Grades!
Who wouldn’t subscribe to a “stress reduction policy”?
Especially students under the strain of deadlines, quizzes, exams, and so on and so forth? Sounds like a great idea—a “stress reduction policy.”
Well, Dr. Richard Watson, teaching at the University of Georgia, Athens, since 1989, instituted exactly such a policy in his Fall 2017 classes. BTW, Watson is a “Regents Professor” at the university, an honor “bestowed by the Board of Regents on truly distinguished
Opportunity!
An interesting event took place a couple of years ago.
Harvard’s debate team had recently won a national title. The best. The unbeatables. The smartest. The most eloquent. The most persuasive.
Or so one would think.
But months after being unbeatable, they were beaten … by a debate team of prison inmates!
The showdown occurred at the Eastern Correctional Facility in New York, a maximum-security prison!
Prisoners are permitted to take classes taught by faculty from nearby
Home!
He’s 90! My father became a nonagenarian last week, beating the biblical average.
As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10
Indeed.
In fact, hardly a day goes by without Dad saying wistfully …
I don’t know why the Lord’s keeping me here and not calling me Home.”
I tell him it so that we, his family, may be prayed for.
Gone?
Talking of phobias ….
Here’s a new one: taphophobia = “fear of graves” (from the Greek: taphos = grave and phobos = fear).
Before the days of modern medicine, taphophobia was not entirely irrational. People did get buried by accident. William Tebb (1830–1917), a British social reformer, collected stories of these premature burials, documenting 219 cases of near-live burial, 149 of actual live burial, and—get this!—10 cases of dissections of bodies that were
Phobia?
Triskaidekaphobia, it is called, the fear of number 13 (from the Greek: “tris” = 3; “kai” = and; “deka” = 10; and “phobos” = fear). And paraskevidekatriaphobia (from the Greek, “paraskevi” = Friday) or friggatriskaidekaphobia (from “Frigg” = the Norse goddess after whom we get “Friday” in English).
Irrational? Maybe. But the British Medical Journal once concluded in “Is Friday the 13th Bad For Your Health?” that:
Friday 13th is unlucky for
Teddy!
Apparently National Teddy Bear was on September 9.
So the popular custom Teddy Bear outlet, Build-A-Bear Workshop, commissioned a survey by a third party, Atomik Research Group. 2,004 adults were queried. And 40% of them confessed to having their favorite stuffed animal by them as they go to bed.
Four in ten Americans.
And many of those furry buddies leftovers from their childhood days. More than half acknowledged possession of a keepsake stuffed animal for more than 20 years.
Outhouse!
Last week some Bostonians made an interesting find: Paul Revere’s outhouse. That revered gentleman (1734–1818), I’m sure you knew, was one of the patriots of the American revolution and famous for his late night ride in April 1775 to warn the colonial forces that the British were coming.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.