Country Connections y James and Ellen Perry
As I sit here on my front porch in the late evening afterglow on a cool December day, I see a robin in my front yard.
Immediately my memory goes back to a beautiful soul-searching song by Hank Williams from 1949. This line was in that song: “Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves began to die, that means he’s lost the will to live.”

he meaning of ‘The Last Days’
What does the KJV Bible mean by the term “The Last Days”?
Digging into the “last days” term we find a few other similar terms the KJV uses: like “Latter Days” and “end of the days;” “time of the end;” or “day of the Lord,” all of which indicate a promise to come after a length of time. The Old and New Testament authors are very particular in how these “last days” terms are used, so as to make a clear distinction between a longer period of time, as opposed to a single last day.

Unlike most kids, my favorite Christmas song wasn’t “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” or “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.” Nope. It was “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.”
Does that sound strange? Being the imaginative kid that I was, I created my own version of a winter wonderland in my head.
Every time I heard that song, it transported me there. In it were snow, talking snowmen (of course), and Christmas trees full of colorful sparkling lights and shiny ornaments.
In other words, it was a perfect place full of adventure.

The recent bitter cold spell we just lived through may have converted a lot of people to become thermophiles (those who like heat), and don’t want to read about cold right now. But stay with me on this one and perhaps you won’t be so down on our own winter weather.

Soon, people working sedentary jobs will be able to take advantage of an innovation created to prevent troublesome back pain — researchers have created a prototype of an office chair that activates deep muscles and improves trunk stabilization.

Research shows that many people spend almost 80 per cent of their working day sitting and at least half of that time in the same body position. The prolonged and invariable sitting posture is associated with lower back pain due to impaired musculoskeletal control.

Have you ever loved a TV show so much that you planned your schedule around it?
My mother loves the classic Christmas TV shows from the 1960s and 1970s: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “The Little Drummer Boy,” and (my favorite) “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” When these shows came out on VCR, she bought them in a pack. When they came out on DVD, she bought them again.

My father was a reader. But during the Great Depression books were hard to come by. We didn’t live near a library. Gas to go there was expensive when he only earned forty dollars a month working on a farm, doing the milking and field work. But there was some reading material available at a low price. The pulp Western novels, costing ten or fifteen cents, filled the bill. We couldn’t even afford a newspaper subscription.

What do you do when you need croutons for salad or a dressing? Do you shell out good money for toasted stale bread at the store? You don't have to do that. Croutons are easy to make. You can use any kind of bread you like. Let's face it, the bread you buy is at least a day old when you buy it. Open it and it's on its way to being too stale to use for anything other than toast or croutons. So you do have stale bread at home. Don't throw it out. Make croutons. You might add some dried spices for different flavors.

Modern living tends to make us too busy to relax, and I’m not the first to tell you that’s not healthy. Humans of any age need to play and let those stress generated hormones that make the heart race and adrenaline flow get out of our system. To many this may involve some form of exercise through various sports, but another way is to just get outside and become more attuned to what's around you. It focuses you to live in the now, with no thought of past or future concerns. A connection with nature has been proven to be healthy and therapeutic, yet severely lacking these days, especially with kids. So let me encourage you to resolve in 2023 to get outside a little more, to be still a little more, and enjoy and learn more about this wonderful place we live in. Here are some possibilities

‘Twas a few days before Christmas, on a chilly evening, when a local family showed up at the Union County Farmers Market Pavilion like Santa Clause. They backed up their truck and dropped down the tail gate, revealing bags upon bags of toys, coats, bicycles, and more. For this generous family donated nearly $500 worth of goodies to children in the community who needed a delivery from Santa Clause.