Middletree

At the end of each year, Miami columnist Dave Barry, one of the funniest cultural observers of my lifetime, recaps the previous year in a humorous way. Barry's strength is pointing out our political posturing, our misplaced priorities, and the way we take it all too seriously. His recap of 2018 is a must-read and is located at    https://www.miamiherald. com/living/liv-columns-blogs/ dave-barry/article223204095. html With no promises of being as sharp as Dave Barry, and not trying to be funny, I present to you my in-no-particular-order list of what I pray that 2019 will bring. Some of this is personal to me, and some is for all of us.  1. I hope to be fully employed for all of 2019 .  I'll just say this: 2018 was hard for me. And I'll leave it at that.  2. I hope to go through 2019 without once seeing a link with the headline "Watch as (fill in the blank) DESTROYS  (fill in the blank). This is almost always a link to a video wher...

Every year, December brings a few things we've come to expect: the local oldies station playing Christmas tunes a little too early; advertisements exhorting us to spend, spend, spend; complainers complaining about "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas"; and some smarter-than-thou guy on Facebook informing everyone that the Nativity scenes are all wrong.  The latter person takes a certain satisfaction in being the one who sets everyone straight about how Jesus probably wasn't born in a stable , and even if there was a stable, the Wise Men (they weren't kings and there weren't 3 of them) weren't there anyway because they most likely saw Him up to 2 years after He was born.  And t he Little Drummer Boy? D on't get him started.  If Facebook Guy is correct, it's likely that one day, in this life or the next, we're going to find out that the birth of Jesus was nothing like we pictured it. We were raised thinking it was one thing, and...