Earth date: September 14,
2020One of my favorite movie
moments was in History of the World, Part 1 where Mel Brooks playing Moses
comes down Mount Sinai carrying three stone tablets. “The Lord Jehovah,” he
says loudly for all to hear, “has given us these fifteen.” He accidentally
drops one of the tablets onto the rocks, smashing it to pieces. He looks at the
mess at his feet. “Oye. Ten,” he yells, “ten commandments for all to obey.”I was in my thirties when
I first saw this movie and this slapstick scene caught me so off guard that I
burst out laughing and crying at the same time that I forget whatever scene came
after. In the years since, I
have wondered what if the Lord HAD intended for there to be fifteen
Commandments instead of ten, but only ten survived to be mentioned in the Exodus
and Deuteronomy. The first four
Commandments honor and respect the Lord God, and the other six honor and
respect the people and community around us, so maybe the last five were
intended for us to reac…
Earth date:September 7, 2020I was one of those
obnoxious, sissy girls who played with dolls and dishes when I was a child. My
neighborhood was mostly boys, so they ignored me unless they needed an extra
person to even up teams when they played war or cowboys, or the one baseball we
owned in the whole neighborhood went into Mrs. Cowser’s back yard. She owned
three fierce chihuahuas with sharp little teeth, and I could run fast. I grew wiser as I got
older and would hold out until they agreed to my terms. I made the boys
super-dog, spit-in-the-dirt promise to play “school” with me in return.When it came time to keep their part of the
bargain, only my brother and the two boys who lived next door kept their word. Teaching was my career
for thirty-seven years. My dream was to get my PhD in languages from UT Austin
and travel the world teaching in magnificent universities, but I needed to earn
some money first, so back in 1971 I accepted a teaching job. It was only for
one year.As most firs…