Don’t know what to do with your extra day on Friday? Since Leap Day, Feb. 29, comes around only once every four years, it seems fitting to celebrate the occasion by doing something you normally don’t do during the course of a standard year.
For example, say something nice about the IRS. Leave a tip at fast-food restaurant...or any restaurant. Speak with a British accent (unless you’re Britney Spears). Don’t criticize an official during a basketball game. Close the lid to the toilet when you’re through. Turn off your cell phone for the entire day.
You get the idea.
Slaves to routine, most of us will probably observe Feb. 29 no differently than we would any other Friday. We’ll go to work or school, continue our routines and miss the opportunity to do something extra on this extra day of our lives.
To do one thing new and different. You know, maybe that should be our routine. —DR
This is about sounds that go beep in the night. Once in a while my cell phone makes beeps during the night, like a low battery warning or that I have a voice message. I would really like to turn it off, but my world requires that I be available for problems that crop up day or night.
Early Sunday we had a different beep in the night. It wouldn’t quit
so I got up to investigate. After stumbling around for a while I
learned it was our oven telling us it was malfunctioning. Error code F7.
I
reset the clear/off button and went back to bed. A few minutes later it
started all over again, wanting us to know that it still needed help.
A quick trip down to the breaker box silenced it for good but that also means the oven doesn’t work.
Two controversies that surround the church have been in the news recently.
The first surrounds Ted Haggard, former pastor of the New Life Community Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., amid allegations of sexual misconduct and drug abuse.
The other alleges financial impropriety and personal misconduct within the network of churches associated with nationally known Calvary Chapel and its senior pastor, Chuck Smith.
Recent events inspired me to write about a few things that have been on my mind lately. They’re aspects of something Bill O’Reilly calls the “culture war.” See, I’m one of those people O’Reilly would call a “secular progressive.”
To begin, let’s consider that phrase for a moment. The first word is secular. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary lists one of the definitions as “not overtly or specifically religious.” That certainly fits me.
The second word is progressive. As opposed to what, Bill? Regressive? Should we regress socially to the days of slavery or to feudalism or all the way back to tribalism? Should we regress back to stone-age technologically? Of course not.
The Pope, God bless him, issued a set of “Ten Commandments” for drivers last month, telling motorists to be charitable to others on the highways, to refrain from drinking and driving and to take time to pray before they even buckle up, according to an Associated Press story on the unusual document from the Vatican’s office.
The population of Marion County hovers around 12,000 souls. What would it take to double this in the next decades? Or, is slow population decline inevitable in this region?
The second question is, does the county want growth that matches the demographics of America—meaning solid numbers of young persons in addition to retired persons?
Opinion 
