Columns

COVID-19 Update: Due to the recent events of Coronavirus, we are taking precautions at the shelter. We encourage people to stay home as much as possible and distance yourself from others. However if you would like to adopt or foster an animal, please be advised we are allowing adoptions and foster opportunities by appointment only! We are also screening people before they come into the shelter for health and safety reasons. We have the ability to isolate potential adopters and fosters with their respective animal for everyone’s safety.

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Matthew 2:13 is a scripture appropriate for the Christmas story I want to tell, “Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy Him.”

Thomas R. Connelly and about 150 fellow Marines and soldiers were prisoners of the North Koreans in 1951 and were held just above the Inchon Reservoir in North Korea. They had been forced marched for days, had not eaten in three days, their feet were frost bitten and their uniforms were ragged with many of them wounded.

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions?

I used to, but then I began to realize that I made the same two or three resolutions every year, and after years of that, my expectations of achieving those things was pretty low. After all, surely, I would have mastered them by now if I were going to!

I was talking about this with a friend and told him I thought I was resolution-challenged. His response? “You’re pretty bullheaded, so if you can’t keep the resolutions, maybe you are resolving the wrong things. Or maybe you’re relying on the wrong power.” I’d like to say he was wrong about the temperament part, but he was exactly right on the rest of it.

There’s an author named Margaret Feinberg who wrote a book called The Sacred Echo. In it, she talks about the ways God speaks to us.

While visiting with some interesting people that were touring our Mansfield Female College Museum I found that they traditionally had a Christmas Yule Log insert for their gas fireplace. That night when I got home the first thing I did was get a fire started in my real fireplace. After I could tell it was going good I put the biggest piece of my split firewood on top. Of course it didn’t last long, much less all night like the old Yule Logs were supposed to. Its two-hour interlude falls far short of the tour group’s fake Yule Insert that probably stayed in from Thanksgiving until New Years. The main consolation I have though is that the next Yule Log I select will be completely different from the last one. Another thing I enjoy about my fireplace is kindling and starting the day’s first fire and keeping it going until bedtime satisfies my inner-firebug.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11 (NKJ). We are all familiar with the nativity scene showing the holy family and the “Three Wise men” or “Three Kings”. As a twelve year old boy I could have written up the story with a great deal of confidence but with further study and reading how much do I really know about the Magi? Where did they come from? What was the star they followed?

We had a wonderfully festive time at the Annual Grand Cane Christmas Parade a couple of weeks ago.

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Public schools have been an integral part of DeSoto Parish life for over one hundred and fifty years. Grand Cane in October 1894 was made a public high school. On April 3, 1895 Mansfield became a high school. The State Board of Education approved Keachi and Stonewall as high schools in 1898.

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DeSoto Parish was a very ever be considered an area for water commerce being situated primarily in the hills between two rivers, the Sabine to the west and the Red River to the east. Of course, originally DeSoto reached from the small Sabine River to the larger Red River. By the time DeSoto was developing into a large cotton exporting parish Red River Parish was formed in 1871 and all fertile bottom land to Bayou Pierre was given to Red River Parish.

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Evaporated or Condensed Milk?

I’ve always had a problem remembering which one is the sweetened one and which one is only condensed, ... or is it evaporated? See what I mean?? While studying up a little on these two I found out that Evaporated Milk was discovered by a French scientist Appert in 1795 while he was working on various food preservation methods. He boiled the fresh milk to reduce it by sixty percent then canned it. Here in American in 1856 Borden and Nestle both came up with a version of Appert’s evaporated milk using extra sugar to help preserve the milk calling it “Condensed Milk”.

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With the 2020 Presidential Election now almost over and controversy raging over the results perhaps a little historical recounting of the Electoral College would be in order. Once upon a time the Electoral College was not controversial. As some of the States became heavily populated they felt they were not being represented as they would like to be. They wanted the Constitution changed to reflect the election of the President and the Vice-President by popular vote. They argued that every State Governor is elected by popular vote.

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