Is It Live or Is It Memorex | by Linda Brendle

Yesterday was my birthday, and if you remember the commercial quoted in the title of this post, you’re like me, older than dirt. But I don’t want to talk about age today. I want to talk about birthday greetings. I got a LOT. I got two cards in the mail, I got lots of face-to-face wishes and hugs at the Senior Center, and I got a phone call from my sweet friend Mary. Everything else was electronic. My question is, were the electronic greetings live or Memorex?

Being Hacked and Other IT Challenges | by Linda Brendle

I’m having a real “IT” week, and it’s only Wednesday. It began on Monday morning with a text from my son Christian. If you’re new to my world, you may not know that he’s a writer, a prolific writer, and the Internet is his life. He has published several books and is a frequent contributor to a number of e-publications – and he BLOGS. He gets more views in a couple of weeks than I’ve gotten in the 19 months since I published my first post. So here’s the text he sent me:

Senior Humor – Edition 11 | by Linda Brendle

It’s just a few days until the election, and I thought we all needed a little break.

An older woman went into a store to buy curtains.

She approached the salesman and said, “I want those pink curtains in the display, but I need them customized to fit my computer screen.”

“Ma’am,” said the salesman, “I’ve worked here for 20 years, and I’ve never had a request like that. Why do you need curtains for your computer?”

How Much More Is Enough | by Linda Brendle

One of the disadvantages of country living is the lack of services. We have city water and electricity, but we have a septic tank instead of city sewer service. We don’t have cable, so the only way we can get TV reception is with a satellite dish. And then there’s Internet service, or rather, there’s not. The choices are dial-up, which for anyone who spends any time on-line is no choice at all, or satellite, which everyone we know who has tried it, hates. So we’re left with going to the library to use their WiFi or using a wireless card.

Pray Hard | by Linda Brendle

One day last week I was reading one of the blogs I follow and saw a word cloud based on Romans 12. One particular phrase jumped out at me: “Pray hard.” This is a phrase that I’ve seen and heard quite a bit, especially over the last few years, and it’s always raised questions in my mind. What exactly does it mean to pray hard? Being the deep theologian that I am, it evokes images of a 5 year old in the toy department, his tiny fists clinched, his face red with tense emotion as he implores his father.