Student immersed in world of prostitution found slain

Twenty-one years ago ...

Acts 8:26-40                                                            September 29
who I'm responsible for                                           9509.29


Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.
"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" 30-31a


A Spirit-filled Bible study -- that's what tonight's [it was a Friday - D.] session at the Bramlitts' was. Demons possess us all at one time or another, and they're having a field day with me and my family. I cannot change Dad and how he feels toward me, but I can change me.


Lord, be with Ray and his wife as they work in and through their new church in the area, Ethan in his schooling, John in his dealings with life, Eustis Middle's ACE retreat, and Aaron and Norma Dunn -- let us seek Your face in all our daily doings.


[My prayer request's at the bottom of the page's "out go the divisions, in Jesus' name!" and my post title today comes from a news article I'd wedged in there dated that day with dateline Pontiac, Michigan referring to Tina Biggar, an undergraduate psychology major at Oakland University whose research project on prostitution and AIDS led to her going undercover as a prostitute, and one of her customers beat her to death. I guess in the terms of Rev. Edwin A. Thome, the minister who spoke at Tina's funeral, I'm pretty self-righteous, for I DON'T understand how this translates into her "spirit of adventure" as a good thing. - D.]


I promise to keep my other sentences shorter.


In fact I won't even go by sentences, I'll go by numbers!


5. Félix Faure. Lord Palmerston. Cardinal Jean Danielou. Nelson Rockefeller. Pope John XII. It's a safe bet that more people in history have died during sex than these five, but they just don't make the lists. And in Karl Shaw's 2007 book 5 People Who Died During Sex (ISBN 9780767920599) this and a hundred other ... weird, if not outright disgusting statistics about people, places, and things famous and otherwise make up lists. It is definitely fine reading -- I mean, I read the book, that's why it's listed here! -- but the likelihood you or I will want to refer to this again for such factoids as King Louis XIV only took three baths in his lifetime or that Prince Charles and Princess Diana's honeymoon was among the least romantic (he read her passages from Carl Jung as a treat) is among the miscellany you're not likely to ever be asked on Jeopardy!


9. John Deere. Prudential. Kitchen-Aid Dishwasher. Westinghouse. Evinrude. Gerber. Polaroid. Jacuzzi. AstroTurf. Nathan Aaseng's 1989 book The Problem Solvers (ISBN 0822506750) details how the developers of the nine products I've listed above saw a need and filled it -- but not in a way you might expect. And there's a few surprises too. I did NOT know that Jacuzzi was a person's name; it's the water injection pumps the brothers Jacuzzi invented, and not the whirlpool tub itself. The dishwasher was originally invented not to save its inventor the housework but to end her frustration with servants who constantly broke the dishes when they were washing them. And AstroTurf was originally developed by the Monsanto Company (before it became the genetic engineering villain it's called now) and it's named for its first place of use, inside the Houston Astros' Astrodome.

94. The number of days including today left in this calendar year. Also, the last two digits of the year I graduated from Stetson University with my bachelor's degree in social science-education. Also, the docking bay at Mos Eisley Spaceport where the Millenium Falcon took off in a hurry with captain Han Solo, first mate Chewbacca, two passengers, and two droids in very much of a hurry ...


1330. In military time, that's 1:30 pm local. And the time I finish this post!



2067. The year, Gregorian calendar, that the last issue of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's graphic novel series Y: The Last Man takes place. Though like the direct cause of the plague that killed every male mammal sixty-five years before, it's not directly stated and the reader has to make an educated guess. Consider: through its sixty issues where Yorick Brown the last known surviving man, his helper Capuchin monkey Ampersand (last known surviving male of any other species), geneticist and cloning specialist Allison Mann, and Agent 355 "who gets people where they need to go", traveling the world to finally reunite with Yorick's fiancée Beth takes five years. Apparently so did the series, but I got around waiting that long by checking the Deluxe Edition volumes out of the library and rightly cheering that I did it!