On a recent Saturday morning, I saw an enticing image of baked apple chips on Facebook. I read through the recipe. It seemed simple enough. I’m no baker, but I figured I could do that. My wife, who often bakes with our two young daughters, raised an eyebrow when I told her what I wanted to do. “OK, if you want to,” she playfully shrugged. So off to the store I went. I selected a few Granny Smith apples, picked up a few other needed household items, and approached the clerk. She was, I’d say, in her late 50s or early 60s and not in a talkative mood. As she punched the code for apples into her register, I mentioned that I was going to bake apple chips with my daughters. Suddenly, her mood changed. Maybe she enjoyed baking. Or perhaps what I said reminded her of baking with loved …

The beloved, red-headed orphan, Anne Shirley, first appeared over 100 years ago in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel and was brought to modern audiences through Kevin Sullivan’s movies.  What is the secret to her enduring appeal? The story of Anne of Green Gables began as a single line written in one of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s notebooks. Forgotten for several years, Montgomery stumbled across the notebook in 1904 while looking for a story to submit to a Sunday school paper. The brief entry simply said, “An elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy but a girl is sent them.” It was this humble beginning that inspired L.M. Montgomery to breathe life into Anne Shirley… but it wasn’t easy. Montgomery finished her manuscript for Anne of Green Gables in 1905, but it was promptly turned down by five different publishers. Frustrated and discouraged by the poor response, she packed the manuscript …

Today, we are airing fourteen straight hours of The Waltons on INSP. How is it possible that a television network in the year 2013 could still draw a massive crowd with a show that began airing forty years ago? Could it be:

-The love of family
-The love of community
-The love of God
-The love of country
-The understanding that achieving dreams is still possible

In February 1968, my family – dad, mom, and us three kids – visited Tucson, Arizona for the first time. February was a popular month for tourists to visit The Old Pueblo, as the Southern Arizona town had been known for more than a century.  The weather was postcard perfect, especially for visitors from the mid-Atlantic coast.  Back home, our friends were walking to school in heavy coats, mittens and snow boots.  In Tucson, we were swimming outdoors in our motel’s heated pool, and hiking up a sunlit trail in the Santa Catalina mountains, where we saw towering (and flowering!) saguaros, and heard the enchanting coos of Gambel’s quail and white-winged doves. Tucson was more than just a vacation destination for my family that winter of ’68.  My dad had been offered a job there and our visit was a precursor to moving west three months later. Whether by luck …