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"A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Those words by Frank Lloyd Wright reveal the highly challenging competition in architecture to create a design that is so stunning so as to leave one breathless. From time to time such efforts do reap a bounty of homes that are a trifle unattractive to say the least. Sometimes, when architects push the envelope, the envelope gets torn and wadded.

I have seen homes that just were not my taste that received rave reviews from architectural digests. And I have seen homes that even the…  ( Click for more )

I started attending Christian Service Camp when I was ten years old. At that time that was the youngest that anyone was admitting a camper for a weeklong program. I remember a kid, who shall remain nameless, that had some sort of nasal problem for which he was being medicated. He brought the medication to camp and the camp nurse made sure he got it every day.

Only problem was his problem became our problem. With nine boys in the dorm plus a dorm dad only one person slept that first night; the kid with the nasal problem. The rest of us lay awake listening to him breath and…  ( Click for more )

Here in America we are in a time that is referred to as, "March Madness." It is the time of the year that the National Collegiate Athletic Association stages its annual men's college basketball tournament pitting the 65 best teams in the college ranks against each other for an earned national title as the National Champions of College Basketball.

The March part is that it is contested in the month of March and pretty much consumes sports fanatics for that time period. The Madness part of it is the effort put out by armchair basketball prognosticators who wish to try their…  ( Click for more )

During my sophomore year at Johnson Bible College near Knoxville, Tennessee, I had a roommate named Bill Green. Bill and I had a good relationship and tried our best to motivate each other to do the work we were supposed to do for our classes. I hate to admit it but I resisted a lot of Bill's good urgings and sloughed off a lot of my classwork due to some poor choices I was making with my life. I was just killing time.

During the second semester Bill found a neat little placard and put it on the front part in the middle of the bottom shelf at our desks. The placard read,…  ( Click for more )

Erin go bragh! And a good St. Patrick's Day to you. Today people all around the world will be celebrating a holiday which means absolutely nothing to them other than it's a holiday on which they wear green and pinch those who don't. Please don't be so quick to pinch this year. There are some things you might wish to know before you start leaving small bruises on each others skin.

First of all, Saint Patrick's Day is in honor of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of my homeland, Ireland. It is also a very religious time for those folks there. Even the…  ( Click for more )

While enrolled at Johnson Bible College near Knoxville, Tennessee, I developed a friendship with a young man from Young High School who liked to box and thought I might enjoy it also. He took me to meet his trainer, an ex-boxer who never made it out of the club circuit. The trainer checked my hand speed, overall strength and asked me if I would like to train. I tried it and liked it.

I trained hard. I ran incessantly and lifted what weights the gym had as well as those at Johnson. I watched as my body redefined itself. I trimmed down to a svelt 195 pounds. I had been sparring…  ( Click for more )

Recently my wife and I went to St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky to visit a friend of ours who had surgery to repair three massive blockages and a bad aortic valve. Only problem is we never got to the hospital itself. After finding a parking place a couple of tiers back from the front entrance we started making our way to the entrance walking over a mounded landscaped area which was covered with a thin layer of snow. My wife made it fine. I didn't.

Don't you just hate falls? You know what I'm talking about. The ones where you start down and have no…  ( Click for more )

Horace, the great Roman poet and satirist, once said, "A picture is a poem without words." I am sure that he was talking about the artist's canvas rather than the photographer's lens. Proof of that might well be found in a photo from the 1970s of Jack Nicklaus all decked out in his fitted plaid pants caught in full swing of the driver. Quite a fashion statement, but hardly poetry other than Jack's impeccable swing. But the fashion aspect of his clothing?!? Golf has had some rather famous fashion faux pas.

Not long ago Golf Magazine surveyed their subscribers…  ( Click for more )

Ebb and flow. Two terms used to describe the movement of the earth's oceans during the course of the average day. The process was immortalized in the lines; "First the tide rushes in, plants a kiss on the shore, then rolls out to the sea and the sea is very still once more," from the song "Ebb Tide." But have you ever seen the effects of the flow?

The flow is the high tide that seeks its way inland. At the point of furthest penetration it leaves a line of debris; seaweed, drift wood, shells, etc. It also leaves something else; tide pools. Wherever there is a depression…  ( Click for more )

One of the things that I enjoy about Myrtle Beach is, of course, the beach. Each morning while there I took the opportunity to go down to the beach with a couple of those mornings giving me the chance to take a walk. Even though the temperatures were in the thirties most mornings it was still pleasant and enjoyable. How can a walk in that beautiful a setting not be enjoyable with the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean?

As I would take these walks I would also notice the various footprints. There were a number of different shoe tread designs along with several sizes of dog prints.…  ( Click for more )

It is good to be back. Bet you didn't even miss me. Vacation time or retreat time that takes me away from the house also takes me away from the computer. That's right, I don't have a laptop or notebook or portable or whatever you would call it. I am stuck with one computer at one location and it stayed home while I was gone. I guess I'm just not up-to-date.

Speaking of up-to-date, while on the Hikes Point (Louisville, KY) Christian Church Golf Retreat with eleven of the nicest guys you would want to meet, one of the men was having some tire problems. Ed…  ( Click for more )

The last year we lived in Bellville, Ohio I had the privilege to write a sports column under the nom de plume of Da Wiffer. It gave me the opportunity to look into some sports matters a bit more deeply and ask questions that most sports aficionados don't ask. The year was 1991. One column that I wrote stood out that year because it made the natives angry.

The Cincinnati Reds were the reigning champions of baseball having swept the vaunted Oakland A's of "Bash Brothers" fame in four games. The Cleveland Indians had played possibly the best baseball of their careers…  ( Click for more )

"Blessed is the man whose strength is in God." Psalm 84:5 That little verse speaks volumes to me. As a golfer I have had to learn certain things which have, in turn, taught me about God. You might think that a tad strange that a sport can teach you about the heavenly Father, but it can. Living life for the Lord seems to be very difficult. Hitting a golf ball where you want it to go is the most difficult thing for me to do in sports. Let me explain.

Like most golfers I started playing golf having no training whatsoever. No one else in my immediate family ever played the…  ( Click for more )

Golf has produced some rather interesting swings over the years. Some are so buttery smooth as to invoke poetry. Others, well, let's just say that someone sneezing and chopping wood at the same time looks more coordinated. That little bit of commentary helps to explain why many golfers are referred to as "hackers." They literally look like they are hacking away at something rather than making what one would call a stroke.

Of all the ugly swings that worked Arnold Palmer has to be at the top of the list. When viewing Palmer's slashing jab at the ball one gets the feeling that…  ( Click for more )

In Cooperstown, New York, stands professional baseball's Hall of Fame. Enshrined within those hallowed halls are the immortals of the game of baseball; the best of the best. The all-time home run hitters, runs batted in men, stolen bases champions, strike out champions, most pitching wins all-time; you get the picture. There is something sadly missing. The all-time hits leader is absent.

Pete Rose is not a part of baseball's Hall of Fame. He has more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, yet, there is no place for him in the Hall of Fame. He won multiple batting titles…  ( Click for more )

Sibling spats are nothing new. They have been going on since the dawn of time. Recently, a mother of three was talking with me about her difficulty in controlling her children's internal wars. After talking with her I began to remember the skirmishes that my late sister, Peggy, and I used to get into. We had some doozies, but one in particular stands out.

I was all of ten years of age. My family and I were heavily involved in the church life of the Jeffersonville Church of Christ in Jeffersonville, Ohio. As it usually happened, Sundays were a chore for my parents as it was…  ( Click for more )

Amazingly, one of the farthest points east in the continental United States is the small town of Lubec, Maine. Lubec has a few hundred residents and yet is well known in a number of circles. Lubec is home to one of the most famous lighthouses in the United States. The name of that light is what seems so odd considering the location of Lubec. The light is called the West Quoddy Head Light.

The current lighthouse was not erected until 1858. A rubblestone lighthouse existed there from 1808 until that time. It was authorized by President Thomas Jefferson as a need was expressed…  ( Click for more )

When I first took up the sport of golf I was given an old set of clubs by one of the elders of the Bainbridge (OH) Church of Christ. The parsonage for the church bordered on an open field which ultimately became my driving range. However, I didn't have enough golf balls to be able to stand there and hit them for any length of time before having to go looking for them.

It wasn't until we moved to the Wilmington, Ohio area that I had the opportunity really hit golf balls. I played a round of golf at a local golf course and, during that round, found close to fifty balls that golfers…  ( Click for more )

When Eldrick "Tiger" Woods came along people said there would never be another one like him. Power, precision and a certain youthful zest made him appealing. Then came William Tryon. Tryon was a precocious teenager who took the golf world by storm as he was seemingly being another Tiger. Everyone thought that he would be the next Tiger and were predicting great things.

If you don't recognize William Tryon you may recognize Ty Tryon. Ty is William's nickname hung on him by a doting father in recognition of the otherworldy character made famous in Caddyshack by Chevy Chase.…  ( Click for more )

Saturday evening, February 12, was the annual Valentine's Day Banquet for our church on the campus of Georgetown College. This fine event is run every year by Shari Coleman who does an outstanding job of pulling everything together. Right before the banquet I was talking with her when she said, "By the way, Dad said to tell Tom if he asks how I am doing, tell him, 'very well,' for me. And tell him I do tell a lie from time to time."

"Dad" is Archie Burchfield. He and his lovely wife Betty were unable to be at the banquet. Archie was battling cancer at the time. Yesterday…  ( Click for more )

Golf is a fickle mistress. She doesn't always allow you to do the same thing twice in the same month let alone in the same round. Beautiful high arching shots that land on the green, as Sam Snead once said, "as soft as a butterfly with sore feet" can suddenly become low, twisting line drives that rocket into the fields of bushes that the butterflies inhabit.

That sure putting stroke which canned putt after putt to save par after a not-so-brilliant chip suddenly leaves you eight feet short on a five foot putt. It's called the "yips," but no one says, "Yippee," when they get them.…  ( Click for more )

I recently took over our dining room table. It is now covered with a thousand pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle, a rather beautiful montage of lighthouse illustrations and facts, was given me by a family at the Berea Christian Church across from the Kentucky Horsepark here in the heart of the Bluegrass. I have just now gotten it out to assemble it as a result of some cleaning my wife did. She found it.

I have been collecting lighthouses for some time now and the puzzle has a number of the lighthouses I have in my collection illustrated within it. The border is a row of…  ( Click for more )

This past week has been a difficult one for me. An upper respiratory infection moved in and took over. It sapped my strength leaving me so weak that I was constantly falling asleep. I couldn't concentrate enough to write this column nor stay awake long enough to do so. Fits of incessant coughing also got the best of me making me exhausted from sometimes fifteen minutes of continual coughing.

I was not able to get into a doctor's office until Friday so, for three days, I bore the brunt of the infection and struggled to make a go of it. My wife's birthday was Thursday evening…  ( Click for more )

We use them on an almost daily basis. They power many infrequently used items and also some that are constanly used. They are batteries. Yeah, the good ole A, AA, AAA, B, C, D and 9 volt. We have them in games, pda's, phones; you name it, batteries power it. Batteries were, for the longest time acredited to the work of Alessandro Volta. Hence the term, "volt", to describe their power.

However, less than fifty years ago a clay jar some five inches high and three inches across began to change our previously held historical view of the battery. A group of clay jars made by…  ( Click for more )