Author Archives: CleoLampos

Believe

Photo from peoplesbanktheatre.com The music filled the Dorothy Meneker Theatre with 110 voices singing in four part harmony backed by live musicians playing violins, flutes, cellos and muted drums. The words formed inspiring images of reaching for dreams and finding them attainable by one thing: believe. The message from the song “Believe” from the hit […]

A Woman’s Potential

thewordfortheday.tumblr.com   “You can go to college. You can have a career. Study hard.” Those words from my mother still echo in my head. Good advice. But from a woman married to an alcoholic and poorer than a church mouse, the statistical possibility of her daughters graduating from college would have discouraged many. Not my […]

A Salute to the Family Farm

As a child, I lived on an eighty-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin. We slopped pigs, gathered eggs, cleaned/plucked chickens, hung by our knees from the top of the windmill, and birthed calves. Nature and life intertwined as geese migrated overhead and ice storms prevented the school bus from coming. A feeling of satisfaction and harmony […]

A Quilt for the Angels of Bataan

“They were trailblazers for women in the military, for the Army Nurse Corps. They set the example for the rest of the services. Their story told the world…that women are tough, they can serve in combat and they can survive.”  -Lt. Col. Nancy Cantrell, nurse and historian Preparation from Life The 99 Navy and Army […]

A Picture Worth Thousands of Words: The Dust Bowl by Ken Burns

For two hours, Vernon and I watched disturbing, yet stunning visuals flash across our television screen. Frightening images of gigantic black blizzards engulfing barns and cities with devastating results. Plagues of jackrabbits and locusts. Old and young coughing from dust pneumonia. The first DVD of The Dust Bowl, by Ken Burns, sent chills pearling over our […]

Anything

“Where does God want to take your plenty and pour it out?” – Jennie Allen One word kept appearing in the book I read with quickening hope. Anything. “The very idea of doing anything demands everything,” the author, Jennie Allen, wrote.¹ Complete surrender to God’s will. At the end of the book’s last paragraph, my […]

Angels Watching

“Our certainty that angels right now witness how we are walking through life should mightily influence the decisions we make. God is watching and His angels are interested spectators too.”                                                                                             -Billy Graham                                                                                          Truth is always stranger than fiction. That is why biographies and memoirs are my favorite genres to read. As a public […]