Uncle Thor's Lessons, Anecdotes and Humor

I have just been made a moderator for my friend’s discussion forum. Like most busy forums, an extra moderator or two helps. Better to have two or three people checking instead of one person.
Moderating a forum is not like moderating a spoken conversation. It is simpler. All a moderator should [...]

Life is not made for coasting. If you float along with the current, you end up wherever it takes you. The idea of Life is to plot your own course. For that, you need a sense of direction.
Today I saw the antics of a family of lumps. The mother of this [...]

Along the Rufiji River of Tanzania and in the Tsavo region of Kenya, nature has shown that it is not safe. Tsavo was the site of numerous lion attacks on humans. One estimate is that the pair of lions killed 135 people during their reign of terror. That happened over one hundred years ago. In [...]

When people speak of reputation, what do they really mean? Each of us has a reputation among the people who know us. It is built on our dealings with others. We may not think of it as a reputation, but that is what it is.
Most folks have a general sense of good will [...]

Have you ever chanced making a mistake?
Most of us have. Things can go wrong, no matter how much we try to get them right. Usually the mistakes are not a big thing. It might be as simple missing a turn on a strange highway or forgetting an item at the supermarket. [...]

Some years ago in another town, I was invited to a “business proposition” by the fellow whose father owned a local pizzeria. He assured me that it would impress me. However, he refused to tell me the name of it. He explained that I would learn all that at the presentation. I weighed my options. [...]

There has been some talk lately about sacrifice. Those doing most of the talking do not have the macht to go into a situation where they can really get hurt. True sacrifice means facing the likelihood of harm.
Every soldier, naval sailor, airman and marine knows sacrifice. Just getting into the military involves [...]

Audrey and I went out today to get the newspaper. They were out of newspapers at our usual stop, so we went another store. On the way, we decided we needed something from the local “big box” hardware store. Off we went to get it. It was then we decided that [...]

There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is simply not knowing. Stupidity has several definitions. It can be defined as knowing better but choosing worse. It can be a matter of thinking you know better when you do not know enough. There are several other definitions for stupidity that [...]

I had two friends who died tragically back in the 80s. I was a substance abuse counselor at the time. Both of these men had gotten off the needle juice. They had stayed clean, only to discover a scary fact. Both had AIDS. In the 80s, that was a death [...]