Tony Cartledge’s Blog

Last Friday I was witness to the power of encouragement -- and the flip side of that -- in two different ways.  Episode One: Knowing that I'm a Duke fan, my wife Susan bought us tickets for the Duke-Mercer game in the NCAA tournament's round of 64. Duke was expected...

Does email in your inbox multiply like rabbits? Do you ever sit down to work on a project, but find yourself, two hours later, still dealing with email?  Email wouldn't be such a plague if were not also such a blessing. Provided one has Internet access, email is free,...

While Russian president Vladimir Putin celebrates his success in taking Crimea away from Ukraine and using his bully pulpit to excoriate the West, Franklin Graham is endorsing Putin's campaign against homosexuals.  Graham, who now leads the Billy Graham...

Sometimes, less can be more. Recently I was given the challenge of writing a meditation that speaks to the church as a good gift of God for which we should be thankful. In 50-90 words.  That's about three tweets' worth. How to describe something as big and...

I can't remember the last time I went to a circus ... until we recently decided to check out the latest edition of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth" on its Raleigh stop.  Expand the picture and look closely: you'll see five...

I read a story recently about Disneyland's "It's a Small World" ride being renovated, in part to introduce wider seats because "small world" visitors were getting bigger. I haven't been on that ride in many years and would be perfectly happy if I never do again: five...

All of us find some things hard to understand. Calculus, for instance, was difficult for me. I did fine until we got to imaginary numbers, and I couldn't imagine them. Other things are much simpler in concept, but frustrating to understand in other ways. At the top of...

Observing the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. has become iconic on our calendars, though for many it marks more of a free weekend for skiing or traveling than for remembering the Civil Rights pioneer. The MLK memorial in Washington, DC.For many people -- and I...

The calendar is an amazing thing. From antiquity, when time was measured by the cycles of the moon, until the present, when years are measured to the fraction of a second, humans have wanted a system that allows them to organize time, plan for the future, and remember...

I've spent a good part of today sitting in a hospital room with my oldest son, who will leave in a couple of days with an astronomical hospital bill and no major medical insurance to apply to it. Because of pre-existing medical conditions, he has been unable to...

Image from http://www.hdwallpapersinn.com.So here it is, another new year, and I find myself making the same resolutions I made last year, and the year before. Perhaps you've had that experience? Surprisingly, I don't find that frustrating at all. Such resolutions as...

I've refrained from comment on the ongoing flap over "Duck Dynasty" partriarch Phil Robertson's comments about homosexuality in part because it seemed that more than enough had been said, and in part because the whole thing just seemed too ridiculous. Photo from...

I don't have many Christmas traditions, but there is one thing I try to do every year: at some point during the Christmas season, I watch Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas. The 48-minute muppet special first aired in 1977, so it's been a part of Christmas at my house...

Daniel's cryptic reference to a three-and-a-half year period for the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes comes to mind when I try to get my head around what time it is. It's the last week of the semester and the middle of the Advent season, but I'm preparing for spring...

I've observed that birthday parties are often more about the person throwing the party than the one being honored. Children's birthday parties, for example, can become de facto competitions between parents who want to outdo other kids' parties: who has the biggest...

As big cuts in supplemental nutrition programs take effect on Nov. 1, the fast food industry continues to thrive on subsidies from the federal government. There's no law that says congress will pay $1.2 billion annually to subsidize McDonald's, for example, but that's...

I was working at a card table in front of the TV on Sunday afternoon so I could keep tabs on the Goody's 500 NASCAR race at Martinsville, and most of the race was typical short-track racing: lots of bumping and shoving, spinouts, and drivers getting short-tempered as...

We've all seen it, I'm sure -- most commonly when we were four or five years old, maybe even nine or ten, in more elaborate fashion. Some kid makes a loud noise in class, or draws an ugly caricature of the teacher on the blackboard, and when the teacher seeks the...

An overnight trip to the high country early this week offered multiple opportunities to be reminded of God's presence. From near Todd, NC, looking southwest toward Boone. The mountains themselves shout with it, of course, whether in the morning, when fog pools in the...

Photo from telegraph.co.ukThe recent interview with Pope Francis, "the people's pope," was yet another sign that a fresh new breeze is stirring the dusty air of the Vatican. That makes the more stodgy types really uncomfortable, of course, but it brings hope to...

AP photo from foxnews.com, weapons from a gun buy-back program in Trenton, NJ.It's enough to make you puke. As if North Carolina's super-majority right-wing legislature hasn't done enough to flaunt its power and make life harder for many of its citizens, lawmakers...

The current income disparity in the U.S. is enough to make most anyone despair -- at least those outside the top ten percent. The rich have made out like bandits during the recovery from our most recent greed-induced "great recession," while poor and middle class...

... and their callousness. Hugh Hollowell and other workers with "Love Wins" speak to a police officer who would not allow them to distribute food to the homeless. I was surprised, if not shocked, to learn that the city police in Raleigh, N. C., are now threatening to...

North Carolina's governor Pat McCrory has called for the legislature to return to Raleigh for a special session to deal with two bills he vetoed, one a discriminatory demand that some welfare applicants be tested for drugs and the other an immigration bill that he...

Anyone who's watched much television preaching or visited certain churches has certainly run across someone promoting the prosperity gospel, the notion that God wants to make us all rich so we can be an example of divine beneficence to others. It's tempting to buy...

Campbell University held its faculty orientation August 15, and change was in the air. The new School of Osteopathic Medicine has opened, for one thing, to much fanfare. The afternoon session was held in one of the two high-tech 200-seat classrooms in the new...

In a surprising turn of events, Israeli officials who tried for 10 years to have a stone Hebrew inscription declared a forgery have now filed suit to keep it because it is an "antiquity." The artifact, known as the "Jehoash Inscription," is a dark sandstone tablet...

Getting one's first car is one of those thresholds of emerging adulthood that most young men and women experience, most often in a good way. I didn't have wheels of my own until I was a sophomore in college, 60 miles from home and longing for something more reliable...

The North Carolina legislature, newly and completely dominated by agenda-wielding Republicans intent on solidifying their position and steam-rolling opposition, has wrapped up its 2013 session, successfully turning the Old North State into what should be a state of...

Coming down to earth from nine days of Baptist meetings in Jamaica had its positive and negative aspects. The upside was finding several ripe tomatoes on my vines, enough squash for multiple meals, and plenty of bell peppers for stir-fry. I've eaten a whole tomato at...

The summer blockbuster movies are sprinkled, as usual, with heroes who come from other planets, are altered by nuclear radiation, or are simply gifted at violence, but when I hear the word "hero," I don't think of imaginary characters who populate comic books and...

Most days we go about our business with little thought beyond getting through our to-do list, but every now and then, mortality stands up and demands to be heard.  We don't like it's harsh voice or blunt words, but we can't avoid listening. On May 10, Miriam...

One of the Barna Group's latest studies indicates the unsurprising trend that a growing number of pastors and churches are using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Graphic from Barna.orgThe survery of 1,263 senior pastors in Protestant churches suggested that...

As the country's congressmen dither over who gets the blame for our ongoing budget uncertainties and sequester-fueled cutbacks in services, lots of notions about tax reform are floating about. Image from yobucko.comSome of the ideas involve closing tax loopholes,...

Gabrielle Giffords had it right when she called them cowards in an op-ed piece published yesterday in the New York Times. The cravens in question are U.S. senators who have effectively shot down any efforts at making it more difficult for criminals and mentally...

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has announced a major reorganization and downsizing -- with the biggest cuts coming through the virtual elimination of campus ministry, where 10 people will lose their jobs. According to an article posted by the Biblical...

When it comes to sports, for the most part, I can take 'em or leave 'em. I don't remember who played in the Super Bowl, because I didn't care. Basketball's NCAA tournaments are over, and once Duke's teams lost, I lost interest. Are they playing professional basketball...

Good grief, George. Your latest survey on American attitudes toward the Bible can't tell us much when you ask square questions of a multi-shaped people. Image from barna.orgBarna's latest survey on what Americans think of the Bible was released today, in an apparent...

News outlets are abuzz this week as the Supreme Court prepares to hear two cases relative to same-sex marriage. The court's decisions, due by June, could be landmark findings, or a more cautious response. Photo by author, taken 3-4-2013National sentiment has swung...

How low can Congress go, at least in the category of job approval? An average of seven different polls taken during the past month showed that only 15.6 percent of Americans approve of the job our law-makers are doing, while a resounding 78.7 percent disapprove -- a...

Pope Benedict XVI announced today that he plans to step down at the end of the month -- the first pope in 600 years to resign voluntarily rather than clinging to power and dying in office. Benedict has not been my favorite pope: his strict orthodoxy and...

Lord, don't we love to call others culpable. Even when there's no skin off our nose, we enjoy the chance to put the onus on folk who might possibly be responsible for any sort of misfortune. Sometimes people deserve it, of course. But sometimes things just happen....

You can tell a lot about a person by what he or she leaves behind. That would be particularly true when someone dies and family members or friends pick through the finances, belongings, or correspondence of the deceased. Was the person a giver or a hoarder? A saver or...

What? It's finally gotten cold in our neck of the woods - relatively speaking, of course. After the warmest winter on record in 2012 and several 70 degree days this month, we've finally run into a five or six day stretch in which temperatures are predicted to range...

Thinking of Martin Luther King always reminds me of justice issues, of how far we've come, and how far we have yet to go. When I was a boy, students from all twelve grades rode the school bus together because we all went to the same school. That is, all of the white...