Add the camera’s “auto” button as one of the great inventions of history.
Stuck inside on a rainy, cold Sunday afternoon, I dragged out the box of family photos. I took a lot of pictures of my firstborn in the early 1980s, but many of them were out of focus and the lighting was bad. I did much better 10 years later with my second-born — better camera and a more experienced photographer.
Yet another decade later, I could almost pass for a real photographer with my third-born son’s baby pictures. A digital camera with all the fancy settings did the trick.
Just set the camera to “auto” and relax. No thinking. No bracketing. No guessing about lighting. Unless I’m at a fast-action basketball game, “auto” does a pretty good job.
The quality is better, but there may be fewer of young Michael’s pictures in the photo album. I rarely print pictures any more. They’re all digital — stuck in the computer or on a disc. There won’t be any bad photos of Michael in his book, but the good ones languish inside the computer.
Clemmons reader Phillip Thompson on Monday recalled an Easter story about Napoleon. Billy Graham mentioned it in his devotional, “Hope for Each Day.” The French Army had approached the Austrian town of Feldkirch during the night, and Christians in the little town gathered on the eve of Easter to pray as they had never prayed before with the enemy sure to seize the town the next day.
At sunrise, Christians furiously rang the bells of the church to signify the resurrection of Christ. Napoleon, forgetting Easter, thought the Austrian army had moved into town.
He ordered a retreat, and the town was spared.
Phillip Thompson thinks 2013 is a good time for us to be praying, too.
Also for Easter, Union Hill Baptist pastor Christopher Burcham has noticed the zombie craze that has swept the movies in recent years. His Sunday sermon topic is, “The Walking Dead.” That’s keeping up with the young people.
Johnny Marklin of 1st Baptist Church, Mocksville, is campaigning for women to wear the Easter bonnets on Sunday morning. That’s a style that has shown no indication of coming back into fashion.
Following tradition, we Moravians will get out the scrub brushes on Good Friday to clean the graves of our family members and decorate them with flowers. Weather, however, is a worry. Temperatures have dipped below freezing nearly every night this week, cold enough to ruin flowers. The forecast looks like Easter will be nice, but it will be chilly Saturday night.
Last summer at the beach I bought a $10 crab pot at Bass Pro Shops to delight — and terrify — the grandchildren with my catch. The store must have thought I was quite a fisherman. In Monday’s mail was a 172-page fishing catalog, complete with thousands of lures, rods and reels and fishing boats up to $50,000.
I was honored, but the store has wasted its money.
Aside from chasing a crab now and then, I haven’t fished in years. I failed my sons by not teaching them the fine art of …