Olive's Angels

I started writing this story more than sixteen years ago, but for whatever reason, I placed it on the back burner as daily life continued on for me. I took up several other writing projects. My mother passed away in 1992, and then just last October, my precious senior daughter also passed. Losing her jarred me to open this project and start writing again--to finish this story before it was lost.

This is a story of one woman's belief in angels, as well as several stories of people who believe they had personal encounters with angels. Some biblical references are included, as well as a few misconceptions about angels people may have. This book in no way says angels are fact or fiction, just states things many people believe and what is said in the NKJ Version of the Bible. It was fun to do the research for this story. I learned so much I never knew before about the angels.

I actually started to write this story because on my mother--how she loved and believed in God's angels. She was as close to being an angel on earth as I could ever imagine a human could be. She was a godly woman in every respect. But I also wrote the story because I believe many of my relatives that are now deceased are in heaven with my mother.

 Please click on this link:

Olive's Angels.

Olive's Angels

Anyone who ever knew my mother Olive very well knew how much she believed in God’s angels. From early in our childhood we were taught to respect the angels. I admit that I thought I knew a little about angels when I started writing this story, but I never realized just how little until I started doing the research. I discovered some astounding things about angels that I am sharing with you in this story. Not only is this story true, but it is truly amazing. It contains some of Mom’s legacy in how we still respect the things she taught us in our childhood. But the story also contains much of my research from the KJ Version of the Bible, plus many personal stories of angel encounters within our very own family, including close relatives, a sibling, myself, and several other people, all real people.

Whether one believes in angels or not, this is a compelling story. I hope you will read it.

Olive’s Angels

Available for the first time today at:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Olive%27s+Angels

Olive's Angels

Of all the seventeen books I have had published, my upcoming one will be the one I am most excited about. It will be a book on angels. The book will be titled, Olive's Angels, and dedicated to my mother who believed in angels stronger than anyone I ever knew. It will be my eighteenth book, but my very first nonfiction one, It will contain what I know (what I believe) about angels and a number of stories of people who have had angel visits or encounters of one kind or another. The cover is being designed as I write this, so in a very few days the book will be out and ready for download from Amazon Kindle. If you believe in angels (and even if you don't) you should read this story. It is captivating. Much of the story centers around angel experiences within my family. I hope you won't miss it.

Acronyms, Placebos and Doctors

Acronyms, Placebos and Doctors

A few years ago my wife Sandra was the administrator of a medium-sized health care facility in the town where we lived. It was common for the doctors to socialize in the same circle as my wife and me because of her management of the facility.

There were five full-time doctors of various specialties, two nurse practitioners, and a physician’s assistant headquartered in the facility. Several other specialists held office hours on a satellite basis one day each week. Whether or not I wanted it, simply because it was my wife’s work world, I absorbed by osmosis much of the medical language that was spoken around me. Sometimes when a group of medical professionals were gathered, I heard so many medical terms and acronyms that it nearly made my head swim.

          Many folks do not understand the medical world of super bills, CPT codes, and all the many other terms that doctors and other medical personnel use most of the time as they go about their medical business. Most of us have now heard of UTI (urinary tract infection), AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), and now even SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), but why have we suddenly learned to shortcut the names of these particular diseases when there are so many others that could use a darn good shortening? To shorten how we call some of these diseases, I would suggest the following acronyms in parentheses for diseases like the Whooping Cough (WhC), Rheumatic Fever (RhF), Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), Pancreatic Cancer (PaC), Abdominal Cystic Lymphangioma (ACL), Basilar Artery Migraines (BAM), Camptomelic Syndrome (CaS), Darier’s Disease (DaD), Davenport Donlan Syndrome (DDS), Fallot Tetralogy (FaT), and the list goes on and on practically forever. Should there be more than a single disease with the same first initial, a second initial could be added either in the first or second part of the name. For instance, an example for Rheumatic Fever might be Rfe, or if that one is already taken, perhaps RhF, as depicted previously.

          Wouldn’t it make sense for the doctors and other medical professionals to complete the mystery and talk one hundred percent in medical terms we absolutely can’t understand? They are well along the way as it is.

          I suggested to my wife that she should pass these ideas along to the doctors in her staff meetings, but she rejected the idea as being too radical and revolutionary. I believe she truly meant it was more because the doctors wouldn’t listen anyway, especially since a nonmember of their fraternity could not possibly have a decent idea that could work.

          I also suggested a few more acronyms for use by the doctors. Most people know that doctors prescribe placebos for mystery and/or unknown ailments of the human body and/or mind. When a doctor cannot diagnose a patient’s medical condition, he or she has two alternatives to select from, depending on their best judgment at the time of the office visit. Should a patient suggest he or she is suffering from an ailment that is foreign to the doctor’s knowledge base, he or she may refer the patient on to a specialist in the field, thereby losing a fair amount of office and personal cash flow income. However, before doing so, the doctor may elect to treat the patient with a best-guess methodology to ensure decent cash flow, at least for a minimum of six office visits. Should the patient seem to be a chronic hypochondriac, the doctor may simply prescribe a placebo, which in many cases either cures the ailment completely or will cause a sudden drastic improvement. This is sometimes a preferred method because it ensures many, many office calls for follow-up consultations to see how effective a placebo is to the patient’s problem. Sometimes a doctor will discover that a combination of placebos works even better, which provides even more cash flow and results in the ability of the doctor to move up from a Buick to a Mercedes or even a Porsche.

Some examples of these imaginary ailments and their acronyms might include items from the following list, any of which could make a doctor very wealthy if properly nurtured:

Ordinary Chest Pain – OCP

Left Leg Pain – LLPS (left leg pain syndrome)

Right Leg Pain – RLPS (right leg pain syndrome)

Unknown Internal Organ Quirk - IOQ (internal organ quirk)

Unknown External Limb Pain – ELQ (external limb quirk)

Common Headache – CHA

Common Backache – CBA

Heart Burn – HEB

One can only imagine how rich a doctor might become if he or she would shorten all of these ailment names to short acronyms. That would allow much more rapid patient turnover, which in turn increases cash flow dramatically.

          The next time you see a doctor drive into the hospital parking lot in his or her Mercedes of Porsche, you may stop and wonder if placebo patients made it possible for the mode of transportation being driven, or if in fact it could be due to the rapid flow rate of patients in from the waiting room and through the doctor’s office visit, primarily caused by the extensive use of these new acronyms.

Paul R. Meredith

1997

Olive's Angels

This is a very brief excerpt from a book I am writing about angels. This book has been in some measure of progress for thirteen years or more. I was never certain I would publish it, but that all changed after the death of my senior daughter. Now I know I will publish it soon. I must complete a small part of it that is in progress at this time. I hope you enjoy the idea of my book on angels and want to read it when it is completed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My sister Trudy approached me one day after my first two fiction novels had been published. She asked me if I would be interested in writing a book that would become a collection of angel stories, stories she would collect for me at the angel store that she and her daughter Leisa owned together, Olive’s Garden of Angels, the store named in Mom’s honor. After some limited conversation on the topic, I agreed to at least think about it, but only if she would start collecting a few stories for me to analyze and see if it was something I could actually get into. She agreed to do it, and eventually she sent a handful of angel stories for me to work with. These stories were from customers of her store, and some of the people who submitted the stories were from Mom’s town of Decatur, Illinois, which is my birthplace and the birthplace of my seven siblings. Some other angel stories came to me from Iowa and other points through my daughter, Tara, who owned a web-based scrapbooking business at that time. She had solicited the stories from her customers over the web. After I read a few of the personal stories, I thought it would be appropriate for me to do some research about angels and try to gather enough information to write a short introduction to this book.

I realized I didn’t know a lot about angels when I started writing this small book containing some true-life stories of peoples’ encounters with angels, or in a few cases, just simple stories of faith. But I thought I had a basic knowledge of angels. I decided to get my Bible out and see what it had to say on the subject of angels. I quickly discovered I had something close to zero knowledge about angels, which surprised me in a way. I always thought, for some strange reason, that I had a reasonable amount of knowledge regarding angels, but as I delved into the depths of the Bible to find out where and how angels were mentioned, it surprised me how little I actually knew about them. In one respect there were so many references about angels, but in another respect, there was very little information on the classifications of angels. I learned a lot more than I ever thought I would by the time I completed my study. A good portion of my study involved research on the Internet. While I cannot vouch one hundred percent on the validity or accuracy of what I discovered on the Internet, I will say that I was able to corroborate most if not all of it from more than a single source. I will share some of what I discovered here. In honor of my mother Olive, I am naming this book, Olive’s Angels.

The Copycat Vigilantes

This is my very latest book, my seventeenth (17th), It is hard for me to realize I have written so many books, but I have. I have even more of them in the pipeline.

The Copycat Vigilantes. It is a really good thriller that will be difficult to lay aside once you start reading. This is actually the fourth book in my Vigilante series. Even though this story is a stand-alone story, you may want to read the previous three books in the series in order to get the entire picture of how I got to this point.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Copycat+Vigilantes

Ten Commandments of Gardening

In her gardening blog, my daughter, Kris Meredith Sulzberger, wrote very interesting articles like the one shown here. She had a tremendous sense of humor even though she was terminally ill with breast cancer. Kris passed away October 27, 2013. I miss her more than I can say. Here is her blog site:

http://englishprof-playinthedirt.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The 10 Commandments of Gardening
Talking with David today, I was thinking about creating a "10 Commandments of Gardening" list. Here's what I have so far:

The 10 Commandments of Gardening

1. Thou shalt have no other interests before me.
2. Thou shalt not make for thyself a genetically modified organism, but shalt allow nature to take its course.
3. Thou shalt not curse Mother Nature, for she is fickle and will show no mercy to those who misuseth her name.
4. For six days thou shalt labour in the garden. But the seventh day is a sabbatical from weeding, planting, and harvesting. Thou shalt need the seventh day to cook, can, and otherwise preserve the food gathered.
5. Honor thy Father Sky and thy Mother Earth, so that thy garden days will be long and fruitful.
6. Thou shalt not kill beneficial bugs.
7. Thou shalt not water at high noon.
8. Thou shalt not steal food from thy neighbor's garden, but shall asketh kindly, offereth to trade, or purchaseth foods from local farmer's markets.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness about the bounty thy garden produces.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s garden, or gardening tools, or wheelbarrow, or any gardening thing that belongeth to your neighbour.

So...do you have any commandments to add?

Ten Minutes Past Two

I wrote this story a few years ago after a trip to Spain with my wife. It is a really good romance story that takes place on two continents. I hope you enjoy this excerpt and want to read the rest of the story.

TEN MINUTES PAST TWO
by
Paul R. Meredith
 

Chapter 1

    Estelle Mercer was sipping her first cup of coffee of the new day. She looked out the window and saw the breaking sun turn the sky from the dark of night into the bright of early morning. It was a huge and beautifully brilliant yellowish orange ball, now just half visible above the tree line on the distant horizon. She saw the gorgeous work of God being displayed in a magnificent fashion, and it somehow gave her new hope and inspiration for the future.
    As the sun slowly rose in the east, her Florida room was flooded with the rush of the day rapidly heading west. The light quickly grew so bright it nearly blinded her from being able to continue looking eastward. She donned the pair of sunglasses that were conveniently in front of her on the table. She kept a pair there for just this very reason, because she dearly loved to watch the sun come up these last few mornings when it was not possible for her to sleep well. This is the day I must start living the rest of my life, Estelle thought. I must put my troubles behind me and look to the future. Paul is gone now. I’m on my own from here on out.
    Estelle Mercer’s husband Paul died exactly two weeks before in a horrible work-related accident at the relatively young age of fifty. For the ten days since his funeral, Estelle had found sleep hard to come by. She had had her soul mate by her side nearly constantly for all thirty of the years since they married. She smiled as she thought back to that day so long ago. She was eighteen and Paul was twenty. They had fallen in love three years before in high school and had gone steady from that moment forward.
When Estelle’s father turned down Paul’s petition to marry his daughter, she was heartbroken. She devised the plan to run away and get married. Paul was nervous about the idea, but he knew her dad was firm in his decision, and as much as Paul loved Estelle, he knew he couldn’t live four more years without her. That was her dad’s decision—to wait. He wanted the kids to wait until Estelle was out of college. After that he would give his blessings on their marriage.
    Paul told Estelle, “Honey, let me go back and ask him one more time. Maybe he will give in and let us get married. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
    “He won’t ever give in Paul. He says I will never finish school if I get married first. Dad told me it was his obligation as a father to make sure I get started in life with a chance to make it, and it takes a college education to make it these days. He won’t cave on it, I’m telling you,” Estelle said. “I know my dad.”
    “I’ve got to try it one more time, but if it doesn’t work, we’ll just elope as we planned. But somehow, I just feel he will allow us to go ahead and get married,” Paul told Estelle.
   
Paul begged Estelle’s father the next evening to let them go ahead and get married. He promised that he would continue with his last two years of college and make certain that Estelle started and finished her own college education. Her father would have none of it, saying to Paul, “No, her mother and I know that Estelle would most likely get pregnant and cut her education short. You kids can’t afford to do that anyway. College is expensive as hell these days.”
    “But sir, my folks would probably help us a little if we needed them to. I think we could do it, and we’d be careful not to get in a family way.”
    “Look Paul, I like you a lot. I think you are a fine young man, and there will come a time when I will be more than happy to welcome you into our family with open arms, but it will have to be after Estelle gets out of school. The two of you are young. Four years will be a good test of your love.”
    “But sir, we have already been tested for three years. I love her so much, and she’s the only girl I would ever want to be my wife,” Paul argued.
    “That’s good, but the answer is still the same, and you shouldn’t expect your folks to help support you kids after you’re married. Being married is a grown up responsibility. Your folks have a lot on their plate anyway. They can’t afford a burden like that,” Bryan Sager said.
   
    Estelle and Paul did elope to Arkansas and got married. The parents were upset at first because they feared the worst—that Estelle and Paul would never get their college degrees.
    Now, as Estelle recalled those days so long ago, she at first smiled, and eventually openly laughed out loud at how it had all turned out.
    Paul worked hard at two part-time jobs during college, while Estelle worked at a good part-time job. They were both able to secure a little scholarship money from various sources, and yes, the folks on both sides helped them some when they got in tight pinches. Paul graduated and was lucky enough to land a great starting job in a local industry as a mechanical engineer. Estelle continued on with school and was able to graduate two years after Paul. She immediately went to work as an accountant in a local firm that was growing rapidly.
    There was no pregnancy during that time, nor were there any huge problems of any kind. The pieces just sort of fell into place for the young couple. Paul insisted on paying the parents back the money they had provided when they were desperate. He had carefully and completely kept track of every penny given them, and even though the money was never considered a loan by any of the parents, Paul always considered it as such. Paul and Estelle paid back every single dollar to their parents, even though it wasn’t required. Paul never let the parents refuse the payments—told them they owed it and would not feel free until they reimbursed them.

Available at:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DS736E4