Yesterday was a strange kind of farewell for me. On July 16, 2007, I published an essay on my web page and started what I intended to be a blog. The blog quickly turned into a series of essays. From that day through November 13, 2025, I posted an essay every day without missing a single day. I posted when I was sick and when I was well. I posted when I was tired and when I was well rested. I posted when I was busy at work and when I had leisure time. I posted while we were traveling and when we were at home. That is 6,696 days. It is 6.696 essays.

I started the practice in part because I wanted to have a website that invited people to return. I also started the practice because I wanted to teach myself how to become a writer. The website never went viral. I didn’t expect it to. It was much more language-intensive than most other websites. The essays gave me a way to explore my life and share my ideas with others.

Over the years, I have had some loyal and faithful readers who have checked in daily and given me good feedback from time to time.

I was 54 years old when I started posting essays. I started without a plan for how long I would keep up the practice. At one point, I planned to stop daily essays in 2020 when I retired, but the Covid-19 pandemic gave me a renewed sense of the importance of making contact with others. When we retired, we moved away from the congregation and the people we had served for 25 years. I missed the people a lot. I still do. Writing and occasionally getting responses from folk in South Dakota was meaningful to me. And I kept enjoying writing.

I am no longer 54. I am 72. And my writing is taking a turn. I have had a couple of essays published in collections. And I have written a book. I could make a book by pulling together some of the best essays from the past. However, sorting through 6,696 essays is more work than writing a book from scratch. Furthermore, I couldn’t get the essays to hang together. In the end, I used a couple of essays that appeared in my journal, but most were written from scratch, along with the poems and prayers that are a part of the book.

Following my editor's advice, I began thinking about how I could help market the book once it was published. I discovered Substack and started posting to it regularly. I now post one essay, one poem, and one prayer each week. I also designed a new, simplified web page to sell the book and expand my contacts through my email list and social media posts. The new web page has been in the works for some time, but I was waiting until the book could be ordered online before going live.

Thursday, November 13, was the launch day for the new website. I moved my existing website from its old URL, revtedh.com, to revtedh.org. The new website is now live at revtedh.com. For a while, I have decided to keep the old website live at revtedh.org. That is where this essay is being posted.

Yesterday I did not write an essay. I did some cleanup work with my websites, finished the book I was reading, helped our son with a couple of errands, and did a few chores. It felt really strange not to write an essay. An old habit is not easily broken. That is why I am writing this essay today. And it is why I will send a few emails today letting some of my regular readers know that there is one more essay on my website.

I need to say farewell. Farewell to my loyal readers. Thank you for your faithfulness and your interest in my essays. Farewell to a practice that had become a spiritual discipline for me. I will continue to write and journal about important aspects of my life. I hope to write one more book, maybe not for publication, but a kind of memoir for my grandchildren. And I want to write some short stories. I hope that writing fewer essays will allow me to invest my creative energy in other writing projects.

I don’t know if this essay is my swan song or my encore. I certainly do not intend to stop writing essays. I plan to post at least one essay on Substack each week. Right now, I’m publishing them on Tuesdays, but I don’t want to develop a practice that is too rigid. I hope I can also publish short fiction and other genres over time.

I wrote a few paragraphs of a project that might grow into a book one day. It is too early in the process for me to know for sure. Right now, I need to invest time and energy in selling the book that just came out. I have many bookstore visits to make, events to plan, social media posts to make, and more marketing efforts. I plan to begin recording the audiobook version early in 2025.

It will probably take me a while to adjust to the change. I expect to wake up thinking about what topic I might address for a few more days. However, this chapter of my life is closing so that a new one can begin. I’ll leave this website up for a few months. In the background, I am backing up all the files. The website is currently hosted on two servers because I changed servers partway through the process, so archived files are in one location and current files are in another. I want to make sure that all of those things are sorted out and that none of the essays will be lost when I close out my accounts with the servers.

I write with a deep sense of gratitude for 6,696 essays and for the people who have read many of them. Farewell and Godspeed.

My uncle was a three-crop farmer. His main crop was hard red winter wheat. On the side, he would occasionally plant a field of barley or oats. His farm was on bench land above the Missouri River in Montana. The region was mainly strip-farmed in the days when he was an active farmer. The fields were divided into strips. Every other strip was planted each autumn, with the alternating strips left fallow. They used tillage equipment pulled behind a tractor to clear the weeds from the fallow fields. The purpose of the fallow fields was to store soil moisture, allowing the seeds to sprout when planted. In the spring, broadleaf herbicides were applied to growing wheat to control weeds. When I worked for my uncle, my main job was to drive the tractor around the fallow sections of the field, pulling a duckfoot cultivator, gently turning the top layer of the soil, and displacing weeds. Then, when harvest came, I generally drove a truck in the field.

Working for my cousin, the son of my farmer uncle, was different. He farmed wheat like his father, but he also raised cattle. Later in his career, he diversified his farm further, eventually having the entire farm certified organic. He grew a wide rotation of crops, including lentils, and experimented with bison and beefalo. He set aside a large section of his farm for the conservation reserve program. Those changes, however, came after I had grown and no longer worked on the farm as my summer job. When I worked for my cousin, I did a bit of summer fallow work, but I also did a lot of building and repairing fences. Adding cattle to a farm operation means you need good fences. The fences were all on my cousin’s land, and there were no shared fences with neighbors. It was clear whose responsibility it was to build and maintain the fences.

For many years, I didn’t think about fences at all. Then, when our children were 2 and 4 years old, we purchased a home in Boise, Idaho, with a major irrigation canal running right behind our property. The house had a 4 ft. chain-link fence along the ditch, with a six ft. wooden fence on one side between the neighbor and another four ft. chain-link fence on the other side, shared with that neighbor. Our front yards were not fenced. As soon as I could, I replaced all the chain-link fence with a new 6-foot cedar fence. I had one conversation with the neighbor, during which we discussed the chain-link fence, and I paid the full cost of installing the new fence. I maintained the new fence, except for leaving the staining of the neighbor’s side to that neighbor. We never had another conversation about that fence.

Afterward, we lived for 25 years in a home in a subdivision with no fences between neighbors. It was rocky country, and I didn’t miss digging holes for fence posts.

Now we have moved into a neighborhood where all of the back yards are fenced with shared fences. That means that I have three different neighbors with shared fences between us. With two of the neighbors, the finished side of the fence faces my yard, so I assume I am responsible for maintaining those fences. I have replaced several boards that rotted at the bottom and kept my side of the fence stained. The other neighbor, to the north of our house, has the finished side of the fence facing his house. However, this particular neighbor is not really big on maintenance. For example, a row of arborvitae planted on his side of the fence has been dead for the four years we have lived in the house. None of the dead and dried trees has been removed. They are just gray trunks and branches, standing 6 to 8 feet above the fence. I’ve never had a conversation with the neighbor about those dead trees. I suppose I might offer to cut them down, since I have chainsaws, and the job wouldn’t be that great. I’ve joked with my family about spray-painting them green to improve the view from our deck, but I just haven’t found the right moment to discuss it with the neighbor.

That neighbor isn’t much for fence maintenance, either. The fence used to have a gate, but it has been nailed shut from the neighbor’s side. There is an eight-foot section where all of the fence boards are so rotted that they are no longer attached to the bottom rail and are hanging by just a couple of nails from the top rail. The bottom rail is also rotten and falling apart. Since the posts seem stable, I installed a new bottom rail a bit higher than the original and attached fence boards on our side of the fence to maintain the fence’s integrity. It is an unusual look, new boards on my side of the fence, rotten ones on the neighbor’s side.

The saying is “Good fences make good neighbors”. I’m not sure that the contrary is true. Band fences don’t necessarily make bad neighbors, but they may contribute to disputes. I have no intention of starting an argument over a fence. I don’t mind the expense of maintaining the fence. I’d even replace a post if needed. The truth is that when a fence is located on the boundary between neighbors, it isn’t clear who owns the fence. It assumes a shared ownership status. Most of the time, it is easy to coordinate with neighbors for fence maintenance. Sometimes it can be a challenge.

Furthermore, our son and his family have a farm down the road where they keep a few cows, so I get enough fence maintenance to keep me busy. In addition to the wire fence around their pastures, they have the entire perimeter of the areas where the cows feed surrounded by an electric fence. The electric fence is simple to maintain, but I’ve forgotten to turn it off a couple of times and gotten a mild shock.

Fences work for cows. When they first got the place, they allowed a neighbor to pasture sheep for a few weeks, and it was a constant battle. The sheep were too short to reach the electric fence, and they found every hole in the wire fence. Barb wire didn’t work. They found ways to get between the strands. Sheep panels kept them in some areas, but they are expensive. After a while of constant sheepherding and fence repairs, the sheep returned home. There have been no sheep since.

And fences don’t restrain honey bees. My bees choose their own areas of operation and don’t acknowledge property boundaries. There are lots of other creatures, including geese, ducks, eagles, herons, fish, and sea mammals, who don’t observe human boundaries. More than a fence along the 49th parallel, which marks the boundary between the US and Canada, we need to learn to get along with our neighbors. And that is something that can’t be done with more fences and helicopter patrols.

I’m not one for Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, but we are planning to travel for Christmas this year, so we need to do a bit of planning. Furthermore, we are trying to be responsible in our decisions, seeking fewer, higher-quality items, avoiding excessive packaging, and consuming less. So I’ve been on a mission to purchase a toy excavator for a three-year-old. I thought it would be easy.

My father was a John Deere Dealer from the early 1960s through the 1970s. Back in those days, product licensing wasn’t as big as it is today. Farm stores weren’t filled with all kinds of clothing covered with logos. You didn’t see green baby onesies with the yellow John Deere logo across the chest. However, there was a line of quality steel toys available. My father quickly ordered toys of the tractors he sold in the store. He kept a display of 1/16-scale steel toy tractors, and he made it clear he was willing to deal. When he saw a child eyeing the tractors in the display, he went over and spoke to them as if they were his biggest customer for full-scale tractors and implements. If they were short of cash, he would suggest that he would accept trade-ins. Because the toys were not his main business, he could afford to sell them at no profit and even at a loss. The used toys were donated to an annual Christmas Toy drive. He felt that if a child had a good experience trading with him for a toy, they would later become a customer for more expensive items, and he kept at it long enough to sell a few tractors to young farmers who had purchased toys when they were younger.

Some John Deere dealerships still sell a few toys, but the bulk of John Deere toy tractor sales is conducted through major retailers and online stores. And judging from what I’ve found online, John Deere is licensing that logo to a lot of different companies that make products of varying quality. Not every toy with the John Deere logo is a quality steel toy. Most are cheap plastic.

I am on a mission. The excavator must be able to withstand rugged play in an outdoor sandbox and will probably see time scooping mud in the farmyard. It needs to be strong enough to last. Our grandson is enamored of construction equipment, especially excavators. Next door to the library in Ferndale, they are preparing the foundation for a new City Hall. The other day, three excavators were working, digging and loading dirt into dump trucks. Watching those excavators in action was far more interesting to our grandson than the story hour at the library. He protested when his mother tried to get him to go inside for the program. Usually, he enjoys story hour, but those excavators working next door are much more inviting to him.

The combination of my father’s joy in trading toys and my grandson’s love of excavators has made me brand-specific in my search. I would definitely consider a Cat excavator, but I hope to avoid the Komatsus and Volvos for now. There is no shortage of toy excavators with the Deere logo. While shopping, I discovered something that piqued my interest for a while. There is a complete line of toys called the Prestige Collection. These toys are crafted for serious collectors and have price tags that make them beyond the reach of most children. They are exquisitely designed with intricate details. They have opening doors and realistic hydraulic cylinders. The die-cast tracks move with ease.

Real collectors keep the boxes and remove the toys only briefly to admire them. They see their toys as investments and believe they will appreciate in value over time. One website selling the Prestige Collection offers buyers the option to pay in four installments instead of paying cash up front. That’ll give you a sense of the price of these toys.

Toys are for playing, not for collecting, but my family would be quick to point out that I have a collection of 11/64 Die-cast John Deere toys. It started with a boxed set of historic tractors that was offered when my father was a dealer. He gave the sets as gifts to several family members, and I ended up keeping one of them. Tractor design has evolved quite a bit since 1960; however, I would add another tractor from time to time, eventually collecting four-wheel-drive and articulated tractors. Since the toys are scaled, the newer tractors are also larger. And what good are tractors without implements? I began to add balers, wagons, drills, and tillage tools. That led to a few swathers and combines. A pickup truck with John Deere on the side and a couple of Semis to haul grain and move implements appeared. At one point, my collection ran the length of the front of my bookshelves.

When we moved, I carefully boxed up the collection. We downsized, and I don’t have as many bookshelves as I once did. And the chore of dusting my shelves is way easier when I don’t have a bunch of toys to dust as well. So, at the moment, the collection is in a box in my garage. I’ve been thinking of waiting until our youngest grandchild is a bit older and one day taking out the box to explore the collection with him. We keep a small box of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, which are a similar size, and I watch him play with them. Right now, he’s pretty rough on them. It is common for me to be gluing on wheels and other parts after an intense session of play. I’ve decided to wait a bit before getting out my toy collection.

For now, I’m trying to find just the right excavator that will withstand his rough play. I have a shortlist and will be making a purchase soon. And I’m experiencing some of the joy that my father had when he ordered toys for his store. They not only amuse and entertain the child who receives them as gifts. They also delight the grandfather who shops for them.

Some writers write to share expertise. I often write about subjects about which I have little knowledge or expertise. I write to explore topics that interest me. It isn’t that different when I speak. I often talk about things that I don’t understand.

I don’t understand the rapid rise of sports betting. Advertisements for sports betting appear online, on billboards, and on the sides of sports stadiums. It seems that every time I check the score in a popular game, I am confronted by invitations to place bets. When it comes to placing bets, however, I really don’t know what I’m talking about.

Actually, I’m not that big of a sports fan. I pay attention to the World Series most years, depending on which teams are playing. I’ve watched portions of the Super Bowl, mostly to see the advertisements and sometimes to watch the halftime show. I enjoy local ball games when I know some of the players.

As a result, it is easy for me to make a connection between ardent sports fans and gambling. I know rationally that not all sports fans are gamblers. Chance is a factor in every sports competition. Both betting and playing sports involve winners and losers.

I don’t feel the urge to place a bet. As far as I can recall, I have only purchased two lottery tickets in my life, both as gag gifts. I’ve scratched off the waxy coatings on sweepstakes forms sent in the mail by car dealers and the sellers of timeshare properties, but I’ve never won anything. I don’t expect to win. I occasionally become aware of a sweepstakes with a prize I’d like to win. A few times, I have read the contest rules enough to figure out how to enter without making a purchase. You’ll often see the words “no purchase necessary” on a sweepstakes advertisement. It takes a bit of reading of the fine print rules to figure out how to enter without making a purchase. Usually, it involves sending a handwritten postcard or note.

The purpose of sweepstakes is to make money. A common sweepstakes names a prize and offers “free” entries with every purchase. People will purchase merchandise motivated by the dream of winning the prize. Often, they will make purchases that they would not otherwise make. The merchant offering the prize estimates that profits from increased sales will exceed the cost of the prize.

Most of the time, I have no interest in purchasing the merchandise, even if winning is a good thing. I don’t expect to win. Paying money to lose seems like a poor investment to me.

When it comes to betting and games of chance, I’m no expert.

I once won two drawings in the same month. The car dealership where I had my car serviced was giving away a giant Christmas stocking and encouraged customers to fill out a slip of paper with their name and phone number to enter to win. I was visiting with a dealership employee while my car was being serviced, and the employee kept prodding me to enter the drawing. I didn’t want the stocking, which was filled with candies and toys. After several invitations, however, I filled out a single slip with the name of a family with whom we were building a Habitat for Humanity house. I did not know their phone number, however, so I put my phone number on the slip. By the luck of the draw, the slip I filled out was selected as the winner, and I got a phone call. I went to the dealership the next day, picked up the giant prize, and delivered it to the new Habitat for Humanity house in time for the dedication. We finished the house, and the family moved in just before Christmas.

That same month, I got a call from a local funeral director. The funeral home had an annual Christmas drawing. They put the names of the clergy who had officiated at funerals directed by their firm into a hat and drew one out. The winner received a new suit from a local menswear store. I don’t know what the prize was if the winner was a woman. Since I didn’t have to do anything beyond officiating a funeral to enter the contest, I was unaware that the contest existed or that my name had been entered. I did, however, claim the prize. I bought a dark suit and was careful to wear it for funerals overseen by that funeral home for several years.

It seems that I’ve probably done enough winning for a lifetime and shouldn’t expect to win anything more.

One of my brothers, however, was just the opposite. He bought lottery tickets every time the prizes got big. He entered every contest offered. And when I listened to him, he really believed he would win big one day. He liked talking about what he would do if he won a big jackpot. I think he did win some prizes—small amounts of money in Bingo games and the like. He liked telling the story of going to a casino with $20 in cash and leaving with $200. I always suspected there were times when he did just the opposite, but he didn’t brag about them. He never did win a big prize.

As a pastor, I was asked to counsel and spoke with two people who were addicted to gambling. One managed to gamble away $20,000 in a single day. Another kept getting cash advances on a credit card at an ATM and managed to gamble away the entire credit limit. I referred both to counselors with more expertise in gambling addictions than I. My experience makes me wonder about the people who place bets on sports. You can now bet on everything from the outcome of the game to individual plays or the number of points a particular player will make. There are phone apps that allow fans to bet while watching the game.

I’m no expert. I don’t think such betting is good for communities. I suspect that many families face significant problems caused by gambling losses. I think the lure of winning may seduce people who can’t afford to lose.

What I do know is that I won’t be one of the winners. I’ve guaranteed that by not placing a bet. I have no intention of purchasing a lottery ticket, either.

Please note: Changes are coming.

Friends, in the next two weeks, this website will be replaced with a new one. I do not yet know the exact timing, but soon things will look different at revtedh.com. For a limited time following the change, you will be able to access this site at revtedh.org. However, some features of this website, including the daily journal entries, will end when the new website launches. You can keep up with regular writing posts at revtedh.substack.com. On Substack, you can subscribe to receive regular posts in your email. I appreciate your patience with these changes.

Please note: Changes are coming.

Friends, in the next two weeks, this website will be replaced with a new one. I do not yet know the exact timing, but soon things will look different at revtedh.com. For a limited time following the change, you will be able to access this site at revtedh.org. However, some features of this website, including the daily journal entries, will end when the new website launches. You can keep up with regular writing posts at revtedh.substack.com. On Substack, you can subscribe to receive regular posts in your email. I appreciate your patience with these changes.

Before my retirement, I served for many years as a human rights advocate for clients of an agency that provided services to persons with developmental disabilities, brain disorders, and a wide variety of physical handicaps. My role was to represent the community and its interests, and I remained independent from the agency during my time of service. When I was first recruited, I thought that I would be called upon to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. The agency served people with limited verbal skills, limited social communication, and challenges in interacting with others. Some of the persons served had difficulty with nonverbal clues such as gestures and facial expressions. Some made little or no eye contact. Some of the people served did not speak at all. I mistakenly thought that they needed someone to give them a voice and to stand up for their rights. I was eager to be that voice and to advocate for the rights of all persons served by the agency.

However, I quickly learned that the persons served by the agency were their own best advocates for human rights. Their desire for meaningful work, stable family and friend relationships, and independence was best expressed by them, not by me. I learned to be quiet and to observe closely when considering the cases that came before the human rights committee.

In the process, I discovered a new role for myself as the community representative on the human rights committee. I became an advocate for the full involvement of persons with disabilities in all aspects of community life. This was not from the perspective of those with disabilities who wanted to be involved, but rather from the community, which was strengthened by their involvement. Businesses, churches, schools, and other parts of our community were strengthened by the participation of those living with disabilities.

I also learned to be careful when using the terms “disability” and “disabled.” Too often, those terms are employed to describe what a person cannot do. What I learned is that it is far more helpful to define a person by what they can do. Some people prefer the term “differently abled,” recognizing that any community is made up of people with diverse skills and abilities. One young man who uses a wheelchair for mobility gave me a fresh perspective by referring to me as “temporarily abled.” He reminded me that I was only one accident or illness away from having to live with a disability. Others reminded me that there are many abilities that I do not possess. There are people whose ability to smell is more discriminating than mine. Some people are far better at remembering dates and names than I am.

As a community rights advocate, I began speaking up for the right of every community to have full participation by persons with a wide range of abilities. While it is true that the removal of physical barriers is helpful for those living with disabilities, it is also beneficial for those who do not have those disabilities. We all benefit from accessible bathrooms, accommodation for those who use walkers and wheelchairs, and resources for those with visual disabilities.

My life is richer because of the people with cerebral palsy, those who use wheelchairs, those who are blind, and those with autism spectrum disorder who have come into my life as friends and colleagues. Our community is richer because of their participation and leadership. The rights of all are elevated when the rights of any subset are elevated.

The work of advocating for the community of persons with all abilities continues. There is a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and ignorance in government and public media. As one who benefits from standing with persons with disabilities and their families, some fundamental truths must be communicated freshly in the face of this misinformation, disinformation, and ignorance. For example, scientific consensus is clear:

Vaccines do not cause autism. Decades of rigorous, global research involving millions of children and adults have confirmed no link between vaccines and autism.

The use of Tylenol during pregnancy does not increase the incidence of autism spectrum disorder. The most extensive study on acetaminophen use during pregnancy found no evidence supporting an increased chance of autism.

Furthermore, communities are strengthened when they integrate support services that build on each child's strengths and honor differences in communication styles. Persons of all abilities gain from educators and service providers who are trained in inclusive, neurodiversity-affirming practices. Accurate information helps to free all people from stigma and fear.

Many things labeled as disabilities are, in fact, natural parts of human variation. We are not all the same. We do not all think, act, and relate in the same ways. Variation in human abilities is a strength, not a weakness. Despite the misleading rhetoric from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., portraying autism as a tragedy is not only inaccurate, it is harmful to people with autism, their families, and caregivers. It is also detrimental to all communities and to the health of our nation. The health and well-being of our communities is strengthened by embracing neurodiversity and learning from those with autism.

As a community advocate, I will continue to work for the meaningful inclusion of all.