Paul Asay

  If you know me, I would think you would consider me an affable character.  However, did you know I spent days in Juvenal Detention?  As Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story. Have a particularly good friend Nick whom I’ve known for decades.   From riding local mountain bike trails to mission trips in far off, and crazy places.   We have seen and experienced a lot together.   Now days Nick works as a carpenter extraordinaire, and has a contract with a local interior design company.   He installs high-end closets and pantries for mostly new home construction in particularly nice homes.   These installs are constructed of large and heavy puzzle pieces, and that’s where I enter the story.   I help him as a part-time assistant installer.   This past week instead of working on new homes, we have been installing closets and a pantry in the local juvenal detention center.   We have been working up close and personal ne...

If you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien you would have come across a land called The Shire. In Tolkien's fiction, the Shire is described as a small but beautiful, idyllic and fruitful land, beloved by its hobbit inhabitants. They had agriculture but were not industrialized. The landscape included downland and woods like the English countryside.   Families lived in a close community of friends and neighbors, often celebrating and having meals together.  He envisioned The Shire as a place of refuge in an otherwise chaotic and often dangerous world.  Sometimes I view The Shire a bit like living on South Lake within Sun City Center proper. Tolkien himself experienced chaos and extreme danger as a soldier in the first World War.  Barely surviving the Battle of the  Somme, spending months in recovery from Trench Fever.  The battle was one of the world's bloodiest battles, with one million casualties.   Withi...