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On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Monday, January 05, 2026
Evangelizing the World
Sunday, January 04, 2026
And it was love ❤️
Posted by Sat
Destiny.
🥿🎁He gave away a simple shoebox without imagining that years later it would lead him to the love of his life.
In 2000, Tyrel Wolfe, a 7-year-old boy from Idaho, participated in 'Operation Christmas Child,' a program that sends gifts to children in different countries packaged in shoeboxes. His box traveled thousands of miles to the Philippines, where it was received by Joana Marchan, also 7 years old. Inside were school supplies, a small gift, and a photo of Tyrel, which she treasured throughout her childhood.
More than a decade passed before Joana decided to look for the boy in the photo on Facebook in 2011. She sent him a friend request and they started talking. Soon the greeting turned into a deep friendship that grew stronger over the months.
Years later, in 2013, Tyrel traveled to Manila to meet her in person and spend time with her family. Then, in 2014, they reunited in Idaho, where they married in a simple outdoor ceremony.
As a special touch, they asked the guests to bring shoe boxes instead of gifts for the same program that had brought them together.
And it was love ❤️.
The Star of Bethlehem
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Saturday, January 03, 2026
Behold Him with Wonder and Awe
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Friday, January 02, 2026
Be who your dog believes you are
I was one breath away from letting go of the leash and letting whatever was inside me finally surface. Not the dog’s instinct—mine. Because there comes a point when decades of swallowing anger, of playing nice, of following rules that keep shrinking, finally dissolve. And all that’s left is the urge to shatter the noise with your bare hands.
That’s how close I was this afternoon.
My name is Frank. I’m seventy-two years old, raised in a time when problems with neighbors were settled face to face, on wooden porches, with honest words and eye contact. You didn’t hide behind screens. You didn’t turn pain into performance. You didn’t broadcast someone’s worst moment for strangers to dissect. But that world is gone, they say. Now everything is a clip, a post, a spectacle waiting to be uploaded.
I was at the dog park on the south side of town—the last place I know where the ground still smells like earth instead of fumes. Guthrie was with me.
Guthrie is a kind of dog you rarely see anymore. A twelve-year-old Bluetick Coonhound, ears sweeping the grass, coat mottled like stone weathered by time. He smells of damp wool and yesterday. He doesn’t bark—he bays, a sound low and aching, like a cello mourning something lost. His body has slowed; his hips ache, his eyes are fogged with age. But his nose still understands the world better than any algorithm ever could.
We were on our usual bench, watching the mess of it all. The park felt like a small replica of the country now. To one side, expensive dogs guided by people in polished activewear, checking watches instead of watching tails wag. To the other, the mixed-up mutts and their owners. Nobody crossed lines. Nobody spoke. Everyone stayed inside their chosen corners.
Then the kid came in.
Couldn’t have been older than twenty. Thin, ghost-pale, hair dyed an electric green that seemed to hum. His clothes hung off him like borrowed armor. In his hands was the leash of a Pitbull mix who looked terrified—muscle wrapped tight around fear, tail folded so far under it vanished.
They were trembling together. Boy and dog. Two fragile beings trying to stand their ground in a public space.
It started with a sneeze. Not a snarl. Not a lunge. Just a wet, explosive sneeze. But the dog was big. And big dogs scare people who see only outlines, not souls.
A couple near the entrance flinched dramatically. Well-groomed, mid-forties, the sort who complain about birds being too loud. The man immediately raised his phone. The woman folded her arms, her face settling into practiced outrage.
“You need to control that animal,” the man declared—not to the kid, but to his screen. “It’s aggressive. It just lunged at us.”
It hadn’t. It sneezed.
“I—I’m sorry,” the kid said, voice breaking. “He’s a rescue. He’s just scared.”
“That thing shouldn’t even be here,” the woman snapped, stepping closer, crowding him. “Look at it. It’s dangerous. And you—who knows what you’re on. We’re live-streaming this. Let’s see what the HOA thinks about trash like this in our neighborhood.”
The kid folded in on himself, pulling his hood up like it might make him invisible. The dog whimpered softly, sensing the fear pouring off his human.
“See?” the man shouted, shoving the phone closer. “Growling! I’ve got it all recorded!”
That’s when something in me burned white-hot. My hand clenched. My jaw locked.
I saw it clearly. This wasn’t concern. This was dominance. Two people feeding on the humiliation of someone smaller. The modern disease—the hunger to destroy publicly so you can feel righteous privately.
I began to rise. My knees protested. I was ready to march over and unleash words sharp enough to scar. I wanted to tell them about the mills, about men crushed and burned so people like them could play judge with a phone.
But Guthrie stood first.
He didn’t rush—he hasn’t rushed anywhere in years. He rose slowly, exhaled deeply, and started walking.
He passed the running dogs. Passed the barking ones. He moved with purpose, heavy and steady, like something ancient that knows exactly where it belongs.
“Guthrie, stay,” I said, habit more than command.
He didn’t listen.
He crossed the invisible divide. Walked past the man without so much as a glance. To Guthrie, a man without compassion might as well not exist.
He stopped in front of the kid and the Pitbull.
The woman scoffed. “Oh perfect. Another one. That thing looks filthy.”
Guthrie ignored her. He looked up at the kid with tired, kind eyes, then leaned—fully leaned—pressing his weight into the boy’s legs. Ninety pounds of warmth. Of presence. Of grounding.
Then he lowered himself beside the Pitbull, rested his chin across the dog’s shoulder, and sighed.
No words. Just truth. I am here. You are not alone.
The shaking stopped. The kid’s breath steadied. Slowly, unsure, he reached down and touched Guthrie’s ears. Guthrie closed his eyes and groaned softly, content.
The park went quiet. The man’s phone dropped to his side. It’s hard to sell a story of violence when an old hound is offering himself as comfort.
That’s when I arrived.
I didn’t shout. I didn’t need to. I stood there—six-foot-two, worn down by years and work.
“Phone,” I said, pointing. “Put it away.”
“We’re allowed to—” the man began.
“You’re allowed to be human,” I said evenly. “You’re not protecting anyone. You’re humiliating a scared kid for attention.”
I turned to the woman. “My dog was bred to hunt through mountains. He can smell fear. He can smell cruelty.” I nodded at Guthrie, asleep at the boy’s feet. “And right now, all he smells is pain. He chose to help it.”
People had stopped scrolling. They were watching. Really watching. The couple felt it—the weight of eyes, the return of shame.
“Whatever,” the man muttered, shoving the phone away. “Let’s go.”
They left quickly.
The kid wiped his face with his sleeve, mascara smearing.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I just moved here. Everyone looks at me like I don’t belong.”
“They’re staring because they don’t know what else to do,” I said, lowering myself onto the grass beside him. “And yelling is easier than listening.”
“I like your dog,” he said, scratching Guthrie’s ear. The old hound’s leg thumped.
“Guthrie. He snores. His breath could knock you out. But he’s honest.”
“I’m Leo.”
“Frank.”
We stayed there as the sun dipped low. No debates. No labels. He told me about saving Tank from a shelter days before closure. I told him about Guthrie stealing a Thanksgiving turkey once.
For one hour, there was no divide. Just two men. Two dogs. And a country that felt, briefly, softer.
As we left, Leo paused. “Why did he come to me?” he asked. “Why Guthrie?”
I looked at my dog, tail swaying gently.
“Dogs don’t see what we see,” I said. “They see the heart. And Guthrie can’t stand watching a good one crack.”
I walked home lighter than I had in years.
We waste so much time screaming across fences we forget the view looks the same from both sides. Everyone’s just trying to survive the noise.
The world is loud. The internet is cruel. But if you listen closely, there’s still truth underneath.
Be who your dog believes you are. And when someone trembles in the chaos, don’t record it.
Be like Guthrie.
Lean in.
Gertrude Elion didn’t just beat the odds
They told her she’d be “too distracting” to work in a lab so she taught herself biochemistry, worked without a PhD, and went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicines that saved millions.
Gertrude Elion was just 15 when cancer took her grandfather in 1933. She watched helplessly as doctors tried everything and failed, and in that moment she made a private promise: someday she would help create the cures they didn’t have. It was an impossible dream for a young girl in the 1930s, but she held onto it anyway.
She flew through her chemistry classes at Hunter College, graduating near the top of her class in 1937. But when she applied to graduate school, the rejections came fast and cruel. One interviewer didn’t even bother hiding his prejudice—he told her directly she would be “too distracting” for the men in the lab.
Imagine being told the scientific world had no place for you because of how you looked, not how you thought.
So Gertrude pieced together whatever work she could find: teaching high school chemistry, assisting in low-paid labs, taking night classes, reading scientific journals until the pages wore thin. Every job used a fraction of her ability, but she refused to stop learning or dreaming.
By 1944, Burroughs Wellcome finally hired her. And the moment biochemist George Hitchings saw her work, he realized what everyone else had missed: this woman had a mind that could change medicine.
Together they began something revolutionary.In an era when drug development was mostly guesswork, they used chemistry—real, precise chemistry—to understand how diseases grew, stole nutrients, and replicated. Instead of throwing random compounds at illnesses, they designed medicines that blocked the exact pathways diseases depended on.It was a scientific leap that reshaped modern medicine.
Their first breakthrough came in 1951 with 6-mercaptopurine, the first drug that could push childhood leukemia into remission. Before this, children diagnosed with leukemia rarely lived long enough to finish the school year. Suddenly, they had a fighting chance—and eventually, survival became common.
Gertrude had turned a childhood promise into something real.
Next she developed azathioprine, the first drug that allowed organ transplants to succeed. Without it, the immune system destroyed new organs within weeks. With it, transplants became life-saving realities.
Then came acyclovir, one of the first antiviral drugs that actually worked. Until that moment, medicine had almost no tools against viral infections. Acyclovir proved viruses could be treated directly, opening the door to entire generations of antiviral therapies.
And the work she did on DNA and RNA metabolism helped shape the first HIV/AIDS treatments—lifelines during one of the darkest medical crises of the 20th century.
Around the time I first read her story, I remember seeing a thoughtful discussion on Evolvarium about how many world-changing breakthroughs were created by people who were never “allowed” in the room. Gertrude’s life was the perfect example of that truth.
Despite everything she accomplished, she never earned a PhD.The doors were closed to her, so she simply found another way in.In 1988, the Nobel Committee honored her work, awarding her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—making her one of the few laureates in history without a doctorate. She had outperformed nearly everyone in her field despite being denied the very education they considered essential.
When asked what achievement she was proudest of, she didn’t mention the Nobel medal or the awards that followed. She simply said, “Watching people get well.”
Gertrude kept working into her 80s. She mentored young scientists, encouraged women who faced the same barriers she once did, and continued shaping the field she had helped reinvent. Universities that had rejected her earlier in life awarded her honorary doctorates—the recognition she didn’t need but richly deserved.
By the time she died in 1999, her medicines had saved millions.Children with leukemia lived to grow up.Transplant recipients lived decades beyond expectation.People with viral infections recovered instead of suffering for life.Researchers worldwide built new treatments using the approach she pioneered.Gertrude Elion’s story reminds us that brilliance doesn’t wait for permission.It doesn’t ask whether it’s welcome.It doesn’t disappear just because someone in authority says “you don’t belong here.”She proved that a determined mind, a relentless heart, and a refusal to give up can change the world—even when every door is slammed shut.
And today, every life saved through targeted cancer therapy, antiviral drugs, or organ transplantation carries a quiet echo of the woman who refused to stop learning.
Gertrude Elion didn’t just beat the odds.She rewrote them.
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