A FULL WEEKEND OF EVENTS...AND PLENTY MORE TO COME

One hundred seventeen QUILTS on display at Centenary United Methodist Church. Forty-eight youth soccer teams. Weddings. The Southeast Missouri Music Academy fund raiser and performance at St. Vincent's Church Sunday ... a real treat and another display of the fine artistic talent we have. The RIVER BARGE excursion boat tied up at the downtown riverfront. Great football. Flying. Golfing. Tennis. Softball. Walking. Great weather. One fine weekend in Cape.

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Cape's major CHAMBER DINNER EVENT is the Industrial Appreciation Dinner scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Show Me Center.

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Maybe it's a coincidence, but at a time when Sikeston has sent a message to the meth dealers and other unsavory elements of their community (just get out!), some good things have started to happen.

A yet-to-be-announced major industry is expected to pick Sikeston for expansion, while SCOTT MATTHEWS has announced a major retail development to be anchored by LOWE'S.

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I watched intently as my little brother was caught in the act. He sat in the corner of the living room, a pen in one hand and my father's brand-new hymn book in the other.

As my father walked into the room, my brother cowered slightly. He sensed that he had done something wrong. From a distance I could see that he had opened my father's new hymnal and scribbled in it the length and breadth of the first page with a pen.

Now staring at my father fearfully, he and I both waited for his punishment. And as we waited fearfully, there was no way we could have known that our father was about to teach us deep and lasting lessons about life and family, lessons that continue to become even clearer through the years.

My father picked up his prized hymnal, looked at it carefully, and then sat down without saying a word. Books were precious to him. He was a clergyman and the holder of several degrees. For him, books were knowledge, yet he loved his children.

What he did next was remarkable. Instead of punishing my brother, instead of scolding or yelling or reprimanding, he sat down, took the pen from my brother's hand, and then wrote in the book himself alongside the scribbles John had made: "John's work, 1959, age 2."

How many times have I looked into your beautiful face and into your warm, alert eyes looking up at me and thanked God for the one who has now scribbled in my new hymnal. You have made the book sacred, as have your brothers and sister too so much of my life.

"Wow," I thought. "This is punishment?"

The years and the books came and went. Our family experienced what all families go through and perhaps a little bit more: triumph and tragedy, prosperity and loss, laughter and tears. We gained grandchildren, we lost a son. We always knew our parents loved us and that one of the proofs of their love was the hymnal by the piano.

From time to time we would open it, look at the scribbles, read my father's expression of love and feel uplifted. Now I know that through this simple act my father taught us how every event in life has a positive side if we are prepared to look at it from another angle and how precious it is when our lives are touched by little hands.

But he also taught us about what really matters in life: People, not objects. Tolerance, not judgment. Love not anger. Now I too am a father and, like my dad, a clergyman and holder of degrees. But unlike my father, I do not wait for my daughters to secretly take books from my bookshelf and scribble in them. From time to time I take one down not just a cheap paperback but a book that I know I will have for many years to come, and I give it to one of my children to scribble or write their names in.

And as I look at their artwork, I think about my father, the lessons he taught me, the love he has for us and which I have for my children love that is at the very heart of a family. I think about these things, and I smile. Then I whisper, "Thank you, Dad." -- Author unknown to me

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Two Cape Girardeau County lawyers, Judge Marybelle Dailey Mueller of Jackson and Donald P. Thomasson of Cape Girardeau, were recently honored as senior counselors of the Missouri Bar Association.

The senior counselor title is bestowed upon lawyers who have reached the age of 75 years or who have been admitted to the Missouri bar for 50 years. The recognition ceremonies came Sept. 21 during the opening luncheon at the Missouri Bar Association's annual meeting.

A total of 125 members of the association were presented with the designation at the luncheon.

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Oh, never mind: And they used to talk about GOP candidates being beholden to the religious right. Get a load of these two attaching themselves at the hip to the libertine left: Recently Al Gore and Joe Lieberman made a joint appearance at a Hollywood fund raiser held in a Beverly Hills mansion, amassing $4.2 million at the $10,000-a-head event. You pay your money and you get what you want to hear. From Lieberman: "Al and I have tremendous regard for this industry ... I promise you this: We will never put the government in the position of telling you by law, through law, what to make." Translation: This issue dies after the election. Last week, Gore pulled $6 million from this same crowd at Radio City Music Hall in New York. We guess the content of any given position is like the price of drugs: whatever the vice president imagines it to be from one day to the next. -- The Wall Street Journal

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How to be a liberal:

1. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach fourth-graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.

2. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese communists.

3. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.

4. you have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical, documented changes in the earth's climate and more affected by yuppies driving SUVs.

5. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.

6. You have to be against capital punishment but support abortion on demand.

7. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

8. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but loony activists from Seattle do.

9. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

10. You have to believe the military, not corrupt politicians, start wars.

11. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Robert E. Lee or Thomas Edison.

12. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides aren't.

13. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried, is because the right people haven't been in charge. -- Author unknown

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications.