Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Seen one cow . . . seen them all

One of the things that I often do in my blogs and even in my preaching is to allow you to see inside the real “Scott Distler.” Unfortunately, one of my strengths, which is the ability to be transparent, can also at times be one of my weaknesses. During these times that I get transparent and tell or write of personal stories in my life, opinions I have, and the experiences I have encountered, I also take a risk.

Human nature is one that can easily cause people to bristle whenever they hear an opinion they don’t agree with or learn of something about someone they don’t like. As a result, most pastors refrain from being so transparent. They already feel as if they live in a glass house and don’t want to offer any unnecessary information that may allow others to struggle in accepting them. Well, this is one of those blogs. It is not meant to in any way to demean what others enjoy or see as important. It’s just my opinion.

One of the things that Laura and I have heard so much about from people and on television is the annual Pennsylvania State Farm Show in Harrisburg. Not knowing what we would discover, we decided we needed to go see what all of the excitement was all about. On the next to last day of the show we traveled to the State Capitol to experience a true Pennsylvania spectacle.

My first impression was to be amazed at the number of people that were there. Literally thousands upon thousands of people were piling into the facilities for this event. I wasn’t expecting it to be near as big as it was. We walked through each large exhibition hall. One hall was full of tractors. One hall was full of chickens. One hall was full of cows. One hall was full of goats. And, of course, there were many other halls with additional friends of the animal world and exhibits.

So, was I impressed? I was impressed with the size of the facility and the number of people that were there, but in my humble opinion as someone that grew up as a “city boy”, if you’ve seen one cow, you’ve seen them all. If you’ve seen on goat, you’ve seen them all. If you’ve see one chicken, you’ve seen them all. Will I ever go back to the Farm Show in Harrisburg? Well, never is a long, long time but I’d be much more interested if it were a big baseball card show instead. In the meantime, I think I would rather check out some of these other attractions that I have not had the chance to visit yet:
  • Wheatland
  • Ephrata Cloister
  • National Civil War Museum
  • State Capitol
  • Valley Forge
  • Shea Stadium
  • Yankee Stadium
  • Fenway Park

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