I got to hold little Margaret during the Arts Council concert Sunday.  She’s five weeks old and absolutely adorable.  It had been a long time since I’d held a baby, and if Margaret hadn’t been asleep she probably wouldn’t have put up with it.  But since she didn’t know who was holding her, everything was fine.

The first baby I ever held – more than 26 years ago – was Lori’s and my first son, William.  We had no idea what to do with a baby, but somehow we figured it out.  Lori and I went on to have two more children, Angela and Thomas.  With each one parenting got easier, but it never got easy.

Before we became parents, Lori and I thought we knew everything about raising children.  Parenting seemed simple and straight-forward.  Nobody, after all, knows more about being a parent than someone who’s never had a child.  It all seems so simple when it’s abstract, when there are no dirty diapers, no sleepless nights, no croup or colic.

But in truth nobody knows more about being a parent than someone who HAS been one.  Parenting is a skill that develops gradually through experience.  I admire Margaret’s parents for undertaking this noble task, envy them their youth (babies suck that out of us quickly), and I can’t help but ponder the challenges and wonders that await them.

As I handed Margaret back to her mom I felt a familiar parental urge stir within me – I wanted as good a future for Margaret as I do for my own children, and I imagine most people – not just parents – feel the same about the children around them.

Over the years I’ve had opportunities to work with children in various ways.  I’m proud to be a Teammates mentor and I was happy to take part in a Career Day for area students last week.  One thing I try to tell young people is that most of the adults around them want them to succeed, and will help them if they can (and I’ve found that not all kids, unfortunately, have this form of support).

It’s a cliché that ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ but friends and neighbors do play an important role in our children’s lives – just look at how much time and money we invest in schools, in playgrounds, and in organizations like scouts and church groups.

I saw a very good example of this last Friday when local veterans partnered with the school for the annual Veteran’s Day program.  And as I looked at the students’ faces, I felt that commitment to their future that so many of us share.

The featured speaker was career Air Force veteran Clyde Stuhr of Petersburg.  Clyde’s theme was the importance of having one another’s backs, whether in the military or in civilian life.  I know first-hand how much our veterans have their neighbors’ backs – earlier this year they helped send our son Thomas and us to Washington D.C. for the national Voice of Democracy event.  But it isn’t just veterans – pretty much everyone in a small town has each other’s backs.  That’s one of the attractions of living in a community like Albion.

Holding little Margaret helped remind me that we are all part of a large and diverse family, bonded together by a shared commitment to our own families, to our community and to our future.  For without that commitment, there would be no future.  But so long as we have each other’s backs – especially our children’s – our future looks pretty good…

It’s been said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Thus, until the Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch, and their pet chupacabra come forward to hold a joint press conference, their existence will remain seriously in doubt.

This saying, popularized by the late scientist Carl Sagan, applies at least as much to UFOs – Unidentified Flying Objects – as to the creatures mentioned above.  Though the acronym “UFO” can apply to any natural or man-made object that can’t be identified by the observer, it’s generally taken to mean an extraterrestrial flying saucer.  As such the term carries an onus of irrationality and one wonders if a lot of people don’t report seeing something strange in the sky for fear of being called crazy.

Fortunately, readers of this column already know I’m crazy so I’m not overly reluctant to admit that last Thursday my wife Lori, our son William and I saw a UFO.

It was just past sunset.  William and I had spent the afternoon marking some Native American mounds with spray paint so we could photograph the mounds from above with a drone.

This took a lot longer than we had anticipated – the mounds are very low-relief and it was challenging to determine their precise edges.  We had hoped to take photos with the drone while the sun was fairly high to get the best picture quality.  But we felt it was better to take some pictures in the evening light than take no photos at all.

As Lori and I watched the drone hover above the mounds, we noticed an unusually bright object in the sky above it.  The sun had just set and though the half-moon was visible behind some high clouds to the south, it was not dark enough for any stars to be seen.

This object appeared to hover in place – we watched it for approximately half an hour and though it may have moved slightly it didn’t move much.  Lacking any reference points we were unable to estimate its size or altitude, though it appeared to be quite high and quite large.  It was below the high clouds, however.

Viewing it through binoculars revealed that it was elliptically shaped with a bright white light on the east end and a well-defined ring of white light on the west.  The space between was indistinct but appeared white in color.  One unusual aspect of this sighting was that although the object did not appear to be moving, the binoculars had to constantly be refocused.

We watched the object until we got hungry and decided to go home for supper.  In the 2 or 3 minutes it took us to drive through the farmyard to the road and close the gate, the object disappeared.

We have no idea how long it had been there; had we not looked up into the sky to view the drone, we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.  And if the sun had been very high in the sky when we flew the drone, we might not have noticed this object in the sun’s glare.

I’m not saying this object was from another planet (though I also can’t say it wasn’t), but it certainly wasn’t anything we could identify.  And the way it disappeared in a very short time only added to the impression there was something very unusual about it.  Since we didn’t come away with any extraordinary evidence, we’ll probably never know what it was.  But from now on I’m going to try to look up more often.  One never knows what might be looking back…