"Padre Pio: The True Story" by C. Bernard Ruffin - Outstanding biography! Outstanding edition!

What more can I say really than what I wrote on the headline? C. Bernard Ruffin, who sadly passed away this March 2019, has truly written the best and most powerful biography of St. Pio. I found his 2nd Edition to be a wonderful and comprehensive book. I was very excited when I discovered, just by chance that he had updated his biography.

Ruffin was a Lutheran pastor who was interested in people whom God seemed to use and bring to bring Himself to humanity. Even if Padre Pio never had the stigmata, he would have been held in high esteem by many who appreciated people who strived to live a holy and upright life. However, we may never have heard of him. It was the reported stimatization that first caught the attention of laity. Then it was the miracles attributed to him. It is obvious to true believers that the hand of God was working in and through this friar's life.

Ruffin does a good job condensing the huge amount of information on St. Pio into a fascinating, readable account of his life. The author really should be applauded for his contribution on his learned research into Padre Pio's life and career. He interviewed many people who are no longer with us and has greatly added to the humanization of St. Pio showing him to be a real human being and not a holy caricature. In some ways I thought he bent over backwards too much trying to legitimize some of the miracles attributed to him. Apparently, he did this for the doubters. Personally, I'm tired of the doubters and non-believers many are so fanatical that nothing will ever change their minds. But, Ruffin tries very hard to choose the healings and stories that can be verified with contemporary documents and statements. Which is good for historical purposes and scientific purposes, although many doctors confronted with miraculous healings refused to acknowledge them as "miracles" and tried to rationalize such events with their own mumbo jumbo so they wouldn't have to give any credence to the existence of God.

This book is really a testament to the amazing efforts of Rev. Ruffin who did such a meticulous job in researching, interviewing, evaluating, updating and writing, that this book will be the go-to book for decades to come. I am so thankful that he completed this book in February 2018 before he died a year later.

For those interested, there are some videos available online form years ago where C. Bernard Ruffin gives us some insight in his interest and writing of the preeminent biography.

I am a very slow reader, but I was able to get through the over 400 page book quite fast considering. A miracle!? Well, maybe more because of the interest of the subject matter and because of Ruffin's easy writing style. God bless St. Pio and God bless C. Bernard Ruffin for writing these editions on Pio's life.

Wordperfect Office X9 for PC

Wordperfect works perfect!

I'm very happy with my choice of Wordperfect Office X9 for PC over other competitive brands specifically Word. It was easy to install and I had no problems doing so. I can open my older Word files in Wordperfect X( and have had no problems with that. Although I am new to Wordperfect and still learning, it is very intuitive and many tools are easily used without having to look up how to use them. I mainly got this software for the word processing, but there are other programs associated with this Office software including, Quatro Pro, Presentations and After Shot 3. I am very happy with this Corel software.

VEGAS Movie Studio 14 Suite

I Like It! October 22, 2018

 
VEGAS Movie Studio 14 Suite is the complete suite for video editing and has more things to offer than the last version. A couple of things I like are the new a hover scrub technology, and smart upscaling technology. You can create professional 2D and 3D titles, captions, and credits. RED cameras are now supported too. It does have an intuitive drag-and-drop workflow as they claim. It did take some time to learn this software and I still have not mastered it, but it is very good in my opinion.

The Dictator Pope by Marcantonio Colonna

A Masterpiece.

The Dictator Pope is truly a masterpiece as a study of Pope Francis and what makes him tick and also in its writing. The narrative flows so smoothly without pomp and circumstance. Henry Sire who originally wrote this using a pen name is quite a figure. I've watched him in a few interviews and he is obviously a learned and studied intellect.

I am a Catholic and I in no way find this book to be an attack on the Catholic Church. It is rather elucidating however in understanding the questionable actions of the current pontiff and how the Church got to this point.

I recommend this book for every practicing and believing Catholic.

Transporter The Series: Season 1

  Awesome, February 16, 2016

The Transporter: The Series is an excellent television show. I discovered it rather late, and have just found out that the series ended after two seasons. This is a shame Chris Vance does a great job portraying Frank the Transporter, in some ways I ended up liking his portrayal even more than Statham's because Vance's Frank is a more well rounded human being.

The character of Deiter is a fun one, he fixes Frank's cars and adds all sorts of extras on them. And of course, Frank's police officer friend, the same actor from the movies is in many of the shows. This is another plus as I always liked his character.

Each show is different with various reasons why Frank has to step on the gas. Some of the driving sequences and fight scenes surpass the movies. The shows producers could have left out the nudity however and some of the more perverse segments that seemed to have been added for no real reason. Although the series doesn't last long in terms of seasons, this is surely something that fans of the movies will want to have! It is much better than the lousy Refueled movie.

Murder on the Withlacoochee by Ron Johnson

  Good Read October 30, 2015

Ron Johnson did a nice job bringing to life the Withlacooche river area. It's filled with characters, murders and fighting between the air boat people and the noise haters. There were some annoying spelling errors, it could have used a good proof reader. But other than that I enjoyed this book, which had some good twists and turns and was a fast paced read. I would have liked to have read the third and from what I understand incomplete last book in the hoped for trilogy, which was cut short by the author's death.

Doctor Who:The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (Big Finish Audio)

Excellent! October 23, 2015

I have listened to about a dozen of the Big Finish Doctor Whos and it has been a real mix. The writing has been the main problem. Some of the storylines are just plain rubbish! This one from 15 years ago however, is excellent. In fact, it could have been a REAL Doctor Who from Colin Baker's time or even before.

I want to fess up here. I was NOT initially a Colin Baker fan. In fact, I hated him as the Doctor! I couldn't stand his acerbic personality and found him to be totally unpleasant as well as some of the shows. As time went on however, and Baker was allowed more room for humor, I began to appreciate his Doctor more. By the time Trial of a Time Lord came up I really began to enjoy his character. Baker was obviously finding his stride! and then it was all over. Sylvester McCoy started out funny and ended up sputtering! Just the opposite of Baker.

I can't stand the "new" Doctor Who for many many reasons and I started looking for more. I purchased all the DVDs available and even enjoyed listening to the very old audio CDs of the original soundtracks that edited in some narration. I enjoyed hearing Jon Pertwee in the two audio shows that he had done for the radio and hated very much some shows Tom Baker did that had a swamp in the TARDIS and dancing ballet shoes! Dreadful.

Then I discovered Big Finish classic Doctor Who shows. The funny thing is that of all the shows I've heard Colin Baker has been the best actor for these audio adventures. Despite how huge he's gotten since his TV days, his voice stayed pretty consistent. He has his character down still, the one I liked from the old days and he is fun to listen to.

Sometimes the storylines haven't been too good, but this one is wonderful! It IS a REAL classic Doctor Who episode. The story might be a little too reminiscent, there are some obvious similarities to a Pertwee story, but it is so well done, both with the writing, style and acting, that you can really "see" the show. It was like listening to a show that you missed from the good old days.

It was nice having a Brigadier story I hadn't "seen" before. Nicholas Courtney fell in easily to his Brig character and Dr. Smythe, The Big Finish companion for Colin Baker is a rather bearable character. James Bolam guested as well as another New Tricks actor. The cast was first rate and the sound effects and music were well done.

All around this one is a good one.