What Day is it? – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

The last fifty years

February 27, 2026

In 1968, when Richard Nixon was nominated by the Republicans for President, his running mate was Spiro Agnew. Shortly after the 1972 election, some charges of impropriety forced Agnew to resign. With the majority of his second term ahead, Gerald Ford was selected to become the V.P. He had been a congressman for twenty-five years.

Ford became the 38^th chief executive and had a difficult campaign against Jimmy Carter, the 1976 Democratic candidate. President Ford pardoned President Nixon before he could even be charged with any crimes from the Watergate Hotel break-in. This was considered by some as the biggest hit on his prospects.

Ford lost to Carter, and the party shift kicked in again. Carter served from 1977 to 1981. During his first term, the Shaw of Iran was overthrown, and a pro-Muslim government took power. The U.S. Embassy was attacked, and hostages were seized on November 4, 1979. The thirty-ninth President lost his second bid for the office in 1980.

The power shifted once again when Ronald Regan defeated the incumbent based on failure to solve the hostage problem and other fiscal problems attributed to his administration. Regan held office until 1989 after winning the 1984 election as well. The hostages were released before Regan was inaugurated as our fortieth chief executive.

“Read my lips, no new taxes” was the campaign promise that convinced many to continue a Republican Presidency under Vice-President George H. W. Bush. His term was from 1989 to 1993. When other Republicans convinced him to sign a tax proposal that Congress passed, the Democrats used it to their advantage.

They nominated Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton as their candidate, and he defeated the forty-first to become the forty-second President. Clinton’s administration featured a joint Presidency with his wife, according to the GOP. She had no official title or authority. They were in the White House from 1993 to 2001.

Do you remember the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country? Muslim radicals hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them. Two took out buildings in New York City, part of the Pentagon building in Washington, D C., and the last went down in Pennsylvania.

When our forty-third President, George W. Bush, the son of the forty-first, addressed us that evening, he launched an investigation to determine how this could happen. We were involved in wars in the Middle East to eliminate factions supposedly responsible for this attack. His administration ran from 2001 to 2009.

Are you getting tired of the constant flip-flop of power from one political party to the other for over one hundred years? In 2008, we elected our first African American President, Barack Obama, a Democrat from Chicago, as the forty-fourth man to hold the office. He served until 2017.

I will not make any comments about the last three Presidents. There are situations that I feel will have to be resolved before we know what should be said without hurting feelings. Both current parties have opposing opinions of what should and should not be commented on. I hope these columns have given you insights into who our leaders have been.

Hoover to Ford

February 16, 2026

A vacuum cleaner to an automobile? No, Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican nomination in 1928 and won decisively. Before he ran, he was the Commerce Secretary from 1921 to 1928. He was our thirty-first President from 1929 to 1932. Often blamed for the Great Depression, it was his predecessors who might have been responsible.

Most of us know of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only one to be elected four times. The first time was in 1932. Of course, he was a Democrat. I’m sure that you have noticed that we jockey back and forth from one party to the other. The problems in a particular year often result in a change.

Roosevelt attempted to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, but his speech on December 7, 1941, put us there. Congress, the President, and the American public had to react to the brutality of the Japanese in attacking our base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He served as our 32^nd President until he died in 1945, when Harry Truman, the Vice-President, became the thirty-third to occupy the office.

Truman is known for ending World War II by bombing two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. These were newly developed, and we succeeded shortly before the Germans and Russians. When Truman ran for re-election in 1948, he faced Republican Thomas Dewey, and most of us have seen the headline that stated Dewey had won. An early case of stating false election results.

General Dwight David Eisenhower was elected as our thirty-fourth President and served from 1953 to 1961. He was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe when the Germans were defeated.

What most of you do not know is that Truman requested Eisenhower run as a Democrat in 1952. He declared to the President that he preferred the policies of the Republican party and they nominated him. His Vice President was Richard Nixon, who ran in 1960 because in 1951 the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which limited our Presidents to two terms.

Now I can speak from personal knowledge of the rest of our Presidents. There will be some non-historical comments on these men. I remember the 1960 election when our thirty-fifth President, John F. Kennedy, defeated Richard Nixon and served from 1961 to his assassination in 1963. I do not have to look up these dates; they are etched in my memories.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President after John Kennedy was declared dead in a hospital in Dallas, Texas. He was re-elected in 1964 and declined to run in 1968. Since he served a little more than a year of Kennedy’s term, he was eligible to seek a second term of his own.

Richard Nixon was elected our thirty-seventh President and served from 1969 to 1974. He defeated Johnson’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, and was the first President, and to this date the only one, to resign his office. Next time we will discuss the only President never elected as either President or Vice-President.

A Day for Love

February 14, 2026

Today is Valentine’s Day. This is the day we celebrate love. We are asked what love is, and we have difficulty answering that question.

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NIV

Yes, this is from The Bible. Do you believe what Paul says in this passage? Is love really that important? The question remains, “What is love?” It is not a feeling or an emotion. Say it with me, “I love you.” I am a word nerd. Break the sentence down. I is the subject, you is the object, Love is the verb.

Let’s let Paul define it for us. First Corinthians goes on in the fourth verse, “⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.” NIV

Get it? This is the kind of love that Yahweh God has for us. The Greek word is Agape. You are probably thinking of another Greek word that we translate as love, Eros. Our word erotic comes from that word. It is not what most of us want when we think of love on Valentine’s Day.

We want our valentine to cherish us, care more about us than anyone else does. Those of us who are married wanted that on our wedding day. For some of us, it did not last. Are you in love with your spouse as much as you were on that day?

I must confess that I am not. Today, I am more in love with Cindy than I was fifty years ago. Many of you have not lived for fifty years. Our daughters have not. Does that surprise you that we were married before we had children? For celebrities and other influencers now, this is not the norm. It was for us and our parents and grandparents.

You decided that this person was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. You did not move in with them or spend the night or the weekend. You said, “I do,” and you meant it and kept your promise. We agreed to stay together in sickness and in health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and we have.

It hasn’t been easy. Love is hard work. “Love is a choice.” Read the book. Not just the one by that name, but the one I mentioned earlier. Read the Bible. That is where I find my answers. You can as well. You must read it to see them. Or you can follow and subscribe here, and I will continue to share what I have read from it. The choice is yours.

Twenty-fifth through thirty

February 13, 2026

Let’s continue with the twenty-fifth President of the United States. William McKinley served from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. The first to serve in the twentieth century, he was known for imperialism and protectionism. He was reelected in 1900.

He was shot on September sixth, 1901, died on the fourteenth, and his assassin was convicted and executed on October twenty-ninth. Talk about swift justice. Why, with all our more civilized laws, does it take over ten years to accomplish the same thing?

I think many of you have heard of his vice president who became President number 26. Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in and served until 1909. The hero of the Spanish-American War defeated his Democratic opponent and declared he would only run for an additional term in 1904. His choice to succeed him as the Republican candidate was William Howard Taft.

I know you’ve never heard of him. As our twenty-seventh President he served from 1909 to 1913. He is best known for being the only person to serve as President and a Supreme Court Judge. By the time the 1912 election began, Teddy Roosevelt had changed his mind about Taft and opposed him for the Republican nomination.

The organization of Roosevelt’s Progressive Party to oppose Taft caused the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election. Taft narrowly defeated the Republican Charles Evans Hughes in 1916. The First World War began in 1917 while he was serving his second term. He advocated the establishment of the League of Nations but opposed the ratification of the treaty to allow the U.S. to join.

The 1920 election saw Wilson running for a third term and losing to Republican Warren G. Harding. He was popular at the time, but after his death, some scandals caused him to fall from favor. The twenty-ninth President died of a heart attack in 1923, and his vice president succeeded him.

Calvin Coolidge was well known in the 1960s. Floyd Lawson, the barber on the Andy Griffith show, was known for attributing many quotes to him. I am not sure if they ever told us anything notable that he said. Silent Cal led our country through the roaring twenties. Fortunately, he was the first V.P. to be invited to attend cabinet meetings.

When the 1924 nomination was made, he took it on the first ballot. As the thirtieth man to hold the office, there are many stories about why he was not more outspoken. One that seems to have been verified as true was that he said, “I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I will go along with them.”

Too bad that many of those who followed him did not feel the same way. Now we seem to have to try to forget what the politicians say as quickly as they open their mouths. Next, we will learn about the Great Depression and who blamed whom for it.

The Sixteenth President

February 9, 2026

Let’s see the hands of all of you who do not know this man’s name. I thought so, only three raised your hands. The rest of you knew it was Abraham Lincoln. This was the year of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate. Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861 and was blamed for causing the War Between the States, commonly referred to as the Civil War.

I imagine not as many of you know the name of the seventeenth President. Andrew Johnson was a War Democrat who ran with Lincoln in 1864 for the National Union Party and was the Vice President when he was assassinated. The Republican led Congress impeached him, but the Senate acquitted him by one vote. He was not chosen to run for a second term and left office in 1869.

Ulysses S. Grant had been the Union General attributed to the defeat of the Confederate States. The Republicans nominated him, and he led the Union back to the vigor that had been lost for years. He was credited with unifying the southern and northern states until the twentieth century, when Southern Democrats defamed him. He served as our eighteenth President until 1877.

Rutherford B. Hayes, another Republican, was elected in 1876. There was a problem before he was declared the winner of the election. It was called the Compromise of 1877 when a Congressional Commission awarded twenty contested Electoral votes to Hayes. He stood by his promise not to run for a second term.

The twentieth President is James A. Garfield, who took office in 1881. He was shot in July and died in September, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Chester A. Arthur. Garfield was known for his anti-corruption and pro-civil rights stance. He is often ignored by those who rank our Presidents.

President Arthur continued the reform of the civil service that was begun by his predecessor. A widower, whose wife died shortly before he became Vice President, his sister, Mary, served as White House hostess. He failed to gain the 1884 Republican nomination. Biographers refer to him as one of the most distrusted Presidents when his administration began, but widely respected when he stepped down.

The first Democrat to be elected President after the Civil War was Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th on the list. His first term was from 1885 to 1889, and his second was from 1893 to 1897. He was considered a classic liberal and owed his first win to a defection of some Republicans.

In 1888, the popular vote went to Cleveland even though Benjamin Harrison received more electoral votes. Six western states were added from 1889 to 1893, and the US Navy was refurbished. His tariffs increased the Federal budget but cost him the election in Cleveland.

He was not the only President to lose his second bid for the position due to the economic state of the country during his second attempt. Most economic experts believe that it takes a minimum of twelve years for Presidential policies to affect our economy to a significant extent. Next time, we start with the twenty-fifth man to hold the office.

More Presidents

February 8, 2026

We begin here with William Henry Harrison, number nine, who was elected in 1840 and inaugurated on March 4, 1841. His slogan was Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. He was the hero of the battle there in 1811, and John Tyler ran as his Vice President. His inauguration address was almost two hours long. He died one month after he took office.

His death was originally attributed to pneumonia contracted on inauguration day and later found to be septic shock. John Tyler became the tenth President after much discussion about the succession process. Harrison was the first chief executive to die while holding the office.

John Tyler was a member of the Whig party, like his predecessor and running mate. He finished the term for which they were elected and was well known as a states’ rights supporter. He was opposed by some of his own party for seizing the Presidency that the Constitution said he was entitled to. These squabbles resulted in this being his only term.

In 1845, James K. Polk became the eleventh President. I’m guessing that most of you have never heard of him. He served only one term, which ended in 1849. He was a Democrat and gained the office because he was supported by former President Jackson. The Whigs were divided, so were the Democrats, and the Republicans hadn’t had a viable candidate since they split from the Democrats.

The 1948 Election year was focused on the Mexican American war and all the divisions due to economic difficulties and the westward expansion after Mexico, Spain, and Great Britain made agreements during the Polk years to allow for this. A hero of that war, Zachary Taylor, was the 12^th President from 1849 to 1850.

His Vice President, Millard Fillmore, finished the term. Taylor died of some sort of stomach ailment, possibly cancer, on July 9, 1850. Filmore openly declared slavery evil and helped form the Compromise of 1850, which gave a cooling period for the North and South over that issue. Filmore was from upstate New York and was needed on the Whig ticket to make Zachary Taylor more palatable for the Presidency. Filmore was the last Whig to be President.

Franklin Pierce became the fourteenth President on March 4, 1853. His wife was not there due to the earlier death of their last son. He was a Democrat and was viewed as a compromise between the North and the South. He supported the Fugitive Slave Act and was not his party’s candidate in 1856.

That was when James Buchanan was nominated as the Democrat candidate and defeated former President Filmore that ran on the American Party ticket, and John C. Fremont, the Republican Candidate. He served as the fifteenth President and spent the next four years trying to keep the union together.

In my next column, I will begin with our sixteenth President. If you do not know his name, sit tight, and I will reveal the two famous candidates for the position in 1860. I do not think many of you will be surprised at the winner.

Presidents

February 6, 2026

I want you to understand that this series of articles is about all forty-five presidents and not just the two who have birthdays in February. You know some, and others are a mystery to us. We need to learn about all these men before Presidents’ Day.

We all know our first president, who was elected from 1789 to 1797. He had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Patriot forces from the beginning of the war. This position was also given to the president by the newly ratified constitution. George Washington was not affiliated with a political party, even though he seemed to agree with most of the Federalists.

John Adams was Washington’s Vice President for his two terms. He was a Federalist and was elected as the second President and served from 1797 to 1801, when he was defeated by his Vice President, Thomas Jefferson. His stance on the French and Indian War was supposedly the reason.

Jefferson served from 1801 to 1809 as our third President. Jefferson is best known as a Federalist, but his party was listed as Jeffersonian when he ran against Adams. He was the second choice, and that is why he became Vice President. During his terms, we purchased what is called the Louisiana Purchase. This land is now occupied by our Midwest states.

The fourth President elected was James Madison, who served from 1809 to 1817. He was a Democratic-Republican and instrumental in the creation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The War of 1812 began in his first term and ended after he was elected to a second term.

James Monroe took office in 1817 and served as our fifth President until 1825. Monroe was also a Democratic-Republican. The Monroe Doctrine limited European colonialism in the Americas. It is said that he wished to continue pushing across our continent.

In 1824, the election was split between four candidates. No one had an electoral majority. As per the Constitution, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as the next President. He had served under the first five previous Presidents and was the oldest son of John Adams. He served from 1825 to 1829. John Clay, one of his opponents, was chosen as Secretary of State.

In the next election in 1828, another of his opponents defeated him. Andrew Jackson was a hero of the War of 1812. The deciding factor in defeating Adams was that Clay had been appointed to a high office, which was pointed out as an attempt to deceive the voters. Jackson was our first Democrat President. He served as seventh in line until 1837.

Martin Van Buren ran as Vice President in 1932 with Jackson. After four years as second in command, the Democrats nominated him, and he won the election and became the eighth President in 1837. Van Buren’s bid for his second term resulted in defeat due to the recession that began after he took office, and he was defeated by William Henry Harrison. We will continue next time with him.

Today is Ground Hog Day

February 2, 2026

That is correct. This is February second and it is the traditional day when we turn to Punxsutawney, PA, and watch Phil XXVI come out and not see his shadow. This year, it was sunny in Pennsylvania. The report that was read was that the rodent had seen its shadow. As this was read, he was held up and deprived of the sleep he wanted for the next six weeks. That part of the day is over. Now what? If, like me, you have the day off, you need to fill your day.

Hunters, this would be a good day to go out and shoot every groundhog you can find. Vengeance for causing six more weeks of winter seems to be justified. Or is it? Varmints do not control the weather. What is winter, anyway? It is a season. One of the four that the angle at which the Earth rotates causes. This creature can’t change anything, especially what season it is. Fortunately, today is not groundhog season.

You could always watch the movie “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray. It is fun to view, but have you thought about the lessons it teaches? The weatherman played by Murray is obnoxious, opinionated, and selfish. No one would refer to him as kind, generous, and selfless. The replay of the same day forces all that to change. Think about yourself. What improvements need to be made in your character?

Meals today should be easy. One main ingredient must be in at least one of them. Today you must eat ground hogs. That’s correct. You must honor the groundhogs of America by eating sausage, which is made from ground hogs. No turkey, chicken, or tofu will do today. Pure pork sausage is what we need today on Ground Hog Day.

Thank you, Jimmy Dean. I guess you can substitute some other form of ground hog. I have seen ground pork or Boston burger, which is a combination of pork and beef. Have you purchased deviled ham or spam in cans? They are both ground ham products, and we all know ham is another pork product.

Some other ways to celebrate the day are to help eliminate the pork that is in our government. The only way to do this is to put people in office who have no affiliation with political parties that owe favors to those who want government money paid for their services.

We all know honest people. Ask some of them to run for your local offices and support their campaigns. My suggestion is to get them to register as non-partisan or any party but Republicans and Democrats. Send the porkers in government back to their holes.

November is the time to dig them out of their dens like they do to Phil every year on February second. This year, it will be the second Tuesday in November to pull the hogs out of their offices. Then maybe next year spring will come early. I hope so.

Happy Birthday, Cindy

December 25, 2025

I was thinking about my first Christmas when Cindy and I were dating. She was fifteen, and I was twenty when we started dating. I do not remember what I gave her for her birthday. I do remember picking her up that morning and bringing her to our home.

She had been there several times before. Mom and Dad had no problem with this girlfriend coming for Christmas dinner. Cindy did not know that there was another celebration scheduled for that afternoon. When we were eating dessert, there was a birthday cake.

Mom, Mary, made the statement that Christmas was over. It was now Cindy’s birthday. If she were alive, that birthday would have been remembered after we had Christmas dinner. This has been the tradition with our girls and the entire family almost every year since then. First, it’s Christmas, and then it is over, and the birthday begins.

After her sixteenth birthday that year, she earned her driver’s license. When she completed her sophomore year in high school, we were engaged. After she turned seventeen, we were married, and that first December after we moved to Joplin, she turned eighteen and brought my lunch to me at the convenience store where I was the assistant manager.

We now spend her birthdays at home with our grandchildren when they can all make it. The problem is that as she has celebrated her day of birth, it has been overshadowed by the so-called birth of the man named Jesus. Someone thousands of years ago determined to change a pagan festival to Christmas.

Happy Birthday, Jesus is a great song to sing today, but we will sing Happy Birthday, dear Cindy. She is a few years past her twentieth, and our time together has been spent remembering the actual day of her birth, not some holiday concocted by the manufacturers and retailers to guilt us into buying stuff they could never sell without advertising.

This year, our family will remember Christmas in a few days, and tomorrow, all I must do is celebrate Cindy’s birthday with a quiet meal. This is my way of wishing Cindy a happy birthday and telling her that I love her as much or more than I did when we honored her at her sixteenth birthday party the first Christmas we spent together. 1-4-3, baby.

Good Times

December 24, 2025

I spend a lot of my columns remembering the good times of my life. This time, I would like to speak to my younger readers. If you are sixteen to twenty-four years old, these should be some great times for you. It is Christmas on top of that. Let’s talk about what is going on right now for you.

You probably still live at home with mom and dad if you are fortunate, as I was. Even if you only live with one parent or some other responsible adult, I hope you are having a great time. You have friends and family around. Enjoy them by going to school or church functions.

Don’t skip the family or work parties. I had a great time with the guys and gals I worked with in high school and college. We had a good time. No one got drunk, or high, or shot, or arrested. That is what I hope for you.

Don’t worry about the bad stuff in the news. Most of us are blessed enough to go through life without being directly involved in situations that make it to the local news. I know you do not think your parents and other adults treat you the way they should. That’s life, get used to it.

Enjoy the parades, concerts, parties, and just driving around looking at the decorations and lights. You are young. Someday, you will be old like me, and you want to have those memories. What memories? Read my other columns, and you will learn of my recollections.

If you are in a choir, band, orchestra, or clubs, go to the parties. Stay away from the drugs and drinking and the “friends” that ask you to do things you don’t want to. There are times that you don’t have anything to do so grab a couple of friends and do what you want to do, as long it is legal, mostly.

I lived in a small city where it was safe to walk or drive around town and enjoy the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of this time of year. Have a good time with people that you know and care about.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and happiness. Make the most of each moment. Take the time off from school and work, and do what you and your girlfriend or boyfriend enjoy doing. Maybe don’t spend a lot of time alone with them. Enjoy their company and double date or go to parties.

God created us and said that His creation was good. It becomes bad only if people make it bad. Don’t be one of those that spoils the fun, if you can help it. Walk away from fights and arguments. Stay with those who aren’t trying to get themselves arrested or killed. That was easy for me.

There will come a day in thirty or forty years when you will say, “I remember when . . .” Let them have good memories of the music, friends, laughter, and fun. OK, now for the rest of us. I just talked to a friend of mine who celebrated his ninetieth birthday before Christmas. I never heard of a sixteen- or twenty-one-year-old who had more fun. Make this Christmas your best.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Category: What Day is it?