Our 2021 Blog ⇔ (Clicking on photo galleries reveals the entire caption and often makes pictures bigger; for individual photos, “open in new tab”)

Jan to present (click here for 2020a or 2020b)

Thanks for visiting wp.krigline.com. If you are an old friend or former student, maybe we can get “caught up” during IFM’s weekly Friday night Zoom gathering. Everything is always free, everyone is welcome, and with rare exceptions I’m participating (and often teaching). From 7:30-8pm, guests talk one-on-one with American volunteers who enjoy meeting our international friends. The meeting ID and passcode are always the same, or you can write to the address shown for more info.

June 12, 2021

Since mid-May, I’ve invested many hours daily to help my friend Dr Aluri prepare for the 2021 Columbia International Festival. Due to COVID-19, we faced many uncertainties and challenges. But on June 5&6, the Festival was open to the public, and an estimated 8000 enjoyed the chance to see, taste and experience the world. Here are a few representative photos from this year’s popular annual event.

Columbia International Festival, June 5&6 2021, filled two buildings at the State Fairgrounds with sights and tastes from around the world. This is the main National Exhibitions center in the Cantey Building.

The 2021 Highlight Country was India; here an exhibitor demonstrates a traditional instrument. Around the clock, guests engaged their international neighbors, learning about different cultures and making new friends.

Guests enjoy looking at student Art Contest display at the Columbia International Festival.

Students from all over South Carolina submitted artwork on the theme “Discovering India,” often in connection with a curriculum exploring East Asia. Many of the works were on display at the Festival, including these prize winners.

The Columbia International Festival main exhibition hall at the State Fairgrounds, June 5&6 2021. On the left, participants line-up to walk in the popular Parade of Nations. In the center, original floor-art by Indian Folk Artist Jugnu Vermu, under a 10’ globe added this year to celebrate the Festival’s 25th anniversary.

India Folk Artist Jugnu Verma poses with her daughter, behind the sand-art she created for the Columbia International Festival

Festival guests shop at the International Bazaar

Throughout the Festival, guests enjoyed international performances in the Nutt Building, which also hosted a food court featuring dishes from 16 nations.

Outside the Nutt Arena, guests enjoy the stage performances on TV while eating food from 16 nations.

Stilt-Dancers from the US Virgin Islands were a big hit with children (of all ages!).

The Food Court in the Nutt Arena included food from India, Myanmar, Peru, Pakistan, Congo, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Korea, Germany, Liberia, Eritrea, Russia, Kenya, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

May 7, 2021

Space seems to be closely connected to sanity, and after a year of COVID conditions we have been feeling the need for both. In April, while the kids were on a vacation with other relatives, we headed for the hills of North Carolina to enjoy a spacious change of scenery. Since our return, we’ve been busier than ever preparing for the Columbia International Festival (and looking for a more spacious home).

A wonderful Greek meal, just before checking into Ridgecrest

Enjoying the hills of North Carolina, above Ridgecrest Retreat Center. On the way down the hill, we encountered a black bear! (Fortunately, we were in our car)

Ridgecrest has the most beautiful putt-putt golf course we’d ever seen. We enjoyed 36 holes in this tranquil beauty.

After two short days at Ridgecrest, we drove home via the Billy Graham Library.

The complex is filled with memorabilia from the lives of Billy and Ruth. This display is about Ruth’s childhood in pre-war China.

Their graves are on site. Notice the Chinese character for “Righteousness,” made up of two pictographs: “a lamb” covering “me”. This is the simplest explanation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the “lamb of God” whose blood covers me, and makes me righteous.

Billy would’ve been the first to point out that the focus was never on himself. It was about how an awesome, loving God can use a simple, obedient Carolina boy to bring many fellow rebels into His family. (I’ll type this caption below.)

We are now working to prepare for June 5&6, when we fill these two buildings with food, entertainment and exhibits from around the world!

Finally, the need for more space has led us to buy this 1968 home in West Columbia. (More about that after we “close” the purchase.)

If you can’t read the caption under Billy praying, here it is: “The secret is not me. So many people think that somehow I carry a revival around in a suitcase, and they just announce me and something happens – but that’s not true. This is the work of God, and the Bible warns that God will not share His glory with another. All the publicity that we receive sometimes frightens me because I feel that therein lies a great danger. If God should take His hand off me, I would have no more spiritual power. The whole secret of the success of our meetings is spiritual – it’s God answering prayer. I cannot take credit for any of it.” ~Billy Graham

If my comment about Ruth Graham’s gravestone make you wonder what the Gospel is, see my article on being born again.

Mar 16, 2021

After lunch with friends, I got my first COVID-19 vaccine today (Vivian has already had both shots). Here are some recent photos.

Today, I got my first COVID vaccine. It was a “drive-thru” place, run very efficiently. I was grateful for all the polite staff and volunteers who spent the day outside in the cold to help us put an end to this virus.

Now that many restrictions have been removed in South Carolina, it is great to be able to have lunch with old friends again. We enjoyed a nice buffet at Doc’s BBQ in Columbia.

We live in the tall building (7th floor, other side). Spring has begun across the street at the Garden Club property.

Now that the weather is getting better, CJ and I enjoyed this trip to one of Columbia’s nice parks.

Great picture by Grandma, who enjoys taking the kids to parks too.

One of our favorite things to watch is CBN’s SuperBook cartoons. You can find them at CBN.com or the CBN Family app. I also love CBN News (same app).

Christy (with some help from Grandpa) completed this 300 piece puzzle today, and graciously let her little sister put in the last piece. CJ couldn’t pull himself away from his device to help much, or maybe decided that the saying is correct: “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

These tenacious daffodils reminded me that God’s beauty triumphs over life’s disasters. (The Garden Club building burned down some time ago, but no one told the flowers to find a new location!)

Feb 26, 2021

Although we don’t have many photos to show for all our work, you can enjoy some of the “fruit” of our labor on our “English as a Foreign Language” website: EFLsuccess.com. I’ve added study guides for some good films, like Family Man, Far and Away, and It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve also added lessons about Valentine’s Day. Look at the “Recent Posts or Updates” box toward the top.

Today is the Lantern Festival in China, marking the end of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holidays. I’ve long enjoyed this holiday, being fond of the beautiful lanterns on display at this time. This year, being in the US, we helped our grandchildren make paper lanterns to decorate their home.

Our grandson is standing on a chair, to finish putting up the new lanterns he and his sister made.

In between Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year, we enjoyed a delicious Chinese meal with an old friend–one of those who actually visited us in China!

First signs of spring in Columbia.

On my neighborhood walk, this tree’s early attempt to announce spring grabbed my attention, so I had to stop and take some pictures.

Feb 10, 2021

Vivian uses her collection of toy bears to add color to our apartment month to month. “Grandma and Grandpa bear” always stay under the TV (yes, Grandpa has control of the remote), but Valentine’s Day bears now keep them company. Across the room, a Groundhog Day bear enjoys the blossoms of our “Christmas cacti” (which normally don’t bloom until around Chinese New Year–which is this Friday). Today is the birthday of one of my nieces, so I created a graphic for her, and I was so happy with the result that I’m posting it here too! For our foreign friends (who might not understand the white text), if there’s a shadow on Groundhog Day (Feb 2), then winter will be shorter; the cacti in the photo bloom only once a year (often in Feb); and Valentine’s Day (for lovers) is in the middle of this month. Oh, and “love bears all things” is a quote from “the Love chapter” in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13, which I’ll paste below.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

“The Love Chapter” ~ 1 Corinthians 13 (by St Paul, the Bible, ESV)

Jan 29, 2021

I can’t believe that January is almost over!

Most of our Christmas decorations have been put away, but this Christmas Tree candle remains, surrounded by two Christmas cactuses. The cactus is so-named because it blooms once a year, normally around Christmas or in January. Vivian loves to see these annual flowers, which prove that even dry, prickly, leafless things can produce something beautiful! That’s a life-lesson for us all!

Christmas cactuses blooming in January.

We haven’t done much (except work) in January, but here are a few photos. One of the special things we did was to scan old photos from our pre-digital photography days. I’ll post a few here, but you can see “early digital” photos of the era (and three gorges) on our old website.

We ended 2020 on a sweet note at a local ice cream parlor! It was a great ending for a rather terrible year!

Every year, we add ornaments to the tree that point to the year past. The left ornament includes masks, hand-sanitizer and toilet paper; the one of the right (from WhiteHouseHolidays) says “We’re all in this together.”

On Jan 22, I strolled around the SC State Capital grounds. This memorial remembers the men and women who gave their lives to protect the rest of us as law enforcement officers. The central column says “Lest we forget.”

When a rumor indicated that our grandchildren might have been exposed to COVID, they were all tested, as were Vivian and our daughter. All came back negative. Vivian got her “drive-up” test after waiting in this line.

In 2000, as a college graduation present, we flew our daughter to Shanghai for about two weeks. She never saw the sun, and never came back to China! (Here she is with her little brother, Andrew.)

From 2000 to 2002, Michael taught a variety of students, including these Yew Chung students, young professionals, and corporate clients.

In Shanghai, Vivian was mainly studying Mandarin; but she also taught a bit, and conducted this after-school club for young foreign students.

In 2001, Michael’s parents visited, and we enjoyed a cruise down the Yangtze River, just before a huge dam changed the landscape forever.

This village had to be moved to higher ground before the dam was finished. Now, it is completely under water.

(click here for 2020b) 

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