Mesquite Country

Communicating or Just Sayin'

2011-10-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

Lately my dad has called our phone on an average of three or four times a day. He has a hearing aid and might be able to hear some of the words if I care to shout them. The phone we have in his room at the nursing home has the amplification turned up to the utmost. It's quite possible that the nurses down at the central station can hear me when I try to tell Dad something. However, Dad always asks Mom if she heard what I said, and then he promptly tells me again that he can't hear a word I am saying so I will just have to tell Mom. This type of so-called conversation has prompted me to turn on the answering machine and the 'do not disturb' feature on our phone. It is impossible to communicate over a telephone when one party cannot hear--or won't listen.

Now Fang finally decided to get a hearing aid for both ears when he kept having to wonder what the grandchildren were saying to him. Mind you, he could manage to ignore whatever I was saying. In forty-three years of marriage, he has probably heard whatever it was once or twice already. But it has been nice to know lately that he can hear me when he has his "ears" on. Being ignored is one thing, but being told that I haven't said anything to him all day is something else again.

Over the years we have come up with a fairly good way of handling decisions around our house. I talk about things and make plans; then Fang decides what HE wants to do and does it. It may be a little one-sided on the decisions, but at least one of us is usually satisfied. This might not sound like a good form of communication, but it has worked wonders for our marriage. If a mistake is made by the decision maker (guess who), the other party can smile and say (or think), "I told you so." As I said, at least one party of the first part gets to be satisfied.

Now communication is supposed to be a two-way situation. At least that is what most folks take for granted. And perhaps it is just as true for my parents as it is for Fang and me. One of us talks away while being ignored--in both situations. Tonight my dad left a message on the answering machine telling us that they are ready to go home. It was so easy to erase the message. Now if it were as easy to get it across to Dad that he IS at home where he currently resides, then maybe we could just talk about the wonderful fall weather and the recent rain. Somehow, ignoring his message happens to be much easier than ignoring the fact that he wants to go home. Children--at least Dad's children--were reared to try to please their parents and do whatever they asked of us. Not being able to do what they want of us is just as hard on us as it is on the parents not to get what they think they want.

It may be that in the future our children will have to tell us to just be still and stay in the car, chair, bed, nursing home, or wherever we need to be. It is NOT easy being the child who has to tell a parent what to do. When children have to 'parent' the parents, it is awkward at the very least and emotionally trying at the best. It would be wonderful to be able to just do for them what they have always done for us without all the complications of personality and stubbornness. And maybe that is possible for some children and parents. Maybe God will bless our children so that Fang and I can be less of a problem and more like old friends who live in someone else's house. But since one of us likes to talk and the other likes to make the decisions, who knows what kind of problems we will make for others. Maybe the kids won't put a phone in our room--just sayin'.

2011-09-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Followers and Readers

Every once in a while I log into this account to read what Robin and Jim have posted on their blogs. Both of them come up with some pretty neat comments and ideas. I still wonder if Jim's Russian tomatoes produced anything in the heat we had this summer. And I am ready for Robin to post a good list of things that we CAN buy that are made in America. One likelihood is just about as good as the other. The heat probably cooked Annie's purple tomatoes, and we would have to weave our own cloth to sew our own clothes if we want some made strictly in America--and that's IF we could find thread still made in America. [My Singer sewing machine was made in England, by the way.]

Not to sound too pessimistic here, I realize that some of the BEST things in life are still made right here in the US of A. Fang believes that most good ideas start here at home in this country--no matter the racial or ethnic background of the idealistic person who comes up with the ideas. The CLIMATE of this country--and no, I am not talking about the temperature or the rainfall--is very conducive to innovation and invention. Oh, now there are those who say that one state is more innovative than others. My brother Sterling says that the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas. If it had been invented in Texas, it would have been the TEETH brush! Shaking my head and smiling at the thought. I have heard that in the typical doctor's waiting room in Arkansas one can find enough teeth for an entire set. That is about enough said to get me in trouble for today.

No place on earth is perfect for every situation or person. My friend Bill Turley and his wife Gloria live in her home country of Colombia. Where they live in Somondoca must be pretty ideal as to climate. Bill does say that Gloria gets a little tired of cleaning up after their big bull mastiff because it rains nearly every night and the big dog tracks in the mud. But they also have wonderful water--free right out of the mountain--and hummingbirds and exotic flowers all around their home. If a person wanted to retire to an area where each dollar counted for the very most, it seems that the Emerald Mountain of Somondoca would be the perfect place. On the other hand, Bill is always happy to talk to me--in ENGLISH. Most of the townspeople he sees speak only Spanish. And while he has no trouble making himself understood, I can just imagine how much trouble I could get into with my two-word Spanish vocabulary.

Our children have mentioned a couple of times that they wished we lived closer to the Metroplex--that is the Ft. Worth to Mansfield [north-south] area. We don't like the traffic or the general attitudes of that area, and we are quite happy to live off in the boonies here in Wichita Falls where we generally know most of the neighbors. Fang and I like to read about or see shows about other areas--particularly those about Scotland and places in Europe like the Normandy area where Fang's ancestors originated. It seems to me that my ancestors thought that the air might be a bit more inviting in America, and for all intents and purposes, it has been the best breathing air we could ask for in our lifetimes. At any rate, we won't be leading any waves of descendants back to Europe to establish roots. We will probably content ourselves with reading about the land and the people while sitting in our own living room. But it is always nice to dream of other places and other folks and how they live THEIR lives. And truly, Texas is big enough for just about any dream.

Death Night

2011-08-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

Death Night

I heard my horse scream and could tell she was running full speed around her pen. It took some help from a friend who was visiting for us to be able to catch her and hold her. It was when we finally had her by the head that we realized that the screams were coming from a fire-engulfed two-story house just over from ours on the cross street. We knew the man and his parents well. Death had never frightened me, but that night dying became a terrifying reality.

Only years after the fact did I think about what she might have told her dad about how she came to be pregnant. All I knew for sure was that no marriage took place and the baby boy had been adopted by her aunt. Gossip in small towns is similar to what happens when a rancher keeps the breeding bull one season too many—everyone is related to someone on one side or the other of the herd. So many people knew something but hardly everything, but what was unknown was great fuel for the gossip fire.

I met her for the first time that summer. She came down to stay with her grandmother and brought her horse with her. We rode some together and then she stopped riding up to our place, so when I saw her up the street talking to a neighbor and one of the kids who was a bit younger than me, I asked her when she would be available to go riding again.

“Oh, I guess I won’t be riding for several months now. I am going to have B’s baby.”

I asked her if she were kidding, and she told me what she planned to name the baby and that she would soon be Mrs. Looking over at the man who was supposed to be the other half of this conversation, I saw a man who wanted to run or duck or something. He just backed against the wall where he was standing and slowly shook his head. I reminded her that he already had a son by that name; he was, in fact, the father of two sons already. Why would he want another baby?

The younger man who was leaning against the rail of the carport laughed and said, “Well, not every baby is planned or every marriage either. I will be married soon, and the baby is already on the way.”

Shock was still within my abilities, and I asked that young man who was the mother and intended and learned that incubation was taking place merely another block away in the other direction. Yes, the heifers were running wild that year and the fences were down in every pasture in the county.

It takes time for babies to come into the world, and it takes time for families to accept the idea that their precious children can very quickly become a source of either pride or embarrassment. In those years, a child born out of wedlock was definitely an embarrassment; and sometimes a quick or quiet marriage was plenty of reason for gossip—whether or not a child precipitated the event.

She left town soon after, or at least her horse was not in the corral by her grandmother’s place. Of course, her dad could have taken the horse back to her hometown. I never knew for sure and didn’t ask her grandmother. Sometimes it is just better not to ask questions if the answers might embarrass old friends. And her grandmother was, in fact, an old friend of mine. Years later, with tears in her eyes, the old woman told me that her son could not come to see her there in our town. That was the day I realized that the two men who suddenly left town after the fire were friends of her son. And it was later still that I wondered what the young woman had told her dad.

The adoptive mother is gone now; the grandmother long in her grave, but a certain sound in the wind, or a glance up the street when I go back for a visit are reminders of that night. The younger man died on a curve when his brakes gave way. It could have been just a simple accident, but his child never knew him as a father. And the girl left town with her family—probably before the gossips could talk about her. But the other death—that one was premeditated and horrific. And that man/child would know by now that it was murder. Whether his adoptive mother told him the ‘who and why’ can only be guessed. And whether his birth mother told her dad that she was raped or seduced doesn’t really matter now. It is not only men who are oversexed and under-principled.

Oh Pioneers!

2011-08-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

First published in SlightlyCreaky:

Oh Pioneers!

No cowboy and Indian wars loom over the horizon. The cavalry has gone off to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ‘frontiersmen’ in the Space Station have a Daniel Boone ‘elbow’ to manage all by themselves—with a little help from Houston; but we have become so accustomed to their adventures that we simply watch and grin. So where are the pioneers? Oh, they are just over in the next county—or down the street. But don’t look for men with rifles and women with long skirts. Instead, look for those brave souls who are seeking a way to fight stagflation, recession, depression, and general lack of confidence in a ‘standard’ way of life. But that does not mean that they lack for enemies other than attitude. Hand held to eyes to shade the glare from all the ‘super stars,’ prize athletes, politicians, and ‘trumped’ up billion or millionaires…

No bank robbers with masked faces staked out accounts this past year, but the one-armed bandit down at the gas station still did a pretty good job of depleting the budget. And no one wore a mask at the checkout counters scanning the groceries. And, of course, one of the biggest threats to fiscal well being continues to be the insidious reduction of whatever interest savings should be accumulating in a place called “Wall Street.” So the new pioneers have their battle lines drawn; but what weapons will prevail against doubt, dismay, and double digit inflation?

The Great Depression of the 30s found the pioneers of the economic battlefront making do or doing without. But most of them had never heard of credit—much less a credit card. Today’s pioneer goes to battle carrying the burden of past excesses. Now the jobless who carry credit card debt have no choices left—housing, transportation, food—just the essentials of life—these are no longer choices.

Years ago and several generations back, the backwoods cabin in Jack County had a rock cistern for water and a rock trail hewn down the side of the mountain to level ground. A mule, a rifle, a fireplace, and a bit of luck with the wildlife provided sustenance. Somehow those pioneers survived to invest in the county co-op. The investment receipts have beautiful scrolled writing in the dates and names. But who could possibly calculate their worth now?

In New York City, Dallas, or in Wichita Falls, a mule, a rifle, and a fireplace might not help anyone survive today. But, like those early pioneers, we still need to feel it is worth our while to invest in our community—investing by building homes, buying local products, or raising our families here. Most are willing to work for that investment—when work is available. Even a pioneer needs a plow, a hammer, a way to connect with community. All over our country we need those tools; they are called jobs.

She Knows!

2010-08-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

Fang gets such a big kick out of asking the grands questions and waiting for the answers. He recently asked our Dickerson grandson: Where was Moses when the lights went out? It took him a minute or two, but he gave the answer. A week later when he and his sister were in the back room bouncing on the bed while Paw Paw watched, the boy asked his little sister: Where was Moses when the lights went out? Paw Paw pointed out that she might not KNOW who Moses was. Looking at Paw Paw with one of those subtle but pointed smiles the grand said: She knows who Moses is.

That started a discussion between Fang and me about how many kids actually know who Moses is, but it was time to go to sleep, so we left that discussion for another day and just chuckled over the kids and some of the things that they have said that tickle us. For instance, about this time last year the little girl had finished her first day of kindergarten. Her mother told her that she needed to go into her room and choose the clothes she would be wearing the next day. The child's astonished question was: You mean I have to go back?

Having read some of the news today, I was encouraged to know that the trapped miners in Chile can see some hope of leaving that mine alive. These men need all the help that the nation and world can provide to free them from a certain and slow death in the depths of blackness. One of the first things they asked for was toothbrushes. One can only imagine what weeks without a toothbrush could do. But one thing sent down to them other than food was 33 extra strong mag lights so that each man could see what was around him. Being without sufficient food is one thing, but being deep in darkness could certainly send a person over the bend in a hurry.

Now, I have a point to mentioning those miners. They were making their living down in the bowels of the earth, and that was probably the only employment available to them or they would not have been in such an unsafe place. Still, they had a choice about leaving the sunlight and becoming restricted to a dark place. Some women in this world do not have the luxury of that choice. They are no more than slaves or chattel of little value, and their darkness is the burka or burqa, that all encompassing garment that becomes a walking tent when a woman must wear it.

In some countries--Israel and France--wearing the burka has been totally discouraged or outlawed. The French refuse to allow anyone to use public transportation who is wearing a burka--probably because either a man or woman would be unrecognizable and could easily conceal explosives or firearms under the garment. Only the ultra orthodox in the Jewish community would have their women wear the burka, and the rabbis in Israel discourage such a restriction on women and consider its use a type of sexual deviancy.

Other countries refuse to allow the garments to be worn in any school or university, but some countries have just slowly begun the elimination of the garments, including parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The problem with a burka is as symbolic as it is a reality. If a woman has no identity, she has no meaning as a person. This same attitude prevailed in America for centuries concerning the black people and the American Indians. Unseen as individuals, these people had no rights or value to those who "conquered" this land. What was stolen from them included more than land or liberty, but their very identities. How can one have hope in life if one has no name, no place, no value?

Women have not always been appreciated in America--lacking the right to vote or even own property for many years. But men in the United States had something to guide them that had nothing to do with hiding their women in tents or behind veils. Just as our grandson said, they knew who Moses was.

August in Texas

2010-08-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Somehow all the miserable critters that live in Texas manage to hide out under rocks or near a cooler spot during August. About the only plant that does well in this heat has to be the stinging nettle--otherwise known as bull nettle. If the reaction to bull nettle could ever be bottled, the army would have a biological weapon worth billions. Anyone hit by bull nettle would spend at least most of every day scratching and being too miserable to be dangerous. Maybe if it were used as a weapon, bull nettle would also find its way into medicine to offset some of the reactions in the human body to things like arthritis, Crohn's disease, Lupus, and such. After all, nothing causes such a reaction in the immune system the way the chemicals in bull nettles do.

Our month of August calls for all the crazy folks to come out in droves to try to ride their bicycles in the Wichita Falls Hotter N Hell One Hundred bike race. Exercise is wonderful--just like work, but I could watch folks work a lot easier than I could watch thousands of bicycles rolling around with those sweating riders huffing and puffing and just asking for heat stroke. Any time the temperature gets over 100 degrees, it is time to slow down and drink something while sitting in the shade--NOT ride hell bent for leather in the sun!

August is also a good month for salads and sandwiches and easy no-cook food. Or if our bellies just have to have hot food, it is a good month for grilling stuff outside in the shade. This weekend we had corn-on-the-cob grilled by our oldest son. The sliced roast made decent little steaks that cooked quickly, but the grandson informed me that the meat was a bit salty. I used lots of tenderizer and some seasoned salt, so I guess that was more than he liked. Just wait until he starts cooking!

Having the oldest son and his two children here for the weekend was just pure pleasure. Lance handled a couple of tasks that needed to be done and that the "old folks" found a bit daunting. But mostly, we just enjoyed having our family here for the visit. Fang truly gets a kick out of those kids and watching cartoons has become his second best activity. And of course, Harley B just thinks that the kids are here for his enjoyment. Every time one of them would put down a water bottle, he would look at it, look at us to ask permission, and then take off with the water bottle. It is beyond me why a water bottle is such good fun for a dog.

While the kids were here, we filled up the pool about half way and they splashed everyone and everything in sight. The dog did not offer to swim with them this time, however. He had his bath the day before they got here, so maybe he thought enough was enough. Besides, it was too hot to even enjoy the pool.

Mother always said enjoy the time you have and don't wish your life away, but doggone if I don't wish that August heat would go away much sooner than it will. Looking forward to a bit of chill in the air....

The Book of God

2010-05-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

Raised as a good Southern Baptist, it is not surprising, I suppose, that I have read through the Bible more than once and memorized a fair portion of scripture. Now that is NOT to say that I totally understand/understood everything I read. In the first place, what may have been written and understood in context 100 to 1000 years ago may not have the same meaning to us today. However, the other night I finished reading The Book of God by Walter Wangerin, Jr. I highly recommend that anyone interested in reading a good--and I do mean GOOD--book read this one.

Not too far into the book, I felt I had run into an inaccuracy and almost stopped reading due to my prejudice--or obsession--for accuracy. But the point in question was debatable, so I kept reading. That was a good decision. The book begins with Abraham and ends with the empowerment of the apostles at Pentecost. This is one book I want my grandchildren to read. Years ago I would have thought that The Robe and The Big Fisherman by Loyd C. Douglas were about the best works around to make biblical history feel personal. Now I want to read other books by Wangerin and see if they are as good as this one has been. Zondervan publishers chose a good book in The Book of God, so now I am hoping that Paul, a Novel and Jesus, a Novel will be as good.

I am interested to know if others have read these books and what their thoughts might be.

Viewpoint/Perspective

2010-05-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Viewpoint or perspective is partially created through experience and partially created through what we read or see in media. Whether positive, negative, or indifferent that viewpoint still has to sift its way through moods and circumstances. Experience includes what happens to those around us and how they react to their circumstances. A friend lost her breasts to cancer. Then she wore prostheses instead of having implants. One night she returned from the bedroom and told her husband that she had injured herself seriously. Concerned, he asked what had happened. She told him that she had dropped her boob on the floor and stepped on it. I am still laughing.

My father drives an old Ford truck that he calls “Budweiser” because it had a “Bud” can in it when we took it to him. He says he can’t drive it right now because it is in mourning. It just can’t accept that Budweiser has sold out to a foreign company. Besides, it has just enough gasoline in it to get to the filling station to get more motion lotion. He is driving a little personal scooter down to the post office every day or so to get his mail. The scooter is slow and maybe not as dignified as sitting up in the cab of a truck, but it gets the job done.

Mother invented a new kind of doughnut that she deep fries and Dad calls them “hooters.” The parents had no idea why their children and grandchildren were laughing about the “hooters.” We explained. Then Mom created a new kind of cookie roll and Dad called them “poopers.” Rolling eyes . . .Don’t ask.

Somehow it always seems to help us along in life if we can bend our viewpoint to the funny side—some called it warped, but I think of warped in a good way. No matter how bad things can get—and let’s face it, things can get pretty bleak—calling things something other than what it is can make life a little easier to accept. A wreck on the Harley was a failed attempt to straighten out a California highway; a horrendous hail storm was an opportunity to fill up cups for a cool root beer for the kids; a long drought is a good excuse for planting cactus.

We need some humor in this life almost as much as we need love. No, I can’t see the evening news person making jokes about the economy or the weatherman giggling when the heat index reaches 110 degrees. But I can tell you about the guinea hens that froze in the trees back in ’85 and then thawed in the trash cans where we pitched them. I would have felt sorry for the man who opened the lid and nearly fell over when they flew out, but I was too busy falling over laughing. Yes, the pipes froze that year and water went everywhere when it thawed, but I still just remember the frozen guineas and the man who opened the trashcan. That’s perspective.

Springtime in Texas

2010-05-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I posted anything here because I have been writing for SlightlyCreaky.com and have had my book--Destinations--published there. It was very exciting to have it published online, but not many people let me know what they are thinking about it as they read it. Hal Rosengarten has divided it into 'chapters' in order to manage the size of each section he puts online. It really doesn't matter to me how it gets on there as long as it can be read.

So much can and has happened in our lives lately. We are so grateful for all the blessings we have, but we are especially grateful for our children and our home. We even appreciate the silly ole black dog who likes to ride in the truck with us and the long-haired gray cat who sleeps on our bed with us. Oh, life is bound to bring some miseries around eventually, but right now we are just hobbling along together with love and laughter.

It's storm season now. Each year when I was a child we had a tornado on my birthday--or at least a storm. I guess we have a couple of weeks yet, so for now we could just use some nice rain on my new rose bush.

My work is cut out for me this week. Rachel colored pictures for her daddy's birthday book. She had to ask her mom what a couple of them were after she put them aside for a bit. I guess we may have to use more than one version or at least label what her pictures are supposed to be. She did a good job on a bicycle, however. I could not draw one that well.

Reece and Gary have gone on a trip to Austin and San Antonio for the fourth grade kids field trip to learn about Texas history. We took our children there one year and never regretted it. Even the adults have a lot to learn.

Well, back to Facebook to check on a post from the oldest son and then to bed. Posted a congratulations to our niece for graduating tonight with her master's degree. Sent her a check, but I think it is the idea that means more to her than the money. It took a lot of work to get that degree and she can be proud of it. Now we will watch Tracy graduate with her second masters and Lance with his first degree. Glad it is them and not me. I am too tired to study.

Do You Want to Know?

2010-01-09T17:57:00.001-08:00

Customers are some of the most sensitive people in the world. When the product they are considering is a bit out of their normal sphere of knowledge, customers can be almost defensive because they may feel intimidated by the salesperson or what they consider to be the “expert” about the subject. Whether a person is buying a new tech gadget like a phone or a service such as rehabilitation exercises and classes, the customer should be treated as an intelligent person rather than as a child to be taught or as a negligent student to be scolded.

Recently we met up with an excellent sales person who rolled her eyes, growled, shouted, and otherwise showed her irritation with the phone service connection which was needed to activate our new phone. Never once did she show any indication that her displeasure had been caused by our inability to complete the same communication with that company. When she finished and gave us the paperwork, indicating the pieces of information that were essential to save, she made the comment that these companies who made products that required a call to a foreign country or to an automated system should have to spend their days shouting into a fuzzy call system in order to obtain a pay check. We thanked her for her patience on our behalf, and she went on about her business with a cheery demeanor. We were very glad to have had her help since she obviously knew what to do and what to expect.

Not every situation is so pleasant. Lifestyle changes involving foods meet those criteria. Recently published articles concerning genetic tendencies and a body’s ability to switch on or off certain enzymes have changed the way nutritionists have to look at foods and how their substances are absorbed within the body. Furthermore, scientists have observed that certain food combinations can change the body’s ability to convert foods into energy. Basically, changing one’s eating habits may help considerably when attempting to reduce cholesterol levels along with the use of drugs, but even certain changes or stresses on the body may change its ability to use nutrients.

No one minds putting forth his or her best efforts, but whether it is lifting weights, going to nutrition classes, or losing weight, the customer should be encouraged and appreciated rather than scolded or treated like a red-headed step child. Customers don’t come back when they expect negative feedback. Even teachers have to learn to cheerfully help students realize that the full load can be nibbled away one spoonful at a time. A nutritionist must learn to load her students with piles of good things they can choose rather than focus on the necessary restrictions. No one is so foolish as to expect to eat as much or any type of foods available, but it is nice to hear suggestions for healthy changes rather than doom and gloom about cholesterol, blood sugars, and weight loss. If you want customers to return, be positive!

Gifts and Gambles

2009-12-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

Sooner or later—not just at Christmas time or for some other special holiday—we all end up giving a gift to someone. Now not everyone is as paranoid about gift giving as I am, but let’s just assume that someone else feels nearly as uncertain about what to give to whom and in what manner. Gift giving is NOT easy, despite commercials to the contrary. Expecting a pleased reaction is like gambling on the lottery.

Certain factors affect what can be given to whom and how. For instance, a beach pail with shovel and assorted summer accessories for the beach just doesn’t cut it during winter. Never mind that all those beach things were on sale two months ago when the stores were trying to clear out merchandise! Not many families with small children will be going to a beach during the winter—much less allow the kids to play in the wet sand.

Then there are those leftover boxes of Valentine candy that were on sale right after that holiday. True, Aunt Julie would love the candy, but she might wonder why it is frozen solid and question whether the chocolate Easter bunnies and Cadbury eggs would have stayed good even kept in your deep freeze. Personally, I think the combination of red hearts and colorful eggs would be quite attractive. I can skip the plastic grass easily enough—even if it was cheap.

Our family doctor moves into his new office next week. I have the perfect gift for him if I can just find a nice gold string for a bow. He is a cowboy type who has some carved cacti and spurs in his office waiting room. So my old antique barbed wire should be just about right for an ‘office warming’ present. That wire has been in the family for a long time—so long I can’t remember the last time one of the kids got cut on it. Like I said, it’s the perfect gift for a doctor’s office.

Gifts should be surprises and fun to give or get. I like the song that Rod Stewart sings that asks, “Whose gonna bring you a broken arrow; whose gonna bring you a bottle of rain? Here he comes, walkin’ across the water.” The only one I know who gave the ultimate gift to ALL of us still gives it to us every day. And I am still surprised that He loves us.

The Safety Catch

2009-11-05T10:41:00.001-08:00

Each weapon I ever saw had at least one safety device to prevent unintentional discharge. We were always taught to treat each weapon as if it were loaded, even if we had just removed all the ammunition. We were taught to respect weapons for what they were—useful, but very dangerous tools.

In the past ten to fifteen years, we learned to use another dangerous tool—the Internet. However, the Internet has a less obvious safety device than any weapon. The first obvious safety device for any tool should be common sense. However, not everyone has or uses common sense. Obviously that is true of those who use the Internet just as much as it is of those who carry weapons.

Privacy on the Internet is a joke. Nothing that can be heard on a cell phone or seen on the Internet can remain hidden or private. This certain knowledge can be regarded as the warning on the carton of ammunition—potentially dangerous and explosive. User is solely responsible for outcome. Even if posted, this warning probably would be ignored by Internet users just as often as it is ignored by those who load weapons.

Whether it is a princess, an athlete, the son of a college dean, or a politician, what is said or written in private is no longer private when it goes to the Internet.

Words and opinions can be dangerous when used irresponsibly. But which is worse? Is irresponsible use of words any worse than the demands of those who feel they have the right to judge what was supposed to be a private message?

Many companies now control their e-mail systems to prevent unfair business practices or other insider damage control. But when did our high schools and universities begin to practice the same type of control? When young people post foolishness on a social Internet site, the foolishness is their problem—not that of the school. When a college student privately posts critical remarks about his school, does that give the school the right to harass the student?

One step further leads us to public words spoken, written, or posted online: does any government entity have the right to judge, condemn, or coerce a person who is critical of our government or any laws passed by our government? The obvious answer sounds like a safety catch—The Patriot Act. No one wants anarchy in our country or even acts or words to incite rebellion. But the Patriot Act can take away our right to express our honest—even though critical—opinions. Restricting freedom of speech is the same as saying that we are too foolish to be responsible citizens. Yet somehow freedom of speech always seemed like a good idea. Just as competition seems to help markets grow, freedom of speech seems to help us develop ideas and learn more about our fellow man. What happens when we remove the safety catch on democracy?

Perhaps it is true: it is the empty weapon which kills.

Not Your Mother’s Washtub

2009-11-05T10:38:00.000-08:00

Our lives just seem to become more convenient every day, so it seems a horrible shock when, incredibly, something doesn’t work the way it should. If the TV should lose its signal, we hardly know what to do beyond griping and snorting—especially if we miss a play during the World Series. It is difficult to imagine the days when folks had to listen to sporting events on the radio.

My grandmother thought her life had become almost heavenly when she finally got a ringer washer out on the farm. Our fourth or fifth washer went out the other day, and we went to our local lumber yard the very next day and brought home another one because we consider that appliance essential. It is strange how some things have taken their own positions on our list of priorities. A telephone is one item on that list. Our cell phone isn’t all that technical. I can actually use it to make and receive calls and even have some numbers installed in its memory—which is extra nice now that my memory seems to balk on occasion. Most of the children in our extended family have texting on their cell phones down to a speed system, however. And eventually they will consider their ‘old’ phones too obsolete for use.

We seem somehow to have lost that sense of adventure that came naturally with living in the country. We never knew when we would find a snake in the hen house or an armadillo in the garden, but recently it seemed like a very strange inconvenience to have our dog make the acquaintance of a skunk. When HarleyB returned to the back door reeking of essence of skunk, I was able to access the formula for removal of skunk oil immediately by using the Internet. Using peroxide, baking soda, and soap to clean the dog, we were able to allow him to finish spending the night in the house. It occurred to me that I would not have known what to use to clean him if it had not been for the convenience of instant information from the Internet.

The contrast between what our lives were like 50 or 60 years ago and our lives today may seem silly in a few short years for one reason or another. When contrasted with much of the world, we are so blessed. Our forefathers wrestled with this land during years of drought, floods, storms, and other natural disasters. But the blessings came despite the circumstances. Opportunistic scoundrels or gifted individuals, they gave back to the world what they were given, full measure, shaken down. Giving back became the American way, but it was always with a generous willingness. That may change; and if it does change, the world will be a poorer place both literally and figuratively. I challenge anyone to look at the Copenhagen Climate Treaty.

When our President signs this legally binding treaty, our world as we know it will change drastically. You will never even remember your mother’s washtub and its wonderful convenience.

Heart Healthy

2009-09-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Fang wanted vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge, and nuts. Now that sounds like a good start on a banana split to me. Of course, all the ingredients have to be sugar free and low in carbs. That makes life interesting, but thanks to our country's lifestyle, so many people need sugar-free products that it is much easier to find a good selection of products in almost any store.

While I was picking out Fang's favorite Braum's ice cream, I noticed a man with a rather large protrusion from his chest to his lap. This protrusion reminded me of an article I read about measuring our diabetes risk with a ruler or--as it would have had to be in this man's case--with a yardstick. My thoughts were that the fellow needed to put back something or go for a nice healthy walk.

Now, I would never pick on folks who are overweight--if for no other reason than that I count myself among the many who are. But since Fang just returned from quadruple bypass surgery only this past Wednesday (September 23), I am more aware than ever of our need to control what we put in our bodies and how much exercise we really need. Genetics plays a big part in our tendency to become diabetic or to have heart disease, but we can do so much to help ourselves.

Fang was especially blessed to have a very healthy vascular system--except for four blockages. He has always been active and keeps his mind busy learning things and exploring the richness of being a grandfather. To put it bluntly, he is a happy man. But lack of oxygen to his heart has caused problems this past several months that just seemed to come out of nowhere. And we never suspected that his heart was the problem and would never have known had he not had a simple EKG done in our doctor's office.

The long and short of my thoughts today is that life is too wonderful to throw away or to treat carelessly. Happiness is a choice; to some degree, health is among our choices as well. Take care of yourselves; we need every gripey old man and woman around here to support the doctors who take Medicare.

National Gallery of Writing Badge

2009-09-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder why I enjoy writing. And then someone or something comes along to remind me. NTCE is one of those organizations that tends to encourage teachers and writers to do what they do best.

Carla Beard has been one person who has been an encouragement along this bumpy road, so shortly she will receive an e-copy of what I hope will be the final draft of my first novel. For some stupid reason, the name for this book has not yet solidified for me. I have thought of Family Connections, yet that doesn't quite do it. Well, time has a way of bringing things to ripeness. We shall see.

Meanwhile, today is our youngest son's 30th birthday: Happy Birthday Hanan!

We were told this past week that our world would be turned upside down for a bit as of next Thursday. We are walking quietly and waiting for the answer to prayers and thinking that life is never certain, to say the least. Maybe the wandering trip by the Mountain Jews in my book is a bit of a symbol for the uncertain destinations that we yearn toward. Sometimes we walk forward--or what we believe might be forward--with a determination that belies our fears and frailities. We try to walk in faith, and we stumble in the darkness of the dread of we know not what. As uncertain as our lives may be, we hold to them and to those we love with a fierceness borne of desperation simply because we cannot imagine a better way. And yet I am reminded lately that it is not MY will, but God's will that will be done.

In this life, nothing is ever finished.

A NEW and IMPROVED HANDMAID’S TALE

2009-08-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

‘No one will ever tell me what I can say or not say or what I can think or not think. I still live in a free country!’ Those had been his words only a few weeks before today. But today he had been to the pharmacy. They could not—would not—fill his prescription for blood pressure medicine. When he had objected that he was paying cash for his medicine instead of using the state program for older persons, he had been told that no medications could be dispensed outside of the guidelines of the program. In other words, he had to subscribe to the state’s program or do without.

He had known the pharmacist for years at this store, but his friend no longer worked in the pharmacy. He had been retired a few weeks earlier because he had objected to the guidelines for dispensing medications. One of the pharmacy clerks caught up with Johnson as he left the store and quickly whispered that his friend the pharmacist had taken some of the final solution. The clerk expressed her disbelief in his acquiescence to its administration. Johnson would not find any information in the state run newspapers since obituaries were no longer permitted.

A few days later, even though his head was pounding, Johnson had decided that he had to go to his favorite all-in-one-stop store to buy a few groceries. This store had the motto ‘As Joe’s Goes, So Goes the Nation.’ Today he would have to walk or ride a bicycle to the store. He could no longer buy fuel for his small vehicle since the state had declared a moratorium on unnecessary travel and fuel consumption due to a sudden loss of markets overseas. Johnson would be able to buy only what he could carry the five miles back to his home.

No vehicles had been in the enormous parking lot at Joe’s. A few bicycles had littered the grass near the islands that floated on the sea of asphalt. A sign on the door of Joe’s had declared that its doors would reopen from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m. on even days. It had been Wednesday at 2 p.m. when he had arrived, exhausted but proud of his vigor at his age. Then he had attempted to look inside the glass doors to see if he could find anyone to talk to him. Only total darkness within the building had convinced him that his trip had been futile. This had been his only hope for food since all other local stores had been closed.

The grass along the highways had not been mown in some time. Somehow Johnson had remembered that his mother had pointed out the salsify plants that had bloomed and produced tiny helicopters when the seed pods were ripe. The roots of the plants were supposed to be edible. Johnson had begun to look for blooms or even the thick stalks that would give away the location of the roots. It had not been the right season.

When Johnson had returned to his home, he had found several new occupants. He had already begun to accept the new ‘Fairness Act’ that provided each individual with one room within the new government housing projects, but he had been totally unaware that ALL homes had been declared part of each area’s projects. Private ownership had been declared unfair to everyone who had not been able to acquire the means for affordable housing. Johnson’s home of 50 years no longer belonged to him. He had been assigned an area to share with another older man.

Johnson’s death had been expected. The mediations he had been taking had been gradually adjusted by the manufacturers so that the older generation had been easy to remove from the government rolls. Nothing he had owned remained, and his ashes had been among the many that had been mixed into a new organic compound used for pavement patches. Now he would truly support his country.

Diogenes Today

2009-08-22T18:05:00.001-07:00

Recently some companies decided that they were not being properly represented in the marketplace by sponsoring a nationally syndicated talk show. The host managed to comment in a censorious manner upon the ultimate authorities in America, the President and Congress. He cast aspersions upon what he considered to be corrupt, suspect, or at least unworthy intentions as demonstrated by forthcoming legislation and contradictory utterances that seemed to make a mockery of truth and forthrightness.

His remarks bring to mind—at least to my mind—two questions: What is racist and in what possible contexts can the term be properly used? Race is defined—other than by genetic characteristics—as those united by common history, language, or cultural traits. Racial is defined as pertaining to or characteristic of one race or the races of humankind; or between races: the terms are racial harmony and racial relations. Racism is defined thus: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior; or a policy, system of government, etc., based on such a doctrine; hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. One assumes that the racist would be anyone who makes a remark or otherwise indicates that he or she holds the beliefs of racism.

Do any of our countrymen consider themselves superior to John Q. Public or Janice Q. Jones of Jonesville?

The television and the Internet provide a wonderful window on America. How realistic the view might be is another question. But the definition may have to be stretched across the screen or compared to the sites found on the Web: racism is a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement. The teachers who discovered that their students WOULD learn if the expectation was given to them have proven that individual achievement has nothing to do with race. So much for that idea!

Television has presented the entire world with the extreme contrasts between those who have much and those who have little to nothing. Whether it is the ‘star’ of some soap opera, an athlete, or someone who has inherited an insane amount of wealth, the lives of those who have something make a couple of things obvious: wealth can make a difference in the manner one eats and in the manner one goes to jail.

Does the wealthy person fit the definition of racist? Does wealth cause hatred or intolerance of others? It is more likely that the wealthy person never considers those who have no wealth. Of course, no overall judgment can be made about any people: wealthy, healthy, wise, talented, or fumbling. The importance of knowing those who consider themselves above anyone else is the effect on the rest of us. So who makes the laws we must follow? Who consider themselves above those same laws? Who are the racists?

Does Diogenes still speak?

NON-POLITICAL GOVERNMENT

2009-08-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

No intelligent person is without an opinion, or a viewpoint, however warped or skewed either might be. Intelligence has no immunity from stupidity or egotism. But generally the intelligent person has something in common with his fellow man—a sense of right and wrong. Today some of the leaders of our nation have told us that THEY hold the hallmarks or standards of right and wrong—that they alone have the intelligence and common sense understanding to guide the rest of the nation in the best path for the common good.

When a standard applies to ALL, it is truly a standard. When some exempt themselves from the same standard that applies to others, it no longer can be called a standard. Government can be called a standard for those governed, but it MUST apply to all equally. In America, this concept goes back to that one statement with which most are familiar: “all men are created equal.”

Apparently, if what is shown on television and seen or read on the Internet can be considered any indication of the concept of ‘equality,’ NOT every American has been created equal. The average American equals a source of income or self-aggrandizement for those who have bought a position in ‘government.’ Those in government positions are not now, nor conceivably ever have been considered ‘equal’ to the rest of Americans. They are ABOVE the rules and regulations that apply to Joe and Jane Citizen.

Joe and Jane Citizen may or may not have a bank account, a home, a means of transportation, and decent food that must be prepared daily by one of the household members. Of all the ‘things’ that appeal to them as desirable, they generally understand the difference between a desire and a necessity and are willing to forego the pleasure of more ‘things’ until the family budget can accommodate such a purchase. Either one or both of these family members work diligently to fulfill the desires of the rest of the family, sacrificing individual desires for the good of the entire family.

Joe and Jane also have hopes for the future and compassion for those who seem less fortunate than themselves. Joe works and Jane volunteers her time to help build a home or to volunteer in some capacity to serve the community. Neither take for granted that life will give them what they need or desire simply because they exist; they understand that effort is required for whatever they earn. But they are willing to do whatever is necessary to provide for their family and to secure their future as they conceive it.

The ‘government’—those in charge of determining the value applied to the lives of all the Joes and Janes of America—have their own standard of compassion and their own set of hopes for the future. No concept of earning respect or serving exists in the standards of those involved in ‘government’ unless the person has already proven himself or herself to be a servant of those governed. One wonders how many servants currently exist in government. Can a few servants offset the entrenched attitudes of self-importance among those who have come to feel superior to all the Joes and Janes?

What made America great from the very beginning? The servants who were willing to work for the good of all and who realized that they were, indeed, servants made the difference. Individuals were willing to set aside whatever could have created personal comfort to assist in creating security and comfort for all. It was not the ‘government’ they created that made America what it should be; it was the individual who was willing to sacrifice self for others. How much of that sacrifice is left in our government today?

There Came a Woman of Samaria

2009-07-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

Former President Jimmy Carter has declared in an article called “Losing My Religion for Equality” that a group of men called The Elders have determined that women are misused and abused due to tradition and religious viewpoints:

"The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share.

In order not to confuse religion with faith, let’s clarify that neither Jimmy Carter nor any other person is being asked to disavow his or her faith in God in whichever name one knows Him. Religion is, after all, man’s view of God. Faith is a gift from God that allows us to believe in that which is not seen.

The subject of woman’s image in the eyes of man has taken many convoluted turns throughout the centuries. Only literature, and now other forms of entertainment, can give us an accurate measure of how women are or have been perceived. Literature, especially the Bible, has been instrumental in forging the foundation of men’s opinions about woman’s place in life. One work that had such a strong influence was Dante’s Inferno. Even the Church itself could not have prevented such lively and ingenious images from becoming part of man’s concept of woman and of her place in causing so much sorrow. But not many people read Dante today, so why are the concepts so prevalent?

Ian Fleming wrote some spy thriller books back in the 50s which became movies in the early 60s. About the only name more familiar than James Bond is John Wayne. John Wayne was sure to treat a woman with respect, but the James Bond woman played only an ancillary part to preen the male ego and purpose. Death for a James Bond woman provides realistic, if merely collateral, damage. The same is true in a later movie called The Bourne Supremacy. About the only movie that shows respect between a woman and a man in modern times is the new Walt Disney movie UP.

Most people today who have the luxury of belief, faith, and any concept of a higher power have heard of the Christ. The story of His life and the repetition of the things He said have been the basis for many of the traditions that men have created concerning their place in the world and its order. Two important stories from His life are quite often ignored. During the lifetime of Jesus Christ, the people of Samaria were considered less than illegal aliens and squatters upon the land of Jacob. No Jewish man would even speak to a Samaritan, much less a woman of Samaria. But Christ did. He first revealed Himself to the Gentiles through a woman. He flat out told her that he was the Christ for whom they watched. Oh, the men of the village came to see Him because of her report, but they were quick to tell her that they believed because of HIM, not because of her part in the revelation. They missed the point. HE had shown her respect.

Finally, the woman who loved Jesus was the first to see Him after He arose from the tomb. And it was the women who went by themselves to wrap in spices the body they expected to find in the tomb. No man went with them to help in any way. The women served Him to the bitter end. And it was their voices which brought the good news of His resurrection.

Oh, no one has to believe in one man’s version of the creation or the names of a creator if that belief can be avoided, but we are all the result of an ongoing process of becoming something other than individuals or egos. We share this planet and its destiny. The final result for all lives can be much more than ideas, beliefs, and determinations if we treat each other with dignity and respect.

They Grow Up

2009-07-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

By this Thursday, at least two things will have happened. Our youngest grandchild will have her fifth birthday, and our daughter will return for her two boys. It seems so strange that the baby girl has grown up so quickly. Hardly any time at all has gone by since we sat down at Thanksgiving dinner with our son and his family and waited for the blessing to be asked. And then they told us that they were going to be parents to another child. They both seemed a bit shocked by the entire situation--though surely by then they knew the process.

But now the little girl is going to start "real" school this fall. And our oldest grandson will be in seventh grade. Wasn't he just a little boy not too long ago?

Today I asked the boys to be careful with their granddad and watch after him while they went target shooting. He doles out the .22 shells one at a time so he can be sure who is doing what, but I want them to be sure they are listening to him. My own dad KNEW we would listen to him by the time he let us use a gun. But our boys are a bit like the dogs on the new movie UP--squirrel!! Their attention can be totally off a subject in a heartbeat.

We took these boys to see the Walt Disney movie UP and laughed until our sides hurt. Both boys would wait a few minutes between shouts of 'squirrel' before they would start laughing again, but otherwise, they thoroughly enjoyed the ideas behind the movie. I could have cried in a few places, but perhaps it is just as well that the boys kept me laughing. We are all adventurers at heart. But adventures are so much more worthwhile when they are shared. These two boys will share the adventure of growing up together--even if it is ever so fast.

Each child should have a sibling or at least a cousin with whom to share childhood. Oh, we can compare sizes, eye color, hair thickness, and all that other silly stuff, but what really matters is sharing a time in life that only comes once. None of our children or grandchildren will ever be perfect, but they can learn to appreciate family ties. Sharing a grandparent or two helps, but they also need to have experiences together that they can recall when they are grown.

Now I know what some siblings would think: Oh, never again! My brother was a character and a good brother. But that did not keep him from throwing rocks at the hen house while I was in it and scaring the liver out of me. But I remember he also tried to teach me to swim and to drive. I never have been much good at either, but that wasn't his fault. We can all recall some of the things that a sibling did that wasn't the best for us at the time. But we can usually also recall some of the things that made for good times or better understanding.

Whatever life brings to our grandchildren, I hope that they can look back someday and recall that they were loved and appreciated for who they are/were. And perhaps when they get together with cousins, they can share again some of those memories of growing up.

Grandparenting

2009-07-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since last this space was used, but time flies quickly for grandparents who are confused. Summertime is for children and grandparents, not for blogs.

Grandparenting

Somewhere in the hall of fame for strange critters, the grandparent must have a place. He or she feels responsible for the little darlins while enjoying the realization that the situation is generally temporary. The hall of fame has several categories of grandparents; so for the edification of those who have yet to experience one of life’s final ironies, the following enumeration of their characteristics is offered.

The all-permissive grandparent may be either male or female, but the entire idea behind being permissive is to allow the grandchild/ren to go home and tell the parents that ANYTHING is permissible at Granddad’s or Grandmother’s house. Candy, late hours, bouncing on the bed in the back bedroom, coffee in the morning with the grandparents, just about anything not allowed at home is allowed by these grandparents. We won’t go into the reasoning behind this kind of grandparenting because some mothers and fathers feel that an insidious—if not vicious—delight is expressed when their children are allowed non-standard child fare or activities.

The “we will buy it for you” grandparents may be about the most dangerous type in existence. Children who inherit this type of grandparent will have considerable difficulty in learning to value doing things the hard way or earning their own treasures. Parents who must deal with the grandparents must find a way to manage their frustrations and their children at the same time. Only if the grandparents can be persuaded to invest in long-term values like education or real properties will the goodness of their intentions have worth to the grandchildren or parents.

The most blessed children are those who have grandparents who will share their stories of growing up and a history of their own family. Children don’t see themselves as their parents do, so a grandparent’s memories can shed insight upon both the child and the grandchild when traditions are involved. The story about the daughter asking her mom why she always cut the roast edges off before putting it all in the pan illustrates one of the funnier traditions. The mother couldn’t tell her daughter why she cut the roast up in that way except that she always had seen HER mother do it that way. The mother called the great grandmother and asked her why she cut the roast up before putting it in the pot. The answer was simple: HER pot was not big enough for the full roast to spread out.

Our parents knew us as children. Their memories bear repeating for all concerned. We had grandchildren before we ever heard of the term ADHD, but now we understand why our parents thought their children were scatter-brained and never still. And believe it or not, we were well-behaved, good children. But the world we lived in had very little resemblance to that of today. We rode real bikes with one speed—whatever our legs would pump up. We rode all over town without our mom worrying about us. The neighbors all knew us and had us run errands for them. Our toys included hop toads, horny toads, grass lizards, and June bugs. We played in the rain, got muddy, got dirty, got hot, and got cold with the seasons. And all the time we had parents and grandparents who loved us and cheered us on. We were so blessed to have both.

If a child has even one grandparent, a certain amount of history will come out about the child’s parent. But the best part about having any kind of grandparent is seeing the continuity of life in a family, from one generation to the next, with love.

So How Does THAT Concern Me?

2009-06-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

So many of us today would just like to live our lives in peace without having to fuss with anyone over property boundaries, the volume of the neighbor’s music, the color scheme the neighbor chose for his house and garage, the number of pets or children running amok among our flower beds, the little things like property taxes, the price of fuel, the price of food or medical services. No, those are not the most earth shattering things, but we really would like to be able to just ignore them and enjoy our favorite hobbies or otherwise be able to quietly go about our lives. But such is life that we are constantly brought up short by some ‘problem’ with a capital P.

One neighbor has caused property values to plummet by parking dilapidated cars all over his yard. So we ask the city offices to ‘do something’ about it. Another neighbor has decided to plow up his front yard and plant a garden of cotton, okra, and sunflowers. The neighborhood children have discovered they can hide there and throw things out at people passing on the sidewalks. Oh well. It is HIS yard and kids will be kids.

Some things are just not worth our concern. It is pointless to complain or worry if things will change in three months, a year, or two years. My favorite grandmother used to say that no one would know the difference in a few years anyway. And that is so true of many things that irritate or otherwise grate on our nerves. But some things do actually matter now—and will matter in years to come.

Animal abuse has probably been around in some form since mankind discovered his ability to chain them up or even eat them. But seeing abuse of animals hurts the spirit of those who can make a difference. So, that is one concern that can and should be addressed by everyone. But is child abuse? Our youngest son reminded me of an incident that happened when he was little. He wanted a toy while we were at the grocery store and I said we could not do that. He threw a hissy fit and got an immediate response from me—a paddling right then and there in the grocery aisle. If I had done such a thing today, I might have been arrested for child abuse!

Animals and small children need to be corrected immediately to help them associate the behavior with the response. The response does not have to be terrifically painful, just definitely unpleasant. Just as we give rewards immediately for good behavior, we have to be able to respond to wrong behavior immediately. A good parent doesn’t just ignore bad behavior.

Somehow I feel a bit like a neglectful parent when I see our government running amok among our civil rights. But I will be dipped in kerosene for fleas if I can figure out exactly how to ‘correct’ our government’s behavior. Voting or not voting doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference these days—if it ever did. I can remember that our city government planned years ago to build a convention center and events complex. The citizens of our fair city voted it down numerous times, but somehow it managed to slip in there on a ballot and get built anyway. Now a convention center might be a pretty expensive item for a fairly small city like ours, but some of the ‘items’ on our government’s list are so big that they defy imagination. Three commas in a figure just about top my ability to imagine an amount.

Even if the government were not spending as freely as a child who stole his brother’s piggy bank and found his way to the candy store, something about the way things are being done—even in the open and semi-above board—makes me suspect that citizen rights are far from being of first consideration these days. Oh, I have already written to the Texas governor about Bill 1440 that gives Child Protective Services the right to invade and kidnap our children just like a SWAT team on a mission. But what about government agencies that MAKE money off of taking away citizen rights? Whether it is the local drug enforcement people who decide we MIGHT be druggies or CPS who think we are too strict with our children, who gives these people the right to force their way into private homes?

Today we saw that the government has decided to tax 25 percent of the cost of business cell phone use because they have somehow decided that the normal person (?) uses a business phone for personal use about 25 percent of the time. Now, when will the government decide it can tax my playing Farm Town because it is an unnecessary addiction similar to alcoholism? Makes sense to me! Being concerned somehow is just not enough when civil rights violations are so ubiquitous and so idiotic. Some things were never meant to be taxed. Some rights (ownership, privacy, and self-defense) were never meant to be seized.

Unto the Least of These

2009-06-09T22:29:00.001-07:00

No, animals are not our brothers in the sense that they are not born of men; but we share this earth with them, and in many respects, share the same fate. What happens to them eventually happens to us in ways we might not even consider. If we poison our planet, we poison life that is sustained by the planet. If we show little regard for the small creatures of this place we call home, can our disregard of life not quickly extend to the lives of people as well?

Today our neighbor’s daughter took four little kittens to the animal control facility. When she spoke to me about it, she said that she regretted having to do it, but the kittens were ‘feral’ and unhealthy. No one had ever taken the time to show any attention to the mother cat, so the kittens’ relationship with humans consisted of staying just out of reach. The kittens were undoubtedly euthanized this morning shortly after their arrival at animal control.

Each day thousands of kittens, puppies, cats, dogs, and assorted critters are killed one way or the other. We have agencies that try to prevent cruelty to any animal, but the fact is that the animals are in an overwhelming majority. Even if every family in America took in two dogs and cats today, thousands would still be out there roaming the streets and alleys. And the outlook for their survival—much less their healthy existence—is pretty dismal.

Horses were once the treasure and pride of kings. Today it almost takes a king’s financial backing in order to keep a horse. So what happens to the thousands that are not in stables and beautiful green pastures? They die of neglect. It is just that simple. An animal that carries its pride in its head and flying mane can become a bedraggled carcass just as quickly as the dogs and cats roaming the streets unless someone cares for it.

Now the little child that roams the streets is no different than an animal—and almost as dangerous. It may grow up to become a vicious killer. It needs loving care, attention, and someone to teach it—to tame it. The child may belong to a neighbor, but we pay attention if we want to reach out to tame a little heart. We teach by example. The child sees how we treat our cat, our dog, and our neighbors. And the child becomes tame.

None of us can prevent abuse or neglect of all the animals. And none of us will ever overcome the crises of child abuse in this world. But each of us can take responsibility where we can, in whatever way we can. One kitten, one old dog, one little boy at a time can be loved.

Things Remembered

2009-06-02T23:34:00.000-07:00

One summer spent in Arkansas gave me memories of fireflies that can’t be reproduced for the grandchildren. Oh, Arkansas is still there even if the farm has long since been sold and the grandparents gone to glory. But the summer nights were special for a particular reason. Granddad Kennedy didn’t believe in lighting up the entire farm with those night lights up on huge electric poles. Certainly the chicken houses were well lit, but the front lawn and the horse trap out in front of the barn were pools of darkness lined by huge trees. And they sparkled at night with the flashing of fireflies.

In Texas it always seemed to be too dry to think about fireflies, but northwest Arkansas was almost juicy with moisture. The fireflies seemed to like it, anyway. We would catch them—probably mostly males—and put some in a jar for a while before we turned them loose. They could never have produced enough light to show a path or anything of that nature, but they were purely fun to catch and imagine as our own personal lanterns.

Years ago our children were able to catch some fireflies out in the backyard or down toward the lake on the Fenoglio’s lawn. Mrs. Fenoglio found their attempts as amusing as we did and let them run around all over her hill. And the fireflies were great fun to chase. But something has happened to the fireflies. At first I thought it might have something to do with the spraying for the mosquitoes that has caused them to disappear. But a little research has given me more things to consider.

According to an Associated Press article, fireflies have declined as much as 70 percent in some areas. Part of the reason is due to loss of habitat—housing projects built in creek beds. Part of the loss is due to lights—yes, lights. Fireflies need darkness to find their mates. Well, duh. That makes sense. But if one of these huge, oversized, overpriced houses has 32 big lights shining to show off its ostentatiousness, then the firefly doesn’t have a chance to be even a tiny bit of a showoff for his potential mate. If insects like the firefly don’t mate, we lose another species.

Ok, so the loss of one species of firefly out of 2,000 may not sound like a big deal in the overall picture of the insect world. It only matters if one is a member of that species, I suppose. But if we are so callous as to ignore our responsibility to the survival of the smallest things, what does that say about our stewardship of the larger things of life?

Oh, and I plan to find a book to explain fireflies to the grandchildren. Otherwise they may never have any idea of what they have missed.

Forgetfulness…and that Other Stuff

2009-05-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

Forgetfulness is not so bad. In fact, it is actually pretty handy as a reason for not showing up somewhere or otherwise not doing whatever was expected. Someone will ask me, “Don’t you remember that we wanted you to . . .?” Well, the answer is usually no. A deep sigh or a shrug of the shoulders just means that one of us is forgetful.

And then there is that hearing thing. Sometimes people think that they have told someone something, when, in fact, they really just thought about it. When we all become mind readers, we will probably have other problems—confusion comes to mind. But when the person who sits in the chair across the room from us hears about half or less of what is said, well, that can cause some interesting situations.

“Why did you move the truck?”

“Didn’t you say you needed to move the truck so you could mow?”

“No, I said I will take the truck to be washed after I mow.”

Oh, life is definitely more interesting for the forgetful, the hard of hearing, and . . .what were those other things?

And This Time I Mean It

2009-05-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

Fang and I have this silly joke when we tell one another that we love the other, one or both of us will giggle/laugh and say, ‘And this time I mean it.’ It’s silly; but then so is trying to live with someone for a lifetime. It takes a sense of humor and more patience than a cow has milk to live at peace with someone for a lifetime. But every day we are reminded that the effort has been worth it. Sharing our lives has given us more than any list of tangible benefits that some psychologist could discover and publish. The children have been one of those most interesting benefits.

Of all the things children teach, helping us learn how to play again has got to be the best gift that they can give us—well, next to grandchildren, that is. And truthfully, the grandchildren just make it easier to join the fun again without quite the sense of responsibility that we had when their parents were little and we were caring for them on a 24-7 basis. Walking in the rain with a child or digging in the dirt is right up there on my scale of fun stuff.

When we first got married, it seemed as if we both had made a definite choice about our new friend. Oh, we both had had people with whom we grew up or hung out with, but this was a REAL friend who would be there forever. And that is how we felt about marriage that first few years. And then we grew up a bit and learned that we had to work together to be happy and to make our lives mesh in the best ways. His work became my concern, and my work became his concern as well. But even when things were tight and problems seemed to come at us fast and furiously, we still had someone right there to hug and to listen to the concerns.

After nearly 41 years, Fang still teases about my cooking—and yes, about my driving as well. And he still has no idea where the furniture will be when he wakes up in the morning because I still move the darned stuff around—and worse still, I move around his tools, his tractor, and other assorted stuff that he thinks he will find where he left it. That situation takes patience, but the pile of tools on the kitchen table takes just a bit of patience as well. What really amounts to patience, if truth be told, is the certainty that we will both smile at each other and know that whatever concerns one of us will always matter to the other. This is the time when we really mean it—we really do love each other, and it’s a blessing we appreciate deeply.

Seasons Greetings!

2009-05-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

I promise that THIS is the time of the year that we receive the best season’s greetings. In the first place, every bird (including the duck that walked her babies across six lanes of traffic on Southwest Parkway today) has an attitude! The doves have been giving us a hard time since yesterday when the bird feeders ran out of seeds. So this afternoon we made a trip to Atwood’s to pick up more bird seed. The neighbor’s cats came to sample the stale bread I threw out for the ducks, but otherwise the feast was on among the winged critters that discovered the replenished feeders.

My parents were the recipients of a few radishes picked from among the zinnias this morning. Our flower/garden is a little bit strange, but mostly it has its shape from the flow of laundry water that took all the zinnia seeds to one end of the hill and left the radish seeds willy nilly wherever they sprouted. Then there is the dill weed that just tantalizes me every time I touch it. The taste is wonderful and just calls for more lettuce, tomato, or just about anything green. The rest of the flowers in the yard are somewhat more organized. Pots of squash and some kind of strange purple bean fill one big liquid cow feed tub. Other tubs contain roses or mint or cucumbers. The tubs just seemed more sensible since my time is divided between several other little jobs around this place.

Fang dared to let me drive his tractor yesterday. I ran the top into a tree branch; I ran over a tree, but managed to back up before I ruined anything. Then I ran the front loader into a telephone pole. Fang swears the phone company people called and said to keep me out of the telephone poles as it was making their customers stutter! Then I found a nice hole out between some trees and dropped one wheel off in it. Fang just sat there and watched and shook his head. Unbelievable! Years ago he would have shouted at me. Maybe all that work we did together on the tractor made a difference to him….or not.

When we finally finished all the mowing of the lots between us and the highway, the land looked so very nice. If it were not for all the uneven ground and the danged holes, the land would be nice for playing on or just for walking. One stone we dug out and dropped in a hole was a two foot block of concrete. At least I didn’t run over that one! But Ray Charles could have seen that chunk of rock! Eventually the land will look half way decent and be level enough to mow a bit more easily. And maybe eventually I will learn to drive the tractor with the front-end loader on it and the finishing mower on the back. Meanwhile, we can sit outside on the porch bench and listen to the birds sing and watch the cats and squirrels run around on the mown grass. Yeppers, this is the season for greetings in green and song.

To Be or Not to Be: Choices?

2009-05-22T21:58:00.000-07:00

The right to die with some degree of dignity and the ability to choose one’s own timing has definitely given some people a feeling of independence. Terminal illnesses are not just undignified and painful; they are expensive and very difficult for all members of the family involved sometimes. My friend Jan had her husband in their home up until the last few days of his life. She watched him, bathed him, cleaned him, and loved him while he suffered the miseries of cancer from Agent Orange. Then in the last week of his life, she let Hospice keep him in their facility where they could administer morpheme by injections.

In at least two states people have the right to die by administering to themselves the drugs that will stop their lives quietly and quickly if they have a terminal illness and have six months or less to live—an opinion that has to be shared by at least two physicians. The person has to ask more than once for this particular final medication—twice verbally and twice in writing over a period of time. The main point to this particular set of rules was that the person who chose to die must do so by his or her own hand, must be consciously asking for the right, and must have sufficient medical reason to do so.

Recently a financial advisor gave someone advice that was startling to me: One does not have to allow antibiotics to be given for pneumonia or any other infection in an elderly person who has dementia or who is otherwise non-responsive. That idea just about shocked my socks off. When does a family member decide that an elderly parent or other member of the family has lived long enough? This is not the same thing as giving someone a choice of how to die. This idea is choosing to get someone out of the way for whatever reason. We are not gods and have no idea how to value life inside the mind of a person who can no longer communicate.

I can understand wanting to die. We have all seen those who have become vegetables for whatever reason—wrecks from drugs to wrecks in vehicles. I probably won’t ever jump a horse again and endanger my neck that way, but a good rear-end collision can do enough damage to totally ruin the physical aspects of real life and living. And let’s face it: the physical definitely affects the mental outlook. I cannot keep from wondering if one’s physical inability to live life in a somewhat normal manner might be the sole factor in producing the desire to end life. But the main point I think we need to consider might be one of WHO should be making choices.

I have known of doctors who chose not to treat newborns with the drastic means necessary to save their lives. Whether the reasons were the expense, the complications that the child would continue to have in life, or some other reason, the choices made by the doctors may seem quite callous to the parents. The same can be said for some nursing homes and facilities that care for the disabled. If they choose to ignore symptoms, people can die much more quickly than if they are monitored and treated as the need arises.

Pain is not dignified. In fact, it makes mewling infants of some of us. But if the pain can be alleviated or reduced to an acceptable level for the individual, why should we choose to end life? I have seen an old woman smile in her sleep when her grandchildren were in the room. Who is to say that happiness is not in the noises one hears in our sleep? Give us time and we may have more smiles, more dreams. I can still ride the wind in my dreams when my legs would no longer help me balance on the back of a horse. Let me ride in my dreams until the horses no longer run.

The Job Market

2009-05-20T22:51:00.001-07:00

Whether or not we have heard the joke about the definition of a recession or depression, the fact remains that too many jobs have gone ‘south’ lately. South, in this case, at least, is not a direction but a fate—something like GM. No amount of government input or outlay is going to change the lack of confidence that many of us have developed concerning the American and world economy.

Layoffs—euphemistically called downsizing—sometimes presage a healthier business approach. At other times the layoffs are the beginning of the end—the loss of another business in town. Businesses that were already having some trouble before the bank bailouts were not all that important in the overall scheme of most cities. But some of the ‘mom and pop’ type of businesses that depend on one man or one family to provide several jobs are a different situation altogether. One tool and die company in Dallas depends on customer satisfaction, credit availability (for the customers), the availability of products (also dependent on another company’s ability to get and maintain a flow of credit, and the purchase of products at an end point—which again depends on the availability of credit for those customers.

Business interdependence is just an example of an overall system we expect to work in our nation—and in the world to an even greater extent. When GM or some bank goes bottom up, someone down the line other than the frontline employees will hurt. If our local feed store can’t get credit to buy a load of chicken feed, I can’t buy chicken feed from them at a reasonable price. If I can’t feed my chickens, we are going to have to kill the suckers and put them in the freezer. That means no eggs for breakfast—or for any other purpose. It is too simple an analogy, but all over the world it is the same principle. We buy what we can afford.

Well, most of us buy what we can afford. Then there are the banking people who bought worthless debts; the car manufacturers which produced cars no one could afford to drive; and the state governments which taxed people beyond their ability to pay. The folks at the IRS—somewhat like the government of California—may soon be sending out IOUs to those who still try to pay their income tax and have a refund coming. That is pretty sad.

I have a suggestion—or two. Let’s start some layoffs of our own. If our congressman can’t be found on Capitol Hill three days out of five, he doesn’t need to be there at all. He doesn’t need a retirement check, and he (not to be sexist—or she) doesn’t need health care that the rest of us can’t afford either. If he can’t pay his bills for those excessively expensive dinners or writes hot checks, he can have a nice warm jail cell—just like the ones we have reserved for some banking CEOs.

As for the latest illegal immigrant who brought his little pregnant queens and her eggs across the border in some kind of produce, let’s see if we can find a better approach to eradication than building fences. Unless the government declares the “rasberry ant” a protected species, we have a duty as Texans to prevent the spread of more misery into our country.

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for one’s attitude. Oh, and a recession is when your neighbor loses HIS job. A depression is when YOU lose yours.

The New Neighbors

2009-05-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

Quite some years ago our little city of slightly over 100,000 became the site of a new maximum security prison. Not everyone was thrilled to have the prison as a new neighbor, but eventually most of the citizens accepted the fact that it WAS established and wasn’t likely to go away anytime soon. And many citizens also found a new employer with the prison system.

At this point, I must point out something I heard in a song [‘Til It Shines] by Bob Seger, who sang: “Let the inmates free the guards.” I have thought about that line several times and still wonder about possible meanings. Whatever the reason for the line in the song [assuming I understood the words correctly], the news about prisons and enforced detention has not been good lately. In Harare, Zimbabwe, the Chikurubi Prison had 327 deaths reported by the International Red Cross between November of 2008 and January of 2009. The prison has seen the deaths of 700 of its 1,300 inmates in filthy, disease and rat infested cells. Because the government has been so unstable and incapable of allowing help from international organizations, men have starved to death by the cell-full. The prison morgue may have rat-riddled bodies stacked ten high at a time.

In our country, we debate capital punishment. In Zimbabwe, well, life has little value. And in Ireland, where a young child could be taken forcibly from the parents—especially if the parent were an unwed mother—if the child got in trouble at school or in the community, the child could be put in detention “home” and be subject to horrid abuses by those who were supposed to be helping to reform the child’s behavior. Unbelievably, this abuse went on from the 30s up until the 90s.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, the mentally challenged residents of one dormitory of a state operated school have been used as a “fight club” type of entertainment for some employees.

Death, degradation, dishonor. It is still true what Burns said:

Man's inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn!*

Wordsworth, too, had his view: Have I not reason to lament/What man has made of man.**

One of the comments of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was extremely revealing about life in our up-to-date, well-informed world:

I am not an investigating magistrate but somebody who describes the life around us for those who cannot see it for themselves, because what is shown on television and written about in the overwhelming majority of newspapers is emasculated and doused with ideology. People know very little about life in other parts of their own country, and sometimes even in their own region.***

If the apathy and ignorance that Anna Politkovskaya found in Russia is even a tiny bit like that found in Ireland, America, and yes, even in my own state of Texas, then we can expect to continue to hear “the still, sad music of humanity”** Anyone still determined to sing, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” need not expect a sing-along because the new neighbors in Ireland, Zimbabwe, Dagestan, Corpus Christi, and beyond are still all too aware that we don’t have much to sing about when life and freedom is so little valued.

*Robert Burns, From Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge, 1785
**W. Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring; Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
***Her Own Death, Foretold, Washington Post

Blessings and Other Green Things

2009-05-13T20:14:00.001-07:00

God loves us, and Fang is talented mechanically. The tractor is up and running, and the clutch is better than ever. The lawn tractor has a new tire, and it made a pretty good imitation of a hungry goat running over the grass. If we could have cut. then raked, wind rowed, flipped the layers in the sun and then baled it, we could have made some mighty fine hay. As it is, the forecast is for more rain. Let ‘er rain.

Fang has the crud that someone in this family shared with him . . .The doctor had the nerve to accuse me! Can’t imagine why! But the dog is still fine, and the cat hasn’t even hacked up a hairball lately. Maybe it was the dust bunnies.

Driving from here to Henrietta and back we noticed that the entire world looks a little like that artificial grass that goes in Easter baskets—shiny green! The trees, the grass, the weeds, and even the older weeds that are semi-dry seem to be a bit greener. Green is such a happy, soothing color. No wonder God gave us spring.

But then, God also gave us mosquitoes. Why Noah let those critters on the ark is a wonder to me. Maybe they were stowaways. But the ladybugs are also out in full force. When we let the dog out after we returned from Henrietta, the fence post was covered with ladybugs. Maybe we have aphids or something. We definitely have some special roses from Gurney’s out front. Two blue roses have bloomed so far. They don’t have as much of a fragrance as the yellow ones, but they are so pretty and so unusual.

This has been an unusual spring in several ways. I think all the small field birds from Archer County have found our place. And the same can be said for some places in Henrietta. Dr. Wolfe said that all the black birds have found his dog’s food. Yellow finches were in the treetops outside the Dr. Parkey’s office, and some kind of red and dark bird flew over our car and flashed his redness at us. Fang stepped out on the front porch the other day and two finches flew out of the feed sack on the front porch. We were a little slack about filling up the feeder apparently.

The youngest son called to ask about the tractor status. I said we were still considering getting a goat. Then he started laughing and reminded me that we would have the dog hanging out one side of the back window of the truck—and the goat hanging out the other side window. Guess we will stick to mowing the grass.

Grease Monkey Central

2009-05-07T20:27:00.001-07:00

When Fang used to come home covered in grease and dripping oil from every crevice of his clothes, I wondered if he actually wallowed in the stuff at work. Today while I was helping him connect the four-wheel drive shaft under the tractor, I found out just what it takes to get an oil bath—one loose bolt. We were trying to put in this greasy rod thing with six little balls on each end when a bolt suddenly spurted oil out as if it had ruptured an artery. Fang didn’t even bother to crawl out and get out of the oil pool. He called the bolt an interesting word and asked for the towels. One roll of blue towels and some Viva paper towels later, he had the bolt tightened, his face wiped, his ear drained, and basically no longer had to do the back stroke to stay afloat under there.

I could never be a mechanic; it would simply be too expensive to keep all the parts clean and neat—not to mention the wasted oil that would flow from any bolts that actually needed more than hand tight to keep them bolted. Perhaps I will stick to cooking and cleaning and maybe doing a bit outside in the flowerbeds. As it is, my neck is burned from sitting out in the sun on the side of the tractor while I handed things to the real mechanic. Fang put some salve on my neck when I realized it was burned. He rubbed on it as if it were part of the tractor, so now I have two kinds of burn. I feel for the grass underneath the tractor….

A dozen doves have entertained us lately while they ate all the bird seed they could possibly pack away. They don’t sing; they just make noises that can eventually become monotonous. The red-winged blackbirds have them beat any day for joyful noises. But while we were out working on the tractor, I finally found a flock of cedar waxwings in the top of the big elm. They apparently thought that we were pretty entertaining because they spent about three hours talking about us to one another. That had to be what they were doing because there was not a sign of any food exchanges up there over the rooftop. It makes me wonder what birds think about some of the silly things that they see us do. The purple finches, of course, don’t care what we do just as long as we keep filling up the feeder.

We will undoubtedly pray over—or under--the tractor again tomorrow, but if everything keeps going together well, we will have it up and running no later than Saturday. Maybe we won’t have to lease any goats for the back yard after all.

The Crud

2009-05-03T23:19:00.001-07:00

If a bullfrog could be bilious, the crud that has infected my lungs could have given an entire pond worth of bullfrogs the foghorn voices needed for mating season. Why a respiratory infection can manage to lower my voice by several octaves is beyond me. But answering the telephone obviously proves the point. Even my parents thought that they were speaking with my husband rather than to me! T’aint fair, McGee!

Spending three or four days curled up with tissue, antihistamine, antibiotics, the generic for Musinex, hot tea, and Southern Comfort has not improved either my disposition or my desire for food. One result has been that Fang sincerely would appreciate a ‘real’ meal prepared by his lovely wife. Unfortunately, his lovely wife has stepped out and left this old hacking hag in her place. The morning meal might or might not be placed upon the daily altar for burnt offerings. And subsequent sustenance is a hit or miss situation depending upon the degree of headache, the angle of phlegm, and the amount of oxygen reaching the parched brain of the chief cook and bottle (non) washer.

Now normally bellyaching should be reserved for the private confidences of one’s dog, cat, or even one’s mate—depending on how much patience the mate retains after a prolonged bout of bitching—er, bellyaching. But national pride and priorities demand a reckoning with the latest round of those affected by flu, funk, flack, and flippancy. No one other than a fellow sufferer could appreciate the sore muscles from coughing up one’s guts, the throbbing of the facial features, or the glazed eyes from attempting to see out of squinted lids while gasping for yet another breath of air. But please do not allow any other person to compare the miniscule problems that person might have with mine. NO one has this much difficulty with what some consider to be a normal hazard of health. Nothing is normal about being ill to me!

Disgusting as it may be to not have regular employment, an inopportune by product of being ill AND unemployed is the inability to call in sick. How righteous one can be when sick and employed! Not exposing others to an unnamed but obviously potent illness shows graphically proportionate compassion for others. Put a tack on the wall, someone, because you have not been exposed to THIS brand of whatever it is that afflicts my person! But the question remains: WHERE did this come from? Did I not wash my hands at the hospital when visiting the sick mother-in-law? Did I not use a wipe to clean my hands after visiting Wally World? Was it the restaurant or the fast food place that contaminated my healthy outlook?

Eventually this bout of illness will be a distant memory. Meanwhile the suitcases are being packed and the maps folded to begin the journey. Enough of this crud already!

Birds of a Feather

2009-04-25T08:57:00.001-07:00

Some folks call all birds sparrows and all flowers petunias, but that’s ok. It becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between the finches and the sparrows when the little finch females look almost like sparrows with stripes. It’s easy to call scissortails by the name of flycatchers, but it’s a big group of birds. And then there are Mockingbirds, robins from the thrush family, wrens, cedar waxwings, and any number of colorful little buntings. But the most difficult birds for some of us are the blackbirds. The red-winged black birds have a distinctive call and personalities. They are bold and quick about their decisions to come visit a likely feeder.

The most irritating birds are the grackles, however. They run off the birds that sing and befoul the air with their screeching. And it is not always easy to distinguish between a simple black bird and the lesser grackle unless one notices that the grackle has an upright feather configuration about his tail. Black birds have a flat tail. The cowbirds have that brown neck and head and the totally tacky habit of invading other birds’ nests to leave their eggs to be hatched by an unsuspecting pair of song birds. The first hatched will, of course, be the bigger cowbird which will kill its step-siblings or ruin the eggs.

My parents have a wren nest in one of their gourds that they hung for the birds. The pair were a bit fussy about our presence under the carport the other day, but we still got to watch them feed the babies. Old gourds make great nests for wrens. But so do door decorations—wreaths and other types of foliage, fake or otherwise. Our daughter had to go in and out of their garage door for a while when a bird put its nest on their front door decoration. Now she has a nest of mockingbirds out front in one of the trees that finally got big enough to support a bird nest and purple finches in a fern plant. Growing things always brings rewards as well as surprises.

If I could attract plants the way we seem to attract birds, we would be considerably richer. As it is, the only plants we seem to attract are nut grass and crab grass. Then there are the billions and billions of elm tree seedlings….sigh. Shade comes at a price. But shade and song birds are worth whatever it takes to produce the singing, the shade, and the memories. All three of our children insist that the elm tree is THEIR tree because they spent so many years playing in the dirt or swinging from its limbs. Yeppers. It is worth whatever it costs because now we have other little feathered friends and grandkids to raise under that tree.

Old Fogies

2009-04-21T19:21:00.001-07:00

Ok, admit it! Everyone at some time or other has held back from becoming involved in something just because it seems like a fad. Hulahoops were the craze when I was younger [sometime in the past 60 odd years], but none of the kids of this modern era know how to roll the string on a top and throw it to make it spin. Although I am not sure that I could still do that one, at least I am tall enough now that my yo yo could actually do both yo’s. That might not mean anything to anyone who is an adult, but I was very short when the boys were learning how to yo yo. Mine would go down—and then hit the ground and sit there. How sad.

Well, now I have been persuaded to take part in another online activity. I can’t twitter like a bird or pick blackberries because of chiggers, but I can write a comment or two on Face Book. Someone told me that Face Book is addictive. That must be for those who don’t chase dust bunnies for exercise. If anything is addictive, it is that silly game the oldest child gave us: Chuzzles Deluxe. All these silly little balls wear sunglasses and make funny noises when they are poked; then they explode into shreds of fuzz when they are lined up in a row. And the neat thing about them is that there is no real mess to clean up after the explosions. How neat is that!

Oldest child noted that I was like a kid in a candy store with this Face Book thing. I remember my one and only trip to a REAL candy store when I was a little critter. Uncle Morgan went with us to Traskwood, Arkansas. On the way there he wanted to stop and get some candy at a real candy store. That is all they had there—jar after jar and shelf of pretty candy. Uncle Morgan said he would get some for me. Dad said I could have ONE thing. Someone said horehound (not me!) and I ended up with this really nasty stuff in my mouth. Rolling eyes with the memory. . . If I ever get to go chocolate shopping in the Hill Country again, you can bet I will go to Hico and buy some chocolate something…NOT horehound anything! Hmm. Thinking about the trip I have been promised after the tractor is running again….

Tomorrow is Earth Day. I would celebrate but think I will wait until I am ready to take my dirt bath or whatever. Meanwhile we put feed out for the birds and watched a couple of ducks enjoying the grains. Apparently they are not afraid of us because they waited until the supply was replenished at least once while we watched. Fang says we will have to put the bird bath out there for them. That’s reasonable. Now all we need is a bird hotel.

Summer is on its way, but for the time being, the weather is gorgeous. Our roses are blooming as if their lives depended on it—except for one bush which has already turned up its toes and died. I have no idea what I do to some plants to make them give up. Maybe it’s my attitude.

Well, the vacuum dog just came in to clean up the office floor for us. It must be time to call it a night. If someone knows any way to train a dog to dust and mop…

Excedrin Headache #1001

2009-04-19T09:23:00.001-07:00

If dust were a commodity, we would be rich. And if dust bunnies brought any price at the sales’ barn, we would never have to work again. As it is, our dust bunnies are composed of one part long-haired gray cat hair, one part black and/or white dog hair, one part whatever is under the bed fuzz, and the ubiquitous Texas dust that comes in with the ever-changing wind. Oh, to be a beggar for dust and dust bunnies! But we will never be poor in dust or dust bunnies as long as there are floors in this house!

At least the wind brings in different odors each day. Once in a while we can smell the old-fashioned petunias out front. The roses smell wonderful, but their scent doesn’t go very far from the bushes. At least the dead fish smell has abated since the birds and the rain have made a difference in the lake. Golden algae bloom may have its own smell for all I know, but it definitely made a nasty odor out of the fish it killed. Even though the numerous flocks of birds were interesting to watch on the lake, it is great that they no longer have a reason to congregate on this particular lake. Dead fish are a lot like the odor from a feed lot, but no one makes any money out of the dead fish unless they could gather, grind them, and use them for fertilizer. Hmmm….

The wind brings something other than dust to our house; it also brings a headache or two from the allergies it stirs up. It can seem like a perfectly beautiful day outside, and Fang and I will have bodacious headaches from something in the air. Whether it is mold, pollen, or someone’s leftover smoke from a prairie fire, we get the headache to mark its passing. T’aint fair, McGee! Beautiful weather shouldn’t have to be spent indoors hiding from allergens or popping pills to avoid the headaches. But such is life.

Allergies were classified as a “maybe so” problem when we were younger. No one ever mentioned being allergic to anything. One teacher objected to my mother’s taking me out of school to go see the doctor one day because he didn’t believe anything was wrong with me. Then Mother had me uncover my arms and show him the weeping sores that had accumulated from my allergies to the sheep on Granddad’s farm. It seems that some people are just irritated by the feel of wool. Very few are actually allergic to wool. Not only was I allergic to the wool and lanolin, I was allergic to cotton because we fed the sheep cotton seed hulls. Go figure!

Recently some doctors have tried to say that fibromyalgia is not an actual disease. I remember that they used to say the same thing about “chronic fatigue syndrome.” Whether we call it allergies or one of the fancier names, it can be plum miserable to have a headache or just generally feel as if the weight of the atmosphere is lying on one’s chest. Of course, one doctor who treats people with the newer technology says that all medicine traditionally has been a matter of poison or cut. Thinking about that makes me wonder if the reason people live longer these days is that we have choices about how much poison we take or what we allow to be cut. One of these days that doctor who has begun to work with near-infrared laser and hyperbaric oxygen treatments will be the norm rather than an experimenter. The doctors’ tools may not even include a scalpel or drugs. But in the meantime, I will dance with the dust bunnies and take another allergy pill. Sigh.

From the Storehouse

2009-04-18T20:19:00.001-07:00

Today the semi-circle of chairs was never really full, but we still shared our stories with those who came to listen and learn. One old familiar face came with her grandsons. We talked about the fun we had as children and the activities that were part of our lives. We reminisced about horny toads—the horned lizards of Texas. Most of them are gone now, along with the red ants that used to make life interesting for those of us who were silly enough to stop near their nests. Oh, life was different those many years ago.

Yes, life was different, but not necessarily better or worse. Our knowledge came slowly from reading and listening when I was young. Now, plugging into an online source makes learning easy and fast. But we have lost a few things in the process of making learning easier or faster. Walking under the trees and smelling the river in the summer was an experience that can’t be put online. Watching a pair of mated birds build a nest one thread, one scrap at a time can be put online; but can you see her reject the twig, the piece of hair that doesn’t quite fit her plan? I wonder if an online story would have those parts edited out to save time and space.

Great-grandmother’s quilt was a good place to start showing the youngsters how recycling really started. The cloth tobacco sacks made squares and circles divided into fourths in order to have enough pieces to set the flour sack dress scraps together in rings. And then the children learned why quilting the bat was so important to keeping it in the spaces between the stitched sections. Modern bats are flat and usually stay in place. Older quilts sometimes had goose down or cotton stuffed in between the layers. And quilting was necessary as much as an art form. But the quilts were much smaller than those we have today. Beds were narrow and not very long. A tall man got cold feet during the winter unless he had more than one quilt or slept curled up. Some things have definitely improved in this day and age.

One of the grandmothers who came to sit, rest, and listen could have told us all stories of a different part of the country and a different time. She had lived in Florida as a young person and faced problems that this part of the country simply never had. I hope that she will take the time to tell her son and his children the stories of her childhood. It will matter someday. No computer source on earth can take the place of personal memories shared with loved ones. And memories are the best kind of recycling we can promote. For out of the storehouse of memories will the future be shaped.

And Rain in Due Season

2009-04-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

The sparrows and small birds that come around our place find a drink and sometimes some seed to eat on a regular basis. While God takes care of His creatures, it looks like He gives us the opportunity to ‘help’ once in a while. My egotism probably amuses Him when He receives reminders from me that the small creatures are suffering from the weather. But everyone—including the Master—needs a laugh now and then.

An inch and a half of rain and several little sprinkles since have kept us hoping for a ‘toad strangler’ that will fill the tanks and bring up the lake levels. The land is still thirsty despite the good rain. The earth needs a good soaking that will seep down to the roots of the trees. Shallow rooted trees may do well—such as the paradise trees that the government asked farmers to plant back during the dust bowl days—but big trees like the pecans, elms, oaks, and hackberries need two or three deep soakers to keep them going all summer. This year the trees have been hesitant to leaf out without the water to keep them alive. They have their own survival mechanism built in. Sometimes I wish people were more like trees.

If we were like trees, we would know better than to gamble on possibilities. We would deal with what we got and not what we might get. We would provide others with what we could instead of what they think they need. We would stand rooted to good ground and good ideas without being shaken from our foundations by the winds of fashion, impurity, and the modern diseases of ‘baring it all’ to gain popularity. If we stood with other trees as a forest of sensible beings, we could withstand almost any storm.

As it is, we are not trees. We are—one by one—subject to the vagaries of time, chance, and circumstance. One man fights a fire and burns while another stands back and clamors for help to rebuild—not considering what one man has sacrificed to help his neighbor. No, we can stand with others of like mind, but we live or die as individuals. We can share our knowledge and understanding, or we can stand aloof and judge others. But the Master still provides rain in due season on the just as well as the unjust—on the single tree as well as to the forest. It’s a wonder that the trees don’t look at us aghast at the possibilities that we waste.

Forecasts

2009-04-10T21:43:00.001-07:00

Sooner or later we all get around to hoping for something, even if it is just a good night’s sleep. Texans have been hoping for rain for so long that our preachers have shiny knees on their pants legs. On the way to Decatur and back today we ran through the smoky smell from the range fires that have devastated thousands of acres of grassland and some small communities. It’s horrible to contemplate the loss of life involved in this particular fire. It wasn’t just cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and a few armadillos—we lost good folks as well. Range fires can engulf an area faster than a bullwhip can snap, but this one was whipped by winds that hit 70 mph.

Reading online tonight, I found the suggestion that at least one fire in Oklahoma was set by arsonists. On the side of the road outside Bellevue where the Stoneburg-Montague fire began, we watched the police who are arson specialists going over that site. If someone set that fire on purpose, the person is guilty of murder. But even if a fire starts out of nature’s storehouse of surprises, the results can be just as deadly.

My horse at home stayed in our backyard and had the run of the entire area. She could trot around and graze or just roll around in the grass—what there was of it. One night I heard her screaming. Yes, a horse can scream. When I went outside to check on the horse, I realized that she was not the only one screaming. The horse was about to hit a fence when I caught her and held her down, but the screaming continued. A man who lived in a two-story house behind us was screaming as he burned to death. That was a nightmare in wide-awake stereophonic sound. I had always liked the young man and his family, and to know that he was hurting like that just about made me sick. I knew by the next morning that he had been murdered—the fire was set intentionally. But the men who ran the murderers out of town could not bring back the man for his family. They bulldozed the house so his parents would not have to see what was left.

Losing a home, a vehicle, even livestock and family pets would be enough to hurt a person for a very long time. But to lose a family member stays with a person from now on. We don’t forget those we love. And we don’t forget our friends. We know in our minds that hurting stops with death for someone who is gone, but our hurting will be with us unless we can remind ourselves of the good things in that life.

Today we saw areas which had burned back a few months ago. The old growth was burnt off, the new grass was coming up, and the cattle were grazing on it. We have learned that fire is sometimes good for the land and its growth. We just forget sometimes that we are only borrowing a few spots of God’s green earth while we live here. If we are careful, we can live in peace with the land and the elements. If we are careless . . .we can forecast the future all too easily.

Smell That Wonderful . . .

2009-04-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

One day this week we had a cloud of smoke out of Archer County that looked like a good fog rolling over the end of the lake and across the hospital grounds. It didn’t take too long for the firefighters to put that one out, but it got a few structures before it was all over. Today we heard that part of Archer County had to be evacuated when another fire roared through between Archer City and Lakeside City. Now you talk about it being hard to breathe! If those firefighters didn’t have some breathing apparatus, they should have. We were sneezing, choking, and trying to keep our eyes from watering—and we are several miles from that fire.

We had made plans earlier to go pick up a grandson. We were to meet the son-in-law in Decatur. It was going to be late, and I already had an allergy headache, so I called the daughter back and asked if we could wait and get him tomorrow. Boy! I am glad we waited. The highways were closed, the towns were being evacuated, and we might not have been able to get back home tonight until the smoke cleared. Maybe that headache was a very real blessing.

Normally we get high winds just about any spring. It is so dry these days that I just open the back door and change layers of dust. Dad called and said that he and Mom were reminiscing about the dust bowl days when the dirt would fly right in at every crack and make little piles. THEN Mom wiped the table off and got a good layer of dust this afternoon. Later she took a wet rag to the west windows and got mud pies. One thing about our weather—it’s entertaining.

It’s Easter weekend, and we will have the grandsons for a while. I hope to explain to the youngest one what the egg symbolizes. An empty egg means that what was once inside is now no longer held there. Maybe he will listen long enough to understand that the last enemy was defeated 2000 years ago. It is wonderful to have the excuse to teach the story that matters. Yes, the birth was important—necessary to the rest of the scenario—but the best part is yet to come. That is the story I will enjoy telling this weekend.

Blessings to one and all.

Burned Out!

2009-04-08T12:28:00.001-07:00

Back when England and Scotland were under a feudal government, a landholder wanting to get rid of one of the families on his land for any reason would simply go throw a torch on the straw or corn shock roof. He ‘fired’ the squatter or sitter on his property without having to murder anyone or without having to send for the sheriff and pay him to remove the family. Now that is the story the way I heard it, anyway. It is the origin of the word ‘fired.’ Most people who are let go from a job now might as well throw in the towel because they will lose everything just as effectively as if the hovel they live in had been burnt to the ground—especially if the family is in debt.

The neighbor across the street came to us last night and said that his brother had lost everything in a fire down in Clyde—close to Abilene. I remember seeing the name of the town from a trip we made for a Keep Texas Beautiful conference that we attended a couple of years ago. I thought then that it was a pretty neat name for a town or community. That’s not much different from Charlie or some of the other weird names we give our communities—Mable Dean or Dean Dale. Shaking head here…

In considering what the man must be experiencing after such a loss, I remembered talking to my great-grandmother once about the smells that we liked. I told her my favorite smells were wood smoke and pipe tobacco. She laughed at me and said that I had not ever had to be around them constantly with those smells in everything from my clothes to my hair. She said that she had cooked on a wood stove and smelled that old kind of tobacco for years. Then she went on to tell me about losing her home to a chimney fire twice. With not a clean cloth to wipe her babies face, she just sat down and cried. I could only imagine.

Losing a home to a fire or to a tornado—there isn’t that much difference—has to be heartbreaking. The neighbor’s brother didn’t have insurance, so he has nothing to use to start over. And to add insult to injury, a man came and wanted to bulldoze what was left and caved in the septic tank! That will be just one more expense to consider if he tries to rebuild. This is the same man who had to have surgery a few years ago for a cancerous tumor in his leg. This fellow doesn’t have just the best of luck.

Grass fires and tornadoes are just part of life in Texas, but a few things could make the difference if we had the will and the wherewithal to try them. In California some of the landscapers tried to get people to plant something called an ‘ice plant’ around their homes to prevent fires from going from the grass to the house. Of course, out there the trees and brush would catch a house on fire before the grass would even be touched. Even so, if we keep our grass cut close and keep bushes away from the sides of the house, it is less likely that a grass fire would burn the house.

Tornadoes have no sympathy, rhyme, nor reason. They take one house and leave the neighbor’s house. They take the roof and leave the walls. Or they take the trees and leave the cars. Caprice is the name of the game. Probably a cellar or a ‘safe room’ is about the only chance a person has of survival if a larger tornado hits like the one we had in 1979. Foundations were about all that was left of some of those places. Our bank was gone the next morning after the storm, but the vault where the cashiers had hidden was still standing. Now THAT was a safe room!

I suppose it will always be true that ‘time, chance, and circumstance’ comes to all men. But if we can see it coming, I would fight the fire and hide from the storm. Maybe it is a good thing the neighbor wasn’t at home. With his luck, he would have fought the fire and had a heart attack!

Commercials

2009-04-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

Fang listens to old “Perry Mason” movies on his headphones while we are here in the office together. I really appreciate his consideration in using the headphones because, even though I enjoyed Perry Mason in its day, I can’t concentrate on what I am doing with the movie in full volume. However, the commercials that run on the computer along with the show come on loud enough that I have difficulty ignoring them. And boy do they ever need to be ignored!

When the Super Bowl comes around each year, I wait for the commercials. That is the best part of the weekend. Usually Budweiser or one of the main sponsors has some nice ones. I still think about herding cats across the hills even though I can’t remember what the commercial originally sponsored. And then there’s that little lizard and the silly duck! Oh boy! Those are worth watching for the humor.

It has long been my contention that the people who design commercials should be designing our educational system as well. Half of today’s education is simply rote memorization. I made a song out of the multiplication tables when I was a kid and think of them and the alphabet in about the same way—necessary evils to getting things accomplished. But someone with a real sense of adventure began a show that included some little ditty called ‘conjunction junction, what’s your function.’ My students used to sing it in class and laugh about it. All I can say is that if it helped them remember how to use their language easily, it was great!

Most commercials, however, just irritate the wham out of me. One that shows on the computer along with the excessive volume has some old girl jumping up and down saying “Who’s your mama?”--or some member of the family. It is supposed to be advertising basketball or something of that nature, but I guarantee that I would not wear even a “give me” t-shirt for anything that uses such repulsive advertising. Bleah! Another one has some guy acting like a complete idiot in an airport. That is the kind of commercial that simply does not “fly.”

I suppose it is just as easy to forget the product being featured on a good commercial as it is one that is irritating [cat herding, for instance], but why a company would accept irritating commercials in an attempt to sell their products is beyond my understanding. Inform, invite, intrigue would be my suggestion for the basis of good commercials. But don’t yell at us or portray men or women as complete idiots! The baby doing an e-trade is MUCH better than that bunch of idiots gathered around the cubicle making fun of someone who is talking about some sweet 16 or something. Who cares? The kid is cute. The cubicle crowd is pathetic.

Obviously I don’t plan to advertise anything in the near future. If I were to advertise anything, I would use Harley B to exhibit excitement. He does the Boston Terrier routine of excitement perfectly even if he does weigh in at 90 pounds and stand as tall as a Labrador. For calm and cool collections, I would use OliverTwisted and a picture of his claws. He knows how to use them. Yes, maybe no one would pay to get my advertising skills, but at least the ideas wouldn’t irritate the whim wham out of anyone—unless, of course, the person didn’t care for dogs or cats. And everyone knows what we think of those who don’t love dogs and cats…..

The Potatoes

2009-04-04T18:29:00.001-07:00

It’s strange how our memories of the same events are never exactly the same as for those who were also there. For instance, my parents once ‘rescued’ a mother and her six children from starvation—and, in the case of the mother, from insanity. The woman was terribly depressed, but she managed to call my mother and asked her to come get her children. She was going to die and wanted my mother to raise her children. Had Mom and Dad left the woman alone, she probably would have died—one way or the other. As it was, I have no idea how they got that woman and her six children in the car and brought them home from Okla-doggone-homa.

A friend of the family, Pauline Simmons, agreed to take my brother and the woman’s two boys into her home with her son. That left my parents with the woman, her four children, me and the parents in a three-bedroom home. I don’t remember how they did it, but it had to have been crowded. The funny part that I remember was the potatoes, however. Mom had to take the woman and the youngest girl to the doctor. The child was suffering from malnutrition, and the woman didn’t look as if she could live with just bones and skin holding her together. Anyway, Mother left the rest of us girls at the house and had Grandmother come stay with us until she was able to get back. I don’t remember how Mom got to Henrietta to see the doctor, but Grandmother stayed with us and ‘supervised’ what we were doing in the kitchen.

Now I had been trained since a pup to do what Mom had told me the way she had told me to do whatever. She had pointed at a bag of potatoes and told me to peel and cook them. Grandmother helped a bit, but she began to protest after half the bag was peeled. I told her we had to do the whole bag and cook them. We did. Almost as soon as Mom came in the door, Grandmother began to apologize to Mom for letting me cook that entire bag of potatoes. Mom laughed and said it would take every one of them. It did. Not one bite remained of those potatoes, and Grandmother was simply amazed. Now those were some hungry kids. I don’t remember if the boys came to our house to eat or if Pauline fed them, but they probably came to our house.

As I sit here, I wonder what the smallest child remembers from that time or if she would even remember the time she lived with us. I can’t even remember how long they stayed. And she was just a little thing, so she probably doesn’t even remember it. The last time I saw her, she was a police officer and definitely did not look malnourished. But she did not want to talk to me, so maybe she has her own memories.

Today a woman came over to our table at CiCi’s and hugged me. I knew she was one of my former students. She had trouble remembering my last name, but she told me that the transcription that I made her slave over had finally been put to good use. I was glad that she had trouble remembering my name since hers was beyond my recall. She introduced her daughter to me and told me that her daughter was finding my English grammar book helpful in her classes. Her comment made me feel good. Then I heard her tell her mother later, “She is the teacher who always told us that she was meaner than a snake.” It amuses me that I get hugs from so many ‘snake lovers.’ But then, I don’t remember ever handling any mean snakes—a few uninvited ones, maybe.

Anyway, we all remember things about our experiences differently depending on our perspective and how things affect us at the time. The young woman who hugged me today must have enjoyed her experiences in my classroom—slave labor and all. The policewoman who stayed with us when she was a little girl may not remember those days at all, or she may have bad memories of that time in her life. What we hold near and dear is what is important in my estimation. The rest is gone and past. If we care to resurrect fear, pain, and resentment, or if we cherish good memories, it is our own choice. But you can just bet your boots that one woman's box of buttons will contain a different set of memories than mine or anyone else’s that I knew when I was younger. Matching buttons to button holes is difficult enough; matching memories is even harder. If a memory suits one’s mood, why bother rearranging the buttonholes?

A Dry Spring

2009-04-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

When a cloud comes up, we always think of rain and dread storms. We have had several storm clouds lately, but not much rain. It reminds me of the dry spring out on the farm. At one time the spring fed some wild rose bushes out in the east pasture. The grass was always green around the area, but the ground was never wet. A small hackberry tree grew near the spring.

I call it a spring, yet I never saw water flow from it. It had been dry all the days of my memory. But Granddad wanted water out in that field and tried to get a water well dug where the spring had been. I don’t remember if he and dad tried to drop auger the hole or if granddad just dug down, but I can almost bet Dad tried to drop auger it for him. They dug several holes one year in various places on those 160 acres. It was pretty disappointing. The locations looked so promising, and the water was so desperately needed.

Now any rancher or farmer will tell you that water is a necessity for livestock and crops. Nothing grows without water. And many an old farmer or rancher has gone to great lengths to provide that needed commodity for his little enterprise. Lyndon Johnson said the best fertilizer a man could put on his land was the imprint of his boots, but he still needs water. Several conservation reservoirs had their beginnings under his instigation. The man knew that the land would be here long after politicians went to glory in a sand bag. And the land would always need water.

This nation holds a promise of growth and new beginnings; it has right from the start. Sometimes things have looked like that dry spring out on the farm—not fulfilling the promise or the need. But overall, we have always had what it takes to grow and become strong. It’s important that we realize that it is not money that makes this nation grow. Yes, the economy of the nation is a reflection of some of its parts, and right now that reflection is pretty doggone muddy. But the spirit of America from the start has been an individualism and self-reliance that almost flabbergasts the rest of the world. We take on personal responsibility and even reach down to lend a helping hand as it is needed. Sometimes the hand is given to a single individual, and sometimes it is given to an entire nation or continent as it was after WWI and WWII.

But one of the neatest things found in America is the ingenuity of its people. Today we passed several old homes that had been allowed to go vacant in Clay County. New homes come with mortgages, credit, and high expectations. Old homes come with complications. How long it will take for someone to put families in those homes is not as important as the fact that it WILL happen eventually. Unless they burn to the ground or blow away, those old homes are just as valuable as one of the newer ones. It just takes some fertilizer—the hands of the owners on its walls and floors—to make it grow. The water—the spirit of free enterprise—is already available. Maybe we will get to watch those homes blossom again soon.

The Vagaries of Texas Weather

2009-03-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

It’s 41 degrees outside today, and the wind is blowing around a chill factor lowering the temperature’s effect another five or ten degrees. And the danged mesquite trees are beginning to leaf out, so this weather really shouldn’t be happening. Granddaddy used to say that the almanac was nearly always right, and that potatoes shouldn’t go into the ground until after Easter. Seems he is still right about the crops and weather.

We needed a rain so badly that we didn’t mind if this fog turned into snow this morning, but lighting that stove in the kitchen still irked me. It’s supposed to be pretty this time of year. But then, in a day or so we will probably have to run the air conditioners.

The little flower bed out by the front side of the house includes a bird feeder, a bird bath, a metal garden bench, and various pots of plants and some plants that remained in the ground—including the petunias that come back to life each spring after a hard winter. This winter hasn’t been hard at all, so the petunias are playing it up to be spring like. The old standby lavenders, pinks, and whites are all nodding their blossoms at the birds as the seeds fly over and around them. Inevitably some of those seeds will sprout and have to be plucked out by hand. That’s ok. I like the green stuff and the dirt better than many things I have put in my hands.

The bluebonnets are showing off their stuff over on Highway 79 near Sutherlands. The grass hasn’t had enough moisture to make it grow tall, so the bluebonnets show up well. It’s amazing to me that people think that they have to have good soil to grow pretty flowers. The buffalo bean and the bluebonnet grow in the poorest soil around. In that, they are akin to the aspens. It used to be that the old timers knew what kind of soil to expect just by looking at the growth on the rolls of the hills. Aspens were a sure guarantee of poor soil. Of course, the prairie wasn’t meant for corn, cotton, and the like. It was meant to be pasture land. But man has always tried to make the land to conform to his so-called needs. If we hadn’t slaughtered the buffalos, this nation could still be eating the best meat available.

This morning the Internet news included a little blurb about an elephant bird egg being up for sale. Now anyone in his right mind knows that that egg has been spoilt for a looooong time. And if a body is THAT hungry, an ostrich egg should do the trick—or maybe two of them. And the ostriches are not even extinct. Stink, maybe, but not EX-stink. Again, if man hadn’t done a bit too much over hunting, those elephant birds could probably put Tyson out of business.

A bright blue tarp covers my pot plants outside, and the stove is keeping us warm enough in the house. I keep wondering when this danged dog is going to decide it is nicer outside. Until he quits barking to come in during the day, I guess I will just keep cleaning paw prints off the floors. But that is ok as well. If he is leaving paw prints, that means we are getting some kind of moisture for the land. Whoever thought I would be happy to see paw prints on my floors!

Going Down to the River

2009-03-18T21:38:00.001-07:00

A bit over 40 years ago, Dad took my future husband down to the river with us for a little pot shotting. Bob Brown let Dad go down there any time he wanted to go because he had known Dad all of his life and trusted him to shoot turtles and not cows. Now Bob’s son lets Dad carry a key to the gate so Dad can go whenever he takes the notion; but Dad’s notions and his physical abilities aren’t quite up to par anymore. In fact, I felt somewhat anxious as I noticed that Dad was not as steady on his feet as he should have been as he leaned over the edge of the embankment to look for turtles or turdles—the latter being floating excrement dumped into the river at some point. Anyway, Dad may be blind in one eye and not see well out of the other, but he still spotted a snake and laid into it with his shotgun. And he was polite enough to say that he was never much of a shot with a pistol when I missed a perfectly easy shot with Mom’s little .22.

The husband entertained two grandchildren, Landon and Rachel, with the .22 automatic rifle and a BB gun. They threw in a few branches for targets and cut them up into soggy kindling. Both kids were worn out, and their granddad needed a nap by the time we got back to Petrolia and unloaded the guns at Paw Paw Leland’s house. Someday the boy may remember his trip to the river with Paw Paw, but Little Girl probably won’t remember it. Paw Paw gave Landon a whistle and told him to drive his Ma nuts with it on the way home. Landon took it, said thanks, and grinned at me. He is a pretty danged good little guy. He only whistled quietly.

But I guess the best part of the trip was sitting in the front of the truck with my dad as I drove down the road with one eye partially on the road and one eye and both ears on the husband and kids in the bed of the truck. I know we used to let our kids ride back there with one of us, but these are grandbabies, for pity sake! And yes, I am kin to Leland Pollard! We have worrying down to a fine art. But it was nice to visit with Dad. While we sat on the river bank together, we talked—or he did. I listened. He reminded me that this had always been a good place for him to pray for all these years. No church pew is nearly as effective as God’s front row seat on His creation. I am glad—thankful—that my parents raised me the way that they did. They shared their worries, their hopes, and their values in the best way that they could. It doesn’t take a river trip to understand that they kept back nothing of themselves when they gave their love to us as kids—and still give to us and our little ones today. I hope that we can give as graciously to our children and grandchildren as they have.

The Carrot Cake

2009-03-13T12:11:00.001-07:00

Talking to the youngest son last night, I discovered that his favorite cake is the carrot cake. When I mentioned that both of our boys considered the carrot cake their favorite, my mother said, “Bleah!” I KNOW she made banana nut bread when we were kids, but the favorite goodie around the parents’ house these days is oatmeal cookies. The doctor told Dad that he needed to eat oatmeal—and he didn’t say how. Mom says that they go through a batch of oatmeal cookies about every two or three days. Dad should invest in oats!

This is the first year since diabetes entered our lives around here that we even had any real sugar in the house. Our daughter bought us a sugar-free cook book, and once in a while I will try one of those recipes just to keep my hand in shape as a baker. The only recipe I never change is the family favorite for all our holiday meals: butter rolls. Both girls know how to make those now, so the tradition will live on.

One of our friends up north has all these wonderful Swedish dishes that make one’s mouth water—but make me tired just thinking about all the steps involved in creating the perfect sauce for the vegetables and meats. Grating up a few carrots for a carrot cake and throwing a bunch of ribs in the oven to bake pretty much exhausts my good intentions for cooking. Coleslaw for the DIL, Brussels sprouts for the oldest son, and macaroni and cheese for the grandkids is actually a semi-elaborate meal around here.

Tomorrow will see pancakes and some coffee for breakfast. After their parents leave, the kids will probably ask for McSomething for lunch and dinner. But they both know that popsicles are for AFTER meals. Kids are a great excuse to make fun foods—hot dogs and roasted marshmallows, peanut butter jelly sandwiches, and apple slices. I might even splurge for some celery and make ants on a log for them. Grinning wickedly….

Foods make family traditions in almost any country. I suspect that our friend in Colombia, South America has his wife Gloria’s favorite foods as part of their traditions. Down there it would not be difficult to find a young kid [goat] to roast for a family meal. We couldn’t even find a sheep rancher in our county for a young lamb, however. And United Market Street prices their lamb just a wee bit out of our range. Ah, well, spring comes but once a year. Maybe this year we will start a new family tradition with our foods: carrot cake, liver and onions, Brussels sprouts, and pop sickles. I can see our children making the appointment with the psychiatrist now!

Grease for the Wheels

2009-03-10T13:51:00.001-07:00

In The Ten Commandments movie years ago, the mother of Moses was portrayed as one of the workers who greased the path of the huge blocks used in constructing a pyramid. When her gown caught under the block, her death was certain except for the help afforded her by her son. Without his intervention, her body would have simply been another greasy spot along the way.

Sometimes we tend to feel that our bodies have a good chance of becoming just another greasy spot in the rush and bustle of the times. Traffic accidents, medical mishaps, societal ‘storage’ of older people, and a general apathy or disregard for neighbors occur often enough to leave some of us wondering if anyone would notice if we suddenly disappeared.

Americans have always favored the self-reliant individual, yet the pioneer spirit was one of cooperation and helping one’s neighbor. Being self-reliant does not negate one’s responsibility to the community—at any age or stage of life. The combination of American ingenuity, self-reliance, and pure hardheadedness has served our society well. But one of the best results of American character has been the proliferation of volunteerism.

Young men leave work in the afternoon to go coach baseball teams of youngsters. At one time the wives even made the uniforms for the youngest players. The younger people learn from example, of course, and grow up to volunteer as coaches when their children are old enough to play. The same is true for Boy and Girl Scouts, after school tutoring programs, Boys and Girls Clubs, Meals on Wheels, and various other groups who depend on volunteers to make things run smoothly.

A day usually comes into most lives when it seems that the body has betrayed the wishes of the individual’s life and spirit. Throwing a baseball, threading a needle, picking up a child, or even getting down to weed the flower beds may become problematic. But as long as the spirit retains its identity, the person can still be a giving individual. Volunteering need not require physical stress. Our next door neighbor showed me what she thought was a poisonous snake near her sidewalk. She was volunteering to teach me something she knew. It was not a formal class. It was a neighborly deed. In listening to volunteers tell stories last night, I have now learned that a snake with round eyes is not poisonous—as if I would get close enough to look!

The point is that we all know assorted facts and stories that can be shared with others. Fang could tell anyone a few simple mechanical tricks to making car maintenance easier. But somehow I cannot imagine anyone ever asking me for the best way to use gerunds. Still, I refuse to be a greasy spot under the pyramids. Cut me loose and let me tell my stories. Surely someone needs to hear what I know!

The Very Best Teacher

2009-03-07T23:10:00.000-08:00

Schools provide most students with the best education available in any particular area—in most subjects that communities consider necessary. And most students learn just what they need to know no matter how begrudgingly they accessed the study. Not many children wake up early in the morning with joyful thoughts about going to school unless the school or the children are exceptional. That’s possible.

Not all schools rate right up there with a juvenile detention facility. And some classes can actually be a blast. Years ago the smaller schools in Clay County had what was called FFA classes and FHA classes—Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America. The guys got to learn how to weld, how to keep feed, weight gain, and cost charts for their ‘ag’ project—usually something not terribly expensive like a lamb or chickens. The girls learned a little about cooking and sewing. But there were always special situations where the students could do something that made good sense and helped the communities. Sometimes the girls would plan a bean supper to raise money for whatever the community needed. The girls learned to plan and serve a dinner in that way just as if they were feeding a harvest crew. It was a very useful lesson. The boys sometimes got to weld up cattle guards for the area ranchers—thus getting practice in doing things right while not having to put out the expense for the materials.

One year it was dry from late fall until early September of the next year. My dad would say that it was so dry that the trees had learned to whistle for the dogs. But sure enough, the stock tanks were dangerously low. In fact, the crawdads had built towers so tall in digging down deep into the mud that a kid could have made a baseball bat out of one of those towers. It was danged dry.

No one was burning trash if there was the slightest hint of wind, but the pump jacks still backfired now and then and caused a problem. It just so happened that somehow a fire started on the range between Buster Zachary’s ranch and the Pollard farm. I don’t know who called the volunteer fire department, but no one little pump truck was going to stop that wild fire. So the fire department asked for volunteers from the high school boys. The entire ‘Ag’ class and many other boys as well jumped in trucks and bumped their way out to our grandparents’ farm.

The little stock tank across the fence from the house still had just a little bit of water in it. Grandmother gathered up all the burlap ‘gunny’ sacks from the feed barn and took them to the stock tank. When the boys got to the farm, the fire was sweeping over the top of the hill about a half mile from the house. They all got wet, muddy gunny sacks from Grandmother and headed for the fire. The boys saved the farm that day and had my grandparents’ undying appreciation.

In order to thank the boys in a meaningful way, my grandparents let it be known that any boy wanting a lamb for a FFA project had one waiting on the Pollard farm. Oh, the FFA boys gave the grandparents a nice certificate of appreciation, but the boys were the ones who needed to be thanked. Most of them just thought it was a neat way to get out of class that day. But for our family, their help was the difference between having a home or a disaster. And yes, for several years the FFA of Petrolia had more black-faced Suffolk lamb entries than any other school in the agriculture fairs. But not many fire departments today could pay their firemen with a lamb.

The Chicken Ranch

2009-03-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

Now some people have the idea that chicken comes in little Styrofoam packages or plastic bags with only certain parts of the chicken ready to be cooked. And the children believe that eggs come out of grey paper cartons by 6, 12, or 18 counts. Some people may even be so far gone that they might believe that chicken and eggs are called McNuggets and McEggs. But it just isn’t so. Of course, I read lately on the Web that some of those grilled ‘chicken’ pieces served on salads never really saw a chicken. But I don’t want to think about their source. [Not quite as many stray dogs and cats running around these days…]

Years ago on the farm, my grandparents had some sweet old hens. I call them sweet because each one had a name and Grandmother seemed to coax eggs out of those hens much longer than they normally would have remained in the egg laying mode. The funny thing about it was that Grandmother wouldn’t kill and cook any of those old girls. They died a natural death of old age while she kept putting out feed for them. Sitting here shaking my head. Of course, they would have been too tough to eat if she had tried to cook one, so it’s just as well she didn’t try.

Shortly after Fang and I married, I decided to raise my own chickens in the backyard. When the roosters got big enough to make a meal, my sister-in-law and her daughter Karen came up and helped me dress fryers. Karen watched me kill the chickens with an axe and sidled up to her mom and said, “Mom, Aunt Nancy is mean!” Yes, I really did feel mean about killing those critters, but I don’t know how to wring their necks or otherwise help them meet their demise before they are added to the deep freeze. Anyway, the fryers were good and the hens began to lay eggs in self defense. Fang got a little perturbed with chicken stuff all over the place, so I had to kill the rest of the chickens eventually. But that was not ALL of the chickens. Our daughter had a science teacher who was teaching a unit on eggs. The children got to watch the eggs being incubated and turned until almost all of them hatched out. Then the teacher sent home baby chicks. Oh boy! One child, one chick might work; but three children and one chick just won’t work. So off to the feed store we went and came home with two more chicks. We ended up with two roosters and a lady. Thankfully, father-in-law still had a farm and his own chickens, so when the roosters started crowing and chasing the kids around the yard, we bundled them up and took them to the farm. The biggest rooster was a Rhode Island red and he didn’t last long. I just didn’t ask because he was the one who chased the kids around and had the others following him.

Our children have seen chickens growing out on the farm, but they have never seen the chicken ranch like my Kennedy grandfather had. His houses each held ten thousand chicks. [Mother corrected my numbers, but I still think it was more than a thousand.] Let me tell you; that is entirely too many chickens! The summer I stayed on the farm and worked in the chicken houses with my Grandmother Kennedy, I learned all I ever didn’t want to know about chickens. But I have to laugh now at some of the things that they did. Granddad Kennedy complained about the little idiots removing the shiny nuts off the water troughs. Each chick would go by and peck at the shiny nut and go on. Repeat that a few hundred times and the nut was soon gone—swallowed by a feathered idiot. And those chickens would eat anything—ANYTHING! Granddad was squatting down trying to cut a piece of string with his teeth when he accidentally pulled one of the false teeth off his upper plate. It hit the ground and was gone in a flash of a yellow beak. He sat there cussing and ranting until Grandmother came over and asked, “Billy, what in the world is wrong?” Granddad, being a typical Kennedy, put the string on the OTHER side of his mouth and showed her what he had done—and DID IT AGAIN!

When I think back on the chickens eating Granddad’s teeth, I don’t feel quite as bad about Harley B eating our carpenter pencils.

Granddad Kennedy felt that the big chicken companies had no intention of helping the growers make a living. And that was nearly 50 years ago. My brother and his family are back in Arkansas raising chickens now. And things are worse now than they were when our granddad finally threw in the manure spreader. Even if raising chickens were not terribly labor intensive, the cost of maintaining the houses and equipment—along with all the regulations for disposal of wastes—has become outrageous. The government can print all the money it can find paper to print it on, but the chicken farmer couldn’t use it to paper the floor under his chickens. Unless something changes soon, each family may have to start penning up some chickens in the back yard again. At least the kids could see the real thing for a change.

Campfire Stories

2009-03-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

Man has been recounting his exploits since time first began. The drawings on the cave walls in France tell us of men hunting beasts much larger than a man—and the drawings prove that man lived to tell of the encounter and to bring home the bacon, so to speak. Whether stories were first told in some form of language or simply mimed as if in charades matters little now. Apparently mimed stories are still pretty effective because Tom and Jerry still appeals to a wide TV audience.

When men began to gather into groups larger than family units, they needed a way to name some of their common fears and hopes. So they created a mythology that could explain the seasons, the floods and storms, and even death itself. Their mythological gods were made in man’s image and after his character. Thus little Cupid was fickle in his selection of who would fall in love with whom. Mars, the god of war, would lend his help to those who showed him the most respect. Diana helped one hunter and not another. And the goddess of fertility brought a child to one woman and not another, or a crop to one village and not another. So men were able to explain some of the events in their lives. Mythology or story telling is a universal bond among men. Only the names and characters change by accident of birthplace. One hero rides a winged horse, and another rides a winged snake or dragon.

Mythology became religion to one degree or another, so that the charms of mythology became saintly relics in the hands of religion. More than when men feared thunder, men learned to fear the power of religion because it bound up the lives of men from birth to death—and supposedly beyond. No less ignorant than the cave man, medieval man knew little more than what was told to him by the storytellers of the church.

And then came Chaucer—the ultimate storyteller and jokester. Chaucer put stories back into the hands of the common man who sat in front of his hearth and laughed at the silliness of hypocrites. Chaucer’s ridicule of the church took away some of the fear that had bound men to their beliefs.

Today we have increasingly become separated from the natural world around us. Oh, the Nature Channel still intrigues us and keeps our interest—especially a family story—even a family of meerkats. But lately electronic storytelling gives us mechanically mythological cartoons or scintillating scientific intervention in life-threatening scenarios. Storytelling around the campfires has drastically changed. Maybe Madagascar is about as good as it gets.

You Don’t Have To Be Crazy

2009-02-25T19:23:00.001-08:00

Texas weather explains the way Texans behave: two quilts in the morning and a fan the evening before means that it was hot when we went to bed and cold when we woke up. Today we ran the air conditioner in the truck, and Fang got sunburned on his neck while working on the Mustang. The ground is warm enough—for the moment—to plant something like petunias and snapdragons, but this weekend it might just freeze off the blooms. Plant cabbage, onions, and radishes and smile. Plant anything else and the grub worms will enjoy the rotted seed.

And if the weather is not enough to confuse our lives, just look at the poor bemused, confused, and abused trees. Plums, apricots, and assorted fruit trees have already begun to bloom. So much for the fruit crop this year! It’s February, for pity sake! The mesquite hasn’t even got a tiny bit of green about the limbs; its sap is still down around the roots like any sensible tree. It’s another month until Easter, so the calendar and the weather are hopelessly unsynchronized.

And just look at that peckerwood! He is out there on that old dead elm tree just a bleep screepin’ his heart out to attract a mate. If she has any sense at all, she hasn’t even packed up to leave Georgia yet. But don’t tell that to the silly finches or the cedar wax wings. Honestly! It is just too early to be expecting bugs, buds, and berries. Except for the flippin’ love bugs! HOW in all that is right about freezing weather do those bugs make it through the winter and come back fifty fold every other week? The whole world could come to an end tomorrow, and those bugs would just keep on multiplying!

With a water hose in one hand and a digger in the other, my efforts moved around some wild verbena and a couple of those sticky little weeds that look almost edible—for deer, that is. If we don’t get a flood pretty soon, we might as well call in the dogs and call it a summer. Nothing is going to grow in dry heat. Even the water from the washing machine and the dish water wouldn’t be enough to keep a good flower bed going. But the roses will not die for lack of water even if we have to move them next to the dog’s water bowl. It makes one wonder how the early pioneers ever grew enough to eat, much less anything to make a house look like a home.

Up north a friend is watching for an early crocus. They may still get some snow. If we are lucky, we won’t get any tornados. And yes, insanity makes all the difference in how one lives with weather.

THE BOY NEXT DOOR

2009-02-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

Years ago my brother mowed grass, ran errands, and did those little things for the neighborhood widows whenever one of them needed something done. Mrs. Donald, for instance, had him clean out the ashes where she had made lye for her lye soap. Whatever he learned in the process of helping her just expanded his knowledge of life as it once was. He learned to love the little old grandmother types in the process of helping them. Mrs. Donald was the only neighbor he invited to witness his marriage in our mother’s front room.

Our parents are in their eighties now. Dad, never bigger than a pewter fizzle in the first place, is still headstrong even if the strength has left his legs and arms. Yesterday the son of an elderly neighbor stopped by to ask if he could help load a water heater that needed to be hauled off. Roger has always been a sweet guy, but when I heard that he had stopped to offer his help, I felt he deserved a hug or at least a pat on the back. He may be the same age as I am, but the boy who helps his neighbors is alive and well in his spirit.

This boy-next-door helpfulness may be apparent in other nations just as much as it is right here in Texas, but to me it symbolizes something that is from the American mold. One of our friends introduced me to a young woman who serves in Iraq as a munitions and ordinance specialist who blows up ammunition, bombs, and other dangerous stuff that needs to be disarmed. Even guys who really like loud bangs know that her job is extremely dangerous. But she is serving because she knows this job needs to be done for her ‘neighbors’ in Iraq. Even though she has been offered work with private security companies, she stays with our American military and continues to do her work.

My brother would come home from a hard day’s labor when he was 17 and go mow Mrs. Donald’s grass. Roger stopped on Sunday on the way back home after helping his own mother. Mary lives in the extreme dangers of Iraq and chooses to stay despite the danger because she can serve others in ways that they cannot help themselves. Young people or old, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Somehow they did and are still doing what the commandment demands: Love your neighbor as yourself. Thank God for the boys and girls next door.

ALL IN A WEEK’S WORK

2009-02-22T18:35:00.000-08:00

Returning home from Mansfield today, I glanced back at the dog and wondered if he was really that tired or if riding in the truck caused that expression on his face. His eyes were woebegone and he just kind of drooped. When we got home, he was excited to see his own back yard—without having the need to remark all of his territory. He happily chased up and down the side fence in a cuss fight with the neighbor’s bitch, but he only made three or four mad dashes along the fence before he was satisfied and came back to the back porch. He wanted IN, thank you very much. He wanted to lie down on his floor, on his rug, near his cat and near his family. He is only three or four years old—mentally reminding myself to check the date with his vet. But he has worked hard since Wednesday night when we went to Mansfield.

Animals that don’t actually peck each other have to establish their territory in some manner. Dogs that are not allowed to fight must see who is tallest and whose leg will stretch highest when they mark their areas. It has to be exhausting work. And to top it off, two cats sat in the back door and laughed at the dogs through the window. Then it was also obvious that some kind of female furball that looked like a dog and sounded like a dog was allowed to sleep under the covers with the big dogs. And to top it off, the boys left for the weekend and didn’t stay and play. For a dog, that has to be a tough situation.

Riding for two and a half hours in the back seat of the truck with several loaves of fresh spelt bread that couldn’t be touched would have tortured the cat, but the dog took it all in stride until the stop at Braum’s. The place just smells so good! And nobody notices that the dog is sitting here drooling! Sigh….

Well, one can of dog food and the cleanup of the cat food later and the dog is now resting on his bed. Back to just living with the old folks should be pretty relaxing. Maybe tomorrow a new ball will show up in the yard…..

Rain and Shine

2009-02-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

It rained, hailed, and rained some more. And then the sun shone, and the grass stood at attention to get its growing orders. The elms budded; the skunks came out to dance on the roads; the black tom cat came to visit the neighbor’s cat. The older neighborhood cat climbed a tree and declared the coming of spring. It can’t get much better than that.

The sun shone and Sutherlands put out potato and onion plants for sale. The bulbs donated from the Coors company flower beds came up and seemed to be considering their time of bloom. The entire flock of cardinals brushed across the tree tops to sing their songs while the purple finches chipped in chorus. The lake whirled under the wings of the sand hill cranes, the pelicans, and sea gulls. The ducks and geese kept looking north. The foals nudged their dams as the stallion snorted at passersby. It can’t get much better than that.

Puppies and kittens grace the month’s calendar page. “It’s the kitten month,” declares the child. “When can we walk in the rain?” asks another. “We can help plant the flowers,” one child assures us. “We can still roast marshmallows in the fire pit,” declares another. It’s that time of life, and it can’t get much better than this.

A Good Book or The Good Book?

2009-02-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

One small word distinguishes one book from another. THE good book refers to the iconoclastic book that differentiates between gods and God. So many words have been written about that book, that men have either come to doubt its authenticity or have chosen to venerate a specific version as holier than any other. Scolding men for their double mindedness, the greatest teacher, the Christ, told them that by their traditions they made the law of God of none effect. If something as meaningful as the rules of life can be so easily disregarded, it should not seem strange that man can disregard the meaning of life itself in his conceit.

The subject of ethics—the moral principles which normally govern a culture—has become as effective as a political cartoon. Moral choices that run counter to popular demands and the courage to stand up for principles have become increasingly rare. From the individual who chooses to live beyond his means, the stars and athletes who choose to live in sordidness, the CEOs and politicians who feel that they are above the law, to the lawless criminals who rape and ravage our society, these have lost the sense of social conscience that guides our national character. When the subject of ethics is tossed into the arena of the media, no one can conclusively determine where to stand. Does a man have the right to go into overwhelming indebtedness? Does a woman have the right to a litter of children? Does a killer deserve to die after a gruesome murder? Does a politician deserve a different set of standards than the ordinary citizen?

Nothing sells better than a disturbing story or one that can be considered controversial. Such is the reason for most of the so-called ‘news’ brought to the American public by its entire media. The negative construct is so complex that the media simplify each separate disaster and dastardly deed. Eventually, social sanction is given so that tax evasion is acceptable; ‘death with dignity’ (euthanasia) has value; and psychotic parenting becomes the norm.

No people as diverse as those of our nation are going to accept willingly one standard set of rules for life and living. Morality cannot be legislated or regulated no matter how much we might try. What little we can do has to come from individuals who accept responsibility for their own thoughts and actions. America has always been an individualistic nation. But the whole is still made up of its parts. We must choose the better part of ethical existence--no matter which book we choose to read.

Rain, Sleet, or Hail?

2009-02-14T20:01:00.000-08:00

Not that I would ever gripe, mind you, but we actually got moisture today. Dad called and wanted to know if we got a good rain and sleet. I told him we got a decent rain and hail. When something the size of a pea hits the ground, bounces, and then sits there for a bit, it's hail. When it hits and splatters, its sleet.

In Texas it doesn't really matter what kind of moisture it is as long as it fills up the stock tanks and lakes. As it is, our lake is filled with water fowl and a foul odor. The morning breeze from across the lake would just about gag a maggot off a gut wagon. The golden algae bloom has killed off enough fish that the birds just sit there and eat their fill of floating fish right out in the middle of the lake. About the only time the birds aren't feasting in the middle of the lake is when the wind is up making chop fish suey out of the mess. And to think a humogous rain would take care of the entire situation! Can just imagine what the drainage ditch off the dam spillway is going to smell like if we ever get enough rain to see it go over the spillway again. Somebody down river is going to need a gas mask!

The pretty weather makes me want to go out and play in the dirt. Oh, I would put in some seeds too, but mostly I just like to play in the dirt. I don't think I ever plan to grow up. It's too much fun to do stuff like play in the dirt and walk in the rain. Besides, I am old enough now I can be a kid if I want to. So phtttt>> there!

A One-Room Country School

2009-02-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

This evening our President expressed his concern that our Congressional leaders are not really working together for the best interests of the nation. Now that seems really shocking, doesn’t it. For years we have watched, and cringed, when Congress gets together and decides that the nation can pay for another wonderful program—whether or not the program will help the American nation. It makes a person just want to slap someone up the side of the head. But none of that! We can’t expect Congress to learn overnight that they are going to be put on a budget. Yes, you heard it right. CONGRESS on a budget! And term limits! And accountability! And laws that make sense! And no automatic retirement benefits! What job in our society provides retirement after only two or four years!

Now for education, we expect every city to find a decent teacher or two to work with a room of children and teach them to read, to do basic math, and to write comprehensible sentences and essays—just like the old one-room country schools. No child will suffer from lack of knowledge or lack of technological prowess. And each child will be able to walk no more than a block or two for classes. Children in inner city areas will be escorted by two male parents both to and from school. Children promoted by their one-room schools will be allowed the option of home schooling with visiting teachers or attendance in public schools with class sizes determined by subject and the availability of teachers. No class will have more than twenty students at the junior high and high school level.

Employment for any teenager who does not want to continue in school will be mandatory and provided by each city. Jobs will be appropriate to the strength and abilities of each young person. All nursing homes will be staffed by teenagers who will ‘shadow’ a nurse or appropriate care giver. All parks and recreation programs will be staffed by other teenagers. All public programs will staff any available positions with teens who do not continue in higher education. Any business that will hire a teenage helper for two years and train the young person, will be tax exempt for the amount of wages offered to the young person. All parents who prefer to home school their children to avoid having those children go to work in public programs must prove that their children attend some kind of classes or otherwise participate in helping others in the community.

Soon this dream will have to come to an end and I will surely wake up, but it is so good to think that children could actually be educated, that parents would be responsible for their children, and that Congress could make responsible decisions. Imagine personal responsibility as a basis for living in a community. Oh to dream…..

Algebra, New Shoes, and the Bible

2009-02-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

Sixty years ago math held little importance for a mother. Her ability to feed and nurture her family gave her a sense of being needed. She read to her children and explained the relevance of the stories from the Bible to their lives. What she taught them was reinforced by their teachers in school. The children could repeat the ‘Golden Rule’ and explain who was to be considered ‘a neighbor’ without pause. Children understood the necessity for caring for their clothes and shoes, and no child would have complained about his or her supper—even if one serving was English peas. And a frown from Father was not to be taken lightly. A lecture about respectful behavior inevitably followed any horsing around at church.

Forty years ago high schools required algebra and geometry classes for graduating seniors. Failing either class required repeating the class. A good math teacher had tutorials for those who asked for help, but the school system did not require that of teachers. Kind hearted teachers gave of their time and knowledge willingly.

Gym shoes were an extra expense for families, but the shoes were great for absorbing the thorns of the ‘goat head’ stickers in Texas by the time summer rolled around. Each fall the new pair was never worn except on the gym floor until school was out. School shoes were also church shoes—cleaned and polished on Saturday night. Teens were allowed to sit together in church, but a minister who stopped the sermon to correct them could plan on hearing about their punishments later—along with an apology.

Twenty years ago children were offered generic math classes for those who really did not ‘understand’ algebra. The business math classes were considered remedial but taught the concepts of figuring interest on loans and bank statement reconciliation. Children who needed help were offered tutorial classes after school as mandated by the districts for the many children whose parents both worked and had no time to help them. Many of those students came to school early for breakfast because no one was at home to prepare a meal. Many school systems had to implement a dress code to keep children from wearing ragged jeans and shoes to school. Jeans and shoes with holes were an expensive fashion statement. School systems also did not allow organized prayer in school.

Today the algebra taught in second and third grades is equivalent to that used by junior high students twenty years ago. Calculus is even an option in some junior high schools. Dress codes require shoes to cover toes: no flip flops allowed. The Bible may be taught as a class in literature or history—not as a type of religion and not from the Bible itself because of the diversity of editions available.

Math—algebra or other concepts—has long been considered a necessity for the educated person. And while styles and fashions have changed what children are wearing—what they are now choosing to wear—those decisions are based on social expectations more than health or safety. Someday the knowledge of the Bible as history and literature may be just as prevalent as the knowledge of algebra or as widespread as the notion of Cupid in February—maybe in another twenty years?