Sharritt Christmas Letter, 2013

Dear friends and family,

We hope this letter finds you doing well.

With Grace married off and Ben gainfully employed, they have been voted off the Christmas letter island. In their absence, we are finding ourselves able to use a larger font in this empty nest Christmas letter. Plenty of margin space. The lovely Miss Beverly can read it without her reading glasses too.

R o o m y.

The stages of launching our children into the world from the beginning of the countdown somewhere around "fastens own seatbelt" led to learner's permit, planning their own trips to Oregon and Ghana, and went to full blast-off this year. Ben graduated from I.U. and landed his first teaching job at Fairview Elementary in Bloomington. Grace married Chris, and they are both headed for senior internships, and then graduate programs, location to be determined. We are concerned that the school they end up in may be a place that will require a passport to visit; say Ohio State, or Michigan, but we've accustomed ourselves to crossing the border into Bloomington, so we'll figure it out.

We've decided it's pretty spectacular to see your kids become autonomous. They do things like plan their own graduation parties complete with ping pong tournament, and clean the whole house while you're out. Things that may sound mythical if you are in the trenches with toddlers or adolescents.  Last night after Christmas Eve service we came home and Ben offered to make the brunch casserole, and Grace to make the caramel rolls. Stunned, we sat down at the card table and worked on the jigsaw puzzle with Chris. The sounds of your kids doing dishes, while you sip wine, can sound as big as a rocket engine.

The empty in empty nest is feeling less like a loss or grief, and more like "roomy". Spacious. Ample. Boundless.

Roger continues to act like a twelve year old, pedaling for miles and miles on his bike. 2013 saw him riding 4600 miles. That's from here to there and halfway back again. Three big rides comprised the milestones for his year of pedaling, feeling the wind in his hair, picking bugs out of his teeth, and dodging assassin deer; 

Ride Across Indiana, The Flat Fifty, and the Hilly Hundred. Thanks to those who supported him in the Habitat  for Humanity  ride across Indiana. Your generosity raised nearly $1500 for shingles. How do I know it was for roofing shingles? Well, you're the tops.Next year, he hopes to ride in the Race Across Indiana; 160 miles from Terre Haute to Richmond on state road 40 in one day. Here's to praying for a very strong tail wind. 

Each goal inspires others. Now the nieces and nephews are talking about riding across Iowa in 2014 with uncle Roger in RAGBRAI. The lovely Miss Beverly will drive the support vehicle carrying bananas, water, and the occasional discouraged niece or nephew who could not keep up with uncle Rog.

Bev is feeling the advantages of ample time to be the teacher she wanted to be when she was balancing career, family, and farm. She indulges in after school naps. Not wanting to give up cooking and baking for a crew, she invents combinations of people to invite for soup suppers, and tries pie of the month recipes out on her book club and gardening friends. She organized a dozen women to share a house near the Dunes National Lakeshore this fall for a prayer retreat. She has pulled out the totes of fabric she amassed in the early mom years, and is dabbling in quilting again. In preparation for Grace's wedding she invited family and friends to a pennant making party where old and new fabric bits brought by the participants were crafted into 1200 feet of colorful decoration for the reception hall. 

The year of wedding planning and parties distilled into wedding week with many moments of joy, including an impromptu run to Jimmies Dairy Bar with 7 people stuffed into Roger's car after buying 40 quarts of strawberries for wedding trifle. And while the big week was fraught with cursing the weatherman's predictions of 80% chance of heavy thunderstorms, we prepared for an outdoor wedding anyway. Once again, the weatherman didn't know rain from tears of joy. The clouds made room for sun, birdsong, and singing under the wedding tree, followed by feasting and dancing. 

Those were the exciting ventures. Most evenings are spent in our roomy nest, in contented silence while swiping away on our iPads. The extent of our conversation might be,

"You gonna ride your bike?"

"Yep."
One hour later:

"How was your ride?"

"Windy." (or "Hot.", or "Great!", or "I didn't unclip in time when I stopped to talk to Steve and I fell in the ditch.")

We love these boring stretches too: the days of getting up early, eating oatmeal, and doing what needs to be done. These times, spiced with grown-up conversations with these lovely new adult people who grace our lives add up to a great recipe for this new expansive half of life. (Bev especially enjoys texting fellow teacher Ben speculations about two hour delays and school closings.)

Let us know when you're passing through. It might be pie-of-the-month night and we'd love to sit down to a meal with you.

Merry Christmas,

Roger & Bev

Our Gift to You?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Although, I found myself slogging away, trying not to lose my mind as I lost another minute of daylight heading for the 21^st. It has been a long journey down an ever shrinking corridor this year. It was due to the extended period of cold and snowy weather that kept me off of my bike outside. Barring a major holiday push, I will barely ride 200 miles this month. Sure I have put 10 hours of gerbil time riding the stationary bike, but it is not the same. Late last week the roads were clear enough to get out. Riding at 8:30 with a full moon being captured and amplified by the snow cover, it was a beautiful night to be out there chugging away.

It’s okay. This too shall pass. Saturday, December 21 came, and we have swung around the corner of the winter of our discontent on the fantastic march towards June 21^st which ironically goes through March, that 31 day trudge through the mud. The anticipation is already starting to build. We are experiencing 4 more minutes of daylight today compared to the low water mark of Saturday. I can feel the stores of vitamin D rebounding even as I write.

I have been enjoying a few days of vacation before Christmas and the end of the year. It has been enjoyable. The children are home. We all got dressed up in our finest and went to a niece’s wedding on Saturday. Three inches of rain couldn’t dampen our spirits. The anticipation of the nuptials built over the weekend with events, card games, Christmas treats, gifts, and board games.

Several of the most recent celebrations have included a mega event for the family’s enjoyment the evening before. Kickball and entire family dodge ball were on tap for the previous get togethers. This wedding eve featured roller skating. It was fun . . . mostly. There were a few bumps and bruises; no broken bones during this outing. That is no mean feet as the aunts and uncles seem to have forgotten that they aren’t as young as they used to be. We used to bounce off of the floor and spring back up. Now we fall in slow motion, our faces contorted in the precognition of pain to come.

It is the result of evolutionary programming; this recognition that one set back could presage the end. Our ancestors, recognizing that they were not as fleet as they once were, drew back from the hunt. The comfort that while they didn’t have to be faster than the bear just faster than grandpa running from the bear, evaporated as they realized that they had become grandpa. A sore hamstring, a tweaked ankle, or a bit of nearsightedness could move you to up to entrée of the day for a bear in pursuit. In spite of the anxiousness generated from our hereditary warning system, we got out there. We held hands. We did the hokey pokey. We hoped that we didn’t look as dumb as that guy. And we teased the only person who had the good sense to recognize their limitations; the one who decided to sit this one out.

We are a family that is passing the generational torch. The aunts and uncles have moved into cautious middle age. We parents are letting children go; getting them through school; watching them get married; some having children of their own. Our parents are getting more attention. It is a shock when we find that they need to set this one out; a shock because they had always been so game to try anything. It is a bigger shock when the act of getting up on roller skates initiates the life before our eyes trailer that we had been saving for a special occasion; like driving into a retention pond.

As I sat in the reception hall taking in the beautiful bride and handsome groom, the rich texture of the décor, the anticipation of the hot fudge wedding favors, the dancing, the wonderful toasts, the gift table overflowing, I watched as pranks were schemed and carried out by aunts and uncles on nephews using Instagram as they frantically tried to figure out the new smart phone. I watched young cousins talk smack back and forth. I watched as an uncle created a tribute in limerick to the bride and groom. I watched as a son-in-law took grandma’s scooter out on the dance floor for a spin. In all of the craziness, I realized that the gifts that had been given were not in brightly wrapped paper. They were covered in the rich tapestry of life embraced, loved, and passed along. The gift of celebration passed to you.

Take care,

Roger

The Three Light Disk of Christmas?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The winter weather has come on pretty strong. If the wooly worm’s markings predicted an intense early winter, he is a prophet of monumental proportions and I am glad that I ran over so many on my October rides. If his markings predicted a mild early winter, he should apply to meteorological school because he is just about as successful in prediction as the weather channel.

The snow on the road has certainly curtailed my bike riding the past 3 weeks. I believe that I have overcome this problem this past week. That’s right, the studded bicycle tires that I have coveted for 2 years, have arrived and been installed on an old beater bike that I had.

Thanks to the internet, you can find anything you may or may not need to improve your lot in life. Now if I can just get Obamabike passed, others will be able to pay for this obsession . . .  I mean healthful activity in which I participate and the world benefits. The irony was not lost on me when the package containing tires with 256 steel studs for “sure grip in icy and snowy conditions” arrived with a Florida postmark.

I am prepared now. This afternoon, I shall take my surefooted steed to the highways and byways. I am super excited because not only do I receive the benefits of safe traction. Should I come across an assassin deer on my ride, I can turn him into ground venison with the repeated application of my 512 steel studs. “Honey! Look who’s coming to dinner.”

This Christmas season has brought about a big change for the lovely Miss Beverly and me. For the past 4 years, we have been transitioning nicely into the empty nest. This year the transition took two major steps forward with Ben’s graduation and subsequent teaching gig and the Kozak wedding that involved Grace. If you would like more information about these two wonderful events, read a few blogs from mid-year. You miss an installment; you miss a lot. With their two major steps towards independence, our empty nest situation has shifted into high gear.

This has been most evident during the Christmas season. The number, of traditions that a family has that surround the children, kinda sneaks up on you. Cutting the tree, decorating the tree, candy wrapping, and present wrapping; all were traditions that involved Ben and Grace. Even as they went off to school, the long semester breaks provided plenty of time to fit these traditions into the fabric of our lives, with just a few wrinkles. We were able to leave detailed instructions for them in the bottom of the cereal bowls. They would be able to read these as they got up from their long winter’s naps around noon and complete the tasks that evening after the lovely Miss Beverly and I went to bed and they had gotten their feet underneath them.

So, this is a year of new traditions, or rather further refinement of the old. It started last week. The cold temperatures and snowy Saturday, highlighted by a fantastic morning sun, catapulted the lovely Miss Beverly (a catapulted lovely Miss Beverly is a sight to behold) out of bed and into the woodlot, where she had spotted a nicely shaped 11 foot cedar tree. The old traditions were holding form nicely. I had the chain saw. Bev had the camera. Two quick cuts and a couple of lumberjack pictures later; we had a stellar eight foot tree with some extra greenery for wreath making. Then the wheels fell off. We were 600 yards from the house and had no children to drag the tree carcass back home. Thankfully, the lovely Miss Beverly has also been called the sturdy, lovely, Miss Beverly before my editor insisted that I reduce the use of commas to help the flow of these blogs. She dragged the tree to the front porch, while I made a couple of trips bringing greenery and the saw in.

With the arduous task of bringing the tree in, and getting it set up straight completed, we suddenly also realized how much we missed the kids and their tree decorating skills. “Maybe we should wait until the rest of the snow melts from the tree,” was my suggestion. I will admit I had my eye on another prize. I had intended to watch college football all day. This would have never been a problem back in the good old days. Grace and Bev would have decorated the tree sharing stories about each ornament, richly weaving many inches onto the Christmas tradition tapestry. Me? I would have had horrible flashbacks as to the rules of tree decoration from my youth. “Big ornaments on the bottom, small ornaments on the top, keep that 5 watt light bulb away from the crepe paper Jesus. You don’t want to burn down the house do you? Come on pay attention.” Soon, I would have been curled up on the floor in the fetal position with my hands over my ears trying to keep the voices out.

Bev is very gracious. Waiting later was an accepted suggestion. On Sunday the one watt cool bulbs came out and were strung on the tree. Thankfully, we lost momentum, and we both think that the tree looks pretty nice with just Christmas lights. So we have a new tradition.

On to present wrapping, we shouted after solving the tree decoration crisis. I was brought up short. I have had a cherished present wrapping tradition through the years that has been thrown into disarray with transitions of this year. I have long turned over the sacred task of wrapping presents to Grace. Okay sacred may be a bit much. But it does approach the very important. You don’t believe me? Go ahead and put a bow on the target bag and leave it under the tree. No! Present wrapping is a very important Christmas tradition. So I have asked Grace to do it all of these years. Sure, she found out what she got from me. You may think that it ruined the surprise, but it didn’t. She was just as surprised on December 10^th as she would have been on Christmas morning.

As the Santa in brown, the UPS man, started to appear the Monday after Thanksgiving, I immediately saw that things were amiss in the new world order. Grace was not available to wrap presents and I have neither the patience nor the attention to detail to wrap presents. I was faced with two choices; either practice patience and attention to do a heartfelt imitation of present wrapping or create an internet meme and convince the world that the new chic is to put a bow on the target bag and shout Merry Christmas. Both seemed like a lot of work and the success of either did not seem probable and then it dawned on me. Like the Grinch when “his heart grew three sizes that day”, I grinned as I realized that I could hire a youth of America to wrap presents for me. Thank you Jesse. You did a wonderful job. As you said, you like to wrap presents and I found out that I like to pay to have presents wrapped. It is a win-win situation.

Then it struck me, this is the way it has always been for the Sharritt’s. All through my youth, we had to wait until the morning chores were done around 10:00 before dad came in and the presents could be opened followed by sticky roll and sausage and scrambled egg brunch. My grandmother had the aluminum tree with the three color spot light disk rotating through red, green and yellow. Then she was gone and so was the tree. For several years after our marriage, Bev and I spent the early dark hours traveling between family homes watching houses wake up one by one; a few more lights coming on as we traveled further down the road. Our years of creating Christmas traditions with our children have been fantastic, and it appears made the preparations easier through the division of labor. Now once again, traditions will spin off throwing new light on our tinseled life like that three light disk slowly spinning on and on.

Take care,

Roger.

The Black Hole of Fridays?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The 1000 piece New Yorker cover jigsaw puzzle was no match for the high visual acuity guests. Even the 1700 clue crossword puzzle found inside the newspaper among the black Friday ads, picked up at a gas station early Thanksgiving morning while on a mission to rescue Ben from the airport as he made his escape from the tempting 68 degree highs of Phoenix, fell to the collection of wordsmiths assembled for the weekend. It was close though. The action became frenetic late Saturday as it suddenly dawned on us that those four days would not last forever. Our 96 hours were starting to wane. Two turkeys, eight pies, a bushel basket of noodles, two pecks of stuffing, and 248 rolls; that was the best Thanksgiving ever; or at least the best this year.

However, all was not bliss in the Sharritt household. All of the hunters had assembled, and the Assassin deer folded back into fog of war. It was as if the tornados three weeks ago sucked them all away into another dimension. I know that they are out there somewhere. I have seen their fresh droppings scattered hither and yon. It appears that the wild raging hormones have settled down, allowing them to settle into the flora and fauna. Next year’s replacements are in the oven; a promise that winter will not last forever. Nature’s bridge arching over the bad times, these next 200 days the fawn will stay inside, nice and toasty. Next April and May, they will head outside and play assassin deer games during the lush green summer months. Black Friday was some where in the middle of it all along with the obligatory Wal-Mart fiasco.

We knew Black Friday was coming. We had been warned by the morally superior. We had been lured by the decadent. We had been shown videos of past bad behavior. Friends had shared stories of a guy who knew a guy who maced a fellow low price hunter for a $100 32 inch tv. You could see the tear of admiration well up in the storyteller’s eye as he recalled the valiant hunter’s admonition to his wife. “Here, stand in line and get that TV. Then come post bail. It is so worth it.”

I just want to say that I get it. I understand. A deep need and drive exist here. Our fallen angels have been identified and awakened every year with millions of advertising dollars. We flock and follow to the Pied Piper song. I get it.

After watching hours of football in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, it appears that there are actually three fallen angels that are summoned each year. The first is that giving angel; the one who wants to give and give; whose mantra is “it’s for the children.” This person’s payoff is that moment when the child opens the present; their eyes fly open wide, and they start hopping up and down gasping for breath in between shrieks of delight. Any reaction that does not meet this preconceived notion is seen by the giver as a failure; not of the receiver’s gratitude but of the giver’s abilities to please those around them.

The ads that I have seen targeting the givers have focused on using old home videos of children going bonkers in reaction to the new bike, the new computer game, or the new box the bike came in. There used to be old home movies from the Sharritt archives of a bouncing 5 year old Roger. I have no idea what the gift was but it sure made me happy, or I was completely strung out on breakfast pastry and Santa adrenalin.

The second fallen angel to be awakened is the hunter of falling prices. This fellow traveler carries a huge adding machine toting up the savings. I don’t get this one. My lack of intuitive understanding of the hunter’s motivation is my fault. I am too lazy or too ADHD to stalk my quarry. The idea of reading 3 dozen newspaper ads, scouring a dozen internet sites, developing a plan of attack using a spreadsheet that does the time, distance and savings calculus is daunting. The hunter loves these tasks. Their skill has been honed through multiple campaigns of Black Friday shopping. Every lost parking spot, every lost deal, every “we’re sorry no rain checks” has become a painful teacher. They are wizened hunters. I am more of a gatherer than a hunter. I am perfectly willing to walk along through the woods and stumble across something that I know my loved ones will bounce up and down in delight in recognition of my thoughtfulness and the clever gift which I purchased for them. But the hunter loves the competition; keeping track of the savings,  bagging deals, and accumulating tales of daring do to share around the water cooler on Monday morning with mere mortals who will have to pick the carcass of 5% discounts the following week.

Like Ebenezer’s final ghost, the last of the fallen angels to be summoned is the scariest for me. It is scary because as I look inside the cowl hiding its face, I see my own. My Christmas Black Friday is about saving enough money so I can buy me what I want. I am not proud of it. It is sad. You can shake your head back and forth and say tsk,  tsk, tsk. The phrase “it’s the thought that counts is lost on me. I say this because it is true for me. I was given the wish book every year. I circled and folded pages. I was good. I was disappointed. We were poor; probably poorer than I ever knew. So electric race sets, M16 with grenade launchers, and BB guns, were not under the tree. Rather these were replaced with Hot Wheels, Play Dough pumping stations and cloths. Cloths??? Cloths were one of life’s necessities not a gift. It is true. I have an ungrateful heart. To make matters worse, after not receiving what I had asked for, I would go to friend’s houses and covet the race tracks, M16 with grenade launchers, and BB guns. Today, I can tell you which garage in Madison County holds that dark green M16 with its bright red grenade.

You can imagine the pull and tug of the Black Friday ads when you have two of the fallen angels deep within your breast. If you have the desire to protect the objects of your affection from disappointment and the desire to right past “wrongs” for your own gifts, Katie bar the bank account. It is going to be a long January, paying for all of your shopping therapy.

It is a season of hope though. Over time, I have seen my fallen angels. I have learned that the holes created by experience and temperament are not fillable. I could use the entire treasury to buy things to fill it, and it would all disappear into the void; filling the hole is a fool’s errand. It helps to know that it is just a hole. Let it be. Recognize it. Recognize that the tug of the advertiser is natural but not helpful. Just let it be and kindle the embers of gratefulness. Someday, the fire may become large enough to even things out.

Take care,

Roger.

When Life Gives You Lemons

Dear blog reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. To all of my Illini and Hoosier friends who faced nature’s wrath a week and a half ago, I hope that your power is back on, the tree limbs are being cut up, and that all of the contractors you encounter are honorable. To the homeowners in Kokomo whose 2^nd story decided to detach and go on a walkabout into the middle of the road, wow, that must have been quite a ride.

A week ago last Sunday it was 60 degrees. Saturday, it was below freezing. What did these two pictures have in common? They both featured bicycle rides in winds that were above 25 mph. Last Sunday, the wind was actually above 30 miles per hours. They were straight out of the South. This made my trip South an arduous task, but I could turn north and I was on fire. It was a good reminder that I am not as good as the 30 mph with the wind at my back or as poor as the 6 mph with a stiff head wind.

It was a week of entertainment for the lovely Miss Beverly and me, her humble escort. We went to see Jim Gaffigan and Garrison Keillor at Ball State. In an aside, Ball State has some very good shows and the price is often less than going to the same show in Indianapolis. Check it out.

I rarely do reviews. It isn’t that I don’t have strong, insightful, and accurate opinions about others. I do. I just rarely go out for entertainment. Number one, Bev and I have not been in the position to afford anything other than the cheap seats. Which always made me wonder, why would I want to pay that much money to watch a show on a video monitor? Suddenly, we find ourselves in an empty nest and the nest is lined with a bit more money that had been previously earmarked for our children’s upbringing.

Gaffigan was very funny. He had a couple of very funny riffs; one about going to weddings, another about Hot Pockets. Keillor was completely different. I have been a fan for a long time. I have been to see Prairie Home Companion three times. Once, the lovely Miss Beverly and I got on a train to Minneapolis in early February to spend the weekend in a romantic bed and breakfast. It is a little known fact that global warming has been traced back to that weekend. I’m just saying. It was a romantic bed and breakfast with the lovely Miss Beverly, and it was Minneapolis in early February. While Garrison is a huge star in the public radio world, it is a case of a big fish in a little pond so the tickets have always been affordable and the seats are good.

This show was different. It was a one man show.  He came out and started singing; singing songs that the audience knew and had sang from memory at one point in their lives. After a couple of songs, we received a wonderful invite to join him. He said that adults are seldom asked to sing along. It was a beautiful moment; 1700 people of common musical heritage, singing from their Psalter; Back Home Again, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I Come to the Garden Alone; all a cappella.

It struck me that he was right. We are not invited to sing as adults very often. Even in the rich church tradition that I experience, the invitation does not often come. I am sometimes admonished to sing when it dawns on the leadership that Sunday morning has become a concert with the band pumped up loud; loud enough that my lips are moving but I’m not sure that any sound makes it past my lips. It was a blessing; singing in the dark; our voices mixing and covering one another’s weaknesses.

It brought to mind Mark Twain. In fact, several things from the evening brought to mind Mark Twain. Samuel Clemmons, near the end of his life, turned very bitter. He had lost his wife and three of his children. The despair and vitriol are evident and strident in his writing. The essays were not published until 1960, in a book called Letters from Earth. The letters are written by Satan to the archangels Gabrielle and Michael. One of the major points in the essays was that the author had serious doubts about Christian’s claims to be looking forward to worshiping God forever. He claimed that we get bored of singing after 20 minutes. We get tired; start looking through the bulletin; wondering how long the sermon will last because “you don’t want the roast to burn back home.” That observation has resonated inside my head; usually when I have exhausted the bulletin and after I have “rested” my eyes for the second time during the sermon.

However, the singing a cappella in that darkened room old favorites stirred something an ignited a hope that there is something inside me that could reach out and touch the forever.

After singing, he launched into a review of his life; about growing up in Minnesota with his people. He described their stoic optimism forced upon them by their lives is northern Minnesota. Through the evening, he wove the maxims preached by his people and how they intersected with the events of his life. He mentioned repeatedly how lucky he had been. As he told stories and jokes, it struck me that this is what an evening with Mark Twain must have been like. It is remarkable what Mark Twain accomplished; the time period in which he flourished. How do you become an icon without Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Commercial radio had not become a phenomenon. He crossed the country to perform shows in front of sold out audiences. He became one of the wealthiest men in America and certainly the wealthiest entertainer. He was the Oprah of his time.

While Twain’s themes struck a strident tone, Garrison’s theme revolved around the luck in his life. The luck of events and opportunities that presented themselves after set backs; the luck surrounding his work in radio, leaving Minnesota; the luck of meeting the one teacher who could inspire his immersion into literature. It is interesting to see the results of the ruminations of the introspective.

Life exerts its pressures and blessings on us all. It appears that we take those influences in and make of them what we can. One sees the setbacks and turns bitter. Another sees the setbacks and recognizes how they forced a good turn into luck. I hope that I see the setbacks as a test persevered through and not broken by. For that, I am thankful.

Take care,

Roger.

A free education shouldn't be cheap?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope this finds you doing well. We have done it now. The first snow fall of winter has fallen on us this past week. A frigid Canadian cold air mass has snuck across the boarder and visited an inch of the white stuff upon us. Obviously the wooly worms are exacting their revenge for my Hilly Hundred shenanigans. It will be gone shortly. We will survive this season of our lives somehow.

Speaking of seasons, the Sharritt household is in the throes of pumpkin pie season. The lovely Miss Beverly loves pumpkin pie. In fact she could eat it year round. Fortunately, she married me, and I am able to place boundaries on her pumpkin pie eating fondness. Specifically, she loves store bought pumpkin pie. This is an odd thing when you look at it logically. Bev is an excellent pie maker. It’s true and not just family bias. She entered the Indy Star’s pie contest 5 years ago and came in 3^rd in a controversial judging decision. The winner was some holiday confection. It was the middle of summer for goodness sake, and they went with the pie that would have slipped Santa Claus into a diabetic coma.

Yes, the lovely Miss Beverly is a documented expert pie maker. However, she is not a competitive pie maker. She loved the creative part; creating a wild black raspberry cream pie with a lemon crust. She enjoyed the testing and tweaking. She reveled in having 20 friends over for a tasting. She disliked the being judged.

The irony is that the lovely Miss Beverly, she of pie making expertise and artistry, loves store bought pumpkin pie. She of the light and flakey Crisco infused crust loves the 10 inch Costco cardboard crusted pumpkin pie. So every October through December, we experience the pumpkin pie season.

This week the hankering overcame the lovely Miss Beverly. I know the look in her eye. Sitting at the dinner table, she will peer longingly at the empty kitchen counter and sigh. After a few minutes, she will start to fidget. Finally, she will get up, walk to the freezer pull out the emergency tub of Cool Whip and put it into the fridge to thaw out. When she does that, I know that it is time. It is time to put on my coat, drive to the local Marsh and bring home a store bought pumpkin pie.

That is why I found myself at the store on Thursday evening having the following conversation with the checkout girl.

 The check out girl said “I can’t believe this pie is so expensive. The 8 inch pie is only two inches smaller but costs much less than the 10 inch pies.” (Note to Marsh management, please train your staff to not ridicule the customer for spending more money.)  Fearing that this youth had wasted my property tax support of her public education, I tried to help out by saying “It’s close to the same price.” Receiving a blank stare in return, I pushed on. I am an educator at heart.  “You see volume is pi r squared.” This isn’t exactly right. That is the formula for area. You would have to take that product above and multiply it by the height. However, I figure that you had to start someplace. I will introduce that concept when I buy a 10 inch pecan pie next week.

Any who. Bambi, or Barbie or Constance or Jessica or whatever her name was, looked at me in all seriousness and said “no pie are round.” Who am I kidding? I would have been proud of her if she had that much wit. I would have walked around the check out counter and given her a hug. I would have looked into her eyes and said, “very good job. Excellent job! Geometry may not be your strong suit but you have a literary wit about you. You’ll be okay.” Actually, she just stared at me blankly. Still uneducated prepared to buy $5.25 eight inch pies over the $8.00 10 inch pies for the rest of her life.

The sad part is that sometime during the past week, she or one of her cohort probably looked up at a math, science, or English teacher and whined, “Why do we have to learn that? We’ll never use it in real life.” I believe that there should be a zero tolerance policy for those words in schools. If you open your pie hole and let those words escape, you should be forced to spend the next week in a room without your “smart” phone, speaking and writing in full sentences, pondering where two trains will collide if they leave two cities, traveling toward one another, on the same track that is located 1.6 miles from your suspension room, at different speeds, carrying toxic acne producing chemicals that will form a 2 mile diameter “zit zone”, answering the question; how many phrases can you hook together with comas and semi-colons and not get a grammar ticket? How’s that for a real world application, dearie? Answer: It doesn’t matter. A 2 mile diameter “zit zone” will miss me by more than a half a mile so I stopped caring about your stupid story problem long before the actual question.

The list of things that are explained by useable knowledge that can be gleaned from a free public education is expansive; when to fill the gas tank so you aren’t doing the long trudge of shame with your $20 red gas can, why do ice cubes freeze together into a solid block when they are obviously melting, why your fritos are more expensive since the ethanol boom, or why a 8 inch pie for $5.50 is more expensive, per volume than a 10 inch pie for $8.00. In fact it is nearly half a cent per cubic inch more expensive. So you paid about 46 cents too much for your cheap 8 inch pie.

Don’t worry though. As Paul Simon predicted, the world will ensure that your “lack of education hasn’t hurt you none.” It will put pictures on the cash registers and have them count out the change for you. It will print calculated tip amounts on the bottom of your receipt. It will even put a green logo on the gas pump so that you can feel like you are doing the right thing while “driving” world food prices up.

It will even be glad to charge you a half a cent more for your pie and make you feel better in your clouded thinking. Those half cents add up during the pie season. Now if you have learned something from today’s lesson and sworn off your 8 inch pie ways, it is important to know one more thing. While your pie is just “2 inches larger”, you had better get an extra tub of cool whip just too even things out.

Take care,

Roger

A pressing memory?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am pretty good. Although the past two nights as I have finished my bike ride, I have witnessed two pair of glowing green eyes about 3 feet off the ground staring back at me from the hydrangea field. This field is about 200 yds from our front door. No those four eyes don’t belong to a pair of ghosts, or two really tall raccoons. It is a pair of assassin deer stalking me; coming ever closer, moving in for the kill. Am I worried? Nah. Just another 100 yards closer and I will walk out on my front porch early one late fall morning and I will bag me some venison. You don’t threaten a man on his own property without some serious repercussions.

You said what, Roger?, readership has reached an important milestone. This past week the 12,000 pair of eyes has perused these missives that I enjoy putting together each week. Thank you for your support. If you are a frequent reader, feel free to become a follower by clicking some line off to the right -à. I don’t know if it helps build readership, but it does give a face to people who really enjoy the blog and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling as I write.

Big doings in the Sharritt household this past gray November week. The lovely Miss Beverly has been hard at work making something for someone that involves fabric. I would share more but it is a secret. Also, it is a secret for someone who often reads the blog. So I hope that you will understand my furtiveness in this situation. Just know that someone will be very surprised and very pleased with the results of Miss Beverly’s artistic vision and handiwork. Is it you? Come now, you know that I can’t tell you that. Patience friend, please have a little patience.

On Tuesday evening, while frantically working with a nearing deadline, the lovely Miss Beverly looked at me with her lovely eyes and said, “I just want to say that I wish we would have kept that rolling iron 27 years ago.”

The incident of the rolling iron is one of the seminal events that our young married life was built upon. It was an event that showed us the stark differences in personality that would have to be compromised through in order to become one as our married life matured through the years. Thankfully, we have not often become a couple that marked victories and defeats in the marital balance sheet, taking care to keep a most careful ledger. There is no bitterness or rancor that has festered through the years of this seminal event. It has become one of the myths of our marriage.

Back when we were young and newly married, we loved to go to auctions. The thrill of the hunt was intoxicating. Stalking other people’s junk, finding their treasures, preparing to pay pennies for what was rightfully theirs, all combined for heady fun. Often times, these auctions were estate sales. Loved ones had passed and had so many accumulated knick-knacks, towels, and dish ware that the heirs could not possibly absorb it all. So after Billy Bob and Bobby Sue had pulled out the good silver, china, and quilts, the rest was piled on tables out in the yard for the neighbors and the curious to stake their claim on the remains. Every once in a while you would stumble across an auction where the heirs could not play nicely, and divide up the good stuff amicably. Each of as many as a dozen sides sure that Mom and Dad would want them to have the Mercedes, or the one carat diamond ring. Each one just as sure, prepared to state under oath that mom had said, just a week before her demise, “I want you have take the pie safe, when I’m gone.”

These auctions were a study in family dynamics. Sisters pitted against brothers, standing immovable at strategic spots in the auctioneer’s line of vision. Their arms encircled their purses. Their checkbooks grasped in white knuckled panic. Eyes danced between adversary and item. One could see brains doing the accounting of love. The careful observer could see the signs quickly, and really push the suspense to a climax by throwing a “uninterested” third party bid at a pivotal moment. This diabolical action would cause the head and heart computers working furiously at full capacity to nearly explode. You ask what we did before facebook and the internet. This is it. On Thursday, we would look for the auctions in the paper. On Saturday, we would get up and go watch some people.

The auction in question was a very low key affair; no drama. Which isn’t completely true, the lovely Miss Beverly and I brought our own. Things were progressing nicely. We had gotten a very nice green overstuffed rocking chair, and a TV. We were in solid agreement, in perfect lockstep, when the seeds of controversy were sown. It was a fairly large accumulation of stuff to be auctioned this day. Every auctioneer knows that you have to keep a certain momentum going or the crowds will lose interest and drift away. Following the laws of economics, supply will swamp demand and they will be selling wheelbarrows full of junk for a quarter.

To combat boredom and auction fatigue, they opened up two rings. Bev and I separated and I suddenly lost focus. I will admit that I love technologically complex contraptions that solve one small problem. If I were to deny it, I would be proven a liar by a simple perusal of my craigslist search list; unimog, big green egg, tandem bikes, shopsmith etc. . .

On this fine summer day, I saw the thing that would make everything right with the world. My discovery was an epiphany. The clouds were breaking up and a single shaft of sunlight shown down illuminating an automatic industrial sized steam roller iron.

This is what the Sharritt household needed. I hate ironing. Bev had never shown a desire to iron. Someday we might have jobs that required nicely pressed clothing. This was what we needed. The problem was there was no time to consult with the lovely Miss Beverly. It was the next item up for bid. To run and find her in the other auction ring, bring her over, explain the wonderful advantages to having an automatic steam roller iron, and decide on the appropriate highest bid, it would have all taken too long and they would auctioning the old golf bag with a rusty putter and driver poking out of the top.

This situation demanded swift and decisive action. I was stunned when they had trouble getting a starting bid of $50. The caller lowered expectations to $25 then $10. Still, no one started us out. Suddenly in the grips of inspiration, I blurted out “a dollar.” The dollar bid is the equivalent of saying “I will take it off your hands. Let’s get moving.” My bid was barely out of my mouth when to my shock and surprise, I heard the words “sold to number . . . 103.” I had done it. I had secured freshly pressed shirts in perpetuity. Surely, one of my children would inherit it. This would insure that my offspring would be sharp dress men that the world would go crazy over for generations to come.

I could not wait to show the lovely Miss Beverly this treasure. I must admit that I was a bit naïve. I thought that automatic meant that all you had to do was throw a shirt on top of the throat to the rollers, turn on the switch and it would pull them through pressing out the wrinkles as they passed between the massive, padded, steam-filled, rollers. Looking over my prize, figuring out how it would work, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of capacity. There was no hopper on top. With a hopper, the busy family could load it up turn on the switch and press an entire week’s worth of clothing hands free. After a bit of cogitation, I figured that twenty minutes with some cardboard, utility knife and some duct tape the capacity problems would be solved.

I was hopeful and dying to show the lovely Miss Beverly my revolutionary new find that I purchased for a dollar. This is where my naivety failed me. I was showing off the many advantages of our new automatic industrial steam iron, when Bev pointed out that you couldn’t just throw your shirts, pants, underwear, and socks on top and the wrinkles would automatically be pressed away. No you had to carefully fold your clothing and feed them through carefully or the wrinkles would be pressed into the fabric.

Carefully fold them and feed them through? Are you sure? It says automatic. Carefully fold them and feed them through? That would be like the automatic dishwasher that I have the scrap and rinse the dishes for in order for it to “wash” them. That is bogus. Bev assured me that it was bogus but true. I had spent a dollar to carefully fold and feed cloths into the “automatic” iron. This was a definite technological step backwards.

And this is where the fun began; where our different temperaments showed through. When that auctioneer said sold, I heard him say “we have entered into a covenant. You will pay me $1, and you will take this piece of crap home.” I said in my mind, “Yes, I will pay you $1 and I will take this fantastic automatic industrial sized steam roller iron and make my life better.” The lovely Miss Beverly entered into no such covenant. When the word sold flew out of the auctioneer’s mouth, she entered into an agreement to pay $1 and leave that piece of crap here if she wanted to.

You can see that the storm was coming. Two different world views were heading toward a collision course. Thankfully, life’s circumstances would force a solution. We were poor. Consequently, we were still driving an old 74 Camaro with little back seat room and no trunk room. Something would have to be left behind. We could take the chair and TV, or the TV and the iron, but not the chair and the iron. Something had to be voted off of the island. I knew that the TV and the chair would work. Bev’s logic managed to penetrate my delusions of hands free ironing. I could see the validity of her argument. I had wasted a dollar on a pipe dream. However, there was still the covenant. “You will take this piece of crap home.” After much huffing, puffing and muttering, the laws of physics proved themselves firm and unyielding. You cannot put 10.5 cubic feet of things into a 10.25 cubic foot space. It was a 45 minute drive home. So a covenant rescue trip to bring home the iron was a 90 minute fool’s errand.

So, we left it; sitting on the edge of a bean field a little worse for wear with a few scratches with the pushing and pulling of trying to have it all. It became a little story of our life together. Then in a moment of kindness and grace this week, Bev remembered it and thanked me for the memory of something I was willing to give up 27 years ago. It seems that old iron could press one more time; a memory on our hearts.

Take care,

Roger

Stop messing with me.

Dearest blog reader.

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. Yes, looking through properly focused glasses gives one a different perspective and a better outlook on life.

I finished last week's blog with the thought of coasting down hill after a long trip up hill. I did not realize how prophetic those sentiments would be. All week long, I had nothing to write about. There was that one thing at work, but I have made it my personal rule not to write about work. I was tempted. I was walking through the valley of the shadow of idea death. I had nothing and three of my prime writing days were past. I should have been in full editing and revision mode, and I had nothing.

Thankfully, life continued. Government is still ignorant and is happily churning out ideas that make my libertarian heart cringe; stupid, vapid ideas providing easy opportunities for ridicule and derision.

First, my friends at the N eophytes S tanding A round got caught red handed, or is that red eared, for listening to German chancellor, Angela Merkel’s cell phone calls. The Germans cried foul.  All of Europe has cried that "You can't spy on your allies." The Germans have demanded an apology. To which I reply in nationalistic fervor, "don't hold your breath." I do not remember any apology from the N ubbin S couring A colytes to the American people for eavesdropping on our phone calls or for reading this blog without contributing to my reader stats. Far from apologizing, I have read of no repudiation or cessation of the practice. You will know when I have heard the apology, and the practice has stopped. I will immediately stop using the clever ruse that I have successfully employed to confuse certain unnamed supercomputers, but don’t hold your breath.

So while the Germans were turning blue from holding their, waiting for an apology, breath, our local government was busy playing nanny state, bending the laws of nature, the calendar and recognized holidays. They changed Halloween from October 31, to November 1 for child safety; the big sissies. They got too scared to dress up in scary costumes and scream boo at the doors of friends, neighbors, and strangers. If a miscreant youth had tried to extort cheap chocolate candy from me on November 1 without the official auspices of the authorities, I would have released my Rottweiler on the grounds on my spacious estate. This would have provided a challenge since I don't own a Rottweiler. Maybe I could have rented one. Who knows?

I just know that I dislike sissies and I don't like people who don't have the good sense to regulate their own lives. Sure, it was going to be a stormy Halloween night. The weather guy gave us plenty of warning. Bored, for a lack of hurricanes this season, he hit the panic button for central Indiana severe weather potential on Wednesday. "Beware strong winds, heavy rain, high potential for severe weather", were his clarion calls. In more self-reliant times, hearing the sincere and maybe accurate predictions, tough minded people would have had two choices.

The more timid could be sad. They could say "I am sorry kids. It is too dangerous to go out this year. Maybe next year." Clearly, this would be an unpopular and possibly crushing decision for the youths of central Indiana. However, the parent's tough minded gift would have been more valuable than two bags of candy; teaching the youths that life is full disappointment, there is always next year, and this too shall pass.

The more brazen and adventurous could dress their children up as witches wearing ruby shoes; secretly hoping that they would win the most authentic costume when a house landed on them. Clearly, this would be a popular and possibly crushing decision for the youths of central Indiana. However, this parent's tough minded gift would have been more valuable than two bags of candy; teaching the youths that life may be dangerous but you can't let fear rule your life, get out there keep your eyes open and get ready to run if a house is about land on you. Thankfully, my niece and nephew in Illinois is counted in the second camp. Michelle and Joe were proud of the fact that they just went anyway was we were discussing the topic this weekend during a visit.

First it is Halloween. What's next Christmas? Rather than calling on a drunken reindeer with his red nose so bright to lead the way on a foggy Christmas Eve, are we going to postpone Christmas until the weather is safer? What would happen to Boxing Day? Would it cause panic attacks in Canada or England? Will Boxing Day the 26^th or the 27^th this year? When will the governor declare the change? It’s just too much.

It won’t stop there. The next thing you know the nanny state will decide to change the time twice a year. The next thing you know I will be having the following conversation with the Lovely Miss Beverly when waking up in the Illinois relative’s bedrooms on the first Sunday of November.

Bev: “What time is it?”

Roger: “Depends.”
Bev: “On what.”
Roger: “The ipad says 6:47. At home it is 7:47. Yesterday, it was 8:47. Ouch!
Bev: “What’s wrong?”
Roger: “That made my head hurt.

Take care,

Roger.

I made it. I made it. I made it.

Dearest Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I still can’t see but have served one half of my ten day penance for losing my glasses (read last week’s blog for an explanation). By the time you read this, I should be looking through rose colored glasses. I had so much fun riding in the Hilly Hundred last weekend. That ride marked the end of a year with three major organized bike rides. The first in May traveled 360 miles over the state of Indiana raising funds for Habitat for Humanity. I am very thankful to those who supported me and raised nearly $2,500 in the process. On my birthday, I rode 50 miles in the Flat Fifty through Amish country in north central Indiana. Unfortunately, it was the first hot day of the summer and I fell well short of my 100 mile goal due to cramping.

This past weekend, I rode 100 miles over two days in the Hilly Hundred. For two days, Mt Tabor lived rent free in my head. Mt Tabor is a legend among the Hilly Faithful. There are You tube videos dedicated to Mt Tabor fails. All Friday evening I heard; “Mt Tabor is a killer.”  “So many good cyclists have to walk up Mt Tabor.” Mt. Tabor, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Tabor; I was getting sick of it. However, every time my mind started to wander, Mt Tabor would loom up in front of me.

To make matters worse, the route actually took riders down Mt Tabor a day prior to its ascent. That made it a historic Hilly Hundred. For the first time, the day one route took everyone down Mt Tabor to give riders a feel for the 22 degree gradient. It did nothing for my confidence. Half way down, I had to apply my brakes to maintain control as the bike’s front tire skittered over pothole patches poorly applied by the Monroe County highway department. In all fairness, it is hard to apply asphalt to near vertical surfaces. I am guessing that all of those little tar covered pebbles would start rolling down the hill before that tar would find traction and hold on to the side of that hill.

Even with the Mt. Tabor ascent in front of me, it was a great ride. Saturday started a little rough. A steady light rain had settled in over night. The sky, gray and low, was a portent of November weather. According to the weather channel, it would be with us until around 1:00; at least three quarters of the ride. Rain with temperatures in the high 40’s does not make for a very enjoyable ride. However, there were 50 miles to ride and like a boy scout with a discover card, I was prepared. In fact, the last item, a pair of over the glasses motorcycle goggles to keep the rain out of your eyes, had been delivered by the UPS guy, that Santa in Brown, just two days before my departure for the Hilly.

I was prepared; over prepared in fact. It would appear that the third long sleeve biking jersey trapped too much of the heat generated on long climbs. 45 minutes into the ride, it was time to stop and, like a snake, shed one of my layers. That done, the next 45 minutes was spent shivering while the sweat generated from the first 45 minutes evaporated and my body temp came to a decent equilibrium. So Saturday was spent slogging along. One turn of the crank at a time, wondering what if I could make the climb up Mt. Tabor on Sunday.

Sunday arrived bright and sunny. The wooly worms were out in force trying to get warm on the pavement. You can imagine that any kind of circulation problem with that many feet would drive you to distraction and cause one to make decisions that were unwise in an effort to seek comfort. So out they came. I, being a kid at heart, proceeded to dart around the width of the road putting an end to their winter prophesying aspirations; making up limericks about the experiences.

Why limericks? The lovely Miss Beverly had been struck by inspiration in a dream on Friday night. While I was lying in bed listening to the rain drip from the eaves, she was reaching for the Ipad calling her Facebook nation to another limerick challenge. It was a perfect distraction from the cold damp weather and the times when Mt Tabor loomed too large. Over the two days, I wrote and posted 11 limericks. A hundred miles of pedaling up and down hills provides a lot of free time for the mind to roam. I do fear that the prodigious quantity of quality output from my two days of trekking may have scared challengers off. Don’t worry. I get pie from Miss Beverly all of the time. It is only right that someone else receives the blessing of a Miss Beverly pie. If you would like to participate in this challenge, send me a limerick in the comment of this blog, or a facebook message. We will get you in on the opportunity to win.

In between limerick construction and wooly splats, I was struck by the great difference in rider ability. You had some folks on old schwinn bikes. Others were riding the latest carbon fiber. This group was delineated even further by a small number who would ride to the top of a tall hill, and turn around to ride down for the chance to ride back up again. This difference in ability was vividly on display on the ascent of the first hill on Sunday morning. Right at the bottom of the first hill, Shwinn guy had already abandoned ship and was pushing his bike up. I was plugging along and the couple, on the tandem was powering their way up the steep incline.

Shwinn guy’s determination amazed me. On the very first hill, he was off and walking up. He had at least a dozen more to go, and there he was getting right after it. I had spent two and a half years riding, getting into some kind of shape to do what I could to get over each of those hills. After a fair amount of perseverance, road miles, and lost weight, I felt confident enough to give it a try. But Schwinn guy just jumped on his bike and took off, and tandem couple? I last saw them cresting the hill having a dialogue about the Hilly Hundred not being a beginner’s ride. It was too difficult for beginners.

The day proceeded and there it was. 92 miles into the 100 mile ride, Mt. Tabor rose up. The approach comes right after a bridge crossing a creek with a sweeping right hand turn and then a half mile ride along the valley floor. You get to look up the elevation the entire time. There were 5,000 people on the ride on Sunday. Consequently, there were no gaps in the stream of cyclists. Looking up at Mt Tabor, at all of those people, I was struck that they looked like salmon trying to lunge up stream and there was the bear, Mt Tabor, ready for a tasty morsel. Schwinn guy was off at the bottom of the hill happily pushing his way up the hill. He was joined by half of the intermediate cyclist’s not so happily pushing their bikes. The carbon stud cyclists were standing up merrily powering up the hill with some of them coming down to the left, grinning, ready to give it another run. The rest had heads bowed, backs bent, chains in the lowest gear, huffing and puffing, turning the crank just fast enough to keep the bike upright, scratching to make it to the top.

I chose to throw my lot in with this last group. These were my people. Scratching my way up, three images from the weekend swirled in my mind; the guy who crashed on Bean Blossom Hill when his chain broke (how do you break a bike chain?), the guy who crashed going around a curve on a decent who had the wide eyed look of “what the hell just happened” etched on his face, and the speed that I could unclip my cleats and get my foot down without falling over should I need to abandon ship.

While the entire hill is steep, there are differences in gradients. The worst is about 5/6 of the way up. You are already tired hoping for relief and it gets worse. When you hit that transition, you have no reserve. You just keep pedaling. The panic rises when you realize that your speed just fell below the pace where you can unclip and step off gracefully. You are either going to make it to the top or fall over still clipped to your bike, forcing your fellow salmon to fall as they struggle past the bear’s mouth.

Then, the grade shifts again. This stroke was a little easier than the last. The burn in your legs eases just a little. Slowly, your speed quickens. You could safely abandon ship and walk. Why would you want to do that? You are going to make it. The bear isn’t going to eat you this time. You are to the top and after every top there is a hill to coast down.

Happy coasting.

Take care,

Roger

As Plain as the Nose on Your Face?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. By the time you read this I will be completing the Hilly Hundred or as it is commonly referred to in the Assassin Deer community Pigs in Spandex  Family Extravaganza. I know that you must be wondering how can a person ride 100 miles and still type out these wonderful blogs. Does he tape his iPad to the handlebars and type as he pedals along? No that would be dangerous. I would have to take my fingers off of the triggers of my twin front fork mounted 50 caliber assassin deer deterrent machine guns. You have to stay focused and ever vigilant.  To do so, I have been training hard at the range recently. Training is vital. You don't want to be spraying bullets around indiscriminately while watching the fall colors in southern Indiana. People could get hurt.

In order to make sure that my judgment is keen and honed to a razors edge, I am practicing at a range that has set up one exercise where life sized cut outs of deer are interspersed with cutouts of  innocents.  The cutouts pop up  from behind trees and cars, forcing the shooter to make split second decisions as to the potential lethality represented by the targets. The training has helped sharpen my skills over the years. I must confess that the grandma in the party antlers and red clown nose often trips me up. I see those antlers and red nose and I think that I have hit the Rudolph jackpot. As I depress the trigger, it registers that no that is actually grandma walking home after a Christmas Eve party. I should have noticed the martini glass. Shoot!!!

There I go again getting distracted. The question “how can you ride 100 miles and still type out these wonderful blogs” goes unanswered.  Actually, I have taken my son Ben’s advice. I was whining to him that with the fall wood cutting season and target practice, I find it hard to have time to write the blog on the weekend. I was also finding that if I posted mid-week readership was down dramatically. It appears that a blog mid-week does not find you doing well. It finds you too busy to stop and read the ink. Ben, astute son that he is, suggested that I write the blog a little at a time during the week and then publish it on Sunday during prime readership time. So as I marshal my reserves to make it up the next hill, the marvels of technology will push this blog out to you.

Speaking of distraction, I had an epic senior moment last week. I lost my glasses. I have no idea where they are. I remember getting them out of the holder in the car. Then poof they had left the building. As I sit here typing this, I am wearing a 10 year old pre-bifocal pair of glasses. They are perched on the end of my nose. The laptop is sitting just below my knees. My fingers are extended to their full reach and my head is thrown back trying to find the sweet centimeter of distance that will bring the screen into focus.

Did I mention that these glasses are at least 10 years old. It appears that 10 years ago it was the fashion to put windshields on your face. These things are huge. A friend who is in the vision industry saw me Sunday morning. Her eyes got great big and she asked “do those come with wiper blades?” Did I mention that they are huge. It is a shock to have to wear these for the next 10 days. I hope that the optometrist under promised and will over deliver.

After 42 years of glasses wearing, I had finally found the glasses whose style fit my personality. I called them the evil deacon glasses; black frames, silver accents, medium size, and the bifocal line right across the middle. They are the glasses that one on the gruff old deacons wore in the church where I grew up. I love those glasses.

You may be asking yourself, “If you loved them so much Roger, how did you lose them?” I don’t know. That is where the frustration lies. I will admit that I am not a careful person. I have a propensity to utilize any horizontal surface for whatever I may have in my hands. I have temporarily misplaced 1000’s of things in my life and permanently misplaced millions. I have developed handy coping mechanisms. When I was farming, flashlights, utility knives, and pliers were the most important tools to keep the operation moving.  Being a person who eschewed pegboard with hooks and tool outlines, I found it hard to locate the needed hardware at a moments notice. I adapted. I changed. I made it my personal goal to have enough flashlights, utility knives and pliers that within a normal distribution around the farm, on any of its horizontal surfaces, I could find the needed implement within 30 seconds.

It worked great. I would need a tool. I would look around for 30 seconds. I would find the tool I needed. If something happened and it took a minute or two to get back to work, I would make a mental note and the next time at the store, I would buy another needed tool and disperse it to the universe.

As I wrote, I have lost millions of things in my life. I blogged about losing socks on my shoulder way back on March 13, 2011.  I am a prodigious loser of things. But I have never lost my glasses. I forgot them once running around packing for a family vacation and had to wear prescription sunglasses for a week. But I knew right where they were and upon arriving home went directly to my nightstand put them on my face and immediately had a brighter outlook on life.

But I had never lost them. I looked high and low for them. I looked in all of the usual places; the corner of the roll top desk, the night stand beside the bed, beside the sink in the utility room, the kitchen countertop, the kitchen island, the entry way table. I looked on all of those in a continuous loop and they were not there. The frustration continued to grow and I must admit; it grew so large that I did not enjoy my weekly bowl of ice cream and hot fudge. I went ahead and ate it. I just didn’t  enjoy it. The frustration grew so intense that on Sunday morning when the lovely Miss Beverly supportively mentioned that I never lost my glasses, I knew that she had hit the nail on the head. She had perfectly captured my  frustration and worry. I exploded with such a string of invective pointed at the universe of black holes for glasses that would have caused the evil deacon from my childhood would have blushed.

Well its over now or nearly so. I have paid the $215 uncareful tax. I am suffering through the humiliation of wearing glasses that look like the windshield off of a Pacer. Everyone under 40 will probably have to go to Wiki to find that one; type in AMC Pacer. I will make it through the next ten days of squinting, getting closer, or getting further away from the computer screen to try to see what I just typed. I will survive.

But I am still worried. It has crossed my mind that this could be the canary in the mine for Alzheimer’s. What if  this is just the first step to a life of misplacement, forgotten appointments and names? I also wonder if I want to find them now. What if I left them someplace really bizarre? I don’t know where.; no more bizarre from that. I am talking about National Enquirer bizarre. I am definitely hoping that I don’t find them now.

That is sad really; all that worry and anxiety about what it and what might be. Especially after last weeks blog where I waxed about the need to not worry about tomorrow; just let it come to you. Isn’t that the way with life? Just about the time you are confident about the secrets of life, just about the time things are as clear as the nose on your face, life changes. You do something or don’t do something and your vision is no longer clear. Things get all blurry and you spend the next 10 days getting things back into focus.

Take care.

Roger.

Predictions, Portents, and Probably?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. Last week, I wrote about the travails of caterpillars and their attacks on the unsuspecting and a bit naïve. I was trying to be kind; hoping that the reason the victims were in contact with these poisonous little buggers is that their parents had not raised them right. Parents who did not know better because they were not paying attention in high school biology or they did not have a jar to collect insects and then prematurely send lightning bugs to lightning bug heaven because no lightning bug ever survives no matter how much grass you put in the jar or how many holes you put in the lid with a 16 penny nail and hammer. So caterpillars are attacking the most vulnerable among us. Except for my fun and games playing splat at 16 mph, humanity seems to be doing very little to rid ourselves of the scourge of children’s allergic reaction pictures on Facebook.

I was sharing the vision of gut splatters on the road with a co-worker and they said “yeah, what do those blond caterpillars mean for how bad the winter is going to be?” I am thinking “pay attention here. The topic that I am talking about has nothing to do with winter weather severity and everything to do with vector analysis and practical story problem skills.” If a bike leaves the house 4 miles away travelling 16 mph and the caterpillar decides to cross the 20 foot country road going a foot a minute how far will the biker have to swerve from his usual track of 2 ft from the shoulder? Why are we more reliant on caterpillars for our winter weather forecasts rather than as excellent story problem references?

My co-worker went on to make a classic entomological mistake. “I have seen a lot of those blond wooly worms. Doesn’t blond mean that it will be a mild winter?” By misidentifying a regular old death deserving caterpillar as the sage winter prognosticating wooly worm, they had doomed themselves to a winter of discontent. Armed with poor information, their winter will be without the guideposts readily available to old timers through out the centuries. I was going to offer subtle correction; “what you saw was not the traditional wooly worm. They are brown and black in segments.” However, I could tell that their knowledge was so tightly held and my explaining skills so poor that frustration would ensue. It was time to cut my losses and go back to work on a spreadsheet. “Sure looks like a mild winter,” was all I could muster.

We do put a lot of faith in these signs of the future. We seem to be searching for any sign of what it coming; for the forecast. It doesn’t matter how good the prognosticator is at their craft. They could have never have gotten it correct and we will still give them credit and believe a least a little bit what they are predicting for our future. I am chief among suckers on this topic. I am holding fervently to the idea that the Super Bowl will be played in a blizzard in New York this next year after the Farmer’s Almanac made their bold prediction in September. It will serve those big city New Yorker fancy pants right.

I say bold because it was quite specific; a specific meteorological phenomena on a specific weekend in a specific spot. Most seers know to keep it vague and leave the results open to interpretation. Last year the wooly worm and the persimmon tree predicted a snowy early winter. Their advocates hung their hat on the brutal 3 inch blizzard on December 26. Yep, the wooly worm’s esteem catapulted based on the overreaction of the meteorological community and a panic prone public. The misappropriated attribution of accuracy has boosted his reputation to such an extent that people are rushing out and misidentifying our diminutive prophets and raising the status of your common blond caterpillar.

Insects and weather are not the only predictors in which we put our faith. This was made very clear to me while visiting my daughter and son-in-law earlier this fall. Being very smart people, they read a lot of books and in this case internet articles about books. They came across a book that makes personality and life success predictions based on your birthday. The article made it very clear that these predictions were NOT astrology which makes the same predictions based on . . . your birthday. No these predictions had the force of science behind it.

These scientists had culled the supermarket check out lane for stars of another type. Celebrities from all walks of life were included. From Einstein to Cher, they were all there. After star identification, these scientists categorized their personality traits and spewed forth that everyone born in the same 7 day period has the same traits. It strikes me that the sample would be a bit skewed towards nihilistic, narcissistic, nutcases. How are you going to overcome your obvious personality flaws if you were born this year on July 3^rd when you are following in the foot steps of Tom Cruise?  You are doomed; you poor cute little nutcase you.

As Ludicris (sorry all of you September 11 babies), as ludicrous as it may sound we do admire our stars. The ancients loved them in the sky and we, like the Greeks and Romans, look to them up on our Mt Olympus and read the oracles of their lives on the end cap in front of the checkout line. Now we worship at their feet in hopes that their good fortune and coping skills will reflect however dimly on our lives. I think that many of us are susceptible to this transference. I am. I read the article, looked at the Amazon description, read an excerpt. I was almost hooked by the part that predicts relationship compatibility based on the respective birthdays of the couple.

I am sorry to say that the Lovely Miss Beverly and I have been living a lie for the past 28 years. Our passion should have flamed out about 26 years ago if you believe people who have made it an academic pursuit to study the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Kardashian. Maybe we would be better off choosing a bit stronger foundation for predicting the future.

Or just not worry about it, and deal with it when we meet.
 

Take care,

Roger