Tossing and turning over nothing?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. The world is rushing pell mell through the most wonderful time of the year. The lovely Miss Beverly and I got into our one horse open sleigh and traveled to friends and family last weekend, on Christmas we loaded the visiting brood and went to grandma’s house.  We noticed that many of you did also. Traveling down the highways and byways, we noticed many of you were double parked in the barn lots and driveways of your families. That time honored practice of extended family Christmas. The last week celebrators were the lucky ones. I always loved the Sunday before extended family Christmas. It meant that there would be present opening before the 25^th. To not have to wait until Christmas, always felt like a little bit of cheating. Alas, it did not happen very often with the Sharritts. It appears that my ancestors were big rule followers. There were almost never any circumstances that would allow the premature opening of Christmas presents. In fact one year we had to wait until after the new year to celebrate and open the presents that technically should have been opened at least a week earlier. Oh the humanity.

I must say that I have a confession to make. All is not well in the paradise of Sharritt marital bliss. That’s correct. There are times when the lovely Miss Beverly is wrong. There is a bit of controversy here. I am afraid that the lovely Miss Beverly has fallen into the grasp of the big MATTRESS hoax. Millions of dollars have been spent by this power hungry lobby to convince us that our mattresses are trying to kill us. They are trying to convince us that our dead skin cells are sloughing off and falling into gravitational forces of our mattress. As the mattress grows and grows ever denser, it is a wonder that our floors can support these deadly bricks of dead human skin cells. Consequently,  after eight years it is out with the old and in with the new.

I don’t see why the public should be forced to endure this hoax when big MATTRESS refused to employ the basic manufacturing principle of planned obsolescence. Light bulbs could last a thousand years, but by utilizing planned obsolescence the light bulb manufacturers sell us a new one every 12 months or so. Cars don’t have to wear out every six years. I have never seen a WWII tank sitting in an outdoor museum  all rusted out. No 4 inches of hardened steel would solve our car replacement problems. However, big AUTO and big CAR LOAN colluded and decided that they would make cars that would last about six years. Just in time to pay off the old car loan, save a small down payment and indenture you once again to the finance company.

Big MATTRESS did not learn this lesson. They kept making mattresses better and better; using space age materials, and stainless steel coils. Then one day they realized that no one was replacing their mattresses. There was no need. My 20 year old mattress is nearly as firm today as it was the day that we bought it. In the bad old days before quality mattress production processes. The mattress would break down in the middle under the bulkier parts of our bodies. By the end of our long winter’s nap we would have completed what was warmly referred to as a Hoosier Yoga party. By laying on our sides, we would complete the supine crescent pose (remember to roll over and stretch the other way). Lay on your back and you would be doing the inverted downward dog. Roll over and finish with the cobra. For those married couples, after a few years of marital bliss they would find themselves doing the sinking to the middle stay on your side pose unable to keep from rolling down the steeply sloped mattress sides into the middle of the bed.

In the morning, after you managed to finally straighten up, you would find that you had completed a rigorous yoga work out for free. Now with these new and improved mattress making processes, we find that our range of motion continues to diminish over time as we lie fully supported on our ever firm mattresses. To compensate, we buy gym memberships every January, go to two yoga classes, get discouraged and revert back to our inflexible life styles for the remain 51 weeks of the year.

So as big MATTRESS made better and better products, we stopped buying new mattresses every 8 years. Something had to be done. The American mattress industry was about to implode. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So big MATTRESS and big YOGA got together and invented the eight year guideline. Of course it is bogus.

Think about the science. Go ahead and remove the peel off that banana in the kitchen; throw it out on the side walk in the middle of summer and look to see if you can find it in a couple of days. Like all organic matter, the banana peel and your skin cells break down. They go poof and become a shell of their former selves. Besides most of them do not slough off in bed. Most of them let go of their tenuous hold on your sorry carcass in the shower. You get all suds up and they slip off into the water park ride of your plumbing. I suppose the next big exfoliator would be your cloths. That sweatshirt and jeans probably coax several more millions of cells every day from your furry hide, leaving very few to get out of Dodge in your bed. Even at that, they have to get through the pajamas and sheets before sinking into the mattress to molder into compost.

I hear you saying “but Roger, logic is no proof. Of course we need to replace our mattresses every eight years. Why would they threaten us with penalty of law for removing the tags that have the manufacturing date printed plainly upon it?” Why indeed? Why would big MATTRESS convince big GOVERNMENT to make it illegal to remove a tag from our mattresses when what goes on in the bedroom is no one’s business? If logic does not convince you, let’s try experience. If billions of skin cell were sloughing off in your bed nightly and making compost, wouldn’t families who routinely ate poppy seed covered bagels in bed and had bed wetting children visit them in the night wake up in poppy fields some morning? It does not happen, not even on Facebook or YouTube.

So unless you are one of those people who never showers and sleeps on the mattress without a stitch of clothing on, you have nothing to worry about. If you are one of those people, the age of your mattress is the least of your quality of life issues.

I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t you just whining and complaining too much? Stop the drama Roger. Go out and buy a new mattress? What are you afraid of? I’ll tell you what I am afraid. The lovely Miss Beverly has her heart set on a memory foam mattress and it frightens me. You know Memory Foam is that space age material that lets you sink down into it; compressing the little air space between its polymer fibers. The compressions leaves your entire body fully supported. It is kinda like Hans Solo in horizontal carbonite. The “great” thing is that memory foam remembers and retains your shape should you have to get up in the middle of the night for relief. If you don’t know what I’m talking about don’t worry you’ll be fifty soon enough. This allows you to come back to bed and fall back to sleep in the same warm and comfy position you left a few minutes earlier. How sweet is that?

It’s terrifying. What happens if you choose wrong on the first night and sleep in the wrong position? What happens if you read too long in bed and the foam mistakenly remembers that you sleep on your back? Am I to torture the lovely Miss Beverly with my snoring til death do us part? That’s what I do when I sleep on my back. Sometimes I like to sleep on my right side; sometimes on my left. Am I never allowed to change my mind in my memory foam mold? I am not a camera tucked in to a foam filled briefcase with snug compartments cut out for my ears, nose, or chin. Memory foam scares me.

Don’t worry. It will work itself out. I will overcome my fears. The lovely Miss Beverly and I will work out our differences and reach a compromise. I will stop losing sleep and settle down for our long winter’s nap.

Take care.

Roger

Do you see what I see?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. In the words of National Public Radio, “All things considered,” I’m doing fine. We are in the clutches of Christmas mania; making trips to son’s and daughter’s houses, making plans to go to our annual visit with friends at Arni’s in Lebanon, making some 600 pieces of homemade caramels for work friends and nieces and nephews that are in college. Thankfully, we have found a neighborhood girl who will wrap caramels for cash. We continue to scour ebay for a functioning salt water taffy wrapping machine cheap. Actually, the task of finding a mechanical solution has fallen to me. I never understand why the lovely Miss Beverly doesn’t share my love of gadgetry. It doesn’t have to be “labor saving.” It just has to be a gadget and I am in.

You would think that some gap toothed carny would have “found” one as the carnival was leaving town. They could simply carry the pile of mechanical wizardry back to the trailer park and sell it on ebay.  No luck so far. Alas, we have had to continue to look for people who will take jobs that Sharritts won’t do. That task has fallen to the lovely Miss Beverly. She has always been better at connecting. Connections are what is needed when looking for candy wrappers. It is not that we are too good to wrap them, or that we don’t care for our loved ones and coworkers enough to sacrifice this little bit of time in thinking about gifts of confectionary perfection.  We just find it mind numbingly boring. Sure I will poison my friends with high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, butter, and heavy whipping cream (or as I like to say all of the good things in life) but I don’t like being bored while doing it.

While Savana has been standing at the kitchen counter lovingly wrapping caramels for people she doesn’t know, the lovely Miss Beverly and I have had huge chunks of free time. We have used that free time very productively. We went to visit Ben in Bloomington on Saturday and went Christmas light watching on Friday evening.

I love Christmas lights. Actually, I love to look at Christmas lights. I am very ambivalent about putting out Christmas lights. However, I loath taking them down. First off, why take them down on the first of January? We are still in the grips of the winter darkness. Sure the days will be getting longer but by the 25^th, we will still be 45 days from driving home with some daylight. Leave up your lights people. Secondly, I am too lazy to take down Christmas lights. Sure social conventions pressure us to take them down. But why? Really, what does it hurt to leave up your Christmas lights and outdoor decorations up year around? I suppose the bright sunlight of summer would fade all of you Santa suits to pink the first year. Let’s just say that Santa is wearing pink in solidarity with the NFL and breast cancer awareness. Also, I suppose that it would be a pain trimming around the base of all of those santas. But isn’t that why weed eaters and Roundup were made? I would use the weed eater solution. The grass splatters all over the santas would work as a sunscreen. This would help them retain their red tint longer. I challenge everyone to leave up their Christmas lights and outdoor decorations year around. I promise not to ridicule you or make disparaging remarks about your ancestry, Cletus.

What about leaving your indoor lights up year round? I do not care. What people do in the privacy of their own home with their Christmas lights is up to them. I do remember a house in Lafayette that left a Christmas tree lit in a window that overlooked a busy street for years. Every two years the local paper would call them up and ask why they didn’t take their tree down. The story started that they had a relative that went off to war and was supposed to be discharged and home for Christmas. The relative died in battle so they left the tree up in honor of his sacrifice. Later the story changed to just being curmudgeons who did not want to take their tree down. This micro fame does point to a bit of discrimination between indoor and outdoor decoration laziness. Leave your lights up indoors and you get a bit of your 15 minutes of fame every couple of years. Leave them up outside and let’s face it you’re hilljack trash.

I love to go drive around looking at Christmas lights. What a blessing it is to have $2.40 gas again. I can afford to drive around with the lovely Miss Beverly for a couple of hours on a Friday evening watching as festive Hoosiers blast billions of photons into the dark Indiana evening. As we were driving around Southern Madison County, I commented that what we really need is an app for this. It wouldn’t be that hard to develop. Just go out and get a book “App development for Dummies” perhaps. Give up writing the blog for a couple of weeks (see last week’s blog), spend countless hours reading and debugging woefully inadequate code,  and out of frustration pay the kid next door $500 and you have yourself a Christmas light tracking app. You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when I found that my million dollar idea already had an app for that.

Of course, I downloaded it. I downloaded it immediately. I couldn’t download it fast enough. I was set. With sweaty palms, I swiped to open the app on Saturday morning. You would not believe my disappointment. I live in a Christmas light dead zone. According to the app, there is nary a Christmas light display in all of Madison County. How could this be? I had thought that I had witnessed numerous displays worthy of mention. There were the battling displays in Ingalls. It looks like neighbors had been going around to garage sales for years buying up the plastic figures. They had rows and rows of santas, toy soldiers, candy canes and rain dear. They were lined up facing each other across the street. Those phalanx of iconic plastic figures reminded me of a giant red rover game. Red Rover Red Rover, we send Jolly Santa over.

The winter festival of lights in Fortville does not exist. The 45 minutes that was spent in Summer Lake did not happen. I just thought that I saw house after house lit up. You can imagine the disappointment that I felt with that discovery. I had the impression that the concentration of Christmas lights in the 200 acres of Summer Lake which is surrounded by inky dark farm land on all sides would be bright enough to be seen by the space station.

Thankfully, I am a doer and not a stewer. After a few minutes of outrage at the slight given to the Christmas light outdoor decoration mecca that is Southern Madison County, an idea came to me. We have our marching orders between now and Christmas. The lovely Miss Beverly and I will be taking our iPads and marking our maps with all of the lights of Madison County. We will not be known as a Christmas spirit dead zone.

Because everybody knows that the lookers are the yen to the decorator’s yang.

Take care.
Roger.

I've Said What 200 Times?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand doing better than I have done in a few months. It also finds me at the start of our 200^th blog together. I am perseverant. You are easily amused. I appreciate both.

On average, it takes two to three hours to put down what is on my mind. People ask me (I’m delusional. Actually, I ask myself) “how could you have better spent that four to six hundred hours over the past 4 plus years?” Sure I could have spent it finding the cure for cancer or even more significantly, discovered the mysteries of teleportation (or teletransportation depending if you are a tomato or tomato person. (It never works in print.)) It is true that I have long wanted to discover the secrets of teleportation. I have seen this dark art’s usefulness since the early days of Star Trek. (Yes, I was there for the original.) I want teleportation all for myself. I would never fly or drive again. I would move all of the gold out of fort knox to my back bedroom. If I ever developed cancer, I would find a way to teleport myself from here to there and leave the cancer here; effectively curing cancer and discovering the secret of teleportation; a two-fer so to speak. I would do all of these things and find ways to spend the remaining 50 hours keeping it out of the hands of the N oncompliant S entinals of A merica.

Actually, both of those noble pursuits would take too much effort. I may start for a day or two. Then, I would figure out that I would have to relearn calculus which I did not learn very well the first time and give up. Without the blog, I would have ended up looking at pictures of cats in ridiculous outfits on Facebook. They would be looking back into the camera with eyes that seem to be saying “Shoot me now. Please.” I know that this is true. It is what I do now. Come on, I surely have had more than 600 hours of useful free time in the past four years, and I wasted every one of those precious hours looking at those stupid forlorn cats.

The first paragraph of this post testifies to doing better than I have done in several months. I would write about it but I have a hard and fast rule that there are parts of my life that I do not write about. I know that you think I am simply teasing. However, I am not. I am amazed at stories of people who post things on their wall or Facebook status and are flabbergasted that there are ramifications. They write the school food sucks and are surprised when they find a loogie in the mystery meat the next day. Come on dude; use your brain. You are not the first person who couldn’t go around saying whatever was on their mind.

I suppose that honor would go to Jesus. Yes, that Hispanic man who lived in the Middle East 2000 years ago. Isn’t it obvious that God said no posting anything about the “Kingdom of God” on Facebible? Seems pretty obvious to me. So what did we get? We got parables. “He who has ears let him hear.” The next thing you know you have mustard seeds, lost coins, lost sheep and seeds on the hard ground, but no dishing on the Kingdom of Heaven.

So in the manner of all great story tellers, here is a parable. There once was a dedicated Christmas pageant director named Marge down at the local church. Every year, she got the children to stand in straight rows, make cherubic hand gestures, sing their songs, and dress in homemade angel wings, and sheep costumes, all the while looking adoringly at the manger with the stars of the show, Mary and Joseph (who am I kidding only Mary, Jo is an extra) singing a couple of verses solo. Marge worked very hard. She had call outs right after Halloween. She knew that the kids would still be on their sugar high from the Halloween candy that first Sunday but there were only so many Sundays and Christmas Eve was only 54 days away.

This year she chose Cindy McDermit to be Mary. Cindy was a precocious fifth grader. Her ascendancy to the role of Mary was, like a good Calvinist, pre-destined. She had steadily moved up through the ranks the previous 4 years. She had been the lead sheep her first year; bleating “let us go see the King.” Her second year she was Harold the Hark Angel singing Gloooooooooooo oria. Her third year she nearly stole the show giving baby Jesus his present of Gold. Last year, Cindy would have been Mary but the preacher’s daughter had never been Mary and it was her last chance; politics. Cindy readily agreed to be the little drummer boy and people commented that the rumpapumpums had never been crisper.

It was Cindy’s year and this was going to be the greatest Christmas pageant ever. In fact, the director used this year to order new music and arrangements for the pageant. In an effort to modernize things, there would even be angel tweeting; #haroldtheharkangelsays “get down to Bethlehem you smelly shepherds.” It was time. It was big, and with Cindy in the lead it wasn’t that big of a risk.

However, even at this young age, Cindy was a very busy person. She was in the school play. She started basketball right after soccer. She was running all the time. As a result, there wasn’t time to completely learn the lines by the Sunday before Thanksgiving. That’s okay there was Thanksgiving vacation. The kids could come in Friday, and Saturday for a little extra practice. However, Cindy’s family was out of town. There would be no extra practice. The calendar turned. The Christmas Eve deadline neared. The lines weren’t perfect yet and the pageant director started to lose sleep. She spoke words of encouragement to the kids. Things were going to be fine. She told the kids and herself. She lost more sleep. She just needed Cindy to have one good practice and lock those lines down.

That practice was scheduled from 1 to 4 on the Sunday before Christmas. The first two hours would be with Cindy and the other leads. The last 2 hours a dress rehearsal for the big night in three days on Christmas Eve. Then it happened. Cindy’s mom called at 9:00 on Sunday morning to say that Cindy wouldn’t be able to make it to practice she was very sick. Hopefully, she would be well enough on Monday or Tuesday to come to another practice but there was no way today.

At that moment, a wave of peace came over the pageant director. The pageant was going to fail. There was nothing that could be done to help Cindy learn her lines. Suddenly, there were no plans to shift, no shortcuts to find, no false encouragement to give. The new and improved pageant was too much to bite off. However, the die had been cast and with no ability to change the outcome, Marge was able to accept it and let the peace of that acceptance come over her. She slept like a baby once again.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the theme of these 200 posts. I jokingly said Assassin Deer and flannel sheets. The lovely Miss Beverly is also a common theme. Actually there have been two Rogers saying what this past four years. One Roger likes to pull the pin on verbal hand grenades and offer his opinions about how ridiculous he finds situations and people. These rants have grown fewer and farther between. While fun and cathartic, expressing strident opinions doesn’t do much. They are like street lamps on a very dark and lonely road. They attract like opinioned people search for company, but they change no minds and bring about some frustration because the individuals in the group can’t understand why the world isn’t different when everyone they know are just like them.

The other Roger has found overtime that he has a knack at letting people explore three needs in their lives; who are they, who they are becoming, and the tribe to which they belong? The posts,that have struck the greatest chord with you, have described situations of who I am at that moment, provided a small glimpse of who I am becoming, and a fuzzy picture of the tribe. Don’t think that it is an open book or a very clear picture. As I said, there is a policy about not writing about some things and some people, and I often don’t see the pictures of what I can write about clearly enough to describe it. They are just glimpses, stitched together in a chain 200 links long; some strong, some very weak. In the end, I find myself sleeping better.

Take care.

Roger

Thanksgiving Stuffing

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. This blog puts me on the cusp of 200 blogs. This is number 199. I don’t know if I have a special 200^th edition or if I will find a regular shiny bauble to interest me into writing. We shall see. I do think that 199 is pretty epic.

You will remember from the last post that big doings were in the offing. Nephew Max was coming back to the scene of his greatest epicurean feat. Two years ago, he had eaten 7 honey buttered yeast rolls. It had started out as adoration for the roll. Out of all of the food on a fabulous Thanksgiving spread, Max chose the roll to love. There was turkey, and stuffing, mashed potatoes and noodles, some celery cut up and a carrot for veggies. There was pie by the half dozen with whipped cream piled high but it was the yeast rolls that caught young master Max’s eye.

In anticipation of the great day, I had immortalized Max’s feat of intestinal fortitude. Sibling and cousin love being what it is, my tome of gastronomical encouragement became a challenge for brothers and cousin. As everyone arrived after their arduous trek over rivers and through woods, I heard the first faint rumblings of competitive juices. Suddenly, we had three big eaters laying claim to the best. Three teen tummies denying themselves the cheeseball and cracker appetizer that the older grazers were brunching through. The wise ones in the room knew from experience that these sprints for glory are well past us. One should take it slowly when warming up to the task of annual gluttony.

Sensing competitive shortages ahead, the lovely Miss Beverly sprinted into action, pulled out another bag of flour, reopened the tub of yeast and doubled the roll recipe. She is a lovely life saver that Miss Beverly. As one o’clock rolled around, the noodles were done, the potatoes were smushed, the stuffing stuffed and the pies were sliced. It was time. Lord bless this food and the family. Thank you for the blessings of the past year and may the best boy win.

Before the eating could begin, the ritual talking had to take place. It is the American way. All of sports radio is a testament to the importance of talking about what you are going to do before you do it, or talking about what you are not going to do because “talkin ain’t walkin” as my grammatically challenged grandpa used to say.

“Wait a minute boys. How many rolls are you going to eat?” Sam the bold immediately responded, “Fifteen.”

“Fifteen? Well you better put those mashed potatoes, noodles, cheesy macaroni, and turkey back.” “Nah, I’ll be fine.”

“The heck you will. But never mind; go ahead, fill up and lose focus with all of those other goodies. Just don’t be disappointed when the “I told you so’s” come out later when you lose steam and don’t make your goal of 15.”

Fifteen was a well thought out goal. Sam the bold is 14. Any boy worth his salt should be able to eat his age plus one. In all fairness, Sam would have made Thanksgiving lore if it weren’t for the aforementioned carbs. There was still a chance. His plate had sensible servings. In fact, Sam sprinted out to a quick start. The arbitrary uncle’s council declared that we did not care how many were eaten before number 7. “Let us know when you get to number seven.” Let’s face it number one through seven is pretty boring. No one is going to throw up on one through seven. No one is likely to chew too quickly and have a roll go down the wrong pipe. The arbitrary uncle’s council is a lot of things but hovering and worrying about the preliminaries isn’t one of them. Our motto is “come back when you’re interesting in about 5 years.” Sam sprinted out to eight eaten when he faced a crisis. It is a crisis that we all face; a mini version of midlife. “I am midway to the goal. There is still a long way to go for success, and it will be hard to reach. Plus, I haven’t had any pie yet. It is a tough decision. I want to make the goal but that pie looks very good. I think that I will have a piece or two of pie.” Poof, goal is abandoned. Sam the bold’s count? Eight.

The beautiful thing about Sam’s boldness is that it cleared the way for Joe the sly, and Max the mighty. They were able to get in there and eat what they could eat without being targeted by the Uncle’s commentary.

Joe is the fleet footed “Illinois cousin;” a cross country runner of some repute. Obviously, he has an unfair advantage both on the course and at the table. “That boys got a holler leg” (thanks grandpa.) It makes him fast at cross country and a force at the feast table. He had kept pace with Sam. As Sam exited at the ramp to Pie-ville. Joe kept his foot on the pedal and kept rolling down the road. However, his cover was gone and the uncles were able to focus their laser like focus on the fleet footed one. We counted and watched. 11, . . . 12, . . . . . 13,. . . . . . . . . . 14, . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 was a bridge too far. It was a gallant effort. However, 15 was never Joe’s goal. It was Sam the bold’s goal. Joe was simply able to excuse himself, wipe the crumbs from his shirt front and go off to more esoteric pursuits.

Before we turn ourselves to the plight of young Master Max, I want to take a moment to commend Sam the bold. Certain uncles have been known to run a joke into the ground. Sometimes even hurting the feelings of the recipient. I have never recalled witnessing such running amok but I have had the opportunity to apologize for certain excesses in the past. Mr. Sam the bold stood up to the teasing quite well and even came up with a couple of great jokes himself. So good that he nearly caused his brother, Max the magnificent, to lose his good work by laughing uncontrollably with a mouth full of his sixth roll. That would have been “icing on the cake”; so to speak.

That left Max the mighty. He of the 7 roll fame two years ago. He is a smart one that Max. He kept his goal simple. “One more than my brother.” That would make 9; nine rolls to glory. One bite at a time Max slowly worked his way to the goal. He would take the roll break it into pieces and slather each piece with honey butter to help everything go down. As mentioned earlier, there was a near crisis at roll 6. A fit of laughter caused by a helpful brother nearly sidetracked Max’s climb to greatness. 7, 8, 9; it was done. He had made it. Fist bumps all around. It was time to go play with the cousins.

Isn’t it great to boldly proclaim even if you fall short? Isn’t it great to hang in there and put away 14 yeast rolls and not throw up? Isn’t it great to beat your older brother? I love Thanksgiving.

Take care.

Roger

Gift of the Mag-pie.

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Today finds me with nearly a full stack of wood, a brief respite from the cold weather and family starting to congregate getting ready for Thanksgiving. These are good things. I am blessed.

This weekend is the start of big doings. It is the first of two big doings. The lovely Miss Beverly has been enlisted by my side of the family to make pie. You may have seen the Instagram last evening proclaiming success. As I stepped into church, this morning the ringing of praises filled the

sanctuary. “Bev is so gifted at making pie.” “That pie sure looks good.” “You are so lucky to have that Beverly making you pies.” That last guy’s wife didn’t seem quite as pleased at Bev’s giftedness. I may have been reading her body language incorrectly, but I am pretty sure that holding a rolling pin wielded menacingly above the head is a sign of displeasure.

Pie making is a good thing to be gifted at; to enjoy, to have in your wheel house. People know this intuitively. Pie is good. Pie is great. Everybody wants to eat pie. More importantly, we want to eat good pie. Sure, we will eat cheap pie. I will eat the $3.79 eight inch pumpkin pie. I will eat it gladly with 3 heaping serving spoons of whipped cream smeared over its 50.2 square inches. Measuring pie in square inches often confuses me; pie are round not square. It confuses me until I think about 50.2 square inches of whipped cream enhanced pumpkin, and I get over it.

We will all eat that $3.79 pie from that gourmet pie shop called Target, but we won’t ever say that the Target pie fairies are gifted. Spiffily dressed maybe, but they are not gifted pie makers. We know what gifted pie making tastes like, and it doesn’t come from a box from Target. Good pie crust is flakey with a stick of Crisco cut in. The crust is thick but not too thick. The filling is chilled before it is poured in the crust. Go ahead and put an extra dash of sugar in the pecan and an extra pat of butter in there too, take that extra time to brush the egg whites on the top crust of the raspberry pie.

We do rely on the lovely Miss Beverly’s giftedness. She always comes through. It is a good thing too. The dessert counter would have been pretty bare without her six pies. And as we all said on the way home, “that was good practice for Thursday.

Speaking of practice for next Thursday, anticipation is building this year. Everyone coming to the Hoover feast is holding their breath. It is the two year anniversary of Mini Max’s triumphant seven honey roll binge at T-giving two years ago. You can read all about it in the November 26, 2012 blog “Wish you were here.” It was an epic battle of boy against honeyed yeast goodness. A case where grandpa Doyle would have said “don’t let your eyes be too big for your stomach” in good hearted teasing. And the boy would have responded “don’t worry grandpa. I got this.”

Things were tense for a moment. The seventh one causing a bit of sweat to break out on his forehead; swallowing hard; crazy uncles and cousins balancing on that thin line between encouragement and too much encouragement. But he did it. He ate all seven and kept them down. He even had a strong enough pancreas to secrete the insulin needed to metabolize all of that sugar. We were all impressed.

Now as the rematch between boy and food approaches, questions abound. Is 11 year old Max as good as 9 year old Max, or has he lost a step to the ravages of age? One would think that his stomach has not stopped growing. Surely, it is getting bigger. But what about his heart? Has his drive, his determination, that certain something that separates the greats from us mere mortals, has that stopped growing? Can he eat his age in honey rolls? Next Thursday around noon, Max will sit at a table piled with platters of food. Will he focus on the rolls or be distracted by the noodles? They are both tempting starches; both comfort foods. Time will tell.

His fan club will be there in full force. I hope that there is time to make a banner. "Go Max Go. Eat Those Rolls. Eleven or Bust." Aunts will cheer. Cousins will howl with laughter. And Uncles will "throw up" their arms in wild exultation and experience a moment of self-congratulation for keeping another piece of Bev’s magic pie for themselves.

Take care.

Uncle Roger

Time to embrace the flannel

Dear Blog Reader            

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. This winter weather has gotten pretty serious in a hurry. Just goes to show you what will happen when you throw hurricane force winds at Alaska. That’s right the Alaskans get honked off and send an early artic vortex can of whoop butt on our Hoosier Thanksgiving.

I do want to take this small opportunity to do some advertising. To the right of this blog is a button that lets you follow the blog. If you join ranks of blog followers, you will become part of an exclusive group of followers in the world. You will have something in common with 30 or so other followers. Out of all of the millions of people in the world on the internet, you would become part of the cool few who get notification that a new post has been perpetrated on the world. That would be a great Christmas present for yourself; nothing screams merry Christmas to me like the prestige and honor of knowing that you are part an elite, connected, group of cultured, hip, and well educated individuals. And I will get a kick of having a few more people follow “You Said What, Roger?”.

The Lovely Miss Beverly and I were sitting around a table with some good friends the other evening. (I can call you good friends. Can’t I?) We were speaking about the blog, and a recurring theme discussion started. “What do you think the recurring themes of your blog are Roger?” Without hesitation I said, “Assassin deer.” Which isn’t entirely true. It is Assassin deer and flannel sheets.

I was reminded of this by one of the blogs super readers. (I can call you a super reader. Can’t I?) After reading last week’s blog about the assassin deer attack on the Lovely Miss Beverly’s car and gathering walnuts for the impending winter. I received the following message in my in box. “When are you changing to flannel sheets?”

I was dumb struck. I had dropped the ball. I was so focused on the Assassin deer that I had forgotten about the flannel sheets. It is true that most of my focus in on removal of flannel sheets in the spring and trying to rally the troops to keep them on through May 15^th in an homage to the weather gods capricious nature and their desire to ruin the apple crop with a late season freeze. My focused obsession in one area had kept me blind to this other danger lurking in the shadows sneaking up on me. I had left the Sharritt’s exposed to mortal danger. We were one quick cold snap from freezing to death in our sleep. (Or at least being uncomfortable for an hour or two in the middle of the night trying to outlast the Lovely Miss Beverly. Hoping she would get up walk across the cold floor pull out the emergency quilt and lay it lovingly over my cold body, thereby allowing my body to generate more warmth through the shear exertion of supporting 50 lbs of blankets.)

To make excuses: the weather had lulled me into complacency. Sure October temps were cool for their daytime highs, but the overnights stayed pretty warm. The average frost date in Indianapolis is mid- October. 3 out of the last 4 years we received a frost the last week of September. This year? It was late October. Average temperatures are such a tricky thing. So the nights have not been cold enough to need flannel sheets.

Also, the Sharritt’s have made a technological leap. This past summer we put in geo thermal air conditioning and consequently, heating. We have relied totally on wood heat for the past 10 years. I have always felt like the exercise of cutting wood has made me a conservationist. Every room that I shut the heat off in is a ½ piece per day of wood that I do not have to cut. Every degree that I leave the temp below 70 degrees is another ½ piece of wood per day that I do not have to cut.  Pretty soon those 120 days of one piece of wood add up and I save a couple of trees. The other challenge with the old technology is that the house took a long while to heat up. Turn up the heat and then sit in front of space heaters and under blankets while the house warmed from 60 up to 70 before bed time. Then we would turn back the heat and bask beneath the heavenly flannel sheets for our long winter’s nap.

With the new technology, the wood heat is augmented with the geothermal and wow the house heats up very quickly. We can jump the temp 10 degrees in about 45 minutes. The temperature changes so quickly that we are concerned that tornadoes could be spawned across the warm front as it moves through the house. The other thing that happens is that we find ourselves waking up soaked in sweat because we have set the fancy thermostat to start warming the house at 4:10; 20 minutes before alarm clocks start sounding for Bev and I to start our days. Literally, I started to empathize with the frog sitting in the slowly warming water not realizing that the critical boiling temperatures were arriving until it was too late. Morning after morning, I have been throwing the covers off in fitful bursts trying to keep from spontaneously combusting. The situation would become truly dire if we were to have flannel sheets on the bed.

Not to worry, I have been adjusting the fancy thermostat so the heat comes on later and later. A couple more days and the conditions will be right for flannel sheets and all will be right with the world.

Isn’t that the trouble with technology? Every advancement leaves us searching for answers to cope with the changes the advancement created. On the way to increased warmth, we get too hot so now we can’t enjoy the goodness that is a flannel sheet. We adjust until we learn to live with the progress that technology has brought, and find ourselves in nearly the same spot where we started.  We see it with computers, smart phones, microwave popcorn, and the electric tooth brush.

For now though, it is time to turn back the heat and put on the flannel sheets. Winter is coming and nothing says warm like flannel on a cold, dark, winter’s night. It is time to embrace the flannel.

Take care.

Roger

I say nuts to that.

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand doing pretty okay. How’s that for a resounding   endorsement as to the state of my affairs. The Sharritt’s do feel a bit under attack. Last week, I wrote of the effort to spy on the lovely Miss Beverly and me by the Assassin Deer and one of his minions, Ricky Raccoon. As you can read in last week’s blog, it did not end well for our enemies. This week saw a direct frontal attack. Not to worry, no one was injured. Although the Subaru received a bloody nose and is a bit dinged up.

The lovely Miss Beverly was heading for work on her usual route. (I know; routine is the enemy of personal security. This fight will take constant vigilance.) At the bottom of the hill, a quarter of a mile from the front door, a doe comes streaking in at an oblique angle from the northeast. Bev’s fast reflexes kick in. She slams on the brakes and takes evasive maneuvers. Stupid antilock brakes lengthened the stopping distance. Consequently, there was contact. However, the damage was minimal. Unfortunately, the terrorist perpetrator was able to limp off. Actually, the doe went over to the nearest fence and leapt over it without any sign of lasting hurt. Bev returned to the house and we examined the damage.

The damage was not too bad, I peeled off the chrome piece that advertised to the world that we drove a Subaru Forester. I should not be too surprised that the Assassin deer would attack an icon of encroachment; the Forester. I have kept it for a souvenir, and am waiting for the opportunity to tack it on to the Assassin deer head that I am committed to mounting in the man cave in our home. (I have been informed that that act of vengeful home decoration will require the lovely Miss Beverly’s dead body. I can always mount it to the radiator of my wood hauling tractor.) The right front head light might shine off a bit more to the right now. Which is a good thing, it gives a great view of the side ditches in rural South Madison County; side ditches that are the staging ground for Assassin Deer attacks. The Side Ditches of Madison County: wouldn’t that be the title of a great book and follow on movie with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood? Meryl could play the lovely Miss Beverly and Clint (after extensive make up) could play the bitter Assassin Deer. Somebody call my copy right lawyer.

Like the Assassin Deer driven by the change in day length, temperatures or the calendar, I am feeling the change of the year. My life is definitely in the gathering mode. I am gathering wood to burn for heat in the winter and this year I have been gathering walnuts. Like a ground squirrel on meth, I have been scurrying around picking up all of the walnuts that I can find. I literally have more than 10 gallons of hulled nuts stored up for this winter.

I find myself having to give a walnut primer at this point. Walnuts, when found in the wild, have a green husk that grows around the hard woody shell that encases the nut meat. When the walnut falls to the ground the green husk turns all black and gooey. They are nasty things to look at, and nastier things to touch. That black and gooey part has tannins that will permanently stain whatever it touches a dark brown to black. Your ancestors when they became tired of looking at clothes that were the natural white of cotton or wool, realized that they could change all of their cloths to a dirty brown color by soaking them in a tub of water with plenty of walnut husks mixed in. The puritans were a dower, sullen looking people for a reason. They had just stained their cloths a depressing color and it wasn’t coming out. They were stuck with it.

This husk has to come off. Once discarded, you still haven’t reached to good meat on the inside. A huskless walnut is a wooden structure that is hard to break. You can run over them with a car and they don’t break. You can squeeze them with pliers and unless they are the huge channel locks, you aren’t going to open them up. You can hit them with a hammer but you had better wear eye protection because they produce some serious shrapnel. The hammer method is too much of a good thing. Sure the nut is open. However the good stuff is smashed to smithereens and infused with splinters of the shell. No walnut cracking is an exercise in physics. You want a long lever to generate a lot of power with a short throw so that power is limited in the damage that it can to. Once these attributes are finely balanced and in harmony, the nut is opened revealing the tasty nutmeat.  

I have the nut guy to blame for my walnut obsession. It is an obsession. Two weeks ago, I had cleaned up all of the walnuts around our place. We went to a friend’s house and walking between their drive way and the back door. I went in and asked if he had a 5 gallon bucket that I could use to take some nuts home. The nut guy is a friendly retiree at the Pendleton Farmer’s market who promised that “these walnuts are the best you have ever eaten.” That is a lie. His walnuts taste like any other walnut in the world. But I believed him and bought a couple of quarts last year. After breaking a couple of store bought nutcrackers, smashing my fingers using channel lock pliers and having several nut shrapnel slivers removed from my face, I still had a quart and ¾ left and still had no nutmeat to show for it.

Like the one tracked minded person I can become from time to time, I turned to the internet and found the best walnut cracker ever. Most of the time when you look for the “world’s best”, the selection is simply narrowed down to the top 100. Not so with walnut crackers. There appears to be one claimant to that title. The owners of that title are a small mom and pop business in rural Iowa. They have harvested the laws of physics. The cracker is about a foot tall, it has a handle about two feet long and it moves a steel piston approximately 3/8 of an inch; “just enough to crack the walnut and not damage the meat.” And it costs $100.

Sure, I could have just thrown away the $3.00 of walnuts gone to Trader Joes and bought all of the $12.00 a pound shelled walnuts I could ever have wanted. But no, I had a problem that needed solved. I had 25 walnuts that could not be cracked. I had found a solution; a $100 nut cracker that took up 3 feet of counter space in the lovely Miss Beverly’s kitchen. It seemed that my path was clear. I would convince the lovely Miss Beverly that fresh cracked walnuts were better for you; the nut guy’s walnuts were much better than store bought walnuts, and never let her see the receipt for the $100 nutcracker until I had cracked enough nuts to get the price per nut below the store bought nuts. So the nutcracker arrived in December. I cracked my 25 walnuts at a $4.00 a nut rate, and waited for this year’s nut crop to come in.

After collecting, hundreds of nuts this fall, husking the nasty black hulls and staining my hands, I am set. By next September, after cracking 4 nuts a day, I will be nearing the ½ way point to bragging about how cheap the world’s best nut cracker is. Like all of the rest of the squirrels, I know that life is good when it is November and you have 25 lbs of nature's free goodness stored for the long winter ahead.

Take care.

Roger.

Keeping Track of the time

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I feel much better after getting Ebola and ISIS out of my system last week. Isn’t that the way of worries and concerns? You are going along just fine. Everything is cool. Then, something appears. Worries on the periphery congregate; accumulating, getting more numerous. Suddenly what was clear blue sky is now overcast and ominous. Thankfully, writing about it clears things away. I would say that we are now partly cloudy, on a cool spring day; warm when the sun shines; cold and shivering when a cloud interrupts my sunbeam.

It is hard to believe that we are racing through October. November is just around the corner and with it, my precious returns. My precious hour of sleep that the government stole from me last March with day light “savings” time. Isn’t it ironic that an entity that can’t save enough money from my tax dollars and use that savings for the development of a vaccine to prevent “the AIDS of our time”, Ebola, can sneak into our bedrooms in March and remove a precious hour from our alarm clocks? Obviously, Santa needs to tighten up on security at the North Pole because his secret is out regarding that neat trick of getting to everyone’s house in one night. I believe that he has been hacked by the N.orthern S.ly A.malgamation. Next thing that you know, he will find out Santa’s secret of being able to be in numerous shopping malls from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve while supervising his elven, slave labor force.

It is my duty to report the first casualty of the season’s shift out of DST to regular time; or as I like to call it Back to the Dark Ages. Usually, it is only embarrassing when you show up an hour early after “falling back” the last Sunday of October instead of the first Sunday of November. The consequences are a bit stiffer when, like the Colt’s defense, you show up confused about the manmade semiannual rift in the space time continuum and let the Steelers drop 51 on you. Still that is nothing compared to the consequences of a miscalculation by my arch nemesis the Assassin Deer and one of his minions, Ricky Raccoon.

You see I have been suffering from a bit of insomnia, what with Ebola and ISIS (read the blog before this if you need more context.) I had suffered through a particularly bad night last Tuesday night. Tossing and turning, counting sheep, counting backwards from 100, counting 100 sheep backwards, nothing was working. So at 3:00 a.m., I got out of bed and read for a while. The next thing that I knew it was 4:30 and time to go on my morning bike ride. I got dressed and had a great ride, put in a full day at work and managed to stay awake for the drive home. But, I was exhausted. I kept myself awake until 7:30 then shuffled off to bed.

The assassin deer setting his watch ahead 1 week early made two fatal errors thereby assuming that I was going to bed at 8:30. With the bad information, he sent one of his raccoon minions up to check the back door. I can understand the confusion. Sure the lovely Miss Beverly was still up. However, we have distinctively different lighting tastes. I am an every light in the house on. She is miss “I like mood lighting.” 29 years of marriage and we still make this fundamental difference work. So the lovely Miss Beverly was sitting in the near dark reading on the IPad for the hour before her usual bed time of 8:30. I know. We are pretty wild and crazy.

As her bed time approached, she let out our two dogs and they caught the raccoon red handed. He was up on his hind legs checking to see if the back door was unlocked. Certainly, he was preparing a report on the security surrounding the Sharritts for his dark overlord the Assassin Deer. The raccoon made his second fatal mistake. First, he took orders from the Assassin Deer. Second rather than run away across the grass, he went vertical and ran up the porch post in the corner.

Let me paint a word tableau for you. The raccoon is in the rafters of the back porch hissing and scrabbling for a foothold. The dogs are on the ground jumping, barking and snarling at said raccoon. I am in bed at the other end of the house, just heading for a deep sleep after being awake for 18 hours the day before. And the lovely Miss Beverly is standing over the bed whispering my name; “Roger, Roger, Sweetie.” I groggily open my eyes to see Bev silhouetted by the hallway light. As I come to, I get the grim news that the dogs have a coon cornered on the porch. That is all that is said. It was the part that was left unsaid that was the important part.

“What are you going to do about it?” Those words were not spoken but I heard them loud and clear. This is not a new subject. It has been written about over and over again in the annals of spousal communication. Every essayist has written about it. Every comedian has stood up about it. The first time I read about it was in a reader’s digest back when reader’s digest was what bloggers did before the internet. The situation in that essay described a husband being informed that there was a dead ground hog back by the garden. “What are you going to do about it?”

Being a responsive and caring husband, I swung my feet out of bed, put on a sweatshirt to guard against the chill in the air, shuffled to the back porch and figured out what I was going to do about it. There was one angry raccoon poised about three feet above my head. I could see that he recognized me from the Wanted Dead or Alive poster that the Assassin Deer had been circulating. I could see it in his beady little eyes. “If I drop down from here, I could scratch his eyes out. He would wander around aimlessly taking me away from these cursed dogs. Once safely away, I could crawl down and go get my master and collect the reward for this wretched beast thereby ingratiating myself to my evil overlord the Assassin deer.” Raccoons only look stupid. They are really quite imaginative.

The dogs were at my feet. I could see that they were thinking about using me for a ladder. I could see it in their beady little eyes. “If we jump up to about his waist, we could gain purchase about his belt and then by rapidly moving our short little legs and claws we could scratch our way to the top of his head. As he flailed around, we could perch there until he drew close enough and then fling ourselves at the coon. You go for his throat and I will unclench his paws and we will tumble to the ground and take this fur ball out. Our master will be forever grateful and give us extra chew toys and not make us stay outside all day during the winter.” My dogs really are that stupid. I was in my pajama pants and was not wearing a belt. That would have been a painful disaster.

After sizing up the situation, I went back in the house, put on some thick gloves, rummaged around the closet for the rarely fired 22 rifle, and remembered where I kept my Barney Fife bullet. I went the back out to the porch, and put an end to our little drama. Life is hard on the farm. No we don’t trap raccoons and move them to the country where some farmer will have them spying around the house getting the dogs all lathered up. We are the country; the end of the line.

Take care. And remember what time it is.

Roger

What the heck is going on out there?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand is a state of unease. Each year during early to mid-October the wooly worms come out. Last year the peak coincided with the Hilly Hundred and it was a goo bath. I would say a blood bath but woolies are filled with goo. They were thick on the road, getting out of the cold damp grass heading for the warmth of the pavement with a sun that was slanting more and more to the South. They presented their short plump bodies up for destruction by the hundreds.

I would be ashamed to admit that I wantonly swerved down the road like a drunken sailor with a squish-squish here and a squish-squish there shortening the already short lives of these cold weather prophets. I would be ashamed except for the fact that in retrospect I enjoyed it. The enjoyment increased with every inch of snow and ice, subzero wind chill, and polar vortex that was visited upon my Indiana home. So they are coming out again. And with the prognostication of another bad winter on the way, I have decided to dispense with the false angst. I predict that I will squash their little black and brown fur covered bodies with glee and sweet anticipation.

It is difficult being a prophet. The little people hate you if you’re wrong. The big people hate you if you’re right. Really the prophet is usually just a little person who can’t keep his mouth shut. Jerimiah? Little person who ended up in a dungeon because he let the big people know that they were going on a bit of a walk about to Babylon. Chicken Little? Little person blighted by acorns and gravity, trying to let the king know about the sky and unfortunately, and misguidedly, missed the true evil and led several other little people over to the fox’s house for supper. The wooly worm? Many legged little person trying to warn us of deep snow and bone chilling cold unfortunately wandering into the path of a mean and vindictive cyclist.

I started this blog two weeks ago looking for prophets and have been completely overwhelmed by their voices. Prophecies of Ebola, ISIS, upcoming polar vortices have overcome my ability to write a simple blog. Recently, I have written about pictures and memories; the importance of young men’s influences on young boys. I like writing about those things. They are good blogs. They give me hope. Nothing about ebola or ISIS gives me hope. My dreams and thoughts have turned dark.

In fact, I must confess about a small bedroom quirk that I have has been exacerbated by the portents of tough times ahead. Don’t worry, the sharing of this has been approved by the Lovely Miss Beverly. I am a pillow grinder. I can take a perfectly plump pillow and after a few short months it will be reduced to the thickness of a very thin waffle. You probably didn’t know that there was such a thing as pillow break down. You may believe that pillows are a closed system; fluffy stuff enclosed in an impermeable case. Fluffy stuff that simply needs a bit of fluffing every few weeks. I am here to testify that it isn’t so. In certain extreme cases the fluffy stuff can be transmuted into unfluffy stuff leaving your pillows the thickness of a tea bag.

You may be wondering what strange forces could be breaking down pillows at such an alarming rate. I am afraid to say that it isn’t the extreme density of my brains overwhelming the fluffy fibers or supernatural brain wave activity that vaporized fluffy fibers with their intensity; supernatural brain wave activity that my superior intellect generates even when I am asleep. No, it is a mechanical grinding; a bending and twisting, smashing and wadding brought about by deep subconscious angst breaking out to the surface of my sleep. These prophesies of doom have certainly had a negative effect on my poor pillows. In fact the twisting and bending a couple of nights ago resulted in a pillow braid by morning. That will leave a sleep crease on your face that doesn’t work itself out until about 10 a.m.

I long for those Halcion days of summer? Those days when the only thing that we had to worry about was “do we have a cooler big enough for an effective ice water challenge?” Those days seem long gone. Who knew that while we were pouring water over our heads, thinking up new and inventive ways to keep the same old thing repeated over and over from being boring, a miniscule virus would be incubating in the West African population. Or that a militant Islamic virus would have lain dormant until the perfect opportunity to break out and appear to be mounting a successful region wide caliphate, or that our many legged friends would be wandering across the road in their darker than usual coats.

The toughest part is all of the noise, or to quote the Grinch “oh the noise, noise, noise, noise!” Not only do we have the prophets of doom out there telling us of bad things to come but we have the sirens of sweet telling us don’t worry be happy. Everything will be okay. We can stop Ebola with our world class medical system. We can bomb ISIS to smithereens and keep our boots off the ground. It is unusual to have two bad winters in a row. Each side clamoring louder and louder trying to out shout the other side. Each side selling their version of the truth or selling their side of the wished for truth.

That is the problem with living through prophecy. Too many voices are selling their version, are wooing an audience, and are looking for power over the little people. What are the little people to do? First, let’s take a deep breath. Second, let’s take another deep breath. Let us keep our eyes open, talk out the fear, and take a true stock of the situation. Let us not listen to the prophets of doom or the sirens of sweet for a while. They have had their say. The messages are not changing. It is time to see what the due course of time will bear out. Then, let’s wash our hands just in case.

Take Care

Roger

Picture Perfect

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The fire wood gathering is moving into full gear. It is a yearly post Labor Day ritual at the Sharritt house. The goal is very simple; ten cord of split wood stacked up neatly on the concrete slab by the 2^nd week of December. I will then head inside for my long winter’s nap.

Last week the blog took an unexpected turn. It was headed towards the picture of Ben and his skateboard crew. It got there it just went via different avenue than I had expected. I had expected it to start out at a family reunion in mid-August. The Kincade’s, not the Kincaid’s (all you Kincade wanna-bes,) got together to look each other over; see how the grandkids and the great grand kids are doing; and give reports on those who were unable to be with us this year.

This year had a special treat. My Aunt Jo has moved into assisted living. My cousin Pam is working hard at getting everything around; having sales and working at getting everything in order to sell the house. This gigantic task unearthed a bunch of pictures. You know pictures, photos, those square bits of color and black and white images etched on a thick and semi rigid paper. Yeah those predecessors to the things you keep on your cell phone, data sticks and hard drives by the thousands. The only difference is back then you had to be interesting enough for someone to take a picture of you; no selfies in the 2000’s.

Really hasn’t the cell phone lessened our love affair with photography? The narrow view of the selfie has sorely limited the usefulness of photography. Anybody can go around taking pictures of their big heads at arm’s length with just a hint of background to try to give the viewer context. Take this selfie for example, one would be hard pressed to know that I had moved away from the Whitehouse tour group and surreptitiously snapped this photo in the Green Room just off the Lincoln Bedroom. Instead it looks like I am a vaguely surprised 50 year old trying to figure out how to hit the camera toggle on my phone so that I can take a selfie. Add lines on the wall and you would have my first mug shot.

In the good old days, with photos taken at more than an arm’s length, you got perspective. You would get a picture of the family standing in front of panoramic view of the mountains, families in front of the Tilt-a-Whirl at the fair, families on the edge of a mountain stream with a Grizzly Bear stalking them some distance off moments before said bear rushed them and carried off grandma. This of course necessitated the need to develop the video camera so that the entire sequence of events could be video graphed and the entire video sent to America’s funniest home videos; later replaced by YouTube.

Families that is except for the “picture taker” in the family. They were always left out. Their talent for capturing the meaning of the moment through the view finder doomed them to a life of anonymity. The lovely Miss Beverly loves to take pictures, and I was not considerate enough to think about taking pictures of her very often. So she was the photographer in our family. Someday the Sharritt Family biographer will incorrectly assume that I was a single father bravely raising Ben and Grace. “Here is Roger with Ben and Grace on the first day of school. One can only imagine how much easier raising these two wonderfully well rounded children would have been had not the lovely Miss Beverly not abandoned the family shortly after their birth.”

So the Kincade’s sat there on an August, Sunday afternoon looking at pictures that had been well preserved but poorly documented, and I found myself doing something that I had often ridiculed my parents for at earlier editions of the annual Kincade family reunion. I reminisced. “That must be Dad Kade. Look that is Pam and Carol Ann. I don’t know what was going on but I sure wasn’t happy. Oh look, it’s Pop. No wonder you called him Uncle Tubby.” We remembered the long dead and the much older. We didn’t recognize those who had changed too much or were only on the periphery of our lives and commented about how little some of us had changed. We did not learn from previous mistakes. We did not document the remembered on the backs of photos or the best guestimates of the year this or that photo was taken.

All of that was therapeutic. Remembering, and backfilling stories helped jog memories of who I am and some of the things that colored my life. Aunt Jo  and Pam were gracious in dividing up the photos and letting us take them home. I took photos of Jr. High and high school dad, mom and dad dating, Pop (my grandfather) in front of loads of pumpkins, Christmas shots of all kinds, campaign pictures of dad when he ran for township trustee and lost to a future felon, (a loss that made an eight year old father worshiping son despondent), and cousins, cousins, cousins.

My favorite? None really, or actually, it shifts to the next one that I pull out and use to pull back memories; the one on top that says to me “oh I see that in me today. It’s that little piece of me right there.” Like the one on top of the pile today, it is a picture of 7 year old Roger. I am wearing 6 year old Roger’s cloths because I have been out mucking around on the farm; the cloths that fit were for school and church. The coat sleeves are too short. The shirt cuts off at the belly button. The pants wouldn’t get wet in an hundred year flood. I am standing on the concrete drive in front of my Grandparent’s house (the house I live in today.) Behind me is my Aunt Jo’s car. Behind it is my parent’s red Pontiac (my dad’s favorite car ever). Behind that is a maple tree that has been gone for twenty years and is now replaced by two good sized oak trees which is backed by the tool shed that I tore down 15 years ago. I am missing a front tooth and holding a dead muskrat in my hand. Which means, that even on a gray cold November day, I am happy because I have $5.25 to spend for Christmas; five dollars for the muskrat and twenty-five cents for the tooth.

Thank you, whoever took that picture. It looks perfectly focused to me.

Take care

Roger

Get Over Here Dude

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The third of three 100 mile plus rides are in the bag for this year. Now it is time to coast for the final 1,300 miles to get to my 4,500 mile annual goal. Of course, I am showing off. I am bragging. Pride goeth before the fall but I am wearing a helmet. I’m wearing a helmet.  Na, na, na na na. I have been riding long enough that friends are sending me news articles about people who share my passion. I received one last week that caused me to pause; 25,000 miles in 5 years. I’m like that is crazy. 25,000 in 5 years, that is 5,000 miles a year. That is crazy nuts. Then I went and logged my daily 20 mile ride and realized that I am riding 4,500 miles a year. So it will take me 5.5 years to log my miles. Just goes to show you that a ride here and a ride there will add up to some serious mileage after a little while.

I know the question on the tip of your tongue this week. In answer, yes, the skunks are still out in force. These s(c)entinals of the evil assassin deer have been scoping all of my rides around 5:00 a.m. Mostly, they have making their way down the side ditch. I have just had to be careful not to crowd the side of the road. I make my way down the road, and they arch their backs and waive their tails at me threateningly.

That is until last Tuesday. One of the watchers sprung a trap. I had slowed and was rounding the corner of 800S onto 650W. I come racing around the corner and look up and there was one of the assassin deer minions making its way across the road. Why did the skunk cross the road? To file a Roger report. It was about 1/3 of the way across the road. The arc of my turn was going to put me right on top of him. I could see the flash of its beady black eyes as it looked into my headlight. Its back was quickly arching. Its tail was rising. I slammed on the brakes. I thought about zigging left but decided to zag right trying to pass to its front away from his business end. In the end, everything turned out okay. He missed and I made it on home unscathed.

Every time that I see a skunk, I think of Steve Kosmicky and a little stupid dog called Freddie. One evening Steve, Freddie, and I were making our way to the pasture field to get the 60 cows up for the the evening milking. I was idling walking down a dusty cow path; lazily swinging a 4ft ironweed back and forth. Suddenly, Steve, who was 10 feet in front of me, looked back to answer some question that was on the tip of my tongue. What was the question? I have no idea. I am sure that it came from the list of important questions that all seven year olds carry in their hip pocket to ask any high school boy who takes the time to treat him with respect.

Steve had stopped; turned around, and was listening to my question, when he quietly whispered “stand very still Roger. Do not move. There is a skunk just off to your right and he is getting ready to spray you.” Steve loved to tease. He blew a considerable amount of “smoke up my skirt.” He was the one that convinced me  that underwater gnomes moved wheelbarrows of gravel around the gravel pit. If I were to go swimming in the pit, they would come up and grab me and drag me under. Looking back on it 40 years later, I am sure that he was under orders from my parents to scare the crap out of me so that I wouldn’t go sneaking off swimming unattended. It worked. To this day, I have never dipped even a big toe in a perfectly good swimming hole.

Even though he had teased me about all manner of things, I knew that he was telling me the truth that day. There was an edge in his voice. The ring of truth; I’m not messing around this time Roger, was in his voice. So I stood still. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the contrasting white on black. The tail was rising. The back was arching. I was a dead, stinky boy. To make matters worse, Freddie was growling getting ready to enter the fray. I don’t know how it happened. I can’t remember if Freddie was propelled by hand or foot, but propelled he was. As the snarling dog was on his arc to destiny, Steve yelled "run away", and I turned to run. The skunk faced with one incoming snarling target and one fleeing screaming target made the only choice he could. He turned and sprayed Freddie.

Freddie suddenly faced with the embarrassment of being the smelly fellow for the next six weeks, scampered to the house, yelping. I finally stopped 50 yards down the cow path. And Steve was laughing until tears came to his eyes.

What is it about those childhood heroes; older boys or young men who accept you? They don’t accept you as equals because that would be inappropriate. We were in two different worlds. He was 18, getting ready to graduate. I was seven, getting ready for what; little league. But I was accepted. I was good enough company for a walk to the woods. There were questions that I wanted answered and he was willing to answer. We were in different worlds but he could see that I was on a trajectory to enter his world in time. I was grateful for that vision.

I don’t know how much of that happens today. We are so suspicious; maybe rightfully so, maybe not. I believe that the young and older boys are ill served by lack of contact. The young boys lose an example of maturity; a sign post. Steve was not as mature as my father but he was on the arc. I could imagine that he was as mature as my father at 18 and dad turned out alright. I felt like I could never be as mature as my father, as hard working, as serious. However, I could feel a reachable connection to Steve, and he was a mile post to my dad’s maturity. Through Steve, I could experience the connection to dad.

The older boys suffer because they have no purpose, no example, no way to practice maturity. They should be able to bridge the gap between parents and children. They can step in. Young boys will listen to them and old men need them. I think that the lovely Miss Beverly and I were fortunate in that regard. When we were organic farmers, we and our children were surrounded by young adults. They bridged that gap. They helped show our children the way. They were a release valve. They did a great job in helping mold our children.

This lesson was brought home in a picture posted by Ben our 25 year old son. His path took him to the skate boarding community. That community has provided him with family, love, respect, and people to be with. During the past few years, he had gotten a group of skateboarders together to go on a skating weekend in some city in the Midwest.

This picture was taken outside of St. Louis a week or so ago. These are Ben’s people. See that kid way down in the corner on the right side. He wasn’t part of the group that traveled to St. Louis. He was a kid that showed up. Being treated with respect, he latched on to this group of 20 somethings. And as he told Ben when the Hoosiers were leaving, “That was the best weekend of my life.” As it should be. As it would be when you have a good strong bridge like that.

Take care

Roger

Thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. If fact, I come to you from an entirely new PC. My 8 year old Fujitsu bit the dust. So I unceremoniously went out and bought the newest thing on sale. Plugged it in and started typing. I know. Where has all of the loyalty gone? Right out the door; I’ll tell you; it is not like the old days when things were built to last. I remember my first abacus. I must have glued a dozen beads after they cracked from intense mathematical exercises. Then one evening I carelessly left it out after an exhausting evening of homework. The dog came in and destroyed it while eating my homework. Sure I had to get a new abacus but the point is I had repaired it a dozen times before it bit the dust.

Labor Day weekend finds me on the eve of the third and final long distance ride of the season. Three century (or better) rides in one season; a century ride from Ben’s to our house on Good Friday, the 160 mile ride across Indiana in July and now a century ride for MS the first Saturday in September. All of this and I have made a very big change in my life. No, I did not decide to change the side of my head that I part my hair on. I still am sticking with my life goal of never combing my hair ever again. I just keep it short. No, I have decided to do my daily ride at 4:45 in the morning. It is very bracing. Bev and I wanted to fit a little bit more face time in daily. Since it is more face time with the lovely Miss Beverly, it is a pretty good deal.

You would be amazed at the different perspective that 5:00 a.m. will give a person. I have made it a practice to get up at 5:00 a.m. the past 7 years. In order to get to work on time, my personal grooming rituals would need to start around 6:00. However, I have found that an hour of sitting quietly, thinking, praying, reading, makes my day much more enjoyable. So I have religiously gotten up and spent this me time getting energized for the day. While I have been awake, I have missed the perspective of being outside; riding in the pitch black of predawn.

As a quick aside, the quote “it’s always darkest before the dawn” was quipped by Thomas Fuller way back in the 1600 hundreds. While Tom was good at providing prescient, uplifting quotes that Hallmark would eventually steal when it entered the public domain, he was a horrible astrologist. It is darkest when our little part of the earth is furthest away from the sun which by definition is midway between dusk and dawn. One could forgive the man waking up at 4:45 a.m. in the 1600’s, looking for the matches to light the handlebar torch, and riding down cobblestone roads, trying to illuminate his path mistaking the pitch blackness of the countryside for the deep dark of midnight. It is a pretty easy mistake to make.

My early morning rides have cued me into yet another phalanx of Assassin Deer collaborators. It seems that the skunks are the early morning assistants to the Assassin Deer. I have seen skunks on three of my four early rides so far. The first one scared the crude out of me. I was not expecting it. I was riding along in the dark; minding my own business and there was the small black animal with the white stipe running down its back scurrying down the side ditch straight for me. Luckily, the business end was furthest away from me. Consequently, he was unable to spin around fast enough to spray me. I was very fortunate. The next morning, I saw two skunks while on my rounds.

Obviously, they are the Assassin Deer’s s(c)entinels. Luckily, they are much smaller than Pepe Lepew and Warner Brothers would have you believe, and that the road is startlingly empty at 5:00 so I can ride down the middle of the road, using speed and distance to my advantage.

Looking at this third big ride of the season, this summer will be documented as a very good summer for my personal bike riding. This ride is a fund raising ride. MS has rides all of the country to raise funds for research. I have participated in one other fund raising ride. It was a Habitat for Humanity ride last year. Everyone was very generous and I was very grateful for the support shown. Your contributions helped build a very nice home for a family. Fund raising this year for the MS ride has hit a head wind. It is called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It is a wonderful thing. It has raised over $80 million. Last year during the same time period, ALS raised $2.7 million. That is amazing. It is also creating a strong headwind for other fund raisers.

It reminds me of a story. I was working with a group on a back to school fund raiser. The volunteers were hardworking, and loyal. They were just very few. The leader of the group was lamenting the last fact out loud during a frustrating moment with deadlines and bad weather looming. She and the volunteers had worked very hard. It would have been easier if more people would have been willing to help. She wondered why it was so difficult to get people to be involved in the community. A friend pointed out several people in the crowd of “non-volunteers” who were in attendance; there was John who was the Scout Master, April who worked at the homeless shelter, Mark who coached little league baseball during the summer and football in the fall, Carrie who put on the retiree lunch every month down at the church. His list of “non-volunteers” went on and on. His point was that we live with a group of very generous people. However, the problems and the causes are very generous also.

 

So thank you to everyone who gave to MS through my ride and thank you to everyone who gave to ALS through the Ice Bucket Challenge. It’s all good.

Take care.

Roger