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