Are You Through With That?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. If I get this done, I will have been on a roll of three weeks in a row. Alas, I did not get done so I spent a week of lollygagging and you had to read reruns. With regards to blogging, I spent the year lollygagging along. Suddenly the end is near and I try mightily to speed things up a little to save the year of reduced writing. Who knows what will happen next year.

 A couple of things are going on here. I have just made the commitment to cut wood until I am 70 or 75. We made the investment of buying an outdoor wood burner 15 years ago. The furnace heats water in a vessel that surrounds the firebox. The water then is pumped under ground in insulated piping. Once inside of the house we use it to heat the house and all of our hot water. I suppose over the course of the 15 years we have saved close to $10,000. That is over and above the cost of the installation. Of course, I have spent a lot of hours during 12 weekends each fall cutting wood. I could have been making a whole $5 an hour. However, I wasn't doing much else that I could make that much money.  What else would I have done; spend $40 a weekend to watch Purdue lose football games, write 12 more blogs a year and publish them in a medium where I get no money, or maybe work harder on my pickle ball skills in anticipation of a long career on the seniors tour? No, in each case, cutting wood was the big payday for me.

In the 15 years since we purchased this furnace, the technology has changed. The federal government did not like the fact that 10,000 people across the country were burning inefficient somewhat smoky furnaces. So they said that you shall make your furnaces more efficient. They burn much hotter and route the heated exhaust around the inside of the furnace to let that heat burn up the pollution so the furnace burns clean and extracts more heat from the wood burned. There is no such thing as a free meal. All of that routing of heated gas allows parts of the furnace to be covered with creosote. This causes the steel used inside of the furnace to corrode and start to leak much sooner than 15 years. That is unless you upgrade to the stainless steel model for 2x the cost.

The good news is that with the more expensive option, rather than passing on more cash to Ben and Grace when Bev and I pass, we will be able to pass this furnace down to our children. That is how the sales person on the phone with her Minnesota accent sold it to me. She may have to break the good news to the kids. When I shared the possibility of a bitter inheritance fight, I was a bit underwhelmed. I was hoping that a bit of sibling rivalry would break out and I could turn it into a long term containment facility that provided extra chocolate chip cookies for septuagenarians who no longer care about their borderline diabetes.

This is probably the first major purchase that the lovely Miss Beverly and I have considered the fact that we were getting old and may not be fit enough to use it until the end of its useful life. I remember my grandmother, Nanny making that decision with regards to her last new car, a blue and white two toned and two ton Pontiac Bonneville. I remember a lot of familial debate. The size of the old steel land ships had crested a few years earlier. In fact the car before the last car, was a green Pontiac Bonneville. My grandfather bought it. It happened to be his last car. However, there was no end of life discussions for Pop. His cancerous pancreas snuck up on him. When he drove that big green boat into the driveway, he believed that he would be able to replace that beautiful tilt steering wheeled behemoth with and even bigger tilt steering wheeled behemoth ten years later.

He loved the tilt steering wheel. He went on and on about it. He had a unique body type. Big bellied, short legged, and short armed, he had spent 30 years buying cars with his legs fully extended yet constantly having to mend his bib overalls where the steering wheel rubbed the spot where that belly that produced the nickname "Tubby" was wedged up against the wheel. I had the opportunity 10 years after his death to meet the GM engineer who patented the tilt steering wheel. His eyes lit with delight as I told of my grandfather's  20 minute discourse of "this is the steering wheel up and this is the steering wheel down." Who knew that a couple of strategically placed and engineered U-joints could change the world?

Any who, I remember the debate about the cost of a new car. She didn't drive very much. The green one still had a lot of miles left on it. She could live a long time yet. But in the end, it was going to be the last car she ever drove and it was her money. We all enjoyed riding in that blue and white two toned Bonneville. It did turn out to be the last car she ever owned.

I have friends who are downsizing to the last house that they will own. A few who are concerned about making a long term commitment to a dog or a cat that other family members may not want to inherit. These things are starting to weigh on my mind from time to time. And this is a new sensation. It seems like it was just yesterday that I thought that I was going to live forever. And while I do hold out some hope that I will be the first person to live to 150 years old (because someone will some day), I imagine that my earlier love affair with Big Mac's, in continuing love affair with ice cream and cookies, and my early childhood exposure to certain farm chemicals will leave me somewhat short of the goal. So somewhere out there is a day of reckoning where  some of the things that I am currently committing to will be passed on to those who want them or maybe future Craigslist posters.

I know that I am not imaginative enough. Lord knows that there some things that have been brought to my door by the UPS guy that will be the last one of "those" before the sands of my hourglass have passed as the Days of my Life. I will never purchase another pet rock. I think that I am over getting another chia pet. If I lower my expectations, no new toilets will pass my threshold. If I don't get too big of a garden and don't leave them out in the rain, it is a good bet that I have a couple of pretty good hoes that will be available in the year 20??.

Yes, I think that I am entering a different stage of life. A stage with a bit different calculus. Do I want to deal with this in 15 years when I'm (gulp) 70?; will be a question that pops up from time to time. While the possibilities of the never ending have been fun to contemplate and enjoy, the thoughts of ever after are starting to show themselves and they feel a good place to be.

Take care.

Roger

Giving Until It Hurts

Dear Friends.

Did you see the explosion last Tuesday? My email blew up. From early in the morning until late in the evening, my aol account burst to life. In the morning, it was the initial ask. "It is giving Tuesday. Please give." Some were more special than others. Bill and Melinda was matching your gifts. Or was that the Floyd and Ethel foundation fund? Either way some people were able to make their dollars go further. Its all good. They were all good causes.That is obvious because they were all causes that the lovely Miss Beverly or I had given to in the past. That is how my email became their target. Even so, no matter how good the cause, or the Gates' Foundation endorsement, I was fatigued by the end of the day when they were encouraging me to get on the bandwagon.

However, I didn't this time. I chose not to because I had joined the trend. I was out there with my hand out. No, I wasn't raising money for the Sharritt CNC router (look it up) fund. The lovely Miss Beverly and I agreed to help Safe Families of Madison County raise money. If you have scoured the blog over the past year, you would have seen a few mentions of Viki and Vaeh, two lovely young girls who stayed with us while their dad sorted some things out. The following is a note that I wrote for the fund raiser. While specifically for this fund raiser, I believe it to be applicable to what many of us felt last Thursday.

I must admit that I am a bit reticent about asking you to support a good cause. And I do believe that Safe Families is a good cause. Not that it saves the world one child at a time. As you may have read in my blog about our experience providing a place for the lovely and talented Miss Viki and Vaeh (the V girls as the hipsters might say), I am not always sure of the good that was done. Bev and I hope and pray the girls' course through life may have been altered just a little. In fact as we have continued to be a presence in their life, we see little glimpses of change and pray that God will continue a good work in them.

The cause is good. However, I am reticent because of a lesson taught to me ten years ago by a good friend. We were busy one hot and humid August afternoon sitting up for the Back to School Fair in Fall's Park. The Back to School Fair was another good cause that used the thousands of dollars generated by playing in the park to purchase back packs for kids in Southern Madison County. It was a good cause and a big deal. Hundreds of person hours were required to plan, organize, set-up, run and tear down this great event. It was held right as school was starting so the volunteer families were under a lot of stress getting the fair set up all of the while wondering just a little about the $100 that they needed to lay out for their own kids supplies and even more desperately wondering where the time would come from to get to town to do the shopping.

The fair opened and the throngs appeared right on time. A group of volunteers had gathered under a shade tree astonished that it had come together and how good everything looked. One of the volunteers wryly said "This would have been a lot easier if some of these good people would have volunteered to help." Several of us nodded in agreement. That is when my wise friend stepped in to give us an education.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Joe over there runs the cub scout group mostly without help. Kerry is the coach of a softball team. Doesn't Manisha organize the Indian cultural fair?  I think that Marvin is recruiting help for the Cancer Society walk," He continued. We were surrounded by volunteers who had given all they could and needed an afternoon in the park with their family to enjoy one another. Chastened, I am always reluctant to assume that my cause is the one you should give to. There are tons of opportunities and only a limited amount of resources.

Last night, while sitting at the dinner table, my alma mater called to ask me for my annual contribution. Annie, a sophomore in the school of agriculture started in on her spiel and I blurted out, "I will give you $25 if you don't say another word but if you continue the script I will give you nothing." The hands out and manipulation can be overwhelming sometimes. I get it, and yet I ask.

If you have the money, and/or time to give, Safe Families will put it to good use. If not . . .

. . . I have surrounded myself with giving people. You, the giving people, are just more fun to be around. Your parties are bigger. Your homes are more inviting. You let me stop by your pool or ride in your boat. I love what you have done with the patio. That dinner party was so much fun. I love your generosity. Thank you for all that you give.

Take care

Roger.

Thanks to all of you who gave $850 toward Safe Families. And if you would like to give but haven't yet, go to:

http://crowdrise.com/safe-families-for-children-of-central-indiana-giving-tuesday/fundraiser/bevsharritt

Burning passion?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. Yes, I am doing fine. I know that it has been a while since I have written. I would apologize but that would be disingenuous. An apology would suggest that I have intentionally done some wrong that requires some contrition. It is not wrong that I have done. It is the physical and emotional roadblock to writing during this season. A season that may have been done November 8. But given the election reaction, maybe the season is lingering; like a cold winter that drags on into mid-April. Maybe I am an election groundhog. I am coming out of my hibernation hole to provide my prognostication that this crazy will last another 6 weeks or maybe not. 

Either way, every topic that I have chosen and worked on in my head, partially composed, and prepared to commit to writing, would wind its way back to the election and how you are wrong and I am right during this season of malcontent. It has been my goal in writing this blog to stay away from how right I am and how wrong you are. Those who know me from my other non-blog life know that I can opine with the best of them. We had a saying, while we were selling organic produce at several farmers markets in a previous life; "opinions are like derrières; everybody has one and they mostly produce fertilizer." I know what your'e thinking. You are surprised that we were french speaking organic farmers. Truth be told; I was always saying pardon my french while standing in a 95 degree parking lot listening to a customer's opinion that french filet beans should be picked 1 millimeter shorter to maximize the sugar content. It was in these moments I would smile, nod my head exhibiting excellent listening skills, and think "everyone has one and this is nice smelling fertilizer."

I do hope that the efforts to remain even handed in writing these missives have been successful. It has been a goal since its beginning with Girls Gone Wild. 

It is hard to imagine that a little more than a fortnight ago, our country was united in cheering on the Cubs. Basking in the belief that no matter how pitiful you are, your time will come, and if management would simply open their pocket books for the fifth largest payroll in baseball, we too could mistakenly believe that the purity of sport could shine through and lovable losers could take their place on the podium for a few fleeting moments. Unless you were one of the 3.5 million or so from the greater Cleveland Metro area, plus the few expatriates that had moved on to other places, the country was all in for the Cubbies. The number of bleary eyed co-workers was legion every morning after all seven games.

The lovely Miss Beverly and I were watching one of the early games. Sitting on our couch, in the evening winding down from a big day of work, the lovely Miss Beverly suddenly said "I miss the days when you were passionate about baseball." It is true. I no longer care. I don't believe that I saw a single pitch after 8:30 p.m.; my bed time before my 4:19 wake up call. The lovely Miss Beverly, on the other hand, caught a bit of the bug and watched into the wee hours many of the seven games. I on the other hand was sound asleep with visions of sugarplums dancing in my cap covered head.

I have fallen vast distances from the burning of my previous passions. A fan of the Big Red Machine, I listened to Marty and Joe on "Reds Radio" every night while out in the barn breaking show steers to semi tameness for the 4-H fair. Joe Nuxhall with his slight lisp (however the lovely Miss Beverly would say moderate) would call the 3rd, 4th, and 7th innings. At 15, Joe was the youngest big league player ever. It was a fluke. World War 2 had depleted the bench of pitchers. Fluke or not, Joe was there, barely needing to shave, throwing heat to other fortunate young men who had not been called up to beat back the threat of world-wide fascism.

Joe's co-announcer, Marty Brenneman, would do most of the work calling the other innings with his deep melodious baritone filling the barnyard with the heroic feats of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Dave Concepcion, George Foster, Ken Griffey (Senior not Junior) and of course Pete Rose. That voice filling the dusk settling barn yard as the fireflies would begin their evening light shows in late June and July was the only thing that made my torture of leading mildly psychotic 1200 pound steers around the barn yard, holding on for dear life lest of deer fly bite a heel and started a futile tug of war and a mad dash to corral the four hoofed victor.

I loved baseball. I wasn't very good at it. I was in that vast group of kids who played well enough to not do much harm and from time to stick a glove in the right general direction. I was a coaches dream; just good enough to play all of the time but not good enough to take the all star slot from some of the more obnoxious families in town. In spite of that level of mediocrity, I still loved baseball. I loved baseball so much that I planted Ash trees around the farm in my early twenties. I don't know. I think that I thought that by the time I was 50 I would cut down that tree, cure the wood, and turn bats on my lathe so that I could play with my own bat in the over 50 league. Who knows? 

Alas, the  emerald ash bore has infected and killed those three ash trees (two white and one green ash; yes I was going to experiment to find the finest ball hitting instrument.) As I said earlier, I don't care about baseball any longer. I do care about hot water for my bath and hot air for the winter nights. Yes, I cut those three trees into firewood and am enjoying the benefits of my labor in a warm house and a hot shower.

As the lovely Miss Beverly stated the obvious about my loss of affection towards our once national pastime, I was immediately transported to a college cafeteria in the early 80's. We were setting with a sociology professor who was pontificating about his chosen field of study. During his discourse he stated unequivocally that he knew there was no such thing as God or the Holy Spirit. He had proven this fact to himself through his studies. During graduate school, he had studied rural Pentecostals and their religious practices. On several occasions he had visited Appalachian Pentecostal churches. He had recorded their services. He had witnessed them in the "throws of the fire". In spite of the religious fervor all around him, he had felt nothing. His heart rate had not increased. His tongue had not been loosed. He felt no desire to grab a snake. And these lack of "signs" proved to him that there was no God and that people were not filled with the Holy Spirit.

I did not contradict him. It was not the time nor did I have a good enough grasp on debating technique. To say anything would have resulted in embarrassment and ridicule. And avoiding ridicule is something for which I did and still have great passion. This discussion was one of the lessons that I learned in college that stuck with me much longer than the calculus class. Through the lens of time, I could have said "well of course you didn't feel anything. You didn't believe. The holy spirit doesn't possess you against your will. It is invited in. And you don't believe. So you lose the experience."

Isn't that the way it is? I lost my belief in baseball. I don't believe that it is a game anymore. Two strikes for more money, shifting the stadium costs to the general public, and $40 parking has drained my belief. I had believed that every once in a while on a summer evening, I would see the ball as big as a grapefruit and I would hit a line drive back up the middle watching the pitcher's eyes get as big as saucers. I had believed that Charles (not Charley) Ritchie would stick his glove up in right field, where he was usually safely hidden for the required two innings a game, and catch the inning ending out. I had believed that an 0 - 8 team could win number 9 in 13 innings with the coach saying "Roger can you pitch? If it goes to 14, your'e going to have to pitch. I am out of pitchers."

Isn't that the way? We believe in one thing because of our experience with it and then the world grabs it at twists and manipulates it trying to make it felt by everyone. We have it upside down. Rather than letting individual experiences accumulate through community to become the general experience, we create a societal experience and try to make it, through twisting and manipulation of the individual, into the individual experience. It strikes me that the twisting and manipulation is corrosive. It eats at a person. For some the corrosion eats through quickly others, the more resilient, it takes a while but usually it eats through and the passion leaks away, leaving us empty. Until the next big thing.

What does it mean? I don't know. I just know that it happened.

Take Care.

Roger

Home Field Advantage

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. I must admit that I was blown away by the response to the last blog about greeting people as they come to the end of our driveway. Thank you.

Labor Day has come and gone. Fall is here in spite of the high 80 degree temps. The beans are in the turning mode. One farmer, a particularly ambitious farmer, planted his beans the 1st week of April. He snuck them in just as the ground was barely dry enough to support his equipment and just before 2 weeks of rain that kept everyone out of the fields for three additional weeks. As a result, that one field is harvested and ready to plant a good crop of wheat if he so desires. So he has bragging rights and we will wait a couple of weeks as the beans and the corn dry. As we prepare for harvest, try to remember to take it easy as you come up behind that massive equipment lumbering down the road that was paved when the equipment was much smaller and jerks who thought that they were the center of the universe lived in the big city instead of country estates.

Sure you are in a hurry to get to the drive through for your breakfast burrito, but look at the physics of the problem. That tractor or combine weighs a gazillion lbs. It is 12 ft wide on a 16 ft wide road. You take up the remaining 8 ft. Oops! There are only 4 ft remaining. You in your car even with your considerable Big Mac fed girth, only weigh in at around 4000 lbs; a lot less than a gazillion lbs. So . . . Let me get my calculator. Let's see. Now carry the one. Yep, in this confrontation, you are not the center of the universe no matter what you think. No matter how important that meeting was when you left your house late, you will lose. You are definitely going to scrape the paint on your car.

That public service message out of the way. I love this time of the year. The full moons are brightest for September, and October. I have no idea why. But they are bright. I do love to walk through the house at night with the moon pouring through the window. I can look out the window and see the outline of late summer sunflowers drooping over as their heads fill with winter bird forage. As fortune and my 54 year old prostate would have it, I was up at 3:00 the other morning (as usual). I stumbled into the bathroom and was startled by the moon flowing in through the bathroom window illuminating the toilet in that soft lunar light. Yes, the throne looked like a majestic throne. I must admit that I took a few extra moments to sit there and soak in the ambience and specialness of the moment in my royal splendor.

That is the September moon; the Harvest Moon. October's, the Hunter's Moon, will be even brighter. So bright in fact that it will drive people crazy all over the midwest and they will congregate on the banks of the Wabash River in Tippecanoe county and have a feast of the Hunter's Moon. And you GenXers and Millennials thought that you had invented Cosplay. No you just move it from the country side to the city where the newspapers can take pictures and publicize the madness.

Speaking of things out of place, the lovely Miss Beverly and I trekked up to East Lansing Michigan to spend a day with Grace and Chris a few weeks back over the Labor Day weekend. I like the Lansing environs. Michigan's state capital, a rusted out industrial base and a college town all wrapped into one. I do think that the college town part has a biggest influence on the things that I like. College towns are an interesting phenomena. Mom and dad send all of their disposable income to a far away place where it is accumulated 30,000 times and the augmented by college loans and suddenly you have the ability to sustain a hundred or so small independent local eateries. Yes, the food is very good there. Chris and Grace have taken us someplace different every time and I have not been disappointed in the quality of the fare.

I like visiting Grace and Chris. This trip was no exception. The food was great. Getting away and resting was good. Grace and Chris schooled us in the game of Pickle ball. We were Pickle ball newbies and have found that we like it a lot. I am sure that you have heard that Pickle ball is the fastest growing organized sport in America. I know it sounds impressive but since Grace and Chris were the only people playing and now Bev and I are playing; that 100% increase counts as the fasting growing sport in America. If four of you want to continue this explosive growth but are unsure of how to play Pickle ball, it is basically tennis slowed down for baby boomers. The glorified wiffle ball slows the game so that from time to time, I can run across the court and track down one of Bev's tremendous backhands.

It was the signs in East Lansing that caused me to pause. They surprised me. I don't know why. I think I was surprised because I noticed them. The first was on a bumper. Apparently, a doula was very proud of her chosen profession. That is good. I know of accountants with "accountants do it by the numbers" bumper stickers and "Exterminators are to die for" stickers. Well, we pulled up to a Subaru and there was a bumper sticker encouraging me to "catch the wave; Water birth". What? It made me uncomfortable. I must admit I have an aversion to water. I don't know why. I swam a lot when I was a kid. However, overtime I have become less and less comfortable around the water. I spent two lovely weeks of vacation this summer on the shores of Lake Indiana and never got my knees wet. I think that it comes down the fact that I have no gills. My ancestors made some radical choices a few million years ago to venture out on the land. I am sure that the first few breaths were difficult. There was some gasping and panting going on. However great, great grandpa Jim stuck with it and we have left all of that dissolved oxygen gill exchange behind for lungs. I really don't see the need to take a step backward and see if our babies have any inclination to revert back a few million years.

The other sign that took me aback was actually on the back of a T-shirt. I was behind this guy and I could not quite figure out what his shirt said. It had a lot of words on it and a graphic of this bull's head on it. I wasn't sure but I was pretty sure that the last word ass. I am not opposed to the tastefully done cuss word. However, since I was at church and this guy was in the front row, I was intrigued. I squinted. I used my iphone. I used all of my observation skills. I think the word right before ass was Candy. Then my new friend turned around and I realized that he picked this work of art up at a WWF match. Well I had enough clues that with my handy Iphone, I could figure out the rest. I soon found out that the Rock often ridicules his opponents by threatening to lay a smack down on their candy ass. Grace and peace to you too Dwayne. Don't you hate it when you get your church shirt out of your WWF drawer? I do. I think that he may have realized it about halfway through the song service. There was a lot of shirt tail tucking going on. So much so that I was unable to get a picture of it for the blog.

Why did I even notice? If I would have been in Ingalls or Indianapolis on my home turf, I would not have either sign. If I would have noticed, it would not have risen in my consciousness to the level of comment. Why is that? What had suddenly changed? In the end, I have to admit that I am just a home body at heart. I love home. I am comfortable at home. Away from home, I am on edge. I am in search of all things that make me uncomfortable. Every instance becomes another indicator that things are not right; that I should head home as soon as possible. Proof of the point that I was making; thank you very much. I want to point it out to everyone around me that this place; not my home, is not safe and not worthy of my continued presence. I do feel sorry for the kids. Who wants to be reminded that your chosen hometown is full of people who want to drown their new born babies or lay a smack down during the passing of the peace? I don't. That is why I ignore it around home, and why I point out all of those flaws when I am not home.

They say that home is where the heart is. It is also the place where your babies are born on dry land, and your candy ass isn't about to get smacked down. Yes, home is where your toilet is bathed in royal moon light at 3:00 a.m.

Take Care.

Roger.

From the end of the driveway

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my finger tips doing well as I sit at the kitchen table typing. A couple of Saturday evenings ago I had the privilege to share some of my wife's and my experiences with a ten month placement of two girls ages 9 and 10 through the Safe Families ministry. We were asked to speak as the filler between acts of a benefit concert for Safe Families. When asked, I thought that it would be a wonderful opportunity to encapsulate all of the ups and downs of that 10 months. I had even bigger voices in my head because the girls' father has been reunited with the girls and he would be speaking about what the experience meant to him at the same time. It was going to be a dynamite panel discussion.

Well you guessed it. People were there to listen to the musical talent. They were not there to listen to us speak for very long. I get it. However, there were some things that came to mind as I was processing "what I wanted to talk about." Thank you Emma, for encouraging me to put those thoughts into words.

No we didn't just wake up one day with two young girls living with us. There was a call. In fact, it was a call that my wife, the Lovely Miss Beverly, had heard and was prepared to answer. Bev heard, "hey, we have a big empty house. Several rooms were available as our own kids have exited stage right as their adult lives take hold. There are kids and families that have a need. We can make a difference. As I said, Bev heard a call. I did not. I heard the call of riding my bike for 5000 miles a year, putting out a large garden plot, writing a weekly 1200 word blog, and rekindling an old wood working hobby that had fallen in the wake of raising our children. Why did Bev hear the call and I did not?  Who knows? Maybe the Holy Spirit saves time by just convincing one of the pair and then let the communication of a marriage figure it all out. Rather than figure out the mystery of marriage, in the end, we signed up and waited.

Then one day Emma said, "I have an interesting placement. It would last a minimum of 6 months but could go longer." We heard six months. Six months doesn't sound like it is very long. In 6 months, we will have flown through two seasons. In six months, the sap on the maple trees will be rising. The winter coat will not have to be worn every day. We will still have to get through the big spring thaw of March, but the days will be getting noticeably longer. In my 54th year, six months is a blink of an eye.

So we said sure. Six months is fine. If it goes longer, it will be fine. I remember telling Emma "we will take them when they get to the end of our driveway and keep them until they leave the end of our driveway." The "end of the driveway" has become a go-to metaphor at our house. For ten years, we raised organic vegetables for sale at local farmer's markets. One of the ways that we survived is through accepting summer interns who would wander to our farm through Internet contacts. They lived in our house, shared our meals and became an integral part of our family life. In any given summer, we could have several college students spend four to twelve weeks with us in an ever revolving door of personalities. At one point we had a self-proclaimed anarchist lesbian and a fundamentalist evangelical under the roof at the same time. Unlike me, the rest of my family understandably wanted more information, so they could prepare a little before the next eclectic personality showed up at the end of the driveway.

I had other priorities. I needed someone to pick beans, hoe weeds, and, if they weren't too squeamish, help dress chickens. Their religious or political leanings were of no concern to me.  I would get question after question from our kids and Bev about the next intern that I had just interviewed over the phone. Where are they from? How old are they? Do they shower often? Where do they fall along the lifestyle spectrum? So many questions that I had not asked. I asked, "when can you be here and how long are you staying?" So in response to all of the relevant family questions, I would just shrug my shoulders and say "we'll find out when they get to end of the driveway."

So in face of the uncertainty of the girls' and their father's story and duration of the placement, we just said we'll take them when they get to the end of the driveway and keep them until they leave the driveway.

I believe that accepting whoever and whatever God brings to the end of our driveway is what Bev and I are called to do. I thought that I was prepared for living life that open handed, accepting whatever God brought our way. I was wrong. I want to control. I want to judge. I want things my way. Keep that in your mind for a minute while I bring you up to date about the girls.

Imagine for a moment, that you are 10 and 9 years old. You are being taken to the library by grandma and grandpa to meet with a social worker and an old man and woman who are going to give you a safe place to stay. Dad has hit a tough patch. You haven't seen your mother since you were 2 and 1 respectively. And while grandma and grandpa were watching you at the start of dad's rough patch, their circumstances mean that they can't watch you for six months. In the middle of that storm you hear your grandpa say, these people, who you don't know, who he says are good people and safe, are really what is best in the circumstance. If I am 10 years old, I would have thought that things were pretty bad if these strangers are the best that we can do in the circumstance.

I thought that I was empathetic. I thought that I was patient. I thought that I had wisdom and excellent parenting skills that had been hard won through 54 years of life and 31 years of marriage. I thought that Bev's and my marriage could thrive through any adversity. I have now learned that those things are true to a certain extent. But not enough to overcome the strain that 10 years of varying degrees of chaos had affected the two young girls who came to stay with us. They came to us having each other and any normality, or structure would have to penetrate the coping mechanisms they had used to navigate a chaotic road that put them at the end of our driveway.

If I had truly accepted the girls that had shown up at the end of our driveway, I would have accepted the circumstances that had brought them to us. I would not have tried to fix them. I would not have compared them to our kids and the decisions Ben and Grace had made while living with us. I would not have wondered why bed time was so difficult if I would have thought about what life was like when you know that a new day may bring you unexpected things.

Accepting life at the end of the drive is difficult. There is such tension between accepting and expecting; come as you are, versus you can't make poor decisions. We will help you get to sleep, versus you have to go to sleep early in order to be rested for school tomorrow.

That tension was with us throughout the entire placement. Everything was a negotiation. In coming along side the family, all situations had to be negotiated. We would say, "we are partners with your dad and you can't do this or that," which wasn't always true. That is what was negotiated at that time. Their father wouldn't have given two rips about the situation we were negotiating about if we weren't partnered. I would have dealt out much greater consequences if we weren't partnered. So we spent a lot of physical and emotional energy walking the girls along this difficult balance beam between our world, and their dad's.

No, partnering with hurting people creates a tension. A tension that shows how difficult life is for the families that it serves. You want to fix that difficult life. You want them to know that if you don't drink pop for supper, you will be able to get to sleep at a good time and wake refreshed and your concentration will be so much stronger tomorrow at school. With stronger concentration, you will get better grades; graduate from high school, go on to college and meet a good man to create a family; a safe family. You have to give that desire up. If you don't, it will drive you crazy. No! You still can' t have pop for supper for a whole host of reasons, but not because it will fix your life.

Probably nothing done in Safe Families will fix the children. Certainly, nothing that Bev and I did fixed the girls who lived with us for 10 months. It took us a while to understand it. But when we recognized that, it became easier. I finally came up with the metaphor of the asteroid. In this metaphor, the girls' lives have an asteroid streaking towards them. It is a big one. It will cause great devastation. Nothing we can do will stop it streaking toward their world. No, at our point, at the end of our driveway, we can only push, pull and tug at the circumstances. Hopefully, that asteroid is deflected. Hopefully, the time to impact or the angle of deflection is great enough that no harm will come; maybe not. Maybe there will be some impact. Who knows?

We still have contact with the girls and their father. We give rides, help in emergencies, have the family over for supper once a week and have even started working with their dad to establish a budget to corral their tight finances. Maybe, it will be a fairy tale ending. Maybe, it won't. Either way Bev and I will not have fixed the situation. It wasn't the calling. We were simply called to show up.

From the end of the driveway, take care.

Roger

The things you can see on a bike ride.

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Vacation is over and I am back in the saddle. Although the saddle is a bit different for a few days. The great city of Pittsburgh has opened its doors to the people of my chosen career. I make it a firm policy to not write about the job. I continue that policy here. I only share that I am away and with vacation, I will have been gone from home for a week and a half. More importantly, I am away from the lovely Miss Beverly for three days. I know you road warriors are sarcastically crying boo hoo . . . "break out the violin section. You poor baby."

You are right. I am blessed. Your lives are affected by those long absences. I know because my life is affected by this short term absence. So I take my hat off to you.

That is an aside. Back to the vacation. I mentioned in last week's blog that Bev and I were on vacation in Beverly Shores on the beautiful banks of Lake Indiana. It has become the "go to" vacation spot for the lovely Miss Beverly and I. It is close enough that we can get there in 3 hours and yet far enough away that we are away from home. We aren't going to run home to take care of the dog or (as hard as it is to say) I can't go home to pick some green beans or cucumbers. The garden is on its own for that week.

The thing about having that "go to" place is over time you start to get the lay of the land. You learn the best places for the farmer's sunrise platter or peaches by the half bushel. More importantly we have found numerous outlets for Sherman's ice cream. It is a wonderous ice cream that we found in South Haven, Michigan 6? years ago.

I love the area. That Michiana land around the lower curve of Lake Indiana. Every time I ride along the south shore past the power plant cooling tower that looks like a nuclear power cooling tower (but it isn't) past the little bars and rail yards at the edge of Michigan City, I am reminded of stories of Jean Sheperd. He is an Indiana author that grew up in the Region. He was a humorist and radio show host. In 1966, he put together a compendium of essays into a book called "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash." I found the book 20 years ago and it has become one of the books that has made the transition with me through two media. I had it as a paper back. It was lost in one of the many book purges that the Sharritts have suffered during the years. I bought a second copy to store on my IPad. We will see how long it lasts.

It is one of the books that has made a lasting impression on my life. Some people look to the Self Help genre to find hints and helps to make their lives better. That route never works for me. I have started numerous self help books never finishing the third chapter. However, I may pick up a book about canning and find a pertinent pointer for my life. Six months ago I was reading one of the many murder mysteries in which I indulge and I found what it looks like to have a bunch of guys in your crew who watch your back. I was sharing another insight with my counselor and he was excited to write down the name of the book so he could share it with other clients. The advise was that good. Alas, it was one line in another mystery.

So I pick up these tips to live by in obscure places. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash was one such gold mine. Sheperd has an essay that describes the difference between the famous and the great unwashed. His premise is that every person faces three or four turning points in their life. How they react in that moment of blinding self awareness, determines if they are one of the famous people or the throng. When faced with the blinding truth of our existence most of us slink off to the weeds where we hide what we see from those around us. The famous? The famous when faced with their inadequacy put on a pair of sunglasses walk down to the nearest coffee shop and order a latte to drink out on the sidewalk under an umbrella.

So I carry the brilliance of Jean Shepard around with me in Northern Indiana as I do my favorite thing on a vacation. Because of advanced technology, I can take a box full of electrons smaller than a pack of cigarettes, tell it that I want to ride 50 miles and the GPS pixies will discover a route on rarely traveled roads that are in pretty good shape. I attach my Garmin to my handlebars, ride in the direction it tells me to ride. 500 feet before a turn it will tell me to go left or right and count down the feet until I have reached that intersection.

So I leave the directions to the pixie and just ride. I ride wherever it tells me to ride. I turn right. I turn left, I have no idea of where I am at. I have not paid close enough attention to get back home if the technology fails me. I just ride. I ride and look at the world through someone else's eyes. For a ride in the Region, it is Jean Shepard's eyes. I see the ridiculous, the sacred, the harmonious and the tone deaf.

Last week, I saw an old time dairy farm. The farmer was cutting hay in anticipation of a few dry days. I say old time and I mean the kind of farm that was prevalent 30 years ago but has disappeared to be replaced by the Fair Oaks of the world. Fair Oaks milks 30,000 cows just south of Chicago; 30,000 cows. For perspective, it would replace 300 dairies similar to the one that I grew up on. As I watched the mower make I couple of laps, I was transported to our farm and the hours and hours that I had done the same thing. In comparison, when I drive by Fair Oaks, I think what are they going to do with all of that poo. It turns out that they turn it into natural gas to run their fleet of trucks and buses.

A ten acre field of cucumbers was three miles down the road. I was flabbergasted; ten acres of cucumbers. And to think that I am limited to one plant at a time. Although I have found that you can cheat a little bit if you plant 3 seeds in a hill and be covered up with cukes, but still ten acres. You get some really big garden tools for 10 acres. You would have a lot of pickles to eat.

My travels took me past several "Stop the Freight Trains" signs. Really? Stop freight trains. I thought that we had fought that fight back in the 1800's. In fact, freight trains probably was one of the factors that tipped the balance to the North in the Civil War. But for people along that transportation choke point around Chicago and Northern Indiana the war is just heating up. I found other interesting signs: the Independent Cat Society. What? Can you get independent cat's to band together in a society? It also appears that the Region has lost its leprechaun. The rest of the world goes hunting in March, but not Northern Indiana. They have a hunt on August 20th at McHenry park. It makes some sense when you think about it. In March, their leprechauns are probably hidden under five feet of lake effect snow. No, it is best to wait until things thaw out a little bit in August and then go hunting in a wife beater, shorts and flip flops.

Finally there was the prediction of the apocalypse at Frank's pretty good flower shop. "Book your wedding flowers soon," Frank encouraged because "open dates are running out." Who knew? It appears that only a few weekends are left before the end of the world. Or maybe Frank has all of the business in Michigan City, Indiana for the next three millennia or however long we get to see interesting things off the beaten path.

Take care,
Roger.

The winner of the 4th annual limerick contest is?

Hello all, 

It’s the Lovely Miss Beverly with the results for the 2016, 4th annual limerick contest held in honor of the late Doyle Hoover, my dad, who loved limericks. This year’s theme was love—it was tempting to go with politics, but only tempting in a “let’s stare at the accident” kind of way. 

Thank you to all of the family and friends who penned their passions for everything from kittens to their cousin’s dance moves. The entries came slowly early in the week, but the procrastinators came through with a surge of brilliance in the last 24 hours. It is not easy to express love in this compact form, but your expressions made us laugh about pig riding and pig landings, and sigh with love confessed for brothers, and the remembered hard work and joy of baling hay.

Late July brings the image of hay-making alive for many of you; from the childhood tumble-down construction of bale forts in the hay mow to the adolescent memories of watching the sweaty, sexy farm hands stack bales on the wagon. 

There were tributes to my mom and dad, with nuanced references to a love that led to eight kids—one of my favorite rhyme schemes this year was Bill’s use of “farmer”, “charmer”, and “alarmed her” that had nice story appeal. Another rhyme triplet worth mention was Danielle’s use of “harried”, “married”, and “carried” expressing her relief in no longer being interrogated by Aunties about her love life.

It’s good to know what we don’t love, by way of contrast, to help us appreciate ice cream, caresses, and bike gadgets, so we valued Patty and Grace’s mention of humidity and head lice.

Jane and Chris took on the challenge of describing true love with the paradox of the work and endurance needed to love (for example, in combing out lice in a loved one’s hair), and the effortlessness that love embodies when it takes flight—as easy as reaching your toes to the sky on that childhood summer swing. 

This week of creative play is becoming a part of the Sharritt summer rhythm—when the hollyhocks bloom it’s time to come up with a theme, then after Ben’s birthday just a couple of days until posting, leading up the early August judging sometime between a squeezed-in vacation or day at the State Fair. Like summer, we look forward to this contest, soak it in, and then move on the structure and schedules of fall. 

This year we chose a gold, silver and bronze winner from the 37 entries, with scores clearly elevating them to the pie podium. Cue the Olympic music!

In third, from 2014’s winner, Bill Hoover:

The aroma of morning mown hay

Fresh smell after summer stormy day.

All things that I miss,

Country living was bliss,

Pleasant memories are with me to stay.

In second, from last year’s winner, Judy Boggs:

The Hoovers were quite a hot number.

Eight kids left them no time for slumber.

With a house full of love,

And the good Lord above,

There seemed nothing, at all, could encumber.

And this year’s golden crust pie winner! Bonita Hoover:

They make fun of my bingo addiction.

I know it’s a crazy affliction.

But the friends that I made,

For the money I paid,

I could write a book better than fiction.

Take care
Bev

Ice doesn't grow on trees. Well mostly.

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. I am in the second week of my summer vacation. The 1st week in late June was recent enough that I still have some residual rejuvenation left. So when I add this rejuvenation onto the residual rejuvenation, I should be good to go through November. There is a lot to do between now and then; still plenty of garden to grow, and winter wood to cut during the fall weekends. It is always a great time to put the headphones on tune into the Purdue game on Saturday or the Colts game on Sunday and enjoy the great outdoors while cutting and splitting firewood.

We are back on the shores of the lovely Indiana Lake. For those of you familiar with the blog you know which lake I am talking about and the terrible injustice when the citizens of the Indiana Territories had the naming rights stolen by the usurpers to the North in what came to be derisively known as Michigan. Don't worry, the wheels of justice are rolling; preparing to reverse this wrong that was thrust upon we Hoosiers. You can help. Every time you speak of the lake on the Northern edge of Indiana refer to it as Lake Indiana. Over time, it will creep into the vernacular and its usage will become more wide spread. At precisely the proper moment, (the tipping point so to speak) my legal team will file the appropriate paperwork and the next thing you know the map makers will be doing bang up business making new atlases and fold out maps proudly proclaiming Lake Indiana starting at the Northern edge of Indiana and proceeding all the way to the Canadian border.

We are in a lovely cabin in the lovely lake shore community of Beverly Shores. We are in a big house that three brothers built into the side of a sand dune. The house has three doors on three landings  that come out on grade level where that part of the house tumbles down the hill. The brothers are engineers and using a winch powered sand sled to excavate the sand off of the side of the hill, created grade and built a house in the side of the hill. Most of us, most of the other builders in fact would look at the dune and take a bulldozer to knock the top of the hill off and start building. It is a unique building. The lovely Miss Beverly found this place a couple of years ago. So we switch back and forth between a small rental in Sawyer, Michigan and this huge 4 story four bedroom hole in the hill for our goto vacation solutions.

The lovely Miss Beverly does a great job finding places like this. I just wanted to make sure that I gave her credit publicly for her great work at finding hospitable places off the beaten path. I also want to give her credit for a line that I will use later in blog. I would do it at the time but by that time the blog will be running with so much momentum to its conclusion that I don't want to slow down to credit the lovely Miss Beverly and her very funny line. Up here though, near the top, the meandering bits of the blog, there is plenty of time to say it was a great line and she is great at finding places for vacation and offering her hospitality to those around her.

The Sawyer, Michigan cabin, the one from our June vacation,  is small and mostly for Bev and I to hang out together. This house is big and begs to have people here to enjoy all of the space. So Chris and Grace are here. Last night a couple of Bev's sisters and all or part of their families came up. In fact a few friends of Amy and Amy, Patty's youngest, came also. Patty is Bev's sister who migrated to Iowa and is fully assimilated to Hawkeye land. So, last night we had a house full of 5 teenagers in the house.

I want to take a second to declare my admiration for all of the nieces and nephews. I have made it a strict policy as an uncle not to pay attention to any of them until they become interesting. They have done nicely through the years. Of the 20 nieces and nephews, all have turned out to be interesting in their own time. What is interesting? Like that dirty old man on the Supreme Court, "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." Twenty for twenty is pretty good.

Like I said  we had three nieces and nephews and two friends here for Saturday afternoon through Sunday noon enjoying the fruits of Lake Indiana and a house full of fun. As much as I love these children and their interests in Purdue, AP this and that, running, volleyball and ice cream, I was dismayed at their lack of a certain life skill.

Everyone had spent an afternoon in the sun, looking at and wading out into about a billion gallons of water. When they got back to the cabin, they ran to the cabinet, got out a glass for water, and opened up the freezer for ice to make that water even more refreshing. Upon opening the freezer they were stopped in their tracks.

"Where's the ice," they moaned.

"It's in the freezer", came the chorus of adults.

"Where?"

"In the freezer in those blue plastic trays."

"What? Well how do you get ice out of those?"

At that I despaired. We have raised a bunch of children without this basic manual labor experience. So the aunts and uncles chimed in about twisting and turning the blue trays and expounded on how that torquing would cause the ice cubes to pop out. Some of us old timers even shared about the prehistoric times before plastics that could bend without breaking in sub freezing temperatures were developed; back when we moved into the 1970's. That's right kids back in the olden days our ice cube trays were made out of aluminum. They had this set of louvred paddles on a spine that slid back and forth when you pulled really hard on this six inch handle. A couple of pulls back and forth and the cubes would be loosened enough to pour into the bucket and refill with water. Let's be honest here. How many of you convinced your little sister or brother to stick their tongue on the frozen aluminum ice tray? Come on. It's okay your among friends. Really? Well you weren't very interesting as children now were you?

So the crisis was averted. Ice was put into glasses. Thirsts were quenched, and a few lessons were learned. Well almost. I thought that civilization had been advanced until I went to the freezer a half an hour later and found three trays with 1 or 2 cubes in each. What? Empty the tray and refill it with water for the next person. The ice fairies do not sense the empty ice tray and then automatically refill the tray with water to the proper level for automatic ice replenishment. No, considerate people realize that in order for the group to benefit from the cooling properties of cold water the near empty trays have to be refilled. Ice does not grow on trees people. Well . . . except durning ice storms then it does grow on trees. (Nice one Bev.) But still you get the picture.

What will happen if the government decides that automatic ice dispensers cause global warming, ozone depletion, earthquakes or the spread of zika? They will ban automatic ice makers. That's what will happen and all of your children of a certain age will stand in the kitchen, freezer door ajar, mouth agape, ice cream melting onto the floor, wondering how do I get the ice out of these blue trays and when it is empty how do I get it refilled.

I say people run to a cabin in the woods or unplug the ice maker in your house; run down to the nearest museum store and by two or three blue plastic ice trays; fill them up and show your youths how to empty them the first time and then berate them constantly that ice doesn't grow on trees until they figure it out.

Or have a crazy uncle do it for you. It will help make them a little more interesting.

Take care.

Roger.

The Invisible Hand's Magic Trick

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The heat is good for the garden unless you really need lettuce or arugula. The kale is going to burn up and forget about the spinach; nothing doing as the temperature creeps up above 85 degrees.

Yes, as promised last week, I am here to discuss the weather surrounding the July 4th weekend. I really hated giving homework. But I really needed you to remember the rained out July 4th weekend. As the list of blog topics piles up, some are given away to the outer recesses (what an oxymoron; outer recesses) of my brain; the 12 foot tall sunflower that broke off before blooming, the beauty of hanging clothes on the line, the beauty of central air, why are some bees so mean, or if we don't stop misbehaving we are going to have to stop buying tall flag poles. The world has been bumping from one crisis to another. Over the past month the flag has flown at full staff for only 4 days. The other 26 it has flown at half-staff under the direction of our governor. Other topics stick in the forefront of my brain and I can't shake them. They wait until the traffic jam of life and my brain clear out and I get around to doing it.

So you were tasked with homework last week. You were supposed to remember the miserable rainout we had for the July 4th weekend. I want to take a moment to marvel at the lesson in the failings of big government. I know there are many of you who think that the purpose of government is to solve our problems and make the lot of our lives better. Bless your heart. You keep on thinking that. And don't read the rest of this blog.

Yes, the 4th of July was predicted to by rainy. Not only the 4th but rain was predicted everyday of the big weekend. All of the big 4th of July firework displays were threatened. They were threatened early in the week. The five day forecast predicted 100% rain on each of the days of the weekend. We were given early warning that the festivities were in danger of being rained out. The only fit time to shoot off fireworks was going to be Friday evening, the night when no festivities were planned. We had just finished a big week. We were on the brink of a three day weekend. Collectively, we needed to gather ourselves for the big weekend. So Friday was out, there was no time to reschedule. Fire personnel, police, and public safety  personnel of all stripes could not be mustered in time for the events to take place on Friday evening.

So we went into the weekend, wringing our hands with anxiety and the cold sweats of those who know the entitlement of a city with an indoor football stadium whose roof opens for those three days a year when it is sunny and 70 degrees at kickoff. Would we be able to see the fireworks this weekend? Would the parade and street fair occur Saturday? Maybe it could be postponed until Sunday afternoon or Monday. Our face paint shouldn't run. Life would continue its uninterrupted string of successful holidays and celebrations. But Henny Penny could look at the weather forecast and see that was not going to happen. There was an 80% chance of rain each of the days. Yes, it was going to rain and rain hard. Still Penny wrung her hands.

I started this train of thought saying that a wonderful lesson was taught to us. The teachers came in the most remarkable form. We usually don't look to those DIY pyrotechnic experts, those who keep an eye on the seasonal fireworks shops, those who proudly sign the "I promise to light my fireworks at the approved fireworks lots placed around the state." They sign this proudly and without compunction under penalty of perjury knowing that they have no intention of  lighting their fire works any place other than their own back yard barbecue, on their deck, after consuming multiple adult beverages and shooting towards your house.
Usually,  they are not the paragon of virtue and good judgement. Yet, this time they got it right. Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand". According to Wiki the invisible hand theory states "that individuals' efforts to pursue their own interest may frequently benefit society more than if their actions were directly intending to benefit society." Yes, the invisible hand if those perjury committing hill-jacks single handedly saved our Independence Day. You may consider them and their home fireworks of shells, Roman candles, and sparklers a nuisance. However faced with a weekend of certain rain these sons and daughters of freedom stepped up and pursuing their own interests benefited society by jumping the gun and firing off their works on Friday night.

I know what my law and order fans want to say. "But Roger, they put the public and themselves at risk. Also, I hope that you weren't being insensitively ironic about the whole "invisible hand" thing." I wasn't and the fact that you brought it up shows how cynical you are. Sure some of them lost a finger or many fingers. Yet in the end this small subset provide a precautionary tale for the rest of us. Make sure that you throw the explosive after ignition. If it doesn't detonate in the prescribed time, let it be. Go get another one of the six free ones you got when buying one. Even the guy, on YouTube who put a "magic fountain" in his pants and lit it, provided millions of hits and shares bringing the world closer together. It was actually quite impressive until something went askew, as it was bound too, and started shooting million degree sparks at his belly button.

What was the rest of the world doing besides criticizing the Liberty loving patriots? They had their spokes-people on the news looking all glum about the show that was postponed on Saturday night. It was repeated for Sunday night. Some governments cancelled. Others postponed theirs until September. The news used the same breathless sense of urgency that they use for 4 inch snow storms. I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to have my traditional French toast 4th of July breakfast because all of the milk, bread, and eggs had been bought off the shelf in the panic.

So there you have it. On the one hand, government stood on the sidelines fretting about the rain and what to do and creating quite a stir in the mean time. On the other hand, the invisible hand, people went out and did what needed to be done. Sure, the rest of us had to show a little more forbearance and understanding for people who can sometimes be obnoxious in their exuberance. But in the end, they had a celebration the government couldn't get off the ground.

Take care.

Roger

Fading Daybreak

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I mentioned last week that I had a lot to write about. It was the time to write it that is the problem. I have two good blogs and time to write one. So I need you to remember the weather July 4th weekend. There are some observations about a rained out 4th of July. They can keep for a week or so.

Big news alert; my daughter Grace and I will be riding across Indiana in the RAIN ride. It is 160 miles from Terre Haute to Richmond on SR 40 with a detour around Indianapolis. It will be my second time and Grace's first time. It is exciting and a bit nerve wracking at the same time.

Speaking of riding my bike for special events, I am coming to the end of a special annual set of rides. I ride early in the morning for training during the week. When I started riding, I would ride in the evening. Get started by 6:30 or 7:00, and except for the small time from November to March, I would be riding in the light. Of course, they say you should never vigorously exercise immediately prior to going to bed. There were a few nights at the beginning when my endorphin charged blood stream would not let me go to sleep. My body adjusted however and I was sleeping fine. This schedule allowed me the opportunity to get up in the morning and veg out for an hour or so. For some reason, I love to get up at 5 and sit, read through the news and Facebook, browse a couple of sites where I get other news and generally contemplate life.

The only drawback to this plan was that I lost that hour of lovely Miss Beverly time in the evening. Compromise is the spice of life. So, I changed up the routine. I started biking in the morning. In order to ride for an hour and make my hour commute, I need to leave the house at 5:00 a.m. I found pretty quickly that I still needed some time to engage the brain before my butt hit the bike seat. So I get up at 4:19, spend 26 minutes doing the mini cross word, checking the weather,reading the news. At 4:45, I get in my bike gear and am out the door by 5:00 or so.

Speaking of lost hours, the hour that I routinely give those who have enough power to take with Daylight Savings Time means that these morning routines never see the light of day. Well almost never. For 3 and a half weeks, centering around the Summer Solstice, I get to ride in first light and I get to see day break for about one week. First light is that lightening time. You can't see the sun over the horizon. However, it provides enough for shadowing to be able to turn off the headlights.

I do not get this benefit for the entire ride even on the longest day of the year. Even on June 21st, the first half of the ride is made in the dark. I am using every light I have sweeping the fields and side-ditches for assassin deer or skunks out for their morning constitutional. I am also on the look out for any road kill that might be littering the road. It is never pleasant to try to rekill the already dead and somewhat squishy on a bike going 16 miles per hour. You kinda have to brace and hope for the best. A certain amount of mouth breathing helps also.

So 40 minutes in the dark and eventually 20 minutes in the light gives me the perfect ride for three and a half weeks every late June and early July. It is perfect because 6 months ago I found a different ride. I used to do two laps through the countryside and finally got bored. So I went East and went through the small town on Pendleton. Pendleton has a great downtown consisting of mainly restaurants, antique stores, and a donut shop. They also have a neon sign maker. Many of the shops have his handy work and like to leave it on all night long. So riding through down the street under the mercury lamps and the bright neon signs brings joy to my soul in the predawn hours. Plus I get the added benefit of riding past people's houses wondering if they are having a good nights rest.

That joy is doubled during these 3 and a half weeks, the first half through downtown Pendleton, the second half 20 minutes later turning down 750 W. and heading north the first light slowly fading the lighting ability of my headlamp. Last week, I found myself delaying may departure by a couple of minutes a day. I have just been trying to hold onto to the perfection for a few days longer. This week I am sure that I will make the choice to stay gainfully employed and avoid speeding tickets to make up the lost time. I will leave the house on time. I will accept the single joy of the lights of Pendleton. I will ride in the dark for the next 11 months.

I know that this dark riding is the fault of the "powers that be." Who knows who those powers are? It could be big golf. It could be big evening barbecue, I suspect that big keep you up until the 11:00 p.m. news is part of the cabal. I used to be angry at all of you. But that changed this time through the joy of these few weeks.

My journey to releasing this anger is a stretch. But riding my bike thinking things often stretches me physically and mentally. Every time that I thought about the time that is taken by those in power, I would flash back to a passage written by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. He was answering the question is "psychoanalysis okay within the Christian tradition."

To paraphrase; he stated that the idea of mental illness is one of the reasons that Christ admonished us not to judge others. Those with mental illness combated forces that were ingrained and brought upon themselves with little fault of their own. He went onto say that it is impossible to determine the blame for another. Maybe the alcoholic that was able to forestall a drink for a couple of days or who swore to stay sober for the 10th time to fail two weeks later was showing more of Christ's grace and sustaining power than a teetotaler who never drank a beer in his whole life, simply because he never liked the smell of alcohol.

Somehow on those rides, I came to feel the same way about the stealers of light. You are doing the best that you can. I wish you well with your 9:00 p.m. sunsets, and am thankful for the 25 days of watching this sliver of joy rise in the East, having it erase the beam of my headlamp, and letting me see the deep greens of deep summer in the quiet of a warming morning.

Take care.

Roger

The magic of broken strings

Dear Blog Reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. Hope that you were not too concerned with the lack of  posts. Yes, I know that the blog recently passed a milestone. It is a milestone that I had hoped I would not have to pass on this journey of the "you said what; Roger?" Blog. June 2016 was the first month that I have gone without blogging since "Girls gone Wild"; a blog about Grace a newly minted college freshman spreading her independent wings ironically by jumping out of a perfectly good plane, in September 2010.

On the one hand not a bad string; almost six years opening my brain and watching what pours out onto a screen to by released into the world. On the other hand a string broken is a broken string. You pull on one end and the other end does not, cannot move. Also, this broken string reminds me that all of the strings will be broken sooner or later.

Strings are important to me. The most precious string in my 54 years (except my 54 years and 31 years of wedded bliss to the lovely Miss Beverly and the string of one successful jump from a perfectly good airplane for Grace) was Pete Rose's 44 game hitting streak in 1978. I vividly remember in late July of 1978 going to River Front Stadium with the family for Farmer's Night and watching Pete Rose (may he never get to the Hall of Fame), get a bunt single to extend his string on the way to 44 consecutive game hitting streak. The 16 year old Roger went crazy. Sure it wasn't a real hit. It was a bunt for goodness sakes. He wasn't using skill, hand speed, or eye hand coordination. He was using cunning and sneakiness to extend the streak. But I was delirious with joy that the string was extended one more day. A string that was cut 12 games short of the record by Joe DiMaggio. Joe's string was a string that was cut at 56 games far short of going on forever, which is how long any 16 year old fanboy thinks a string should last.

The Sharritt household is atwitter with the causes and excuses for the blogging string breakage. There has been the adoption of multiple new hobbies. I am like a high school Jr. trying to get into Harvard by trying to pad my resume. Two hives provide bees that are buzzing in the expanded garden. It is not just any garden. It is an Amish child garden. An Amish child garden, for those unfamiliar with the blog, is a garden tended by Amish children who have no access to TV, or video games, and still have a tendency to get under their mother's feet. Mom gets frustrated and tells the kids to get out to the garden and hoe a row; viola a pristine weed free garden. In addition to those two full time past times, I plan on riding 5000 miles on a bike this year. Plus, my woodworking skills had rusted from years of non-use and I have decided to revive those. No wonder my blogging string was frayed.

If that weren't enough, as you know if you have read the blog, the lovely Miss Beverly and I have taken in two children with Safe Families. The placement at 10 months has continued longer than expected. I think that it is not coincidental the blog writing string started when Grace's departure created an empty nest allowing space for the blog and the girl's stay refilling the space crowding blog writing to the edges. I personally think that it is the empty nest connection but as I wrote the Sharritt household is hotly debating the causes and effects of the situation.

I am sure of one thing though. The lack of blogging does not come from a lack of topics to blog about. This month you almost heard about the assassin deer being caught at the scene of a raccoon's death on CR 750 at 5 a.m.; the sliver of time granted to me each year when the sun almost rises at the end of my early morning bike rides; and the books that I read for self help and the strange places that I find good advice. It would have been a good month.

No crying over spilt milk. They did not get written. They can still be written about. That is the thing about broken strings. They can't be put back together again. They can't be made into a whole string. You are certainly left with four ends and not two. I suppose all that is true unless you are a magician and can magically repair the strings that you so ostensibly cut in two in front of your bewildered audience. If I were a magician, the string would not be broken. But as you can see there are no tricks up my sleeve. Until next time.

Take care.

Roger,

Sallying Forth to Disaster or Greatness or at Least the Great Unknown

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The spring continues. The garden, or parts of it, have germinated. I am expecting a 3 pound box of bees this week.  I started this blog 4 weeks ago. Then, as you know, current events intruded into our esoteric pursuits and there were limericks to write about the carnival called the primaries that had parked itself in our Hoosier driveway. I couldn't look away and ignore the easy targets as they sashayed into our collective conscience.

Since then other earth shattering events have occurred in central Indiana. The frost that we had on the morning of May 15. I warned you. You were warned. Do not take the flannel sheets off of the bed until Memorial Day. But someone did not listen. Someone did not listen. I will not go all mid evil on you and publicly shame you; no 3 days in the stocks on the public square for you. Simply go off in your private shame and swear that you will leave your flannels on until Memorial Day next year.

So the bees arrived three weeks ago to fill the hive that I had purchased last summer. It had been sitting outside the old henhouse where I would see it everyday as I turned into the driveway as I returned from a long day at work. That daily reminder pointed to a commitment that I could no longer back out of. Treasure had been spent. I needed to learn about bee keeping. I have been interested in bee keeping for a long time. I gave up thinking about it 20 years ago. It just seemed too complicated; mites, black foul brood, Apistan, queen excluder, honey super, honey extractor, queen cells, drones, sudden colony collapse, scout bees. What the heck? I watched in fascination as the neighbor guy brought one of his hives to the farm "because an organic farm would be a safe healthy place; free of  harmful pesticides for his bees." I was surprised when I could walk up to the open hive while he was working it without a bit of fear. Bees were flying all around my head. I had no protective gear and I wasn't worried at all.

That fall, I remember feeling terrible that my turkeys had used the hive for a night roosting spot. Turkeys, being the clumsy animals that they are, knocked the cover off just in time for a 1 inch cold rain to pour in the unprotected hive and kill the colony. I put the idea of bee keeping far away. My life is too chaotic for the structure of bees. We are working on two different wavelengths; two different planes of existence. I am PigPen the bees are the Lucy of Sharritt land. While Lucy and PigPen can coexist on Charles Schultz world, somebody's gonna get hurt in the land of Sharritt.

Then two years ago, in September a small swarm split from a hive someplace close by and used a small cherry tree sapling that I had recently planted in the front yard. That sentence described some very unusual things. First, I saw a swarm. I had been on this earth for 51 years, 1/3 of my total 150 year expected life span (read other of my blogs) and had never experienced a honey bee swarm. Oh sure, I had convinced a swarm of wasps to sting the crud out of me after 10 year old me had used a stick to bang on the shed where they lived. I was surprised. I tried to say that I was sorry. I didn't know that shed was their home. It appears that wasps aren't great reconcilers. They are Old Testament, wrath of God, creatures. They came out of that building with vengeance on their mind. It was eye for an eye time. Five stings on the lip and a PR seven second 100 yard dash later, I was prepared to never see a swarm again.

But I did see a swam again; a swarm of honey bees. They had congregated around their queen on that branch in our yard; a collective catching of the breath, while the scouts went out to find a place to rent; the new hive. This brings us to the second very unusual thing described in the first sentence in the previous paragraph. The bees had swarmed in September. Bees come out of the winter. Their stores of honey are low. They haven't been producing brood; there is no food available to feed their young. No, they are laying low, hoping that the food holds out for spring and the pollen and nectar flow. Then one day, spring leaps upon us. Food is everywhere, maple pollen, crab apples, apple trees, tulips, daffodil. While you reach for the Zyrtec, the bees are getting down to business. With all of the food, they are making babies. The next thing they know    that 2 bedroom bungalow just won' do any more. It is much too crowded.

Faced with an intolerable situation, the bees send out scouts. Through bee magic, they create a queen. Then one day, half of the hive escorts the old queen to a tree limb where they lounge around while the scouts find a nice condominium to move into. The new hive will work hard the rest of the summer to build the hive, raise brood and store enough honey to get through the winter. That takes time. September leaves them no time. It was a bit depressing knowing that that group of bees made a fatal mistake. They were not going to make it through the winter. A week later, the scout bees reported back and the swarm made its move. What possessed those stupid bees to make the leap in the wrong season. Maybe the abundance of sunflowers that I always plant on August 1st in my annual race against the frost confused them. They saw tons of pollen waiting for them. Maybe, they were in the slow but steady wins the race camp. They kept plugging away. Getting their hive stronger and stronger and they weren't bursting at the seams until late in the season. Perhaps, they suffered a setback early in the spring that was not of their making, but they persevered, overcame and full of renewed optimism sallied forth on their great adventure.

That is the way of sallying forth. We do it with great optimism or big naïveté. If we knew that winter was coming, we wouldn't split our resources and numbers in September to sally forth into certain doom. If I knew that bee keeping was a difficult task and probably doomed to failure without constant vigilance; vigilance that I haven't shown in the past, I would never have bought a 3 pound box of bees just to see how things turn out. We know that the frost gods will frown on our sallying forth with Egyptian Cotton Sheets before Memorial Day and then complain about how cold it is on May 15th and that the tomato plants were frost killed.

Yet again, if we didn't sally forth, we would be stuck in our overcrowded hives and never thrive in another setting. I would never have the opportunity to become a fair to middling bee keeper. And you wouldn't be able to complain about a few cold evenings in mid-May before summer really gets started like you always do.

Take Care

Roger

A Little Political Clarity

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I have never been better. Never in my life has there been a Presidential primary election that mattered in Indiana. That has all changed now. Next Tuesday, it matters, at least on the Republican side. I know that I have some readers who will say that the nomination process is undemocratic or unconstitutional. You readers are not along. I am in a hotel in Iowa this morning waiting for a nephew's wedding. The breakfast buffet included Fox TV. I had to listen to the "smartest people in the room" tell me that It wasn't fair. To you (and them) I say, "I am sorry your education was so sorely lacking." It is simply not your responsibility to decide who will the republican or democrat party's nominee. (Presumably, the person most likely to bring success in the general election.) it is the members of the republican or democrat parties responsibility to decide. If you don't think that it is fair get over it, or get your own political party and nominate your own candidate any fair way you choose.

My political education was extensive and hands on. Estelle and Lloyd Sharritt immersed me in art of political warfare at a young age. My mom spent many an early May day at the polls challenging democrats requesting republican ballots. Another time, I remember running home crying because two high school kids were obviously bullying by chanting "Humphrey, Humphrey, He's our man. We'll throw Nixon in the garbage can." How could they be so mean? How could they be so stupid. When I was 11 years old, I watched all of the Watergate Hearings. I watched in fascination as big old jowly Sam Ervin questioned Halderman and Eirlichman. I seethed when that traitorous Howard Baker crossed the aisle in bipartisanship to sink Nixon's ship. Each day my father reassured me that these were things that all presidents had done. Nixon just got caught. There was even an episode when members of the John Birch society were out to ruin mom and dad. I have to admit that my recollections are fuzzy with regards to this event. I only remember hushed dinner conversations and the promise to shoot those people if they show up.

So you can imagine the glee that I find in this hot political climate. We are a country that was forged in full scaled rebellion based on the political suppositions of representation. We are a country that had to go through armed rebellion to answer the question of state's rights and people's rights. A little anger at a Trump Rally is a minor kerfuffel. This is democracy. We are people with varying opinions. We will reach some sort of consensus by our collective November vote.

So the participants on the ballot, comes down to Hoosiers. On Tuesday, we will walk into the polling place, request our ballots, step to the machine and place our vote.

Who will we vote for? One of 5 people will win our proud Hoosier votes. Who will you vote for? As fate would have it, I mentioned earlier in this blog that I have traveled to Iowa for a wedding this weekend. Iowa the place that the primaries began last January. Eight hours on the road thinking about primary season, gave me the perfect opportunity to weigh the pro's and con's of each of the candidates. These eight hours have resulted in 10 limericks (one pro and one con for each of the candidates.)

I share them here with you, a gift of clarifying poetry to help you make an educated selection next Tuesday.

They say I should mention Kasich
Although, Indiana he did ditch.
A moderate sort,
He failed to thwart,
With his party-line centerist pitch.

The firebrand candidate Trump,
Whose celebrity gave him a bump.
They say, "it's a sin,
If he should win,
The country will slide to the dump."

They say he looks like a Munster,
He certainly isn't a funster.
The moderates whine,
'Bout his conservative line,
Ted Cruz is still trailing the Trumpster.

There once was a Madam named Hillary
Whose mouth brings to mind loud artillery,
Her email kerfuffle
Some feathers did ruffle,
She, Republicans all want to pillary.

There once was a commie named Sanders.
Voted in by many Vermont-landers.
What's yours is mine,
He things is just fine,
A Mercedes for all the pan-handlers.

All the fans of little Teddy Cruz
Say that he should never ever lose.
The constitution is pure.
To be followed for sure.
President Hillary would make them drink booze.

My job was shipped overseas
All I want to do is work, yes please.
I am a Trump fan
He is the man.
I'm begging you down on my knees.

They say she has tons of experience.
So how can you still ride the fence?
In the Senate she rocked.
At state was top jock.
Her brain is rather immense.

Oh Bernie will care for the poor.
Banks and Wall Street he'll choose to abhor.
With college, he's shown,
You won't need a loan.
All to show Hillary the door.

Yes, John's the only one sane.
SO don't throw your vote down the drain.
He won't rock the boat,
And keep us afloat
And won't cause the Democrats pain.

Happy voting.
Take Care.

Roger