Dear Blog Reader.
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Thank you for all of the positive feedback about the 2016 Christmas Letter. It is always fun to collaborate with the lovely Miss Beverly. Usually, I write with very little revision (laziness). Thankfully, the lovely Miss Beverly didn't want the Christmas letter to go out the door without our best efforts. She did such a great job polishing and adding a great amount of sizzle to the initial words and ideas first spewed onto the screen.
Two weeks down 50 more to go. We finally took down the Christmas tree last week. Thankfully, we had not made a resolution to get it down on New Years day. That would have been a complete fail. We started. We took all of the ornaments off, wrapped them up and banished them behind the cold, but soon to be stifling hot, knee wall space in the attic. Christmas ornaments are long suffering. They wait patiently behind that knee wall freezing in winter and sweltering from April through October. Then in December we take them out and bring them into the environmentally controlled space of our life. They take center stage. They reveal the phases of our lives.
The first round, those wooden, poorly glued, lead painted, creepy ones, are nearly gone. They entered our married life first. Newly married in a town with a new Sam's club, they were an impulse buy when we realized how empty our first tree would be. Only a couple of that 24 pack remain. The freezing and thawing cycles loosened most of their glue joints and they have been replaced by better made ornaments from children and various handy people in our lives.
We have the macaroni on a cardboard, spray painted gold, preschool projects. They take prominent places near the bottom of the tree where stronger branches can hold their one pound of glue. There will be no glue failure here. Every year the school picture, being transformed with glitter and a bit of string into a guilded pathway thru childhood into the teen age years, has added to our ornament arsenal. There are the painted Santa spindles made by a friend who had gotten a lathe and turned dozens of spindles a little fat in the middle and of various lengths. They are some of my favorites.
There are chickens of various shapes and sizes; a testament to an incorrectly identified hobby of collecting chicken figurines. It was an honest mistake. We lived on a farm. We raised chickens. All of the Christmas letters has chicken stories in them. The lovely Miss Beverly finding a vintage chicken target game, to replace the one she had growing up, was the kicker. Yes, the chicken figurine fever burned hot and for many years. Dare I call it the chicken pox phase of our life. We have all kinds of chickens; glass chickens, skiing chickens, chickens with funny glasses and stars on springs shooting out everywhere. We even have a miniature version of the classic rubber chicken. Can you imagine that at one time in America, dressing our own chickens was so ubiquitous that it could become a gag that would be universally recognized?
All of the chickens, Santas, pictures, macaroni collages, commemorative college bulbs were put away (the IU bulb a bit roughly) on January 1. The memories going back in the box were as strong as when they came out of the box three weeks earlier. That said, we did not take down the tree. No, the lovely Miss Beverly and I have an affinity for a plain lit unadorned tree. It is very simple. The white lights on a fragrant green tree does try to push back the long cold darkness of December and January. In fact a couple of years ago, we became a couple of a certain age (read the Christmas letter for a more complete explanation) that lost the will to decorate the tree after getting the lights on that first weekend of December. It stood there ablaze in white light without a single decoration. Even the angel on top was banished to the decoration box that stood ready at the bottom of the tree for two weeks while Bev and I marveled at how much we liked our unadorned tree. It was all fine and good until Grace got home from school and thankfully decorated the tree. I write thankfully because I am thankful that she didn't get out the retirement home brochures or call her brother and start planning our incarceration in the old folks home because: "They are obviously losing their marbles. They aren't even decorating the tree for God's sake." I would have been okay with just the lights (at least for that year.)
Isn't it funny? We are all experts at our perfect tree. The entire time that the tree was going up and coming down this year I was thinking artificial vs real. The lovely Miss Beverly and I grew up in live tree families. Is that a question on the premarital counseling survey? Do you believe in real or artificial trees? I believe that real trees are about the real Christmas spirit. Artificial trees? Well artificial trees are the spawn of Satan. Yes, I think that maybe this question should be answered in pre-marital counseling.
I certainly grew up during a time when it was an annual debate. I grew up in a divided family. My mom and dad were both big live tree advocates. However, both of dad's sisters were artificial adherents. Both sets of grandparents were artificial tree people. My maternal side being converted over time and my dad's mom opting for the aluminum foil tree with the rotating red, green, and yellow light. Each year it would make its way downstairs from the attic fully decorated, set up and lit by that ridiculous light whose motor, that turned the tri-color disk slowly, made a remarkable amount of noise for its size and lightness of load.
I once asked Nanny, why she didn't put the lights on that aluminum tree like everyone else. She said that people learned the hard way that aluminum "trees" are fantastic conductors of electricity. So if you put electric lights on an aluminum tree and it develops a short over time someone is going to be electrocuted. I think that by saying 'the hard way" she had read a story of said person's electrocution. Anyway in order to maintain that UL seal of approval, the Reynold aluminum foil company took the lights off of the aluminum tree and gave us the three disk light.
Yes it was an annual debate. The newspapers would be filled with opinion pieces from the realists; the trees smell better and the artificialists; you are being a poor steward of the world's natural resources by cutting down a live tree every year for 3 weeks of decorations and an artificial tree won't catch on fire with those hot bulbs that we used to have. Yes all of you millennia's out there, we used to put 200 lights, each about the size of a spot light, on our live drying out trees. They generated enough heat that natural gas suppliers around the US would notice a sizable decrease in amount of gas used to heat homes. That much heat on a tinder dry tree in a house with a relative humidity of 20%, it is going to cause a few fires. Each year we would read about this or that family who had their Christmas ruined because their tree caught fire. We would all come together and help out the family. But I could hear my aunts mutter, "it wouldn't have happened if they had an artificial tree."
The debate hung in the balance at the Sharritt house year after year. For us, it was sticking a white pine needle into our big toe in July every year. To be fair, we had 4 inch green shag carpet through out the 70's. Those needles would burrow down in there lurking until we were sure that we had dodged the bullet. Then "CRAPPPPPP! MOM I HAVE A TEN INCH NEEDLE IN MY FOOT. WHY CAN'T WE GET AN ARTIFICIAL TREE NEXT YEAR." She would answer, "take it easy. It isn't that deep. Rub some dirt on it." She would go on. "We are not getting a fake tree this year. Have you ever smelled a fake tree? Of course not, artificial trees don't smell. I love that pine smell in the house every December."
It is hard to believe that I lived during a time when real or fake trees as the great question of our time. We have certainly managed to make the world a much more complicated place.
Take care.
Roger
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Sharritt's Annual Christmas Letter
Dear Sharritt friends and family,
The gifts have been unwrapped and our belts
have been let out a notch or two to relieve the
pressure from the great cooking and baking in
an expanding assembly of family foodies.
In discussing a theme for the Christmas Letter,
the lovely Miss Beverly's mind went to three
trees that were cut down on the farm this year.
All were brought low because of things to which trees of a certain age succumb. Two of the trees were 40 foot ash trees planted by Bev and Roger the year of their engagement in 1984. Sigh. For Miss Beverly, read a sigh of melancholy, and for Roger read a sigh of contentment by the ash-stoked fire. We know, after 31 years together, how our paradox of love works. These ash fell to the Emerald Ash Borer, a shiny green beetle, that found our trees of a certain age, and found them delicious.
The lovely Miss Beverly had tried to will it back to health. We would pull into
the drive, and both look at the tree, and the conversation would go something
like,
Roger: We need to cut that down.
Bev: Half of it is still green. It must be coming out of the root girdling thing. Couldn't we just cut the dead half?
Roger: No. Too dangerous.
Bev: Let's wait, I think it's greener this year than last year. Don't you think so? Roger: No.
Bev: Maybe in the fall.
But it was of a certain age also, and Bev, after taking some photos of it over the season to try to document its comeback, yielded to Roger's pragmatism.
I know what you are thinking. Are they really writing a Christmas letter about being of a certain age? Dead trees? How depressing is that? I have those concerns myself. In reading Face Book the past few days, the mood is not good. For some the election results have depressed you and then the double whammy of Princess Leia and her mom Queen Leia has really taken the wind out of your sails. And now the Sharritt's want to write about being of a certain age. Before you reach for your favorite antide- pressant, please hear us out. We aren't in denial about getting older, but we are choosing to think of if like a tomato that is just getting ripe. Things have really gotten interesting now that we have become a couple of a certain age.
The lovely Miss Beverly, becoming a person of a certain age, embarked on a job search in the spring to see what other things a teacher for the blind with 20 years experience might do in the big wide world. She found that PATINS, a statewide service supporting technology and inclusion for all learners was looking for a teacher for the blind with 20 years experience and a creative mindset to be a specialist/ advocate for students with blindness, and their teachers. This has allowed her to travel the state teach- ing about electronic Braille displays, while scouring the countryside for diners with good pie.
In discussing a theme for the Christmas Letter,
the lovely Miss Beverly's mind went to three
trees that were cut down on the farm this year.
All were brought low because of things to which trees of a certain age succumb. Two of the trees were 40 foot ash trees planted by Bev and Roger the year of their engagement in 1984. Sigh. For Miss Beverly, read a sigh of melancholy, and for Roger read a sigh of contentment by the ash-stoked fire. We know, after 31 years together, how our paradox of love works. These ash fell to the Emerald Ash Borer, a shiny green beetle, that found our trees of a certain age, and found them delicious.
The other tree was a 50 year old maple that was in our yard. I mean no disrespect to my Great Aunt
Mid when I write this. This tree reminds me of her. She was of a certain age where years of crossing
her legs, one ankle over the other, had caused her sciatic nerve to flare and "no end of aggravation"
late in life. She would shift from one hip to the other trying to get comfortable and suddenly realize that
80 years of muscle memory had crossed her ankles once again. The maple tree suffered from the
same aggravation. Early in its life it got in the habit of crossing one root over another root. There were
no problems early on but 40 years later that habit had robbed itself of the nutrients needed to survive
on its eastern side.
Roger: We need to cut that down.
Bev: Half of it is still green. It must be coming out of the root girdling thing. Couldn't we just cut the dead half?
Roger: No. Too dangerous.
Bev: Let's wait, I think it's greener this year than last year. Don't you think so? Roger: No.
Bev: Maybe in the fall.
But it was of a certain age also, and Bev, after taking some photos of it over the season to try to document its comeback, yielded to Roger's pragmatism.
I know what you are thinking. Are they really writing a Christmas letter about being of a certain age? Dead trees? How depressing is that? I have those concerns myself. In reading Face Book the past few days, the mood is not good. For some the election results have depressed you and then the double whammy of Princess Leia and her mom Queen Leia has really taken the wind out of your sails. And now the Sharritt's want to write about being of a certain age. Before you reach for your favorite antide- pressant, please hear us out. We aren't in denial about getting older, but we are choosing to think of if like a tomato that is just getting ripe. Things have really gotten interesting now that we have become a couple of a certain age.
The lovely Miss Beverly, becoming a person of a certain age, embarked on a job search in the spring to see what other things a teacher for the blind with 20 years experience might do in the big wide world. She found that PATINS, a statewide service supporting technology and inclusion for all learners was looking for a teacher for the blind with 20 years experience and a creative mindset to be a specialist/ advocate for students with blindness, and their teachers. This has allowed her to travel the state teach- ing about electronic Braille displays, while scouring the countryside for diners with good pie.
Becoming people of a certain age, Roger and Bev's excursion into having nine and
ten year old sisters live with us through the Safe Families program ended by be-
coming the lovely Aunt Beverly and Uncle Roger, as we are still involved in Vaeh
and Viki's life. That grouping has expanding now that their father, Jeff has been re-
united with the girls. We have them over and find ways to influence the trajectory of
their lives even if it is just a little bit. They nudge us out of our own trajectory too,
making sure we don't keep our legs crossed any certain way for too long.
Ben and Grace are doing great. Or rather Ben and Lisa and Grace and Chris are doing great. Becoming people of a certain age, our
family continues to expand. Ben and Lisa will be married next July under the same oaktree where Chris and Grace were married. Roger has been challenged (in his own garden-of-mythic-proportions mind) to grow a myriad of flowers for the wedding and
stands ready to put his green thumb, and collection of professional equipment to the
test. As he says, with a gleam in his eye, "dirt will be thrown in the air." Grace is raising
oodles of money for the American Cancer Society, and Chris is just a few months away
from having to endure a lifetime of lawyer jokes. Our time together during the holiday
season was a blessing. There is a Psalm (133) that speaks to the blessing of people coming together in unity. I don't know what Hermon Dew flowing down upon the mountain is like but if it is anything like playing exploding kittens with your highly competitive children or sitting around the breakfast table with everyone sharing the experiences of their families of origin, I say let it flow.
Roger has suddenly decided to pursue all of the hobbies from all of the certain ages he's ever been. At
the same time. He has a worm composting unit, taking him back to the toddler years of grubbing in the
dirt. He continues to garden like the 12-year-old with the legendary cucumber harvest of 1974. A re-
newed passion for woodworking takes him back to his 20's and 30's and the tools that have gathered
dust in the back of the barn are buzzing again. Also buzzing, he has added bee-keeping to his evenings
with two hives this past summer. It's fun to hear him talk about the personalities of each hive (one mean
and feisty, the other comparatively laid back). The Kozak's introduced him and the lovely Miss Beverly
to Pickle Ball to add another fitness regimen to his enduring passion for riding his bike. He loves writing
the blog and writing Ben and Grace a weekly snail mail letter. Also becoming a person of a
certain age, Roger may have figured out that it is okay to stop. During the RAIN ride with his lovely
Merry Christmas and all the Blessings of a New Year.
Roger and Bev.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
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
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
Sunday, December 4, 2016
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
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
Thursday, November 24, 2016
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.
What does it mean? I don't know. I just know that it happened.
Take Care.
Roger
Sunday, September 25, 2016
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.
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.
Monday, September 12, 2016
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
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
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