Time on the Flying Trapese

Has it been over a week since I blogged? Oh, dear. I used to assume that time would somehow slow when people retired. I have longed for time to slow down, but instead it goes faster and faster. Some have told me that time does this for people as they grow older. Certainly I did not calculate how much slower I would be with everything I do as I age. So the same activities fill up more time than in the past. I have heard so many retired people wonder how in the world they used to fit in an eight-hour-a-day work schedule. Life has a way of gobbling up time once someone retires. So that is my excuse for not blogging, and I’m sticking to it.

Katherine had been waiting patiently all summer and filling in aides shift by shift the best she could. She was comforted knowing that even though two of her summer workers were going off to college, she had two other aides coming on her staff who were highly trained and experienced.

As her always difficult life would have it, however, one of the two developed transportation problems that have prevented her from working so far, and yesterday the one who had begun this week somehow had an accident with a hospice patient in a Hoyer life. She ended up in the Emergency Room with three broken ribs! All this has certainly destroyed Katherine’s plans and hopes for consistent scheduling. Yet she keeps coping. It also does not help that Katherine has been quite ill with an infection that is being treated with an antibiotic. It does help that this time the infection is expected to be cured with meds taken only every 12 hours instead of the more frequent kind. Two extra pills a day is not that difficult for someone who takes a huge number already of various kinds for different reasons for a systematic disease like multiple sclerosis.

When David left Katherine to go to the farm today, I arrived at their house to replace him before noon at 11, and I found myself eating supper back here at Woodsong at l0 tonight and taking the eight pills I take daily with that meal. Like many women I will take thyroid pill when I wake up in the early morning hours since it must be taken with lots of water but no food. I know my good health prohibits me from griping, although when I was younger, I always refrained from any kind of pills if at all possible.

Katherine was up and dressed in her chair when I arrived, but she and I were busy for most of the time I was there: repositioning, eating lunch and a little supper and taking those many pills with apple sauce, adjusting ceiling fans and lap blankets as her needs changed, trying to make her more comfortable in that miserable wheelchair by pulling on the draw sheet on top of the seat cushion. Nevertheless, we did have time to watch Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, which she had recorded, and that was fun even though we kept being interupted. She watched a bit more television and napped a tiny bit while I was doing some kitchen clean up.

Sam slept late this morning recovering from the late night high school football game last night. I had taken him Thursday night for their marching band rehearsal, and I wondered how any director could get a band ready to perform in August so soon after the start of school. But he did, and Sam was enjoying every minute of it.

He also was enjoying his plans for today to be picked up by his cousins Trent and Brianna and their friend Sarah. They have all known Sarah for years, but she has just moved into her grandmother’s former home in our village of Crab Orchard, so now they can see her more often. They were headed to Trent and Bri’s new down-here home to watch movies. Their dad Brian was down for the weekend from central Illinois to work on his crops here. Mary Ellen was tied up in Springfield with a real estate responsibility and had told us yesterday she couldn’t come this time.

Gerald was mowing up at the other place when I left the farm this morning, and I left his lunch in the oven. He was already asleep when I returned this evening. But from notes left on my desk, I see he also made time today to do some shopping for a new mattress that the physical therapist has been advising him about. He had just started physical therapy this week, and already he is feeling better.

We communicated by phone a couple of times. It is interesting that families are often spread out over much more geographic territory than in the past, but with cell phones, texting, and Internet, families are more in communication contact than ever before in history. Our son was watching Little League baseball. Jeannie, of course, was riding her bike. Gerry and Vickie’s grandson Aidan in the first grade won his first football game today. Our piano rack holds three photos of three-year-old Maddux on his first day of preschool this week. Gerald copied them off the Internet as he also did the 8 by 10 photo of our beautiful Brianna, which now graces our bookcase.

I not only know about my own family today, but our young friend in the Washington, D.C., area talked to both of her college kids today, and she not only knows they are doing well, but thanks to Facebook, I know it too. I also observed her North Carolina aunt and uncle in a photo they posted showing their outing to a mountain. Another friend was celebrating with a family party tonight for their adult son’s birthday, and I know who attended. A young friend who has spent three weeks with her mother during a serious hospitalization sent me a return message on Facebook as well as posting her mother’s turn-around and great progress. One of Katherine’s classmates now out in Oregon told of problems they once had with their new-born and asked for prayer for another couple going through this same situation. I sent up a prayer for them.

On and on, I learned about various folks I care about and some folks I don’t even know. Maybe the wealth of information is one more reason I stay busier than I would like. Yet I find it happily amazing that I have all this information at my fingertips. This availability makes this century incredibly different than any previous time. Regardless, we must face that fact that time no longer marches on but that it flies with the greatest of ease while we try to keep our balance and embrace the experience.

Time on the Flying Trapese

Has it been over a week since I blogged? Oh, dear. I used to assume that time would somehow slow when people retired. I have longed for time to slow down, but instead it goes faster and faster. Some have told me that time does this for people as they grow older. Certainly I did not calculate how much slower I would be with everything I do as I age. So the same activities fill up more time than in the past. I have heard so many retired people wonder how in the world they used to fit in an eight-hour-a-day work schedule. Life has a way of gobbling up time once someone retires. So that is my excuse for not blogging, and I’m sticking to it.

Katherine had been waiting patiently all summer and filling in aides shift by shift the best she could. She was comforted knowing that even though two of her summer workers were going off to college, she had two other aides coming on her staff who were highly trained and experienced.

As her always difficult life would have it, however, one of the two developed transportation problems that have prevented her from working so far, and yesterday the one who had begun this week somehow had an accident with a hospice patient in a Hoyer life. She ended up in the Emergency Room with three broken ribs! All this has certainly destroyed Katherine’s plans and hopes for consistent scheduling. Yet she keeps coping.

It also does not help that Katherine has been quite ill with an infection that is being treated with an antibiotic. It does help that this time the infection is expected to be cured with meds taken only every 12 hours instead of the more frequent kind. Two extra pills a day is not that difficult for someone who takes a huge number already of various kinds for different reasons for a systematic disease like multiple sclerosis.

When David left Katherine to go to the farm today, I arrived at their house to replace him before noon at 11, and I found myself eating supper back here at Woodsong at l0 tonight and taking the eight pills I take daily with that meal. Like many women I will take thyroid pill when I wake up in the early morning hours since it must be taken with lots of water but no food. I know my good health prohibits me from griping, although when I was younger, I always refrained from any kind of pills if at all possible.

Katherine was up and dressed in her chair when I arrived, but she and I were busy for most of the time I was there: repositioning, eating lunch and a little supper and taking those many pills with apple sauce, adjusting ceiling fans and lap blankets as her needs changed, trying to make her more comfortable in that miserable wheelchair by pulling on the draw sheet on top of the seat cushion. Nevertheless, we did have time to watch Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, which she had recorded, and that was fun even though we kept being interupted. She watched a bit more television and napped a tiny bit while I was doing some kitchen clean up.

Sam slept late this morning recovering from the late night high school football game last night. I had taken him Thursday night for their marching band rehearsal, and I wondered how any director could get a band ready to perform in August so soon after the start of school. But he did, and Sam was enjoying every minute of it.
He also was enjoying his plans for today to be picked up by his cousins Trent and Brianna and their friend Sarah. They have all known Sarah for years, but she has just moved into her grandmother’s former home in our village of Crab Orchard, so now they can see her more often. They were headed to Trent and Bri’s new down-here home to watch movies. Their dad Brian was down for the weekend from central Illinois to work on his crops here. Mary Ellen was tied up in Springfield with a real estate responsibility and had told us yesterday she couldn’t come this time.

Gerald was mowing up at the other place when I left the farm this morning, and I left his lunch in the oven. He was already asleep when I returned this evening. But from notes left on my desk, I see he also made time today to do some shopping for a new mattress that the physical therapist has been advising him about. He had just started physical therapy this week, and already he is feeling better.

We communicated by phone a couple of times. It is interesting that families are often spread out over much more geographic territory than in the past, but with cell phones, texting, and Internet, families are more in communication contact than ever before in history. Our son was watching Little League baseball. Jeannie, of course, was riding her bike. Gerry and Vickie’s grandson Aidan in the first grade won his first football game today. Our piano rack holds three photos of three-year-old Maddux on his first day of preschool this week. Gerald copied them off the Internet as he also did the 8 by 10 photo of our beautiful Brianna, which now graces our bookcase.

I not only know about my own family today, but our young friend in the Washington, D.C., area talked to both of her college kids today, and she not only knows they are doing well, but thanks to Facebook, I know it too. I also observed her North Carolina aunt and uncle in a photo they posted showing their outing to a mountain. Another friend was celebrating with a family party tonight for their adult son’s birthday, and I know who attended. A young friend who has spent three weeks with her mother during a serious hospitalization sent me a return message on Facebook as well as posting her mother’s turn-around and great progress. One of Katherine’s classmates now out in Oregon told of problems they once had with their new-born and asked for prayer for another couple going through this same situation. I sent up a prayer for them.

On and on, I learned about various folks I care about and some folks I don’t even know. Maybe the wealth of information is one more reason I stay busier than I would like. Yet I find it happily amazing that I have all this information at my fingertips. This availability makes this century incredibly different than any previous time. Regardless, we must face that fact that time no longer marches on but that it flies with the greatest of ease while we try to keep our balance and embrace the experience.

From Jane Eyre to Shirley

After re-reading Jane Eyre, I decided I should read Shirley since it was right there in my bookcase tempting me. I almost quit sooner than I did a few years ago when I started this second novel of Charlotte Bronte. The foreword warned me accurately that the book sometimes dragged. That foreword had also excited me, however, with the explanation that when she was 15, Charlotte Bronte had heard a favorite teacher at Roe Head boarding school talk about the Luddite Riots in 1812. Charlotte was sufficiently fascinated with this era of English history that she used it as the background for this story.

I liked knowing also that the two main women characters, Caroline and Shirley, were based on real women including her sisters Anne and Emily, who along with their only brother Branwell had died of tuberculosis while Charlotte was writing this novel published in 1849 under her pen name Currer Bell. I am using the author’s given name not out of disrespect or unearned familiarity but to distinguish her from her Bronte siblings.

What almost stalled me in the beginning was the use of dialect that I could not read nor understand easily. For example, here is a quote: “Middling, middling, maister I reckon ‘atm us manufacturing lads I’ th’ north is a deal more intelligent, and knows a deal more nor th’ farming folk I’ th’ south. Trade sharpens wer wits; and them that’s mecyhanics, like me, is forced to think. Ya know, what wi’ looking after machinery and sich like I getten into that way when I see an effect, I look straight out for a cause, and I oft lig hold on’t to purpose; and then I like reading, and I’m curious to knaw what them that reckons to govern us aims to do for us and wi, us: and there’s many ‘cuter nor me; thnere’s many a one among them greasy chaps ‘at smells ‘o oil, and amang them dyers wi’ blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that can tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, and a deal better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o’ Whinbury, and a greet hectoring nowts like yond’ Irish Peter, Helstone’s curate.”
As if that was not obtuse enough, then I ran into Charlotte’s frequent use of French, which I guess all educated women of the main characters’ day were somewhat fluent in. I always wanted to study French but did not, so these passages were Greek to me.

But even before I became caught up in Caroline and Shirley’s lives, I kept reading because it was enlightening to me that 200 years ago, the men who worked the looms manually to make cloth were strongly objecting to being replaced by machines. Without unions or any social protection, their families were literally starving. Yet because of England’s war with France and the upheaval in America destroying the market, cloth was piling up unsold and the mill owners were in danger of losing their businesses. Thus, they were compelled to cut labor costs with the use of machines.

As I continued reading, it was obvious that the life choices for women were as controversial in that day as they’ve been in past centuries here. Married women were usually fully employed with the many children produced without birth control, but an unmarried woman of Caroline’s class had no choice other than boredom or governess. The novel was very much about women’s place. I kept feeling the similarities between then and today’s world these two centuries later.

The style of writing, however, was definitely different. I suspect that in homes without radio, television, movies, or Internet, slow-moving 500 page books were very welcome to while away time. (Just as folks used to welcome two-hour sermons when there might be only a once-a-month opportunity or less to hear a speech at a public gathering.)

Probably also the reading public back then welcomed multi-syllable words, which showed off both the writer’s and the reader’s education and created pleasant prideful satisfaction. With my journalism background, I will always choose the shorter word if two words seem to be equally apt. One of Charlotte Bronte’s paragraphs included “lugubrious,” “approbation,” and “acquiescence.” Another paragraph contained “quiescent,” “aspirations,” “apparition,” “personages,” and “countenance.” She used “countenance’ often, where I would say “face.”

I realized when I read Jane Eyre that I could increase my vocabulary if I took time to jot down words I did not know the meaning of and looked them up. But doing that while trying to enjoy the story was not something I wanted to do. I did, however, learn that “beck” in England meant creek, and so I was glad to already know that when I read Shirley. And “wicket” is a small opening or gate. The frequent use in Shirley of “curate,” “vicar,” and “rector” stumped me with the difference and exposed my limited provincial knowledge of only “preacher” or “pastor.” (BTW, I only recently learned from my Irish friend Mary Wilkinson’s blog in Red Room that “potter” is the variant of “putter,” and “amble” can be a noun as well as a verb.)

Although other past reading had made me aware of the rigidity and extreme class consciousness in those days in that part of the world, Bronte made it extremely clear and involved me emotionally in that unpleasantness. With my love for education and respect for teaching, I was angered that the curate, rector, vicar, or whichever Caroline’s uncle guardian was would not approve of her desire to be a governess. I became upset when the retired governess in the novel told Caroline how difficult that position was in those fine snobbish manors. I liked that this novel may have brought about more democratic feelings and may have contributed to breaking down somewhat the smug belief in life-long status based on birth and not on character or achievement. So in that sense maybe we have come a long way, Baby, in 200 years.

I think I read Charlotte’s The Professor at the same time I first read Jane Eyre. Should I go ahead now and read Villette? Although I read Emily’s Wuthering Heights years ago, I’d like to read it again. And I want to read Anne’s Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. That last title seems so familiar that I wonder if I have already read it. I may or may not remember even if I read it now.

In the meantime, while Gerald was gone, I grabbed another novel from the bookcase set before and during the Revolutionary War. In it, I find a Tory family living in a class-conscious society in the New York area with people making marriage choices based on family wealth. Another group resent both England and local wealthy landowners supported by the labor of tenant farmers.

Gerald returned home from Texas Tuesday night. Geri Ann has started her freshman year at University of Georgia, Brianna her senior year at Lincolnwood High School in central Illinois, and Sam his sophomore year at Marion. Elijah and Trent will be starting their sophomore years at college soon. Granddaughters Leslie and Erin have started their new jobs, and everyone else is busy with their old jobs.

August Filling Up and Rushing By

I woke up this morning to a gentle rain. I need to go out on the deck and see how much we received so I can tell Gerald when we talk on the phone. He is in Texas.
Less than six weeks ago, Gerald helped granddaughter Erin move her huge sectional couch from the little house in Cambria to her new quarters nearer Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she worked. I was emotionally prepared to be involved with her 2012-13 softball games there, and I liked thinking about the lovely new duplex she would share with another young woman professional. And I knew I would continue to enjoy her drop-in visits to Woodsong.

But life has a way of jarring us from what we expect. Erin had an offer from Denton, Texas, to become an assistant softball coach at North Texas University and she could not refuse this advancement. Suddenly she had to make a great many changes in a very short time. Her SIUC coach was wonderful and very supportive, and Erin quickly found another young woman to take her place sub-leasing the duplex. That did involve quickly moving her stuff to a storage building behind so this person could move in immediately and also putting that huge couch out on the sidewalk in hopes someone else might use it. Because the new renter had a pit bull and Sadie does not like pit bulls since she had been attacked by one, Sadie came to visit us this past week. And Erin stayed here when she returned from finding an apartment at Denton. Now she and Sadie must adjust once again to new quarters.

Because we have friends in the Denton area that Gerald has been wanting to visit, he could not refrain from saying he wished he could help Erin move and visit with his buddies down there. I am not sure he meant it, but that is how he became involved helping her load the U-Haul and taking it down to Denton behind his pickup. They made the trip in one long day and had her moved in so she spent the first night in her new apartment. The next day Gerald was breakfasting with his good friend Bobby Sanders and that afternoon he and Erin were able to attend Bobby’s birthday party. This afternoon he is visiting at a nearby town with Don and Helen Ruth Dillow. I can tell he is having a good time, and I was relieved that Erin had help moving in. I wonder if anyone ever picked up the couch from the sidewalk.

I was thrilled to have Leslie and Mike stop in Friday night on their way up to Freeport for a reception for friends in Leslie’s hometown. They had to be back at work this morning in Nashville, so they couldn’t stop on their return trip. (Mike sometimes has a 4:30 a.m. client. I wonder if he did this morning.)

Friday evening Gerald and I had picked up a friend from a Marion retirement center and gone down to Anna for supper. One of his classmates phones us with an invitation to this annual gathering of Wolf Lake classmates. We knew we’d be home before Mike and Les arrived from the drive up from Nashville after work, and so at the kitchen table over 10 p.m. cold cuts and deviled eggs and peaches from a local orchard, I loved hearing about Leslie’s new job at a music publishing company. And I knew I must learn more about the recent break-in at their duplex which caused Leslie to describe the “ransackage” on Facebook. I was relieved to find out that Mike had renter’s insurance for them, and they had a call on the way up that the police had already arrested one of the three suspects. So maybe their misfortunate will prevent many future ransackages for other Nashville residents.

Before I went to bed, I fixed a pot of coffee for the next morning with the special blend Erin had brought me as a souvenir when she returned from a tournament in Hawaii. She and I enjoyed our last visit together over Saturday morning coffee, and I confessed how very sad I was about her leaving even though I was happy for her new opportunity. Gerald and Erin were both long gone before Mike and Leslie woke up at a more decent time for a Saturday morning. Leslie and I had another visiting time over our coffee while Mike conscientiously ran into the gym before their 6-7 hour trip up to Freeport. I actually left before they did that morning as I had signed up to go to a preview of a new Sunday School curriculum in Marion that I was interested in. Yes, I drank another cup of coffee there. I caught up on my sleep that afternoon.

Yesterday I taught our Young Adult Sunday School class, but left before the worship service to go to Katherine’s since I knew she had not secured an aide for yesterday. We visited and later watched TV including Tangles, a Walt Disney production of the Repunzel fairy tale. The music was good and the visuals pleasing. I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching a children’s story. Sam is all smiles these days because he received his learner’s permit to drive, and spending time at the wheel with his dad telling him to slow down is now one of his favorite activities.

I came home, ate a late night supper, and tumbled into bed and slept for nine hours. The first thing I had to do this morning was to call our classmate friend who had left two phone messages on Sunday worrying if she might have dropped her billfold in our car Friday night. It was after l0 when I heard her message and I knew the billfold was not in the car, but I went out and looked anyhow so I could tell her I looked. But I felt it was too late to call her back for fear she was in bed.

One of her messages mentioned a black purse, and I remembered she had carried a light beige purse. I was aware of the purse because when we arrived to pick her up, she was in a dither about lost keys to her apartment inside the center. When they were finally located, they were in her black purse. She had changed to the beige one and she had forgotten to take the keys to the new purse.

So I was hoping my telling her that her billfold was probably in her beige purse would solve her problem. In the meantime, however, people there at the center had helped her look and someone had found the billfold, she said. The bad news was that she had put it up and could not remember where she put it. So she was looking again. Usually when I lose something, I look for it for a reasonable time (whatever that is) and then force myself to stop looking. I figure that the lost object will eventually show up on its own. That usually works, so that was all the encouragement I could give her.

She has always been one of my most admired acquaintances and she has achieved so much despite many disadvantages and problems that life threw at her. Watching her handle her present disability with grace and good judgment increases my strong admiration for her, but touches my heartstrings.

My only other item on my agenda today was to call my brother and sister because I have failed to do that recently. Before I made the first call, my sister called me and we had a long catch-up session. Before I called my brother, our cousin Kenny from California phoned to tell us about the death of one of our mutual cousins out there. He would later call our cousin Leonard in Michigan, and he called me back to give me the address of another cousin’s widow. He asked me to call Rosemary and Jim to let them know, so I had sad news to share when I called Jim for our long catch-up phone visit. Then I called Rosemary and talked to her again. Except to walk down the lane with Jake to retrieve the mail and the newspaper, that is about all I have accomplished today. Usually Gerald walks down every morning to get the newspaper and it is on the breakfast table when I wake up. Jake always bounces along with him as he did with me today, but I know he will be happy when Gerald, his best friend, returns.

August Beginnings

I can’t get used to school beginning in the beginning of August instead of the end. Does anyone know why? Is it because of air conditioning? I don’t think the number of days in the school year have been increased, or have they? I guess the old-fashioned calendar that allowed families to start school the day after Labor Day is gone forever. Anyhow in Illinois, everyone is buying school supplies and getting ready for the academic changes coming in their lives.

In fact, if anyone local reading this has size 8 boys blue jeans or clothing to give away, drop the clothes by the farm and I’ll make sure Katherine passes them on to a single mother who needs them for her son’s return to school.

Our granddaughter Erin spent the night here prior to driving to Saint Louis to catch a flight to Dallas. She will return Wednesday. Her dog Sadie is visiting the farm while she is away. I wanted to do something to wish Erin Godspeed, so I fried bacon to go with our breakfast cereal. Our dog Jake, who gets along well with Sadie, gave Erin a send-off by following her car down the driveway barking. Gerald can’t get timid Jake to stop that. Interestingly, Jake never chases our car or truck.

I visited with our daughter Katherine yesterday afternoon and evening as she did not have an aide scheduled. Her morning aide had gotten her ready for church, but by the time they finished, it was too late to go to Katherine’s church. Katherine suggested they go to the aide’s church, which started later—St. Paul’s Baptist Chapel in Marion. Katherine was thrilled with the pastor’s sermon there, and she could not help but be impressed when she learned he also taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. David took us in their van to their own church for the last evening service for their interim pastor before their new pastor comes on the field. Katherine is able to attend any service so seldom that going to church twice in one day was extraordinary.

There was an ice cream social after church in the interim’s honor. Katherine enjoyed visiting with friends and seeing how babies had grown and hearing good things about their son Sam. I saw several people we know, and a young woman came up and asked if I was the daughter of the late Clyde and Katherine Martin of Goreville. My parents have been gone long enough now that it is rare that I run into their acquaintances, so I truly appreciated her coming to talk with me.
Her husband was the grandson of Ernest Hancock, one of my parents’ friends, and she and I both knew the same wonderful story of this grandfather’s going to a country school at a very early age and sitting under the desk, not talking or reading. Then he finally came out, and of course he could read perfectly. As an adult, he was a Johnson County school teacher for many years. Rural schools sometimes met children’s needs in ways our present schools cannot as I doubt many teachers would allow a child to sit under the desk today.

But many rural schools were inadequate. Years ago I borrowed my cousin David’s copy of a self-published book written by a Johnson County retired country school teacher—back when self-published books were much rarer than today. I was so embarrassed by the man’s near-illiteracy and his seeming ignorance of his own inadequacies. I could not imagine how he could teach children much, but maybe I was wrong about that. He might have been empathetic and a better teacher than I figured he might have been. Teaching and learning come about in strange ways often times.

All five of the original GlascoFive (Gerry’s family) happened to be at the Premier Fast Pitch National Championship tourney at Irvine, California, last week. It was Geri Ann’s last travel tournament participation. She was playing on one of the Southern Force teams. Erin (recruiting for SIUC) and Tara (recruiting for University of Georgia) were able to share a hotel room and a lot of sisterly giggles. Erin loved all that time with her mother. It was a special time for the whole family.

Tara’s husband Bryan was home in Georgia supervising the three little boys--with the help of baby sitters when he was working in the other part of the house. Gerald thoroughly enjoyed thinking about this and hearing anecdotes about six-year-old Aidan’s first football practices. Three-year-old Maddox entertained himself very happily running the tract there, and since Payton is swimming like a fish these days, it looks like those parents will have a lot of sports events to attend to. Gerald was amazed to learn Bryan had even dared to take the boys bowling—including Payton who was able to get the ball half way down the alley and started by yelling with great enthusiasm, “Go Payton!” As the evening progressed, he was yelling, “Go me!!” I think Bryan and Tara have his self esteem in good shape despite his being overshadowed by two big brothers.

Some people criticize the emphasis these days on building self esteem, and some of the criticism is warranted. Yet it is difficult for a child (or adult) with low self esteem to have the confidence to learn. That is why building self esteem is important by parents and teachers. We all need to esteem ourselves as worthy human beings created and loved by God and desirous of learning from Him. Life long learning is a precious and necessary activity.