Blessings in the Fall

 When you look out our living room windows now or stand on the deck and look beyond the country road and beyond the green meadows, the woods on the horizon present a colorful array of orange, green, yellow, and red leaves.  I came down to write about them yesterday afternoon; but before I started, I heard Mary Ellen enter the house on the first floor above me.  Instead of writing, I joined her and Gerald in the downstairs family room, and the first remark she made was on the beauty of the trees as she had looked out coming down the stairs.

It had been too long since we had visited with her, so it was a welcome alternative to writing.  She and Brian had taken their high school senior Brianna down to Murray State in Kentucky for a football weekend at the school Bri has chosen to become  her alma mater.  They were back at their house over on Route 13 and Mary Ellen came over to visit before she and Bri had to return to Waggoner for school and work today.

Although I never taught my kids to kick their shoes off when they entered our house, they all do. (When the whole crowd is here, the rows of shoes amuse me and I had Gerald photograph that sight as one of our holiday memories.)  Mary Ellen was already wearing sox with a Murray emblem on them as we relaxed with our feet on the coffee table in front of us.

Yesterday was a special day at our church because we were honoring Dr. Ed Handkins, who was just a college student when we joined the church in our village in the early 1960s. I remember his going to Alaska that summer as a student missionary and showing slides when he returned.

A close knit family now grown large and spread in many directions, the  Handkins clan who could came to celebrate Ed’s 50 years of ministry and sat in the front left pews where Ed’s parents, Lorene and Alva, sat for so many years even after Lorene spent the last decade of her life suffering multiple sclerosis.  Ed’s sister Joan has suffered decades of multiple sclerosis but still reared four children. She recently suffered two life-threatening infections in ICU and then weeks of rehab under the watchful eye of her daughter Kim.  She is now back at her apartment and was there in a wheel chair smiling and looking great with three of four children in attendance. Ed’s brother Darrell, who was a high school teen when we came to this community, was there, and his daughters Carol and Tanya from Peoria and Chicago area  joined us in the choir. Ed’s older brother Carl Ray died several years ago, but Carl Ray’s daughters Cindy and Carla were both there to represent him.   Other relatives and their many spouses were also there so some family members would not fit into the three front rows. 

         His cousin Alan Ozment sang and reminded us that God is good, and Ed’s remininces of good and difficult times during his ministry re-enforced that message of confidence in God’s watch care over us.  Ed had us laughing often because his mother Lorene’s sense of humor was obviously passed down to him. Still a college student, he said he filled the pulpit one day at Fairview Church, one of our nearby rural churches. He was amazed to get a letter a couple days later telling him he had been voted in as their new pastor—he had no idea they were considering that and he had no confidence that he knew how to be a pastor.  As fearful and unprepared as he felt, he accepted the pastoral call and continued there while in college. He expressed relief that the church survived.

Alva and Lorene continued serving their children and grandchildren during holiday and summer vacation times for the next few decades, and the rest of us whenever they could as long as their health allowed. One of my early interactions with Alva was in a small group when we were studying vocations and the desirability of choosing a vocation one enjoyed. Most men in our church and community in those days worked in the coal mines.  I remember Alva saying that he really did not like being a miner, but that was what life allowed him to do to support his family, and he sounded content anyhow. One of the earliest events in our lives here was a wonderful man being killed and his body trapped by a mine collapse.  (Someone said his cashed pay check was in his pocket although I don’t know that.)  Alva and other men risked their lives over and over going down in hopes of bringing his body out to his family before they finally had to give us and allow the collapsed mine to be his burial site.

Some were surprised yesterday to learn Ed had been one of the original members of the Glorylanders Quartet that he and his cousin Dee Ozment started with Don Richey and Lyndell King. I remembered it because Lorene—she and Alva were always hospitable to newcomers—had me visiting their home and Lorene played a record of her son’s quartet.  After graduation and marriage, Ed taught science for three years at my high school at Anna-Jonesboro and was  pastor of a rural church there at the same time.  Then he and his family took off for seminary and eventually after pastoring in Cairo during troubling times, most of his career was in northern Illinois.  In retirement he and Donna are in North Carolina, where he continues writing and now is even pastor of a church again.

Down through the years, Ed and Donna have come back home to Center to visit loved ones, and he has occasionally preached for us, and he became one of my favorite preachers.  His compassion is as obvious as his humor, and I have never doubted that he believes everything he preaches.  His intellectualism is only revealed by the creativity and the simplicity of his messages.  I have stored some nuggets of spiritual wisdom that go directly back to his sermons.

Our church hosted an fantastic buffet of potluck foods for a dinner after Ed’s morning sermon, and we enjoyed the food and the fellowship.  There was another gathering afterwards back in the sanctuary to allow people to express appreciation for Ed and to let this extremely talented musical family sing.  Gerald was needing a nap by now, so we missed out on that in order to go to the opening four-night revival starting last night at Creal Springs Baptist Church,  hosted by our neighboring rural churches.  I was so glad we heard that sermon, and I felt both refreshed and strengthened as I drove into Katherine’s after the service to make sure she had her evening meds since one aide had left and there was a gap before the next would arrive hours later.  Thank you, Ed and Donna, for your many years of service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frost and Election Season

The fog rises high off the lake and off the valley beyond the country road at the end of our driveway.  The green grass between our house and the lake glistens with frost this morning.  I run to Gerald and ask if this was a killer frost.  Would our son-in-law’s soybean crop be damaged just as the corn crop was hurt by the summer drought? 

The farmer’s success depends on the weather, and the price city dwellers will pay for food is also weather dependent. The fear of an early frost is a familiar fear to me. Yeteven more than our over fifty years of farming made me aware of the weather and food supply connection, Robert J. Hastings book A Nickel’s Worth of Skim Milk impressed me with this concern.  Hastings wrote about his eight years in grade school during the Depression when he wore the same coat all eight years.  Like most people in small towns and on farms, his unemployed father made an annual garden.  During those years, however, bad weather limited his production just as the job loss limited the family income. 

It is odd how sometimes life seems to be on a bad luck roll.  Just when someone thinks they can stand no more, another blow comes to knock them down yet again. Things get worse and worse, but usually eventually things turn around.  In the meantime, people have to be tough and use unbelievable human ingenuity to survive.

One of the ways that Hastings’ family survived was through thriftiness—the kind of thrift few of us could understand today despite our bad economy. His mother deliberately bought his school coat much much too big for him.  How many children have you seen today with clothes that are too big for them?  He grew into the coat and wore it until it was too little for him, but he continued wearing it anyway.  Finally the nation’s and his family’s economy improved, and he got a new coat for high school.

I do not know how families’ whose unemployment has run out are making it. I cannot imagine how a family can survive when their home and all their belongings are destroyed by fire, flood, or tornado.  Yet across our nation right now families with those troubles are making it. (Some are not, of course.  Some have turned to alcohol or drugs or suicide.)  I have wondered if the Greatest Generation veterans were as strong as they were because they were part of a family that kept hanging tough and fighting hard for survival during the Depression.

One of the most exciting articles I ever read was a news magazine account in the 1960s of the successful California lives of the Oakies that John Steinbeck told us about.  Someday someone will be writing about today’s trials and how their family made it anyway.  Michele Obama’s story of her dad going to work everyday to support their family despite multiple sclerosis brings tears to my eyes. Would he not have been shocked to know back then that his daughter and his widow would live in the White House someday? 

In the past, the business cycle has usually brought an end to recession.  I suspect it will again unless some fundamental difference has occurred to change that usual result.  So I am hopeful that regardless of who is elected President, we will see the economy improve and more jobs become available.  And, of course, whoever is elected will get credit for that turn around whether that person is responsible for the improvement or not.

One of my greatest concerns is the lack of health care for many of our citizens.  Despite our fine hospitals and many excellent doctors, international statistical comparisons show that our health care is inferior in its results.  Our loss of infants, for example, is much greater than many other nations despite the fact that we spend more than them for health care. 

The Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) will still not be universal, as I understand it, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.  Children with serious health problems can no longer be denied insurance nor can we adults be suddenly dropped if we become expensively ill or lose our jobs.

If we have the will to do it, we can make the changes we need to make and have care as good as other developed nations.  I would like to see the for-profit insurance industry out of the health care system altogether as Britain has done but some other nations use insurance to give universal care. Personally, I don’t want to be denied a needed procedure by an insurance company.  Governor Romney wants my state to take care of the health problems in Illinois as he did in Massachusetts, but I don’t think he understands how broke our state is. With our tendency to elect governors who end up in prison, I trust the federal government more than our state government.

Last night a neighbor phoned and asked me if she could bring me a Romney sign to put on our farm.  I had listened to his foreign policy address that morning, and I told her no.  If I knew he could achieve peace, I would certainly vote for him and put up a sign encouraging other people to do so.

The murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American heroes was evidence of serious problems in that part of the world.  What I do not know is whether President Obama or Governor Romney would be more effective in healing those problems--or if anyone can. Would Romney’s tough talk, building more warships, and increasing our military budget and perhaps military presence work better than Obama’s measured thoughtfulness and emphasis on diplomacy? If there anything our nation can do to insure people in those countries will start getting along?

I like few advertisements on television, but I do like the new one showing a renown economist who is asked if something or other will take place in the future. (I don’t even know what is being advertised.)  His succinct answer to the question  if he can predict what will happen is, “No.”  That is how I feel as an ordinary citizen about knowing which candidate will more likely achieve peace or prevent our being in another war in the Middle East.  I do not want our citizens killed and I do not want innocent men, women, and children in other countries killed.  But I do not know how to vote to achieve that end.

Our phone caller warned me that our nation is in a mess and that my great grandchildren were going to suffer because of it.  This special neighbor friend has worked hard all her life, and most of the people I know do so.  Our children and grandchildren certainly do.  I am very proud of them for that. I have a great deal of confidence in our nation’s people and especially our young people.  I truly believe that they will be able to cope with whatever is thrown their way when they are in charge someday.  They will go through rough times just as every generation has.  Their rough times may be worse even than ours. But if they have the will, they will survive and our democracy will also.

I will be listening to the vice presidential debate Thursday night and to the two remaining debates between President Obama and Governor Romney.  I will try to follow the national and international news and understand it the best I can.  And then I will be deciding by election day which candidate I will vote for.  It will probably be too late to put up a sign though.

P.S.  I wrote most of this in the morning plus a report on Jeannie, Cecelie, Leslie, and Mike’s weekend visit.  Then I got a call from Katherine’s aide that she was sick and leaving. (Actually she came to work sick spreading her germs—GRRRR.) Suddenly I had to hurry to town.  Late tonight I got home, proof read my earlier effort, thought I was copying it to post, and the entire blog disappeared with only two words saved when I tried to paste.  I have re-written the first part the best I remembered it, and left off the weekend report.   Ah well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine

Last Wednesday I looked out the living room window and realized I was seeing a tiny bit of yellow amid the leaves on the island and also the  beginnings of orange on a few trees on this side of the lake.  The next day I looked out the kitchen window at Jake’s little sycamore tree and realized it was completely and beautifully red wine. Then driving to town, as I do so often, I begin to see more and more yellows and reds and wines and oranges.  After the dry summer, I was thrilled when everything greened back up, but now the colors are bringing me joy.  I need every bit of beauty I can discover to comfort my heart as I watch the devastating effects of multiple sclerosis on my daughter.

I know that life is not meant to be fair and that suffering always has been and always will be present on this planet. Suffering is part of life. I know that, but that does not decrease its pain.  I understand the old saying about feeling sorry for yourself if you are without shoes until you realize some have no feet. But suffering is suffering and knowing that many others are in pain—even worst pain--does not ease but only increases the psychic pain. 

Weakened and wracked with yet another infection,  Katherine entered the hospital Friday to be treated successfully, and Gerald brought her home yesterday afternoon.   Gerald took her take-home prescriptions to a pharmacy, but the druggist realized a dangerous conflict between the two drugs—delaying last night’s treatment.  Phone calls were made to the appropriate doctors, and hopefully with her regular infectious disease doctor back in town today, everything has been cleared up and continued treatment resumed.  Nothing is simple in the life of a chronically ill person. 

When no one answered the phone at her house this morning, I drove to town to make sure her morning aide had shown up. She had, but Katherine was sleeping, which I know she did not do much in the hospital, and the aide evidently did not hear her phone ringing or was hesitant to answer it with Katherine asleep. In my hurry to reach her house, I didn’t put on my hearing aids.  With the aide whispering, I knew I could accomplish nothing by staying, so I drove right on back to the farm.

I had caught up on laundry and dishes at her house yesterday, since I was hanging around to be certain Sam had needed transportation as I had promised both Katherine and David.  David had to leave very early Saturday morning to drive with his parents to Chicago and serve as pall bearer at not one funeral but at two funerals for loved ones—an uncle and the mother of one of his best lifelong friends. 

Sam is so eager for that driver’s license, and I will be happy for him when he is old enough to get it in less than a year now.  Still I will miss driving him occasionally to his activities.  (Yet when I do, I ache for his mother who so wishes that she could still have that privilege. And I wish it for her. ) 

More and more of his friends are getting their licenses, and other friends’ parents are also glad to give him rides, but I wanted to be there at near-midnight when the three big yellow school buses pulled into the high school driveway bringing home the Marion Wildcat Marching Band from their competition at McKendree College. 

Sam tossed his ukulele in the back seat and climbed in front with a smile on his face.  Once again their band had placed third in their class and this time had missed second place by only one point.  The two higher winning bands were from larger communities, and Sam felt good about how their band is ranking this year. His fellow sophomore class musicians were always top in all kinds of competitions when they were junior high students, and last year’s experience of receiving participation ribbons rather than ranking had rankled their performing egos.  Sam went to bed exhausted but happy.  I’d decided to stay there rather than us to drive back to the farm that late at night.  

Yesterday morning, I was pleased when Sam came out with a smile and his Bible in hand ready for church at 9 a.m.  That gave me plenty of time to drop him off and then to go to the farm and pick up Gerald for Sunday School and worship at our village church. Afterward we picked up Sam to go to dinner with us. 

When Gerald left with the van since Katherine had called that they were releasing her, I stayed at Sam’s house because he had to meet up that afternoon with four of his buddies who have started a new band called Reformed. They played publicly for the first time last evening leading the worship at a youth meeting at Cornerstone Church.  Sam was making his initial appearance as a vocalist.  As it turned out, his friend Evan’s dad picked him up, so I did not take him, and I was right there when Gerald brought Katherine home. 

We sent Gerald on home, so I could stay until her evening shift aide came on duty.  In turning and trying to help her out of her hospital gown and into her own, I managed to let her slip into a very uncomfortable position on her wheelchair—making us both fearful she would slip out. We repositioned and tugged and pushed, and she at least didn’t fall.  In that miserable position, however, we were unable to enjoy a pleasant supper and watch television together as we had planned. I was so thankful when Jayson came on duty and quickly picked her up and re-sat her more comfortably.  (I only say more comfortably because wheelchairs are always uncomfortable after a few hours—especially when you are too near paralyzed to adjust yourself in any way.)

I was happy to be there at 9:00 because I was able to see Sam come in aglow telling about the 60 kids worshipping together at Cornerstone.  I left with Sam in his mom’s room telling Katherine all about the joyous night.  That memory too was a bit of beauty comforting my aching heart when Gerald came after me and we drove home with a full moon overhead enlarged by a clouded sparkling halo all around it.

 

 

 

Georgia on Our Minds

Gerald and I have returned from a long wonderful weekend in Athens and Watkinsville, Georgia.  Gerald drove us south all day Friday crawling through the 6 p.m. Atlanta traffic and finally eastward arriving for the late evening with our son and wife, Gerry and Vickie, and the Archibalds.  I hadn’t been down to see their large rented house since Tara join the University of Georgia softball coaching staff, but I could quickly see the house was comfortably large enough for two families.

Bryan and Tara’s three little guys were already in their beds, but the older two, Aidan and Maddux, were not yet asleep. We were able to enter their bedrooms and give them good night kisses.  They were so sweet, and after hugs and grins, they seemed to go right on to slumber land when we left the room.  We did not try that with Payton since he had already fallen asleep. 

With the extraordinarily busy lifestyle the Archibalds-Glascos have and with an important visiting day for UGA softball recruits the next day, they were tired. And, of course, so were we.  We tried not to talk too late but to all go on to bed. I think Gerald was too tired from the trip down to sleep well; so as he is most mornings, he was up very early. Gerry wanted his dad to go on campus with him to observe the huge crowd already there at 7 a.m. ready to camp out tailgating all day for the 7:45 p.m. football game against Vanderbilt.

Tara and Bryan were busy early Saturday morning claiming the spot close to the stadium and setting up the canopy tent for the tailgate supper for  potential softball recruits and their parents and for the hosting freshmen players and parents. Gerry and Tara were working all day, so we had plenty of time to enjoy visiting with the little boys until the late afternoon tailgate time.  I had not seen them for much too long.  Payton, who turned 2 in early March, woke up smiling, and I loved getting re-acquainted with him.  Aidan, 6, and Maddux, 3, had school crafts they had made to show off and lots to tell about. Soon the kids and the adults were playing with Legos, and I spent some time watching Maddux write the alphabet letters of his name and then playing a paper game with Aidan.

After Vickie came back with lunches for all of us, the boys napped, and I even had a chance to review some family history material I had brought with me. Later we sat on lawn chairs in the garage with the door open watching the three boys play a variety of ball and bike activities, some take-offs of real sports and some made-up games. Bryan was there encouraging and playing right with them.  

When Aidan, who has just started first grade, asked me what we played when I was in school, I had to think hard.  I told him about Red Rover, which we played with the entire grade school lined up in two large opposing lines on either side of the huge side yard of our school building.  Obviously we did not have enough people to do that. 

Then I remembered how we sat on steps with crossed hands and tried to fool the kid playing the teacher as to which hand had a rock in it.  If the teacher did not guess correctly, the pupil promoted up a step to the next grade. Aidan soon had a piece of chalk for us to use, and he and Maddux and I moved over to the front steps and played school where two little bulldog statues greet guests at their entrance. Maddux liked getting promoted to fourth grade at the top of the three entry steps. Then I remembered the game about taking giant steps, baby steps, scissor steps according to a leader’s direction, and we played that for awhile. (Although I really could not remember the rules.)

Finally, it was time to don our red and black clothes and join the throngs heading to the tailgate area. Far from the stadium, cars and trucks were already lined up on all approaching streets, and lawns were full of lawn chairs and UGA fans and their friends grilling out.  Parking spots were available for $50 or $25, and scalpers had tickets flashing for the unprepared. Before Bryan put their van in the parking garage, he was kind enough to drop Gerald, Vickie, and me and the boys as near as possible for us to enter the village of red canopies set up on campus in the stadium roadway. Patient people behind us waited while we undid three car seats and grabbed boys and lawn chairs.  Actually Gerald and Vickie did that as it took me that long to get out of the high van. I got to grab Payton’s hand as we headed to the softball tent. 

I don’t know if Norma Holliday and her husband Mike were there all day or not, but I think they were--busily helping the caterers and getting every thing ready for the recruit party. They greeted us and guided us to lawn chairs when we arrived at 4:30 or so and helped keep the boys occupied since they are special friends of these little fellows. They had bean bag games set up and were letting other revelers use them until the softball gang arrived. (Coach Lu Harris-Champer and three little daughters, were up at Macomb at her alma mater Western Illinois University.  Her husband Jerry Champer, UGA associate head swimming coach, was being inducted into Western’s Hall of Fame for being the most winning coach in Western Illinois Swimming and Diving history.)

Although we had slept in our granddaughter Geri Ann’s room, we had not seen her until now since she lives with the other players on campus in the dorm. There was time to socialize with the players and parents and eat supper before the band started arriving and setting up next to us. I never in my life saw so many marimbas marching into play. The weather was very warm, and these brave band members had on heavy uniforms and gloves, but they were obviously enjoying themselves as we listened to drums giving us rhythms to add to the festivities.

Very early people started lining up three and four deep to be behind the band members who formed a large aisle for the traditional Dawg Walk.  Norma and Mike generously let softball players sit in the bed and even on top of their truck parked by our tent. Hundreds of spectators crowded at the wall atop the stadium and hundreds more filled balconies over the stadium staircases long before the band started playing for the Dawg Walk. 

The band was so large that it spread out over the area below those many spectators looking down on them but then they also stretched around the corner from our tent up the roadway.  I was fascinated by not the one director below but another up above looking down and at least two other student directors on very tall sturdy ladders that allowed them to see one another around the corner and, thus, all stay together. 

Because I am short, I had to enjoy just the music and the directors on ladders because all I could see with the rows of taller people in front of me were sometimes the tops on baton twirlers’ heads and then the large tubas as their owners marched by.  I am assuming that football players had marched in during all this pageantry, but I never did even ask.  The whole spectacle was quite exciting with everyone anticipating the lone trumpet player mixed with the top crowd who would sound a few notes on cue.  Then after the band finished playing, two members replaced the on-top director and led the crowd in cheers.

Gerald, who had attended a UGA football game, warned me about the multitude of steps inside the stadium without banisters for us oldsters, and I had instantly declined any plans to attend since I am not a football fan.  Gerald too was glad to go on back to the house and make up for the poor sleep the night before.  So we hugged Geri Ann goodbye as Gerry and Vickie and Tara went on to the game to sit with the recruits and parents and probably over 90,000 more folks who saw Georgia win over Vandy.  After some straightening up, Mike and Norma did yet another good deed and drove us and Bryan and the boys over (way over) to the parking garage. 

On Sunday before I even got up, once again Tara and Gerry were off to campus very early preparing for the first game of the year for the 2013 softball team that afternoon.  Fall games are considered just practice games, but coaches and players know they are very important preparation for the real season during the spring semester. 

I dressed casually for the day and the afternoon game before I came downstairs, where I was pleasantly greeted by little Payton who looked at me and said, “I like your shirt.” 

The Archibalds go to a different church than Gerry and Vickie, because the boys are satisfied in their classes there, so Tara and Bryan are less likely to be called out of the service. Payton will stay happily if the teenage helper named Miss Allie is there to befriend him.  So I decided I’d attend church with Bryan and the boys, and we were relieved that Miss Allie was present.  Started in 2005, the Athens Church was created to provide a place of worship for people who might not like traditional buildings or services. No one needs to dress up or feel pressure to conform.  Music is  loud and passionate, and the two wide screens high in the auditorium allowed an enjoyable view of the talented drummer and other  musicians.

The church’s stated mission is “to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ,” and they have available staff to help seekers who want to learn more about Jesus.  The sermon too was a different format than I am used to, but it was given by an extremely talented communicator and the message was very helpful to me personally on the importance of our knowing how to draw a line with our own values in difficult situations and to avoid addictions.  I won’t read about Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar ever again in quite the same limited way as before thanks to the pastor’s excellent content.

As we drove away, I liked the way Bryan asked the boys for reports on what they had learned in their classes, and I was more than amazed when Maddux recited his Bible verse along with where it was found. With lunch boxes from a drive-in, we headed to the softball stadium to join the rest of the family already there.  Bryan let the boys decide if they wanted to go to the game and assured them they could leave when they wanted for nap time.  Only Aidan lasted through the double header. Always full of energy, he was happy to the end and as we waited for Geri Ann afterwards to go to dinner with us. 

We were there this particular weekend because we wanted to see Geri Ann’s first Division I college game, and we were not disappointed.  The softball Bulldogs won both games by a respectable score against Georgia State, a good team.  Geri Ann played at first base while junior Morgan Montemayor pitched an excellent game, and we were able to see Geri Ann’s and Tina Iosefa’s first homeruns of the season. Geri Ann pitched the second game, and Tina played first.  The night before, we had met Chelsea  Wilkinson’s mother, who had come from North Carolina to see Chelsea’s first college games. When Chelsea relieved both Mo and Geri Ann, we were able to see why she had such an outstanding high school record.  (She had set the North Carolina record for high school shutouts, perfect games, wins, and innings pitched as well as being an ESPN first team All American.)  Of course, we also liked meeting or at least seeing the other freshman  players—Sam Lazear, Cricket Blanco, Kaylee Puailoa, and Katie Brown—as well as the talented players we enjoyed watching last year.

When the games were over, players iced down, and goodbyes said after more socializing, Aidan and Geri Ann took me through the locker room and offices.  We left to meet up at a steak house with Brian, Maddux, and Payton, where Gerry and Vickie treated us to a celebratory dinner.  As reluctant as we were to end that good time, Vickie had to take Geri Ann back to campus for a tutoring session, and we took Gerry back to the office to do some lock up and tape watching before we gathered again to rehash the games until bedtime.   I was able to hear Aidan read Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, and I started  packing up for our trip home.

We had a morning visit around the table drinking coffee and admiring Maddux, who loves to dress up.  He was in his fire fighting outfit because their preschool class was going to be concentrating on the letter “f” this week.  I had a hard time thinking of short nouns starting with that letter, but Tara with her elementary ed experience was good at it.  Too soon Tara was taking Aidan and Maddux off to school while Payton was looking forward to having Gma Vickie all to himself.  Bryan, who works for a Chicago-area firm, excused himself to go to work--in his office in their part of the house.  Gerry helped me carry all my bags downstairs and to the car before he left for campus, and Gerald and I were off to creep through the Monday morning Atlanta traffic and on up through Tennessee and Kentucky back to Southern Illinois.  Our conversation on the trip back and now here at Woodsong has mostly been remembering what we laughed at there with our great grandsons and how much we enjoyed watching Geri Ann’s first Georgia games.

 

 

 

White Lines in the Sky over Woodsong

 As Gerald and I lunched one day this week, we were looking out over the lake and observing two aircraft contrails cutting through the blue sky in opposite directions. This is not uncommon because we seem to be under the path to the Williamson County Airport.

It caused me to reminisce about the first time my sister Rosemary and I saw such a white line across the sky.  I was a college freshman at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Rosemary and her husband Phil were also there working and going to school. Then Phil joined the Air Force and started basic training.  Instead of staying in my dorm that second quarter, I lived with Rosemary in their apartment until she was able to join Phil.

She was greatly saddened being apart from Phil, and she liked visiting his parents on the weekend because they would enjoy talking with her about her absent husband.  Because she had told me about it, I wanted to see their interesting big home, a former small hospital building which had been moved to their farm and was heated by fireplaces. Also I had heard about Mrs. Parks’ good cooking—including making her own chocolate-covered cherries, which I thought was remarkable. So Rosie invited me to go with her.

As we drove from Carbondale to the rural Stonefort-Carrier Mills area for a weekend with the Parks, we suddenly noticed this unusual bright white line crossing the sky.  We watched it for miles and were filled with curiosity and even awe.  Having never seen such a sight before, we thought it looked like an opening in the sky with this white light shining through. 

As we puzzled on what we were seeing, we wondered with great wonder if it could be the end of the world with an opening crack into Heaven.  I can’t remember how we learned the cause of these clouds left behind from the planes’ exhaust and the resulting condensation. I suppose someone in the Parks’ household explained it to us.  Because of this first experience with the trails, I always rather enjoy seeing them.

The next day as Gerald and I again looked across our kitchen table and out the glass doors to the deck and to the blue water of the lake beyond, there were two white herons flying parallel to one another through the blue sky.  Fluffy white clouds made the blue and white color scheme complete.  I frequently see both blue herons and white ones standing on the edge of the water or walking near the shore.  I like this vision even better than the contrails.  Gerald says that he has heard that many try to get rid of the heron because they eat the fish, but to me, their beauty deserves a good fish meal the same as the rest of us.

Tonight beside our lane, there were two deer grazing in neighbor Scott’s harvested field. I hadn’t seen deer for a few weeks; and though they eat our crops, I was sort of missing them.  They certainly were not afraid of me and the car.  They stood perfectly still and stared at me. Then I saw Jake running and barking beside our driveway to chase those predators away.  By then I was past, so I did not see the end of his efforts, but I assume he was successful since he was quickly back to the garage asking for a handout.

With squirrel season in, Gerald and Jake got their first squirrel together. Of course, Gerald had to brag about it to our son Gerry.  As competitive as Gerry is, he was soon lamenting the 1-0 score with Gerald ahead of him and his grandson Aidan and their squirrel dog.

As we drove home from church Sunday, Gerald got a photo on his phone from Gerry with their squirrel dog and a squirrel.  Then Gerry’s text explained the photo.  When they got home from church, their dog on a chain in their backyard was with the squirrel that he had caught!  Gerry soon sent word that he and Aidan had unanimously voted that the score was now tied at 1-1. 

 

Jake and Other Late Summer Pleasures

Jake, the little black and white squirrel dog who lives at Woodsong, takes afternoon naps across the driveway beside the garden. I like looking out the kitchen window and seeing him at his special chosen spot underneath the shade of the sweet gum tree that Gerald planted a decade ago. This is where he quickly takes any proffered bone. He much prefers a table scrap to the dog food that Gerald provides in the bowl in the shop, and Jake carries morsels there to enjoy. I wondered this afternoon if he is dreaming of squirrel hunting.

Our great grandson Aidan woke up from the Georgia football game the other Saturday afternoon talking about coming up here to squirrel hunt. I wonder if that was what Aidan had dreamed about. Obviously we need for Jake and Aidan to get together. Gerald believes Jake is ready for his first season of squirrel hunting since throughout the summer he has treed a turtle, moles, and bugs and raised quite a ruckus doing so.

This evening before Gerald had even reached our lane with his tractor, I saw Jake alert and running briskly towards the road. He must have recognized the sound of the tractor long before he saw it. I don’t like it, but he chases and barks at cars and trucks of visitors despite our scolding. Yet he never barks at our car or Gerald’s pickup. He does come down the road to meet either of our vehicles and lets us know how glad he is to see us.

Now that we have finally had rains, the black and white moving spot he makes on the landscape bouncing through bright green green grass somehow makes me happy. His little tail is held high in a near perfect circle above his body. If I walk to the mailbox, he will be my companion as he is every morning to Gerald when he walks down the lane to get the paper. Jake soon tires of my slow walk and is off on jaunts through the fields on one side of the road or other. But he will come back periodically and check on my progress.

Not only has the grass revived its color, but today I saw three yellow day lily blooms beside the house and several buds promising more. Then I realized that their brown foliage that had looked so ugly this summer was again green. I have neglected all the outside flower beds because it has been much too hot to go out and work with them. With the cooler weather at hand, my excuse has gone away. I am sure I can find another.

Gerald greatly reduced his gardening this year, but the okra, tomatoes, and cantaloupe he planted are all on our meal table frequently now. Summer is ending with many pleasures.

Life's Ups and Downs with Lois Barrett

Yesterday it was my privilege to introduce a fellow Southern Illinois Writers Guild member, who was speaking at the Marion Woman’s Club. I had looked forward to hearing my friend Lois Barrett, and I was not disappointed. She kept our group laughing even though I think she has had one of the most challenging lives I’ve ever known with many heart-breaking events along the way.

Lois has never been held down long despite those challenges. When she returned to Southern Illinois from her foray and a failed marriage in Texas, she listened to a presentation at the Guild by Violet Toler on self publishing. Within 30 days Lois had set up Brick Hill Publishing and quickly had her first earthquake novel available to the public. (I heard Violet’s presentation those many years ago, and I still would not have the gumption to do this.)

Lois’ first book When the Earthquakes Spoke was one that she had thought about and outlined as an 18-year-old. She explained to us that at 18 she only dreamed of someday writing a novel, for she lacked the experience to understand people and how they talked. Only as a senior citizen needing a new start in life, did she get down that box of notes from the closet shelf and complete the novel set here on the Ohio River in Shawneetown at the time of the 1812 earthquake. As a reporter, she had researched and written about that earthquake.

I was amused to find out that in high school for a quarter, Lois would write love stories for fellow students changing the names of the main characters in order to hide the indenity of their current crush. Several club members besides Lois were members of the 1952 Marion High School graduating class, and I had to wonder if any of them had paid her a quarter (worth five cokes or ice cream cones in those days). No one confessed.

Prior to becoming a novelist, Lois had raised four children, worked at a variety of jobs, studied in several fields, and traveled broadly here and overseas. Although she did not dwell on her journalism career in her talk yesterday, she has fascinated me with accounts of investigating reporting that she did for our area newspapers—work that often put her life in danger by people who did not want to be investigated. Those years of nonfiction writing were to do her in good stead when she began writing poetry and fiction in the latter part of her life.

Health problems and personal tragedies have devastated her life but never have destroyed her. In a state of deep depression from the death of a daughter, her second husband, and three other family members within a few short months, she withdrew to Texas thinking she was old enough to die only to realize that as she told us, “Wrong. God was not through with me yet.”

With that third Texas marriage that repeated itself three times—if I understood that complicated story right--after the final divorce, she moved home to Illinois only to return to be at the death bed of this third husband. Since then in Harrisburg, she has lived through the tornado and continued health problems with eye floaters that are keeping her from night driving. Nevertheless, I will not be surprised to have the opportunity to buy her sixth novel. She may not be working on it yet. I don’t know, but I suspect God is not through with her yet. I know her family and many friends and her colleagues in the all the organizations she supports hope not.

Her novels can be bought at www.BrickHillPublishing.com as well as on Amazon. Her second earthquake novel was Preacher’s Son & Henry Brown. Then came There Oughta Be a Law, Gulf Coast Love Affair, and A Love Story: Shuugh God and Lulu.

Once in a Blue Moon and Every Four Years

Thursday night as I traveled back to the farm from Katherine’s, the moon was near full and both bright and beautiful. I was somewhat surprised because it seemed as if we had only shortly before had a full moon, but time is passing so fast these days that I assumed it was a full thirty days since the last one. Even after a cloud passed in front of it, it shone through gorgeously luminous, and I allowed it to both light and lighten my trip home.

The next day I learned that Friday night was to be a blue moon—the writer explained that when we occasionally get two full moons in one month that is what a blue moon is. Someone else wrote that we would not have another until 2015. Friday night the rain clouds and the good gentle rain here at the farm kept me from seeing the orb again just as tonight’s rain is now doing, but it had been so beautiful that I am still seeing it in my mind. I feel unusually blessed that I had been allowed to enjoy it on Thursday night, because I needed that beauty.

We appreciate these rains, which while too late to help the corn crops, will help the later soybeans and will also help the ground be ready for next year. We are just sorry that others had to experience that terrible hurricane and flood damage for us to finally receive rain. I don’t know how people bear going home to flood destroyed homes—or out west to the fire destroyed homes. Certainly these brave ordinary people are heroes as they face starting over.

Gerald and I were at Katherine’s this evening when the television announcer was telling the people in nearby Carbondale to take shelter for a tornado. We were on the alert too until after 6 when things seemed to calm down, and as far as I know, no one had a tornado after all. But for the first time I ever remember, Carbondale fell victim to flash floods. Cars were flooded out and stalled, and the tow trucks were busy. We’ll find out in tomorrow morning’s newspaper how bad it was. Here although the rain continues, it is not harsh or in excess yet.

It is an unusual Labor Day weekend for us since we don’t have company. I thought Mike and Leslie might be coming up from Nashville, but then I found out that I had mis-remembered; it was Columbus Day weekend that they plan to be here. I think the Taylors are still coming down from central Illinois to their home here, but so far they have not arrived.

Gerry thought about coming if they did not have practice, but decided to stay home whether they did or didn’t. His clan was all at the football stadium today and saw Georgia win. Erin at University of North Texas and us Southern Illinois University fans were not so fortunate with our teams’ results. Marion High School played up at Mattoon last night (my brother’s town) and they not only won but Sam’s friend Josh, a sophomore, was put in for five minutes’ play again. Not being a football fan myself, I don’t really care who wins or who is playing whom, but hearing all the others’ football excitement heralds that fall is here. However, I am a kid fan, and I felt happiness just thinking about that great tall guy Josh playing the game he has anticipated since he was a little short guy pitching a football back and forth in Sam’s front yard.

I limited my television viewing of the Republican National Convention to evening hours throughout the week and plan to do the same with the Democratic Convention this week. I think I know how I will vote in November, and tell pollsters who torment me with phone calls who that is. However, I won’t be absolutely certain until nearer the election. Anything could happen between now and then. Who knew, for example, that a movie star would pull a stunt like one did Thursday night and be so vulgar and disrespectful to our President? I did wonder about the morality and patriotism of the folks who applauded him. (I often wonder that same thing about those supporting comics who mock the opposite party.)

I am grateful we have a good family man with either party’s candidate to set a good example for our youth. I love our present First Lady, but Mrs. Romney would succeed in that role. The emphasis this week on hard work bringing success was inspiring, and I am sure we will hear that emphasis this coming week also. I liked it that someone (maybe several people) pointed out that if we can keep our kids in school and if they will postpone sex and babies until they are properly ready, the statistics are in their favor for successful adult lives. I want good public schools for all children, and I am not satisfied with either party’s plan for achieving them.

I think whoever is elected will get credit when the economy turns around as economies always have in the past. I think the turn-around has started. I am not fearful that our nation will go down the drain as so many are predicting. But I know there are many hard problems that we must face, and I think we will do so just as those ordinary folks will manage somehow or other to survive and go on with their lives after all this summer’s natural disasters.

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.