Paradigms...where shift happens!

A Summer Place III

I was in Bedford, Virginia a year or two ago to pick up an old table from the Summer Place. It was in my grandparents’ house and when my uncle and I went in there to move it out we spent some time looking around the old place, now musty and mildewed but not very dusty. I suppose dust needs people or pets moving around to make it move around and settle on things.

Grandma had two kitchens in the Summer Place. She and Granddaddy called one of them the Front Kitchen and the other one was (you guessed it) the Back Kitchen. The Front Kitchen was where all the kitchen work went on. She had two stoves in there, one electric and one wood. I can’t remember anything ever being cooked on the electric stove although I’m sure she must have trusted it enough to boil the occasional pan of water there.

Anything that counted happened on the wood stove like biscuits and cooking off egg shells. I should have some folksy piece of Appalachian style wisdom here about what happened to the egg shells after they were cooked off on the stove top. The truth is I cannot recall other than Granddaddy crushing them to put in the garden or feed to the chickens or something. I do recall the smell though. It was noxious and since there was no ventilation in the Front Kitchen it persisted all day long.

There was only one hanging light bulb in the Back Kitchen and it was burned out almost all the time. If I had to speculate today I would say that it was never replaced because my grandparents saw no need to replace it since they knew where everything in there was by touch. For my brother and me though, it was a Dark and Evil place but not because anything bad had happened there. It was just dark and in the minds of 5 and 8 years old boys, dark and evil were the same thing. If we came into the house from the back door we had to pass through the Back Kitchen. I’m sure that our theory was that the faster we moved through there the less time the Evil had to get us, so we moved expeditiously, always slamming the door to the outside shut. That way, it would catch and we would not have to back track to close it thus give the dark things a second shot at us.

The Back Kitchen was also where they scabbed on the indoor bathroom that we finally got when my Uncle Buddy paid to have it installed by Sears & Roebuck. Before that addition, a night time nature call entailed a trek across the back yard, though my Uncle’s beagle pen and up to the new outhouse featuring rough cut pine boards for our voiding pleasure. Since Uncle Buddy was not terrible fastidious in his maintenance of the landscaping in the beagle pen, these night time sojourns also functioned as a chigger harvest, the fruit of which never became evident until a day or two later.

Don’t we remember the oddest things from our childhood? Anyway thanks for walking along with me on this little jaunt down memory lane….

Those good old days at UVa

While having a cup of coffee with friends the other day the conversation turned to our kids and how they were doing. They told me that their oldest son was a student at William & Mary and was doing very well there. It’s great to hear about parents who don’t have to worry every spring that Junior will be coming home for the summer in a few weeks with 300 metric tons of dirty laundry and will immediately begin to prepare them for a sub-stellar semester report card. My parents were not so lucky and I’m not talking just about the laundry that I came home with.

My youngest daughter made the Dean’s list her first year at Longwood University; my grades my first year didn’t total Dean’s list much less average that. There were a number of reasons for that, none of them good ones. In fact, my grades would not have been as good as they were had it not been for my required math class. Back in ’63 at the University of Virginia (that’s 1963 not 1863, thank you very much) one part of the requirements for a degree was successful completion of one year of mathematics. I can refer you to 12 people who will testify that teaching me math was quite possibly the most futile pursuit of their professional lives.

The first semester of math was something called Analytical Calculus. I had no idea what that was since I had always thought that a calculus was something that happened on your elbow if you played too much tennis. Complicating the issue was that my instructor was from Taiwan or someplace like that and had an accent so heavy that it was three weeks before I understood that when he said “yeentiger” he wasn’t talking about a young striped feline jungle predator. He meant “integer”. Who knew?

Now the good news: He graded on a strict curve and there were 5 scholarship football players in my section of twenty students. These guys took up all the F’s the curve allowed for so by the time he got to my grade there were no F’s left for me and he had to start handing out D’s. I was passing with exam grades in the high 30’s and low 40’s.

So first semester was not the math debacle I had expected. Second semester did not look good, however. That course was something called Matrices and Vectors. I always thought that “matrices” were the snotty guys you slipped a couple of bucks too for a table that was actually inside the restaurant and not in the alley. I almost panicked at registration but then it dawned on me, follow the jocks. I found where they were in the lines waiting to register for second semester classes. I passed “Matrices and Vectors” as well, hanging on to the coat tails of 5 very large sweaty men without necks. 

My academic career was, on the whole, undistinguished. As I tell it today, I crammed a 4 year course of study into 5 ½ years and three summer sessions. Someone had to make the upper 90% of the class possible after all, right? As poor as my transcript was, though, I’ll always have memories of one or two academic victories; I’ll always have Math.

Politicians & Polls

I’m sure most of you have flirted with the theory that most politicians, on the state and national scene at least, have the occasional lapse in being forthright about their views. As the mid-term elections grow near people like John McCain (who I like for the most part) are scrambling to mend fences even with people like Jerry Falwell. If the senator from Arizona shows up as a guest host on the “700 Club” with Pat Robertson I won’t be real surprised.

I point out only an example of the Republicans because it looks as if the Democrats can’t figure out which way to turn. Al Gore seems to have become “Earth Daddy” and Miss Congeniality, Hillary Clinton is trying to un-piss the people she has alienated. Joe Biden might make a statement but with his verbosity it’s touch and go as to whether or not he would even be finished by Election Day.

The point of this ”equal opportunity”, “a pox on both their houses” rant is that politicians seem to not be able to state their views until the public opinion polls have told them what views the majority of the public wants to hear.

So, what if everyone in America refused to answer any polling questions at all between now and November?  When the phone rings right in between your last bite of pot roast and your first bite of apple pie at dinner time, either don’t answer the phone or ask if you can call them back after the dishwasher is loaded or better yet tell them you are taking a poll yourself and want to know what they think.  Imagine all the candidates come October, scurrying around like cockroaches on a hot griddle , trying to figure out what to say when the voters won’t tell them what they want to hear. See Hillary scurry...

Just say no to pollsters!

Judy Collins

I'll file this first one about Judy Collins under Music but there is so much more there for me than just the music. I just came from hearing her give a one hour talk over at Mary Washington College. I was just blown away at sitting so close to an icon of my youth.

I'm going back to hear her actually perform in concert in about an hour and a half so I just walked the few blocks home. It's raining pretty hard here but it felt so good to walk in the quietness of the spring rain here....for a few moments I was 21 again...

Film at 11!

No sun so far today here...

in Fredericksburg  where it's overcast, drizzly and warm. In February or March the temperature would be in the 40’s maybe but today it is 65 degrees. It’s not nasty feeling or depressing today as it would be if it were colder. The drizzle is almost welcoming as I step out on the balcony.

Back when we lived out in the country on our little 27 acre slice of Spotsylvania County I would have welcomed a day like today because it would mean that I had a good excuse for not firing up the tractor and spending hour after hour driving that noisy orange machine and being chased by a bush hog while trying to avoid annoying a nest of yellow jackets. I could just stay inside and putter around or even stay put doing absolutely nothing.  Maybe I would go in and sit down at my amateur radio station and listen for voices from places I will never see like the Antarctic or Peru

This winter of 2005-2006 was a difficult one for me; the gloomy days were gloomier and the chill more invasive. I don’t know why the weather chills my soul but when the bare trees are the only thing separating me from a leaden sky nothing feels cheerful or promising. The lonely days slice through to the core and sleep is the only escape. Today, though, is like a warm bath that unties the knots in my head. Maybe it’s the green that does it. 

Or maybe it’s because tomorrow I’m taking this lot to see “Ice Age II” and then out for pizza. It's been a tough week for them, for all of us, we deserve it.

 

Lisa of...

... That's Renarded fame has a new posting this morning that had me snorting coffee all over my keyboard. While you are there enjoying her writing, please note that she has moved her blog so you will need to set a new bookmark. It's easy to do, just get a Sharpie pen and circle the address on your screen. Then when you want to go back to it, just double click on the circle.

(Dear God, please tell that no one who reads blogs is Renarded enough to actually do that!)

An amputation...

...often leads to the patient continuing to feel pain in the missing limb even though it is no longer there. If you are a parent with a grown child, you understand that...

M&M's?

This woman just left our office who was wearing a bright yello jacket that advertised M & M's...you know, like melting in your mouth, not in your hand. Nikki told me that there was an M & M sponsored car on the NASCAR circuit but it looked an awful lot like a straight ad to me. Is there no product that people will not wear ad apparel for?

So far there's nothing out there that I have seen that touts the wonders of any particular brands of condoms, feminine hygiene products or personal pleasure devices but I have a feeling that a line of t-shirts or ball caps may may not be too far in the future.

Jeans companies seem to have been in the forefront on the adver-parel...Jordache, that Klein guy and so forth but Old Navy has a death grip on the gold medal. The whole bloody store is little more than a poster factory for itself...everytime someone walks out of there with a t-shirt or sweatshirt they proclaim where it was purchased and that they were dumb enough to pay ON for the privilege of advertising for them.

We're not even going to talk about the clothing items that have the label sewn on the outside. Do you think it happened because Label Sewer # 39 came in hung over one morning and accidentally started sewing labels in clothes that were right side out? She probably got canned for bad performance and is now sitting around in a trailer somewhere trying to figure out how to get a cut of the profits from companies who decided her mistake was a good promotional idea.

My personal idea would have been a set of t-shirts with velcro attachable displays that announce what brand of cereal the wearer had for breakfast but then no one would walk around with a sign across their back proclaiming that had started their day by consuming a bowl of something called "mueslix"...would they?

This is really a weird time we live in I think....

The Anvil Chorus

I said I wasn't going to get involved with political postings anymore but this is too curious to pass up.

Everytime I let myself get drawn into a discussion of this fiasco in Iraq it seems the supporters of the war say we are doing well over there and that all is well with President Bush at the helm. To me that means they are supporting the Secretary of Defense as well because the Commander In Chief hired him and is the only one Secretary Rumsfeld reports to. As with all appointees, Secretary Rumsfeld serves at the pleasure of the President.

Now suddenly a whole fistful of retired Generals are speaking out to the effect that the President's next in line in the chain of command,  Rumsfeld needs to go. It's true enough that Bush and Rumsfeld are two different people in two different positions but there is something terribly wrong with this picture.

These guys didn't get those stars for ignorance and their experience certainly lends substantial credibility to their voices but will the President listen to anything dissonant in his own echo chamber?

Film at eleven boys and girls....

Voices of the Rappahannock

The river has many voices. At her infant headwaters in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Chester Gap, she chortles just like a scurry-crawling newborn as she gambols over the rocks.

By the time she reaches the fall line and the Falmouth white water just above Fredericksburg she seems to laugh out loud, passing us here on her way through, bound for Port Royal and Portabago Bay and then to a confluence with the Chesapeake Bay.

Just below the Falmouth bridge, though, she settles into mature and soft spoken adulthood. 

Ultimately the Chesapeake Bay will subsume her flow as it did the mighty
Potomac and these matrons of old Virginia will blend all they bring with them with the Chesapeake's outflow into the Atlantic Ocean.

Perhaps she knows that in another 80 miles she will reach Saluda as an old woman, contentedly  murmuring  memories to herself, memories and wisdom she has gathered on her journey along these history filled banks, preserving her quiet tales of years past in a whispered secret shared with those who still listen to the old ones. Mostly though, she just talks to herself as The Elders often must do. At Saluda she will bequeath 184 miles of memory and a thousand years of wisdom to the bay. 

What's in your news?

One of the many points made in Kovach and Rosenstiel's book, The Elements of Journalism was that there is no occasion where a journalist reporting a story does not change it in some way. Furthermore, it is almost axiomatic that a journalist must not become a part of the story.

 

In today's Washington Post, a thought provoking article in the Style section discusses the journalistic ethics issues raised by NBC's pedophile sting operations that have been televised on their news magazine show, Dateline. The network hired a group called Perverted Justice to organize and advise on the sting and in one instance the group's members were even deputized by the local sheriff.

 

All well and good it might seem at first glance….nothing much lower than a child molester, right? Local law enforcement joining forces with the media to protect our children seems like a positive step towards a safer world. Maybe it is…in this case. Where, though, is the dividing line between this and more invasive concepts like a phony web site set up in partnership between a media organization, an internet site and the Feds to gather other sorts of information for whatever purposes the government thinks appropriate.

 

In 1920 Walter Lippmann wrote "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies." If our information to detect lies comes via a press that hires consultants to set up stings in consort with the government, how will we know that information is not itself false or flawed due to the methods used to gather it.

If good ideas...

...come to those who deserve them then Nikki, who I nudged into blogging, must be the most deserving person in the blogosphere. Why, oh why don't I get to see things like what she wrote about today at Blind Wanderings . I'm not at all sure that my style would have done it justice but what a great description she gives of a very funny scene.

You almost have to know her to imagine the full spectrum of that snorting laugh she describes and when I told her I had just read the posting she immediately went into snort mode.... Go there and have a chuckle.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it....

Kent Nerburn's new book

If you have ever sat by the bedside of someone who's earthly life is almost at an end, you need to read Kent's experience with his father-in-law in this preview chapter of his new book The Hidden Beauty of Everyday Life which is due out in May.

I've never met Kent but his writing in this chapter entitled "The Conversation" tells me that he is a good and gentle man whose insights are important.

It was a double!

 

A thunderstorm just blew through here, not a violent one but definitely a storm. It started quickly as if God flipped the ‘storm switch’ and then it was over.
I wish you had been here with me to see it, partly because I like the idea of you being able to see something like that but more because it was the kind of display we should have seen together on our best day…but then they were all best days….

                                                                                     
                                                                                             

OK, I'm breaking two rules...

...of blogging here I think. The first one is that this post is too long and the other is that this is a repost of something I posted about a year and a half ago under the title "A story to be read to a child". I was thinking about this story today after talking with B about animals talking and having souls.

                                                                The Tree & The Dove

Once upon a time, a very long time ago when animals and trees could talk, there was a beautiful white dove. Although she had the whole wide sky to fly in, at night time she always flew home. Day after day she would soar up into the clouds to explore and see all that she could see. Some days she would fly through great white clouds as fluffy and soft as cotton but other days the clouds could be dark and stormy.

When the clouds were white and the warm yellow sun was shining through, flying was easy and fun. It wasn’t so easy though when the dark clouds gathered. Then the little dove had to use all the strength in her beautiful white wings to fly through them. The winds around the dark gray storm clouds were as strong as they could be. They bounced the little dove around in the air and ruffled her feathers. One day in a storm she got so tired she knew she just had to find a place to rest. No matter how hard she looked she could not find a single tree to rest in. By the time the storm was over and the gray clouds had gone away she had been blown far far away from her old home

In the days that followed she tried very hard to find her way home. Each night just before it got dark she would find a rocky corner on the side of a mountain and rest until the sun came back up in the morning. Day after day in the warmth of the morning sun she would fluff her wings and soar up into the sky, always looking for her home. Sometimes at the end of the day she felt very sad and was afraid she would have to live among the cold rocks forever. But deep down inside she had a feeling that there might be a place of rest and safety just beyond the next cloud, a shelter where she could rest and be safe from the strong winds that came from the huge gray clouds. Day after day she flew on, searching and hoping that this would be the day she would find the home she longed for.

One day as the beautiful dove was flying along she saw a mountain far off on the horizon jagged and rough looking standing out against the sky. It was near the end of the day so she flew nearer to the mountain and began to look for another place where she could stop and rest. All the mountains she had seen in her long journey had been very tall and rocky. At first this mountain looked the same but as she flew she saw it was different because on the side of this mountain there was a very scraggly looking little tree growing out on the edge of a rocky cliff.

This sad looking tree had been clinging to its rocky little spot on the mountain through storm after storm for many years there on the cliff. Because it lived on the cliff it only had a small bit of rocky soil to put its roots in. With so little good soil to get water and food from it could never grow tall and straight towards the sky like all the other trees that lived below it in the valley.

The dove was curious about this crooked little tree and so she turned toward it. Closer and closer she flew until she found herself settling down onto one of the crooked little tree's twisted branches. She rested there for a few minutes as she looked the tree up and down to see what it was like. “It’s as good a place as any to spend the night”, she thought so she fluffed her feathers up against the chilly night air, and tucked her weary head under her wing to wait for the warm morning sun.

After a bit she became aware of a faint vibration in the branch where she was resting. She didn’t know what to make of that. And then it stopped. As she tucked her head back under her wing, she felt the vibration again. And then it stopped again. Once again she put her head under her wing to wait for the morning light. Then, there it was again...a vibration.

Since the vibration started every time she nodded off to sleep, the little dove thought maybe the tree was trying to tell her something so she remained very very still and listened carefully trying to hear what message this twisted little tree might have for her. She soon realized that it was talking to her.

It wasn't long before she began to feel peaceful and safe for the first time. Puzzled at this, she cocked her delicate head to one side as if to listen more closely for something from this poor stunted tree that might explain this new feeling of calm and safety. She felt the tree telling her that it understood she needed shelter and rest and she could stay as long as she needed to. If she would perch very close to his trunk he would try to protect her so that she could rest and regain her strength for the rest of her journey.

For many, many days she stayed, gaining strength with each passing day. And as she began to think it might be time to continue her quest she became aware that perhaps this was what she had been looking for, this was what her quest was. And so she decided to stay a bit longer.

One morning, many months later, the little dove awoke and looked around her and felt the tree's vibrations again. Now, the tree had not talked to her for a long time. As she listened this time ever so carefully she realized the tree was singing. While she listened to this beautiful tree she looked closely at the tree and noticed a wonderful change in her poor little tree. It had not gotten any taller but it had grown strong and its branches seemed a little straighter. As she felt the tree's song vibrating through her now rested wings she understood what had happened.

This tree had only needed a reason beyond its own pride to grow. With the little dove there to shelter and protect, the sad little tree wasn’t sad anymore and so it had forced it roots down through the cold rocks to the soil beneath them and found the nourishment it needed to grow strong because at last it had a reason to grow. It had another soul share the days with and to care for. So the little dove decided to stay there, in the gentle sheltering arms of her crooked little tree while the tree continued to vibrate its beautiful song of life through its branches and into the life of the beautiful white dove.

Even though this happened long, long ago and even though trees and birds can no longer talk, their ancient songs continue to echo, reminding us that having someone to care for and protect is surely the greatest purpose and source of strength any of us can have.