Glory Be

Yummy

2011-02-28T08:48:00.003-05:00

If you came here expecting more amusing tales of the sweetest grandbaby on earth, I'm sorry. You'll have to re-read my last two posts (admittedly dated now) for your Piper fix.

No, today I've got a question for you. What's your favorite food?

Let's say it's cheese. Cheese is wonderful, isn't it? So versatile, so tasty, savory or sweet, melty or crumbly, just delicious in thousands of ways...a truly delightful food.

Now let's say that you discovered that an essential step in cheesemaking involved painfully yanking several whiskers from the precious face of a newborn kitten.

I'll bet you'd be appalled. You'd probably write to the cheesemaking folks, demanding that they stop their horrible, abusive practices. You might stop eating cheese altogether, or try making whisker-free cheese yourself, at home. You'd certainly tell your friends, and maybe together you'd sign petitions, picket cheese factories, start a Facebook campaign.

Happily, no newborn kittens are harmed in the cheesemaking process (as far as I know). But there's an even more appalling practice going on, and I wish more people knew about it.

It's chocolate slavery. You can read about it here, and you can see a video about it here, but if you want the short version: thousands of African children, mostly young boys between the ages of 12 - 16, are slaves on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast. This is the chocolate that is bought by all the US chocolate manufacturers, and that makes its way to your grocery store and to your table.

Slave chocolate.

I can't buy it any more.

Do you know a 12-year-old boy? Or a little boy that might be 12 in a few years? Maybe your son, your grandson, the little fellow next door? Let that sink in for a while.

Now that I know what's going on, whenever I see chocolate, I see the beautiful brown skin of a boy in Africa.

I love chocolate. I LOVE chocolate. To a large extent, I am the plus-sized gal that I am today because of chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. I've eaten my share of chocolate, and probably yours, too, sometimes all in one day. So lest you think I'm getting too preachy here (Hey now! Stay away from my chocolate!), I'll admit a few things to you now.

1. I haven't totally stopped eating it. If someone offers me something chocolate and it's already been bought or made by them--I'm eating it. I figure it's been bought already. Might as well.

2. And sometimes, I push that picture out of my head, and just buy some, anyway.

3. And I've told the fellow who first told me about chocolate slavery--stay away from sugar and coffee. If those are made by slaves, I don't want to know.

But I've drastically reduced my buying of chocolate, and I sort of hope that you will, too. Or you can buy Divine Chocolate (or some other Fair Trade brand). By doing so, you not only take a stand against chocolate slavery, but you help to support local cocoa growers who have slave-free farms.

Travels with Pippie, part 2

2010-12-11T09:20:00.010-05:00

(Read yesterday's post for the first part of this story.)

So we head out to WalMart. There's a Salvation Army bell-ringer at the entrance, and I decide to give Piper her first experience in benevolence. I didn't really learn much from the McDonald's fiasco, though; my purse and Piper are still occupying much the same space, while my right hand is clamped to her head, in an effort to keep the fuzzy hat on. So we stand in front of the nice Salvation Army lady, at an impasse, and for a moment I contemplate just letting her search through my purse for my wallet and take an appropriately charitable donation from it.

I'm smarter than I look, though. I squat and set Piper on the pavement, and with one hand free I extract a crisp 5-dollar bill. "Here, Piper." I hand her the money and hoist her up to kettle level. "Put it in there, sweetheart."

Piper looks at me, at the money, at the kettle. Clearly, grandma, you have lost your mind. Even if I wanted to let go of this interesting piece of paper, I lack the fine manual dexterity to put it in that narrow slot. I believe I'll just taste it, instead.

I stand with an oof and take the money from Piper's hand. Grandma giveth and grandma taketh away. With a "Merry Christmas" to the bell-ringer, we head inside.

A blue-smocked gentleman offers us wipes for the shopping cart. Where was he half an hour ago, when we encountered that horrid high chair in McDonalds? Piper's cute little corduroys still carry remnants of that ancient stickiness.

I have a small list, but it involves visiting several different corners of the store, and it's not my WalMart. I'm unsure where to find any of my items, so we journey through all the aisles in search of such diverse items as face cream, aloe-infused socks, and goldfish crackers.

Piper is extremely interested in everything she sees; she reaches out with fingers opening and closing. "Meeee! Meeee!" That's sweet. It's almost like she's saying "me", a pronoun fairly advanced for her current vocabulary. We stop occasionally for a little lesson. "Look at the pretty pillow, Piper! Oh, Piper, look. Can you say flower?" Piper mostly says "meeeee" happily.

We stop at the greeting card section and I'm searching for the "For The Pastor" cards when Piper sneezes.

There's very little that can mar the cuteness of this adorable child--but the production of two perfect snot bubbles, one large and one small, comes pretty close.

Raise your hand if you think Grandma has a tissue in her purse. Or in the pockets of her jeans. Or anywhere else on her person. If your hand is raised, you're wrong. Well, this is why God invented thumbs. I make a few passes--Piper grins--and I casually put my hand in my back pocket.

A quick trip over to the grocery side, where I pick up a few items to take back to the House of Sickness. When I pull a box of graham crackers from the shelf, Piper repeats her favorite word with new urgency. "Me! Me! Me! Me!"

Hmmm. Maybe it's a real word, after all.

You know, I went through my own daughters' entire childhoods without ever opening a package before paying for it. I never sample grapes or snitch from the bulk candy bins, either. But I don't hesitate for even a second; the box is open and a graham cracker is in Piper's little fist before you could say "Revoking Your Grandma License".

After an uneventful trip through checkout, we head back to the car. Hat on. Hat off. Hat on. Hat off. Hat on. Hat off. After securing Piper in her carseat, I reach into my back pocket for my keys. They're not there, but Piper's sneeze is. Eww.

Keys located (in my purse, in the exact spot where tissues should be), we're headed back home. I start to sing a Christmas song, one that Megan has told me Piper likes. Sure enough, when I get to the end of the second line, I hear a whisper from the car seat: pum pum pum pum pum. The spirit of Christmas whooshes into the spot of my heart previously occupied by peevishness.

Travels with Pippie

2010-12-10T17:38:00.003-05:00

The plan was for a girls' weekend: my friend Lisa and her daughter Maddie, my own daughter Megan and the adorable Miss Piper, all gathered here for two days of What Girls Do. I gave my house the kind of cleaning usually reserved for visits from the parents, and stowed away all breakable items at toddler level.

"Thanks for telling me your plans," said God, and with a benevolent chuckle, He stirred up a patch of wintry weather between Lisa and Maddie and here. He knew, of course, that I'd be needed elsewhere; Megan fell to the pestilence that's been raging through our family, and she needed to be in bed, hugging The Big Bowl. And grandma needed to be with Piper.

Now, I've spent almost every Friday of Piper's 15 months with her, but I've rarely taken her out in the car. Today, however, we wanted to give Megan an hour or so of quiet time. So I bundled Miss P into her car seat for a foray into town.

Indiana is cold in December, and Piper is a baby of very little hair. You know what's a fun game to a toddler? Take-off-your-really-cute-fuzzy-hat-and-throw-it-on-the-ground. Piper wins that game, every time.

First stop--McDonald's, where I realize that I've totally forgotten all of the traveling-with-toddlers tricks. I order a nice lunch for us, then realize that my purse is dangling from my left shoulder and I'm carrying Piper with my left arm. Do I put her down? What if she runs? Should I shift her to my right? But I really need two hands to fumble with my purse and wallet. Set her on the counter? This simple problem utterly flummoxes me. I decide to put her down, and she clings to my leg. Good. The teenager at the cash register looks impatient. I pay for lunch, and pick up my tray.

Um.

Set the tray back down, pick up Piper. Balance Piper on hip, pick up tray. I spot a high chair across the restaurant and head in that direction. Once there, I look at the chair stupidly for several seconds, unable to figure out how to get it and Piper and the tray all to a table.

Lacking a third arm to drag the high chair, I find a table nearby and set the tray down. Back to the high chair, which I now see is sticky with approximately two years' worth of stickiness. Well, I'll be sure she doesn't touch that part. I settle Piper into the seat and open up the fruit and walnut salad.

No plasticware...how am I going to give her that yogurt? How will I cut up the grapes? Oh yeah--I also forgot to fill my cup with Diet Coke. Didn't get a napkin, either.

I'm not going to leave her in the high chair to go fetch all those things. There's a family next to me; grandparents and a little boy. I start narrating my dilemma to Piper, hoping that someone will take pity and help us out. (It is against everything in my nature to actually ask a stranger for help. I can't do it.) So I babble: "Piper, I forgot a spoon! Oh no, Piper, no napkin! Silly grandma! And look, Piper, I didn't get any pop! What should grandma do, Pippie? Huh?"

There being no help forthcoming, I pull Piper out of the sticky high chair and head off to fetch the missing items. When I settle her back in the seat, I sense the other family looking at us.

Well, let them look.

Then I hear something that thaws my coolness toward them: the little boy, who says to his grandparents, "That baby's cute!"

Yes, she is.

"Grandma, can I say hi to her?"

Anybody who thinks Pippie is cute is a person of impeccable discernment. I smile at the little guy, and he says "Hi, baby!" and waves.

"She doesn't talk much yet," I say, and Piper makes a liar out of me by breathing out a soft hhhhuh and waving at her new friend.

"What's her name?"

"Piper." The boy's grandparents (who look way older than me) are smiling encouragingly at him, so I figure I've passed the "stranger danger" test. "What's your name?"

"Andrew. How old is she?"

"She's one. And I bet you're...five?"

Andrew nods. "And you know what?" He leans in to whisper to me. "I know everything."

"Wow, Andrew! Everything?"

He's serious about this. "Yes."

"Do your grandma and grandpa know everything, too?"

They laugh, but Andrew glances solemnly at them, then back to me. "No."

We make it through the rest of lunch, and head out to WalMart. I wish I had taken Andrew with me; it would have been nice to have someone with us who knew everything.

I'll write that saga tomorrow.

Australia, last day

2010-10-18T06:07:00.003-04:00

We couldn't have had a more perfect last day. The weather was (finally) gorgeous, with broad blue cloudless skies. We left fairly early for a drive north to Hunter Valley, famous for its many wineries and for the Hunter Valley Botanical Gardens, Australia's most beautiful and popular garden site.

Passed a few mysterious signs for Bullsballs on the way; didn't find out what that was until after dinner, but it was the cause for much riotous speculation. Turns out to be exactly as naughty as it sounds.

The gardens were another occasion for me to run out of adjectives: I just kept babbling 'beautiful, beautiful' all day, like the professional wordsmith that I am. Rather than try to describe them, I'll just post a few pictures. There were millions (literally) of roses, Japanese gardens, pretty black swans with fuzzy gray cygnets, all kinds of blossoming trees, every type of flower and shrub and hedge and bloom you can name. The scent of roses was so thick I could feel it in my throat.

Ben was impressed to learn that there are many varieties of gum trees, of which eucalyptus is only one.

There was a storybook garden where we had our pictures taken with Humpty Dumpty and Alice's Tea Party, and a lovely chapel where weddings are sometimes held.

Before leaving the Hunter Valley, we stopped at a touristy little village and bought a few souvenirs. Then back through the mountains toward home--I particularly enjoyed the little wooden cottages, formally owned by miners, in the small town of Cessnock. They were a bit run-down and weather-beaten, but utterly charming.

Home for a final supper with the Porters, and delightful post-meal conversation. Lots of laughs with Matt, a fine young man. He and Kylie are really fun, and they made me miss talking and laughing with my girls.

We fly home tomorrow. I'm glad to be going home to my cat and to Piper, but will miss beautiful Australia and cherished friends.

Australia, Day Somethingth

2010-10-17T05:15:00.004-04:00

Here's something to love about being in the family of God: church is church, no matter where you are, no matter how different the customs and styles of worship. We felt it three years ago in England, and again this morning in Australia. The common denominator, of course, is God's presence, and He was evident in a lovely way this morning at Deb and Steve's church.

After church we went to the Hog's Breath Cafe (a steakhouse with a fun pigs/license plates/tee-shirts decor) nearby and met Kylie and her boyfriend Al there. Three hours later, we staggered home for a quiet Sunday afternoon. Naps happened.

Pies for dinner--both meat and apple--and then Kylie broke out the Sesame Street Uno cards. Lots of fun (Ben won, in a supreme display of ungrateful guest-ishness. As for myself, I graciously lost).

Tomorrow is our last full day in Australia--a trip to the Hunter Valley Botanical Gardens, two hours away.

Australia, Saturday the 16th

2010-10-16T06:14:00.003-04:00

Answer to the seed question: it's not an Australian 'personal product'. It's just a seed that made its way into the packaging somehow.

We started the day at Questacon, a wonderful hands-on science museum primarily for children. Being pretty immature ourselves, we loved it. Ben's favorite item: a large screen that he stood behind while it created psychedelic images of his body. He also enjoyed various pendulum displays, and a game of Toss-the-ball-while-spinning. Other attractions included an earthquake simulation room, a room with everything you could possibly want to learn about the science of musical instruments, and a block puzzle that I could solve but Ben couldn't. Woot!

Culinary highlight of the Questacon: Magnum bars, an ice cream bar that's like a Dove bar on steroids. Peppermint.

We left the museum and drove a few miles to Cockington Green, a magical little village where they've recreated dozens of English buildings of various styles to a 1/12th scale. In another section, there are buildings from around the world, all in miniature. The landscaping was, oh heck, I'm running out of adjectives. Pretty, pretty, pretty flowers, bushes, and miniature trees. Really pretty.

Lunch at Happy Jacks, the Aussie version of Burger King. Tasted like home, except for the 'tomato sauce', which is not ketchup.

After lunch, we drove back to the Parliament area and visited the Old Paliament House, which is now the Australian Government Museum. It was exactly as interesting as you'd think it would be.

Fantasmic drive home though splendiferous scenery, with a stop for supper at the same Coolabah Cafe where we ate yesterday on the way to Canberra.

I'm having issues with the pictures from today, but I've posted are a few (I hope). One of them is a little shack outside the old Parliament house as a protest of sorts by the Aborigines. It made me sad.

Australian Mini-Mystery

2010-10-15T16:27:00.005-04:00

Our hotel in Canberra has the usual assortment of complimentary soaps and shampoos, along with a 'personal care package'. Here's a picture of its contents:

And here's a close-up of a mystery item. What do you suppose Australians do with that? Best answer wins a Tim-Tam.

Australia, Day Eightish or Nineish, I forget

2010-10-15T06:26:00.004-04:00

We headed today to Australia's capital, Canberra, about three hours away. It was a cool and rainy day, but the drive through totally unpopulated Australian countryside was beautiful anyway, with lots of hills dotted with cattle and sheep. Also, it rained a lot, did I mention that?

Stopped for lunch at the Coolabah Cafe, which sounds lovelier than it is. Basically a truck stop, but with better food than in the U.S. But grosser bathrooms. Outside, it rained.

On to Canberra, where we checked into the Diplomat Hotel, then took off in search of a shopping centre and a food court. We stopped first at the new Parliament Building (in the rain), which is a really interesting, modern building built into a hillside. Having recently been in Washington D. C. and taken a tour of our Capital Building, we were astounded that we were able to drive right up to the Parliament Building, drive underneath it to park, and walk all around it. It was 6:00 in the evening, and there was NO ONE around and no sign of security except for a few cameras.

Also, it was raining.

Looking away from the new Parliament Building, you can see the old one, and beyond that, the war memorial, in a setup very reminiscent of Washington, D.C.

We left the government area (in the rain) and found the mall. HUGE mall, with three levels that cross two streets. Really bad honey chicken at a food court place; I wasn't entirely convinced that what I was eating had ever cackled. Made up for it by buying a pecan and white chocolate tart.

Left the mall (rain) and went back to the hotel for a quiet night. We'll explore Canberra tomorrow, then head back to the Porter's house in St. Clair in the evening.

Australia, Day Seven

2010-10-14T06:28:00.003-04:00

...Or maybe Day Eight. I'm losing track.

A very low-key day, but wonderful. The weather is the best since we're been here--like a mild summer day in Michigan. We left late morning for a trip to the shopping centre (mall, to Americans). It's huge! We bought a few gifts for family and friends, had a nice lunch, and stopped at a riverside park on the way home.

And that was it--but I should mention one of the absolute highlights of this trip, which has been the after-dinner conversations with Deb and Steve and their delightful daughter and son, Kylie and Matt. They're all so sweet and funny, and very patient with us Americans, with the language barrier and all...we've just laughed and laughed. So much fun!

Oh, the eclairs. The bakeries here are...well, I can't think of a word. There are so many of them, and everything looks delectable. Is delectable, in fact. We're trying to sample one of everything before we go home.

Tomorrow we leave for an overnight trip to Canberra. The holiday is winding down, and I'm sad to think of going home.

Australia, Day Six

2010-10-13T17:14:00.002-04:00

Holy Moly. Best day ever, maybe.

Relaxing morning at the Porter's house while we all caught up on various tasks. In the late morning, Ben and I walked to the shops and had wonderful pastries (chocolate eclair, apple something), then had matching framed prints made of the butterfly-on-the-hand picture. When we got home, Steve was back from work, so we headed off for our afternoon and evening in Sydney.

Lunch at McDonalds (Mackers)--no kangaroo burgers.

Slight detour into Paramatta to replace the charger for their GPS, or we'd still be wandering around, looking for Manly.

First 'real' stop: Manly Harbour, where we bought gelato (hazelnut, strawberry) and enjoyed it on the boardwalk before visiting the last of the four attractions we'd bought tickets to the other day. Manly Ocean World is a small aquarium, nothing too spectacular, but with a really great display of cuttlefish. There's a sandy beach there, and gorgeous shoreside apartments and condominiums.

Next--a ferry ride of about half an hour to Sydney Harbour. Spectacular views of the skyline, and utterly breathtaking when the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge came into view. It was the third time during this vacation that I've choked up: the other two times being the Blue Mountains and the butterfly room at WildLife World. Weird that a piece of architecture would rank up there with all that natural beauty, but surely the Sydney Opera House is the most beautiful building in the world, and I never, ever thought I would be here.

We spent a long time just walking. The area around the Opera House is full of shops, cafes, and pubs, and it was crowded with tourists, patrons, and people getting ready for the evening's outdoor concert at the Opera House: Simply Red's farewell performance. We were able to walk a short distance into the beautiful botanical gardens when the threat of rain drove us under cover, so we headed for City News (a really cool restaurant with harbour views) for dinner.

Ben: pumpkin fritatta and a hot fudge sundae. Me: shepherd's pie and ohmygoodness ohmygoodness ohmygoodness Pavlova that was definitely the best thing I've ever tasted. I wish I'd taken a picture.

More walking after dinner. There was a light rain, but we were able to stay under cover until we got back to the botanical gardens. Unfortunately, they were closed for the evening, so we walked back around the Opera House and enjoyed the nighttime harbour lights.

Another ferry ride back to Manly, and home for a great night's sleep. Absolutely perfect.

Australia, Day Six

2010-10-12T01:35:00.003-04:00

A more relaxed day today--we headed off in the morning for Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, which reminded us very much of both Chicago's Science and Industry Museum and the Smithsonian's American History Museum. Lots of fun, interactive exhibits. Ten things I learned here:

1. Don't let Deb Porter design your fireworks; they'll fizzle

2. Weightlessness simulators will make two out of three of us 'wonky' for a long time, even after getting off

3. Museum exhibits that promise "a taste of chocolate" don't necessarily come through

4. Australian culture is very heavily influenced by American culture, and they know a whole lot more about us than we know about them--by a magnitude of about 600%

5. I'm not any better at things like chemistry and physics in Australia than in the States, nor are displays about them any more fascinating. Give me history, any time.

6. The 80s were a time of terrible, terrible 'fashion', no matter where you were.

7. Most of the celebrities who we in the states think are Australian--aren't. Go ahead, name one. Probably not Australian.

8. Australians have invented a teeny tiny ultrasound machine, and some other things that I've already forgotten.

9. Travel by train in the 1800s was great in the first class car, but in the third class car--forget it. Miserable.

10. Deb Porter really gets a kick out of activating the 'light up boobs' on the anatomy model.

Ben's Museum notes:

1. We were very impressed by a beautiful grand piano made of Australian woods.

2. The 80s--an odd decade, no matter where you were

3. Weightless makes you dizzy

4. The first locomotive in Sydney--impressive, and awesome that it was preserved after only 22 years of service.

5. $3.50 for a Diet Coke. Seriously?

We didn't take any pictures today, but I've included a few of the museum.

Australia, Day Five

2010-10-11T05:30:00.005-04:00

Disclaimer: I am very, very tired. Therefore, I am writing like a 4th grader. I'll make it nicer/funnier/ more moving when we get home.

A day in Sydney, with Australia's weirder-than-weird wildlife. Oh, and strange animals, too.

(pause for acknowledgement of hilarity)

But seriously...

We drove to Sydney from Porter's house in Penrith (less than an hour's drive) and bought tickets for 4 Sydney attractions. First stop--Sydney Wildlife World, a superb zoo with only Australian animals. The turtles were fascinating, some of them with necks longer than their bodies. The animals were all just so, so strange...the highlight was the butterfly room, where butterflies, some of them with wingspans of 6 inches or more, fluttered around. One of them landed on Ben's hand, and then on Deb's.

Lunch was at a little fast food court in Darling Harbour, where we were pestered by seagulls--the very ones that inspired the "mine! mine! mine! mine!" seagulls in "Finding Nemo". One of them was even signing autographs.

Then we went on to the Sydney Aquarium, again featuring only Australian Marine Life. We saw lots of species of sharks, dugongs, sea horses that look as if they're growing seaweed, fluorescent jellyfish...there were three tunnels where the fish, sea turtles, and other marine animals swim all around you, over you, even under you--even a huge ray, at least 6 feet across. The live coral reef displays were stunning.

Baskin Robbins ice cream next, and then a monorail ride into downtown Sydney, and a walk through Hyde Park to the barracks. We didn't have time to see them before the museum closed, so we went back to the Sydney Tower and had a claustrophobic ride to the top, 1000 feet over Sydney. There we enjoyed a panoramic view of the beautiful city and all its harbors.

Australia, Day Four

2010-10-10T03:21:00.006-04:00

We started today with Ben being badly trounced by Steve in a game of pool, while Deb and I took one of the conference-goers to the train station. Really badly trounced, by the way.

When Deb and I returned, we all headed off for the Blue Mountains, about an hour from here. We stopped first for a hearty breakfast at a nice little cafe with an attached gift shop, the first of several today. Then up to the Blue Mountains--spectacularly beautiful. Indescribable, really--sort of like Australia's version of the Grand Canyon, but with more vegetation.

We walked out on a few lookout points in a brisk breeze, and just marveled at the view for quite a while. After a brief visit to another gift shop, we headed for the Skyway. A cable car took us out over a gorge in the mountains, where we had more views of the Three Sisters, Katoomba Falls, and the many beautiful natural rock formations.

At the far end of the gorge, we got out and walked down a pathway to an accessible part of Katoomba Falls, where Ben climbed up the rocks for a great photo op.

Lunch was at the Three Sisters Cafe, then we headed back for home through the Mount Tomah region, a gorgous winding mountain road though sandstone cutouts and with panoramic views of beautiful countryside. As we reached the lower elevations, we passed through several orchards--apple, peach, and pear--and stopped at a fruit stand for fresh fruit and just-baked pie.

At a lookout point in Kurrajong, we were able to see Sydney--far, far in the distance.

Back at the Porter's home for a quiet evening. Tomorrow--our first trip into Sydney, about 40 kilometers away.

Australia, Day Three

2010-10-09T06:17:00.008-04:00

Here are a few images from the Aussie conference, featuring some of the speakers. I don't know why I'm so out of focus in the one picture, but the important thing is in focus--the slide imploring people not to write 'alot'.

The conference was wonderful--a more subdued and low-key version of the American FW conference, but with the same loving family atmosphere.

I know I keep mentioning the food here, but so far we haven't done much sight-seeing, since we've been concentrating on getting ready for the conference. So...a few more observations on Australian food.

1. Scones and cream--so, so, so good. Just so, so good.

2. Passionfruit--failed to elicit much passion in me. Too tart, and too melon-y.

3. "Brownies"--not brownies. Here's a place where they could take some lessons from us. Brownies should not be dense, crumbly, and shaped like a biscotti.

4. "Tropical pizza"--yum.

Did I mention scones and cream? So very, very delicious.

Tomorrow: the Blue Mountains.

p.s.--I hate Blogger. Having a hard time now with 1) pictures, 2) formatting, and 3) everything else. Sorry.

Australia, Day Two

2010-10-07T22:35:00.005-04:00

We spent the morning relaxing, reading and watching Australian television. It looks just like American televsion. In fact, it IS American television--lots of re-runs of Westerns like Maverick and Bonanza. (Do you suppose they think that's what we're like? Hoss and Little Joe?) Deb was running errands--picking people up from the airport and preparing for the conference tomorrow.

At lunchtime, we walked about a mile to a nearby shopping center and window-shopped. We found a great source for Tim-Tams of many varieties, and had lunch at a Turkish kebab place. A kebab here isn't anything on a skewer; it's more like a flatbread wrap. Like Olga's on steroids. The 'chips' are delicious--nice fat fries in what Ben calls 'high test' oil.

From the kebab place, we went to Lollypalooza, a little candy shop where they had some fascinating bins of bulk candy. Witchitie grubs are little white candies modeled after the live grubs eaten by Aborigines. We didn't get any of those, but we were intrigued by something called 'musk sticks'. Surely, we thought, they couldn't be made of actual musk. Because you Don't. Eat. Musk.

The nice girl gave us a sample. Ben says it tastes like a product used to clean the toilet; I think it tastes like skunk. Skunk candy. Skunk candy.

More down time in the afternoon, then off to Spurs, an Australian restaurant along the line of Chili's. The pictures here are of some of the Aussie FaithWriters and their spouses: Mick Dawson, Noel Mitaxa and Lynne Churchyard, Debbie Roome and her husband Kevin, Karen Ward, Noel Mitaxa with his wife Judy, and Deb and Steve Porter.

The conference is tomorrow; looking forward to it, but even more looking forward to the sightseeing, starting Sunday. Which would be Saturday for you all. Or maybe Monday.

Australia, Day One

2010-10-07T15:08:00.005-04:00

(This is Tiger, the Porter's dog. I'm having trouble moving this photo, so it's staying at the top).

***

The guy next to me on the plane had the plague.

Well, perhaps not exactly the plague, but some germ that had him sneezing and dripping all the way from Chicago to San Francisco. Consequently, I am filled with doom; some time in the next few days, my throat will sieze up and I'll spend the rest of my vacation in pestilential misery.

But I'm feeling fine--now.

The flight from California to Syndey was pretty much as we'd expected. Long, noisy, cramped. But it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. We were both able to sleep a bit, and we chatted with the lovely Australian couple in seats 40D and F. In-flight movies: Keeping Up With the Joneses (horrible) and Cyrus (even more horrible), but happily I had my Kindle and a wonderful travel companion.

We had no customs or luggage difficulties, and Deb and Steve met us at the airport--how wonderful to see familiar faces! Oh, and everybody's rightside-up here, despite what we've been told.

We drove about half an hour to St. Clair, the Porter's suburb, and stopped before getting to their house to replace my reading glasses (left behind on the first plane). Australian money: pretty. We had our first Australian lunch: meat pies (delicious) and Lamington (also delicious), a yellow sponge cake cube, iced with chocolate and covered in coconut. Those of you who know Ben will know that he didn't have the Lamington; I shared it with Deb. Ben's alternate goodie: Chocolate Tim-Tams.

Note to the USA: we need Tim-Tams. They just might solve all of our problems. Australia may be the lovely, laid-back country that it is because of the gloriousness of Tim-Tams.

The Porters house is in a charming neighborhood of brick houses and pretty trees. One of our biggest surprises so far--the birds, which are very different from American birds, and considerably noisier. Not necessarily in a pretty, twittering way. More like in a nagging, screeching, Myna bird kind of way. Much nicer were the galahs--pretty gray parrots--and the colorful lorikeets, which we saw on an afternoon excursion to spot wild kangaroos.

Spotted 'em. Just sitting in the soccer field of a nearby high school. There was a mama, very evident by her bulging pouch, and two companions of undetermined gender, very relaxed and watching us as we watched them.

Back to the Porter's house for dinner, wonderful conversation, and then a jetlagged, Ambien-less sleep. The conference is this weekend, and then we plan to see several sights in Sydney, Canberra, and the Blue Mountains later this week. Stay tuned.

I've posted a few more pictures from yesterday on the post just below this one. I'm not liking Blogger so much right now.

(Two views of the Porters' pretty landscaping)

A few more pictures from Day One

2010-10-06T18:56:00.000-04:00

I'm finding Blogger somewhat awkward when it comes to loading and moving pictures, so I won't label each of these individually. They include shots of the Porters' garden, Deb and me, and the kangaroos we hung out with for a while yesterday afternoon.

What Does the Lord Require of You?

2010-08-28T23:44:00.005-04:00

Several years ago, I 'met' an excellent blogger whose world could not be more different from my own. She is urban, Jewish, single--I am small town, Christian, married. These labels might have separated us, but we were drawn by a mutual appreciation of the written word, music, and the exploration of our faiths. We commented on each other's blogs and exchanged a few emails, where we discovered a few more commonalities, including fine chocolate.

Then I stopped blogging, and I'm sorry to say that we fell out of touch.

But when I re-started this blog a few months ago, she 'found' me, and I was delighted to find her on Facebook, too, especially because I'm still re-thinking the nature of this blog, and I might easily have lost her again while I worked it out.

Last night, my friend posted a Facebook status that I can't stop thinking about. It's an appeal to contribute to an interesting cause: I'll let you read about it here. I'd encourage you to read through the comments, too, and to notice how many Muslims were moved by the simple act of charity that this rabbi has taken upon herself. I was especially drawn to this statement by the rabbi who posted this blog:

I'd love it if we could send a gift to the mosque to show that the guy who desecrated their sanctuary doesn't represent the rest of us.

The semon this morning in my church was based on Matthew 23:23-24: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill, and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former." I do believe that one was meant for me, so I came home and wrote this blog.

Christians, will you join with me and my friend in performing this small act of mercy?

Here's the entire verse (Micah 6:8) that I used for the title of this blog:

"He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Job Interview at Panera

2010-07-07T15:08:00.004-04:00

Jan hasn't had a job interview in years, and she likes that this one is taking place in a Panera; she plans to get there half an hour early and have a mocha while waiting for the guy to show up.

At the restaurant, she stops first in the ladies' room to make a few adjustments. When she looks into the mirror, she's startled by a wiry white whisker growing from her chin, apparently invisible in the lights of the bathroom at home. Her attempt to pluck the errant whisker using only her fingernails has the same effect as that of scissors on ribbon--it curls into a neat coil, stubbornly clinging to her chin.

Well, it's smaller now, Jan reasons, and she heads out to order her caffeinated lunch--still 25 minutes before the interview is to start.

She takes her iced mocha to a table with a view of the parking lot, the better to spot the guy when he enters. The barrista has overfilled the plastic cup, and with the first slurp, a substantial glob of whipped-cream-and-coffee plops onto Jan's blouse. She swipes at it ineffectually with a napkin, making the mark larger and, somehow, darker.

Back to the restroom, where she dabs at the spot with a cool, damp paper towel. The coffee spot fades, but now she looks like a lactating Amazon--a large wet spot covers one breast.

Still twenty minutes. Surely it will dry by then.

She sits again and slurps madly at the iced mocha.

Once the brain freeze ends--an agonized few minutes in which she mentally attempts to unbury the icepick from her temple--she glances down at her newly-revised resume for one last check. It's been decades since she interviewed for a job. There's a spot of something organic and greasy on the left margin. A stray crumb of breakfast from her hands, perhaps...it's like an extra bullet point, calling attention to what should have been obvious the first twenty times she proofed this document. There it is, about halfway down: 'administered vocational assessments to learning disabled studnets.' Stud-nets.

Nah, he won't notice that.

Jan glances toward the parking lot, and sees a likely fellow--short-sleeved shirt and tie, black leather man-purse. She arranges herself so that she looks like someone about to be interviewed. Sure enough, the fellow approaches her table. "Jan? I'm Gerry." They shake hands, and he takes a seat opposite her, where he has the optimal view of her pseudo-lactating breast.

The interview goes well, she thinks. She is confident, intelligent, even occasionally witty. When she is asked to read a short passage out loud (the job involves administering tests to groups of studnets), he hardly seems to mind at all when she asks him to hold the text several feet away from her face. It's what she considers the best option, since she forgot her reading glasses. The other options were 1) squinting with her left eye, while holding her right eye wide open, or 2) guessing at half the words on the page.

Afterward, she buys a chocolate croissant and drives home. Gerry has promised to call back, soon.

***
(note from the blogger--my dear friend has suggested that I should try something new and different for me. Since I'm missing my real writing love--fiction--I should fictionalize things that really happen to me, and leave it up to my readers to determine where life ends and fiction begins. So...there you have it, readers. Some of this happened, some of it didn't. Anyone care to guess?)

Great News!

2010-07-06T09:47:00.002-04:00

Great news! I've been contacted by a company that wants to publish my novel, even though I haven't written it yet.

Pretty awesome, huh? But wait, it gets even better. They've read some of my work online, and it really fits in with their vision for the future of publishing. They've promised me lots of autonomy, probably to publish a collection of themed short stories, and they'll let me work with one of their graphic designers on cover art. They're pretty sure we can sell 5,000 books, and the testimonials on their website seem to back them up. Most of the people who've left quotes on the website are Christians, too. I have a friend whose cousin published with them, and the cousin's really happy with the company.

AND...best of all, they only want a little bit of money from me up front. Nothing much at all--looks like a win-win situation to me.

So, when did the red flags go up? Please tell me the red flags went up at LEAST somewhere in the middle of that second paragraph, if not sooner. Please, PLEASE tell me that the alarm bells started to sound at the mention of money. Because I totally made this up.

It seems to me that we've all become just a tad too naive. Whatever happened to discernment--isn't that supposed to be one of the spiritual gifts? Over the years, I've heard lots and lots of people list their own gifts, but no one ever mentions discernment; I guess it's not as 'pretty' as 'hospitality' or 'intercession.'

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus says that we're being sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves. But we don't need to act like sheep (the wolves as certainly out there, disguised as Nigerian millionaires)--we're told to be as wise as serpents AND as innocent as doves. That's a tough balancing act, but I think too many of us are tipping the scale in favor of doves.

Several months ago, a hacker or SOMETHING sent out a mass notification from "me" at Facebook to dozens of my friends. I first got notice of it when someone chastised me privately; I should be more careful about what I send, she said--some of those things are scams and viruses. Steam rolled out of my ears--not at her (I was glad she pointed out the message)--but at the idea that dozens of my friends got this thing, and may have thought that *I* was falling for a scam.

For the record: If it's online, my tendency is NOT to believe it. My criteria for evaluating anything that I see in a fwd or a Facebook status:

1. Has it been forwarded? Unless it's simply a funny picture of kittens, its reliability is gravely in doubt.
2. Is it from a biased source? I want a neutral source to back it up.
3. Are there errors in spelling or grammar? 'Nuff said.
4. Do I personally know the person who wrote it?
5. If it's a product that makes outlandish claims--are the 'studies' that back it up somewhat...incestuous? You know, studies run by the same company that makes the product? I ain't buyin' it.
6. Come to think of it, outlandish claims in general belong in the trash with the banana peels and coffee grounds.

Christians are nice--we don't like to think that someone would intentionally deceive us. And we're caring--we don't like to believe that little Suzy is in the hospital, so we decide to be one of the million people who send her a greeting card.

But when we tumble onto every re-posted rumor, and then we are proven wrong--well, it's just one more bit of ammunition for the enemy. Look at those Christians, how gullible they are. I wonder what else we can get them to fall for?

Garage Sale

2010-06-30T19:51:00.004-04:00

A smattering of interesting characters from this weekend's garage sale. Writers, feel free to borrow any of them that strike your fancy.

1. Father and son--dad is 40ish, friendly, articulate. Son looks to be about 17 or so. He has a wispy goatee and a bit of a speech impediment, perhaps caused by his horrible teeth. There are only half a dozen or so teeth in his mouth, blackened and gross, and his gums are studded with fragments of rotting stubs. I wonder how an intelligent man could allow his son's mouth to get into such a horrible state.

2. A woman approaches me and my cash box, fumbling half a dozen small objects. I give her a total--seven dollars and a quarter--and she begins to juggle some bills and coins as well. Can I help you? I say. No thanks, I've got it. She holds a quarter between her lips and counts out a few dollars. Still fumbling, she drops the quarter into her hand and puts the bills in her mouth. Finally, she has the right amount, and she drops her purchases into a small bag that I've held out, then takes the money from her mouth and puts it in my hand.

3. A fellow who seems to be about 80-eleven years old, who wears short athletic shorts that might have been fashionable in the '70s. His skinny legs are very white, and did I mention? Those shorts were short.

4. Two guys, thirty-something, roar into the driveway in a souped-up pickup truck. They hop out and make a quick survey of all the tables; they've obviously got an agenda. Good thing my friend's teenaged son brought over a box of toys he'd outgrown--the men each gleefully snatch up a few plastic snakes. Another guy who makes a surprising purchase: a single Little Golden Book.

5. Pretty lady with her son, perhaps 8 or 9 years old. She speaks only Spanish, and I speak none; the little boy translates for us. He is sweet and shy, she is shyer. She picks a few items and pays me a couple of dollars. On the way out, the boy sees a box of Pokemon cards, another contribution from my friend's son, Tim. There are hundreds of cards in there, and Tim wants a dime each for them. The boy fishes around for a long time, and holds out a stack of perhaps 50 cards to me. For all I know, the Honus Wagner of Pokemon is in that stack, and they're not really mine to dicker. Two dollars? He looks at his mother and translates. She looks startled, shakes her head, and leads him away. I wish I'd just given him the cards--his eyes were the color of molasses.

And just because--here's Piper, practicing "not being in the way".

Free Photo

2010-06-25T20:42:00.002-04:00

I've been having a lot of fun looking for freebies and giveaways online, and the other day my daughter directed me to a good one--a drugstore was giving away one free 5 x 7 photo. I sent them a jpeg of my cutie patootie granddaughter and then waited the recommended 3 days before picking it up.

The drugstore is about 15 minutes away, so I called first to be sure the photo was ready. Here's a replay of our conversation.

ME: I ordered a photo online, and I'm calling to see if it's in yet.

DRUGSTORE LADY: I don't know anything about that.

ME: The website recommended that we call before picking it up.

DRUGSTORE LADY: Well, hang on a second.

(long wait)

DRUGSTORE LADY: I don't think we'd have it under a name. What's it a picture of?

ME: A really cute baby.

Really? You file by the pictures? So you'd look in your 'baby' file? Or maybe 'girl'? Is that the most efficient way you could think of to file photos?

DRUGSTORE LADY: A baby? (She seems unclear of the concept). Wait a minute.

(long wait)

DRUGSTORE LADY: Yeah, we've got a picture of a cute baby here.

Well...good.

Invocation

2010-06-21T07:58:00.003-04:00

A few days ago, I went to the funeral of my sweet Aunt Dorothy. She was my last aunt on my father's side; of twelve (twelve!) siblings, only two are left now.

Dorothy had a charming and modest manner, and before she died, she had planned to make quilted Christmas tree skirts for each of her many nieces. I think I got the first one, and I'll always believe that maybe it was because she liked me best.

At the funeral, my mother pointed out a typo on the printed program: instead of 'Welcome and Invocation', it read 'Welcome and Innovation.' I was pretty happy about that--an innovation at a funeral! Maybe they'd do something innovative specific to Dorothy's interests...pass out samples of pie, or break into little groups to play a round of Skip-bo. She loved crossword puzzles--they could have projected clues about her on the screens. "Dorothy often vacationed at their _____ up north (5 letters)"

To my disappointment, there wasn't any innovation at all, just a regular funeral.

Love you, Aunt Dorothy.

Egg Salad

2010-06-15T06:33:00.004-04:00

Settle a dispute, please.

Someone in this house says that when you've used a pan to boil eggs, there's no reason to wash the pan. Boiling makes things cleaner; in fact, it sterilizes them.

Someone else in this house says that you've cooked something in a pan. You should wash it.

I'm not saying who's who--but the majority rules. What do you guys think? Send your friends over here to vote, too.

Egg salad sandwich time...someone in this house has boiled some eggs.

Valet

2010-06-13T19:35:00.017-04:00

We'd been driving for more than two hours, and my stomach was beginning to growl for the combination of foods only available at graduation parties--potato salad, hot beef sandwiches, tiny carrots with a dilly dressing, cake so sweet that my tonsils slip into a coma. Ben turned the car onto a dirt road, and the bumpiness caused me to look up from the book I was reading. "They really live out in the country, don't they?"

"I googled a map," said Ben. "They're pretty far back here. We've still got a way to go." His great-niece had graduated from high school, and we were on our way to visit a branch of Ben's family so different from us that I'd often suspected that they--or Ben--had been grafted from another species of tree altogether.

The dirt road narrowed to barely more than one lane, shrouded in trees. We bumped along for five minutes or so. I closed my book. "What happens if someone comes at us from the other direction?"

Ben gritted his teeth. "We kiss the trees on the side, I guess."

Impossibly, the road narrowed once more, and we drove for another half mile, until the woods opened in a rough clearing. The graduate's younger sister was there in a four-wheeler, waiting to take party guests up to the house, which seemed to have been built by Papa Bear--it was that deep in the forest.

I was not about to get on a four-wheeler. "Isn't there another way there?" I asked Emmy. "How far is it? Can't we just walk?"

"It's pretty far, you'll never find it. But ny friend Jace is comin' with the van, he'll take you up." She peeled away, showering us with fine dust.

A moment later, a van appeared. The driver--Jace, I guess--looked very young. "You goin' to the party?"

Ben shot a look in my direction. "You don't have a license, do you?"

"No, sir."

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen, but I been drivin' for years."

We shrugged and climbed into the van.

When the van stopped at Papa Bear's cottage, Jace stepped out and let loose a stream of tobacco-spit into the dirt.

For a few hours, we visited family in a smoke-filled garage smelling of beer. I filled my belly with that sweet, sweet Crisco frosting and my spirit with sour adjectives.

As the afternoon drew to a close, young Jace began the process of shuttling people back to their cars in the clearing. I watched Ben in the van, thankful for this lovely, distinguished man. Sunlight flickered though trees onto his white shirt. Thirteen-year-old Jace was driving pretty fast over the rough country lane; I held onto my seat and leaned away from the open sliding doors.

Suddenly, the van skidded to a stop, but we were nowhere near our car. "What's up?" said Ben.

Jace pointed. "Just waitin'." We followed his finger. A small box turtle was making his way from one side of the path to the other. When it disappeared into the trees, Jace nodded. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's get you back."

Twenty-Eight Cents

2010-06-13T06:50:00.001-04:00

I'm in line at the grocery story with bananas and Diet Coke, the staples of my retirement diet. In front of me--a man who looks to be approximately 112 years old. A sideways glance tells me that he's buying white bread, applesauce, canned peas, and a few other items. The cashier tells him it comes to $11.72.

"What's that?" he says. His shoulders are so stooped that his natural posture has him gazing at the floor; he looks up at the cashier with painful effort. "What's that?"

"Eleven seventy-two," she repeats, a little louder.

He fumbles in a little change purse and brings out some crinkled bills. He's got a five and some ones, but obviously he doesn't have enough.

"You want me to put something back?" she asks.

The old man doesn't seem to understand--he just smiles at her and holds out his wrinkled money.

I'm searching past the old fellow now, for his daughter maybe, or someone who brought him--surely he didn't drive himself. But there's no one around, no waiting grandson putting a shopping cart away or buying lottery tickets from the vending machine at the door.

The cashier used to come to our VBS, and I remember that her name is Autumn. She's a sweet girl, and I can tell she feels sorry for the guy.

"Autumn," I say, and I give her four dollars, nodding my head toward the 113-year-old man. He's still proffering his money at her, still smiling, and he doesn't even see what I've done. Autumn bags his groceries and counts out twenty-eights cents in change, holding it out to me with a question in her eyes. I look at the guy. Give it to him.

He shuffles to the parking lot with his plastic bag and twenty-eight cents, and a few minutes later when I follow him out the whooshing doors, he's driving away at five miles an hour, his head barely visible over the steering wheel of his sedan.

Here's What I Think

2010-06-12T11:34:00.000-04:00

Several months ago, a local Christian DJ 'dinged' a Christian college nearby for not having the national anthem performed before their sports events. This is a historically Mennonite college, and the Mennonites (like the Amish) have traditionally distanced themselves from nationalism. Yet it was clear to me from his post on Facebook, and from the scores of comments that followed, that most people doubted the college could be truly Christian if they continued to decline to play The Star-Spangled Banner.

Here's what I think: it does us Christians no good if we continue to thunk each other for things that don't matter. I love The Star Spangled Banner--it never fails to cause a prickling of my eyeballs. But is singing The Star Spangled Banner a matter of salvation? No? Then let's move on.

What's more--

I don't claim any political party, as I find that they all contain beliefs, traditions, and people that I find admirable, and those that I find despicable. But...

Let's stop assuming that all Christians hold the same political positions.

Let's acknowledge that neither political party has cornered the market on patriotism.

And while I'm on a roll...

Let's agree that once we've stipulated to the basics, there are lots of ways to do Christianity, and God loves them all.

Let's make everyone...yeah, everyone...feel welcome in our churches.

I could go on, but I'll save it for another post. I guess I've startled enough of you for now. You know the comedian Jim Gaffigan? How he's always saying what the audience members are probably thinking? Well, I'm imagining you all now...(wait...this isn't what I was expecting at all!)

No One Gets It Now...

2010-06-11T08:20:00.004-04:00

It's the year 2075, and Grandma P is snuggling with her granddaughter. They're reading a book together, and the granddaughter is worried; one of the characters is sick.

"Grandma P", she says, "what's cancer?"

Grandma P takes off her glasses and kisses the little girl's head. "We don't have to worry about that any more, sweetheart. It was a bad disease, but no one gets it now. No one's ever going to get it again."

***

This weekend, my son-in-law is donating 18 hours of his time to DJ a Relay for Life event in White County, Indiana. Wouldn't it be great if his efforts, and those of the tens of thousands of Relay for Life participants this year would make that little vignette a reality?

It's for my aunts.
It's for my good friend Sharon.
It's for Tony's dad.

It's for all the sisters and brothers, parents and children, nieces and nephews, grandparents and friends who you loved.

It's for Debi B. and Steve B. and Kathy B. and all the others...who survived.

***

Things Change

2010-06-10T10:32:00.007-04:00

Between my last blog post and this one, nearly two years have passed. A few things have changed since then, and I'm thinking that it might be time to start blogging again.

The best change by far: this beautiful little baby, who will be calling me "Grandma" as soon as she figures out that whole "talking" thing. Her name is Piper, and she's the sweetest baby ever. Ever sweeter than that baby you know--I'm sorry, but Piper wins this one.

Almost as wonderful as being a grandma--being a retiree. After 30 years of teaching, I gathered up my post-it notes and colored thumbtacks and went home. I haven't regretted the decision to retire for one nanosecond--mostly because of all the nana-seconds that followed. (snork)

The last change I'll mention here--I'd been writing ultra-short fiction for FaithWriters since 2005, doing pretty well in the Weekly Challenge and sticking my fingers in my ears every time someone suggested that I do something else with my writing. Several months ago, my friend Deb (who runs the Weekly Challenge) asked for my help in administering the challenge. I agreed--but of course that means I'm not entering any more. I've been editing some, and posting some writing lessons for beginners, but I find that I'm really missing writing for me.

So...the blog again. I had fun when I was writing this, and I'm ready for some more fun. I'd like to start up where I left off: with some funny observations on life, reflections on faith, commentary on current events, maybe some media reviews, and thoughts on writing. I may write the occasional short story or poem.

Blogging has changed a bit since I was here last; I expect that I'll be tweaking this for a while before I get it right.

Home

2008-08-21T07:54:00.009-04:00

And then we went home.

Here are a few more pictures...some people have suggested that, now that I'm back in the habit of blogging, I continue. No promises....but I'll try. These aren't in any particular order, just pictures worth sharing that I ran out of room for in the previous blogs. I'll just tell you from left to right, top to bottom, what they are:

1. More of those 500-year-old paintings being restored at St. Teilo's Church in Wales.

2. A view of an empty capsule above us in the London Eye.

3. St. James' Park, near Buckingham Palace.

4. The gates of Buckingham Palace.

5. Warwick Castle

6. Some very nice roses in a cemetary near the P--'s house.

7. Ben being silly on the SS Great Britain

8. A scone with butter, rasperry jam, and clotted cream. Yum.

9. A show-off at the peacock garden in Warwick.

10. One more view of Warwick--that place was huge!

Anything else you'd like to see more of? We've got hundreds of pictures, and I never get tired of talking about them.

In the Tower and Miserable

2008-08-20T09:11:00.013-04:00

At breakfast in the hotel on August 5th, Ben presented me with birthday cards from the P-- family, and also from H--'s parents (with whom we spent that lovely day in Wales). H--'s card wished me a day in which I would be neither "locked up" nor "miserable"--a nod to the day's planned activities at the Tower of London and the theater.

We took the underground to the Tower of London fairly early in the morning in a constant drizzle of rain. Like probably 99% of all Americans, I had visualized the Tower of London as, well, a tower...a tall round building: you climb up, you look at a prison cell, you climb down. Tower of London, right? So I was very puzzled when, earlier in the week, H-- had told me "Oh, you'll love the Tower, you can spend the whole day there."

Really? What, in chains?

Really. It's not just a tower, it's a whole fortress. There are many towers there, and a castle, and an armory, and residences, and even a house for the Queen to live in, should she choose to visit her jewels. There are even a few public toilets, much to our joy. You can spend a whole day there.

We decided to start with an audio tour which focused on prisoners of the Tower and lasted about an hour. We were able to get a good overview of the whole complex that way, and once the tour was over, we struck out on our own to see the bits that it didn't cover.

The Medieval Castle Walk took us on much of the wall surrounding the Tower, and several of the smaller, named towers along the perimeter. Information plaques here dealt mostly with the defense of the Tower. The castle walk concluded in a room called Crowns and Diamonds. There we saw replicas and de-stoned crowns from many eras and many monarchs, and thousands of uncut diamonds. I reminded Ben that it was my birthday: perhaps he'd like to make them an offer? But no.
Next, we went to see the Crown Jewels, where we saw the actual crowns of recent and current monarchs--Queen Victoria's small crown, for example (the one she wore in lots of photos), and Queen Elizabeth II's current one. That building is protected by one of the Tower Guards, those big-hatted guys you see on television and movies all the time. We saw them at Buckingham Palace, too, but couldn't get close enough to take a picture. They really are absolutely motionless--we took this picture quickly, between lots of people who were sending their children up to this fellow to pose with him or to waggle their fingers in their ears to try to get him to laugh.

We had a sandwich lunch at an indoor cafe' inside the Tower grounds; it had drizzled constantly all morning, and as much of the tour was outside, it felt good to be inside and dry, and sitting down for a little while.

Back on the Tower grounds--we found this 1000-year-old wall, behind which is an enclosure for the Tower Ravens. The legend is that if ever the ravens should leave the tower, Britain will fall--so now they are well cared-for there, by a Raven Master whose sole job is assuring Britain's future.

To conclude our Tower visit, we walked through White Tower, a separate building in the center of the Tower complex that now serves as a museum of armor and weapons. And on the way out of the Tower grounds, we stopped to watch the firing of a small trebuchet.

It was just a short walk from the Tower to the beautiful Tower Bridge, although wet cobblestones and two enormous blisters were making walking rather painful for me. The Bridge is gorgeous, though, and provides for great views of both the Thames and the Tower of London.

We had some time before our evening outing, so we checked our London map for places we hadn't seen yet. Shakespeare's Globe theater wasn't particularly close to any underground stops; we'd have to do a fair bit of walking. I wasn't particularly thrilled with that prospect (have I mentioned the huge blisters?), so we kept looking, and found that Trafalgar Square was literally at a tube stop.

Trafalgar Square--I don't know a lot about the battle of Trafalgar (who won, who lost, who was even fighting...), but isn't that the place with all the millions of pigeons? Where Mary Poppins sang "Feed the Birds"? That sounded nice. Off we went.

It was a bit disappointing. There were signs posted: Don't feed the birds. It is unhealthy for them. There was a big, impressive statue, but lacking the history knowledge for it, we were somewhat unmoved. Also, there were construction cranes all around, and even the four large lion sculptures were draped in screens advertising a "Trafalgar Festival". We walked around the square (well, Ben walked and I hobbled) and decided to head back to the hotel for a bit of a rest before the evening's activities.

We got a little bit lost...actually found our way to a different Travelodge, but not ours. Happily, ours was close by...we crashed for a few hours, while I nursed my poor feet.

At dinner time, we headed out for Bella Italia again. We had really enjoyed our dinner there two days earlier, and we knew that it was very close to the theater where H-- had scored us great tickets for...Les Miz! We sat at "our" table: Ben had spaghetti and meatballs (borrring) and I had canneloni with spinach and ricotta. I ordered a lemonade and got Sprite. Interesting.

After dinner we walked for a while and bought some silly souvenirs, then went into the Queen's Theatre. Our seats were Row C, on the aisle--fantastic! Les Miz was beyond wonderful. I'd seen it before, in Chicago, but from the nosebleed seats. From where we sat here, we could see every nuance of expression on the actors' faces, could distinguish one chorus member from the other, could even see the spit fly as they sang. It was great. Javert's and Valjean's voices--out of this world. The best theater experience we've ever had, without a doubt.

Loo

2008-08-19T07:13:00.011-04:00

So. Going to the bathroom in England. It was a problem.

It wasn't a problem at the P--'s house, of course. They had a perfectly lovely bathroom, only differing from American bathrooms in that the toilet flushed on the wrong side. That was easy enough to get used to.

But when we were sight-seeing, it was a whole 'nother thing all together.

I am a woman of very small bladder. Enough said about that; you understand the implication. Here in the states, I really believe that no matter where you are, you're only 10 minutes away from a restroom. If you're in a city, every public building has one, as does every restaurant and every store of substantial size. Museums and tourist attractions have several--at the entrance, at the exit, at the gift shop, and on every floor. Train stations, bus stations, airports--lots of restrooms. On the road, you're never far from the fast food place at the next exit, or a roadside rest area. We are a nation of potties.

Not so in England. You know those meandering, random streets I've been mentioning? Well, sometimes when we were walking in one of those tourist-y towns, we'd see at an intersection one of those arrow trees, with arrows pointing to various places of interest. This way to where Anne Boleyn was exceuted. This way to a cool statue. This way to Paddington Bear. And sometimes, an arrow would indicate this way to a WC (water closet, loo, toilet).

The thing is, the arrow would point in a direction that might indicate any of three streets. And it didn't say how far the WC was; we didn't know if it was one block away, or one mile. Never once did we successfully find a restroom based on one of those signs. Frankly, I don't know why we kept trying.

Most of the shops are very tiny. No restrooms. Underground stations? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Most of the castles and abbeys are ancient; I can understand their reluctance to knock down the walls of Henry VIII's banquet room to install restrooms for tourists. Still. It was a problem.

Eventually, we learned to use them when we found them, whether we needed to or not. It was like a little victory. Yessssssss! (fist pump) Hey Ben! A restroom! And then, like a mother talking to a toddler...do you have to go? The problem was, we might find one only 10 minutes after the last one, and then not again for hours.

Here's something really good about English restrooms, though. The little latch that closes the door also causes a little sign to spring up on the outside of the door so that it's obvious the stall is occupied. Sometimes the sign was a red or green dot, sometimes the words "in use" or "vacant." H-- was appalled when I told her that the usual US way is to peek for shoes under the stall door, and even more appalled when I told her that it's not uncommon to see the head of a young child appear under the stall you're currently using.

We need to get those cool latches here.

Now...about men's restrooms. This next bit is Ben's contribution; I'm taking his word for it. He tells me that he never knew what kind of urinal he might expect--anything from ultra-modern, almost sculptural ceramic urinals that seemed to spring organically from the walls, to crude troughs in which there was a certain amount of...mingling. Lots of variety--who knew there were so many types of urinals? It got to the point where I'd ask for the "urinal report" when he'd emerge from the restroom. We even considered that he should have been taking pictures for a future coffee table book: Urinals Across England.

One more thing--we learned not to ask where the "restroom" is; that was most often received with blank stares. When in England, ask for the toilet. Also acceptable: Gents or Ladies.

Hope this didn't offend anyone--these kinds of things are important to know! The travelogue resumes tomorrow, with our last day in England.

Down the Down Escalator

2008-08-18T07:40:00.011-04:00

Back to the travelogue--we're at August 4th now.

The hotel served us the same "cooked English breakfast" that H-- had made, with the addition of croissants, muffins, fresh fruit, cereal, and yogurt. We managed to find enough to eat, and headed out to London early on a beautiful morning.

Our first job was to take the tube to the London Eye. I need to stop the narrative already, though, and write about the underground stations. Those of you who know me know that I have a very specific phobia: the first step of an escalator going down. I'm fine after that first step, but my heart lurches and I can barely bring myself to step onto those moving stairs. Well, I didn't have a choice in London--I had to go down that escalator, or spend 3 days in the hotel room, because there was no other way to get around. Oh...and the escalators are VERY long and VERY steep. And VERY scary.

I did it, lots of times, and I'm very proud of myself.

We arrived at the London Eye about an hour before our scheduled "flight", but as we were waiting in line to exchange our voucher for a ticket, we were directed straight into the switchback for the Eye. They put us in the first capsule of the first flight of the day--about 20 others shared the capsule, but it wasn't at all crowded.

We stood for the entire flight, which lasted about 20 minutes. It didn't feel as if we were moving at all, just floating 450 feet above London. We had a fantastic view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Thames River, and a panoramic look at the entire city of London. You can see most of those things over my right shoulder in this picture, one of our favorites from the whole trip (we both look cute).

We hadn't specifically planned out the late morning and early afternoon of this day, but once we saw how close some of London's "must-sees" were, we disembarked and walked a short distance over the Westminster Bridge, past Parliament and Big Ben, and into Westminster Abbey.

I'd previously thought, "yeah, yeah, another Abbey." Well, that thought flew right out the window; Westminster is the mother of all Abbeys. We saw the burial places of kings and queens (including Queen Elizabeth I) and gorgeous memorials for everyone from Isaac Newton to Handel to the anti-slavery Wilberforce. Of course there were incredible stained glass windows, high high high vaulted ceilings, beautiful little chapels and the quire area, peaceful cloisters. A wonderful tour--we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so we bought lots of postcards at the gift shop. Here's an example, though--this is the quire, one of the prettiest areas of the Abbey.

From the Abbey, we walked to St. James park for a baguette lunch. This would turn out to be our favorite park of the whole trip. It's huge--really huge--very pretty with lots of trees, gradens, a little river complete with families of swans, even a few public toilets (more on that tomorrow). It rained lightly for a few minutes, as it would occasionally for the rest of the afternoon, but never so much that we got drenched or uncomfortable, and the sun always came out again fairly quickly.

Since we had a few hours before our scheduled tour of Buckingham Palace, we walked all around the park, then bought an ice cream cone before heading to--as H--'s mother called it--Buck House. We stopped first at the huge Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the palace and took some pictures, along with roughly a gazillion other tourists.

Way back on July 25, H-- had called us while we were in Bath to alert us that tickets to the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace were available--apparently one can only tour them when the Queen is not in residence. Did we want her to book them for us? Yes, we did, and we were glad of it. The State rooms are gorgeous from floor to ceiling, full of fine art and elaborate furnishings, just as you'd expect. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed again...here's one that I found of the banquet room, set up for a state banquet. The steward literally uses a ruler to be sure that every plate, every article of silver, every wine glass is precisely placed. You could look down the entire row of hundreds of place settings, and not see anything even a millimeter "off".

Following that tour, we made our way by tube to Covent Garden, where we enjoyed supper in Porter's English Resraurant--I had shepherd's pie with lamb, and less-adventurous eater Ben had honey roasted chicken. Then we walked a bit through the Covent Garden area (lots of shops, open markets, ethnic restaurants--a very bustling place), and stopped to watch some highly entertaining street jugglers.

Finally, back to the hotel--with VERY tired feet!

Observations of England

2008-08-17T12:36:00.004-04:00

A pause now in the travelogue for some observations of England. These aren't meant in any way to be value judgements, just ways in which England is different from America. Some of the observations are positive, some negative, some neutral.

A disclaimer: We only spent time in two places, really--the home of friends in Bristol, and a London hotel. So admittedly, our observations may not be true for the whole country.

So...here we go, then.

1. We had street maps of several places we visited: Stratford, Oxford, London, Bristol. NONE of those cities had anything resembling a grid of streets with 90 degree angles predominant. H-- described Bristol as having grown "organically" around a central point, and that seemed to be true of the other cities. Totally random streets, at totally random angles. It adds to the charm of those places, but for visitors, it's pretty frustrating.

2. Within cities, we never saw street signs at intersections. I guess you're just supposed to know where you are. Sometimes there would be a street sign on a building at an intersection, but not always, and not in the same place every time.

3. As I've mentioned before, the city streets are narrow, shoulder-less, and winding. There are few stop lights or stop signs; for the most part, it's a right-of-way system (also not entirely clear to us). Oh, and cars park on both sides of these narrow, winding roads. It's just a thrill a minute. But I've got to add that the right-of-way system seemed typical of British politeness, which we found everywhere we went.

4. The cars are considerably smaller, on average, than those in the US, and mostly stick shifts. Along that line, it seemed to me that the British are "greener" than we are. At the very least, that was true of our friends, who composted, air-dried their laundry, recycled and re-used. And we definitely saw signs of similar green-mindedness elsewhere in the country, to our abashment.

5. I'm not sure if this is a "green" thing, or an "our streets are indecipherable" thing, but there's much more use of public transportation there. Trains, buses, coaches, taxis, undergrounds...especially in London, there were hardly any personal vehicles on the crowded streets.

6. Some fashion observations: women wear skirts and dresses a lot there, even for very casual outings. I don't think I saw anyone over 25 or so in jeans. And we were amazed in London to see lots and lots of women, obviously locals going to and from work, wearing spiky heels for what must be long walks to and from tube stations. Ow. For the teens-and-twenties group: skin-tight, ankle-hugging jeans for guys, and short shorts worn with black tights for girls.

7. There didn't seem to be many bugs in England. This was nice during picnics, and in the evenings when we often opened windows--especially since we didn't notice screens on many windows or doors. Speaking of picnics, they seem to be a national pasttime, which is very pleasant. The parks were full of picnickers everywhere we went, and lots of the parks provided colorful canvas chairs; people would move them into small, pretty groups and eat their lunches, then read or just enjoy the gardens. I've meandered a bit in this item, but one more thing to note--the flower gardens everywhere were gorgeous.

8. Many more people walk their dogs in public, in downtown areas and parks. Many more people smoke in public, in downtown areas and parks. And--this one really puzzles me--I saw more people walking with Lofstrand crutches (the ones that grip your forearms) in two weeks than I've seen in the rest of my life.

9. Beverages are often served lukewarm. Occasionally in London, we'd get a Diet Coke with 3 or 4 feeble pieces of ice floating around--but they'd been put in a drink that was warm to begin with, and their effectiveness was minimal. One of the first things we enjoyed upon coming home was an ice-cold Diet Coke. Ahhhhhhhhh.

10. We slept in two beds, one in London and one in Bristol. Both had a bottom sheet and a duvet, but no top sheet. Interesting.

11. Some media observations: some British TV stations have no commercials. That's nice. Some of their newspapers are very sensationalist...even one tabloid that H-- described as "moderate" was full of opinionated reporting and lurid stories. And some of the newspapers got way worse than that.

12. It's still possible to get milk delivered to your doorstep, in small glass bottles.

I think a dozen observations should be enough. There will be an entire blog entry soon on the toilet situation in England...stay tuned!

Blisters

2008-08-16T20:35:00.012-04:00

We said our good-byes to the P-- family with much love and hugs all around. H-- drove us to the coach station--more hugs, and we were off to London in a hot, stuffy coach (what we'd have called a bus) and a bit of a rainstorm.

The coach pulled in to Victoria Station about noon, and we took a cab to our hotel, the Travelodge in Covent Garden. The cab ride took us past several of London's must-sees: Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace. It was a little bit frustrating, though, because 1) the cabbie didn't say anything, so even though we were pretty sure that building was what we thought it was, we weren't positive, and we didn't want to ask and sound like the dumb tourists that we were. "Is that Big Ben?" "No ma'am, that's the public library." And 2) he was going kind of fast, through those winding roads, and just when we thought we glimpsed, say, the Queen, she was gone.

We arrived at the hotel two hours early, and Ben had to pay a bit extra to get a room as soon as it was available. When we did check in, our room was functional, but spartan, with no air-conditioning and bare-bones furnishings. Well, that was fine; we weren't planning to spend much time there, and we didn't.

Ben spent several minutes studying maps of London and its vast underground ("the tube"), then we took off, two small town Americans, for our first London adventure. Once we'd figured out how to purchase and use an "Oyster Card" (which enables you unlimited travel in the underground by electronically registering your entrances and exits from the system), we took a tube to Green Park, near Buckingham Palace--no problems! We'd been told by both Jericho and Bobby that the underground was easy to master, and we found that to be true. While most of England seems to have neither street signs nor indication of how to get from here to there, the tube stations are very well marked and it's quite easy to figure out how to get where you're going.

We saw the Victoria Memorial Statue in front of Buckingham Palace, a high-stepping palace guard, and about a gazillion people, not one of whom, apparently, was British. I've never heard so many foreign languages spoken anywhere. We walked all around the palace, then back to Green Park, where we planned the next leg of our excursion.

Back on the tube, this time to Picadilly Circus and the famous statue of Eros--no big deal. From Picadilly, we found the theater where we'd see Les Miz Tuesday night (after several false starts--it's much easier to find your way on the underground than on the actual streets of London). After walking, walking, walking, we stopped for supper at Bella Italia, a tiny and very atmospheric Italian restaurant. Delicious--an appetizer plate, chicken cacciatore for me and penne with mushrooms and panchetta for Ben.

Then we walked...and walked...and walked...and walked...and walked...and walked...and walked...andwalkedandwalkedandwalkedandwalkedandwalked. I raised two humongous blisters about the size of a quarter, one on each foot. We were increasingly confused by the London street map--until miraculously the hotel appeared.

We bought ice cream and turned in for the evening, after planning our routes for the next day, which would be our biggest day so far.

Yesterday's mystery building? A pit for cock fighting.

Mysterious Punctuation, Mystery Building

2008-08-15T04:56:00.010-04:00

Today's visit was to St Fagans Natural History Museum, which for some reason has no punctuation. I understand that it's not British practice to put a period after the "St"--but why no apostrophe in "Fagans"? I worry about this sort of thing.
We tried to find information about St Fagan--nothing. So maybe his name is St Fagans. Nope. This is disturbing.

Anyway, it was a great day. St Fagans-without-punctuation is a Greenfield Village-like place in which buildings from all over Wales have been disassembled, then reassembled on the site. Consequently, the buildings there are from all eras of Welsh history. The buildings were fascinating, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the signs in both English and Welsh, a language unlike any other that I've seen. We heard it spoken and few times, and it's trippingly lilting--very pleasant to hear.

We were joined on today's outing by H--'s parents who live in Cardiff. B-- and E-- are really wonderful people: gracious, intelligent, fascinating. It is from them that H-- gets her ability to find teachable moments. They delighted in telling Ben and me all about each building, with great pride in their adopted country.

There were so many buildings that it's impossible to write about them all here, but here are a few highlights:

1. St Teilo's Church (which has an apostrophe...I must figure out this system!), a 13th century church brought to the site fairly recently. This was a smallish church, and when it was being disassembled to bring to St Fagans, wall paintings from as early as 1400 were discovered; they'd been painted over at some point in the church's history. These paintings are now being restored, and they're gorgeous, colorful, and fascinating.

2. A round, thatched building--our British friends threatened to withhold lunch from us unless we guessed its purpose. Inside, there were 3 or 4 rows of concentric seating, surrounding a raised platform. Here's a picture, both inside and out--you guess.

You may have lunch if you guess it right.

Answer tomorrow. C'mon, let's have some guesses!

3. St Fagans castle, which has a very different exterior look from the castles we'd already visited in England. This castle also had very lovely grounds--walled gardens growing orange trees, pretty knotted hedges, lily-padded ponds, wooden benches to rest on.

4. There were so many more fascinating buidlings: a country store in which I took a picture of a "fruit cleaner" to send to my dad-the-orchardist (I also sent a pic of a cider mill)--a row of little houses depicting coal miner's housing as it changed over the past 150 years--a union hall, also for miners, that put me in mind of the wonderful movie "How Green Was My Valley"--a bakery, a pink farmhouse, a pigsty, a thatched cottage.

In mid-afternoon, H--'s parents took the girls to their home, and Ben and I and H-- and S-- saw an open-air production of "The Taming of the Shrew". Once again, H-- scored us some superb seats: front row, right in the center. The play was very well done, if a bit contrary to 21st century PC-ness.

After the play, we drove a few miles into Cardiff, saw a few places from H--'s youth, and ended up at her parent's home for a lovely, lovely dinner. We had a first course of green pepper soup, followed by penne pasta with sauce and cheese (also, teensy baby corn cobs and snow pea pods), then strawberries and cream served with shortbread cookies. We enjoyed dinner immensely, despite there being twice as much silverware as we're accustomed to using, and intriguing items like silver sugar shakers. Our hosts were graciously understanding of our American awkwardness, and we had a delightful conversation as we ate.

A Comedy of Errors

2008-08-14T06:48:00.009-04:00

Ben and I were off on our own today, as the P-- family all had places to go and things to do. We boarded a train in Bristol for Stratford-Upon-Avon at about 9:00.

Just minutes after the train left the station, it stopped--and it stayed stopped for over 45 minutes; another train on the same track had broken down. When we finally took off again, we knew that we had missed our connection in Birmingham. This is the sort of thing that (not to my credit) fills me with anxiety and makes me ornery (a word that is unknown in England).

At Birmingham, we were to change stations for the leg of the journey to Stratford--the next railway station, according to H--, was only about 200 yards away. But the fellow at station #1 directed us to a different station, considerably farther away. We had an anxious and cranky walk through the crowded streets of downtown Birmingham until we finally found the station and a connection that would take us to Stratford.

Stratford was not at all what we'd imagined--in our American naivete, we'd pictured a quaint little village, largely unchanged since Shakespeare's day. Maybe a little shop here and there selling "I (heart) the Bard" tee-shirts. But it's a large-ish, touristy city, with the Shakespeare places of interest widely scattered about, nestled between cafes and "Fat Face" stores. We quickly realized that a walking tour would be impossible--in fact, probably didn't even exist--so we found one of those red "Hop On, Hop Off" tour buses.

The first stop where we chose to "hop off" was Shakespeare's birthplace, a very, very old half-timbered cottage with a beautiful flower garden.

The bus took us past several other places of interest--mostly houses of people who Shakespeare knew: Shakespeare's butcher, Shakespeare's acupuncturist, Shakespeare's personal trainer. We didn't get off for several stops, knowing that we were pressed for time. Thanks to the tour guide, however, we did learn about one of the interesting medical practices of the day.

If a person had a sore throat, the physician would take one of the local small, yellow frogs and dangle it by it's back legs over the open mouth of the sufferer. The stressed frog would secrete stringy saliva, which, when landing in and coating the patient's throat, had a mild analgesic effect. Hence: he has a frog in his throat.

Our next "hop off" spot was Anne Hathaway's cottage, the most beautiful home of any that we visited in England. It had recently been thatched, and everything about it was lovely, including the extensive flower and vegetable gardens.

The guide told us another historical story: Tudor families would bathe only once a year. The head of the household would go first, followed by other adult males, then the women, and finally the children, from oldest to youngest--all in the same bath water. By the time the baby got it's bath, the water was muddy and opaque, and the baby could easily be "lost" in the water. You've got it: Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

There wasn't really time for much else once the tour had stopped. We took a picture of a jester statue in the downtown square; the pedestal has such Shakespeare quotes as "Lord, what fools these mortals be." Then we got pasties and ice cream in a little cafe' called "As You Like It" and headed back to the train station.

We made our connection just fine this time, and took a taxi back to the P--'s house. One last bit of anxiety to cap the day: another cab driver who had no idea where they lived or how to find it.

It was good to be back "home."

Fun at the Castle

2008-08-13T02:34:00.009-04:00

On the morning of July 31, we left for the 2-hour drive to Warwick Castle under a cool and gray English sky.

Just inside the castle gates, we were greeted by characters in medieval garb, singing "Lavender's Blue" accompanied by guitar and lute, and others strolling around in conical princess caps--sort of a Disney England, an impression that would be reinforced later.

Our first stop within the castle proper was a walking tour called "The Kingmaker"--we walked into rooms depicting preparations for battle: an armorer, a blacksmith, a knight keeping all-night vigil. These were all life-sized figures, not real people, but visitors could walk in among them, handle their props, pose with an arm draped around their shoulders. It was dark and echo-y, and L-- was very scared and held my hand tightly throughout.

Next stop was the largest working trebuchet in England. This was fascinating to Ben, as he made the smallest working trebuchet in America in our basement last year. The amusement park atmosphere continued...we stood across a small river from it (sharing our riverbank with a mama duck and her little brood) as Richard, the "captain of the army" explained the workings of the trebuchet, his voice amplified by a medieval microphone to reach the entire hillside full of people behind us. After about 15 minutes, it was loaded and ready to fire a 35-pound rock across the length of the riverbank.

Lunch was in the peacock garden, where one irridescent fellow came right up to us, shamelessly begging, and ate half of S--'s brownie. Meanwhile, a few yards away, his buddy brazenly showed off.

Down the hill again just past the trebuchet area, where a jousting arena had been set up. Ben and I and H-- and S-- watched from the bridge, while the girls ran ahead to get closer to the joust. It was a little bit disappointing--poorly scripted, and too many "dead" spots with no action.

Next, we headed back to the castle--the museum part that didn't seem Disney-like at all--for a look at some of the state rooms, including the armory (Ben's favorite). We hurried through these rooms, so that the girls could see the demonstration of one-on-one combat using medeival weapons that was to take place in the courtyard.

The two combatants explained the use of each weapon, along with its advantages and disadvantages, then engaged in some mock combat, with the "bad guy" winning.

Back into the castle, then, for a recreation of a Victorian house party--more museum-type rooms, very beautiful.

H-- and S-- and I didn't care to go on the rampart walk (over 500 stairs!) so Ben took the girls. They went up many, many steps into several levels of towers and castle walls, and got some fine views from up high. Meanwhile, the rest of us went to the Victoria rose garden and had a nice chat.

Eventually, we met back up outside the castle gates and listened to an archer describing and demonstrating his crossbow. L-- got to wear his big padded coat. A quick stop at the pillories, then we headed home, where L-- was extremely silly all the way. Dinner was a delicious curried chicken dish and homemade ice cream.

Later in the evening, H-- and I played duets on the piano. We were very, very bad. Pianos on two continents shook their heads in shame.

Bristol Tour

2008-08-12T07:07:00.015-04:00

The smell of sizzling bacon met us as we came downstairs this morning. H-- was preparing a traditional English cooked breakfast, which consists of:

1. fried mushrooms in butter
2. fried eggs
3. fried sausages (are you sensing a theme here?)
4. fried bacon
5. fried potato cakes
6. baked tomatoes
7. baked beans
8. juice and coffee

Delicious--but I couldn't handle it every morning! Incidentally, when we went to London later in the week, our hotel served the same breakfast every morning. I never quite got used to the baked beans for breakfast bit, though.

About 9:00, we left with H-- and the girls for a tour of the highlights of Bristol. Before I describe each one, I'll mention the layout of the city of Bristol, which has a population of about 400,000--very narrow, winding streets, no 90 degree angles anywhere in the city, steep hills that could give San Francisco a run for its money, cars parked on both sides of the already too-narrow streets, rows of small shops or townhouses interspersed with large, old buildings. In a word: wonderful. So on today's journey we drove around...and around...and around...we had a dozen stops altogether.

1. Our first stop was at a view of Bristol Gorge, spanned by the Clifton Bridge, which we'd see more of later. The gorge consists of limestone quarries on either side of the Avon River--very steep, stark, and beautiful. At this point, the Avon is a muddy, opaque brown.

2. The Downs is a huge, beautiful green park that extends for acres on both sides of the road. It's dotted here and there with large trees. Helen told us that the Downs are much beloved in Bristol, and that people gather there in large numbers daily for picnics and recreation. We drove through it early in the morning on a cool, cloudy day--no people, but we took her word for it.

3. Clifton College is a "public" school--which in England, means an exclusive private school for ages 3-16. It looks exactly as you'd expect an English boarding school to look--kind of like Hogwarts.

4. We drove around a bit to get a good, close-up view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

5. After missing it the first time around (have I mentioned how confusing Bristol streets are?), we made our way back to the Clifton Bridge and walked the length of it (about a quarter of a mile). At the other end, at the top of a hill, was an ancient-looking building called a "camera obscura" which H-- explained and I totally didn't understand. Unfortunately, it wasn't open for visitors, so we walked back down the hill, across the bridge again and back to the car.

6. The SS Great Britain is England's first ironclad steamship. It's now in drydock and restored as a museum. You can tour both above and below decks, and many of the passenger's cabins appear unchanged from over 100 years ago. One thing we noticed in England: in many museums and castles, many items are within reach and there are no "Do Not Touch" signs. We could actually sit on the bunk of a 3rd class cabin, and touch the cooking utensils in the gallery, for example--no ropes or plexiglass holding us back, and every one seems to behave themselves.

7. Docked next to the SS Great Britain was the Matthew, a much smaller sailing ship which can be rented out for private parties for people who want to dress up like pirates. We climbed the steep ladders to the top deck--that was about it.

8. Lunch was at the Cairns Road Cafe', one of the ministries of the P--'s church. It's a popular gathering place at lunchtime for mothers with young children.

9. The Red Lodge is the only Tudor house remaining in Bristol. This was a very short tour--just a few rooms showing the furnishings of that period. We loved watching H-- with the girls; she never missed a teachable moment (later, we would learn that H--'s parents are exactly the same way). Consequently, the girls are both intelligent and curious.

10. Similarly, the Georgian house is from what would be our Colonial period. This was another very short tour. The house was originally owned by John Pinney, a plantation owner who made most of his money in the slave trade. There were some interesting quotes by Pinney on the walls, in which he tried to justify the slave trade--quite horrifying, actually, in their cold logic.

11. George Muller (with an umlaut that I can't make here) was a man whose inspiring stories of praying for food for the orphans and recieving miraculous answers to his prayers are well-known in Christian history. We saw the buildings that were once his orphanges, and that housed as many as 2000 children!

12. Blaise Hamlet is a circle of utterly charming houses, built for the retired employees of Blaise Castle. They're so cute that they put Kinkead paintings to shame--idealized versions of what you think of when you imagine "English Cottage", but so much better because they're real.

After the Bristol tour, we went home and had a "cream tea" served by S--, L--, and V-- (who even wrote down our orders). It consisted of scones (made by the girls) served with butter, jam, and clotted cream; coffee, and tea. "Clotted cream" is far more delicious than it sounds; it's a very mild sort of sour cream-like substance with a smooth texture, thicker than sour cream but not as thick as cream cheese. The girls dressed in little aprons and were very proper and polite, and tea was served on H--'s fine china and crystal. I was very careful to raise my pinkie.

Finally, the girls put on a most excellent talent show. V-- played her cello, S-- played the piano (we all sang along to "Desert Drums"), they all danced, and L-- provided jokes for transitional moments. Bless their hearts, the girls collected coins for AIDS orphans at this benefit concert.

Two Heroes: Spooner and Churchill

2008-08-11T11:29:00.013-04:00

Another beautiful day in England--we'd been told to expect cool and rainy weather, but so far had experienced only sunshine. We left early on Tuesday morning for a two-hour drive to Oxford with S--. We got lost a bit in the winding streets of Oxford, looking for a place to park, but once our charming "absent-minded professor" had found a car park (and backed illegally into it) we set off on our way into the town.

Again, we were struck by the juxtaposition of old and new: buildings from the 16th and 17th centuries rubbing shoulders with Pizza Huts and Toys R Us.

We walked down a few streets, marveling at the old buildings and asking questions. Sometimes S-- knew the answers and sometimes not, and he was very focused on finding the bookstore where he could look for some materials for his doctoral research. Happlily, we came upon a man offering walking tours of the university, with the next one starting in just half an hour. We wandered a bit more, then parted ways: S-- to the bookstore and us to our tour.

Our tour guide, Stuart, was very knowledgable, but a bit condescending in his manner, especially toward Americans. We went first to the "New College", where we saw an example of a typical Oxford quadrangle, or "quad." These were built early in the college's history to protect students from townspeople who apparently hated (and sometimes even killed) them. Each of Oxford's 39 colleges is nearly an independent entity, with about 500 students studying any number of subjects, and about 50 "fellows" who teach almost entirely by tutorial.

The grass on each quad may be walked on only by the fellows or the Queen. This fact led to a joke by Stuart: a bloke was mowing the grass of a quad during one of his tours, and Stuart asked the group, "What does this bloke have in common with the Queen?" The intended answer, of course, was that they may both walk on the grass. But one lady piped up: "Does he have a Corgi?" I was proud of myself for getting that joke.

Our group climbed the steps to the dining hall of New College, where we learned about taking meals at Oxford: informal breakfast and lunch, and a formal dinner in academic robes, with servants in attendance. There were originally no chimneys; a fire was simply lit in the middle of the floor and the smoke rose through a hole in the roof.

Stuart pointed out the portrait of the current Dean of New College, and then of the most famous one: the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1876-1889)! I was thrilled! I was sitting in the very room where one of my linguistic heroes ate!

Incidentally, that dining hall was also used in the 4th Harry Potter film, as were the cloisters of New College.

The chapel at New College looked very much like the chapels in the abbeys at Wells and Bath--with the exception of a $10 million El Greco. Sideways pews, misericords (leaning benches), stained glass windows...you know, that sort of thing. The stone carvings at the front of the chapel depicted Old and New Testament characters, apostles, angels, and the Trinity. We learned that this sort of elaborate decoration is called a "reredos."

Two of the colleges that we stopped in on later in the tour were All Soul's College and Hertford College. Ben took pictures of both quads. All Soul's is a 15th century college that was built as a memorial to those who died in the 100 Years' War. Hertford, in the picture to the left here, was founded in the 1280s, but the buildings are Georgian (King George III, about the time of the American Revolution).

We met up with S-- right after the tour and drove a short distance to Blenheim Palace, one of England's largest and most beautiful estates. Winston Churchill was born there, as his father was the Duke of Marlborough and Belnheim is the Marlborough estate.

We entered the grounds and were immediately greeted by an amazing view of a lake in a valley, a very substantial ancient bridge, lots of hills, and huge trees. H-- had packed a picnic, and we enjoyed that on the palace grounds, enjoying the view.

The Blenheim gardens are terraced, with Greek (or maybe Roman) statues, elaborately trimmed hedges, and lots of pools and fountains. We walked around the gardens for a while, then entered the Palace.

Simply spectacular rooms--marble columns, fine Chinese porcelein, all the furnishings beautiful and rich. There was a glass case with hundreds of tiny lead soldiers, and a library with thousands of leather-bound volumes. There were also a few separate display areas highlighting Churchill's life.

Back at the P--'s house, we enjoyed a meal of pasta and swiss chard (!), then a simple Communion of bread and wine. Off to bed for the girlies, then a quiet evening reading and watching an episode of "Yes, Minister", which I'm utterly convinced you have to be British to laugh at.

Lovely, lovely day!

Ancient Things and Limoncello

2008-08-10T07:36:00.013-04:00

The next morning, we took a train from Bristol back to Bath, where we had spent the day on Friday. We took a few pictures of the painted, concrete pigs that are one nearly every corner in Bath--there are over 100 of them in all. We quickly found the quaint little bookshop where the tour coach to Stonehenge stops, and bought a few items there while waiting for it to arrive.

Our driver was Dan, a pleasant and witty young man who took us out of Bath down many streets we hadn't seen on Friday, narrating all the way.

Just outside of Bath, we had a gorgeous panoramic view of the Avon Valley. Dan told us that "Avon" is from a Gaelic word meaning "river." Hence: River River.

The route to Stonehenge (about 42 miles from Bath) took us past some quintessential English sights: a teensy "castle" (actually a guardhouse) now transformed into a teensy hotel, some cottages with ancient thatched roofs, a jailhouse resembling a short, brick silo.

At about the halfway point, we learned that in this part of England, there is a deep layer of chalk (actually fossilized sea animals) just below the surface. Scattered around the countryside are over a dozen gigantic chalk "sculptures" made by ancient people by scraping away the topsoil. The one that we were able to see was a beautiful white horse on a far, far hillside.

Dan also pointed out several areas of earth piled into large mounds--ancient burial sites.

After about 45 mintues, we arrived at Stonehange, which really defies description. Incidentally, "henge" means "hanging"--therefore "Stonehenge" is "the hanging stones."

Visitors are guided by a low rope path a few hundred feet away from the stones, in a counterclockwise direction, so that their first view of the stones seems to be of a random collection of very tall rocks. As we walked further around the monument, we saw views that were gradually more and more like the Stonehenge views we'd seen all our lives in photographs--breathtaking!

Although there were many people there, Stonehenge felt not at all crowded, and it was possible to find views of the stones with hardly any people in them at all. The audio tour lasted about 40 minutes--we got some toffee ice cream and headed back to the bus.

When we got back to Bath, we ate our picnic in the Parade Gardens, a large and beautiful landscaped park that reminded me of the "Sunday In the Park With George" painting.

Back to Bristol...this time, at Temple Meads Station, we caught a smaller local train to a station about a mile from the P's house...ALL UPHILL, past trees which I learned later were horse chestnuts, or "conkers". We walked in the P's door to the wonderful smell of raspberry jam cooking; H-- and the girls had picked all morning, and somehow H-- also found time to wash our clothes and hang them to dry!

More board games with the girls (Labyrinth), and when S-- got home we all gussied up and went to dinner at a tiny Italian restaurant about a mile away called Valentino's.

Wonderful food, and wonderful company! We lingered over dinner for two hours, and had the best Italian food ever. I also had more to drink in that one evening than I have had in some entire years: two glasses of Chardonnay, and a delicious limoncello after-dinner drink, compliments of the restaurant. Yum. (*hic*)

Pasties and Creme Brulee

2008-08-09T07:50:00.009-04:00

I started Sunday morning very sweetly; 5-year-old V-- asked me to read to her the book I'd brought her about a man who, like her, plays the cello. There are few things nicer than reading to a child...

H-- postponed the "English cooked breakfast" that she'd planned, as my stomach was slightly queasy from yesterday's fish and chips. More about cooked breakfast later in the week. So we had a simple breakfast of cereal, toast, and juice, and after the exact amount of hustle and bustle you'd expect from a family of 5 with two guests, we set off for Cairns Road Baptist Church, a short drive away.

We felt quite at home at their church. It was very much like an American church service would be: a worship team led singing (some familiar songs and some unfamiliar ones), there were announcements, a sermon, and prayer. The guest speaker was a man from Zimbabwe who shared some of what's going on in that troubled country. We felt welcomed and at home, and among the familiy of God.

In the early afternoon we drove to Wales, less than an hour away over a huge and beautiful suspension bridge. As we got closer and closer to our destination (Castell Coch), S-- got more and more turned around, and we approached the castle from several different directions before we finally got there!

Our first stop was a picnic in the forest-y castle grounds. H-- had made Cornish pasties (partry wrapped around a filling of meat, potatoes, and carrots), potato salad, tossed salad--and creme' brulee! She even brought a little propane torch to caramelize the sugar topping...not your typical American picnic!

Castell Coch was rebuilt in the Victorian era from 13th century ruins. It stands on a steep hillside, and from the outside, it looks more Teutonic than typically British.

The inside is filled with narrow, winding staircases leading to fabulously decorated rooms. There are bedrooms with heraldric patterns stencilled on the walls, dining rooms with long tables fit for twenty, a room with wall paintings depicting Aesop's fables--each room more interesting than the last. There was even an oubliette!

We drove home in time for a light English "tea"--one of the items we shared was the Cheddar from Cheddar!

After tea, Ben and 7-year-old L-- went for a nice long walk, and L-- didn't stop talking the whole time. The P-- girls are simply delightful in every way. These last two pictures were taken on that walk in the P's Bristol neighborhood.

Once the girls had gone to bed, we had a few hours of lovely conversation with H-- and S--. They are such interesting people--between them, they have a couple hundred advanced college degrees, but they're absolutely down-to-earth, funny, easy to talk to, and full of grace and compassion. We were blessed to be in their company.

Rock of Ages

2008-08-08T07:15:00.008-04:00

On Saturday morning, July 26, 9-year-old S-- made us some delicious pancakes for breakfast. There was an interesting selection of toppings: strawberry, lemon, chocolate--no maple syrup, which is uncommon and expensive in England.

Soon after breakfast, we took off with the Ps in the family van for a day of adventure. The girls and I played car games, H-- navigated, and Ben tried to get his stomach accustomed to the winding streets and highways of England while S-- drove.

"Driving" in England is an entirely different skill than it is in the states...previously we had entertained the idea of renting a car or borrowing the P's car for our outings; that would have been a bad decision. Drivers are constantly taking curves and roundabouts, and I don't believe there are more than a dozen 90 degree angles or street signs in the country. You're just expected to know where you are and where you're going, and how to get there. Yikes!

Our first stop was at the place where the words to the hymn "Rock of Ages" was written. According to the story, a man named Augustus Toplady was traveling through the gorge when a huge thunderstorm hit, and he took refuge in "the cleft of the rock." While he was there, he was inspired to write the words to the hymn. And here it is!

Just a few miles past the "Rock of Ages" site, the landscape begine to change. You feel as if you're driving deep into the earth, and on either side the cliffs rise up at a steep angle. These are no barren cliffs, though; they're topped with beautiful green brush and trees. Occasionally, one spots a fleet-footed mountain goat or two. These animals are feral--the ones we saw close up reminded me of wizards, with their tall, curving horns and bobbing beards.

We parked the van about halfway into Cheddar Gorge and took off on foot--down, down into the gorge for about a mile, with the view around each curve more beautiful than the one before.

At the bottom of the gorge is a little tourist area, with charming little souvenir shops. I bought some authentic cheddar there (although I passed up the Marmite-infused version). S-- and Ben walked back up to the van, while H-- and the girls and I gratefully waited for them below.

About half an hour's drive brought us to the town of Wells. We parked, walked a bit through a modern downtown area, then through an outdoor market of vendor's stalls: food, clothing, jewelry, arts and crafts.

At the far end of the market was the entrance to the cathedral grounds. The huge cathedral was at our right, and in front of us, a huge expanse of green lawn, where we had a picnic lunch. We saw an unusual sight just outside the cathedral that would become the epitome of the English juxtaposition of old and new: Darth Vader and an army of white-uniformed stormtroopers marching in formation with a majestic, centuries-old cathedral in the background. I have no idea why they were there. While we ate our lunch, they stormed away.

We entered the cathedral after lunch to the sounds of women's voices singing in 3-part harmony--English folk songs, including the lovely "How Can I Keep from Singing?". The acoustics of the cathedral gave the voices an ethereal quality.

Wells Cathedral is fantastic: high vaulted ceilings, stained glass with incredible detail, fabulously embroidered tapestries. In one room--a great favorite of the girls--there is a clock that has replayed the same scene every 15 minutes for 600 years; knights come out jousting, and the same poor fellow always loses.

Our last stop at Wells was the Bishop's Palace and Garden. The grounds, including a croquet lawn, were wonderful, and Ben and I took a rampart walk which gave us several panoramic views of the English countryside. One plaque on the ramparts walk told us that a bishop from Wells had written the words to the Doxology there.

Inside, we were able to enter several of the rooms of the palace, but we were too foot-sore to do much exploring. We soon met up with H-- and S-- and the girls and set off in search of fish and chips.

We found them at Clevedon, on the Bay of Bristol. Wales was just visible behind the bay. The beach, however, was not a beach for sunbathing--at low tide, it consists of rocks and black mud. English fish and chips (with salt and vinegar) are delicious (but they gave me a touch of indigestion the next morning).

Back at home, we enjoyed a pudding (dessert) of chocolate cake and ice cream. The girls went to bed, and the rest of us watched an episode of "Jeeves" (with a very young Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster).

Our Day in Bath

2008-08-07T12:38:00.016-04:00

I had my first real adventurous moment at breakfast, before the day's travels were to begin. H-- offered us some Marmite, a yeast-extract spread that's a close cousin to Vegemite (which my family will remember vividly). I spread the teensiest bit of it on a corner of buttered toast. To my relief, it wasn't horrid--it tasted salty, and that's about it.

So we were off, then, to explore Bath on our own. It was just a 15-minute train ride from Bristol, and an interesting mix of tourist trap and the most ancient of cities. Fascinating.

Our first stop was the Bath Abbey, a spectacular ancient abbey. It seemed huge to us; later in the week we'd realize that the Bath Abbey is just a little country church compared to some that we'd later see. Nevertheless, we were awed by the stained glass windows that depict some of the words of Jesus; they seemed to go up and up forever and ever. The vaulted ceilings were indescribably beautiful.

The floors and walls of the Abbey are covered with gravestones and monuments erected to the memory of the dead, mostly from the 18th century. I learned a new vocabulary word: relict, which means widow, although H-- would later tell us that the words is obsolete in England now, too.

A short step away was Bath's main claim to fame: the Roman Spas.

These spas date back to not long after the time of Christ, and they take advantage of the naturally-occurring hot springs in this area, the only ones in England. Large portions of the original Roman architecture remain: huge columns, Roman statuary, enormous paving stones. The main bath itself is still filled with water from the springs, and is about the size of a home swimming pool. The water is untreated, and quite green from the growth of algae as the original wooden roof of the temple surrounding the baths is long, long gone. Needless to say, people do NOT get in that water any more.

The tour of the spa includes a museum where there are other bits and pieces of the excavation on display--beautiful Roman mosaics in red, cream, and black, a copper head of Minerva, a bas relief sculpture of a Medusa-like man which would have decorated the front of the temple.

The whole Bath Spa experience is narrated through self-paced audio guides. We found those in several places during our trip, and usually found them quite helpful, but unfortunately, very little of the information we heard in them remains in our long-term memory.

After our tour of the spa, we wandered about in Bath a little bit, looking for a place to eat the lunch that H-- packed for us. Side note: we had a picnic lunch nearly every day, graciously packed by our fantastic hostess. Homemade bread with delicious fillings, fruit, a drink, and always something delicious and sweet to finish with. We observed that the English seem to picnic a lot more than we do: there were always parks filled with picnickers, and it's even welcomed on the grounds of some of the castles and stately homes that allow tourists. It's pleasant, relaxing, and frugal, and we enjoyed those picnic lunches tremendously.

We found a little bench on the Avon River and ate our sandwiches, attracting the attention of roughly a zillion pigeons. To our right as we ate was the Pulteney Bridge, about which I know nothing except that it was pretty and old.

Then we wandered a bit more, with the aim of finding the Theatre Royal, where we were to see a play later in the evening. On the way, we saw this wonderful street performer, who was so still that even pigeons would occasionally land on his hat. By the way, Bath's street performers were excellent--we especially enjoyed a couple of very excellent guitarists, and a young man who played the didgeridoo and the djembe simultaneously, which made us think of both of our sons-in-law, who would have enjoyed him.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with more wandering about, stopping occasionally to sit on a bench and watch the people go by while marveling that we were in England. It was a beautiful day: overcast but usually quite warm.

H-- had made dinner reservations for us at The Vaults, an atmospheric and aptly named restaurant beneath the Theatre Royal. It was a delicious meal--Ben had a Caesar salad and pork tenderloins, and I had roast chicken breast and a strawberry mousse. With the arrival of the bill came two pieces of Turkish Delight--it tastes like roses!

The play was called "Born in the Gardens", and it was very Bristol-specific, with much of the British humor flying right over our heads, although we caught on that some of it was very naughty. But the acting was excellent, and our seats in the gorgeous theatre were front and center. We had a great time there.

The last adventure of the day was catching the train back to Bristol. We found the station with not much trouble, and caught a taxi back to the P's house. Our cabbie was a Somali man who had no idea where their address was, and I was afraid that he'd drive us around Bristol six times before taking us there. But he found it right away, and thus ended our first full day in England. As the Brits say: lovely.

Our England Adventure, Day One

2008-08-07T04:55:00.005-04:00

I'm very sorry that I haven't written in this blog for a while...but now I figure that it's the best way to share with friends and family some of the highlights and pictures of Ben's and my 2 weeks in England. I'll try to post once a day or so.

I took a journal with me to England, and every evening I wrote up what we'd done the day before. What you'll be reading here is a mostly unedited copy of what I wrote then...therefore, not the most compelling writing I've ever done. I freely admit ahead of time that I may over-use exclamation points.

And before I get to day one, I really need to mention right off the bat that the family of H-- and S-- P is simply the best family ever. Gracious hosts, charming children, and just so, so much fun to be with. That family was the highlight of our vacation--in England, castles and abbeys are a dime a dozen, but families like the Ps are a rare blessing anywhere in the world. I'm not using their full names here for privacy reasons; but you all know who they are.

Here we go...July 24

After a long flight (for which our seats were not together...), we arrived at Heathrow Airport, London. We sailed through immigration and within minutes had connected with H--, who was holding a handmade sign--colored by the girls--reading "Ben and Jan".

Hugs all around--and we were off to Bristol, about 100 miles from London. We knew this next fact ahead of time, but it's worth noting here, because it just felt so weird: the people drive on the wrong side of the road in England!

The highway between London and Bristol has very much what you'd see in the northern United States--lots of trucks, green fields, grazing animals...although there are considerably more sheep than we were used to seeing.

After a pleasant, getting-to-know-you drive to Bristol, we arrived at H-- and S--'s home in a quaint, hilly neighborhood. We settled in quickly with a wonderful cup of coffee, and after an hour of pleasant chat, we set off on a short walk around the neighborhood to pick up the girls at their school.

The girls , ages 5, 7, and 9 were at first a bit shy. H-- encouraged them to give us a tour of their elementary school (which looks and smells very much like an American school). Given the opportunity to show off, they relaxed and showed us every room in the school. An interesting note: although it was a state school (like our public schools), it also had a Christian emphasis that would never be allowed in the States.

Since this was the girls' last day of school, they each had a large packet of school work and art projects to show off to us and their mother. We poured on the praise--it was easy to do, as the girls are bright and talented--and they began to warm to us.

When S-- arrived home from work, there was another round of getting-to-know-you, and then H-- served us a wonderful dinner in the garden (yard)--including trifle, which our own daughters would have loved. Afterwards, the girls went to bed (after recieving gifts from America, and after many delaying tactics). H-- and S-- and Ben and I sat in the lounge (living room) and talked until bedtime, and planned the next day's excursion to Bath.

The pictures you see are the P's house and garden--a delightful place to visit--and of H--and me on that first day.

My First Novel

2007-10-08T18:42:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog about "Apache Fog." Go ahead and read it again; it'll be fun to have another laugh at my expense.

You're back already? Okay, here's Part Two.

We were driving through foggy Indiana with our daughter, Megan, this weekend, and "Apache Fog" came up--it's a bit of a family joke now. Megan said that I should write a book called "Apache Fog"; it sounds like it'd be a bestseller.

I entered "Apache Fog" into this title analyzer and found that it has a 45.6% chance of becoming a bestselling novel.

Megs and I decided that it should be a Western, and a romance. The ad would go something like this:

She went West to find herself, but she got lost...in Apache fog.

The cover will be a beautiful blonde with windswept hair, wearing a deep-V, cleavage-baring, buckskin dress, complete with beaded fringe. And of course, a noble Apache grasping her...

So I've got the title, the ad copy, and the cover. Is there anything else I need to do?

In the Hospital Chapel

2007-10-03T19:31:00.000-04:00

I had escaped to the chapel of a large hospital. I was full of sorrow and fear and anger and above all, utter shock, and determined not to leave the chapel until God gave me comfort, or peace, or something like that.

It was an interfaith chapel, with the symbols of several major religions decorating the front wall, and uncomfortable chairs like those of high school auditoriums from 50 years ago. You know, those hinged, creaky, wooden ones.

I looked around for a Bible in this ecumenical chapel, but the little holders on the backs of the seats only held pamphlets telling when the hospital chaplain was available, and others with information on high cholesterol. I snorted in derision--what kind of chapel has no Bible? I finally realized that the only Bible there was the huge, sanctuary-type Bible on the front table. I lugged it to one of the seats, and opened to the Psalms. There would be comfort in the Psalms, I was sure.

The humongous Bible was difficult to read, so I propped my feet up on the little pamphlet holder, so that the Bible in my lap would be closer to my eyes. There I read Psalm 131, for perhaps the first time, and I was struck by the 2nd verse:

But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

I remember thinking how interesting. I wondered why the Psalmist chose the imagery of a weaned child, rather than a nursing child. I wondered, too, how I could still and quiet my soul...

...when I broke the little pamphlet holder, and my feet and the Bible went crashing to the floor, along with splinters of wood, utterly irreparable.

Are there security cameras in hospital chapels? I looked around wildly, expecting a chaplain or a rabbi or an imam or something to come rushing in to demand that I pay for the damage. Replacing the big Bible on the table, I scooted out of there, comfortless, and now adding guilt to my emotional stew.

But I remembered that verse for a long time.

The sorrow and fear and anger are long gone (I still feel a little bit guilty--I broke the chapel), but a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to write on the topic of "Calm." Immediately I flashed on Psalm 131:2, and I knew that would be the starting point of my writing. A few more moments of thought, and I had the structure of a free verse poem. This is only my second free verse poem ever, and I have absolutely NO measure that I can trust for analyzing the quality of my own poetry. But here it is.

A Poet Rests in the 131st Psalm

But…

But I
am a leaf
slightly quivering…

But I have
been a ripple
that tickles silver sands…

But I have stilled
the thump of my heart with
the syllables of Your holy name…

But I have stilled and quieted my soul…

Like…

Like a
breath, a
whispered breeze…

Like a weaned
kitten who purrs with
throaty and contented rumbles…

Like a weaned child
no more blind and panicked
rooting, no more grasping, dimpled fingers…

Like a weaned child with its mother…

Like…

Like a
whisper, a
sweetly spoken caress…

Like a weaned child
ready to stand, to stretch,
to step, I grasp your hand, and trust…

Is…

Is my
hushed, hushed,
soothed and rested self…

Is my soul
when You quiet me
when You cover me, when You surround me…

Is my soul within
my soul without, my soul
yesterday and tomorrow, my soul there and here…

Is my soul within me
when You lead me to the place
where all is still—is still—is still…

Like a weaned child is my soul within me...

Lost in the 6th Dimension

2007-10-01T18:54:00.000-04:00

I keep all of my keys on a fairly large carabiner--a fun word to say, yes? The carabiner is easy to find in my purse, even just by feel, and it's large enough for my many keys. I've got one ring attached to it with my school, house, and car keys, one with my little travel drive (LOVE my travel drive) and one with the extra-special tiny key that opens locked drawers in my classroom (one with secret files, and one with my purse).

Saturday, I fished the carabiner out of my purse, because I needed to download a document onto my travel drive (LOVE my travel drive). As I was detaching its ring from the carabiner, I heard a clunk and I realized that the ring with my drawer key had fallen onto the floor.

Bear with me here--I know that so far this is a very uninteresting post about key rings, but soon it will become a keen insight into the different ways that men and women think. Or that Ben and I think.

I thought, I'll pick that up on the way back, and downloaded my document. But on the way back--I couldn't find the drawer key and its ring.

The place where I dropped it is just an expanse of bare, wood floor. It should have been just lying there, waiting to be picked up. But it simply wasn't there. Weird. But I put it out of my mind, for the time being, because I am married to a Finder. He would find the key, I was sure, when he came home.

Later that day, I even ran a dustmop around that area of the floor, thinking that I might connect with the key-and-ring. Nope. Gone--simply gone.

So when Ben came home, I told him about my mini-mystery. He wasn't particularly interested--imagine that!

I looked around a few more times. Nada.

So this evening, I ran it by him again. "If you ever happen to see that key," I said, "let me know. I can't imagine where it went."

"Did you look under the love seat?" he asked. I believe he may have been a tad annoyed.

I scoffed. "It wouldn't slide. It's heavy, and the floor's not particularly slippery. No, it fell right here." I indicated a bare area of the floor.

"Look under the love seat."

And sure enough, there it was.

Here's the thing--it was easier for me to believe that the thing had simply vanished--perhaps into the 6th dimension, the Realm of the Lost, than to believe that it could had slid under the love seat. I was ready to write it off as one of Life's Great Mysteries.

Honey, remember 30 years ago, when I lost that key? I wonder where that thing went?

We'll never know, dear. It's a Mystery.

Things that Bother Me

2007-09-29T18:20:00.000-04:00

Here are a few things that bother me:

1. People who say "ick ectera". Especially if those people are newscasters who, one assumes, should know better. Similarly, people who write "ect", which only makes sense if it's an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "ec tetera."

2. Commercial jingles that I can't understand. There's a cruise line that has just such a jingle, and also (I think) A T & T. What are they singing?

3. People who are oblivious to the fact that they occupy space. Symptoms of such oblivion include: coming to a dead stop when walking right in front of me, stepping suddenly into my path while looking totally in another direction, and leaving their dang shopping carts right in the middle of the dang aisle. Dang.

4. Pictures of two-headed turles, particularly a two-headed turtle on which the two heads are on opposite ends of the turtle's weirdly fused body, and face in totally opposite directions.

5. That crusty thing on the tip of the mustard bottle.

6. Scratching out a wrong answer in a crossword puzzle. While I'm on the subject of crossword puzzles--when Across clues intersect with Down clues neither of which any human being on the face of this planet could be expected to know.

7. Mushy whiteboard markers.

8. That I can never find my fingernail clippers. Never. I buy them all. the. time. And they're never there.

9. Lists that don't contain a nice, even, ten items.

A Turtle's Life

2007-09-23T18:25:00.000-04:00

There's a song that has been playing on Christian radio stations for a while now--actually, a rather annoying song--with a refrain of "Life is good, eternal life is better" repeated a gazillion times.

A little fellow that my friend Pam told me about was singing that song, but he had apparently misunderstood the lyrics; here is how he sang it:

Life is good, a turtle's life is better...

This post is dedicated to my grand-turtle, Dwight, and to my brother Doug, who has made me both laugh and cry with his turtle stories.

October

2007-09-23T18:09:00.000-04:00

It's ornery of me, I know, but I dislike fall--despite the beautiful leaves and the crispness in the air, despite the goodness of things made with pumpkin and apples, I dread the coming of October. October is the month of the worst event of my life, and the month in which I am most likely to be crabby and depressed.

Which is why I was thankful, last night, for a moment of unexpected grace.

Ben and I were visiting Megan and Tony, and in the course of a conversation about their new church, Megan mentioned a hymn that had been sung there last Sunday. It was a hymn that I've not sung often, and certainly not in decades, but my synapses immediately fired on the lovely melody and the title stirred a longing in my spirit--I need to sing that song again.

When I got home, I looked it up; I wanted to know why it had resonated so strongly with me in that one small moment. Well, this is why--here are the words of the 2nd verse of "Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting."

Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus,
I behold Thee as Thou art,
And Thy love, so pure, so changeless
Satisfies my heart--
Satisfies my deepest longings,
Meets, supplies its every need,
Compasseth me round with blessings:
Thine is love indeed!
Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art,
I am finding out the greatness
Of Thy loving heart.

Lord, make it so...

Phobias

2007-09-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

(I'd really love to post original material here more often, as I did several years ago--perhaps when my life settles down a bit, I will...in the meantime, here's a little piece I wrote a few weeks ago that cracked me up.)

Christian clinical psychologists and counselors should note this addendum to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Listed below are some common Christian phobias, along with brief descriptions and, in some cases, the prognosis.

300.29.01
Boredboardophobia—This extreme fear of boredom at board meetings manifests most frequently at home in the minutes immediately preceding the meeting. Patients demonstrate a reluctance to leave the house, accompanied by whimpering, pouting, and stamping of the feet.

300.29.02
Campfirophobia—Most clinicians will be sympathetic toward this fear, which is characterized by an adverse reaction to the song “Kumbaya.” Symptoms range from mild nausea to the urge to run screaming from the room.

300.29.03
Codaphobia—This is seen most often in people with personality types that are resistant to change. Codaphobics are afraid of contemporary Christian music, particularly those songs with several repeats. They may exhibit pursed lips, furrowed brows, and clenched hands. (See also pitsophobia and wesleycrosbyphobia, below.)

300.29.04
Dropinophobia—Fear of unannounced pastoral visits. Sufferers of this condition may be seen tossing magazines under throw pillows and frantically scooping music and movies of dubious spiritual value into closets at the approach of visiting clergy.

300.29.05
Globophobia—Pronounced with a long “o”, globophobia is the all-consuming fear that one may be called to missions. As epitomized by the song “Please Don’t Send Me To Africa,” some who are afflicted by this condition have been known to doodle through entire missionary slideshows, and to attempt to alleviate their symptoms by means of substantial monetary contributions.

300.29.06
Jellophobia—Interestingly, this fear of potluck dinners has a companion condition known as jellomania (love of same). Sufferers of jellophobia have been known to attend fellowship dinners to which they contribute only a bag of potato chips, and to leave the buffet line with only a plate of those chips and a cup of red Kool-aid. Despite the name, may also be triggered by repeated exposure to meatloaf or broccoli casserole.

300.29.07
Mahlimushiphobia—Taken from Numbers 3:20, this phobia is defined by a fear of reading complicated passages of Scripture aloud. Of particular concern are passages such as the tribal lists in Numbers (hence the name) and the genealogies in Matthew.

300.29.08
Malachiphobia—Also known as tenthophobia, this is the fear of tithing one’s income. Persons with this condition are extremely gifted at rationalization. This phobia is exceptionally resistant to therapy.

300.29.09
Nivophobia—Fear of using any translation of the Bible other than the one most familiar to the phobic. Patients manifest a sense of unease, sometimes leading to extreme agitation when hearing familiar verses in unfamiliar versions.

300.29.10
Olordophobia—Patients with this malady fear being asked to pray aloud in public. Symptoms include mumbling, stammering, rapid heartbeat, and clammy hands. This is a minor phobia which often resolves with repeated exposure to the phobia-inducing stimulus.

300.29.11
Pewnophobia—Perhaps the most common phobia on this list, pewnophobia is the fear of having to sit in the front pew. A closely related condition is the fear of arriving at church to find someone else sitting in one’s usual seat. Symptoms include anxiety and irritability, and in extreme cases the phobic person will simply leave the premises.

300.29.12
Pitsophobia—Seen most often in members of liturgical denominations, this is the fear of raising one’s hands or arms in worship. Sufferers may be seen with their arms pressed closely to their sides, glancing around uneasily, clearly uncomfortable at the attitudes of worship in non-pitsophobics. Those undergoing therapy may occasionally lift one hand briefly to waist level.

300.29.13
Savophobia—This may be the most seriously debilitating phobia on the list. Patients with this phobia are afraid of witnessing, and they may be recognized by their uncanny similarity to non-Christians. Avoidance, rationalization, and conformity are common manifestations of savophobia.

300.29.14
Vibsophobia—Although the name of this condition is derived from VBS, it is an umbrella term encompassing those with the fear of working with children in any church setting. Patients cite many contributing sub-fears: runny noses and dirty diapers top the list, which also includes questions I don’t know the answer to.

300.29.15
Wesleycrosbyphobia—The fear of singing hymns. Ironically, this condition is often found in families where codaphobia (300.29.03) is also present, most frequently in persons of different generations. In such a family, the prospect for resolution of both phobias is extremely grim.

Christian clinicians are advised to familiarize themselves with this list so as to recognize the symptoms in their clients, always remembering the most effective and proven therapy—perfect love casts out fear.

_____
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2000) is published by the American Psychological Association. This addendum is entirely fictional.

“Please Don’t Send Me To Africa”, © Scott Wesley Brown, 1995

1 John 4:18 (NIV)

Little One, Relax

2007-08-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

Here's one that I really like...I wrote it for FaithWriters a few weeks ago. The prompt was "angry," and this wounded little boy showed up at my fingertips.

He is sleeping now, his long eyelashes resting on his freckled cheek. His deep and measured breathing belies the fury in which he spun through the day. I rest a hand on his pajama top and feel, beneath the rise and fall of his chest, an angry heartbeat fighting against the imposition of a few hours of unwelcome peace.

The social worker, Allison, has tried to prepare me for the difficulty of being a foster mother to Cody. For each placement in his three years of life, a colored tab adorns his thick file. It is a veritable rainbow; so many well-intentioned families have fallen for Cody’s cherubic face only to be defeated by his startling outbursts of anger.

Despite Allison’s pessimism, I have brought Cody home with me. I understand his rage; that same dark, cold fire burned in my own spirit until extinguished by a pair of pierced and weathered hands. Although I did not give birth to this little boy, surely the volume of love ripped from my heart when I first held his little hand was a sort of birth.

Here then, is Cody’s day: he emerges from sleep with a whimper, kicking at the blankets. When I pull him, half-awake, into my lap, he drapes his warm arms around me and burrows his face into my neck. He remains groggily compliant while I help him into shorts and a tee-shirt and lead him, yawning, into the kitchen.

Some time during breakfast, Cody’s anger is sparked. Perhaps the orange juice is too pulpy, or the grape jelly spread too thickly on his toast. The inevitable result is a sticky mess on the floor and the necessity of a change of clothes for both Cody and me. A few shards of shattered glass lodged in my heel have taught me to use paper and plastic for all of our meals.

Cody lisps sowwy, and sometimes he forgets to call me Moira and says mama instead, his fist grasped tightly around my soul. I look for pleasant ways to fill his hours then, and we play with Noah’s ark or Legos until something not right sends Cody back to that scarlet place where only screams can adequately express his pain. I gather Cody into my lap and hold him close, my grip around his arms both restraining him and telling him I will stay here as long as you need me. I rock him and murmur shhh, shhh into his ear.

Father, will You teach me to heal this broken boy?

I prepare Cody’s lunch while he watches Veggie Tales, clinging to Morton, the stuffed alligator that has traveled with him to every foster home. He sucks his thumb so hard that it is red and cracked; it is a battle I have chosen to forego. If he takes comfort from Morton and his beleaguered thumb, so be it.

Lunch is always macaroni and cheese and canned peaches. My little tyrant insists that they must not touch, must not be too hot, must not fall off his spoon. A good lunch ends with only a few fierce tears; a bad one ends in another full-body embrace as I battle this 30-pound bundle of wrath.

After lunch, we explore the wooded area in the back of my property. Cody discovers nature with all of his senses—even, alarmingly, taste—and I allow him a restricted freedom, aware that it is my effort to keep him safe that most often precipitates an angry episode. So I hold my breath and pray as Cody finds a stone, a leaf, a fuzzy caterpillar. “Look, Moira!” he exclaims, his eyes wide and a blush spreading beneath his freckles. I hold out a hand to receive his treasures, and wait for the explosion.

It comes, it always comes, on the heels of the word no. There is a flurry of elbows and knees, accompanied by a soundtrack of dreadful screams and incoherent agony.

So this is the rhythm of Cody’s day, a pulse of alternating turbulence and tranquility. And here I am on Cody’s bed, my hand on his chest, when I see that his pudgy fingers are tightly fisted even in sleep. Oh, little one, relax, I breathe. I work my pinky into the clenched knot and realize that Cody is clutching something. He stirs and opens his eyes a little, gracing me with a sleepy smile. Mama, he whispers. A small, crimson wildflower uncrumples and falls at my feet.

At the Fair

2007-08-18T09:35:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen the musical "State Fair?" It's an old-fashioned musical, set in the '50s, in that rural America where women still wore gingham dresses while they worked in the kitchen and hung out laundry. The family spends a week at the state fair, where Mother wrings her hands over whether or not her canned pickles will take first prize, and Father roots for his giant pig...

...that's the kind of fair we go to.

There are barns for all of the farm animals, and little kids bring their bunnies and lambs, and there are contests for the best apple pie and the largest sunflower. There's an exhibit of quilting. Tractors on display attract farmers in overalls. Women wear cut-off jeans and cowboy boots. Well, I could go on forever; you get the idea.

Oh, I've got to mention the food. You can get elephant ears (sweet dough deep fried, spead with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar), Wisconsin hot cheese (mozzarella deep fried and coated in bread crumbs), and even, I suspect, deep fat fried fat, coated in deep fat fried lard.

And then, weirdly enough, there's the "other" fair--the one where you'll find the teenagers hanging out, the girls scantily clad and the boys smoking and wearing rude tee-shirts. They ride the clackity rides manned by grease-covered carnies with frightening tattoos and too few teeth. There are furtive exchanges under the ferris wheel. It's as if, by crossing one dusty lane, you leave innocence behind and step into the sinister.

Someone should write a book about that--I nominate Ray Bradbury.

Charming Things

2007-08-14T16:16:00.001-04:00

We had a guest from Australia for a few days last week. Deb had never been in the United States before, and her stay here was an eye-opener for both of us. Once she got over gasping every time I turned a corner in the car (into what seemed to her to be the wrong lane), there were so many other things here for her to exclaim over:

1. Fire hydrants. They're marvelous! Apparently in Australia, the hose-containing apparatus is flush with the ground, and not at all quaint or charming, as fire hydrants are. Happily for Deb, in the course of a 3-mile walk around my little village, dozens of them can be seen, each more adorable than the last.

2. Mail boxes, especially the ones with little red flags to alert the postal carrier that mail resides within to be picked up. What will they think of next? (If you wondered, in Australia one goes to the post office both to pick up and to drop off mail.) A postal carrier on foot, delivering to a box attached to one's house, is worthy of rhapsody.

3. Lightning bugs. We were strolling in the back yard one evening, showing Deb our diseased apple tree and our crabgrass, when she asked, "What are those little flashes of light I keep seeing?" The very idea of lightning bugs was enough to send her into ecstasy. I even caught one for her (and those of you who know me know how very remarkable that is...) to show her how very ordinary they are when their bottoms aren't imitating neon. She told me later that she watched them for hours from her upstairs bedroom window.

4. Rest areas--yes, rest areas! They've got them in Australia, I guess, but they're of the pit variety. The one that we stopped at was, in Deb's eyes, so pretty! Indeed, there were pots of petunias on the walkways into the restrooms, and a little picnic area. (An aside--who wants to have a picnic at a rest area? It's like having a sandwich on the toilet at home.)

5. Money that's all one color, and in numbers not divisible by ten. At the grocery store, she was buying a Diet Coke, and she held out a fistful of change, like a little child. "Do I have enough?" The cashier looked at me, alarmed--what grown woman doesn't know how to buy a Diet Coke?

It's fun to see things from another person's eyes every now and then. Nothing deeper, no spiritual message--maybe just a suggestion that you might tell a fire hydrant you appreciate it, next time you see one.

Will, Revisited

2007-08-10T07:30:00.000-04:00

I love to write in this blog, despite the fact the I often forget to write in it for days (*cough*weeks*cough*) at a time. I have a few loyal readers (love you, fam), but it's those occasional pop-in-ers who will frequently give me a silly grin that lasts for hours. For example, inexplicably, my blog on Zimmyville has gotten some odd, random hits and comments.

Recently, two old blogs attracted some attention, much to my delight. One of them, called "Vanity", brought me a distant relative with some gracious words about my grandparents. The other was called "Will," and someone who read it yesterday was blessed by it, and told me so. Interestingly, that post too mentions my beloved grandmother.

When I re-read "Will" after getting the new comment, it was apparent that that blog was written during a time of distress, more than two years ago. I thought back, trying to remember what it was that had caused such a crisis of faith, and when it came back to me with a hot rush, I was amazed. The resolution of that problem has brought our family blessing upon blessing upon blessing. And if it had been "solved" the way that I had fervently hoped for at that time, there would have been great hardship and heartache.

God's will is always best, indeed.

Missing Jesus

2007-08-06T12:46:00.000-04:00

It's weird, but riding in that big, bumpy, noisy truck made me very sleepy. Perhaps it was because we slept little the night before, camped in my son-in-law's living room on a wobbly air mattress, with thoughts of the long drive ahead mocking our dreams. At any rate, once Ben had maneuvered the monster onto I-75, I drifted off for a bit, sleeping through most of Ohio.

The girls were following us in their car, and when we pulled off into a rest area and hobbled off the truck, the first thing they said was "Did you see that huge Jesus?"

Ben had seen it, and they marveled about it for a bit, making me wish that I had seen it, too. Here it is:

Their descriptions of Huge Jesus made me think that I should start jotting things down for a blog, and so it is that I have a yellow receipt from the dry cleaners on which I have written missing Jesus.

I'm not going to go into the aesthetic value of Huge Jesus here. (I don't think I need to.) But you know--that Jesus is pretty big--and yet I managed to miss him.

Real Jesus--You are so much bigger and more beautiful than Huge Jesus. How do I sometimes manage to miss You? Will You poke me awake, please, when I do?

Great Motto

2007-08-03T08:16:00.000-04:00

Traveling through Kentucky, we were passed by two very interesting trucks. One of them had a sign lettered on the side:

MASA HAY COMPANY
"WE GOT HAY'

What a great motto! I can just imagine the meeting, at the corporate headquarters of the Masa Hay Company. Men in dark suits surround an oval table, with the CEO of the Masa Hay Company at the head, a Bluetooth perched in his ear. A young hay executive fumbles nervously with his tie; this is his first proposal to the boss, and he desperately wants to impress. A pretty secretary brings in a tray of bottled water.

The boss speaks--who has come up with a slogan for the Masa Hay Company? Our young executive defers to those with more seniority; there is a prickling at his armpits. One by one the other men propose their slogans.

"We make hay even when the sun doesn't shine!"

"Hay, hay, hay, we're not the Monkees!"

"What the hay are you doing for hay?"

The boss pounds the table in increasing frustration; doesn't anyone have something better? Finally, the young man clears his throat and, almost in a whisper, speaks the three words that have consumed him for the past week.

"We got hay."

There is a stunned silence at the table. One of the older executives glances around and begins to snicker, but is quickly silenced by a sharp look from the CEO...

That's it, I can't sustain it any longer.

The other truck was a pickup, loaded with what appeared to be dozens and dozens of dismembered fake deer parts. Kentucky is a funny state.

Cheesesteaks--The Real Thing

2007-08-02T08:52:00.000-04:00

Not too far from Jericho and Bobby's new house, there's a gas station and convenience store that we visited several times during the moving process, for pop and ice and (mmmmm) gas station food to sustain us during the move. During one of those visits, Megan snorted at a sign painted on the side of a nearby building.

It's quite possible that only Megan and I, in all the world, find this funny. Punctuation humor isn't really...well, humorous to most people. Nevertheless, here it is. If you find it funny too, please let me know, so that I can embrace another kindred spirit.

The sign said:

WE SELL "AUTHENTIC" PHILLY CHEESESTEAKS.

If I have to explain to you why those quotation marks around "AUTHENTIC" crack me (and Megan) up, then you are obviously not a punctuation pedant, and we'll have to find something else to bond over. Chocolate will do nicely.

Real Chicken

2007-08-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

On the long trip along I-75 to Florida from Michigan, there are ample opportunities to play "the alphabet game." Over a thousand miles of freeway, in fact, and since Ben was concentrating on driving a honkin' big truck, I often played the game by myself.

I would like to say "thank you" to the owners of "Zaxby's" restaurants, a chain that started popping up around Tennessee. X, Y, and Z in one place, and then you can start right over again with A and B!

It made me happy all out of proportion with how the names of restaurants should make people happy. As a bonus, the sign boasts "Real Chicken." That strikes me funny, too. As opposed to what?

Our Pizza Experience

2007-07-31T14:02:00.000-04:00

We spent ten days in Florida recently, moving the newlyweds into a cute little house, then spending some time vacationing at the "happiest place on earth." I jotted a few notes on a scrap of paper for potential blogs while we traveled, and here's the first of them.

We weren't able to unload the moving truck on the day that we'd planned to, so the six of us (Ben and I, Jericho and Bobby, Megan and Tony) spent a few days in a hotel. On one of those evenings we ordered some pizzas delivered. I called the pizza place, and gave our order to Christy, who was surprised at our request for a cheese pizza with feta cheese. Apparently, feta's not big in Florida.

While we were munching pizza poolside, Megan showed me the receipt--it read:

"Your pizza experience has been brought to you by Christ"

Gosh--that makes us pretty special, I reckon.

Mixed Metaphor

2007-07-18T08:29:00.000-04:00

We're leaving tomorrow, for the longest journey of my life.

It's long in miles--almost 1200. But it's longer still in what it will demand of me...saying good-bye, perhaps for months, to my youngest daughter.

This move was definitely orchestrated by God--the adorable and adoring husband, the made-to-order jobs, the pretty little house, the new car--each entering into this grand symphony at the tap of His baton. And it's a beautiful piece of music, but I'm just not in the mood for this particular piece right now.

I'll listen to it later, when I'm missing her.

Phone Hussy

2007-07-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

This isn't about what you might think, given the title. It's about Sophie.

(In the unlikely event that you are a random reader--Sophie is our cat).

Yes, I realize that I wrote about Sophie just a few posts ago. My excuse is that we are true empty-nesters now, and I have gone to that horrible place where I believe that cat anecdotes are truly interesting--are in fact as interesting to everyone in the world as they are to me.

Anyway--

By careful and studied application of positive reinforcement, Sophie has trained us to perform a very specific response whenever the phone rings. She hops up from wherever she is sleeping (for she is certainly sleeping somewhere, that being her primary occupation), runs to the phone, and flops on the floor, waiting for whoever is answering the phone to get there.

Let's assume it's me (although Ben also has been similarly trained). I'm expected to rub her with my foot for the entire time that I'm on the phone. The rules are very specific:

1. If I stop, she glares reproachfully at me, or...
2. ...utters the Pitiful Peep.
3. I am to use my foot only. If I'm on the cordless phone, and I sit down to chat, I may not reach down and scratch her with my hand. Foot only.
4. Acceptable motions include: tracing her spine, bumping her butt, and toes-to-the-nape-of-the-neck. (Ben can't do that last one, not having prehensile toes as I do).
5. Unacceptable motions include: anything near the tummy, and stopping.
6. Did I mention? I may not stop.

Until the conversation is over. When I hang up, she runs away, leaving me feeling used.

Phone hussy.

My Inner Pedant

2007-07-08T17:09:00.001-04:00

Every now and then, my inner pedant goes on a bit of a rampage. A conversation I had with a few friends a couple of days ago has spurred me to humor the pesky rampager.

It's about alot. There's no such word--never has been, never will be.

I teach students with learning disabilities, and they're pretty poor writers, and nearly all of them write alot. I correct it immediately, and tell them that if they learn nothing else during the school year (a distinct possibility), I'll feel that I've been successful if I can break them of writing that miserable word.

They're actually pretty proud of themselves when they remember. They hand in their papers with a big grin. "Look, Mrs. A, I wrote a lot." And I beam at them, and ignore the myriad mistakes on that same paper (not myriad of...), because they have written those two little words correctly.

Unfortunately, alot-itis is a disease not limited to the learning disabled. I see it all the time. Funnily, I never see alittle.

People, people, people. For the love of all that's good in the world, I beg you. Write a lot. Also, write a lot, often, frequently. It won't do you abit of harm.

Finding the Light

2007-07-07T18:48:00.001-04:00

There is a time in the late afternoon when the sun shines onto the living room carpet in several bands of light. Sophie hops down from her basket above the computer and finds the light, posing in ways that show off all her prettiest features: her fluffy orange tummy, her white-tipped paws, the diamond of soft creamy fur at her throat.

And it is when I seek out the Light that my most beautiful features are revealed, those inner features of the spirit that flourish in His warmth.

Worst Blog Entry Ever

2007-07-03T10:43:00.000-04:00

Things that make a logophile's mind whirl:

1. At the drycleaner's, someone has attached a sign to the inside of an industrial dryer that says "I'm dizzy!!!" My first thought is, let the poor person out of there! My second is, how fortunate for him, that he had a Sharpie and a slip of paper when he happened to get stuck in the dryer. My third thought: he should write "get me out of here" instead.

I know that the sign was a clever employee's way of indicating that the dryer was out of order. But that's just the way my mind works.

2. The personalized license plate in front of me reads:

HENBABY

Since you have to pay for those special plates by the letter, I'm thinking she could have saved some money by just picking:

CHICK

Or better still:

EGG

3. At a large family reunion recently, one of my aunts gave Megan a little cloth pouch with a necklace inside. The pouch had little sayings printed on it, including this one:

Do things in the long run?

Hmmm, I dunno. Do they?

As Long as we Both...

2007-07-01T19:26:00.000-04:00

Watching daytime television during summer vacation...there are quite a few guilty pleasures out there. I spent one afternoon this week watching a marathon of "Who's Wedding is it, Anyway?" The weddings featured there are for the most part gaudy and tasteless, with tantrum-throwing brides and drunken guests. Quite unlike this wedding...

Anyway, one wedding in particular made my jaw drop in amazement. The bride slightly modified the traditional vows; she was willing to promise to take her groom "for better or worse," and "in sickness and in health," but not "for richer or for poorer." She wanted "for poorer" taken out of there, and apparently everyone--including the clergyman--agreed, for when it came time to say the vows, she only pledged to keep him "for richer."

Everyone seemed to think that was both hilarious and perfectly acceptable.

That's just wrong on so many levels that I find myself speechless. Well, wordless.

I give 'em a year or two, max.

So Beautiful!

2007-06-27T20:54:00.000-04:00

Check out these pictures of Jericho and Bobby's wedding, by Sweet Monday photography. Sweet Monday is my niece Lindsey and her friend April, and they are awesome, awesome, awesome.

Corned Beef Sandwich

2007-06-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, my mom used to buy this Spam-like substance in a can that we called "corned beef " (but it wasn't really). It came out of its squarish can with a horrible sucking noise, covered with a gelatinous substance, the thought of which is literally making me gag as I type this. Strangely, I really enjoyed a "corned beef" sandwich occasionally with my lunch, and it's just such a sandwich that will appear as a minor character in this little childhood drama.

I'm pretty sure I was in 2nd grade. I was on the playground, holding hands with a little 2nd grade hunk who was named, I believe, Ricky. One of my classmates thought she'd be awfully clever, and she pulled out that schoolgirl's taunting chant--

Janet and Ricky, sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

Well, in the first place, I wasn't kissing him, and in the second place, the bad poetry offended me. I took the only logical action: I bit her.

I honestly don't remember what happened next--in my memory of that day, the next scene opens in the classroom, where I'm at my desk, opening my lunchbox. I unwrapped the waxed paper and lifted a corner of the white bread to see what kind of sandwich Mom had packed for me that day. Yes! Corned beef! And then the chunk of meat tumbled out of the sandwich and onto the floor.

I really liked corned beef sandwiches. I glanced around, bent over and picked up the pinkish chunk, and tucked it back between the Wonder Breads.

The next thing I remember, my teacher was walking toward me, with a stern look on her face, and I remember thinking, she saw me pick that up off the floor. She's going to make me throw it away. I was fiercely ready to defend my sandwich, and it never, never occured to me that the playground incident was anything but behind me.

"Janet," she said. "Did you bite Susie?"

Whew! The sandwich is safe! And I'm not admitting anything...

"No." I took a bite of the sandwich, lest she add "eating food from the floor" to my list of offenses.

"Janet, I want you to look at this." She gestured for Susie to come forward, and pushed up her sleeve. There was a perfect little oval made of toothmarks there, and I distinctly remember being both shocked and grossed out. It was disgusting, but it hardly seemed connected to me.

In my defense, I was seven. Or possibly only six--I had skipped first grade because of my superior reading skills. Apparently, IQ tests of the early 60s did not predict the likelihood of a child biting her peers.

My memories of the day are somewhat fragmented, but I recall feeling quite sheepish that the rest of the students were all looking at me over their bologna sandwiches and boiled eggs. I ate as quickly as I could, while the teacher went brak brak brak. And then I was horrified, as she took me into the hall and paddled me.

I did not cry. I would not cry.

I went through the rest of the day in defiant stillness. It was over, I had been humiliated, and soon I could go home where everyone loved me.

When I got home, Mom asked, “How was your day?”

"Fine."

"Did anything happen at school today?"

"No." That IQ test got one thing right; I was smart enough to know not to tell Mom about the paddling.

"You didn't get paddled for biting Susie?"

Mom knows everything! She probably knows about the corned beef on the floor, too!

I honestly don't remember how Mom dealt with me at home; she may have spanked me again, or hugged me, or given me a talking-to. The thing that sticks with me is my amazement that she knew, and my feeling of having been betrayed by my teacher.

I didn't feel sorry for biting Susie, not then, and not now.

WWJD

2007-06-25T21:07:00.000-04:00

We have new neighbors--a very friendly couple from Chicago who will only be here on weekends. Our little town has become quite the draw for Chicago people, and lots of little artsy-fartsy boutiques and eateries have sprung up downtown to cater to their Chicago-ish tastes.

Anyway, Ben met Jack first, over the fence, and they chatted for a bit, mostly about the bizarre landscaping that the old neighbor had left. Ben pointed out our little church, just around the corner, and invited them to join us there on Sunday.

"Sure thing," said Jack. "I'll mention it to Larry--he's upstairs showering."

Oh.

So I've done a bit of thinking over the past few days, about the Jack-and-Larry dealie. Certainly, we intend to be good neighbors--well, Ben will be. I'm not the best neighbor to anyone...too shy and indoorish. But Ben mowed Jack and Larry's lawn, while they were busy tearing out vines, and we'll chitchat with them as much as we would with anyone.

No, I honestly, honestly don't mind having them as neighbors. They listen to nice classical music. It's pleasant. But I've had to examine my feelings about Jack-and-Larry in church.

Certainly, they need salvation as much as anyone. As much as I did, for example. Their sins are no worse than mine. Jesus loves Jack and Larry. He does. But I am from a denomination not known for its tolerance. If they should walk in next Sunday, or the one after that, they'd be greeted with tight smiles. Meaningful glances would be exchanged between congregants, and whispers behind hands. At best, people would be uncomfortable; at worst, there would be an exodus.

How then, should a conservative church deal with Jack and Larry? I don't have the answers, but I suspect that the response Jesus would approve of is His own approach, love them, embrace them, welcome them, teach them. Ironically, that's our least likely course of action.

Poo In Church

2007-06-24T18:08:00.000-04:00

There were several large piles of cow poo in the church foyer this morning, and even more in the downstairs hallway.

It was fake poo, of course, part of the "Avalanche Ranch" decor for the upcoming week of Vacation Bible School. Still, it's a bit off-putting to see piles of poo anywhere in church.

I suspect that the kiddoes will love the fake poo, and that we'll have to stop them from picking up the poo, tossing the poo back and forth ("go deep!"), pretending to smell the poo--well, all manner of poo-related hilarity.

It's actually kind of fun, even as an adult, to write about the poo.

If there's going to be poo in the church, though, I suppose it's best out in the open, where it can be quickly found and taken care of...the alternative being that hidden, insidious poo that causes people to wrinkle their noses and think what is that smell?

Party

2007-06-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

Well, just one more. I know this ain't great literature, but it's fun to write. I'll get back to the sequel to Moby Dick next week.

Highlights of the reception:

1. Tony's DJ voice. He was so cute, and he really set the tone for the party.

2. The "Through the Years" video, especially the adorable shots of two-year-old Jericho and two-year-old Bobby dressed in identical red hooded sweatshirts.

3. "Someone to Watch Over Me". That song always makes me misty.

4. Little boxes of personalized M&Ms. I ate 4 of 'em. Yeah, 4 boxes.

5. The perma-grin on Bobby's face.

6. Pretty, pretty Jericho. Her dress was ivory and pink, and so was she--her neck and shoulders pale and glowing, her face blushing and sweet.

7. Decorations by Bobby's mom that looked like a gazillion bucks. Gorgeous.

8. Hockey puck cake, and Bobby's tickled exclamation of "Sweet!" when Jericho revealed it.

9. The air in the room, rich with several generations of love.

10. Megan, so lovely in her up-do, giving a toast that sent a tear trickling into my throat.

11. Ben in a tux, being Mr. Gracious Host. Yummy.

12. The feeling of relief that something exciting and frantic was finished, slowly replaced by a feeling of peace that something exciting and wonderful was beginning.

And here's a little treat for you, if you haven't seen this yet. Lindsey and April, you're unbelievable.

Part Two

2007-06-21T07:38:00.000-04:00

More wedding reflections...

The pianist switches to "You Raise Me Up" and the bridesmaids' parade begins. They're dressed in gowns of sage green with wide ivory sashes, and they carry bunches of pink blossoms and ivy. Elizabeth is Jericho's unique and wacky friend since high school...Audra, Lindsey, and Carianne are college pals...Megan, her lovely sister, looks sweetly serene with her hair loosely off her neck.

Emily and Robbie are next, and each is very serious about the task assigned. Emily very cutely drops petals only at the extreme left of the aisle; you could connect them with a plumbline that skims the "bride's side" seats. Robbie carries his little pillow carefully horizontal and takes his spot with a look at his mom. See? I'm being good.

Elizabeth has slipped over to the piano and has taken up her guitar for the bride's processional. Bobby picked this song, a very non-traditional song for his bride--it's "More Than Words" and the instruments play it soft and sweet:

All you have to do is close your eyes
And just reach out your hands and touch me
Hold me close don't ever let me go

And there is Jericho, on the arm of her handsome dad. She floats, she glides, she is graceful and elegant in an ivory gown with the palest of pink flowers. I glance back at Bobby; he's fixed on Jericho with that un-nameable look that is equal parts adoration and solemnity, excitement and mischief.

The pastor offers a prayer, and the opening words are spoken, ending with Ben's big line--her mother and I. He kisses his little girl and sits by me. We grasp hands.

Vows are spoken in strong and sure voices...Jericho's grandpa reads from Ephesians...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ...Bobby's grandps reads from Phillipians...Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Jericho and Bobby take communion, from the pewter chalice and plate that Ben and I used for the same purpose, almost 32 years ago. They light the Unity candle while Lindsey sings, in the voice of an angel.

I pray you'll be our eyes, and watch us where we go,
And help us to be wise, in times when we don't know
Let this be our prayer, as we go our way
Lead us to a place, guide us with your grace
To a place where we'll be safe...

The pastor pronounces them husband and wife, there is the tenderest of kisses, a charge to "go forth in love", and applause from the congregation.

I finally remember to breathe again.

Part Three coming soon.

Wedding Reflections

2007-06-20T08:34:00.000-04:00

Watch "Whose Wedding Is It, Anyway?" or any of its ilk, and it becomes fairly obvious that in our country, wedding is largely synonomous with party, and that for most people, the ceremony that precedes the party is little more than prologue. The reception is the event.

I've never felt that way. To me, a wedding is a holy ceremony, and almost certainly the most important hour in a couples' life.

Here, then, are my impressions of Jericho and Bobby's wedding.

Before...

I pull up to the church at the same time as the groom, who is cutely pink with a combination of sunburn and excitement. He looks both happy and serious, and after a greeting, he retreats to a wing of the church so that he'll not see Jericho before The Moment.

Jericho walks in a few minutes later wearing her veil and jeans, with pretty, wavy hair and a big grin. Despite the jeans, she already looks lovely enough to say a vow or two.

Five pretty girls, Jericho's sister and friends, laugh while they apply makeup, iron bridesmaids' dresses, fuss with hair and jewelry.

The ringbearer struggles into his miniature tuxedo, and pulls on my sleeve to inform me solemnly that "somebody already wore these shoes." He wants desperately to take possession of the pillow, on which the rings are loosely tethered, and I just as desperately do not want to give it to him yet, as there is still half an hour until Aisle Time. He is cute, cute, cute, but only 5. When I finally give it to him, he becomes very, very still, focused only on his moment.

The flower girl, sweet as can be in an ivory dress with a wide green sash, asks me where her basket is. Hmmmm, where is that basket? But it's right where we left it, and she's old enough to be trusted with it.

Mindful of her hair and veil, we help Jericho into her gown. My heart quickens.

The photographers are Jericho's cousin, Lindsey, and Lindsey's friend April. They are so, so sweet and lovely, not at all like so many obnoxious photographers. They become part of the mood of celebration, and I love them.

All the players assemble, the pianist begins "Rocket to the Moon", and Bobby's mother Holly is led up the aisle on the arm of a handsome usher. Holly is younger, prettier, and slimmer than I am, and her dress is fancier. To my surprise, I don't care.

My turn, and my son-in-law Tony takes my arm, tells me to smile and to slow down, and we're off.

The church is beautiful, its focal point a large, stained glass cross. Three arrangements of pale pink and ivory blooms decorate the altar. Holly and I light the unity candles, exchange goofy grins, and take our seats.

Bobby enters alone from the back of the church and lights a third candle, this one in remembrance of family who have passed away. Nice touch. Then (I can only assume) he sprints to the side entrance, where he now appears with the pastor and his groomsmen.

I finally stop worrying that something will go wrong.

Part Two tomorrow.

What Angels Do

2007-06-19T12:45:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know I haven't written a blog in forever. I'm sorry. It's been a spring of transition--the total re-structuring of the special ed. department at work, and that other minor thing: helping Jericho and Bobby with wedding planning. I'm still writing, have contributed a bit to FaithWriters, and I hope to get back to blogging several times a week, too.

The wedding was wonderful, and I'll write more about it in the next day or so.

Here's a little snippet from Wedding Day. One of Jericho's bridesmaids, Audra, had a bit of a sunburn on her back, and another bridesmaid, Elizabeth, was sweetly applying a soothing cream to the burn. She noticed, on the jar of cream, an interesting little slogan:

"Angels are watching your dreams."

Is it just me, or is that really, really creepy? Don't they have better things to do? Somehow, dream voyeurism isn't a characteristic I had previously attributed to angels.

It's Off to Work We Go

2007-04-20T17:42:00.000-04:00

A statement from one of my students:

During World War II, people used to say "hi-ho, Hitler!"

Learning that I'm Not a Writer, After All

2007-04-04T18:48:00.000-04:00

I've been on spring break this week, and I've spent all day, every day writing. I've learned a few things:

1. I'm far better at writing little chunks like blogs or super-short stories than I am at longer projects.

2. Research is more fun than writing, sometimes.

3. I will never be a novelist.

4. I used to try to make art projects--I'd have an idea in my head of how they were supposed to look, but they always came out as "abstracts." Same thing with this project I've taken on: I know my character, and what happens to her, and what I want it to look like, but what's actually being created just ain't pretty.

5. Life in Bible times was gritty and smelly and hard. Especially for women.

6. I can write for 5 or 6 hours, but only about a tenth of what I write is any good. So maybe I should only write for half an hour--but only about a tenth of that is any good, too. At this rate, I'll finish this novella, oh, in about a decade or so. And even then, it won't look like the sculpture in my head.

7. It's hard to know how much to include. Do I have to move my characters around the room like chess pieces? Tell when they stand and when they sit? If I don't, will they seem to be blinking in and out of their positions to the readers, like Star Trek characters? Where do I draw the line--"Ruth breathed. She took another breath. She said a few things, and did a few things. She breathed some more, and walked some places."

This is hard.

Highlights

2007-04-01T19:59:00.000-04:00

My brother "got" me the other day with an e-mail consisting of only two words: The Timbertoes.

Remember them? If you ever got "Highlights" magazine as a kid, I'll bet you do. They were the happy wooden family who got a full-page spread, on the right-hand page.

I loved "Highlights" as a kid, and when Megan was a toddler, I subscribed for her. I only paid for one year, but they kept coming for years and years--even though I never renewed. I was still getting them when the girls were in their teens.

Megan and I laughed ourselves silly once over the "Headwork" exercise on the back page. Those questions always started out ridiculously easy, so that the littlest family members could feel smart (Are you a boy or a girl?) and got harder and harder, to challenge big brother or sister (Joey looked out the window and started to laugh. What might he have seen?).

The item that gave us a moment of hilarity was this: Make a face like that of a hungry horse.

Huh?

I'm not even sure I can make a face like a horse--let alone a hungry horse. Go ahead. You try it.

There was one regular "Highlights" feature that always disturbed me, and it still does. It was a two-panel cartoon called "Goofus and Gallant," featuring a set of identical twin boys with very different temperments. Goofus was always bad, clumsy, and gauche, while his brother Gallant was sweet, talented, and polite.

I remember being bothered by them as a child, but not in the way you'd think: I felt sorry for Goofus. Did he never do anything right? Couldn't they just once find something to praise him for? And I wanted to stomp on prissy Gallant's neatly shined loafers.

Poor Goofus never had a chance--they named him Goofus, for Pete's sake.

And now, I teach a whole classroom full of Goofuses every day, and God help me, I love it.

In a Hurry

2007-03-29T17:04:00.000-04:00

I left school at 3:00 today, headed for a short workout and eager to get home. My mind was on any number of things: a weekend in the company of my daughters, the upcoming spring break (which I hope to spend writing, only writing, for several hours per day), last night's episode of "Lost."

Apparently, my mind was not on my driving, not until I saw those flashing lights in my rear view mirror and looked to see that I was exceeding the speed limit by 14 miles per hour.

I was only a few blocks from school. Many students--including several of my own little delinquents--were walking home along the very street where I was now stopped, my heart thumping alarmingly. Oh geeze, let them not see me being pulled over. Puhleeeeeeze.

The officer who approached my car looked to be about seventeen years old. In fact, I recognized him as a student who had graduated from my school a few years ago. Dang.

He seemed to be smirking. Students began to line up on the sidewalk. I believe they may have been waiting for me to be pulled from the car and made to walk a straight line. Soon there was a crowd of perhaps 30 or 40 teenagers, snickering behind their hands. The local newspaper sent a reporter and cameraman, and a News16 helicopter hovered overhead.

I was given mercy: a verbal warning and an admonition to buckle up and drive carefully.

I can hardly wait to go to school tomorrow.

Thanks for the Warning

2007-03-26T17:12:00.000-04:00

I found another fun title today. It wasn't this, exactly, but pretty close:

Prepare for Impending Chao's

A Voice in the Night

2007-03-18T12:25:00.000-04:00

I wake suddenly in the dead dark of night, my mother's voice ringing in my ears. She has called my name, it seems, and loudly, followed by several exclamation points. My heart pounds into the sheet. I am very awake, and I listen carefully for her voice again, aware that I may have been wakened by something else. It's not Ben, who is softly poo-ing into his pillow. My daughter is home for the weekend, but it's not her: she's far in an upstairs bedroom, and why would she call my first name? Nor is it my daughter's fiance', tucked into another spare room--the voice was distinctly female; in fact, it was my mother's voice.

I remember my Sunday School stories--how the boy Samuel was called several times in the night, by the Lord. He didn't recognise the voice until old Eli told him who (or Who) was calling him. So I hesitantly think, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth, even though I'm pretty sure the Lord doesn't sound like my mother. I do not hear my name again--not the Lord, then.

My heart stops thumping, and I have another thought. You hear stories like this all the time--people who "hear" a loved one at a particular time, only to learn later that just at that time they had fallen, and couldn't get up. I think about that for a moment, but dismiss it: if Mom has fallen, there is little I can do for her--I live two hours away. And why would she call out for me? My thoughts are getting fuzzier as sleep reclaims me, but I think I'll need to blog about this before I surrender to the night once more.

In the morning, I e-mail my mother. "How you doing?" She replies that she's fine, a bit of a cold, nothing remarkable. I hardly think she called out to me at three in the morning for a tissue, and I'm relieved on a few levels. First of all, of course, that Mom's fine. I'd hate it if she'd been seriously ill, or injured, and had called out to me in her distress, and I had simply gone back to sleep.

But I'm also relieved on a philosophical or spiritual level--I'm a skeptic who tends to dismiss those stories as superstitious or somehow un-Christian. Because, really--what explanation can there be for the "I thought of my brother just as he was in a skiing accident" phenomenon other than that somehow the brother's spirit traveled to visit the...visitee. And I don't know of any Biblical basis for the "traveling spirit" experience.

I think of my daughters many, many times thoughout the day. I'm sure that if I kept a record of those times, and compared it to their lives, there would be times when they were experiencing great distress right then--slamming on the brakes to avoid a swerving car, nursing a splitting headache. But there are many, many times, I'm sure, when I think Megan, Megan and she's just sitting at home, having a Diet Coke. See? I'm just a hardened skeptic.

So...those of you who are convinced that Cousin Harvey came to you to say good-bye right before he passed...God bless you, you're probably right. It wouldn't bother me if you are--I kinda hope so, as a matter of fact.

I'm thinking that the voice I heard was my mother, but that she had caught me doing something naughty in my dream. Sorry, mom.

Saving Dwarfs

2007-03-13T17:14:00.000-04:00

I was looking through a list of titles today--it doesn't really matter why, nor where I found the list. What matters is that I found what may be the weirdest title ever written:

Saving Dwarfs from Forlorn Encystment

I looked it up: "encystment" is "the act of enclosing or becoming enclosed in a cyst." Ewwww, and I guess one would feel forlorn in such a circumstance, although I can think of better adjectives.

So I'm happy, I guess, that dwarves are being saved from such a fate. Lucky dwarves. Dwarfs. Whatever.

My Hiro Face*

2007-02-28T18:40:00.000-05:00

If you watch "Heroes", you'll understand this post. If you don't--you should. But this post isn't about "Heroes," but about prayer.

A bit of background: one of the heroes, cutely named "Hiro", is a Japanese man who can stop time--can even reverse time, with certain "givens." But in order for him to do so, he has to make this cute little face. He scrunches his eyes and mouth and strains, as if the effort of pushing hard with his face is what will stop time.

There are a few things that I'm praying hard for right now. All is well--but the kiddos are getting married soon and certain aspects of their future are still up in the air, and I have a friend who's going through some pretty rough times. I'm tempted to pray with a Hiro face, scrunched and straining. Pleeeeeeeeeze. (open eyes, look around, strain again...) Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze. Honestly, if I thought making a Hiro face would pursuade God to act more quickly, or more according to my will, I would do so.

Well, He will not be manipulated, no matter how I strain. But He will act with wisdom and grace, of that I am sure. And He will laugh with affection, I think, when I am unable to resist a little scrunched pleeeze.

*Parts of this post inspired by correspondence with my funny brother.

Teaching Alliteration

2007-02-23T21:15:00.000-05:00

Today was my day to teach alliteration. My students usually learn this pretty quickly; who hasn't done tongue twisters since childhood? They always feel successful and smart on alliteration day.

Because it was Friday, and I was in a good mood, we played a game at the end of the hour--sort of my version of "Wheel of Fortune" using alliterative phrases. But I was feeling whimsical, and I decided to give the game an alliterative name.

I should have gone with "Wheel of Wortune."

But I didn't. I wrote "Feel of Fortune" on the board. That was absolutely hilarious to 16-year-old boys.

In the true spirit of alliteration, chaos commenced.

The Women Only Gym

2007-02-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to lose a certain amount of weight before Jericho's wedding. And I've lost a big chunk of it, but I've been stuck for three dang months. Christmas didn't help, but Christmas was a long time ago, and I've been back on track and Nothing. Is. Working.

So I went and joined one of those "women only" gyms, hoping to kick-start my metabolism or something.

A friend who knows what I'm trying to do just asked me, "How are you enjoying the gym?"

I had to snort, because "enjoying the gym" is not something that I am doing, not one little bit. Going to the gym combines several of the things that I hate most in the world:

1. Exercising. I don't believe anyone who says they love to work out. They are lying.

2. Small talk with other women, all of them strangers. I'm just not good at it--too shy--and although I know I appear aloof or snobbish to them, I have no desire to chitchat. I just want to put on my grim I-am-exercising face, and get it over with. Silently. Don't talk to me.

3. Being away from home. Home is where my favorite things are--Ben, the cat, my computer, Diet Coke, and Survivor. There is nothing even remotely appraoching those treasures in the stupid gym.

But dress #2 has come, and it's beautiful, and it just doesn't quite fit. I have just over 100 days. Back to the gym.

Fourteen, Almost Fifteen

2007-02-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

I was in charge of Saturday School this morning: three hours during which students who have been naughty or have missed too many classes must sit quietly and do something productive. There were four kids on my list, but only one showed up--a fellow I'll call Joe. I don't know Joe, have never had him in my classes, nor even, to be honest, noticed him in the halls.

Joe took a seat and started to read. I worked at my desk. After a bit, he said to me, "Mrs. A., can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," I said, thinking that we were about to discuss his book.

Joe swung around in his chair to face me. "My girlfriend's mother doesn't want her to date me. What do you think I should do?"

Good Lord, I wasn't prepared for that question. I hadn't spoken a dozen words to this kid up until that point: how ya doin, did you bring some work, have a seat.

"Well, Joe, that's a tricky one. Why doesn't she want her daughter to date you?" Please don't tell me about your sex life...

Joe looked at his shoes. "Well, she's only 14, almost 15 next month! And I'm sixteen. She thinks I'm too old. Would you let your daughter date a 16-year-old if she was almost 15?"

I thought for a moment about my 14-year-old daughters, eighth graders, sweet, sassy, full of music and laughter. No, Joe, I would not.

"Fourteen's pretty young, Joe. I think you have to respect what her mom says. Tell you what--why don't you wait a year or so? Then if you still want to date her, her mom will remember you as that nice young man who respected her wishes. You'll get lots of points that way."

I was pretty sure that Joe would have a "yeah, but" reply, but he smiled a little bit and nodded, and turned back to his book.

I'll bet a year seems like a long time to Joe, and he probably was too polite to tell me that I was being old and ridiculous. And a year is a long time, in a world where between one breath and the next one's life can tumble into another reality altogether.

Yet there are times when God tells me why don't you just wait for a bit? You'll get lots of points that way...

Science Disabilty

2007-02-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

My school recently built a "Smart Lab," costing many tens of thousands of dollars. This lab is amazing; at its several stations, students can build and program little robots, forecast and broadcast the weather, fly and land a simulated airplane, and calculate the amount of pressure needed to crush various objects--and that's just scratching the surface. There are about 15 such stations, each with its own computer and the "toys" necessary to operate the station: lasers, construction sets, electronic circuit-makers.

At a recent teacher in-service, we were given the afternoon to explore the Smart Lab. Each station had a little placard with the most minimal of instructions--along the line of "Make the little robot travel from Point A to Point B." We were not told how to do that, just encouraged to "play with" things.

I hated, hated, HATED every moment of that afternoon, but it was valuable to me nevertheless. I learned that day what it meant to be learning disabled in a way that over two decades of teaching leaning disabled students has not taught me.

I tried a few things, but the darn robot wouldn't move. I didn't understand the icons for the computer commands. I tried a few more things. The robot moved, but not in the way I thought I had told it to. When the Smart Lab dude came over to help me, he just said brak brak brak and then left me to "have fun". Then another teacher, one not science-impaired like myself, sat down and got the stupid robot to move after about 30 seconds of fiddling with the keyboard. It looked so easy for him, and I felt dumb, frustrated and angry.

I felt the same way at every single one of the stations that I visited, although I was encouraged at every station to "have fun" and promised that it would be easy.

After about 6 stations, I cut class. I went to my room and worked at my desk, while the smart teachers enjoyed the Smart Lab. I felt crabby.

Being a Wordie

2007-01-31T19:50:00.000-05:00

I'm not particularly good at doing only one thing at a time. When I'm watching TV, I'm also on my laptop. When I'm reading, I'm drinking a Diet Coke. You get the idea. But so far, I haven't had the nerve to take my laptop to church, nor to pop the top of a cold soda just as the sermon begins. I used to write notes to my girlies, or play hangman with them, but since they're gone now (and Ben sits at the soundboard), I have to find other ways to multitask.

Okay, bear with me here--you're going to think I'm silly.

I listen to the sermon--of course I do, the pastor is very good at it. But while I'm listening to his wise words, I'm also playing an alphabet game. I start by listening for a word that begins with "A". I usually get an "A" word really quickly, so I listen for a "B" and then a "C", and so on through the alphabet.

As you might guess, I often get stuck in the same place in the alphabet. No, not "J", there are "J" words a-plenty in Christian sermons. It's more often "Q" that's the sticking point, although about half the time I get past "Q", too. It's those letters after "T" that are hard to come by. My goal is to someday hear a sermon that ends with, I don't know, a zither or something.

I actually got all the way to "Y" one time, when the talk improbably had both a quilt and King Xerxes in it. Made my day.

Check This Out

2007-01-24T22:14:00.000-05:00

Jericho's Blog

Finally!

Message Boards

2007-01-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

There's an online message board that I visit a couple of times a year, just to see what's new in a medical field of interest to me.

I read a post there today from a woman who said, "I don't believe in God, but I would like to believe in the power of prayer."

It's a little bit like saying, "I don't believe in the internet, but I would like to believe that someone out there is reading my message board posts." Absurd on so many levels.

god--i hope u r listening to her prayer. i hope someone shows u 2 her.

Mother of the Bride

2007-01-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

When Megan got married, I ended up with three Mother-of-the-Bride dresses. It's a long story.

I ordered a dress for Jericho's wedding a few weeks ago, in a hopeful size, and it arrived this week. The dress is pretty, the size definitely attainable...but there are problems. Despite having lost over 70 pounds, I am a woman who always will be quite large in the...chestular area. And this dress, pretty as it is, maximizes rather than minimizes my, you know.

So I'm returning it, and I think I've found dress #2. I'm going to order it this week. Stay tuned.

Chapter Nine

2007-01-19T15:38:00.000-05:00

I'm an English teacher, not a science teacher, but they gave me a Biology class this year, for a handful of learning disabled students who were struggling in Mr. P's class.

Since September, I've been dreading Chapter Nine. Human reproduction. I'm the gal who blushes when Shrek kisses Fiona; I didn't want to teach that chapter. I sent home a letter before Christmas, giving parents an "out"--if they didn't want their child to get that information in school, just let me know. Please, please, let me know.

No one did.

So we plowed through it today, a few very quiet, blushing students and their stammering teacher. Everything gets read out loud in that class, and I decided that I'd read the critical paragraphs. Darned if I didn't trip over every body part, making it necessary to repeat them--louder.

After the first section, I stopped. "Anyone have any questions?" Pleeeeease, let them not have any questions...

No one did.

We soldiered on. At the end of the chapter, I passed out diagrams, without making eye contact. "Label all the parts, okay? The picture is on page 207."

When the bell rang for lunch, we all ran for the door.

Sacrament

2007-01-18T16:18:00.001-05:00

The window near Billy’s mattress is cracked, and the breeze that whistles through the glass raises goose bumps on his thin arms. He sits up, awake and listening. Next to him, Sam is still asleep, making sucking noises as if he has not yet completely thrown off babyhood. Little Nicky snuffles from his spot on their shared bed. Billy wrinkles his nose; Sam has soiled the mattress again and Nicky is wearing yesterday’s diaper.

Billy glances toward his mother’s bed, unsure if the silence from her corner is because she is unconscious or simply gone. Her grayish sheet is crumpled, her bed empty. Billy lets out his breath and walks barefooted to the window.

A car cruises by, speakers booming. In the distance, a siren screams. The sky is pale, the sun invisible behind the city’s haze. Two big boys walk past Billy’s building wearing identical orange sneakers. One of them tosses a basketball from hand to hand. Billy watches as the boys turn the corner.

A gnawing emptiness draws Billy to the kitchen. Sam and Nicky are both awake now, whimpering and rubbing their eyes. Pulling a chair over to the counter, Billy stretches toward the cupboard and peers inside.

An opened bag of flour. A bottle of vegetable oil. Canned beets. One waxy square juice box. Spaghetti noodles. Green Jell-o in an envelope. A nearly empty jar of peanut butter.

Billy’s mouth floods at the thought of spaghetti, but he is afraid to boil a pot of water. It will take hours to make Jell-o, he knows, and his brothers have begun to cry, their stomachs as empty as his. He fumbles in the drawer for a can opener, but he only finds a wooden spoon and a little knife. He pokes timidly at the can of beets.

When the crying from the mattress increases, Billy knows that he must feed his brothers soon. If he cannot quiet them, the neighbors will be angry, may even call the police. And if the police come, they might take him away from Sam and Nicky.

So it comes down to flour and oil. Billy takes a cereal bowl and sets it on the counter, then picks a few bugs out of the flour. He spoons flour into the bowl, stopping occasionally to pinch out another mealy intruder. Uncapping the oil, he cautiously pours a thin drizzle which forms a golden pool in the mound of white. He stirs and stirs with the wooden spoon until he has a pasty dough.

Sam wanders into the kitchen, sucking his thumb and clutching a plastic car—a treasure from a Happy Meal eaten weeks ago. He tugs on Billy’s shirt with a wet and grimy hand, whining for food. To quiet his brother, Billy hands him the peanut butter jar and sends him back to Nicky. Soon both little boys are still, and Billy can see that Sam has offered the baby one chubby finger.

With his brothers silent, Billy returns to his task. He finds the skillet and places it on a burner, the blue flame low. The flame worries him a little—his mother would be angry if she caught him using the stove. But his brothers will not be satisfied with peanut butter for long, and they could be alone for hours. He adds a bit of water to the flour and oil and pours the batter into the skillet, where it pops and sizzles. A hot, wheaty odor fills the apartment.

When the smell begins to tickle Billy’s nostrils, he cuts his flatbread into smaller pieces, turning them over in the skillet. A few burnt sections stick to the pan, but he ends up with six oddly-shaped chunks, golden brown and specked with black. He upends the skillet onto the table and blows on the bread with quick puffs. After a few seconds, he takes one of the chunks over to his brothers, who are following his movements with wide eyes.

Billy breaks off a bit of bread and hands some to Sam. It seems to have cooled enough, so he kneels next to Nicky and pushes a few crumbs between his baby brother’s lips.

Twice he returns to the kitchen—once to collect the remaining chunks of flatbread and once for the juice box. The little boys sit side by side on the mattress, and Billy silently holds the purple box as Nicky and Sam drink grape juice from their brother’s hands.

The Little Drummer Boy

2006-12-20T18:37:00.000-05:00

I love so much about Christmas--both the sacred and the secular holidays--so I hope you don't think me cynical or irreverent for this little observation.

You know that Little Drummer Boy song? The
pa RUM pa pum PUM one? I may be the only person in America to say this, but I can't stand that song.

The tune is boring, the words are silly, but most of all, I just keep imagining Mary. She's just given birth, there's straw scratching her back, a bunch of shepherds are gawking, and suddenly some little kid thinks it's a good idea to play the drum. Are you kidding me? The baby's trying to sleep, for the love of...well, you get it.

Saving Dolphins

2006-12-15T18:28:00.000-05:00

The computers at school are set for a home page that mostly gives news headlines and links to the weather, sports scores, and other sites deemed appropriate for high schoolers to view.

One of the headlines this week read: WORLD'S TALLEST MAN SAVES TWO DOLPHINS IN CHINA.

I haven't read the story; I'm afraid that might detract from the charm of that headline. I'm just having fun trying to imagine how many sets of circumstances had to converge for the world's tallest man to be in the same place with two dying dolphins and for him to somehow be able to save them.

If I were a dying dolphin, how would it help me to have a very tall man nearby? Or...did he save them in the spiritual sense, witnessing to them with an open Bible in one hand? Do dolphins have souls? (Yikes, I'm going to need to re-think my theology.) How did they all (tall man, dolphins) all happen to be together in China?

If you know the rest of the story, please don't tell me.

Things I Didn't Like Today

2006-12-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

1. Getting to work and discovering that under fluorescent lights, the socks I thought were black are, in fact, blue.

2. Wilted and brown-edged lettuce.

3. The realization that even in the adult world there are cliques, and that I am not one of the cool kids.

4. Early December in Michigan--gray skies, bare and stark trees, brownish dying grass, coldness without that delicious frostiness that comes later (if we're lucky).

5. Students who cheat.

6. Sad news from a friend.

7. The socks thing again. It bothered me all day.

Drones

2006-12-05T17:27:00.000-05:00

I've believed for some time now that the naked mole rat is surely God's funniest and ugliest creature.

Today my science students were in the lab, exploring a website that features a different science story each week. This week's article is about the naked mole rat, and I learned along with my biology class that these critters are, like bees, eusocial.

New word alert: Eusocial--meaning that there is a queen naked mole rat, and a division of labor among the other naked mole rats, including a whole social stratum of naked mole rats who seem not to do much of anything at all. They are drone naked mole rats.

As you'd expect, the queen gets bigger when she becomes queen and starts her career of making baby naked mole rats. And as you'd also expect, the drone naked mole rats get fat, because they don't do much. They're fat, lazy, naked mole rats.

Oh, and also--they honk when disturbed.

Is It Just Me?

2006-12-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

I can't exactly put my finger on it...but these things just seem wrong:

We went to the mall yesterday--Christmas shopping. At one end of the mall was the usual line to see Santa. At the other was an arrangement of several large cages. Inside the cages: three pairs of baby tigers, some very small (not much bigger than Sophie) and some perhaps 50 pounds or so. People could buy, for $25, eight minutes with the tigers. The money would go toward "saving this endangered species."

And at church this morning--everything was beautifully decorated for Christmas, with lots of greenery and candles, an Advent wreath, a display of the manger scene on the altar. And the large rustic cross in front of the sanctuary was gaily bedecked with hundreds of white lights.

Noel

2006-12-01T11:48:00.000-05:00

The other day, a colleague showed me something in a mail order catalog that she thought I'd love. She knows me well enough to know that I'm a cat person, and that I'm a Christian (perhaps not in that order.) This is what she showed me:

I don't love it, not at all, and don't you dare get me one. I like marshmallows, but that doesn't mean I want to display this in my living room:

(Is it just me, or does it look like Marshmallow Baby Jesus is melting?)

Editing My Blog

2006-11-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

I've been editing this blog a bit--taking out posts that never should have been posted in the first place (mostly lame attempts at humor), and those that represent chapters in my life that I have no need to re-visit, ever. As I've read through the past two years, a few things have occured to me:

1. I used to write better blogs when I was writing every day.

2. I used to get more comments, too.

3. I started this blog as a means of improving as a writer, and as a sort of therapy/spiritual journey. The therapy/spiritual journey thing has worked pretty well. Not sure about the "improving as a writer" bit, especially given the past several months.

4. That device I started early that I thought was ever-so-clever of giving all my posts one-word titles is now proving to be a pain in the rear. I look at the index of blogs in order to figure out what to click "delete" for, and I have no earthly idea what I meant by "Color" or "Sticky" or "Amused."

I'm not fishing for compliments, just making observations.

I'm also in the process of adding those fun little tags that you see below. When you click on one, you'll be taken to a new page in which all related blogs are grouped together in a happy little family. I'm noticing a trend: there are a LOT of blogs with the tags dumb me, life lessons, humor, and food. There are also several about birds. Weird.

I'm still working on tagging old posts; it's a time-consuming process, as I stop to read each one, then read the comments, then decide how to tag it. It's silly, really--who's going to read these? But I have always enjoyed sorting and categorizing things.