When I was a kid on Long Island, I sometimes spent Saturdays picking up soda and beer bottles along the side of the street.
Back then, there were no taxpayer-funded signs advertising who kept the street clean. Children looking for something to do and looking to make a few bucks were more than happy to pick up the refundable bottles.
That’s because, way long before “green” was hip, companies sold their soda, beer and milk in deposit bottles. I remember my parents taking the thick-glass gallon milk bottle to the drive-up Dairy Barn. Before that, the milkman from the local dairy picked them up for refill.
As a matter of fact, around the time I moved to Virginia, New York State made it mandatory for companies to offer a refund for all bottles and cans, whether glass, plastic or aluminum. The year after I moved here, Virginia made it illegal for companies to sell refundable bottles.
What is the reasoning behind that?
It has done nothing but multiply the litter. What a waste. And disposable plastic water bottles? Are you kidding?
So us kids were outdoors getting exercise and keeping our neighborhoods clean with the incentive of gathering a few dollars’ worth of bottles. Our parents did not hire personal trainers to get us to lose weight.
An e-mail from a friend entitled, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day,” reminded me of these things.
Things like washing cloth diapers and hanging them on the line. Rather than using an energy-consuming dryer, our mothers dried their laundry with the wind and the sun.
As a child, I did not have dressers and closets bursting with clothing. As a matter of fact, my mother and Great Grandma Bess made most of my dresses. Mom even made my mini-skirts. Each article of clothing handmade, just for me.
When we remodeled our bathroom last year, the husband removed the old medicine cabinet. In back of the bottom shelf was a thin opening for disposing of razor blades. Rather than throw away the whole razor, people used to slip the used blades into that slot.
Where did the old blades go? We found a slew of them inside the wall.
Another thing we refilled was our pens with ink. I must have more than 100 pens in my house right now. When a pen runs out of ink, I throw it away. When I was younger, I had to go to the stationery store to buy refill cartridges. I still do have a pen or two like that. Hmm. Should I chuck all the disposable pens?
When I was a kid, if we wanted to watch TV, the whole family had to agree on what to watch, because we only had one set. Of course, there were fewer options back then because you had just a few channels. Our small set used a lot less power than families do now, with a flat-screen TV in every room.
In school, when it was hot, the teacher opened the windows. We didn’t die. To cool off, people sat on their front porches in the evening, visiting with their neighbors. (Neighbors are the people who live around you.)
Intersections used to have one traffic light fixture with lights in all four directions. Now an intersection has a minimum of four fixtures and usually many more. We pay the power bill.
Now that I think about it, we were pretty “green” back then. Unpretentiously so.
As a matter of fact, do you know that some people install solar panels on their homes just to impress you? Yup, the panels are not attached to anything. They generate no power. They’re just for show. They are there to impress us with the owner’s environmental consciousness.
That’s why I have contempt for the current “green” movement. It’s a consumer thing, to get consumers to buy things that pretend to be or are better for the environment. Or, better yet, to buy things that are colored green. Still buying and consuming. So stupid.
As soon as I was old enough, my dad began paying me to mow the lawn. Back in the 1960s, that meant a manual push mower. It used no gasoline, just muscle power and endurance. No treadmill or gym membership, no money spent on a cute outfit to look cute while exercising. Now that was a workout.
They still sell manual mowers, for less than $100. So smart for someone with a small lawn.
I dare you.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
When the Sound of Worship Fades Away
As he opened the door, Bruno quickly stepped inside the room, set the empty box on the floor. He shut the door noiselessly before turning on the overhead light. He didn’t want anyone to know he was here at his church office on this Friday night.
Lord knows we’ve talked about this enough, he thought.
Bruno turned first to his bookcase. The shelves were full of slender volumes of sheet music, hymn books and CDs. He reached first for a tattered old book whose bright green cover was taped together. It was full of the old hymns he loved: “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”
When he was a boy, the pastor of his parents’ church had given him the book, seeing how the young lad loved to sing the old songs and seemed to have some talent on the piano. Bruno had played every song in that book at some point or other.
All Bruno wanted to do was sing praises to the Lord. And as the worship leader at his church, that’s what he thought he was supposed to do.
Bruno loved any music that praised the Lord. The old hymns, the psalms set to music, the worship choruses. He loved all styles of music. Classical, rock and roll, bluegrass, jazz …
He’d been so excited when he was asked to lead worship at this growing church. At first he had volunteered. Then, as more and more people began attending services, it became a paid, part-time position.
That’s when things began to sour. Oh, not for Bruno. He was happy planning and playing music. But not everyone was happy with what he was doing. Namely, the older longtime members of the church.
When Bruno came to the church, he, the pastor and the other leaders of the church agreed that “blended worship” offered just the right balance of old and new music for their diverse congregation. And that was fine … for a while. Then, as more and more young people began attending, the leaders decided to add another service, a Sunday night service especially for older teens and 20-somethings.
Since the younger folks preferred rock and roll, Bruno weighted the music at this service more in that genre, while still doing one old hymn every week. Some of the people who came had never gone to church before. Nothing delighted Bruno more than to see them let down their guard and give themselves to worshipping God.
Occasionally some of the older folks would slip in to a Sunday night service to check up on what was going on. They did not like what they saw and heard. Several began to complain to the pastor. One man called the service “slap-happy” and a woman called it “a circus.”
We can’t have that, can we? Bruno was pressured to “tone it down,” even at the Sunday morning service. No more “blended.” Even his contemporary arrangements of the old hymns was condemned.
Since his musical creativity was no longer being called upon, Bruno got bored with his job. The young people got bored, too. They became confused about God and church. Church was supposed to be a refuge from the squabbles of the world, they thought. Disillusioned, many of them left. So did the young families. Bruno could only hope and pray that they did not abandon their newfound faith in God.
He finished packing his books and CDs, the papers in his desk. He secured the plastic cover over his keyboard and set his guitar in its hard case.
There was a knock at the door. He opened it to the pastor’s wife, Joanie.
“Bruno,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t leave. You need to stay and fight for what’s right.”
“But don’t you see, Joanie?” he said. “This fighting is all wrong. This is not being a light to the world. I feel life just draining out of me.”
“But where will you go?” Joanie asked. “Talent like yours should not go to waste.”
Bruno wasn’t ready to go home, where everything would feel so final, so he drove around for awhile, thinking, grieving. It was Friday night and young people were outside the bars, smoking, talking and drinking. They seemed happy. Bruno even spotted a few who had been to the church.
When he saw a sign for “Open Mic Night” at a small pub, Bruno felt a surge of joy. Pulling into the parking lot, he opened his trunk, grabbed his guitar and went inside.
Lord knows we’ve talked about this enough, he thought.
Bruno turned first to his bookcase. The shelves were full of slender volumes of sheet music, hymn books and CDs. He reached first for a tattered old book whose bright green cover was taped together. It was full of the old hymns he loved: “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”
When he was a boy, the pastor of his parents’ church had given him the book, seeing how the young lad loved to sing the old songs and seemed to have some talent on the piano. Bruno had played every song in that book at some point or other.
All Bruno wanted to do was sing praises to the Lord. And as the worship leader at his church, that’s what he thought he was supposed to do.
Bruno loved any music that praised the Lord. The old hymns, the psalms set to music, the worship choruses. He loved all styles of music. Classical, rock and roll, bluegrass, jazz …
He’d been so excited when he was asked to lead worship at this growing church. At first he had volunteered. Then, as more and more people began attending services, it became a paid, part-time position.
That’s when things began to sour. Oh, not for Bruno. He was happy planning and playing music. But not everyone was happy with what he was doing. Namely, the older longtime members of the church.
When Bruno came to the church, he, the pastor and the other leaders of the church agreed that “blended worship” offered just the right balance of old and new music for their diverse congregation. And that was fine … for a while. Then, as more and more young people began attending, the leaders decided to add another service, a Sunday night service especially for older teens and 20-somethings.
Since the younger folks preferred rock and roll, Bruno weighted the music at this service more in that genre, while still doing one old hymn every week. Some of the people who came had never gone to church before. Nothing delighted Bruno more than to see them let down their guard and give themselves to worshipping God.
Occasionally some of the older folks would slip in to a Sunday night service to check up on what was going on. They did not like what they saw and heard. Several began to complain to the pastor. One man called the service “slap-happy” and a woman called it “a circus.”
We can’t have that, can we? Bruno was pressured to “tone it down,” even at the Sunday morning service. No more “blended.” Even his contemporary arrangements of the old hymns was condemned.
Since his musical creativity was no longer being called upon, Bruno got bored with his job. The young people got bored, too. They became confused about God and church. Church was supposed to be a refuge from the squabbles of the world, they thought. Disillusioned, many of them left. So did the young families. Bruno could only hope and pray that they did not abandon their newfound faith in God.
He finished packing his books and CDs, the papers in his desk. He secured the plastic cover over his keyboard and set his guitar in its hard case.
There was a knock at the door. He opened it to the pastor’s wife, Joanie.
“Bruno,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t leave. You need to stay and fight for what’s right.”
“But don’t you see, Joanie?” he said. “This fighting is all wrong. This is not being a light to the world. I feel life just draining out of me.”
“But where will you go?” Joanie asked. “Talent like yours should not go to waste.”
Bruno wasn’t ready to go home, where everything would feel so final, so he drove around for awhile, thinking, grieving. It was Friday night and young people were outside the bars, smoking, talking and drinking. They seemed happy. Bruno even spotted a few who had been to the church.
When he saw a sign for “Open Mic Night” at a small pub, Bruno felt a surge of joy. Pulling into the parking lot, he opened his trunk, grabbed his guitar and went inside.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Becoming A Mother Is Transformative
What happens to a young woman when she becomes a mother? What changes take place in her psyche and her emotions?
In the numerous mother-and-child paintings that grace my office, the women hold their babies close to them, their arms around them. These women, no matter their age, have the quality of being maternal.
Motherly, caring, kind, tender, gentle, affectionate, warm, loving, protective. These are the words my thesaurus lists as synonyms for the word “maternal.”
Also, among the Madonna paintings on the walls and shelves are two photographs, one of my daughter with her eldest son, one of my daughter-in-law with first daughter. I knew both of these women before they had children. Before they became pregnant, I would not use the maternal characteristics to describe them—or myself—but there’s no doubt about it now.
Becoming a mother is transformative.
When does it start? Watch any pregnant woman as she rubs her hands over her swollen belly. Observe how she takes care of herself. She takes vitamins, eats healthier foods, quits smoking, goes to the doctor for check-ups. All for the sake of her child. Yes, she is already a mother.
(Case in point. As I write this, I’ve just gotten a text message from my daughter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, telling me she’s e-mailed something for me to read. I have a deadline to meet. The wireless Internet is turned off so I won’t be distracted by checking e-mails or the like. If this message was from a friend or someone at work or from anyone else but one of my children, I would easily wait until I have finished my present task. But this is one of my children who needs something from me… Okay. I checked. It can wait.)
I cannot speak for my daughter or my daughter-in-law, but I know for myself that I would be quite a different person were it not for having borne children. My goals and everything about my life were all about me, what I wanted.
Recently a young friend confided in me about an abortion she had years ago. The baby was conceived in a one-night stand. She felt she had no choice but to abort it. Yet even as she went through the steps of seeking the abortion, talking with the clinic staff and filling out the paperwork, she felt deeply conflicted.
For several years afterward, when she saw a pregnant woman or heard the sound of a baby’s cry, she felt anguish. Why should she feel this way about fetal tissue? Because when she had the abortion—mere weeks into her pregnancy—she was already a mother.
My friend did eventually find help at a post-abortion ministry, in a small Bible study group with other women who’d had a similar experience. She found forgiveness from God, through Jesus Christ, and was able to forgive herself. She has a child now and has found much joy in being a mother.
Many of you know my own story, of how, when I discovered I was pregnant at age 18, the doctor asked me in the same breath whether I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. I’d had no plans of ever becoming a mother. I did not like or want children. I always knew that if I became pregnant, abortion was the only solution. Yet when the day came, I cried at the thought of aborting my baby, Heidi.
Heidi, my curly-haired blonde girl, brilliant and strong and funny. The mother of my two grandsons. She and I are working on making a quilt together. We go to concerts together. She has always been a joy.
On Mother’s Day, as moms, we get cards that contain the maternal words. We are thanked for being motherly, caring, kind, tender, gentle, affectionate, warm, loving, protective.
As if we have a choice.
In the numerous mother-and-child paintings that grace my office, the women hold their babies close to them, their arms around them. These women, no matter their age, have the quality of being maternal.
Motherly, caring, kind, tender, gentle, affectionate, warm, loving, protective. These are the words my thesaurus lists as synonyms for the word “maternal.”
Also, among the Madonna paintings on the walls and shelves are two photographs, one of my daughter with her eldest son, one of my daughter-in-law with first daughter. I knew both of these women before they had children. Before they became pregnant, I would not use the maternal characteristics to describe them—or myself—but there’s no doubt about it now.
Becoming a mother is transformative.
When does it start? Watch any pregnant woman as she rubs her hands over her swollen belly. Observe how she takes care of herself. She takes vitamins, eats healthier foods, quits smoking, goes to the doctor for check-ups. All for the sake of her child. Yes, she is already a mother.
(Case in point. As I write this, I’ve just gotten a text message from my daughter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, telling me she’s e-mailed something for me to read. I have a deadline to meet. The wireless Internet is turned off so I won’t be distracted by checking e-mails or the like. If this message was from a friend or someone at work or from anyone else but one of my children, I would easily wait until I have finished my present task. But this is one of my children who needs something from me… Okay. I checked. It can wait.)
I cannot speak for my daughter or my daughter-in-law, but I know for myself that I would be quite a different person were it not for having borne children. My goals and everything about my life were all about me, what I wanted.
Recently a young friend confided in me about an abortion she had years ago. The baby was conceived in a one-night stand. She felt she had no choice but to abort it. Yet even as she went through the steps of seeking the abortion, talking with the clinic staff and filling out the paperwork, she felt deeply conflicted.
For several years afterward, when she saw a pregnant woman or heard the sound of a baby’s cry, she felt anguish. Why should she feel this way about fetal tissue? Because when she had the abortion—mere weeks into her pregnancy—she was already a mother.
My friend did eventually find help at a post-abortion ministry, in a small Bible study group with other women who’d had a similar experience. She found forgiveness from God, through Jesus Christ, and was able to forgive herself. She has a child now and has found much joy in being a mother.
Many of you know my own story, of how, when I discovered I was pregnant at age 18, the doctor asked me in the same breath whether I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. I’d had no plans of ever becoming a mother. I did not like or want children. I always knew that if I became pregnant, abortion was the only solution. Yet when the day came, I cried at the thought of aborting my baby, Heidi.
Heidi, my curly-haired blonde girl, brilliant and strong and funny. The mother of my two grandsons. She and I are working on making a quilt together. We go to concerts together. She has always been a joy.
On Mother’s Day, as moms, we get cards that contain the maternal words. We are thanked for being motherly, caring, kind, tender, gentle, affectionate, warm, loving, protective.
As if we have a choice.
Friday, April 22, 2011
No Escape from Death
On Good Friday, the Rev. David Smith woke up, put on his swimsuit, donned his regular clothing over it, stealthily left the house, and drove three hours to the beach. He knew his wife would assume he’d gone to his office for some early morning meditation on this high holy day. His secretary would assume he’d lingered at home this morning for the same reason. His cell phone was off.
Smith had grown up on the beach, another beach on another coast. He always missed it but rarely visited anymore. Today was different. Today he wanted to escape Good Friday’s rituals of suffering and death.
He found a coffee shop right on the beach. By now, the place contained just a few tables of retired men, out from under their wives’ feet. He bought a tall Kenyan blend, grabbed a thick newspaper, and settled down by the window.
There’s no place I’d rather be right now, he thought, rifling through the paper. He pulled out the Culture section, scanning the photos of art exhibits and authors. He set down the open paper and looked out the window. Dotted up and down the waterline, several men were surf casting. A group of young people, two in wetsuits, toted surfboards.
It was a rough day. The surf thundered as it tumbled to the shore. His eyes went out further, over the water, to the horizon. It seems to go on forever into the unknown, yet there is another side. He tried to conjure the image from his study wall of the world map, to picture what country lie directly across the latitude of the Atlantic.
Back to the newspaper, Smith read a review of Rob Bell’s controversial book, “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” Several of his church members had asked him about this. Christians were lining up militantly on either side, charging at one another with words as bullets, grenades and bayonets, looking down on each other with disdain. His standard reply was, “I have not read the book.” He hadn’t.
He had addressed the issue indirectly last Sunday in his sermon from Galatians 5:13-15: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” The sinful nature, he explained, is pride, which often surfaces as a need to be right.
Just then there was a commotion at the shoreline. People—the fishermen and young people—ran back and forth, yelling, pointing. Smith hurried out to the front deck of the coffee shop, peering out to see what was wrong. There it was. A surfboard shot straight up into the air, suspended for a moment, then fell back onto the waves. Where was its owner?
Smith descended the several flights of stairs and headed a few hundred feet down the beach to the lifeguard stand. Yanking open the supply box, he picked up the binoculars and climbed up the stand. He instantly spotted the surfer’s head bobbing on the water beyond the breakers. The young man struggled to keep afloat, his arms flailing.
Smith jumped off the stand, pulled out the rope from the supply box and sped down the beach to the distraught group. He ripped off his shoes, shirt and jeans. He tied one end of the rope around his waist. He handed the roll to the strongest looking man in the crowd, then dove into the surf.
As a lifeguard in his youth, he’d been a strong swimmer. He’d tried to maintain that strength at the local pool by doing laps several times a week. It was not the same as ocean swimming but now he hoped it was enough. Where his strength ended, adrenalin took over. He made it out past the breakers and looked around. Nothing. He looked toward the group on the shore. They were still and silent.
Smith kept swimming back and forth, searching. After about 15 minutes, he was joined by several lifeguards in a rescue boat, who pulled alongside him, hauling him into the boat. He was tired. Back on shore, the four young people wept, hugged Smith and thanked him for his efforts to save their friend.
Driving home, Smith could not rid his thoughts of death.
Smith had grown up on the beach, another beach on another coast. He always missed it but rarely visited anymore. Today was different. Today he wanted to escape Good Friday’s rituals of suffering and death.
He found a coffee shop right on the beach. By now, the place contained just a few tables of retired men, out from under their wives’ feet. He bought a tall Kenyan blend, grabbed a thick newspaper, and settled down by the window.
There’s no place I’d rather be right now, he thought, rifling through the paper. He pulled out the Culture section, scanning the photos of art exhibits and authors. He set down the open paper and looked out the window. Dotted up and down the waterline, several men were surf casting. A group of young people, two in wetsuits, toted surfboards.
It was a rough day. The surf thundered as it tumbled to the shore. His eyes went out further, over the water, to the horizon. It seems to go on forever into the unknown, yet there is another side. He tried to conjure the image from his study wall of the world map, to picture what country lie directly across the latitude of the Atlantic.
Back to the newspaper, Smith read a review of Rob Bell’s controversial book, “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” Several of his church members had asked him about this. Christians were lining up militantly on either side, charging at one another with words as bullets, grenades and bayonets, looking down on each other with disdain. His standard reply was, “I have not read the book.” He hadn’t.
He had addressed the issue indirectly last Sunday in his sermon from Galatians 5:13-15: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” The sinful nature, he explained, is pride, which often surfaces as a need to be right.
Just then there was a commotion at the shoreline. People—the fishermen and young people—ran back and forth, yelling, pointing. Smith hurried out to the front deck of the coffee shop, peering out to see what was wrong. There it was. A surfboard shot straight up into the air, suspended for a moment, then fell back onto the waves. Where was its owner?
Smith descended the several flights of stairs and headed a few hundred feet down the beach to the lifeguard stand. Yanking open the supply box, he picked up the binoculars and climbed up the stand. He instantly spotted the surfer’s head bobbing on the water beyond the breakers. The young man struggled to keep afloat, his arms flailing.
Smith jumped off the stand, pulled out the rope from the supply box and sped down the beach to the distraught group. He ripped off his shoes, shirt and jeans. He tied one end of the rope around his waist. He handed the roll to the strongest looking man in the crowd, then dove into the surf.
As a lifeguard in his youth, he’d been a strong swimmer. He’d tried to maintain that strength at the local pool by doing laps several times a week. It was not the same as ocean swimming but now he hoped it was enough. Where his strength ended, adrenalin took over. He made it out past the breakers and looked around. Nothing. He looked toward the group on the shore. They were still and silent.
Smith kept swimming back and forth, searching. After about 15 minutes, he was joined by several lifeguards in a rescue boat, who pulled alongside him, hauling him into the boat. He was tired. Back on shore, the four young people wept, hugged Smith and thanked him for his efforts to save their friend.
Driving home, Smith could not rid his thoughts of death.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Enlightened Sexism: Is Feminism's Work Done?
At age 15, I was part of a sit-in. One morning in 1969, I crowded with other girls into the lobby of my high school, sat down and refused to move until I had what we wanted: the right to wear pants to school.
And get this. The blue jeans I wore to school that day? They were boys’ jeans. Because back then no manufacturers made dungarees for girls.
In a speech Wednesday at JMU, Susan J. Douglas recalled that when she was 18, women could not get credit cards or take out mortgages. So things have changed a lot for women, she admits.
Douglas, author of “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done,” says our culture gives girls and women some very mixed messages about who they are. On the one hand, you have women playing powerful roles on TV shows, starring as news anchors, lawyers, doctors, police chiefs and judges. In the last presidential election, a woman ran for the top seat and another ran for vice-president.
The reality is that not many women really work in those roles. Women today fill the same jobs they did 100 years ago, as secretaries, nurses, maids, waitresses and schoolteachers. Does college make a difference? A year out of college, Douglas cites, women earn 80 percent of their male counterparts. Ten years out, they earn 69 percent of what men make.
“And if girls and women really have come so far,” says Douglas, “and full equality has truly been achieved, why is it that K-Mart sells outfits for four-year-old girls that look like something out of Fredericks of Hollywood?”
Douglas says much of the media is over-representing women as having made it in the high-profile professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort. At the same time, there’s a “resurgence of retrograde dreck clogging our cultural arteries,” like The Man Show, Girls Gone Wild and TV specials featuring Victoria’s Secret bras and panties.
“But even this fare,” she writes in her book, “which insists that young women should dress like strippers and have the mental capacities of a vole, was presented as empowering, because while the scantily clad or bare-breasted women may have seemed to be objectified, they were really on top, because now they had chosen to be sex objects and men were supposedly nothing more than their helpless, ogling, crotch-driven slaves.”
By some strange twist in logic, in the 1960s, girlie magazines were sexist, but now pornography empowers women?
Douglas writes, “In Sex and the City, with its characters who were successful professionals by day and Kama Sutra masters by night, there was no such thing as the double standard: women had as much sexual freedom, and maybe even more kinky sex, than men. Cosmo isn’t for passive girls waiting for the right guy to find them; it’s the magazine for the ‘Fun, Fearless Female’ who is also proud to be, as one cover put it, a ‘Sex Genius.’ Have a look at O! The magazine is one giant, all-encompassing, throbbing zone of self-fulfillment for women where everything from pillows to celadon-colored notebooks (but only if purchased and used properly) are empowering and everything is possible.”
Oh, and in addition to being a “sex genius,” the other most powerful thing women can do is shop. “Buying stuff — the right stuff, a lot of stuff — emerged as the dominant way to empower ourselves,” writes Douglas. Does shopping make you feel powerful?
Douglas contends that the media offers women fantasies of power. But, ah, seeing the irony in all this also offers a fantasy of power. Watching a show like Jersey Shore and ridiculing the girls also feels empowering, says Douglas. It offers women a form of pleasure in that oh-so-feminine catty sort of way. So you think you’re not being seduced by it but … you are still watching it, aren’t you?
So all this is driven by two premises, says Douglas. One is “embedded feminism” that’s woven into our culture. We’ve made so much progress in 40 years and there’s no more to be done. We’re equal. That’s it.
The other is “enlightened sexism,” which keeps women in their place. Because in spite of all our professional, academic, athletic, artistic and you-name-it success, if our faces (well made-up), hair (straight, shiny) and body (thin, large-breasted) are not perfect, we are failures.
Isn’t that what most of us think?
And get this. The blue jeans I wore to school that day? They were boys’ jeans. Because back then no manufacturers made dungarees for girls.
In a speech Wednesday at JMU, Susan J. Douglas recalled that when she was 18, women could not get credit cards or take out mortgages. So things have changed a lot for women, she admits.
Douglas, author of “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done,” says our culture gives girls and women some very mixed messages about who they are. On the one hand, you have women playing powerful roles on TV shows, starring as news anchors, lawyers, doctors, police chiefs and judges. In the last presidential election, a woman ran for the top seat and another ran for vice-president.
The reality is that not many women really work in those roles. Women today fill the same jobs they did 100 years ago, as secretaries, nurses, maids, waitresses and schoolteachers. Does college make a difference? A year out of college, Douglas cites, women earn 80 percent of their male counterparts. Ten years out, they earn 69 percent of what men make.
“And if girls and women really have come so far,” says Douglas, “and full equality has truly been achieved, why is it that K-Mart sells outfits for four-year-old girls that look like something out of Fredericks of Hollywood?”
Douglas says much of the media is over-representing women as having made it in the high-profile professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort. At the same time, there’s a “resurgence of retrograde dreck clogging our cultural arteries,” like The Man Show, Girls Gone Wild and TV specials featuring Victoria’s Secret bras and panties.
“But even this fare,” she writes in her book, “which insists that young women should dress like strippers and have the mental capacities of a vole, was presented as empowering, because while the scantily clad or bare-breasted women may have seemed to be objectified, they were really on top, because now they had chosen to be sex objects and men were supposedly nothing more than their helpless, ogling, crotch-driven slaves.”
By some strange twist in logic, in the 1960s, girlie magazines were sexist, but now pornography empowers women?
Douglas writes, “In Sex and the City, with its characters who were successful professionals by day and Kama Sutra masters by night, there was no such thing as the double standard: women had as much sexual freedom, and maybe even more kinky sex, than men. Cosmo isn’t for passive girls waiting for the right guy to find them; it’s the magazine for the ‘Fun, Fearless Female’ who is also proud to be, as one cover put it, a ‘Sex Genius.’ Have a look at O! The magazine is one giant, all-encompassing, throbbing zone of self-fulfillment for women where everything from pillows to celadon-colored notebooks (but only if purchased and used properly) are empowering and everything is possible.”
Oh, and in addition to being a “sex genius,” the other most powerful thing women can do is shop. “Buying stuff — the right stuff, a lot of stuff — emerged as the dominant way to empower ourselves,” writes Douglas. Does shopping make you feel powerful?
Douglas contends that the media offers women fantasies of power. But, ah, seeing the irony in all this also offers a fantasy of power. Watching a show like Jersey Shore and ridiculing the girls also feels empowering, says Douglas. It offers women a form of pleasure in that oh-so-feminine catty sort of way. So you think you’re not being seduced by it but … you are still watching it, aren’t you?
So all this is driven by two premises, says Douglas. One is “embedded feminism” that’s woven into our culture. We’ve made so much progress in 40 years and there’s no more to be done. We’re equal. That’s it.
The other is “enlightened sexism,” which keeps women in their place. Because in spite of all our professional, academic, athletic, artistic and you-name-it success, if our faces (well made-up), hair (straight, shiny) and body (thin, large-breasted) are not perfect, we are failures.
Isn’t that what most of us think?
Friday, April 01, 2011
An Encounter With Troy Aikman
So a couple weeks ago, on a Saturday afternoon, in the mail came a flyer about a business that rents huge-screen TVs on a weekly basis.
And when I say huge, I mean huge. You get 55 inches of LCD 1080p 120Hz HDTV—delivery and set-up included—for only … are you ready for this … $29.99.99.99 per week. For an extra $7 you can rent a TV stand to put it on, available in a variety of styles. Oops! Sorry! Not a mere everyday typical run-of-the-mill variety, but a wide variety. Wide.
Other merchandise available to rent are washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, living room sets, computers and bedroom sets. And for an extra $13 per week, they’ll throw in the mattress.
On the front of the flyer are two hunks of manhood holding a small sign, one on either side. I recognize the one man. Who has not heard of Hulk Hogan, the “pro” wrestler? But I do not know who the other man is.
“Who is Troy Aikman?” I ask the husband.
The husband says he used to be a quarterback for some “football” team. I forget which or when and I don’t know what a quarterback is. I mean, I’ve heard about quarterbacks all my life, but I don’t know what they actually do.
But get this. Later, that night, we’re out somewhere and someone starts talking about … Troy Aikman! That’s the second time today! I look at the husband like … what? This has to be God, right?
Is this a sign that I should rent the 55-inch LCD 1080p 120Hz HDTV? Or am I supposed to rent one of the other products? Or am I supposed to write a column about Troy Aikman? How can I know what this means?
Why would Troy Aikman and Hulk Hogan be on this flyer, I wonder. Some people might see them as real manly men. Both were in sports that require speed, agility, strength, power, tenacity, muscle. All which add up to pure masculinity.
Also, in both “football” and “pro” wrestling the athletes get knocked around. Don’t their brains suffer some trauma? Does a helmet make it safe to ram your head against another head over and over for years?
In an attempt to discover the deeper meaning of this double encounter with Troy Aikman, I look him up on Wikipedia. First off, his photo looks like he spends a lot of time in the tanning booth. You know the look, so distinct from a real sunshine tan. I tend to group individuals who do this frequently into a little family. So no matter what their name is, I call such a person Miss Tanning Booth, Mrs. Tanning Booth or, in this case, Mr. Tanning Booth.
Aikman is a pure sports guy. The New York Mets baseball team offered him a contract right out of high school. He chose instead to pursue “football” at the University of Oklahoma, then transferred to UCLA where he played with the Bruins. From college he went to the Dallas Cowboys. Then he had this 11-year career in “football,” breaking records and leading the team to glory over and over.
After retiring, he became a sports commentator on FOX, winning an Emmy Award for his work. He started a weekly radio show. He’s the head of the Troy Aikman Foundation, a charity that benefits children. In 2006, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Later he was inducted into the College Hall of Fame. He bought a racecar and founded the Hall of Fame Racing in 2005. He is co-owner of the San Diego Padres.
Then there’s this: “As of fall 2010, Aikman is a co-spokesman for [a rental business] along with Hulk Hogan.”
Why? Why, Troy, why?
It’s like William Shatner in the Priceline ads. Every time I see one, I think, “Come on, Bill, you’re better than this.”
Why does a guy like Aikman, with such an illustrious career, obviously rolling in the dough, busy with family, public appearances, board of directors work, sportscasting, team ownership and on and on start appearing on flyers for TV rentals?
Aha! In his Wikipedia bio it says, “Aikman's final game was a home game against the Washington Redskins. Aikman was hit by linebacker LaVar Arrington and suffered the 10th concussion of his career.”
That answers that question. But the puzzle still remains as to why I encountered Aikman twice in one day. The answer can only be destiny. I was destined to write about him for April Fool’s Day.
And when I say huge, I mean huge. You get 55 inches of LCD 1080p 120Hz HDTV—delivery and set-up included—for only … are you ready for this … $29.99.99.99 per week. For an extra $7 you can rent a TV stand to put it on, available in a variety of styles. Oops! Sorry! Not a mere everyday typical run-of-the-mill variety, but a wide variety. Wide.
Other merchandise available to rent are washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, living room sets, computers and bedroom sets. And for an extra $13 per week, they’ll throw in the mattress.
On the front of the flyer are two hunks of manhood holding a small sign, one on either side. I recognize the one man. Who has not heard of Hulk Hogan, the “pro” wrestler? But I do not know who the other man is.
“Who is Troy Aikman?” I ask the husband.
The husband says he used to be a quarterback for some “football” team. I forget which or when and I don’t know what a quarterback is. I mean, I’ve heard about quarterbacks all my life, but I don’t know what they actually do.
But get this. Later, that night, we’re out somewhere and someone starts talking about … Troy Aikman! That’s the second time today! I look at the husband like … what? This has to be God, right?
Is this a sign that I should rent the 55-inch LCD 1080p 120Hz HDTV? Or am I supposed to rent one of the other products? Or am I supposed to write a column about Troy Aikman? How can I know what this means?
Why would Troy Aikman and Hulk Hogan be on this flyer, I wonder. Some people might see them as real manly men. Both were in sports that require speed, agility, strength, power, tenacity, muscle. All which add up to pure masculinity.
Also, in both “football” and “pro” wrestling the athletes get knocked around. Don’t their brains suffer some trauma? Does a helmet make it safe to ram your head against another head over and over for years?
In an attempt to discover the deeper meaning of this double encounter with Troy Aikman, I look him up on Wikipedia. First off, his photo looks like he spends a lot of time in the tanning booth. You know the look, so distinct from a real sunshine tan. I tend to group individuals who do this frequently into a little family. So no matter what their name is, I call such a person Miss Tanning Booth, Mrs. Tanning Booth or, in this case, Mr. Tanning Booth.
Aikman is a pure sports guy. The New York Mets baseball team offered him a contract right out of high school. He chose instead to pursue “football” at the University of Oklahoma, then transferred to UCLA where he played with the Bruins. From college he went to the Dallas Cowboys. Then he had this 11-year career in “football,” breaking records and leading the team to glory over and over.
After retiring, he became a sports commentator on FOX, winning an Emmy Award for his work. He started a weekly radio show. He’s the head of the Troy Aikman Foundation, a charity that benefits children. In 2006, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Later he was inducted into the College Hall of Fame. He bought a racecar and founded the Hall of Fame Racing in 2005. He is co-owner of the San Diego Padres.
Then there’s this: “As of fall 2010, Aikman is a co-spokesman for [a rental business] along with Hulk Hogan.”
Why? Why, Troy, why?
It’s like William Shatner in the Priceline ads. Every time I see one, I think, “Come on, Bill, you’re better than this.”
Why does a guy like Aikman, with such an illustrious career, obviously rolling in the dough, busy with family, public appearances, board of directors work, sportscasting, team ownership and on and on start appearing on flyers for TV rentals?
Aha! In his Wikipedia bio it says, “Aikman's final game was a home game against the Washington Redskins. Aikman was hit by linebacker LaVar Arrington and suffered the 10th concussion of his career.”
That answers that question. But the puzzle still remains as to why I encountered Aikman twice in one day. The answer can only be destiny. I was destined to write about him for April Fool’s Day.
Monday, March 28, 2011
It's an Early Spring on the Farm
What an early spring we’re having.
Here at 2 Pond Farm, our maple syrup-making was shorter than usual because the maple trees started budding. It’s during that interim period between winter and spring, when the nights are still cold and the days get warm, that the sap flows. Some years, this weather has lasted for up to five weeks, but this year it lasted only two weeks.
Still, we did get a few gallons of syrup and now, spring is here.
Through the stand of still-bare trees, a patch of daffodils is blooming in the woods. The forsythia outside my kitchen window is aflame with yellow. Onion grass (delicious chopped into mashed potatoes) grows in tufts around the yard. The budding lilacs are waiting their turn.
The husband has plowed the fields. When it stops raining for a few days, he can finish tilling the large plots. However he did plant some peas. Lots of other early-planting seeds have yet to go in. Next week, we’ll put 200 strawberry plants in the ground, as well as some new berry vines.
Last weekend I planted some Tennessee orchid ferns, given to me by some friends. In the early spring they are supposed to pop from the ground as fiddleheads, a delicacy in some states similar to the way we enjoy morel mushrooms here.
Then there’s the chore of cleaning the yard: raking up leaves, pine needles and small sticks; clearing the dead growth in the flower beds; pulling out honeysuckle before it goes rampant.
The nights are warm enough now to keep the bedroom window open a crack. The breeze carries with it the all-night broadcast of Virginia peepers (thanks to the “front pond” the husband created years ago).
I found a few eloquent quotes about this annual event online in people’s blogs:
“And there is now a grand chorus of Virginia peepers in all the ponds and creeks around us!”
“As I drove in our nearly half-mile long driveway, the sound of the Virginia peepers overpowered my radio, even with my truck windows rolled-up. What a beautiful sound.”
I wanted to see a spring peeper but they are hard to spot, so I looked them up in our book, “Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia,” published by the UNC Press Chapel Hill in 1980. We bought this book when we lived in the hollow, where the spring peepers were loud enough to keep you awake at night. That is, until you got used to the sound. At first I thought they were insects.
The scientific name for these little guys is hyla crucifer, so named because of the prominent dark X marking on their backs. They can be tan, brown or gray. They also have large toepads to help them get a grip as they climb.
The beautiful sound is a mating call. It is the male peeper calling for a female, all night long. The females come to the male, mate, and then lay eggs on underwater sticks and plants. In 12 days, the baby peepers are born. The tadpoles eat algae and tiny organisms in the water.
In three to four months, the tadpoles undergo metamorphosis and become adults. Then they take up residence in the woods, where they come out at night to look for food: beetles, ants, flies and spiders. In the winter, they hibernate under logs or loose bark on trees. For their size, they are quite sturdy: They can survive having most of their body frozen.
Getting a bit off subject here, the list of the peepers’ prey I found on a website contains some fascinating names. Like daring jumping spider, rabid wolf spider, horned fungus beetle, six-spotted tiger beetle and Asian tiger mosquito.
So much for Virginia peepers.
On the farm, the next thing we’ll harvest (I think) is asparagus. The husband has always remembered that it comes up around the time of his father’s birthday in late April. In years past, we’ve had asparagus through July, enough for ourselves and to share with other family members. However, the husband has been expanding the patch, so it will be exciting to see what comes up this year. The roots take three years to get established, so it takes patience.
We also have wild asparagus growing along the fencerows on the property. These are especially delicious. One plant by the “back pond” grows very thick and tall stalks, but tender as butter. Go figure.
Ah, Spring! All around us and in our hearts!
Here at 2 Pond Farm, our maple syrup-making was shorter than usual because the maple trees started budding. It’s during that interim period between winter and spring, when the nights are still cold and the days get warm, that the sap flows. Some years, this weather has lasted for up to five weeks, but this year it lasted only two weeks.
Still, we did get a few gallons of syrup and now, spring is here.
Through the stand of still-bare trees, a patch of daffodils is blooming in the woods. The forsythia outside my kitchen window is aflame with yellow. Onion grass (delicious chopped into mashed potatoes) grows in tufts around the yard. The budding lilacs are waiting their turn.
The husband has plowed the fields. When it stops raining for a few days, he can finish tilling the large plots. However he did plant some peas. Lots of other early-planting seeds have yet to go in. Next week, we’ll put 200 strawberry plants in the ground, as well as some new berry vines.
Last weekend I planted some Tennessee orchid ferns, given to me by some friends. In the early spring they are supposed to pop from the ground as fiddleheads, a delicacy in some states similar to the way we enjoy morel mushrooms here.
Then there’s the chore of cleaning the yard: raking up leaves, pine needles and small sticks; clearing the dead growth in the flower beds; pulling out honeysuckle before it goes rampant.
The nights are warm enough now to keep the bedroom window open a crack. The breeze carries with it the all-night broadcast of Virginia peepers (thanks to the “front pond” the husband created years ago).
I found a few eloquent quotes about this annual event online in people’s blogs:
“And there is now a grand chorus of Virginia peepers in all the ponds and creeks around us!”
“As I drove in our nearly half-mile long driveway, the sound of the Virginia peepers overpowered my radio, even with my truck windows rolled-up. What a beautiful sound.”
I wanted to see a spring peeper but they are hard to spot, so I looked them up in our book, “Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia,” published by the UNC Press Chapel Hill in 1980. We bought this book when we lived in the hollow, where the spring peepers were loud enough to keep you awake at night. That is, until you got used to the sound. At first I thought they were insects.
The scientific name for these little guys is hyla crucifer, so named because of the prominent dark X marking on their backs. They can be tan, brown or gray. They also have large toepads to help them get a grip as they climb.
The beautiful sound is a mating call. It is the male peeper calling for a female, all night long. The females come to the male, mate, and then lay eggs on underwater sticks and plants. In 12 days, the baby peepers are born. The tadpoles eat algae and tiny organisms in the water.
In three to four months, the tadpoles undergo metamorphosis and become adults. Then they take up residence in the woods, where they come out at night to look for food: beetles, ants, flies and spiders. In the winter, they hibernate under logs or loose bark on trees. For their size, they are quite sturdy: They can survive having most of their body frozen.
Getting a bit off subject here, the list of the peepers’ prey I found on a website contains some fascinating names. Like daring jumping spider, rabid wolf spider, horned fungus beetle, six-spotted tiger beetle and Asian tiger mosquito.
So much for Virginia peepers.
On the farm, the next thing we’ll harvest (I think) is asparagus. The husband has always remembered that it comes up around the time of his father’s birthday in late April. In years past, we’ve had asparagus through July, enough for ourselves and to share with other family members. However, the husband has been expanding the patch, so it will be exciting to see what comes up this year. The roots take three years to get established, so it takes patience.
We also have wild asparagus growing along the fencerows on the property. These are especially delicious. One plant by the “back pond” grows very thick and tall stalks, but tender as butter. Go figure.
Ah, Spring! All around us and in our hearts!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Society Must Support Mothers, Too
A world in which a mother feels she must be rid of her unborn child in order to live well is not a fair world for women.
As usual, I did not know about International Women’s Day until it was halfway over. The reminder, again, came from my sister in Ireland.
Never mind that it’s been observed around the world since 1911. On March 19, more than one million women and men attended rallies in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to campaign for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained and hold public office.
But it was the fire a few days later that really got people’s attention. On March 25, 146 garment workers—mostly women—died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City because the exit doors were locked.
People paid more attention to working conditions and labor legislation after the Triangle Fire, and New York legislators quickly made changes to the labor laws. IWD subsequently focused on these issues in the United States.
IWD was first observed on March 8 in 1913, when, on the eve of World War I, Russian women campaigned for peace. In 1914, women across Europe followed suit, protesting the war together.
“When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life,” said Clara Zetkin, a German socialist who first had the idea for an IWD.
In 1917, Russian women hit the streets once again, striking for “bread and peace” in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers. Political leaders opposed the strike, but four days later—March 8—the Czar was forced to resign and the provisional government granted women the right to vote.
The United Nations in 1977 adopted a resolution setting March 8 as United Nations Day for Women’s Rights, to be observed in its member states. In this year’s statement, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon writes, “Only through women’s full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve the sustainable, peaceful and just society promised in the United Nations Charter.”
Today, in many countries—such as Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Mongolia, Russia and Vietnam—IWD is a legal holiday. In the U.S., we’ve designated March as Womens’ History Month, when events and observances are held.
Thanks to the courageous women before us, today we have the right to vote, to work in any profession we want, to run marathons, to be paid a fair wage. And the work continues. In Washington, D.C., IWD events included panel discussions of policies concerning immigrant women, lobbying for education and economic support, and a photo exhibit of international women.
We’ve come a long way. But in many ways, it’s still a man’s world. One issue in particular still needs much more attention. Because mothers are women, too.
“There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as [abortion],” wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Revolution. “But where shall it be found, at least where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?”
In another The Revolution article, Martha Gage wrote, “This subject lies deeper down in women’s wrongs than any other. … I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex.”
Women should have all the same civil rights as men, but women should not live as men. Women should live well as women.
As a society, we must offer support to mothers as mothers so they do not have to choose between the life of their unborn child and their own lives. It is distressful for a woman to be forced into making that decision.
“Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women,” says Serrin Foster, founder and president of Feminists for Life.
Unfortunately, many women ignore International Women’s Day because they equate a passion for women’s rights with the “pro-choice” agenda.
“The myth that to be a feminist is to be pro-choice has forced many women to resign from the name of feminism, to settle back bruised into the silence of the margins,” says the President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary McAleese.
I, for one, refuse to choose.
As usual, I did not know about International Women’s Day until it was halfway over. The reminder, again, came from my sister in Ireland.
Never mind that it’s been observed around the world since 1911. On March 19, more than one million women and men attended rallies in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to campaign for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained and hold public office.
But it was the fire a few days later that really got people’s attention. On March 25, 146 garment workers—mostly women—died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City because the exit doors were locked.
People paid more attention to working conditions and labor legislation after the Triangle Fire, and New York legislators quickly made changes to the labor laws. IWD subsequently focused on these issues in the United States.
IWD was first observed on March 8 in 1913, when, on the eve of World War I, Russian women campaigned for peace. In 1914, women across Europe followed suit, protesting the war together.
“When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life,” said Clara Zetkin, a German socialist who first had the idea for an IWD.
In 1917, Russian women hit the streets once again, striking for “bread and peace” in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers. Political leaders opposed the strike, but four days later—March 8—the Czar was forced to resign and the provisional government granted women the right to vote.
The United Nations in 1977 adopted a resolution setting March 8 as United Nations Day for Women’s Rights, to be observed in its member states. In this year’s statement, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon writes, “Only through women’s full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve the sustainable, peaceful and just society promised in the United Nations Charter.”
Today, in many countries—such as Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Mongolia, Russia and Vietnam—IWD is a legal holiday. In the U.S., we’ve designated March as Womens’ History Month, when events and observances are held.
Thanks to the courageous women before us, today we have the right to vote, to work in any profession we want, to run marathons, to be paid a fair wage. And the work continues. In Washington, D.C., IWD events included panel discussions of policies concerning immigrant women, lobbying for education and economic support, and a photo exhibit of international women.
We’ve come a long way. But in many ways, it’s still a man’s world. One issue in particular still needs much more attention. Because mothers are women, too.
“There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as [abortion],” wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Revolution. “But where shall it be found, at least where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?”
In another The Revolution article, Martha Gage wrote, “This subject lies deeper down in women’s wrongs than any other. … I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex.”
Women should have all the same civil rights as men, but women should not live as men. Women should live well as women.
As a society, we must offer support to mothers as mothers so they do not have to choose between the life of their unborn child and their own lives. It is distressful for a woman to be forced into making that decision.
“Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women,” says Serrin Foster, founder and president of Feminists for Life.
Unfortunately, many women ignore International Women’s Day because they equate a passion for women’s rights with the “pro-choice” agenda.
“The myth that to be a feminist is to be pro-choice has forced many women to resign from the name of feminism, to settle back bruised into the silence of the margins,” says the President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary McAleese.
I, for one, refuse to choose.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Find the North Star for Your Life
Going back to school. Again.
Longtime readers will remember when I attended Blue Ridge Community College. My classes there were a joy, even the ones I’d hated (namely biology) as a teenager in high school.
As an adult, I’ve always been able to get the jobs I wanted without a college degree.
We are all born with natural talents, proclivities for being able to do certain things well. One friend, as a child, took apart car engines and put them back together. He continued to work on cars as a teenager, displaying a gift for diagnosing problems. Thus, as an adult, he was able to move into a career as an auto mechanic.
Lots of people succeed without going to college.
Bill Gates, a college dropout, has been named the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine 27 times. Gates was 10 points away from a perfect score on the SAT, enrolled at Harvard College in 1973, then two years later took a leave of absence to form a partnership with classmate Paul Allen. The partnership became known as Microsoft.
Steven Spielberg, the movie director and producer, was denied acceptance to film school and dropped out of California State University in Long Beach. He co-founded DreamWorks, a major film studio that’s produced several of the highest grossing movie hits and Academy award-winning films.
Julie Andrews, the Oscar-winning actress and singer, dropped out of high school.
Anne Beiler, founder of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, dropped out of high school.
I’m not saying you should not go to college, just that you don’t have to go to college to succeed. It’s certainly not for everyone, as a recent study showed. The world has need of carpenters, hair stylists, plumbers, housekeepers, mechanics, waitresses and electricians.
The long list I found of successful people who did not attend college included mostly people in the fields of entertainment or business. Of course, many professions are impossible to enter without college study, like law, medicine and teaching.
I’d always been a writer, since the first time I put pencil to paper. I spent my young adult life raising my children, so when they were in high school, I applied for a job at the Daily News-Record. I got a job there based on the results of my writing test. But believe me, though I knew how to write, I still had much to learn about reporting news.
What with working at the paper, babysitting grandkids and otherwise living my life, it took five years to earn an associate’s degree at BRCC. When the e-mail came early this week that I’d been accepted at JMU, I was thrilled.
When you feel that good about something, you should follow it, says Martha Beck. In her book, “Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live,” she advises readers to follow what gives them joy, energy, health.
Me? I love reading, listening, studying, writing papers, lively discussion … of almost anything. But writing is my first love.
So what will I study? Should I get a degree in a field that will make me more money?
Listen, I’m in my mid-50s. It’s going to take a few years to get a bachelor’s degree, so I’ll be close to 60 when that happens. Life is getting shorter as each day passes.
My hope is that I can study what I love and that it will be enough.
“The North Star—Stella Polaris—is a fixed point that can always be used to figure out which way you’re headed,” writes Beck. “Explorers and mariners can depend on Polaris when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot. You may think you're utterly lost, but brush away the leaves, wait for the clouds to clear, and you’ll see your destiny shining as brightly as ever; the fixed point in the constantly changing constellations of your life.”
It’s worked so far, so I’ll just keep following.
Longtime readers will remember when I attended Blue Ridge Community College. My classes there were a joy, even the ones I’d hated (namely biology) as a teenager in high school.
As an adult, I’ve always been able to get the jobs I wanted without a college degree.
We are all born with natural talents, proclivities for being able to do certain things well. One friend, as a child, took apart car engines and put them back together. He continued to work on cars as a teenager, displaying a gift for diagnosing problems. Thus, as an adult, he was able to move into a career as an auto mechanic.
Lots of people succeed without going to college.
Bill Gates, a college dropout, has been named the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine 27 times. Gates was 10 points away from a perfect score on the SAT, enrolled at Harvard College in 1973, then two years later took a leave of absence to form a partnership with classmate Paul Allen. The partnership became known as Microsoft.
Steven Spielberg, the movie director and producer, was denied acceptance to film school and dropped out of California State University in Long Beach. He co-founded DreamWorks, a major film studio that’s produced several of the highest grossing movie hits and Academy award-winning films.
Julie Andrews, the Oscar-winning actress and singer, dropped out of high school.
Anne Beiler, founder of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, dropped out of high school.
I’m not saying you should not go to college, just that you don’t have to go to college to succeed. It’s certainly not for everyone, as a recent study showed. The world has need of carpenters, hair stylists, plumbers, housekeepers, mechanics, waitresses and electricians.
The long list I found of successful people who did not attend college included mostly people in the fields of entertainment or business. Of course, many professions are impossible to enter without college study, like law, medicine and teaching.
I’d always been a writer, since the first time I put pencil to paper. I spent my young adult life raising my children, so when they were in high school, I applied for a job at the Daily News-Record. I got a job there based on the results of my writing test. But believe me, though I knew how to write, I still had much to learn about reporting news.
What with working at the paper, babysitting grandkids and otherwise living my life, it took five years to earn an associate’s degree at BRCC. When the e-mail came early this week that I’d been accepted at JMU, I was thrilled.
When you feel that good about something, you should follow it, says Martha Beck. In her book, “Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live,” she advises readers to follow what gives them joy, energy, health.
Me? I love reading, listening, studying, writing papers, lively discussion … of almost anything. But writing is my first love.
So what will I study? Should I get a degree in a field that will make me more money?
Listen, I’m in my mid-50s. It’s going to take a few years to get a bachelor’s degree, so I’ll be close to 60 when that happens. Life is getting shorter as each day passes.
My hope is that I can study what I love and that it will be enough.
“The North Star—Stella Polaris—is a fixed point that can always be used to figure out which way you’re headed,” writes Beck. “Explorers and mariners can depend on Polaris when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot. You may think you're utterly lost, but brush away the leaves, wait for the clouds to clear, and you’ll see your destiny shining as brightly as ever; the fixed point in the constantly changing constellations of your life.”
It’s worked so far, so I’ll just keep following.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Catching the Wind
So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a striving after the wind. ~ the Preacher, Ecclesiastes 2:17.
Last Saturday was terribly windy. As I looked out the window of my house at the waving branches and tumbling tumbleweed, I remembered—as I have so often—an afternoon I spent as a child out in the wind. Now, you’re going to think this is silly, but I’m going to tell it anyway.
I was 8 years old. We lived in a housing development in a lower middle-class neighborhood. These were the years my parents were down on their luck. My Dad lived away that year, participating in a study at a national laboratory for which, I suppose, we were given a stipend. We were on welfare, too. I remember going with my mother to get food, waiting on line for hours.
Anyway, every house in this depressed area was the same split level model with asbestos siding, concrete driveway and an obligatory lone maple sapling in the center of the front yard.
As a child, I often played outdoors alone. I had three younger siblings and all the neighbors had children our ages, but I guess I sought the outdoors—and solitude—more than most. The only open space there was the empty corner lot next to our house, where I spent many happy hours rapt in a world my sister called Lala Land.
So one windy day I was strolling around the lot when I spotted a large, clear plastic bag fluttering in the wind, the upper part of it wound around the end of a long stick. I picked up the stick and, behold, the bag filled with wind. The force of it pulled me and, rather than resist, I let myself go.
As the wind had its way with the bag, I ran, leaped, twirled, danced … flew! I laughed out loud and shouted, caught up in joy, pure joy.
I’d caught the wind and the wind caught me. I must have spent several hours at this. I even named the bag-stick toy, Tippy.
It was one of the happiest days of my life.
So last Saturday, nearly a half-century after that happy day, I bundled up, grabbed a plastic grocery bag from the pantry and went outdoors to find a stick. I wound the bag’s two handles around the tip and lifted it to catch the wind. Instant joy!
I was out there only a few minutes when Scarlett and Sydney—my three- and four-year-old granddaughters—arrived. I jumped up and down and showed them my … Tippy. Of course, they each wanted one, so in short order I rigged up two more. As the wind filled the bags, their faces lit up with happiness!
We ran out to the back hill and skipped and swirled and smiled around that acre for a time apart from time. We laughed out loud and shouted, caught up in the joy.
The wind. Growing up on an island, I spent a lot of time on boats: cabin cruisers, ferries, rowboats, speedboats, clamming boats, canoes. I love sitting or standing alone in the bow, out front, the wind and salt water in my face.
However, I’ve never been on a sailboat. I can only imagine what it must be like to hoist the sails and see them, feel them, fill with wind. The power.
The above-quoted Preacher equates the inability to catch the wind with vanity.
“Vanity: excessive pride in one’s appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit.”
Our culture is based on vanity: the attainment of stuff, status and celebrity, to be seen by others as prosperous, pretty and pampered.
“[Egoism] is the most intangible and the most intolerable. … It is that condition in which the victim does a thousand varying things from one unvarying motive of a devouring vanity; and sulks or smiles, slanders or praises, conspires and intrigues or sits still and does nothing, all in one unsleeping vigilance over the social effect of one single person,” writes G.K. Chesteron.
It is a striving after the wind.
Wind is the first image the Bible gives us of God: Ruach Elohim (Wind God). “The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2).
RUACH ELOHIM, the breathing, blowing, surging phenomenon, is neither natural (wind) nor spiritual (spirit) but both in one; it is the creative breathing that brings both nature and the spirit into one being. … Here at the beginning of the Bible, RUACH ELOHIM stands as a great, unformulated, latent theological principle, expressed only by implication.—Martin Buber
So Preacher, Mr. All-Is-Vanity, what if … what if you actually catch the wind?
Last Saturday was terribly windy. As I looked out the window of my house at the waving branches and tumbling tumbleweed, I remembered—as I have so often—an afternoon I spent as a child out in the wind. Now, you’re going to think this is silly, but I’m going to tell it anyway.
I was 8 years old. We lived in a housing development in a lower middle-class neighborhood. These were the years my parents were down on their luck. My Dad lived away that year, participating in a study at a national laboratory for which, I suppose, we were given a stipend. We were on welfare, too. I remember going with my mother to get food, waiting on line for hours.
Anyway, every house in this depressed area was the same split level model with asbestos siding, concrete driveway and an obligatory lone maple sapling in the center of the front yard.
As a child, I often played outdoors alone. I had three younger siblings and all the neighbors had children our ages, but I guess I sought the outdoors—and solitude—more than most. The only open space there was the empty corner lot next to our house, where I spent many happy hours rapt in a world my sister called Lala Land.
So one windy day I was strolling around the lot when I spotted a large, clear plastic bag fluttering in the wind, the upper part of it wound around the end of a long stick. I picked up the stick and, behold, the bag filled with wind. The force of it pulled me and, rather than resist, I let myself go.
As the wind had its way with the bag, I ran, leaped, twirled, danced … flew! I laughed out loud and shouted, caught up in joy, pure joy.
I’d caught the wind and the wind caught me. I must have spent several hours at this. I even named the bag-stick toy, Tippy.
It was one of the happiest days of my life.
So last Saturday, nearly a half-century after that happy day, I bundled up, grabbed a plastic grocery bag from the pantry and went outdoors to find a stick. I wound the bag’s two handles around the tip and lifted it to catch the wind. Instant joy!
I was out there only a few minutes when Scarlett and Sydney—my three- and four-year-old granddaughters—arrived. I jumped up and down and showed them my … Tippy. Of course, they each wanted one, so in short order I rigged up two more. As the wind filled the bags, their faces lit up with happiness!
We ran out to the back hill and skipped and swirled and smiled around that acre for a time apart from time. We laughed out loud and shouted, caught up in the joy.
The wind. Growing up on an island, I spent a lot of time on boats: cabin cruisers, ferries, rowboats, speedboats, clamming boats, canoes. I love sitting or standing alone in the bow, out front, the wind and salt water in my face.
However, I’ve never been on a sailboat. I can only imagine what it must be like to hoist the sails and see them, feel them, fill with wind. The power.
The above-quoted Preacher equates the inability to catch the wind with vanity.
“Vanity: excessive pride in one’s appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit.”
Our culture is based on vanity: the attainment of stuff, status and celebrity, to be seen by others as prosperous, pretty and pampered.
“[Egoism] is the most intangible and the most intolerable. … It is that condition in which the victim does a thousand varying things from one unvarying motive of a devouring vanity; and sulks or smiles, slanders or praises, conspires and intrigues or sits still and does nothing, all in one unsleeping vigilance over the social effect of one single person,” writes G.K. Chesteron.
It is a striving after the wind.
Wind is the first image the Bible gives us of God: Ruach Elohim (Wind God). “The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2).
RUACH ELOHIM, the breathing, blowing, surging phenomenon, is neither natural (wind) nor spiritual (spirit) but both in one; it is the creative breathing that brings both nature and the spirit into one being. … Here at the beginning of the Bible, RUACH ELOHIM stands as a great, unformulated, latent theological principle, expressed only by implication.—Martin Buber
So Preacher, Mr. All-Is-Vanity, what if … what if you actually catch the wind?
Friday, February 11, 2011
Getting Lost is the Fun of Travel
Time to renew the passport. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since I first left the shores of America to travel over seas to foreign lands.
The passport application provides a box to note your travel plans. Where are you going?
Good question.
When I worked downtown I often saw tourists strolling the sidewalks. They proceeded slowly in a sort of meandering way, gazing up at street signs, scanning the storefronts, peering into windows. They seemed a bit lost.
The streets so familiar to me were to them quite strange. As Ray Bradbury says, “Half the fun of travel is the esthetic of lostness.”
Like motorcycling. My favorite way is just to turn onto any road that looks intriguing. Like that back road in West Virginia with the river on our right and sheer cliffs to our left. The smell of pine needles, the scent of water, the aroma of rhododendrons. The cool and warm spots in the air.
We stop at a rickety roadside store and sit on the porch drinking Pepsi and iced tea. This is Frost, we discover.
Frost. I pull out the map, unfold it and lay it on the gas tank. My finger follows the last road I know to where we turned off. Trace it through the mountain pass. Ah, there’s Frost. And there’s that sense of satisfaction of discovering where I am.
On my bicycle, as an adolescent on suburban Long Island, I often rode out of my neighborhood and away away. I loved getting lost, the adventure of it. One day I followed a creek through several housing developments—it was not easy to keep it in view, turning up and down streets to do so—to a small woods. I leaned my bicycle on a tree, walked along the grassy bank and sat down.
What a wonderful place. I had no idea where it was.
On my feet, the last time I was in Northern Ireland, I walked the towpath for several miles along the River Lagan. I’ve been to that area enough times to know my way around, yet experiencing it from the river transformed it into a new and strange to me place.
In a canoe on the Shenandoah River, I had this same experience just paddling from Elkton to Shenandoah. I lived in that area for 15 years, yet traveling on the river gave me a whole ‘nother view of fields and forest. I could not tell where I was or even when I was, a delightful feeling. River travel, of course, was the norm at one time, evidenced by the occasional old house that fronts the Shenandoah.
By train a familiar place feels strange, too. This summer, I took the Long Island Railroad from my hometown in Suffolk County into the city. When I was young this is how I always traveled to NYC, but I’d not done it for many years. Passenger railroads tend to run through the poorer sections of towns—having pre-dated much of the highway system—and so the tracks are a bit distant from the shopping malls, tall office buildings and better residential areas.
Lost has many definitions. I am referring to “unable to find the way,” yet it is not a permanent state. Apparently I was able in all these cases to find the way, else I’d not be here to write about it.
Lostness is a feeling. It can be panicky or it can be supremely peaceful, exhilarating.
Faith is like that. You set out, not sure of the path, yet knowing it will take you somewhere. In the meantime, the journey takes you through unfamiliar territory. You have the feeling of lostness: “For we walk by faith, not by sight …,” writes Paul in 1 Cor. 5:7.
My life feels like that right now. With the economic upheaval, it seems in a larger sense to be happening to many other people, too. Where are we going?
We’re in the same place, the USA, but we’ve gotten off the familiar highways. We’re seeing it all from a different view. It’s an adventure!
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door,” said Bilbo Baggins. “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”
Where am I going? I don’t know, but that road there with the trees leading into a cool forest? I think I’ll turn there and see where it takes me.
The passport application provides a box to note your travel plans. Where are you going?
Good question.
When I worked downtown I often saw tourists strolling the sidewalks. They proceeded slowly in a sort of meandering way, gazing up at street signs, scanning the storefronts, peering into windows. They seemed a bit lost.
The streets so familiar to me were to them quite strange. As Ray Bradbury says, “Half the fun of travel is the esthetic of lostness.”
Like motorcycling. My favorite way is just to turn onto any road that looks intriguing. Like that back road in West Virginia with the river on our right and sheer cliffs to our left. The smell of pine needles, the scent of water, the aroma of rhododendrons. The cool and warm spots in the air.
We stop at a rickety roadside store and sit on the porch drinking Pepsi and iced tea. This is Frost, we discover.
Frost. I pull out the map, unfold it and lay it on the gas tank. My finger follows the last road I know to where we turned off. Trace it through the mountain pass. Ah, there’s Frost. And there’s that sense of satisfaction of discovering where I am.
On my bicycle, as an adolescent on suburban Long Island, I often rode out of my neighborhood and away away. I loved getting lost, the adventure of it. One day I followed a creek through several housing developments—it was not easy to keep it in view, turning up and down streets to do so—to a small woods. I leaned my bicycle on a tree, walked along the grassy bank and sat down.
What a wonderful place. I had no idea where it was.
On my feet, the last time I was in Northern Ireland, I walked the towpath for several miles along the River Lagan. I’ve been to that area enough times to know my way around, yet experiencing it from the river transformed it into a new and strange to me place.
In a canoe on the Shenandoah River, I had this same experience just paddling from Elkton to Shenandoah. I lived in that area for 15 years, yet traveling on the river gave me a whole ‘nother view of fields and forest. I could not tell where I was or even when I was, a delightful feeling. River travel, of course, was the norm at one time, evidenced by the occasional old house that fronts the Shenandoah.
By train a familiar place feels strange, too. This summer, I took the Long Island Railroad from my hometown in Suffolk County into the city. When I was young this is how I always traveled to NYC, but I’d not done it for many years. Passenger railroads tend to run through the poorer sections of towns—having pre-dated much of the highway system—and so the tracks are a bit distant from the shopping malls, tall office buildings and better residential areas.
Lost has many definitions. I am referring to “unable to find the way,” yet it is not a permanent state. Apparently I was able in all these cases to find the way, else I’d not be here to write about it.
Lostness is a feeling. It can be panicky or it can be supremely peaceful, exhilarating.
Faith is like that. You set out, not sure of the path, yet knowing it will take you somewhere. In the meantime, the journey takes you through unfamiliar territory. You have the feeling of lostness: “For we walk by faith, not by sight …,” writes Paul in 1 Cor. 5:7.
My life feels like that right now. With the economic upheaval, it seems in a larger sense to be happening to many other people, too. Where are we going?
We’re in the same place, the USA, but we’ve gotten off the familiar highways. We’re seeing it all from a different view. It’s an adventure!
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door,” said Bilbo Baggins. “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”
Where am I going? I don’t know, but that road there with the trees leading into a cool forest? I think I’ll turn there and see where it takes me.
Friday, February 04, 2011
How to Help the Jobless? Do the Math
John (not his real name) worked in construction all his adult life, making plenty of money to support himself. But when the recession hit, like many others in his field, he was laid off. For months, he looked for work in construction. Nothing. So he took a job in the poultry industry.
“I’ve never done work like this,” he said. His paycheck is not enough to cover his living expenses.
Our church co-hosted the Harrisonburg and Rockingham Thermal Shelter (HARTS) the week our jobless benefits expired. Was that ever sobering. The stories of the people seeking shelter made me realize that homelessness can happen to any of us.
Some expressed shock that this was happening to them. Them.
We knew the unemployment checks would stop in the middle of January. The husband had been through Tiers I, II and III, and extended benefits. Still, it was jarring to get the Notice of Exhaustion: Your final benefit on your State Extended Benefits (EB) claim has been processed.
For 18 months, every Wednesday this money materialized in our checking account. The week after it expired, I looked online at our statement. The husband had filed anyway. After all, he was still unemployed. But there was no deposit. I checked again on Thursday. And Friday.
Dudes, I was in denial.
In the meantime, I’m doing math. Even though I’ve always excelled at English, history and philosophy, I can also actually do math. And let me tell you, this is no time for algebra, geometry or trigonometry. What we all need is simple addition and subtraction. If only our elected representatives and corporate billionaires would pay attention to simple adding and subtracting, like me.
(Note: If you read my column every week, you know in the fall I hired a cleaning woman. I did that in anticipation of a job that was to start within weeks. Because of the economy, the job itself ceased to exist and I subsequently let the cleaning woman go. Simple subtraction.)
The week our check stopped, I walked over to the bookstore during my lunch break to buy a book, “Five Acres and Independence,” for the husband. He spent most of his adult life working in manufacturing supervision. Now in his late 50s, he does not think he’ll work in that field again. After all, he’s been looking for nearly two years now.
Just last night he talked about how well the stock market is doing. The rich are getting richer and the manufacturing is all overseas.
However, the husband’s first love is the land. Since losing his job, he’s been happily planting and growing stuff, fixing and building things. Because of this, we have food in the freezer, in the cabinets, in the cold storage. In a day or two, we’ll order seeds for this spring’s planting. When he finishes building the greenhouse, that will assure fresh vegetables next winter.
He’s not a bit worried.
So when someone recommended this inexpensive, practical little book, I figured it was right up his alley.
While in the bookstore, I spotted the New Yorker calendar, on sale for half-price. This daily tear-off calendar is often pretty funny and I need to laugh, I thought, justifying the small expense. What sold me was the sample page on the back.
A man dressed in a suit carrying a briefcase opens the front door of his house and shouts to his wife, “Honey! We’re homeless!”
The 2011 daily planners were also half price. I picked up a tooled leather one, just my style. I turned it over. “Made in China.” I set it down and picked up one with a black-and-tan plaid cover for the same price. “Handcrafted in Maine.”
I thought about some of the towns I visited in Maine as a child. I envisioned a roomful of people in Maine cutting the fabric, inserting the pages, gluing these planners together.
I bought the planner with the belief that I was helping someone in Maine keep their job. It was an investment in an American company.
I may not have much to spend these days, but the money I do spend—as long as it’s in my power and even if it costs a few dollars more—will be an investment for America, for Virginia, for Harrisonburg.
Please multiply.
“I’ve never done work like this,” he said. His paycheck is not enough to cover his living expenses.
Our church co-hosted the Harrisonburg and Rockingham Thermal Shelter (HARTS) the week our jobless benefits expired. Was that ever sobering. The stories of the people seeking shelter made me realize that homelessness can happen to any of us.
Some expressed shock that this was happening to them. Them.
We knew the unemployment checks would stop in the middle of January. The husband had been through Tiers I, II and III, and extended benefits. Still, it was jarring to get the Notice of Exhaustion: Your final benefit on your State Extended Benefits (EB) claim has been processed.
For 18 months, every Wednesday this money materialized in our checking account. The week after it expired, I looked online at our statement. The husband had filed anyway. After all, he was still unemployed. But there was no deposit. I checked again on Thursday. And Friday.
Dudes, I was in denial.
In the meantime, I’m doing math. Even though I’ve always excelled at English, history and philosophy, I can also actually do math. And let me tell you, this is no time for algebra, geometry or trigonometry. What we all need is simple addition and subtraction. If only our elected representatives and corporate billionaires would pay attention to simple adding and subtracting, like me.
(Note: If you read my column every week, you know in the fall I hired a cleaning woman. I did that in anticipation of a job that was to start within weeks. Because of the economy, the job itself ceased to exist and I subsequently let the cleaning woman go. Simple subtraction.)
The week our check stopped, I walked over to the bookstore during my lunch break to buy a book, “Five Acres and Independence,” for the husband. He spent most of his adult life working in manufacturing supervision. Now in his late 50s, he does not think he’ll work in that field again. After all, he’s been looking for nearly two years now.
Just last night he talked about how well the stock market is doing. The rich are getting richer and the manufacturing is all overseas.
However, the husband’s first love is the land. Since losing his job, he’s been happily planting and growing stuff, fixing and building things. Because of this, we have food in the freezer, in the cabinets, in the cold storage. In a day or two, we’ll order seeds for this spring’s planting. When he finishes building the greenhouse, that will assure fresh vegetables next winter.
He’s not a bit worried.
So when someone recommended this inexpensive, practical little book, I figured it was right up his alley.
While in the bookstore, I spotted the New Yorker calendar, on sale for half-price. This daily tear-off calendar is often pretty funny and I need to laugh, I thought, justifying the small expense. What sold me was the sample page on the back.
A man dressed in a suit carrying a briefcase opens the front door of his house and shouts to his wife, “Honey! We’re homeless!”
The 2011 daily planners were also half price. I picked up a tooled leather one, just my style. I turned it over. “Made in China.” I set it down and picked up one with a black-and-tan plaid cover for the same price. “Handcrafted in Maine.”
I thought about some of the towns I visited in Maine as a child. I envisioned a roomful of people in Maine cutting the fabric, inserting the pages, gluing these planners together.
I bought the planner with the belief that I was helping someone in Maine keep their job. It was an investment in an American company.
I may not have much to spend these days, but the money I do spend—as long as it’s in my power and even if it costs a few dollars more—will be an investment for America, for Virginia, for Harrisonburg.
Please multiply.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Some Films Give Answers, Others Ask Questions
The Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards are not the only “best of” film lists.
Have you seen “Babette’s Feast,” “The Wind Will Carry Us” or “Ikuru?”
Over the past several years I’ve seen some excellent films, thanks to the annual Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list that comes out every year around this time. This is a “top films for all time” list. It’s compiled every year so as to include films made the previous year and to reflect the viewing of the Arts & Faith community.
The Arts & Faith list is characterized by films of artistic excellence—often beautifully filmed—and which grapple with questions of spirituality and religion.
I must admit, watching some of these movies—many which are foreign and independent—is a stretch. When we’re done watching one of these films, the husband and I talk about it. We ask questions. I often find myself, several days later, still thinking about it.
Like “Ordet,” a Danish film written, produced and directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. “Ordet” is a story about Morten Borgen, a prosperous farmer whose three sons are giving him cause to worry. The oldest, Mikkel, has renounced the religious beliefs of his forebears, claiming that he no longer has even “faith in faith.” The second, Johannes, has gone mad from too much study and now claims to be Jesus of Nazareth. The youngest, Anders, is in love with a young woman whose religion puts her family at odds with the elder Borgen.
The story seems to focus on the Romeo-and-Juliet plight of Anders, while it’s also concerned with Mikkel’s pregnant wife. But then there’s Johannes, in a dazed state, reciting scripture like a running commentary. If you’ve never heard the Bible quoted in this way, it’s quite jarring. As the story unfolds, you wonder who really is nuts.
Several of my all-time favorite movies are on the Arts & Faith list: “Chariots of Fire,” “Magnolia” and “Babette’s Feast.”
“Babette’s Feast,” another Danish film, takes place in 19th century Denmark. It’s about two adult sisters who live in an isolated village where their father had founded a small sect-like Protestant church. One night, Babette, a French refugee, arrives at their door, begging them to take her in. Although the sisters cannot pay her, they take Babette in as a housekeeper and cook. Several years later, the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate their father’s 100th birthday. Babette, who has recently won a lottery, begs the sisters to allow her to prepare the meal.
The sisters and, indeed, the whole village, become concerned about the rich foods and alcohol that Babette (a Catholic and a foreigner) may serve to them. But Babette cooks up the feast of a lifetime for the church members and an unexpected guest.
The Arts & Faith folks are interested in arts of all ilks, with cinema among their favorites. Some are film critics, published in such places as Paste, The National Catholic Register and Relevant. I love reading and, occasionally, participating in their film discussions.
Perhaps when you think of “Christian” movies, what comes to mind is “The Passion of the Christ” and “The Ten Commandments.” Or worse, “Left Behind.”
But, “Christian media have in recent years tended to celebrated art and entertainment for its ‘evangelical potential,’ ” writes Jeffrey Overstreet in his introduction to the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films. “In other words, many Christians have become so concerned about the usefulness of art as a tool of ministry and evangelism, they’ve forgotten—or never known in the first place—what art really is, and how it works.”
Never was this made so clear as when “The Passion of the Christ” was doing its pre-release marketing. Movie trailers played in evangelical churches across the country on Sunday morning with the goal to “train your members to invite their friends …”. Yup. Can you say Corporatist Christian Consumer?
My point being that after you see such a movie, there’s not a whole bunch to talk about, except things like “Did you see this? Did you see that?” Not much mystery there.
The films I’ve seen on the Arts & Faith list have not handed out answers, but invited questions. Asking questions is how we begin searching.
And is it not honest searching that ultimately may lead us to God?
Have you seen “Babette’s Feast,” “The Wind Will Carry Us” or “Ikuru?”
Over the past several years I’ve seen some excellent films, thanks to the annual Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list that comes out every year around this time. This is a “top films for all time” list. It’s compiled every year so as to include films made the previous year and to reflect the viewing of the Arts & Faith community.
The Arts & Faith list is characterized by films of artistic excellence—often beautifully filmed—and which grapple with questions of spirituality and religion.
I must admit, watching some of these movies—many which are foreign and independent—is a stretch. When we’re done watching one of these films, the husband and I talk about it. We ask questions. I often find myself, several days later, still thinking about it.
Like “Ordet,” a Danish film written, produced and directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. “Ordet” is a story about Morten Borgen, a prosperous farmer whose three sons are giving him cause to worry. The oldest, Mikkel, has renounced the religious beliefs of his forebears, claiming that he no longer has even “faith in faith.” The second, Johannes, has gone mad from too much study and now claims to be Jesus of Nazareth. The youngest, Anders, is in love with a young woman whose religion puts her family at odds with the elder Borgen.
The story seems to focus on the Romeo-and-Juliet plight of Anders, while it’s also concerned with Mikkel’s pregnant wife. But then there’s Johannes, in a dazed state, reciting scripture like a running commentary. If you’ve never heard the Bible quoted in this way, it’s quite jarring. As the story unfolds, you wonder who really is nuts.
Several of my all-time favorite movies are on the Arts & Faith list: “Chariots of Fire,” “Magnolia” and “Babette’s Feast.”
“Babette’s Feast,” another Danish film, takes place in 19th century Denmark. It’s about two adult sisters who live in an isolated village where their father had founded a small sect-like Protestant church. One night, Babette, a French refugee, arrives at their door, begging them to take her in. Although the sisters cannot pay her, they take Babette in as a housekeeper and cook. Several years later, the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate their father’s 100th birthday. Babette, who has recently won a lottery, begs the sisters to allow her to prepare the meal.
The sisters and, indeed, the whole village, become concerned about the rich foods and alcohol that Babette (a Catholic and a foreigner) may serve to them. But Babette cooks up the feast of a lifetime for the church members and an unexpected guest.
The Arts & Faith folks are interested in arts of all ilks, with cinema among their favorites. Some are film critics, published in such places as Paste, The National Catholic Register and Relevant. I love reading and, occasionally, participating in their film discussions.
Perhaps when you think of “Christian” movies, what comes to mind is “The Passion of the Christ” and “The Ten Commandments.” Or worse, “Left Behind.”
But, “Christian media have in recent years tended to celebrated art and entertainment for its ‘evangelical potential,’ ” writes Jeffrey Overstreet in his introduction to the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films. “In other words, many Christians have become so concerned about the usefulness of art as a tool of ministry and evangelism, they’ve forgotten—or never known in the first place—what art really is, and how it works.”
Never was this made so clear as when “The Passion of the Christ” was doing its pre-release marketing. Movie trailers played in evangelical churches across the country on Sunday morning with the goal to “train your members to invite their friends …”. Yup. Can you say Corporatist Christian Consumer?
My point being that after you see such a movie, there’s not a whole bunch to talk about, except things like “Did you see this? Did you see that?” Not much mystery there.
The films I’ve seen on the Arts & Faith list have not handed out answers, but invited questions. Asking questions is how we begin searching.
And is it not honest searching that ultimately may lead us to God?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Gather 'Round the Dinner Table
The kids set the table as Mom cooks and Dad relaxes. Dad’s turn is coming after dinner, doing clean-up as Mom relaxes. Everybody is involved with dinnertime.
This scene happens nearly every night at my daughter’s house.
If there were no other advantages to having a family dinnertime, this one thing would be worth it. The kids learn that they have a role to play in the family. They see Mom as she cooks up a nourishing repast for them, an act of love. They see Dad doing his fair share. The whole hour is a communal act.
These days, “most family meals happen about three times a week, last less than 20 minutes and are spent watching television or texting while each family member eats a different microwaved ‘food,’ ” according to Dr. Mark Hyman in a Huffington Post article, “How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life.”
This one thing—eating dinner together daily—is better for you and your child’s health and well-being than anything else you can do.
In 1900, writes Hyman, two percent of family meals were eaten outside the home. In 2010, that number was 50 percent. That’s half of all meals.
My first question is, how can you afford it? At the bare minimum, eating at a fast food joint costs at least $5 per person. For a family of four, that comes to $20 for a meal full of fat, salt and sugar, devoid of nutrients.
Other advantages of family mealtime:
• The average parent spends 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children, according to a study by A.C. Nielsen Co. A family meal immediately ups that to per day.
• Family dinners are more important than play, story time and other family events in the development of vocabulary of younger children, according to Harvard Research, 1996.
• When families dine together, they tend to eat more vegetables and fruits—and fewer fried foods, soda, and foods with trans fats, says an article in WebMD.
• Younger children who eat meals with their families are less likely to be overweight. Recent studies show that 20 percent of American children are obese. That puts them at higher risk for many health problems later in life, including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as emotional problems.
• Kids who eat most often with their parents are 40 percent more likely to get mainly A’s and B’s in school than kids who have two or fewer family dinners a week, reports the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA).
• Adolescents and teens who eat dinner with their parents are 42 percent less likely to drink, 50 percent less likely to smoke and 66 percent less like to smoke marijuana.
• Adolescent girls who have frequent family meals, and a positive atmosphere during those meals, are less likely to have eating disorders, according to research at the University of Minnesota in 2004.
“One of the simplest and most effective ways for parents to be engaged in their teens’ lives is by having frequent family dinners,” says Joseph Califano Jr., chairman and president of CASA.
My daughter has family dinner together every night because that’s how she was raised. I did it because that’s how I was raised. If that’s not how you were raised, start a new family tradition. Start a new “normal.”
With the $20 you would spend buying fast food, you can buy a whole chicken, a box of rice, a pound of fresh green beans and some salad greens. Involve the family in preparing the meal and table.
Turn off the TV, don’t answer the phone, no texting at the table. Get everyone involved in conversation; keep it positive.
Light a candle and say a prayer together and you’ve got the closest thing to heaven this life has to offer.
This scene happens nearly every night at my daughter’s house.
If there were no other advantages to having a family dinnertime, this one thing would be worth it. The kids learn that they have a role to play in the family. They see Mom as she cooks up a nourishing repast for them, an act of love. They see Dad doing his fair share. The whole hour is a communal act.
These days, “most family meals happen about three times a week, last less than 20 minutes and are spent watching television or texting while each family member eats a different microwaved ‘food,’ ” according to Dr. Mark Hyman in a Huffington Post article, “How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life.”
This one thing—eating dinner together daily—is better for you and your child’s health and well-being than anything else you can do.
In 1900, writes Hyman, two percent of family meals were eaten outside the home. In 2010, that number was 50 percent. That’s half of all meals.
My first question is, how can you afford it? At the bare minimum, eating at a fast food joint costs at least $5 per person. For a family of four, that comes to $20 for a meal full of fat, salt and sugar, devoid of nutrients.
Other advantages of family mealtime:
• The average parent spends 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children, according to a study by A.C. Nielsen Co. A family meal immediately ups that to per day.
• Family dinners are more important than play, story time and other family events in the development of vocabulary of younger children, according to Harvard Research, 1996.
• When families dine together, they tend to eat more vegetables and fruits—and fewer fried foods, soda, and foods with trans fats, says an article in WebMD.
• Younger children who eat meals with their families are less likely to be overweight. Recent studies show that 20 percent of American children are obese. That puts them at higher risk for many health problems later in life, including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as emotional problems.
• Kids who eat most often with their parents are 40 percent more likely to get mainly A’s and B’s in school than kids who have two or fewer family dinners a week, reports the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA).
• Adolescents and teens who eat dinner with their parents are 42 percent less likely to drink, 50 percent less likely to smoke and 66 percent less like to smoke marijuana.
• Adolescent girls who have frequent family meals, and a positive atmosphere during those meals, are less likely to have eating disorders, according to research at the University of Minnesota in 2004.
“One of the simplest and most effective ways for parents to be engaged in their teens’ lives is by having frequent family dinners,” says Joseph Califano Jr., chairman and president of CASA.
My daughter has family dinner together every night because that’s how she was raised. I did it because that’s how I was raised. If that’s not how you were raised, start a new family tradition. Start a new “normal.”
With the $20 you would spend buying fast food, you can buy a whole chicken, a box of rice, a pound of fresh green beans and some salad greens. Involve the family in preparing the meal and table.
Turn off the TV, don’t answer the phone, no texting at the table. Get everyone involved in conversation; keep it positive.
Light a candle and say a prayer together and you’ve got the closest thing to heaven this life has to offer.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Epiphany is the Real Magic of Christmas
It’s still Christmas!
We put up our tree on Dec. 23. Several days before, the husband and daughter rode the tractor “out back” on our 12 acres and found a cedar tree. The size was fine and it generally had the conical shape, but it had long branches on one side and a huge bare spot on the other. I had little hope for it.
But once we strung the lights and placed the ornaments and tinsel on it, it took on a new identity, as though some magic transformed it into an object of beauty.
It graces the dining room. With its gentle light and that of a candle or two on the table, Christmas music softly playing, the room is a peaceful place to linger over a meal or cup of tea.
And so Christmas for us begins on Christmas Eve and lasts until Twelfth Night or Epiphany, a holiday that lasts nearly two weeks. It’s party and gathering time.
Many countries around the world still observe Christmas through Twelfth Night. America’s consumer culture, which prefers to observe Christmas as a secular spending spree, has gypped its citizens of experiencing the depth and width and height that Christmastide has to offer.
Rage against the machine. You are not a consumer.
The last day of Christmas is Epiphany, Jan. 6, the day to commemorate the arrival of the wise men. Epiphany is the revealing of Jesus as the son of God. Epiphany also celebrates the revealing of Jesus at his baptism and at his first miracle at the wedding of Cana. It honors the mystery of incarnation.
Epiphany is not defined as a good idea or an inspiration. The word in Greek means manifestation or appearance. It’s used to describe God coming to Earth as Jesus Christ.
I love this period of time, a time out of time. The kids are off from school, I am off from work, and my daughter is visiting from Belfast. Friends and family come and go. Aside from a few daily chores, it’s like a long Sabbath. I can stay up as late as I want, take naps, read, visit, bake, take long walks, rest, celebrate.
The Christmas tree lights and candles are like the light in the darkness of cold, barren winter. Like the light of Christ in an often difficult world.
Some churches celebrate Epiphany with “mystery dinners,” where a few members host a meal in their homes. Their guests don’t know whose home they’re dining at until a few hours before the meal, and the hosts don’t know who their guests are until they appear. Thus the revealing. Other churches hold a “burning of the greens,” where members and neighbors bring their (real) Christmas trees and wreathes for a great bonfire.
The burning of the greens, in addition to creating a great light, also fills the role of ridding the house of Christmas decorations. In some places it’s considered unlucky to have greens in the house after Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night is the sort of “secular” version of Epiphany. Shakespeare’s play—a great confusion and revealing of identities—was written to be performed on that night. In some places, a special cake is made containing a dried bean and pea and whoever gets them are the king and queen of the night’s activities.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m a bit romantic. Maybe I don’t belong in USA in 2010. I seem to march to the beat of a different drummer. I just think we’re missing a lot with our obsession with shopping, our attempt to be satisfied with the accumulation of stuff, our disconnect from the natural world all around us.
Honestly? I think we’ve been sold a pack of lies. I think Consumerism is a religion concocted by Wall Street to make a small part of our population rich. It’s a distraction from who we really are, why we’re really here, what life is really all about. And so I continue to remind myself and you that there are other, deeper, more satisfying ways to live our lives.
Like our cedar tree, I still believe the magic of Christmas can transform something small and ugly into a thing of beauty and grace.
And so with that I wish you a merry Christmas and happy new year.
We put up our tree on Dec. 23. Several days before, the husband and daughter rode the tractor “out back” on our 12 acres and found a cedar tree. The size was fine and it generally had the conical shape, but it had long branches on one side and a huge bare spot on the other. I had little hope for it.
But once we strung the lights and placed the ornaments and tinsel on it, it took on a new identity, as though some magic transformed it into an object of beauty.
It graces the dining room. With its gentle light and that of a candle or two on the table, Christmas music softly playing, the room is a peaceful place to linger over a meal or cup of tea.
And so Christmas for us begins on Christmas Eve and lasts until Twelfth Night or Epiphany, a holiday that lasts nearly two weeks. It’s party and gathering time.
Many countries around the world still observe Christmas through Twelfth Night. America’s consumer culture, which prefers to observe Christmas as a secular spending spree, has gypped its citizens of experiencing the depth and width and height that Christmastide has to offer.
Rage against the machine. You are not a consumer.
The last day of Christmas is Epiphany, Jan. 6, the day to commemorate the arrival of the wise men. Epiphany is the revealing of Jesus as the son of God. Epiphany also celebrates the revealing of Jesus at his baptism and at his first miracle at the wedding of Cana. It honors the mystery of incarnation.
Epiphany is not defined as a good idea or an inspiration. The word in Greek means manifestation or appearance. It’s used to describe God coming to Earth as Jesus Christ.
I love this period of time, a time out of time. The kids are off from school, I am off from work, and my daughter is visiting from Belfast. Friends and family come and go. Aside from a few daily chores, it’s like a long Sabbath. I can stay up as late as I want, take naps, read, visit, bake, take long walks, rest, celebrate.
The Christmas tree lights and candles are like the light in the darkness of cold, barren winter. Like the light of Christ in an often difficult world.
Some churches celebrate Epiphany with “mystery dinners,” where a few members host a meal in their homes. Their guests don’t know whose home they’re dining at until a few hours before the meal, and the hosts don’t know who their guests are until they appear. Thus the revealing. Other churches hold a “burning of the greens,” where members and neighbors bring their (real) Christmas trees and wreathes for a great bonfire.
The burning of the greens, in addition to creating a great light, also fills the role of ridding the house of Christmas decorations. In some places it’s considered unlucky to have greens in the house after Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night is the sort of “secular” version of Epiphany. Shakespeare’s play—a great confusion and revealing of identities—was written to be performed on that night. In some places, a special cake is made containing a dried bean and pea and whoever gets them are the king and queen of the night’s activities.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m a bit romantic. Maybe I don’t belong in USA in 2010. I seem to march to the beat of a different drummer. I just think we’re missing a lot with our obsession with shopping, our attempt to be satisfied with the accumulation of stuff, our disconnect from the natural world all around us.
Honestly? I think we’ve been sold a pack of lies. I think Consumerism is a religion concocted by Wall Street to make a small part of our population rich. It’s a distraction from who we really are, why we’re really here, what life is really all about. And so I continue to remind myself and you that there are other, deeper, more satisfying ways to live our lives.
Like our cedar tree, I still believe the magic of Christmas can transform something small and ugly into a thing of beauty and grace.
And so with that I wish you a merry Christmas and happy new year.
Monday, December 20, 2010
When Do You Put Up Your Christmas Tree?
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree!
How lovely are your branches!
When do you put up your Christmas tree?
In an online survey of this question, 47 percent—almost half—of the 755 respondents put up their tree between Dec. 1 and 15, 33 percent—one-third—put up their tree the day after Thanksgiving. So that takes care of most of you.
The next group—13 percent—puts up their tree between Dec. 16 and 23. Five percent put up their tree on the first Sunday in Advent and two percent put it up on Christmas Eve.
Many people surveyed who put up their tree at or right after Thanksgiving say they want the “Christmas feeling.” One woman wrote, “life is too short to miss out on the good stuff,” that you should put it up if you want to. Another said, “follow your heart.” This seems to conform to the contemporary attitude of doing whatever feels good.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
“Traditionally, Christmas trees were not brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve (24 December) or, in the traditions celebrating Christmas Eve rather than first of day of Christmas, the 23 December, and then removed the day after Twelfth Night (6January); to have a tree up before or after these dates was even considered bad luck.”
Putting up a tree “early” seems to be a more recent trend. Perhaps it follows on the tail of commercialism. Did you know that Christmas was officially commercialized by an act of Congress? No kidding. Listen to this.
“So vital did Thanksgiving prove in inaugurating the Christmas season that commercial interest conspired in resetting its date,” writes Penne L. Restad in the book, “Christmas in America.” During the Great Depression, retail profits declined, and the Christmas season of 1939 was expected to be especially dismal for business because Thanksgiving fell on the last day of November.
Fred Lazarus, Jr., president of Ohio’s Federated Department Stores, “noted that by advancing the date of Thanksgiving one week, six additional days for Christmas shopping could be added to sales calendars,” Restad writes. “Persuaded by his logic, President Franklin Roosevelt moved the feast from the 30th to the 23th of November, and in 1941, Congress set the annual date of Thanksgiving at the fourth (rather than the last) Thursday in November.”
This guaranteed a four-week shopping season each year. Of course, that doesn’t stop corporations from putting up Christmas trees and playing Christmas music (spend, you consumer, spend!) in September.
I love Christmas. It’s my very favorite holiday. Especially Christmas Eve. One of the things I love about Christmas is the time leading up to it, Advent. The expectant, excited waiting. Awaiting the coming of Christ.
When I was a kid, we put up the tree on Christmas Eve. Sometimes the night before, but usually on Christmas Eve. Dad would go to a lot and bring home a tree. There were always plenty to choose from, because it seems that most people in those days (or in that part of the country?) put up their tree close to Christmas.
A woman who grew up in upstate New York told me that when she went to bed as a child on Christmas Eve, the house had no signs of Christmas. Her parents decorated the house, hung stockings, put up the tree and put the presents beneath it while she and her siblings slept. Can you imagine the glory of Christmas morning?
I decorate the house the first or second week of December. I hang old and new Christmas cards, string up lights, drape greenery about, place the Nativity on the mantle. This all sets the mood of Christmas and anticipation of the tree.
The only disadvantage to putting up the tree so close to Christmas is they’ve been pretty well picked over by the time we buy ours. That is, since Mr. Mitts died. He was a nearby neighbor who sold Christmas trees for, like, $5 to $7. Lovely trees.
Sometimes we cut a cedar from our own property. Not the greatest of trees, but the right color, shape and smell, and the price is right.
Oh, Christmas tree. It seems the English translations of “Oh, Tannenbaum” vary. I like this ending:
Each year you bring to me delight, meaning in the Christmas night
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, of all the trees most lovely.
How lovely are your branches!
When do you put up your Christmas tree?
In an online survey of this question, 47 percent—almost half—of the 755 respondents put up their tree between Dec. 1 and 15, 33 percent—one-third—put up their tree the day after Thanksgiving. So that takes care of most of you.
The next group—13 percent—puts up their tree between Dec. 16 and 23. Five percent put up their tree on the first Sunday in Advent and two percent put it up on Christmas Eve.
Many people surveyed who put up their tree at or right after Thanksgiving say they want the “Christmas feeling.” One woman wrote, “life is too short to miss out on the good stuff,” that you should put it up if you want to. Another said, “follow your heart.” This seems to conform to the contemporary attitude of doing whatever feels good.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
“Traditionally, Christmas trees were not brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve (24 December) or, in the traditions celebrating Christmas Eve rather than first of day of Christmas, the 23 December, and then removed the day after Twelfth Night (6January); to have a tree up before or after these dates was even considered bad luck.”
Putting up a tree “early” seems to be a more recent trend. Perhaps it follows on the tail of commercialism. Did you know that Christmas was officially commercialized by an act of Congress? No kidding. Listen to this.
“So vital did Thanksgiving prove in inaugurating the Christmas season that commercial interest conspired in resetting its date,” writes Penne L. Restad in the book, “Christmas in America.” During the Great Depression, retail profits declined, and the Christmas season of 1939 was expected to be especially dismal for business because Thanksgiving fell on the last day of November.
Fred Lazarus, Jr., president of Ohio’s Federated Department Stores, “noted that by advancing the date of Thanksgiving one week, six additional days for Christmas shopping could be added to sales calendars,” Restad writes. “Persuaded by his logic, President Franklin Roosevelt moved the feast from the 30th to the 23th of November, and in 1941, Congress set the annual date of Thanksgiving at the fourth (rather than the last) Thursday in November.”
This guaranteed a four-week shopping season each year. Of course, that doesn’t stop corporations from putting up Christmas trees and playing Christmas music (spend, you consumer, spend!) in September.
I love Christmas. It’s my very favorite holiday. Especially Christmas Eve. One of the things I love about Christmas is the time leading up to it, Advent. The expectant, excited waiting. Awaiting the coming of Christ.
When I was a kid, we put up the tree on Christmas Eve. Sometimes the night before, but usually on Christmas Eve. Dad would go to a lot and bring home a tree. There were always plenty to choose from, because it seems that most people in those days (or in that part of the country?) put up their tree close to Christmas.
A woman who grew up in upstate New York told me that when she went to bed as a child on Christmas Eve, the house had no signs of Christmas. Her parents decorated the house, hung stockings, put up the tree and put the presents beneath it while she and her siblings slept. Can you imagine the glory of Christmas morning?
I decorate the house the first or second week of December. I hang old and new Christmas cards, string up lights, drape greenery about, place the Nativity on the mantle. This all sets the mood of Christmas and anticipation of the tree.
The only disadvantage to putting up the tree so close to Christmas is they’ve been pretty well picked over by the time we buy ours. That is, since Mr. Mitts died. He was a nearby neighbor who sold Christmas trees for, like, $5 to $7. Lovely trees.
Sometimes we cut a cedar from our own property. Not the greatest of trees, but the right color, shape and smell, and the price is right.
Oh, Christmas tree. It seems the English translations of “Oh, Tannenbaum” vary. I like this ending:
Each year you bring to me delight, meaning in the Christmas night
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, of all the trees most lovely.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Death Takes No Holidays
In a heartbreaking scene in the movie, “The Two Towers,” King Théoden mourns the death of his only son with weeping that comes from depths of his soul. “No parent should ever have to bury their child,” he says.
A few days before Thanksgiving, two sets of parents we know lost a child. All through Thanksgiving week, in the midst of the cooking and family happiness, my heart kept returning to these mothers’ and fathers’ loss. Why can’t death and calamity take a break in November and December?
A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.
(Matthew 2:18)
For this is part of Christmas. The evil King Herod, you may remember, when the three wise men came looking for the baby Jesus, told them to let him know when they’d found the baby. Of course, they knew the king was evil, so after they’d found Jesus, they took a different route home. When Herod found out, he was infuriated, and ordered all the male children in the Bethlehem area under the age of two to be killed.
In the 12 days of Christmas, day four, Dec. 28, is Holy Innocents Day, when we remember the Massacre of the Innocents.
In America, we say that a person is “doing well” if they are holding it together during the funeral and that they are “not doing well” if they cry. That’s pretty sick. With the death of a loved one should come “wailing and loud lamentation.” Yet that does not usually happen until after the funeral. At the time of death there is shock. Then we must make the arrangements. Family and friends gather around us. We receive their offered comfort.
Then, after the burial, after the covered dishes have stopped, after everyone has gone home, then we are alone with our grief.
“Grief is the experience of finding yourself standing alone in the vacant space with all this torn emotional tissue protruding,” writes John O’Donohue in “Eternal Echoes.” “In the rhythm of grieving, you learn to gather your given heart back to yourself.”
This takes time. And even though the loss is shared with others, it is lonely. Nobody else had exactly what you had with this loved one, so nobody else has lost what you have lost.
The grieving loosens its grip when we realize that this person is with us in a different but very real way. The connection between us can never be severed. Although they are absent, we sense their presence. As O’Donohue says, “You become aware of the subtle companionship of the departed one.”
And we know, too, that while someone is absent here, they are present somewhere else. For the Christian, there is the hope/faith that we will again, at our own death, be with them physically. This is a great comfort, but it does not stop us from grieving.
My youngest daughter has lived overseas for 10 years. Before she left, and for several years after, I grieved with the weeping and travail of deep loss. When I visited her or she came here, at our parting I grieved all over again. Yes, I knew I would see her again, but that did not—does not—stop me from missing her.
Too often our culture and community can make us feel that mourning—with its lonely withdrawal—shows a lack of faith. We are expected to snap out of it, to jump right back into living. Yet we need to feel our loss in order to get through the grieving process. A good companion understands this, and makes his or her presence available.
Rachel … refused to be consoled… because she needed time and space to grieve. Even at Christmas.
A few days before Thanksgiving, two sets of parents we know lost a child. All through Thanksgiving week, in the midst of the cooking and family happiness, my heart kept returning to these mothers’ and fathers’ loss. Why can’t death and calamity take a break in November and December?
A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.
(Matthew 2:18)
For this is part of Christmas. The evil King Herod, you may remember, when the three wise men came looking for the baby Jesus, told them to let him know when they’d found the baby. Of course, they knew the king was evil, so after they’d found Jesus, they took a different route home. When Herod found out, he was infuriated, and ordered all the male children in the Bethlehem area under the age of two to be killed.
In the 12 days of Christmas, day four, Dec. 28, is Holy Innocents Day, when we remember the Massacre of the Innocents.
In America, we say that a person is “doing well” if they are holding it together during the funeral and that they are “not doing well” if they cry. That’s pretty sick. With the death of a loved one should come “wailing and loud lamentation.” Yet that does not usually happen until after the funeral. At the time of death there is shock. Then we must make the arrangements. Family and friends gather around us. We receive their offered comfort.
Then, after the burial, after the covered dishes have stopped, after everyone has gone home, then we are alone with our grief.
“Grief is the experience of finding yourself standing alone in the vacant space with all this torn emotional tissue protruding,” writes John O’Donohue in “Eternal Echoes.” “In the rhythm of grieving, you learn to gather your given heart back to yourself.”
This takes time. And even though the loss is shared with others, it is lonely. Nobody else had exactly what you had with this loved one, so nobody else has lost what you have lost.
The grieving loosens its grip when we realize that this person is with us in a different but very real way. The connection between us can never be severed. Although they are absent, we sense their presence. As O’Donohue says, “You become aware of the subtle companionship of the departed one.”
And we know, too, that while someone is absent here, they are present somewhere else. For the Christian, there is the hope/faith that we will again, at our own death, be with them physically. This is a great comfort, but it does not stop us from grieving.
My youngest daughter has lived overseas for 10 years. Before she left, and for several years after, I grieved with the weeping and travail of deep loss. When I visited her or she came here, at our parting I grieved all over again. Yes, I knew I would see her again, but that did not—does not—stop me from missing her.
Too often our culture and community can make us feel that mourning—with its lonely withdrawal—shows a lack of faith. We are expected to snap out of it, to jump right back into living. Yet we need to feel our loss in order to get through the grieving process. A good companion understands this, and makes his or her presence available.
Rachel … refused to be consoled… because she needed time and space to grieve. Even at Christmas.
Monday, November 22, 2010
An Ode to the Holiday Season
Deep breath
The holiday season
How did it get here so fast it was just
Christmas and snow all that snow
First Thanksgiving
Gottagetta turkey a big one
The family yes the family how I
love gathering around the table the
happiness at being together the
holding hands the
thankful here we are
again
Try not to eat too much
Try not to think about
problemsissuesdifficultiesheart
breakcoldnessanxietydread
Remembering
I miss my mom I still miss my mom
Grandma’s dining room table the crystal
wine glasses and stuffed celery
The youngster’s table a wobbly card table
Will we ever all be together again or is this
But the living yes the living gather breathe
Thankful.
Then Advent
shopping decorating baking
meditating caroling birthday attending
praying airport contemplation
leteveryheartpreparehimroom
cleaning remembering missing wrapping
It’sAWonderfulLife WhiteChristmas
String the lights across the front porch
Hang the angels
Oh come oh come
Don’t eat too much
Emmanuel and rescue
remembering
I miss my stepmom Rosanne oh I miss her
The castle how cold the stone walls
but the cheer of the fire
the wild cheer in our hearts
Scout for greens, pinecones, prettyweeds
to make a wreath to try again
God can you make all things right again
Can you please make all things
right and bright
In the stores and online finding the perfect
the perfect to see the smile to make them
happy always
Waiting
Then Christmas Eve
the hushed holy
Mulled cider, candlelight, worship, guests,
cheesebreadeggnogcookiesfruitcake
Assemble tricycles castles racetracks
Remembering
I miss Grandpa how long will I miss him
the fireplace the
quiet talk the
timelessness
the best when the hay fell off the truck
the good friends over the years
Remembering when I believed
Hopeful
Then Christmas Day
the gifts the prayer,
the children yes mostly the children
This year they are 3, 4, 5 and 17
A young girl in 1575 England the castle
Happy happy
Wrapping paper strewn ribbons shiny
children excited shouting jumping about
Adults in chairs drinking coffee watching
Remembering the excitement
my dad I miss my dad this morning
Dinner play games read stories
Sing carols and happy birthday to Jesus
Jesus.
Then New Year’s
A loud party? Quiet dinner? Babysit?
Remembering
watching Times Square with my parents
drunken parties and kissing everyone
watching Times Square with my children
in bed by 11
dinners with friends
2011 really?
Where’s our rocket packs?
When will humans finally self-destruct?
Where’s my robot maid?
God what will this year bring?
Will I ever?
I miss you
Then January
cold dark sleep read quiet
Deep breath.
The holiday season
How did it get here so fast it was just
Christmas and snow all that snow
First Thanksgiving
Gottagetta turkey a big one
The family yes the family how I
love gathering around the table the
happiness at being together the
holding hands the
thankful here we are
again
Try not to eat too much
Try not to think about
problemsissuesdifficultiesheart
breakcoldnessanxietydread
Remembering
I miss my mom I still miss my mom
Grandma’s dining room table the crystal
wine glasses and stuffed celery
The youngster’s table a wobbly card table
Will we ever all be together again or is this
But the living yes the living gather breathe
Thankful.
Then Advent
shopping decorating baking
meditating caroling birthday attending
praying airport contemplation
leteveryheartpreparehimroom
cleaning remembering missing wrapping
It’sAWonderfulLife WhiteChristmas
String the lights across the front porch
Hang the angels
Oh come oh come
Don’t eat too much
Emmanuel and rescue
remembering
I miss my stepmom Rosanne oh I miss her
The castle how cold the stone walls
but the cheer of the fire
the wild cheer in our hearts
Scout for greens, pinecones, prettyweeds
to make a wreath to try again
God can you make all things right again
Can you please make all things
right and bright
In the stores and online finding the perfect
the perfect to see the smile to make them
happy always
Waiting
Then Christmas Eve
the hushed holy
Mulled cider, candlelight, worship, guests,
cheesebreadeggnogcookiesfruitcake
Assemble tricycles castles racetracks
Remembering
I miss Grandpa how long will I miss him
the fireplace the
quiet talk the
timelessness
the best when the hay fell off the truck
the good friends over the years
Remembering when I believed
Hopeful
Then Christmas Day
the gifts the prayer,
the children yes mostly the children
This year they are 3, 4, 5 and 17
A young girl in 1575 England the castle
Happy happy
Wrapping paper strewn ribbons shiny
children excited shouting jumping about
Adults in chairs drinking coffee watching
Remembering the excitement
my dad I miss my dad this morning
Dinner play games read stories
Sing carols and happy birthday to Jesus
Jesus.
Then New Year’s
A loud party? Quiet dinner? Babysit?
Remembering
watching Times Square with my parents
drunken parties and kissing everyone
watching Times Square with my children
in bed by 11
dinners with friends
2011 really?
Where’s our rocket packs?
When will humans finally self-destruct?
Where’s my robot maid?
God what will this year bring?
Will I ever?
I miss you
Then January
cold dark sleep read quiet
Deep breath.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Cleaning Lady's Worth Is Beyond Measure
We’ve had company for dinner three times in the past two weeks.
So?
So … before this we went for months with no guests (not including my kids, grandkids or Harold). Do you want to know why?
My house is clean!
Several weeks ago I decided to hire a young woman to clean my house once a week.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. It’s like I had to justify it in my mind. So many women I know work full-time and keep such lovely homes. If they can do it, I can certainly do it.
But it’s like Joan Rivers said: “I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.”
Most weeks, I’ve designated a half-day to clean the house. Sometimes it ends up being Sunday afternoons. That feels awful, because I have this innate sort of belief that Sunday is for doing whatever I like, whether it be reading, writing, hiking, visiting or whatever.
Then I discovered that some women have cleaning ladies.
My stepmom, Rosanne, was a full-time schoolteacher. She was a superwoman. She loved to cook and was always trying new recipes. She kept up with her friends and family members. And somehow her house was always clean. I always wondered how she managed everything, and then discovered she had a cleaning lady come in once a week.
A teacher friend grew accustomed to having a housekeeper when she lived overseas, in a country where it was taken for granted. She has a woman come in every weekday morning to clean up. Another friend has a cleaning person in monthly. Whatever it takes.
In many of the British novels I read, the family has a housekeeper, and no matter how poor the family is, they still pay this person to clean or cook or both.
Right now I’m reading a biography of Isak Dinesen, the Danish storyteller (“Out of Africa,” “Babette’s Feast”). In her old age she worried about money to pay the taxes on her home. Despite this concern, she did not scale back on her household staff, which included a cook, housekeeper and gardener, plus her personal secretary.
Dinesen loved to hold dinner parties.
I used to be a cleaning lady myself. When I lived in New York, I cleaned for several families. More recently, I worked as a housekeeper cleaning condos and hotel rooms at Massanutten Resort. It’s work that keeps you moving, burns calories, helps pay the bills and blesses others.
When I walked my potential cleaning lady through the house, we talked specifically about her tasks. At one point, she said, “It may take a few weeks to get it clean. I noticed it’s a little … dusty.”
Such a tactful young woman. My weekly buzz through the house included picking up and vacuuming, cleaning kitchen counters and appliances, and mopping the kitchen floor, plus laundry. Many weeks, that’s about all I had time and energy for.
That meant dust, crumbs and dog-and-cat hair accumulated on books, shelves, lamps and knick knacks, under and behind furniture. In my “picking up,” I focused on the big stuff in main rooms, while piles of paper and books accumulated elsewhere.
I did not realize how this was cramping our social life. We always talked about inviting people over, but stopped short of actually picking up the phone to do it.
It’s not that I feel the house must be immaculate. I think people feel more comfortable in a lived-in home. But somehow having a clean house has freed me to invite people. The first weekend after the cleaning lady started, I called some friends I’d been wanting to spend time with.
That was Friday. Then on Sunday the husband spontaneously asked a family at church to come for dinner. Then on Tuesday he had a friend over for dinner.
No, I don’t have a lot of money to throw around. The woman’s rates are good, though, and she uses eco-friendly cleaning products. She lives nearby. She can sure use the money.
The way I figure it, it’s a way of sharing what I have.
And as we sat on Sunday evening with our friends at the candlelit table, finished with the meal, lingering over a bottle of wine and good talk, I knew it was the right thing to do.
So?
So … before this we went for months with no guests (not including my kids, grandkids or Harold). Do you want to know why?
My house is clean!
Several weeks ago I decided to hire a young woman to clean my house once a week.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. It’s like I had to justify it in my mind. So many women I know work full-time and keep such lovely homes. If they can do it, I can certainly do it.
But it’s like Joan Rivers said: “I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.”
Most weeks, I’ve designated a half-day to clean the house. Sometimes it ends up being Sunday afternoons. That feels awful, because I have this innate sort of belief that Sunday is for doing whatever I like, whether it be reading, writing, hiking, visiting or whatever.
Then I discovered that some women have cleaning ladies.
My stepmom, Rosanne, was a full-time schoolteacher. She was a superwoman. She loved to cook and was always trying new recipes. She kept up with her friends and family members. And somehow her house was always clean. I always wondered how she managed everything, and then discovered she had a cleaning lady come in once a week.
A teacher friend grew accustomed to having a housekeeper when she lived overseas, in a country where it was taken for granted. She has a woman come in every weekday morning to clean up. Another friend has a cleaning person in monthly. Whatever it takes.
In many of the British novels I read, the family has a housekeeper, and no matter how poor the family is, they still pay this person to clean or cook or both.
Right now I’m reading a biography of Isak Dinesen, the Danish storyteller (“Out of Africa,” “Babette’s Feast”). In her old age she worried about money to pay the taxes on her home. Despite this concern, she did not scale back on her household staff, which included a cook, housekeeper and gardener, plus her personal secretary.
Dinesen loved to hold dinner parties.
I used to be a cleaning lady myself. When I lived in New York, I cleaned for several families. More recently, I worked as a housekeeper cleaning condos and hotel rooms at Massanutten Resort. It’s work that keeps you moving, burns calories, helps pay the bills and blesses others.
When I walked my potential cleaning lady through the house, we talked specifically about her tasks. At one point, she said, “It may take a few weeks to get it clean. I noticed it’s a little … dusty.”
Such a tactful young woman. My weekly buzz through the house included picking up and vacuuming, cleaning kitchen counters and appliances, and mopping the kitchen floor, plus laundry. Many weeks, that’s about all I had time and energy for.
That meant dust, crumbs and dog-and-cat hair accumulated on books, shelves, lamps and knick knacks, under and behind furniture. In my “picking up,” I focused on the big stuff in main rooms, while piles of paper and books accumulated elsewhere.
I did not realize how this was cramping our social life. We always talked about inviting people over, but stopped short of actually picking up the phone to do it.
It’s not that I feel the house must be immaculate. I think people feel more comfortable in a lived-in home. But somehow having a clean house has freed me to invite people. The first weekend after the cleaning lady started, I called some friends I’d been wanting to spend time with.
That was Friday. Then on Sunday the husband spontaneously asked a family at church to come for dinner. Then on Tuesday he had a friend over for dinner.
No, I don’t have a lot of money to throw around. The woman’s rates are good, though, and she uses eco-friendly cleaning products. She lives nearby. She can sure use the money.
The way I figure it, it’s a way of sharing what I have.
And as we sat on Sunday evening with our friends at the candlelit table, finished with the meal, lingering over a bottle of wine and good talk, I knew it was the right thing to do.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Looking Beyond the Fear of Death
One Halloween years ago, our next-door neighbor’s little girl went to a party held in the woods. The ghosts and goblins scared her, as well as the “dead bodies” hanging from the trees. She was so afraid afterward that she could not be in the dark by herself. For as long as we lived next door to her, her bedroom light stayed on all night.
The “fun” spooky Halloween fear touched something deep in this child.
“All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears—of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words ‘Some Assembly Required,’” writes Dave Barry.
Instinctive fear. When I was a child of seven or eight, as I fell asleep sometimes I would feel my own death. I was afraid, and would run to my mother’s room and climb into her bed and her arms for comfort.
It says in the Bible that the fear of death holds us in lifelong bondage. “Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives are held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
We have no idea how deeply our lives are dictated by fear. It manifests in so many ways. For instance, many people use control to order and structure their lives. They try to control the people and circumstances around them. This control can become quite a strong power that comes back to curse them, because they are trapped within its walls of seeming protection.
John O’Donohue tells the story of a man condemned to spend the night in a cell with a poisonous snake. If the man made the slightest movement, the snake would kill him. So all night he cowered, petrified, in a corner of the cell, afraid to even breathe. In the first morning light, he could see the snake in another corner, coiled and sleeping. Then, as it became lighter, he saw that it was nothing but an old rope.
So what is it exactly that we are afraid of? Perhaps it would help to take a closer look, because fear operates under a shroud of mystery. When we shine the light upon it, we may see it’s not what we’d imagined.
I never really understood Franklin D. Roosevelt’s statement about fear, you know, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I get what he meant, but it seems that fear itself opens the door to more fear.
If the fear of death is the root of all fear, the first thing we must realize is that we cannot control it. We don’t know when or how or where we’re going to die, or who will be there. You often hear about not wanting to die alone. Well, what if you’re out on the road, miles from home, and die in an accident?
I have never had the privilege of accompanying someone into death. My mother, father, grandparents … all died hundreds of miles away. Yet I have heard that the moment of death is an incredibly peaceful event for many, even for those who feared it.
Just last week, a relative was telling me about the death of her grandmother. The elderly woman had been in poor health in recent years. Although she was a lovely Christian woman, she was afraid of dying. When she took a turn for the worse, she had to go to the hospital. My relative described what she observed in her grandmother, at the moment of her death, as an audible joyous, peaceful relief. Death is a moment of ultimate self-surrender.
Maybe our fear of death is really a fear of self-surrender. Maybe our death is not somewhere in the future. It’s here now.
“Then I saw that the wall had never been there, that the ‘unheard-of’ is here and this, not something and somewhere else …,” writes Dag Hammarskjöld in “Markings.”
I wonder if the moment of death is like the man seeing the rope in the corner of the cell. “This? This is what I was afraid of all my life?”
Just what, exactly, are you afraid of?
The “fun” spooky Halloween fear touched something deep in this child.
“All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears—of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words ‘Some Assembly Required,’” writes Dave Barry.
Instinctive fear. When I was a child of seven or eight, as I fell asleep sometimes I would feel my own death. I was afraid, and would run to my mother’s room and climb into her bed and her arms for comfort.
It says in the Bible that the fear of death holds us in lifelong bondage. “Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives are held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
We have no idea how deeply our lives are dictated by fear. It manifests in so many ways. For instance, many people use control to order and structure their lives. They try to control the people and circumstances around them. This control can become quite a strong power that comes back to curse them, because they are trapped within its walls of seeming protection.
John O’Donohue tells the story of a man condemned to spend the night in a cell with a poisonous snake. If the man made the slightest movement, the snake would kill him. So all night he cowered, petrified, in a corner of the cell, afraid to even breathe. In the first morning light, he could see the snake in another corner, coiled and sleeping. Then, as it became lighter, he saw that it was nothing but an old rope.
So what is it exactly that we are afraid of? Perhaps it would help to take a closer look, because fear operates under a shroud of mystery. When we shine the light upon it, we may see it’s not what we’d imagined.
I never really understood Franklin D. Roosevelt’s statement about fear, you know, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I get what he meant, but it seems that fear itself opens the door to more fear.
If the fear of death is the root of all fear, the first thing we must realize is that we cannot control it. We don’t know when or how or where we’re going to die, or who will be there. You often hear about not wanting to die alone. Well, what if you’re out on the road, miles from home, and die in an accident?
I have never had the privilege of accompanying someone into death. My mother, father, grandparents … all died hundreds of miles away. Yet I have heard that the moment of death is an incredibly peaceful event for many, even for those who feared it.
Just last week, a relative was telling me about the death of her grandmother. The elderly woman had been in poor health in recent years. Although she was a lovely Christian woman, she was afraid of dying. When she took a turn for the worse, she had to go to the hospital. My relative described what she observed in her grandmother, at the moment of her death, as an audible joyous, peaceful relief. Death is a moment of ultimate self-surrender.
Maybe our fear of death is really a fear of self-surrender. Maybe our death is not somewhere in the future. It’s here now.
“Then I saw that the wall had never been there, that the ‘unheard-of’ is here and this, not something and somewhere else …,” writes Dag Hammarskjöld in “Markings.”
I wonder if the moment of death is like the man seeing the rope in the corner of the cell. “This? This is what I was afraid of all my life?”
Just what, exactly, are you afraid of?
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