Jul 2013
Costa Rica Pilgrimage
31/07/13 05:53
Costa Rica is officially Christian. The government embraces the Roman Catholic Church as the official religion of the country. The separation of church and state that is an honored tradition in the United States is unknown in Costa Rica. There are, of course, members of other denominations and religions in Costa Rica. Our congregation has a long-standing partnership with a protestant Christian church. The church is allowed to exist and to do its work by the government, but lacks the official support given to Roman Catholic congregations. In some ways the church is treated as a non-profit social services agency by the government, which inspects the facility for compliance with health codes because it conducts a feeding program. There are some official restrictions on signs and other displays and advertisements for the church but these restrictions are not a problem for our sister church which sees its role in the community as that of a servant.
As a country with an official religion, there are public and government holidays for religions events and gatherings. This Friday, August 2, is an official holiday for the annual pilgrimage to the Basilica Nuestra Senora de los Angeles, located in the old colonial capital city of Cartago. But the actual pilgrimage is already underway and most businesses will be closed on Thursday as well. Thursday is the day of the official pilgrimage mass at the basilica. Millions of pilgrims participate in the event, many of them walking the 22 km (a little over 13 miles) from San Jose to Cartago as a sign of their faithfulness. Pilgrims travel by horseback, on foot and some even make the trek on their knees.
The tradition is that on August 2, 1635, a young indigenous girl discovered a small, black statue of the Madonna with her child on a rock in the forest outside of Cartago. Attempts to remove the statue failed and the word spread of the discovery. The Virgin Mary eventually became Costa Rica’s patron saint. Many Costa Ricans see the pilgrimage as a mark of faithfulness. Some, coming from distant parts of the country walk for a month or more. Others, like President Laura Chinchilla will participate in the traditional hike for a day or less. The tradition of completing the hike by traveling the last several hundred meters on their knees is observed by only a small percentage of those who come to attend the mass.
There is additional attention to the pilgrimage this year because the healing of a Costa Rican woman by Pope John Paul II has been officially ruled a miracle and paved the way for the consecration of the Pope as a saint. Floribeth Mora, who lives in Cartago, Mora was diagnosed with an inoperable and incurable brain aneurism. Mora received a visit from the late pope who invited her to get up. Later medical evaluations showed no sign of the aneurism. The Vatican officially confirmed the healing as a miracle on July 5. Legend holds that there have been many other miraculous healings associated with the basilica in Cartago.
The Tico Times reported that nearly 2 million people participated in the pilgrimage last year. The total population of Costa Rica is only 4.7 million. About a 1.5 million people live in the San Jose and its suburbs. Although some people from outside of the country participate in the pilgrimage each year, the vast majority of pilgrims are Costa Ricans. It is estimated that nearly half of the people in San Jose participate in the annual pilgrimage.
The large numbers of pilgrims in a country with a relatively small population means that there is a need for significant infrastructure to support the pilgrims. Emergency medical treatment stations are set up. The Red Cross mobilizes over a thousand volunteers to assist pilgrims each year.
It is not uncommon for pilgrims to walk only one way in the process, taking the train or obtaining rides back home after participating in the mass. There is train service from San Jose to Cartago and trains are expected to be running at capacity for the return on Friday and Saturday.
There is nothing in my own experience to help me understand the dynamics of mass pilgrimages. I read about them occurring in places around the world and I am struck by the power of such events in the lives of some of the participants, but I think of a pilgrimage of faith as something a bit less public and a bit more individual. My faith has never found its strongest expressions by being part of a crowd. Doing what everyone else around me is doing doesn’t seem to bring out the deepest side of my faith. Taking a stand on my own requires a more careful examination of my faith.
Were I in Costa Rica at the time of the pilgrimage, I think I would watch from afar rather than participate. I’m not a big fan of crowds in the first place. But I understand that the pilgrimage is deeply meaningful for some of the participants.
If I were in Costa Rica this week, I suspect that I’d be working with our church to help neighbors prepare for water outages that will occur this weekend. Most of the Desamperados area will be cut off from water from noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday, which means that there will be no water at the church for the lunch that is served on Sundays. The official agency that announced the water cut offs says that the water will be on for about an hour from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and then off again until 11 p.m., but seasoned Costa Ricans know better than to count on that hour of water. Chances are that once the water is turned off there will be delays and problems with getting it turned back on again. The outages are part of a large hydroelectric project that will result in additional turbines and additional electrical generating capacity for the city. Installation of the turbines requires major changes in water pipes that also supply municipal water to the city.
It should be an interesting weekend in Costa Rica. But then again they all are when you look at the country through the eyes of an outsider. We gringos never really understand the country.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
The perfect boat
30/07/13 05:31
I recently read an article in a magazine that I receive about a man who has found the perfect canoe. He gives the history of his various canoe purchases and speaks of the problems that he found with various canoes. But now he believes that he is the owner of the perfect canoe. The canoe he claims is perfect is a 15’ Fletcher’s Fancy.
Now I have to admit that he does own a really nice canoe. Thelma Cameron built that canoe. She makes canoes the old fashioned way, one at a time. She does use forms that assure that here canoes are consistent in shape and size, but each has hand-steamed and bent ribs, hand shaped cedar planking and canvas carefully stretched to cover the canoe. The Fletcher name comes from her uncle Paul Fletcher, who was an aircraft designer, but obviously knew a thing or two about boats as well. In many respects they reflect the shape and style of Chestnut canoes. Each of Thelma’s canoes is a work of art. They are beautiful, lightweight and very functional.
But I can’t accept the description of “perfect.” It may be the perfect canoe for the author of the article, but there are some drawbacks to any 15’ canoe. Though the boat will haul enough weight to be paddled tandem, it really works better as a solo canoe if one is carrying a lot of supplies. And fully loaded it is a bit short of freeboard for those really windy days that come up on northern lakes. The canoe wouldn’t handle much of a sail rig if it were to be sailed, though the author seems to have no intention of doing so. While the canoe may be perfect for the use that it gets and the owner that it has, no canoe is truly perfect for every situation and circumstance.
At any rate, I’m still looking for my “perfect” canoe. I have some boats that I really like. This summer I have been paddling a woodstrip canoe that I made in 2001 to the lines of a Chestnut Prospector. In many ways it is a similar shape of the canoe that was touted as perfect. It is a foot longer and is covered with fiberglass instead of canvas. It probably weighs about ten pounds more the way that I built it. Still, it is light enough for me to handle by myself, a joy to paddle solo and has plenty of room for a second paddler and all of the equipment that one would need for a multiple-day camping trip. It has enough rocker and freeboard to take waves, but still carves a remarkably straight line on a calm lake. It is beautiful and feels just right under paddle. It is symmetrical, which means that I can treat it as if either end is the bow, a nice feature for a multiple-use canoe. When paddling tandem, we head out with the bow in front. When paddling solo, I turn the boat around so that I can occasionally sit in the bow seat while facing the other direction. That puts my weight closer to the center of the boat. And it provides a relief from the sometimes-stiff knees when I have been kneeling for too long a time. I still prefer to paddle kneeling, but like the ability to change from time to time.
It isn’t my only boat however. I suppose that the author who has found the perfect canoe can understand why I built a rowboat for adventures with my young grandson and why rowing is another excellent exercise for a rotund middle-aged man. And I suspect he can understand that a kayak works a bit better for whitewater and for expeditions along the shores of the ocean. Of course he would notice that my 17’ expedition kayak is really different from my little play boat that is used in creeks.
But when it comes to just canoes, I can’t choose just one. For nostalgia and for just plain fun with a gang of people it is hard to beat my 1960 Old Town OTCA. It is a great wood and canvass boat that I restored a number of years ago. It is read and beautiful and easy to paddle. It is very difficult to swamp and a great beginner canoe for kids. We’ve had a lot of fun paddling it on lakes large and small. It was our primary tandem canoe for our Lake Superior adventure a few years ago. But it is heavy, and I already notice that I sometimes struggle to get it to the top of a car. I prefer to put it on one of the lower racks of the canoe trailer.
I suppose that when I am too feeble to lift the bigger boats, I will still treasure my little Wee Lassie. It is just 13’ long and a really fun solo canoe. It can be paddled with either a traditional paddle or a double paddle like a kayak. It floats in a very small amount of water. It was the first boat I built after moving to South Dakota and it is made of fence cedar so the wood has lots of character. And it is light enough to pick up with one hand. But it is no boat for stormy weather. And it doesn’t heel over very well. I can’t make it work for freestyle or Canadian style paddling very well.
So I haven’t found the perfect canoe. I suspect that other family members wish I would. The fantasy of my having only one boat holds the promise of my needing less room to store so many boats. A family with two persons hardly needs a trailer that will haul eight boats. So I’m still looking as I paddle four different canoes and four different kayaks and occasionally rowing a small yawl. I keep dreaming of the next boat I’ll build. I’m thinking a tandem or triple kayak or perhaps a guide boat. Now that I’m a grandpa, boats need to have room for a grandson.
The good news is that I can’t afford a custom-made boat like the one that was discovered to be perfect for the writer of the article. The only practical way for me to get another boat is to make one myself. Some of us might just not be made for only one boat.
But I can’t accept the description of “perfect.” It may be the perfect canoe for the author of the article, but there are some drawbacks to any 15’ canoe. Though the boat will haul enough weight to be paddled tandem, it really works better as a solo canoe if one is carrying a lot of supplies. And fully loaded it is a bit short of freeboard for those really windy days that come up on northern lakes. The canoe wouldn’t handle much of a sail rig if it were to be sailed, though the author seems to have no intention of doing so. While the canoe may be perfect for the use that it gets and the owner that it has, no canoe is truly perfect for every situation and circumstance.
At any rate, I’m still looking for my “perfect” canoe. I have some boats that I really like. This summer I have been paddling a woodstrip canoe that I made in 2001 to the lines of a Chestnut Prospector. In many ways it is a similar shape of the canoe that was touted as perfect. It is a foot longer and is covered with fiberglass instead of canvas. It probably weighs about ten pounds more the way that I built it. Still, it is light enough for me to handle by myself, a joy to paddle solo and has plenty of room for a second paddler and all of the equipment that one would need for a multiple-day camping trip. It has enough rocker and freeboard to take waves, but still carves a remarkably straight line on a calm lake. It is beautiful and feels just right under paddle. It is symmetrical, which means that I can treat it as if either end is the bow, a nice feature for a multiple-use canoe. When paddling tandem, we head out with the bow in front. When paddling solo, I turn the boat around so that I can occasionally sit in the bow seat while facing the other direction. That puts my weight closer to the center of the boat. And it provides a relief from the sometimes-stiff knees when I have been kneeling for too long a time. I still prefer to paddle kneeling, but like the ability to change from time to time.
But when it comes to just canoes, I can’t choose just one. For nostalgia and for just plain fun with a gang of people it is hard to beat my 1960 Old Town OTCA. It is a great wood and canvass boat that I restored a number of years ago. It is read and beautiful and easy to paddle. It is very difficult to swamp and a great beginner canoe for kids. We’ve had a lot of fun paddling it on lakes large and small. It was our primary tandem canoe for our Lake Superior adventure a few years ago. But it is heavy, and I already notice that I sometimes struggle to get it to the top of a car. I prefer to put it on one of the lower racks of the canoe trailer.
So I haven’t found the perfect canoe. I suspect that other family members wish I would. The fantasy of my having only one boat holds the promise of my needing less room to store so many boats. A family with two persons hardly needs a trailer that will haul eight boats. So I’m still looking as I paddle four different canoes and four different kayaks and occasionally rowing a small yawl. I keep dreaming of the next boat I’ll build. I’m thinking a tandem or triple kayak or perhaps a guide boat. Now that I’m a grandpa, boats need to have room for a grandson.
The good news is that I can’t afford a custom-made boat like the one that was discovered to be perfect for the writer of the article. The only practical way for me to get another boat is to make one myself. Some of us might just not be made for only one boat.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
On being tired
29/07/13 05:31
There is certainly more than one way of being tired. I am usually tired on Sunday after leading worship. I put a lot of emotional and physical energy into planning and leading a service. We have high standards for the coordination of music and liturgy. Our team style of worship requires some of the sensitivities to theatrics and timing that is part of any good presentation. There is a level of mental energy required for the memorization that I do for each service. And when it is all over, I’m tired. It isn’t uncommon for me to take a nap early on Sunday afternoon. Yesterday, we had a special memorial service for Marc Wessels at our church. There were other speakers, but the service, the bulletin, and the organization had to be prepared at the last minute. When the day was drawing to an end, I was tired, feeling a bit drained.
That kind of tired is different from the physical tiredness that comes from a day of hard work. When I participate in a splitting party for the Woodchucks, which is usually about 3 hours of good physical labor, and then spend the rest of that day mowing my lawn and doing other yard work, I can fall to sleep in the evening and feel the muscles relaxing as I enjoy the comfort of simply stopping the work. That is a different feeling than I have after having led worship.
I have a memory of the tiredness that comes from having very young children in our home. The unceasing activity that is required of parents of children who need constant supervision combined with nights where sleep is interrupted, sometimes multiple times in the same night leaves one with a kind of overwhelming tiredness. When you do get the opportunity, you find that you have the ability to wake yourself and listen to the quiet because you are used to the need to be constantly aware.
These days, I experience a form of tiredness that includes a little bit of ache. My muscles and joints don’t have the physical strength that I once enjoyed. I’m not at all feeble, and I experience very few restrictions to my activities, but there are some tasks that I do that leave me with a bit of stiffness. Tasks that are infrequently performed such as splitting wood by hand or carrying things up ladders or operating a pressure washer can still be done without much trouble, but whereas there used to be a time when I could tackle a new job and then forget about it, these days, I can feel it in my legs and shoulders after doing some work that isn’t part of my routine. In most cases, if I simply keep up the work, I can regain lost strength and the aches will go away. Sometimes, I just have creakiness and pain that are a part of aging and the best thing to do is to ignore it and get on with what needs to be done.
I am, of course, capable of making myself tired in a variety of different ways. I can be mentally and physically exhausted at the same time. Still, I know that I am not routinely running short of sleep as was the case when we had a household with babies and toddlers. These days there are enough hours in the day for a reasonable sleep almost every night and I find ways to sneak in a nap on a fairly regular basis.
It is probably not a deep discovery or a significant revelation, but I have found that there are plenty of things in this life that are worse than being tired. In fact, with six decades under my belt, I have come to enjoy the feeling of being tired – at least a little bit. Being physically tired comes with the satisfaction of having accomplished work. Being mentally tired comes with the knowledge that I have given my best to an event or project. And sleep is a delicious reward. A cool breeze blowing through the window and a warm quilt on the bed is a great combination for comfort.
I used to think that I’m not a very good sleeper. I wake early and seem ready to get out of bed. There are some nights when I sleep for an hour or two and then my mind gets to work on solving a problem and I can’t go back to sleep. It is not at all unusual for me to get up and read a book for an hour at some point during the night. But I no longer consider myself to be a poor sleeper. I’m pretty good at sleeping when I am tired. What I’m not good at is staying in bed when I’m not sleeping. I do better if I get up, even if it means that I will go back to bed a little later.
Having recently been on vacation, I recognize that my sleep patterns are a bit different when I am away from my usual work routine. I made a point of not using my alarm to wake myself at all during my vacation and some days I did sleep in a bit longer than usual. But then some evenings I stayed up later than usual. Now that I am home, I set the alarm. The alarm is not so much to wake me as it is to keep me from worrying about oversleeping. I can sleep better knowing that I will be reminded when it is time to get up. Otherwise I’ll be checking the clock all night long.
So I get tired these days. But I’ve been getting tired for most of my life.
There is simply nothing wrong with being tired. It is a part of being alive. It is the result of investing energy in meaningful work. It is an anticipation of the reward of sleep.
And it goes with the mostly white beard and hair quite well. It’s not bad having people expecting you to take a nap from time to time. I don’t disappoint them.
That kind of tired is different from the physical tiredness that comes from a day of hard work. When I participate in a splitting party for the Woodchucks, which is usually about 3 hours of good physical labor, and then spend the rest of that day mowing my lawn and doing other yard work, I can fall to sleep in the evening and feel the muscles relaxing as I enjoy the comfort of simply stopping the work. That is a different feeling than I have after having led worship.
I have a memory of the tiredness that comes from having very young children in our home. The unceasing activity that is required of parents of children who need constant supervision combined with nights where sleep is interrupted, sometimes multiple times in the same night leaves one with a kind of overwhelming tiredness. When you do get the opportunity, you find that you have the ability to wake yourself and listen to the quiet because you are used to the need to be constantly aware.
These days, I experience a form of tiredness that includes a little bit of ache. My muscles and joints don’t have the physical strength that I once enjoyed. I’m not at all feeble, and I experience very few restrictions to my activities, but there are some tasks that I do that leave me with a bit of stiffness. Tasks that are infrequently performed such as splitting wood by hand or carrying things up ladders or operating a pressure washer can still be done without much trouble, but whereas there used to be a time when I could tackle a new job and then forget about it, these days, I can feel it in my legs and shoulders after doing some work that isn’t part of my routine. In most cases, if I simply keep up the work, I can regain lost strength and the aches will go away. Sometimes, I just have creakiness and pain that are a part of aging and the best thing to do is to ignore it and get on with what needs to be done.
I am, of course, capable of making myself tired in a variety of different ways. I can be mentally and physically exhausted at the same time. Still, I know that I am not routinely running short of sleep as was the case when we had a household with babies and toddlers. These days there are enough hours in the day for a reasonable sleep almost every night and I find ways to sneak in a nap on a fairly regular basis.
It is probably not a deep discovery or a significant revelation, but I have found that there are plenty of things in this life that are worse than being tired. In fact, with six decades under my belt, I have come to enjoy the feeling of being tired – at least a little bit. Being physically tired comes with the satisfaction of having accomplished work. Being mentally tired comes with the knowledge that I have given my best to an event or project. And sleep is a delicious reward. A cool breeze blowing through the window and a warm quilt on the bed is a great combination for comfort.
I used to think that I’m not a very good sleeper. I wake early and seem ready to get out of bed. There are some nights when I sleep for an hour or two and then my mind gets to work on solving a problem and I can’t go back to sleep. It is not at all unusual for me to get up and read a book for an hour at some point during the night. But I no longer consider myself to be a poor sleeper. I’m pretty good at sleeping when I am tired. What I’m not good at is staying in bed when I’m not sleeping. I do better if I get up, even if it means that I will go back to bed a little later.
Having recently been on vacation, I recognize that my sleep patterns are a bit different when I am away from my usual work routine. I made a point of not using my alarm to wake myself at all during my vacation and some days I did sleep in a bit longer than usual. But then some evenings I stayed up later than usual. Now that I am home, I set the alarm. The alarm is not so much to wake me as it is to keep me from worrying about oversleeping. I can sleep better knowing that I will be reminded when it is time to get up. Otherwise I’ll be checking the clock all night long.
So I get tired these days. But I’ve been getting tired for most of my life.
There is simply nothing wrong with being tired. It is a part of being alive. It is the result of investing energy in meaningful work. It is an anticipation of the reward of sleep.
And it goes with the mostly white beard and hair quite well. It’s not bad having people expecting you to take a nap from time to time. I don’t disappoint them.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
'till it's gone
28/07/13 05:17
There’s an old song, sung by Joni Mitchell, going through my head this morning:
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot Spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.” The South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ experienced a loss on Friday. But we’re having trouble assessing its meaning.
At our annual meeting in June in Custer we elected Rev. Dr. Marc Wessels to be our next Conference Minister. The search committee was very pleased with the result of their long and difficult search for a new Conference Minister. Although we have been ably served by an interim Conference Minister for two years, and had an acting Conference Minister before that, it has been a long time since we had a called conference minister in place. We were beginning to get excited about the possibilities for mission and ministry in the South Dakota Conference when Marc arrived mid August to assume his duties.
Then the annual meeting got over and we all went back to our lives. We had Vacation Bible School and other summer activities at our church. Susan and I squeezed in two weeks of vacation. And we have all begun the first stages of planning for fall programs and activities.
Meanwhile, Marc was planning his move. It was a bit of a complex move. He has been serving as an associate Conference Minister in the Missouri-Mid South Conference, based in St. Louis, but with a child finishing high school, his wife was remaining in a previous home. With one child graduated from college and the other from high school, the couple was looking forward to re-combining households and making the move to South Dakota. The plan was for Marc to load the U-haul in St. Louis, drive to their home and re-pack things for the move. Friday, while loading the U-haul, Marc suffered a heart attack and died as doctors attempted to save his life in the emergency room.
It isn’t like we have lost a long-time friend. We didn’t really know Marc at all. Most of us had only had limited conversations with him. Without minimizing the scope of the tragedy and the depth of loss for Marc’s family and friends, what we in the South Dakota Conference have lost is a bit different than losing a friend. We have lost a particular vision of how our future might have unfolded. In a time of great transition in the church, when the very nature and existence of Conferences is being questioned, we had made the commitment to a traditional ministry with a strong pastoral presence in our Conference office. We had envisioned a minister who would travel about South Dakota providing pastoral support to our pastors and congregations, assisting with placement when congregations were seeking ministers, responding to special needs and crises, administering our office and directing our staff. We were looking forward to putting the “interim” sense behind us and getting on with the next stages of planning our mission and ministry.
Now we are back in the interim mode once again. It is not that we don’t like our interim minister. We do. We had a gathering in the Black Hills last week to say thank you and good-bye to him. It’s just that we were ready to get a bit more settled. But now is not the time to be settled.
Marc was interested in astronomy and had studied the history of the U.S. space program. He got excited when talking about the subject at our annual meeting. I was looking forward to setting up a time to take him on a night hike in the badlands, which is one of the best places on this planet for stargazing. I was anticipating the opportunity to take him for a drive around the Cheyenne River Reservation to see the Dakota Association churches and meet the people. That drive might not have actually ever occurred, as there are plenty of other people to serve as a guide to find the isolated and rural churches. But I could imagine such an adventure. I really enjoy taking “city” people into the open land in the center of South Dakota and watching their reactions as they begin to understand the size and scope and distances of reservation life.
I have been less active in Conference committees and boards in recent years, a position that I treasure, as I’m not a big fan of excessive meetings. But I was looking forward to conversations about emerging missions within our conference. The possibilities of a conference-wide mission trip, opportunities to help other congregations discover grass roots ministries like the woodchuck society and expanding our sacred conversations with our Dakota, Lakota and Nakota brothers and sisters all excite me. I was looking forward to new leadership in our conference office to open up avenues of conversation about the mission of our Conference.
But our path will be different that what we envisioned.
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
I don’t, at my core, believe in a hierarchical church. I don’t think that faithfulness and discipleship come from the top down. I have never seen the Conference and its ministries as somehow “above” those of the local church. I don’t think that Conference Ministers are somehow more capable or more competent than those who serve local congregations. I don’t believe that there is a higher calling than that of being a pastor. In our vocation there really isn’t any ladder to climb. But some of my colleagues do see the church that way. They aspire to serve as conference ministers and then move on to calls in the church’s national setting. Frankly, most of those jobs simply don’t appeal to me.
But I do appreciate the gift of leadership when God provides it. And I am confident that God will provide the leadership that our Conference needs to move on to the next phases of our shared mission and ministry. It just isn’t going to happen in the way I imagined.
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
Today our prayers go out to his wife, Elizabeth, in her shock and grief. And to the rest of his family and friends we send condolences and prayers. It is a day for faith and trust. For none of us know the future. We recognize that the future is and always has been in God’s hands.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot Spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.” The South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ experienced a loss on Friday. But we’re having trouble assessing its meaning.
At our annual meeting in June in Custer we elected Rev. Dr. Marc Wessels to be our next Conference Minister. The search committee was very pleased with the result of their long and difficult search for a new Conference Minister. Although we have been ably served by an interim Conference Minister for two years, and had an acting Conference Minister before that, it has been a long time since we had a called conference minister in place. We were beginning to get excited about the possibilities for mission and ministry in the South Dakota Conference when Marc arrived mid August to assume his duties.
Then the annual meeting got over and we all went back to our lives. We had Vacation Bible School and other summer activities at our church. Susan and I squeezed in two weeks of vacation. And we have all begun the first stages of planning for fall programs and activities.
Meanwhile, Marc was planning his move. It was a bit of a complex move. He has been serving as an associate Conference Minister in the Missouri-Mid South Conference, based in St. Louis, but with a child finishing high school, his wife was remaining in a previous home. With one child graduated from college and the other from high school, the couple was looking forward to re-combining households and making the move to South Dakota. The plan was for Marc to load the U-haul in St. Louis, drive to their home and re-pack things for the move. Friday, while loading the U-haul, Marc suffered a heart attack and died as doctors attempted to save his life in the emergency room.
It isn’t like we have lost a long-time friend. We didn’t really know Marc at all. Most of us had only had limited conversations with him. Without minimizing the scope of the tragedy and the depth of loss for Marc’s family and friends, what we in the South Dakota Conference have lost is a bit different than losing a friend. We have lost a particular vision of how our future might have unfolded. In a time of great transition in the church, when the very nature and existence of Conferences is being questioned, we had made the commitment to a traditional ministry with a strong pastoral presence in our Conference office. We had envisioned a minister who would travel about South Dakota providing pastoral support to our pastors and congregations, assisting with placement when congregations were seeking ministers, responding to special needs and crises, administering our office and directing our staff. We were looking forward to putting the “interim” sense behind us and getting on with the next stages of planning our mission and ministry.
Now we are back in the interim mode once again. It is not that we don’t like our interim minister. We do. We had a gathering in the Black Hills last week to say thank you and good-bye to him. It’s just that we were ready to get a bit more settled. But now is not the time to be settled.
Marc was interested in astronomy and had studied the history of the U.S. space program. He got excited when talking about the subject at our annual meeting. I was looking forward to setting up a time to take him on a night hike in the badlands, which is one of the best places on this planet for stargazing. I was anticipating the opportunity to take him for a drive around the Cheyenne River Reservation to see the Dakota Association churches and meet the people. That drive might not have actually ever occurred, as there are plenty of other people to serve as a guide to find the isolated and rural churches. But I could imagine such an adventure. I really enjoy taking “city” people into the open land in the center of South Dakota and watching their reactions as they begin to understand the size and scope and distances of reservation life.
I have been less active in Conference committees and boards in recent years, a position that I treasure, as I’m not a big fan of excessive meetings. But I was looking forward to conversations about emerging missions within our conference. The possibilities of a conference-wide mission trip, opportunities to help other congregations discover grass roots ministries like the woodchuck society and expanding our sacred conversations with our Dakota, Lakota and Nakota brothers and sisters all excite me. I was looking forward to new leadership in our conference office to open up avenues of conversation about the mission of our Conference.
But our path will be different that what we envisioned.
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
I don’t, at my core, believe in a hierarchical church. I don’t think that faithfulness and discipleship come from the top down. I have never seen the Conference and its ministries as somehow “above” those of the local church. I don’t think that Conference Ministers are somehow more capable or more competent than those who serve local congregations. I don’t believe that there is a higher calling than that of being a pastor. In our vocation there really isn’t any ladder to climb. But some of my colleagues do see the church that way. They aspire to serve as conference ministers and then move on to calls in the church’s national setting. Frankly, most of those jobs simply don’t appeal to me.
But I do appreciate the gift of leadership when God provides it. And I am confident that God will provide the leadership that our Conference needs to move on to the next phases of our shared mission and ministry. It just isn’t going to happen in the way I imagined.
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
Today our prayers go out to his wife, Elizabeth, in her shock and grief. And to the rest of his family and friends we send condolences and prayers. It is a day for faith and trust. For none of us know the future. We recognize that the future is and always has been in God’s hands.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Life on the edge of comedy
27/07/13 05:19
I could go on and on with stories about my family that seem to me to be humorous. Most of my brothers and sisters have been divorced, some multiple times, and divorce is a ripe subject for comedy. In our family you can see divorces coming. Usually the ones involved are the last ones to know that the marriage is over. The rest of the family has known that the marriage was doomed for a long time.
The problem with being a comedian in a large family – or in any family for that matter – is that your family doesn’t want you to tell their stories. And all of the stories are perceived from a distinct perspective. We don’t share the same memories and when we tell of a particular event, it sounds like we might have had entirely different experiences. I sometimes comment that a conversation with my brother about the past might convince one that he is either completely crazy or the biggest liar or perhaps he didn’t really grow up in the same house with the same parents as I did. The way he remembers things seems to be very different than the way I remember them. Were I to stand up in public and tell stories about him, he might think I was making fun of him. And in our family there is no need for additional tension and disagreement. We can come up with enough of that in private without any need for public statements, thank you very much.
And a lot of the stories of my family aren’t mine to tell in the first place. It is easy to find humor in other people’s stories, buy that doesn’t mean that you should exploit them by twisting them for the best laugh line and telling them in public.
That is the problem with telling funny stories about my work as well. Life in the church is a constant source of humor. I meet people whose lives are comedy in motion. There are plenty of days when if you didn’t laugh, you’d weep. I’ve been told by a church member that I “micromanage” manage everything in the church and that I should apologize for mistakes in a church project in which I had no part in the same conversation. I’ve been told that I don’t keep sufficient distinctions between work and home life by the same person who was angry that I didn’t answer an e-mail message sent to the church account while I was on vacation. One member declared in a meeting that if we don’t have enough volunteers for a project, we should “hire volunteers.” People are inconsistent and we all have all kinds quirks. It would be easy pickings for a stand-up comedian to make fun of real events that take place in a church. But such jokes would be made at the expense of good and faithful people. The folks in the jokes would recognize themselves and resent that their experiences were twisted in the telling of the stories.
You wouldn’t think that kind of story would be funny. But she is incredibly so. Or perhaps I just have a warped sense of humor.
Chances are I wouldn’t be as good at comedy as I think.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
At the Copacabana
26/07/13 05:27
The story goes that Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman stayed at the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. While they were there, they had a conversation about whether or not there had ever been a song called “Copacabana.” The conversation gave rise to the story/song with the title. Sussman collaborated with Jack Feldman to write the lyrics about Lola and her lover Tony, his rival Rico, the fight and the three shots that were fired. Manilow wrote the music for the lyrics and the song became a hit, released in 1978.
The song, however, isn’t about the Copacabana Hotel in Rio. It is about the Copacabana nightclub in New York City: “at the Copa, Copacabana, the hottest spot north of Havana.”
There might not have been a song with the title “Copacabana” prior to the 1978 hit, but there was a movie staring Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda released in 1947 with that name. A musical, written by Manilow came from the song and was later made into a movie with the same name.
So much for trivia. The name Copacabana might refer to several different places. There is a city with that name in Bolivia, another in Columbia, and even one in New South Wales in Australia. There is a Copacabana Beach in Dubrovnik, Croatia. And Rio de Janerio has a nightclub, a fort and a beach with that name.
It was the beach that made the news yesterday, however. With a blasting medley of bossa nova music as a prelude, Pope Francis celebrated mass and addressed a crowd of about a million worshippers on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. “Bota Fe” – put on faith – was his message to the crowd, which included a large number of youth.
The people of South America know that this Pope is different from his predecessors. The first pope from South America is less enamored with the traditional pomp and ceremony of the office, less likely to indulge in the luxury and privilege afforded his position. Before addressing the crowd on the beach, Francis walked the muddy streets of the Varginha slum. This neighborhood is known for drug sales and other crimes. It has been rainy in Brazil during the pontiff’s visit.
I am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church and I am not current with the nuances of its latest theological statements. But the Pope’s visit to Brazil has resulted in some news stories that are a bit misleading if not outright incorrect. A couple of comics had picked up on the headlines and pretty soon there is a full-blown media rumor that the faithful can obtain indulgences for following the Pope on Twitter. If that were true, it would be silly, not to mention bad theology. But, of course, things are rarely the way they get reported by the popular press.
For the record, you can’t shorten your time in purgatory by re-tweeting the Pope. It is fairly common for the Vatican to issue a document that promises an indulgence for making a spiritual pilgrimage. Such a document was released in advance of the Pope’s visit to Brazil. The basic theological concept is that sinners are punished after the end of their lives. The punishment, however, can be lessened or shortened by acts of faith. When the faithful are truly repentant and do good deeds to make amends for their sins, these deeds do not go unnoticed. The practice of the institutional church having the ability to judge who does and who does not receive credit for good deeds is controversial and was one of the big issues at the center of the Protestant reformation. Whether or not the church is able to issue a full indulgence and essentially wipe the slate clean remains an area of disagreement among Christians.
At any rate, it is common for faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church to make pilgrimages to shrines and other holy places, offer prayers, and engage in acts of faith to demonstrate their repentance and intentions to live a better life.
The Vatican encouraged people to come to see the Pope in Brazil by issuing a document that proclaimed that such a pilgrimage would be an acceptable way of demonstrating repentance. It wasn’t offering a “get out of hell free” card for those who came.
Then, in the spirit of the new Pope, it occurred to Vatican officials that the benefits of faith shouldn’t be restricted to those who are affluent and able to travel. At the end of the official document, the Vatican noted that it was not just pilgrims who could demonstrate their penance, but also those who might participate “with devotion, via the new means of social communication.” The intent, I think, was to widen the description of the ways that the faithful could participate in the Pope’s visit and to broaden the ways of thinking about pilgrimage and penance.
The whole thing got blown out of proportion in the media coverage. What the Vatican meant to say was that for those who cannot travel to Brazil because of a lack of financial resources or ill health, they are welcome to participate through social media. I don’t think that there are any serious Roman Catholic theologians who believe that the amount of punishment one receives in the afterlife can be shortened by reading the Pope’s Twitter feed.
But then I don’t follow the Pope on Twitter. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Pope has a Twitter feed. I signed up for Twitter a few years ago, and I can’t figure out how to use it in a meaningful manner other than to announce the availability of the newsletter or offer links to other web sites. As a tool for proclaiming the Gospel, it seems to not work at all well for me. It reduces serious faith to aphorisms. It reminds me of the pithy statements that get put up on changeable letter boards at churches. The sayings might be clever – they might attract attention – but they aren’t a very good way of communicating the messages of faith.
But that might be a good reason to follow the Pope on Twitter. It might provide some good slogans that could be used when one has to be succinct. His message at Copacabana Beach yesterday wasn’t bad: “Bota Fe” – put on faith.
The song, however, isn’t about the Copacabana Hotel in Rio. It is about the Copacabana nightclub in New York City: “at the Copa, Copacabana, the hottest spot north of Havana.”
There might not have been a song with the title “Copacabana” prior to the 1978 hit, but there was a movie staring Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda released in 1947 with that name. A musical, written by Manilow came from the song and was later made into a movie with the same name.
So much for trivia. The name Copacabana might refer to several different places. There is a city with that name in Bolivia, another in Columbia, and even one in New South Wales in Australia. There is a Copacabana Beach in Dubrovnik, Croatia. And Rio de Janerio has a nightclub, a fort and a beach with that name.
It was the beach that made the news yesterday, however. With a blasting medley of bossa nova music as a prelude, Pope Francis celebrated mass and addressed a crowd of about a million worshippers on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. “Bota Fe” – put on faith – was his message to the crowd, which included a large number of youth.
The people of South America know that this Pope is different from his predecessors. The first pope from South America is less enamored with the traditional pomp and ceremony of the office, less likely to indulge in the luxury and privilege afforded his position. Before addressing the crowd on the beach, Francis walked the muddy streets of the Varginha slum. This neighborhood is known for drug sales and other crimes. It has been rainy in Brazil during the pontiff’s visit.
I am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church and I am not current with the nuances of its latest theological statements. But the Pope’s visit to Brazil has resulted in some news stories that are a bit misleading if not outright incorrect. A couple of comics had picked up on the headlines and pretty soon there is a full-blown media rumor that the faithful can obtain indulgences for following the Pope on Twitter. If that were true, it would be silly, not to mention bad theology. But, of course, things are rarely the way they get reported by the popular press.
For the record, you can’t shorten your time in purgatory by re-tweeting the Pope. It is fairly common for the Vatican to issue a document that promises an indulgence for making a spiritual pilgrimage. Such a document was released in advance of the Pope’s visit to Brazil. The basic theological concept is that sinners are punished after the end of their lives. The punishment, however, can be lessened or shortened by acts of faith. When the faithful are truly repentant and do good deeds to make amends for their sins, these deeds do not go unnoticed. The practice of the institutional church having the ability to judge who does and who does not receive credit for good deeds is controversial and was one of the big issues at the center of the Protestant reformation. Whether or not the church is able to issue a full indulgence and essentially wipe the slate clean remains an area of disagreement among Christians.
At any rate, it is common for faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church to make pilgrimages to shrines and other holy places, offer prayers, and engage in acts of faith to demonstrate their repentance and intentions to live a better life.
The Vatican encouraged people to come to see the Pope in Brazil by issuing a document that proclaimed that such a pilgrimage would be an acceptable way of demonstrating repentance. It wasn’t offering a “get out of hell free” card for those who came.
Then, in the spirit of the new Pope, it occurred to Vatican officials that the benefits of faith shouldn’t be restricted to those who are affluent and able to travel. At the end of the official document, the Vatican noted that it was not just pilgrims who could demonstrate their penance, but also those who might participate “with devotion, via the new means of social communication.” The intent, I think, was to widen the description of the ways that the faithful could participate in the Pope’s visit and to broaden the ways of thinking about pilgrimage and penance.
The whole thing got blown out of proportion in the media coverage. What the Vatican meant to say was that for those who cannot travel to Brazil because of a lack of financial resources or ill health, they are welcome to participate through social media. I don’t think that there are any serious Roman Catholic theologians who believe that the amount of punishment one receives in the afterlife can be shortened by reading the Pope’s Twitter feed.
But then I don’t follow the Pope on Twitter. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Pope has a Twitter feed. I signed up for Twitter a few years ago, and I can’t figure out how to use it in a meaningful manner other than to announce the availability of the newsletter or offer links to other web sites. As a tool for proclaiming the Gospel, it seems to not work at all well for me. It reduces serious faith to aphorisms. It reminds me of the pithy statements that get put up on changeable letter boards at churches. The sayings might be clever – they might attract attention – but they aren’t a very good way of communicating the messages of faith.
But that might be a good reason to follow the Pope on Twitter. It might provide some good slogans that could be used when one has to be succinct. His message at Copacabana Beach yesterday wasn’t bad: “Bota Fe” – put on faith.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Home again
25/07/13 05:33
After my mother was widowed, we would sometimes encourage her to consider buying a new bed for herself. Her old wooden bed frame was nothing special and the mattress was a bit worse for the wear. She would always reply that she didn’t want her bed at home to be too comfortable because she never wanted to give up traveling. She didn’t want to become someone who would turn down an adventure or an opportunity to travel simply because things were too comfortable at home.
She never gave up her sense of adventure or her love of traveling.
We have a comfortable bed in our home, but it isn’t that much more comfortable than the bed we have in our camper. And most motels have fancier and nicer beds than we have in either place. The amount of money spent on a bed has little to do with our overall happiness.
We slept in our bed at home last night after a little more than two weeks on the road. We covered 3,305 miles and spent ten nights in just two campgrounds – five nights in Anacortes, WA and five nights in Olympia, WA. We stayed in six other campgrounds for one night each. The camper and truck served us well and we were about to try out the new-to-us camper in a variety of different settings. During the adventure I got better at backing the camper precisely into a variety of parking places and we got pretty smooth at the process of setting up and breaking down a campsite. It was a great adventure.
Still, it was nice to go to sleep in our own bedroom last night with the breeze blowing through the curtains and the sound of a small thundershower in the night to water the lawn and freshen the air. Our home and yard look remarkably good for having been gone for two weeks. The grass needs to be mowed and there are lots of weeds to pull, but other things are looking good. Despite the very hot temperatures during our absence, there was enough rain to keep the hills green and keep the fire danger in the moderate range. There is a small fire near Harney Peak in the Black Elk Wilderness Area, but crews have responded and we didn’t notice any smoke as we drove into the hills.
It is always a challenger to switch gears after a trip. There is a list of chores related to the return home that need to be done. The grass needs to be mowed, the camper needs to have the bugs scrubbed off the outside and be taken to the storage area, there is laundry to do and a bit of unpacking and putting things away that remains. We got in early enough yesterday to get started on the list.
There will be a long list at work when I arrive at the office today. There will be messages and e-mails that need response. There is a worship bulletin to get out, there are reports to hear about activities and events in our absence and the usual business of a busy church that needs attention.
It didn’t make the headlines in too many papers, but we weren’t the only ones traveling yesterday. President Obama made a visit to the University of Central Missouri to make a speech and praise the “Missouri Innovation Campus” that has a special program in partnership with public schools and a community college to offer low-cost, fast-track college degrees to students in partnership with area businesses. It was the first trip the president has made to Missouri since he spoke at the Joplin high school graduation in May 2012 – one year after the tornado devastated the area.
We took notice of the president’s travels because we got the news from our daughter, who lives in Warrensburg and who works on Whiteman Air Force Base. She was on the shift that closes the child development center at 6 p.m. and they couldn’t leave base immediately because the base was locked down for security. So they got to watch the president’s motorcade as it returned to the base and Air Force One as it departed. It was a bit of history in the making and it is fun to be an eyewitness to it as it happens. Base security frowns on photographs and video, so what she had to share with us was the story and the telephone is pretty good for storytelling.
The president probably went home and slept in his own bed last night. Except the president doesn’t really own the white house. It is a temporary residence. After eight years, another president will take up life in that place and this president will have another place to live. I suspect that presidents don’t spend much time or energy thinking about mattresses or beds. They’re probably pretty much used to sleeping on new or nearly new mattresses wherever they go. Although travel can mess with sleep patterns and no one is immune to jet lag, I don’t think that world leaders have much problems with travel discomfort.
The rest of us, however, have the opportunity to travel if we are willing to put up with some things that are less than ideal. Some of the campgrounds where we stayed didn’t have high speed Internet service. One didn’t have cell phone service. I uploaded my blog every day, but had to be a bit innovative and it took some extra effort. Although our camper has a very nice kitchen, cooking on the road is different than being at home. Grocery shopping is a bit more challenging because we don’t know where things are in different places. Some campgrounds place the campers too close to each other and getting used to the comings and goings of neighbors is different than at home. I could make a list of things that require adjustments each time we travel.
But the minor discomforts of travel are nothing compared with the joys and benefits. We are indeed fortunate to be able to travel and see places far from home. The photos and memories of this trip will linger for a lifetime.
Mom was right. Don’t get attached to a bed. A little discomfort isn’t anything to worry about.
She never gave up her sense of adventure or her love of traveling.
We have a comfortable bed in our home, but it isn’t that much more comfortable than the bed we have in our camper. And most motels have fancier and nicer beds than we have in either place. The amount of money spent on a bed has little to do with our overall happiness.
We slept in our bed at home last night after a little more than two weeks on the road. We covered 3,305 miles and spent ten nights in just two campgrounds – five nights in Anacortes, WA and five nights in Olympia, WA. We stayed in six other campgrounds for one night each. The camper and truck served us well and we were about to try out the new-to-us camper in a variety of different settings. During the adventure I got better at backing the camper precisely into a variety of parking places and we got pretty smooth at the process of setting up and breaking down a campsite. It was a great adventure.
Still, it was nice to go to sleep in our own bedroom last night with the breeze blowing through the curtains and the sound of a small thundershower in the night to water the lawn and freshen the air. Our home and yard look remarkably good for having been gone for two weeks. The grass needs to be mowed and there are lots of weeds to pull, but other things are looking good. Despite the very hot temperatures during our absence, there was enough rain to keep the hills green and keep the fire danger in the moderate range. There is a small fire near Harney Peak in the Black Elk Wilderness Area, but crews have responded and we didn’t notice any smoke as we drove into the hills.
It is always a challenger to switch gears after a trip. There is a list of chores related to the return home that need to be done. The grass needs to be mowed, the camper needs to have the bugs scrubbed off the outside and be taken to the storage area, there is laundry to do and a bit of unpacking and putting things away that remains. We got in early enough yesterday to get started on the list.
There will be a long list at work when I arrive at the office today. There will be messages and e-mails that need response. There is a worship bulletin to get out, there are reports to hear about activities and events in our absence and the usual business of a busy church that needs attention.
It didn’t make the headlines in too many papers, but we weren’t the only ones traveling yesterday. President Obama made a visit to the University of Central Missouri to make a speech and praise the “Missouri Innovation Campus” that has a special program in partnership with public schools and a community college to offer low-cost, fast-track college degrees to students in partnership with area businesses. It was the first trip the president has made to Missouri since he spoke at the Joplin high school graduation in May 2012 – one year after the tornado devastated the area.
We took notice of the president’s travels because we got the news from our daughter, who lives in Warrensburg and who works on Whiteman Air Force Base. She was on the shift that closes the child development center at 6 p.m. and they couldn’t leave base immediately because the base was locked down for security. So they got to watch the president’s motorcade as it returned to the base and Air Force One as it departed. It was a bit of history in the making and it is fun to be an eyewitness to it as it happens. Base security frowns on photographs and video, so what she had to share with us was the story and the telephone is pretty good for storytelling.
The president probably went home and slept in his own bed last night. Except the president doesn’t really own the white house. It is a temporary residence. After eight years, another president will take up life in that place and this president will have another place to live. I suspect that presidents don’t spend much time or energy thinking about mattresses or beds. They’re probably pretty much used to sleeping on new or nearly new mattresses wherever they go. Although travel can mess with sleep patterns and no one is immune to jet lag, I don’t think that world leaders have much problems with travel discomfort.
The rest of us, however, have the opportunity to travel if we are willing to put up with some things that are less than ideal. Some of the campgrounds where we stayed didn’t have high speed Internet service. One didn’t have cell phone service. I uploaded my blog every day, but had to be a bit innovative and it took some extra effort. Although our camper has a very nice kitchen, cooking on the road is different than being at home. Grocery shopping is a bit more challenging because we don’t know where things are in different places. Some campgrounds place the campers too close to each other and getting used to the comings and goings of neighbors is different than at home. I could make a list of things that require adjustments each time we travel.
But the minor discomforts of travel are nothing compared with the joys and benefits. We are indeed fortunate to be able to travel and see places far from home. The photos and memories of this trip will linger for a lifetime.
Mom was right. Don’t get attached to a bed. A little discomfort isn’t anything to worry about.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Paradise Valley
24/07/13 06:05
Those days of active firefighting led to a build up of fuels on the ground. As scientists learned more about the forest, they began to allow small burns to clear away some of the fuels, while continuing to fight the larger burns. Then in 1988 and 1989, nearly 20 years after my father quite flying the patrols, Yellowstone saw fires that could not be put out no matter what human effort was applied. Dozer lines were cut through the forest and backfires lit to clear the fuel away from the approaching fires. The fires jumped the lines and continued to grow in the backcountry until finally the chill of September and the snows of October put the fires out. Back in 1988, we had our own airplane and I obtained permission to skirt the firefighting efforts and take a look at Yellowstone. We flew past Emigrant Peak and then cut over into the Gallatin Valley and down to West Yellowstone. It seemed as if the entire park was a single giant smoke plume. It was the largest fire I have ever witnessed. The radio was a buzz with all of the firefighting activity. Air tankers and helicopters seemed to be everywhere. Our little airplane would just be a nuisance and a danger in all of that traffic, so we stayed clear, but we were close enough to sense the size of the fire.
I watched a lot of television news that summer. The news photographers were using long lenses to take pictures of the fire, so the flames looked closer to landmarks than they actually were. One night it seemed as if there was no way to save the grand lodge at Old Faithful from the fire, but when we visited on the ground in 1990, we discovered that the fire really had been on the ridge quite a ways away. This was true in other areas of the park.
There were some amazing results of the fire. Down by the Lake, it opened up vistas and views of the lake that I had never before seen. The old stands of lodgepole pine were so thick that all I had known was the trees. Coming into the park from West Yellowstone there was a hillside where the flames had been so intense that they said the soil was sterilized, but there were already tiny green plants two years after the fire. The seed had somehow blown in. In some places there were Douglas fir seedlings growing where I hadn’t remembered the giant firs growing before. Who knows how long the cones had laid on the forest floor before the heat of the fire opened them up.
All of that was years ago now. They understand the dynamics of fire much better these days, but the balance has not yet been discovered. Yellowstone is unlike the areas in Colorado and Arizona that have suffered so much from forest fires this summer. In Yellowstone there are no housing developments filed with homes that are threatened and destroyed when the forest burns. There are just a few settlements with summer housing to serve the visitors. Compared to the areas that have burned this year, Yellowstone Park is easy to evacuate.
The burn on Emigrant Peak is at about 350 acres. It was started by lightning almost a week ago and smoldered for some time before it was reported on Sunday. It is burning in very rugged and remote country. The crews on the fire report that as the fire burns up the steep slope, burning logs and hot rocks are falling down below the burn area starting small fires below the main direction of the fire. The fire is burning next to an old burn scar, so it has limited fuel on that side. There are a couple of helicopters assigned to the effort and ground crews are working from a remote base camp that was established by flying in crews and equipment with the choppers. So far the weather is not cooperating with highs in the 90’s and plenty of wind. It is always windy in Paradise Valley as the air makes its way from the high country and the river is squeezed between the mountains.
It is fun to revisit this beautiful valley. We’re camped right next to the Yellowstone River. It is a pristine trout stream. Last night the fish were coming out of the water in search of the insects that hovered above the surface. There are ranches in this immediate area where I delivered farm machinery back in my high school and college days. I probably don’t know any of the ranchers these days. Times change and much of the valley has been purchased by wealthy landowners who don’t live here, but maintain ranches as vacation homes.
Today promises an easy drive home and a return to work and the activities of the hills. It has been a very good trip and we have had a wonderful time.
New adventures await.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Heading Home
23/07/13 05:33
We started out yesterday about 1350 miles from home. After saying our good byes, we hitched up our trailer and headed out down highway 12. US 12 takes a beautiful path through the Cascades. In fact it is possible that there are no paths through the Cascades that I wouldn’t call beautiful. At any rate, US 12 winds between Mount St. Helens on the south and Mt. Rainier on the north. There are spectacular views of Mt. Rainier almost all of the way to Yakima. White pass is gentle compared to the climbs of Washington 20, US 2 and Intestate 90. Still it is enough to give the truck a workout and to make sure that everything is working. It was only 56 degrees when we got up in Olympia, but it was in the seventies by the top of White Pass. The temperature kept climbing to 98 at Yakima and 101 at Walla Walla. The span from Yakima to Walla Walla is a long drive, with not too much scenery for people who like mountains and ocean. The Yakima River is a thread through a desert with a few orchards and vineyards that are green an lush due to the irrigation from the river. The Yakima runs into the Columbia near Pasco, Washington. The tri cities area seemed to us to be simply hot and desolate so we stayed inside of our air-conditioned truck and kept driving.
Even though we have good air conditioning and we kept ourselves hydrated with ice tea and water from the refrigerator throughout the day, the heat takes something out of us. Sitting too much isn’t good for our old bones and joints and walking in the heat isn’t very inviting. We found a cool place to eat our lunch in the shade by a little lake, but we mostly kept driving all day long. By late afternoon, we convinced ourselves that we had driven enough and so we stopped a little early when we reached the Snake River at Clarkson, Washington. We’re really only a bridge away from Idaho and if we get a reasonable start, we’ll have lunch in Montana, so making it home on Wednesday will work out fine for us.
The Snake is an amazing river. We learned a bit about it when we lived in Idaho. Downstream from our campsite, the river joins the Columbia for a leisurely and well-regulated trip to the Pacific Ocean. The dams allow the river to maintain sufficient depth for barge traffic from Lewiston, Idaho to the Ocean. And there is plenty of traffic. Even though the wheat harvest is just beginning to get into full swing in eastern Washington, the elevators are already full. We saw elevators piling wheat on the ground from Pasco to the Idaho line. The barges will need to be filled and the wheat moved as soon as the markets are ready. Much of the wheat from this part of the country is exported.
Upstream from our camping place, the Snake is coming out of Hells Canyon a long and steep gorge that forms the boundary between Idaho and Oregon for much of its way. The canyon was thought to be un-navigable by the early settlers who visited the region. They crossed further upstream at fords in the wider Snake River plain in southern Idaho, downstream from Twin Falls, where the Snake flows through another canyon, made famous by Evil Knevil and his rocket-powered motorcycle. Fortunately Evil had a parachute with him for that venture. These days, Hells Canyon is the place of raft trips and jet boat excursions and there are many professional guides who take tourists through the amazing and deep canyon. The upstream entry into the canyon is called “Farewell Bend” as the river turns from its westerly flow to run nearly northward through the canyon.
The Snake River is heavily developed and there are many diversion dams that carry water from the river to the fertile volcanic fields of southern Idaho. The aquifer in the region is tied to the flow of the snake as well, so that when too much water is taken from wells, it affects the water flow in the Snake. At Twin Falls, Idaho there is a federal courthouse that is dedicated to adjudicating water rights disputes. The case backlog is so long at that court that some of the cases that have already been filed will not be argued before the court in the careers of the people currently working there. Fighting about water rights is a long-established tradition in the West, and it appears that it will continue to be a big source of conflict for the foreseeable future.
But alongside the Snake this morning, it is quiet and peaceful. I took a short paddle last night and I’ll paddle before breakfast this morning. One thing about a desert climate: once the sun goes down things cool quickly. It is rare for the heat to last into the night even on the hottest days, so it is nice and cool to begin our day today. We were treated to a magnificent moon rise over the hills last night and serenaded by a chorus of coyotes. We’ve missed he coyote song at home in the last few years, but they were close and numerous last night. The full moon brought out their song. The day promises a drive into the Idaho and Montana Mountains, across Lolo Pass and down into Missoula. We’ll cross the Continental Divide at Pipestone Pass just east of Butte and it is pretty much all down hill from there until we get home.
Reflecting this morning I am grateful for the ability to travel and to connect with our family. It was a truly lovely vacation and celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary. It was really hard to say good-bye as we put Rachel and Michael on the plane and again as we left Isaac, Allison and Elliot yesterday morning. Despite the difficulties of saying good-bye, it makes sense for us to live in different places and pursue different careers. We knew that our children would likely choose to live in other places when we encouraged them to pursue varied career paths. So we live with the distance as we celebrate the opportunities to get together.
We’ve still got a couple of long days of driving ahead of us, but the driving is a good time of transition from one part of our life to another. We’ll be eager to get home and back to work by the middle of the week.
The Snake is an amazing river. We learned a bit about it when we lived in Idaho. Downstream from our campsite, the river joins the Columbia for a leisurely and well-regulated trip to the Pacific Ocean. The dams allow the river to maintain sufficient depth for barge traffic from Lewiston, Idaho to the Ocean. And there is plenty of traffic. Even though the wheat harvest is just beginning to get into full swing in eastern Washington, the elevators are already full. We saw elevators piling wheat on the ground from Pasco to the Idaho line. The barges will need to be filled and the wheat moved as soon as the markets are ready. Much of the wheat from this part of the country is exported.
Upstream from our camping place, the Snake is coming out of Hells Canyon a long and steep gorge that forms the boundary between Idaho and Oregon for much of its way. The canyon was thought to be un-navigable by the early settlers who visited the region. They crossed further upstream at fords in the wider Snake River plain in southern Idaho, downstream from Twin Falls, where the Snake flows through another canyon, made famous by Evil Knevil and his rocket-powered motorcycle. Fortunately Evil had a parachute with him for that venture. These days, Hells Canyon is the place of raft trips and jet boat excursions and there are many professional guides who take tourists through the amazing and deep canyon. The upstream entry into the canyon is called “Farewell Bend” as the river turns from its westerly flow to run nearly northward through the canyon.
But alongside the Snake this morning, it is quiet and peaceful. I took a short paddle last night and I’ll paddle before breakfast this morning. One thing about a desert climate: once the sun goes down things cool quickly. It is rare for the heat to last into the night even on the hottest days, so it is nice and cool to begin our day today. We were treated to a magnificent moon rise over the hills last night and serenaded by a chorus of coyotes. We’ve missed he coyote song at home in the last few years, but they were close and numerous last night. The full moon brought out their song. The day promises a drive into the Idaho and Montana Mountains, across Lolo Pass and down into Missoula. We’ll cross the Continental Divide at Pipestone Pass just east of Butte and it is pretty much all down hill from there until we get home.
We’ve still got a couple of long days of driving ahead of us, but the driving is a good time of transition from one part of our life to another. We’ll be eager to get home and back to work by the middle of the week.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Passing on the Stories
22/07/13 05:47
In times long ago people sat around in the evenings in their long houses or tipis or in the shelter of mud homes or igloos or other shelters and they told stories. Their stories often explained the natural world around them. If a mudslide destroyed a village and killed most of the inhabitants, a story of that event grew up and over the decades evolved into a tale about how Raven punished a village. In the story, the people are punished for their cruelty towards animals. The event that tips the balance for the village is the torture of a young goat kid by throwing rocks. The one person in the village who was kind and rescued the goat survived and his house was not destroyed. All of the rest of the village was wiped away. The story became a morality story that was used to teach children about respect and care for other living things.
There are stories about why hummingbird has a read throat, why the Okanagan Valley is so dry, why humans are not all alike, why there are so many mosquitoes and why rabbits hop. The stories were told over ad over again. In the time before printing presses and literacy among the people, the skills of storytelling were well honed. In most traditions, there was a form of group memorization that meant that stories could be conveyed from generation to generation with word for word accuracy.
The skills of storytelling and memorization have faded in our modern times of computers and television and electric lights to keep the dark out of our homes. We no longer entertain ourselves by sitting in the dark or sitting around a fire and telling stories. We no longer have patience for the same stories being told over and over and over again. We need something new and we want sound and lights and action. We like our televisions and movies and computers and YouTube. We have little patience for the skills and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Still, there are some forever stories that we are called to pass down to the next generation. In our family there are stories of the births of babies and of the moment of meeting in an adoption. There are stories of big trips and special occasions. There are stories of weddings and anniversaries. And there are stories of deaths and losses and remembrances of people who have touched our lives and then died. There are stories of how grandma met grandpa and of some of the things that they did during their lives. We tell those stories with varying amounts of accuracy. I find that my brother and I have different versions of the stories of our elders. We even have different versions of many events that happened in our lives. There is not, as yet, a single version of the story that has risen to the level of being the story for the whole family. Perhaps that takes many generations.
Our scriptures contain the forever stories of our people. While I am very grateful that they have been written down and that they have been translated into so many different languages so that they are accessible to so many people, I fear that the legacy of 500 years of printing is that we have become lazy about the stories of our people. We trust the printed word to carry the stories from one generation to the next. We don’t feel the urge to internalize the stories and make them a part of ourselves. In the time before printing, the people felt that they had to learn the stories in order to be able to pass them on. These days, we order a bible from Amazon.com or pick one up at a local bookstore and make a gift of it for a graduation or a confirmation and assume that we have done our part.
Passing the faith from one generation to the next is not that easy.
Now we stand at another of the great transitions in human history. Like the invention of the printing press, which displaced the oral tradition and created a major shift from trust in the spoken word to trust in the printed word, our time is facing a technological revolution. Our son, who is a librarian, explained to me how libraries are not very much about books any more. They are about connecting people with information. Dictionaries that contain static definitions of words no longer are useful. The meaning and proper usage of words change with the development of culture. The next generation of dictionaries will be user edited and subject to constant change. It will be more like Wikipedia than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If books are diminishing in their role, usability and trustworthiness as our culture undergoes this revolution, the question arises of how best to preserve and pass on the stories of our people. Just as printed Bibles were an appropriate response to the invention of the printing press and the rise in literacy of the people, we will need to discover the proper response and ways to convey our stories. The Internet is filled with attempts. From YouTube to Twitter, from Facebook to cloud photo sharing, we are trying to find ways to keep our stories alive and to share them with other people.
I receive hundreds of emails each year that someone found inspirational. They pass them on without ever considering the source, without ever evaluating why they produce an emotional response or how those stories might be used by others. Some of the emails are worth saving and looking at again and again. Others are hardly worth the effort of reading the first time.
I think that in this time of transmission, there is a special need for people who can internalize the stories of our people. In addition to those who seek new forms of keeping, treasuring and sharing the stories through modern technologies, there is a need of people who simple become so familiar with the stories that they are a part of their personality and identity. I have learned some of the stories, but I have much more yet to learn. I do, however, strive to be one who has internalized the stories enough to convey their essence without the actual printed book.
Keeping and sharing the stories may become a lost art at some time in the future. But for as long as I live, I pray that I might be able to keep and treasure and share our people’s stories.
There are stories about why hummingbird has a read throat, why the Okanagan Valley is so dry, why humans are not all alike, why there are so many mosquitoes and why rabbits hop. The stories were told over ad over again. In the time before printing presses and literacy among the people, the skills of storytelling were well honed. In most traditions, there was a form of group memorization that meant that stories could be conveyed from generation to generation with word for word accuracy.
The skills of storytelling and memorization have faded in our modern times of computers and television and electric lights to keep the dark out of our homes. We no longer entertain ourselves by sitting in the dark or sitting around a fire and telling stories. We no longer have patience for the same stories being told over and over and over again. We need something new and we want sound and lights and action. We like our televisions and movies and computers and YouTube. We have little patience for the skills and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Still, there are some forever stories that we are called to pass down to the next generation. In our family there are stories of the births of babies and of the moment of meeting in an adoption. There are stories of big trips and special occasions. There are stories of weddings and anniversaries. And there are stories of deaths and losses and remembrances of people who have touched our lives and then died. There are stories of how grandma met grandpa and of some of the things that they did during their lives. We tell those stories with varying amounts of accuracy. I find that my brother and I have different versions of the stories of our elders. We even have different versions of many events that happened in our lives. There is not, as yet, a single version of the story that has risen to the level of being the story for the whole family. Perhaps that takes many generations.
Our scriptures contain the forever stories of our people. While I am very grateful that they have been written down and that they have been translated into so many different languages so that they are accessible to so many people, I fear that the legacy of 500 years of printing is that we have become lazy about the stories of our people. We trust the printed word to carry the stories from one generation to the next. We don’t feel the urge to internalize the stories and make them a part of ourselves. In the time before printing, the people felt that they had to learn the stories in order to be able to pass them on. These days, we order a bible from Amazon.com or pick one up at a local bookstore and make a gift of it for a graduation or a confirmation and assume that we have done our part.
Passing the faith from one generation to the next is not that easy.
Now we stand at another of the great transitions in human history. Like the invention of the printing press, which displaced the oral tradition and created a major shift from trust in the spoken word to trust in the printed word, our time is facing a technological revolution. Our son, who is a librarian, explained to me how libraries are not very much about books any more. They are about connecting people with information. Dictionaries that contain static definitions of words no longer are useful. The meaning and proper usage of words change with the development of culture. The next generation of dictionaries will be user edited and subject to constant change. It will be more like Wikipedia than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If books are diminishing in their role, usability and trustworthiness as our culture undergoes this revolution, the question arises of how best to preserve and pass on the stories of our people. Just as printed Bibles were an appropriate response to the invention of the printing press and the rise in literacy of the people, we will need to discover the proper response and ways to convey our stories. The Internet is filled with attempts. From YouTube to Twitter, from Facebook to cloud photo sharing, we are trying to find ways to keep our stories alive and to share them with other people.
I receive hundreds of emails each year that someone found inspirational. They pass them on without ever considering the source, without ever evaluating why they produce an emotional response or how those stories might be used by others. Some of the emails are worth saving and looking at again and again. Others are hardly worth the effort of reading the first time.
I think that in this time of transmission, there is a special need for people who can internalize the stories of our people. In addition to those who seek new forms of keeping, treasuring and sharing the stories through modern technologies, there is a need of people who simple become so familiar with the stories that they are a part of their personality and identity. I have learned some of the stories, but I have much more yet to learn. I do, however, strive to be one who has internalized the stories enough to convey their essence without the actual printed book.
Keeping and sharing the stories may become a lost art at some time in the future. But for as long as I live, I pray that I might be able to keep and treasure and share our people’s stories.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Sleepover
21/07/13 07:43
We know that our celebration vacation is drawing to a close. Yesterday we took Rachel and Michael to the airport and they flew home. Susan’s sister and husband headed home on the train. We have just one day left before we head for home tomorrow.
So last night was a good night for Isaac and Allison to go out for dinner and a movie and we got to have Elliot at our camper for a sleepover with Grandma and Papa Ted. Grandma had lots of toys and games and she had made blue play dough for rolling and cutting out shapes with cookie cutters. The campground has a swimming pool and a hay ride behind a tractor and a special track for riding bikes and pedal toys where Elliot could ride his strider very fast. There was a special supper with macaroni and cheese and fresh peaches.
I got to read some of the classic stories that our children enjoyed like “Green Eggs and Ham.” “I do not like them, Sam-I-Am!”; The Monster at the End of this Book (surprise, it is Grover! And he is so embarrassed!”; and one of my all-time favorite books. “Go Dogs Go!” That book has everything! A bit of romance, “Do you like my hat?” A chase scene. A boat. A train. And a surprise ending! I won’t spoil it for you, but there is something very special at the top of the tree at the end of the book.
I really like the feeling of having our whole family together. But I enjoy the people in our family in couples and one-on-one. A sleepover in the camper is a perfect way to continue to develop our relationship with our grandson. We’ve been around his family long enough to know the nighttime routine and to have a sense of the way his folks go things. And we chose the particular model of camper that we have because it has plenty of room for grandchildren.
And the adventure also gave Elliot a chance to ride in Papa Ted’s BIG truck, which was pretty cool.
I’ve probably grown out of it, or perhaps our kids have grown out of it, but I am no longer able to impress them with everyday things. With our grandson, it is a different matter. There are all kinds of things that I do that really impress him. He loves my boats and my truck and he loves the camper. Of course he will learn, as all children do, that there are lots of things that Grandpa cannot do. There are things that get broken that Grandpa can’t fix. Grandpa makes mistakes and forgets things that he should be remembering.
But the role of grandpa is one that comes easily and fits naturally.
Our camper is about two (and probably more) tasks. One is about going. It has wheels and tires and a hitch and equipment that is designed to be towed. When we are hitched to the truck we can go down the highway at 65 mph, climb up and over mountain passes and see interesting things. This camper is new to us, but we will have towed it over 5,000 miles this summer by the time we get home from this trip. We bought the camper for traveling and we intend to travel with it as much as possible over the next ten years or so.
But the camper is also about staying. It is a home away from home where we get to sleep in the same bed every night and have some of the comforts of home. Actually this camper is filled with comforts. It has a furnace and an air conditioner and a complete kitchen. We have a shower and a full bathroom. It is in this role of staying that it shines with our grandson. He is a pretty good traveler and at 2½ years he has more experience with traveling than many of his peers. He has traveled by airplane, by train and by boat. But his parents know that big trips are much easier for him and them if they travel by a fast means such as an airplane. When they come to visit us, they take the airlines and make the trip in about a half of a day. The three-day road trip in a car is for a different phase of his life. So for him, the camper is a place to stay.
And it is exactly why we chose this camper. The camper has a bunkroom, with four bunks – perfect for grandparents. It is a lot of fun for a grandson. He has his own cupboard, with his toys and a place for his clothes. The bed is right on the floor, so he can get in and out by himself. He is eager to try a top bunk, but that will happen later, when he is older.
He woke this morning without fear and started to describe the things he was seeing out of the window. We are parked in a grove of very tall trees, with lots of ferns and other undergrowth. But he can see the end of the truck out of his window and another camper parked across the way. Now he has joined me at the table and Grandma is getting him some Cheerios and milk. We have been visiting fruit stands, so we have blueberries and peaches and apples and raspberries and strawberries, so he’ll have his choice of fruit as well.
All too soon it will be time for us to take him back to his own home and parents. The camper’s owners have two modes as well. We have enjoyed the days of staying. While on the west coast we have been in only two campgrounds and have not moved the camper every day. Tomorrow we’ll switch from staying to going. We’ve got about 1,350 miles to drive before we are home and back in our office on Thursday. Breaking those miles up into three days means that no one day has too many miles and we will get to see lots of things along our way.
We’ll all be ready for the next adventure and hope that is comes before too long.
I got to read some of the classic stories that our children enjoyed like “Green Eggs and Ham.” “I do not like them, Sam-I-Am!”; The Monster at the End of this Book (surprise, it is Grover! And he is so embarrassed!”; and one of my all-time favorite books. “Go Dogs Go!” That book has everything! A bit of romance, “Do you like my hat?” A chase scene. A boat. A train. And a surprise ending! I won’t spoil it for you, but there is something very special at the top of the tree at the end of the book.
I really like the feeling of having our whole family together. But I enjoy the people in our family in couples and one-on-one. A sleepover in the camper is a perfect way to continue to develop our relationship with our grandson. We’ve been around his family long enough to know the nighttime routine and to have a sense of the way his folks go things. And we chose the particular model of camper that we have because it has plenty of room for grandchildren.
And the adventure also gave Elliot a chance to ride in Papa Ted’s BIG truck, which was pretty cool.
I’ve probably grown out of it, or perhaps our kids have grown out of it, but I am no longer able to impress them with everyday things. With our grandson, it is a different matter. There are all kinds of things that I do that really impress him. He loves my boats and my truck and he loves the camper. Of course he will learn, as all children do, that there are lots of things that Grandpa cannot do. There are things that get broken that Grandpa can’t fix. Grandpa makes mistakes and forgets things that he should be remembering.
But the role of grandpa is one that comes easily and fits naturally.
Our camper is about two (and probably more) tasks. One is about going. It has wheels and tires and a hitch and equipment that is designed to be towed. When we are hitched to the truck we can go down the highway at 65 mph, climb up and over mountain passes and see interesting things. This camper is new to us, but we will have towed it over 5,000 miles this summer by the time we get home from this trip. We bought the camper for traveling and we intend to travel with it as much as possible over the next ten years or so.
But the camper is also about staying. It is a home away from home where we get to sleep in the same bed every night and have some of the comforts of home. Actually this camper is filled with comforts. It has a furnace and an air conditioner and a complete kitchen. We have a shower and a full bathroom. It is in this role of staying that it shines with our grandson. He is a pretty good traveler and at 2½ years he has more experience with traveling than many of his peers. He has traveled by airplane, by train and by boat. But his parents know that big trips are much easier for him and them if they travel by a fast means such as an airplane. When they come to visit us, they take the airlines and make the trip in about a half of a day. The three-day road trip in a car is for a different phase of his life. So for him, the camper is a place to stay.
He woke this morning without fear and started to describe the things he was seeing out of the window. We are parked in a grove of very tall trees, with lots of ferns and other undergrowth. But he can see the end of the truck out of his window and another camper parked across the way. Now he has joined me at the table and Grandma is getting him some Cheerios and milk. We have been visiting fruit stands, so we have blueberries and peaches and apples and raspberries and strawberries, so he’ll have his choice of fruit as well.
All too soon it will be time for us to take him back to his own home and parents. The camper’s owners have two modes as well. We have enjoyed the days of staying. While on the west coast we have been in only two campgrounds and have not moved the camper every day. Tomorrow we’ll switch from staying to going. We’ve got about 1,350 miles to drive before we are home and back in our office on Thursday. Breaking those miles up into three days means that no one day has too many miles and we will get to see lots of things along our way.
We’ll all be ready for the next adventure and hope that is comes before too long.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Family
20/07/13 05:52
I am a bit of a crusty old guy. I have seen a lot of good and bad things in the past six decades and I can keep my calm in a whole lot of situations. I have been the one to bring bad news to families. I have made death notifications. I have debriefed law enforcement officers after they have witnessed gruesome scenes. I have listened carefully to the coroner as he described the gory details of a premature death. I have been with families in the midst of loss and grief. I have walked alongside couples as they experienced divorce.
I have the ability to turn on a professional side of myself and maintain boundaries between my personal life and my professional life.
But there are some things in this world that get to me emotionally.
My two-year-old grandson is one person who can melt me with a simple phrase. “Papa Ted, hold my hand!”
The sky was blue and there were shells being crewed in the south sound. An eight-oar boat and a four-oar boat went by. Grandpa is pretty interested in the making of shells and the technology of creating carbon-fiber racing boats. But these marvelous craft aren’t nearly as interesting to a two-year-old as the things that are much closer. There is Madrona Tree with roots that have been undercut by the water and the tree is growing horizontally instead of vertically. It creates a bridge just right for a small person to walk under. The combination of shells and gravel crunch underfoot. The path is steep and there are roots to step over and sticks to pick up and a few rocks that need to be thrown.
“Papa Ted, hold my hand!” There is no sweeter sound in the world.
Our days have been full in this vacation of celebration with our family. We have been on some marvelous adventures. Yesterday alone, we went to the beach, to a fountain in Olympia that is designed for kids to run through and play in, shared a meal and had a lovely drive through a portion of Mount Rainer National Park. We literally went from the seashore to the base of a 14,000-foot mountain. And that was just one day. All along the way, the most important part of the adventure has been sharing time with our family.
It is a joy beyond description to see our adult children and their spouses deepen their friendships. The delightful people that they have become are recognized by their siblings as wonderful friends.
Despite the fact that I am a bit of a crusty old guy, there is a part of me that is a sentimental old fool and being with my family brings that side out in me. I am deeply touched by the process of sharing love from one generation to the next. I see some of the features and qualities of our parents in our children and I witness the legacy of love that goes beyond a single life.
Family was important to my parents. We had some really big family gatherings when I was growing up. My father had four brothers and a sister and ours wasn’t he only big family in that bunch. My mother had three sisters whose families were very close. The word would go out about a time and a place for a family gathering and folks would arrange their schedules. I got to know my cousins pretty well over the years and those relationships remain strong and important.
Still, there is no substitute for actually being together. You can’t hug over a computer. You can do a pretty good job of reading facial expressions and understanding feelings. Seeing is better than just a voice conversation. But the best is really being together.
After all, I can’t actually hold my grandson’s hand unless I am in the same place at the same time as he. When I hear, “Papa Ted, hold my hand!” the appropriate response is not contained in what I say, but in what I do. Holding that small hand as the attached boy explores the world is worth a trip of whatever distance it takes.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Success
19/07/13 08:00
Just a brief note. I finally figured out the problem with file names that was preventing the pictures with the July 16 blog from displaying correctly. If you are interested, the picture of the orca whale and the Fidalgo Bay sunset are now displaying properly. Sometimes it just takes a while to get things figured out.
Exploring Seattle
19/07/13 07:02
Our son-in-law grew up in Virginia. He has traveled the world as he served in the Air Force, but this is his first visit to the Pacific Coast of the Untied Sates. So in addition to our spending time in the islands and Olympia, we wanted to do some of the usual tourist activities in Seattle. Yesterday was our day for those events. We went to the top of the Space Needle, ate at the Armory, rode on the Big Wheel, visited Pike Place Market and walked along the waterfront. We by no means exhausted the possibilities of the city, but we did do a pretty good job of catching some of the high points in a day.
Even compared to cities in the Eastern Untied States, Seattle is a young city. It has yet to celebrate its sesquicentennial. It started out as a rough and tumble fur trading and provisioning center with a safe and secure harbor well inside the Puget Sound. The area was visited in the early days by Spanish and British explorers, but Seattle was really founded as an American city. As a place of import and export it quickly developed a bit of a shady reputation. It was visited by smugglers and people who traded in all sorts of illegal commodities and shady business deals including the smuggling of people to provide labor for mines and railroad building among other activities. But there was also a genuine civic side to the city as it grew.
Today Seattle is marked by the presence of many high tech companies. As the home of Microsoft, the presence of the computer software giant has made its mark on the city. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s headquarters is in a prominent location and there are many civic projects and arts organizations that have benefitted from the generosity of software developers.
The face of the city was transformed by the 1962 World’s Fair. Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Space Needle was designed to be a temporary structure. 50 years later it sports a new coat of paint and is still going strong as a major tourist destination. The city is proud of its look on its skyline, though several downtown buildings now are taller than the iconic structure that at the time it was built was the tallest structure in the city. It sits a bit away from the tallest downtown buildings and provides a great view of the city. At its base is a large science and industry museum, a fascinating gallery of glass art objects, a large indoor food court, and a host of other shops.
Connecting the Space Needle to downtown is a monorail train. The monorail is not a complete urban transportation system. It never developed into more than a novelty, but the two trains run out and back to and from downtown providing a four-minute ride from the Space Needle to the city center. A half-century after the World’s Fair the monorail and the Space Needle both lend a futuristic look to the city.
In a way Pike Place Market is the opposite of that futuristic, space travel-inspired architecture of the Space Needle and Monorail. It is a jumble of shops and stalls and vendors crowded with both the tourists who visit the city and the locals who come there to shop for everything from fish to produce to flowers to handcrafts to a wide variety of other products. The shops and stalls that have the most prominent locations near the entrances tend to have very high prices, but there are bargains to be had for those who are willing to brave the crowds and explore the inner locations. For the most part it is just a fun place to visit and explore.
Near the main entrance to Pike Place Market, at 1st and Pike is the original Starbucks Coffee House. Founded in 1971, it isn’t that old, really, but it carries a certain nostalgia for lovers of coffee and aficionados of coffee houses. It is one of the places I like to visit when I am in the area. Others are drawn to the Seattle Hard Rock Café next door.
If you start at the main entrance of the Pike Place market and descent three levels lower you’re still several flights of stairs above the waterfront below. When you do get there, you’ll see a restored and beautiful area that features the Seattle Aquarium and a large Ferris Wheel that provides beautiful views of the city and the harbor.
Seattle is probably the third or fourth busiest harbors on the west coat. The shipyards are filled with cranes and there is constant coming and going of container vessels with commodities from the orient and export products from the west coast. There is significant agricultural export from the Port of Seattle as well as the export of manufactured goods and other items. For a boat lover like me, it is fun to look at the various ferries, harbor cruise vessels, private boats, tugs and other vessels that are constantly at work in the harbor.
Seattle is also a city with fresh water lakes. The lakes are large enough to provide landing and take off places for floatplanes and both Harbor Air and Kenmore Air have floatplane tours based out of Seattle. It is still possible to hire a ride on a DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver with the Pratt & Whitney radial engine.
For us, of course, the high point of the visit to Seattle was the opportunity to spend more time with our adult children. Watching their competence and confidence as they navigated the complex urban environment and sharing the joy of discovery and the fun of exploration was a great way for us to spend a day. The conversations we had and jokes we shared as we explored the city were great fun and a wonderful way to invest a day of vacation.
We are reminded that there is still much that can be discovered in a place that we have been before and there is still much to be learned in relationship with the people that we love.
Today Seattle is marked by the presence of many high tech companies. As the home of Microsoft, the presence of the computer software giant has made its mark on the city. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s headquarters is in a prominent location and there are many civic projects and arts organizations that have benefitted from the generosity of software developers.
The face of the city was transformed by the 1962 World’s Fair. Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Space Needle was designed to be a temporary structure. 50 years later it sports a new coat of paint and is still going strong as a major tourist destination. The city is proud of its look on its skyline, though several downtown buildings now are taller than the iconic structure that at the time it was built was the tallest structure in the city. It sits a bit away from the tallest downtown buildings and provides a great view of the city. At its base is a large science and industry museum, a fascinating gallery of glass art objects, a large indoor food court, and a host of other shops.
Connecting the Space Needle to downtown is a monorail train. The monorail is not a complete urban transportation system. It never developed into more than a novelty, but the two trains run out and back to and from downtown providing a four-minute ride from the Space Needle to the city center. A half-century after the World’s Fair the monorail and the Space Needle both lend a futuristic look to the city.
In a way Pike Place Market is the opposite of that futuristic, space travel-inspired architecture of the Space Needle and Monorail. It is a jumble of shops and stalls and vendors crowded with both the tourists who visit the city and the locals who come there to shop for everything from fish to produce to flowers to handcrafts to a wide variety of other products. The shops and stalls that have the most prominent locations near the entrances tend to have very high prices, but there are bargains to be had for those who are willing to brave the crowds and explore the inner locations. For the most part it is just a fun place to visit and explore.
Near the main entrance to Pike Place Market, at 1st and Pike is the original Starbucks Coffee House. Founded in 1971, it isn’t that old, really, but it carries a certain nostalgia for lovers of coffee and aficionados of coffee houses. It is one of the places I like to visit when I am in the area. Others are drawn to the Seattle Hard Rock Café next door.
If you start at the main entrance of the Pike Place market and descent three levels lower you’re still several flights of stairs above the waterfront below. When you do get there, you’ll see a restored and beautiful area that features the Seattle Aquarium and a large Ferris Wheel that provides beautiful views of the city and the harbor.
Seattle is also a city with fresh water lakes. The lakes are large enough to provide landing and take off places for floatplanes and both Harbor Air and Kenmore Air have floatplane tours based out of Seattle. It is still possible to hire a ride on a DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver with the Pratt & Whitney radial engine.
For us, of course, the high point of the visit to Seattle was the opportunity to spend more time with our adult children. Watching their competence and confidence as they navigated the complex urban environment and sharing the joy of discovery and the fun of exploration was a great way for us to spend a day. The conversations we had and jokes we shared as we explored the city were great fun and a wonderful way to invest a day of vacation.
We are reminded that there is still much that can be discovered in a place that we have been before and there is still much to be learned in relationship with the people that we love.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
In the Forest
18/07/13 07:03
We made the move to the southern end of the Puget Sound yesterday. We are camped in a magnificent piece of the Olympic rainforest near Olympia. The trees here are so tall and the vegetation so lush that our campsite is always in the shade. It is probably ten degrees cooler here in the trees than it is out in the direct sunlight. It is a beautiful place.
O course, it is not home. One of the things that we would notice, were we to stay is that it rains a lot in this place. The trees and undergrowth need lots of moisture and we are on the wet side of the mountains. This is the driest part of the year for this area. By late September it will be raining nearly every day. I don’t know how I would adjust to that kind of weather. I’m used to living in a place where it is sunny most of the time. But I know that each place has its own beauty. There is evidence that people have lived in this region for tens of thousands of years. It is likely that this is one of the first places on the continent to have human inhabitants.
There are a lot of people here now. Yesterday’s drive took us down Interstate 5 through Seattle. There is plenty of traffic in that city. People adjust to commuting in all of that traffic, but I don’t think I’d enjoy that part of city life. We chose the time of day carefully so that we would pass Seattle at midday, between the heaviest times of traffic. Our son tells us that if he has a meeting in Seattle that ends at 5 p.m. he can either get in the car and spend two and a half hours in traffic or find a place to sit and have coffee or a meal for an hour before starting out. By six the trip is an hour shorter. Either way he gets home at 7:30. Waiting before departing he arrives less frustrated and with more energy. People who live in densely populated areas learn to make adjustments like that.
I’ve never been a city person. I grew up in a town with less than two thousand people. We did live in Chicago for four years and Boise for ten, but the rest of the time, we’ve lived in places with less than 100,000 people. Most of my life has been spent in parts of the world where people have room to spread out. When we moved to North Dakota from Chicago, some of our Chicago friends couldn’t understand why we would want to live in a place with so much empty land and so few people. We couldn’t understand why someone would want to live in an apartment filled with people in the middle of a city where there were so many folk that there was hardly any open space. I’m sure that I could adjust to living in a different part of the world, but there are definite advantages to living in a place that is not so heavily populated.
There is a great advantage to the temperate rainforest for those who live in the urban areas, however. The rainforest absorbs sounds. Despite its location relatively close to the hustle and bustle of Seattle, Olympic National Park is one of the places on the earth with the least amount of human-caused sound. Even a relatively small grove of trees, like the one where our campground is located is a quiet place. We are not far from Interstate 5 with its constant around-the-clock stream of traffic between Seattle and Portland. It is one of the nation’s great truck corridors. Loads are in constant motion. The terrain is hilly so the trucks are opening up their throttles to go up the hills and forced to use their compression brakes to adjust their speed to the traffic. The highway has four lanes of traffic in each direction in this stretch. But here in the trees, we can’t hear the road noise. We don’t hear our neighbors in the campground. What we do hear is birdsong and the gentle rustle of the breeze in the treetops. It is a peaceful place.
I’ve been reading legends from the indigenous people this week. The coastal tribes have a different language than the tribes of the plains and their stories describe different animals and situations. Among the tribes of this area are the Twana, Suquamish, Snohomish, Lummi, Chinook, Kittitas, Puyallup, Snoqualmie, and Skagit. One of the traditions that these tribes share is that when elders told stories, the younger listeners were expected to voice their appreciation for stories by making comments to demonstrate that they were listening carefully. The typical response in several of the languages was “Ah-Mo.” I don’t speak the languages, but I imagine that it sounds like a sigh and a request for more in the same breath. The tradition is that as the evening wore on and the children became tired, their responses became less and less frequent and when they failed to speak their response the parents knew it was time for them to be put to bed.
I suspect that a longhouse in the midst of the rainforest would be a great place for storytelling and for sleeping. The shade of the trees would make is fairly dark all of the time and by evening the light from the fire would encourage people to gather around. The warmth would be inviting as well. I can imagine the rain dripping on the roof above with the dry area around the fire offering the sense of shelter and protection from the elements. Nights are long here in the North Country in the winter months and there would be plenty of stories to tell. Some of the stories would explain the features of the birds and animals such as “why the crane has long legs,” or “why the robin has a red breast.” Other stories would be lessons for the children such as the Twana legend of the Loon that warns of children straying too far from their mother.
As I read the stories, I can imagine myself joining in the chorus of “Ah-Mo” until sleep overtakes me and the distinction between stories and dreams fades.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Glitches
17/07/13 07:24
You probably noticed that the photos that accompanied yesterday’s blog were rather strange. In my blog software there are two beautiful pictures – one of an orca whale surfacing, the other of a sunset from my kayak in Fidalgo Bay. For some reason, the blog site is displaying the wrong images and one of them is distorted. I did three different uploads of yesterday’s blog page and I even changed the file names of the photographs to see if that would help, but I was unable to correct the glitch.
And I am on vacation, so I didn’t invest more time or energy in correcting the problem. In fact I went paddling instead. And after I went paddling, I had breakfast with my family and we went out to Discovery Park and unloaded the boats and rowed around the area. It was a delightful day. I didn’t give any more thought to the problem with the blog. And we were tired so we slept in a bit this morning.
I guess technically the problem isn’t really a “glitch.” A glitch is a problem that is short-lived and therefore difficult to diagnose. I tend to use the term for all of my computer problems especially those that I am not able to diagnose. Problems that are difficult to diagnose are a part of computing. It is one of the frustrations of computers for those of us who use them in a business setting. At work, when we have a computer problem, I try the “fixes” that I have learned from experience. There are certain things that often provide a remedy for the problem. I know a little bit about network management. I can install software and re-install it when required. I know how to format a hard drive and I can even replace computer components when needed. The problem is that I have learned most of what I know about computers simply from working with them. As a result, I often don’t know why things aren’t working. So I simply try a variety of possible solutions. Often I get lucky and the problem goes away. Often I don’t really understand the cause of the problem.
When we run into problems that I cannot solve, we call a technician who comes. I think the service call rate for technicians is around $60 per hour. Almost always our technicians don’t know what is going on when they arrive. Almost always they start by trying the things that I have already tried. It is very frustrating for me to be spending the church’s money to have someone repeat things that have already been done. I try to carefully tell technicians exactly what I have already done to avoid this duplication of work, but it almost never works. There is something in the nature of the technicians that distrusts customers – especially those who haven’t had any formal training in computers or network management.
But computer system repair often involves coming up with a solution to a problem with an approach that is less than systematic. It isn’t a matter of diagnosing the problem and then addressing it. It is a matter of trying a series of “fixes” until one works. Good technicians apply their “fixes” in a rational order so that they don’t repeat steps. When a technician is unable to fix the problem the solution they offer usually involves replacing components – sometimes even complete computers. We have a backup computer in our system at work with two functional network cards that the technician swore had to be replaced because it was outdated and it would no longer support the network cards. He recommended replacing the computer because one network card had failed and the other was bound to fail soon and he had run out of slots for network cards. He never explained why he didn’t remove the old network card freeing up a slot. We did purchase a new computer, but I kept “messing” with it until I got it working. We have continued to use the machine for a year since that incident and, as I say, both network cards (including the one he said was ruined) continue to work.
This isn’t the first time that a technician wouldn’t believe me when I reported what I had done to address a problem and then went on to propose a “solution” that clearly demonstrated that he didn’t know what the problem was. The technicians understand that at some point buying a new computer is less expensive than paying a technician to chase an elusive problem when they don’t understand what is going on in the first place.
I am perfectly capable of not understanding what is going on all by myself.
And occasionally, I replace hardware or software simply because I don’t understand what is going on. In that, I’m a bit like the computer technicians.
All of this is to say that I don’t know why the pictures failed to load to the web site correctly. I’m sure I’ll come up with a solution. By the time I do you will have gone on with your life and with the blog and won’t go back to see the pictures. Perhaps I can work the pictures into some future version of the blog.
In the meantime, I’m on vacation. So I’m not stressing too much about the glitch. I’ll continue to write the blog and I’ll try to post some pictures as well. When I get home, I’ll archive a bunch of old blogs and create additional server space and decrease the number of images in my uploaded files. That will probably address the problem without my ever knowing for sure what was its cause.
On the other hand, it is possible that I will come up with a solution as we travel. If so, it won’t be the first time that the solution has come to me when I wasn’t thinking about the problem. Sometimes I just need a little space from the problem to come up with a solution. Sometimes it takes creative thinking – approaching the problem from a different perspective. And vacations are great places for creative thinking.
So no pictures today – not even some strange ones. And who knows what surprises will show up tomorrow.
And I am on vacation, so I didn’t invest more time or energy in correcting the problem. In fact I went paddling instead. And after I went paddling, I had breakfast with my family and we went out to Discovery Park and unloaded the boats and rowed around the area. It was a delightful day. I didn’t give any more thought to the problem with the blog. And we were tired so we slept in a bit this morning.
I guess technically the problem isn’t really a “glitch.” A glitch is a problem that is short-lived and therefore difficult to diagnose. I tend to use the term for all of my computer problems especially those that I am not able to diagnose. Problems that are difficult to diagnose are a part of computing. It is one of the frustrations of computers for those of us who use them in a business setting. At work, when we have a computer problem, I try the “fixes” that I have learned from experience. There are certain things that often provide a remedy for the problem. I know a little bit about network management. I can install software and re-install it when required. I know how to format a hard drive and I can even replace computer components when needed. The problem is that I have learned most of what I know about computers simply from working with them. As a result, I often don’t know why things aren’t working. So I simply try a variety of possible solutions. Often I get lucky and the problem goes away. Often I don’t really understand the cause of the problem.
When we run into problems that I cannot solve, we call a technician who comes. I think the service call rate for technicians is around $60 per hour. Almost always our technicians don’t know what is going on when they arrive. Almost always they start by trying the things that I have already tried. It is very frustrating for me to be spending the church’s money to have someone repeat things that have already been done. I try to carefully tell technicians exactly what I have already done to avoid this duplication of work, but it almost never works. There is something in the nature of the technicians that distrusts customers – especially those who haven’t had any formal training in computers or network management.
But computer system repair often involves coming up with a solution to a problem with an approach that is less than systematic. It isn’t a matter of diagnosing the problem and then addressing it. It is a matter of trying a series of “fixes” until one works. Good technicians apply their “fixes” in a rational order so that they don’t repeat steps. When a technician is unable to fix the problem the solution they offer usually involves replacing components – sometimes even complete computers. We have a backup computer in our system at work with two functional network cards that the technician swore had to be replaced because it was outdated and it would no longer support the network cards. He recommended replacing the computer because one network card had failed and the other was bound to fail soon and he had run out of slots for network cards. He never explained why he didn’t remove the old network card freeing up a slot. We did purchase a new computer, but I kept “messing” with it until I got it working. We have continued to use the machine for a year since that incident and, as I say, both network cards (including the one he said was ruined) continue to work.
This isn’t the first time that a technician wouldn’t believe me when I reported what I had done to address a problem and then went on to propose a “solution” that clearly demonstrated that he didn’t know what the problem was. The technicians understand that at some point buying a new computer is less expensive than paying a technician to chase an elusive problem when they don’t understand what is going on in the first place.
I am perfectly capable of not understanding what is going on all by myself.
And occasionally, I replace hardware or software simply because I don’t understand what is going on. In that, I’m a bit like the computer technicians.
All of this is to say that I don’t know why the pictures failed to load to the web site correctly. I’m sure I’ll come up with a solution. By the time I do you will have gone on with your life and with the blog and won’t go back to see the pictures. Perhaps I can work the pictures into some future version of the blog.
In the meantime, I’m on vacation. So I’m not stressing too much about the glitch. I’ll continue to write the blog and I’ll try to post some pictures as well. When I get home, I’ll archive a bunch of old blogs and create additional server space and decrease the number of images in my uploaded files. That will probably address the problem without my ever knowing for sure what was its cause.
On the other hand, it is possible that I will come up with a solution as we travel. If so, it won’t be the first time that the solution has come to me when I wasn’t thinking about the problem. Sometimes I just need a little space from the problem to come up with a solution. Sometimes it takes creative thinking – approaching the problem from a different perspective. And vacations are great places for creative thinking.
So no pictures today – not even some strange ones. And who knows what surprises will show up tomorrow.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
A Day to Remember
16/07/13 05:59
Yesterday was one of those once-in-a-lifetime days for us. We have been talking about taking a whale-watching cruise since before we had children and our oldest is now 32 years old. Over the years we have collected brochures from a half a dozen charter companies who provide such tours. It all came together for us yesterday. Our whole family was aboard the Mystic Sea when she pulled out of her slip in Cap Sante Harbor at Anacortes, WA.
Being a lover of boats it was a joy just to be aboard the 100-foot vessel and listen to the diesel engines rumble as the captain made his way through the islands to the location of a pod of resident Orca whales. The company works with a spotter plane that keeps an eye on the location of the whales and yesterday the whales were to the west of San Juan Island. It took about 90 minutes for our ship to make its way to the whale watching area. Along the way we were treated to spectacular scenery on a nearly perfect day. The sky was clear and there was a light sea breeze that made standing on deck pleasant.
We also had a booth near the bow of the ship that allowed us a comfortable place to get inside and sit comfortably when we wanted to step out of the sun and wind for a few moments. Our booth was just a few short steps away from the bridge where we could observe the captain and listen to the radio chatter from the harbor control, the spotter plane and other boats in the whale-watching fleet. It sounded like we were in for a good day of whale watching from the reports of the others.
There is an art to watching the whales. The fleet is closely supervised so that none of the boats come too close to the whales or get in the way of their activities. The boats need to anticipate which direction the whales are traveling and position themselves so that the whales come to them. The orcas eat salmon and sometimes you can see the salmon jumping ahead of the whale that moves underwater. A mature orca can stay underwater for more than 20 minutes and is capable of diving all the way to the bottom of the shallow coastal waters.
And we saw whales. We were as close to the whales as those on smaller vessels and at times as our boat sat still there where whales rising on both sides of the ship. They were close enough that we could hear the spout of their air holes as they exhaled. We got a number of good pictures as we eagerly stood at the rails watching these amazing creatures.
The cruise also gave us a look at a Minkie whale, bald eagles, turkey vultures, harbor seals with their pups and more of the gorgeous scenery of the San Juan Islands. Our boat had a naturalist on board who was able to answer our questions and provide identification of individual whales.
The trip back to the harbor included an opportunity to stand on the bridge with the captain and take a brief tour of the on board navigational and communications equipment. I also got a tour of the engine room with the two giant 700-horsepower Detroit Diesel engines. There is a separate engine with a generator to power the electronics, galley and lighting systems. The engine room even had enough room for a fourth engine that was kept in standby to power a back up generator should the main generator for some reason fail. Everything was clean and ship-shape in the engine room.
The Mystic Sea is an aluminum-hulled vessel licensed as a charter boat to haul up to 74 passengers with a crew of two. There were far fewer passengers than that for our cruise and an additional two crew members staffed the galley and concessions area as well as assisting with dock lines and other seaman duties. The naturalist on board had worked her way up from crewing various vessels and will stand for her captain’s license in six weeks.
Our cruise took a leisurely seven hours to complete and our crew enjoyed the adventure. Our two-year-old grandson was remarkably resilient, taking a short nap in the midst of all of the activities. It was difficult for him to know where to look and he was expecting to see more than just dorsal fins, so we are not completely sure that he spotted any of the whales, but he did enjoy the adventure, have an on-board lunch and snack and share the joy of being with his family when we were all in a good mood and enjoying ourselves.
After the cruise, we cooked supper outdoors on the grill and enjoyed a family meal. After supper it was bath time for the young one, but grandpa had time for a brief paddle. At high water it was a very short carry from our campsite to a good launch site and I was able to paddle over to the mainland and back for my own sunset cruise. My homemade cedar strip kayak has been in the waters of the Puget Sound before, but this is the first time I’ve paddled in the islands. The harbor seals were curious about my passage and came up to within 20 feet of my little boat as I paddled. This particular boat is made of fence-grade cedar from South Dakota and has been paddled in waters as varied as the Yellowstone River in Montana, the Bay of Fundy off of New Brunswick, Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan and her home waters of Sheridan and Pactola Lakes in the Black Hills.
As I watched the sunset from my little boat I thought of a phrase that we have heard from our grandson several times since we arrived. He keeps describing each day as “best day ever.”
From the perspective of my age I know that a day of whale watching ranks pretty high. It isn’t better than the day I was married or the day I was ordained or the day I danced at my daughter’s wedding. It might fall a bit short of the day of the birth of our son or the birth of our grandson or several other memorable days. But I don’t need to rank my days. Instead I can add one great memory to another and have been allowed the luxury of all of these wonderful days.
And yesterday was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime day that was truly memorable and will be added to the growing list of “best days” for all of us.
Being a lover of boats it was a joy just to be aboard the 100-foot vessel and listen to the diesel engines rumble as the captain made his way through the islands to the location of a pod of resident Orca whales. The company works with a spotter plane that keeps an eye on the location of the whales and yesterday the whales were to the west of San Juan Island. It took about 90 minutes for our ship to make its way to the whale watching area. Along the way we were treated to spectacular scenery on a nearly perfect day. The sky was clear and there was a light sea breeze that made standing on deck pleasant.
We also had a booth near the bow of the ship that allowed us a comfortable place to get inside and sit comfortably when we wanted to step out of the sun and wind for a few moments. Our booth was just a few short steps away from the bridge where we could observe the captain and listen to the radio chatter from the harbor control, the spotter plane and other boats in the whale-watching fleet. It sounded like we were in for a good day of whale watching from the reports of the others.
There is an art to watching the whales. The fleet is closely supervised so that none of the boats come too close to the whales or get in the way of their activities. The boats need to anticipate which direction the whales are traveling and position themselves so that the whales come to them. The orcas eat salmon and sometimes you can see the salmon jumping ahead of the whale that moves underwater. A mature orca can stay underwater for more than 20 minutes and is capable of diving all the way to the bottom of the shallow coastal waters.
And we saw whales. We were as close to the whales as those on smaller vessels and at times as our boat sat still there where whales rising on both sides of the ship. They were close enough that we could hear the spout of their air holes as they exhaled. We got a number of good pictures as we eagerly stood at the rails watching these amazing creatures.
The cruise also gave us a look at a Minkie whale, bald eagles, turkey vultures, harbor seals with their pups and more of the gorgeous scenery of the San Juan Islands. Our boat had a naturalist on board who was able to answer our questions and provide identification of individual whales.
The trip back to the harbor included an opportunity to stand on the bridge with the captain and take a brief tour of the on board navigational and communications equipment. I also got a tour of the engine room with the two giant 700-horsepower Detroit Diesel engines. There is a separate engine with a generator to power the electronics, galley and lighting systems. The engine room even had enough room for a fourth engine that was kept in standby to power a back up generator should the main generator for some reason fail. Everything was clean and ship-shape in the engine room.
The Mystic Sea is an aluminum-hulled vessel licensed as a charter boat to haul up to 74 passengers with a crew of two. There were far fewer passengers than that for our cruise and an additional two crew members staffed the galley and concessions area as well as assisting with dock lines and other seaman duties. The naturalist on board had worked her way up from crewing various vessels and will stand for her captain’s license in six weeks.
Our cruise took a leisurely seven hours to complete and our crew enjoyed the adventure. Our two-year-old grandson was remarkably resilient, taking a short nap in the midst of all of the activities. It was difficult for him to know where to look and he was expecting to see more than just dorsal fins, so we are not completely sure that he spotted any of the whales, but he did enjoy the adventure, have an on-board lunch and snack and share the joy of being with his family when we were all in a good mood and enjoying ourselves.
After the cruise, we cooked supper outdoors on the grill and enjoyed a family meal. After supper it was bath time for the young one, but grandpa had time for a brief paddle. At high water it was a very short carry from our campsite to a good launch site and I was able to paddle over to the mainland and back for my own sunset cruise. My homemade cedar strip kayak has been in the waters of the Puget Sound before, but this is the first time I’ve paddled in the islands. The harbor seals were curious about my passage and came up to within 20 feet of my little boat as I paddled. This particular boat is made of fence-grade cedar from South Dakota and has been paddled in waters as varied as the Yellowstone River in Montana, the Bay of Fundy off of New Brunswick, Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan and her home waters of Sheridan and Pactola Lakes in the Black Hills.
As I watched the sunset from my little boat I thought of a phrase that we have heard from our grandson several times since we arrived. He keeps describing each day as “best day ever.”
From the perspective of my age I know that a day of whale watching ranks pretty high. It isn’t better than the day I was married or the day I was ordained or the day I danced at my daughter’s wedding. It might fall a bit short of the day of the birth of our son or the birth of our grandson or several other memorable days. But I don’t need to rank my days. Instead I can add one great memory to another and have been allowed the luxury of all of these wonderful days.
And yesterday was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime day that was truly memorable and will be added to the growing list of “best days” for all of us.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Marriage
15/07/13 03:23
There is a myth that is common in our culture that a marriage is a union between two people. The common notion is that a couple make promises to each other and that the keeping of those promises is their sole responsibility. It is not uncommon for people to assume that the decision to divorce is a decision that is left solely to the two primary partners in marriage. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it forgets that every marriage is a complex merging of two family systems and that a divorce is a break in these systems. A simple and obvious observation is that when a family breaks up by divorce when there are children involved, it is not only the splitting couple whose lives are forever changed. The landmark studies of Judith Wallerstein have demonstrated the depth of the impact of divorce among children. Children of divorcing parents are themselves much less likely to become married, much more likely to divorce when married and much less likely to be successful in other partnership relationships such as business. When families experience divorce the relationships become strained, the grief is often poorly processed and recovery is longer and more painful than people initially expect.
We humans are, however, resilient. We survive and even thrive in the face of incredible stresses and difficulties. There are plenty of stories of children of divorce who have gone on to have happy, successful and meaningful lives, and learn to form lasting relationships and live in harmony with others. My observation is merely that we need to understand marriage as a social institution. Marriage affects the whole of society and not just a single couple. As such, all of us have a stake in meaningful and lasting relationships and in covenants that endure.
Our children and their spouses and our grandchild are all with us this week in part to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. Of course the circle of people whose lives are invested in our marriage is much larger than the circle that gathered for dinner last night. It is impossible for us to gather as a family without a firm awareness of those who have died and whose lives have run their course. We miss them and we understand that they too were affected by the promises that we made and the relationships that we formed. But those of us who did gather for dinner are all directly affected by this marriage. As part of our celebration, we each took a few minutes to speak of the things for which we are grateful. We are grateful for each other. Having other people in our lives adds to our meaning and our sense of belonging in this world. Love really is required for us to live. And we are grateful for the love we have found together. We also expressed our gratitude for the lasting nature of our marriage. Somehow we have discovered ways to nurture and support each other and remain faithful to the promises we made.
We are aware that the 40 years of our marriage is in part a legacy of other marriages. Our parents’ and grandparents’ marriages have helped to pave the way for the joys we have found. Our family is not somehow immune from the realities of the modern world. We have known marriages that ended in divorce. There are eight divorces that involve my siblings. There are other marriages in our family that have ended in divorce. These have added to the complexity of our family life. I once told one of my brothers that I was slow to learn to love his wife. He loved her first. When he decided that their marriage was over he may have moved on to another relationship. I, however, couldn’t just stop loving his “ex” simply because he did. I am aware that I am slow to trust and to love the people in his life in part because of the ways that he tends to move on from one relationship to another.
As I said, marriage is a social institution. The whole of human society is affected by the choices that individuals make. And marriage is a relationship that affects the whole of society.
I have tried to make a firm investment in others’ marriages just as I have made an investment in ours. I work hard with couples who come to me to serve as officiant in their weddings. My track record for the weddings in which I have been the officiant is about normal for our society. Some have been delightful and successful. The first marriage whose license bore my signature as officiant ended in early divorce. Another couple whose marriage we celebrated have passed their 30th wedding anniversary. There are all sorts of stories that surround the couples who have come to me for help in getting married. But I hope that each of those people, regardless of how their lives have turned out, can remember that I tried to teach them that their relationship was about much more than themselves. I hope that each could see their marriage as part of a much bigger story than just their own.
Being on the west coast, it was natural for our celebration evening to end with a great view of a sunset over the Puget Sound. There is something powerfully beautiful about a sunset over the water. The dramatic hills and mountains of the Pacific Northwest added to the power of the experience. Watching sunsets is a vacation experience for me. Although I am aware of watching sunrise every day, the busyness of my life often means that I am indoors during the sunset. But when on vacation, I make time to watch the sun go down. It is important for me to be reminded that there is beauty at both ends of the day. Not only does the new day begin with spectacular beauty, it also ends with incredible artistry.
There is beauty to endings as well as beginnings. When we fail to see the beauty in endings, we fail to experience the richness of life.
And through it all, I have had a partner to walk alongside me, to support me when I needed help, to challenge me when I grew complacent and to nurture me when I was unwell. That same partner has shared the ups and downs of life – the grief and the joy, the beginnings and endings.
How fortunate I am to know that we still have more sunsets – and more sunrises – to experience together.
We humans are, however, resilient. We survive and even thrive in the face of incredible stresses and difficulties. There are plenty of stories of children of divorce who have gone on to have happy, successful and meaningful lives, and learn to form lasting relationships and live in harmony with others. My observation is merely that we need to understand marriage as a social institution. Marriage affects the whole of society and not just a single couple. As such, all of us have a stake in meaningful and lasting relationships and in covenants that endure.
We are aware that the 40 years of our marriage is in part a legacy of other marriages. Our parents’ and grandparents’ marriages have helped to pave the way for the joys we have found. Our family is not somehow immune from the realities of the modern world. We have known marriages that ended in divorce. There are eight divorces that involve my siblings. There are other marriages in our family that have ended in divorce. These have added to the complexity of our family life. I once told one of my brothers that I was slow to learn to love his wife. He loved her first. When he decided that their marriage was over he may have moved on to another relationship. I, however, couldn’t just stop loving his “ex” simply because he did. I am aware that I am slow to trust and to love the people in his life in part because of the ways that he tends to move on from one relationship to another.
As I said, marriage is a social institution. The whole of human society is affected by the choices that individuals make. And marriage is a relationship that affects the whole of society.
I have tried to make a firm investment in others’ marriages just as I have made an investment in ours. I work hard with couples who come to me to serve as officiant in their weddings. My track record for the weddings in which I have been the officiant is about normal for our society. Some have been delightful and successful. The first marriage whose license bore my signature as officiant ended in early divorce. Another couple whose marriage we celebrated have passed their 30th wedding anniversary. There are all sorts of stories that surround the couples who have come to me for help in getting married. But I hope that each of those people, regardless of how their lives have turned out, can remember that I tried to teach them that their relationship was about much more than themselves. I hope that each could see their marriage as part of a much bigger story than just their own.
There is beauty to endings as well as beginnings. When we fail to see the beauty in endings, we fail to experience the richness of life.
And through it all, I have had a partner to walk alongside me, to support me when I needed help, to challenge me when I grew complacent and to nurture me when I was unwell. That same partner has shared the ups and downs of life – the grief and the joy, the beginnings and endings.
How fortunate I am to know that we still have more sunsets – and more sunrises – to experience together.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Island life
14/07/13 06:54
The northern Puget Sound has been the home of coastal Salish tribes for thousands of years. The area was first visited by European explorers in 1790, when the Spanish were exploring the West Coast of the Americas. The island where we are staying is called Fidalgo Island and it gets its name from Salvador Fidalgo, who was a member of that 1790 Spanish expedition. The English also contributed a lot of names for the places that are in use today. The Vancouver expedition arrived in June of 1792 and a group of sailors from that expedition, led by Joseph Whidbey mapped and gave place names to the Islands of the region. The largest island bears his name. At first, however, the explorers didn’t realize that Whidbey was an island. They thought that it was a peninsula. The narrow channels that separate Fidalgo Island from the mainland and Whidbey Island from Fidalgo were at first not noticed. It was George Vancouver himself who gave the name “Deception Pass” to the channel that separates Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands.
These days, the islands are connected to the mainland by bridges. Highway 20 has a bridge from the mainland to Fildago and a bridge across Deception Pass to Whidbey Island. Actually, it takes two bridges to span Deception Pass as there is a large rock, called Pass Island between the two islands. The waters in the pass are turbulent and at low water can produce large standing waves. The area is one of incredible natural beauty and the ocean is abundant in producing food. The Salish people were able to make a good living gathering clams and other shellfish and fishing for the plentiful fish of the nearby waters.
I am not an Island person. I have lived my life in the center of the continent, surrounded by prairies and mountains and miles and miles of land between me and the ocean. Most of the world’s people, however, live in coastal regions. Coastal regions support higher populations and the United States, like other regions of the world has higher populations at its coasts. Not being from this place gives me a particular way of looking at the area and its people.
There are several features of the land that surprise and delight me as I tour this area. The islands are large enough to have their own mountains and there are freshwater lakes nestled among the rolling hills. Here on Fidalgo Island the highest point is Mount Erie. We journeyed to the top of the mountain where there are views in several different directions. The mountain is home to rainforest with giant Cedar, Hemlock and Douglas Fir trees. The trees grow all the way to the top of the mountain, so you have to find just the right spot to get a view. When you do get a view, it is spectacular.
There are at least eight lakes on Fidalgo Island. There is a very good view of Campbell Lake from Mt. Erie. Right in the middle of Campbell Lake is a small, wooded island. The idea of an island in a lake on an island is rather intriguing. From the top of Mt. Erie, there are good views of several of the islands that make up the San Juan chain. Most of the Islands do not have bridge access and are accessed by boats. The Washington State Ferry system provides regular service to the islands. People who live on the islands have adapted to the schedules and have learned that traveling to and from their home requires a bit of extra time. The relative isolation of island life has a similar quality to the isolation of small towns on the prairie where people have to travel many hours to get to a city. A relatively isolated lifestyle in a place of great natural beauty rich with varied food sources is something that the people of the prairie share with their distant cousins living on islands.
If you study a map of the Black Hills, you realize that the hills are an island as well. Instead of being surrounded by the ocean, however, they are surrounded by the flatlands of western prairie. There are miles of open prairie that separate the Black Hills from the other mountains of the Rocky Mountain range. And the hills have developed their own ecology in the midst of this isolation, with a unique variation on the spruce tree known as Black Hills spruce. The resident animals also have unique variations from their cousins in other areas. Black Hills mule deer tend to be smaller than those of the main Rockies and the populations of elk and bighorn sheep have also developed some unique characteristics from living isolated from the larger herds found elsewhere throughout the west.
We have the great luxury of being able to travel from one environment to the other. Unlike the explorers of the great European expeditions of the late 18th century, we are able to make multiple visits within a single lifetime. We have the luxury of exploring the territory with the knowledge that we will likely return. The beauty and the charm of the islands have attracted many repeat visitors. Their popularity as a destination is evidenced by the many tourists we encounter everywhere we go.
We are enjoying the hospitality of the Samish Nation, staying at a resort that is owned and operated by the tribe. The Samish people range from the Cascade Mountains to the coastal and island areas. Their heritage includes and emphasis on communal living and the traditional longhouses housed multiple families under the same roof. I have much to learn about the traditions and culture of the native people, but their way of life is distinctive and fascinating. Here at the resort are several large cedar canoes and later today there is a special festival celebrating the arrival of a canoe from another island. The Samish people also erected totem poles. There are also displays of Samish artwork around the area.
I do not live in the era of the great expeditions to explore the world, but I am privileged to live in a time when I can do a little exploration on my own. Along the way I am encountering not only beautiful places, but also interesting people. I hope that I can offer them a bit more respect than did those early explorers.
I am not an Island person. I have lived my life in the center of the continent, surrounded by prairies and mountains and miles and miles of land between me and the ocean. Most of the world’s people, however, live in coastal regions. Coastal regions support higher populations and the United States, like other regions of the world has higher populations at its coasts. Not being from this place gives me a particular way of looking at the area and its people.
There are several features of the land that surprise and delight me as I tour this area. The islands are large enough to have their own mountains and there are freshwater lakes nestled among the rolling hills. Here on Fidalgo Island the highest point is Mount Erie. We journeyed to the top of the mountain where there are views in several different directions. The mountain is home to rainforest with giant Cedar, Hemlock and Douglas Fir trees. The trees grow all the way to the top of the mountain, so you have to find just the right spot to get a view. When you do get a view, it is spectacular.
If you study a map of the Black Hills, you realize that the hills are an island as well. Instead of being surrounded by the ocean, however, they are surrounded by the flatlands of western prairie. There are miles of open prairie that separate the Black Hills from the other mountains of the Rocky Mountain range. And the hills have developed their own ecology in the midst of this isolation, with a unique variation on the spruce tree known as Black Hills spruce. The resident animals also have unique variations from their cousins in other areas. Black Hills mule deer tend to be smaller than those of the main Rockies and the populations of elk and bighorn sheep have also developed some unique characteristics from living isolated from the larger herds found elsewhere throughout the west.
We have the great luxury of being able to travel from one environment to the other. Unlike the explorers of the great European expeditions of the late 18th century, we are able to make multiple visits within a single lifetime. We have the luxury of exploring the territory with the knowledge that we will likely return. The beauty and the charm of the islands have attracted many repeat visitors. Their popularity as a destination is evidenced by the many tourists we encounter everywhere we go.
I do not live in the era of the great expeditions to explore the world, but I am privileged to live in a time when I can do a little exploration on my own. Along the way I am encountering not only beautiful places, but also interesting people. I hope that I can offer them a bit more respect than did those early explorers.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Lukiest guy in the world
13/07/13 06:29
It is possible that I am he luckiest guy in the world. It is possible that my grandson is the smartest 2-year-old on the planet. It is possible that I have the best son and daughter a guy could have. It is possible that I am exaggerating. But I am one very fortunate guy. One of the elements that gives shape and meaning to life is gratitude. I find myself feeling very grateful much of the time these days.
I have been allowed to see great beauty. The drive across the plains of Southwestern Montana and into the mountains was wonderful and then we just kept going, through north Idaho and into Washington and up to the high country of the North Cascades. There are people who live the whole of their lives in cities without experiencing the open country and the wild places. I am sure that they have full and meaningful lives, but they miss experiences that I sometimes take fr granted. To be able to travel and camp in such beautiful country is a privilege that is unique not only to a very few of us who are privileged to be able to travel when we want, but also unique in history. It took Lewis and Clark two years to make their voyage of discovery, and they missed some of the country that we have seen because it was too remote and too difficult to travel through. We have enjoyed access on good roads.
And now we are on Fidalgo Island, in the Puget Sound, where the sunsets are truly glorious and the sea breeze brings a freshness to our lives that we don’t experience at home in the hills.
And we have been joined by our family, whose members have given us the gift of time and presence. Both of our children have married people who are supportive of family. This is a wonderful gift in and of itself.
And there is that two-and-a-half-year-old. I haven’t exaggerated his brilliance. I have vivid memories of the times when our children were young. I could just stare at them while they were sleeping and marvel at what wonders they were. That feeling comes back instantly as I watch our grandson sleep in his bed in our camper. He is so much at home in his world. When his father was the age that he is now, we took our first study leave and traveled to Berkeley, California where we engaged in a short residency at Pacific School of Religion. On our way, we traveled to visit my brother and his family on Whidbey Island, just south of the island where we are camped on this trip. We had a brand new tent and we slept in the tent in the back yard. Our son wasn’t thrown by the unusual sleeping arrangements. He was very comfortable to be on an adventure and to explore the world.
Now, all of these years later, our grandson is sleeping peacefully in our camper, equally at home in his world. He stirred briefly in the night and I went to check on him. He told me where he was, “sleeping in my bed in the camper.” He told me where his dad was, “sleeping in the little house.” He told me where I sleep, “In the big bed in the camper.” And he told me where the toys were, “Concrete truck is sleeping in the shed (cupboard).” And then he put his head back on his pillow, comfortable and at home in his world.
We have not been with our grandson face-to-face since February. When you are two, half a year is a quarter of your life. And yet he knows us, recognizes us, and feels safe to be with us. It is a miracle of family. And I am the luckiest guy in the world. I’m not exaggerating about that part.
Again, I have a sense of being so fortunate to live in the moment of time that is ours. We have the luxury of traveling to be with our family. For many generations past, leaving the home territory meant leaving family behind. When our grandfather Abraham and grandmother Sarah left their home, they never returned. Their families that remained behind were never again seen. They never had another conversation with their parents and cousins and other members of their clan.
We visit with our grandson by video conference whenever we want. We have technology to purse a conversation at will. We can see his world and he can see ours even when we are more than a thousand miles apart. I know that technology is an invention of humans and not a miracle of God, but the workings of the human mind and the ability to imagine and then create such technologies are a marvel.
Today promises a wonder of exploring the world and sharing life with our family. There is a children’s festival here in Anacortes. We found a toy and children’s bookstore worth exploring. There is a working waterfront with hundreds of boats to check out. Anacortes is filled with shops and restaurants and other interesting places. Perhaps we will go to the mountain that is at the heart of the island for 360-degree views of the sound and the mainland. Mt. Baker is a dramatic volcano to our northeast. The sound is filled with islands to the west. Seattle lies to the south with its urban sprawl and rush of modern life. There are many other options for our day.
The real treasure of the day, however, is not the places we will go or the things we will see. It is the joy of being together. Our family has gathered for the joy of being together. There are stories to tell and dreams to share, adventures to explore and memories to build. For the next week we are given the gift of being with people who share their spirits with us and blend their stories with ours.
I am not exaggerating about being the luckiest guy in the world.
And now we are on Fidalgo Island, in the Puget Sound, where the sunsets are truly glorious and the sea breeze brings a freshness to our lives that we don’t experience at home in the hills.
And we have been joined by our family, whose members have given us the gift of time and presence. Both of our children have married people who are supportive of family. This is a wonderful gift in and of itself.
And there is that two-and-a-half-year-old. I haven’t exaggerated his brilliance. I have vivid memories of the times when our children were young. I could just stare at them while they were sleeping and marvel at what wonders they were. That feeling comes back instantly as I watch our grandson sleep in his bed in our camper. He is so much at home in his world. When his father was the age that he is now, we took our first study leave and traveled to Berkeley, California where we engaged in a short residency at Pacific School of Religion. On our way, we traveled to visit my brother and his family on Whidbey Island, just south of the island where we are camped on this trip. We had a brand new tent and we slept in the tent in the back yard. Our son wasn’t thrown by the unusual sleeping arrangements. He was very comfortable to be on an adventure and to explore the world.
We have not been with our grandson face-to-face since February. When you are two, half a year is a quarter of your life. And yet he knows us, recognizes us, and feels safe to be with us. It is a miracle of family. And I am the luckiest guy in the world. I’m not exaggerating about that part.
Again, I have a sense of being so fortunate to live in the moment of time that is ours. We have the luxury of traveling to be with our family. For many generations past, leaving the home territory meant leaving family behind. When our grandfather Abraham and grandmother Sarah left their home, they never returned. Their families that remained behind were never again seen. They never had another conversation with their parents and cousins and other members of their clan.
We visit with our grandson by video conference whenever we want. We have technology to purse a conversation at will. We can see his world and he can see ours even when we are more than a thousand miles apart. I know that technology is an invention of humans and not a miracle of God, but the workings of the human mind and the ability to imagine and then create such technologies are a marvel.
Today promises a wonder of exploring the world and sharing life with our family. There is a children’s festival here in Anacortes. We found a toy and children’s bookstore worth exploring. There is a working waterfront with hundreds of boats to check out. Anacortes is filled with shops and restaurants and other interesting places. Perhaps we will go to the mountain that is at the heart of the island for 360-degree views of the sound and the mainland. Mt. Baker is a dramatic volcano to our northeast. The sound is filled with islands to the west. Seattle lies to the south with its urban sprawl and rush of modern life. There are many other options for our day.
The real treasure of the day, however, is not the places we will go or the things we will see. It is the joy of being together. Our family has gathered for the joy of being together. There are stories to tell and dreams to share, adventures to explore and memories to build. For the next week we are given the gift of being with people who share their spirits with us and blend their stories with ours.
I am not exaggerating about being the luckiest guy in the world.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
The North Cascades
12/07/13 06:22
Our second night in a National Park Service campground has begun the transition from work to vacation for me. I haven’t checked my e-mail since Tuesday – a rare thing for me. Today we’ll arrive at our destination campground, which has Internet service and full hookups so I’ll probably get back in touch a little bit. It isn’t as if we were out of contact as we used to be when on vacation earlier in our careers. The cell phones work even in very remote places along our travels these days.
I wake this morning with great anticipation of a wonderful time because we will see our family this afternoon. Our son and grandson will pick up our daughter and son-in-law at Sea-Tac Airport and drive to the campground. We are really looking forward to a week of being together face-to-face. We’ve planned a lot of fun activities and the San Juan Islands are an area that we have wanted to explore for many years. We’re relatively familiar with Whidbey Island, as my brother lived there for many years and we have visited often. But we have seen little of other islands. And for this trip we’ve scheduled a whale watching tour which will be an entirely new adventure for us.
We’ve pulled at least nine mountain passes on this trip. Washington Pass, on the North Cascades Highway is as steep and as long a pull as you’ll find with the possible exception of the Beartooth Highway between Red Lodge and Cook City, Montana when pulled from Red Lodge. The truck performed perfectly with temperatures staying well within the normal range. The trailer handled very well with no hot brakes or other problems. It was a kind of test. We’re new to traveling with a camp trailer and we wanted to make sure that the equipment was able to go where we want to go. So far we’re very pleased. The camper also handles well when we’re “off grid.” The batteries have plenty of power for the lights and other electrical things we use, including an inverter to charge computer batteries, etc. The propane and water tanks are large enough for many nights without hookups. We’ve found places to dump our wastewater each day, but clearly we have capacity for four days without needing to dump.
North Cascades National Park is one of the newer parks in the system. It is an amazing place for people who love mountains. There are high spires and alpine meadows and acres and acres of trees growing on steep slopes. Like the rest of the Cascades, the mountains are rainforest on the western slopes and nearly desert on the eastern slopes. The contrast is dramatic and incredible. Yesterday at Kettle Falls, the ground was dry and crackly when we walked. The trees were primarily Ponderosa Pine, though they were taller than they grow at home. Today we are surrounded by Cedar, Douglas Fir and Hemlock trees that stretch hundreds of feet into the sky. The ground is lush with ferns and moss on almost every surface. When I went out to paddle last night, I came back with muddy feet.
Because it is a relatively new park, the use of North Cascades National Park is more varied than other National Parks. There are at least two major dams within the park that back up lakes. Ross Lake stretches all the way to Canada, with the only road access being from north of the boarder. There is a portage from Diablo Lake, where we are camped. This means that boats can be used to go deep into the wilderness on the surface of the lake, providing access points for hikers and campers that would not otherwise exist. To the southeast, Lake Chelin is a huge natural lake that was used by natives as a travel route long before European settlers arrived. There are several archeological sites within the wilderness that show evidence of human use of this land for more than 100,000 years.
North Cascades has more glaciers than any place in the United States outside of Alaska. Glaciers have a unique way of grinding and crushing the rocks. The runoff from the glaciers carries this rock dust and the cold, clear water has a unique green color that is found only in lakes that are fed from glaciers. I haven’t paddled in such a lake since we traveled in British Columbia years ago. Paddling on Diablo Lake last evening brought back memories of those adventures.
The Cascades, of course, are named from the dramatic waterfalls that are prevalent throughout the region. We passed many waterfalls and enjoyed the beauty of such places. The sounds match the sights in their beauty and emotional impact. There are places that touch the soul, and this is one of them. It seems appropriate to us that the area is being preserved as a National Park.
As a builder of canoes and kayaks, I feel a special kinship with cedar trees. The wood from these trees is perfect for the kind of building that I do. It is soft enough to make the complex curves of my craft and it is water resistant. Here in the forest, the trees are almost constantly wet and they grow to massive sizes. There is still a lot of discussion about what the proper balance between harvesting timber and preserving forests. My consumption of cedar in a lifetime will be less than one tree, but I still wonder and visiting the forest where the cedars grow is a gentle reminder to me that their wood is a precious commodity and not to be wasted or taken lightly. The canoe that I paddle the most was made more than a dozen years ago and I have a responsibility not only to make it last for my lifetime, but to find someone who will treasure and care for it after I am gone. Having used the wood, it is a trust with the forest to use it well. The kayak I brought on this trip is made from fence cedar, harvested from the small cedar trees that grow along rivers throughout the west. It seems quite at home in this area, however.
So we continue our adventures and continue to enjoy exploring this wonderful world.
I wake this morning with great anticipation of a wonderful time because we will see our family this afternoon. Our son and grandson will pick up our daughter and son-in-law at Sea-Tac Airport and drive to the campground. We are really looking forward to a week of being together face-to-face. We’ve planned a lot of fun activities and the San Juan Islands are an area that we have wanted to explore for many years. We’re relatively familiar with Whidbey Island, as my brother lived there for many years and we have visited often. But we have seen little of other islands. And for this trip we’ve scheduled a whale watching tour which will be an entirely new adventure for us.
Because it is a relatively new park, the use of North Cascades National Park is more varied than other National Parks. There are at least two major dams within the park that back up lakes. Ross Lake stretches all the way to Canada, with the only road access being from north of the boarder. There is a portage from Diablo Lake, where we are camped. This means that boats can be used to go deep into the wilderness on the surface of the lake, providing access points for hikers and campers that would not otherwise exist. To the southeast, Lake Chelin is a huge natural lake that was used by natives as a travel route long before European settlers arrived. There are several archeological sites within the wilderness that show evidence of human use of this land for more than 100,000 years.
North Cascades has more glaciers than any place in the United States outside of Alaska. Glaciers have a unique way of grinding and crushing the rocks. The runoff from the glaciers carries this rock dust and the cold, clear water has a unique green color that is found only in lakes that are fed from glaciers. I haven’t paddled in such a lake since we traveled in British Columbia years ago. Paddling on Diablo Lake last evening brought back memories of those adventures.
As a builder of canoes and kayaks, I feel a special kinship with cedar trees. The wood from these trees is perfect for the kind of building that I do. It is soft enough to make the complex curves of my craft and it is water resistant. Here in the forest, the trees are almost constantly wet and they grow to massive sizes. There is still a lot of discussion about what the proper balance between harvesting timber and preserving forests. My consumption of cedar in a lifetime will be less than one tree, but I still wonder and visiting the forest where the cedars grow is a gentle reminder to me that their wood is a precious commodity and not to be wasted or taken lightly. The canoe that I paddle the most was made more than a dozen years ago and I have a responsibility not only to make it last for my lifetime, but to find someone who will treasure and care for it after I am gone. Having used the wood, it is a trust with the forest to use it well. The kayak I brought on this trip is made from fence cedar, harvested from the small cedar trees that grow along rivers throughout the west. It seems quite at home in this area, however.
So we continue our adventures and continue to enjoy exploring this wonderful world.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
In my kayak
11/07/13 06:20
My small kayak allows me to sit easily on big water. I have been on many waters, both big and mall over the years and have learned that often I am not able to explore a very big slice of the world, but I am able to explore a small part in depth. We are camped alongside Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir formed by the Grand Coulee Dam. We are less than 50 miles from the Canada line in northeastern Washington. We decided to make a short drive yesterday and stop early for a little exploring. We hae spent some time alongside the Columbia in British Columbia and I have paddled the big water in the gorge between Oregon and Washington. It is good to get to know a bit of the character of the water in another part of its territory.
This is a region of really large boats. The houseboats that they rent at the Kettle Falls Marina must be 75 feet long. There are huge cabin cruisers in the marina as well. These are the kind of boats that are transported on semis when they have to travel over land. They are the kind of boats that spend their entire lives in the same lake because they were designed for water and not for life on a trailer.
When I sit on the water in my small boat I am dwarfed by the scale of everything. The big boats might intimidate me, but the reservoir is so big that there is no reason for me to come close to them except when they are moored at the marina. My path keeps me close to shore and I am able to explore the inlets and eddies and small ponds that are too small for the big boats to bother with. The reservoir is nearly full at present. Because of he downstream navigation, large irrigation projects and other uses for the water, it is common for the water level in the reservoir to drop by many feet during the cycles of the year. This is dry country. Without the Columbia, this is really dry country – almost desert, but the mountains that surround the river up here are covered with pine trees and their character might remind me of the hills except here next to the reservoir the roots are nourished with a constant supply of water and the trees are 150 feet tall and taller yet.
Even with the reservoir that makes the bottom of the coulee hidden, this is a deep gorge. The sun disappeared beneath the mountains suddenly last night, almost catching me by surprise. It gets dark quickly in this country. This morning’s pre-dawn glow will linger for some time before we actually see the sun, and when it does appear it will already be high in the sky.
The scale of the Columbia dams is so huge that they dwarf the tiny reservoirs that we have in the hills. The size and the cost of the engineering and construction of those dams is mind-boggling to someone like me. These projects were, in part of product of the Great Depression. Times were different then. Our country experiencing a large economic challenge with millions unemployed and the economy faltering. But there was a common belief in the power of the government to set things right. Big problems required a big response and Americans believed that drawing together and doing things together was the way out of the poverty and problems of the Great Depression.
I think that attitudes are different these days. We have economic problems, but less confidence that the government can solve them. These days we have trouble imagining that Congress could do anything. Just passing a simple piece of legislation seems impossible in these partisan-divided days. The thought that there might be massive new projects like the great construction projects of the 1930’s seems impossible.
But thoughts of politics and government do not linger in my mind as I paddle. The osprey are fishing and they are magnificent birds. With a wingspan that is nearly as long as my kayak they would make me seem small and insignificant were I to see one up close. But in this big country, they are dwarfed by the immensity of the sky and the water. They look small as they soar high above the lake. I must look different to them, however, because their eyesight is so keen that they can spot a fish from that great height. It is easy to confuse an osprey for a bald eagle. They are of a similar size and they both have white heads. The osprey, however, has much more white on its belly, so if you get a look from the right angle, it is easy to tell. The problem is that when they soar, they are merely silhouettes in the sky and it is hard to see their coloring.
It is when they fish that the observer gets to see the power of these birds. When they spot a fish, they will suddenly dive. With their wings folded back, they drop precisely and quickly and impact the water with a great splash. It happens so quickly that you don’t even realize that the bird has, at the last minute, pulled out of the dive, lowered its mighty talons and entered the water feet first. As soon as the fish is grasped the wings are working hard to take the whole operation into flight. The fish is suddenly out of its element in a huge sea of air where it cannot breath as the sharp talons pierce its sides. It is soon a meal for the great bird. The fish could have escaped by diving for deep water. The bird can only take the fish that are near the surface. But there is no way for the fish to know that the osprey is coming. It cannot see into the sky and it cannot know the speed of the great bird.
So I will paddle a bit more this morning and explore another corner of this huge lake. I don’t presume to get to know it, but I have found that it is a joy to sit comfortably on the water, even when it is much bigger than I.
When I sit on the water in my small boat I am dwarfed by the scale of everything. The big boats might intimidate me, but the reservoir is so big that there is no reason for me to come close to them except when they are moored at the marina. My path keeps me close to shore and I am able to explore the inlets and eddies and small ponds that are too small for the big boats to bother with. The reservoir is nearly full at present. Because of he downstream navigation, large irrigation projects and other uses for the water, it is common for the water level in the reservoir to drop by many feet during the cycles of the year. This is dry country. Without the Columbia, this is really dry country – almost desert, but the mountains that surround the river up here are covered with pine trees and their character might remind me of the hills except here next to the reservoir the roots are nourished with a constant supply of water and the trees are 150 feet tall and taller yet.
Even with the reservoir that makes the bottom of the coulee hidden, this is a deep gorge. The sun disappeared beneath the mountains suddenly last night, almost catching me by surprise. It gets dark quickly in this country. This morning’s pre-dawn glow will linger for some time before we actually see the sun, and when it does appear it will already be high in the sky.
The scale of the Columbia dams is so huge that they dwarf the tiny reservoirs that we have in the hills. The size and the cost of the engineering and construction of those dams is mind-boggling to someone like me. These projects were, in part of product of the Great Depression. Times were different then. Our country experiencing a large economic challenge with millions unemployed and the economy faltering. But there was a common belief in the power of the government to set things right. Big problems required a big response and Americans believed that drawing together and doing things together was the way out of the poverty and problems of the Great Depression.
But thoughts of politics and government do not linger in my mind as I paddle. The osprey are fishing and they are magnificent birds. With a wingspan that is nearly as long as my kayak they would make me seem small and insignificant were I to see one up close. But in this big country, they are dwarfed by the immensity of the sky and the water. They look small as they soar high above the lake. I must look different to them, however, because their eyesight is so keen that they can spot a fish from that great height. It is easy to confuse an osprey for a bald eagle. They are of a similar size and they both have white heads. The osprey, however, has much more white on its belly, so if you get a look from the right angle, it is easy to tell. The problem is that when they soar, they are merely silhouettes in the sky and it is hard to see their coloring.
It is when they fish that the observer gets to see the power of these birds. When they spot a fish, they will suddenly dive. With their wings folded back, they drop precisely and quickly and impact the water with a great splash. It happens so quickly that you don’t even realize that the bird has, at the last minute, pulled out of the dive, lowered its mighty talons and entered the water feet first. As soon as the fish is grasped the wings are working hard to take the whole operation into flight. The fish is suddenly out of its element in a huge sea of air where it cannot breath as the sharp talons pierce its sides. It is soon a meal for the great bird. The fish could have escaped by diving for deep water. The bird can only take the fish that are near the surface. But there is no way for the fish to know that the osprey is coming. It cannot see into the sky and it cannot know the speed of the great bird.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Western Montana
10/07/13 04:54
Then, as we drove along, after we were west of Missoula, but not yet to Frenchtown we saw the “Lord of the Valley Lutheran Church.” I wondered if the Lutherans over there in the Clarks Fork valley knew that Jesus is Lord in the Blackfoot valley. I got to thinking about how it might go for the good folks at Lord of the Valley Lutheran Church when it came time for them to interview a candidate for a minister. I imagined a conversation something like the following.
“We’re sorry, pastor, we can’t afford much of a salary. And you’ll have to work long hours with little help. But our church is located in beautiful country, and we have another special thing to offer the minister of the church.”
“What might that be?”
“You get to be Lord of the Valley.”
“Interesting. Doe that mean that I get to decide who can and who cannot hunt in the forests of the valley?”
“Well, no.”
“Does it man that I get to decide who can marry the young maidens of the valley?”
“Um. . . no.”
“Can I levy taxes? Eat the first produce from the gardens? Hunt out of season?”
“Well, no, no and no.”
“Then what do I get for being Lord of the Valley?”
“Um . . . nothing. It is just a title.”
“I see . . . I think I’ll go over and see what they have to offer me at the Garrison Lutheran Church. I hear that Jesus is Lord in their valley.”
And then we got to Superior, Montana. It doesn’t say on their sign what they are superior to. It isn’t elevation. The town is at less than 3,000 feet above sea level. His is a land of high mountains, but the Clarks Fork, which passes right through downtown Superior, has cut a deep valley as it heads west toward Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. Pend Oreille is French for earring, and earrings are made from Gold, which is really what is Superior about the town of Superior. The Superior Gold strike was one of the largest gold discoveries in the region in the 1860’s and 1870’s. I suppose that it wouldn’t be hard to learn the history of the region, since nearly every town around here has the word “historic” somewhere on the signs that advertise the community.
It started around Butte. As we traveled west we were invited to explore “historic Anaconda,” “historic Warm Springs,” and “historic Deer Lodge.” All of the small towns also proclaimed that they were historic. There are “historic Phillipsburg,” “historic Drummond,” and a host of other historic towns. I suppose that there is a long history of human habitation in this part of the world. The land is gentle, though winters can be harsh. There is plenty of shelter and the forests are rich with game. The territory is a haven for contemporary survivalists in part because they can harvest abundant amounts of firewood for fuel and game for food without having to travel very far. It must seem strange, however, to visitors from Europe, which is filled with buildings that date back hundreds and hundreds of years, to come to a place where “historic” is a claim that tells about what happened in the second half of the nineteenth century. In almost every one of these historic towns, the history to which they refer is less than 150 years.
So we have arrived in St. Regis. The banners on the street claim that this is the fly fishing capital of the northwest. I’m not sure how they choose the various capitals around here. I suppose that Superior might have become the county seat of Mineral County in part because of its name. The fly-fishing is good in this part of the country and the Clarks Fork is a fine place to catch a fish. But that would also be true of the Bitterroot, the Blackfoot, the Madison, the Gallatin, and a host of other rivers and streams. The fishing on the Clarks Fork is spectacular upstream from St. Regis as well. Folks in Superior might even claim that it is superior in their town. But with a name like St. Regis, you have to claim to be the best at something. After all, “Regis” means “kingly.” The French use the old Latin term to refer to Jesus, who is “regis” over several valleys in the French alps, as well as many other places.
I suspect that the town St. Regis got its name from John Francis Regis, who was named a saint by Pope Clement XI in 1715. He never visited the United States, which weren’t “united” at the time of his life, but he was a very popular saint among the Jesuits, who came to this country in the late 19th century at the request of the local native communities. When they encountered French fur trappers and others from Europe they became curious about the religion and medicine of these foreigners and requested that the “black shirts” come to them. “Black shirt” was their description of Roman Catholic clergy. Members of the Jesuit order responded and part of their legacy in this part of the country is that there are a lot of place names that were given by the Jesuits. St. Regis is one of them.
It seems a bit out of place to have the patron saint of lace makers lending his name to a rough and tumble cowboy town in Western Montana, but there are plenty of things around here that are even stranger. There are obviously more stories to be told in this “historic” community. Some of them, however, will have to be told in places other than this morning’s blog.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Detours
09/07/13 04:55
We are camped at a lovely campground in Red Lodge, with Rock Creek right behind the camper. There is a big water main project going on in Red Lodge, so we had the feeling that most construction is going on in cities and towns this summer, with fewer projects on the open road. We don’t have much data to back it up, that’s just how it felt on this trip.
In addition to the brief detours for construction, we took a break for 15 minutes or so to wait out a thunderstorm in the parking lot of the Cabella’s store in Billings. It was a doozy of a summer storm with the rain falling in sheets and winds that I suppose were gusting to 50 mph or more. We didn’t have any trouble controlling our trailer, but since we were right in a city when we ran into the thundershower, it seemed easy to take a break and sit it out while we sipped ice tea in the comfort of our pickup cab. We’re on vacation after all and there was no need to add to the stress of driving. A few minutes later we were on our way.
It seems to me as I think about it this morning that life is really about the detours. At least the detours and surprises make for the best stories. If I were to just tell about a day when we were a little slow getting going and then the entire day went well with us arriving at our destination in time for a great meal of home-cooked tamales and fresh salad and then we tucked into bed in our camper with the river sound as a lullaby, there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell. The real adventures come from life’s detours.
While we were sitting out the rain shower and the winds, we noticed a beautiful little teardrop camper being pulled by a Volkswagen in the parking lot. The camper had Oregon plates and we followed it out of the parking lot and onto the highway. Once on the highway they traveled a bit faster than we. But when we arrived at our campground, they were checking in just ahead of us. What struck us was the saying that they had carefully painted onto the back of their camper: “Life isn’t about avoiding the storms. It is about learning to dance in the rain.” A slight modification of their motto might apply for me: “Life isn’t about avoiding the detours, it is about enjoying the break in the routine.”
So we are off on a grand detour. And spending the night next to a roaring creek rushing down from the high country and rolling the boulders in the stream bed is a great way to make the transition from being at home to life in our camper. A good night’s sleep is soon to be followed by breakfast with Susan’s sister and husband who hosted us for a wonderful dinner last night. We have no particular goal for today other than just to make a few more miles in the right direction. It promise to be a good day for detours and we’re hoping that we find some that are good not only at getting us around the construction, but also at giving us stories to tell.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Daisies
08/07/13 05:12
On Saturday I stopped by to visit a family and found them in their back yard. Just walking into their yard was a treat. Alongside the driveway there were rows of plans, carefully tended and perfectly weeded. In the side yard were dozens of rose bushes with gorgeous blossoms. In the back yard were a few fruit trees and two areas growing vegetables with neat rows and carefully cultivated plants. The vegetables were up enough to be identified and you could see that some crops, like lettuce and radishes had already yielded harvest. We sat under an apple tree that was laden with green fruit. It was lovely and I complimented them several times on their beautiful yard.
Our yard is beautiful, but in a different way. We have a large open area that is filled with the natural plants of the hills – grasses and sage and a few wildflowers. Because we keep it mown, it looks like a lawn as long as it gets enough water. In the front yard, the application of fertilizer and water and a bit of broadleaf herbicide from time to time has yielded a more lush growth of grass. We have a few flowerbeds. This year I didn’t plant much of a vegetable garden. Last year I planted a couple of rose bushes in the vegetable garden because it is fenced away from the deer. With modest success in that venture, I added another this year. I always plant sunflowers simply because I like sunflowers. There are a couple of tomato plants and a row of lettuce, which has given some fresh greens for our salads this summer and is nearing the height of its production, a few carrots which aren’t yet ready to pull, and that is about it this year. It seems that each year I plant a few more sunflowers.
In the beds by the back deck, I have wildflower beds, but they are mostly daisies. We love the daisies. They require little care. They come back each year without much tending. They have long-lasting blossoms that keep producing for most of the summer. And they are just plain pretty. We have a mixture of common daisies and a few larger Shasta daisies as well. Some were grown from plants purchased at the nursery. Most were grown from seed.
I really don’t know much about gardening, just a few things I have picked up from watching others. My father-in-law was a very good gardener and his roses were the delight of everyone who visited their home. His youngest daughter, my sister-in-law seems to have inherited his way with plants. I always look forward to visiting their home and looking at their yard with all of its plants. They live in a very different climate than ours, in Oregon, right on the dividing line between the high plains desert and the more lush temperate forest at the base of Mount Hood. But there is more than location to successful gardening. One of the things is the investment of more time that I am currently willing to give. The work is not hard – in fact it is very rewarding, but it does require the investment of time.
Daisies, on the other hand, are easy. They are forgiving of busy schedules and compete well with the weeds that don’t get pulled. They will even push their way through grass to show up each summer. Daisies grow wild across the west (and probably other places as well). The lore from where I grew up is that you can use daisies as a gauge of the harshness of the winter. I’m not sure whether or not this is true, but I grew up believing that if there were wild daisies it meant that it didn’t get below -30 in the winter. The super cold places had other flowers, but not daisies. The daisies grew in the sheltered areas at reasonable altitudes and stayed away from the places where the icy winds whipped all winter long. The theory or story works for us. We didn’t see -30 or even -20 last winter. The roses are a different matter. If they aren’t pruned and carefully mulched in for the winter, they will winter kill in our area. Keeping them going from year to year, however, isn’t much work.
I know a lot of songs about daisies:
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look neat upon the seat of my bicycle built for two.”
I'll give you a daisy a day dear
I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away
I'm a Daisy Girl Scout, yes I am.
Here is my tunic, here is my pin
When a do a good deed, hear me shout,
I'm a Daisy, inside and out!.
(No, I never was a Girl Scout. I don’t know why I know this song.)
Flyin' me back to Memphis
Gotta find my Daisy Jane
Well the summer's gone
And I hope she's feelin' the same
There are probably a million more, if one were to check. I guess that the daisies provide a bit of inspiration for the songwriters. It doesn’t hurt that it is one of the flowers also is a common name for women and girls. Women often inspire songs – both good and bad songs. The ones I remember are rarely the great ones, just the ones that stick in your head and you can’t get out.
So we grow daisies. They are pretty. They are easy. And they fit the character of our yard. And, for whatever reason, the deer aren’t as likely to eat them as they are to go after some of the other things that grow in the garden. They’re a good plant for this place and this time in our lives.
Still, I think I’ll add a rose bush each year. I’m starting to find a little more time for the garden and I like the roses. It seems a fitting way to remember my father in law and there is plenty of room in this world for more flowers.
A brief note: Susan and I are heading off for a two-week vacation today. I’ll keep writing the blog, but the postings may be irregular, depending on Internet access and our schedule. At any rate, they’ll probably show up a bit later in the morning. We’re heading to Pacific Time Zone and probably will sleep in a bit on our vacation.
Our yard is beautiful, but in a different way. We have a large open area that is filled with the natural plants of the hills – grasses and sage and a few wildflowers. Because we keep it mown, it looks like a lawn as long as it gets enough water. In the front yard, the application of fertilizer and water and a bit of broadleaf herbicide from time to time has yielded a more lush growth of grass. We have a few flowerbeds. This year I didn’t plant much of a vegetable garden. Last year I planted a couple of rose bushes in the vegetable garden because it is fenced away from the deer. With modest success in that venture, I added another this year. I always plant sunflowers simply because I like sunflowers. There are a couple of tomato plants and a row of lettuce, which has given some fresh greens for our salads this summer and is nearing the height of its production, a few carrots which aren’t yet ready to pull, and that is about it this year. It seems that each year I plant a few more sunflowers.
I really don’t know much about gardening, just a few things I have picked up from watching others. My father-in-law was a very good gardener and his roses were the delight of everyone who visited their home. His youngest daughter, my sister-in-law seems to have inherited his way with plants. I always look forward to visiting their home and looking at their yard with all of its plants. They live in a very different climate than ours, in Oregon, right on the dividing line between the high plains desert and the more lush temperate forest at the base of Mount Hood. But there is more than location to successful gardening. One of the things is the investment of more time that I am currently willing to give. The work is not hard – in fact it is very rewarding, but it does require the investment of time.
Daisies, on the other hand, are easy. They are forgiving of busy schedules and compete well with the weeds that don’t get pulled. They will even push their way through grass to show up each summer. Daisies grow wild across the west (and probably other places as well). The lore from where I grew up is that you can use daisies as a gauge of the harshness of the winter. I’m not sure whether or not this is true, but I grew up believing that if there were wild daisies it meant that it didn’t get below -30 in the winter. The super cold places had other flowers, but not daisies. The daisies grew in the sheltered areas at reasonable altitudes and stayed away from the places where the icy winds whipped all winter long. The theory or story works for us. We didn’t see -30 or even -20 last winter. The roses are a different matter. If they aren’t pruned and carefully mulched in for the winter, they will winter kill in our area. Keeping them going from year to year, however, isn’t much work.
I know a lot of songs about daisies:
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look neat upon the seat of my bicycle built for two.”
I'll give you a daisy a day dear
I'll give you a daisy a day
I'll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away
I'm a Daisy Girl Scout, yes I am.
Here is my tunic, here is my pin
When a do a good deed, hear me shout,
I'm a Daisy, inside and out!.
(No, I never was a Girl Scout. I don’t know why I know this song.)
Flyin' me back to Memphis
Gotta find my Daisy Jane
Well the summer's gone
And I hope she's feelin' the same
There are probably a million more, if one were to check. I guess that the daisies provide a bit of inspiration for the songwriters. It doesn’t hurt that it is one of the flowers also is a common name for women and girls. Women often inspire songs – both good and bad songs. The ones I remember are rarely the great ones, just the ones that stick in your head and you can’t get out.
Still, I think I’ll add a rose bush each year. I’m starting to find a little more time for the garden and I like the roses. It seems a fitting way to remember my father in law and there is plenty of room in this world for more flowers.
A brief note: Susan and I are heading off for a two-week vacation today. I’ll keep writing the blog, but the postings may be irregular, depending on Internet access and our schedule. At any rate, they’ll probably show up a bit later in the morning. We’re heading to Pacific Time Zone and probably will sleep in a bit on our vacation.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
God has created a new day
07/07/13 05:31
The neighborhood where we live has streets that are named for birds that frequent our part of the world. Many of those birds, like the Tanagers, who give their name to one of the main streets, are not year-round residents. The Tanagers head for Central America in the winter. Our house is on Waxwing Lane. Male and female waxwings look more alike than some species of birds, making it hard for an amateur like me to tell the difference. Sometimes, when there is a couple, they will pass a pine nut back and forth between their beaks in a courting ritual. We also have streets named for Pinion Jays, Ravens, Crossbills, Kingbirds, and Meadowlarks. We’ve seen each of those types of birds in our neighborhood over the years. Our neighborhood doesn’t have streets named for other birds that are common in our part of the world like robins and grackles and sparrows and buntings. And we have no streets named for raptors like eagles, hawks, or kestrels.
Still, it is a good place to have things named for birds. We wake in the morning to a chorus of birdsong. This time of the year they start at first light, which is a little after 4 a.m. While the official sunrise isn’t until 5:18 today, there is enough light to see across the street by 4:30 and the birds raise enough racket to remind light sleepers of the joys of rising early. Today is a bit cloudy and the forecast promises rain showers throughout the day and into tomorrow. While we don’t need any more lightning in the hills, the showers are helping keep things green and keeping the fire risk at moderate, which allows the community to lend some of its firefighters to the big fires in Colorado, Arizona and California.
The weather cooperated beautifully with last night’s wedding. There was a shower that passed through before the ceremony began, but the evening was pleasant and the reception under the tents in the backyard was a great success. They had music and dancing under the shade structure and there were festive lights to add to the mood of celebration. After so much work in preparation it was fun to have things work out so well. I’m sure that the couple and their families are pleased.
There will be a few tired folks in church this morning. The kitchen crew worked hard, hauling all of the plates and silverware and other items out, setting every thing up, serving, cleaning up and doing a mountain of dishes. There has been no small amount of moving furniture, and today promises more work returning everything and taking down the tents. Our plan is to use the celebration space for an ice cream social after church, so we’ll get a little more use out of it if the weather cooperates one more time.
One of the tensions with which we live is that we are given an abundance of beautiful spaces. Because we have such a beautiful church with its magnificent musical instruments and refreshing space, we love to worship indoors. The indoor space provides shelter from the weather and is comfortable on all but the hottest days of the year. And there is much talk of adding air conditioning to cool the building when the heat becomes oppressive. Our indoor space is welcoming for our elders and those living with disabilities and so we tend to us that space for most of our times of community worship.
But there is a real joy to worshiping outdoors. Many of us have very fond memories of meaningful worship at camp and in other outdoor settings. Most of us appreciate the outdoors as one of the great gifts of living in the hills. No human architect or builder has ever matched the natural beauty and glory with which we re surrounded. In some ways our buildings distract us from the glory the Creator.
When our shade structure was under construction, I anticipated that we would use it for outdoor worship more than we have. It seems that each week there is some reason for us to put off outdoor worship. The musicians who provide leadership for our worship need the organ or piano that cannot be moved outdoors. Those with hearing difficulties need the sound system in order to hear clearly. There are too many insects. The sun is too bright. There is no end to the reasons that are given to keep our congregation indoors on Sunday morning. Each makes a little bit of sense.
And yet, as I write this morning and the low clouds project the yellow, orange and gold of the predawn light into a 360-degree sunrise, and the birds raise a song that seems to me to be a true song of joy, I long for the entire congregation to experience the wideness of God’s presence.
As sacred as is our sanctuary, we must never think that we might be able to contain God in a single place. As powerful as is our worship when we gather, we must never think that we re the only ones who draw close to God. God is greater than the greatest memory we hold. God is more than the music and liturgy we lead. God surrounds us with beauty and blessing.
Sometimes, on a morning like today, I think of what the hills must have been like before there were houses and cars and roads and all of the trappings of human habitation. For many centuries the hills were not a place of year-round human living, but rather a place visited for hunting and spiritual nurture by people whose primary homes were portable structures and whose lives were tied to the buffalo on the plains. In those days there were no dams or reservoirs and the creeks would turn into dangerous raging torrents with the sudden rainfall of summer showers.
There has always been great power and beauty in the hills, even when there were no human eyes to witness it. There is more to this world than we are able to take in, more beauty than we are able to see, great sounds that we do not hear.
A new day is dawning in the hills, and a song of gratitude raises from deep within me.
God is good
All the time.
All the time
God is good!
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Weddings
06/07/13 05:19
There is a wedding at our church today. After the rehearsal last night the mother of the bride said to me, “I’m almost to the point where I can relax and start enjoying this.” The entire wedding party looked a bit tired. There have been a lot of people doing a lot of work to prepare for this wedding. The entire event, including the reception, is being held at the church. This is relatively rare for our church. It is more common for receptions to be held in other venues. Families planning weddings often want things that we can’t provide such as catered meals, alcohol service, a dance floor, wait staff and a team of cleaning personnel. But this couple chose to have their event at the church.
What is apparent to me is that the wedding is a big deal to the couple and to the families. And by “wedding” I mean all of the trappings of the event – the music, the food, the guests, the decorations – all of these things are important to the couple. Some of them seem, at times, to take precedence over the relatively simple half-hour worship service that is the core of the event.
I’m not sure that I remember accurately how it was for us, but in a way, I don’t think that the event of the wedding was quite as big of a deal. I do know that we had a smaller group of family and friends who gathered. Ours wasn’t the social event of the season. I’m the middle child of a fairly big family, so there was a wedding in our family every couple of years there for a while. We had grown up immersed in church and had met at church camp, so we had two ministers for the event. The pastor of Susan’s home church took the lead with planning the ceremony, but the two knew each other well and shared leadership comfortably. The reception was at the church, but it wasn’t a complete meal. We shared cake and ice cream and had a few pictures taken. Susan made her own wedding dress and she and her sisters made the dresses for the bridesmaids. My sister sewed the shirts for the groomsmen. We had a live plant for the communion table. The bride had a small bouquet and we had flowers for the wedding party and parents. We didn’t hire a wedding planner and the church didn’t provide a wedding coordinator.
The average wedding in the United States costs $25,656 these days. The majority of weddings fall in the range of between $19,242 and $32,070. This cost includes the reception but not the honeymoon. It is a big deal.
Our church seats 500 people, has an impressive array of musical instruments, including a pipe organ, two grand pianos and a harpsichord, has an experienced staff that includes three ministers, and is one of the most acoustically balanced rooms in our community. It is a sought after venue for lots of events, including weddings. A wedding at our church for a couple who are not members, including minister, organist, wedding coordinator, candelabra and candles, use of the building for rehearsal and wedding, rooms for changing clothes and family, etc. costs $550. Costs are lower for church members. So if a couple chooses to have an average wedding, that leaves over $25,000 to spend on the rest of their event. It is rare to have a wedding at our church where the family didn’t spend more money on the photographer than they did on the church. It is very common for the bride’s dress to cost more than the total cost of the church and ministers.
I really don’t know if this is bad or good. It is just the way of our culture. We still do a few simple ceremonies, where the costs are very low and the focus is on the worship service, but most of the weddings that happen at our church are really big productions. We assume that we need a wedding coordinator to make one happen. And the receptions are frequently elaborate productions with sit-down dinners, live bands held at hotels or other fancy locations.
I believe that occasions are important. I believe in genuine celebrations. I believe that there is deep meaning in the public exchange of vows in front of family and friends. I believe in weddings. I’m glad that we had one. I’m glad that our children had theirs.
But I remain unconvinced that many of the trappings associated with contemporary weddings in our land are necessary. Sometimes the size of the event detracts from the meaning of the ceremony. Sometimes the importance of entering into a covenant with God is overlooked.
The truth is that a marriage is formed not in a single event, but in a lifetime of shared experiences. The promises are made at a ceremony but they are kept in years of lasting faithfulness. The success or failure of a wedding has little to do with the size of the ceremony or the amount of money that is spent. The important part of a marriage happens the day after the wedding and every day that follows.
I have a colleague whose church requires all couples who are married in their church to have worshiped in their church a minimum of six times during the year before the wedding. They expect the couple to be known as a part of the church community in which their wedding takes place. They encourage couples who live in other communities to find a church near their home before getting married. Their thought is that the couple needs to understand worship, and life in community before they marry. I am attracted to this way of thinking, but I know that making such rules would not work for our congregation. I do wish, however, that I was more skilled at enabling couples to focus their attention on the worship service, the commitments they are making, and the need to have an on-going relationship with God and a community of believers as they go forward.
And I hope for weddings in which the participants are not too tired to focus their attention when the worship service begins.
What is apparent to me is that the wedding is a big deal to the couple and to the families. And by “wedding” I mean all of the trappings of the event – the music, the food, the guests, the decorations – all of these things are important to the couple. Some of them seem, at times, to take precedence over the relatively simple half-hour worship service that is the core of the event.
I’m not sure that I remember accurately how it was for us, but in a way, I don’t think that the event of the wedding was quite as big of a deal. I do know that we had a smaller group of family and friends who gathered. Ours wasn’t the social event of the season. I’m the middle child of a fairly big family, so there was a wedding in our family every couple of years there for a while. We had grown up immersed in church and had met at church camp, so we had two ministers for the event. The pastor of Susan’s home church took the lead with planning the ceremony, but the two knew each other well and shared leadership comfortably. The reception was at the church, but it wasn’t a complete meal. We shared cake and ice cream and had a few pictures taken. Susan made her own wedding dress and she and her sisters made the dresses for the bridesmaids. My sister sewed the shirts for the groomsmen. We had a live plant for the communion table. The bride had a small bouquet and we had flowers for the wedding party and parents. We didn’t hire a wedding planner and the church didn’t provide a wedding coordinator.
The average wedding in the United States costs $25,656 these days. The majority of weddings fall in the range of between $19,242 and $32,070. This cost includes the reception but not the honeymoon. It is a big deal.
Our church seats 500 people, has an impressive array of musical instruments, including a pipe organ, two grand pianos and a harpsichord, has an experienced staff that includes three ministers, and is one of the most acoustically balanced rooms in our community. It is a sought after venue for lots of events, including weddings. A wedding at our church for a couple who are not members, including minister, organist, wedding coordinator, candelabra and candles, use of the building for rehearsal and wedding, rooms for changing clothes and family, etc. costs $550. Costs are lower for church members. So if a couple chooses to have an average wedding, that leaves over $25,000 to spend on the rest of their event. It is rare to have a wedding at our church where the family didn’t spend more money on the photographer than they did on the church. It is very common for the bride’s dress to cost more than the total cost of the church and ministers.
I really don’t know if this is bad or good. It is just the way of our culture. We still do a few simple ceremonies, where the costs are very low and the focus is on the worship service, but most of the weddings that happen at our church are really big productions. We assume that we need a wedding coordinator to make one happen. And the receptions are frequently elaborate productions with sit-down dinners, live bands held at hotels or other fancy locations.
I believe that occasions are important. I believe in genuine celebrations. I believe that there is deep meaning in the public exchange of vows in front of family and friends. I believe in weddings. I’m glad that we had one. I’m glad that our children had theirs.
But I remain unconvinced that many of the trappings associated with contemporary weddings in our land are necessary. Sometimes the size of the event detracts from the meaning of the ceremony. Sometimes the importance of entering into a covenant with God is overlooked.
The truth is that a marriage is formed not in a single event, but in a lifetime of shared experiences. The promises are made at a ceremony but they are kept in years of lasting faithfulness. The success or failure of a wedding has little to do with the size of the ceremony or the amount of money that is spent. The important part of a marriage happens the day after the wedding and every day that follows.
I have a colleague whose church requires all couples who are married in their church to have worshiped in their church a minimum of six times during the year before the wedding. They expect the couple to be known as a part of the church community in which their wedding takes place. They encourage couples who live in other communities to find a church near their home before getting married. Their thought is that the couple needs to understand worship, and life in community before they marry. I am attracted to this way of thinking, but I know that making such rules would not work for our congregation. I do wish, however, that I was more skilled at enabling couples to focus their attention on the worship service, the commitments they are making, and the need to have an on-going relationship with God and a community of believers as they go forward.
And I hope for weddings in which the participants are not too tired to focus their attention when the worship service begins.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Anticipating vacation
05/07/13 05:33
There are many ways in which a church doesn’t act like a small business. There are other ways that the church is just like any other employer with a small number of employees. Because we have a small number of employees and we have a limited budget for salaries, we have to be creative in how we cover for employees’ time off. For the most part we simply cover for each other when vacations occur, with no small amount of juggling work responsibilities. The joke we make is that a vacation doesn’t mean that you do less work, it just means that you do part of the work before you leave and the rest after you come home. This is actually pretty much the truth. Except for worship and a few public appearances, the people of our church are responsible for getting their own work done. Planning a vacation means figuring out how to get the work done.
And, in the church, like all other modern offices, the distinctions between work and home are fading. With cell phones, computers, e-mail, voice messages and other technologies enable us to be constantly connected. It is not at all uncommon for me to take a call and handle a work-related issue on my “day off.” Days off are another challenge for us.
Although we complain about it, I don’t think that there is anything that is substantially different from the way we work and the way many others work. There are many people for whom their vocation is a genuine calling – a way of life – more than it is a simple job. There are lots of people who take their work home every day. There are a lot of jobs where the distinction between personal life and work are not entirely clear. Family farmers and small business owners know that the attempt to count work hours is meaningless.
The challenge for the church, as with any employer that values the creativity of its workers, is to create an environment where workers are nurtured and encouraged to achieve appropriate balance between work and recreation. The Biblical practice of Sabbath is as relevant today as it ever was.
At least two large employers, IBM and Netflix, have completely stopped tracking their employees’ time off. They simply do not keep those records. For them, time cards are a part of the past. They understand that employees get creative ideas when they are in other locations. They know that spending time with family makes for more balanced and more productive workers. These policies begin with the assumption that not all work takes place at the office. The companies have decided to structure themselves for results rather than rules. They also understand that managing, monitoring and enforcing vacation policy takes time, energy and money. These companies have decided to focus their resources in other areas.
We do a similar thing at the church. As the senior officer of the institution, it falls to me to supervise other employees. However, we have found that what works best for the church is to hire dedicated people who care about the church and who do not need external supervision. While members of our team report their plans for time off and we discuss how best to juggle busy schedules, I don’t count days or keep track of how many hours are worked. I expect those who work at the church to be responsible both to the work that needs to be done and to their own needs for rest and recreation. With the kind of creative and engaged people who come to work for the church, getting them to step away from the obligations of their jobs and take genuine time off is probably a bigger problem than having them take too many days off from work.
The bottom line is trust. When we hire trustworthy people and give them our trust they rarely abuse it. Time and time again the people who work at the church prove me to be right to trust them to live lives of faithfulness to the mission of the church. Conversely, when trust breaks down, problems arise. From time to time, for whatever reasons, a church member will have some dissatisfaction with a person who works at the church. One disgruntled church member can account for hours and hours of lost productivity while a church employee struggles to answer complaints and concerns. A few years ago, we had a church member who stopped by the church at 9 a.m. several days a week and commented on who was and who was not in the office. The member didn’t learn much about how we get our work done. Spot checks on who is at the office tells you nothing about who was at the hospital in the middle of the night, who has arranged a Bible study in another location, or who is out visiting other church members. Office hours are nearly meaningless when it comes to productivity of church workers. Much of our work doesn’t occur at the church office and when we are at our best, we are out an about working with the people.
This blog, of course, is prompted by the fact that I am in the midst of the scramble of arranging for a two-week vacation. There are many things that remain on my “to do” list before I can depart. I know that I will take a few phone calls as I travel. I’ll check on my e-mail on a regular basis. The church called me to be a pastor. I don’t stop being me and I don’t stop being a pastor when I am on vacation.
On the other hand, it is important for me to get away to gain perspective. I need to look at the church from a distance from time to time. I need to model being attentive to my marriage and family as an enduring commitment. I need a balance of recreation and work.
The next three days will be filled with lots of activities. I’ll be running errands for the church and personal errands in the same trip. I’ll be thinking about family and about work all together.
If someone wants to track my hours, they are welcome to do so. I’m too busy to keep that kind of record.
And, in the church, like all other modern offices, the distinctions between work and home are fading. With cell phones, computers, e-mail, voice messages and other technologies enable us to be constantly connected. It is not at all uncommon for me to take a call and handle a work-related issue on my “day off.” Days off are another challenge for us.
Although we complain about it, I don’t think that there is anything that is substantially different from the way we work and the way many others work. There are many people for whom their vocation is a genuine calling – a way of life – more than it is a simple job. There are lots of people who take their work home every day. There are a lot of jobs where the distinction between personal life and work are not entirely clear. Family farmers and small business owners know that the attempt to count work hours is meaningless.
The challenge for the church, as with any employer that values the creativity of its workers, is to create an environment where workers are nurtured and encouraged to achieve appropriate balance between work and recreation. The Biblical practice of Sabbath is as relevant today as it ever was.
At least two large employers, IBM and Netflix, have completely stopped tracking their employees’ time off. They simply do not keep those records. For them, time cards are a part of the past. They understand that employees get creative ideas when they are in other locations. They know that spending time with family makes for more balanced and more productive workers. These policies begin with the assumption that not all work takes place at the office. The companies have decided to structure themselves for results rather than rules. They also understand that managing, monitoring and enforcing vacation policy takes time, energy and money. These companies have decided to focus their resources in other areas.
We do a similar thing at the church. As the senior officer of the institution, it falls to me to supervise other employees. However, we have found that what works best for the church is to hire dedicated people who care about the church and who do not need external supervision. While members of our team report their plans for time off and we discuss how best to juggle busy schedules, I don’t count days or keep track of how many hours are worked. I expect those who work at the church to be responsible both to the work that needs to be done and to their own needs for rest and recreation. With the kind of creative and engaged people who come to work for the church, getting them to step away from the obligations of their jobs and take genuine time off is probably a bigger problem than having them take too many days off from work.
The bottom line is trust. When we hire trustworthy people and give them our trust they rarely abuse it. Time and time again the people who work at the church prove me to be right to trust them to live lives of faithfulness to the mission of the church. Conversely, when trust breaks down, problems arise. From time to time, for whatever reasons, a church member will have some dissatisfaction with a person who works at the church. One disgruntled church member can account for hours and hours of lost productivity while a church employee struggles to answer complaints and concerns. A few years ago, we had a church member who stopped by the church at 9 a.m. several days a week and commented on who was and who was not in the office. The member didn’t learn much about how we get our work done. Spot checks on who is at the office tells you nothing about who was at the hospital in the middle of the night, who has arranged a Bible study in another location, or who is out visiting other church members. Office hours are nearly meaningless when it comes to productivity of church workers. Much of our work doesn’t occur at the church office and when we are at our best, we are out an about working with the people.
This blog, of course, is prompted by the fact that I am in the midst of the scramble of arranging for a two-week vacation. There are many things that remain on my “to do” list before I can depart. I know that I will take a few phone calls as I travel. I’ll check on my e-mail on a regular basis. The church called me to be a pastor. I don’t stop being me and I don’t stop being a pastor when I am on vacation.
On the other hand, it is important for me to get away to gain perspective. I need to look at the church from a distance from time to time. I need to model being attentive to my marriage and family as an enduring commitment. I need a balance of recreation and work.
The next three days will be filled with lots of activities. I’ll be running errands for the church and personal errands in the same trip. I’ll be thinking about family and about work all together.
If someone wants to track my hours, they are welcome to do so. I’m too busy to keep that kind of record.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Signs of the times
04/07/13 04:39
Driving downtown yesterday, I noticed that our city has put up one of those temporary letterboards that are often used in construction zones right at the west end of Hailey Park, which divides the traffic into one-way travel for the downtown grid. The sign is set up to be read from the eastbound lanes – the ones going into downtown Rapid City. I am sure that it is part of the preparations for the city’s 4th of July celebrations. It says:
U Booze
U Cruise
U Lose
Don’t
Drink
& Drive
I was immediately struck by the genius of this approach. Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? All you have to do to address a major social problem is put up a sign! Drinking and driving is a major problem all across this country. While there have been some decreases in recent years, nearly 10,000 people die in accidents involving drunk drivers each year in the United States. In 2011, 32 people died in South Dakota because of drunk drivers. Eight of those fatalities involved a drunk driver who was underage. Catching drunk drivers is serious business and preventing alcohol;-related accidents is rightly a high priority for law enforcement agencies. So I don’t mean to make a joke of this very serious problem.
But does anyone seriously think that putting up a sign is the way to stop people from drinking and driving? I’m trying to imagine the scenario.
A car full of people leaves a party driven by someone who has had a few too many. As the car weaves towards downtown the driver sees the sign. Immediately he pulls over parks the car and announces, “Everybody walks from here. I just forgot that you aren’t supposed to drink and drive. It is a good thing they put that sign up there to remind me.”
Or perhaps this is the way it will work out. A group of people are heading downtown to have a few drinks at a local bar. The driver sees the sign and it makes him think, “Oh, it’s a good thing they put that sign up to remind me. Now I will give my keys to the bartender before I start drinking and call a cab when it is time to go home.”
You get the picture.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about officers who have tried to peacefully apprehend drinking drivers. They have been subjected to attempts to get them involved in highway chases. They have seen inebriated drivers try to run for it. They have heard stories about how the person isn’t really drunk. “I have diabetes!” They have been spat at, swung at, and had to wrestle suspects to the ground. They have been cursed at, chewed out, and heard more excuses than you might imagine. I’ve never heard of an officer who, when arresting a drunk driver, has heard, “Gee, officer, I forgot that I’m not supposed to drink and drive. If only they had put up a sign, then I would have known.”
As far as I know that same excuse has never been used as a defense in court, either.
But now we don’t have to worry because we’ve got our sign.
If they really want to stop drunk drivers, a real police car with a real officer in the same location would be more effective.
Seeing the sign made me think of a couple of other signs that are up around our town. On Jackson Boulevard, the scene of a lot of construction, they’ve put up one of those temporary speed limit signs that has a radar device that will display the speed of your vehicle. I’ve often wondered if people are so unaware of their driving that they don’t know what speed they are going. I have a speedometer and a GPS device in my car. Both give me constant feedback on my speed. I don’t really need a sign in order to know how fast I am going. This particular sign has another problem. It is focused down the road a ways. In heavy traffic, which is most of the time these days, it may be displaying your speed or the speed of a car that is ahead of or behind you. I’m trying to figure out exactly where it reads the speed of the car. This is important information. Because I haven’t been speeding. I’ve been following the speed limit. So, when I look up and the sign is displaying a speed that is faster than I’m going, it makes a BIG difference to me whether that speeding vehicle is the one ahead of me or the one behind me. You know what I mean. So far, no one has run into me, but there have been a few squealing tires on pavement when the brakes were applied suddenly. It makes me think that I’m the only one who notices the sign. If the speeders aren’t noticing it, we’re all in trouble.
I feel the same way about the “U Booze, U Cruise, U Lose” sign. I noticed it. Heck I even took pictures of it. But I don’t drink to excess. I still have two cans of beer left from the six-pack I bought last summer to use to grill beer can chicken. I drink a glass of wine from time to time, but never several. And I have an absolute rule about drinking and driving. I simply don’t do it. But I do notice the signs.
Driving around town, however, it seems that there are a lot of drivers who don’t notice the signs. For example, the speed limit sings are clearly posted all around town. I know exactly where the speed limit changes from 35 to 40 and from 40 to 45 and from 45 to 50 and back to 45 on my drive out Sheridan Lake Road. Some days, however, it seems like I’m the only one who notices such things. Nearly every day I get behind someone who drives 45 in the 50 mph zone, but who also drives 45 in the 40 mph and the 35 mph zones.
So, if offenders don’t read the signs, what are the chances that they will have their lives changed by the temporary signs that the highway department has put up for a holiday weekend? Hmm. . . it is a good thing that the city purchased those signs for other purposes. It would be a shame if they spent all that money to purchase signs that people simply won’t read.
But then, again, I don’t think like the people who decide where to put the signs and what they should say.
So drive carefully out there. It is a holiday. There might be some drivers who aren’t as careful as you. Better yet, stay home to celebrate the 4th. If enough of us did that, the stores would stop thinking that they have to be open on the holiday.
U Booze
U Cruise
U Lose
Don’t
Drink
& Drive
But does anyone seriously think that putting up a sign is the way to stop people from drinking and driving? I’m trying to imagine the scenario.
A car full of people leaves a party driven by someone who has had a few too many. As the car weaves towards downtown the driver sees the sign. Immediately he pulls over parks the car and announces, “Everybody walks from here. I just forgot that you aren’t supposed to drink and drive. It is a good thing they put that sign up there to remind me.”
Or perhaps this is the way it will work out. A group of people are heading downtown to have a few drinks at a local bar. The driver sees the sign and it makes him think, “Oh, it’s a good thing they put that sign up to remind me. Now I will give my keys to the bartender before I start drinking and call a cab when it is time to go home.”
You get the picture.
As far as I know that same excuse has never been used as a defense in court, either.
But now we don’t have to worry because we’ve got our sign.
If they really want to stop drunk drivers, a real police car with a real officer in the same location would be more effective.
Seeing the sign made me think of a couple of other signs that are up around our town. On Jackson Boulevard, the scene of a lot of construction, they’ve put up one of those temporary speed limit signs that has a radar device that will display the speed of your vehicle. I’ve often wondered if people are so unaware of their driving that they don’t know what speed they are going. I have a speedometer and a GPS device in my car. Both give me constant feedback on my speed. I don’t really need a sign in order to know how fast I am going. This particular sign has another problem. It is focused down the road a ways. In heavy traffic, which is most of the time these days, it may be displaying your speed or the speed of a car that is ahead of or behind you. I’m trying to figure out exactly where it reads the speed of the car. This is important information. Because I haven’t been speeding. I’ve been following the speed limit. So, when I look up and the sign is displaying a speed that is faster than I’m going, it makes a BIG difference to me whether that speeding vehicle is the one ahead of me or the one behind me. You know what I mean. So far, no one has run into me, but there have been a few squealing tires on pavement when the brakes were applied suddenly. It makes me think that I’m the only one who notices the sign. If the speeders aren’t noticing it, we’re all in trouble.
I feel the same way about the “U Booze, U Cruise, U Lose” sign. I noticed it. Heck I even took pictures of it. But I don’t drink to excess. I still have two cans of beer left from the six-pack I bought last summer to use to grill beer can chicken. I drink a glass of wine from time to time, but never several. And I have an absolute rule about drinking and driving. I simply don’t do it. But I do notice the signs.
Driving around town, however, it seems that there are a lot of drivers who don’t notice the signs. For example, the speed limit sings are clearly posted all around town. I know exactly where the speed limit changes from 35 to 40 and from 40 to 45 and from 45 to 50 and back to 45 on my drive out Sheridan Lake Road. Some days, however, it seems like I’m the only one who notices such things. Nearly every day I get behind someone who drives 45 in the 50 mph zone, but who also drives 45 in the 40 mph and the 35 mph zones.
So, if offenders don’t read the signs, what are the chances that they will have their lives changed by the temporary signs that the highway department has put up for a holiday weekend? Hmm. . . it is a good thing that the city purchased those signs for other purposes. It would be a shame if they spent all that money to purchase signs that people simply won’t read.
But then, again, I don’t think like the people who decide where to put the signs and what they should say.
So drive carefully out there. It is a holiday. There might be some drivers who aren’t as careful as you. Better yet, stay home to celebrate the 4th. If enough of us did that, the stores would stop thinking that they have to be open on the holiday.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
How long is too long?
03/07/13 05:35
Dates and ties in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew texts that are often called the “Old Testament,” are a topic that has generated a lot of discussion and conversation over the centuries. Not all versions of the scriptures agree precisely about specific dates and times. This may be due to errors in copying and translation. For most of the history of the written Bible, the method of getting another Bible has been to hand copy the original. Hand copying carries with it a certain level of mistakes. Even with the most careful scrutiny, it is quite easy to make a simple mistake when copying.
So here is a bit of Biblical trivia for you. The most common age assigned to Methuselah in the Bible is 969 years old, although there are versions that have him dying as young as 720. He either died in the year of the Great Flood or six years before the Flood or fourteen years after the Flood, depending on the version of the scriptures that you consult.
Methuselah makes his Biblical appearance as a part of genealogies – lists of Biblical characters. The genealogy connecting Noah with Adam shows up three times: in Genesis, in Chronicles and again in Luke. Only Genesis contains a chronology – dates and times. In the King James Version (not the most accurate translation, but arguably the most common) Methuselah is mentioned as follows:
“And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah. An Enoch walked with God after he began Methuselah three hundred years, and Enoch begat sons and daughters. And all of the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty five years. And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech; And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters; And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died.”
It is interesting to note that while the text talks about Enoch walking with God twice and describes Enoch’s death as his being taken by God, no such credit is given to Methuselah, who simply “died.”
Literalists take the words to mean 968 solar years, despite the difference between such a lifespan and contemporary maximum life span. According to the Gerontology Research Group, Jeranne Calment, a French woman who lived to 122 years of age, had the longest lifespan with verified dates of birth and death. The maximum human lifespan has increased from 103 in 1798, to 110 in 1898 , to 115 in 1990 and finally to 122.45 years when Calment died in 1997. We had a member of our church who died in 2012 at the age of 111, which isn’t bad, when you consider longevity. None of these people approach the age reported of Methuselah, however. Heck, Methuselah fathered a son at 187. That would make the newspapers these days.
There are other explanations about the dates. Some scholars theorize that the dates themselves are the product of mistranslation - that the meaning was “months” not “years.” The math of all of that doesn’t work out very well. If you work it out that way, Enoch would have fathered Methuselah at the age of 5 years, which doesn’t seem likely. Another interpreter suggests that everything has been inflated by a factor of ten, meaning Methuselah lived to the age of 96.9 years, but that makes Enoch a father at 6.5 years.
There are plenty of symbolic interpretations of the texts. 10 is symbolic of completion, 8 symbolizes the mundane world, and 7 symbolizes the divine. Enoch, who does not die but is taken by God, is the seventh patriarch. Methuselah, the eighth, dies in the year of the flood. There are ten generations from Adam to Noah, making the sequence complete.
Scholars and some not so scholarly voices argue about these dates all the time. I prefer to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. It is clear in many different places in the bible that God’s time and our time are not the same thing. I think that the attempt to measure God’s time in human terms is likely to end up with human confusion, which appears to be the case when it comes to ages.
All of this is a very long introduction to the concept of Methuselarity, a term coined by Aubrey de Grey. It is the term applied to a future point in time when all of the medical conditions that cause human death would be eliminated and death would occur only by accident or homicide. There is even a private Methuselah Foundation, of which de Gray is a primary founder, that supports studies about extending the human lifespan. The Methuselah Foundation even sponsors the Mprize. The Mprize awards money to researchers who can extend the lifespan of a mouse. The normal lifespan of a mouse is generally between 1 and 2 years. I think that the prize has upped the record to somewhere near 5 years. The prize winner was subjected to a reduced calorie diet with nutritional supplementation to keep vitamins and minerals in balance. The research appears to hold out the promise that it might be possible to more than double your lifespan through diet manipulation. That probably is an oversimplification. After all the experiments were conducted on mice, not humans.
Actually, I find it a bit surprising that anyone is willing to invest money in such a goal. It makes more sense to me to invest time and energy in figuring out how to improve the quality of life than to increase the lifespan. The Bible reports that Noah died 350 years after the flood at the age of 950. Lifespans in the Bible get short after Noah. Moses is said to live only 120 years. But Noah didn’t exactly have an idyllic retirement. About all we know about it is that he planted a vineyard, got fall down, naked drunk and got into a fight with his son. If you want my opinion, that’s not the best way to spend a 350 year retirement.
So count me out on the Methuselarity diet. I have no need to live any longer than Moses did.
So here is a bit of Biblical trivia for you. The most common age assigned to Methuselah in the Bible is 969 years old, although there are versions that have him dying as young as 720. He either died in the year of the Great Flood or six years before the Flood or fourteen years after the Flood, depending on the version of the scriptures that you consult.
Methuselah makes his Biblical appearance as a part of genealogies – lists of Biblical characters. The genealogy connecting Noah with Adam shows up three times: in Genesis, in Chronicles and again in Luke. Only Genesis contains a chronology – dates and times. In the King James Version (not the most accurate translation, but arguably the most common) Methuselah is mentioned as follows:
“And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah. An Enoch walked with God after he began Methuselah three hundred years, and Enoch begat sons and daughters. And all of the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty five years. And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech; And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters; And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years; and he died.”
It is interesting to note that while the text talks about Enoch walking with God twice and describes Enoch’s death as his being taken by God, no such credit is given to Methuselah, who simply “died.”
Literalists take the words to mean 968 solar years, despite the difference between such a lifespan and contemporary maximum life span. According to the Gerontology Research Group, Jeranne Calment, a French woman who lived to 122 years of age, had the longest lifespan with verified dates of birth and death. The maximum human lifespan has increased from 103 in 1798, to 110 in 1898 , to 115 in 1990 and finally to 122.45 years when Calment died in 1997. We had a member of our church who died in 2012 at the age of 111, which isn’t bad, when you consider longevity. None of these people approach the age reported of Methuselah, however. Heck, Methuselah fathered a son at 187. That would make the newspapers these days.
There are other explanations about the dates. Some scholars theorize that the dates themselves are the product of mistranslation - that the meaning was “months” not “years.” The math of all of that doesn’t work out very well. If you work it out that way, Enoch would have fathered Methuselah at the age of 5 years, which doesn’t seem likely. Another interpreter suggests that everything has been inflated by a factor of ten, meaning Methuselah lived to the age of 96.9 years, but that makes Enoch a father at 6.5 years.
There are plenty of symbolic interpretations of the texts. 10 is symbolic of completion, 8 symbolizes the mundane world, and 7 symbolizes the divine. Enoch, who does not die but is taken by God, is the seventh patriarch. Methuselah, the eighth, dies in the year of the flood. There are ten generations from Adam to Noah, making the sequence complete.
Scholars and some not so scholarly voices argue about these dates all the time. I prefer to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. It is clear in many different places in the bible that God’s time and our time are not the same thing. I think that the attempt to measure God’s time in human terms is likely to end up with human confusion, which appears to be the case when it comes to ages.
All of this is a very long introduction to the concept of Methuselarity, a term coined by Aubrey de Grey. It is the term applied to a future point in time when all of the medical conditions that cause human death would be eliminated and death would occur only by accident or homicide. There is even a private Methuselah Foundation, of which de Gray is a primary founder, that supports studies about extending the human lifespan. The Methuselah Foundation even sponsors the Mprize. The Mprize awards money to researchers who can extend the lifespan of a mouse. The normal lifespan of a mouse is generally between 1 and 2 years. I think that the prize has upped the record to somewhere near 5 years. The prize winner was subjected to a reduced calorie diet with nutritional supplementation to keep vitamins and minerals in balance. The research appears to hold out the promise that it might be possible to more than double your lifespan through diet manipulation. That probably is an oversimplification. After all the experiments were conducted on mice, not humans.
Actually, I find it a bit surprising that anyone is willing to invest money in such a goal. It makes more sense to me to invest time and energy in figuring out how to improve the quality of life than to increase the lifespan. The Bible reports that Noah died 350 years after the flood at the age of 950. Lifespans in the Bible get short after Noah. Moses is said to live only 120 years. But Noah didn’t exactly have an idyllic retirement. About all we know about it is that he planted a vineyard, got fall down, naked drunk and got into a fight with his son. If you want my opinion, that’s not the best way to spend a 350 year retirement.
So count me out on the Methuselarity diet. I have no need to live any longer than Moses did.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Stories
02/07/13 05:11
I’ve been reading David Sedaris essays again. I received an autographed copy of “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” for my birthday. I had intended to save the book for reading on vacation, but in the busyness of last week, I decided the I needed the “mini vacation” of reading something silly in the midst of my work. Vacations afford more time for reading, so that would be a good time for a couple of novels and even a book of theology that are sitting ready to be read.
I don’t think that David Sedaris will go down in history as one of the great writers of our generation. His pieces are mostly fun and silly and make me laugh. There is nothing wrong with humor and there are some examples of humor that weather well through the years and have become classic. But, for the most part, “humor essays” is not one of the genres of classical literature. David Sedaris, however, seems to be able to earn a living writing and reading his humorous essays. He travels a lot and he makes a good impression on National Public Radio, where he gets a good deal of airplay these days.
It is interesting to me that someone can earn a living writing essays. I write an essay every day, but there are no books of my essays out there. And if there were, they wouldn’t exactly be best sellers. I’ve submitted a couple of essays to National Public Radio and to other venues, but I haven’t written any prizewinners yet. No one is clamoring to have me read my essays on the radio or anywhere else.
Of course it is silly to compare myself to David Sedaris. We’re not the same at all. He is a much more polished writer. He has a real gift for observing small details and weaving them into the stories in such a way that the story is spun into a yarn. And people love a good yarn.
Sedaris is an ardent diarist. He gives time to writing in a personal diary every day just I as write a blog every day. But he keeps his diaries to himself. Then he reads what he has written. From the details of the diaries, he mines and then refines the stories that he tells. In part his is successful because he is willing to read, edit and re-write. I’m not much for the re-writing part, so far. I have a book-length manuscript that has been sitting for most of a year waiting for me to write a second draft. I just can’t get myself motivated for that most important task of a successful writer. I tend to write an essay and then go on. I don’t sit around reading old blogs after they have been completed. There is probably a volume of essays in the blogs, but I’ve yet to pull it together.
But we had an event in our neighborhood yesterday that would be worthy of a humor essay if I knew how to write a humor essay. Our neighborhood is on a hill. There are plenty of stories of cars sliding out of driveways around here. Before we owned our home, a car that had been parked in our driveway got away and managed to careen through the neighbor’s yard, missing all of the trees and ending up in the kitchen of the home. It must have been a spectacular accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but telling the story was high on the agenda of that neighbor when we moved into the house. We are very careful about setting parking brakes and making sure that they work in our house. Still, we did have a friend’s car slide down our driveway once. It was snowing and slippery and the car had warm tires from having been driven to our house. After it was parked the tires melted the snow and ice enough for the car to gently slide into the street. It didn’t run into anything, but it was a bit scary all the same. So that is the back story to yesterday’s adventure.
Down the street a couple of houses, a neighbor has purchased an old two-ton truck. It is a 1960’s vintage truck, with plenty of rust on the cab and old wooden sides on the box. The box is filled with a bunch of empty soda crates. It looks like the kind of thing that you bring home from an auction because you weren’t paying too much attention and you couldn’t believe would actually sell for such a low bid. At any rate, the truck has been sitting in the back yard for a couple of weeks. Our subdivision covenants don’t allow disabled vehicles. It think that the truck was driven to the parking place. The tires all hold air and the neighbor has been working on it during his free time over the past few weeks.
Yesterday, he was doing something with the truck, got finished, got out of the truck and locked the door. He was in his front yard when he noticed the truck in his back yard was moving. It rolled backwards out onto Sheridan Lake Road, which has a high berm as it enters a corner in his back yard. It looked for a minute like it might roll across the road to the ditch on the other side. That must have been scary for the owner who noticed it rolling. There is a lot of traffic on Sheridan Lake Road. He rushed for the truck, but with the doors locked, he couldn’t get into it. It slowed to a stop. He let out a sigh of relief and started to think about how he was going to get it off of the road, with locked doors and the like.
That is when it began to roll forward. And not just forward, but every bump caused the wheels to turn and the truck to head in a new direction. It took out a couple of trees planted alongside his fence, then took out the fence and did not stop. It careened through his back yard and out through the side of his fence. By this point, he was hanging on to the back of the truck, trying to stop it, but his weight was no deterrent for the heavy truck which continued alongside his house, across his front lawn, across the street and the neighbors lawn until it came to rest next to the neighbor’s house, smashing the front porch to splinters and lining its bumper up squarely with the basement wall which held and stopped the motion.
That’s where it was sitting when I came along. After ascertaining that no one was hurt and that the neighbors whose home had been hit were not at home at the time, we examined the damage a bit and decided that he’d need a sheriff’s report for all of the insurance paperwork. We briefly discussed using my pickup to tow the truck back to its parking place, but he was in no mood for any further risk and decided to get a tow truck to return it.
Now there’s probably a humor essay in that story somewhere. But I’d have to take the time to write it. If I ever decide to do so, at least I’ve got a version of the notes written down.
The story, like many of mine, however, lacks detail.
I don’t think that David Sedaris will go down in history as one of the great writers of our generation. His pieces are mostly fun and silly and make me laugh. There is nothing wrong with humor and there are some examples of humor that weather well through the years and have become classic. But, for the most part, “humor essays” is not one of the genres of classical literature. David Sedaris, however, seems to be able to earn a living writing and reading his humorous essays. He travels a lot and he makes a good impression on National Public Radio, where he gets a good deal of airplay these days.
It is interesting to me that someone can earn a living writing essays. I write an essay every day, but there are no books of my essays out there. And if there were, they wouldn’t exactly be best sellers. I’ve submitted a couple of essays to National Public Radio and to other venues, but I haven’t written any prizewinners yet. No one is clamoring to have me read my essays on the radio or anywhere else.
Of course it is silly to compare myself to David Sedaris. We’re not the same at all. He is a much more polished writer. He has a real gift for observing small details and weaving them into the stories in such a way that the story is spun into a yarn. And people love a good yarn.
Sedaris is an ardent diarist. He gives time to writing in a personal diary every day just I as write a blog every day. But he keeps his diaries to himself. Then he reads what he has written. From the details of the diaries, he mines and then refines the stories that he tells. In part his is successful because he is willing to read, edit and re-write. I’m not much for the re-writing part, so far. I have a book-length manuscript that has been sitting for most of a year waiting for me to write a second draft. I just can’t get myself motivated for that most important task of a successful writer. I tend to write an essay and then go on. I don’t sit around reading old blogs after they have been completed. There is probably a volume of essays in the blogs, but I’ve yet to pull it together.
But we had an event in our neighborhood yesterday that would be worthy of a humor essay if I knew how to write a humor essay. Our neighborhood is on a hill. There are plenty of stories of cars sliding out of driveways around here. Before we owned our home, a car that had been parked in our driveway got away and managed to careen through the neighbor’s yard, missing all of the trees and ending up in the kitchen of the home. It must have been a spectacular accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but telling the story was high on the agenda of that neighbor when we moved into the house. We are very careful about setting parking brakes and making sure that they work in our house. Still, we did have a friend’s car slide down our driveway once. It was snowing and slippery and the car had warm tires from having been driven to our house. After it was parked the tires melted the snow and ice enough for the car to gently slide into the street. It didn’t run into anything, but it was a bit scary all the same. So that is the back story to yesterday’s adventure.
Down the street a couple of houses, a neighbor has purchased an old two-ton truck. It is a 1960’s vintage truck, with plenty of rust on the cab and old wooden sides on the box. The box is filled with a bunch of empty soda crates. It looks like the kind of thing that you bring home from an auction because you weren’t paying too much attention and you couldn’t believe would actually sell for such a low bid. At any rate, the truck has been sitting in the back yard for a couple of weeks. Our subdivision covenants don’t allow disabled vehicles. It think that the truck was driven to the parking place. The tires all hold air and the neighbor has been working on it during his free time over the past few weeks.
Yesterday, he was doing something with the truck, got finished, got out of the truck and locked the door. He was in his front yard when he noticed the truck in his back yard was moving. It rolled backwards out onto Sheridan Lake Road, which has a high berm as it enters a corner in his back yard. It looked for a minute like it might roll across the road to the ditch on the other side. That must have been scary for the owner who noticed it rolling. There is a lot of traffic on Sheridan Lake Road. He rushed for the truck, but with the doors locked, he couldn’t get into it. It slowed to a stop. He let out a sigh of relief and started to think about how he was going to get it off of the road, with locked doors and the like.
That is when it began to roll forward. And not just forward, but every bump caused the wheels to turn and the truck to head in a new direction. It took out a couple of trees planted alongside his fence, then took out the fence and did not stop. It careened through his back yard and out through the side of his fence. By this point, he was hanging on to the back of the truck, trying to stop it, but his weight was no deterrent for the heavy truck which continued alongside his house, across his front lawn, across the street and the neighbors lawn until it came to rest next to the neighbor’s house, smashing the front porch to splinters and lining its bumper up squarely with the basement wall which held and stopped the motion.
That’s where it was sitting when I came along. After ascertaining that no one was hurt and that the neighbors whose home had been hit were not at home at the time, we examined the damage a bit and decided that he’d need a sheriff’s report for all of the insurance paperwork. We briefly discussed using my pickup to tow the truck back to its parking place, but he was in no mood for any further risk and decided to get a tow truck to return it.
Now there’s probably a humor essay in that story somewhere. But I’d have to take the time to write it. If I ever decide to do so, at least I’ve got a version of the notes written down.
The story, like many of mine, however, lacks detail.
Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.
Yet another tragedy
01/07/13 05:18
One of the stories that was part of the culture and known to me was the story of the Mann Gulch tragedy. It happened before I was born, but I knew the story. It was August of 1949. A crew of fifteen elite smokejumpers were flown to the Mann Gulch area in the Helena National Forest on a C-47 operated by Johnson Flying service. The drop was nearly perfect. They parachuted into the drop zone and their equipment was also dropped. Spotters saw them retrieve their equipment and head toward the blaze. Shortly afterward, a dozen of them were dead. They were burned by the fire while trying to escape the flames in a desperate uphill race. The general opinion of the people who told the story to me was that they never had a chance. You can’t outrun a fire burning up hill.
That was after I had failed the eyesight test for becoming a smokejumper, after I had made the decision not to go into the family flying business, after I knew that my life would not be centered around western wildfires. The closest I had ever come to a fire line in my life was fighting fire in wheat stubble with wet gunny sacks where the flames rarely rise above your head and it is obvious that you can run through the flames if necessary to avoid serious injury.
But my heart catches when I read of the loss of firefighters.
Part of me doesn’t want the details. I want to respect the families who have experienced this awful tragedy. I want to respect the Arizona firefighting community who have to be reeling with the news. I don’t like staring grief in the face. I hate it when television camera operators don’t have the good sense to turn their cameras off. I am afraid that someone will obsess with the details of the tragedy like Norman Maclean did in his book and that there will be far more information available than I want to know.
And I know that I will read every article about the fire that I can find. Despite my aversion to the gory details, I too am obsessed with firefighting tragedies. I keep hoping that we will learn enough to save lives. And we have learned a lot. Crews have much better fire shelters with them than they used to carry. They are better trained. They have better tools for knowing where they are and where the fire is headed. And the tragedies are a bit fewer and farther between.
Fighting wildfire, however, is still very dangerous. A fire shelter gives you about a 50/50 chance of survival once it is deployed. Firs behavior is unpredictable. Exhaustion and dehydration are real dangers that affect judgment and decision making. And it is hot in Arizona. Temperatures away from the fire are exceeding 120 degrees.
This is a nasty fire. One source reported that about half the homes in Yarnel have been destroyed. But homes can be replaced. The property that is lost can be recovered or replaced. People cannot.
So Yarnell will be added to the list of infamy. Blackwater in Wyoming, Mann Gulch in Montana, Rattlesnake in California, Storm King Mountain in Colorado, and now Yarnel. They are all places where heroes have fallen. They are all lessons in how vulnerable lives are and how risky fighting fire can be. And so we study the tragedies to learn what we can to prevent the next one.
No matter how painful it is to examine the story, it must be done. It is clear that we haven’t learned enough yet.
For now we pray for the families who also have become victims of the fire.