Ho-Hum!

It's been a while since I put anything on here, but that's reflective of the pace of winter in the Midwest. Everything just seems to drag along, and most days don't really offer much worthy of comment. The best way I've found to describe Midwest winters is to just say that you let them happen to you. It'll be over when it's over. This is never more true than during what I always think of as the Black Hole phase of the year: the Holidays are over, football season's over, baseball season is still weeks (if not months) away, and it still gets dark around 5 PM.

And, of course, it's colder than CRAP!

So, you can catch up on your reading, see those movies you've been wanting to see, re-connect with old friends on sites like Facebook, or you can pursue any number of other sedentary activites that don't involve frostbite or running your car into a ditch somewhere.

I didn't have much to say when I started this, but I was hoping it would brighten up a little as I went along. So far, it doesn't seem to be happening for me. It's really not THAT bad, but days like this sure do inspire some cabin fever.

It might help if it weren't true that I can count the number of days THIS YEAR that I've seen the Sun on the fingers of one hand, and have fingers left over. Or if we'd had a continuous 24-hour period in the last 3 months with no snow on the ground. But neither of those things are true. I understand that this is Illinois, and that this is late January, but jeez!

Forgive me for this entry's being a total bummer. Believe me, as soon as something interesting or funny happens, I'll be all over it. In the meantime, I just felt like I should do this post as a "message in a bottle" to assure folks that I'm still kicking. At least the furnace works and everybody's healthy. I guess for now, I'm going to indulge in the most exciting part of the day...

I'm gonna go to the post Office and check the mail!

A New One To Check Out

Just a quick entry to let everyone know about a new blog being started by my good friend and church brother Jimmy Rice. It's at http://accordingtojimmy.blogspot.com/

Jimmy's one of the funniest and most delightful people I know, and just knowing him tells me his blog will be well worth keeping up with. Even though he's smart as a whip and a very spiritual person, he could easily have been a comedian, and if anything at all of him comes across in his blog, it'll be a treat!

Check it out if you get a chance. You won't regret it!

Who's training who?

Well, the big news around our house is that we got our new dog this weekend- Bosco, a 9-month old Boston Terrier. If you've happened to follow my Facebook page in the recent past, you might recall that our little 12-year-old Pekingese, Beavis passed away a couple of months back. At that time, we made the statement that we didn't want to get another one because we didn't want to go through that loss again. Beavis was literally like one of our children, and after 12 years of having him around, I'm positive that having to take him out and bury him will endure as one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

There's something about pets that I've learned over and over again (including right now) that never ceases to amaze me- the fact that, for all our talk about training them, they end up teaching us much more. I was crazy about Beavis, but he could be so stubborn at times that it would just frustrate me no end that he couldn't see that I was trying to do what was best for him. He had an independent streak so wide that his small body size seemed like a deception. In his last couple of years, however, his health steadily declined to the point that he wasn't able to go upstairs on his own, so every night, I'd scoop him up in my arms and carefully carry him up, making it a point to set him down gently once we got there to allow his weak little legs and hips to adjust to his body weight. He could then go to his water dish on his own for his bedtime drink, then he'd let me deposit him into bed.

As I was carrying him up one night when he'd been particularly weak, the thought struck me of what a little microcosm that was of what it must be like for God to deal with me sometimes. I can certainly be stubborn and unwilling to listen when a superior power tries to get me to see what is or is not good for me. But it never fails that when I get in over my head, He is willing to scoop me up and get me safely through whatever challenge is at hand, because His love for me isn't daunted in the least by my stubbornness. To Him, my welfare takes precedence over my sometimes-boneheaded behaviors. That's a good piece of information to have right there.

So, what am I learning from Bosco as he enters his second full day in our household? I can name several things already: resilience, spirit, determination, and love for life. Bosco's story is not a happy one at all. He was born in a "puppy mill", an unethical breeding operation where the goal is to produce the maximum number of dogs for the maximum possible profit. When he was born, he had some serious health problems in the form of severe allergies and digestive problems that caused him to be really small and thin. The people who ran the "puppy mill" only saw that he was not going to be a money maker for them, so they basically decided to just starve him to death and not provide any vet care for him. I can't imagine a worse position to be in for a creature that vulnerable. There was every possibility that his story would end, painfully, right where he was, and no one would have ever been the wiser.

Fortunately, a puppy rescue organization found out about him somehow and took him in. It was an improvement, but he was still in crowded conditions with other dogs, subject to whatever other health problems might have come from that. The puppy rescue depended on donated food, so he ate whatever they were able to get their hands on. Portions and appropriate diet were pretty much just items of wishful thinking. He did get some basic vet care, and he was even adopted once, by a lady who returned him after about a month because she didn't want to deal with his health issues. The chances for him to get adopted permanently looked pretty slim, enough so that the rescue organization put him on the internet. That's where we came in, and this past Saturday, we made the 275-mile drive over some pretty darn slick roads to go make him ours, and it's one of the most worthwhile trips I've ever made.

In "dog years", Bosco is even now just an early adolescent, and if he was human, we'd have every reason to expect he'd be a juvenile delinquent (or whatever they call it now), given what he's been through. Instead, he's just a joy to be around. Showing him even a little love has been like touching a match to gasoline- he's just exploded into this delightful little personality that loves his new family with all his heart, and I don't even know how describe how hard he tries to please us. There is no bitterness, he is not withdrawn, and he loves to make us laugh. He is a one-man show on the subject of how life is worth living to the fullest extent possible, regardless of what you've been through or what your frailties might be. He is a living example to even the most skeptical heart that love can conquer anything. A lesson like that, from whatever source, is worth more than gold in my book.

He's pretty darn cute, too. We're glad he's here.

Running the 75-Year Dash

The last day of 2009. Wow!

The late, great jazz musician Eubie Blake summed up my position perfectly when he said "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." Like all of us, I had my period of reflection today about what I've done with this year, and how that stacked up against what I'd PLANNED to do with it.

As I was doing all that reflectation (that's a word in the South!), something hit me like a bolt out of the blue, and I wanted to get it on paper (well, on-screen at least) before it evaporated into the same realm as whatever it was that I was thinking of at 2:15 PM last Thursday.

If you've read any of my earlier pieces, you're aware that I delight in remembering things. It probably won't come as a great surprise, then, for you to learn that I am a great history fan. As an outgrowth of that, I've been in an on-again/off-again, love-hate relationship with genealogy for the past 7 years or so. It's love-hate because, on the love side, it's very exciting to tap into a rich new deposit of information on the people that brought you into the world. On the hate side, those rich deposits can be very few and far between.

I was blessed enough to really strike a big one on a cold night a couple of years back. We're talking about birth dates back to the year 1234. Having been stuck at dates of around 1720 for over a year, this was a big deal, and I stayed up until 3:30 AM that morning, happily assembling details between yawns.

Using my genealogy software, I was typing in the information on George Steed, my maternal grandfather's brother. Uncle George has long since passed on, but if you could meet him, I could guarantee you two things:

1. The first person you'd think of when you met him would be Jed Clampett, and
2. Uncle George would be just fine with that.

Right down to his scraggly whiskers, this was a man who made no effort to be anyone or anything other than himself. I never saw him in anything other than a pair of Liberty bib overalls. I also never saw him in anything other than a good mood, offering a smile, a soft kind word, and a warm welcome to everyone he came in contact with.

That's the picture I was seeing in my mind as I was entering his information, but I realized before long that I was also remembering the little sweet-apple tree in his yard, the way-cool old swing by the creek behind his house, and the old wood-stove that he cooked on and heated his little house with.

He lived alone, at the dead end of a dirt road in rural (and I do mean RURAL) Roane County, East Tennessee. In no time at all, these memories played out in sequence in my mind's eye: riding down that dusty old rough road, getting to Uncle George's little place, stockpiling a bunch of those sweet apples, and heading for that swing where I'd savor the woods, the apples, and the smell of hickory smoke drifting out from the stove to permeate the woods and the crisp autumn air.

I'm obviously still under the spell of that memory, because I still haven't gotten to the "bolt".

It's simply this, (and it really is so simple that lots of folks miss it): nobody in your family (or anywhere else) is just a name, a set of dates, or a location. They all have a story, and that's the tangible part of their memory. It's not the collecting of a bunch of dates to show what a skilled statistician you are. Remembering who they were, as real people dealing with the full array of things life can bring to a person, should be the bedrock reason we remember them at all. And that's the standard I think we should use when we do our New Year's self-evaluation. What are WE going to be remembered for this year?

My genealogy software informs me that, as of this morning, I have 487 names plugged in, and the same things that made remembering Uncle George such a worthwhile exercise are also true of the other 486 names. They all have a story. They all, for better or worse, have left a legacy.

There is an old Southern gospel song called "The Dash". The title refers to the dash that separates the birth and death dates on a gravestone. Even though the actual dates on the stone are the specific information, what happens "during the dash", as we live out our lives, is what we're going to be leaving with the world, and it's what we'll be remembered for.

So that's where I stand on this cold morning. The sun's bright outside, but as my good friend and Tennessee native Doug Presley (who now lives over in Indiana) says, "it's lying its butt off". It's still cold. The momentum from Christmas is still winding down, and shoppers are still packing the stores looking for bargains and exchanging gifts.

As corny as it may sound (did you hear that? I was worried about corn in Illinois!), I know I will consider it an entirely different kind of gift to have learned what a great, ongoing family story I'm part of, and how I fit into it. Whether you ever tackle genealogy or not, I hope you get to experience the joy of that in your own way.

As for myself, well, you can tell by my stories that I'm working on a very interesting "dash" to leave behind.

How's yours going?

Hit-and-Run Hoots

Something about road trips brings out an extra degree of mischief and silliness for me. Yeah, I know, but this is even more than usual that I'm talking about. I find that everything's amusing for me, and I also find that I'll sometimes pop off the stupidest jokes to total strangers, just for the glee of seeing their reactions.

So it was Christmas Day this year, on the way to have dinner at my in-laws about 100 miles away. We had to stop at one of the few convenience stores open that day, and when I went in to pay for my gas, I discovered that the lady running the cash register and another lady in the store were engaged in a detailed discussion of canning, and specifically the use of vinegar.

As my turn came to pay for my gas, I simply interjected, "Boy, I got pickled on vinegar once!" Both their heads snapped around, and both their jaws dropped. I didn't say another word- I just walked out like I had good sense to let them react however they wished after I was gone.

It didn't even make sense, and I'm still chuckling about it. It was great fun!

I DID have the tables turned on me once at a little market on the edge of Maryville, Tennessee. The gas pumps at this little place were the kind that go full-speed, and you can't stop them right on the amount you want. As a result, I pumped $20.03 worth of gas and went inside to pay.

"I got $20.03 in gas," I told the little lady inside, "I couldn't cut it off in time."

"That's OK, honey" she said sympathetically, "none of us can anymore."

I got back to my car feeling as if I knew WAY more about that lady than I ever would have wanted to.

What goes around comes around, I guess!

Happy Holidays!

The Shortest Post Yet

Around my house, we're as caught up in the season as everybody else, and we're apparently going to be busy enough to keep me from putting anything substantial on here until after the holidays.

Having said that, though, I didn't want to let this chance go by without thanking everyone for all the positive responses to the blog. You guys have been plenty encouraging to this rookie, and I just want you to know that I appreciate it, I'll keep plugging at it, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you have the greatest Christmas and most prosperous New Year ever!

See ya' next time!

On Maturity, Manners, and Fast Talking

Sometimes the most obvious things are the easiest things to overlook. Most of us have learned that to some degree, at some point, and hopefully, we’ve benefited from the lesson. At the moment, I’m thinking specifically of our approach to teaching our kids the real basics; things like politeness, selflessness, self-control, and being considerate of others. It’s so natural for us to go to work on instilling these traits from the get-go that we overlook a most obvious and amusing truth- in fact, the primary truth- that makes that job necessary:

The little scutters are born with absolutely none of that stuff.

I’m positive that some of you are thinking right about now that that mean old man is saying all manner of uncalled-for things about little Johnny or Janie (or, for you Southerners, little Jim-Bob or Julep). It happens to be true, though, and if you’ve ever visited a hospital nursery, you’ve seen all the proof you could ever want. When those kids get hungry, they want food 5 minutes ago, and they have no reservations about screaming their little heads off until they get their point across. Waiting their turn is rock-bottom on their priority list, and the next item up from that is the amount of inconvenience, work, or outright sacrifice it might take to meet those relentless little demands.

Now, before you decide that I’ve gone all anti-kid, let me complete my point by saying that most of us somehow manage to do an incredible job at helping those little personalities form properly. In fact, by the time school age rolls around, the transition can be almost unbelievable. What started out as a crying, wrinkled, self-absorbed, and often smelly little creature becomes a truly amazing creation in an amazingly short time.

I have been blessed with 4 absolutely delightful great-nieces, one of which has just reached kindergarten age. At a recent family dinner, I asked her how school was going. She gave a cute little shrug and said “Oh, school’s OK- it’s nothing I can’t handle”. This kid is 5 going on 35, and the air of confidence that comes with having a firm grasp on kindergarten radiates from her.

My youngest daughter, after her first day at school, answered the "How was school?" question by saying “Boring!”. When she was asked why it was boring, she said (with not an ounce of doubt) “ I already KNOW everything!”. I guess coloring inside the lines wasn’t a challenge that she considered worthy of her potential.

Believe it or not, I was more subdued on my first day of school. When the teacher asked me if I knew the alphabet, I said “No, ma’am- it’s just my first day.” I wasn’t (yet) devious enough to deliver a line like that for selfish purposes, but the teacher later told my mom that I pretty much melted her with that one. Score one for the little brown-eyed kid.

I have a theory (actually a fact to me, but a theory by the world's standards) that the human brain can only get up to about 50% speed by 7:30 in the morning. I'm living proof. In any form of research, the rules of scientific method dictate that the results must be reproducible and repeatable. Well, I can be right there, functioning at 50% every single morning, for days on end without even breaking a sweat. I rest my case.

I was in just such a stupor one morning when I stopped for gas on the way in to work. It was freezing cold, and I was zoned in and staring at the display on the pump, wondering how it could possibly take so long to get to $20.00 when gas is over 3 bucks a gallon. Suddenly, though, a little voice broke my trance.

"Ein taima abitheeth!"

Huh?

I looked down and saw this little boy of about 5 smiling broadly up at me, front teeth missing. He was apparently the grandson of the guy getting gas on the other side of the pump island. I finally put it together that he had proudly been announcing to me that he could say his ABC's, and it was obvious that he would be willing to do so at the drop of a hat. Grandpa said nothing, but just rolled his eyes as if to say "Oh, brother, here he goes again!"

I would have wanted to act suitably impressed anyway, but after seeing that reaction from Grandpa, I immediately felt compelled to see if I could take this thing to the next level. So, in my best Andy-Griffith-sounding Southern accent, I said "CAN you?" My little buddy went into a head nod like a bobblehead doll on a roller-coaster. Grandpa was now giving me a look that said, "Come on, buddy, do we have to do this?"

"Let's hear you", I said.

Grandpa let out something like a snort as the kid took in the deepest breath he could hold. He then unleashed the entire alphabet at a breakneck pace, running the letters into each other and lisping every time the missing teeth interfered. He also cranked the volume up a few decibels (which I wouldn't necessarily have thought of). When it was all over, he was breathless, eagerly looking up at me for my reaction.

"WOW!", I raved, "I've never heard anybody do it any better than that!"

He proudly marched back over to Grandpa's truck and got in, his mark made on the world for that day. Grandpa never said anything, but gave me a stern look as he replaced his gas cap. I smiled and cheerfully said, "You guys have a good one!"

As I drove on in to work, I replayed that scene in my mind, analyzing it from both Grandpa's and the kid's perspective. Honestly, Grandpa's perspective was sort of dull and depressing, so I didn’t dwell much further on it, but the kid's was fascinating.

You just get a new piece of knowledge and you want to show it off, but you know that the people you're showing it off to already know it. But if you can do it faster (and/or louder in this case), you still come off as doing it better. You've driven home the point with insurmountable force that you know the same stuff they know, only you know it better.

I don't know which is more amusing- the fact that little kids naturally process stuff this way, or the fact that a lot of us never seem to outgrow that way of thinking. You could build your own list of your favorite examples of this: politicians, infomercial announcers, salespeople - it could go on and on.

We get older, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we mature in the process. If that’s all bad, I guess I’m sunk. It’s neat, though, when we manage to change enough to recognize it in ourselves, to appreciate the fact that we’ve progressed, and to get a chuckle out of realizing where we’ve come from.

Just my thought for the day.