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 |  I've maxed out. Closed this blog. |
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This is a way of making myself write something coherent and grammatically correct almost every day. I'm opinionated and need an outlet. I'm also prone to flights of fancy. Thanks for stopping by. |
| If there ever was such a place as the Garden of Eden, what happened to it? If it was figurative, what does it really tell us? Was it really perfect? If Adam was placed there as a caretaker, what does that mean about his career? What kind of care did he take? Did it need a lot of weeding; were there predators like Peter Rabbit; were there adverse weather conditions like frost, hail, drought, flood? Or was caretaker just a title while he lay around all day eating apples and appreciating naked Eve? If you read Genesis, the serpent is never equated with Satan. In fact the experts say Satan does not appear in the Old Testament. The serpent is "the deceiver", the craftiest of all the animals. Apparently, he walks or flies or something. He doesn't slither until after God punishes him for helping Adam and Eve disobey. Since they weren't literate in the Garden, whoever told this story many generations later was not an eye witness. Makes you wonder was the serpent, which most people dislike, guilty of anything at all. He didn't lose his brain or his power of speech. He probably never had them. I'm not invalidating the story. Even figuratively speaking, it's a powerful story that we often misunderstand. It sounds like the first humans had to work, but were content in their labor. They had everything they needed. They weren't ashamed of their sensuality and suffered no consequences for expressing it. The problem for mankind came from desiring to be like God, to know everything that God knows. The only thing God said Don't to was what they wanted, like children you tell not to hug Grandpa. They run to Grandpa. They were told "Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge". So they did. That brings me to another dilemma. Did evil not exist before they ate the fruit? The knowledge is about good and evil. So it they had never eaten the fruit, would evil never have existed? Was disobedience to God in the first place, taking the fruit (not an apple), not evil itself? If you keep reading Genesis, God didn't get mad because they now knew good and evil, but because they had disobeyed and were now lying about it. Further, these original story teller in the patriarchal society, and through the millennia since, placed the blame on the woman. Adam, figurative or not, was the caretaker, the manager. In business, the manager ultimately is responsible for what takes place on his shift. Why wasn't Adam onto the serpent? Why didn't he protect his helpmate Eve? Why didn't he stand up for his woman when they were caught? Why did he throw her under the bus? And through the centuries, man has used the claim, the woman made me do it, like he had no nerve of his own. He was vulnerable to her charms. He couldn't think straight. The woman caused his fall, so she pays the price. Man has passed the buck ever since Adam. I think we are supposed to question it, examine it, think about what it means, why the story endured, first verbally, then in writing. What meaning does it have for us? But don't take somebody's word for it. It will be biased. A good teacher or preacher will make you think about it for yourself. |
| I'm trying to learn a little U.S. history that I didn't know or have forgotten. I've watched 4 of the 5 installments of Texas Rising on the History Channel. To tell the truth it's a little hard to follow the line of history in it. There are some sweet little love stories scattered among the rangers and volunteers. The first 3 episodes spent a little too much time with the men relieving themselves or sitting on toilets. TMI. It does reveal the bloodshed and ruthlessness on all sides.So far there haven't been any great heroic moments. There have been some speeches and selfless acts at all levels of the army. They have also shown personal greed, prejudice, and dishonesty, Of the cast, a few are giving outstanding performances. Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Emily D. West, the "Yellow Rose of Texas" according to legend, has done a stellar job. She's made a fan of me. Miss West was an indentured servant who had met Sam Houston in New Orleans and ends up spying on Santa Anna to avenge her brother's execution at the Alamo. Also standing out to my naive eye were Brendan Fraser as a half-Indian member of the Texas Rangers; Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a man with TB, married to a Mexican woman, but dedicated to Texas independence; and Olivier Martinez as Santa Anna. I guess you can say it's a successful endeavor in that I want to research it for myself and figure it out. It's repeated all through the week at various times of day on the History Channel, so you can play catch up. The final episode will presented as a new show next Monday. |
| I have a friend who gives water to the homeless in the summertime. He and sometimes his wife would go downtown and sit in the park with a cooler of ice and a couple of cases of water. This year he has had medical problems. He;s not up to strength yet. He's worked out details with a day center opened by a movie producer only a block away. They can get a light lunch there and see counselors, and so forth. As they leave, they can pick up a cold bottle of water to take with them. Then a few afternoons when he can break away from work, he will carry the cooler with water bottles in it down on the mall. (Our Main Street area has been bricked in as a pedestrian outdoor mall.) It's easy to pick out the homeless and the down and out from the artsy crowd and the business people. There are professional beggars and crafts people out there, too. I admire this couple. They feel like this water deal is their calling. The people recognize them and know why they are there. They exchange good clean conversation, only sometimes talking about church or God. You can't force people to listen to lectures on how to clean up their lives or keep a budget. You can show them mercy on a hot day. |
| I am exhausted. I babysat from 6:30 am until 8 pm with a 22 month old child. She opened every drawer and every door in the few rooms in which she was allowed. She touched everything that she could reach. The refrigerator and freezer were being opened every time I turned around. Even after my brother and my father came in after 6, she ran us ragged. I have run up and down the wheelchair ramp with her, marched around the house, pulled her in the wagon, and pulled weeds with her.I tried to teach her how to roll in the grass. I have a frozen shoulder that is only half healed, but I forgot about it until I was lying in the grass. I tried rolling over while protecting that shoulder and landed at the bottom of a short hill near the walkway. I tried to get her to do it and keep her legs straight, but she rolled and bent her knees every time she went over. She ended up crawling down the hill. We got up and brushed off grass and went on to other things. We did the hokey pokey out front where the neighbors could hear us singing (I hope they weren't looking through all the vegetation). We colored, read Peter Rabbit, watched a few minutes of SpongeBob, and stirred some little plastic Easter bunnies in some aluminum pie pans. We called it Rabbit Stew.We used every diaper she brought with her, and let her use shorts without diapers tonight. Which meant we changed her shorts several times, and were lucky she did it outside. She got mad and cried a lot when I told her she had to take a nap, but she sat in my lap and cried herself to sleep in less than 5 minutes. Her mom, an RN, came in tired from a long work day, to pick her up, to eat supper, and to pack their things. She throws tantrums with her mother. It's amazing how kids know who to test. And her mom doesn't give her everything she wants. She is very patient with her. I realized I don't usually go outside much in the evenings, mostly because I have an aversion to mosquitoes, while they have a lust for me. I'm usually out in the hot part of the day. It was very nice out this evening. I had put bug spray on both of us earlier in the day, so I made it ok. I might try to get out more those last hours of the day without a child to chase. |
| One of the things required for my forestry class were team projects. In addition to extensive and boring reading, laborious note-taking and Saturday field trips, we had self-directed projects. My team started out as 4 people who seemed reasonably interested. I felt like the idiot in the group. It narrowed down to just me and an ex-Marine when it came time to get started. Our particular project involved studying a particular plot of wooded land south of town. We had permission to be there. We were studying the effects of drought and forest fire on the woods in that area, We followed instructions for gaging the height of trees, taking soil samples, and counting rings in a section of tree taken with a special tool. We recorded wildlife and flora that we spied. My ex-Marine knew how to read a compass, so we didn't get lost. He also kept a machete (from Vietnam) under the seat of his pickup truck. He used it to clear away brush for us. I couldn't have made it through the project without him. He had some knowledge of the forest, as well as survival skills. I acted mostly as recording secretary. I wrote up our findings. Despite his skills and expertise, he didn't want to face the class, so I had to do the oral presentation. I felt like a fraud. I didn't think we were really answering the questions. I have no problem with public speaking, however, and delivered our findings. Surprise to me! We got an A on the project! Both of our names went on the paper. The professor liked it so much, he filed it with the Department of Forestry in our state. There are people who do that all the time for a living, and it's no big deal. But for me and this machete Marine, it was quite a feat. {A good forester knows that not all fire is not bad for a forest, as long as it is a controlled fire.) It was great, not just to learn and get a good grade, but to know we had produced something useful. Maybe some landowners, some timber owners, would find it helpful. |
| I don't know what made me remember my forestry class, but it brought back such good feelings, I want to share them. I thought it would be an easy course at the community college, get some hikes in the woods. I was in my 20's still, already had a B.A., so this was just for fun--no pressure to succeed. Boy, was I surprised. It was a real science class! The professor did advisory work for land owners. This was just a little side thing for him. He lectured for 3 hours with only a 5 minute break. We wrote notes for the whole class. We had to read a tremendous amount of homework. To understand the current state of forestry in our area, we had to study back to the ice age to see how it affected parts of the world, including ours. What had I gotten myself into? I didn't want to drop out and waste my money. The field trips that were short were okay. We walked through some property with the landowner and he explained his land management. What may look natural to you actually takes a good deal of planning to keep it healthy. Nature evolves. Sometimes during class, we'd walk outside and sit in the grass on the hill. It was late spring, so the evenings were still light. He tried to teach us how to tell what it looked like 50 years ago, and what it would look like 50 years from now, if left as is. All I remember now is that nature does not stand still. One Saturday, we took a big trip to Skyline Drive and hiked two hours uphill with Boy Scouts and an extension agent studying the deer in the National Forest. I started out trying to keep up with the Boy Scouts. After the two hours, I couldn't stop coughing. I discovered for the first time, that I have pollen allergies. I stayed sick after that for the rest of the summer. At that point the agent and the professor told me that, even though the rest would be mostly downhill, it would be off the beaten trail. I probably should go back. So I hiked back down alone. It took two hours going down. I didn't drive my car, so I sat there without water and coughed and gagged. Hours later, they came straggling in from another direction. All of the women looked beat, scratched and dirty. Only the Boy Scouts still looked alive and perky. The men were tired, but not bellyaching. I was glad I didn't continue with them. As it was, the next day, my legs were too stiff to stand up easily. The final exam was open book. By that time, half the class members had dropped out. I find it hard to believe that with access to all our notes and all our books, people still couldn't pass the exam. I thought it was hard, and took almost the whole time limit, but I got an A. Whew! I worked so hard for that class. I succeeded with only pressure from myself to do so. I appreciate nature so much more now because of the understanding I have of the cycles of life. It was so worthwhile. |
| Last Sunday we had a new arrangement of an old hymn. The pianist is a professional musician who plays in area bands and does many instruments. We also had a flute and oboe accompaniment. We had not practiced with the flute and oboe until just before the service. In an instrumental passage, the director lost track and didn't bring in the choir. It's amazing that no one started without him. We were all counting, but watching for his direction. He missed it. He laughed and whispered something. We nodded on the front row. He stopped, turned to the audience, apologized, and told the musicians where to start. The pianist didn't hear him correctly, so they didn't start at the same place. They had to stop and the director yelled out the pick up at measure number, and they started again. He still missed bringing us in. He stopped many measures of background only later, turned, red-faced, and apologized again. This time he counted, and he signaled us appropriately. We continued on, ending with a beautiful instrumental finale. They were very talented. The audience politely applauded, whether for the professional class instrumentalists, or forgiving of the troubled spot, It proves how vital the director is, no matter how good the musicians. They can't do it without a leader. It also proves that everyone is human. Fortunately, it was only church where everyone is very forgiving. At rehearsal this week, we all had a good laugh. |
| Maybe one of the best gifts I ever got was on my 16th birthday from my mother's mother. She didn't have a lot of money. My grandfather had been very ill and unable to work when the kids were young. As he became able to work for longer periods of time, too many years had gone by, leaving them barely making ends meet. My grandparents lived near the downtown area by the time I was a teenager. I remember we walked down to Main Street and looked into the jeweler's window. We liked the birthstone display. She said that it wouldn't hurt to go in and take a look. They were 10 karat gold with a simple stone. Mine was amethyst by some charts, but this jewelry line said alexandrite. The rings were $10 a piece. No big deal by today's standards, but it was a significant amount back then. (I remember thinking that a Villager summer blouse for $7 was a lot when I was a high school sophomore). She bought the ring. Later when I was showing my mother, she admired it, but pointed out, for her mother ten dollars was a sacrifice. I should appreciate what it meant to her to give me such a gift. So I did appreciate it. I still have the ring. In fact, I still wear it on my left hand, where my wedding ring used to be. It still looks pretty good. I know that jewelers don't waste their time with rings like this now. You'd probably find them at a department store. No matter. When I look at it, I see my Grandmother's smile. I remember that I was her first grandchild and am reminded that she loved me. |
| I see children playing with a ton of toys and demolishing them. The girls in my family get dolls for a birthday and a month later, "it's head broke off". When my grown nieces were little, they must have had 300 Barbies. They had baskets of Barbies, some without various limbs. My brother said that he needed another house just for toys. Things were different when I was growing up. There was plenty of advertising, but kids didn't have the same intense longing to have what everybody else had. Or at least their parents didn't have that longing. I remember Barbie was just getting famous, and I wanted one so badly. Year after year I didn't get one. I'd go to sleep at night thinking about one, and having various outfits I had seen. Finally, when I was too old to play with dolls, my mother got me a Barbie. I still have it. In fact, I have almost all my dolls. When I mentioned this one day at a job, a man who had raised three daughters, asked, "Weren't you ever allowed to play with them?" It hit me like a ton of bricks. No, I wasn't. Except for one or two baby dolls that I had before school, all my dolls were kept like treasures. My mother had been very poor and didn't have a lot of toys, probably never a decent doll. So she made me preserve my dolls for my own daughters some day. I could set them up and look at them or lay them in the toy crib, but all I really was allowed to do was dust them off and tidy up. I never had any daughters, but I still have the dolls. They are old fashioned, so today's girls wouldn't like them. To be honest, if I had had daughters, I probably would let them only look at my old dolls. They would have to play with new ones. I would let them play with their own things. They could break off the arms, by accident, without fear. But the conditioning is too deep. My old dolls are just keepsakes, not toys. No one can play with them. If I saw a child playing with one of these, I would have a nervous breakdown. I have no one to inherit them, so I guess I should try to sell them as antiques. I am old enough, and the dolls with me, to qualify. The money would do me more good when I retire than a doll to dust. But I can't part with them yet. I'm not letting go of the past just yet. |
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