The beauty of Solomon's Temple

 The Beauty of Solomon’s Temple
I was reading passages in First Kings where Solomon listed the LORD’s design for the building of His temple in Jerusalem, Israel. His father David had already gathered much of the material necessary for its construction, but the actual task of following God’s blueprint fell onto the Solomon’s shoulders. Solomon gathered the cedars from Lebanon for the beams, pillars, and doors of the sanctuary. Many of those beams, pillars, and doors were covered in gold. The precious stones and the selected stones for the walls and floors were shaped and fashioned off site to remove the noise and dust from the temple.
The text lists the actual dimensions for the several porches and courts. There are verses that describe the pillars of brass and capiters for the pillars. He had artisans to make a “sea of molten brass” with knobs compassing the sea cast in two rows. Its brim was wrought like lilies and the “sea” stood on the backs of twelve brass oxen. On and on in multiple passages the text describes the wonders that the craftsmen wrought. It must have been outstanding to see. At one time Solomon’s Temple was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It had to be an impressive sight because it drew kings, queens, and visitors from surrounding areas to come to Solomon’s court.
The Temple was designed as a place for the LORD to reside when He came to earth. I can’t help think that even though the temple as wondrous as, it could not compare to the glorious realms of heaven that God designed and shaped with His imagination and hands.
I can see in my mind’s eye God looking at Solomon’s temple like an earthly father seeing a preschooler’s first drawings with crayons. An earthly father may have no idea what the child has drawn, but he is thrilled that his child has used its time and talents to make something for him with its limited skill.
I can imagine that the LORD inspected the workmanship of the Temple with the eye of a Father seeing something that His child had crafted then dedicated and offered to Him as a gift. The Father was viewing the gift through the eyes of love for His child. The child’s love in the gift was what impressed the Father even though it did not have the quality of something that God could have created Himself. Our gifts of love although inadequate are what our heavenly Father sees.

On Labrador Bay

 

*On Labrador Bay

A red boat adrift on a foggy day

Alone and floating in a still wide bay

Water and sky blended to misty gray.

The beauty of Labrador on display

The only color drawing vagrant eye

From monochromatic ocean and sky.

The swoop and dive of screeching seagulls fly

Scene locked in memories of days gone by.

My brain has stored these thoughts to fill each page

They are safely locked somewhere in that cage

Present themselves, like actors on a stage.

The scenes are lost and blur as I age.

From the fantail of a docked cargo ship

Light explodes as sun reaches water’s lip

Colors of Labrador Bay amazes

When sun sets, lights dance each ripple blazes.

Sparkling copper and gold treasures appear

Now far away, those memories draw near.

 

These are the memories that still cling to my soul after

a missionarry trip wit my friends and my chilren.

Surprise Surprise Surprise

 Surprise Surprise Surprise
While putting in my 4 hours of volunteer work at the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society, I was surprised at some of the facts that I uncovered as I sorted through some of the paper material that was still stored and barely accessible. It looked like a major undertaking and it was at first. Almost an entire box filled with notes, copies of deeds, wills, and service records had been gathered by one woman and her family donated them to the Society. The sad part was there is so much information buried there that wasn’t available to the public, but I’ve started to make a dent in sorting it and filingg them away.
I placed the deeds in one folder, the wills in another, and so on. When it came to the service records, many of which were from wives and children who were filing for benefits for their disabled or deceased loved one. With several sheets of information on each veteran from the War Between the States, the Civil War, I separated them into family names for easier access. That emptied one file. It was set in order.
Reading and deciphering the handwriting was absolutely necessary to ascertain their content. Some were requests from widows, some were from amputees, and some were from disabled men because of respiratory problems caused by untreated pneumonias. It was interesting, but the tales pulled at my heartstrings as I read the difficulties of those soldiers.
Perusing more deeds, I read about a man on his piece of property that he claimed saw an Indian (his term) crawl into an unheated outside oven for the purpose of attacking the unsuspecting family. The settler had no gun, but used a rail to beat the Indian to death. This was the frontier at that time.
I found one interesting note from the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t written at that time, but the information was written in the briefest form to preserve the information. What do the names Timothy Thayer, Deborah Sampson Gannett and Robert Shurtliff have in common? They are the same person. Deborah enlisted as Timothy Thayer, but failed to meet up with her company. Later, she donned man’s clothing, enlisting in Massachusetts under her Brother Robert’s name. She was wounded in the thigh in Tarrytown New York and treated it herself. It became infected and a doctor examined it, but kept her secret and wrote a medical discharge for her. The notes at the Society says that she enlisted twice to escape marrying the man her mother decided for her, but in a later search of other records I gleaned the date she joined was after the time she was married.

Reality and Cartoons Colide

 Reality and Cartoons Collide
When I tried to think of a topic to write about, two thoughts meshed. I decided to integrate them and make them my insight on life today. I was reminded of the black and white television cartoons of my youth and the reality of my aging body. The pain in my lower back from the shoveling of moving heavy rocks made me feel as though I had gone several rounds with Joe Palooka, the comic pages of the newspaper boxer. Putting aside my aches and pains, I began to recall other cartoons from my youth and the Sunday paper and on the elevision.
Dagwood and Blondie, Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey were old standbys. Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Felix the Cat, Lil Abner, Katzenjammer Kids captured the excitement and humor over a wide range of topics for us kids. Mutt and Jeff, Nancy and Sluggo, Heckle and Jeckle were couples that amused me. Their antics didn’t just entertain me they also taught me to read, although many of the actions on the page often didn’t need words.
The television introduced me to the animated characters of Tom Terrific, Mickey Mouse, Popeye the Sailor Man. All of the cartoons started in black and white. Adventure Time made the names Rodney and Knish, the Little Rascals, the Three Stooges famous to me. Kookla, Fran, and Ollie as well as Sherrie Lewis and Lamb Chop were puppets as well as Howdy Doody.
Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Porky Pig and Petunia, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner, Wylie Coyote, Sylvester and Tweety were all late comers. Caspar the Ghost and Spooky, Wendy the Witch introduced me to a gentle enchanted and supernatural world. These were the cartoons that captured my interest every Saturday morning and caused me to fight for the Sunday Pittsburgh Post Gazette funnies.
Today my writer’s creativity allowed my aging and abused body to be free and wander through the youthful, fruitful hallways of my brain. I hope that by sharing my memories, I have stirred a few of yours.

Banned From the County Courthouse

 Banned From the County Courthouse
Quite a few years back I answered a call for jury duty at the Fayette County Courthouse. As a citizen of the United States, I felt it was my responsibility to go. I was retired and didn’t have anything else exciting to do. I was blessed when I found the gate to the parking garage was open and was able to park for free. I made my way to the courthouse and entered a courtroom for roll call. I was amazed at the inefficiency of the officials. Instead of someone checking people as they entered, marking them on the roster, and assigning a juror badge number, the juror pool sat and waited until the room was full. One by one the names were called and given badges. It was more than an hour wasted while I sat on those hard oak benches irritating my patience and sciatic nerve.
Our group was assigned to report to another courtroom. Again we sat on hard oak seats for another hour. The ache in my back worsened and my foot began to go numb. After the judge sat on his dais and lawyers made one plea deal after another, we were excused to wait in the hall. By then it was lunchtime and we were dismissed to find food nearby. When I returned my pain had worsened. I hunted the office of the woman in charge of the jurors and told her about my problem with the progressive numbness in my foot. She said if I stayed until three PM, she would excuse me from jury duty.
While I was talking with her, I mentioned, “The last time I was here, the prosecutor didn’t do his job.” She looked startled. So I shared, “The accused stole an air conditioner for the aluminum but the prosecutor failed to say whether it was commercial or home model and whether it was even functioning. We could only judge the accused with scrap metal prices for the aluminum.”
At three I left AND would you believe it, the very next week, I received another jury duty summons. I sent back a scathing letter telling the courthouse that they could send the sheriff and all his deputies, but I wasn’t coming back. I explained that I’d already been there and my sciatica problem. They sent a return letter saying it was no longer necessary for me to serve as a juror. I’d been banned.
Because my address is Acme, I also get jury summons from Westmoreland County. When I received one from Westmoreland, I returned it saying I lived in Fayette. When they responded I needed a doctor’s excuse, I phoned them. The reason for the continuing snafu is the list is generated in Harrisburg. Enough said.

Visiting a Widow

 Visiting a Widow
When my wife Cindy Morrison Beck was alive and we went shopping together at Pechin’s in Dunbat, Pennsylvania we would buy some extra fruit for a friend who lived along our driving route home. We knew the woman before she lost her husband and would sometimes we would stop to visit for about half an hour.
I knew the couple as a child from the old clapboard, one room church in Clinton Pennsylvania. Ahe and her husband were good friends with my dad and mom. As I mayured from childhood, they became my friends as well. He was a thin man with a ready smile and she was a sweet woman who laughed easily.
Because they lived along the Springfield Pike, it became natural for us to stop when my wife and I saw them on their porch. From those visits my wife and our children grew to know them as well. We were always welcome and they seemed to enjoy our children. Our children became comfortable with them almost as much as with their grandparents.
It was hard to explain to our kids when her husband died. We didn’t take them to the funeral home. We didn’t think it was appropriate for them and would have been a distraction to other mourners. It was difficult to stop at her home, but we needed for her to believe we hadn’t abandoned her. It was more awkward for my wife and me, but our children continued where they were before her husband’s death, climbing onto her lap and playing.
It slowly evolved for us to buy some extra fruit: a bunch of bananas and a container or two of whatever fruit that looked good. That might be a bag of apples, a tray of oranges or a container of pears or tangerines.
She never said that she needed the fruit, but was always thankful. Cindy and I knew that she could use it, because after her husband’s demise, she took on jobs cleaning other people’s homes and became a sitter for sick clients at night.
When we moved fro Normalville, we didn’t drive by her home nearly as often, but we would occasionally make the detour so we could visit. She slowly aged and her family moved her into the same nursing home as my dad. We could visit more often. She remembered us and still called me Tommy when we would stop and talk with her. She and my father are gone now, but the pleasant memories linger.

A Memorial on Memorial Day

 A Memorial on Memorial Day
The United States of America set aside an entire day to honor those brave men and women who marched off to war knowing full well what might be asked of them and they still left home to protect their home, family, and country. There might have been a person with stray thoughts of glory, but I’m sure that all of those thoughts evaporated at the first taste of battle, of seeing the carnage of war, or of watching fellow soldiers falling dead around them. As the sounds of bombs falling, guns being fired and the screams of pain from the wonded, and moans of dying assaulted thir ears. Thoughts of home and hearth became more intense and more important to them and yet they continued to advance through the jungles, onto the beaches, and travel in ships and planes to stop the tide of oppression.
I would like to honor the brave men and women who sacrificed all to allow America to remain free and to break the grasp of despots of the past.  I was going to write about a close friend and honor him, but expanded it to include all the military men and women who gave their lives to preserve freedom in the Unuted States.
My friend and I were playmates as children and grew up together. We spent summers together at is grandmother’s home. He was canscripted to fight the war in Vietnam, the war that wasn’t a war. He was killed in action. When I heard the news I felt crushed and heartbroken. I was the same age. I was a corpsman in the Inited States Navy. But by the hand of God, I was spared the Hell that was Vietnam. I was relegated to care for those who sacrificed body parts, who were maimed and wounded when they returned home. I was responsible to help mend their broken bodies.
I searched for him on Google to be sure to spell in correctly. I knew his name, but I had never actually seen it written. As the screen popped up, I felt my chest tighten as I scrolled down through the names. Fifty-eight thousand men and women died in just that war. The weight of that number pressed down on me as names flitted by. Not too far down that list I found what I was searching for: Earl Duane Barkley, Sgt. Army, Indian Head, PA.
Since then, the bridge in his nearby hometown now is honored by being named in honor of him. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.