Do Not Go Gentle

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This is the last line of a poem written by Dylan Thomas. I know that he wasn’t meaning what I am about to share. My thoughts are disgusted about the evolution of politics of today. The election is long past and there are many who are disappointed that their candidate didn’t win the White House, but never in my sixty-nine years of existence can I remember such hatred, such malignancy, and such rancor being expressed by any losing party. I am sickened that the elected officials from an opposing party are now encouraging violence against every voter, every supporter and every one of the winning officials. I can’t believe that the sting and embarrassment from the loss has overridden all reason and the losing officials are using their position to instigate open rebellion and insurrection. This vitriol comes from a group that prides themselves on tolerance and transparency.

I am disturbed that they have turned their backs on what is good for America and have embraced positions of opposition to unity and a widening of division of race, class, and religion. They have turned their backs on those who have served our country faithfully here and abroad, to protect our freedoms and are trying to remove as much of our liberty as they can.

The media has also used their influence on television, radio, and in print to disparage the election results by changing facts, cherry-picking words and phrases to alter the official’s meaning, or by outright reporting of outright untruths.

It has gotten so bad that the judicial and investigative officers of the law can no longer be trusted. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and even the Internal Revenue Service have been caught egg on their respective faces. People who were to be in positions known for their integrity have proved themselves untrustworthy and unreliable.

I believe that term limits could minimize the stranglehold that a career politician has on Congress. Politics was never meant to be a lifetime appointment. When these officials are in Washington D.C. for so much time, they lose contact with their constituents and become influenced by lobbyists, fellow politicians, and the beltway crowd. Rage, rage, rage; never have I seen such seething discontent.

The Three R’s

When most people hear the three R’s, they think of the ones in the ditty song, “School Days:” Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic, but I want to comment on three other R’s that are of concern to me and are seemingly being lost in today’s society: Reason, Respect, and Responsibility. Great men of the past have commented on these three ideals, so I will share their words in my post.

There are two others Rights and Religion, but they are God given and should be kept inviolate as did our founding fathers. They listed them as parts of our country’s foundational precepts that were set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America. People, who were much wiser than I, wrote these ideals to form the foundation of our nation.

REASON is the first R I’d like to address. Edward Counsel said, “Reason is a pillar of the mind.” Sophocles wrote, “Reason is God’s greatest gift to man.” The words of God Himself say to mankind, “Let us reason together.” Scientists say that reason separates man from the animals. Reason tempers emotion to make rational decisions.

RESPECT is the second in the trilogy I want to share. Billy Graham said, “A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.” Respect is shamefully absent in much of society today and Laurence Sterne said, “Respect for ourselves guards our morals, respect for others guides our manners.” What has happened to being polite? H. M. McGill wrote, “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” Shouting down another person’s point of view or feeling offended and needing a safe place if someone doesn’t agree with our point of view is the norm in society today.

The third ideal is RESPONSIBILITY. A right without responsibility is anarchy. “A definition of responsibility: a commitment of head, heart, and hands to fix the problem and never again affix blame,” was described by John G. Mills and Robert L. Joss said, “Real leadership is not about prestige, power, or status. It’s about responsibility.”

I don’t know how many will agree with my view on this subject, but as I have said, many men mush wiser than I share the same perspective on reason, respect, and responsibility.

A Stirring of Memories

Last evening I was watching one of the nature channels. The television program was of an explorer that goes about trying to find animals that are thought to be extinct. His quest took him to Newfoundland looking for a white wolf that was thought to be extinct for over thirty years. He first met an 80 year old man who lives in Newfoundland and kept two wolves, but not ones indigenous to the Island, but was familiar with wolves.

The two set out exploring one arm of the eastern coast, but when they were unsuccessful there, they moved their operation to the northern part of the island. After several more days of searching, they found tracks, scat and several thermal images that prove there are still wolves in some isolated areas of Newfoundland.

I have said all of this just to say much of the scenery was familiar to me. Quite a few years ago, Tim a young man wanted to see what Newfoundland and Labrador was like. He was thinking of establishing himself as a missionary to this area of the globe. My good friend Norman Lee Johnston was our Pastor at the time and very keen on supporting missionaries. He decided to take the young man to scope out that part of the world. My son Andrew, daughter Amanda, and I were fortunate enough to make the trip with them driving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through the northeastern United States into Canada. We camped in Maine before crossing into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, taking the ferry to Newfoundland.

Back on dry land, we motored the length of Newfoundland from the southern coast to its northern tip. All of this was to say that much of the scenery that was shown on the television program brought back those memories of a dear friend that has recently passed away and of friends that we met on the trip. I miss my dear friend Pastor Norman Johnston. I also miss a missionary couple that we met on our trip, Buzz and Judy Ferguson. Just to let my missionary friends and families know that they are thought of and that they remain in my prayers.

Another Week in the Can

It’s been another busy week and I’m feeling just a bit sore and tired. Laundry on Monday, Tuesday was finishing spading one hole closed in my backyard and opening another to find the opening in my septic tank to have the local honeydipper visit and clean out the sewage and made the call to set up an appointment. Wednesday, I visited my dentist for my teeth to be cleaned and to have a filling replaced. On my way home, I stopped at my brother’s place. He wasn’t home. Next stop, the barber, then at a local grocery store where they still have a meat department where they will do custom orders to have a special ham loaf ground. Later in the evening I attended Wednesday evening prayer services at church.

Thursday as I waited for the honeydipper to arrive, I continued the seemingly endless chore of stacking the firewood. When the truck arrived, I talked to the man who opened the concrete vault as he suctioned the mess from the depths of the tank and learned a few valuable tips. The waste in my tank was difficult to remove because it was more solid. He said routine cleaning at a family dwelling should be every 5 to 6 years. If not the solid waste will ruin a leach bed causing more problems. It had been at least 20 years since my last cleaning.

Later, because I hadn’t mowed my neighbor’s grass the last time I mowed mine, I decided to mow his lawn. He and his wife are good people, but due to his age and physical condition, it’s difficult for him to do. While I was mowing his lawn, I noticed that now, my lawn looked ragged and shabby, so I swung the mower around and finished nearly 2/3’s of mine. The back side of my lawn is lower and with the recent rains, the ground was soggy and unsuitable to mow.

Tired, I came in to relax and cool off. I fell asleep in my recliner. I showered and began to do some writing. I missed my writers meeting. I looked at the calendar in my office earlier, but because I hadn’t flipped the page, I was looking at May I mistakenly thought there wasn’t a meeting.

Today, there is a different writers meeting. I should attend, yet there is still a lot to do at my home. More wood to stack, the remaining hole in my yard needs filled, vacuuming and dusting needs done. We’ll see. I haven’t been engulfed in a dust storm or been attacked by savage dust bunnies yet.

Honey of a Job

I’ve been managing with only using my upstairs to limit the water going into my septic tank. It became filled when my downstairs commode had a steady leak causing my water bill to soar to nearly triple. For several weeks, I have been using the water saver commode in my newly remodeled upstairs bathroom and avoiding the downstairs toilet. It’s been more wear and tear on my knees, but it was necessary if I wanted to the necessary room.

During this time, I have been searching for the concrete septic tank buried in my backyard and the removable trap door to gain access to have it cleaned. A friend volunteered to open an area where I thought it might be, but to my chagrin, it was the wrong spot and the backhoe only managed to break the exit sewage pipe to the tank.

After repairing it, I continued the quest for the “prize.” By following the now repaired pipe, I spaded a trail toward the elusive goal. The actual tank and my ultimate target was about three feet away. Only one yard from where I directed the friend break ground and eventually break my sewer pipe.

My spading was delayed because the tank and door was under the pile of dirt that was removed by the backhoe and my earlier shoveling. My dig to the tank’s opening was delayed while I returned the dirt to its original position. Much of it was clay/soil mixture that was heavy under normal circumstances, but with the rains it was clumping and very backbreaking work. With the hole filled, I quickly spaded downward to the tank top and door.

I placed a call to one of the local honeydippers to have the tank emptied. Honeydipper is a term for the men who used to hand shovel the waste products from outhouses and who hauled it away. As I grew up, the honeydipper was the butt of many stories and jokes.

I am hoping to solve the septic problem on Thursday. I have an appointment with a honeydipper. I’m just thankful that they come to me and not the other way around.

Learning the Alphabet

Saturday, I was asked to be docent at the Chestnut Ridge Historical Society and since my day was unclaimed, I agreed. I would have probably been there anyway. No one else had signed up and rather than to have the facility closed if anyone should show up, I decided I could open it up. Although I don’t know all of the ins and outs I am learning and often able to direst people with questions to the correct information.

I have been trying to close up the loose ends with sorting, filing, alphabetizing, and rearranging thing into a better type of arrangement in an attempt o make things easier to store and find. The task that was left undone was to sort and alphabetize the cards that the funeral homes give out to those who visit and pay last respects. There were about eight boxes of semi-sorted announcements. I say semi-sorted because someone had started until the system broke down and the pamphlets were just shoved in, in no order. Names with W were in with G’s and so forth.

Using the first and second letter of the last names, I began the task of labeling and placing them into piles in order. Once the cards with the same first 2 were in stacks, they were placed in their file boxes for easier access.

In four hours I managed to get names from A to Mc sorted and stored. In the checking of names, I was saddened by the number of people I was related to and to those who were friends. Some older from fellow church members, one in particular my dad would pick her up so she could attend church with us. She had no other way.

Other very familiar names came and went in a seemingly endless parade. So many cards passed through my fingers. It reminded me of my own mortality and that a person’s entire life could be reduced to a few faded lines in a folded note.

The other thing I got from wading into this gigantic task is allergies. Whether it was because of the dust or the inks, I’m not sure, but after I came home, I began to sneeze and my nose became so  congested. I now whistle when I breathe, but at least…I’m still breathing.

Wood I

It’s that time of the year again. I just bought my first of several loads of wood to stockpile for the cold (Br-r-r) winter months. Believe it or not, I have grown more intelligent over the thirty years I have lived in my house and raised my family. When I first began using wood to help warm the house, I thought the pile of uncut wood was ugly. It detracted from the beauty of my home. I placed the wood pile at the back of the one acre lot. What I didn’t understand was that the spot that I’d chosen wasn’t the best place. Between the woodpile and the house, several drifts of snow would form during the winter storms, making the task of hauling wood to the back porch a formidable task. I tried a wheelbarrow, then a toboggan, but it got to the point a light bulb finally went on in my head, “You can make this a lot easier.”

So, I moved the delivery point to the now empty garden plot. The harvest was all in and it seemed like a good idea. Cutting and stacking was closer to the house and partially hidden by several oak trees. Again I was worried about the looks of the pile. The snow drifted there too, but it was just about ten feet closer to the house, thinking there would be less distance to drag the firewood. Not so. It was just as difficult.

The very next year I decided to put the pile on the other side of the house, near the bushes and tree line there. It was about another fifteen feet closer. By now, I was hauling wood into the basement. I had a new wood burner and I put it in the cellar to limit cleaning up from the dirt from the bark and ashes. The wind and snow didn’t care. There were still drifts, smaller but there were more.

For the last six years or so, I have the wood delivered right outside my basement door. Who cares if it looks unsightly? I’m older and tire more easily, and hopefully it shows I am smarter by choosing a place close to the door.

Well, the first load is here and slowly I will stack it on my pallets to continue to age until it is needed to warm my home on the cold windy days of winter.

Friends

All through life we make friends. Some have become very close while others have drifted away. Many are gone due to accidents and death while others have fallen away.  Many have been acquaintances that have become close friends, while other friendships have eased back to be only acquaintances.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friends because of several incidents that seem to come together at once. The first was the death of a long time friend and Pastor, Norman Lee Johnston. We shared the same birth month and traveled together on the church camping trips out west as well as a missionary trip to Newfoundland and Labrador. He allowed my son Andrew Beck and several of our church’s youth to accompany him on a return trip to South Korea where he started churches years ago.

The second thought that became interwoven with these thoughts was my blocking of a long time friend on Facebook. His extremely Leftist political views and his stand on the faith and biblical ideas finally sealed it. He wasn’t able to share my views and I wasn’t able to share his without arguments. Those differences caused dismay and interrupted my walk with God. Since then, I still pray for him and his sickly mother, but it isn’t this constant back and forth of emotions and there is more peace in my life.

The third incident happened last evening. I got a call from a writer friend who has many health problems of her own. She wasn’t able to find her cat in her apartment. One bedroom, one bath, living room, and a kitchenette, but with her health issues she couldn’t get behind the sofa, behind a cabinet, or under her bed. She was upset because her cat wouldn’t come to her when she called for nearly a day and she was sure he was dead. I arrived and looked behind the sofa, under chairs, and behind the hutch, no cat.

Now this cat is famous and has a book out. His sales for his one book outsells all of my books put together. My search continued into the bathroom, then into the bedroom. No cat and I sat on the edge of my friend’s bed, thinking her cat ran away. I glanced under her desk and there he was, staring back at me. My friend called to him and he stayed there, staring at us both. I reached under, grabbed the scruff of his neck, and hauled him out, placing him in my friend’s arms. The vet placed him on new medications. My friend started them the day before. I believe the cat was hiding so he wouldn’t have to take the medicine. I was a being good friend, although the cat may not believe it.

Back to the Old Country

Friday evening, the men of the Mt. Zion Community Church emptied the cargo from a large enclosed trailer. It had made its way from Milford, Ohio. Milford is just east of Cincinnati. Such a small town, I thought I’d help you locate it without searching for it on a map or in an Atlas. A church there has set up a missionary outreach program to provide Scripture in different languages to missionaries and churches who request it. Inside the trailer were boxes and bundles of John and Romans that had to be separated, folded, assembled, then stapled. Staplers and the trimmer were placed in the gymnasium, waiting for the morning when our church members would gather to join the different sections and ready them for distribution.

Saturday morning at 8:30, a bit earlier for those who couldn’t wait we began to fold the colorful cover sheets which were passed to another table. While we were doing this, one group was placing one part inside the other in correct order. The Gospel was carried to the table with the folded covers and workers there tucked the printed word inside. Those compiled pages were carried to the staplers and secured in a booklet form. Then off to the trimmer to be cut and placed into boxes ready for shipping. Each table kept the young couriers busy moving products from one station to the next.

Our task was a little greater this time assembling. The books of John and Romans were printed in Croat and English, so the finished product was thicker and slightly harder to tear apart and assemble. The people in Croatia are eager to learn English and the English was an incentive for them to accept the Scripture. The group in Croatia will pass out the booklets we assembled. An invitation will be given to attend a rally in the month of September. Those who come to the assembly for the preaching of God’s word will receive a Croat Bible.

After 4 hours of constant movement, we were able to correlate 6,591 copies to add to the Scripture that was assembled by other churches. Because we have Seedline in several times per year, we complete about 20,000 copies yearly.

With D Day just past, and Independence Day drawing near, I wrote this to share.

Fireworks fill the night sky
Explode to oohs and ahs.

Fiery trails of blood red

Thrilling kids, Mas, and Pas.

Celebrate freedom’s road

It’s Independence Day

Liberty’s seeds were sowed

It must not slip away.

Air fills with marching bands

Shrill fife, loud drums and pipes

On sands of foreign lands

Above flies Stars and Stripes.

Flintlock or tomahawk

Bayonet or Enfield

Silence dictator’s knock

Lest freedom be defiled.

Bullets zip, cannons roar

Earth becomes bloody fen

At home or foreign shore

Survivors became men.

Mile markers of headstones

Charting mile after mile

Peace gained by flesh and bones

And bodies in deep piles.

Hard fought, hard won, Independence Day..

Legs

Many years ago, when I worked at Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, 3 incidents made an impression on my mind about legs. The first tale occurred when I was working night shift on a med/surg floor. A female patient who hated men was a diabetic and would feign swooning because of her problems. She would also be incontinent and need her linens changed. She was rather large and one night the other nurses asked me to help. When she heard my voice, she stiffened and asked, “Is there a man in my room?” When the nurses tried to explain that I was a nurse and was only trying to help, she shouted “I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ. Get him out of my room,” her eyes remained tightly closed. Sometime later she had one leg removed and was readmitted to have the other leg removed, telling the nurses she already named the first Pete, now she was here for “repeat.” I told the nurse the story of me being in the room, then I said “As much as she hates men, she should have said, I named the first Kate and the second duplicate.”

The second memory happened within the first month of transfer into the emergency department. A man who was helping a friend was run over by a caterpillar nearly severing both of his legs at the thighs. The EMT’s did a wonderful job finding ice in the middle of nowhere to pack his legs, but the damage was so severe, that the surgeon finished amputating the thin bands of tissue remaining and dropped them into trash bags that I held.

The third storey is more amusing. One of the ward clerks in the emergency room was gathering information for a new patient’s chart while he was sitting in front of her on a wheelchair. He crossed his legs and to the ward clerk’s surprise, the leg fell off and landed at her feet. She jumped from her chair, began to dance in circles. The man said, “Don’t fuss honey. It happens all the time.” The old man had a loose fitting prosthetic leg.

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 it.

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 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, I separated them into family names for easier access. That emptied one file and it was set into order.

Reading and deciphering the handwriting was absolutely 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 and 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. Thus 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 search of other records I gleaned the date she joined was after the time she was married.

Because I'm not feeling up to snuff and didn't sleep well, I'm sharing a past post.
If Looks Could Kill
I was enlisted in the navy and after I had completed my corpsman’s training at the Great Lakes Naval center, I was assigned to the Naval Training Center in Orlando Florida. Several of the other corpsman with whom I became friends in Florida, were “druggies.” They were corpsmen as I was. It was several months before they became comfortable in offering and actually smoking marijuana and hashish with me present. As they learned about me, even though I didn’t do drugs, they began to trust me and less private in smoking.
Let me interject, I am a teetotaler and do not use alcohol or drugs. I never drank any type of an alcoholic beverage, not even a beer. I liked being in control of myself and had too much fun being myself to let go. I never told them not to drink or do drugs. It was a personal choice for them. Nothing that I would say would change them. If they were to change, it would have to come through the choices that they made.
Somehow, the naval intelligence (The people would say that “the Navy has intelligence?”) compiled a list of “druggies.” My friends were called in one at a time to be questioned. One of them saw a list on the investigating officer’s desk and who could read upside down, read the names that were included on it. It was a list all of the friends who hung out together, EXCEPT my name. My name was not on the list.
Now I come to the scary part (for me and not for you.) In their state of heightened paranoia, they huddled together and decided that it had been me who had informed on them because my name was not included in the roster.
In their fear, they decided to kill me. En mass they came to my room. (I never did find out or ask how they planned my demise. It may be fortunate that I never knew.) My roommate was one of the assassination squad and with his key they all gained entrance to the room.
Only by the grace of God I wasn’t home. I was never sure where I was at the time, because no one told me of their plan until much later.
The conspirators went back into seclusion and after things settled down, emotions cooled, and they became more rational, someone wisely pointed out that I did not do drugs and therefore my name wouldn’t have been on the list. I hadn’t do the drugs with them.
I am alive today because I wasn’t there when they looked or I would have been killed.