As the old hymn says: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."
My outside canning center (I did not even sweep the floor when I finished), and the first canner of corn still on the cob.
I husked, blanched, cooled, cut the kernels off and put them in freezer bags and on into the freezer.

preserving

This summer got off to a slow start.

It was cool and cold all spring. Many crops that did not get off to a good start. My tomatoe plants have provided enough, but now they are bearing heavily, and we are only weeks away from first frost.

The seed corn company my neighbor works for planted a 5 acre patch of corn just to give away. They furnish corn for the county fair corn roast, for the rodeo and so on. It is a service they gladly do for the community.

But the corn is ready now, and those events were last month.

So this week Terry and I picked a couple sacks of those big beautiful ears. I could have had a dozen sacks if I wanted them. We have a smallish freezer (14 c.f.) and it is full right up to the door. Were it an upright, stuff would be falling out! Somehow I want to live with what we have, I don’t want a 2nd one and a new bigger one is out of the question.

Sadly the field will be disked in and the corn will go unharvested.

So this week I did 21 pints of corn, good corn that mostly will make corn chowder this winter.

I know it is not a big deal, people have been doing this for generations. But I have not. Miriam always all of this and did it well. Now it is my turn and I feel like a new bride. She can tell me that I am not doing it right, but she cannot do it.

So I set up my corn processing center under the big elm tree in our back yard. Didn’t take too long, and those packages of corn look so good.

We are going to be gone next week, and the tomatoes are coming on strong. I told Juan my neighbor across the street to help himself. We have one more peach tree with a bumper crop. It may ripen while we are gone and I told my other neighbor Terry (the corn man and my back neighbor) to help himself if they ripened. “I can just taste peaches and ice cream” he said.

We have been blessed, the freezer is full. Grape juice is next, and last!

grandparents grim

My grandparents and my father a very long time ago.
Whatever it was that was going on it did not seem to be too good.
It might reflect a bad day or an testy photographer. It was tough living those days.

writing

For some years I would have this annual ritual.

I would start a new journal at the beginning of the year, and then re-evaluate my belief systems. It was a good exercise.

The point was not to change my beliefs, but to revaluate my positions and to strengthen my resolve on these issues, and to occasionally discard ideas and beliefs that no longer were of use.

I’ve written before about the advantages of journaling. I think it applies more now than ever. I have a lot of fuzzy thoughts streaming through my head. To write them down you must think them through and organize them, or the verbiage makes no sense.

Not that my journals are filled with brilliance. That is not the point and it does not happen! There are teachers who say a child should only read noble fine literature, others who think that getting the kids to read ANYTHING they enjoy is a first step.

Journaling is like that, I think. I’d rather write less than inspiring than not write at all. It is a daily ritual, often times a many times a day ritual.

I began serious journaling in 1978. At first I had a bound book that I used for sermon notes. Then I began writing about live around me. Now I have shelves full of journals. I have used cheap spiral notebooks, bound art books, expensive spiral notebooks and Moleskines.

When I discovered Moleskines it was a Eureka moment. I was in the College Store in the town where Daughter One lives. There was this rack of perfect sized, very pocketable books. I was mesmerized by the whole idea. I bought two, and began to write. I still like those wonderful little books.

But I would fill a Moleskines about every 3 months, sometimes less. At $12 a copy that added up, and besides, I had always thought I might want to make books, so a hobby was born.

Nowadays I hardly ever get to the last blank page. A newer version seems to more tempting than I can handle, so the last 20 or 30 pages are often left blank. And that is OK too.

And, if I thought I had a variety of books for journals, now there is even more variety than before. I never make two books alike, and the size varies as well. It needs to be small enough to fit into my back pocket, but large enough that a page holds a fair number of words.

It is an artists fate to be eternally looking for perfection. That does not mean Kodak quality color or detail, by any means, but rather the perfection of the artists own vision.

One of the Impressionists, so the story goes, on his deathbed said in sadness: “I’ve almost got it.” He had been painting the same local mountain for much of his career and he finally had just the vision he wished for.

Almost. The story of my life.

recent books

I have been making some different style books of late. I began using the Coptic Stitch and this is some of the results. The Copts, Christians in and near Egypt, began using this stitch about the 3rd or 4th century AD. The advantage is that the book can lay flat and the pages open easily.
The book is made without any glue, though I might glue the cover together. And, there is a very decorative look.

This is a large sketch book. 6 /2 by 9 1/2 by 1 1/4 42 pages heavy drawing paper. This view shows the stitching.

The cover is a small version of a poster that my daughter Lia designed for Moonstruck Chocolates.
I am still learning of the almost limitless ways the stitching can be done. There is so many kinds of cover, text paper and thread/cord/ribbon that can be used for the binding.
I am having a good time with all of this!
Box making and book binding go hand in hand. I am working on a small box to hold the smallest journal in this series.

Japanese style stab binding. 8 1/2 by 3 3/4 by 1/2 80 pages.
To confuse you I have the binding on both ends of this very long book. The actual binding is on the left. The cover is leather, and like all leather covers in this series is repurposed.


Leather wrap journal. Open. Cover attached by long stitch. 4 1/4 by 5 5/8 by 1 1/4 216 pages.


Leather wrap journal. Closed.


Small leather cover journal. 2 5/8 by 4 by 1 1/2. 360 pages.
The cover is from the sleeve of an old leather coat. The seam is part of the original.


My current journal. Harness leather cover. 3 1/2 by 5 1/2 by 1. 216 pages.
The leather was a gift from a friend who is a professional leather-crafter. I might have to admit that it is "new"!
Decades ago I worked some with leather. This may get me to work with leather again!

Uncle Mert as a young man.
About the time he was in high school there was a baseball player named "Hack Wilson."
Some how Uncle acquired the nick name of "Hack". One of his classmates exclaimed to me: "You are the nephew of HACK WILSON!"
I had a bunch of good looking uncles!
Mert was about 69 when he died, way too young.

uncle mert

Merton was my mother’s brother.

Mom was born in Nebraska, but at 6 weeks of age her parents moved west to Idaho. Her brother Merton was born here.

I saw Uncle Mert a lot more than the other uncles. His parents lived in my town and though he had a busy professional life, he came to visit regularly.

He graduated from high school here, then went to Portland, Oregon. I am not sure of the exact order of things, but her married Hazel, worked for the railroad, was in the Navy in WWII and went to college.

His Navy service was aboard a submarine. Those were the diesel/electric subs that were pretty small compared to the newer ones. Nothing was ever said about his service except that he was a Machinist Mate. Whatever the stories that might have been told, were not and now are lost.

Hazel was a very capable woman. She managed a series of restaurants. I remember her well. Her hard work made education possible for Uncle. It seems to me that she worked even after Uncle set up his Dental practice.

With Hazel’s hard work and the GI bill, he went to college and then to Dental School. Grandma had a portrait of him in his graduate regalia. He was a great looking guy.

He practiced dentistry in Portland. (I always wanted to use that term: “I practice tile work”).

In mid life Uncle divorced Hazel and married Barbara. By the way:I had two aunt Barbaras. Uncle Wayne, my fathers youngest brothers wife as well as my Uncle Mert, who was my mother’s brother.

Mert’s Barbara was bit older than me and quite a bit younger than him. She was exceedingly vivacious and was fun to be around. I can see why he liked her. They moved into her small but well designed house.

One day Mert climbed up in a cherry tree, in Barbara’s back yard to do some trimming and fell. He had some head injury, but recovered, it seemed. That trauma did bring on Early Onset Alzheimer’s, however.

We did not know too many details. But Barbara would call me occasionally. She would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be gone. Sometimes the police would call and say they had found him driving the wrong way on a one way street in the middle of the night. She would hide the keys, but he had another set. It was rough on her.

Eventually she had to put him in a nursing home, but he did not live too much longer. We were in Texas when he died. She called me and gave me the news. There was no service. He did not have any children.

It is curious that relatives like this are around a fair amount, but we rarely get to sit and talk seriously with them. I did only once with Mert, when I was visiting he and Barbara in Portland.

Unfortunately Aunt Barbara also died a few years ago, after a long struggle with cancer. As far as I know Aunt Hazel is still living. One aunt keeps in touch with her.

Uncle Mert was a good man and an addition to his community, but some how by not having any children he stopped his story. Children are not a cure, but I will wonder if he and Hazel had had children, if it might have all come out a bit better.

Then maybe he would not have climbed that blasted cherry tree.

dorlin

Understandably, I have few pictures of Dorlin. Here he is as a kid and as a young pastor.

uncle dorlin

Because my father died when I was young, I did not get to spend as much time with his brothers as I wished.

It was not an evil plot, it was just how it was.

Dad had three brothers. His mother (Mother May) choose unusual names sometimes. My dad was Hoyd, then there was Cletus, Dorlin and Wayne. Their only sister was Ruby. Dorlin is the name of a village in England, but family legend is that he was named after Mother May’s friend Dora, only since he was a he she had to change the name a bit.

What I know about Dorlin is mostly what I heard from other sources. When I did see him, we did not talk about family or his life. His middle was Knowles (as was his fathers) and he was known as DK. I really only saw him a double handful of times. He was born in Oklahoma, like his siblings. The family went to California during the dust bowl days, and then ended up here in Idaho.

Dorlin served in the Army in WWII. He was an unarmed medic who saw heavy action in the Philippines. I remember a breath of an idea that he served with some velour under heavy fire, but I cannot confirm that story. My guess is that it is true. He never talked about it.

He learned the plastering trade, probably from Grandpa Mud. He became a licensed contractor in California, something he was pretty proud of, but much of his plastering career was between terms as a college student. He had a family to support.

He married Connie about 1940 and they had four children. After the war he went to college on the GI Bill. With a young family, he had his hands full. Toward the end of his career, he went to Ethiopia to be president of a college. He was there when the communist took over the country, and he was held at gun point and then prisoner for some time. He was never quite the same afterwards.

While in Ethiopia he contracted a disease that eventually took his life. He was 69.

I remember a bit about his oldest son. His initials the same as mine: DWG. He went to Vietnam as a medical helicopter pilot. Again the word was that he served well in a very dangerous assignment. I had so hoped to meet him, but he died a few years ago.

Dorlin began his career as a pastor in California then went to southern US, where he worked mainly as an educator.

His wife Connie was Spanish. She was always extremely beautiful, a super fine woman and a superb cook. When I was 6 or 7 we made a trip to California where I was introduced to Aunt Connie's sisters. They thought I was cute (that is actually what mom said). My memory is that there was a bunch of them and they were the most beautiful women ever. I was mesmerized.

As a struggling young pastor, Connie's dad once told him to go down to the Chevrolet dealer and pick out a car. It was a gift of appreciation. Aunt Connie came up to Idaho to visit her sisters in law a decade or so ago. That was the last time I saw her. They all knew it was the last time the three of them would get together.

At that time Aunt Connie was living with family in Georgia, Aunt Barbara was the widow of the youngest brother: Wayne. She lived near here for a few years. The third was the sister of their husbands:Ruby, who lived here in Idaho.

Dorlin and his family were dearly loved by all who know them. I always enjoyed being with them.

I do wish I had known them better. It did not happen.

My father's grandparents.
He was the ancestor who was the prisoner of war.
One of my uncles lived in the south much of his life.
"You are a yankee?" one of his parishioners declared.
Well, my grandfather fought in the war between the states on the confederate side.
"You are still a yankee."
You can't win them all.

parent care

My wife took care of her mother until mom died.

Mom was 57. Miriam stayed with her day and night for about half a year before she died.

By then Miriam's father's Parkinson's was advanced enough that he was not able to live on his own. Miriam could not live full time 30 miles away from our home, so we did the obvious thing.

We moved Miriam’s father into our house. It made a ton of sense, and it was the right thing to do, and it was rough, and maybe not even wise.

We have a small house, designed for a 5 people at most. We did not have a separate “suite” for another person. We could squeeze a bit tighter and make it work, and we did our best.

Dad was a bit hard of hearing and he had his cable tv. We did not have a tv when the kids were in school, they had homework and music. (Believe it or not, it was the girl’s choice to not have a TV).

Dad loved to watch TV. It was all he had, really. Baseball mostly, but noisy news and such as well. I tried to rig up some kind of a system where he could hear without blasting the rest of us out, but my systems did not work well.

I built a room for him where I had planned an open patio. Since our house is partly underground, that involved a good hunk of work, but we got it done. The problem was that the place for his TV was right by the door that went into our smallish living/dining/kitchen area.

I was totally miserable. And angry.

Miriam would not listen to any complaints. It got worse and worse. Finally I made an appointment with a friend who is a counselor. He lived a few hours away and we went to see him.

We sat down and he asked Miriam how things were going. “Wonderful.” Are there any problems? “No, all is wonderful.”

She would not budge, she would not allow that I was being crushed by all of this. Her head was buried in sand. We stood up, shook hands and left.

Dad was with us for almost ten years.

As I look back, they were not happy years for me. I am not sure, even now, what I should have done differently. I am not sure of my motives, then or now. How would i make it easier for my daughter and his family if I had to live with one of them? I am still thinking on that one.

Multi generational homes were not at all unusual a couple of generations ago. That was before TV. Maybe that made a difference, I sure do not know. I am still not sure how all of this should have worked out. Was the problem in MY head or was it a combination? Could we have faced it a bit more openly and talked more and made it better? I don’t know that either.

As I get older and life alone may be slipping through my fingers and I am troubled by all of this. Could I live with one of my daughters and not drive my son-in-law nuts? I do not know.

For the child of the old parent it is a duty gladly performed, even at the cost of neglecting other family. To the spouse, and children, it is a different world.

Even after 20 years, I am not remotely sure of how I should have handled it all.

Either way, it was not my happiest decade.