kids

My father, his little brother and a cousin. 1922. Oklahoma.

funeral number one

It has been a weekend of funerals.

Two of my friends, both women, a generation apart, were put to rest this week.

The first service was Saturday afternoon. Our church has a capacity of about 500 and every seat was full. The parking lot was full.

Eulogies can have a little “who is that” about them. After all, why emphasize the departed’s foibles. But it is refreshing if there is a tiny balance, somewhere.

Jeanne did not know a stranger. She knew every kids name in the church, even those who just moved her last week. She also knew every one’s business, and remembered all the details.

It is not that she used that information for evil, she just knew.

Her two college age sons spoke eloquently about her as a mom, about their good times, and even about them arguing, but they never questioned her love.

The curious thing is that so many people attended but there was only a death notice in the paper. Her husband did not want an obituary and there was none. I can only guess the reason, and my guess is not particularly ennobling.

She was a good person who went way to soon. We worked together for some years in various church projects. She had the tendency to do more, to dominate, but she never shirked her duty.

I will miss her. I was an unflinching member of her fan club. RIP my friend.

Lew Wilson was my great grandfather.
I did not know that he had taught school!

work ethic

It has been a cold rainy week.

There was work that I could do outside, but most of my outside work has past the “must do” stage to the “I should do” or even the “if I get around to it” stage.

So I spent a good bit of time in my little studio.

But my brain kept doing these evil tricks with me.

“Why are you goofing off in the studio, when you should be working.” It is hard to quiet that voice. I suppose I could blame my mother, but I don’t think that will work. Miriam’s mom would catch her doing art work and would tell her to stop and do something important.

But I still was struggling with that work thing. I am an old guy, thoroughly retired and living easy on the land, but feeling a twitch of guilt.


Truth is that one of the few times I have been able to work on art and not feel like I was flaking out, was when I was in graduate school. I had a studio in an old dormitory, 12 by 16 feet of solid concrete. It had electricity, a window, heat and AC and it was all mine for a few years.

Maybe once again, I could trick my over trained brain into thinking that my studio is my “job” which it was, at that time.

I am working on it. Some of my art projects are useful, some will go for gifts and some are just whimsical. Right now I am working on a small book: 2 ½ by 4, with about 500 pages and a wood cover.

Not much use for such a thing, and I think I’ll make a box just for that book when I am finished.

Some one once said that real fine art has no practical use, that the value is purely sensory. This one should be high art then!

open air canning

The stove on the left sterilizes the jars, the little one burner in the right center keeps the lids hot and sterile, and the stove on the right runs the steamer.
I ran all three stoves almost continuously for two days went through a gallon of stove fuel, but got the grapes all juiced.
And what i spilled on the "floor" will fertilize the grass!
Had I harvested the grapes a week earlier I would have gotten more, but the pesky birds got ALL of the red and white seedless grapes. Still I got about 60 quarts from the purple grapes.
Good stuff!

content

There are always people worse off.

A friend attends a support group (his wife is in final stages of AD). He says one reason he goes is to find others whose life is worse than his.

That motive is a bit problematic, it seems. Still, there is a point there.

Last night on PBS there was an hour long piece about people whose lives have been changed by the recession. Big changes.

So many good hard working people in their 50’s simply will not find work again that was comparable to what they did before. So much misery.

So I come back to my modes little life. We are warm, we are fed - we have a few luxuries (home made muffins for breakfast). But that does not make me feel a lot better. My children are not homeless, but all are struggling. One sold her house. She needs more flexibility in her life and home ownership (overblown advantage sometimes) is not always a positive.

She moved into a newer, larger, nicer house for a good hunk less money. In her area houses are difficult to sell, her advisors tell her. Some people cannot give their houses away, she was told.

There was a chap in the Big Book who looked at someone of a lower class, who he perceived as being less fortunate then him and said something like: “Thank god I am not like him.” The story ends with a rebuke.

So I want to put it in terms of being thankful for my little life. Contentment is a gift, as is gratitude, I think.

]
Do trucks get lonely too?

aloneness

Friends come and go.

Lately I have lost a whole lot more friends than I have gained. That happens a lot easier than I might have thought.

Some made the final journey. Some have just gotten tired of my shtick. Some moved away, or I moved.

I had a good friend in Texas. We spent a lot of time talking, mostly about computers. But in time we ran out of something to talk about. We just did not have enough in common to pursue another subject or subjects.

And, there is glue. My wise cousin (I have several) once said that if he was not related to his brother they would not even be friends. Blood binds us. So does church.

But even the friendship of closeness changes. Grandkids grow up and have their own very busy lives. They are not “unfriendly” just other friendly. Grandpa becomes more of a luxury than a necessity.

Right now I am feeling the loss, sometimes feeling quite alone.

Miriam has been my best friend for most of my life (literally), but her ability to use her cognitive skills have gone. And I am feeling a degree of loneliness to which I am not accustomed.

The upside is that I am as much a loner as a social being. I do not resent being alone,

Artists are like that, I am told.

Jeanne and Joan

In less than a day I lost two of my women friends -- to cancer.

Joan was the smiling member of my bible study group. She was kind and considerate, and loved by all.

Jeanne was my assistant in the Deacon/Deaconess department at the church. When Jeanne saw something that needed to be done she did it with all of her might.

They were both good women and I will miss them.

confession

Much to my friends aggravation, I am an environmentalist.

It would be easier to be a communist in this state, and many consider them one and the same.

My favorite America conservative politician was an avid environmentalist. He was also a really great photographer. But that was a long time ago.

It is easy to push each other into big uncomfortable categories. Unless we are unduly shaped by an outside sources, most of our values and life limits are a mix, some of us have a real blender mix of ideas. But we still find ourselves pushed into these big generalizing categories.

At the least it would seem that it is our duty as citizens (not to mention christian citizens) to treat God’s creation with a modicum of respect. Nature was intended to be used, but not abused. Unfortunately it is easier to destroy than to nurture.

Christians who are sure that the 2nd coming is so soon that caring for our surrounding is a waste of time, might want to remember that every generation since the christian era began has had more than a few who were sure that their generation would be the last.

And as the old curmudgeon Edward Abbey once advised: "One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."”

I didn’t say that word, I just quoted the man!

Jess

Jessica 15 and a half years ago.
She is a classy lady!
Grandpa is very proud of her.

Happy Happy Jessica

Today is Jessica’s 16th birthday.

For me it has been a short/long time since she was born, to her it has been forever.

Jess is the oldest of our granddaughters. We had 4 grandsons in a row and we were ready to have an all boy grandlist, but along comes Jessica and changes it all.

I am very proud of Jessica. She is tall and beautiful. She works very hard and has her head properly screwed on.

In reality I don’t mind Jess having birthdays, except for one small matter: Whenever she has one, I have one seven months and two days later, but, as they say who is counting!

Happy birthday Jessica.

sisters

My maternal grandmother and her sisters about 1910.
Grandma is the 2nd from the right.
Both of their parents had emigrated to the US from Denmark, as adults.
Grandpa came to avoid going into the army!

my neighbor the squirrel

I was sitting in a lawn chair on the back lawn, thinking and writing in my garden journal.

Each year I hope that the next garden will be better in a host of ways, and I was deep into thinking and writing.

Then I noticed movement. A squirrel came down the grape arbor (a row of grapes vines a hundred and some feet long). She (can’t prove that one) had a big walnut in her mouth.

The closest producing walnut tree is 75 or 100 yards away. There was a tree closer but it was cut down earlier. Where did this nut come from? I can only guess.

The squirrel stopped and ran up a grape vine trunk and stared at me for a long time. I was 20 or 30 feet away.

Then she made a beeline to my garden and the soft dirt where I grew peppers this year. She looked at me briefly, then dug a hole, buried the nut, back filled the hole and tamped it down. Then she scurried away.

Just for fun I’ll mark the spot to check and see if she comes back and gets the nut or whether I have another seedling walnut tree! I don’t need another and have no real place to put one.

But this is how the little lady stores her food and spreads the bounty for later. That nut might be dinner some cold winter day, and it might be a seedling come spring.

I share with the critters but they can be greedy too. More on that tomorrow.