changes

Having said what I did about the Cathleen Falsani book, I need to say a bit more.

Every once in a while a transformative book comes into my hands. It is not often, maybe only fist full of times in a lifetime.

To make it harder to list, those who seem so important at the moment, may not be the most important over a life time. Still, I have this short list.

At this point for sure, Falsani is on that list. I listened to the book, the author reads it herself, right after I got it. Loaded it on my tiny iPod and listened as I worked in the garden.

Since then I have listened to it another couple of times. There is so much in this book of stories about grace, the big kind.

Last week on our way up to grandparents day, I set up the “new” iPod with a gizmo that ran the sound through the car stereo system. Our car is will be old enough to vote this year and the sound system is not fabulous, but it worked well.

Miriam and I listened to the whole book by the time we got home. It is not a long read, and the iPod plays it in real time (meaning if it took her an hour to read it takes us an hour to listen.”

Our trip to SanFrancisco and back home the long way, will involve about 24 hours of driving. I’ll make sure I have some good books on there, in addition to “tunes.”

Mozart would understand, I think.

On the shore of the San Francisco Bay. Me on the left, Deanna with Leo, grandsons David, Griff and Josh, Miriam on the right.
David's wife Mandy took the picture.
Thanks Mandy.

Thanks


It was a good day to be thankful.

We ate well, had good company, and ate some more. Good cooks. Good food. Five kinds of pie, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, collard greens vegetarian steak, some turkey for Curtis, you know, all of the regular stuff.

There were 8 of us for dinner and all of this in a tiny house.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the shore of the bay. It was cool and the wind was blowing and it was good.

Indeed, it was good.

Downtown Lovelock! Two thousand people, a few more men than women, I read.

lovelock

Once not long after my mother and my step father were married dad came through this town and sent mom a post card (he was not a romantic person and this was a bit out of character).

The post card had a picture of something in the town and the message: “Lots of the first part to you.”

Lovelock Nevada, population 2006.

This is a little town, but it is the count seat (Nevada has few towns and quite large counties). Lovelock has it’s own hospital, mostly because it is a hundred miles any direction to a larger town. The town was named after George Lovelock who donated the land.

For us, it has almost exactly half way to Deanna’s house. Sometimes we drive from our house to Dea’s in one day, it is only an 11 hour drive, but any more, I try to break it into two sessions. I like to be pretty sharp when go into California.

Reno is a 93 miles west of here. Not far out of Reno is the California state line, and then over the historic Donor Pass. It is a beautiful drive, but the road tends to be a bit narrow, there is a LOT of truck traffic and the road needs to be upgraded. But it is finite! Not really white knuckle driving but time to concentrate.

Once over the pass it is a good road (with increasing traffic) through Sacramento, the state capital on to Oakland and then over the Bay bridge to San Francisco. There is a bit of a trick turn in SF, and if I get in the wrong lane it takes half an hour to get back on the right road!

We should be at Deanna’s by early afternoon, missing the real traffic snarls.

I bring gifts (I know this is not Christmas). Home made pumpkin pies, fresh bread and a whole cooler full of “Grandpa’s Great Grape Juice.” Dea’s boys ask about that one.

We make the trip down every couple of years. It is a long way, but we always enjoy our visit.

I lost most of my picture collection a while back.
Time to take some more, lots more!

being useful

Yesterday I helped to help a lady move.

The move was in the same retirement building, but on a different floor with a bit more space for her.

The engineer in charge had it all figured out: box the contents of a book case (there were lots of them), move the book case to it’s new place and then put the same books on the same shelves, in a different room.

Had he been working alone he could have pulled it off. But there were a lot of helpers, maybe a dozen or so and it got a bit scrambled.

The lady has a lot of books (literally thousands) and she is not ready to give up on them now. They are her friends, as she put it.

We all grumbled good naturedly as we worked, going up and down the elevator with boxes and boxes and hand carts and hand trucks full of stuff.

I suggested to one of the girls that she guess at how many people hours were involved in this project, multiply times $10 and see how spendy this move was. We laughed together!

Still, I am glad to help people who need help. Moving is arduous any day.

Some years ago a new pastor arrived in our town. He built a new house for himself and is family. The church group rallied around with untold hours of help on that house. I set the kitchen cabinets for him and put the counter tops on.

I don’t object or feel bad about what was done then, or what we did yesterday. And as long as I have strength, I’ll keep helping people when I can.

I am retired, I have time and a bit of strength left. Helping is the least I can do.

This is a painting my daughter Deanna did of herself as a child. It is from a photograph I made. She is a talented lady and typography is one of her skills. The text font is her invention.

grace

Grace: Getting what we really don’t deserve.

Some time ago an online audio book company asked if I would like to download a contemporary book. The book looked interesting, so I took them up on their offer.

The book was “Sin Boldly.” by Cathleen Falsani. The title comes from a quote from Martin Luther, the great reformer from a long time ago. Luther did not mean that you could sin boldly without any retribution.

But without grace, religion will suffocate us.

Justice is getting what we deserve, grace is not.

When I deal with God I like, even expect a great outpouring of grace. When I am dealing with others, well not so much.

In my country the deciders came up with the idea of a new 45 million dollar jail to be built a half dozen miles from the court house. The jail is full they said, to do JUSTICE to wayward citizens we have to build a new bigger one.

Others say the jail is not nearly full and we put too many people in jail who would be better punished in other ways and that jail site is a long way from the court system. The doubters won this time.

A nearby county had a vote on a jail bond 8 times before it finally passed, and out deciders said they would try us again in May.

Does grace fit into any of this? We sure would not want those “criminals” to think they could find “grace” in the “justice” system, would we.

But God? A little more please.

Pretty close to what mine looks like, except for the chipped paint!
This one is still in the treadle cabinet.

1912 Singer

Today I unwrapped an old friend.

A long time ago (30 years give or take a few) I had a friend who was a sewing machine repairman. One day he came by and gave me this ancient Singer. He had serviced it and he assumed me that it worked well. And it did one thing sew straight ahead.

Some of my sculpture has involved some sewing and that old machine worked through art school. People often wondered about the old girl sitting I the corner of my studio.

Well today I got her out (have a book project that I want to do some sewing on). The old gal had been wrapped in plastic so it was clean. I got the serial number to check with the guru’s online.

It turned easily and should work, except that the wiring is totally shot, bare copper in a lot of spots, but that is fixable, and easily so.

She is a 1912 version of the trusty old Model 66. She sews straight ahead, and that is all. But she will sew leather and thick fabrics. My skills are somewhere beginner and beginner and I don’t need anything complex.

It is sorta like an old Brownie camera. Not a lot of complications, not a lot of adjustments and sure not a lot of modernity!

Most likely this lady started out in a treadle cabinet, but was electrified at some later point. That was almost a hundred years ago.

Any way, it was good to find something useful that is older than I am!

I give up

OK it didn’t work

There are a lot of reasons for me to move my clean studio into the shop building. And, I got it mostly done then it all fell apart.

Every time she came into the studio and saw me in there, she would fuss. Big ugly fuss.

Days ago it was her suggestion that we just as well let it all go. That conversation went away very soon and it was trouble trouble.

Some one who knows nothing about AD said that patents should not be put on behavior medication but instead should have counseling. Hmm. All of that beautiful counseling would be gone about the time the patient got to the door

So, this afternoon, I moved back into the outside studio.

I won a small victory. The inside studio was used as a catch all. I cleared it out and now I can use it for storage. The art/craft I am doing has a lot of inventory. Much of that can be housed there.

All of this does not make me happy but seeing and hearing her really unhappy does not help either, so I do what I have to do.

But right now, as we are sitting here in the evening, she is talking about something I do not understand. Something about clay. That thought won’t go away. She wants to have the wheel setup so she can work on throwing pots. A while back she wanted to sew a pillow. We bought the fabric, she sat down and worked an hour an has not touched it since.

Moving that studio may have been a huge mistake on my part. I stirred up a horrible hornets nest.

leo's nemesis

friends or family

There was one more funeral that I did not talk about.

The couple had moved to my town a few years ago. I must have greeted them, that was my job, but I have no memory of them at all. He was a retired pastor with fairly advanced Alzheimer’s.

They had a daughter here so I am sure that was the reason they moved here, but they never made a splash any way, and we did not get to know them. That is not a recommendation for us, btw.

But the man died, I saw the name but could not put a face with it. The funeral was in a town 20 miles away where he had some family history.

My guess is that they moved here because of family, for the help they could give. In the process of gaining help from their family, they gave up their friends.

Last week my Bible study group had a potluck after church, as we do regularly. There were 27 of us there. We have been a group for well over a decade and our friendship is deep. The food was extraordinary, with a great variety and just the right amount of almost everything. It was a feast.

We all reveled in the joy, not just of good food, but to be with old and trusted friends. The hostess had tables set up all over the house. Miriam and I ate with two other couples in the office.

Jan graduated from high school with Miriam. We knew her husband from soon after that. Our paths went opposite directions, but now in retirement, we are back in the same town. The other couple, Ray and Betty have been close friends for about 30 years. So these were long term close friends. The whole group fell into that category.

Now, we don’t have family here, but we have this bevy of true and tested friends.

So which is more important? Friends or family? I think the best answer is YES.

Right now we are doing alright here with our friends and with our family a bit further away. We seem to see them quite often, which is truly good, but it is not the same as being there with them. The time will come when we will need to have family closer, and that will mean WE will relocate.

That is how it has to be, I fear, but I will miss the people who have worked and camped and prayed and studied and ate and cared for us all these years.

I will. I will.