GETTING IT RIGHT [W, 4-10-19]

Each day

I think that this is the day

I’ll get it right.

It never is.

But there’s always

Tomorrow.

Until there isn’t.

Maybe then

I’ll get it right.

John Robert McFarland

“In Senegal the polite expression for saying that someone has died is to say that his library has burned.” Susan Orlean, The Library Book

FOUR STANZAS IN SEARCH OF RED THREAD [T, 4-9-19]

In that languorous spot of golden grace

When the sliding moonbeam sips your face

A distant music fills all space

Then every grace note knows its place

I never learned where the elephants go

To dance at night by the river’s flow

Hoping to star in a Broadway show

Humming a waltz, precise and slow

When a prisoner springs out the jailhouse door

His face turned south to the sandy shore

He never thinks of less or more

There is just that moment of the open door

There’s a tape to break when the race is run

A medal to wear when victory’s won

This is the day that was made for fun

And even God points toes to the sun

John Robert McFarland

“I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change; only the depths of my seeing.” Mary Oliver

The depths of my seeing tell me that Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America is the best YA novel ever.

EVERY TIME I FEEL THE SPIRIT [M, 4-8-19]

 Our pastor at St. Mark’s UMC, Jimmy Moore, asked me to do the pastoral prayer yesterday. After I added to the prayer concerns list, I said, “Sing with me, please,” and started into Every time I feel the spirit, moving in my heart I will pray. I was pleasantly surprised. I think most of the choir members were with me half-way through the first word, and most of the rest of the congregation was with it quickly thereafter. I don’t have much of a voice anymore, and my ear is shot, and I was especially croaky yesterday, which was all good. My thinking is: If I can stand up here and sing into the microphone like this, you out there have no excuse not to sing.

In the prayer I tried to take up the motifs from the scriptures for the day: the story of the manna in the desert in Exodus, and the story of Peter denying Jesus three times in Luke. And also it was communion Sunday.

Here’s the prayer…

We know, O God, that your Spirit is afoot in this universe of your creation. But your Spirit is too high, too wide, too deep for our small human minds to comprehend, and so we ask you not for knowledge, but for faith.

We thank you for the gentle way you have sprung this spring upon us, for we are fragile and vulnerable in times of transition, easily distracted and led astray. These are desert days, and we are hungry for even morsels of truth and justice.

Our vision has been glazed by the hypocrisies of power. Our hope has been drowned out by the howls and yowls of greed. Our compassion has been wearied by the constancy of troubles. In the midst of the chaos of the whirlwind, it is difficult for us to hear your still, small voice.

So we complain. So loudly. So often. It is just easier for us to speak than to listen. We confess that we are much better at saying what we want from you than we are at listening to hear what you want from us.

Lead us, O God, through the desert of this present age, lead us to the table full of manna, full of grace, communing with You, together with your children from every age and nation.

Those of us who are climbing the mountain from strength to strength, help us to hear your voice as you tell us how to use our strength in the service of your love. Those of us who are sliding down the slope from weakness to weakness, help us to hear your voice as you tell us how to use our weakness in the service of your love.

Help us now, in the silence of this place, the silence that is not really silent but full of the little sounds that remind us that we are not alone in this vast universe, help us now to hear in those small sounds your own still small voice that will tell us where to find bread.

[Followed by the Lord’s Prayer in unison]

John Robert McFarland

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” CS Lewis

IDEALS OF HIGH SCHOOL [Sa, 4-5-19]

As I have mentioned previously, I have been going through and getting rid of old stuff no one else will need or want when I die. So I have been re-reading, for the first time in 64-69 years, old copies of Oak Barks, the school newspaper of Oakland City, IN High School, where I toiled for five years, since 8th grade was in the high school, and I wanted to be a journalist.

I have posted items I thought other old Acorns might want to see, on the nostalgia Facebook page called Oakland City Acorns, but some columns [I always wanted to be a columnist.] are too long for FB, and since this blog no long makes any pretensions to being wise or useful, but is just a place for me to toss anything I come up with… here is a column that started being about an Oak Barks from 1951 and ended up as a point of personal jealousy of James Burch. I was a freshman reporter then. I’ll put the address for CIW on the Oakland City Acorns page on FB so “kids” who are interested can find it…

The Thanksgiving edition of Oak Barks in 1951 was dated Nov. 16 and numbered 4. It had the usual gossip and jokes, but much more serious material than usual. I did an article on how to write to kids in other countries, “International Correspondence,” using my older sister’s correspondence with German kids as a lede. Asst. Ed. Phillip Fischer did an article on “How Clean is Your Water?” Editor Benny Albin wrote one on “Scientific Progress,” and Carolyn Waller wrote a reflection on “Respect.” Charlene Bassett wrote about the new prayer group meeting every Wednesday at 12:40 in room 205.

Then came a column on “Heaven Here on Earth,” in which various students were asked their ideas on that topic. Typical was Linda Luttrell’s definition, “Looking at Jack Dye.” Jack was cute, but, really?

The Oak Barks staff worked very hard to improve our school and society. I wasn’t the only one. In addition to running long gossip columns, we often printed long screeds by one staff member or another against gossiping. We touted civil defense and the military. We gave tips on how to have a better personality—well, they were more criticisms if you did not already have the ideal personality. We were very much into ideals—naming various persons in one class or another as the ideal freshman boy or senior girl or whoever.

James Burch was listed in this issue as the ideal freshman boy for grades. He was the ideal “grades” boy every year, which was disgusting because I knew I would never be the ideal for looks or athletic prowess or eyes or hair or the other categories high school students thought ideal, and so I wanted to be the smartest boy. [Although I did make it for “personality” as a freshman and “friendliness” as a senior, which is like being Miss Congeniality.]

I really wanted to beat “Wally,” even though he and I were very good friends, and often went to the Ft. Branch Dog n Suds of our Oak Barks sponsor and office practice teacher Manfred Morrow, trolling for girls, because the girls who are 17 miles away are always prettier than the ones close at hand, where the aforementioned “Wally,” named such because he resembled Mr. Peepers, the Wally Cox TV character, would use pickup lines on the car hops like, “Hey, baby, you want to hear me pronounce otorhinolaryngology?”

Even though he was the ideal boy for grades every year, I maintained the monstrous illusion that I could outdo him in practical smarts. When I took the employment exam for the Potter & Brumfield factory in Princeton, I set the all-time record, missing only one question. It was the all-time record, that is, until Wally took it the next week and got ALL the answers correct. When we had our senior comprehensive exams, over everything we had studied for four years, sitting all day in the gym, spaced way far apart so we couldn’t possibly see anybody else’s exam papers, I set the all-time record. It stood for twenty minutes. Until Wally turned his exam in.

I’m glad he’s never come to any of our class reunions. As long as he’s not around, I can think I’m smart.

John Robert McFarland

I was smart enough to buy several copies of There’s No Wrong Way to Pray, written by ten-year-old Kate Watson, and her Lutheran pastor mother, Rebecca Ninke, to give to kids and Sunday Schools. You can be smart, too, and get a copy from publisher Beaming Books, or Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, etc.

MUSE AT MIDNIGHT [R, 4-4-19]

Midnight rain calls forth

poems the same way a pungi

calls forth a cobra

from a basket

The poetry muse looks

on from the crowd

her feet still beautiful

from a stint

upon the mountain

Wait, what?

The rain is falling

and it is midnight

Does she not have enough

sense to get out

of the rain?

John Robert McFarland

“You can observe a lot by just watching.” Yogi Berra

RING TONE SUPERIORITY [W, 4-3-19]

Granddaughter Brigid spent her break from the U of Chicago with us, even though her MA thesis was due the day she got back. We left her alone as much as possible, so she could complete that thesis, but she is our tech person, so Grandma had her change the ring tones on her phone so that each of her frequent callers would have a distinct tone. That way she can know who is calling just by the sound. I wanted a quack sound for my ring, but Helen vetoed that for fear it might go off in the Crazy Horse bar and get her thrown out.

Young people probably think this business of distinctive ring tones is some new thing that came in with cell phones, but it’s old hat. When I was growing up, each of the 14 families on our “party line” had a distinctive ring.

Our phone was a wooden box on the wall, with a crank out the side. You cranked once to get “central,” the operator in town, who could connect you to any other phone in the world—if you had enough time and were willing to pay enough—and you cranked some other number and combination of “longs” and “shorts” to get another family on the line.

We were the poorest family on the line, the only one without a car, the only one on welfare, the one with the smallest acreage [five], but there was one way in which we were superior to everyone else: we had the coolest ring tone. Perfect symmetry, two longs and two shorts.

John Robert McFarland

1] In one of his routines thirty or so years ago, dead-pan comedian Stephen Wright said: “I couldn’t find my socks.” [Pause] “I called information.” [Pause. Some laughter.] “She said, ‘Look behind the sofa.’” [Pause, laughter really building by now.] “She was right.”

            It was hilarious, in a way it would not be if he tried to do it now with Siri, because Siri is general information. It’s reasonable to ask her anything. But “Information” was specific information—telephone numbers. It was ludicrous to ask her anything else. Siri is really just information and would say, “I have found four sock stores within five miles of you.” Information said, “Look behind the sofa,” because she was a real person.

THE RELISH KING, & THE ROMANCE KING [M, 4-1-19]

I have been going through old copies of “Oak Barks,” the school newspaper of the Oakland City, Indiana High School. I was the editor for the issue of February 4, 1955, [coincidentally, my 18^th birthday].

David Lamb, “Oak Barks” art editor, and the creator of the “Super Snooper” cartoon page, became one of the premier ad men of the late 20^th century, and he started early, right there in Oakland City as a high school junior. The second headline on the 2-4-1955 front page proclaimed:

Lamb Wins: Now Known as “Relish King.”

Dave had won the contest for naming the Hosmer Company’s new relish as “Spiced Rite.” Hosmer was giving him a free trip to Mardi Gras plus $100 worth of groceries, and he appeared on Evansville’s WFIE-TV.

Another article noted that Don Falls had scored 55 points against the Haubstadt Elites, the second highest individual point total in the state so far in the season. I assume this article was written by our Sports Editor, Russell “Rowdy Russ” Riddle, but for whatever reason, I did not give him a byline. [He was known as “Rowdy” because it would have been impossible to find a less rowdy boy in the school, except for James Burch.]

Asst. Editor Peggy Hunt wrote that we were sending 125 contestants to the solo and ensemble contest in Evansville.

Otherwise we just ran a few senior biographies and a lot of gossip. I don’t know who was doing our gossip column then, but one of the items said, “I hear Bob Wallace is having a gay old time as of late.” These days that would have raised some eyebrows, especially later while he was in the Mississippi State Police and head of the security detail for the governor.

Since Valentine’s Day was coming up, we had a whole page of couples listed, inside a big Valentine heart outline that our art staff had done nicely. Must have been close to 300 kids altogether—almost the entire school. I can’t remember who did the list, but I remember being in the office practice room, which was also the “Oak Barks” office and production headquarters, by myself one lunch hour, laboring to get the paper ready, when I saw the dummy for that Valentine page for the first time.

My girlfriend was a typist for the paper, and I scanned down the page to see our names. I found hers, but not mine. She had typed her name in with a different boy! Mine must have been the only name in the whole school that was not in that heart.

I was shocked. How could she do that? I was the perfect boyfriend! I operated by assuming she would be available any time I wanted a date and otherwise ignored her so she could spend time with her friends. What more could a girl want than that?

What made it worse? The guy paired with her name was better-looking than I. My girlfriend had traded up!

At our 50 year high school reunion banquet, I accidentally ended up sitting between her and my wife. No problem, because my wife likes her. Her husband, seated on her other side, was good looking, but not the guy from the Valentine’s page in “Oak Barks.”

I was pleased to have the opportunity to thank her for being such a good girlfriend back then. She really was a good girlfriend--kind and pleasant and undemanding. She was my “beard.” Not the way we usually mean that, a girl a gay guy dates so he can pretend to be straight. She helped me hide the fact that I was the world’s worst boyfriend. But her patience that February 50 years before had finally worn out.

Thank goodness. Dumping me was the best thing she ever did for me. At least, that’s what Helen tells me.

John Robert McFarland

 “In theory, there is no difference in theory and practice. In practice, there is.” Yogi Berra