Musical Garbage, Backward Gifts, Stupid Technology, & Other Odds & Ends [W, 3-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Musical Garbage, Backward Gifts, Stupid Technology, & Other Odds & Ends [W, 3-15-23]

 

We have friends who spend the winter in a small town in Ecuador. They say that the garbage trucks play music as the make their rounds. What a nice idea… as long as they don’t play the same songs as the ice cream trucks.

We have too much stuff, which means we don’t need gifts of stuff for birthdays or other gift-giving days. So our daughters give gifts to refugees as gifts from us. Our church has a ten-person three-generation Syrian family, and one daughter’s church has a three-generation Ukrainian family. Sometimes they make money donations in our name, and if they are able to give hard gifts—a lamb cake pan or a mixer to a grandma who likes to bake—they take photos of them to send to us. Either way, they are gifts that make us happy, and gifts that make happy people who had to flee their homelands with nothing at all.

“The Indiana Daily Student” is the best newspaper in Bloomington. A bunch of college kids, who write well, and are willing to go any place to get a story. They cover not only the IU campus but the city and county, much better than the city paper does. Of course, it its defense, The Herald-Times has been purchased by a chain that has reduced the local staff to one part-time robot. The IDS, however, is half a million in debt, because, to maintain journalistic independence, it is part of the university but receives no financial support. So they’re asking for donations. I was a journalism student when I started at IU, so I wanted to help. Helen tried to send them a contribution via their web site. OMG! You would think a bunch of tech savvy younguns would know how to make it easy to do that. Not so. She finally gave up and sent a check by mail. People who have grown up with technology often don’t realize its purpose is to make things easier, not to show off their tech chops. [They probably don’t know how to deposit a check, either.]

From my poetry journal of 1-14-23 [sa]

MYSTERY

The light shines brightest

when no one sees

The song is loudest

when no one hears

And I still say

the words

 

“Poetry can help us remember what we didn’t know we knew.” Robert Frost

Janet Lennon, of The Lennon Sisters, says that when they were starting out and gaining fame, their father told them, “You will meet a lot of people, and every one of them will be better or worse because they’ve met you.” She said they always tried to take that seriously. But that’s true, even if you’re not a celebrity.

John Robert McFarland

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Remembrance of Presidents Past [SU, 3-12-23]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, has driven 10 hours to be here for the weekend, and lost another hour overnight to DST. We keep up pretty well with one another--by telephone and email and text and zoom and grandchildren—but it’s always special to be together in person. We do wish, though, that she didn’t have such a long trip.

She is willing to do it, though, so that she can watch me in person for signs of…what…oh, yes, memory loss. Because I did not remember a paper she wrote in fourth grade.

I read recently that John Adams, even though enough of an American patriot that he became our second president, had been the lawyer for the British soldiers who were on trial after “the Boston Massacre.” Not only that, he mostly got them off.

He took the job because no other lawyer would touch it. Adams felt that if America became a democracy, it was necessary to have a justice system that treated everyone equally, that gave everyone a fair defense. Now, there is a guy who should be president!

So I emailed Katie about that, because she has been writing a book about the presidents, as a companion to her The Constitution Decoded. I told her that I had not known about Adams defending those soldiers.

“Oh, yes you did,” she replied, “because that was in a paper I wrote in fourth grade that you typed for me.” And she went on to tell all about the trial and its aftermath.

I forgot about that paper that she wrote in 4^th grade, but it’s really because I remembered a paper she wrote in 5^th grade.

I was the Teaching Assistant for Jim Spalding, the Director of the University of Iowa School of Religion. Actually, I was more of an administrative assistant. For tax reasons, or separation of church and state, or some such, the School of Religion had its own board and raised its own budget. So the Director had to go to a lot of meetings. Except, he didn’t, because he sent me in his stead.

He did, though, teach one Intro to Christianity course, one of those hundred students in a big amphitheater room classes. Sometimes he had me teach the class, and he always had me grade the tests, which were essay type.

One day I was grading those papers when 5^th grade Katie handed me a paper she had written. “Good grief, my grade school daughter writes SO much better than these college students!” I realized that I should not be a college teacher; I would flunk them all because my expectations would be too high for them to match.

Being Jim Spalding’s graduate assistant wasn’t much use to me, since I already knew I didn’t want to go to meetings, and now I knew I didn’t want to teach, because I’d have to grade papers.

A column like this should provide advice, so: Don’t tell your children anything, because it is probably something they told you and you forgot.

Katie’s book on the presidents will be published in October. I’ll give you the details when we get closer to that time. If I remember to…

John Robert McFarland

 

OUT SHOOTING SQUIRRELS [R, 3-9-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—OUT SHOOTING SQUIRRELS [R, 3-9-23]

 

We have too much stuff. We try to get rid of stuff. So, when daughters ask me what I want for Christmas or my birthday, I ask for donations to food pantries or refugee relief and such. They are good about making those donations, but they still think they have not given me a gift unless they wrap something up. They know I’ll read anything that comes into the house, so the wrapped-up gifts are books.

Thus, I read Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses, a gift from daughter Katie Kennedy, the author.

It reminds me of going out shooting squirrels, with Don Survant.

Don’s family moved from St. Louis to the country near Oakland City when he was in 8^th grade. We rode the same school bus. He was only a semester ahead of me, so it was natural that we rode together and talked together. Well, I did most of the talking.

Don was quiet. Smart, but not much interested in books. He liked hands-on stuff. We spent a summer working together as construction helpers. Most importantly, he was a totally reliable friend. We did a lot of things together, including squirrel hunting. Once.

Gibson County was hunter-friendly but not really a hunting culture. Same as my family. Of my 13 aunts and uncles, and 35 cousins, only Uncle Ted, my mother’s oldest brother, ever hunted, and he did it mostly so that Aunt Nora would let him have a dog.

But when Don said, “We’re going out shooting squirrels,” I said “Sure.” I never wanted to be left out of anything. And I liked being with Don. He listened to my mutterings of teenage angst.

I didn’t think about what would happen if I actually shot a squirrel. I’m sure my mother would not have wanted to skin it and cook it.

I didn’t have a rifle, but Don showed up on our appointed hunting day with two. We went out into the woods. Don said we had to be quiet and patient. Neither was a natural quality for me. When I was with a friend, I wanted to talk. Turns out that I was a good shot, though. Aiming at branches. But we shot no squirrels. I don’t think the squirrels even took us seriously.

 

Don didn’t say anything, as usual, but it was clear that he cut our hunting day short because his best friend was not cut out to be a hunter. He never again said, “We’re going out shooting squirrels.”

As kids and teens, even as adults, friendship is mostly liking and doing the same things. Together. So it’s a disjoint, when you learn that a friend does not have the same interests, wants to do other things.

Except for each other, Don and I had very different tastes in people. I wanted to be with the cool kids, and date the pretty girls. That didn’t matter to Don at all. He chose a girl best described as “plain.” She came from a slightly disreputable family, at least her brothers. But Don saw qualities in her that did not show on the outside, just as he did with me. I was his best man when he married her. They kept their vows until they were “parted” by Don’s death, over 60 years later.

After high school and marriage, Don joined the air force. He was a jet engine mechanic. You want reliable people in a job like that. We lived many states apart, but we wrote letters, the way you communicated in those days. But we both got busy. The letters stopped. We lost touch.

Then the internet arrived. It was possible to connect with people again. Google found Don for me a couple of years before he died. It was a joy to learn that he was still my friend and still different from me.

Per Petterson’s characters didn’t really steal the horses. They just wanted to ride them. They took them back. The story is about the activities of two boys, how those activities define their friendship, and continue to impact their lives even though they lose touch with each other.

We spend our lives perfecting who we are. The conventional wisdom way of saying it is that as we age, we become more like ourselves. I think that Don and I both became ourselves, and that’s really what you want in a friend, even if you don’t steal any horses, even if you don’t shoot any squirrels.

John Robert McFarland

 

WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHAT’S ANOTHER WAY TO SAY BARF? [M, 3-6-23]

 

I’ve written about this before, but I’m thinking about it again, because today marks my 33^rd anniversary of starting chemo.

After emergency colon surgery on my birthday revealed a malignant tumor, my first oncologist said, “a year, or two.” My cancer survivor friend, Rose Mary Shepherd, said, “You’ve got to see my oncologist. They call him ‘Dr. Cancer.’” Alan Hatfield told me, “There’s a clinical trial we can get you on, but you have to start the chemo within 30 days of your surgery, and today is your 30^th day…”

It was Helen’s birthday. We began to dread special days.

As time went by, some folks in the cancer treatment room suspected that head nurse Becky and I were having an affair, because we did a lot of conspiratorial whispering. An affair was reasonable as an explanation for the whispering, because she was pretty and I was needy, and for a man, that’s all that’s necessary,

It's hard to have an affair, though, with someone who makes you throw up every time you see her.

I’d walk into the chemo room, and there would be Becky, looking all pretty in her white dress, and it just made me want to puke! So I did. I ran to the bathroom and called Ralph on the big white phone. It’s “anticipatory nausea.” Becky had not done anything to me yet, but I knew she was going to give me stuff that would make me hurl. I just went ahead and got it out of the way. It’s a very efficient system.

[One of the side effects of chemo is learning a lot of different ways to say vomit.]

The stories of anticipatory chemo nausea are legion. One was even quite local. Marie Deschamps was a former nurse in my center who had become the administrator. A classier or more elegant woman you’ll never see. One day she was shopping in a super market. She went around a corner, and came face to face with a woman who promptly lost her lunch all over poor Marie. Yes, a former patient.

Even worse is the story of the oncologist on vacation in Paris. As he walked down the street, a woman a block ahead suddenly ran to the curb and upchucked. He went to see if he could help. When he got closer, he recognized her. Yep, former patient. Years later, in a foreign country, but that anticipatory nausea part of her brain was still sharp. She couldn’t stomach the sight of him.

The odd thing is that these people who make us bring it up for a vote are the very ones who help us get well

Becky and I were whispering because I was the cancer center hitman. After I had tossed my cookies at the sight of her, she would whisper to me if she wanted me in the back room that day, because of some other patient who was there, or wanted me sitting beside a particular patient in the main room, or if she wanted me to talk to a parent, or slip me an address so I could go to the highways and byways to drag in some patient who had dropped out of treatment. We had to whisper because we were probably breaking all sorts of professional standards and privacy laws.

As my treatment came to a close, Becky accepted a marriage proposal. She asked me to perform the ceremony. I was pleased. It was a wonderful honor. But I told her, “Don’t wear a white dress.”

John Robert McFarland

Becky was not the only one. Happy Birthday to the woman who says that I surely amassed some sort of record for a preacher who did weddings for his chemo nurses.

LEARNING TO KEEP GOING [Sa, 3-4-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LEARNING TO KEEP GOING [Sa, 3-4-23]

 

I still get up every day thinking, “Today, I’m going to get it right.” I think I learned that from my father, although his first thought was more like, “Today, I’m going to…” For him, it wasn’t about getting it right, whatever “it” might be. For him, it was just about keeping going, for that was his only choice.

He was born with a bad eye. Not impossibly bad, but a nuisance. It was probably one of the reasons he didn’t like school, and dropped out halfway through his first semester in high school.

He liked learning, even though he didn’t like school. He was good at arithmetic. He read a lot, and taught Mary V, my older sister, to read, before she started kindergarten. But mostly he liked learning on his own, about animals and motors and machinery and the old West.

He didn’t teach me to read, the way he had Mary V, because when I was about five, he lost most of the rest of his eyesight in an industrial accident. A piece of steel flew into his good eye. He didn’t become completely blind until late in life, but from that point, he was legally blind, and his sight kept getting worse.

He endured a series of operations, where they put a needle right into his eyeball. He endured the disappointment of those useless operations. He endured job refusals because of his blindness. He endured the indignity of being on welfare. He endured his wife, our mother, who was not always very understanding. He did the only thing he knew how to do in response to what life had dealt him—become the hardest working man in the history of humankind.

Without eyesight, he withdrew into himself. Not sullen, but just the silent man who worked hard and said nothing. If you live on a farm, where no one else sees you, you can find a myriad of ways to work around blindness.

 

He never lost his wry sense of humor, which showed up again after Helen joined the family as his daughter-in-law. She quickly became his favorite child. Also, Mother’s. She changed the dynamics of the family. We all began to be able to relate to one another in ways we had not before. She was that member every family needs, the “non-anxious presence.” Well, at least she was a less-anxious presence.

From my father--and from Mother, too, in her own way, which was much more vocal--I learned that you just keep going. That has served me well: in corn detasseling, in long distance running, in chemotherapy, in old age. I think it is why I don’t worry about death. On the day that I die, I’ll get up and say, “Today, I’m going to get it right…”

John Robert McFarland

A sharp-eyed reader noted that my recent column on “Trees In Winter” is basically the same one I did back in 2018. Remember, I grew up on a farm. I believe in rotating the crops, but when you’ve rotated through them all, you have to come back to planting corn again.

The photo above is not my father, nor is the horse Old Prince, but it is a close resemblance.

SAYING NO…TO YOURSELF [T, 2-28-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—SAYING NO…TO YOURSELF [T, 2-28-23]

 

It is well with my soul. For in my old age, I am learning to say NO. To myself…as in…

Tomorrow at Crumble Bums, I should end the month on a high note by telling the joke about the termites and the wooden leg…NO! You want to tell that joke just because it’s the only one you have heard in a week, and you want them to think you are funny, but that joke is not funny.

Maybe it would go better if I did a long introduction explaining the different forms of humor…NO! For obvious reasons.

I could call Bob and see if he’s heard any new jokes. NO! This is his writing time. Don’t bother him.

I could email him so that he could reply when… NO! You know his email doesn’t work right and so it frustrates him and he does it only because he has to.

I could tell it to Helen…NO! She’s at her desk, which means she’s trying to avoid your jokes. She’s even willing to do taxes, so that tells you a definite NO!

I could send it to Nina. She does email… NO! She would have to try to say something positive about it, and it’s not nice to tempt her into dishonesty.

I could Google “jokes for people who aren’t allowed to tell jokes…” NO! What is it with you and jokes? Get a life!

I guess I’ll just take out the garbage… YES! Finally! Something to which the whole world can say YES!

It’s very nice when the whole world says YES to you. Unfortunately, that seems to happen only after you’ve heard a lot of NO. But…you’re never to old to learn to say NO… to yourself.

“It is well, it is well, with my soul…”

John Robert McFarland

Horatio Spafford wrote the lyrics to “It Is Well With My Soul,” and Phillip Bliss the music.

 

TREES IN WINTER [SA, 2-25-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—TREES IN WINTER [SA, 2-25-23]

 

I think that I shall never see

            A poem lovely as a tree…

Joyce Kilmer’s Trees was one of the first poems I ever memorized, partly because we sang it at Lucretia Mott Public School # 3 in Indianapolis, partly because it was short and simple, mostly because it rang true to me.

I learned the incorrect version, of course, since we sang it. Kilmer closed it with: Poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. The song version says: Poems are made by fools like me…

I knew more about poems than trees, though, living in the inner city of Indianapolis. It was only when we moved to a farm near Oakland City, Indiana that I really began to understand trees, and to appreciate them.

My father was a good shade-tree botanist. He was an outdoorsman. He knew animals and plants. He could name trees.

On the farm, I learned to love trees and plants, except for the ones I had to hoe in the garden, but I rarely learned their names. I learned the ones everyone knew--maples, oaks, willows, cherry trees at certain times of the year. I never learned to tell a hickory from an ash, though. The only thing that was really important, it seemed to me, was the shade.

The summers in southern Indiana were long and hot and humid. Life was physical and sweaty. We carried water and fire wood in and out. We heated water on a wood stove and washed clothes in a wringer washer and hung them on a line. We hoed and canned vegetables. We had no air conditioning. We did have electricity, but only one old-fashioned slow-moving fan.

In our front yard, we had shade trees—big maples. The front yard was open on all sides except for the house. There was almost always a breeze. When the heat became too much, I would flop down on the grass in the front yard, in the shade of those leafy maples, and feel the breeze.

Helen’s father, Earl “Tank” Karr, always said that spring arrives on March 1. With global warming, spring will be even earlier this year. I should be glad. Old people look forward so much to spring. But, strangely, I am reluctant to see the advent of spring.

The trees are beautiful in spring and summer, all covered with green, and in autumn, ablaze with red and gold, but in winter, we can see the trunk and the limbs. They have their own beauty.

In winter you can see the beauty of what is below.

John Robert McFarland