Against the Wind

Another year, another birthday. The thing about going over the hill is that you just don’t even notice. Energy levels, in my case never really high octane, slip. But you keep doing, and don’t even notice. But every time you see the kids, they’ve seen so many changes in their lives. Quentin, dressed as Mario, and Cameron, our little Indiana Jones, are another year older. Tara gives them a super birthday party at Redman’s, and a fun time was had. The rain broke in time to have the party in the sun, but the yard was pretty wet for the kids. But there they were, in their costumes having a grand old time. The thing about that hill though is how fast once you get over it, the rolling goes on the other side. I don’t notice so much but when I see the kids, I realize… wasn’t long ago that Quentin was an infant.

Veda wanted some photos of the boys, so I’ll put some here as well.

And a photo from the zoo day in the Bronx. It is a good idea to get into a car and ride a bit around the Big Apple, just to get a feel for how big it is. From Brooklyn to the Bronx zoo is no small drive. By the afternoon, we needed some refreshing.

The local Halloween festivities seem to be over. Marianne is off doing her Thriller thing in the French Quarter this evening. There will likely be some photos on Facebook soon. Someone posted some video last year, which was fun. Hope you’ve had a pleasant All Hallow’s Eve.

It’s a falling asleep midday blog. But I’ve done some things that help in the mood lifting vein. I walked this morning with C–. One of my students gave me a nice compliment as she left class. Something about being a good teacher, and not in a bull shit sort of way, but sincerely. I drove to Apple Pie Ridge and took some pictures and did a tiny bit of real estate investigation as I drove home from school.

Before I went to school, I was thinking about writing again. One topic that intrigues me is the history of the church. This comes up because of the offer by the pope of a home for disaffected Anglicans. One of the articles I read said that mainline protestantism is essentially dead. Things that make you go, “Hmmmmm.” David Warren wrote an essay on the Pope’s action.

There has been very big news out of Rome, this past week, for all English-speaking Christians — regardless of denomination, as I have realized from much e-mail. (The reader may recall that I am myself a Roman convert, from Anglicanism, and thus a natural recipient of such mail.)

The North American media have downplayed it, and focused coverage on the pettiest controversial points: “Is the Pope a homophobe?” “Was the Archbishop of Canterbury blindsided?” “Does this mean Catholic priests can now marry?” and other such questions, to each of which the answer is, very obviously, no. (In England, it was rather more front-page.)

What happened? In a sentence, the Vatican announced arrangements by which traditionalist Anglican congregations, in all the English-speaking countries, may apply and be received into communion with the Roman “universal” or Catholic church. (The word “catholic” means universal.)

Presbyterians have certainly had precipitous declines in their numbers. My sense is that “God will not be mocked,” and if the mainline protestants have too much embraced the world, forgotten that they are not of the world, maybe it’s a “just deserts” sort of thing. The Holy Spirit has not left the field. Churches were not the issue of Jesus. His teaching were not for a church, but the disciples found when He was crucified and they in devastation were charged to go and teach the world. The church has always had a tottery balance to keep, proclaiming the gospel, and dealing with the needs of an institutional church.

Proverbs 10:7

The memory of the righteous is blessed,
But the name of the wicked will rot.

When we get it right in the corporate sense, the church is healthy and strong. Wander afield and the rot sets in. Of course that is taking the Proverb of Solomon into places it wasn’t meant, but the wisdom applies in many places.

Meanwhile, our Sunday School teachers are both out of town this week, so I’ve been asked to teach the kids, continuing a group of lessons from home school materials on Moses. My sense is that taking as easy reading a translation as possible, and just reading the story from the bible is fine. They may be young, but a good story is a good story. This week we’re doing the part where Moses is sent up on the mountain to receive the tablets. The memory verse is something from Deuteronomy about obedience to the law. Hiss boo. Obedience is fine and well, but kids hear enough about obedience. We may just use clay and make tablets and reinact the people being frightened when God let his presence be known before Moses went up on the mountain. It’s only an hour, but it’s a nice group of kids, various ages. So I’ll do what I can to tell this part of the story. I have this duty for the next two weeks.

Now time for another Bronx Zoo memory.

From the flamingo enclosure… I have a hard time staying focused on under colored birds. Their flamingos were washed out and hardly worth talking about. So I took photos of a common fowl. Two different croppings of the same photo.

Proverbs 10:6

Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.

A typical ending for Grandpa Brewster’s mealtime prayer: We give thanks Father, for the blessings of the day: the company of loved ones, the watch over us, the forgiveness of sin and the life everlasting. In the name of Christ, Jesus, we pray, Amen.

The words may not be right, but the cadence feels correct. Blessings are on the head of the righteous. Blessings abound. I get caught in a common trap. The day’s obligations blind me. Or the lack of obligations. The sun that doesn’t shine, or the rain that doesn’t fall put me out of sorts. Truth to tell, I chose to be out of sorts. Once in the desert with Job’s friends, it’s easy to let the unguarded words seek their target. Regular heat seeking missiles those words.

The forgiveness of sins…thanks Father. I keep you busy with that one! Always falling short, always lazy in my spiritual practice, and lazier in my writing.

_________

H– called this evening trying to revive the Writer’s group. We hoped after summer to pull it back together. Now there’s not much hope until after Christmas I guess. And if we don’t function as a writer’s group, it’s probably taught me what I need to know. Mostly that I’m not about to sit and do the work!

Fear is a paralyzing force. I see the pictures of Daddy while he knew he was dropping his marbles out on the floor at a great rate, but he was able to cover it to a great extent. He was grim. His expression is one of determination without joy. Later as the marbles rolled about gleefully scattered and causing crack ups and pratfalls, He smiles a most relaxed smile. He enjoyed the motorcycle ride, but Doris wouldn’t let him. Mother harrumphed a lot about that one. I doubt Daddy was ever seriously interested in riding a motor cycle, but he was dead right, Mother would never have let him. He was no longer afraid to speak the truth, and facts didn’t faze him much. Details got embellished in stories, and he got happier.

I know the fear on his face. My feet have ever less sensation. I’m not sharp in the classroom anymore. I am paralyzed when I want to sit down and write. So afraid. I feel like I’m Charly from Flowers for Algernon.

Courage! What makes a king out of a slave?
Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave?
Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got?

All: Courage!

You can say that again! Huh?

Another photo from a kidcentric trip to DC and NYC. Here the very expensive Bronx Zoo, and some of the best animal displays money can buy.

When I can, I watch the video’s people point to. Mostly they’re time consuming, and forgettable. Tonight I ran into something of a talking head. This is an hour with Q & A, a talk with John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide, the story of the Mississippi flood of 1929 that put Hoover into the Presidency. He’s a wonderful writer, and makes history live. His later endeavors have been in epidemiolgy, I gather, and he’s become something of an expert in the flu viruses amongst us. Watch a bit if you have time. It’s very informative. John Barry at MIT on H1N1. Be forewarned that a book that caught my imagination just out of college was “Rats, Lice, and History.” I’ve always been greatly interested in this field.

Since I’ve given my notice, again, that I’m not teaching anymore College Algebra, I’m sort of lurching about for where to try to focus next. Meeting and succeeding at maintaining some control in the medical establishment requires that we educate ourselves. We need to know about our bodies and the current medical treatement of whatever conditions we have. There ought to be plenty of room to play in that area if I want to write. Bottom line on writing is that you have to keep your derriere in the chair, and get the work done.

Off to direct the bridge game tonight. I did enough of that through the spell after Katrina, that I’m glad not to have to do it as a regular thing, but for a few weeks while J & W travel, I can do with a glad heart.

One last photo from that Brooklyn roof top. Urban Eden.

And one more Proverb

10:5

He who gathers in summer is a wise son;
He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.

Guess I should be bringing in the sheaves. Which reminds me of my RR from last year. I’m going to get the ripper out tomorrow and cut the wheat stalk off of the top and replace it with a narrower one, which will be more in proportion. It’s taken me all week to decide that I just have to suck it up and start over on this, but I do. So I’ll give it a good lot of time this weekend. That deadline whoshed past with great gusto! Whooooooooshhhhhhhh….

Proverbs 10:3

The LORD will not allow the righteous soul to famish,
But He casts away the desire of the wicked.

It’s interesting in looking up these proverbs reading the parallel translations.  Sometimes the emphasis is strongly on physical food hunger, whereas I read of a “righteous soul famished” and go immediately to another aching hunger.

Neighbors on Mo’s Brooklyn Roof.  The fellow is the gardener.  His wife is from London.  Mo is from Ghana.  New York City is still an refuge for the world.

Other pictures… from the quilts we revealed Friday night, the album of quilt tops is here . Hat tip, Deb Dunten.

I’m doing it again. Typing with two fingers. It’s gotten too cold to sit at th computer. Home and wishing I could take a day and just sew. Alas other commitments.

Arrived home and dreaded seeing my yard needing mowing. Wonder of wonders, one of the neighbors cut it. So I’ll give him some coin and consider I’ve had a blessing.

Very sleepy. Saints won again. A good day in south LA.

Pecking away one key at a time here in Houston. I purchased a “kit” workshop and found the production sewing mode to be quite relaxing. Gail & Janet were in the class as well, but we were hunkered down making units of the block.

The workshop teacher had a laugh that cut into someplace sinister. There was no mirth in the laugh really, but something hard and sharp. In all other essentials a perfectly pleasant person. I hope I heard wrong. Last year I enjoyed a lecture she gave on collecting fabrics. The idea was that there’s no such thing as too much fabric. But there was then and there still is. There is no sense to collecting at a rate much greater than you produce quilts. But I don’t imagine that will stop me from spending too much on fabrics here.

Anyway, more classes tomorrow and the next day. Then back to my current reality.

Proverbs 10:3

The LORD will not allow the righteous soul to famish,
But He casts away the desire of the wicked.

The blame the victim proverb?   “too bad you’re so wicked…else you wouldn’t have these troubles.”  Job’s friends must have been reading Proverbs!

Bugs don’t know about the rooftop garden.

Carlo says the Proverbs do not apply to our times, they’re something of relics. They are relics, but valuable relics. Useful still, most of them

Proverbs 10:2

Treasures from wickedness profit nothing,
but righteousness delivereth from death.

I find it fascinating that in Solomon’s proverbs we have reference to “deliverance from death.” It seems right to say that in all recorded history, that’s happened only once, yet I have come to believe that we can enter a sort of deathless timeless place here. Righteousness is required, though not sufficient. But the language in the old testament foreshadows a final delivery from the grip of death, the mortal coil. Seek treasure in righteous life. The idea I intuit is outside the language I command. But this verse points at something much bigger than a simple, “do good, go to heaven.”

So, if you get a chance, go watch a sunset. Be still and let the fading light envelop you. Or in my case, grab a camera and try to capture the moment, freeze frame it. Doesn’t work, but I still try.

Proverbs 10:1

The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

The part of Proverbs that interested me, the allegorical first nine chapters has given way to the Proverbs of Solomon. The first here is a bit of a puzzle to me. A wise son … the joy of his father, a fool is the worry of his mother? Mother doesn’t care about a wise son? Dad writes the fool off as a bad debt? Dads can be proud, Moms are best for worry? Are we clear here that I don’t get it? These proverbs come in couplets, compare this thing and that thing. Nothing like starting with the first one to make me crazy.

But I’ll make a launch here into a reverie on my children, no sons, and really at the moment not many worries. Let’s see, there’s T and B a week away from their first anniversary, and open secret of open secrets, a little bit pregnant. B’s not got full time employment. T’s got a good job. There are a lot of changes and adjustments coming their way. B’s been accepted into UNO’s Urban Planning Dept for this January, but will he or won’t he? Lots of changes shaking on that front.

Marianne…busy busy busy with school. Off to NYC for Thanksgiving, maybe we can get some wedding plans in place for Christmas? Who knows.

Tara, going to medical school just as the financial rewards of being a doctor are being reconfigured. I don’t think money is her primary motivation, but the banks that foot 100K of loans have the finances pretty well figured. Meanwhile the ground is shifting.

From the Wall Street Journal,

In President Obama’s Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money. Even so, the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing.

But my children, wonderful as they are, are all BIG government democrats. So we have really really big government.

Now that was my one political moment for today. The photo stream continues with shots from Mo’s Brooklyn rooftop. I took zillions of photos trying to get the feel of the place, but today I started with one and went nuts with filters and such. So a sequence of photos with a title.

Help I’m lost in Photoshop and I can’t get out!

The lightly adjusted original… with the wonderful horizontal evening sun streaming across the city.

Hmmm a Kaleidoscope would be fun.

More, more more fun please

Enough with the Kaleidoscope. How about an artistic filter…. Fresco, this looks interesting.

Now one more Kaleidoscope.

Someone please send me back to my sewing. Pulleeeeez!

By the way, here’s a wheat stalk in progress. THis is some miserable paper piecing, but I’m getting it done.

Or not… I can’t get the photo to email from my Iphone.