Kathryn Page Camp

When Money is Another Way to Care

2012-02-06T00:01:00.000-06:00

Big-eyed, starving orphans from far-away lands. Tornado victims from nearby towns. Homeless men and women without hope. So many causes to choose from.

As the mailman delivers the contribution statements and receipts I need for tax purposes, I notice that some of the causes I used to give to aren't represented this year, and my giving to others has decreased. I wish that weren't the case, but with a reduced income since my retirement, I have had to make some tough choices.

No one can give to every cause that tugs at his or her heart. So how do we choose among them?

Many people contribute to organizations and causes that touch their lives. A widow may give to the local hospice organization that provided emotional support when her husband was dying. A cancer survivor may give to a national organization that funds cancer research and education.

People also contribute to organizations and causes that touch their hearts. Someone who has never known hunger may give to a food pantry. And someone who has never been out of the United States may give to foreign missions.

Choosing a cause or causes is only the first step when giving to national and international organizations. There are a number of groups that fund cancer research, for example. So how does someone narrow it down to one?

When considering charities with similar goals, it helps to ask each for a copy of its annual report. The annual report should describe what the organization does and provide a breakdown on how it spends its money. Two cancer organizations may fund both research and educational efforts, but one may spend the majority of its funds for research while the other spends a larger percentage on education. A person more interested in funding research to find a cure might choose the first, while someone more interested in educating the public on prevention and early detection might give to the second.

The amount the charity spends on its programs is also a consideration. The Better Business Bureau's Standards for Charity Accountability suggest that at least 65% of a charity's expenditures should go towards its programs rather than for administration and fundraising. Organizations that rely heavily on volunteers often dedicate an even larger percentage to their programs.

Most charities are required to file Form 990 with the IRS. If the annual report does not provide the information you need, the organization's most recent Form 990 and some simple math will show how much the charity spent on its programs that year. Small charities and some religious organizations are not required to file Form 990, however.

If you itemize deductions, you need to know whether the contribution is tax deductible. Just because an organization is tax exempt does not mean that your contributions are tax deductible. If an organization's primary purpose is to influence legislation, for example, you cannot write off your contributions. You may still want to contribute, but make sure you know whether your gift is tax-deductible before preparing your taxes.

The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection publishes a fact sheet called "Charitable Donations: Give or Take?" that provides additional tips for checking out a charity before contributing. The fact sheet is available online at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/telemarketing/tel01.shtm.

I'd like to give money to every worthy cause that comes calling, but that isn't practical if I want to eat. And even if I gave everything I have, it wouldn't be enough. So I select a few causes and organizations that touch my life and a few more that touch my heart.

Because it's all about making choices.

Addicted to Reading

2012-01-30T00:01:00.000-06:00

Erasmus said, "When I get a little money, I buy books; and, if any is left, I buy food and clothes."

I'm not quite that bad, but the "not quite" is only because I'm addicted to food as well as books.

The school my children attended through 8th Grade is having its Scholastic book fair this month. Fortunately, I'm immune. That's because the school my daughter teaches at had its book fair in December, and I filled up on Scholastic books then.

I come from a family of readers. (What else would you expect with a name like Page?) But we had neither a local bookstore nor the money to spend there, so most of our reading material came from the school and county libraries. And living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where the deer outnumber the people, even the selection of library books was limited, so I ended up reading those books multiple times.

The Scholastic book orders that came to my classroom were the joy of my young life. My parents paid for one or two books a year, and I bought more when I had saved enough of my allowance. Of course, reading isn't limited to books, and I always had at least one magazine subscription. But I am eternally grateful to Scholastic for giving me the opportunity to buy books that weren't available at either library and that--wonder of wonders--I could actually own.

Because reading is an addiction I'm proud of.

Let It Snow

2012-01-23T00:01:00.005-06:00

The six inches of snow we had on Friday wasn't the first significant snowfall this winter, and it was no big deal. Not for someone who grew up in Michigan and has spent most of her adult years in NW Indiana.

I love living in a part of the country that has four distinct seasons. And even though winter is not my favorite of the four, I love it, too.

The pristine look of newly fallen snow. The lace and spangles sewn onto trees and bushes by Mother Nature. Even the invigorating exercise when the snow is dry and easy to shovel.

Winter is great when I have gasoline in the snow blower and hats and gloves and boots to go with a nice warm coat. But since I can never be sure when that first significant snowfall will arrive, it pays to be prepared long before I expect it.

Death is like that, too. Roland's father was prepared. Dad and Mom not only got their wills in order, but they planned and pre-paid for their funerals. They even set aside the clothes they wanted to be laid out in. So when Dad died earlier this month, there was little left to do.

Still, wills and funeral arrangements are insignificant compared to the question of where we will spend eternity. Dad was a committed Christian, and he knew his answer to that question. When death came, he was prepared to spend the rest of his life with his Father.

The first snowfall can surprise us with its timing, and so can death. Are you prepared?

Precious Memories

2012-01-16T00:01:00.003-06:00

The best Christmas present I got last month was the one I gave my mother.

I admit it. I gave my mother something I wanted myself. And I took it home with me rather than letting her keep it.

But Mama still appreciated the gift. That's because she believes in passing on memories, and my present allows her to do that.

My father took lots of slides as we grew up, so I gave Mama a machine that transfers slides to digital files. Daddy took this picture (as a slide) on Easter 1954, when I was three.

I don't have a slide projector and screen, and it's hard to divide one slide among three siblings, anyway. That's why the digital slide converter was the perfect gift for all four of us. It helps us share precious memories.

My parents did a good job preserving their memories for their children and grandchildren. My mother sought out and compiled a detailed family history going back to the early 1800s, when her ancestors were still in Germany. A family history rich in stories as well as dates. And Mama's memoirs tell about her life growing up. She didn't cover her adult years because my father included much of that information in his own memoirs, which became his vocation after he retired from the ministry. My father's family tree goes back to the 1600s for most branches, reaching into England and Canada. I wish I had more stories about my Daddy's early years and his ancestors (especially his Grandpa Gibson), but I still have a solid framework to pass on to my children.

The memories are skimpier on my husband's side. One of Roland's cousins several times removed put together an extensive family history for Roland's father's paternal side, and I am extremely grateful. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a family tree for Dad's maternal side or for either side of Mom's family. Dad didn't think his own life story was interesting enough to pass on, and Mom seems to feel the same way about hers. So I'm glad that we sat down with a tape recorder one Christmas and asked my in-laws a few questions about their early years.

Memories are precious, and once they are lost they can never be retrieved. So make sure you save yours and pass them on.

In Memory

2012-01-09T00:01:00.001-06:00

Nolan Edmund Ray Camp, 1925-2012.

My father-in-law was permanently cured of his cancer on January 3, 2012, at the age of 86. His family will miss him, and his wife of 64 years will miss him most of all, but we rejoice knowing that he has gone to be with his Father.

Dad had his own brand of humor. In the early years of my marriage, he introduced me to people as "my daughter-in-law the liar--I mean the lawyer." And every time he found a new lawyer joke, he made sure I heard it. But he got along very well with this particular lawyer.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Dad never got beyond a high school education. Still, he always found a way to support his family. A hard worker, when the children were small he took a second job at a gas station to supplement his pay as a mailman.

Dad cared about the education his children received, sending his two sons and three daughters to a Lutheran school through eighth grade. The public school was nearby, and the Lutheran school was not within walking distance. Although tuition was free for church members, transportation wasn't. So the fares to ride the public bus system came out of his meager funds.

A committed Christian, Dad was very active in his church. When the time came to leave this world for a better one, he was ready.

Happy celebration, Dad.

I Wish You Courage

2012-01-02T00:01:00.002-06:00

Schindler's List was the first.

On December 31, 1994, when our children were eleven and eight, we started a family tradition. We had always taken Caroline and John to the New Year's Eve service at our church, and that didn't change. But now we waited until after church to eat and had a supper consisting of cheese and crackers, raw vegetables, and bagels with cream cheese. And we ate on TV trays in the family room while watching a rented movie.

Schindler's List was rated R, but Roland and I thought our children show know about the Holocaust in all its horror. So we decided to watch the movie with them that New Year's Eve.

Some of the years following didn't have a Schindler's List equivalent, and then we selected lighter fare. But our first choice was always a movie that carried a strong message and was better watched in our presence.

As the children grew up and left home, Roland and I continued the tradition, although we now choose movies just because we want to see them. Last Saturday night's movie, however, fit the original criteria, and it happened by default. I wanted to see the movie, but Roland agreed mostly because he wasn't thrilled with any of the other choices. He thought it was a chick flick, and I expected it to be simple entertainment. We were both wrong.

We watched The Help.

I highly recommend The Help to anyone who hasn't seen it. I don't want to give away too much, but the basic plot revolves around a young journalist writing a book about the lives of black women working as maids in white households. On a deeper level, the movie deals with racism in the South in the early 1960s, and although it has touches of humor, it is also grimly realistic.

And it contains the same message as Schindler's List. Overcoming injustice takes a lot of courage, but it is worth the risk. We don't have to be part of the threatened group, either. Schindler was not a Jew, and the writer in The Help wasn't black. In fact, she was raised to be a typical Southern belle.

So here's my resolution for 2012 and my wish for you this year: to have the courage to take a stand against injustice.

That won't keep us safe, but it will make us better people.

What Do Lighthouses Have to Do With Christmas?

2011-12-26T00:01:00.002-06:00

In John 8:12, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world." So when we commemorate Jesus' birth, we celebrate the Light.

The following poem is my take on the subject.

               The Lighthouse
                           by Kathryn Page Camp

A light has come to save the world,
     A lowly baby born,
It shines its beam on rocky shoals
     From evening until morn.

When storms of life beat on my boat
     And winds begin to blow,
The beacon shines across the waves
     With its resplendent glow.

Mist and haze may hide the reefs,
     Clouding up my sight,
But though they blind my eyes at times,
     They cannot veil the light.

As lighthouse keeper I must go
     And rescue those in danger,
For one in peril on the sea
     Can never be a stranger.

The harbor light beams steady on
     Wherever I may roam,
A welcome blaze when life is done
     To guide me safely home.

Christ is the X in Xmas

2011-12-19T00:01:00.001-06:00

Some people worry that using "Xmas" instead of "Christmas" will secularize the festival.

I'm not one of them.

I admit it. I use Xmas at times, either because of space constraints or because I'm lazy. But that doesn't mean I'm downplaying Christ's role in Christmas.

On the contrary, I understand that Christ is the X in Xmas.

The picture at the top of this post shows the Greek spelling for "Christ." It begins with the Greek letter Chi, which looks like our X. And just as we sometimes use initials to refer to people, Christians through the ages have used the Chi as an abbreviation for "Christ."

So if I replace the name "Christ" with an X, you can chastise me for being lazy, but you can't complain that I'm secularizing Christmas.

Have a Christ-filled Xmas.

Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays

2011-12-12T00:01:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas is suing Happy Holidays for divorce and asking for custody of Christmas. Why? Because Merry Christmas believes that Happy Holidays is turning Christmas into a non-practicing Christian or even an atheist.

But if the court appointed me as guardian ad litem, I'd argue for joint custody. (A guardian ad litem advocates for the child's best interests rather than for the interests of either parent.)

I love the freedom I have as an American, but freedom works both ways. If I am free to say "Merry Christmas," my countrymen are free to say "Happy Holidays" or "Happy Hanukkah" or whatever they choose.

And retailers and restaurateurs should be given that same freedom. Yes, sometimes they will decide to do whatever they think pleases their customers even if it isn't their personal preference, but that's their choice.

What are we afraid of, anyway? It isn't as if store decorations and holiday salutations can take Christ out of Christmas. Either God came to earth in human form or he didn't. We can spin the facts, but we can't change them.

My God is in control even if I don't say "Merry Christmas."

So have a merry Christmas or a happy holiday season or both.

Lest We Forget

2011-12-05T00:01:00.001-06:00

Wednesday is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. It was and still is a tragic occurrence, even for those of us who were not born yet.

Every year we remember the men who died at Pearl Harbor, and we should. But did you know that women and children experienced the terror, too?

This summer I purchased a copy of The Children of Battleship Row,* which is a memoir by Joan Zuber Earle. Her father was a major in the Marines, and in 1940 he was assigned to Oahu in the then territory of Hawaii. His family went with him, and they moved onto Ford Island and into a house just yards from Pearl Harbor.

A year later, nine-year-old Joan and her sister, Peggy, were living an idyllic existence. Then came December 7, 1941.

Joan and Peggy had been helping their mother prepare the pork roast that was to go into the oven before they left for church. The sisters were still in their pajamas when they were interrupted by smoke rising from the nearby ships and bullets raining from strange airplanes. Bullets they had to dodge as they ran for their assigned shelter.

But as they passed the Bachelor Officers' Quarters (the BOQ), the men beckoned them inside to get away from the falling bullets. I'll pick up Joan's narrative after they entered the kitchen.

"Get under something!" said a male voice. Peggy scuttled under the kitchen sink. Mother and I crawled under the large wooden kitchen table in the center of the room. Huddle, hide, we are safe for a minute, my brain recorded.

Whomp!!!!! An explosion louder than any crack of thunder or volcanic eruption shook the building, immediately followed by a rain of fire. Even from under the table where I was kneeling, I could see clearly out the kitchen windows. The familiar greenery outside the building was obliterated. On three sides, flaming material now filled the sky. Peggy could see as well from where she was crouched. The BOQ's on fire, I thought. The BOQ's on fire! We're going to be trapped in here and burned up.

I'd never been a screamer, but now I became hysterical. I felt sure that the roof over our heads was already in flames. Stark terror swallowed me. I began yelling words I thought I would never say, "I hate Ford Island. I hate Ford Island. I want to go back to the mainland!"

Mother, kneeling next to me, held my shaking body in her arms. For some reason, she was not screaming, nor was my sister. But I have never fully recovered from what my mother said next: "Don't cry, Joan. Don't cry. Marines don't cry. Don't ruin the morale of the men."

I stopped. After that, I turned my screams inward, becoming mute in my terror.

Joan and her family survived Pearl Harbor. But it took an emotional toll that I can't even imagine.

December 7, 1941 affected the men who died. It affected their families and friends. It affected those who lived through it. And it affects each of us because, as my distant ancestor said, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."**

So let us never forget Pearl Harbor.

__________
*Although I highly recommend The Children of Battleship Row, it appears to be out of print. And nobody can pry my copy out of my fingers to borrow it.

** From "Meditation XVII" by John Donne.

The Secret to Failure

2011-11-28T00:01:00.000-06:00

I was going to be a lawyer. That was my dream when I started college, and I still wanted it when I graduated.

But not a single law school accepted me.

Failure.

The reason I failed is simple. I didn't get accepted because I didn't apply.

Why did I doom myself to failure? The story is too long for a blog post, but after changing my major and working hard for a B average, I decided I didn't have what it took. So I changed course and entered a PhD program in psychology.

I did quite well in graduate school, but I wasn't happy. And the dream kept nagging at me.

Tomorrow I will be speaking to a group of high school students. I was asked to talk about what inspired me in my profession, but I'm going to talk about failure, instead.

Avoiding or overcoming failure, that is. Because after earning my master's degree, I changed course again and did what I should have done earlier.

And this time two law schools accepted me.

That led to thirty years in a successful and fulfilling law career. A career I enjoyed immensely, even after the dream changed.

This time, the dream said, "Write."

The first dream was fulfilled and the second is in progress. Although I've had one book and a number of magazine articles and devotions published, I've also received my share of rejection slips. But even the rejections are successes.

Because you aren't a failure until you stop trying.

"Please Sir, I Want Some More"

2011-11-21T00:01:00.001-06:00

Oliver Twist asked for more gruel because he was hungry--and because of peer pressure, but that isn't the subject of this post.

I get hungry, too. If I haven't eaten for four or five hours, I become so crabby that nobody wants to be around me.

Of course, Oliver's definition of hunger was different from mine. He was near starvation, and I'm used to a full stomach.

Oliver held out an empty bowl and asked the cook for what he needed.

I hold out a full bowl and ask God for what I want. After all, why would I ask for what I need when He's already given it? A loving family, good friends, a comfortable home, plenty of food for the table.

So when I say, "Please Sir, I want some more," am I being ungrateful?

Still, there are some things I do need more of. I need more contentment with what I have and more thankfulness to God for giving it to me.

That's why my Thanksgiving prayer starts with "thank you" and ends with, "please God, give me more contentment and thankfulness."

And that's my prayer for you this holiday, too.

NOTE: The picture is George Cruikshank's illustration for the first printing of Oliver Twist. The book appeared as a monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, and this illustration probably accompanied a March 1837 installment.

Patience

2011-11-14T00:01:00.001-06:00

Patience may be a virtue, but it isn't one of mine.

Saturday I drove to Kokomo, Indiana for a luncheon. The trip was approximately 130 miles one way, and the drive took just under three hours. Almost half of it was along two-lane highways posted at 55 mph and punctuated by small towns with even lower speed limits.

On the way there, my GPS took me a round-about way. Since I was constantly watching for the next turn, I didn't have a chance to get bored.

For the return trip, I looked at the old-fashioned paper map and selected my own route, which was more direct and probably quicker. But it was also quite monotonous as I passed miles and miles of brown fields and an occasional bare tree. I just wanted to reach the expressway so I could get home faster.

That isn't a criticism of rural living. I grew up in a small country town, and I enjoyed those years. But after living in the Chicago area for several decades, I've gotten used to more varied scenery.

And I've forgotten that Midwestern farms have a different type of variety. The straw-colored fields I passed Saturday will turn snow-white in winter, dirt-brown in early spring, and green or golden in late spring and summer. The sleeping fields of November are renewing themselves so they can be productive again next year. Land that never gets a chance to rest soon becomes depleted of the minerals that plants require to thrive. So every season has a role in producing a bountiful harvest. We just can't see the part of the process that happens underground.

Life is like that, too. When I am in the brown areas of my life, I find it hard to picture any yield at all, let alone a bumper crop. Yet it is during those brown times that I am revived. Unfortunately, I don't always realize that until I have a chance to look back.

That's why patience is a virtue.

Familiarity Breeds Comfort

2011-11-07T00:01:00.005-06:00

When I told my daughter that we were thinking of selling our house, she came up with all sorts of reasons why we shouldn't. But I think her real objection comes from her emotional connection with the home she lived in from birth through college.

I didn't have that stability when I was young. My family moved five times before I finished college, and that doesn't count two sabbaticals to foreign countries. Our longest stay was eight years at DeTour Village, Michigan in a house that was cold and drafty. It did have good climbing trees, a garage roof we jumped off of (when my parents weren't looking), a raised front porch with enough room underneath to play house, and an enclosed back porch that was a great place for curling up with a book. But even the house at DeTour didn't create an emotional connection.

That privilege belonged to my grandparents' house in Iowa, shown in the three pictures with this post.

My mother grew up on a farm, and we visited at least once a year. I loved that old farmhouse. I even loved the wall plates for the lights, which used buttons instead of the switches we see today. You would press one button to turn the lights on and a second button to turn the lights off. I was fascinated.

The house wasn't perfect, of course. The small kitchen and the only bathroom (cramped, with a shower but no tub) were located in the original one-story structure at the rear of the house and shared the space with a separate dining room. But the two-story part had plenty of large rooms, and I would have loved to turn one of the four upstairs bedrooms and my grandfather's main-floor bedroom into full baths. Then I could have knocked out the existing bathroom and used that square footage to expand the kitchen. After the remodeling, it would truly have been my dream house.

I knew, of course, that my fantasy was just that. The location simply wasn't realistic for my career goals, and when my grandparents grew older and eventually moved in with one of my aunts, the house fell into disrepair. In the end, the only choice was to raze it.

But I miss that old house just as Caroline will miss this one if we move out. Even though she now owns her own home and rarely has a chance to come back here for a visit, this house will always have a place in her heart.

Because familiarity breeds comfort.

Give the Devil His Due

2011-10-31T00:01:00.003-05:00

I haven't dressed up for Halloween in years--not until Saturday, when my writers' group read at the Lake County Library. None of my writings fit the theme, so I volunteered to get Edgar Allan Poe to emcee the event.

On the way to the library, I tuned into Christian radio station WMBI and listened to the host and his guest discuss whether Christians should participate in Halloween. Nobody asked that question when the guest was a child or when I was growing up. My brothers and I always dressed up and went trick-or-treating on Halloween, and my minister father never called it a pagan holiday or worried about its effect on our young minds. It just wasn't an issue in those days.

I admit it. I let my children dress up and go trick-or-treating when they were young, and I hand out candy every year. For me, it's still a non-issue.

In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." So yes, we do need to give the devil his due. But what is his due?

My edition of The Screwtape Letters includes quotes by Martin Luther and Sir Thomas More. According to Luther, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." And to shorten the Thomas More quote, "The devil . . . cannot endure to be mocked."

Are we really showing an unhealthy interest in the devil when we let our children go trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or even when we dress them in red suits with horns and a tail and give them a pitchfork to carry? If it has any meaning at all (and for most people it doesn't), isn't it closer to scorn and mockery?

Yes, Satan is a force to be reckoned with, and both Christians and non-Christians should be on guard against him. But his influence is more subtle than what occurs on Halloween.

Christians give the devil too much due when we forget that there are three things he is not. He is not omnipresent (God allows Satan to walk this earth but he cannot enter heaven without God's permission); he is not omniscient, or he would have known better than to enter Judas and bring about his own defeat; and he is not omnipotent. God, and only God, is in control. When we view Halloween as a threat, we take Satan too seriously.

So give the devil his due--but no more.

Dream Small

2011-10-24T00:01:00.002-05:00

Dream small? If we don't dream, we won't accomplish anything. And don't bigger dreams lead to bigger accomplishments?

Not necessarily. Few people get the chance to be president of the United States or to play in the NBA. If the person who dreams of being president isn't willing to work for it or the basketball player has no talent, then the big dream means less than a small dream that the dreamer can accomplish. Yes, it is good to stretch yourself, but bigger doesn't always mean better. Butterflies add as much joy to our lives as elephants do.

So what brought this on?

Now that Roland and I are empty nesters, we are thinking of making a slight lifestyle change and moving from a house to a condo. I want a dedicated office, Roland wants a place to exercise, and we both want one-story living so we won't have to worry about stairs when we get older. But unlike many of the home buyers on HGTV's Househunters, 2000-3000 square feet isn't one of our requirements. Neither is a jetted tub or a walk-in closet, although we will take them if we can get them.

A large home isn't in our budget, and it isn't our dream, either. Why pay for square footage we would rarely use? Our dream is small, but it is also realistic.

That doesn't mean I don't have any big dreams. I aspire to write the great American novel and make the New York Times bestseller list. But it will never happen unless I put in the time and effort to write.

Because all dreams--big or small--need a touch of realism.

Taps for Sailing Season

2011-10-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky,
All is well, God is nigh.

Another sailing season is over. A week ago, Roland and I took the wings off our bird as we stripped her of her sails. Yesterday, we emptied her stomach by packing up dishes and cushions and other sailing gear. And on Friday, we will lift Freizeit from her nest and bury her for the winter.

Well, not quite. Our bird doesn't die and it doesn't fly south for the winter, but it does hibernate.

Sort of like a phoenix.

No, Freizeit doesn't combust. Still, I feel a bit like the children in Edith Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet saying goodbye to their beloved feathery friend as he left them with these words:

"The sorrows of youth soon appear but as dreams."

Right now, the end of sailing season is a sorrow. Soon, it will become more like a dream as our thoughts turn to Thanksgiving and Advent and Christmas and Valentine's Day and Lent and Easter.

Then an egg will appear in the ashes, and Freizeit will rise again.

My Favorite Season

2011-10-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

Autumn is my favorite time of year. An artist's palate filled with shades of orange, yellow, and red. Crisp air tickling my nose, tantalizing my tongue, and caressing my skin. Anticipation of upcoming holidays with family and friends.

But there are other people who capture the feeling better than I can. So today I'm going to yield the floor to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African-American poet born shortly after the Civil War ended.

Merry Autumn, by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,--these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.

Such principles are most absurd--
I care not who first taught 'em;
There's nothing known to beast or bird
To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn time, when grief holds sway,
With countenance distressing,
You'll note the more of black and gray
Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;
The sky is blue and mellow;
And e'en the grasses turn the ground
From modest green to yellow.

The seed burs all with laughter crack
On featherweed and jimson;
And leaves that should be dressed in black
Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;
A singing bird comes after;
And Nature, all from earth to sky,
Is bubbling o'er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,
Like sparkling little lasses;
The sunlight runs along the hills,
And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun
It really can't contain it;
And streams of mirth so freely run
The heavens seem to rain it.

Don't talk to me of solemn days
In autumn's time of splendor,
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it's the climax of the year,--
The highest time of living!--
Till naturally its bursting cheer
Just melts into thanksgiving.

I couldn't have said it better.

Miracles Still Happen

2011-10-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

I should be dead.

Thursday night I was cruising down an unlighted expressway at the 70-mile-an-hour speed limit. Suddenly a dark car loomed in front of me, parked sideways across my lane of traffic. In the split second before the impact, I thought I was going to die. As our cars collided, mine continued moving forward through an inky blue mist, which must have been pieces of the other car flying into the air. Then my air bag deployed and my Honda Accord coasted to a stop on the right shoulder, safely out of the way of oncoming vehicles.

And I realized that I was not only alive but virtually unhurt.

Not something I can say about my car.

This picture shows the front right of the car while it was sitting on the bed of the truck that came to haul it away. Unfortunately, it was dark and the only camera I had with me was the one on my cell phone. But maybe you can see a little of the damage from this photo.

The seat belt (which I always wear), the air bag, and the safety engineering of the car had a lot to do with saving my life. Although the front end was almost unrecognizable, the damage stopped far short of the passenger compartment. Thank you, Honda engineers and U.S. safety standards.

But the fact that I was able to walk away? That was a miracle that can only be attributed to God. He obviously has something left for me to do before I die.

The other miracle is that no one was in the other vehicle at the time. Just minutes before, the driver hit a deer and his car spun sideways across the freeway. It isn't a heavily traveled road, and the light traffic gave him time to flee from his automobile before another car (mine) collided with it.

So even though his car ended up looking like a skeleton with shattered bones, my sprained wrist was the worst of the injuries, and that came from the air bag rather than the actual collision. Not that I'm complaining. A sprained wrist is nothing compared to what could have happened without the air bag.

At the time of this post, I'm still waiting for my insurance company to tell me whether it considers the car totaled or just in really bad shape. However, it was bad enough in my eyes that I went out and replaced it with another Honda Accord. And what they had in stock was the same color, so no one can tell I bought a new car. Oh well.

For those of you who may ask, no, my life did not flash before my eyes. I didn't have time to hit the brakes, and I didn't even have time to feel afraid. But I don't fear death, anyway, so I am more likely to have worried about how it would affect my family. And although I am prepared for death, I'd rather it didn't happen yet. So I praise God that I'm still here.

Some people would call it luck, but I call it a miracle.

Tribute to the One-Room Schoolhouse

2011-09-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

My mother and her mother attended the same one-room school: District No. 1 in Danville, Iowa. This picture was taken in 1977, long after Mama's school days. By that time, the building had been decommissioned as a school and converted into a house.

When Grandma went to No. 1 in the late 1800s, it was a true one-room school. By the mid 1920s, when Mama started, the big room had been partitioned into two. But since the smaller room was merely a foyer, the students still shared a single classroom.

For those of us who never went to a one-room school, there is something romantic about the idea, and my mother has good memories of her early school years. Still, I'm not sure I want to go back to the days of coal stoves and kerosene lamps and outdoor toilets.

Although Grandma never went farther than her classes at No. 1, she got a good education there and excelled in arithmetic and algebra. My grandfather attended a different rural school until he was twenty and left after eighth grade. That was a common situation for farm boys, whose duties often kept them out of school. But their persistence shows how much they valued education.

So why am I reminiscing about this now? Mostly because my mother recently received an inquiry from the current owner of No. 1, who wanted to know what the building looked like when it was still a school.

There is another reason, though. Mama believes she got a good education at her one-room school, where teachers cared about teaching and students were willing to learn. (Mama went on to high school and college and eventually became a teacher herself.) In contrast, my husband teaches in a "modern" city school and frequently complains that some teachers don't teach and many students don't want to learn.

Of course, the old rural schools didn't always do the job well, either. Teachers could be hard to find, especially for the small schools in isolated areas, and students didn't always pay attention in class. Still, there were fewer distractions, and the pupils went to learn rather than to play football or basketball.

And sometimes I wonder if this country wouldn't be better off with a few more one-room schoolhouses.

It's Easy to Believe a Lie

2011-09-19T00:01:00.001-05:00

Why do people believe lies that should be easy to detect? Usually, it is because the lies promise things the listeners want badly.

When we were cleaning out my mother's house, I came across Hansi: The Girl Who Loved the Swastika. Now out of print, the book is a memoir by Maria Anne Hirschmann, who was known as Hansi while a dedicated member of Hitler's elite Youth Corps.

Maria grew up in a foster home, and although her foster mother was loving, her foster father was cold. As a teenager, she just wanted to belong. When she was selected to attend one of Hitler's new Nazi schools, she thought her dream had come true.

Maria's foster mother was a devoted Christian, and when Maria left for Hitler's school, her mother said, "Don't ever forget Jesus." So Maria was confused by many of the things she learned at school. Among other things, she wondered if it was wrong to pray.

When Maria asked a beloved teacher about prayer, the teacher gave her a copy of Wanderer Between Two Worlds by a Nazi writer. The author's mother had taught him to pray for protection, so he decided to see what would happen if he didn't. After several days without anything tragic happening to him, he decided he didn't need prayer. Maria tried the same experiment with the same result, so she dispensed with prayer, too. It wasn't until years later that she realized the experiment had been deceptive.

Deceptive experiments are also an effective way to convince people to invest in something that sounds too good to be true. In one type of scam, a telephone solicitor would call sixteen people and tell them that the solicitor could predict the direction the futures market was going. Of course the people who received the calls were skeptical, so the solicitor said he didn't want them investing yet: he just wanted them to give him a chance to prove himself.

The swindler told eight people that the price of heating oil would go up the next day, and he told the other eight that the price would go down. The next evening he called the eight he had given the correct "prediction." But he still told them he didn't want them investing yet. Then he told four that the price would go up the following day, and he told four that the price would go down. By the time he narrowed the field to two victims, they threw their money at him.

Why are people so willing to believe? Usually, it's because they long for what the lie offers. The people who fell for the investment scam thought money would solve their problems, and they wanted to believe they had found the path to material riches. Instead, they lost the money they already had.

Maria wanted to belong, and she thought that giving up God would get her there. But after the Nazi regime fell, she discovered she had given up the thing that mattered most.

Satan used this same ploy in the Garden of Eden. He told Eve that if she ate from the tree in the center of the garden, she would be like God. But, having been made in God's image, she already had what Satan promised. No, she was not God, but she was as much like Him as she would ever be. Satan created a longing for something more, and when Eve listened to the lie, she tarnished God's image in her.

When we let our longing rule our heads, we make ourselves gullible.

Because it's easy to believe a lie.

Remembering

2011-09-12T00:01:00.000-05:00

On November 21, 2008, I stood in a building overlooking the World Trade Center site and took this picture of the construction work going on where the Twin Towers once stood. It wasn't the first time I'd seen the site since 9-11, but it may have been the first time I had a camera with me.

The next day I was in New Jersey visiting my daughter, and she took me to the September 11 memorial at Eagle Rock Reservation. Although it doesn't show up well in this picture, the memorial has a fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline. A skyline that is missing its once-defining twin feature.

For me, September 11, 2001 began in a conference room in Chicago waiting for the weekly management meeting to start. As usual, we had a video hook-up with our New York office, located only a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center. It was around 8:00 a.m. Chicago time when the manager of our New York office asked if we had heard anything about a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. At the time, everyone thought it was a small, private plane that had strayed off course.

A few minutes later, Joe received a message, said that the building was being evacuated, and left abruptly. The New York staff got out safely with no physical injuries, but they spent months in temporary work quarters before being given the okay to return to the building.

Our building in Chicago was evacuated, too, because of its proximity to the Sears Tower. I got home just after noon and sent an e-mail to my family assuring them that I was not in New York on business. But it wasn't until I got a frantic call from my daughter, who was away at college, that I realized I should have used the telephone rather than just sending an e-mail.

My company used to hold two Board meetings a year at Windows on the World at the top of Tower 1, and I usually went. I even got stuck on an elevator on my way up to one. I sometimes browsed the shops in the concourse, and I had recently purchased a trench coat at a Banana Republic store that vanished with the towers.

Of course, it wasn't the loss of the buildings and the stores that made the day so tragic. Bricks and mortar and steel and glass can't feel, and they are alive only in a metaphorical sense. The tragedy comes from the 3,000 people who died and the countless others who lost a friend or a family member or their sense of security

Still, the amazing thing about 9-11 is not how many people died but how many lived. Cantor lost about 800 of its 1,000 employees (the other 200 apparently weren't in the building), but Morgan Stanley lost only a handful of the almost 4,000 employees working in the middle floors of Tower 2.

Let us remember the living and the dead and all who were touched by the events of September 11, 2001.

I, for one, will never forget.

Laboring Under the Sea

2011-09-05T00:01:00.001-05:00

Submarines usually make people think of Memorial Day more than Labor Day. Still, the soldiers and sailors of World War II were laborers, too.

The picture is the USS Silversides submarine, which Roland and I passed as we sailed through the channel at Muskegon, Michigan.* The next morning we walked to its mooring at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum.

We started in the land part of the museum, where we found equipment from World War II submarines and exhibits on submarine history. This is the only time during our vacation that I asked Roland to take a picture of me. Here I am as the periscope lady. (And yes, I maintained that sunburn during the entire trip.)

After we were done with the museum building, we boarded the USS Silversides. She is credited with sinking 30 Japanese vessels during World War II and damaging at least 14 others. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, the submarine was a tight fit for the 80 men who lived and worked on it. Not the place for a claustrophobic sailor.

Nor for someone who is 6'5", as Roland is. This picture shows him entering a hatch. Yes, I said entering. He climbed through it backwards.

The submariners used every inch of space. The men who manned the torpedoes even slept with them. If you look closely at the next picture, you can see the torpedoes over the bunks. The black hole in the middle is the torpedo tube for firing them.

Whatever could go wrong, would, so the crew had to cram the submarine with spare parts. And practically every other inch of wall space contained instruments. Here are just a few of them.

We visited one more piece of history before leaving the museum. The last picture shows the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter McLane, which patrolled the Alaskan coast during World War II. It is less than half the size of the Silversides, but the 30 men it carried had a lot more room to stretch their legs.

Happy Labor Day to everyone who works for a living, and that includes stay-at-home moms and dads. But I'm sending a special holiday greeting to those who currently labor in the military and to the veterans who labored there in the past.

Thank you for serving.

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*All pictures in this post are copyright 2011 by Kathryn Page Camp.

A Grand Old Lady

2011-08-29T00:01:00.001-05:00

By tradition, ships are always female. And the best-dressed ships are the ones that carry passengers on multi-day trips.

Roland and I toured the S.S. Keewatin while our own boat was docked in Douglas, Michigan. (S.S. stands for steamship.) The Keewatin carried passengers across the Great Lakes from 1908 through 1965 and is now a museum.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad commissioned and operated the Keewatin. The company had railroad terminals at ports along Lake Superior and later on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay. The most direct route between them was over the water, but nobody could figure out how to lay tracks there. So the company had the Keewatin built to transport passengers from one terminal to another.

What did Roland and I learn from our tour of the passenger ship? First, we learned that people can do the seemingly impossible if they plan well enough. The Keewatin was built in Scotland for use on the Great Lakes, but there was a problem. The Canadian Pacific Railroad wanted a 350-foot boat. That made it too long to fit through the Welland Canal, which connected Lake Ontario with Lake Erie, so each half was built to float on its own. When the Keewatin reached the canal, workmen cut it in two. Once the sections were safely in Lake Erie, workmen re-joined the halves. This 1907 picture shows the midsection while the two halves were separated.

Second, the Keewatin told us that people haven't changed much in 100 years. We still like to relax in luxury while traveling, and the Keewatin's public areas look a lot like today's cruise ships. Here are two pictures.* (And no, that isn't a ghost in the dining room. It's just a headless mannequin dressed as a waiter.)

On the other hand, the cabins weren't as roomy as we expect today. Here is a Keewatin stateroom.

Like lighthouses, ships have their own personalities. One unique feature of the Keewatin is this planter . . .

that becomes a ceiling for the hallway below it.

The pots were nailed down to keep them from falling on unsuspecting passengers in rough seas. Still, I don't want to be underneath when the plants are being watered.

If you find yourself in the Saugatuck-Douglas area, be sure to see this grand old lady.

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Big Ships in Small Places

2011-08-22T00:01:00.001-05:00

Help! The S.S. Badger is running us down!

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. The largest car ferry on Lake Michigan was behind us in a narrow channel, and it made us nervous. But the ferry captain had enough room to pass, and he did.

I don't know why we didn't plan more carefully. We had seen the Badger arrive the night before and knew it was large and impressive. We also knew the Badger left its berth at 8:00 a.m., heading from Ludington, Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. But we wanted to sail north to see Big Sable Point Lighthouse, and that's the time we chose to leave.

We were just entering the channel when I heard the chains rattle as the Badger raised its anchor. And then it was behind us. I barely had time to snap this picture before Roland sent me up to the bow to watch for rocks while he steered as close to the edge of the channel as he dared.*

And then it was safely past us. I'm sure we weren't the first sailboat to try to beat the Badger out, and the captain knew what he was doing. Still, if there is a next time, we will make sure we don't cut it that close.

Here is another picture of the Badger, taken from shore the evening before. You can see how narrow the channel is.

The next afternoon we arrived at Muskegon at the same time as the Lake Express car ferry was leaving for Milwaukee. Fortunately, we saw it coming along the channel before we entered, so we waited in the basin inside the seawall until the ferry passed. The recreational vehicle in this picture obviously didn't mind sharing the channel with the larger boat.

The two ferries are quite different. The S.S. Badger is a steamship that carries 600 passengers and 180 vehicles (including RVs), while Lake Express operates a modern, high-speed ferry that carries 42 cars and 12 motorcycles. The Badger takes 4 hours for a 60-mile trip and offers a stateroom option for those passengers wanting privacy, while the Lake Express ferry takes 2 1/2 hours for a 90-mile trip and provides only group seating. If my calculations are correct, the Badger costs approximately $250 ($300 with the stateroom option) one-way for a family of four with a car and two children between 5 and 15, and Lake Express costs around $350 to $400 (depending on booking date) for the same family.

Both ferries are good options for people who want to cut miles off their trips from Michigan to Wisconsin or Wisconsin to Michigan. The drive around the bottom of Lake Michigan and through Chicago is 400 miles if going between Ludington and Manitowoc and 275 miles if going between Muskegon and Milwaukee.

While we were in Ludington, I overheard two middle-age couples talking about the Badger. They were questioning why people would pay to take a boat that billowed smoke when there were other options. Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to miss out on Chicago, which is rich with cultural heritage and wonderful places to go and see. Given the choice between the Badger and the Lake Express ferry, though, I'd rather cross Lake Michigan on the Badger. Aside from the cheaper price, a steamship ride is just more romantic. At least that's my opinion.

Ferries weren't the only big ships we came across in a small space. On our way home, we spent two nights at the Grand Haven Municipal Marina in a slip that was right on the Grand River channel. We went to bed sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. the second night because we wanted to get an early start in the morning. Before we could fall asleep, however, we heard a ship's horn very close by. Roland rushed up to the cockpit, and then I heard "Oh, wow," followed by, "Kathryn, come out here."

A lake freighter was moving along the river right in front of us, presumably making its way to the power plant a little farther in. The sun had already set and the light was fading fast, but I ran inside and got my camera anyway. Here is the result of my low-light photography.

Big ships in small spaces can be both awesome and scary, but they make for interesting experiences and great pictures.

I'm glad I didn't miss them.

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* All pictures in this post are copyright 2011 by Kathryn Page Camp.

Lighting the Way

2011-08-15T00:01:00.002-05:00

For centuries, lighthouses have warned sailors that they are close to land or a reef, keeping boats from running aground and joining the shipwreck statistics. Lighthouses are not only vital to the safety of water traffic but are also scenic. And they were one of the highlights of our sail up the eastern shores of Lake Michigan last month.

The original lights were called lighthouses because they provided lodging for the lighthouse keeper and his family. Back in those days, the keeper needed to be on the premises to trim the wicks, replenish the fuel that kept the light burning, and do other maintenance work. Now that the lights are automated, they no longer require a resident lighthouse keeper. The newer ones don't include a house but do make attractive additions to the landscape.

Lighthouses are more than that, though. Even with today's reliance on GPS and other modern inventions, these lights still shine through the dark and the fog to guide ships away from rocks and shoals and mark the entrances to rivers and harbors. And that's a good thing. Otherwise, I shudder to think were we would be if our GPS failed in low visibility.

During our trip, I noticed that each light has its own character. The picture at the top shows the Holland Harbor Lighthouse, affectionately nicknamed "Big Red."* None of the other lights we saw on our vacation had the same look as Big Red. Or the same look as any other light or group of lights. Even the three lights that were similar in shape and color were placed in different contexts.

The difference in character is part of their charm. At least that's my opinion. See if you agree.

St. Joseph North Pier Inner and Outer Lights

South Haven Pierhead Light (at the end of the pier)

Grand Haven South Pier and Pierhead Inner Lights

Coast Guard Station with Muskegon South Pier and Breakwater Light

White River Light Station--the only one no longer in operation

Little Sable Point Lighthouse

Ludington North Breakwater Light

Big Sable Point Lighthouse

Although South Haven, Grand Haven, and Muskegon all have round red silos on the south pier, those lights still have individual characters. The South Haven light stands a solitary vigil at the end of the pier, the Grand Haven light yields pride of place to the imposing building that houses a fog signal (as well as a light), and the Muskegon light stands sentinel between the Coast Guard Station and the breakwater light.

Unfortunately, the White River Light Station was the only place we went into. Although Big Sable and Little Sable are open to the public, they are only accessible by land, and they were both too far away to hike or bike. So we had to be satisfied with seeing them from the lake.

The way they were meant to be seen.

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Pure Michigan

2011-08-08T00:01:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I stole the title from Michigan's tourism ads. To ensure that the theft is legal, I'll make the following disclaimers: I am not affiliated with the State of Michigan (except as a former resident and a frequent visitor), and it does not endorse my blog or any post. Even so, I bet it won't object to what I say.

In July, Roland and I took a three-week sailing vacation along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Actually, the winds didn't cooperate, so it was more of a motoring vacation. But we port-hopped up to Ludington and back again. (The picture shows our 34-foot sailboat, Freizeit, resting at White Lake Yacht Club.)

The highlights of our trip were lighthouses, ferries, and World War II history, which I will talk about in later posts. Western Michigan is also known for its beaches, but although we saw a number from the lake, we didn't have time to visit them on this trip. Still, I know from experience that Ottawa Beach at the Holland State Park is a great place to swim and sun, and the campground is just steps away. Some of the other inviting beaches we saw from the water are South Beach at South Haven, Oval Beach at Saugatuck, Grand Haven State Park at Grand Haven, and Pere Marquette Beach at Muskegon.

For those of you who are considering your own trip (by water or by land), here is a pictorial look at other aspects of Pure Michigan that we enjoyed along the way.*

At South Haven, I walked out to the end of the south pier and was awed by the sunset.

At Saugatuck, we watched the recreation occurring in the harbor. (Yes, there were plenty of motor boats there, too, but we're sailors, after all.)

At Grand Haven, we waited until the sun went down and took in a performance of the Musical Fountain while relaxing in Freizeit's cockpit.

At Ludington, we wandered around Waterfront Park and delighted in the many sculptures. This one is "Follow the Leader" by W. Stanley Proctor.

And when high waves kept us in Muskegon for an extra day, we toured the Hackley and Hume homes, where lumber barons and partners Charles H. Hackley and Thomas Hume lived. The picture is the Hume house.

As I said, the highlights are still to come. Even so, these are all good ways to spend your time when visiting Pure Michigan.

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The Possessions Shuffle

2011-08-01T00:01:00.003-05:00

We all get rid of our possessions sooner or later. For some, the major purge comes when we go to our final home, where either God or Satan will take care of us. For others, it happens in stages.

On Roland and my trip to Michigan last month, we joined my mother, my two brothers, and my sister-in-law in cleaning out my mother's house. Mama has mostly recovered from her recent strokes, but at 92 she's decided to give up her house and move to an assisted living facility closer to her children.

My parents lived in the same house since my (now deceased) father retired in 1976, so they had a lot of stuff. I'm guessing it was about average for elderly people who have been in their home a long time--more than some, and not as much as others. But we filled a twenty-cubic-yard dumpster with the items that weren't worth keeping or giving away.

Junk went into the dumpster, and many things were set aside to donate, including a library's worth of books we had already picked over. (The Pages always live up to their name.) Then there was the stuff that had sentimental or practical value.

I've heard horror stories about families splitting up while dividing their parents' belongings. That didn't happen to us.

Mama had already told us how her more valuable jewelry was to be distributed, and one of the reasons my brothers and I work so well together is that we recognize that everything belongs to Mama and is hers to dispose of as she wishes. Nobody feels entitled to any of it.

I'll use Mama's piano as an example.

Much of Mama's furniture has a story behind it, which may be an association with her family or my parents' early marriage. But although it's nice furniture, I don't have room for any of it. My brothers do, and they are taking several of the pieces that Mama isn't moving with her. The piano has neither associations nor significant value, but it is the only piece of furniture I wanted, and I wanted it for my daughter.

My daughter plays for recreation, while my niece has a degree in music. So if Mama had given her piano to one of her granddaughters, she would probably have chosen my niece. But that isn't the path the piano took. Since the piano was the only piece of furniture I asked for, Mama let me have it even though she knew it would end up in my daughter's house rather than my niece's apartment. But the point is that there was no resentment from my brother's family when the piano went to Caroline instead of Rachel.

When we went through things at the house last month, Mama was there. If she said something should go to a particular person, it did (if that person wanted it). If Mama didn't care and more than one person wanted a particular item, we talked it through. If only one person wanted something, that person got it. My younger brother ended up with the most and I ended up with the least, but I was satisfied. I got what I cared about, and we worked everything out without fighting. That's more important than apportioning Mama's household goods equally.

None of Mama's possessions belonged to her children until she gave them to us, and that's how it should be. Goods may help create memories, but the memories aren't locked up in those things. Even monetary value is irrelevant in the long run. Maintaining good family relationships is more important than satisfying any feeling of "entitlement."

A lesson I hope my children remember when our time comes.

An Excursion Gone Wrong

2011-07-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Here is another true story gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in 1936-1940. I cleaned up a few typos but did not otherwise change the wording in the original manuscript.

The narrator is Mrs. Annie Hightower, who lived in Fort Worth, Texas at the time of the interview. This event occurred when she was a child in Arkansas.

During 1870, rumor had it that a railroad was going to be built into Benton; and did during the 12 months following. I shall never forget our anticipation of that coming event. We children pestered mother every day for an explanation of a railroad and a train. It was to us the wonder of all wonders. Mother promised to take us to Benton the day the first train came in, and she did.

On the day of the big event, the team of horses were hitched to the wagon and we started before daylight on our 20 mile ride to see a railroad and its train. We females carried along our calico dresses, made from the bolt of calico father had bought, which was the proper dress for the occasion. Those dresses were only worn on special occasions. For instance, if we were called upon to act on a reception committee to welcome some high official. When we were about a mile from town, we changed from our home-spun to the calico and arrived in town properly attired.

We drove up to near the depot where we tied the team to a sapling, then joined a crowd of people on the platform who were waiting for the train's arrival. It was an anxious wait, but finally the smoke from the engine was sighted and there went up a chorus of voices yelling, "there she comes!" The train, which was an engine, several box cars and a caboose, came rolling up to the depot. To us, it was a majestic thing. But when it reached the platform over half the people left the platform on a run, and we Heckman children were in the crowd of runners. No sir, we wouldn't take any chances with that engine staying on the track or not bursting. The way the train was swaying on that newly layed track and the engine popping off steam, indicated to us the darn thing was about to destroy everything around there. So our better judgment and common sense told us to give the contrivance plenty of room.

Our team, which had been raised in the hills and valleys of Saline county like us folks, had never seen a train, and the team used the same kind of common sense that we humans did. There was a difference, however, in that the team didn't consider the wagon, harness, and our lunch which was in the wagon. The team reared back a couple times which put such a strain on the tie ropes that it caused the ties to break, and the horses started for some other place going at their best speed.

The result of that team's run was a broken wagon and harness, beyond repair. That was a disaster for mother to face. However, the calamity for us children was the loss of the lunch. Mother had roasted an excellent fat young turkey hen with dressing. She had, also, baked a raspberry pie, some strawberry preserve tarts, and made some vegetable salad, all of which was to be enjoyed under the shade of a tree after the train's arrival. In addition, mother had promised to buy each of us a bottle of red pop. Being deprived of the pop by the run-away was the crushing misfortune for us children, because red pop, those days, was the greatest treat children could receive.

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NOTE: The photograph (which is actually the railroad station at Coal Creek, Colorado) is from the Denver Public Library Collection (Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library) and was taken by Louis Charles McClure sometime around 1915.

The Federal Writers' Project interviews are government-created documents and are available on the Library of Congress' website. WPA Life Histories. The quoted passage is from an interview with Annie Hightower, Item 10 of 445 in the Texas section of the American Life History manuscripts.

Southern Gallantry

2011-07-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

Did you know that Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur, was the Territorial Governor of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881? He figures prominently in this apparently true story gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in 1936-1940. The narrator is Mrs. Pauline Meyer.

My husband had just returned from a hunting trip when a government wagon with four handsome mules drew up in front of the house. It was Governor Wallace's outfit. It was a chilly October day and as the sun went down it grew chilly enough for a fire. I was amused by the Governor's behavior which exemplified our idea of southern gallantry. First I obtained the necessary kindling and other necessities for the fire. These I placed in position, ready for lighting. All this time Governor had been watching me as I went about the task. Then, just as I started to strike a match to light the blaze, Lew Wallace took the match from my fingers.

"Allow me," said he with a slight bow. "No lady has yet lit a fire while I was in the room." And with that he struck the match and set it to the paper beneath the kindling. He made quite a ceremony of the match-striking.

After Lew Wallace had gone I reminded my husband of his "gallant" act.

"Huh--" my husband scoffed jokingly. "If he was so gallant as all that, why in thunder didn't he carry in an armload of kindling for you! He sat there and let you do all the work, then he ups and strikes the match with a big-to-do, just as if he'd done something wonderful."

Of course I couldn't help but agree with my husband, though of course I never let him know it.

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NOTE: I copied the picture from the Wikipedia article on Lew Wallace. I have no idea who the photographer was, but the photograph is in the public domain because of its age.

The Federal Writers' Project interviews are government-created documents and are available on the Library of Congress' website. WPA Life Histories. The quoted passage is from "Early Days in Albuquerque," Item 58 of 218 in the New Mexico Section of the American Life History manuscripts.

They Weren't All Pullman Cars

2011-07-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

I recently discovered a website with life stories gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in 1936-1940, mostly through interviews with the people who lived the stories. I'll spend the next several weeks sharing some of the more interesting ones.

Did you know that George Pullman's sleepers weren't the only ones on the tracks? Here is an account of traveling from Kansas to California in a family tourist coach. The narrator is Mrs. Hortense Watkins of Portland, Oregon.

I am hardly what you would call a pioneer, since it was only as far back as 1883 that I came to Oregon, and not in a covered wagon. But even the way I came with my four children is something of a day that is no more. We came from Kansas to Oregon by way of California, in what was known as a family tourist coach. It took ten days at that time from Kansas to California. I have forgotten just what the railway fare was, but I do remember that children under twelve were half fare, and in some manner I had an extra half. So when a fellow passenger who had six children and not tickets enough to go around found herself in a quandary after boarding the train, I took the surplus youngster on with my extra half. Every time we had a new conductor he would say something about how little that child resembled the rest of my brood, for he was tow-headed and all of mine were dark. We had quite a time, but finally got through all right, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the poor woman and all her six reached their destination.

Those tourist cars weren't very pleasant traveling, but I guess they were a lot better than six months of oxen and wagon at that. We had to furnish our own bedding, even the mattresses, which were made of ticking filled with straw, so they could be thrown away at the end. We had to furnish our own food too. There was a stove in the corner of one end, where we women cooked. I have forgotten just how many were in the car, but I do remember there were sixteen children, so you can imagine the hubbub. This sounds like an old fashioned story, but it's true. The train went so slowly in places that once when one of the men had his hat blow off, he jumped off, caught his hat and got on the train again without stopping. There were two old men that I cooked for. One of them, who wore a tall, silk, stovepipe hat, had his overcoat stolen just before he got on the train, so I loaned him a shawl, which he wore all the time. We had our own brooms, with which we had to sweep the car too. I don't think Heaven can look more beautiful to me than Southern California, when we finally got there.

Not the most comfortable trip, but it sounds a lot better than traveling by covered wagon. And Mrs. Watkins was one of the lucky ones. Her husband was a lawyer, and they could afford the fare to ride in a tourist car.

But it was nothing like a Pullman.

__________
NOTE: The photograph is from the Denver Public Library Collection (Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library) and was taken by H.S. Poley sometime between 1895 and 1900.

The Federal Writers' Project interviews are government-created documents and are available on the Library of Congress' website. WPA Life Histories. The quoted passage is from "Early Railroad Travel," Item 18 of 81 in the Oregon section of the American Life History manuscripts.

A Birthday Tribute

2011-07-04T00:01:00.002-05:00

During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key stood on the deck of a ship in Baltimore Harbor while the British bombarded Fort McHenry. All that night, Key strained to see if the American flag still flew over the fort, but he didn't know the outcome of the battle until dawn. That's when he wrote "Defense of Fort McHenry," which was later set to music and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner." You probably have the first verse memorized, but have you heard or do you remember the other three?

In honor of our country's birthday, here are all four stanzas.

     Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light
     What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
     Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
     O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
     And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
     Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
     Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
     O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

     On the shore, dimply seen through the mists of the deep,
     Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
     What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
     As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
     Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
     In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
     'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
     O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

     And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
     That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
     A home and a country should leave us no more!
     Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
     No refuge could save the hireling and slave
     From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
     And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
     O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

     Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
     Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
     Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
     Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
     Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
     And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
     And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
     O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Free as the Wind

2011-06-27T07:14:00.000-05:00

In former times, boaters relied on the wind to get them where they were going.

Some of us still do.

The sailboats were out in force on Sunday, and we were among them. But even though the weather was perfect, the motorboats were absent. I think I saw one for every five or six sailboats.

With the high price of gas, many people at our marina use their motorboats as summer homes but rarely go out on the water. One October a few years back, we filled our tank to replace the four gallons we had used getting into and out of the marina during the season. At the next pump, a man with a fancy motorboat watched the numbers rise into the hundreds of dollars.

Sailors don't understand motorboaters any more than Cubs fans understand White Sox fans, and vice versa.

It's the difference between a slow but peaceful ride and a fast but noisy one, and between an afternoon on the lake and an afternoon at the dock.

It may take us longer to get somewhere, but at least we go.

Because our fuel is free.

An Empty Nest for Father's Day

2011-06-20T00:01:00.001-05:00

Roland and I have always wanted to be empty nesters.

It isn't that we don't love our children or wanted them to leave before they graduated from high school. (Although there were times during their terrible twos and pre-teen years when I was tempted.) But empty-nesting has always been our long-term goal.

My parents raised their children to follow Christ, but their secondary goal was to make us independent of everyone except God. That's what Roland and I want for our children, too, and we worked toward those goals from the beginning.

There were times when I wondered if we were too successful in reaching the second goal. Caroline was six or seven when she went to camp for the first time, and the weekend wasn't long enough for her. When I arrived to pick her up, she didn't want to leave. I didn't know whether to be hurt that my daughter didn't need me or to rejoice that she was learning to be independent.

(Apparently Caroline knew best. She returned to Camp Lutherhaven year after year and met her husband while they were both counselors there.)

John is different. Although he went to camp and on youth trips, he was less adventuresome than Caroline. I guess we shouldn't have been surprised when he returned home, but that wasn't our goal.

So Roland and I were happy when John joined the Navy. Maybe this time it will stick.

Because we really want to be empty nesters.

Climb Every Mountain

2011-06-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

John W. Campbell, the editor of a well-known science fiction magazine, said, "The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home."

I was reminded of the Campbell quote last month when I overheard an editor at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. She said that most of the people she asks to send her a proposal never do: a comment I have heard many times at writers conferences.

It's so hard to find a publisher who will even unlock the door, so why would a writer stay outside after a publisher has opened it? Fear of failure--or of success. Or the writer doesn't believe the publisher really meant it.

That's what happened at my first writers' conference in 2004. An editor from The War Cry read the article I handed him, handed it back, and said, "Send me a copy and I'll publish it." As I walked away, I thought, "He wanted to be nice, but he doesn't really mean what he said."

I sent the article in anyway, and he did mean it. Because I took the chance, I sold my first article and got a check for $117.

Ever since, if an editor tells me to send in an article or devotion or book proposal, I do it immediately upon returning home from the conference. (Well, not until after I kiss my husband.)

Do editors always mean it? Some may not, but I don't know until I try. That's what Mother Superior meant when she told Maria to "Climb Every Mountain."*

There's a mountain waiting for you.

Go climb it.
__________
* From The Sound of Music.

D-Day: Death and Deliverance

2011-06-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

June 6, 1944. Allied forces landed in Normandy in a surprise invasion (surprise as to location more than timing). Nearly 10,000 Allied servicemen died in the invasion, but it eventually led to the defeat of the Germans and the deliverance of Europe. And no, the D in D-Day doesn't stand for death or defeat or deliverance. It simply means the day chosen to begin the offensive.

June 2, 2011. (Or fill in the date when your Christian loved one died.) D-Day of another kind. Death and deliverance for a good friend after a long battle with cancer.

When Vacation Bible School starts later this month, it will be the first time in thirty years that Alice hasn't been at the helm. She will also leave a void among the participants in the annual church-sponsored mission trip to teach VBS at Native American villages in Alaska. And I have a hard time realizing that Alice won't be sitting next to me when choir starts up again in the fall. We will all miss her terribly.

June 2, 2011 was the day God chose to defeat Alice's cancer. She no longer lives with the pain and fear it brought. More importantly, everyone who knew her knows that she is worshiping God in heaven, more alive than she ever was during her temporary stay on this earth.

To Don, Mary, and Martha: you will miss your wife and mother terribly at times, and I pray that God comforts you in your loss. But Alice's death was also her deliverance.

For Christians, that's the best news of all.

Waterfall Shopping

2011-05-30T00:01:00.002-05:00

I shop for waterfalls like some women shop for clothes. Since I live in the Chicago area, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, and Nordstrom aren't novelties.

Waterfalls are.

So when I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina several weeks ago, I went waterfall shopping. With my camera as currency and photographs as merchandise, my shopping trip was successful and satisfying. Except that I didn't bargain for the sunburn I also picked up.

Joyce Kilmer said:

          I think that I shall never see
          A poem lovely as a tree.

          . . . .

          Poems are made by fools like me,
          But only God can make a tree.

I feel the same way about waterfalls.

I'm awestruck by God's creation. Man can plant trees, but only God can make them grow. Man can build miniature waterfalls in parks or back yards, but the gravity that makes them work comes from God. And the large, awesome waterfalls like the ones I saw in the Blue Ridge Mountains would be unmanageable and expensive for man to build. Not so for God.

My shopping trip started at Yellowstone Falls in Graveyard Fields, where I made a new friend. We hiked first to the Lower Falls and then to the Upper Falls.

From there I went to Looking Glass Falls, which is a mere 60 feet high. But the rocky mountain setting is totally awe-inspiring. That's Looking Glass Falls in the photo at the top of this post.

Then I went to Hickory Nut Falls and travelled quite a ways to get there, only to find that I would have to travel even farther to see it up close and personal. Since I would have missed the beginning of my conference, I chose not to continue on. I did, however, get a glimpse of the 400-foot waterfall high up in the mountains. I used a telephoto lens to take this picture.

But no picture can truly express the wonders of God's creation. You have to be there.

That's why I go waterfall shopping.

The Parable of the Hikers

2011-05-23T00:01:00.002-05:00

A pair of hikers was walking along a mountain path when a faint "help" drifted up from down below. "Did you hear something?" one of the hikers asked. "No," said the other. So they kept walking.

Ten minutes later, another hiker passed by. He heard a cry for help and glanced over the side, where he saw a teenager sitting on a ledge, crying. The hiker stepped back from the edge before the girl could see him. He adjusted the rope he carried over his shoulder and looked at his watch. Late. So he kept walking.

Another hour passed before a middle-aged man came by, panting and wiping his brow. Hearing a moan, he dropped to his stomach and crept up to the edge of the cliff. When he saw the girl, he cupped his hands. "I'll get a rope and come back." Then he stood up and left.

After forty more minutes, a young woman came along and heard a whimper from below. She also dropped to her stomach and crept to the edge. "What happened?" she asked.

"I got too close and slid down here. Now I can't get back up."

"Does anyone know you're there?"

"Some old man said he was going for a rope, but that was a long time ago. I don't think he's coming back. And even if he does, what if the rope breaks while I'm trying to get back to the top?" The girl started crying again. "I feel so alone."

The woman studied the ledge and thought a moment. "I can't save you without help, but I can comfort you and keep you from feeling alone." Then she looked around until she saw the slide the teenager made on her way down. "There's room for two on that ledge, so I'll join you."

But as she slid down, the woman discovered she couldn't control her speed. She barreled into the girl and sent her into the ravine far below.

When the man returned with the rope and another helper, he crawled to the edge and looked down. Wrinkling his brow, he said, "I'm back, but I thought you were younger."

Tears streamed down the woman's cheeks. "The girl you saw is gone."

"I'm sorry." The man fed the rope over the edge. "At least we can get you out of there."

The woman shook her head. "I don't deserve it."

"None of us do. But since we're here, let's bring you back up."

* * * * *

What does compassion really mean? Is it sympathizing with others, or is it rescuing them from danger? I believe it is the second.

I grew up in the United Presbyterian Church, which eventually morphed into the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). That denomination recently amended its constitution to remove the prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals.

I'll be the first to admit that all Christians are fallible and none have a perfect understanding of the Bible. But passages like Romans 1:26-27 say that same-sex relations are a perversion of God's plans, and there are no exceptions noted. Who are we to add what isn't there?

Even so, I'm not aiming this post at Christians who sincerely believe that homosexual relations are not sinful. Instead, my intended audience is those Christians who have a nagging doubt but think that accepting a sinful lifestyle is a more caring response than rescuing people from it.

I want all sinners to feel welcome in my church. After all, I'm one of them. And if we banned sinners from the pulpit, there'd be no one there.

Still, my job as a Christian is to warn people about sin, not to make them comfortable with it. Removing prohibitions on ordaining practicing homosexuals says, "It's okay." And I'm convinced that it isn't.

Yes, my position may leave someone alone and uncomforted for a while, and she might not believe that I'll return with a rope or that the rope will hold when I do. I can't force anyone to believe that. But isn't it better for someone to live with temporary hopelessness followed by rescue than it is to make the hopelessness permanent? Especially when it could be the difference between life and death.

In Acts 26:18, Paul reports these words Jesus said during Paul's conversion: "I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me." (ESV) It's a good description of our job, too.

That's why I'd rather be compassionate than sympathetic.

Searching for Mr. Right

2011-05-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Roland and I celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary on Thursday. Actually, we celebrated apart, because I was at a writers' conference in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. But our marriage survived the ill-timed separation.

A marriage that almost didn't happen. Although I wanted a husband, I wasn't actively seeking. Part of it was that I didn't know how or where to look. But I also trusted that God would make it happen when the time was right even if I did nothing.

A simple sermon eliminated both excuses.

Have you heard the saying, "God helps them that help themselves"? If you think it comes from the Bible, you're wrong. The proverb dates back to only the 15th or 16th century. But even though it isn't in the Bible, there is some Christian truth in it. In 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Paul says: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." And how many of us think God wants us to sit back and wait for a job without even sending out resumes?

Still, I would rephrase the proverb this way: God wants us to be active participants in His plans for us.

That was the message in the sermon, and the minister used finding a mate as an example. He was a counselor for a computer dating service that catered to Christians and Jews, but many people failed to make use of the service because they expected God to handle everything.

That sermon was my wake-up call. I signed up for the computer dating service and met Roland. He was my second match, and I was his second match. But there is nothing second-class about our marriage.

Thirty-two years of wedded bliss (and a few bumps) that almost didn't happen.

So if you are searching for Mr. or Ms. Right, don't just sit back and wait. Be an active participant in God's plans for you.

Even if His plans turn out to be different from yours.

Her Mother's Daughter

2011-05-09T00:01:00.001-05:00

Several weeks ago I wrote about my son and his father in "His Father's Son." I mentioned that my daughter was her mother's daughter but said I would leave that discussion for another day.

This is another day.

However, this post covers three people rather than two. Not only is my daughter, Caroline, her mother's daughter, but I'm my mother's daughter, too. Three generations sharing the same traits and interests.

First, we are all dedicated Christians. In fact, both my mother and my daughter are minister's wives. I'm glad that distinction skipped a generation, though. It was bad enough being a minister's daughter.

Second, we are three determined women with a strong work ethic.

My mother had a stroke in March. Not a major one, but it weakened her right side and put her in a wheel chair. At 91, she is determined to regain as much mobility as possible and walks a little farther each day.

I went to law school at night while working full-time. The evening program was designed to take four years instead of the three for the full-time day program, and I did it in three-and-a-half.

Caroline lives on the Mississippi River in Southern Illinois. Their house is on higher ground, so although they had puddles in their backyard and a little water in the crawl space from the constant rain, they didn't have to worry about the recent flood waters. At home, that is. Caroline's thirty-minute commute to the school where she teaches became substantially longer when the only direct route was under water, but she didn't even consider calling off. She threw a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and some toiletries in her car and went to work. As far as I know she never had to stay overnight, but she was ready if need be.

Then there is music. My mother taught choral music at the beginning of her teaching career and directed church choirs for much of her adult life. Although she stopped playing in the bell choir a year or two ago, she sang in two choirs right up until she had her stroke. She also played piano well enough to sub for Sunday school and church in a pinch.

I love music, too. I read music and play the piano a little, although not well enough to accompany anyone, and I have sung in choirs most of my life. I also played violin in my later high school and early college years.

Like her grandmother, Caroline plays in a bell choir. Like the two generations before her, she loves to sing and always finds a choir to join. Caroline also plays guitar and piano and has learned the fundamentals of flute and ukulele.

When Caroline was born, I was disappointed that she shared none of my physical characteristics. Her hair, eye color, height, shoe size, and blood type all came from her father. But as she grew older, I discovered that she shared my smile, personality, and interests. Mine, and my mother's.

Because Caroline is her mother's daughter, and I am my mother's daughter, too.

Lessons From the Royal Wedding

2011-05-02T00:01:00.003-05:00

Okay, I admit it. I watched the royal wedding. No, I didn't get up early to see it as it happened, but I did watch a replay that night.

And yes, I thought it was cool. However, it wasn't the dress or the ceremonial details that made it special. Here are two things that did.

The service began with these words regarding marriage:

First, It was ordained for the increase of mankind according to the will of God, and that children might be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy name.

Secondly, It was ordained in order that the natural instincts and affections, implanted by God, should be hallowed and directed aright; that those who are called of God to this holy estate, should continue therein in pureness of living.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.*

What a wonderful definition of marriage as God planned it. Those words also describe my marriage, my parents' marriage, and other good marriages I have observed.

Second, this marriage appears to be founded on love. It shone out of William's and Kate's eyes when they looked at each other.

That's the biggest difference between this wedding and the one that joined Charles and Diana. That was duty. This is love.

Kate will face many of the same pressures Diana did, but, if I read it right, Kate will face them with a loving and supportive husband at her side.

And that could make all the difference.

__________
* "Alternative Service, Series One," from the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer.

The Best Meal of All

2011-04-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Many people leave church on Easter Sunday and head for a family gathering over food. Roland and I usually do, too. But this year our children weren't able to come home, and Roland's sisters went to Missouri to spend the weekend with his parents. Since the choir sang once on Friday and twice on Sunday, I couldn't go, and Roland chose to stay home with me. So we spent Easter alone together.

Well, not really.

We spent Easter morning with God's family and shared a banquet with them. A banquet prepared by God himself.

God invites us to the best meal of our lives. The appetizer was God's promise to send a Messiah, the soup is internal peace, the salad is faithfulness, the main course is Lamb seasoned with love and forgiveness, the dessert is heaven, and the wine that flows freely throughout the meal is grace.

Yes, Roland and I like to spend Easter Sunday with our biological family, but that isn't what Easter is about. It's about being with God's family and sharing the best meal of all. A meal we are still eating.

Won't you join us?

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

A Mountain-Top Experience

2011-04-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

As Christians, we use the phrase "mountain-top experience" to refer to an emotional high: often one where we feel especially close to God.

The Bible is full of mountain-top experiences, literally as well as figuratively.

Imagine how Noah and his family felt when the flood waters began receding and the ark came to rest on a mountain. Think of the awe Moses experienced in his mountain-top encounters with God: on Mount Horeb as a voice came from a burning bush, on Mount Sinai as Moses received the Ten Commandments, and on Mount Pisgah as God showed him the lands the Israelites would possess. Or the adrenaline rushing through Elijah when God defeated the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.*

The mountain-top experiences continued in the New Testament. Again, imagine the emotional high the disciples must have felt when they looked out at the crowd that filled nature's auditorium during the Sermon on the Mount. Picture the awe on Peter's face as he saw Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration.**

But there are two mountain-top experiences that don't fit the pattern.***

After celebrating the Passover with his disciples on Thursday, Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives and pled with God to take away the agony Jesus knew was coming. He was still there when he was betrayed and arrested.

Then came Friday. We often picture Jesus dying on top of a rolling green hill, the central figure with a cross on each side. While the Bible says he was crucified at the place of the skull, called "Golgotha," we don't know exactly where that was. It probably wasn't the pastoral setting of the old hymn and children's drawings. Still, Jesus was crucified just outside the walls of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself was (and is) perched on a mountain. There Jesus cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" And there Jesus died.

Not my idea of a mountain-top experience.

But that doesn't change the fact that it was one.

If a mountain-top experience occurs when we are closest to Christ, how much closer can we get than these times when his humanity was at its height? On the Mount of Olives, his humanity made him want to escape the horror that lay ahead. As he hung on the cross, his humanity felt the separation from God that, to me, is the essence of hell.

So why did he do it? For me. And for you.

Or, as I recently heard in a radio sermon, he did it because God's divine nature demanded it. Because God is just, he must have justice. I'm grateful that he executed it on himself rather than on me.

And that's a true mountain-top experience.

__________
* See Genesis 8:1-5, Exodus 3:1-6, Exodus 19:1-20:21, Deuteronomy 34:1-6, 1 Kings 18:20-39.

** See Matthew 5:1-8:1, Matthew 17:1-8.

*** See Matthew 26:36-56 (the Garden of Gethsemane is on the Mount of Olives), Matthew 27:45-50.

So Near, Yet So Far

2011-04-11T00:01:00.002-05:00

Crystal City, Missouri and Maeystown, Illinois are on opposite sides of the Mississippi River. Although they are only ten miles apart, you have to drive a horseshoe to get from one to the other. That's because there are no bridges in the approximately 60-mile stretch between St. Louis, Missouri, to the north and Chester, Illinois, to the south. So near, yet so far.

My 91-year-old mother was living alone in her own home, driving herself to church and the senior center and the grocery store. Then she had a minor stroke. Minor, but enough to change her unassisted walk into a wheelchair ride and her independence into dependence. It also moved her to an assisted living facility five miles away. Only five miles, but she can't even visit the house on her own. So near, yet so far.

One of my writing friends spent many years in Africa as a missionary. After a recent stint in the U.S., she looked for another opportunity to return to the mission field, and she thought she found it in an African country where she hadn't served before. She spent her own money to travel there, stay in temporary housing, and take lessons to learn the language and the culture. But the sponsorship she had been promised didn't materialize. And since her visa is almost up, she may have to return to the U.S. So near, yet so far.

These days even near isn't close enough. We want here. Now. We've lost the gift of patience. Or at least I have.

And I want it back.

So here's another way to view things.

If there were a bridge between Maeystown and Crystal City, travelers would miss the beauty they find along the current route.
Without the loss of her independence, Mama wouldn't have met new people and enriched their lives.
Some day my friend will look back on this experience and say, "Oh, THAT's why."

So near, yet so far? Maybe.

Or maybe the distance is just right.

God Looks at the Heart

2011-04-04T00:01:00.001-05:00

This is the second of the two devotions I mentioned last week.

* * *

The first meeting between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy breeds instant contempt. When Elizabeth sits on the sidelines for want of a partner, their host suggests that Darcy dance with her. Apparently not caring whether Elizabeth overhears him, Darcy replies, "'She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.'"

In Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, both main characters display each of the traits that make up the title. Darcy thinks himself above Elizabeth in station and breeding, and he judges her by her often foolish family. When he finds he cannot ignore his feelings for her, he proposes, but he tells her that he is doing it against his better judgment. His words and actions show that he still believes himself superior to her.

Elizabeth, in turn, prides herself on her discernment of other people's characters, yet she judges Darcy by his unflattering comments and haughty demeanor. The prejudice that begins with first impressions grows when she meets Lieutenant Wickham, who tells her that Darcy refused to give him the living promised by Darcy's father before the older man died.

As the novel progresses, the reader realizes that Elizabeth and Darcy have misjudged each other. Elizabeth has reversed the roles of hero and villain, and she discovers Darcy's generous and kind heart only after Wickham elopes with her younger sister.

In the meantime, Darcy meets Elizabeth touring his estate. Her foolish mother and younger sisters are not with her, which gives him a chance to get to know her for herself. As he does, he realizes that her breeding and intelligence are as good as or better than those of his own friends and relatives.

The two main characters learn a valuable lesson: don't judge people by outward appearances. This is the same lesson that Samuel learned when God told him to anoint one of Jesse's sons as Israel's second king. The oldest son, Eliab, looked the part, so Samuel thought he was the one. But God rejected each of Jesse's sons until he came to the youngest, David.

You may think you are too young or too ordinary or too sinful to serve God, but you are wrong. What the world thinks of you doesn't matter to Him. He looks straight into your heart.

The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. I Samuel 16:7 (NIV)

No Longer an Orphan

2011-03-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

About a year and a half ago, I responded to a call for submissions for a book of devotions based on well-known works of fiction. I submitted my samples approximately a week before the deadline and received a response saying that the publisher had already filled all its slots.

Barbour Publishing just released the book. Book Lovers Devotional contains sixty readings, and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for short devotions and loves books. Two of the devotions are based on the same novels I chose for my two samples: not surprising considering the types of fiction Barbour wanted to cover. The devotion about Anne of Green Gables uses the same theme I used, while the devotion for Pride and Prejudice takes a very different approach.*

Since my sample devotions were written to meet Barbour's particular requirements and are unlikely to be suited to a different paying project, I have decided to use them here. I'll start with Anne of Green Gables and save Pride and Prejudice for another day.

* * *

Anne Shirley longs for a home, and she believes she will find it at Green Gables. But it is all a mistake. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert want a boy to help around the farm, not a girl to help around the house. When Anne realizes they are going to send her back to the orphanage, she is devastated. "'I might have expected it,'" she says. "'Nobody ever did want me.'"

At the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, the reader meets an eleven-year-old girl who has spent the last few years as an unpaid nanny. Then she comes to live with the Cuthberts, and everything changes.

Fortunately for Anne, shy Matthew is enchanted with her from the beginning. Aided by Marilla's own compassionate nature, he persuades his sister to let Anne stay and share their home. But it takes much longer for straight-laced Marilla to let the orphan into her heart.

Anne's quick temper and lack of common sense do not endear her to Marilla. The girl's many exploits range from breaking her slate over a fellow student's head to taking a dare that ends with a fall off a roof and a broken ankle.

But Anne also has a generous and forgiving nature. She will do anything for those she loves, from sharing her favorite candies to giving up her dream of going to college. Early in the book, Marilla asks Anne if the women she lived with before were kind to her. Anne replies, "'Oh, they meant to be--I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible.'" Even though they had treated her as a slave, she looked for the good in them. These traits eventually win Marilla over.

By the time tragedy strikes, Anne's and Marilla's love for each other helps them deal with their loss. Anne of Green Gables shows us the value of belonging to a family where we are loved.

Unlike Marilla's love for Anne, God loved us from the beginning. We don't have to win Him over. If we know His Son, we are part of His family. When we get ourselves into trouble, God forgives us. And when trials come, Christ holds us up, comforting and strengthening us. We are not orphans but children of God, and that makes us members of the best family of all.

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. Galatians 3:26-27 (NIV)

_____

* In case anyone gets the wrong impression, I am NOT suggesting that the writer borrowed material (or even uncopyrightable ideas) from the devotions I submitted. The nature of the project made it inevitable that several people would independently use the same works of fiction and select the same themes from those works.

The Ten Commandments for Preachers' Kids

2011-03-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

I recently had to give a humorous speech, so I decided to talk about The Ten Commandments for Preachers' Kids. I am sharing that speech with you, modified to work as a blog post. (The picture was taken while I was in college, so the worst was behind me by then.)

* * *

Do you know what a PK is? It stands for "preacher's kid." I didn't know that until my first summer at church camp. My name was Kathryn Page, so when a counselor said, "I see you're a PK," I replied, "No, I'm a KP."

I wanted to be anything except a preacher's kid. It's hard enough trying to keep the ten commandments that God gave Moses. But the ten commandments for preachers' kids are even worse.

First Commandment. Thou shalt not be first in line at church dinners. In fact, my father interpreted it to mean that we had to be dead last (and I was dead of hunger by then).

When my son-in-law was ordained last summer, they actually asked Pete and his guests to go first at the meal after the service. When my husband mentioned that I always went last while growing up, the senior pastor's wife said, "She must have been a preacher's kid."

Second Commandment. Thou shalt not act up in school. The principal is a member of your church and will tell your parents.

Third Commandment. Thou shalt not receive Sunday School or Vacation Bible School awards for memorizing the most verses. Even though you earned it, it might look like favoritism.

Actually, it is a good idea to avoid the appearance of favoritism. PK Mary Todd remembers returning to a former church as an adult and speaking with a woman who used to be in Sunday School with her when they were children. And what did the woman remember? "You always got to be the Virgin Mary in the Christmas pageants."

So maybe this one isn't such a bad rule, after all.

Fourth Commandment. Thou shalt not solicit church members for fundraising activities. They may feel obligated to buy something because you are their minister's child.

My high school sold magazine subscriptions every year, and the students who sold the most got nice prizes, like new TVs. I got a pencil.

Fifth Commandment. Thou shalt not accept a pin for perfect Sunday School attendance. The church can find a better use for the nickle it would spend on the pin.

Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt not sin in public.

Tina Watkins remembers the time she was acting up in church and her mother had to take her out and spank her. On the way down the aisle, Tina grabbed a pew and yelled, "Help." Forty years later, she still hadn't lived it down.

So if you are a PK, you had better be sure to act like an angel in public. It reflects badly on your father if you show people you are normal.

Seventh Commandment. Thou shalt not say "no" when asked to do something for the church.

I had just been confirmed and was attending the first congregational meeting where I could vote. I was feeling grown-up and important until my father asked me to take the younger kids out and entertain them.

So much for the PK's right to vote.

Eighth Commandment. Thou shalt not go on youth outings if there isn't room for everyone.

I guess that's why I read better than I bowl.

Ninth Commandment. Thou shalt not act bored in church even if you are hearing the sermon for the second time that day.

Tenth Commandment. Thou shalt not complain about the parsonage. The church members might think you are ungrateful for the free house they provided as part of your father's salary.

This commandment comes with a number of related truths.

Given the choice between buying new banners for the sanctuary or replacing the leaky roof on the parsonage, the congregation will chose the banners every time;
If the parsonage is too small, it's always the minister's fault, because he's the one who had too many children; and
Cold rooms and broken kitchen appliances are God's way of testing you, so learn to live with them.

* * *

Of course, it isn't all "thou shalt nots." There are also a few "thou shalts." The one I hated the most? Thou shalt move seven times while growing up.

So here's my advice to PKs. Since you can't change your lot, remember those stories and become a comic.

His Father's Son

2011-03-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Do you ever wonder how much of a role your example plays in molding your children's lives? In my household, the answer seems to be, "a big one."

My son, John, graduated from Navy boot camp on Friday. When he joined the Navy, he followed in his father's footsteps. And while their motivations and paths have not been identical, they do have a lot of parallels.

Roland and John are both intelligent men who started college right after high school but dropped out in the middle. Roland tried to juggle college with a full-time job, and the job won. John simply wasn't motivated.

Then they both joined the Navy. Roland joined during the Vietnam War, trained as a hospital corpsman, and was assigned to a Marine base in South Carolina for the remainder of his enlistment. John left for a Navy base in South Carolina on Saturday, and he will spend a year or more there training to be an "electrical technician" (working with the nuclear power that runs the aircraft carriers and submarines) before being assigned to a ship.

I'm hoping that their aftermath is similar, as well. Roland eventually returned to school and earned not only his bachelor's degree but also a master's degree and what Indiana calls a "Plus 30" (30 hours beyond a master's degree). One of John's goals in joining the Navy is to earn additional college credits and make use of the G.I.Bill to get a bachelor's degree.

If you think I'm feeling left out, you can stop. My daughter, Caroline, is her mother's daughter. But this is John's time to shine, so we'll leave the mother/daughter discussion for another day.

John is his father's son, and I'm beaming with pride.

The Real Winner

2011-03-07T00:01:00.001-06:00

In 1978, the Nazi Party decided to hold a march and rally in Skokie, Illinois, which had a large Jewish population. When the city refused to give the demonstrators a permit, they turned to the ACLU to represent them.

The ACLU had a dilemma. Although it despised the Nazi Party and everything it stood for, the ACLU was a fierce defender of free speech. So what was it to do? It accepted the case, and the courts allowed the rally to proceed.* It may seem like the Nazi Party won, but freedom of speech was the real winner.

This past Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided a case that reminds me of the Skokie case and creates the same dilemma.** You may know the facts, but if you don't, here is a summary.

The Westboro Baptist Church is one of the smallest but most prominent "churches" in America. It was founded by Fred Phelps, and its congregation is composed of members of his family. Westboro claims that God kills American soldiers as punishment for sin, and especially for this country's tolerance of homosexuality in the military. To spread its message, Westboro pickets funerals for soldiers killed in the line of duty.

After Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq, Phelps and several of his relatives traveled to Maryland to picket the service. They notified the city of their intent and followed the relevant ordinances. The picket signs bore hateful messages, but the picketers did not attempt to keep anyone from attending the funeral or the burial, did not yell or use profanity, and did not engage in violence.

Corporal Snyder's father sued the picketers for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a jury awarded Mr. Snyder over $10 million. Phelps and his relatives appealed, claiming that the jury award violated their First Amendment free speech rights.

Westboro's actions are the antithesis of Christianity, and its name is a taint on the many Baptist churches that follow Christ's command to love our enemies. Christ hated sin, but he loved people. All people. Westboro's statements and tactics show its hate for those same people.

Since I sympathize with the family and friends of the soldiers whose funerals Westboro targets, my heart wanted Westboro to lose.

But my mind said something else.

The First Amendment is designed to protect unpopular speech and ideas that aren't endorsed by the majority of Americans. If Westboro's members aren't allowed to express their ideas, what happens to my right to say something that isn't considered "politically correct"? As long as Westboro's members are allowed to proclaim their message, I'm allowed to proclaim mine. If their speech is suppressed, what will happen to the true Christian message if it becomes an outcast in this society?

I may seem like hate won, but freedom of speech was the real winner.

And I can live with that.
_____

* Collin v. Smith, 578 F.2d 1197 (7th Cir. 1978).

** Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. __ (2011). The United States Supreme Court decided this case (No. 09-751) on March 2, 2011.

Murphy's Law is for Amateurs

2011-02-28T00:01:00.002-06:00

Murphy's Law says, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." For speakers, this usually means the microphone will screech or the audio-visual equipment won't work or the airplane that is scheduled to arrive two hours before your talk will be delayed for three. For actors and actresses, it may be something as simple as a wig flying off in the middle of a scene.

Roland and I went to see a regional theater production of Annie on Saturday night. Professional actors played Miss Hannigan and Oliver Warbucks, but the rest of the cast were amateurs.

In one scene, Oliver Warbuck's secretary, Grace, has just brought Annie to the billionaire's mansion and introduced her to the servants. As they sing and dance "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here," one of the male servants picks Annie up and swings her around. On Saturday night her wig flew off, revealing blond hair hugging the girl's scalp. Not one of the dozen or so people on stage stepped out of position to retrieve the red hair that had come to rest in a conspicuous spot.

Annie hardly missed a beat as she continued singing and dancing. And that's just what she should have done. She wasn't in a good position to retrieve the wig, and the audience didn't expect that from a child, anyway. Annie acted like a professional.

But the others on stage acted like the amateurs they were. Grace probably could have retrieved the wig the most naturally, but almost any of the servants could have broken rank, danced over gracefully and picked up the wig, and waltzed over to return it to Annie. That person would have departed from his or her scripted role, but the interruption would have been shorter and more welcome than the prolonged period where Annie looked like a scalped Indian.

Then Oliver Warbucks came on stage, noticed the wig, and picked it up. He said, "I believe this belongs to you," placed it on Annie's head, and smoothed it down. Yes, it was a departure from the script, but it brought the biggest applause of the evening.

That's the difference between being an amateur and being a professional. Professionals experience Murphy's Law, too, but they don't let it paralyze them. The professional speaker learns how to project his or her voice without a microphone, designs a presentation that is enhanced by but does not rely on audio-visuals, and leaves earlier in anticipation of flight delays. The professional actor expects the unexpected and learns how to ad lib.

If one of the amateurs on stage had taken a risk and stepped out of the script for a moment, the audience would have applauded. Would the director have yelled at him or her for it? Maybe, but probably not.

Life is like that, too. Sometimes we have to step out of the script and take a risk to help others.

Even if we don't get any applause.

_____

The picture is from my high-school senior play. I am the old maid on the left. Although I don't remember anything going wrong, I was a true amateur at the time and would never have taken a risk if it had.

Blame Me

2011-02-21T00:01:00.001-06:00

Borders announced last week that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is closing about one-third of its stores, including the one where my writers' critique group meets.

Not that finding a new location is a novel experience for us: we seem to move approximately once a year as conditions at our host location change. And no, we haven't put them all out of business.

More and more brick and mortar bookstores are closing their doors. Part of it is the economy, but part is a change in reading and purchasing habits. I don't mean that people are reading less, because that isn't my experience. But we are reading and purchasing reading materials in ways that make brick and mortar bookstores unnecessary as places to buy books.

And I'm one of the culprits.

If I'm at Borders for my writers' group, I'll spend money there. Otherwise, I do my shopping online where the selection is better and whatever I'm looking for is rarely out of stock. With the "look inside" feature, I can even read the back cover copy and look at the first chapter to get a feel for the writer's style.

I'm also one of the growing number of people who read e-books. I asked for and received a Kindle as a retirement present, and I love it. (Thank you, NFA gang.) Yes, I still read some paperbacks and hardcover books, but my bookshelves are already packed beyond their capacity. Besides, you can only take so many physical books on an airplane and still have room for toothpaste.

Although I'm sorry for the people who are losing their jobs, I don't mind not having brick and mortar stores as a place to buy books. I don't need them for that. But I am sad that there will be fewer places for readers and writers to congregate to talk about their passion for words. Words that inform. Words that create emotions. Words that, when strung together, tell a story. The passion won't lessen, but the opportunities for face-to-face discussion might.

And that would be a tragedy.

My Valentine

2011-02-14T00:01:00.001-06:00

I've been married to the same guy for over 30 years. I know that's out of fashion these days, but I can't help it. He's just too romantic to give up.

Although I could cite plenty of recent instances (like the 30th anniversary party he planned without my knowledge), I'm going to reminisce about our early days, before we put on the wedding rings. I'm not sure these are in the right order, but here are some of the things Roland did to capture my heart.

A week of flowers. Roland sent me a single rose at work on Monday. Another flower on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. (By the third or fourth day I was expecting it.) A bouquet on Friday. I thought the flower-a-day idea was cool, and so did the people at work.

The want ads. Either The Chicago Sun Times or The Chicago Tribune had a special Valentine's Day section in the want ads for people to post Valentine messages. Roland called me and told me to look at them, and there it was. All these years later, I don't remember exactly what it said, but I think it was something like, "Kathryn Page, I love you. Be my Valentine. Roland." I didn't love him yet, so I wasn't sure how I felt about the ad.

A dozen roses, perfectly timed. Because of Roland's work schedule, we were going out every other week. On one of his work Saturdays, I was home wondering if I should break it off. While I enjoyed Roland's company, I still hadn't fallen in love with him, and that's what I was looking for. When the doorbell rang and a florist delivered a dozen roses, I decided to give the relationship a little longer to develop. So here's a note to you guys: flowers can make a difference.

More unexpected flowers. I was in law school at the time, and I went to Washington, D.C. (by myself) over Spring Break. When I arrived at my hotel, there were flowers in my room from--guess who?

A special airplane ride. Roland had a private pilot's license, so he rented a plane but didn't tell me where we were going. I could see Lake Michigan below us, but it took a while before I realized we were headed for Holland, Michigan, to see my parents. They met us at the airport and took us to their house for dinner. Then Roland and I flew back. (Daddy took the picture while we were there. It suffered water damage in a flood 2 1/2 years ago, but you can still see the distinctly 1970s influence.)

Separate hotels. I planned a vacation to New Orleans with a friend, and we reserved a room with two double beds. When something came up and she couldn't go, Roland volunteered to step in. The hotel I had booked was filled up by then, so Roland stayed several blocks away. Some of my friends thought it strange that we went on vacation together and stayed in different hotels when there was an empty bed in my room, but I was glad Roland and I shared the same morals.

A traditional proposal. When Roland told me to dress up for our date, I guessed what was coming. He took me to dinner at an elegant continental restaurant high above Chicago's Magnificent Mile. The restaurant had strolling violinists, and Roland waited for them to come by our table. They never did, so he gave up and put the ring in my hand. I had fallen in love by then, so there was only one thing I could say.

That's the kind of guy I married.

And I guess I'll keep him.

Snow Art

2011-02-07T00:01:00.009-06:00

As a full-time writer, I work at home. That meant I didn't have to go out in the Blizzard of 2011, but it also meant that I didn't get any days off work.

On the other hand, it did give me the flexibility to walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of nature's snow art before snow plows, snow blowers, and snow shovels spoiled it.

So enjoy these pictures.

Artist: the Blizzard of 2011.* Medium: snow.

* The artist graciously assigned me the copyright for these images.

Intrepid

2011-01-31T00:01:00.001-06:00

I had a busy weekend, and it seemed to carry a message: Don't give up. Now, I'm not sure why that message came at this particular point in time. Yes, I'd just exhausted the obvious publishers for a particular book proposal, but I had already decided to buy the current Writer's Market and seek out the less obvious ones.

Still, the message was there.

On Friday afternoon, Roland and I went into Chicago to attend "Strictly Sail," the annual sailboat show. Since we weren't in the market for anything, we managed to leave with minimal financial damage. I bought a $6 book, and Roland bought a DVD documentary about Zac Sunderland's circumnavigation. We also heard Zac talk about his experiences as the youngest person to sail around the world alone (16 when he started and 17 when he finished just over a year later).

Zac's boat was named Intrepid, which means "fearless" or "courageous."* But it's also a good word for someone who doesn't give up when things don't go his way. In Zac's case, things like rough seas, multiple equipment failures, and a close call with pirates.

Then on Saturday, I saw another example of people who refused to give up.

That's the day my Alma Mater, Hope College, and its near neighbor, Calvin College, televised their men's basketball game. Fans from both schools gathered at satellite locations around the country to watch the game, and I attended the local rivalry party.

There seem to be more Calvin alumni than Hope alumni in this area, and I was feeling outnumbered. It got worse when the game began with Calvin running up eight unanswered points. And even worse at the half, with Calvin up by twelve or thirteen.

The Hope players could have given up. They must have been tempted to say, "That's too big a lead to overcome," or "We're too tired to give it our all." But they didn't. Hope won 76-70.

Zac Sunderland and the Hope basketball team showed what people can do when they don't give up.

If the message is for me, I get it.

----------

* No, that isn't Intrepid in the picture. It's our boat, Freizeit. No copyright issues that way.

Deja Vu

2011-01-24T00:01:00.001-06:00

I'm currently reading a book that discusses a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme and describes some of its victims. They included politicians, the president of a major transportation company, and a number of other presumably savvy businessmen.

These two (apparently true) stories are good examples.

One businessman was talked into investing in a mine belonging to an ex-senator. Although the mine existed and was very profitable, the senator had not authorized the sale, and no documents evidencing ownership changed hands. The businessman regularly visited the brokerage firm to talk about his investment, and he often passed the ex-senator, who would be sitting in the lobby. However, the businessman had been told not to speak to the ex-senator because he did not want his involvement known, and the businessman obeyed. In reality, the ex-senator was there for other reasons and apparently had no idea what was happening.

Another man was taking a trip to Europe and gave the brokerage firm partner $50,000 to invest for him. When he returned from his trip, he stopped in at the firm and asked if he had made any money. The partner promptly wrote him a check for $250,000. After looking at it, the man returned the check and asked the partner to "set that hen again." Of course, he never saw a cent.

So were these men Bernie Madoff's victims? While their stories are similar, Madoff wasn't the crook in these examples.

Or were they victims of the 1920 fraud by the infamous Charles Ponzi? Again, they could have been, but they weren't.

The book is The Autobiography of Mark Twain, and the pyramid scheme was operated by Ferdinand Ward in 1884 (pre-dating the man for whom these frauds came to be known as Ponzi schemes). Ward was the active partner in the brokerage firm of Grant and Ward, where the Grant in the name stood for the former President Ulysses S. Grant and his son (both of whom were naive but apparently innocent). President Grant was himself a victim, losing all of his money and--for a while--his reputation.

As with most things, some good came out of the tragedy. For years Mark Twain had been urging Grant to write his autobiography, but he refused. After losing everything, it was the only way Grant could make enough money for his family to live on. So without Ward's betrayal, the world probably would not have the benefit of Grant's memoirs.

Still, why can't we learn from the past? Over 100 years ago, George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But many of Madoff's victims were sophisticated investors who were surely familiar with Charles Ponzi's history and perhaps even with the Ferdinand Ward scheme. So I'm changing the saying to, "Those who choose to ignore the past are condemned to repeat it."

As long as this world is composed of sinful human beings, there will be Ponzi schemes and there will be victims.

Hopefully you won't be among them.

Human Again

2011-01-17T00:01:00.001-06:00

Nine months ago, my son enlisted in the Navy and signed up for a position with a waiting list. This week, he finally left for boot camp.

During the last four-and-a-half months John has been living at home because it made more sense than renewing his lease in September. Still, it interrupted the life Roland and I had as empty nesters.

Don't get me wrong. I love my children. I love it when they come home for a visit, and I love it when they return to their own lives.

That's because I also enjoy being alone with my sweetheart. And I feel more responsible for my children when they are living at home.

So I love being an empty nester. It makes me feel human again.

Well, not really. I've always felt human, so the "again" doesn't apply. But my return to empty nesting does have something in common with the furniture and the dishes in Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast when they sing about being "Human Again."*

We'll be floating again

We'll be gliding again

Stepping, striding

As fine as you please

Like a real human does

I'll be all that I was

On that glorious morn

When we're finally reborn

And we're all of us human again!

Does any loving parent ever stop feeling responsible for his or her children? Probably not. But there comes a time when they have to be responsible for themselves. Roland and I raised our children to be independent, and being empty nesters is evidence of our success.

It's also evidence of our children's success.

Congratulations, John. We're proud of you.

_____

*"Human Again" lyrics by Howard Ashman.

The Exercise Blues

2011-01-10T00:01:00.001-06:00

I hate exercising. Yes, I know it's good for me, and I do it even though I hate it.

But I'd rather enjoy it.

For the last year, I've been riding my elliptical (in the picture) thirty minutes a day, five days a week. And it's boring, so I've been looking for a way to vary my routine.

Roland helped by giving me Wii Fit Plus for Christmas. I haven't yet achieved the same intensity I get from the elliptical, but the Wii is a lot more fun.

It's also much better at pointing out my weaknesses.

The Wii characters are soft-spoken and polite, but they tell it like it is. The first time I let the Wii "measure" me, it said my physical age was 10 years older than my chronological age. (I think that's partly because I had no clue what I was doing. My physical age dropped six years the next time.)

Then there is the blow to my self-confidence from the exercise games. I was a whiz at the hula hoop as a child, but I can't get the virtual one to revolve even 20 times. And I can't figure out how to throw a snowball at all.

I also stink at the downhill skiing and the bicycle race. With all the walls I've run into and the cliffs I've driven over, I should be dead. But in spite of their challenges, both games are lots of fun.

Oh, I'll continue to do the elliptical a couple of days a week, and I've put together a customized but more traditional Wii exercise program that gives me some variety while working on the areas that need it most. But I'll do some games, too.

Every year I resolve to exercise and lose weight, and I met that resolution last year. This year I want to add a little fun to the routine.

Let's hope Wii Fit Plus is the answer.

Wishing You a Flawed New Year

2011-01-03T00:01:00.004-06:00

Flawed? Did I really say flawed? Yes, I did. I hope you have a happy 2011, but I can't promise it. I can promise that you'll have a flawed one.

I just finished reading Vanity Fair by William Makepiece Thackeray. It's a satire (heavily laced with sarcasm) written in the mid-1800s about "genteel" life earlier in that century. Its subtitle is A Novel Without a Hero.

In fact, Vanity Fair has both a hero and a heroine. The hero is large and clumsy and has a heart of gold, and I love the character. The heroine is gentle and soft-hearted and meek. Her meekness drove me crazy, but good fiction reflects life, and real people are flawed. Even the hero is blinded by his love for and loyalty to family and friends.

It isn't just the characters who are flawed, though. Each year they live through is flawed, too, and some of those years contain burdens almost too hard for them to bear. Fiction reflecting life again. And if the characters had it easy, who would read Thackeray's story?

If you're hoping for a perfect 2011, you're bound to be disappointed. If you're hoping for a happy one, you may or may not get it. All I can promise is that you'll have a flawed one, because that's what life is like. So I wish you a flawed and happy 2011.

* * * * *

The drawing at the head of this post is "Mr. Joseph Entangled," which appears to have been one of the original drawings for Vanity Fair. Thackeray drew his own illustrations.

Christmas Greetings from Charles Dickens

2010-12-27T00:01:00.001-06:00

It's been a busy Christmas season, so I decided to let someone else do the writing this time. Charles Dickens volunteered, but I agreed to introduce his passages.

Near the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge's nephew visits Scrooge's office to invite him over for Christmas. The conversation ends this way.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine!"

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew: "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creature bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

In this scene, Marley's ghost has come to visit Scrooge, and Marley is grieving over his lost opportunities.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode?"

After returning from church on Christmas Day, Bob Cratchit reports on Tiny Tim's behavior during the service.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

And the book ends with Dickens' (and my) wish for you.

[Scrooge] knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that truly be said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

* * * * *

The drawing at the head of this post is "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball" by John Leech. It was one of the original illustrations for A Christmas Carol.

No Room in the Inn

2010-12-20T00:01:00.001-06:00

"While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she

gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in strips of cloth and placed

him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." Luke 2:6-7 (NIV)

The trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have taken several days, and Mary must have been exhausted by the time she reached Bethlehem. Surely she longed to rest and to give birth in private. But there was no room in the inn.

On December 24, 1957, I traveled to Bethlehem from Amman, Jordan with my parents and my two brothers. We did not have reservations for the night, and the hostel we usually stayed at in Jerusalem had been booked up for months. But my father must have been confident that he could find something after we got to Bethlehem.

It was raining when we arrived in Bethlehem, and we were wet and cold by the time we reached the Church of the Nativity, the traditional site of Jesus' birth. (That's the Church of the Nativity at the head of this post.) Although we were out of the rain inside the unheated church, the cold and damp penetrated its walls, and we could not get warm.

Then we went down into the crypt--the cave where Jesus is said to have been born. And down in that small cave, with lamps burning brightly and a continuous stream of people walking through, the warmth was all around us.

No one knows what the weather was like when Mary and Joseph arrived at the stable, but any woman who has carried a baby into the third trimester can tell you that Mary would have been very tired. The stable may not have seemed like much, but she was probably grateful for it. The stable would have given Mary a place to rest and to give birth in private, and the animals would have provided warmth with their body heat.

Jesus came to that humble stable to give us salvation through his death on the cross. But he also came to give us rest from our burdens and to surround us with the warmth of his love.

On December 24, 1957, there were so many people wanting to see the crypt that the caretakers had to tell them to keep moving. Yet they let us stay in the crypt, sitting on a ledge out of the way of the crowd, while my father went to find a room for the night. The caretakers had compassion for a mother with three children between the ages of four and eight.

The innkeeper did not have an empty room, but he allowed Mary and Joseph to stay in his stable. The innkeeper had compassion for an obviously pregnant Mary.

Jesus had compassion on us all when he came to earth as a baby so he could suffer and die a cruel death on the cross. He gave up a heavenly throne to be born in the humblest circumstances imaginable. And he did it all for us.

To my tired six-year-old mind, it seemed like we stayed in the crypt all night waiting for my father. According to my parents, however, it was only one or two hours before my father returned with news that he had found a hotel room in Beit Jala, several miles away.

The hotel room in Beit Jala gave us a place to stay for the rest of the night, but we were not comfortable there. The room was damp and cold, with no heat, and we slept with our clothes on.

This world gives us a temporary place to stay, but we should not get too comfortable here. One day God will give us an eternal home if we believe in him through faith. In our Father's house we will never be tired or damp or cold, and we will find a room already waiting for us.

Have a blessed Christmas.

* * * * *

I previously published this article in The Lutheran Witness, Vol. 123 (December 2004).

Santa Worships Him

2010-12-13T00:01:00.001-06:00

When my children were young, I bought a book about the kneeling Santa. I no longer have the book and don't remember the entire story, but it ends with Santa on his knees at the manger, worshiping Jesus.

Even though it's just a story, it isn't far from the truth. That's because Santa Claus is modeled after St. Nicholas of Bari, who was a dedicated follower of Christ.

St. Nicholas was the Mother Theresa of his day. Born in the third century, he had wealthy parents who were devout Christians and raised their son to be one, too. Nicholas inherited their wealth after they died in an epidemic, and he used his inheritance to help the needy. Apparently he gave most of his money away anonymously, showing that he wasn't motivated by a desire for fame or adulation. No, he simply wanted to follow Christ's admonition to take care of the poor.

There is a great story about him that may even be true. It goes something like this.

A poor man had three daughters of marriageable age. Since he had no money for dowries to buy husbands with, the girls' future looked bleak--either sold as slaves or turned out to walk the streets in a different kind of slavery.

Hearing of their plight, Nicholas snuck up to the house one night and tossed a bag of gold through the open window. Legend says the gold landed in a stocking drying by the fire or in a shoe. Now that the man had enough money for one dowry, the first daughter married.

Nicholas appeared under cover of darkness a second time, found the window open again, and threw in another bag of gold. And a second daughter wed.

By now, the father had a clue that it might happen again, so he waited up to find out who was helping them. When Nicholas threw the third bag of gold into the house, the father chased after him and caught him. Nicholas asked the father to keep his identity a secret, but somebody told, or how would we know the story?

St. Nicholas was more than just a generous man, however. He was a great Christian as well.

Nicholas was one of the few people who became a bishop without first being a priest. Living in a time of persecution, he was imprisoned for standing up for his faith. And Bishop Nicholas must have been well-respected within the Christian community, because he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. (For those of you who aren't up on church history, that was where they adopted the Nicene Creed. That creed is still widely accepted and used by Christians all over the world.)

So if Santa Claus visits your house this year, remember that he worshiped Jesus, too.

* * * * *

The painting at the beginning of this post is "Saint Nicholas of Bari" by Gherardo Stamina, circa 1422. The physical painting is in the El Paso Museum of Art in El Paso, Texas.

Oh Tannenbaum

2010-12-06T00:01:00.002-06:00

The U.S. Supreme Court treats the Christmas tree as a secular symbol,* and that's what it is to many people. I'm certainly not going to take the opposite legal position: better to retain the "secular" Christmas tree than to have no Christmas symbols at all.

But we know better.

Although the Christmas tree has pagen roots, it has been a symbol of Christianity since at least the 1500s. The tradition appears to have gotten its start in or around Germany and was brought to the United States by German immigrants in the 1800s. (Some sources place its U.S. debut even earlier, crediting Hessian soldiers with introducing the Christmas tree during the American Revolution.)

So what is the religious symbolism?

Using a tree to celebrate Jesus' birth reminds us of this death on another tree.
Choosing a plant that is ever green reminds us that Christ lives eternally, and so will we if we believe in Him.
The top of the evergreen tree points toward heaven.

The lights on the tree also have Christian implications.

They shine like the star that shown over Bethlehem on the first Christmas.
And they honor Christ, who is the light of the world.

Is the Christmas tree a secular symbol? For some. But as you decorate your tree this year, I pray you will celebrate the One who is the reason for the season.

* County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989).

Smile Your Way Through Christmas

2010-11-29T00:01:00.000-06:00

I've had several Christmas books on my shelf since September, but I didn't want to read them until after Thanksgiving. Come Friday, however, I gobbled one up as if it were the traditional fare that graced my sister-in-law's table on Thursday. Both the meal and the book were satisfying to the palate.

A Door County Christmas is a collection of four novellas published by Barbour. I don't normally write book reviews, and romances aren't at the top of my reading list most days, but I figured this one would be fun because I know one of the authors and have read something by another. And all of us need a break from serious now and then.

Rachael Phillips' distinctive voice is distinctively humorous. This is her fiction debut, but when she takes her turn posting at the Hoosier Ink blog (http://hoosierink.blogspot.com/), I can tell who is writing even before I scroll to the bottom and see her name. So I knew that reading Rachael's selection, Ride With Me Into Christmas, would keep me laughing, and I wasn't disappointed.

This is Cynthia Ruchti's second fiction book. Her debut novel, They Almost Always Come Home, kept me up late while I was attending a writers' conference in June. That book would probably be classified as Christian women's fiction (although some men might enjoy it, too), and it is a page-turner that I thoroughly enjoyed. The Heart's Harbor, Cynthia's light-hearted contribution to this collection, is very different and, in my opinion, not as good, but it was still a pleasant read.

Prior to this, I knew nothing about either of the other two authors. Their contributions to this collection (My Heart Still Beats by Eileen Key and Christmas Crazy by Becky Melby) were also fun to read. In fact, the quirky but lovable characters in Christmas Crazy made it my favorite of the four novellas.

This book is overtly Christian, and you should know that going in. If you're male or don't like to smile, this book probably isn't for you. But if you're a woman looking for something light-hearted to read in December, you can't go wrong with A Door County Christmas.

You Had to be There

2010-11-22T00:01:00.001-06:00

I knew I should go, and I was one of the first people to sign up, but I wasn't excited about it.

My church invited Dr. Paul Maier, a well-known Christian author, to present a seminar this past Saturday. I had read one of his novels and enjoyed it, but I was lukewarm about devoting all morning and most of the afternoon to lectures that promised to make extensive use of archaeological finds and manuscripts by ancient historians. Not my idea of an interesting day.

But I was wrong. Instead of dry facts and boring academic analysis, I heard a riveting speaker whose entertaining and informative presentation created a verbal mural worthy of Michelangelo. Okay, so nobody can compare with Michelangelo, but you get the idea.

Or maybe not. I went straight from church to my writers' critique group, where I tried to explain the experience I had just been through. The members of the group listened to me with yawns in their eyes and "whatever" in their body language. They didn't catch the fever at all.

I guess you had to have been there.

It's like that with the first Thanksgiving, too. These days, Thanksgiving is simply one more holiday. Although most of us remember to thank God for our blessings, Thanksgiving is often just another chance to get together with family and eat the table bare.

When the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in December 1620, there were 102 of them. When they held their harvest festival in November 1621, there were only 53 left. Those 53 had survived a hard winter filled with hunger, cold, and diseases such as pneumonia and scurvy. They finally had sturdy homes and a plentiful harvest, but they must have grieved for the 26 men, 14 women, and 9 children who weren't there to share the celebration with them.

I can't know either the depth of their grief or the height of their joy as they contemplated a more promising future. I do know that my Thanksgiving celebrations are just a shadow of the harvest festival that we recognize as the first Thanksgiving. With a comfortable home and very little true sorrow in my life, I haven't experienced what the Pilgrims did.

You had to be there.

What Time Is It?

2010-11-15T00:01:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning I left home at 7:00 a.m. for the almost three-hour drive to Fort Wayne and an 11:00 a.m. meeting. Traffic was good, and I didn't hit any major road construction along the way. So did I arrive an hour early? Or is my math wrong?

Neither.

Indiana is one of several states that is in two time zones. Most of the state (including Fort Wayne) is in the Eastern Time Zone. The red counties are in the Central Time Zone. And no, they don't match the political map where red is Republican and blue is Democrat.

The red counties weren't the ones that changed. The entire state was originally in the Central Time Zone. According to Wikipedia, prior to 1883 towns in the U.S. set their time to noon when the sun was at its peak in that particular location, so the time was different even among neighboring towns. No big deal when people rarely traveled, but the advent of the railroads changed that and made the constantly changing time confusing. So in 1883 the major railroads decided to create four time zones in the U.S., and they placed Indiana in the Central Time Zone. When the U.S. Congress adopted official time zones in 1918, it kept Indiana in the Central Time Zone. In the years since then, however, most of Indiana crept into the Eastern Time Zone to have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

Northwest Indiana will never join them. We have stronger ties to Chicago than to the rest of the state (at least in terms of where we work and play), and Chicago is on Central time. Being in a different time zone from Fort Wayne and Indianapolis is inconvenient, but being in a different time zone from Chicago would be much worse.

At least things aren't as bad as they used to be when most of the blue counties stayed on Standard Time all year long. In those days, we matched the rest of the state during the summer but were still off an hour in the winter, and I had trouble remembering when we matched and when we didn't. At least now I always know I have to leave an hour early if I'm going to Fort Wayne or Indianapolis.

But why should I be the one who has to adjust? Everything would have been just fine if the blue counties had stayed where the railroads and Congress put them.

Until they see the light, I guess I'll just have to get up an hour early.

The Customer is Always Wrong

2010-11-08T00:01:00.002-06:00

"Wait," you say, "don't you mean 'the customer is always right'?" No, I don't.

Thursday evening I kicked off my slippers and sat back in my recliner to watch new episodes of "Househunters" and "Househunters International" on HGTV, which was part of our AT&T U-verse subscription. When they were over, I went to bed happy.

Friday morning I wanted something to watch while exercising, so I turned on HGTV. Did I get it? No. I got TLC instead. I like some TLC shows, but others are rubbish, and this was one of the latter. (I think the title was, "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant.") A news feed scrolling across the bottom stated that Scripps (the owner of the HGTV channel) was denying us our HGTV. The news feed also provided information on contacting Scripps through AT&T U-verse.

I don't know who's at fault, and I don't care. I realize there are more important things in life than TV, but HGTV and some of the other Scripps channels involved in the dispute (including DIY Network, Food Network, and the Cooking Channel) are among the few wholesome offerings out there.

Unlike the news feed suggested, I didn't want to contact Scripps. Nor did I want to use a cookie-cutter complaint. I wanted to send AT&T an individual message that said something like, "If you think Scripps is engaging in unfair practices, file a complaint with the FCC. If you think Scripps' conduct is anti-competitive, file a complaint with the FTC. But if you want to keep me as a customer, get HGTV back."

The problem? No matter how much I searched the AT&T website, I couldn't find an e-mail address. I couldn't even find a contact form or an online chat room. When I thought I was filling out a contact form or an online chat inquiry, I received an automated response that no FAQs matched my search. Even my computer-savvy son couldn't find what I wanted.

Yes, I know that AT&T is running a business and times are tough. I understand that customer service representatives cost money and that many questions can be answered as FAQs. I also understand the efficiency in making customers check online FAQs before sending an unnecessary e-mail that someone must sort through and respond to. But AT&T seems to have forgotten who's generating the company's income. If it can't keep its customers happy, it won't have a business to worry about.

AT&T does provide a telephone number to call, and the number does reach a real person eventually. And maybe a customer service representative could have provided me with an e-mail address. But why should I have to go through all that trouble? Especially since the frustrating process could (and surely often does) lead callers to take out their frustration on a customer service representative who is doing the best he or she can.

I sympathize with the people who answer customer service calls, and my complaint isn't about them. Once I reach a live customer service representative (at AT&T and most places), I'm usually satisfied with the response. No, my argument is with the companies that think efficiency and cost-savings are more important than customer service.

If customers are even sometimes right, companies should want to hear from them. The men and women who panned for gold in California and Alaska were willing to sift through tons of gravel and sand and pyrite to find an ounce of gold because they knew the result was worth the effort. By making it so hard to contact them, companies like AT&T are saying all customer input is fool's gold. Or, to phrase it differently, their actions have coined a new slogan: The customer is always wrong.

Someday they'll discover how short-sighted that is.

Postscript: Sometimes companies do get it right. I use Verizon Wireless for my family's cell phone service, and my husband and I recently upgraded our phones. Each phone was supposed to come with a $50 rebate, which I sent in right away. One of the rebates went smoothly, but today I got a card in the mail saying there was a problem with the other one. The card gave me a telephone number to call, and although I had to go through a menu to get there, it did give me the option of talking to a real person. The wait time was just a minute or two, and the person looked up my file, put me on hold for another minute or two, and returned to tell me the problem had been fixed and I would receive the rebate in the mail in about 15 days. I wish I could remember the woman's name (she did give it), but Verizon gets five stars for its customer service.

Ewoks and Cowboys

2010-11-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Halloween costumes are getting more elaborate. No, they're getting more expensive. More expensive and less creative.

Some of the children who came to our door this year wore costumes they (or their parents) put together. But many wore something their parents purchased off the rack. And where is the fun in that?

When I was a child, my brothers and I always dressed up and went trick-or-treating, but spending money on a costume was never an option. Instead, we looked at what we had lying around to see what we could create.

That's what my children experienced, too. Caroline was four months old on her first Halloween, so we passed that one up. But when she was a year old, she went as an Ewok from one of the Star Wars movies. The costume was very simple. Caroline had a stuffed Ewok toy, and we simply took the hood from the animal and put it on her. I made ears out of cardboard, and we dressed her in tan and brown clothing. That's my charming Ewok in the first picture.

The next year Caroline went as a policewoman. Wearing blue clothes, we decked her out with a whistle and handcuffs we already had, a cheap hat (probably cardboard) that we got from somewhere, and a tin sheriff's star.

Then there were two. Kids, I mean. Unlike Caroline, John "dressed up" and went trick-or-treating his first year. He got the short end of the deal, however, as we simply put him in a blue outfit and called him a sailor. (And no candy went into his toothless mouth.) I put most of my effort into Caroline's red hood, which I made from material I already had. Add a dress and an Easter basket, and she was the perfect Little Red Ridinghood.

Okay, I admit it. I did spend a little money on occasion. The last picture shows Caroline in a dragon costume I bought. But it wasn't a plastic costume off the rack. I went to a fabric store and purchased material with the pattern stamped on it. I still had to cut it out and sew it, though. And John's cowboy costume was our typical use-what-you-already-have-type, taking advantage of accessories (the horse and the hat) that we already owned.

I guess I can understand busy parents who rush out and buy something at the store, but half of the fun of Halloween is coming up with an idea and making it work. Creating a costume is a lot more time-consuming, but it's also a lot more fun (not to mention cheaper).

Don't you agree?

Light Bulb Successes

2010-10-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

The waiting is killing me. The waiting for acceptances (or rejections) for two books I am currently circulating among publishers and agents.

Not that waiting is anything new. Or rejections, either. Both are normal parts of writing for publication.

According to Jack Canfield in Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life:

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind and Dr. Seuss's first children's book were each rejected at least 25 times before they found a publisher.

Louis L'Amour received 350 rejections before he made his first sale; and

Jack London had it even worse, receiving 600 rejection slips before selling his first story.

I've sold over a dozen articles and devotions and one non-fiction book, so I'm doing better than many at this stage in my writing career. Still, waiting is hard, and rejections can be crushing. So to keep things in perspective, I think of each rejection as a light bulb success.

Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, but he did make it practical. He tried thousands of filaments before he found one that burned long enough to be commercially viable. He could have given up at number 10, or 100, or 1000, but he didn't see those tests as failures. He saw them as successes because each "failure" ruled out another filament that didn't work and moved him that much closer to the one that would.

I want that attitude. Each rejection is a success rather than a failure. By ruling out another publisher that isn't perfect for my book, the rejection gets me one submission closer to the publisher that is.

These two quotes attributed to Thomas Edison explain why I refuse to give up.

Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

And this doesn't just apply to inventors and writers. It can work for you, too.

Yes, waiting is hard. But I'm continuing to write while I wait for that e-mail or telephone call offering me the contract that will make me the next J.K. Rowling. Because all my rejections are light bulb successes.

God's Tapestry

2010-10-18T00:01:00.022-05:00

I love Autumn in the Midwest, but words can't explain why. So I'll try pictures, instead.

Summer's Over

2010-10-11T00:01:00.003-05:00

After school let out on Friday, Roland met me at the marina for our last sail of the season. Fortunately, the weather cooperated. It was also beautiful on Sunday, as we gazed with longing at the sailboats out on the water while we were stuck at the dock taking our sails off. But Freizeit is scheduled to move to her winter home (in the marina parking lot) on Saturday, and, since only one of us is "retired," we have to get things done when we can.

It was a disappointing sailing season in some ways, primarily because the month-long cruise we had planned refused to fit itself into our busy schedule. Then there were the always-to-be-expected days when the weather didn't cooperate or we had other commitments. Still, it was a fun summer.

And I don't mind that it's over for this year. Putting the boat to bed is a sign of the changing seasons, and the variety that comes with those seasons is one of the things I love about living in the Midwest. In fact, Fall may be my favorite season (at least while I'm in it).

More about that next week.

Dancing at Work

2010-10-04T00:01:00.003-05:00

One of AOL's teasers linked to videos of people caught by security cameras while they were dancing. The first man was at work, and he appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. Since dancing can be a great stress reliever and people who are stressed out are less productive, I approve of dancing at work.

For reasons that will become clear later, the clips reminded me of a fairy tale I heard as a child. Here is a blog-length version.

* * *

Once upon a time, a king lived in a castle with his wife and three daughters. After his wife died without bearing him a son, he decided to choose someone to succeed him. He told his three daughters that he would give his kingdom to the one who loved him most. Then he asked each to describe how much she loved him.

"I love you like diamonds," said the eldest.

"That's pretty good," thought the king.

"I love you like pearls," said the second.

Now the king had a dilemma, because how do you choose between diamonds and pearls? But maybe he wouldn't have to.

He turned to his youngest, and favorite, daughter. "How much do you love me?"

She threw her arms around his neck and said, "I love you like meat loves salt."

"WHAT?" he roared as he flung her away from him. "How dare you. Leave my kingdom right now and never return."

She tried to explain, but he wouldn't let her. Knights dragged her away and left her outside a hut in a neighboring kingdom.

Fortunately, the family who lived there took her in. After a while, she met and married the prince of that kingdom. When his father died, the girl, who was now a wife and mother, became queen. She had everything she wanted, except . . .

Except her father's love.

Then one day her father came to visit the neighboring kingdom. He didn't know his daughter was queen, and she wouldn't let her husband tell him.

The queen threw a feast for her father and his companions but begged off from attending, claiming that she was dealing with a great sorrow.

At the meal, a heavily veiled servant put a bowl of soup in front of the older king. Taking a bite, he nearly spit it out. "This is terrible," he thought. But he ate it so he wouldn't offend his host and hostess.

Then the main course arrived, and the same servant gave him a platter of meat cooked until it had only a hint of red left in it. Since that was just the way he liked it, he dug in eagerly. And gagged.

"Is something wrong?" his host asked.

"I'm sorry," said the guest, "but something seems to be missing from my meal."

"Yes," said the younger man. "My cook received instructions to serve your food without salt."

At first the older king looked puzzled. Then his face turned pale.

"What's wrong now?" asked the host.

Tears ran down the visiting king's cheeks. "I sent my youngest daughter into exile because I thought she didn't love me. Now I realize she loved me most of all." He moaned. "But it's too late. I don't even know where she is to tell her how sorry I am."

The serving woman threw off her veils. "Here I am, Father."

They hugged for a long time before father released daughter. "I wish I could make it up to you, but I already divided my kingdom in two and gave it to your sisters. I have nothing left to give."

"I already have a kingdom. I am queen of this land, with a husband and children I love dearly. I have everything I want except . . ."

"Except?"

"Your love."

The old man's tears started flowing again. "That I can give you."

* * *

This fairy tale reminds me that it isn't only the big or expensive things that add flavor to our lives. It can be something as simple as dancing at work.

So keep on dancing.

Keep on Learning

2010-09-27T00:01:00.002-05:00

"The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done." Mark Twain (from "Taming the Bicycle")

I believe in education. I must, since I have THREE post-graduate degrees. But although I mostly agree with the Mark Twain quote, I also respect the self-taught person. (I bet Samuel Clemens did, too.)

Recently, I purchased Mark Twain's entire collection for my Kindle, and last week I started reading his compiled letters. The compilation includes a biography and running commentary written by his friend Albert Bigelow Paine. While reading the biography, I learned that Samuel Clemens was forced to leave school at age 13, when his father died, to become a printer's apprentice. This icon of wit and wisdom had little formal education. And as noted in last week's post, the same is true of Abraham Lincoln.

I come from a well-educated family, and by the time I met my husband through a dating service I already had a Master of Science in psychology and was working on my law degree. (My third post-graduate degree, an LLM in Financial Services Law, came later on.) When I found out that I had been matched with a man who had dropped out of college, I was skeptical.

We've been married for 31 years. If Roland had been satisfied with what he knew, our relationship would have ended after a few dates. But he was well-read and eager to keep learning, and I discovered that is more important than a formal education.

Still, I'm glad Roland went back to school several years into our marriage and got his college degree. Followed by a Master of Arts in history. Followed by 31 hours beyond that. The college degree enabled him to become a high school teacher, and the MA and Plus 30 increase his paycheck, but I'd like to think he enjoyed the learning, too.

The point is that a formal education is a good thing, but if something deflects you from that path, don't stop learning. Because even the self-taught individual can do great things.

By the way, when Albert Bigelow Paine wrote about his friend in 1917, he predicted that Mark Twain's greatest success--the book that would survive the longest--would be Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc. So much for predictions.

But Paine was right about one thing--Mark Twain lives. If Samuel Clemens had been content with his printer's training, "mark twain" would be no more than a nautical term for marking depth.

So keep on learning.

A Failure's Tale

2010-09-20T00:01:00.001-05:00

Abraham Lincoln was a failure.

Actually, that statement is misleading. As we all know, Abraham Lincoln was a true success story. Furthermore, his failures have been greatly exaggerated, as I discovered after visiting the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois at the end of our vacation. (That's where President Lincoln and his family obligingly posed for the picture at the beginning of this post.)

Still, Honest Abe did have his share of setbacks.

He failed in business when the general store he bought with a partner couldn't compete with another store in town. (Legend says he failed twice, but he was only an employee of the first failed store.)

Instead of giving up, he changed careers and became a successful and well-respected lawyer.

He lost his first election for a seat in the Illinois legislature. (And won the next four.)

He won the race for the U.S. House of Representatives the only time he ran.

He lost his two bids to the U.S. Senate. Being a Senator must have been one of his ambitions, because he gave up a fifth term in the Illinois legislature (right after he was elected) to run for the Senate his first time.

Instead of giving up, he moved up, winning the election for U.S. President--twice.

Abraham Lincoln used his "failures" to achieve greater successes. Yes, his store failed, but he kept plugging along until he got the career he really wanted--law.

Yes, he never became a U.S. Senator, but his debates with Stephen A. Douglas brought him into the national spotlight and netted him an even greater prize.

So what was the secret to his success? A number of sources say it was his perseverance.

But I'm not convinced. I credit his thirst for knowledge instead. Lincoln had few opportunities to attend school, but he went when he could. He borrowed as many books as he could get his hands on and devoured them whenever he could find a spare minute. Like most lawyers of his day, he read law books on his own time and earned his license without a formal legal education.

And it wasn't his silver tongue that won people over. It was his understanding and logic and wit. Those are by-products of a good education (formal or informal), and he gained his through persistence.

So maybe it was his perseverance after all.

Invincible?

2010-09-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

Most of us know where we were and what we were doing on September 11, 2001. At least most Americans do.

I was at work in Chicago. More specifically, I was in a managers' meeting with a video-conference hook-up to our New York office, located two blocks from the World Trade Center. As we were getting ready to start the meeting, the manager of the New York office asked if we heard the news reports that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Then a few minutes later he told us that his building was being evacuated, and he left abruptly.

All of our New York employees escaped physical injury, although it was months before the space was usable again. One of our board members was among the casualties, as was Windows on the World--at the top of one of the towers--where we held our New York board meetings. (I got stuck in an elevator on the way up there once.) But in spite of all the human casualties, it could have been a lot worse. It is truly amazing how many people got out safely.

Why was 9/11 such an emotional event? Yes, we lost approximately 3,000 lives (including the deaths at the Pentagon and on the four airplanes), and that is indeed a tragedy.* But everyone dies, and many deaths are unexpected. According to the Department of Transportation, 37,261 people died in traffic accidents in 2008. That's over 100 deaths EVERY DAY. And be grateful you don't live in Iraq or Afghanistan, where death is a way of life.

So why was 9/11 such an emotional event? Because we lost our sense of security. We thought we were invincible within our own borders. We hadn't seen such aggression on U.S. land since Pearl Harbor, which had the same emotional impact because we had been sitting in our own territory and minding our own business.

It wasn't always that way.

On our vacation, Roland and I visited three forts on the Mississippi River. We started at Fort D, located in downtown Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Fort D is one of four Union forts built to protect the city during the Civil War. The biggest enemy its opponents fought was boredom because the only battle in the area occurred west of the city. But the country knew that it was vulnerable within its borders, and it was prepared.

Fort Kaskaskia is one of two forts near Chester, Illinois on the other side of the river. The fort was made of earthworks and wood, so all that is left are mounds where earthen walls used to be. Fort Kaskaskia was occupied from 1703-1763 by the French, then by the British until the Revolutionaries captured it in 1778, and it was last used in the War of 1812 (by the Americans).

Our final stop was Fort de Chartres, pictured above. This fort had a long history of French occupation during the days when France claimed the territory, but the French surrendered the fort (and the Illinois territory) to Great Britain in the mid 1760s. Great Britain abandoned the fort in 1771, and the Americans never used it.

As the very existence of these forts shows, Americans (and their predecessors in this land) have not always felt invincible. Once upon a time, we realized that we were in danger from all sides, and we learned to prepare for it and deal with it when it came. Yes, there were surprises, but they did not affect us as Pearl Harbor or 9/11 did.

My point?

America's greatest vulnerability is its conviction that it is not vulnerable.

* According to the 9/11 Commission Report, more than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Center, 125 died at the Pentagon, and 256 died on the four airplanes.

Just a Bit Player?

2010-09-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

My daughter and son-in-law recently moved to Chester, Illinois, so of course we spent some of our vacation time there. And what do you do in Chester? Visit Popeye. That's because Chester bills itself as the home of Popeye.

Actually, Chester was the home of Popeye's creator, Elzie Segar. Segar was born and grew up there and got his start as a projectionist in the local movie theater. As he rewound the tape reels, he would draw pictures of locals and project them onto the screen. Then he would go home and work on his mail-order cartooning lessons.

Popeye is a big deal in Chester. It even has a Popeye festival (called the Popeye Picnic) every September. The weekend includes a parade and the unveiling of a statue with one or more of Elzie Segar's characters. (And yes, we did stop and take a picture of each of the existing statues during our visit.) This year's festival is September 10-12.

I first knew Popeye as a Saturday morning cartoon character who downed a can of spinach every time he needed strength to save Olive Oyl or perform some other heroic act. By that time, he was definitely the star of the show.

But it wasn't always that way. Popeye started as a bit player in the Thimble Theatre comic strip, which starred Olive Oyl and her brother, Castor Oyl. (Both Olive and Castor already have statues in Chester.) When Castor needed a ship for a trip to Dice Island, he hired Popeye as one of the crew. The trip lasted a number of weeks, but when it was over, so was Popeye's role in the strip.

That was Segar's intention, anyway. His readers had a different idea.

In the end, Popeye took over the strip. And many years later, it was renamed for him.

Although Popeye was a fictional character, his rise from supporting player to star is not unusual in real life. And even if Popeye had stayed in the background, he would still have played an important role in getting Castor Oyl where he wanted to go.

In the real world, we all have something important to do, even if it is "just" swabbing down the decks so those around us can live in a clean and healthy environment. If it weren't for the farmer and the grocery clerk, I would probably starve. (Well, I'd figure something else out before it got that bad, but I'm grateful I don't have to.) And where would I be without the people who plow the streets in winter and collect the trash all year round? Stuck in my house surrounded by garbage.

Don't ever think that what you do isn't important.

Because there are no bit parts in life.

We Need Each Other

2010-08-30T00:01:00.001-05:00

I grew up in the United Presbyterian Church, but I've belonged to an LCMS (Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod) congregation since I got married, and I've been married longer than I was single. That's the same LCMS congregation my husband has belonged to his entire life.

So when we heard that LCMS began near where our daughter now lives, we added it to our vacation itinerary.

Our first Lutheran heritage stop was at Altenburg, Missouri, in the southeastern part of the state. Altenburg is one of several settlements founded in 1839 by a group of Lutherans from Saxony. Altenburg has a Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum, and the grounds include the first permanent church building in Altenburg. That's it in the picture, although it is now part of the museum. It was replaced in 1867 by a larger church building still in use.

The grounds at the Lutheran Heritage Center also include the Log Cabin College, which trained new pastors for 10 years before its functions were transferred to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1849.

The Lutherans' first two years were tough ones. Most of the settlers had been tradesmen in Saxony, but upon arrival in America they became farmers, learning as they went. They also faced disease and discouragement.

A group of Presbyterians had settled in the area twenty years earlier, and now they proved their Christian kinship with the Lutherans by helping them through those tough times. (I particularly appreciate this connection between my childhood denomination and my current one.)

Back in the present, after leaving Altenburg, Roland and I drove about five miles to Frohna, Missouri, which is another of the settlements from the same immigration. There we visited the Saxon Lutheran Memorial: a farm once owned by two brothers who came over with the other Saxons in 1839. The brothers bought it as a working farm from one of the Presbyterian families already established in the area.

Which gets me to the point of this post. Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics: we are all part of the same Christian family and should help each other the way healthy biological families do. Nor should it stop there. We are all connected in the "family of man." To quote someone from my family tree: "No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." (John Donne, 1623)

So let's follow the example the Presbyterians set at Altenburg.

Lest We Forget

2010-08-23T00:01:00.020-05:00

Here's another idyllic sight that isn't as idyllic when you know the story.

The year was 1830, and the place was Georgia. The Cherokees lived in log houses and farmed their land. Many Cherokees spoke both English and Cherokee, and they even had their own alphabet and newspaper. And they wanted to live in peace with their white neighbors.

But some of their white neighbors didn't see it that way. As more settlers poured into Georgia, they wanted the prime farmland that belonged to the Cherokees. The white man's greed increased when gold was discovered on Cherokee land.

The State of Georgia tried to force the Cherokees out, but these Native Americans didn't put on their war paint. Instead, they took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court--and won.

An illusory victory. White men wanted the Cherokees off that land, and the white man in the White House held the power. As President Jackson is reported to have said, "Marshall made his decision, now let him enforce it."

When the U.S. government offered to relocate the Cherokees to Oklahoma, some thought it better to give in and move out peacefully, while others wanted to stay and resist. So the first group left "voluntarily," if not happily, and the second group stayed until 1938, when soldiers came and forced out the more than 16,000 who remained. Most of these Native Americans were interred in a stockade for the winter, where approximately 500 died from illness. Then the soldiers forced the survivors to march 800 miles under harsh conditions, losing another 4,000 people before reaching Oklahoma.

I took the picture at Missouri's Trail of Tears State Park, which is located where most of the Cherokees crossed the Mississippi River on their forced march from Georgia to Oklahoma. Majestic and peaceful as the site is now, it nonetheless reminds us that white Americans are no better than anyone else. The number of deaths from the Trail of Tears may not come anywhere near the number from the Holocaust, but the prejudice and greed that caused them are the same.

And it could happen again, especially if we forget and grow complacent.

As George Santayana said over 100 years ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I shudder at the thought.

The Good Old Days

2010-08-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Idyllic, isn't it.

Our vacation included a stop at Bollinger Mill State Historic Site in Burfordville, Missouri. The picture shows Bollinger Mill and Burfordville Covered Bridge, which provided access to the mill for people coming from the east.

The setting is idyllic, but the life wasn't.

When we were there in early August, the temperature was in the upper 90s and the heat index was over 100. It was even hotter inside the mill, which has too many cracks and openings for air conditioning even today. And, of course, air conditioning as we know it didn't exist in the 1800s, when mill employees worked from dawn to dusk.

But it was a party for the farmers who brought their grain to be ground into meal and flour. Farm families camped near the mill and used the occasion as a social gathering. A much needed social gathering, because the farmers and their families worked from dawn to dusk when they were back on the farm.

They also lived in houses without indoor plumbing. Imagine the smell and the flies in the outhouse. Then think about getting up in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm and having to go to the bathroom! Some people used chamber pots in bad weather, but imagine the smell in the room until they had a chance to empty and wash them out. (I'd be just my luck to be assigned that chore.)

Okay, you say, so maybe the living conditions weren't that great in the old days, but there were fewer divorces and a stronger values system.

I'll give you the fewer divorces. The conditions probably encouraged more couples to work out their differences. But there were also many dysfunctional marriages.

And crime, and wars, and envy, and greed, and hatred. Those things don't change with the times.

So who's longing for the good old days?

Not I.

Following the Call

2010-08-09T00:01:00.003-05:00

A week ago I watched my son-in-law become an ordained minister. The service included many reminders that God's call is the beginning rather than the end of the process. Although Pete has completed his four years of seminary, he will grown in his faith and continue learning to follow Christ until he dies. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work (and how I pray it will actually work for Pete).

But this life-long learning is not just for ministers.

All Christians are called to grow in faith and to continue learning to follow Christ. That's true in our personal lives as well as in our vocations.

Even if you aren't a Christian, you never stop learning. You either learn to be a better lawyer or writer or teacher or secretary or janitor or spouse or parent, or you learn to become a second or third-rate one. You either learn to enjoy your life, or you learn to curl up and die inside. But you don't stop learning.

Learning isn't a choice, but what you learn is. So choose wisely.

Yellow Kitchens and Pink Bathrooms

2010-08-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

I admit it. I'm an HGTV junkie. "Househunters" and "Househunters International" are among my favorite shows.

But while I love to look at the houses on TV and decide which I like best, I'm often puzzled by the things that matter to other people. Granite counter tops look nice, but laminate is more cost-effective and durable.

Then there are those stainless steel appliances. White ones are just as functional and cheaper.

And why would you want a cathedral ceiling in your entryway or a bathroom you can waltz in? Lowering the ceiling would create another usable room on the second floor, and who dances in their bathroom? To me, that's just wasted space.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm all about function, although comfort is important, too. Yes, I want my house to look nice, but I'd rather live in a box that works than a palace that doesn't.

When Roland and I bought our house, it had a hot-pink bathroom. Not my style, and definitely not his. But we were looking for a place where I could have an attached law office while the children were small, and this was it. So we lived with the pink bathroom for six or seven years until we could afford to redo it.

The "need" for top-of-the-line, expensive things in a home is one thing that fueled the recession. People bought what they couldn't afford and then complained when they couldn't make the mortgage payments. It's one thing to buy nice things if you can afford them, but they are luxuries. When they become necessities, they are just another symptom of our materialistic society.

I'm proud of my daughter and son-in-law. When they went house-hunting in May, they put function first. They enjoy cooking, so they wanted lots of cupboards and counter space and were willing to put up with ugly to get size. (That's their "new" kitchen in the picture. Actually, "ugly" is their word. It isn't my style, but I don't hate it. And the yellow probably wouldn't stand out so much if it weren't for the dark cabinets and brick backsplash.) They bought the house even though they knew that only cosmetic changes were in their budget.

Because yellow kitchens and pink bathrooms are still functional.

Safety First

2010-07-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

The Chicago to Mackinac Island sailboat race officially kicked off on Saturday. It sounds like fun, and after we bought our current boat in 2002, we checked into it. And quickly ruled it out.

The Chicago-Mac race is by invitation only, and that probably means credentials we don't have. It also requires experienced crew and some off-shore sailing equipment we couldn't afford to buy at the time.

These requirements make a lot of sense. The race covers 333 miles, and during part of the course the boats may be as much as 40 miles from the nearest shore. Storms can pop up quickly over one part of the lake while the sun shines brightly just a few miles away. In fact, one boat was hit by lightening this year. (The crew was safe but the boat was damaged and had to leave the race.) So I don't blame the race organizers for putting safety first.

If we spent a lot of time in the middle of Lake Michigan or sailed the ocean, we'd buy that extra safety gear. But we usually sail in sight of land, and even when it disappears it is rarely more than fifteen miles away. And we're cowards who stay at home if the weather looks threatening. So we can get away without a life raft or an EPIRB (which broadcasts it's location in an emergency).

Not that we ignore safety. Life jackets, safety harnesses, and tethers have always been standard equipment on our boats. Since I can't swim, I wear my life jacket whenever we are on the water, and children must wear them or the boat won't leave the dock.

But there is some safety gear we learned about the hard way.

The first time we tried to sail the North Channel, we never reached Lake Huron. At the time we had a trailerable 23' sailboat, and we put it in the water at DeTour Village, Michigan. My brother joined us with his 18-footer, making two boats, three adults, and two children (ages 12 and 8) in our party.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and perfect sailing weather when we left DeTour. (That's DeTour Lighthouse in the picture.) We had been out about an hour and were sailing in moderate winds when... Crack! Suddenly the upper part of our mast was lying on the cabin roof and the sails were in the water. The mast had snapped just below the spreaders without giving us any warning. (For the non-sailors out there, the spreaders are the part of the mast that spreads out like arms on each side.) We were proud of our calmness and quick action, but we never did find out why the mast broke.

We motored back to the marina at DeTour and docked there for several days as we called the insurance company and did some sightseeing on land. But when the week-end rolled around again, we decided to use our sailboat as a motorboat and cruise up to Canada.

Everything went fine--until our return trip.

I was navigating (by sight) and was sure we weren't anywhere near the reef that showed up on the charts. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

With a crunch, the rudder struck an underwater boulder. Although we didn't take on any water, we couldn't steer the boat. We were stranded, and we couldn't use the radio to call for help because the antenna was at the top of the mast and the mast was tied to the trailer back at the marina.

(In my defense, I was used to sailing on Lake Michigan, where the water is at least 25 feet deep and there is nothing to run into except the shore and a few man-made structures clearly visible above the water.)

My brother and daughter were sailing on his boat, but we had left them far behind. When they eventually came by, they called someone to tow us off the rocks. It makes a good story, and my children will never forget that vacation.

The point? We bought a handheld radio as soon as we got back home, and our current boat has a depth finder. We also bought a GPS to help us pinpoint our location (and keep us away from reefs) before we attempted (successfully) to sail the North Channel again.

Because safety is important, even if you have to learn it the hard way.

Not a Lonely Job

2010-07-19T00:01:00.001-05:00

Back when I was earning my living as a lawyer, I attended a hearing where a witness was asked why she wanted to work on the exchange floor when she was trading successfully from home. Her answer? "Trading is a lonely job."

That's what they say about writing, too. And it is partly true. I don't have colleagues occupying offices next door or meeting in conference rooms down the hall. When I sit down to put words on paper, I'm the only one in the room.

But I'm not alone.

No, I'm not referring to God. Yes, He is with me, but that's not what this post is about.

A truly solitary job is one that no one else understands well enough to provide encouragement and where no one else has input into the final product. I don't know if there are any truly solitary jobs out there, but neither writers nor traders qualify.

Writers are part of a broader writing community, and traders are part of a broader trading community. Both writers and traders can find others who have dealt with the same issues to provide encouragement.

Good writers seek input from critique partners, editors, and others to improve their manuscripts. Good traders read financial newsletters and study other traders' opinions and methods to improve their own performance.

I belong to a number of local, regional, and national writers' groups, and I am active in several. These include a local critique group (the Highland Writers' Group), a non-profit group formed to encourage Indiana's creative writers (the Indiana Writers' Consortium), and the Indiana chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers. Each of these groups meets several times throughout the year, and HWG meets weekly. They all provide excellent opportunities to interact with other people who understand the writing life.

Saturday was a good example.

That's when IWG held its second annual networking picnic. Although there were a couple of fundraising activities, the day was primarily about the fellowship and the food and the fun. And I enjoyed creating a literary scavenger hunt using books as clues to things people could find in or near the picnic location.

You may have a job that requires some alone time, but you aren't alone.

And writing is definitely not a lonely job.

Teamwork Gone Wrong

2010-07-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

Camels are herd animals. These camels are in perfect harmony as they pose for the tourists at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

Why can't we all be like that?

Back in college, I took "Introduction to Sociology." The only way to get an A was to do a project, but it didn't have to be done well. Just done.

The teacher divided us into project teams, and we set to work. One member of my team was very outspoken, and his ideas were awful. Unfortunately, no one was willing to stand up to him. An awful idea carried through would still have gotten me an A, but my work ethic wouldn't accept anything less than my best. And this wasn't it.

Those of you who know me today may find it hard to believe, but at that point in my life I was a timid person who never stood up for myself. So it took extreme frustration to make me crack.

But crack I did. I asked the teacher if I could do an individual project (in a class involving the study of groups, no less). She said I could, so I told the team that I wasn't going to participate any more. I could tell the other members were shocked, but I didn't care. I simply couldn't handle the person who tried to dominate the group.

Today, I'm that person.

Well, not completely. I do try to listen to other people's opinions, and I often use their suggestions because I know they are better than my own. But I still can't stand incompetence.

Or people who always have to have their own way.

I have learned something over the years, though. Sometimes quitting isn't an option. Disagreeable people are a fact of life, and it is impossible to avoid them. Better to stick with it, give in graciously on the little things, and fight for the big ones. Because when I walk away, I silence my voice. And what if it is the only voice of reason?

Imagine how much I would have learned about groups if I'd stuck with the sociology team. I thought walking away took courage, but it was really the coward's way out.

So if you are discouraged and ready to quit, think about the void you'll create.

(A personal message to the person who inspired this post: please don't quit. We need your voice to keep us on track.)

Because every voice counts.

Our Politically Incorrect Heritage

2010-07-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

The Nina and the Pinta sailed into our marina last week. Okay, so they are just replicas, but they were interesting all the same.

They also got me thinking about Christopher Columbus and other men and women who put their mark on this country. And about how different it would have been if those men and women had been politically correct.

Before I go there, I'd better define what I mean by "politically correct." I found dozens of definitions on the web, and they differ substantially. The one I'm using is from Encarta's online dictionary:

deliberately avoiding offense: relating to or supporting the use of language or conduct that deliberately avoids giving offense, e.g., on the basis of ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

Notice that the reference to ethnic origin or sexual orientation is just an example. The definition itself is much broader than those two contexts.

Under this definition, our nation's heroes were not politically correct. They knew they couldn't change the world without offending someone in the process, but they went ahead anyway.

Although born in Genoa (now a part of Italy), the adult Columbus lived and worked in Portugal, which was a bitter rival of Spain. So it wasn't politically correct for Columbus to sail under Spain's flag and claim the New World for Spain. But Portugal wouldn't fund the voyage and Spain would, so what was he to do? Give up? Someone else would have made the trip eventually, but it would have changed the course of history.

It wasn't politically correct for the founding fathers to sign the Declaration of Independence and participate in a revolt against the country that ruled the colonies. The loyalists in the colonies and many people in England must have been greatly offended. But the founding fathers thought the existing government was tyrannical, so they made a conscious choice to do something they knew would offend. If they had been unwilling to make that choice, we might be living in a monarchy.

It wasn't politically correct (at least among the Southern slave holders) for a woman named Harriett Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. In spite of the current controversy over stereotyping, the novel was meant to help black people by depicting the horrors of slavery, and it fueled abolitionist sentiment. We'll never know for sure, but slavery might not have ended as quickly if Stowe had worried about offending members of her own race.

It wasn't politically correct for Susan B. Anthony to organize women to fight for the right to vote. Some members of both sexes were offended at the time. Anthony died before her dream became a reality, but if she hadn't been willing to offend those who favored the status quo, would my mother have been able to vote when she came of age? And would the U.S. Supreme Court have any female members today?

It wasn't politically correct for Martin Luther King, Jr. to march through the streets and protest laws that treated blacks as second-class citizens. He offended many whites and even broke some laws in the process. Yet, looking back, how many of my readers wish he had been politically correct? Probably not many.

It is impossible to live a life that offends no one, and the person who tries will never be an agent of social change. I'm not advocating prejudice or speaking without thinking or insensitivity to other people's feelings. Those things have always been wrong and always will be. (See Titus 3:2, for example.) But given the choice between being politically correct or changing the world, I know which one I'd choose.

How about you?

Love is Saying You're Sorry

2010-06-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

I attended a wedding on Friday. Gordon and Heather are members of the writer's critique group I belong to, so I got to watch their friendship blossom into love and engagement and, finally, marriage. But "finally" isn't the right word, because marriage is a new beginning rather than an end.

Although I don't consider myself an expert on marriage, I have been married for 31 years, so that's a good start. (The picture is Roland and me in 1979. How we've changed since then!) I've learned a few things in that time, so I'm passing on some words of wisdom to Heather and Gordon and all the other married couples out there.

First, be realistic. Marriage isn't nirvana. Even the best marriages have times when the spouses don't like each other much. (Yes, mine too.) Marriage requires hard work and compromise, but it's worth it.

How many of you remember the movie Love Story from the late 60s or early 70s? It's most famous line was, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." I completely disagree. We all disappoint each other at times, and the strongest marriages have two partners who are willing to say both "I'm sorry" and "I forgive you."

Second, remember that marriage is a partnership. That doesn't mean losing your individual identities, but it does mean working together to satisfy each other's needs.

There is one more key ingredient--and the main one. Roland and I are both committed to God, and He guides our lives and our marriage.

So here's my advice to Gordon and Heather. Put God at the center of your marriage and keep Him there.

And don't hesitate to say, "I'm sorry."

Dreams Take Work

2010-06-21T00:01:00.002-05:00

Sleeping in the dorm. Eating in the dining hall. Walking across campus to attend class.

My college days? Well, that too. But I'm talking about a writers' conference I attended earlier this month.

The Write-to-Publish Conference is held annually at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. (I don't want anyone to confuse it with Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Write-to-Publish is held at the one that Billy Graham actually attended.) It is a four-day Christian conference that offers multiple opportunities for writers to improve their craft and make contact with editors and agents.

What did I get out of it? New friends. The joy that comes from worshiping with other Christian writers. Lots of good information on marketing my book and expanding my speaking ministry. The opportunity to submit my novel to a publishing house that doesn't take unsolicited submissions. Another lead for my children's book. (And yes, I submitted both the novel and the children's book two days after returning home.)

I try to attend one major writers' conference a year. This year is an exception: I'll be attending two. That's because I had already planned to attend Write-to-Publish when I discovered that American Christian Fiction Writers is holding its annual conference in my backyard this year. Or maybe not quite my backyard, but 2 and 1/2 driving hours away isn't bad. So I'll be going there in September.

Many of you don't see yourselves as writers, but all of you have dreams. We all benefit from time away to develop our skills and re-energize those dreams, whatever they may be.

So take some time to follow yours.

A Perfect Day

2010-06-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

On the shores of Lake Michigan, a buttercup cocks its head and listens to the whispering wind.

High on the Indiana dunes, dry sand skips merrily along, looking for a place to rest.

The flag at the Munster Town Hall lifts halfway and stays there.

At Wrigley Field, the wind nudges a ball into the bleachers. Then the camera pulls back and shows white sails showcased against blue water.

And at the Hammond Marina, I am getting ready to join them.

Flinging the rope off the post, I give Freizeit her freedom. She backs out of her berth and heads for the marina entrance.

Freizeit means "free time" in German, and she is built for enjoyment. Sleek and white with dark green accents, she is rigged with one mast and two sails.

After we clear the marina entrance, Roland turns the bow into the wind. I raise the main sail and cleat it off, then raise the head sail.

"Let's go toward Chicago," Roland says as he turns off the engine and lets the wind take over.

We relax in our seats, soaking in the silence. Well, not complete silence. We hear a gentle "plash" as the waves caress the boat, and a soft "whoo" as the wind plays among the sails.

I watch contentedly as the Museum of Science and Industry grows larger and then smaller and the Chicago skyline becomes more pronounced.

All too soon, Roland glances at his watch and says, "We'd better head back now." Working in perfect harmony with the boat, we swing 180 degrees. Then we settle into our seats and let the wind take us home.

The azure water laps against the side of the boat, and the sun smiles down on us.

Soon the marina looms ahead. Roland turns the bow into the wind, and I take the sails down.

As we pull into our berth to tie up, the wind dies.

The camera panning the lake near Wrigley Field shows sails flapping. But the baseball fans are on their way home after a Cubs win.

The flag at the Munster Town Hall hangs limp.

High on the Indiana dunes, the grains of sand settle to rest.

And on the shores of Lake Michigan, the buttercup straightens its head.

The wind has retired at the end of a perfect day.

My Hero

2010-06-07T00:01:00.002-05:00

My father would have been 100 on June 2nd.

Daddy married later in life, and I was only nine when I started telling my friends that my father was half a century old. (Yes, that gives you enough information to calculate my current age.) Daddy was 73 when he became a grandfather and a few months shy of 89 when he died.

The picture shows Daddy with his first grandchild (my daughter, Caroline), and it is one of the few pictures that shows him smiling. But this one is closer to real life, because Daddy smiled and laughed a lot.

My father was scholarly and strict and he watched every penny. He was also the kindest and most generous man I know.

Daddy valued education. He dropped out of high school but eventually worked his way through college and seminary. He also made sure that his children had the means to go to college. In fact, his example inspired each of us to get at least one postgraduate degree.

Growing up, I didn't appreciate Daddy enough. Yes, I loved and respected him, but I sometimes wished that he was rich, indulgent, and anything but a minister. Looking back, I can see how much he sacrificed for his family and what a rich legacy he left us, but I didn't see it at the time.

Do you appreciate your father the way you should? If he is still around, make sure you honor him this Father's Day (June 20).

On the Road With Laura Ingalls Wilder--Part III

2010-05-31T00:01:00.001-05:00

Since Mama and I didn't want to backtrack, we vistited the Indian Territory site (Little House on the Prairie) outside Independence, Kansas near the end of our trip rather than near the beginning. In the books, Laura moved from the big woods in Wisconsin to Indian Territory and then to Plum Creek in Minnesota. In real life, the Ingalls family moved back to Wisconsin and stayed there for several years before moving to Plum Creek.

The place designated as the Kansas site for Laura's cabin contains a replica of the cabin; an old post office and an old one-room schoolhouse that are both original but were moved to this site and have nothing to do with Laura; and a hand-dug well. Mama saw most of it but decided not to walk the few extra steps to see the well.

At the cabin, a string fed through a hole in the door to open the inside latch. In Little House on the Prairie, Laura describes her father fixing up the string so he could pull it through the hole at night to "lock" the door from the inside.

I'm not sure if this is the real site, or if somebody just decided to call it that. Laura describes their homestead as being 40 miles from Independence and this place is only 13 miles away. But Laura did change the facts for drama sometimes, or her young memory may have gotten it wrong.

Our last Laura Ingalls Wilder stop was also her last. Laura and Almanzo moved to Mansfield, Missouri, while their daughter, Rose, was still young (On the Way Home), and they spent the rest of their lives there. Rose moved to California and eventually to Connecticut, but she is buried next to her parents in the Mansfield cemetery. That's the first place we went when we arrived. Unfortunately, the engraving on Laura and Almanzo's grave is almost the same color as the tombstone, so the writing doesn't show up very well in a photo.

From there, we went to Rocky Ridge Farm to see the house and museum. The museum contains lots of original Ingalls and Wilder items, including Pa's fiddle.

Our admission fee included guided tours of two houses. The farm house is still furnished with Laura's furniture and is pretty much as she left it when she died. The picture at the beginning of this post shows the house from the side. Almanzo built the part on the left first, and he added the part on the right later.

Rose had her own fame as an author (before her mother even wrote the Little House books) and as a newspaper correspondent, and she must have done okay financially. She wanted to give her parents a more modern house, so they let her build them a stone house (called "the rock house"). Laura wrote her first four books while living in the rock house.

After settling her parents in the rock house, Rose moved into the farm house. Eight years later, she decided she'd had enough of small town life and left. As soon as she vacated the premises, Laura and Almanzo moved back to the farm house, where they felt more at home. Laura wrote her other books there.

When we first arrived at Rocky Ridge Farm, I noticed that the parking lot was on the other side of the road and was worried that Mama wouldn't be able to walk that far. Then I saw a sign indicating that there was handicapped parking at the museum/farm house, so we went ahead and turned in there. We also drove past the regular parking at the rock house and parked much closer. The walk wouldn't have bothered most people, but we were glad for the handicapped parking (and yes, we did have a permit).

It was a good trip, and I recommend it for any Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. (And if you aren't one yet, get the books and read them.) But I'm grateful I could travel by car instead of covered wagon.

On the Road With Laura Ingalls Wilder--Part II

2010-05-24T00:01:00.001-05:00

From Plum Creek, Mama and I traveled to De Smet, South Dakota, where we did our most extensive sightseeing. We started with a tour that took us inside two houses. The first was the Surveyors' House, where the Ingalls lived their first winter in De Smet (By the Shores of Silver Lake). That house (shown in the picture) is the actual house and has been restored to its original condition, although it is no longer in the same location. They don't let anyone upstairs, but they have it set up the way it would have been in Laura's time, and mirrors at the top of the stairs reflect the way the attic would have looked with the girls' beds in it.

The site also contained the school Laura attended (The Long Winter and Little Town on the Prairie) and a replica of the first school where Laura taught (These Happy Golden Years).

We then got in our car and followed the guide (in her car) to the Ingalls' house in town. This is where Pa and Ma and Mary lived until they died. Laura was already married by the time Pa built the town house, so she never lived there.

The town house is about seven blocks from the Surveyors' House, so I'm not sure if driving is the normal procedure or if they usually walk and were just accommodating Mama's 90-year-old legs.

The guide took us through the first floor, and I went upstairs as well. Mama couldn't climb the stairs, so the guide showed her a book with pictures of the second floor.

Next, we drove to the cemetery and saw the family graves (all in a row) for Pa, Ma, Laura's son (who died when he was just a few days old), Mary, and Carrie. We forgot to walk a few feet farther on to see the grave where Grace is buried with her husband, but it is there, too.

After that, we took another road to the site where Laura and Almanzo homesteaded after they got married (The First Four Years). All you can see now is a sign marking the spot. Actually, the sign says more about Rose being born there than it does about Laura and Almanzo. But it was close by and worth the short drive.

Finally, we drove to the Ingalls' homestead, where Laura lived in the summers until she got married. While at the homestead, I walked out to a replica of the Ingall's claim shanty, but Mama went no farther than the gift shop. The walking was easy for me, but it was over a gentle hill, and the claim shanty wasn't close to the parking lot. Then, as we left the homestead, we stopped and saw some cottonwood trees that Pa had planted.

Mama and I spent the next day in the car on our way to Burr Oak, Iowa. That's the one place Laura never wrote about. Her stay in Burr Oak came in the middle of the Ingalls' years at Walnut Grove. If you are interested in learning more about that time, I recommend Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Iowa Story, by William Anderson.

Friends bought the Master's Hotel in Burr Oak and asked Pa and Ma to help them run it. Since the crops had failed again, they agreed, but the Ingalls stayed only a little over a year before returning to Walnut Grove.

We took a tour through the original (restored) hotel and heard about Laura's time there. After seeing the main floor, we went outside and entered the lower level through a back door. (Everyone else on the tour went down the interior stairs, but the outside route allowed Mama to take a path with a gentle slope rather than worrying about stairs.) Mama wasn't able to climb to the top floor but did see pictures of it.

"But," you ask, "didn't Laura live in Indian Territory when she was young? And did she ever settle down for good?"

I'll answer those questions in next week's final installment.

And the winners are--

2010-05-21T21:13:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to the winners of the drawing to celebrate my website launch.

Millie Samuelson won the grand prize: a Levenger bag filled with reading tools, an autographed copy of my book, and two packets of note cards.

Betty Anne Bantz and Ruth Mills each won an autographed copy of my book, In God We Trust: How the Supreme Court's First Amendment Decisions Affect Organized Religion (FaithWalk Publishing, 2006).

Sandra King and Sandy Perez each won a packet of note cards.

I appreciate everyone who visited the site and left comments. Thank you!

On the Road With Laura Ingalls Wilder--Part I

2010-05-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

I just returned from a road trip with my 90-year-old mother. When I decided to take her on a vacation, I looked for somthing that would interest both of us and wouldn't be too taxing for her (or for me).

The trip that fit the bill? Visiting the places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived.

Most of you know who Laura Ingalls Wilder was, so I won't go into much detail. But for those of you who don't, she wrote the Little House books (Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, and more). She wrote them for children, but many adults like them, too.

Although some parts of the Little House books are fictionalized, Laura based them on her own life. That means our road trip took us to the real places she lived and wrote about.

Laura's family did a lot of backtracking and Mama and I didn't want to, so our trip did not follow the exact sequence of Laura's books (or her life). But it was an interesting way to learn about a beloved children's author. It is also a good trip for the young and the elderly alike. While people who have trouble walking or climbing might have to forgo a couple of items of interest, my mother was able to see most of them.

We started in Pepin, Wisconsin (Little House in the Big Woods), which is the closest town to where Laura was born. Pepin has a small museum, but it doesn't open for the season until May 15, so we didn't get to see it. I'm guessing, though, that much of the information there would have duplicated exhibits we saw at other museums.

From Pepin, we followed the signs to a wayside at the approximate location of the Ingalls' home. The wayside contains a replica of a log cabin that does not match the description in the book but was still interesting. The location is the main thing, anyway.

In her books, Laura traveled next to Indiana Territory, Kansas (Little House on the Prairie), but we left that for later. Instead, we drove to Walnut Grove, Minnesota (On the Banks of Plum Creek). Walnut Grove has a nice museum with exhibits about Laura and the TV show (which was set in Walnut Grove rather than Indian Territory, where the book of the same title took place). The museum also has a replica of a dugout and has several old buildings, most without any connection to Laura. The exhibits took two hours or less.

Next, we drove to the banks of Plum Creek, and I took the trail to the dugout site. This is one place where my mother stayed in the car. It would be an easy hike for most people, but it was a little too much for Mama's 90-year-old legs.

The picture at the head of this post shows Plum Creek, with the dugout site at the top of the bank (where the billboard-size sign is). The dugout is now just a depression in the ground, but you can see from the picture that the bank was high enough for it.

Next week's post will continue the trip with stops at De Smet, South Dakota and Burr Oak, Iowa.

"We Interrupt This Week"

2010-05-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

Regular readers know that I post new entries on Mondays, so why am I adding a Wednesday post this week? It's because I'm too excited to wait.

My totally revised website just went live and I want everyone to see the great job that PulsePoint Design did with it! The website address is http://www.kathrynpagecamp.com/, but this blog is tied into it. So use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate around the site.

I am giving away several "door prizes" to celebrate. The grand prize is a Levenger bag filled with reading tools, a copy of my book, and two packets of note cards, for a total value of approximately $140. I am also giving away four other prizes: two copies of my book and two packets of note cards. I will draw the winners after 5:00 p.m. Central time next Wednesday, May 19, so make sure you enter before then.

To enter the drawing, go to the contact button at the top of this page and use the contact form to leave me your e-mail address. I won't sell (or give away free) your e-mail address to spammers or anyone else. I might use it for my own announcements unless you tell me not to, in which case I will honor your request.

Only residents of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin are eligible for the drawing. That's because I didn't have the energy to check the laws of all 50 states to make sure I'm not violating them.

The drawing is not open to my immediate family or my husband's immediate family (parents, children, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and in-laws). You know who you are.

Even if you aren't eligible for the drawing, please leave me a comment letting me know what you think of the website.

And feel free to pass this information on. Like most parties, the more the merrier.

Lies Encouraged Here

2010-05-10T00:01:00.002-05:00

I recently listened to a speaker practice for a tall tales contest using a story from her own life. Tall tales (as in Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox) thrive on exaggeration, but this was an ordinary story with no embellishment. Although the way she told it made it interesting, it was not a tall tale.

Novice writers often write about their own experiences but change the names and call their stories "fiction." Members of my writers' critique group would suggest changing the facts to make the action more compelling. The usual response? "It didn't happen that way."

Calling a story a tall tale or fiction makes it okay to change the facts. So get a little creative, folks.

I'm not suggesting that a writer take a recognizable person and give him or her traits that could hurt the real person's reputation. Just changing someone's name and labeling the story "fiction" isn't enough to protect a writer from a defamation lawsuit. But changing events and adding new characters are all part of what makes fiction fiction.

I've known for years that the Little House books are only loosely based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, but I didn't know the first two are out of order. I discovered that only recently while researching a road trip.

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, is set in the woods of Wisconsin when Laura is about four and her sister Carrie is a baby. That fits. Laura did live in the woods near Pepin, Wisconsin at that age, and Carrie was born when Laura was three.

But the second book, Little House on the Prairie, has a slightly older Laura on her way to and then living in Kansas Territory, and Carrie is with them when they leave Wisconsin. In real life, the Ingalls family made the trip from Pepin to Kansas Territory when Laura was two and moved back to Pepin when she was four, and Carrie was born in Kansas. So these books are not in the same order as Laura's real life.

Laura altered her life's chronology for her first two children's novels, and she probably changed other facts, too. But that's okay, because even though it's common knowledge that Laura based the Little House books on her life (and even used real names for her family), the series is labeled and sold as fiction.

So here's my message to all tall tale tellers and novice fiction writers: if lies make your story better, use them. Because they aren't really lies when it's fiction.

Oh, the Places I've Lived--Part II

2010-05-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Call Day is past, and Caroline and Pete ended up in southwestern Illinois. The location is farther from the action than my city-girl daughter is used to, but the church itself sounds like a good fit.

Now on with my story.

Daddy's sabbatical took us to Amman, Jordan. We boarded a ship in New York, disembarked in England, and traveled through Europe on our way to Jordan. Our return trip was on the Queen Mary, which is now a tourist site in Long Beach, California. I was five when we left and six when we returned.

While living in Amman, Daddy taught English at the Bishop's School and Donald and I attended a private school for English-speaking children. (Gordon started school sometime after Christmas.) The classes were small, and King Hussein's sister, Basma, was one of my classmates.

Much of present-day Israel (including Bethlehem and the half of Jerusalem with most of the Christian sites) was in Jordan at the time, so we spent our weekends and holidays visiting Biblical sites. My father had been to Amman and worked at the Bishop's School while still a bachelor, but he wanted his family to experience the Holy Land. And it was a perfect place for a minister to go on sabbatical.

When we returned to the U.S., my father took a church in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. DeTour Village is the place I consider my home town, and it's where I spent most of my growing-up years.

My brother Donald was eight and had three years of school behind him. I was six and had one year of school behind me. But when Daddy went to enroll us at DeTour, he told them that Donald belonged in fifth grade and I belonged in third, so that's where they put us. We each did very well a grade ahead, and Daddy vindicated his failure to convince the LaPrairie school to let us enter a year early.

After three years at DeTour, Daddy decided to take another sabbatical. Again, he let the congregation decide whether it wanted to seek another minister or keep the position open for our return. This time, the church voted to wait for him.

The University of Edinburgh was something of a Mecca for Presbyterian ministers. (Scotland is the birthplace of the Presbyterian Church.) Although Daddy was not looking for another degree, he wanted to take theology classes at New College, and Mama wanted to take classes at the Reid School of Music (also part of the University of Edinburgh).

We sailed on the Queen Mary shortly after I would have entered sixth grade. The Edinburgh public schools placed me with children my own age. The British schools taught at a faster pace than the U.S. schools, however, so I was actually right on track with my class back at DeTour.

The return trip brought a thrill I never (at that point) thought I would experience. Daddy discovered that it was cheaper to fly from Glasgow, Scotland to Reykjavik, Iceland and from there to New York than it was to take the Queen Mary home. So not only did we fly, but we got to take a walk under the midnight sun.

Back at DeTour, I rejoined my classmates for junior high and the first two years of high school. Then Daddy announced that we were moving again.

My parents really liked DeTour, and Daddy loved watching the lake freighters go by his office window. But they were building a retirement home in Holland, Michigan, and Daddy wanted to be closer so that he could work on it during his days off.

What teenage girl wants to be uprooted in the middle of high school and moved somewhere she has to make friends all over again? I didn't. And I was shy in the bargain. But move we did.

Lake City, Michigan, was another small town, but it was close to Cadillac, so it was more built up than I was used to. And I managed to make friends and continued to do well in school, graduating with honors. But it never felt like home the way DeTour did.

The picture at the beginning of this post shows me, Daddy, and Mama dressed in our costumes for Lake City's 1968 centennial celebration. Yes, I know our 1890s dresses were too modern, but we couldn't find a pattern from the 1860s. We were still closer than the other women in town, who wore frontier dresses more suited to a bicentennial.

I should probably end my saga here, but we did move one more time before I graduated from college. During my sophmore year, my parents moved to Schoolcraft, Michigan, near Kalamazoo. They enjoyed the church and stayed until my father retired.

To my future grandchildren: being a preacher's kid has its disadvantages, but it has its good times, too.

So make great memories.