Since we can't leave on our vacation until tomorrow because of the on call thing, Ron and I decided to start our relaxing by going to the movies, something we have always enjoyed. The movie we chose was THE ISLAND, which deals with the issue of cloning.

Cloning has always made me nervous for this reason: if human beings create life, if the spirit in that life is not God-breathed, then what has been created? You know, like in the story THE MONKEY'S PAW by W.W. Jacobs. When the parents wished their son back to life, they were scared to death of what was knocking on their door. Not who. Not their son. What.

Anyway, the doctor in the movie who runs the cloning business has a real god complex and he is not afraid to share that fact. He creates life. Only he and God can give life and take it away. At least that is what he thinks. And the clones, the ones who "win" a trip to "the Island"? They are innocent. Educated only to the level of a fifteen-year-old, the not-so-good doctor says they are not self-aware, that they are not human. That's the way he markets his "products" too. He tells his clients that he is obeying the Eugenics Laws, that the clones are nothing more than organs growing in jelly.

Now I have always wondered about this. Laws are broken all the time, and if people get what they want when the laws are broken, they usually don't care. So what makes us think that, since animals have already been cloned, human beings will not be? If they can be, they will be. I just hope they haven't been already.

And if you create life, don't you have a responsibility to it? I think that was the question in the movie AI too, although it has been a while since I have seen it. If you have a responsibility to it, then you can't clone a being for organs and such. Can you?

The TV series ENTERPRISE dealt with this issue as well, and although I really didn't like their solution, at least it had heart. Captain Archer had a clone created to save the life of his engineer. When push came to shove, though, he couldn't just kill the clone. The clone made the choice to sacrifice his life.

Just like in the ENTERPRISE episode, the clones in THE ISLAND have the memories of the person from whom they have been copied. At least that gives an answer to my question of what you have created if life isn't God-breathed. God gives life anyway; the memories are imprinted on the DNA used to clone. Another evidence of the Creator? When the doctor in THE ISLAND is questioned about disobeying the Eugenics Laws and bringing the clones to consciousness, he responds that unless that happens, the organs for which the clones were grown fail. And herein lies at least one problem with creating clones. If they have memories of a life, they have something they want to preserve.

The story in THE ISLAND would have turned out differently, I think, if the mercenary hired to retrieve the escaped "products" hadn't noticed an imprint, a brand of sorts, on one of them. He also had a brand, given to him after his father was killed in an African uprising. The brand was to mark him and his brothers as less than human. And he didn't like that at all.

Science fiction has always dealt with possibilities, the "what-ifs", both the good kind and the bad kind. How nice it would be if, like on STAR TREK, one syringe of medicine could cure kidney disease. How horrible it would be if we grew human beings just to harvest their organs.

This picture is of my husband and me on our last big vacation two years ago. Tomorrow, we leave for a week, and we are excited. This time we are going to Tennessee.

Truthfully, we have spent much of our married life cruising. My husband for his job, the kids and I to join him. The kids seemed to think it was all adventure when they were younger. I certainly did. I am not quite sure why. Maybe because the promise of something new is always just ahead. That's why we normally don't fly. We would miss too much along the way.

Two years ago, for our twenty-fifth anniversary, we cruised to the west coast from Indiana. We saw Salt Lake City. We saw Yosemite, which we had never seen before. That's where the picture was taken. We drove up the California coast.

I saw a lot of places out there where I think I could live. There was a little beach town in northern California and a log cabin in the mountains of Washington state. The purpose of this trip, other than the fact that the two of us like to be on the road, is to look at retirement property. We are a little over five years out from that the way I figure it, not too soon to look.

My youngest sister lives in Saginaw, MI and wants us to move there. It is pretty in Saginaw, but I am personally not a fan of cold. So Michigan is out.

Our kids want us to retire in Ohio. So does my dad. Our son, as a matter of fact, has forbidden us to retire in Tennessee, which is where we are headed. He thinks somewhere in Ohio is best and has even jestingly offered us his basement.

I don't know what we will find, but I am looking forward to getting away and looking. Sometimes the looking is better than the finding anyway. I will write more when we get back.

It is 2:49 in the morning in Indiana.

My phone has a habit of ringing in the middle of the night. It has for a long time. That's what happens when you have a husband who works for the railroad. That's why it rang at 1:36. My husband called some men out and left for work himself. I was almost asleep when the phone rang again. This time it was my daughter. One of her friends had just called her to tell her that a date had refused to take no for an answer. She had been raped. My daughter was on her way to pick the friend up and take her to the hospital.

Earlier in the evening, my daughter had told me how excited this girl was about her date. It was the first date she had had in quite a while. The girl wanted the perfect shoes and the perfect purse. Just like all of us when we dated, her world was full of possibilities. The date was for dinner and a movie. The friend's birthday is today.

How did things turn out so badly?

My daughter said the girl was afraid to call her own mom. That bothers me too. Evidently the girl thinks her mom is hypercritical. I know that I have been that way on occasion. Still, I hope my kids know that I would be there for them if they needed me. I don't know what happened to this girl to lead to this rape. Maybe if I was her mom I would wonder why she let the guy in her apartment. Maybe I would wonder why the first date didn't end with a chaste kiss at the door. But I think my first reaction would be rage that someone hurt my baby. The girl told my daughter that there was blood all over the couch, all over her.

I have prayed, am praying, for the victim. Am I horrible because, at the same time I am glad the victim is not my daughter?

I did, in fact, voice this thought to my daughter as she drove to her friend. That I was glad it was not her. There was a time when my daughter purposefully did not tell me things about her life that she knew would upset me. Would she have called me in a situation like this?

She thought for a long time before she answered. You see, the marriage that ended for her in January was an abusive one. Then she said that there were some things she couldn't tell me because she hadn't wanted me to see her in that light, to see her as a person who let herself be abused. But did she know that I would have been there for her? Yes. That she knew. And she said that her marriage had done a couple of things for her. She is not nearly as trusting as she used to be. While I am sad that her innocence was taken from her, maybe such knowledge will save her from the horror that her friend just faced, a night full of possibilities gone bad. And she said another thing. If ANY man EVER raises his hand to her in anger again, she WILL call the police.

My daughter's friend did call her mom. She will meet them at the hospital emergency room. My daughter and I talked until she knocked on her friend's door, until they were walking back out to the car in the dark parking lot. I turned on the radio and tried to put it all in perspective. But I couldn't go back to sleep. I will try again in a while.

Right now I need to pray for my daughter's friend. And her mom. And my daughter.

I am so glad it wasn't my daughter. And I grieve for her friend.

I have been unhappy with the name of this blog for a while now, but I didn't know what I liked better. Suddenly (OK. Obviously, since I have been blogging since the end of January it wasn't so suddenly.) it dawned on me that the subtitle, which made its appearance in the spring, would be a much better name.

I relayed this information to my son, who is the computer-knowledgeable person in our family. This is why I am thankful to have adult children: out of the goodness of his heart, he spent three hours of time that could otherwise have been devoted to his family changing things for me. (Thanks also to his wife, Beth, who did not smack him upside the head for doing this.)

My son can deal in pixels, things I have only seen mentioned on movie screens (is it Disney?) to get things to look the way he wants them to look. I am limited to typing things in a blank and hoping that they work. He didn't just change font for my title. He designed the way it would look, and he did it bit by bit. His knowledge, self-taught during his time in the Marines, fills me with awe. Many of my friends here in Marion are jealous. They think that I know a lot about computers, and then I tell them about my son.

So. Hope you like the name change. I do. And while it might have happened without help from my son, it wouldn't have had the subtitle and it wouldn't look nearly as nice.

I went to my first inservice for the new job this morning. It is weird to walk in as a paraprofessional rather than a classroom teacher. The topic was autism, but really a lot of the focus was on behaviors and how to get what you want out of kids.

Here are some of the suggestions that I liked:

1. Give guided choices. Don't ask if a student wants to use scissors, but if he wants to cut lines or circles.

2. Try to understand what drives a student's behavior. Is the student looking for escape? Attention? Or some sort of material reward? If you figure that out ahead of time, you might be able to meet the need BEFORE the behavior occurs.

3. Use planned ignoring. You know what little Johnny or Susie do that drives you insane. Ignore them when they exhibit that behavior, but notice them right after and say something like, "I'm so glad you quit making that noise. It was really bugging me."

4. Be proactive, not reactive. Now, this is not as easy as it sounds, and the presenter acknowledged that. If you are dealing with 20+ students and you have to hand out papers or present a lesson, you don't always have the time to figure out why a student has chosen this particular moment to act out.

4. Understand that you will never get rid of all undesirable behaviors, but you can reduce their frequency or intensity.

5. Be aware that sometimes it is best to state your expectations in as few words as you can. Even though some educators believe it is best to state all expectations in the positive (keep your hands to yourself), some kids need to hear the negative because it is more concrete to them (don't hit).

I had to laugh at the presenter, who was not a teacher. A teacher was telling him that it had been decided at an IEP conference that when a certain special ed student acted out in gen ed classes, the teachers were to empty the room of the other kids before dealing with that student. She thought that she would not be able to implement his strategies in a gen ed setting and wondered what she should do since mainstreaming is required by NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. He stroked his goatee thoughtfully and then said, "Well, good luck!"

Anyone who works with kids knows that just when you think you have a certain behavior conquered, the motivator you have been using ceases to work. Dealing with human behavior is trial and error and although you can identify trends and read up on proven strategies, you have to understand that such strategies will not work with all children or all of the time. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, as far as I am concerned, has some holes in it when it comes to special ed. The law has always said that children should be placed in the least restrictive educational environment, and I think that gen ed classes sometimes restrict special ed students. They have already been identified as having learning difficulties, and just the stimulation of a gen ed class room may interfere with their learning even more.

I do not claim to have the answers when it comes to education. Maybe it is best to approach the whole thing as this young man did, with humor. When thinking back on teachers who made a difference in my life, the ones that come to my mind first are not the ones who yelled. The teachers I remember fondly are the ones who spoke softly and encouraged me. I know positive behavior even from educators is not going to happen all the time, but it is certainly something to strive for.

I read this article on Google Health that said prayer doesn't help sick people if they don't know they are being prayed for. I wish I had saved the link. Anyway, I know that prayer works, but I don't know if you would see it as working if you didn't believe in it. I wonder if the people in the study who didn't know they were being prayed for believed in the power of prayer in the first place. And if they did, they probably knew that someone was praying for them.

I was reminded of this when my husband called this morning to tell me about a situation at work. Now I try always to pray for him about work, both before he leaves and during the day as it enters my mind. I even pray for his employees sometimes. This morning, though, I told him that I would pray about his situation, adding it to my list. He responded that that was his reason for calling. How could I pray if I didn't know?

Seems obvious to me that part of the power of prayer is in knowing that your burden is not yours alone. How lucky we are if we have a network of people to pray for us. But even if we don't, we still have God. Jesus promised us this when he said in Matthew 11:28, (NIV)

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

1925-My mother was born.

1969-Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.

1997-My nephew Graham was born.

MSN - News - 'Star Trek' Icon Doohan Dies

May he rest in peace.

Seems I am on a roll here.

After sending my daughter the book THESE IS MY WORDS because I thought it applied to her life and is about an overcomer, she called and asked me to rent DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN because she thought it pertained to her life. To tell you the truth, the movie had interested me when it came out, but I knew my husband would never go to the theater to see it, so I was going to wait for the video. He had things to do last night away from home. I rented the movie, and I am so glad that I did.

The story is about Helen, who has been married to a successful lawyer for eighteen years. In the beginning of the movie, she tells her diary that she might be able to bring herself to leave him were it not for the fact that she remembers the good times. One night, she goes with her husband to a dinner where he is honored for his achievements. He says all the right words from the podium, including giving credit to his wife of eighteen years. The next day, their anniversary, he throws her out of their mansion in favor of his mistress, with whom he has fathered two children.

Helen signed a prenuptial agreement, so she has nothing. Nothing but herself, the support of her family and faith. Turns out she also has a man, the same one who drove the U-Haul containing her belongings away from her husband's mansion. It takes Helen a while to give up on her husband, though. He is shot in the courtroom and abandoned by everyone he thought he had. She goes to help him recover, but she has some anger to work out in the process.

I thought one of the best lines of the movie was when Helen was contemplating her new love and said to herself that she had at least one thing to thank her ex-husband for. If he had not been so horrible, she might not have known what a good man would be like.

I don't know what kind of reviews this movie got generally, but from me it gets two thumbs up. Here's to overcomers, female and male, everywhere.

A friend of mine lent me this book by Nancy E. Turner. She was worried that I would not want to stick with it since it is not on the best sellers' list, but it has won my heart.

This book is inspired by the memoirs of one of Turner's ancestors who settled the Arizona Territory. She takes her readers along with teenage Sarah as she watches her brother and father die and lives through numerous attacks by Indians. She rescues her soon-to-be sister-in-law from rapists. She outshoots most of the men on the wagon train with which she travels. Sarah faces rattlesnakes and murderers. And she survives.

I enjoyed watching Sarah Prine grow up. I knew she loved Jack Elliot long before she did, and I was sad when she married Jimmy Reed instead. I cried with her when Jimmy's last words were that he loved Ruthanne-not his wife. I cried again when she knew the sweetness of being loved back.

Although young women today do not have to fight Indians or build houses, a lot of the struggles that Sarah went through are similar to today's struggles. She wants to be married and to be loved. She is tired when she is taking care of the house and her babies. Her husband travels and she is lonely.

I liked this book so much that I ordered one and had it sent to my daughter. She also had a bad first marriage. I think the book will give her hope. Every woman deserves her Captain Jack Elliot. Some of us were lucky enough to find them the first time around. Some of us need help in knowing what to look for.

Thank you, Nancy Turner, for a fine book.

When I was a little girl, my mom had this all-purpose soap called Fels-Naptha. We never washed with it, but it was Mom's remedy for any stain, and when I got poison ivy or oak (which I did quite regularly), she would make a lather of it and let it dry to dry up the blisters. It worked, too.

When I became a wife and mom, Fels-Naptha was a part of my household. Since my husband works for the railroad, he often came home with stains on his clothes, and the Fels generally took it out. It was also good for washing my son's neck one summer. I only remember one summer when he was resistant to washing, but Fels took the grime off before church.

One bar of Fels lasts a long time, so I only bought one at a time. A partially used bar moved from Ohio to Indiana with me six years ago, and since I am now without stain-making children and my husband does more supervising than laboring, it took it this long to get down to chips. No problem, right? I would just go out and buy another bar.

Wrong! Even though I live in a rather small city, I thought that certainly the local supermarkets would carry Fels, but they did not. I looked everywhere. I even tried to convince myself that I would get the same stain-removing power with Lava, but it didn't turn out that way.

So I resorted to the net, and I am now the proud owner of two bars of Fels-Naptha that will probably last me until I don't care about stains anymore unless we retire close to the grandkids. The Vermont Country Store had them; two bars cost a little over six dollars. With shipping, it was a little over twelve dollars.

I know that's a lot to pay for two bars of soap, but I can't tell you all the memories that came back when I opened that box and smelled it. That is just another bonus to add to the fact that I know that it works.

I don't have anything against trying new or improved products, but I will be sad if Fels disappears completely. It is sad to see old products go by the wayside when they do a good job.

My dad, who is eighty, is a Republican. Now I know that lots of people, including me, are Republicans, but Dad happens to live in Toledo, Ohio, which is rabidly....Democrat. This is due, in part, to the less than impartial news that is printed by the local newspaper, the Toledo Blade. Dad says that the Republican Party has, in effect, been shut down in Toledo. It is not safe to bring up your political views because people start yelling. If you are Republican that is. If you are a Democrat, it's fine.

So yesterday, my dad stopped for breakfast at McDonald' on his way to church. Two men in the McDonald's were reading the Blade and discussing the fact that George Bush and all Republicans are liars. Loudly. So loudly that they could be heard throughout the restaurant. Their discussion annoyed my father. It probably annoyed a lot of people in the restaurant, but nobody was going to say so because that other party (the Republicans) are not looked upon kindly in Toledo.

Have you noticed that as you get older, you lose patience with some of the dumb stuff that happens in life? I am thirty years younger than my father, and I have already noticed this in my life.

As the men were talking, an African-American (is that the current politically correct term?) man entered the restaurant and seated himself near them. They tried to include him in their conversation thinking, I guess, that he would be a Democrat. Woe to them, though. The man was a Republican, and he said so. He tried to give them some soft answers, but they weren't having it. Finally, he told the men that he doubted they would even have liked Abraham Lincoln. Well, they didn't, and they proceeded to tell the whole restaurant why.

Dad had had enough, and in a loud voice he said that he had political views too, and he figured he should be able to state them as loudly as the two men. That shut them up, he said, for maybe a minute and then they went on. After my dad's comment, the man behind him chuckled and said that he was glad he was a Canadian. I was just worried because being Republican in Toledo has started fist fights. What if the men had followed my dad to his car? What if he put a Republican sign in his yard for the mayoral election? Would his house get egged?

People are always going to have different opinions about politics, I know. But it does create a bad situation when the local media are so obviously slanted. I learned this when I was a freshman in high school on the debate team. We were debating the judicial system, and as I researched both sides, I found to my surprise that the platform for objections is built in to the system. In the courtroom in particular, it doesn't matter if you are telling the truth or not. Who cares if the judge tells people to disregard what you have said? You said it, and you planted an idea in people's mind.

I learned this again when I went back to school for my teaching credentials. Professors stated over and over again that you had to avoid the appearance of impropriety, whether you were female or male. Especially since my certification was secondary, I should never transport students without another adult present and never, ever, should I have a student in my room with the door closed or when we both were not in full view of the open door. Why? Because the charge of impropriety will ruin a teacher whether it is proved false at a later time or not.

I know that the reporting of news and politics itself is big business. But I still think there should be an effort to report both sides fairly. Not that I think it will happen in a country as big and as political as ours. But I think it is something we should work toward.

Certainly, an eighty-year-old man should be free either to express his opinion or to eat his breakfast in peace. That "liberty and justice for all" that we remind ourselves of when we say the Pledge of Allegiance applies to Republicans as well as to Democrats.

It appears that I have a thing about birds.

It all started this year with the Great Blue Heron. He is a pretty bird, and it appears that he knows he has an audience. He makes his appearances along the Mississinewa River in Matter Park. To tell you the truth, I had avoided Matter Park for a couple of years before I saw him, preferring Paradise Spring in Wabash instead. People in Matter Park do not keep their dogs on leashes and then proceed to tell you how friendly they are while they are growling at you. It annoys me.

Anyway, the fact that the heron actually appears to show off amuses me, so I have been walking in the hope of seeing him. Most days I do. He is most impressive when he is fishing and the sun is shining on his feathers. Not so much when he is walking, though. Then, the way his neck moves makes him look like the dinosaurs that spit poison in Jurassic Park.

As I was looking for the Great Blue Heron the other day, I spotted some turkey buzzards. I wasn't sure what they were at first; they were huge and they were landing on a little island in the middle of the river. I went closer for a better look. I had to find a break in the brush, but I got to study them for a while. They looked like turkeys with the red thing (wattle?) under their chins, but a lot uglier. That's what made me decide they were turkey buzzards and not wild turkeys. Some people around here call them turkey vultures, but I think that is the same thing. They creeped me out. As if they sensed I was watching them, all six of them turned at the same time to watch me. Reminded me of the seagulls in FINDING NEMO going, "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine...." I moved along.

I have been wary of birds since I had a close encounter with a ring-necked pheasant when we lived in Ohio. I know they are supposed to make an elegant meal, but I can't hear their call without getting cold chills.

See, I had surgery on my neck about nine years ago, and the doctor said I should put zinc oxide, the kind of stuff that life guards put on their nose, on the scar if I went out in the sun. He said it would fade faster if it didn't tan. I am female, so I come with a certain amount of vanity. I wanted the scar to fade, but I thought the zinc oxide on my neck looked stupid. My solution was to put the zinc oxide on and walk down my country road early in the morning when theoretically nobody would see me.

I had watched the pheasants for quite some time. A lot of them nested near the graveyard at the end of our road, and I almost always took a turn through the graveyard. On this particular morning, though, I heard a pheasant way before I saw it. She was out by the road, and she was obviously upset. I didn't think her being upset could have anything to do with me. I wasn't near any trees, and that's where birds make their nests, right? So I couldn't possibly have been near her nest.

Wish I could have reasoned with her! She dive-bombed me for what seemed like a hundred feet! I couldn't figure it out, and having seen Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, it really scared me. During her attack, I kept walking toward the graveyard instead of backing up to get away from her, so I felt dumb because now I had to go by her again. She was obviously wacko, and I had no idea what I had to do with it.

I began to wonder. I did have that ring of zinc oxide on my neck. Did the bird just think I was the biggest ring-necked pheasant she had ever seen? If so, no wonder she felt threatened. Not that I was any less fearful of the walk home.

I walked on the other side of the road to get home, and the bird harassed me, but she didn't fly as close as she had on my way down the street. Still, I was glad to get by that turn in the road. Then there were a bunch of birds on the big chicken coop (and it WAS big; it had two stories and was about 150 X 40). Yuck!

My best friend lives down that road, and her dad often hunted. When I told her about the dive-bombing episode, she laughed and laughed. Turns out ring-necked pheasants nest on the ground, so I may very well have been near her nest. That didn't change my opinion of pheasant, though. I would just as soon see one under glass as along the road after that little episode.

Wouldn't want to see that happen to the heron, though. And as pretty as I think he is, he is a big bird, and I'd rather not be any closer to him than I have been.

As long as he stays in the river and I stick to my trail, we'll be fine.

I had this discussion with my eighty-year-old father recently. I was sort of irritated because someone I barely knew made the comment that she was surprised that my husband and I were as smart as we were. She knew we both had college degrees, and while I know that not all people who get degrees are what I would call smart, having the piece of paper does presuppose a certain level of intelligence.

I am sort of prejudiced against people who have money, mostly because the ones I know who have money flaunt it. I have been bothered by this for a long time. My friend Kathy and I back in Ohio used to talk about the people who had $100,000 houses (back then that was a lot of house) but no furniture to put in them. At least they had the show. Then I went back to college and read The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie. That just ticked me off.

As far as I am concerned, the Gospel of Wealth espoused social Darwinism. I haven't looked at the writing in a while, but the main gist of it seemed to me to be that Carnegie had wealth because he was smart. Since he was wealthy, he felt an obligation to share his wealth with those less fortunate than he, but I didn't get the feeling that he did it just to help. It was more because those poor saps who didn't have money weren't intelligent enough to make it. His obligation was because he was smarter.

Now, I know that Andrew Carnegie was smart, and there is no doubt that he was a philanthropist. I myself have enjoyed many years of using public libraries, for which I have him to thank. I also have no quarrel with the idea that he should have been the keeper for his wealth. I mean, he made it after all. Where I have the problem is that he was better than anybody he helped because he had more money.

My father pointed out a relative that we have who is a retired VP of Lever Brothers. He has a lot of money. There is no doubt that he is smart. But my father is fluent in three languages and has the true mind of a linguist. Is he less intelligent just because he chose to teach? Did he contribute less to society? True, society as a whole did not benefit from my father's efforts the way they did from Carnegie's, but I have seen him interact with former students, and I KNOW he has made a difference.

Maybe the answer lies in how you assess your wealth. I have noticed that two relatives with whom I have been fairly close assess their wealth in possessions. I assume this is at least partly because they have never had children and so have no other way to measure what they have. My father pointed out that Bill Clinton is both intelligent and wealthy, and I do not dispute either his intelligence or his monetary wealth. After all, the man was a Rhodes scholar. And he served two terms as the president of this country. But his private problems were made painfully public, and I wonder if he is wealthy in the way I would count wealth.

See, although I will admit that I like my creature comforts, I count my wealth in the memories, for instance, that I have of my mother. My mother was a very quiet, gentle Christian woman, and she taught me a lot, specifically about patience. She and I may have had words, but when she went to heaven, we had settle things between us. The only regret I feel is that I ever caused her grief, and I know that she forgave me.

Or what about my husband? As far as I am concerned, I am wealthy just because I am married to him. He is in actuality very shy, and sometimes I wonder how we ever got together, but I have watched him blossom as a man and as a father over the years, and I count myself blessed to be his wife.

The Bible says you should store up your treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves do not break through and steal (Matthew 6:19,20). I may not have a lot of wealth in the way the world counts it, but I think mine is the kind that lasts. And I probably shouldn't judge how other people count their wealth. Who am I to know what sorrows they have felt along the way and why their wealth might be counted in a more material way than my own?

I guess, maybe, that I have answered my own question. Maybe you do have to be smart to have a lot of money.

But you don't have to be smart to be rich.

Before we start, here is the dictionary defintion of graceful. Just so you know where I am coming from:

1. Characterized by beauty of movement, style, form, or execution

2. Suggesting taste, ease, and wealth



Now that we have that out of the way, I should tell you that this isn't me really. It is an artist's rendering of how I look made from a picture that my son submitted to somewhere. I like it, but I don't look quite that way to myself, and I don't wear glasses anymore. Still. Lately, I feel more like this picture.

See, my life IS changing. First of all, I am learning how to wear make-up. Not bad for a person of my advanced years! I am still not real confident about applying it, but I am getting better. My husband originally said he thought the eyeshadow just made me look tired, but the more I wear it, the more he likes it.

I have a new job. Now, some people think I am absolutely insane to give up a position as a salaried teacher to work as an hourly paraprofessional (translation: teacher's aid). However, I have always felt a really strong pull both to maintain a continuous work history and to be there for my family, and I think that this job will satisfy both those needs. Sure, I really would rather make more money. But I'd rather have the time and energy to devote to my family, too, and at this point in my life it does not appear that I can have both. I am a little sad to be leaving the friends I made in the local school system, but the friendships were largely professionally based, and I will make new ones. Maybe stronger ones.

I know that the changes in my life are good because not only am I happy, but my husband is happy too. He is singing songs along with the radio to me, something he has not done in quite a while. And flirting. I know all you twenty-somethings think that people our age do NOT flirt, but you're wrong. Your body gets older. Hopefully you get wiser. But when you are fifty-plus, your head still often thinks that you are twenty and wonders why your body can't keep up.

I started this year of my life wondering about a lot of things: how it would feel to get the application for my AARP card, how I actually got to be a grandma, where the gray hair came from. But underneath all that, I am still growing. And I am still me.

That's a good thing.

"An ordering of society which relegates religion,
democracy and good faith among nations to the background
can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince
of Peace. The United States rejects such an ordering and retains its ancient faith."

-- President Franklin Roosevelt, 1939

My cousin found this photo of our mothers at a garage sale.

When she and I were little, the aunt we saw the most was Aunt Jeanette. She was our mothers' older (not oldest) sister. Mom and Aunt Pat were numbers six and seven out of seven

Aunt Jeanette had two kids, a boy and a girl, but I didn't know them very well or see them very often. They were eighteen years and more older. She was a widow too, something I didn't know much about when I was young. I thought it seemed tragic and romantic. Her husband died in WWII. Aunt Jeanette lived up State Street in Fairmont, on a little street called Pleasant Street. She didn't live at the top of the hill, and I actually had a great-aunt who lived farther up, on the corner of Satterfield Street and State Street.

Directly up the hill there was an orphanage, also tragic and romantic to a reader like me. I don't think I actually ever saw any kids from the orphanage close up, but I did see the horses and the cows that they kept because the barbed wire for the pasture adjoined Aunt Jeanette's property.

There were wide stone steps that led up to her porch which, when I was little, had not been enclosed. The wide stone steps were great for jumping up and down, and in the summer Aunt Jeanette usually had nieces and nephews at her house doing just that. I can't tell you how many hours I spent swinging on that porch. Before it was enclosed, its ledges were wide and great for sitting on.

At the side of the house, there was always a huge garden. This was planted by Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Finley. Actually, they didn't get married until some time in the sixties, but Finley was at Aunt Jeanette's house so often that I always thought Finley was my uncle anyway. He had something called a familial tremor, which made his hands shake. He taught Industrial Arts, and he loved to work with wood. It always intrigued me to watch him because, despite the tremor, his creations were so beautiful.

Having been raised during the Depression, Aunt Jeanette was big on canning, but I think she and Finley would have had the garden anyway because he loved to grow things. He had a lot of flowers, too, and there was a big grape arbor behind the house. The summer I was ten, I spent two weeks with Aunt Jeanette, and I spent a lot of my time lying on my back and watching the sky through the leaves of the grape arbor.

You know how sometimes when you visit people, you remember their living room the most? For instance, my great Uncle Ulysses had a stuffed porcupine in his living room, so you know where I was when I visited him. In Aunt Jeanette's house, it was always the kitchen that drew us. She always had a pot of coffee on, and if you listened, you could learn a lot about the family. Of course, being children we often interpreted the things we heard wrongly, but still, the information was there.

My mother's parents lived in Aunt Jeanette's house after my grandma was diagnosed with hardening of the arteries (which my cousin and I now believe to be Alzheimer's). It was there that they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary the summer that I was eight. I still remember seeing my grandma come down the stairs. She knew that the celebration was for her, but she didn't really know why. When one of my aunts told her, she looked at my grandfather and stated, "That can't be him. The man I married had hair!"


When I was little, you could walk from Aunt Jeanette's house to the farm where my parents were married. Later on, I-79 interfered with that walk. Now it is being extended, and Aunt Jeanette's house fell into its path. Aunt Jeanette died from Alzheimer's quite some time ago in the late eighties and Finley lived on in the house. Then this spring Finley had an intestinal problem and died. He was over eighty, and sometimes I think he gave up because he couldn't stand the thought of moving. He had planted a garden, but he knew that the move was inevitable.

One of my cousins is the executor of Finley's estate, and he decided to have a garage sale to take care of the household items. His sister, who lives in Maryland attended, and she called me about it last night. She was appalled at the way things had been put together and at the people pawing through family things. I would have been too. That's why I try not to go to those things. She got some furniture that had belonged to our grandparents, and she found loads of pictures. One of them shows my mother standing up for her mother at her wedding.

The garage sale did not go well, in part because my cousin told people a lot of things were not available. She was right, I think. The family should have the chance to go through things before the public does. Just because of the age of the people who lived there, there were a lot of antiques which could generate a lot of money and really shouldn't be sold for a buck or two. But mostly it is the family things that interest me. I have a baby afghan that Aunt Jeanette made for my son and a big one that she made for me. That is where my memories lie.

Time-line-wise, we are not on this earth for very long, but it is still hard to watch progress devour things that were important to us. It saddens me that Aunt Jeanette's house will be demolished for the highway. It is the end of an era for my cousin as well, and she has made the decision to move to WVA when she retires. She says that the hills call her. Maybe if she moves back to Fairmont, they will call me the way they once did. All of the things we do, all of the places that we go and the people with whom we interact, make us what we are. The house at 114 Pleasant Street will live on in my cousin's and my memories, and maybe that is all that counts in the long run anyway.

My husband and I were blessed with company this weekend.

Since we moved, we have done a lot of traveling. For us, road trips are enjoyable. Even at $2.39 a gallon for gas. Even so, it was nice not to be the one who drove.

We are thankful that we have relationships with our son and his wife and our daughter. One of the saddest things I have done is talk to other parents of children the age of ours and hear that their children don't call or don't write unless they want something. These parents, sadly, are relieved when they do NOT hear from their children. Ron and I tried hard to treat our children as people, even when they were small. We know it is hard for them to balance their family and work commitments and visit us.

One of the blessings of their visits is, of course the grandchildren. We took our own road trip yesterday, and at almost every rest stop we saw grandparents, not parents, with grandchildren. We have discussed this a lot, and we think we see this because grandparents actually have the time to spend with their grandchildren. Young people today are busy surviving.

The house seems empty when everyone leaves, and it often takes me a while to pick up all the toys and wash the fingerprints off the windows. This is not because I am lazy, although housework is certainly not my favorite thing to do. It is because the memory of the ones I love is sweet, and I want it to last as long as it can.

Family.org - CitizenLink - FNIF News - Cost of Government Day Just Passed

Sobering thought, isn't it?

When I was younger, I worried about losing my husband, but in a really general way, like that it COULD happen, but we were young and it didn't happen very often. He used to travel a lot, and a railroad newsletter he received talked about a railroad employee who was found dead in a motel room. He had knocked the phone off. Evidently he was reaching for it. That gave me cold chills, and I have to admit that I do not like to leave my husband alone because of that story. And yes, I do know that when his time comes, my being there will not postpone it.

Anyway, the worry gets different when you get older and all of a sudden you know a lot of men your husband's age or thereabouts who die suddenly and unexpectedly. Now I don't think that it COULD happen. I know that it will, and while I feel for the people I know who have lost spouses, I look at my own and thank God he is still here.

Should have had that attitude when I was younger.

My daughter just told me about a conversation she had with my niece who is eighteen and lonely. My niece's mom, my oldest sister, became ill when Lillie was twelve, so she has been without an older woman/mentor for a lot of the years of her development. I try to help, but being in a different state doesn't make it easy. I am glad she and my daughter have found each other.

Anyway, I think she is searching for reasons that her family life evolved the way it did. She loves to hear stories about my sister before she was married, although she cannot imagine her mom in a two-piece bathing suit with lots of boyfriends. I can relate to that. At a niece's wedding, I did a couple of dance moves to an old song and my daughter looked at me in shock. I immediately quit. Not motherly, I guess. Since then I have come to think that you have a better relationship with your parents as an adult if you can see them as people.

Anyway, my niece is currently "best-friend-less," and in a time when she might have turned to my sister if things had turned out differently, she can't. My daughter, with the wisdom of all twenty-five of her years, told Lillie that you can make ten friends before you make a good one, that that's the way life is, but she could not have advised her cousin in that way when she was, say.....nineteen. It is a lesson, I think, that you learn.

My office-mate last year had a sister who is profoundly deaf. The sister was complaining at a family gathering about how lonely her deafness made her. My office-mate's husband had enough, and he told the sister so. He said loneliness was part of the human condition. He had not married until he was thirty-eight, and until then, he was lonely.

I don't think loneliness is ever easy, and it has been a constant surprise to me that you can be lonely even if there are people all around you. I wish there was a way that I could make such things easier for my niece.

Is time wrinkled? Does kairos matter more than chronos?

I know, of course, that she is not the first one to postulate folds in time. But the older I get, the more evidence I see of such things.

My father really misses my mom around the Fourth of July. She enjoyed the holiday, and she and dad most often came to our house so that we could go see fireworks with the kids. I do like fireworks, but Dad is right; they are more fun when you have kids around.

My dad talked a lot about my mom. He was married to her for fifty-three years before she died, and I thought for sure that he would get married again soon after her passing. I was wrong. The reason, he says, is that the women who show interest in him "that way" are too bossy. This is the same father who says he misses Mom's "timely" reminders."

What I miss is her presence, and like my dad, I feel her absence most during the holidays. My grandsons got to see fireworks for the first time, and I remember going to the Wauseon, Ohio fireworks display when my son was not quite two and his sister was seven months old. The fireworks didn't bother my daughter, but my son did NOT like the noise, and he sure let us know about it! I remember my mom holding my son trying to quiet him, and I marvel how things have changed in twenty-five years. Can it really be so long ago?

My daughter has, in some respects, taken over the role I played with my mom. She is no longer a little girl; I think I have come to grips with that. But now she watches out for my comfort more than her own. She takes pleasure in doing things for me that she knows I would not do for myself. When I was younger, I did this by taking my mom out to eat every payday. My daughter did the manicure/pedicure thing.

It doesn't seem that long ago that I did those things for my mom. It does not seem so long ago that she held my son and comforted him. She has been with the Lord for nine years now, and the Fourth of July before she died, when my teenage children saw to her comfort as we sat outside for a fireworks display seems like yesterday.

It is comforting to think that time is connected in wrinkles. It keeps the people that we love alive. I am convinced that time-line time does not matter in the long run, although it matters what you do with the time allotted to you. Those memories of times with my mom were spent in real time, kairos, where the ticking of the clock did not matter at all. I think she would be (or is, since she is one of the great cloud of witnesses) pleased with the memories we have of her, pleased that she was a faithful servant. And I am thankful for the little everyday wrinkles in time that let me catch glimpses of her until I see her again in heaven.

You know how some songs just bring tears to your eyes? So it is with Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American." The sons of a local Social Studies teacher, ages 8 and 10, sang it in front of our congregation this morning. Unlike some other churches where I have been a member, we were free to offer them a "clap offering." Their offering, at least for me, was extremely poignant because I looked at them and wondered if they will experience the freedom that I have been privileged to have for as much of their lives as I have had it.

The words of Lee Greenwood's song appear below in case your memory needs refreshed.

Artist: Lee Greenwood
Title: Proud To Be An American

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I'’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I'’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can'’t take that away.

And I'’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'’m free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain'’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there's pride in every American heart,
and it's time we stand and say.

That I'’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'’m free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain'’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

And I'’m proud to be and American,
where at least I know I'’m free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain'’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

I heard a good teaching on the radio concerning I Corinthians 13. It was either on Hope for the Heart or Revive Our Hearts; I can't remember which. Anyway, it came to mind because of what I heard in the beauty parlor on Wednesday. Women all like to talk, and they like to say things about their spouses or significant others like, "If only he'd...."

The point of the talk that I heard was to look to yourself. The speaker felt that women in particular like to quote I Corinthians 13 to their husbands as a means of pointing out their shortcomings. You know: if only you were patient, if only you were kind. And so on. She thought it would be better to substitute your own name in these verses and see if you are doing what you should be doing. Is Becky patient? Is Becky kind? Hmmmmm. Changes your perspective, if you know what I mean.

I Corinthians 13:4-8 is listed below. Substitute your name and see if you are being the spouse you were meant to be.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails

My husband came by after a frustrating morning with his assistant yet again, and what did I do? I reacted as a woman which, of course, is natural to me because I AM a woman, but it isn't very helpful to my husband.

I prayed a lot between his initial phone call and when he came by because my first reaction was not helpful to him at all. He needs to do what he thinks is right, but the task is made doubly hard for him because he is a middle child and he tries to make everybody happy. That's fine with me except when trying to make everybody happy makes him sick.

Well, the good Lord intervened, and through an unusual sequence of phone calls, he got the opinions of his two immediate supervisors and felt better. I am so glad, but I have to admit I don't get manspeak sometimes. Especially the part where the squeakiest wheel gets its way whether it is right or not, but maybe that is genderless. My first impulse is to tell my husband what I think he should do when really all he needs me to do is listen.