The first night family was here was a major blackberry picking event.
It’s about time for my post this morning, but I have only 8 minutes before I go upstairs and wake my oldest grandchild, Ephraim, and his friend Carter. Ephraim, 14 and a long-distance runner in school, wants to run a timed mile this morning (actually, every morning), so I’ll drive the two of them to a high school track and watch. Possibly I’ll walk a 1/4 or 1/2 mile. We’ve doing it early because the forecast temperature today is over 100°.
All the time wasn’t spent on screens.
Last week, we had the three youngest grandchildren with us, and had a good time with them. I meant to do a couple of posts about that, but haven’t. They played and read and spent time on screens. A trip or two ago I established a rule: 30 minutes reading in a book each day (each morning) until they could get their screens. All but the 5 1/2-year-old, who can’t read yet, seem to embrace this rule well. Ezra, the second oldest, does a lot of reading in books without being prompted. He found my book, The Kuwait Years In Letters, and found pleasure reading in it. Elise did too. Of course, they both laughed at their mom’s juvenile letters, at spelling and grammar errors. But, hey, their mom wrote letters as a 7-year-old, and they don’t. End of story.
Only one of the grandkids, Elijah, is still young enough to require help bathing.
Last week we had the three youngest. This week the oldest and his friend. We made the switcheroo on Saturday, driving halfway to their home in West Texas and meeting up with their dad. That was a lot of hours in the car, but time well spent.
So this post is a bit short today, and not focused at all in writing. I have a longer post planned for Friday. We’ll see if the week allows for completing it.
A century of life-giving community completed, ready and looking ahead to the next.
Last weekend, over a year and a half of work came to fruition as our church celebrated its Centennial. Actually, it was our 101st anniversary on July 8. We delayed the celebration a year due to a combination of the pandemic and adjacent construction.
We didn’t sell out of the book, but we sold a lot.
I joined the centennial committee in November 2020 at the request of our pastor, mainly to write the church history. But I got involved in other activities. Brainstorming. Planning. Seeking people whose ancestors had roots in the church. The history was written, printed, and issued for sale on May 22nd.
We did the setup for the Sunday banquet on Thursday. I found out then that the special choir for the Sunday service had some people drop out, and the director asked if I had choir experience. I decided I had just enough experience to help them out. One more thing added.
It’s always good to catch your daughter in a candid shot.
The activities started midday Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony for our re-established food insecurity ministry, reopened in recently constructed quarters and now called the Community Table. The Chamber of Commerce ran this event. I enjoyed finally seeing the building and how the ministry is stocked and managed.
Friday afternoon our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids came for the weekend. By that time I was more or less exhausted, so we had a nice meal out for supper. Meetings and events remained.
Good worship with music mostly unfamiliar to me. Lots of energy.
Saturday morning was choir rehearsal. It was kind of nice to sing after a 25-year hiatus from choir. Saturday afternoon was a concert by Remedy, a band from Southern Nazarene University that included two college students from our congregation. It wasn’t my type of music, but the Holy Spirit was present, and worship happened. This took place in our newly constructed space for youth and Hispanic ministries.
David and Pranathi, among the many who helped out.
Sunday was the big day. Choir rehearsal at 9 a.m. To help with transportation (transporting 8 people in two vehicles, our daughter volunteered to sing with the choir and came with me. We were done by 9:45. That gave me time to greet visitors, signed books and helped direct people, especially to Centennial Hall.
Many visited the diorama in “Centennial Hall”.
The service was magnificent. It included special music from the Mitchell family, the choir number with two soloists and great live backing music. We *nailed* the choir special. I was thankful for the strong tenor from the Mitchell family being next to me. There was a time for introducing some out-of-town visitors who attended because of their family connection to the church. And we had a wonderful, apt message from Dr. Jesse Middendorf, former General Superintendent of the denomination.
Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor/now district superintendent, brings greetings.
Immediately after the service, we had a congregational photo taken in our new sanctuary. Then it was to the gymnasium for a BBQ lunch, with the Mitchell family. We had nearly 300 people for that.
Dr. Middendorf brought the Centennial message.
The final event of the weekend was the dedication of the youth/Hispanic worship space. It turned out to be a 45 minute service, with music in Spanish, responsive readings, scripture readings, the actual dedication, and brief messages from our pastor, district superintendent, and Dr. Middendorf.
They opened the Community Table for anyone who wanted to go through it, and our daughter and granddaughter did (the rest of the family having gone home). We got away at 2:45 pm, a full day.
The final congregational song.
All in all it was a great weekend. Bentonville Community Church of the Nazarene is 101 years old. We actually spent more time looking forward rather than backwards. That was an emphasis I tried to put in the history book as well, making it a Centennial book rather than a strictly history book.
Some of the family had gone home before we thought of the photo booth. And don’t give me grief about not smiling—that IS me smiling.
It’s now time to unwind a little. This week I don’t have to attend any special events. No weekly history post to write. No committee meeting to attend. Instead, we have the three youngest grandchildren with us this week and the oldest grandkid and his friend next week. Time to get back to writing. Ezra and I began work on The Key To Time Travel today.
Another holiday, another non-post post. I had great plans to work about an hour in the yard early this morning before the heat of the day came. But I woke up around 6:15 a.m. with leg cramps, probably from dehydration. Got up and sat in my chair for half an hour. At that point I decided to just have a simple holiday. The yardwork can wait a day or two.
I’m about to enter a very busy week and next weekend. Medical appointments, church Centennial duties, Scribblers & Scribes meeting. Preparing for kids and grandkids to come. Much writing work to do. Too hot to walk outside, so I’ll see if I can get some good minutes on the elliptical.
Some time ago, in July 2020 to be more precise, I began transcribing the many letters we had written home from Kuwait, which our families had preserved for us. My original intent for doing this was to preserve the information and the letters themselves. The act of transcribing meant gathering, arranging, typing, and storage.
Yesterday, I received a proof copy of the book. I’ve gone through it and found only two typos and one formatting problem. Of course, spelling and grammar in the originals wasn’t always correct.
In that fourth post, I said I hoped to someday add commentary and photographs and make the project into a book for our family. That day finally came. Two years ago, I said I hoped the book would be 300 pages. It is 299 pages. It contains 181 letters and around 30 photographs. I’m not sure how many of the 103,600 words are the letters and how much is my commentary. I also put in the four blog posts mentioned above as an appendix.
The photos turned out better than I expected. I’m still learning how to manipulate photos. One of them is dark; I’ll need to figure out how to lighten it, preferably using G.I.M.P. rather than PowerPoint, so I can keep it at a good pixel count. The photos include some of the picture postcards we sent from our trips.
Our villa in Kuwait. I need to work on the back cover still.
Otherwise, there’s not much more to do with this. Make the few corrections, including one to the back cover, publish it, and order three copies: one for us, one for our son, and one for our daughter. Then I will un-publish it so that someone browsing my list of books won’t order one out of curiosity. The grandkids, if they want one of their own…well, that is unlikely to happen until they are older. I’ll worry about it then.
Once this project is over (and it’s really, really close), what next in terms of letters? Maybe transcribe the Saudi years letters? Or start with our juvenalia and go forward from there? We’ll see.
Elise, working on her “word” for earning money from Grandpa, while Nitwit surveys the scene from above, watching out for Useless and Nuisance.
We are back in West Texas for a visit with our daughter’s family. I know, we were just here a month ago, but they had need for a babysitter last Friday night, and we said we’d come do it. We drove here last Thursday, and will likely leave for home tomorrow, though possibly not till Wednesday.
It’s been an easy gig. The four kids were reasonably compliant with doing their chores on Saturday. Even little Elijah, 5 years old, was given two chores. He had his sister write out a to-do list for him, as she was doing for herself. Grandparents can usually ride herd on the kids in a way the parents can’t. At least, they seem to do somewhat better with us in some ways, being a little quicker to jump-to-it when we ask them to do something.
Sunday was church. I went early with the three oldest kids, Lynda and Sara and Elijah coming later. Richard, as pastor, was already there. I attended men’s class for Sunday school, then, during church, I found an unused room, connected by Zoom, and taught our class at our home church remotely. The attendance was good, and the class went well. Of course, that mean I didn’t sit through a church service yesterday. Hopefully I can do so today on the replays.
Elijah had fun cleaning his play area in the sunroom, then checking it off as a job done.
It was difficult to work on writing during this time, so I’ve done a lot of reading. As much as possible, to be an example for the grandkids, I’ve been reading in a print book. So far, no real indication that it’s doing much good. Except maybe for Elise, who is reading Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix in a print book—but she has been doing that for a while. I was able to review two chapters for critique group, which meets on Thursday. I guess on Friday I managed to spend on hour on the Bible study I’m writing. I don’t feel like I got very far with it.
We brought a surplus bookcase from our house to help organize theirs. Elijah’s other chore was to put books and toys on it, which he did with much help from Elise and guidance from Grandpa.
We have also had to care for Useless, Nitwit, and Nuisance, the three pets. Except, it’s now four pets. One grandchild was unhappy that he didn’t really have a pet, so they arranged for a rescue kitten to come join the menagerie. Except, the rescue kitten was in Oklahoma City. So we stopped there on the way here, met up with the rescue woman, and brought the new kitten here. The grandson named her Sapphire. While she is transitioning into the household with three pets there already (actually, more than that if you include the bearded dragon and the goldfish), she is needing a lot of attention. While I was wondering what nickname I could give the new kitten, Elise said it ought to be a name about a girl who needs a lot of attention. Obviously, I immediately named her Diva. Hopefully, with this pet the zoo is complete.
Diva is isolated from the two older cats, she being a female and them being not-yet-neutered males (kittens who are almost cats). I didn’t spend a lot of time with her—if you don’t count the 6 hours in the car between OKC and here.
My plan is to leave the zoo tomorrow. We’ll take their recyclables and drop them in OKC, then get home by a good time, though too late to join an on-line writing group.
One bit of writing I did accomplish (besides this blog post). While sitting on the front porch yesterday, reading for 30 minutes before the onslaught of 20 people from their small group at church for a Super Bowl party, before reading I set my mind to writing a short poem. Nothing major, just a cinqain (a five-line poem). I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s sitting there on my phone, waiting for me to decide what to do with it.
So, I will see you all on Friday, back home, probably in The Dungeon, in old routines.
All is serene as Elise and Ezra work with me on the puzzle. In the background, Nitwit is perched on the highchair to avoid Nuisance as she passes by.
On our recent trip to babysit grandkids and visit a few extra days, we brought gifts. No, not new games or nicely wrapped packages. We brought children’s stuff from our house to theirs: puzzles, and a few books (we brought two boxes of books the last trip).
They have no shortage of books of puzzles at their house, but, due to garage sale over-buying, we definitely have a surplus here. Lynda went through the children’s puzzles and selected a number—two boxes worth—to take. Needless to say, the parents at the other end of the gift weren’t exactly thrilled with more stuff in the house.
Do I sense a little aggressiveness here?
But, they have a good place to donate them if they turn out to be truly surplus, which they undoubtedly will.
When you have new puzzles in the house, you do them, right? We got little Elijah, 5 years old, to do a number of the puzzles at the younger end of his age range, and maybe one at the older range. We also got Elise, 8, and Ezra, 10 to work on larger puzzles. In the course of doing one, which I’m calling “puzzling”, I was reminded how in our family puzzling has always been a blood sport.
Elise has moved on to other things while Ezra and I get into the end-of-puzzle frenzy.
By that I mean that people get aggressive in trying to find pieces in a certain area of the board. They hoard the pieces for that area and try to keep anyone else from working the area. If someone does try to put a piece in, the speed of the puzzling picks up. You’ve got to go fast before someone else does what you want to do. If you see someone reaching for a piece you might need, you quickly grab it and try to put it in place ahead of them. This gets worse the closer you get to the end of the puzzle, when fewer pieces are easier to find and put in place. This is really when puzzling becomes a blood sport.
I first saw this puzzling behavior in our daughter when, as an adult on visits, we would do puzzles and the aggressiveness came out. Our son, not quite so much. Neither my wife or I are truly like that, though I don’t mind twisting people’s tails a little by pretending to go after their pieces, just to get them going.
So, Ezra and Elise began a 300 piece puzzle. Not all that big, as they have both done bigger on their own, but flat surface space was at a premium. They abandoned the puzzle. Then I, bored with reading the books I’d brought with me, began working on it. That brought them back, first Elise, later Ezra. Ezra and I finished it, him hiding a piece to be sure that he would be the one to put the last piece in. That is aggressive puzzling. Of course, I had threatened to do the same thing but then didn’t. I suppose I gave him the idea.
It was a good time. We didn’t get out another puzzle, but set the stage for future family puzzling on other trips. And when they next come here, I foresee the card table going up and a 500 piece puzzle coming out. Maybe two.
Between leftovers and some takeout, I had to fix only one meal. Grandpa’s Mythical Sandwich was a hit, as always.
Yes, the dateline shows that I’m writing these Friday thoughts on Thursday. At least I’m beginning these thoughts then.
Yesterday (Wednesday), we drove back from West Texas from having babysat our four grandchildren last weekend and staying a few extra days. We might have come home on Tuesday, but Lynda had a stomach bug, so we delayed a day. Actually, we had been uncertain of which day to come home on.
But yesterday morning before we left, our son-in-law was sick, went for a covid test, and was positive. So we have been exposed. As it turns out we hadn’t been all that close to him in the house, so maybe we will be okay. But, let the quarantine begin. I guess 5 days. Except, I have prescriptions to pick up at Wal-Mart and a few after-trip groceries I must get. I’ll do that this morning. I’ll have to miss the monthly meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes, our critique group, Thursday night. I’ll send my piece to them by e-mail.
With The Forest Throne done and waiting on beta readers, and with the church Centennial book done and waiting on proof-readers, I’m about to spend time on my next writing project. As I said in my annual writing goals post earlier this month, it would be a Bible study. But which one? On Tuesday, I consolidated my various files from the Holy Week study I taught last Lenten season, on the Last Supper. Thursday morning, I found my hand-written teaching notes and will go through them over the next several days. I have a feeling I will make this my next book rather than the study I did on 1 and 2 Timothy some years ago. But we shall see. I should know by early next week.
I’m in the process of contacting an artist about a cover for The Forest Throne. Hoping to make contact on Thursday. Also, the first beta reader of TFT is my granddaughter Elise, 8. She loved it. She also picked up on a number of subtle things I put in the book.
I’ve been brainstorming the concept of individualism, having posted on that before and wanting to do a follow-up or two, possibly even write and publish an essay on that. I have come to the conclusion that the opposite of individualism is collectivism. I even found a quote by Dr. M.L. King that agrees with that, but I can’t trace it back to the actual speech or document, so hate to use it. I don’t know that this essay will ever happen, or if it does it will be anything more than serialized blog posts.
The drive home from W. Texas was pleasant. I was worried about road conditions near the end, in our own county, as the forecast was for a wintry mix that afternoon. As I looked at radar that morning, frozen precip was showing over Oklahoma City, where we were making a brief stop to drop recyclables from our daughter’s accumulation. But after driving an hour and a half, and checking the predicted radar again, it showed the OKC precip abating by the time we would get there, and that what would fall toward the end of our trip would be minor at most. So on we drove. We stopped about 45 minutes from home and made a couple of phone calls, learned the roads were fine, and so we continued on home.
I’m in the midst of reading three different books (well, four if you include the one I read 3 or 4 pages of on my phone a day—no, five if you include the book I’m reading for Life Group teaching), two of which are books about writing. I took those two with me to Texas, and made good progress in them. One I should finish in three days or so; the other will likely take over two weeks. It’s interviews with 20 writers, and I’m just reading one interview a day.
That’s enough random thoughts. I hope to head to the sunroom later, with my handwritten notes, and get to work on the Bible study. See you all on Monday, when I hope to get back to something on my list of upcoming blog posts.
We didn’t bother with a Christmas tree this year, except for the six miniature ones in the Christmas village.
I wrote last year on Christmas day that Lynda and I were having a quiet Christmas. ‘Tis the same this year. It will just be the two of us, the family having all been with us at Thanksgiving. Well, today we still have Rocky, our neighbor’s dog, with us. We’ve been watching him since Sunday while they got away for a pre-Christmas R&R trip.
Rocky is a good dog, but he’s homesick for his own family. They live four lots up the hill from us, three vacant lots in between. Our normal route to walk him takes us by his house, and he expects to be taken inside it. So we pull him along and he gets over it. In the evenings especially he seems restless and wants to go home. Last night was about the best for him settling down without a lot of difficulty.
I’ve always liked to display blue lights at Christmas, but this red lights display up on the next street is very nice.
The walks after dark have been very nice, as well as the early morning ones. Up on the next street, several houses have outdoor Christmas lights. Nice to walk by them and enjoy. On one of those early walks, before this warm front came through, I found the first frost flower I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard about them for a long time, but have never taken a leisurely walk in the right conditions for them to form. Thank you, Rocky, for making that possible.
One thing different this year from last is our church has returned to holding a candlelight Christmas eve service—two of them actually. Last year we elected not to hold them, with the covid pandemic still in its pre-vaccination stage. We are thinking of going to the 4 o’clock service. It will be good to gather with everyone and focus on Jesus’ birth for an hour.
Another difference is we hope to get together with my cousin Greg and his wife Bev. Although living just 8 or 9 miles apart, it’s been two years since we’ve seen each other. Greg’s health is tenuous and they have been taking lots of precautions. They were supposed to come for Thanksgiving, but he wasn’t feeling well and they cancelled. Our plans are to drive around Sunday evening and see Christmas lights. Beyond that nothing is planned. We may get hot chocolate somewhere and sit on the square in Bentonville, enjoying unseasonably warm weather under enough Christmas lights to read by.
Otherwise, we will read much, probably watch some TV, and eat a nice meal of turkey breast, dressing, and roast vegetables. We’ll eat on it for a week. Hopefully we’ll get to walk. Not with Rocky, however. His family returns today. We’ll take him to his house before we go to church. He’ll jump for joy as we open the door, only to be disappointed his family isn’t home yet (but will be soon).
So a merry Christmas to all. Remember the reason we celebrate it.
I keep making mention of my novel-in-progress. Tentatively titled The Forest Throne, it will be a young adult novel—meaning it is for teenagers. And I’ve been meaning to say more about it, but seemed to have too much on my mind to concentrate on a post about it.
In this post, I’ll talk mainly about the genesis of the book. In a future post I’ll talk a little about the story.
Before they constructed trails near our house, if, when the grandchildren came to visit, you wanted to go deep into the woods, the only way to do so was down the hill behind our house into the valley, called a “holler” around here. I think Ephraim, our oldest grandchild, was 3 or 4 when we did that for the first time. As the other kids got older, several of us would do this. Once you go down the hill, there’s no going back up. Or, should I say going back up is much too difficult. So we would hike down the channel of the hollow until we hit a road and take the road back to the house. While that meant a longer uphill leg, the road is definitely easier than the rocky, leaf-strewn hill. Once the trail construction began in late 2019 and was completed in early 2020, we never go down the hill anymore.
But I prate.
Sometime around 2017 (I think it was), Ephraim, by then 9-years-old, and I went down the hill. For some reason his two siblings then old enough to be with us stayed at the house. We usually have to hunt around to find a place to get down into the channel of the holler. One time we were working our way upstream on the bank, looking for that place to drop down to the channel, when we passed a depression in the hillside that looked a bit like a chair. One of us, I don’t remember if it was Ephraim or me, said it looked like a throne, a throne in the woods, or the forest.
That’s where the name came from. We mused about whether it was natural or manmade. And I began musing about how it could be worked into a book. A plot came to mind. I ran that plot by Ephraim. He said it sounded good, and so I put it in the writing queue. It finally came to the top of the queue last June.
That’s the genesis. The rest will have to wait for another post. I took a photo of the throne when we went back one time, but I’m not sure I can find it on my phone. Thus, I have no illustration for this post. You’ll just have to wait a while for it.
Christmas at the Outlet store in downtown Providence, probably 1953. Edward came along in January 1954.
On Saturday, November 27, 2021, my sister, Norma Lilly Todd, left this world for the next, the heavenly one, after a long, long illness. You may find her obituary here.
She was 16 months older than me, two years ahead of me in school. Born Sept 5, 1950 in Providence, RI, she was a premie by at least a month, maybe more. This would show up years later in her health problems.
Four maternal generations at Norma’s christening, winter of 1950-51
We were raised in Cranston, RI, joined two years after my birth by our brother Edward. Norma, as the oldest, was the one to one supply childhood names for our grandparents, Gar and Grime—names that stuck forever. She established the pattern of the Todd children being scholars (a pattern Edward broke, not because he lacked smarts, but because he had to carve out a different territory for himself).
When Mom died in 1965, Norma was 14, I was 13, and Edward was 11. A lot of the burden of the family duties fell on her. Of course, Mom was so sick leading up to her death that we all were already doing most of the chores a mother would do, including Dad taking on much of the cooking. But Norma probably had a greater burden than Edward and me.
Norma graduated with honors along the way, from Cranston High School East in 1968. She went on to Rhode Island College, graduating in 1972 with a B.S. in Elementary Education.
The family, one Sunday about to embark for church.
She discovered that teaching young children really wasn’t her calling, and instead went into retail, working at a Pier One Imports close to our house. They offered her a management position in Evansville, Indiana. So she became the first of the fledglings to fly the coop in, if I remember correctly, November 1973. I did the same in June 1974, moving to Kansas City.
Daddy’s little girl
Once we moved away from each other, and in the age back when long-distance telephone was still expensive, communications became infrequent and visits even more so. I drove from KC to Evansville to visit her twice before I married, and she flew to KC twice to visit Lynda and me after we married. Since, over the years, we made many trips from KC or Arkansas to Rhode Island, we stopped often in Evansville to see her.
At Mom’s grave, 1965
Norma’s health was never good, and she didn’t have a lot of strength. At some point, maybe around 1990-91, she left her retail management position—which involved her unloading delivery trucks—and went to work as a receptionist at her church, a job she held until her retirement around three or four years ago. Her connection to that is an interesting story, one that I had a part in. When I visited her in October, 1974, I witnessed to her about my conversion experience (from being a nominal, Christian-in-name-only to being born again). After my trip, she wrote me a letter saying thanks but no thanks. It was less than a year later that she sent me a card, saying something on front like, “I meant to call, I meant to write, I meant to visit, but I didn’t so…” and then, inside, “…I’m praying for you.” In that card she wrote about her conversion. Needless to say, I hopped in the car as soon as I could and visited her over the weekend, including Sunday morning service at Bethel Temple.
Norma’s high school graduation photo, 1968, Cranston High School East
Norma was a girl scout growing up, active in that throughout her school years. As an adult, her interests outside of work and church included crafts, especially making greeting cards. Each birthday and holiday we received a homemade, personalized card from her.
Norma never married. If she had boyfriends along the way she didn’t tell me about them.
About 10-15 years ago, she called to say she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. In the course of the examinations, they discovered she had only 40 percent lung capacity, most likely as a result of her premature birth. Due to her general health condition, they would not operate for her cancer. They treated it by radiation, and she was considered a cancer survivor.
A more recent photo, probably from the early 2000s.
But her health deteriorated over the years as her knees wore out and she battled the bulge, like everyone in our family did. She had been confined to a wheelchair, though still living at home. Various friends looked in on her. It was August this year that she took a turn for the worse, spending the rest of her time in hospitals, rehab, and a nursing home. When we last talked by phone, she requested that we not come out and see her. “We went our separate ways long ago,” she said. We reluctantly honored her wish. She had her after-death arrangements made, which included cremation and no services.
Norma is survived by me, our half-sister Deb Harris, six nephews and nieces, many cousins, and a host of friends, mainly in Evansville. I want to give special recognition to Bob and Ellan, the friends who have given her much help and lots of time over the years, especially lately.
On our last visit, in Evansville in October 2015
A popular response to the death of a loved one is to say they have joined so and so in heaven and is now looking down on us. I’m not sure that’s biblical, though it may be comforting. But I do know that’s where Norma is now, because of her faith in Jesus. She fought the good fight; she finished the race; she kept the faith. She has now heard those words that all who love Jesus want to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord.”
