Category Archives: family

Christianity, family

And So This Is Christmas

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The grandkids aren’t here to add toys to our Christmas displays, so Lynda did it, finding this stuffed sheep somewhere in the house and adding it to our nativity scene.

What a different year this is. No one in for Thanksgiving, no one in for Christmas. We have toyed with going over to my cousin’s house in Bella Vista, setting up chairs in the driveway, staying 6 feet apart, drink coffee and talk. But right now Lynda is beset with headaches, possibly a lingering effect of the corona virus. She rightly said that we are, perhaps, both in a weakened condition and more vulnerable to other infections. Or, if we actually had a false positive covid test and really haven’t had it, we are vulnerable to get it. So, it will be just me and Lynda. I have a roast to cook, along with some nice vegetables. We have lots of treats: Christmas cookies, fruit cake, pumpkin pie, honey & mustard pretzels. And more. We will be all set.

And, of course, you read in your Advent devotional book every day.

Listening to Christmas music, I’ve been thinking a lot about John Lennon’s “So This Is Christmas”. Written as the Vietnam War had drug on and on, it’s a cute tune with simple lyrics. Partway through the song, background singers begin singing “War is over, if you want it.” The background gets louder and louder and, by the end of the song, you mostly hear the anti-war chant and not so much the main lyrics.

It’s a nice thought, war is over if you want it to be. Alas, few wars are carried on only by one side. Someone is the aggressor and someone is defending themselves. Back in the late 60s-early 70s, it did seem like the USA was fighting a war that didn’t need to be fought. Not all wars are like that. One wonders what kind of song Lennon would write today, if he would make the lyrics in Arabic so that those who most want war (a.k.a. jihad) could get the message.

The simple decorations in The Dungeon. When I took this photo, I didn’t realize the eagle appears to be swooping down to get Dogbert.

And so this is Christmas. I hope you have fun. The near and the dear ones, the old and the young. Very simple,  as are the rest of the lyrics in the song, the rhymes almost forced, , but very pleasing, with an enjoyable tune and excellent instrumentation. Just as Christmas is this year. Simple. Few Christmas decorations. Less work to set up and put away. A simpler meal. No presents to wrap and unwrap. No grandkids to put wooly mammoths in my Christmas village, or a toy rock, or a toy fire truck. No one to tuck in bed Christmas eve or watch and see their face light up Christmas morning. Stockings are hung by the chimney with care but are not filled. They hang limp, empty.

From early 2020: These bloomed all December through January, dropping their flowers during February and March. Here they are blooming again.

But Christmas isn’t empty. Yes, the world may be going mad with covid19, and we may be taking extreme precautions. The vaccines are being distributed. Will they really end this plague? Will it be Christmas as usual in 2021? I’m not worried. We will have a very pleasant Christmas in 2020, with the near and the dear one, without any fear. War is not over, but I think we are a little smarter about it, the 2003 disaster excepted.

Enjoy this rendition of “So This Is Christmas” by Celine Dion. It doesn’t include Lennon’s anti-war chant (well, maybe just a little in the middle, I think). Well worth listening to.

And so, happy Christmas for black and for white, for yellow and red ones. Let’s stop all the fights.

We will miss these cuties on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, but hope to see them soon in 2021!
Christmas, family

Memories of Christmas Past: The Christmas Tree

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All that late decorating on Christmas eve made for tired parents by the end of Christmas Day.

Christmas is going to be quiet this year, the quietest ever. It will just be Lynda and me. While we are both recovering from covid-19 infections, we are in isolation, and don’t know when we can return to the current real world of staying mostly apart from everyone else. Our son and his partner were planning on visiting us this week, but that’s obviously out. Then we had thought of driving to Big Spring Texas to be with Sara and family over Christmas, but that’s obviously out. So it’s just us. I put up only a few Christmas decorations, and may put up a few more.

Our tree in 2020. Colors change as the motor turns the palate.

Our tree is a small, motorized fiber-optic tree, about five feet tall. I was planning on selling it as part of our down-sizing efforts. But the tree we usually put up is a lot of work, whereas this one was pull out of the closet, put it in the stand, plug it in. The colors change as the motor turns. No ornaments; just the lights at the end of each fiber.

This got me thinking about Christmas past, and the Christmas trees we had growing up. I thought I had written about this before, but can’t find such a post. Maybe I embedded this in another Christmas post, or maybe it’s there and I just don’t know how to search my own blog. But even if I did write about it before, some things are worth covering twice.

Ah, a tree with decorations on it and in front of it. From a couple of years ago.

Each year we got a natural Christmas tree from one of the Christmas tree lot that sprang up on Reservoir Avenue not far from our house. Nowadays all those lots have businesses on them. Dad and we three children would go buy one, Mom being too sick to do so, but she was also busy making other Christmas preparations. We set out on foot—yes, on foot, for the tree lots weren’t more than a five or ten minute walk from the house. We had to cross Reservoir, a major four-lane road, but that was no problem.

This was always kind of exciting. Each family member chipped in to buy the tree. Our budget was $1.00 total, meaning we each had to chip in 20¢. Yes, you read that right. $1.00 for a tree. We didn’t get one of the better ones, but we were all happy with what we got. We picked it out, paid for it with ten dimes, carried it across Reservoir then the two or three blocks. Into the detached garage it went, in a bucket of water. I still remember the year when we couldn’t get a tree for less than $1.25, and we each had to add another 5¢ from our allowance.

Some modern decorations do make for a bright Christmas.

And there it stayed for a week or more. Then Dad brought it to the basement to “get acclimated to being in the house.” He measured it and normally sawed some off the bottom. There it stayed until Christmas eve, or maybe the day before. Dad brought it upstairs to the living room. On Christmas eve we decorated it. Yes, not until Christmas eve. That seems strange by today’s standards, but that was the family tradition. Christmas eve was reserved for decorating, with Mom in the kitchen. At times we all helped her with the cookies and whatever else needed doing.

The decorations were not color coordinated. The lights were multi-colored and large: some bubbly, some round, some pointy. Each string had a mix. The ornaments were in no way color coordinated, a mixture acquired over the years.

A favorite Christmas picture. E3 wasn’t too happy with me.

Now, of course, the tree goes up right after Thanksgiving. It’s artificial. The lights are all white LED. All ornaments are silver or blue. Even the garland is silver. It’s all very pretty. But it’s so different than what I had growing up that, sometimes, it makes me…sad.

Previous posts in the Christmas past series.

December 2017: The Candy House

December 2016: The Nativity Scene

December 2015: Progressive Christmas decoration

December 2014: Wrapping Paper

December 2019: Wrapping Paper again

 

ancient letters, C.S. Lewis, family, holidays

Yes, Thanksgiving Was Quiet

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It was just me and the missus this year. Leftovers from the Thanksgiving dinner we had last week with our son, reading, walking, and lots of phone calls.

I’m not a big fan of talking on the phone, so I can’t say that was pleasant for me. Strange, after all the years in the workforce, dealing with clients, contractors, and colleagues, that I should dislike the phone, but I do. Maybe 44 years of engineering work and the required phone time means I used up my lifetime store of phone time.

I can’t say that I feel like I got much done. I was a couple of days behind on my devotional readings, and I caught up. I did my usual morning stock market accounting even though the market was closed. That saved me from having to do it Friday before the market opens for a half-day session. I had a couple of messages of people wanting to buy stuff off my Facebook Marketplace listings. I responded, started to gather those things, they decided it could wait until Friday. I read eight pages in C.S. Lewis’ letters. I had hoped for 10 pages, so was a little short.

I walked a total of 2.67 miles, according to my app. I went out, came back to find Lynda walking toward me, so we went out again. I think it was a little over 1/2 miles together. A beautiful day in the mid-60s couldn’t be passed by. As I said above, supper was leftovers, a turkey casserole I had made a week ago, the last of the butternut squash, cranberry sauce, and then just snacking.

In the evening I read aloud from the current issue of the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries magazine that we get, finishing it. That paves the way for us to start a new book today. I read a couple of Thomas Carlyle’s letters from 1832, finding them enjoyable as always.

The main task I did, I guess, was formatting a document in MS Word. I won’t say what it was. It’s a bunch of copyrighted items that I downloaded concerning an author I study. I will read it some day; actually started on that some years ago. Now the document is set up in printable form, should I decide to do that. For some reason, formatting documents is a task I find enjoyable. So I worked on that off and on beginning around noon, and finished it around 9:30 pm. Over 200 pages. Done, ready for whatever I want to do with it next.

So here it’s Friday morning. I was up at 6:15 a.m. and have already got stuff done. I’ll head upstairs when I finish this to get my second cup of coffee. Then I’ll see all that I must do and want to do today. Work, walk, and read are my main courses, with a side of eating and conversation. Looking forward to the day.

Bible study, expatriate life, family, Health, holidays, The Teachings

The Beginning of a Quiet Week

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Thanksgiving week is usually a busy week for us. People are coming in. Last year was larger than normal, as both of our children were here, with grandchildren, a sister, and a cousin, plus spouses. We had to set up an extra table for dinner. Thanksgiving has always been a busy time, yet a fun time.

This year, the pandemic has canceled all that. It will just be Lynda and me. Our son was here with his partner last week. They quarantined for two weeks in Chicago before coming, as did we here, so we all felt safe doing that. Charles also came for a week in October, and, if plans work out, they will do the same in mid-December. Our daughter’s family has sickness running through it. Not the corona virus, but the strep throat that kids seem to get every year in school and pass on to parents. So they will hunker down in West Texas.

Last week we had an early Thanksgiving dinner with our visitors, not quite traditional but close. We are now eating leftovers and soon I’ll be making soup and figuring out how much turkey I have to freeze, along with other things. For sure we will be eating leftovers on Thursday. So Thanksgiving will be a quiet affair.

That is actually back to normal. Life is quiet for us. Lynda’s health issues would have forced us into quietness even if there hadn’t been a pandemic. The double-whammy means we don’t go out. I still go to Wal-Mart for groceries and meds, but try to shop so as to go every nine or ten days instead of every five or six days as I used to. I still go to church, except when quarantining. We still see our neighbors on occasion. In this rural neighborhood we have more vacant lots than built-on lots, so you have to go out of your way to see you neighbors. Getting out of the house mostly means taking walks, not drives.

This week, as I look ahead on Monday and build my to-do list, looks to be a writing week. My stock trading activities are now quite efficient and don’t take more than an hour a day. I normally stretch that out to two or so. Last night I spent some time on a writing project: adding commentary to the transcribed letters from our Kuwait years. This went fairly quickly. I want to keep commentary to a minimum. At this point I’m halfway through the book with just a few hours work, and could easily finish it this week. I still have editing to do on the letters, then proofread it all and compare it to the original letters, then decide if I’m going to add photos and if so how many. I don’t know that I’m going to make this a continuous task or rather work on it in odd moment as the spirit moves me, such as when multi-tasking before the television.

I might spend a little time fleshing out the next Bible study I want to write. I’ve selected it and, having taught it twice, have a lot of beginning material. But other studies have been nagging at me, suggesting I develop and write them instead. I will have to spend some time deciding.

A letter to an old friend of my wife and me is in the offering, perhaps as early as today. Listing more things on Facebook Marketplace will also be a task quite soon, maybe even today. While I’ve been pleased with how that has gone, I’ve found it is time consuming. I plan on listing my box of JFK assassination magazines that I bought at auction some years ago, as well as our old treadmill and older bicycles. All of that will take some time. As will a few other downsizing activities.

Which brings me to my novel-in-progress. Yes, I want to get back to that. I think I know how to plow ahead with it and not be stymied by the historical elements. Ideas are floating through my mind and I need to get them written before they totally float away. It is a featured task on my to-do list, though I may need to do a few others first.

All of this is possible because of the quiet Thanksgiving. I will miss not seeing my children and grandchildren all together. But I will also feel good knowing they are protecting themselves where they are, perhaps getting some rest rather than going through all the trouble of travel. We will look forward to making Thanksgiving a busy time in 2021.

books, family, home improvements, miscellaneous

A Busy Time Ahead

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On Friday this will all expand. Additional tables will be set up and moved out into the driveway and yard. I hope much of it goes.

For the next two weeks (at least), my life is going to be too full to keep up a regular blog schedule. I normally post on Monday and Friday. For a little while, however, I will likely do just once a week, probably on Monday.

What’s going on, you wonder? Since July my wife and I have been in the process of downsizing our possessions (not yet our house). We came to the realization that we have too much stuff, accumulated over 46 years of marriage and retrieved from the houses of three parents upon their deaths—or their own downsizing. We had to get rid of it.

This is a cute horse. Pinch its ear and it whinnies and moves it’s head and tail. But they grandkids don’t use it when they come. It fetched $25 on FB Marketplace, and some young child probably loves it now.

I started with my mother-in-law’s papers in July. Some I was able to discard, such as old health records and old financial records after shredding, but much my wife has to see before we can do that. She’s been in the process of that since my sorting gave her enough to look at. Things are being put into recycling. Cards and letters will all have to go, a very few saved for sentimental value.

Of course, I interrupted that work to transcribe the letter from our Kuwait years. They are now in the cloud and backed up. Someday, when life calms down, I’ll put them in book form for children and grandchildren. They aren’t great literature. No, simply a record of our time there. Someday I’ll do the same with the Saudi years.

Tools from Dad’s house. I’ve been surprised at how well tools are selling. Sure takes a lot of messaging, however, to get the sale made.

Slowly, slowly, we have been getting Esther’s things out of her room or our large basement storage room and making them ready for sale. Shelf decorations, boxed crystal, books, and clothes are all being gone through. It’s a slow process. I can only do so much and Lynda’s health and strength doesn’t allow her to work longer. She’s actually doing very well with it. I’d make the decisions on many things, but I know she has to be the one to do it.

Getting rid of Esther’s stuff, stuff that we don’t want or need and our children don’t want or need led me to look at our own stuff. While waiting on my wife’s strength to come back, I realized I had lots of stuff to get rid of that had come to us from Dad’s house back in 1997-98, stuff I never used. I wrote about this process before. All I’ll say now is last Saturday I found another tray of tools that can be sold.

But, it seems, no one wants this old, French postcard. Alas. Not sure where or how we will get rid of the postcards. We took hundreds of them from the house we owned in NC that had been left by the previous owner.

For all of this we are using Facebook Marketplace as our primary sales venue. For now, the only sales venue. I like the success we are having, but it is a slow process. Gent a new item listed and approved and almost immediately you will get “Is this item still available?” You tell them yes in a return message, and…never hear from them again. For one set of tools this resulted in five different people showing interest, even to the point of making appointments to come see and probably buy them. To the garage I went at the appointed time and…nothing. They didn’t show. Didn’t message that they wouldn’t show. Next day I get a message saying oh sorry but I just couldn’t come. Meanwhile I’ve told two other people that the tools are spoken for. Trying to be fair with buyers is turning into a lengthy and frustrating process.

This is a hard one. This tea and coffee brewer was a wedding gift for Lynda’s grandmother back in 1924. Hard to part with it, but we have decorations in abundance. Alas, so far almost no views of it on FB Marketplace.

Slow, frustrating, even maddening. But things are selling. First was a rocking horse that the grandkids have all outgrown. Then it was a 3-gallon aquarium I found on a shelf in the basement that neither of us knew when we got it or if we even used it. Then came the tools. Then came an old kerosene heater we haven’t used since about 1995. Clothes are listed but no one is looking at clothes ads. We have a few decorations listed but it’s too early to know if we will get any interest in them. I found a bunch of unused postcards that apparently belonged to my dad and listed those in several lots, but that doesn’t seem to be the type of things people are going to FB Marketplace to buy.

Meanwhile, we are setting up for a garage sale that will be this Friday and Saturday. I hate garage sales and said I would never do another. But here we are. The neighbors were doing one so we said we would do one too to try to generate more interest. At our last sale I think we did a little less than $200 worth. I’m hoping for a lot more this time around, but am prepared to be disappointed. The work involved is way too much for the reward.

But, the true downsizing/de-cluttering test comes when the sale is over and you have lots of leftover stuff to deal with. A friend has said, “Don’t bring it back in the house. Take it straight to Goodwill.” I’m prepared to do that but I’m not sure the wife is. That didn’t happen after our sale and we ended up with tables in the garage for years. I’m hoping and praying that doesn’t happen this time. If an item is marked as “we don’t need this anymore”, that should apply whether you could get money for it or not. Right?

A few of the bigger, more valuable items, the kind of things that potential buyers for are unlikely to be yard sale shoppers, sure, those can be kept for selling. But most things I think not.

books, family, home improvements, memories, Mom, reading

Goodbye, Books

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So many books to read, so little time left in this world to read them.

The house I grew up in had a lot of books in it. The secretary in the dining room, the bookcase with the glass doors in the hallway, and on shelves of books in the basement—some tied with twine, some in boxes, some in a row, and some under drop-cloths. I didn’t know what these books were. Once I took the drop-cloth off some and saw they were encyclopedias, published in 1900.

After Mom died and we three children grew up and moved out, Dad became an acquirer of books. He was retired by then, and he and his friend boyhood friend, Bob Tetrault, would get together once a month, have lunch, then go to flea markets. I don’t know what Bob bought (if anything), but Dad bought books. He bought paperbacks, hardbacks, on a variety of subjects. Seemingly mindless that he already had more than a thousand of Mom’s books, he bought more—and read them.

When Dad died 32 years after Mom did, and we cleaned out the house, I took the books. I sorted them into three categories: those it seemed Dad acquired, which were published mainly 1970 and later; those older than that that Mom had acquired, mainly hardbacks from the 1930s and 1940s; and then much older books, all hardbacks. These, I learned, had belonged to David Sexton, Mom’s grand-uncle, the man who took my grandmother in as a single mother and gave her a home. These are mainly from the late 1800s, though I found some that went back as early as 1829. I think my brother sold off a few older ones before I took the bulk of them away, but that’s another story.

Now we come down to 2020 and our new effort to reduce our possessions, looking toward that day sometime in the future when we’ll downsize and likely move away. As I reported in a prior post, I’m identifying things to part with and selling them on Facebook Marketplace—with some success. Dad’s tools, taking up space in boxes on shelves in the garage, are gone, at least many of them are. I still have a few. Toys that the grandchildren have outgrown are slowly going. We’ll give a number of them away to a needy family, sell others. Clothes that are surplus or that no longer fit (mostly due to weight loss) are being identified, sorted, and priced in anticipation of a yard sale a week from now. I’ve reported earlier about reduction in papers (cards, notes, letters), something that is on-going and not related to selling.

That brings us down to the books. What to do about them? Uncle Dave’s books are obviously keepers. Not many people have a set of Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s writings published in 1856, and another set from 1905. Not many have Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Kipling from the 1800s. My interest in Thomas Carlyle began because of his books Uncle Dave left behind. The many books that Dad collected we can obviously get rid of. A few would be worth keeping and reading. We’ll sort through them, see what’s good, and keep them. That would be maybe 1 or 2 of 100.

The books that came from Lynda’s dad and mom are more contemporary. The subjects vary from World War 2 to Christian living. I suspect most of those will go. They are not as numerous as the books my parents had, and are not keepsakes. The books we accumulated on our own are a little tougher. If we read them they can go. If we haven’t read them, are we likely to read them? If yes, we keep; if no, out they go. I suspect this will be 50-50. That will get rid of another thousand or more.

This one I will NOT be selling. My heirs can figure out what to do with it. I’ve not yet read “Little Women”, but when I do it may be from this copy.

What about Mom’s books? This is the hardest part of the decision. Over the years, at yard sales and when we briefly sold books on line from 2000-2003, I’ve sold a few of them. Now, however, I’m looking at selling maybe 700 of them if I can find buyers. At the end of that, I might find a good place to donate them, or sell them to a used book store or dealer for 25¢ on the dollar. This is hard, harder than selling Dad’s tools. Harder than selling anything I acquired over the years. Mom bought these books and, I believe, read all of them. It’s a piece of her I have clung to, hoping to read them myself and experience them as she did. Alas, if I could read two a month it would take me 42 years to go through them all. Will I live to be 110 and read these books to the exclusion of all others? Give up all my other interests just to read these books? I don’t think so.

Signed when she was 9 years old, Mom continued that practice all her life.

As buyers come by and take a few of Mom’s books, I look at the half-title page, where she always signed it and put the date she bought it. I look at that and come close to crying. Another piece of Mom gone.

But what else is there to do? My children don’t want these books. My grandchildren, I’m sure, won’t want them either. As Emerson said, each generation must write their own books. Very few people in our family are still alive who knew Mom, with a few more who knew about her. Someday these will all be gone. Should I leave that task to someone who comes after me, letting them make a hard decision?

No, I’ll make that hard decision. It won’t happen in a day, but over months, perhaps years. Slowly these books will go. I’ve pulled a few out to read, and will get through them.

C.S. Lewis, family, home improvements, memories, miscellaneous

Footprints

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I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.

This book will take me several years to get through at the slow rate I’m reading it. I wonder if I’ll ever get to Vol. 2.

As my wife and are in the process of de-cluttering, we find a lot of things I can only describe as footprints: printed matter, souvenirs, old things we used to use but don’t any more. We are weeding through these. So far I’ve listed a number of things on Facebook Marketplace and some have sold. Not many, but some. And the amounts earned thereby are starting to add up.

I’m determined not to leave the mess for our children that our parents did for us. Two houses to clean out, plus all my mother-in-law’s stuff stuffed into our basement storeroom when she left her house for an apartment and more coming with each of her next moves. And this is after having multiple estate sales and yard sales in the past.

This drill set hung in the basement above Dad’s workbench. I could have sold it for more if it was all there, but the drill itself is missing as well as other parts.

My brother and I divided the tools and hardware from Dad’s basement. I took my share and stuffed them in our garage at our last house and faithfully moved them to our current, larger house and found space for them in the garage. A few—very few—I used. Most sat in cardboard boxes and tool boxes for the last 23 years, as they had at Dad’s for three or four decades before that. Some of those are gone. Some others will be picked up in 42 minutes [I write this on Sunday afternoon.]

When this process is over, a process that will take several years, I don’t know what we’ll have left. At some point we will have to consider our own stuff and decide what to do with it. But for now it’s enough to be dealing with our parent’s stuff. Our son is visiting us now. Before he came I told him to not expect much progress. I said what we had done so far was like cutting a millimeter off a 2-lbs. chunk of cheddar cheese. But progress is progress, even if it’s by millimeters instead of yards.

All of which is making me think of footprints, the footprints we leave in this world. Of course, as a genealogist, I’m thrilled when I find a footprint of an ancestor. It helps me to know a little about their life. The fact that so-and-so took someone to court in 1675 and won matters. Yet, I’m kind of glad I’m not looking at five pages of ancient court documents and trying to decide: “Do I keep this or not?” Footprints are good; a trampled wheat field is not. Hopefully the footprints that now adorn our house will, at such time as we leave this world, be just enough to be pleasing to our heirs, not overwhelming as we are now.

This box of odd clamps, files, and other tools came from Dad’s house in the box you see. I never used any of them.

The quote that starts this post I found in a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to his good friend Arthur Greaves on 10 November 1941. I’m slowly reading through Lewis’ letters. Volume 1 is 1024 pages of 10 point font. I assume Volumes 2 (which I also have) and 3 (which I do not have) are about the same. By “relics” I believe Lewis means the same as “footprints”. He hoped that he would make an impact on the world and that those who came after him would know who he was.

The word “souterrains” was a new one on me. Wikipedia defines it thusly:

Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated mainly with the European Atlantic Iron Age. These structures appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul during the late Iron Age. Regional names include earth houses, fogous and Pictish houses.

So it’s an archeological relic—a footprint of people long gone, something that tells us a little about how they lived. Lewis is saying that, just as these souterrains survived for a couple of millennia, so would his influence survive. He wrote that as a 16-year-old school boy.

At the moment, I think the biggest legacy I could leave my kids is to not leave a mess behind for them to have to deal with. Oh, there will be a few things. We don’t leave earth with absolutely nothing in our possession just prior. But I know it will be better than the three messes we received.

expatriate life, family, letters

The Kuwait Years In Letters

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It may not look like 129 letters, but they are all there, collated by date after transcription. Now I need to figure out a better way to store them.

As regular readers of this blog know (all two or three of you), I love letters. I have a sizeable collection of published letter collections, and from time to time I pull one out and read it. Right now I have Volume 1 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis on my work table in The Dungeon, and am trying to get in the habit of reading one or two of his letters every day. In fact, having not read one yesterday or today, I’m going to interrupt writing this post and will read a couple, then come back…

…okay, letters read, and I’m back. I’ve never understood this fascination of mine with letters, but it’s there.

As it turns out, my own house is littered with letters—letters that I’ve sent over the years. When we moved to Saudi Arabia in 1981, we had no telephone in our flat. Using the phone at the office was not terribly convenient, so we wrote letters: to my Dad, to Lynda’s mom and dad, to grandparents, and a few to siblings or friends. When we moved to Kuwait in 1988 after four years back in the States, at first we didn’t have a phone, so again we wrote letters. We got a phone at some point, perhaps nine months after we got there, but, with international calls being very expensive no matter which side of the ocean they originated on, we still wrote letters to the same people. The recipients of those letters, our parents at least, kept them, and later gave them back to us (or we found them in their possession upon their deaths).

The Saudi letters will be an even bigger challenge. For now they can stay in their bin, awaiting my attention at some future date (measured in years, not months).

Now we have those letters. When we moved to this house in 2002, with some space to lay things out and organize papers, I began to “gather” these letters into boxes and bins. They all went into a plastic bin at first. I started transcribing a few of the letters from the Saudi years, but put it aside and have no idea where that computer file is. Perhaps I’ll find it. But no matter because I didn’t have more than ten of them transcribed.

Two months ago, when I began going through my mother-in-law’s papers, looking to downsize/declutter after her death, I found a plastic sack with some letters we had sent her. These were a surprise. That caused me to find the bin and put them in it. Then I thought, perhaps I should separate the Saudi years letters from the Kuwait years letters. So I did that. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to get back to transcribing these? Since I didn’t know where my Saudi years computer file was, I decided to do the Kuwait years.

So on July 19, 2020, at 11:07 a.m., I created a computer file and transcribed a letter. Before that, of course, I had pulled them out of the bin and collated them by date. I’ve read enough letter collections by now that I knew pretty much what to do. The next day I transcribed another, and the next day another. This went on for a while. Occasionally I might do two letters a day, or even three, if they were short (as many of mine were to my dad).

Then, somewhere around mid-August, finding myself enjoying the transcription, I decided to just make that my work for a while. I began typing for all my time in The Dungeon that wasn’t taken up by stock trading or book marketing or promotion. I spent several hours a day transcribing. As I did, I saw holes in the letters for some month and people, especially to my wife’s dad. I know we wrote more to him than the number I found. I went hunting in the house. He tended to discard the envelopes and put letters into notebooks. I found them in a box, and found another ten or so letters we’d written to him. I think many to him are still missing, and perhaps with a little more digging I’ll find more.

Most of the letters I found around the house are ones we sent back to the States. I did, however, find a few letters we received. Since we returned to the USA for vacation right before Iraq invaded, we were able to go back only after the Gulf War. Our villa was a mess, we had many things to ship back more important (so I thought at the time) than letters, so we must have trashed most of the incoming letters. I don’t remember any of that, but the lack of having them makes me think that’s what happened. The incoming letters that I did find I also transcribed.

This box has other letters and miscellanies, not necessarily from overseas years. Yet, I need to go through it. Maybe I’ll find the missing Kuwait years letters in it.

Tuesday morning I typed the last two, incoming letters just after the Iraqi invasion from my father-in-law. The record is now as complete as I can make it. It’s 129 letters and postcards, 145 typed pages, just under 84,300 words—then length of a medium-sized novel. I have some editing out to do, and I think the final word count will be around 82,000. To this I will add commentary, footnotes, historical perspective. We have numerous photos with which to illustrate this, probably covering all the events mentioned. For the most part the photos are all in one place in the storeroom in a clearly marked box.

So what’s next? At some point I hope to add the commentary and perspective, and to illustrate this with photos. I hope to turn it into a book (‘t’will be around 300 pages, I think), not for publication, but to print off a few nicely-bound copies via my Amazon KDP account, and present them to our children and grandchildren. I wouldn’t offer it for sale. Who would want to buy it? Very few people are like me and love letters. And my lack of notoriety works even more against it ever being in demand. No, I’ll have the copies printed, pull it back to draft status, and leave it there should I ever need a few more copies.

As for the letters from the Saudi years, they will have to wait. I really need to get back to my regular writing and publishing schedule.

construction, Engineering, family, Health, miscellaneous, Writing

Not Quite Back To Normal

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Summer is here in NW Arkansas. This week we will be in the 90s (one day may hit 100), no chance of rain. Definitely stay-indoors weather. We have a couple of appointments that will take us out for a while, but not a lot. Time to get things done, get back to normal.

Except, the time has come for some major work on our house. Three hailstorms this spring have severely damaged our roof. Our insurance company, on the second inspection, agreed. We will get a new roof and some work on the gutters. Since our attic space is not ventilated, I’ll spend a little money and have some vents added. Since some water leaked in and stained the ceiling, we will get a new living-dining-entry room ceiling.

But before that work is done I wanted to have some trees cut away from the house. I arranged for that work with the tree company that worked for us after the August 2019 storms, asking them to hold off a little until the visit of our grandchildren was done. The guy called me Saturday to schedule it, then called me back and asked if they could do it that day. So my Saturday up till about 1 p.m. was consumed with directing their work. At the same time I picked weeds from the front yard, something I had delayed doing. It’s now weed free except for a small area where I had to stay clear of due to the tree work.

After that I was way too tired to do much of anything. I did get some blackberries picked. If I do so again this afternoon I will have enough fresh ones to make a cobbler.

At the same time we may have another bug matter we have to deal with, different than the one from May 2019. Lynda has picked up on the decluttering effort and is working on it. That makes the house a mess, though “this too shall pass”.

And, to top this all off, my residual work at CEI has decided to peak right about this time. Last week I made six construction site visits with the man I’m training to take the work over. I still haven’t written the reports yet. I hope to get them done this week.

And, Lynda had her first cataract surgery last Thursday, with the other one soon to come.

Through all of this I try to remember I have a writing career. Stock trading continues and can’t be put off as writing can. The corona virus pandemic makes little difference to two retired people. Church and Life Group on-line takes up almost as much time as they did in person.

Once again, I hope to return soon to writing. I hope to return to the blog series I started on racism and lawlessness. Plans abound; time to execute them is difficult to find.

family, miscellaneous

Back To Normal

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This past Friday we drove the grandkids back to West Texas. We had intended to stay a few days, but then realized we needed to get home to prepare for my wife’s cataract surgery on Thursday (weren’t sure when to start the eye drops). So we headed home on Saturday, arriving at 10:45 p.m. Yesterday was a day of true rest, as we did very little.

So now it’s Monday morning and everything’s back to normal.

Except, what is normal these days?

Stock trading, writing, house upkeep, exercise, medical appointments. These are all on the to-do list I started today. I have much more to add. It’s going to be a full week.

That’s good. I like to have things to do and to structure my time to get them done. I like to cross completed things off the list and have a sense of accomplishment.

But the new normal is now built around the corona virus and trying to make sure Lynda and I don’t come in contact with someone who has it. Isolation, use of masks, keeping up with news about it are all part of the normal now.

Concern about the violence taking place across our nation is part of the new normal. The violence will pass, you say? I’m not so sure. I think, as I mentioned in a previous post, that people have come to realize that the reach of the police is limited and that they can get away with lawlessness. I fear where this will take the USA.

Worry about the survival of the American experiment takes up some of my brain power. Maybe worry isn’t the right words. Rather, it’s time spent brainstorming what I can do to help the survival of the American experiment. I’m working on that.

So, I’ll end this post and get back at it. My thoughts are beginning to come together even now for resuming the series on racism I started before the grandkids’ visit.