We just got back from visiting in West Texas late on Friday. Company came on Saturday and leaves this morning. I have two blog posts started in draft, but neither is close to being finished. So, I won’t have a real post today.
See you all on Friday, when I should be able to write something more meaningful.
A long time member of our church, Thelma Louise (Baggett) Skaggs, went to her heavenly reward on September 9, 2021. She was 82 years old. While the death of someone of that age is obviously possible at any time, her death was still sudden, occurring two days after she had a medical procedure performed.
Thelma was probably the member of our church with roots going furthest back to our founding. As I’ve been researching our history to write our Centennial book, it didn’t take long to learn that her family had been continuously part of the church the longest time period. Her uncle Dallas Baggett found salvation in a revival the church held around 1929 and before long had his whole family coming to church, including Thelma’s father, Lonas.
I sort of knew some of this before, but learned in from Thelma in two interviews, one by phone and one in person. In addition to those interviews, I talked briefly with Thelma a number of other times as questions came up that I hoped she could help me with: identify someone in a photo, learn who had been part of the church at different times, hear anything she knew about a certain family from the distant past. She never hesitated to help me however she could. Prior to my work on this book, I knew Thelma, but more to say hi than to have long conversations. My mother-in-law was in the Life Group class that Thelma’s husband, Bob, taught, which resulted in my interacting with them from time to time.
Thelma was a pianist extraordinaire. She was one of the rare musicians who could play both by ear and by sight. Put any piece of music in front of her and she could play it. If she heard a song on the radio, she could go to her piano and play it without a musical score in front of her. Her musical ability became apparent when she was just 3 years old.
It was less than three months ago that her son, Steve, passed away suddenly. Now Thelma dies as well, also sudden, but obviously different at her age (82) as opposed to Steve’s (57). Bob is left to carry on with his two remaining children, grandchildren, brother, and in-laws and other relatives and friends. I can’t imagine the pain he is going through. Two deaths so close together has to be hard to deal with. But Bob is strong, and has many memories to recall and cherish.
Heaven gained another musician this month. That heavenly choir has a new accompanist, playing by ear or by sight or by practice. And Thelma has now heard those words we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in life. Now come, share in your master’s happiness.”
It’s hot out. Yesterday’s high was 97°. That’s actually around average for this time of year in Northwest Arkansas. I think our summer, overall, has been slightly cooler than normal—not by much, just a few degrees. Certainly within a standard deviation of normal.
In these temperatures, if I have yardwork to do, I go out immediately upon getting up and do it. This year I have yardwork every day. That’s anywhere from 6:30 to 7:00 a.m., depending on when I wake up and how fast I’m moving. Today it was 06:45, and I was out the door in just five minutes. I worked until 07:45, so just under and hour.
The front yard (a rock yard, not grass), is picked free of weeds; nothing to do there. Our unplanted flower bed needs to be picked of weeds again, but the lack of rain has resulted them being impossible to pull out; nothing to do there. The backyard (also a rock yard) needs much weed pulling. I think I’ve weeded twice this year. But I never blew the leaves off of it last year, which has prevented many weeds from growing. Still, that was a possibility.
However, I also had work to do on our wood lot. This is the lot south of our house. It’s our lot. Over a year ago, the power company did a lot of cutting on their easement on this lot, clearing growth away from their lines. The shredded the smaller saplings and hauled off the bigger stuff. This left about 30 feet of a combination of grass and wood-covered bare earth. I raked down a bunch of the shreddings and put them on a brush pile on the lot. Naturally, plants have come up in that area. The favorable rains and temperatures have resulted in a lot of plants growing in this area, some as tall as 6 feet.
Most of those plants are weeds and grass. Some are wildflowers. A few are blackberry plants. Everyone knows I want more blackberries, and to have them growing on my own lot instead of across the street in the right-of-way would be great. So, to remove the unsightliness of the tall weeds and to isolate the emergent blackberry plants, I’ve been manually cutting weeds on this lot using hedge sheers. That’s my only option since my weed eater quit and I haven’t replaced it yet.
It’s not really hard work. I work from the downhill side so that I have to bend less. Still, it includes a lot of bending. Once I find a blackberry plant the bending increases, as I go slowly, cutting weeds and grass around it to isolate it. I have around six or seven viable blackberry plants isolated so far. I’m not sure if I’ll find any others, but I still have a long way to go, so I may.
Another thing I’ve been doing in my morning outdoor work is cutting down a 4-inch diameter hickory sapling. This is growing right against an oak, and the two of them don’t need to be so close together. Until the power company did its clearing, I never noticed this tree encroaching on the oak’s territory. Again, I’m using manual tools: my ancient bow saw and my little folding pruning saw. Sawing is hard work, especially when bending or kneeling. No, 4 inches isn’t a lot to cut through. Hickory is a hard wood, however, so the combination of conditions meant I decided to do this over a few days—four days to be precise. Today, down it came after the last little bit of sawing. Now I get to do the clean-up.
If I had to guess, I’d say I have about five more mornings of work on the woodlot, a morning of work on the flower bed (once it rains), and at least five mornings of weed pulling in the backyard. By then a few weeds will have come up in the front yard and I’ll pull them.
All of this should be of no real interest to my regular readers. So in my retirement I get up early in the summer months and do yardwork. Big deal, right? It’s of interest to me, however. I figure I have another month of doing this, having a little less daylight each day.
This work, while it helps keep me limber and “young”—young being a relative term—it does cut into my writing time. My short story is sitting there, waiting for me to add the final conflict and last 2,000 words. The Forest Throne is sitting there, waiting for me to get beyond the first chapter and make a book out of it. Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution is sitting there, waiting for me to move from completed research to writing. And sorely needed updates to this website are begging me to get to them.
This too shall pass, and soon I’ll be back to starting my day off with writing, the yardwork either being completed or the days cool enough to do the yardwork later in the day. I’ll be glad for that time to come.
Even though I’m retired and can do whatever work I want on whatever day, I still do more yard on a Saturday than on weekdays. This past Saturday I had big plans for two hours of specific work, finishing stuff I started Monday through Thursday. But I had already decided I wasn’t going to work in the yard, because our church had a special ministry opportunity, something known for a few weeks.
Each summer, in August, we have partnered with Samaritan’s Feet to provide shoes to needed children who would soon be back in school. It normally involves foot washing and giving a pair of socks along with the shoes. Last year we cancelled it due to covid concerns. We had it scheduled for this year when it seemed covid was under control. Our problem was construction adjacent to the church that has severely reduced our parking. Then, covid began to rear-up again.
However, since we had them (Samaritan’s feet) scheduled, our leadership reached out to our Hispanic church in Springdale, who accepted our church partnering with them and holding the event for them at their church. That happened this Saturday. We were supposed to sign up online for what job we wanted to do. All the volunteer slots were from 8:45 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I signed up to be one of those moving shoes from the back “inventory” table to the front for access by those giving them to the recipients. That seemed like a nice indoor job (i.e. in air conditioning).
I arrived a little early, and saw people pulling things out of a trailer. The plans for the day included hot dogs, snow cones, cotton candy, small back of chips, and water for all recipients and their parents, as well as for the volunteers as available. Also included was an inflatable play house, but the kind where only two kids at a time enter and no one else goes in until they come out. That was a covid concession to not have the type of house where many kids are in it. They were just pulling them out of the trailer when I came, so I joined the work crew and we figured out how to set them up.
They were also putting up awnings to cover the different food areas. I helped with that, and helped moved the grill out of the trailer and find a place in the shade for it. Then I figured they would be ready to train the inside volunteers, so quickly went there. I was wrong. They were already halfway through with the training. As I listened and looked over the set up, it seemed to me they didn’t need four people to do the job I had signed up for. Two people could easily handle it. They had 400 people signed up to receive shoes, which sounded like a lot, but the system is so well set up that I couldn’t see that I was needed for that. Because of covid fears, the normal foot washing was suspended, reducing close contact between volunteers and recipients.
Back outside, I looked for a job to do. Because of covid they were going to individually wrap hotdogs. A few of us figured out a system for that and, as the delectable meat began coming off the grill we fell into a rhythm where three of us did the wrapping—wearing masks and gloves, of course, and making use of hand sanitizer.
Alas, the hot dog wrapping table was just outside the shadow of the awning. It was hot, and I wore down fairly quickly. I found a shady place to sit from time to time. I did some trash pickup. I went inside when supplies were needed—anything to get out of the sun.
Even with these steps, I was done by about 12:45. All the hotdogs had been grilled and wrapped and over 200 already given out. Most people who had signed up to get shoes had come and gone with their tote bag of shoes, socks, school supplies, and a small message card. Of the 400 who signed up, they estimated about 30 percent no shows. But people who didn’t sign up came by, and because of the no-shows they were able to receive shoes.
Also going on was a food pantry and a covid vaccine clinic. Both of those served a good number of people. The food pantry, mainly of bread products donated to the church, looked like it might be a regular part of their ministry. The covid clinic was something we arranged for to hopefully catch people who came for shoes but who had not availed themselves of the vaccine. That seemed to work.
I got home (a 30 mile drive) a little before 2 p.m. I tried to read awhile but my bum knee hurt too much. I went to the couch and, once I found a comfortable lot, was out light a light and slept close to two hours. I should have taken an extra pain pill because the knee prevented me from getting a restful night’s sleep.
Yes, I was tired. Yes, I paid for the extra activity. But it was worth it. The yardwork will still be there Monday morning and after. Hopefully I’ll be able to do this again next year. The construction next to our church will be finished, perhaps covid will be in check, and it will be a more normal set-up.
Thanks go out to Samaritan’s Feet and to our church leadership for figuring out how to make this ministry available in difficult circumstances. People (both recipients and volunteers were blessed) and the kingdom of God advanced a notch in the process.
But, I was busy enough I forgot to take photos of the event. This video will tell you a little. How’s your Spanish?
People who know and love poetry might recognize the title of this post as coming from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”. Over the years I have come to like this poem much, but once upon a time I hated it.
I hated it because of how it was used by a string of English teachers, year after year, and how they insisted that this was a suicide poem. That may even include two favorite English teachers. If so, they did a good job except for this. I never could see suicide in the poem. The teachers said you had to look below the words on the surface and find the hidden meaning the poet was really saying. I couldn’t see it. To my schoolboy mind, the teachers ridiculed you if you couldn’t see it. Years later I wrote a poem about those experiences.
A critic I will never be.
What others “know” I seldom see.
Thought most did, I just never could
see death in that dark snowy wood.
Let others find some hidden meaning.
Such deep insights I won’t be gleaning.
But please, don’t take this as a stricture.
I just enjoy the pretty picture.
Not much of a poem. It has no hidden meaning. No metaphor or simile. The only poetical devices are rhyme, meter, and line breaks. Maybe a touch of word play.
A few days ago, I was outside our house in the street, just up the hill in front of the vacant lot next to me. We live in a lightly developed area; four houses on our street and twenty undeveloped lots, all forested. I looked down into the woods of that lot, and it was dark. It was a bright sunshiny day, but the leaf canopy of the oaks let no light in. The sun, beginning its western descent, was shining on the forest at the edge of the road, but the woods were dark.
I’ve never noticed that before, the incredible darkness of the woods on a sunny day. Maybe the leafy canopy is denser than normal this year. Yesterday I purposely went outside to see the woods (from the street) at noon. The high sun penetrated the canopy in a few places. Most of the wood seemed dark, but the few sunlit places would give someone in the woods a target to go to.
At different times during the day I went into the woods. Just one row of trees from the open area cleared by the power company, but the view was completely different. The darkness of the woods seemed deeper. My eyes adjusted to the reduced light (the sun now being behind my back and me in shade), so I could better see individual trees until tree after tree stacked together and you couldn’t see any further into the woods.
Why did people, English teachers especially, think “Snowy Wood” was a suicide poem? Primarily because of the last stanza, where Frost repeats “and miles to go before I sleep.” The first time this phrase is used, they say, the poet narrator means that night that he is looking at the woods. The second time he uses it, they say, he means sleep as death. His death is a long way off, and those promises he has to keep are burdensome. Thus, he wishes he could just go off into that wonderful, dark and deep snowy wood, die, and be released from his burden.
As I look at the dark and deep woods that surround our house, I have no such foreboding, no such longing. I have much to do in life. While I may be retired, every hour of the day is filled with meaningful, stimulating, sometimes physically exhausting things. Writing, Reading, Praying. Stock trading. Even decluttering and dis-accumulation. I’m so far from being ready to die that I don’t think of it, most of the time.
But I do think of it as I look at the world around me, and people close to me. A number of people in our adult Sunday school class are facing serious health issues. Death may not be on the doorstep but he’s certainly on the block, right around the corner. Wednesday we learned of the death of another high school classmate. That’s now around 80 or 90 out of a class of 725. I didn’t know this man in school, as life circumstances then prevented me from meeting many except for those in my classes, football, track, and band. And even some of them have faded from memory.
But, clearly, the older I get the more death closes in, just like the impenetrable woods.
To me, the woods represent opportunity, something to explore, something to master. not to tear it down, but to get to know it. I have the rest of a lifetime to do so, whatever God allows me to have. I hope I use the time well.
The woods are indeed lovely, dark and deep. But I do have promises to keep and, hopefully, miles to go before I sleep. It’s not about death but about life.
One friend I exchange letters with, via e-mail, said, “You really don’t understand retirement”, or something close to that. As I said in Monday’s post, I stay busy. So I guess my friend is right.
This week, every morning, I’ve been out in the yard around 6:30 a.m. to do my work before the heat of the day comes. I’m pulling weeds from a couple of places. Also, Mon-Tues-Wed I cut the deadwood from our crepe myrtle bush. The branches all died in last winter’s extreme cold, but new shoots are coming up. The dead branches took a lot of sawing, so I spread that hard work out over three days. But it’s done. Tomorrow, I have just a little more weed pulling left, then bush trimming (evergreen and boxwoods), which I should be able to do in an hour or so. Then I’ll haul the cuttings and the deadwood off to the brush piles I’ve made in the woods nearby. Then, next week, I can tackle the backyard.
All this has left me pretty tired. You would think that an hour of yardwork a day wouldn’t tucker me out, but it seems to. That’s a lot of bending and stooping. A rock yard should be easier to keep up than a grass yard, right? Maybe if you spray for weeds regularly to keep them from growing, but pulling them out by hand is real work. Hopefully it’s keeping me young.
Wait, if I can’t work an hour in the yard without wanting to rest the rest of the day, I am no longer young. I keep telling myself that there’s nothing wrong with me that losing another 40 pounds (on top of the 80 already lost) won’t cure, but maybe that’s not true. I haven’t felt much like walking lately, though maybe that’s the heat more than energy. Walking seems to give me energy. Maybe I am old.
The fatigue I’ve felt has slopped over to non-physical pursuits. My work on the history book for the church anniversary is close to done. I’ve started the process of looking into printing options. I should now be spending time on my next two writing projects. But, after a brief rest after yardwork, I haven’t felt like new writing. I do a little hole-plugging on the church book, bringing it from 98% done to 99.5% done, but my mind hasn’t wanted to wrap around my work.
I did manage one mental task this morning. I finally called an appliance repair man to come and see about our oven. The lower heating element went out a couple of months ago. The porkchop and rice casserole I made last night took three hours to cook, so I’d had enough. The man is to come out late today or sometime tomorrow.
So that’s something. Next, maybe I’ll get our barely functioning vacuum cleaner replaced. After that, maybe I’ll return to decluttering activities. Or maybe I’ll get two listings made today, if I can multi-task these house and home items.
Then, and only then, will I have mental energy to work on my writing.
Oh, yes, one more thing. I have decided that next year I will hire a “lawn” service to spray for weeds in the front yard. If that works well and there’s no weed pulling to do, maybe the year after next I’ll do the same for the back yard. That will be my nod to retirement and the accumulating years.
I had great plans for my blog post today. I have three books recently read that I should review. I have things to say about writing but cannot wrap my mind around it.
The weekend was filled with work on the church anniversary book. I know, in the last post I said I was done with that project. But, as I sought to plug those holes I talked about. I found some other resources and am trying to make contact with relatives of various former pastors or church members. I’ve heard back from a couple, and they should be supplying me with information that will plug the holes. So that tiny little amount of writing left is closer to being done.
So what’s making me tired? And is it mental or physical? A little bit of both. Saturday I got out early and did close to two hours of yard work, including a lot of bending and stooping, as well as removing cuttings and pullings off to the woods. I came back into the house exhausted. I still did work inside the house for the rest of the day, and ended the day quite tired. One of the things I did was go through a large box of photos for the anniversary book. I tried to sort and label some of the envelopes, but I found that exhausting.
Then, I think the work that is required of me this week is causing me mental exhaustion even before I undertake it. I have a number of phone calls to make about home repairs, about the book, and about other writing. We have three medical appointments to go to this week, one a 45 mile drive away down a busy interstate. We will get through it, but thinking about it is exhausting. One of those appointments could result in a number of follow-up appointments, as they figure out a treatment regimen for Lynda’s enlarged thyroid problem.
What else is causing tiredness? Or maybe weariness is a better word to use. Thinking about menus while Lynda is still on a restricted diet post-ablation. Thinking of the continued morning yardwork. Thinking about re-starting our de-cluttering activities. I’m also going through the Amazon Ad Profit Challenge for the third (or maybe the fourth) time, trying to grasp things that left me confused in past times. I made two new ads so far, this time for Acts Of Faith. Both ads are getting impressions but no clicks, no sales. Hopefully those will come with time.
Yesterday was restful, as a Lord’s Day should be. But at church I had to make a brief presentation in both services about the work I’m doing with the anniversary book. Those went okay, though I was sweating profusely afterwards. Here’s a link to the second service, should you want to see it. My part runs from about 36:20 to 40:00 in the video.
So here I am, writing this on Sunday evening for Monday posting. I have Beethoven’s 6th Symphony running in the background. As soon as I finish this post I’ll get on our evening reading aloud. Hopefully, in the morning, when this post actually goes public, I will be renewed and refreshed.
Some weeks are more difficult than others, and for different reasons. The older I get the more those difficulties seem to be matters of life and death. That’s been especially true this week. This weekend, a police officer was killed in nearby Pea Ridge. He had stopped someone and they took off and ran over him, killing him. Then there was the collapse of the apartment building in Miami. They are still trying to figure out how many died in that.
Another death, however, closer to home, happened Wednesday, the news coming by e-mail Thursday morning. A friend from church, Steve Skaggs, died unexpectedly. He was only 57. He leaves his wife, Sharon, and two sons. Here’s a link to his obituary.
I had been at our church a couple of years when I met Steve in the 1990s, most likely in the summer of 1991. It was a Wednesday night service, and I saw him sitting near the rear of the church. I’m not big on introducing myself to strangers. I have to flip a switch inside of me to be able to do so. That night I flipped the switch and introduced myself to him. He and I had a brief conversation as I welcomed him as a visitor to the church. Some years later he mentioned that the brief conversation made an impression on him.
What I didn’t know at the time was that Steve grew up in the church. His parents, Bob and Thelma Skaggs, had taken their family to help the new Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene get started. They had worshiped and worked there for a number of years and were about to return to their home church. Whether Steve told me that that evening or not I don’t remember. It may have been later that he told me that.
Steve soon married Sharon, a young woman in the church who was part of the music ministry. It was maybe a year or so after they were married that we had them over for dinner one Sunday. He said it was the first invite such as that that he and Sharon had after their marriage. I remember that day as a good time of getting to know them better.
Steve and I had many interactions over the years. For a while we served together on the church board until I rotated off, deciding not to return. Steve continued in that service. He was church treasurer in the 1990s, bringing order to what was, at that time, something that was a bit unorderly. Eventually he was chosen for the position of secretary of the Church Board. This was a position of significant trust and responsibility. Steve served in this position for many years, still holding it when he died.
I was the coach of our teen Bible quizzing team beginning in 1991. Our second (or maybe third or fourth) year we had an explosion of teens joining, and it was more than one person could handle. Either I asked Steve to help or he volunteered. For two years we coached the Bible quiz team together. We made trips to Oklahoma City, Dallas, maybe Olathe Kansas. We planned together and worked together.
Years later, we were together on the Church Building Committee for the Family Life Center. Those were busy times, as there was much to do. That was in 1998-2001, and it was a lot of work. Then, a few years later, we worked together as leaders of Financial Peace at our church. I think we worked through two rounds of the classes, or maybe it was three. I think I was in the lead and he assisted me. But that was close to fifteen years ago, and right now I don’t remember who led and who assisted. Maybe we switched off.
After that, the interactions between us were fewer. We saw each other at church and chatted from time to time. Both of us led busy lives, leaving little time for building or maintaining friendships. Most recently we have both been on the 100th anniversary committee of the church. Since our committee meetings were strictly via Zoom, these points of contact seemed, in a way, not real.
Steve was what I would call a quiet worker. He didn’t seek the limelight, or to publicize what he did. Those times when he spoke to the congregation, such as when he represented the Church Board during pastor appreciation month, I could tell he didn’t do it to seek attention, but because it was part of the responsibilities he had. But he did it well. No discomfort at speaking in public, just quiet competence.
Steve’s death was sudden. Normal activity on Sunday; gone into the arms of the Lord on Wednesday. Today we will gather to celebrate his life, as well as to mourn his death. There was a hole in the church yesterday, but Steve is now singing with the angels, and has heard his Lord and Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share in your master’s happiness.”
Good morning, folks. Yes, I’m late with my post today, which will be somewhat of a nothing post. The last several days have been quite busy and didn’t plan a post in advance.
What has kept me busy? One thing is the church anniversary book. This has been a week of sending e-mails, making phone calls, gathering information from previously untapped sources, and adding text to the book. I have only one more interview to do, which I hope to do today. The text is now over 27,000 words, so definitely longer than I expected. I added some photos to the manuscript, but most of the photo work is still to come. Hopefully I’ll have some help with that.
Stock trading has taken up some of the day each day this week. Yesterday and today were especially busy with it. The days were profitable, so I don’t mind the work. It does cut into either writing time or reading/idle time, though.
Other than that, I stay busy with household chores as well as outdoors work. My day starts at ±06:30, when I am outside to do some yardwork. Right now I’m pulling weeds in our horribly overgrown and unplanted flower bed in the front yard. It’s a slow process, even with a shovel to loosen the clods. I would say I have another week of that work. Tomorrow I hope to finish trimming bushes in the front yard and removing the cuttings. That’s a very do-able goal. Hopefully I’ll find a little time for reading as well.
Today will be busy with a grocery run, work on the book, some Amazon listings maintenance, and maybe vacuuming. Or I may leave that for tomorrow.
Well, this has been a blah sort of blog post, but it’s what I have for today.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.
One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.
Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.
We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.
The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.
In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.
Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.
As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.
Dendritic Passage
As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.
Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.
As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and
At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.
This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.
My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.
Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.