Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
Raising Chickens
On our farm, a 190 acre dairy farm with timber, pasture, and good tillable McLean county soil for crops, Dad was master of the dairy barn and the sheep lot and my Mom the absolute ruler of the hen house. She bought baby chicks, nurtured them, fed them generously, took their eggs, killed them, butchered them, cooked their flesh in various ways, ate them, and started the cycle over the...
Death Hits Hard
Death hits hard, not only for the dying, but for those of us still alive. I’m pretty sure our understanding of death, our fear of it, changes the way we live. For example, not long ago I was driving my car down an Ottawa street and pulled over, parking alongside a house on a residential street. I had received a text message from a relative and needed to return it....
We've Only Just Begun
In the category of coincidental and strange these two events both happened during this past week. On Wednesday night I was at church waiting in line for a bowl of soup at our Lenten service when I looked on the floor and saw a tiny slip of paper. I picked it up and found it was a fortune from a cookie. It read “All of us are ignorant, only on...
Finding your Place
Remember that young man I bailed out of jail one of those many cold nights this winter? I’m still in touch with him, trying most lately get him proper identification. He has none, zippo, and finds without it he can do very little-buy a bus ticket, open a bank account, fill a prescription, get a job, and so on. How he came to be living without identification is, he says,...
And I thought the snow was bad
I went to Springfield last week to attend a board meeting of our state association for youth service organizations. I’m starting my ninth month of retirement from a job in which I was closely linked to state budgets and funding for services for kids. The state was our biggest funder. Nearly every organization that serves abused, neglected, or troubled kids in a concrete and tangible way here in Illinois is...
Astronomy
The National Science Foundation polled 2,200 random Americans in 2012 and found that 26% of those polled believed the sun revolved around the earth. It didn’t seem like a trick question. They asked, “Does the Earth go around the Sun or does the Sun go around the Earth.” Our collective failure to do better as Americans alarms me. The American Association for the Advancement of Science was talking about that...
Trujillo Honduras
I Care International, a volunteer organization that brings large scale vision clinics to parts of the world where eye care is desperately needed, went back to Trujillo, Honduras for the second year in a row. We just returned from a ten day trip in the early last Sunday, February 16th. I’m just now rested up and reflecting on our experience. It was our third recent mission to Honduras. In 2011...
Chopper Mittens
I will be out of the country for much of the next two weeks and will not publish another update from the shack until I return. That’s a first. I’ve given you a long post, or a short story, about the farm to make up for my absence. Hope you like it. I don’t know why I think of my parents now, or what triggers those thoughts. My Dad would...
Music Appreciation: Chopin
I never wanted a TV here in the shack but I always wanted a good sound system. I’ve loved listening to recorded music since my sister’s 45’s in the 1950’s, then the big sound from the Telefunken cabinet stereo (our family’s first) my brother brought home from Germany when he got out of the army, to the sound of WLS Top 40 hits from the tiny transistor radio in my...
We're So Smart
In a week that saw a youth shot and killed at a Chicago bus stop reportedly for his cell phone, and two college students drowned in the Chicago river trying to retrieve a dropped cell phone, I’ve concluded we treasure these gadgets way too much. Calling them merely phones, however, understates their importance and value to us. They’re smart, these phones, and have become our link to knowledge and information,...