The View from Here

A Day Like No Other

Yesterday was my grandmother’s birthday. She’s been dead for several years, but I still think about her on the day of her birth. She was a kind, generous Christian woman who spent most of her life working hard and taking care of other people, including me. I remember many, many days spent at her house.

Yesterday should have been one of those ordinary days of going through the motions of work and home and dinner and a little television before bed.  I might have paused a few times during the day to reflect on grandmother’s life and my own. I might have talked about her with a few close friends and family members. But that would have been too, too easy…

Instead, I started the day by missing the weather report. I missed the weather report because our converter box, purchased in February, quit working! And it was so cloudy that the satellite wasn’t working. So, I knew it might rain, but I didn’t hear anything about storms and severity. In fact, as I was leaving Gary asked me if he should close the bedroom window. I stood there on the walkway for a moment and looked at the dark clouds. “Yes, just to be safe. If you leave it open it’ll rain for sure.”

The children were a little rowdy yesterday morning, but we did most of our morning work and many finally “got” the concept of subtraction that we began on Monday. We went to lunch and were half way through the line when word came to abandon all other actions and get the children into the “safe room” (our cafeteria). Within minutes all of the children, pre-k through high school were in one room- talking, laughing, teasing, tapping their feet, and wondering what was happening. Half of mine were also wondering why they didn’t get to eat! I had to explain and reassure, and explain and reassure several times during the hour and ten minutes we were there! And you just can’t say “we’re here in case a tornado comes through town”. You have to be creative- “We’re here because the wind is blowing the rain very hard and Mr. J wants us to be safe until it stops.” A couple of older children seated next to mine said the “T” word and one of my girls started to cry and I had to move her and talk to her and calm her down and then give a dire warning to the older children. Most Okie kids are very familiar with tornadoes, but with little ones you just can’t start that conversation! Once we got the “all clear” to return to our rooms the plans of the day were pretty much gone. By the time we finished lunch, bathroom breaks, center time, and art, the day was over. Turns out much of the state was flooded by then. One town got twelve inches of rain!

On my way home I encountered a major accident and had to maneuver around debris that I didn’t notice until the last second. My new tires were saved by one quick turn to the right instead of the left!

There was a note on the table when I got home. The dining room ceiling fan had flickered, smoked, and failed- thankfully while Gary was still at home. So that’s something else to purchase and repair this weekend.

I called Robert to ask him to stop at Best Buy on his way home and buy a new converter box. (Of course I couldn’t find the receipt to exchange it! Are you kidding? I only have receipts for the dozen things that are still working and will probably die of old age!)  It was raining too hard, so he just came home and switched the one on his television to ours. After all that effort the only television for an hour was the President! Lol

Karen called to tell me she had spent half the day at a very sad funeral for a friend’s young son. We talked briefly about her day and mine, and grandmother’s birthday.

It continued to rain for most of the evening. There is still no satellite service this morning, so I will probably not be able to post this until after school.

Note later: more clouds and rain today.  At least our day was less eventful.

 

Germ Free

So…I’m in WalMart yesterday after school and an older gentleman starts pushing his cart next to time.

“Did you just come in?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Did you get your anti-pig flu wipe?”

“Uh…no. I teach kindergarten- I don’t worry about being germ-free.”

“Well, you could be at WalMart. Did you know they have these?” He holds up the wipe still clutched in his hand.

“Yes.”

“Oh. I thought maybe I was telling you something new. Okay. Kindergarten, huh. Okay.” And off he goes to inform someone else.

I thought about our encounter as I made my way through the store. Are there really folks out there who think wiping their cart with anti-bacterial gel is going to protect them from the germs in WalMart?? Do they not realize that everything in the store has been touched by human hands? Do they think the boxes and bags and cartons jumped onto the shelves? Do they not give any thought to where the money they receive as change has spent its previous days? Or what is on the card reader? If you really wanted to be “germ-free” I would think you’d have to wear gloves and a mask and wipe down everything you bought and put your change in a zip-lock bag until you could take it home and sterilize it. Then someone would want to make a movie about that strange lady at WalMart…

I’m fine with the gentleman and his wipe, especially if it helps him feel better. I use anti-bacterial gel in my classroom and I try to wash my hands as often as possible. However, I’m not going to start worrying about being germ-free. Some of those germs are here to protect us from other germs- bigger, scarier germs. Some germs are just inevitable. Besides, my brain has a rather small “worry section” and it’s full.

 

Healing

A little too soon to be jumping up and down or dancing, but I want to thank those of you who have been praying about my foot. I’ve slept without my brace for three nights because I’ve been pain-free for those same nights. I can also bend my foot now. And I worked yesterday without pain. Let’s hope this is indeed a sign of healing! I’m ready to walk more and get rid of some of this winter fat!

I have several friends who are in various stages of healing. There have been lots of accidents and surgeries this year! My brother just had shoulder surgery. A co-worker is recovering from a broken ankle.  Please continue to pray for them.

Now we have the threat of flu again. Our custodian wiped all of our desks with anti-bacterial cleaner yesterday. Just a reminder of how connected we all are- a disease thousands of miles away can find its way to our door in a heartbeat. Just continue to be careful.

And speaking of careful…my students are already showing the signs of summer! Each day at least one comes in with a scrape, scratch, cut, or sunburn. There have already been two “four-wheeler” accidents, a BB gun accident, and a broken arm (swing). The trampolines are being cleaned off and swimming will begin within weeks. Please, please, please start now and discuss summer safety, especially water safety, with any child in your circle of acquaintance. Even if they are older, it never hurts to remind them.

Have a safe day!!

My Favorite Iris!

My favorite iris, given to me years ago and moved here from my old garden, finally bloomed! It's like the return of an old friend.

In Search of Perfection

I visited the gorgeous garden of a friend last week. While I enviously admired her work she spent most of the time telling me what was wrong with it and what she planned to change this summer. I have to admit to doing the very same thing many times while showing someone my own garden.

My husband and I worked in the yard yesterday and even though it is 200% better than it was last year, he is agonizing over the weeds in the lawn. We live in the middle of a pasture and we are essentially just mowing “pasture”, but he wants a beautiful lawn. It’s the Californian in him. J

My oldest daughter is a fanatic about her yard (wonder where she gets that?) and is now in “worry mode” because we are going to be at her house for our vacation in June. I’m sure she will work herself into a frenzy getting everything ready.

We photograph the “yard of the month” and I have yet to visit one of them without hearing “Well, I’m not sure why you chose us, there is so much I need to do around here…” or some version thereof.

Gary and I worked on the wildflower bed last night and I found myself admiring it and yet thinking, “I hope there are more daisies next year…”

That‘s how we think, constantly. It’s like a script that won’t end. “If only…then it would be better.” “If I did this, then it would be perfect. Then I would be happier.” We are always trying to reach “perfection”, not only in the garden, but in other aspects of our lives. I sometimes wonder if we ever really appreciate what we have, here and now, and give ourselves credit for what we have accomplished. I suppose we need to strive to do better, be better. We need motivation to go on and accomplish the next thing. But do we have to sacrifice the here and now to do that? Must we always belittle what is in front of us? The Bible admonishes us not to be proud and boastful, but I don’t remember reading that we should be ashamed of a job well-done.

So give yourself a pat on the back today. I’m sure you deserve it.

 

 

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

One of my fondest early memories is of my father and me sitting in the car, in the driveway, in the rain, listening to Gunsmoke on the radio. I think of that often, especially when I see children sitting in the backseats of cars, watching the latest Disney movie on their DVD players.

Radio drama required audience participation. You had to believe. You had to imagine. You had to form pictures in your mind so you could follow the action. And of course you had to have the “Western knowledge and vocabulary” needed for those pictures. I carried the complete Western encyclopedia in my head- gained from happy hours spent watching Saturday television dramas and reading Western novels! I knew about guns and gunslingers, saloons and dance hall girls, gambling and drinking, cattle drives and droughts. I could picture the clothing and see the dust and smell the gun smoke as I listened to the radio.

I don’t remember why we were in the car. Probably some temporary electrical problem (we couldn’t afford it that week) or our television was broken and we couldn’t afford a new tube. (You went to the store and bought these little replacement tubes that actually fixed the television…really.) The reason doesn’t matter. What strikes me as noteworthy is that we cared enough about the program to sit in the car in the rain!

Gunsmoke was on the radio for nine years beginning in 1952. For some of those years it was simultaneously on television. (The broadcast I recall must have been towards the end of that period since I was born in 1950!) Most people remember that James Arness was Matt Dillon on television, but William Conrad was the original Marshal and played him on the radio in over 400 performances. He was also in the movie “The Ride Back”. Parley Baer was the radio version’s Chester, Howard McNear was Doc, and Georgia Ellis was Kitty. Baer and McNear appeared later on the Andy Griffith show. I knew their voices as well as my own.

I still love Westerns. I watch the old classics (has there ever been a better movie than High Noon?) and new ones like Apaloosa (okay). I’ve seen Lonesome Dove at least four times. There is something so intriguing about the idea of a man making his way across the country on the back of a horse, dealing with life by his wits and his guns, and defending the honor of any woman he happened to encounter. (Of course after defending said woman he promptly left her because everyone knows a cowboy can’t be tied down.) Cowboys lived by a code of ethics. They minded their own business unless someone broke the code. (Then, of course, they shot anyone who just wouldn’t cooperate. Nobody’s perfect.) They worked hard and respected anyone else who did (except farmers of course). They never stayed long in any one place because the wide open spaces always called to them. Life was an adventure and they aimed to live it.

Yep…my heroes have always been cowboys. They don’t talk too much. They just do the right thing and move on.

Just a few flowers...

Gary snapped these while I was at work yesterday. And thanks to my friend Houstine (her mother and my grandmother were friends!) I have lots of new plants to work with tonight. She has been thinning plants in her gorgeous yard.

Banta Pioneers

I’m so excited! I bought a book: Banta Pioneers and Records of The Wives and Allied Families, by Elsa M. Banta, 1983. This is another gift of the internet. I would not have known about it if I hadn’t seen it on Family Search. I just can’t give enough thanks to the sites that make books available online. And having the digitalized version available does NOT mean the end of book sales! I’m a fine example. As soon as I had read enough to know that it was about Mom’s family and that it contained some valuable information, I had to have one for my own collection. I paid $35 for it- not a sum that I part with lightly, especially for a book.

The book is a treasure of information. It is 296 pages long and contains lots of stories, illustrations, photos, and maps. Here is a brief story I had heard mentioned briefly once before in another book, but had never seen in print:

                On October 8, 1656 “Epke Jacobs, miller at Minnertsga, was arrested and caused to appear before the public prosecutor and fined for permitting a Roman Catholic priest in his house to baptize his child.”  The child was probably Hendrick. The state religion was the Reformed Protestant Church. Although he appeared to have sympathy and a leaning toward the Catholic Church at this time, he and his immediate descendant were staunch supporters of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Netherland and New Jersey after their migration.

The book goes on to explain that Epke and his wife also had some financial problems at that time, as shown by court records, and the combination of financial and religious problems were most likely what sent them to the New World.

I want to read more about how Epke and his family became the “Banta” family. I know there were differences in how people were named in the Netherlands and the names they adopted here. Last names often referred to occupations or skills. The book has lots of early court and city records.

There are lengthy descriptions of early life in Friesland and New Jersey, where the Banta family settled. I found this item to be interesting since I had no knowledge of slaves in the East: “Bergen County was one of the slave centers of New Jersey and the east coast. Ships brought their human cargo to Bergen Point where slave auctions were held, and by 1737 negro slaves comprised one-fourth of the population. It was not until 1846 that slavery was declared illegal by the New Jersey legislature. Several of Epke’s descendents were slave owners, although records do not list him as such.”

So, that’s your history lesson for today. I’m anxious to read more, especially about the years in Kentucky. My other great-grandparents, on Dad’s side of the family, were also from Kentucky. Maybe I’ll find a link between the two families or find that they lived in the same area.

Remember, you can’t appreciate where you are going until you understand where you have been.

Just say something...

I woke up without ideas today. Nothing really exciting going on in the old brain. I'm doing some research on dead people and thinking about the next logical steps in finding them. I'm wondering if the wind will stop so I can plant tomatoes after school. I'm thinking about my students and their latest test scores. I'm trying to plan a couple of errands for later in the week. I'm hoping that my foot will stop hurting today. I'm praying that my sick friend will get better. No wonder my brain can't think of anything to say this morning that will be inspirational and entertaining! 

I'm often amazed by what my computer can do for me. However, if we really want to be amazed and astounded we have only to contemplate what our brains do for us each and every day. God gave us the ability to think about countless things, sort them out, prioritize them, and save them for later. And although my brain seems to “fail” me at times, it really is marvelous. That name or date or lyric will come to me if I just wait patiently for processing to occur. Lol

So if you give me a little time, I’ll probably say something worthwhile. Maybe tomorrow.

Have a great Monday!  

Surprise...and not the good kind.

This is what I came home to yesterday. The wind blew in gusts of 50+mph and sent our grill tumbling. The mower rolled at the same time and landed under it. The poor wheelbarrow never had a chance. Gary had taken off the wheel to patch a hole and it was a sitting duck. Anyway, there were nicks and scrapes and dings everyhwere! We had to very, very carefully disengage the grill from the cables on the mower. Let's just hope everything still works. There were also pots and assorted things all over the yard. Three shingles were blown from the roof and more were standing straight up!