Today's blog is written in honor of Sarah's seventh birthday. After I wrote it I realized it violated every child protection policy in the world. When I considered taking out her last name and picture, the piece just didn't have the same flavor and force. So, here's what I'm going to do. Send me a note so I'll know who you are and I'll email it to you. It seems kind of crazy but I remind myself how big the internet is, even when it seems like only my small group of friends and family read this blog.
Tune in next week for my story on the night I was one of the Dixie Chicks. And the story will be out here for anybody to see. There's no one I need to protect in that story.
Jane
About Me
- Jane
- I'm pretty much a typist for the Holy Spirit. I try to put those things into words in a blog called Jane's Journey. I have another blog for recipes called My Life in Food. Also Really Cool Stuff features Labyrinths and other things like how to fry an egg on the sidewalk.(first step: don't do it on the sidewalk, use a skillet) Come along with me as I careen through life.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Wedding Tips
June approaches to usher in the wedding season. Neither one of my girls got married in June. Instead, they got married within a five month time span. This made it a lot easier to plan Emily’s wedding since Elizabeth’s had been so recent. All we had to do was call the florist, photographer, caterer and basically ask for what we had done a mere five months prior. In some cases we learned valuable lessons the first time around and made a few changes. But in some case we didn’t learn a damned thing and made the same stupid mistake all over again. I offer wisdom we learned the hard way. I guess if we had a third daughter we’d have the perfect wedding. Yeah, right.
· Brides: Let your mother run the show. She’s waited all your life for this occasion, since the moment of your birth. She started planning this wedding the day she brought you home from the hospital. Your name was probably chosen based on how it would look on the invitation
· Mothers: Let your daughter run the show. She’s read about a billion brides magazines and knows what she wants--she wants the wedding just like the one the millionaire on Long Island had last spring with the string quartet and the orchid canopy. But, she’s also probably helping to pay for it and it’s her money.
· Men: Let the women run the show. Your job is to show up in the rented tux and keep your mouth shut. If you possibly can, try to look interested. If not, avoid giving any kind of negative opinion. You have no idea what you’re talking about and nobody really cares what you think. How many weddings have you planned?
· Relax. Somebody, sometime, will screw up. Expect it. Accept it. Apologize, if needed. Move on.
· Allot a certain number of nervous breakdowns. Keep track of them. Pace yourself so you don’t use them all up before the big day.
· Try not to let nervous breakdowns upset you. If the bride wants to throw the ice cream sandwich across the room because she’s late to go taste the cake, just smile and point out that she appears a little upset. You might tell her gently “This looks like you may be having one of your 10 allotted breakdowns, dear.” But don’t say anything else.
· Invite everybody you can think of. It’s better to be accused of trolling for gifts than accused of being a snob.
· Be kind to your feet. Wear tennis shoes as much as you can, even up to 15 minutes before the ceremony is permissible. (Try not to appear in public like this, however).
· Avoid heavy medications and/or alcohol. You want to be able to remember all this and you certainly don’t want to embarrass anybody.
· Forget about eating at the reception. It won’t happen. Yes, you did pay a lot of money for this food. Plan instead to eat twice as much at the next wedding you attend.
· Put those disposable cameras at the reception tables. It’s the best money spent with the greatest payback. One warning, however: keep them out of the hands of the 9 year old cousin from out of town, otherwise you could spend your money on 86 fuzzy pictures of various food trays, the ice sculpture and the serving guys.
· Have the ceremony recorded some way, either audio or video. Later, when your spouse claims you promised to deliver fresh squeezed orange juice every morning, you will have a record of what you really did say in your vows.
· Have a roll of tape handy at the reception. Make sure each gift has a card firmly attached to it before the cousins start throwing them into the back of the van. Duct tape is not too extreme for this job. It saves you from trying to match up loose cards to gifts a week later after the honeymoon and thanking someone for the wrong gift. After the reception is over, nobody cares what the packages look like anymore. Use the duct tape.
· Look at it this way: The wedding ceremony is really a celebration of two people that have, hopefully, grown into adults. They will be surrounded by the folks who helped raise them and other people who have an interest in their lives; people who are very proud of them. The reception is your way to thank this extended family for being part of all this.
· After it’s all over, sit back the next evening and prop your feet up. Take stock of all that you’ve done: scouts, braces, football games, college and, now, a wedding. You’re through. Go ahead and cry.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Meeting Max and Alison
I’m about at the end of my travel stories for a while but I still have 2 small ones left. I decided to combine them then realized they are kind of related. If I leave you with nothing else today I hope I will send you surfing the Internet a bit.
One leg of our trip to Italy included a flight from Atlanta to Boston. As we walked to our seats on the plane I saw that the man in the aisle seat just across from me had a plain blue bound paperback in the pocket in front of him. I’ve done a couple of small publications myself this way so I looked real close and saw that it was the galley copy of a “real” book called “ Overcoming Life’s Disappointments and the name Harold Kushner below it. I love Rabbi Kushner’s books. His first, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, is the most famous but he’s written several more and I’ve read them all, savoring each word. Without another thought I blurted out to the man in the seat something like “Oh, has he written a new book?” and we launched into one of the great conversations of my life.
Rabbi Kushner has indeed written a new book and it’s due out in August. It will be based on Moses. I love the way Kushner weaves the bible heroes into his common sense faith stories. I had never seen the galley copy of a new book and was dying to ask the guy if I could see it. My new friend said that he would be writing a promotional blurb for the jacket of the book. That’s the first I realized I wasn’t talking to your average reader. This guy had to be famous enough that his endorsement of a book on life’s disappointments would carry credibility. That’s the first time I took a really good look at the guy and realized he was missing both legs and one arm. I was talking to Max Cleland. I was so surprised that I could talk to someone that long without noticing that he had three limbs missing, because, you know, most people notice stuff like that right away, and it took away a little of the shyness I would normally feel around a national figure like him.
Max Cleland is the former senator from Georgia who lost his legs and an arm in Viet Nam at Khe Sanh in 1968. He served several years in the senate before drawing attention to himself when he defended John Kerry’s military service in the 2004 election. Some blowhard had the gall to criticize Max’s patriotism that caused even more controversy. I think he’s given a couple of big speeches, maybe one at the Democratic National Convention. I know enough about American politics to know he’s a cool dude.
But here’s what I found in the man sitting next to me on the plane: He has one of the most gentle and caring personalities I’ve ever seen. I watched as he listened to a couple of people who came up to his seat to talk to him. A couple of times I noticed while he was reading he would underline something then stop for a while and look into the distance—maybe thinking of what he would say about the book, then write something in the margins of the book. I was in earshot while he made phone calls both before and after our flight ended. (I swear I was not snooping. You know how cramped we are on those planes.) And most of the calls were to check up on his mother who was sick that week. He was so very patient and caring with her that I knew I’d vote for the guy if I ever had the chance.
I haven’t been exposed to a lot of celebrities like Beaven has. He’s met every president since Lyndon Johnson. He's held hands with Oprah for a promotional video. He's sat and shot the breeze with Lee Marvin and Mama Cass and even stood next to John Wayne at the urinal. I think most people will tell you celebrities are not nearly as wonderful as their press says they are. But this guy was the real deal.
Don’t forget the book…..Harold Kushner….Overcoming Life’s Disappointments…. out in August. I’ve already pre-ordered mine from Amazon. Check out what Max says about it. Do it now: www.amazon.com and then come right back.
When we got to London the first thing I wanted to do was visit Trafalgar Square and St Martin in the Fields church. There are across the street from each other and the whole location is one of my favorite places to be. There’s just an aura of peacefulness to the spot but with a small town friendliness to it.
The Square takes up a whole city block. There are four pedestals at each corner with two, yes, two huge fountains in the center and the tallest statue in London. There’s four bronze lions protecting the center –“Nelson’s Column.” Someone told me once that all you had to do in England to get a statue erected in your honor was “beat the French.” Lord Nelson defeated the French in one of the most famous battles ever, in fact, he lost his life in the battle, so his statue atop the column in Trafalgar square is a magnificently large production.
I had never really noticed the four plinths before. Plinth. I just love that word. It’s one of those very British words that makes you sound intelligent and cultured when you casually drop it into a conversation. Plinth. All the word means is “pedestal.”
When Trafalgar Square was built they put down the four plinths and set statues of 19th century military heroes on three of them. Two of the statues are on horses so their plinths are larger. The fourth plinth was planned to hold a statue of King William IV. But poor William was supposed to come up with the money for his statue and he never scrapped it up so his plinth has stood empty ever since. What an embarrassment that must have been. You’d think a king could have afforded a statue of himself.
A few years ago they decided it was time to finish out the square and they set about finding someone to put up there. After a lot of consideration and not being able to agree on one statue they decided to use it for an ongoing series of contemporary works.
Allison Lapper is on there now. Alison Lapper Pregnant is the name of this statue and it’s sculpted by Marc Quinn.
The instant you see the statue you realize it’s different. I couldn’t help falling in love with it if for no other reason than I knew how it must bother the establishment and their sense of order. Where all the other statues are dark and metal, this one is stark white marble. But it’s the woman herself that stops your gaze. At first I thought it was weird modern art then realized this was an accurate sculpture of a real person. She sits there on her plinth stark naked. She has no arms. She has short, underdeveloped legs without knees. She has a man’s haircut. And she’s about nine months pregnant. I stopped dead in my tracks and just looked. Not because she looks different but because she is just so astonishingly beautiful. It reminded me of the Venus de Milo statue—the one who has no arms because they broke off hundreds of years ago. Nobody really knows what the statue would look like with arms but I suspect we would all be disappointed. Venus proves you can be beautiful without arms. Alison reinforces the truth.
This is why I want you to surf the Internet today. Go to www.AlisonLapper.com for the full story and get all soaked up in political correctness and disability awareness. Also you might want to visit www.marcquinn.com What I want you to know today is that the statue is astonishingly beautiful.
The funny thing I realized after I got home and thought about it more, all the great works of art and literature are from the past. We spent the better part of our three week vacation looking at the best art in the world but it was mostly from the 15th century. It takes a certain amount of time for art to prove their worth. Here I was able to see two works of art that I’m certain will find approval and I was there to see them at their beginning. Kind of a neat feeling.
One leg of our trip to Italy included a flight from Atlanta to Boston. As we walked to our seats on the plane I saw that the man in the aisle seat just across from me had a plain blue bound paperback in the pocket in front of him. I’ve done a couple of small publications myself this way so I looked real close and saw that it was the galley copy of a “real” book called “ Overcoming Life’s Disappointments and the name Harold Kushner below it. I love Rabbi Kushner’s books. His first, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, is the most famous but he’s written several more and I’ve read them all, savoring each word. Without another thought I blurted out to the man in the seat something like “Oh, has he written a new book?” and we launched into one of the great conversations of my life.
Rabbi Kushner has indeed written a new book and it’s due out in August. It will be based on Moses. I love the way Kushner weaves the bible heroes into his common sense faith stories. I had never seen the galley copy of a new book and was dying to ask the guy if I could see it. My new friend said that he would be writing a promotional blurb for the jacket of the book. That’s the first I realized I wasn’t talking to your average reader. This guy had to be famous enough that his endorsement of a book on life’s disappointments would carry credibility. That’s the first time I took a really good look at the guy and realized he was missing both legs and one arm. I was talking to Max Cleland. I was so surprised that I could talk to someone that long without noticing that he had three limbs missing, because, you know, most people notice stuff like that right away, and it took away a little of the shyness I would normally feel around a national figure like him.
Max Cleland is the former senator from Georgia who lost his legs and an arm in Viet Nam at Khe Sanh in 1968. He served several years in the senate before drawing attention to himself when he defended John Kerry’s military service in the 2004 election. Some blowhard had the gall to criticize Max’s patriotism that caused even more controversy. I think he’s given a couple of big speeches, maybe one at the Democratic National Convention. I know enough about American politics to know he’s a cool dude.
But here’s what I found in the man sitting next to me on the plane: He has one of the most gentle and caring personalities I’ve ever seen. I watched as he listened to a couple of people who came up to his seat to talk to him. A couple of times I noticed while he was reading he would underline something then stop for a while and look into the distance—maybe thinking of what he would say about the book, then write something in the margins of the book. I was in earshot while he made phone calls both before and after our flight ended. (I swear I was not snooping. You know how cramped we are on those planes.) And most of the calls were to check up on his mother who was sick that week. He was so very patient and caring with her that I knew I’d vote for the guy if I ever had the chance.
I haven’t been exposed to a lot of celebrities like Beaven has. He’s met every president since Lyndon Johnson. He's held hands with Oprah for a promotional video. He's sat and shot the breeze with Lee Marvin and Mama Cass and even stood next to John Wayne at the urinal. I think most people will tell you celebrities are not nearly as wonderful as their press says they are. But this guy was the real deal.
Don’t forget the book…..Harold Kushner….Overcoming Life’s Disappointments…. out in August. I’ve already pre-ordered mine from Amazon. Check out what Max says about it. Do it now: www.amazon.com and then come right back.
When we got to London the first thing I wanted to do was visit Trafalgar Square and St Martin in the Fields church. There are across the street from each other and the whole location is one of my favorite places to be. There’s just an aura of peacefulness to the spot but with a small town friendliness to it.
The Square takes up a whole city block. There are four pedestals at each corner with two, yes, two huge fountains in the center and the tallest statue in London. There’s four bronze lions protecting the center –“Nelson’s Column.” Someone told me once that all you had to do in England to get a statue erected in your honor was “beat the French.” Lord Nelson defeated the French in one of the most famous battles ever, in fact, he lost his life in the battle, so his statue atop the column in Trafalgar square is a magnificently large production.
I had never really noticed the four plinths before. Plinth. I just love that word. It’s one of those very British words that makes you sound intelligent and cultured when you casually drop it into a conversation. Plinth. All the word means is “pedestal.”
When Trafalgar Square was built they put down the four plinths and set statues of 19th century military heroes on three of them. Two of the statues are on horses so their plinths are larger. The fourth plinth was planned to hold a statue of King William IV. But poor William was supposed to come up with the money for his statue and he never scrapped it up so his plinth has stood empty ever since. What an embarrassment that must have been. You’d think a king could have afforded a statue of himself.
A few years ago they decided it was time to finish out the square and they set about finding someone to put up there. After a lot of consideration and not being able to agree on one statue they decided to use it for an ongoing series of contemporary works.
Allison Lapper is on there now. Alison Lapper Pregnant is the name of this statue and it’s sculpted by Marc Quinn.
The instant you see the statue you realize it’s different. I couldn’t help falling in love with it if for no other reason than I knew how it must bother the establishment and their sense of order. Where all the other statues are dark and metal, this one is stark white marble. But it’s the woman herself that stops your gaze. At first I thought it was weird modern art then realized this was an accurate sculpture of a real person. She sits there on her plinth stark naked. She has no arms. She has short, underdeveloped legs without knees. She has a man’s haircut. And she’s about nine months pregnant. I stopped dead in my tracks and just looked. Not because she looks different but because she is just so astonishingly beautiful. It reminded me of the Venus de Milo statue—the one who has no arms because they broke off hundreds of years ago. Nobody really knows what the statue would look like with arms but I suspect we would all be disappointed. Venus proves you can be beautiful without arms. Alison reinforces the truth.
This is why I want you to surf the Internet today. Go to www.AlisonLapper.com for the full story and get all soaked up in political correctness and disability awareness. Also you might want to visit www.marcquinn.com What I want you to know today is that the statue is astonishingly beautiful.
The funny thing I realized after I got home and thought about it more, all the great works of art and literature are from the past. We spent the better part of our three week vacation looking at the best art in the world but it was mostly from the 15th century. It takes a certain amount of time for art to prove their worth. Here I was able to see two works of art that I’m certain will find approval and I was there to see them at their beginning. Kind of a neat feeling.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Sculpting Carerra Marble
We learned a lot about renaissance art on our trip. The master, of course, is Michelangelo. In Michelangelo’s work, not only does his art look really like it is in real life, he makes it beautiful. Let’s put it this way: Michelangelo could take a middle-aged woman and not only make her body look like it really looks, with cellulite, stomach folds and sags and bags everywhere (more realistic than any middle aged woman wants to look) but he could make it look beautiful. Miracle!! Now maybe you can appreciate renaissance art.
One of the big draws of Florence is Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David before he slays Goliath. It’s so famous that most call it “The” David, not “David” and certainly not “Dave.” There is a replica of the statue in one of the plazas and we called it “Fake David.”
David was a popular bible hero and kind of the mascot of Florence. They liked “the little guy defeating the big guy” image. There are several statues of David, carved by different guys. Believe me, we saw each and every one of them. But the best is Michelangelo’s. The guy studied anatomy and knew what he was doing. Every popping vein and bulging muscle is anatomically correct. There’s a rumor that there is one small error in the statue; he included an extra muscle somewhere, maybe one of the hands, but nobody in my tour group was savvy enough to know where.
David was maybe the biggest single reason for me to go to Florence. As we walked into the building that I knew housed the sculpture I was ready to have that “knock your socks off” moment of finally seeing the statue I’d heard all my life about. But when I turned the corner and there he was, my mouth literally fell open. It’s that majestic.
The statue is 17 feet tall. I happen to know there is a very sophisticated motion sensor glued to his butt because I walked around to the back and saw it with my own eyes. This is a test to see if the traffic outside the museum affects the statue. Imagine being one of the most famous statues in the world and they’ve taped a wire to your butt.
One of the things that makes the statue so incredibly gorgeous is the Carerra marble Michelangelo used to carve it. I learned this is the best marble in the world. Not only did Michelangelo personally select the chunk he used for David from their quarry but a lot of other famous statues and artwork in the world are made of the marble: the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of Unknown Soldier and Mike’s other famous statue, the Pieta. The marble is as much a sight as the statue. It’s so creamy and soft looking that you forget it’s stone.
One of the last things we did in Italy was a trip to Pisa. Beaven wanted to climb the tower. Beaven loves heights. I’m scared to death of them.
But Beaven doesn’t merely survive heights, he loves them. He seeks them out. He’s been to the top of the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and Diamondhead Volcano in Hawaii. He called me once from the top of the WFAA television tower just to tell me there is a telephone up there 1,600 feet above the ground. He came home from a trip to the Sears Tower in Chicago and went on and on about the antennae farm at the top. (I kept picturing men in bib overalls with pitchforks but it’s not that kind of farm.)
So, I knew he was going to climb to the top of this thing. And it LEANS to one side for God’s sakes. Remember? That’s why they call it the LEANING tower. Why would anyone in their right mind want to climb something that’s already about to fall over? Don’t ask me why but I decided I should do it.
Once I saw that the stairs are enclosed I decided I could just treat it as a piece of exercise equipment. I found out that there are 273 steps to the top and I started counting them, blocking out the idea of a tall tower leaning over. Just put one foot in front of the other, is what I kept telling myself. Step up, slide your foot forward, lift. Step, slide. Step, slide. The actual climb wasn’t so bad and the counting helped take my mind off getting killed when the tower fell over.
Soon I started noticing that the steps have been patched in places. Then I remembered another one of the uses for the marble from the Carerra quarry. They used it to patch different parts of the Pisa tower. The tower has been repaired more times that you can count, beginning almost as soon as it started leaning. And the tower started leaning before they even finished building it. But anywhere they patched anything they used the good Carerra marble and not the inferior limestone originally used. I realized I was walking on Carerra marble. Then I noticed how scoured and scooped out the footsteps have made the stairs. I wasn’t the only person whose mantra had been “step, slide” just to get to the top. All that sliding, all those hundreds and hundreds of years, all those millions of footsteps had done what an ordinary nail file would do given enough time, gradually sanding down the marble.
I became more interested in this phenomenon than I was frightened at my climb. I was sculpting Carerra marble, just like the great Michelangelo. I conquered the tower and sculpted Carerra marble. I have something in common with Michelangelo.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Travel 101
Never take a dead grandmother with you on vacation.
On our way to the airport, totally on a whim but thinking of the long eight-hour flight to Europe, we bought a portable DVD player. It had a 10-inch screen that we would both be able to see and while we were at the store we bought about 3 or 4 of the latest movies. We were set for a wonderfully relaxing flight.
Because we got one of those fantastic travel deals where our flight would be cheaper and more flexible, we arranged a detour to Boston for almost a week. (This, of course, meant that in the long run it cost us twice as much.) When we settled into the hotel room we opened the box to find that the DVD did not work. We called Sam’s in Dallas and arranged to return the thing once we got home. Meanwhile, we had three weeks of travel with something that was totally useless and only took up space and weight in our luggage. We took it with us to Boston, London, Milan, and Florence.
Where did I get the “Dead Grandmother” title? It reminded me of the movie “Vacation” where the loveable but quirky old great aunt invites herself on their vacation then dies mid-way. Clark Griswold isn’t about to interrupt his vacation, turn around and take her back home; instead he continues on with the poor dear packed up in various ways, including strapped to the hood of the car at one point. That’s what it felt like hauling the DVD player with us all over Europe. It never got any smaller or lighter, only bigger and heavier. By the end of the trip I could swear we had loaded up a big screen TV set. The space it took up could have stored souvenirs for every person I know. So, if you are one of my friends who only got a bookmark, that’s the reason.
We had a wonderful time on this vacation, regardless of dead weight. We’ve been on enough trips now that we pretty much know what we’re doing: how to pack light, how to order food and buy train tickets in other countries. The only things we really haven’t learned to do is peacefully coexist. Beaven and I have totally different travel styles.
When we took a side trip to Bath, England, I spotted a small plaza with benches. People had come to eat their lunch and listen to a classical guitarist who was sitting in the center of the circle of benches. He had his guitar case open to receive donations but it was such a serene sound in a peaceful place. A few pigeons wandered around gleaning from the sandwich crumbs. The sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky that had only a few whiffs of cloud to complete the picture.
I told Beaven I wanted to sit down for a while and listen to the guy play. At this point in our trip he was on track for a visit to the Roman Baths that made the town so popular in the middle ages. And, I swear to God, this is what he said: “I didn’t come three thousand miles to just sit around and do nothing.”
So, he went to visit the baths alone. I had seen the roman baths in the Cluny museum in Paris. To be real honest here, once you’ve seen one roman bath, you’ve seen them all.
We had a similar clash of interests when he obsessed over train schedules. He set our alarm clock in Milan for 5 a.m. in order to catch a 10 o’clock train to Florence. I started to voice my outraged opposition until I realized that the jet lag was going to wake me up at 4 am anyway. So I humored him and, of course, we ended up with a couple of hours to burn in a noisy and crowded train station with no place to sit down.
Did I mention the election? We managed to place ourselves in every conceivable place that afforded crowds. We left Boston the day Jill Carroll landed at the same airport. We were in Florence on Easter. And we traveled in Italy the weekend of the elections. The trains were crowded with everyone going to vote in their hometown in a hotly contested election. The guidebooks told us how relaxed and easy the ticketing process would be; they neglected to reveal that, at election time, it becomes more hectic than the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 3:45.
We have pretty much overcome the differences in our travel styles ever since I printed out small business cards and had them laminated. I made two of them, one for each of us. The rule is that either of us can take the card out at any time in the vacation and simply hand it to the other one. We’ve found that it eliminates a lot of wordy arguments. Here’s what I printed on it.
“You are mentally ill and I am going to have you committed
as soon as we get home. In the meantime, please do not
talk to me or let anyone know we’re married.”
I have to admit that there were times I was the nut case. The bathroom we had in Florence was so small that one night when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom I smashed my mouth into the sink just bending over to sit down. I hit it hard, too, immediately tasting blood. It was one of those injuries that made me kind of feel around to see if my teeth were loose. I had a fat lip for the next 3 days. Even worse, it happened the night we had the wine tasting. No one remembered the next morning that I was one of only two people not drinking wine that night. What was I going to do? Admit to being totally incompetent at one of the most basic function of life?
But I was not the one driving the Bataan Death March. I really do appreciate Beaven’s insistence on using public transportation. By getting tube and bus passes we can usually get ourselves anywhere we want in big cities and on our own schedule, not someone else’s. It gives us a lot of freedom to not have to depend on taxis and such. I did think it was overkill, though, to make a special trip to the Paddington station just to make sure that it was the correct station for buying a train ticket to Bath. He didn’t want to actually buy a ticket, mind you, he just wanted to go see where the tickets are sold. It was at the end of an already long day and my feet hurt. We had been averaging about six miles a day. It called for a long walk and even though we didn’t have to transfer from one line to another, it involved five stops during rush hour, standing the whole time and my feet hurt. I guess I mentioned the feet already, didn’t I?
Next week I will tell you about: Sculpting Carrera Marble and/or Meeting Max. However, sometimes the work of a writer finds them and will not release them until the words have their say. So, if you have the energy to stay with me, I offer you another piece I wrote today. Well, I didn’t actually write it by myself. I was more of a typist for the Holy Spirit today. It happens that way sometimes. Go to the next piece with the title:
Singing the Song
On our way to the airport, totally on a whim but thinking of the long eight-hour flight to Europe, we bought a portable DVD player. It had a 10-inch screen that we would both be able to see and while we were at the store we bought about 3 or 4 of the latest movies. We were set for a wonderfully relaxing flight.
Because we got one of those fantastic travel deals where our flight would be cheaper and more flexible, we arranged a detour to Boston for almost a week. (This, of course, meant that in the long run it cost us twice as much.) When we settled into the hotel room we opened the box to find that the DVD did not work. We called Sam’s in Dallas and arranged to return the thing once we got home. Meanwhile, we had three weeks of travel with something that was totally useless and only took up space and weight in our luggage. We took it with us to Boston, London, Milan, and Florence.
Where did I get the “Dead Grandmother” title? It reminded me of the movie “Vacation” where the loveable but quirky old great aunt invites herself on their vacation then dies mid-way. Clark Griswold isn’t about to interrupt his vacation, turn around and take her back home; instead he continues on with the poor dear packed up in various ways, including strapped to the hood of the car at one point. That’s what it felt like hauling the DVD player with us all over Europe. It never got any smaller or lighter, only bigger and heavier. By the end of the trip I could swear we had loaded up a big screen TV set. The space it took up could have stored souvenirs for every person I know. So, if you are one of my friends who only got a bookmark, that’s the reason.
We had a wonderful time on this vacation, regardless of dead weight. We’ve been on enough trips now that we pretty much know what we’re doing: how to pack light, how to order food and buy train tickets in other countries. The only things we really haven’t learned to do is peacefully coexist. Beaven and I have totally different travel styles.
When we took a side trip to Bath, England, I spotted a small plaza with benches. People had come to eat their lunch and listen to a classical guitarist who was sitting in the center of the circle of benches. He had his guitar case open to receive donations but it was such a serene sound in a peaceful place. A few pigeons wandered around gleaning from the sandwich crumbs. The sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky that had only a few whiffs of cloud to complete the picture.
I told Beaven I wanted to sit down for a while and listen to the guy play. At this point in our trip he was on track for a visit to the Roman Baths that made the town so popular in the middle ages. And, I swear to God, this is what he said: “I didn’t come three thousand miles to just sit around and do nothing.”
So, he went to visit the baths alone. I had seen the roman baths in the Cluny museum in Paris. To be real honest here, once you’ve seen one roman bath, you’ve seen them all.
We had a similar clash of interests when he obsessed over train schedules. He set our alarm clock in Milan for 5 a.m. in order to catch a 10 o’clock train to Florence. I started to voice my outraged opposition until I realized that the jet lag was going to wake me up at 4 am anyway. So I humored him and, of course, we ended up with a couple of hours to burn in a noisy and crowded train station with no place to sit down.
Did I mention the election? We managed to place ourselves in every conceivable place that afforded crowds. We left Boston the day Jill Carroll landed at the same airport. We were in Florence on Easter. And we traveled in Italy the weekend of the elections. The trains were crowded with everyone going to vote in their hometown in a hotly contested election. The guidebooks told us how relaxed and easy the ticketing process would be; they neglected to reveal that, at election time, it becomes more hectic than the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 3:45.
We have pretty much overcome the differences in our travel styles ever since I printed out small business cards and had them laminated. I made two of them, one for each of us. The rule is that either of us can take the card out at any time in the vacation and simply hand it to the other one. We’ve found that it eliminates a lot of wordy arguments. Here’s what I printed on it.
“You are mentally ill and I am going to have you committed
as soon as we get home. In the meantime, please do not
talk to me or let anyone know we’re married.”
I have to admit that there were times I was the nut case. The bathroom we had in Florence was so small that one night when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom I smashed my mouth into the sink just bending over to sit down. I hit it hard, too, immediately tasting blood. It was one of those injuries that made me kind of feel around to see if my teeth were loose. I had a fat lip for the next 3 days. Even worse, it happened the night we had the wine tasting. No one remembered the next morning that I was one of only two people not drinking wine that night. What was I going to do? Admit to being totally incompetent at one of the most basic function of life?
But I was not the one driving the Bataan Death March. I really do appreciate Beaven’s insistence on using public transportation. By getting tube and bus passes we can usually get ourselves anywhere we want in big cities and on our own schedule, not someone else’s. It gives us a lot of freedom to not have to depend on taxis and such. I did think it was overkill, though, to make a special trip to the Paddington station just to make sure that it was the correct station for buying a train ticket to Bath. He didn’t want to actually buy a ticket, mind you, he just wanted to go see where the tickets are sold. It was at the end of an already long day and my feet hurt. We had been averaging about six miles a day. It called for a long walk and even though we didn’t have to transfer from one line to another, it involved five stops during rush hour, standing the whole time and my feet hurt. I guess I mentioned the feet already, didn’t I?
Next week I will tell you about: Sculpting Carrera Marble and/or Meeting Max. However, sometimes the work of a writer finds them and will not release them until the words have their say. So, if you have the energy to stay with me, I offer you another piece I wrote today. Well, I didn’t actually write it by myself. I was more of a typist for the Holy Spirit today. It happens that way sometimes. Go to the next piece with the title:
Singing the Song
Singing the Song
We sang my favorite song in church last week—Hymn #377 in the Presbyterian Hymnal:
Lord you have come up to the lakeshore
Looking neither for wise or for wealthy
You only wanted that I should follow
Chorus:
Oh, Lord, with Your eyes You have searched me
And while smiling, have called out my name
Now my boat’s left on the shoreline behind me
Now with you I will seek other seas.
You know that I own so little,
In my boat there’s no money nor weapons,
You’ll only find there my nets and labor.
You need the caring of my hands,
Through my tiredness, may others find resting
You need a love that just goes on loving
You, who have fished other oceans
Ever longed for by souls that are waiting
My dear and good friend, as thus You call me.
It has a griping and haunting melody and it’s the favorite for almost the whole congregation yet for about 3 different reasons:
The first time I ever heard the song was at the annual Womens Retreat , probably around 1995 or so. Margaret, our organist, not only loves the song but she loves to canoe. She had everybody she could muster out in the lake at Camp Gilmont to canoe that weekend. We had an inspiring speaker that year and the ladies adopted the Lakeshore song as a remembrance of the wonderful fellowship and spiritual depth they had experienced at the retreat. The song has become one of the best parts of the retreat ever since.
But the following fall, after discovering the song, I was in Guatemala for a spirituality/mission workshop. Rev. Robert Moore guided us through our week with daily devotionals, mostly centered around “crossings” and the fears we face anytime we follow Christ. One of our unintended crossings was a detour around a washed-out dam, somewhere between Rio Dulce and Tikal, I think. This crossing involved getting in a small boat by stepping over a vast chasm of air between land and boat. I will never forget the feeling I had getting into that boat. As I overcame my hesitation at the huge step required to go from dry land into the boat, I realized I was also trying to overcome my fears of what true mission requires of me. I think all the folks on that trip felt the same way. We discussed the Lakeshore Song and to this day we have a special relationship to the song. I have been involved in mission work in Guatemala ever since because my boat was left on the shoreline behind me that fall and I chose to follow Christ in exploring other seas.
There’s still another group of people for whom the song is special. My friend Sherry asked for the song to be sung at her husband’s funeral because Jim loved to fish and he loved the song. He was aware the cancer he had would end his life and I think they both heard in the song a message of leaving one life behind to begin another. Others have followed suit and we have women in our congregation now who are reminded of their husbands when they hear the song.
So, it’s just a really special song to a lot of people and for a lot of different reasons.
That’s why I thought it interesting to hear it in worship this particular Sunday--because the previous week there had been a flurry of controversy over a new version of the National Anthem sung in Spanish. I don’t know where you stand on this issue but here’s something you should know:
Hymn #377 was written by Cesáreo Gabaráin in 1979 and it was written in Spanish. In fact, the song’s name is actually “Tú Has Venido a la Orilla.” The English lyrics are listed in our hymnbook second, after the Spanish lyrics. It wasn’t translated into English until ten years after it was first published. Most of the congregation sing it in English because that’s the language they know best but there’s a group, including me, who always try it in Spanish.
Señor, me has mirado a los ojos
Y son riendo has dicho mi nombre
En la arena he deja do mi barca
Junto a ti buscaré otro mar.
I’m not sure where I stand on having people sing the Star Spangled Banner in other languages. But I know this: If they feel the way about that song that I do about the Lakeshore song, I say let them sing it in whatever language allows them to put their heart into words, whatever words they need-- It’s about the message, not how it is sent.
Lord you have come up to the lakeshore
Looking neither for wise or for wealthy
You only wanted that I should follow
Chorus:
Oh, Lord, with Your eyes You have searched me
And while smiling, have called out my name
Now my boat’s left on the shoreline behind me
Now with you I will seek other seas.
You know that I own so little,
In my boat there’s no money nor weapons,
You’ll only find there my nets and labor.
You need the caring of my hands,
Through my tiredness, may others find resting
You need a love that just goes on loving
You, who have fished other oceans
Ever longed for by souls that are waiting
My dear and good friend, as thus You call me.
It has a griping and haunting melody and it’s the favorite for almost the whole congregation yet for about 3 different reasons:
The first time I ever heard the song was at the annual Womens Retreat , probably around 1995 or so. Margaret, our organist, not only loves the song but she loves to canoe. She had everybody she could muster out in the lake at Camp Gilmont to canoe that weekend. We had an inspiring speaker that year and the ladies adopted the Lakeshore song as a remembrance of the wonderful fellowship and spiritual depth they had experienced at the retreat. The song has become one of the best parts of the retreat ever since.
But the following fall, after discovering the song, I was in Guatemala for a spirituality/mission workshop. Rev. Robert Moore guided us through our week with daily devotionals, mostly centered around “crossings” and the fears we face anytime we follow Christ. One of our unintended crossings was a detour around a washed-out dam, somewhere between Rio Dulce and Tikal, I think. This crossing involved getting in a small boat by stepping over a vast chasm of air between land and boat. I will never forget the feeling I had getting into that boat. As I overcame my hesitation at the huge step required to go from dry land into the boat, I realized I was also trying to overcome my fears of what true mission requires of me. I think all the folks on that trip felt the same way. We discussed the Lakeshore Song and to this day we have a special relationship to the song. I have been involved in mission work in Guatemala ever since because my boat was left on the shoreline behind me that fall and I chose to follow Christ in exploring other seas.
There’s still another group of people for whom the song is special. My friend Sherry asked for the song to be sung at her husband’s funeral because Jim loved to fish and he loved the song. He was aware the cancer he had would end his life and I think they both heard in the song a message of leaving one life behind to begin another. Others have followed suit and we have women in our congregation now who are reminded of their husbands when they hear the song.
So, it’s just a really special song to a lot of people and for a lot of different reasons.
That’s why I thought it interesting to hear it in worship this particular Sunday--because the previous week there had been a flurry of controversy over a new version of the National Anthem sung in Spanish. I don’t know where you stand on this issue but here’s something you should know:
Hymn #377 was written by Cesáreo Gabaráin in 1979 and it was written in Spanish. In fact, the song’s name is actually “Tú Has Venido a la Orilla.” The English lyrics are listed in our hymnbook second, after the Spanish lyrics. It wasn’t translated into English until ten years after it was first published. Most of the congregation sing it in English because that’s the language they know best but there’s a group, including me, who always try it in Spanish.
Señor, me has mirado a los ojos
Y son riendo has dicho mi nombre
En la arena he deja do mi barca
Junto a ti buscaré otro mar.
I’m not sure where I stand on having people sing the Star Spangled Banner in other languages. But I know this: If they feel the way about that song that I do about the Lakeshore song, I say let them sing it in whatever language allows them to put their heart into words, whatever words they need-- It’s about the message, not how it is sent.
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