A New Appreciation for the Lonely Art

I have written every day since I was 12. Whether I have the talent may be debatable, but that I have the disposition for it is not. I definitely have three of the four requirements and have convinced myself I have the fourth. These requirements are not mastery of grammar, vocabulary, spelling and typing. These are technical skills that can be learned. I have learned to some extent, but remain woefully inadequate at each. When advisers from the Pennsylvania Labor Department came to our high school to advise we seniors on career choices, they told me I would never be a writer because I lacked vocabulary. These august counselors told me I was best suited to operating machines. (I read that Hemingway used a minimal amount of words in his body of work, yet he and Faulkner both won the Noble Prize, and I'll bet you more people read Ernest than William. I mean no disrespect to Faulkner, I read both.)

I am not certain which machines. There are a lot of different machines to operate. I hope they didn't mean the typewriter. I have always been a two finger hunt 'n' pecker (which sounds smutty somehow). I wanted to learn typing. (For those of you born in the last thirty years -- think non-musical keyboarding.) I elected typing in tenth grade, but they ran out of typewriters and sent me to art class. I was told I would be given typing in the next semester, but I am still waiting for the switch.

The skills I have are these.

As a young boy I lived a period in semi-isolation from other people and learned to fill in the emptiness of a quiet place. I am not afraid of being alone and I don't get bored. This is an important trait, for writing is a lonely art.

I also have a cast-iron seat. I can sit for hours if I have to, and a writer often must. The characters emerging on a page sometimes demand it.

The third is the blessing and curse of scribing, my brain won't shut up. It tries to drown me with ideas, plots and snippets of verbiage day and night. I have to mentally arm wrestle it into submission not to spin off a tale or verse in the mind when I have no paper or screen before me, or I will write it out in my head and lose it. I have lost more than I've written. (And I want no remarks from Retired in Delaware about losing my mind years ago.)

The last is the hardest. It is applying the other three. It is sitting alone in a room before a blank screen and transcribing those ideas into lines of words that make sense to others. I try to manage this. Sometimes I have succeeded.

Blogging has given me a new appreciation, perhaps the first real appreciation, of the columnists, commentators and preachers who do it for a living. You sit in a comfy chair, cup of coffee at hand, reading the morning paper. There are these columns under some byline, tiny essays of 250 to 500 words. What a cushy life, you think. This guy gets paid for this? I can skim through this in five-ten minutes. I could do that, how long can it take? How hard can it be?

Back to where I began this, I have written every day since I was 12. Except for a very few times, I had no deadlines to meet. I didn't have a clock face glaring at me, nagging at me with its tsk-tsk-tick-tock, telling me an anxious editor was waiting. I had all the time I wished to take and if it didn't work, I could start it over tomorrow or next week or next year. No one ever had to see it if it was twaddle. I was a "freelancer" free to take my time. If I thought a piece was ready, I would drop it in the mail and forget it until either the rejection slip or the check came. There were always more rejection slips than checks.

Although as a Blogger, I still am not beholden to an editor to meet a deadline, I now feel an obligation to post often because people actually read these words. Some even come back regularly to see what's new. I actually have readers, perhaps few and far between, but they are there and expect I will be too. Now I appreciate the men and women who "post" daily or even weekly. It is not easy to come up with a piece each day and write it reasonably well. If I don't, it doesn't matter. I can write my blog if no one visits, and if it be slush and slop no one is harmed, not even me. But if those columnists miss the mark once too often, they may do without their next meal for they won't get paid.

Thank you all you columnists, commentators and preachers, even if I don't agree with you all, I bow to your ability to be there.

A Lady of Influence

I would like to say a few words about a lady who profoundly influenced my life, although I didn't know it at the time. She is not one who gained fame so outside a certain circle within a small geographic region, she would not be known. Most of the people who truly influenced me fit such a description. Such people are too often lost in the glare of the superficial star of the moment, some Hollywood heartthrob (more likely in these day to be a L.A. train wreck) or a money magnate - a golden idol building towers to himself; even perhaps a politician riding a mount named charisma.

It is not to say people of fame and wealth are necessarily bad and cannot offer good example to us. It is just that glamour, glitz and gilt may cover a lack of character and blind us to what we might have to give up of our soul to be such.

Yet we can find influence in plain wrappers if we would put on sunglasses against the glitter that emanates from the TV tube or movie screen.

Such is Elizabeth Ezra.

Who?

Exactly, who?

Miss Ezra was my third grade teacher and if not for her I might not be writing this Blog today. I was the new kid in the class, joining it after Christmas break in January 1950. It was at this time, in this class, I met and befriended two people who remain my friends still, although at a distance, one in Florida and one in Lower Delaware (the one who writes the Retired in Delaware Blog I mentioned previously.) They too feel influenced by Miss Ezra. I have learned that many feel this way.

Miss Ezra standing behind The Kid, 1950
In third grade she challenged the class to write a short story. She praised my story, put it up on the wall for the world to see and this was the first of few moments I shown in those early years, and I believe this was the seed that grew into a vine entangling my life. I can't say if it produced a garden or a weed patch, but it certainly made me a cultivator of words my whole life.

Miss Ezra never married. Her students were her children and her life. She was a quiet woman, a humble woman and is still. She turned 101 late last year.
Miss Ezra now and then.


My friend, the one in Lower Delaware, and I visited her a couple years back and she was still spry and cognizant. She walks through town each day and is much the gracious teacher she will always be.
My friend Ron and Miss Ezra at her home


I would hope we all have a Miss Ezra in our life, but more importantly, may we all be someone else's Miss Ezra.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.Proverbs 22:6

1 comments:

Ron said:

A wonderful thoughtful tribute to a kind and gracious lady. We were very lucky to have such a wonderful woman as our third grade teacher during those important formative years. Miss Ezra celebrated her 101st birthday November 10th at Simpson Meadows Retirement Home in Downingtown, PA. Her health is excellent and she is as sharp as she was 54 years ago.

April 24, 2008 8:29 PM 

Saving Lives -- Maybe

In the post on 100 Thing I've Done, etc., I answered number 89 this way:

Saved someone’s life – oddly enough, yes, and it was on vacation in Kentucky in the

 1970s.

Actually it was in Tennessee in 1975, although the vacation included Kentucky.  We stayed overnight in a motel in Lynchburg, where we had taken a tour of the Jack Daniels' Distillery, which I believe is the picture on the left.  (One must learn to label photos as they are taken.) But this is only one time when I might have helped save a life. Let me tell of some in order of occurrence.

The first was a case of almost taking some lives more than saving them. The saving part became a necessity. When I was a teenager, my parents and my friend up the highway's parent along with some others, would go out every Saturday night. They usually met at my friends, then carpooled it to the tavern where they went. This left several unattended and unlocked cars at my friends. My friend and I would "steal" one of these cars and go joyriding, always returning well before our folks might return. (Innocent times, keys were usually in the ignitions.) 

On one such occasion we took my parent's car, a 1953 Studebaker. We drove about, had some

 eats, talked to some girls and then went zipping down one of the back country roads. I was driving. My friend rode shotgun. His brother and another friend were in the back seat. All was fine until I started down a hill and speed picked up. I hit the brake and the pedal went to the floorboard with no resistance. I yanked the emergency brake which had no effect whatsoever.

By this time the speedometer was well above the legal limit and it was not encouraging what lay ahead. This was a long hill and it would soon reach a series of sharp S-curves. Beyond each curve of road was a drop off.

I steered like a madman, or more appropriately, like a scared-out-of-his-wits man. Fortunately, Studebakers were somewhat ahead of their time in design and had a very low center of gravity. This probably kept us on the road around those turns and eventually we drifted to a stop at the bottom of the long hill.

I could not drive it home. My friend took over, and in first gear got us back to his place and into the spot we had taken it from.

But my evening wasn't over. My father would be driving my mother and me from my friend's to our home.  You must understand the new situation. The picture on the right shows my old friend's drive as it looks today. His home is on the right below where the photo was snapped. It was a gravel driveway back then. You can't tell here, but just below where those trashcans sit, the lane took a steep downward dip out to the highway where it dead ended. For us to leave we had to go down that steep dip and make a right turn at the highway. And I could not tell my parents the car had no brakes, for how would I know that?

My dad started out and I slid low in the backseat. We came to the dip and the car took off and then my dad learned the secret and my mother was screaming and we came to the highway and he made the turn and no one came around the bend and smashed us.  I never told my parents I knew about the brakes until their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

At any rate, my driving had saved four foolish teens and my father's driving had saved my family.

My other cases are more to my credit.

Two occurred in 1968. In early 1968, my wife and I had some difficulties in our marriage (and no it wasn't the Seven-Year Itch although it was out seventh year) and we separated for a few months. I went on a ski trip to Big Vanilla Resort up in the Adirondacks of New York. I was miserable. I don't ski and I missed my wife.

When we left on a Sunday evening it was into a blizzard. What should have been a couple or so hours trip, getting us into Philadelphia by 8:00 PM turned into a nightmare of whiteouts, winds, backed-up traffic and a growing tension in the bus. Somewhere after midnight, this tension was verging on panic in the people around me. For some reason, I took charge, somewhat out of character being generally shy around strangers. I told jokes, spoke positively, held people if necessary and it seemed to calm down any dread. By the wee hours some people were even going to sleep. We made it safely to Philadelphia at 6:30 Monday morning. I just got my suitcase and trudged from the bus stop to my place of employment, shaving and changing in the washroom.  I can't say this was truly a life-saving effort, but it may have saved some people from serious anxiety.

Later that same year, Robert F. Kennedy came to Philadelphia on his Presidential campaign. he was going to appear at 15th and Chestnut Street at the lunch hour. I wandered over to the site. The sidewalks were already covered with a blanket of humanity when I arrived. I got as close as I could, which was about halfway back along a building on 15th Street. Despite the crowd, I was tall enough to see the spot where Kennedy was suppose to appear fairly well.

But RFK was an hour late in arriving. The crowd kept swelling and growing restless, pressing out into the streets. Several Philadelphia Cops were present to keep crowd control and they were none too gentle about it, shoving people back onto the sidewalk and shouting some rather impolite words as they did so.  In front of me was a young woman. She wasn't very big and she was trapped in a pocket of much larger bodies. She herself was up against the stone building and the crowd was pressing ever more in around her, pushing her against that unyielding wall. She was in real danger of either being crushed against the wall or knocked down and trampled. I stepped between her and the mob at this point, pushing back as well as I could to provide her breathing room. Fortunately, Bobby Kennedy finally arrived and with his appearance, the crowd surged forward into the streets, cops or no cops, and the lady was freed from the danger.  In fact, so was I.

Now we come to 1975. My wife and I had visited the distillery in the afternoon. That evening we decided to take a walk after dinner just to get out of the motel room.  We walked up along the highway in the direction of the distillery. Perhap a mile along, we saw a lady walking in the opposite direction on the sidewalk across the street. Suddenly she collapsed and dropped into the gutter.  Traffic was reasonably heavy, but no one was stopping to investigate. She lay partially in the roadway.

My wife and I crossed the road, ducking cars, and as gently as possible pulled the lady over to a lawn.  She was unconscious, but breathing. She didn't need CPR, which was good because I was several years away from getting a certificate in CPR.  I tried waving down the traffic, and one man did stop, but he was no help. He just kind of shrugged and asked obvious questions. I left my wife with the lady and went up to some houses along the street, knocking until someone at one finally answered and I asked them to call the police.

Apparently they did, for soon after a patrol car pulled up and two cops got out. I explained what had happened and about that time an ambulance came. While the medics and police tended to the lady, my wife and I quietly slipped away into the evening. I don't know what happened to the lady after that or what had caused her collapse.  I know it wasn't alcohol and I don't suspect drugs. I am sure it was natural.

While I'm at it, I probably should clear up Question 61 since it sounds more provocative than it was.

Had a gun fired at me – had one pointed at me, but fortunately she didn’t pull the trigger

No, not some jealous lover or woman scorned. When I was 15 living again in the country, most us guys had guns. I had a 16 shot bolt-action .22 at the time. My friend had a single shot .22, meaning he had to load a shell every time he shot one. My friend was my age, but he had a younger brother and even younger sister. She was 8 at the time. The four of us were out with our rifles, shooting at cans and such. The younger sister wanted to try and the younger brother, who had my friends rifle handed it to her. It was loaded. She began just turning back and forth asking questions on how to fire the thing, aiming it at each of us as she babbled on, her finger on the trigger. As i said, fortunately she didn't squeeze.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to slip on my cape and go rescue someone.

How Greedy can you get? Major League Baseball hits a fowl ball..

The Associated Press reports Major League Baseball has banned Little League Teams from using shirts with the names of Major League Teams, unless these are purchased from a specific vendor, which charges a higher price. Now why would they care where the kids get their team uniforms? Because they want a cut of the purchase price, of course. You would think Major League Baseball was making enough money all ready, but to those who love money there is no limit to greed.

Without players, there is no Major Leagues and thus no money for the already too rich owners of sports teams. It would seem to be in their best interest to encourage the youth playing baseball in Little League or Babe Ruth League or any other league giving youngsters a place to learn and love the sport. Some of these kids will grow up to be the future baseball stars that draw fans into the seats that put the bucks in the owner's pockets. Or even more importantly from a business sense, the fans who go to the game or watch TV and thus put money in the owner's pockets through ticket purchases or cause those lucrative TV contracts owners receive. In fact, even if most of these kids will not ever be major leaguers, it boosts their interest in the game, and in the teams whose names are blazoned across their chest.

Instead of dictating that Little League must buy more expensive logo shirts from the licensed shills of Major League Baseball, the team owners, if their had an ounce of decency, would donate uniforms to Little League. At least, they could take it as a charitable contribution on their corporate taxes so they got something back, since obviously generous hearts are not part of the issued equipment of Major League Baseball.

Sudden Death

A man went to work yesterday as he would each day. He busied himself in his tasks, perhaps enjoying the work and the moment. Then suddenly, unannounced came pain, fright, brief suffering and death. His life was cut short and his project left unfinished and for a while it will be left undone and forgotten.

I don't know the man's name. He was a Japanese construction worker crushed when an earthquake hit his island nation. He is among the first known dead. Two others died. One was a man who packed up his gear and went fishing along a river. It sounds as if it was a leisurely pursuit, perhaps his passion when on a holiday. As he cast his line across the water, the ground rumbled and he was buried by a landslide and killed. A third man was in an office building, also busy with his life, but when the shock occurred he panicked, ran outside and was run over by a truck.

I don't know the names of any of the departed, only that death came when they least expected it. There were no other details given of their lives, of their families or accomplishments in life. They are just footnotes of a disaster, their deaths mentioned ironically to give a sense of life to the reporting of an earthquake in Japan.




Oh, and Tim Russert died suddenly of a heart attack.

Some will be eulogized at private gatherings, a man like Russert will be eulogized publicly perhaps for days, mourned and praised and remembered by millions, most of whom never met the man. Others will be just a small obituary in a local newspaper. Some will not be noted at all.
Death is no respecter of persons. Your position means nothing to the Grim Reaper. You may have fame and power and riches or be poor and humble and unknown, it matters not. To each of us it is appointed once to die and most of us know not when. It isn't important if you leave a memorable legacy in this world, such as Tim Russert leaves, or if you have disappeared from history as a lost name on a weather striped tombstone. What matters is whether you were prepared for life beyond your death and in which books of God's your name is written.


Think about this when you tune in "Meet the Press" next Sunday and see Tom Brokaw where Tim Russert should be, if you are still alive on Sunday.







Pray for the Russert family and for the families of those lost in Japan as well.

written 6/14/08

Sudden Death of a More Personal Note

We just spoke of the subject, the suddenness and impartiality of death. The death rate of the human race is 100%. If you are born, it is the one intractable truth of your life, the one thing you can be absolutely certain you will obtain. It was in the news this week that life expectancy in the United States reached 78 years. This is misnamed. It should be called death expectancy. You can expect something in your body will fail by nature, by accident or by intention and you will die.

I talked with my mother last night. She called to say my dad received the Father's Day gift I sent. (Both my parents are a decade and then some past the life expectancy, by the way, and look good for a few more thousands of miles.) She told me this week they had been much engaged in the main social event of the elderly, attending funerals. There being one on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This may sound sad, but it's more a testament to the my parents conviviality that they have so many to pay adieu.

One of the deceased was a member of their church and another a long time friend. One died because his body gave out, the other in an auto accident. The third funeral was of a relative, a first cousin, Ruth Esther Downing Fields. (Only photo I have, 1923) Downing was her maiden name. She was the daughter of Clara Wilson Downing and J. Ellsworth Downing. The irony is Aunt Clara was the next entry for my Family Current: Wilson page. (There is another irony I will get to in a moment.)

Ruth was given her middle name in honor of my grandmother, Esther Wilson Brown, Clara's sister. It is a tradition, this honoring by name. My grandmother was named after her own grandmother, Esther Helen Bicking.

My mother had just lunched with the Downing Sisters a week ago after they had visited Ruth in the elder care home where she resided. Ruth suffered from Alzheimer's and had grown quite lost from this world well before her physical death.

Aunt Clara had seven children, one boy and six girls. Ruth was the fourth child. I knew her in my youth, but not as well as some of the others. She was born in 1923 and the age difference made her seem more an aunt than a cousin to me. Of those seven, I was closer to the youngest, Alice, who was only ten years older. She was like a big sister.

The second irony, if that's the word, came a half hour after I hung up the phone. My mother called back to say Dot Downing just died. Dorothy Wilson Downing Menig (photo from 1936) was Aunt Clara's second child, born in 1919. Oddly, despite her being only one year younger than my father, she was the other of Clara's offspring I was close to as a young person. Perhaps it was her free spirit and independence that caused a bond. I don't know. Dot went her own way and surprised everyone when she married at age 48 a retired career military man named Robert E. Menig and moved to Alaska.

Dot's husband died in 1990, so she lived as a single again these last 18 years. A couple weeks ago, she went into a home as well, not because of any infirmity, just because of the demands of her years. She was quite happy about the move and been looking forward to her new home. She was there a week when she fell out bed and broke her hip. Her broken body and her age conspired last night to take her life.

Both Ruth and Dot surpassed the death expectancy of 78, but did not escape worldly death. It gets us all in the end. This is not morbid knowledge, but a sobering one if you have given no thought to what comes after. We will not fear the certainty ahead of us all if we know to die for us is not loss, but gain through our hope in Christ Jesus as the one who conquered death for us.

Farewell my cousins, I will see you again at some future time and we will get caught up.

The photo at the top of the post was taken in 1923, the year Ruth was born, and shows from left to right, Ruth, William, Dot and Anna Downing.


written 6/16/08

Immortal? Not Really, I'm Mortal.

Comments were made to me recently about obtaining immortality and questions have been asked concerning one's legacy. In both conversations achieving a lasting fame or at least being remembered is the thrust, not physically living forever. I said I wasn't concerned about such things. I haven't even wanted a tombstone, which is all the remembrance some people ever have. A friend said I already had achieved immortality because you can Google me on the Internet (if you had my full name) and find 130 hits or so. These are all related to what of mine was published at one point or other.

I call it immortality by association. For instance, a collection of 18 magazines exists called the“Stephen King Rarities" (pictured to the left) because they contain some of his earliest published stories. It contains two of his, which is twice the one of mine included. But it lists every author in the collection, so I ride to reflected fame on the quill tips of Stephen King's pen.

And this is also true for collections of Nero Wolfe and Robert Block and Agatha Christy.

I found the whole idea of my "immorality" silly and undesired, until I began to think of it in terms of legacy. I still don't want a perpetualization of my name. My name can disappear from the footnotes and margin doodles of history, but shouldn't I, and us all, want a legacy of righteousness to others to exist. If we do what is right to another, and in turn, that person does right to someone else because of it, and that someone else continues the process and so on generation after generation, then isn't that a true and desired legacy?

Prov 12:28

In the way of righteousness there is life;

along that path is immortality.

Anonymous said...

My friend, you will not be forgotten once your spirit departs from your earthly body. Whether you desire it or not, you will leave a legacy. We all leave a legacy of some note. Hopefully, the legacy is a positive one.

April 5, 2008 10:51 AM

Christmas 2008

Our Christmas Day is a bit split up by schedules anymore. Since the kids have all reached adulthood there is none of those up at the crack of dawn ready-or-not Christmas Mornings.

My son, pictured to the left playing Santa, works nights, so He prefers a late start.

He is the only one of the kids still living here with us.

With both girls working at animal shelters and both volunteering to work on Christmas, we get a late start anyway. Laurel worked at the SPCA until noon, so we didn't pass out gifts and open them until after 12:00 PM.

Here she takes her turn at being Santa.

Noelle had to leave after we opened to go give medications to animals at the Delaware Humane Shelter. Here she doesn't notice I am taking a picture, but Darryl was quick to get a foot between himself and the camera.

She went into the shelter at 2:00 and got back home a little after 4:00, then we sat down and had a nice turkey dinner.

After dinner we headed north into Pennsylvania and made the hour trip to my parents. We used to get together at our place, but my parents don't want to make the drive anymore and although we took Thanksgiving Dinner up, it just got complicated with the schedules on Christmas, so we ate separate dinners this year.

Here is my dad (age 90) and mom (age 88) in their living room.

My wife and my dad watch as Noelle opens a gift from her grandparents.

My mom puts out all kinds of creatures about the room on Christmas. I don't know what all is on the coffee table.

My wife opens a sweater she received.

My dad is contemplating what he will open next.

Noelle hides again as my wife watches what my mom is doing.

If you wonder where Darryl and I are hiding, well I'm taking the pictures and Darryl is fast asleep in an easy chair.

He works nights as I said, and this was just too long a day for him. Plus my mother always has the temperature so high you kind of drowse off from the heat.

Anyway, I didn't take a lot of pictures. here is one I did manage with no one hiding from me.

Laurel, Noelle and my wife.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year all!