Latvia, for goodness sake!

From time to time I like to look at the blog's statistics. Ego thing, I guess.

Like there were 293 views yesterday for reasons I can't imagine. Sixty is a pretty good day--so what caused 233 more people to view "Under the Castor Oil Tree" than normal?

I can also tell which countries the viewers came from.

The greatest majority or, of course from the US. But there are a dozen countries on the list. There have been nearly 500 views from Latvia, for goodness sake! It's near the bottom of the list, just above Poland....

So, who are these people? Why are they reading my blog? What's up with that?

I'm asking anyone from Latvia or Poland who reads this to email me and introduce themselves. I'd be fascinated to meet them. Or anyone who wants to email--almost nobody leaves comments except my friends Mike Miano and Rowena Kemp--feel free. I'd like feed back from time to time.

I mean, writing a blog is like writing on smoke. I don't understand any of the technology that makes it work that people can view it and I seldom have 'comments'.

So, People of Latvia, write to me.

Padrejgb@aol.com.

(People give me grief for still using aol--but it works and I don't  have to understand something different. I'll be one of the old farts who use aol their whole lives! And I apologize for the cheesy address: "padre" and my initials...but it seemed cute at the time, years ago, and I'd have no idea whatsoever how to change it and let people know. Luddite to the end....)

Faith vs. Trust

I wrote this to someone three years ago (I know because Tegan is 5 now, not 2) and just came across it while looking at my documents library. Thought I'd share it here.

FAITH VS. TRUST

Where I come from, people often ask “Are you a believer?” We're too polite here in New England to ask such questions. Which is just as well with me since I'm never sure how to answer questions like “Do you believe such and such?”

I think what most people mean when they ask about 'believing' is something like 'agreement with a particular doctrine' or 'knowing something is true even thought it's unprovable.'

In other words, questions of faith and belief usually have something to do with intellectual assent to some particular thing—that Jesus was born of a virgin or turned water into wine or any of those things. I'm made uncomfortable by such questions. For one thing, the Greek word we translate as “believe” is Pistos and Pistos could also be translated as “Trust”.

Now we're talking sense--'trust' is something I can relate to. There are people I'd 'trust' with my life. I 'trust' is God—like the money used to say, but I'm pretty foggy about the details of theology. I tend to take most Creeds and theologies with a grain of salt—or perhaps several grains.

You know how Jesus is always saying we need to be like little children to enter the Kingdom? I think what he's talking about is the 'trust' that children have in the 'big people' around them. I watch my son toss his two year old up in the air and catch her. Tegan laughs and laughs and doesn't for a moment imagine Josh might drop her. I used to do the same with him.

That's where I can get some spiritual footing: 'trusting' in God. Depending on how I'm doing that day, my answer about what I 'believe' might vary. But good times and bad, I 'trust' that God is in control, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Shalom, Jim

Photos of Mimi

Here's a poem I just re-discovered. It was written on my daughter's birthday when she was in Japan.

I share it with you with humility and joy.

PHOTOS OF MIMI

The house is full of pictures of her.

In some of them, she is a tiny, chubby baby.

In others, she is a little girl possessed.

In one she gains speed, running

down a hill in front of my father's house,

her tongue out, her blonde hair flying,

her small arms churning

like the wind.

In another, taken the same day,

she is solemn, not looking at the camera,

considering something out of the frame,

unsmiling, gazing at the future, perhaps.

She grows through the pictures—though they are random

on the walls and shelves, so she doesn't grow evenly.

A beautiful, awkward teen, smiling in spite of braces,

her jeans decorated in ink, a hole at the knees,

her shoes half-tied, embarrassed, I think, by the camera.

There is a sagging Jack-O-Lantern at her side,

smiling a smile as crooked as her own.

A whole group pictures when she was finishing

high school—a lovely,, wistful, long-haired girl

exploding gracefully into life and what comes next.

I love the photo from her college graduation,

the four of us, this little family, her brother posing,

Mimi—short-hair and sun-glasses—smiling.

Just the four of us, a tiny clan, so different and distinct,

frozen in time on a mountain in Vermont, timeless, eternal.

I walked around the house today, looking for her visage--

bride's maid at Josh's wedding, clowning in a hotel doorway,

holding one niece or another with her boyfriend

(she natural, laughing, Morgan content on her lap,

Tim is a bit anxious and Emma is pulling away from him),

sitting on our back deck at an age I can't remember

when her hair was a color not found in nature,

and she is, as always glancing away from the camera,

playing on the beach as a toddler, sandy, nude,

hands in the sand, staring backward through her legs

(a photo a camera shy person would hate later on!)

I made my circuit, stopping before each photograph,

amazed at the memories that leaped out of the frames

and enthralled me.

Amazed more that such a beautiful child and woman

could have lived with me so long

and left imprints on my heart so deep.

She is half-a-world away.

In a land I can only faintly imagine.

I will not talk with her today—her nativity day.

I cannot even remember, as I gaze at photos,

if it is today or tomorrow in Japan.

Or yesterday.

Then there is the photo I love most.

It is pinned to the cork board beside my desk,

where I sit and write.

She is framed in a glass doorway. Her hair is long.

I can't remember how old she way—in college, perhaps--

and beyond the door you see, fully lit, dunes of Nantucket.

Mimi is in shadow, almost a silhouette cut from dark paper,

in full profile. Only the back of her hair is in sunlight,

shining, translucent, moving in the wind.

I love that picture because it is Mimi stepping through the

Door of Life, moving away from the infant shots,

the little girl, the teenaged child,

moving into life beyond me...half a world away.

All grown and still, all new....

jgb/July 21, 2008

Dry Cleaner rant

So, I take two sport coats--one blue and one khaki--to the dry cleaner.

The young woman there--a new employee--says the blue blazer is a 'sport coat' but the khaki one is a 'coat'. When I get to my car I see the charge for the blue blazer is $8 and for the khaki blazer is $18.50. So, I go back in and show her how both garments are the same--in fact the khaki blazer has no lining and the blue blazer does.

So, she tries another category and it turns our the khaki sport coat will cost $16.50 to clean.

I tell her it's not $16.50 dirty and take it back.

When I go on Saturday to pick up the blue coat, I'll take the khaki one with me and try again.

They are the same jacket, something you wear with jeans or pants with pleats and a shirt. Yet one is twice as much to clean. Go figure that, if you can.

She was new and 'just following what she was told'.

Isn't that the problem--following what we're told instead of thinking for ourselves?

Two identical kind of outer wear. What's the issue here?

Something to ponder--thinking for ourselves as opposed to 'following the rules'.

Could make a huge difference in how life shows up for us.

A huge difference.

Can you know each other 'too well'?

Monday, I bought an organic catalope. Tuesday, not checking the fruit bin in the refrigerator, Bern bought one too.

Wednesday, I bought Saran Wrap, which I knew we needed, only to open the 'wrap drawer' to find she'd done it the day before.

We do stuff like that all the time. We know what the other is thinking but don't really 'know that we know', so we duplicate each other.

We have great conversations, but the 'real' conversations we have are wordless.

Just like that.

I've know her since I was 17 and she was 14. Imagine that! 51 years is how long and you can do the math but I'll tell you--about 70 percent of my life and 78+ percent of her life.

Amazing! 7 or 8 of every 10 days we've lived, Bern and I have known each other, dated, been married, been in love.

Hard to imagine such a thing, really.

No wonder we 'think' alike and duplicate each other.

I can't really imagine a life wherein I haven't spent nearly 80% of my days knowing Bern. We've been married, come September 5, 45 years. That's over 60% of my life--Monday morning through sometime in the evening on Thursday of every day of my life, I've been married to her.

Astonishing.

Cantalope and Saranwrap aren't the half of it...not even a beginning.

I can't imagine what life would have been like without Bern.

I really can't.

And I'm glad I can't. Really.

Logging off

I decided today that at least one day a week from now on, I won't use any tech device. I only have two, unlike most people, my computer and cell phone. On Tuesdays, from now on, I won't turn either on. That means I can't post to this blog on Tuesdays in the future. But I'll try to make up by doubling up on Monday or Wednesday.

This is my rebellion against what has come to annoy me much--smart phones in peoples hands.

I noticed 14 (once I started counting) people talking on their phones or flipping through them in the grocery store today. Go to the grocery store and shop, for goodness sake! You can catch up on whatever you're catching up on once your home.

I'm bemoaned before the people walking on the old C&O Canal on their phones. Dogs and children and the beauty of nature ignored, concentrating on a device in their hand!

Luddites, unite! I say.

We're flying to the beach this September. Bern and I usually bring 10 or 12 books and won't be able to. She's thinking of getting a Kendal, or whatever else there is. I decided that since I've never been in a Beach House that had no books, I'd take my chances and read what's there.

There was an Atlantic Monthly Cover in the last year that showed two very attractive people, scantily dressed, almost embracing each other except that both were looking over the others' shoulder at the smart phone in their hand. The name of that cover story was 'The end of Intimacy'.

I don't think that's far off.

If I get really into this I might just add a day every month or so that the only way you could contact me was by calling my home phone--on the wall in the kitchen, writing me a letter and mailing it or dropping by. (Though I don't recommend the last one since our dog hates strangers knocking at the door.)

I'm one of those folks who don't mind if the NSA is gathering my data--boring!--but I do resent how we are given so many options to face to face encounters.

I read a book by Susan Smart yesterday (I think that's her name) set in 1973. No one had a cell phone. To get in touch with someone you needed a land line or a car.

Those were the days, my friends....I really believe that.

(As I said: "Luddites, Unite!!!")

Talkin' to hear your head rattle...

That's what my grandmother used to say to me and my six first cousins that lived close to her when we'd be overly chatty.

I've often wondered where she got that saying. It always made us shut up, for sure.

This was my mother's mother, Lina Manona Sadler Jones. My father's mother died before I was born.

Joel and Gail and Duane and Marlin and Mejol and Bradley and I could talk a lot.

Just to hear our head rattle from time to time.