Homeboy Reports II

The End of the Line...

2008-08-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's come to this.

Homeboy Reports have been showing up here just about every Friday for the past two years, and the time has come to take a break. For how long, who knows? I've enjoyed doing these weekly posts, but they seem to be taking more and more of the time and energy which I need to devote to other things (like Law School and home responsibilities). Writing these weekly posts has been a good discipline for me, as well as the exercise of some creativity muscles, but it's beginning to feel like work, like a job I have to do. One of my enduring character faults is biting off more than I can chew, and I tend to take on things like regular blogging until I get an overload and the circuits start to trip. Something has to give, and in this case it will be Friday's Homeboy Reports.

I remember, for another illustration, how excited Ann and I were about helping to build Habitat For Humanity homes around the country. Over the years we've probably left our marks on close to a hundred homes, and it was great fun, we met great people, and we felt like we were participating in a great enterprise. And then one day, out of the blue, it began to feel like work. The tail started wagging the dog. I tried to hold off putting on my tool belt until the last possible minute, and I thought if I had to climb up on one more roof I was going to jump off. It was time to quit.

So it is now: time to quit. Your comments, official and unofficial, have been most appreciated by me (with a couple of forgettable exceptions!) and I'll truly miss that connection. With most of you, of course, we have other ties that will certainly continue, and with others, well, I truly believe in paths crossing. Let's keep in touch.

So with that, Homeboy Reports comes to the end of the line. Thanks for being with me on the journey.

Me and the medics...

2008-08-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

A "procedure" is what they called it.

Strange how those medic types talk in code, but I guess that's better than saying "Esophageal Dilatation", which is what it really was. I happened to mentioned, last time I was talking to my tummy doc, that sometimes I ate too fast and got stuff stuck half way down my throat and I'd have those moments when my life flashed before me or at least the last two minutes of it and that's when I'd remember a good friend who died by choking on a PB&J sandwich and I thought, "no, no, no". I don't mind dying, but that's not what I want my last conscious thought to be.

So the doc and I chatted about this "procedure" which stretches and enlarges the esophagus, and my first question, after being sure it was covered by Medicare, is how soon can we get the "procedure" done. Day after tomorrow is how soon, so I signed up for this oral colonoscopy.

Now, I'm not one of those folks who are "physician phobic". I've seen plenty of the White Coat crowd over the years and have come to harbor a great deal of respect for them. Some of them are best of friends. Oh, I do get bent out of shape when I have to cool my heels in their office, having just broken speed limits to get there at the scheduled hour, and I do get a little testy when I have to repeat my raison d'etre for the third time as I wend my way up the various levels of the medical hierarchy, but I get over it. Mostly, I get over it.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the "procedure". Anyway, I'd been warned that since I was going to get "conscious sedation" (another euphemism, this one meaning "knocked out") I would need someone to drive me home, and Ann thus became the designated driver. After waiting only 30 minutes past my early morning and coffee-less start time, I was ushered into the inner sanctum, told to strip to my waist, and given an IV.

I have a twinge of a recollection that the nurse said something to the effect of, "Roll over on your left side, please", and the next thing I knew we were in the car driving home.

However long it had been -- probably an hour or so -- I had no memory of it. It was an hour or so deleted from my allotted span and for me doesn't exist. But I do have an enlarged esophagus. I mean I guess I do. My throat was sore, so something must have been going on in there, and I assume it was the doc's fibre optic scope, and that the "procedure" was a success and I now have a comfortably large gullet.

While I'm at it, I'll mention another recent encounter with the medic types. The problem is that I don't have a primary physician, or, as the insurance company says, a health care provider. It drives them nuts when they ask me who it is and I tell them "Medac", our local "doc-in-a-box". So a while back I asked my cardiologist, who despite the fact he went to Duke is also a good friend and a baseball fanatic, if he'd be my "primary". Once or twice a year I go see Bill, we talk baseball for 15 or 20 minutes, I take the "breathe on the mirror" test, and if it fogs I am passed and go home.

Having a cardio as my primary is, for the insurance types, almost as bad as having Medac, so I told him last week that I was going to get another doc, an internist who went to med school at Chapel Hill. Bill understood, as I knew he would, but he sure was upset about my choice of docs.

Now I'm going to give the local medical fraternity a rest for a while, and let the copies of the National Geographic accumulate until my next visit, errrr "procedure".

Lambeth Conference

2008-08-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

I frequently hear people fussing about organized religion. "Organized religion does this, doesn't do that, etc." I don't worry about all these rants against organized religion since (to paraphrase Will Rogers) I'm not a member of an organized religion.

I'm an Episcopalian.

The Episcopal Church gives Chinese fire drills a good name. It's exciting, if excitement is one of your criteria for a church, because we're never quite sure what's coming next. But it's never dull. Churches everywhere have a rightly deserved reputation for being rather stodgy and sedate, even boring, but not so with Episcopalians. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

It's strange that this is true since we're the offspring of the famously prim and proper British religious establishment, the Church of England, the home of deservedly irrelevant prelates who wear jodhpurs with vests and sip tea and/or sherry. Sure, that's a caricature of their extremes far removed from reality, but it's the image many folks have of the Mother Church.

All this comes to mind because right now there's a gathering in London, the Lambeth Conference, wherein all the bishops (900 or so, give or take an archbishop or two) of the Anglican Communion come together to discuss common problems, parade around in medieval garments, worship and talk together, and go to a garden party with the queen. They hold no formal plenary debates nor vote on any resolutions. It's a family reunion, ecclesiastical style, and you know what often happens at many family reunions. Here's a picture of the first one, back in 1867:

A thumbnail explanation: the Anglican Communion is the name given to all those churches around the world who have ties to the Church of England. Our Episcopal Church is one of them, so is the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil and the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and the Anglican Church of Kenya. You get the idea. Altogether there are close to 40 churches in the Anglican Communion, and the total membership is about 80 million.

Each of these churches is autonomous and independent, tied together by a historical (and sometimes hysterical) link to the Church of England and a (generally) common form of worship. We're the little guy in this crowd, with only about two and a half million. The big guys, mostly from the African continent, far, far outnumber of us. Numbers don't count for much, though, since each church can pretty much call its own shots.

And therein lies the rub. Our Episcopal Church has done some things that really perturb others in the family. Things like contemporizing the language of worship, and allowing women to become priests/ministers, and ordaining an openly gay man as a bishop in the Church. (Some of us wonder if what we should have done is what we and other churches have been doing for years: ordain gays and lesbians, but keep quiet about it!) It's a saga worthy of Ken Burns' attention.

All this drives some of the member churches in the Anglican communion absolutely nuts. Although hundreds (hundreds!) of people with AIDS die every day in Africa, those church folks (some of them, at any rate) get their chasubles in a knot because a gay man is bishop of New Hampshire. Go figure. Anyway, their response is that the best thing they can do is to boycott the family reunion in London and set up their own gathering in Jerusalem, of all places, where they can talk about the speck of dust in the other's eye and...well, you get the idea. The irony, I'm sure, is not lost on anyone.

My take on all this is that there are people who for a variety of reasons (religious, cultural, emotional, historical, and such) just can't survive in a world that's neither black nor white but varying shades of gray. They are "either/or" folks, not "both/and". But one of the pillars of Anglican spirituality over the years has been the willingness to live with uncertainties and ambiguities, at least for the time being, and leave the truth to God's wisdom. As Stephen Neill, one of our wiser bishops of a generation ago said, that's the genius of Anglicanism.

Well, you get my drift, but don't be expecting any clear-cut resolution from the purple clad clerics in Lambeth. As my mother might have said, "We Episcopalians just don't do that." Or as some of my friends in AA would say, "Hang in there; more will be revealed!" [gulp]

Hurricane Season

2008-07-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

Although the official hurricane season began a couple of months back, June 1st, I think, it was only this past week that folks around here began to really get in the mood. The slow march up the coast of a mild-mannered storm that came to be known as Tropical Storm Cristobal caught the attention of the media and other hurricane watchers, but other than some much needed rain it didn't impact our lives at all. (The picture above is the famous one of Hurricane Katrina, just before it slammed into the Gulf Coast. It looks so benign and peaceful, too.)

Cristobal did, however, become the trigger for the unofficial beginning of hurricane season. For one thing, there's a sudden increase in newspaper and TV ads for a variety of allegedly "hurricane-proof" shutters and other gadgets. For another, all the drug stores, convenience shops, and groceries suddenly have greatly supplemented their usual display of theoretically indispensable items such as batteries, water bottles, flashlights, and so forth, essentials that will never be used.

But my very favorite additions during hurricane season are a couple of web sites that give us the official and unofficial news of impending storms. For the official word I go to the National Hurricane Center site, which has a good selection of maps, charts, and predictions. Plus, those guys are really cool. Reading their stuff is like listening to Mission Control at a shuttle launch. And they're just as good.

For my unofficial news, I turn to two sites. One is a section of my favorite weather site, Wunderground, where you can get all kinds of goodies, many of them directly from NHC, plus a very knowledgeable blog from one of their professional gurus. It has more than you really need to know, but it's fun, anyway.

My other unofficial site is run by a friend, Mark Sudduth, who's a pretty savvy hurricane guru himself and is the founder of the Hurricane Research Intercept Team. In addition to this website, Mark also has a fancy Chevy Tahoe so loaded down with hi-tech electronics that it must need several extra batteries to run them all. He drives his Tahoe to wherever he thinks the storm is going to come in, sets up his cameras and other gadgets, and puts on quite a show that we can follow on the 'Net. He also writes a "commentary" that reflects his storm knowledge and experience. Anyway, as we progress through the hurricane season this summer you might want to have these or some others bookmarked.

My fascination with these storms really went into high gear during the years we spent living on the barrier island of Wrightsville Beach. For a while there, during the '90s, we were on Hurricane Alley, and it seemed as though we were always having to evacuate the island. We were the bullseye. The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore decided to buy a house here. I even had our own set of storm warning flags to fly! As a storm approached and seemed likely to hit us, everyone was told to evacuate, for as a safety measure all the power on the beach would be turned off. There were always a few hardy (or foolish) souls who ignored the evacuation order and, sans air conditioning and lights and refrigeration and TV news and all the other conveniences of modern life, they experienced a few moments of terror. Lots of fun. No ice for their drinks, either.

As for us, we were not so heroic. In fact, I had my own test for when we were going to leave: when there were whitecaps in the commode, it was time to go. And for a few years it happened enough so that it became a serious bother. Five times in three years, in fact, we loaded the valuables such as family pictures and scrapbooks into the car, took enough clothes for a few days, and after rolling up the rugs and moving furniture to a safe spot we'd close up the house and head off the beach.

Fortunately we had the motorhome as our "hurricane hole", so we'd drive up to the little parish in Burgaw (about 30 miles inland) where those nice people had even put in an exterior 30 amp plug so we would have water and power. One year (it was during Bonnie or Floyd, I've forgotten which), the storm hit Burgaw, too, knocking out the town's power, so we turned on the RV's generator and lived in relative luxury!

As far as damage to our home, we were usually fairly lucky, with one major exception. Hurricane Fran, in '96, did major damage to the house, and a picture is above. There were holes in the roof, and water poured in all over everything. It was a mess. We spent more money on repairs from that storm than we had originally spent in buying the house! With that one exception, though, we fared rather well during our 28 years on the island. We always had a major mess to clean up, including some fragrant dead fish and other debris in the front yard, but that just came with the territory.

Those days are gone now, praise be, and we'll not have to evacuate the new house in town. But when the red flags with the black squares start flying, we'll remember those days and watch the progress of the next storm.

"Julius Caesar"

2008-07-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

Mom was a Latin teacher. When she and Dad didn't want "little pitchers with big ears" (such as my brother and me) to hear their conversation, they would talk to each other in Latin. Which will explain why, among other reasons, I took Latin as my language study in high school. My eavesdropping plans, however, never worked, because they spoke it a lot faster than I ever translated it.

Whatever my motivation back then, I have to confess today that it was a good decision to take the so-called "dead language" and to be immersed in Edith Hamilton and the classics. For one thing, it's certainly enhanced my appreciation for words and the English language, and for another it's probably the reason that as soon as I saw it I grabbed this new biography of Julius Ceasar.

It's a great book, which in my lexicon means that I want to read it again. For one thing, you certainly don't have to understand Latin or be a classics buff to appreciate it. The author, Phillip Freeman, I've never heard of before, but he's obviously a brilliant classics scholar as well as a crackerjack story teller. The story he weaves has as many dizzying twists and turns and subplots as a soap opera, and the end of one chapter made me anxious to start the next one.

No matter how much we might try to sugarcoat it, the truth is that people back then (the 1st century B.C.) were just not very nice people, at least not by our standards. They had the sexual morals of rabbits, and would just as soon as not lop the head off anyone of a lower class, sometimes to show others an example and sometimes just to get rid of the poor guy.

There was, for instance, a custom among the Celtic tribes that whenever they met in council, to execute the tribal chieftain who got there last, a practice which may have been at least considered in today's culture. Life was tough, brutal, and short back then. Freeman doesn't dwell on all this, but he doesn't bury it, either. He just tells the story.

And a heck of a story it is. Born into a noble family that had seen better days and was now in decline, Caesar used his genius to rise and become the synonym for "emperor". He was at once an unscrupulous villan and a near-mythological hero, making his story a difficult one to tell and read. Just about the time I was cheering him on ("Hail, Caesar") he would do something incredibly stupid, even evil ("Off with his head"). But I kept turning pages.

Which is another reason I call it a great book: it was a well-told story with issues as contemporary as today's news. You could weave the names Bush, Cheney, Obama, and McCain into the narrative without loosing a stitch. Back then there was the pre-cursor to "public financing", although they just called it "bribes". And Caesar's military exploits were defined as "shock and awe" as well as a "surge". It would take a whole other book to identify all the similarities between politics then and now.

I hope you get the idea that I liked the book. It's a dandy, both in the subject of Caesar and the story of his rise and fall; he was one of history's greatest and most terrible figures. Take a look at it. My Mom would have approved.

Toys I haven't gotten yet:

2008-07-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've never met a gadget I didn't like. So much the better if it runs on batteries or has a cord and plug coming out of its backside. In my list of life's priorities, there's more than a grain of truth in the old bumper sticker about the one who dies with the most toys. You can't have too many, and I've managed to collect at least my share of them over the years. Many of them are now dust collectors in some dim recess of the house, even more soon lost their gimmick appeal and were consigned to the trash, but I yet remain on the lookout for more and better gadgets.

There are a couple I have in my sights, one being the newly released model of the iPhone, the G3.

I'm a confirmed Mac guy, now operating on my fourth or fifth Apple 'puter, and I looked longingly at the original iPhone, now in its second iteration as the G3. (The G3 stuff is about it being the third-generation, after the first cell phone like the one you've got in your pocket and the second being the original iPhone.) This little beauty does everything but brush your teeth. Such as?, you may ask.

Well, with the G3 you can talk on the phone and surf the 'Net simultaneously. It brings Web pages into your hand in less than half the time it takes the old phones. It is reported to have a crystal clear audio quality. It has a built in G.P.S. The list goes on and on, all important to the confirmed gadgetholic. But there are a couple of hitches, you might say.

For one thing, it's not cheap. Although billed at being under 200 bucks, it's actually going to cost you nearly $600 to get out of the bargain basement, and that's only the beginning. It only works on the AT&T cellular network, and that adds another $70 or so a month, which leads into the real deal-breaker.

The G3 part of this neat little gadget only works if you're in one of AT&T's G3 area networks, and there aren't very many of them. Needless to say, Wilmington doesn't make the cut, so the new iPhone will go to the bottom of my "need-to-have" list.

Coming to the top, to replace it, is something lots of folks already have, a Global Positioning Satellite system.

These wonderful little gadgets are approaching the "required" category, and the way things are going they'll soon be available in your local CVS and Kroger. They will not only show you detailed directions to get where you're going, they also provide a voice (his or hers) so you don't have to look at the map on the screen. (I'm personally waiting for Susan Sarandon's voice to cinch the deal for me.) I'm also impressed by the fact that their built-in maps, usually downloaded automatically, have all the brand new streets and subdivisions identified.

But, as always, here are a couple of speed bumps on the highway to G.P.S. The big one is that most of the time I already know where I want to go. Who needs directions to the grocery store or the post office? Traveling to exotic locales doesn't happen to me very often these days. In fact, it doesn't happen, period.

The other negative is that it's rapidly becoming yesterday's toy. The novelty has worn off. A big part of the fun of gadgeting is to be the first on the block to get one. Now the G.P.S. is built into a Chevrolet, for pete's sake. So we'll put that one on Hold.

There's one more on my list which definitely meets the "first-on-the-block" criteria. It's Amazon's electronic book, the Kindle.

Reading has always been one of the great pleasures in my life. Newspapers, magazines, books (both paperback and hardcover), Web sites, cereal boxes...I read 'em all. I'm an Equal Opportunity Reader, and will try any new venue for a while. So along comes this handy little gadget, the Kindle, wherein I can, with just a couple of key strokes, get immediate wireless delivery of any one of thousands of books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, you name it. The Kindle is simple to use, has a sharp high-resolution screen, is lighter than a typical paper back, and you can store the good books to read again and again.

One problem, a major one: the Kindle is not a book. It doesn't feel like a book, I can't make a note in the margin, it won't go on my bookshelves. Reading a book is, for me, an intimate experience, not a one night stand. I like to put my name on the frontispiece and feel the paper as I turn the pages. It's the difference between reading recipes and eating the meal. So I'm going to have to say, "No thanks", to this newest addition to my most-wanted gadget list.

The the search continues, however, and if you know of any new gadgets that you think I just MUST have, please let me know. Immediately.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

2008-07-04T06:23:00.000-07:00

I begin with a confession: I must not be much of a patriot, because I do not wear and do not even have an American flag lapel pin. A lapel pin of any sort just never occurred to me, which is not an excuse but a statement of fact. But it gets worse.

My patriotism might also be questioned because although we fly the American flag from the front porch of our home 24/7, it's in violation of the principles taught me in my Boy Scout Handbook requiring that the flag be lighted at night. Oops! That never occurred to me, either.

My slide down the slippery slope of patriotism continues, for I don't have any magnetic ribbons, bumper stickers, or plastic decals on my car indicating that I support our troops.

To compound the felony, I harbor the mostly quiet belief that Jeremiah Wright was on to something when he was so bold as to preach that perhaps God might stand in judgment of our country.

But when the National anthem is played I always stand at attention, bareheaded, hand over my heart, and I did serve in the Marine Corps during the Korean conflict (though admittedly not getting any closer to Korea than the bars of Oceanside, California). I hope those two facts will cancel out all my other failures.

Patriotism (or the lack of it) is kind of a hot-button item these days. I can almost hear some eight year olds arguing on the playground, "I'm more patriotic than you are", "Ya are not", "Am too", "Are not", and on and on. The current flap over patriotism is made even sadder by the fact that the antagonists are grown-ups. Thomas Jefferson weeps.

All this is bustling around in my brain today because later this morning we'll have our annual Fourth of July parade here in our small slice of Americana. It's not quite the extravaganza that goes on down in Southport, or in larger locales, but in our quiet little neighborhood it's a big enough deal. There'll be 50 or 60 or more of us, Christians, Jews, Muslims, nonbelievers, black, white, oriental, Americans all, pushing strollers or riding bikes festooned with the red-white-and-blue, walking around the neighborhood behind Uncle Sam. Who knows? We may even sing "God Bless America" or somesuch. (I'll post a picture or two afterwards.)

Then we'll have lemonade and cookies before going home to get ready for the (mostly) illegal fireworks in the evening.

It's a grand occasion, and it serves to silence the quibbles over the legitimacy of anyone's patriotism. So join a parade on the Fourth of July if you can, or watch one, or if you can't, wave a flag or hum a few bars of "America" or just remember, remember. Happy Fourth of July!

50 YEARS!

2008-06-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Fifty years.

By any standard of measurement, that's a long time. Most of the people alive today weren't even born when that attractive couple pictured above (who bear an amazing resemblance to Ann and me) walked down the aisle and out of Calvary Church, Memphis on Day One of their fifty year odyssey.

Last Saturday (the longest day of the year, coincidentally) we celebrated our Golden with a quiet dinner with some of the family, and in a couple of weeks we'll gather for a gala whoop-de-do courtesy of our children's affection, hard work, and generosity. We'll have as many of our old friends there with us as we can garner, and it promises to be a memorable occasion.

Over the years I've been privileged to watch hundreds of other couples walk down the aisle and out of the church (or beach or wherever) to begin their lives together. At the beginning of my ministry I faithfully devoted hours to the charade known as pre-marital counseling, something our Church's laws said I was supposed to do.

But you can't always do what you're supposed to do. I soon discovered that hours of pre-marital counseling was not only a source of anxiety for them and boredom for me, but also an exercise in futility: I was always answering questions that no one was asking. So I changed my pre-marital counseling format to one statement: "When things get rough (not if but when), give me a call." Because from time to time we all need some help, a hand up, a a shoulder to lean on; we all need each other. So I'll keep my pearls of wisdom to myself, and keep the couple in my prayers.

But prayers alone, important as they are, won't grease the wheels for fifty years. That just takes plain old work, or commitment, or dedication, whatever you want to call it. Ann and I knew back then, knew beyond a doubt, that barring the intervention of death we'd celebrate this anniversary. No question. But it takes effort. As the farmers say, "If you want potatoes, you gotta pick up the hoe."

It's a yin and yang thing. Maybe that's what lies behind the comment that "so and so were made for each other". Those who make it over the long haul have learned that they have to complement each other. Ann is a creative and knowledgeable cook who wishes dirty dishes would just disintegrate; I don't like to boil water, but my OCD kicks in so that I actually enjoy cleaning the kitchen. Ann has a plaque which reads, "Please remember: I am a gardener, not a housekeeper"; I grudgingly mow the grass but do a pretty good job with the vacuum cleaner. Yin and yang.

The Chinese word, however, has no "and" between yin-yang. They fit together, they complete each other, neither is smarter or better or stronger than the other. For fifty years, that's been our experience, our life. In the Christian tradition, it's what is meant by "the two becoming one flesh". The Taoists call it "yin-yang". Whatever. It's been an important reality for us, but it's not all. There's another essential ingredient that's hard to label.

Some might call it good fortune or luck or blessings. In many ways we have indeed been lucky and Dame Fortune has often smiled on us. But there's something else; Ann and I call it grace. It's what happens after we've done all we can do. It's the icing on the cake. It's a gift from God. A gift we didn't earn, didn't deserve, didn't even know when it arrived. It just came. And we are grateful, humbly and profoundly grateful.

"...a great cloud of witnesses"

2008-06-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual". I dreaded using that word. It's such a fuzzy term, with all sorts of pietistic connotations that give me the willies. As a matter of principle, and to keep folks from getting confused as to my meaning, I usually try to avoid it. Like "grace" and "hope" and other great words, "spiritual" has been used and misused so many times. But...here goes:

Ann and I have just returned from our long anticipated trip to England (see "The Pilgrims' Report" post below), and although I described it (in the blog two posts below) as a "pilgrimage", it turned out to be a truly Spiritual Pilgrimage. Let me try to explain.

When you walk up to the remnants of one of the great abbeys like this one above, in this case the Whitby abbey, founded in 657 and the site of one of the most crucial decisions ever made about Christianity in the Western world, or stand in awe to be enveloped by the grandeur and holiness of a place like Lincoln Cathedral (below),

consecrated in 1092 and ever since the home of bishops and kings, saints and sinners, pilgrims and worshippers, or

stand at the base of this Viking 14' "Tall Cross" which has survived on this spot since at least 942 and where generations of the faithful have offered their prayers, a different perspective slowly begins to take shape.

Nor do I want to leave you with the impression that this was a matter limited to archeological wonders or institutional religion or architectural grandeur. Perhaps no place touched this college English major any more than to be in Grasmere and stand quietly at the simple grave and tombstone of William Wordsworth,

and remembered his lines about "...trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home..."

Can you sense the spiritual pilgrimage?

I've been using the phrase which is in the title of this post, the one about "being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses", for just about as long as I can remember. It's one of the Bible's great images. It's about being enveloped as in a fog, and all around me are are the spirits of men and women, famous and unknown, living and dead, remembered and forgotten, who have pointed me toward God, toward a power greater than myself.

Another thing. We churchers also use the phrase "...with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven" whenever we gather for the eucharistic feast, the Church's most sacred action. I truthfully don't know (and just as truthfully don't care) who's an angel and who's an archangel, but I do know and I do care about that great "company of heaven". And if you've ever sung (or even heard) the old hymn "Angel Band", you'll know what I'm talking about.

While on our pilgrimage as we visited those sites like Whitby and Lincoln and Grasmere and Tall Cross and ever so many more, it dawned on me that there was something more going on during this trip, something Ann and I felt rather than understood. It was, in the best sense of the word, a transcendent experience: it opened for us a window through which we could see only dimly but which was of a world we rarely experience. We have our journal and scapbook and pictures, but even more we have our memories.

It was, truly, a spiritual pilgrimage.

THE PILGRIMS' REPORT...Letters Home

2008-06-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

DAY ONE

A quickie to let you know we made it to the Mother Country without incident or problems, and your Mom's doing just great. The flight was smooth, but we really didn't get a lot of sleep; our seats were immediately forward of the loo!

Some of our fellow pilgrims were late arriving, so our schedule was pushed back and we spent several hours in London’s very unattractive Heathrow airport, but eventually things fell into place.

I don’t know what this portends, but the first thing I saw when we got our luggage and went through all the customs and immigration hoops was a Krispy Kreme shop in the London airport!

Forsaking that temptation, we took a four hour bus ride out the motorway, an interstate-type highway, to Chester, a city with a cozy downtown where we're in an equally cozy but full-of-character hotel. Tomorrow we'll get serious about this pilgrimage of our spiritual roots with a tour of the Chester cathedral, and then explore north Wales, and who knows what other surprises!

But we did want to check in to let you know all's well with...

The Pilgrims

DAY TWO

Our first day as English tourists went great! To give you a quickie: after a seriously full breakfast at our hotel (where our room, by the way, is smaller than our bathroom at home!) we walked the half mile or so to downtown Chester, site of the famous Eastgate Clock and The Rows. There, in the center of town is the great Chester Cathedral (above), which was founded in 1098, and where we got a thorough guided tour and took lunch in the Cathedral's refectory (where the 11th century monks ate).

From there it was onto the bus (excuse me, the "coach") for a tour of North Wales, the highlight of which was an hour and a half exploring the walled city of Conwy and it's castle,the latter built by Edward I in 1283. It was one of a dozen or so he built along the north and west coasts of Wales to defend against potential usurpers. From the tops (gasp) of the towers (gasp) there was a spectacular view of the coast and the old town, which we also explored.

Then it was back into the bus to ride leisurely back into Chester, where we got off at the pub of the Pied Bull (established, I kid you not, in 1155) for a traditional British feast of meat pie, "bangers and mash", and such.

All in all, it's been a fine day, Mom's doing great, and life is good. As it is, we hope, with all of you. Much love from...

The Pilgrims

DAY THREE

It's been a travel day, by and large. After breakfast we walked the half mile or so to the Chester Cathedral for church service, then back to the hotel to get on the bus/coach and head north. The weather turned gray and rainy, sort of what I think English weather ought to be, but we were warm and dry as we headed to the much more rural northwest area of England.

We're staying at a quaint old inn in the small village of Grasmere, home of William Wordsworth; my picture of his grave is above. The town was fairly crowded with tourists (I should say, "other tourists"), but still a treat to walk around. The rain was gone, so we enjoyed exploring the place, including the old parish church and churchyard where Wordsworth is buried. Perhaps you remember, there's a plaque on the wall of St. James listing the many rectors they've had over the years; they have the same thing here, but it goes back to 1254!

We enjoyed a nice supper in the hotel's pub and visiting with some of the other folks in our group. We spent the rest of the evening following, via the internet, the fortunes of UNC-W's baseball team, which had a miracle comeback against Elon, scoring 11 runs in the ninth inning after being down 11-4, but the next day coming up short against Chapel Hill, striking out with the tying run at the plate in the ninth inning. Pretty exciting, and the end, for us, of the college season.

Trust all's well with you; it sure is with us! Much love to all from...

The Pilgrims

DAY FOUR

It's been a full day of touring the northwestern coast and the Lake District, and I'll just hit the highlights.

It was drizzling rain this morning when we rode the Motorway (England's version of an Interstate) an hour or so to the tiny village of St. Bees and the parish church (above) in that town. It (the church) as built by the invading Normans as a monastery in 1130, and was used for that purpose until Henry VIII closed them all down in 1532. Since then it has served as a parish church, but the ancient building still shows many signs of its ancient origins. We talked and studied a lot about Norman and Viking Christianity, but I'll spare you those details! There are great pics at http://www.visitcumbria.com/wc/chw6.htm.

A quick ride took us to the famous Norman Tall Cross, still standing in Gosforth on the original spot where it was placed in 942. Aside from its antiquity, the Tall Cross is famous for the figures carved into its sandstone rock, images from paganism as well as Christianity (Thor as well as Christ). If interested, you can read about it, with pictures, at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cj.tolley/ctm/ctm-gosforth.htm.

Then it was off to the port town of Whitehaven, where we first shared a Cornish meatpie for lunch and then walked around the Green Market and ocean port. Then back on the bus/coach for a ride of a half hour or so to another picuresque Lake District village, Keswick. We would love to walk around this town for several hours, but what we really went there to see was Derwent Lake, or, as they call the lakes around here, Derwentwater. It was of interest to us for two reasons: (1) a fellow pilgrim in our group is named "Derwent", after this very spot, and (2) there's a legend of a 7th century monk named St. Herbert who pitched his tent on a tiny island in the middle of this lake/water and lived there the rest of his life. Why this qualifies him for sainthood is beyond me; just don't ask! Maybe the Tooth Fairy lived there, too! But it was a beautiful spot, whatever the story.

From there it was a leisurely ride home through the hills (fells) and vales of the Lake District, absolutely stunning in their beauty. (You can see some pics [notmine, yet] at http://www.keswick.u-net.com/ldp.htm.) We visited with the other folks on this pilgrimage, and then had dinner with a few of them at a restaurant across the street (fish & chips, bangers & mash, etc!)

Love to all from...

The Pilgrims

DAY FIVE

Quite a day! We left the Lake District and rode to the other (eastern) side of England, to Durham, where we'll be staying for the next two days. We got there too early to check into the hotel, so we dropped our luggage there and walked up (and up and up) to the famous Durham Cathedral (above), another 11th century creation.

We grabbed a quick lunch there and then headed out to explore the Cathedral on our own. You can read about it yourselves at http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/, but suffice it to say we were completely blown away by the beauty and size of this place. Plus, it's a bustling, busy church, with lots going on. The cathedral security system is also in good condition, as we were soon to discover.

We went from there back down the hill to do some window shopping, and I actually made a purchase: at a Harris Tweed shop I found the perfect tam to keep my head warm, a necessary addition up here in the northern latitudes (or is it longitudes? anyway, you get my drift). When we got back to the Cathedral, where we wanted to go to Choral Evensong, we got a nice seat up front only to make a scary discovery: Mom had lost her purse, which included her passport. Major problem.

Leaving her there (and hoping she'd say a few prayers), I began to retrace our steps. (Did I tell you it was cold and raining?) When I eventually got to the Cathedral's restaurant, where we had had lunch, the waitress told me she had found the purse and given it to the manager...who gave it to the Cathedral security office...who gave it to the Durham PD...who called Jeff (she had written his name and phone number as a contact person)...who called the hotel and the police...who delivered the purse, intact, to the hotel, where we picked it up. Close call.

We were able to enjoy the Choral Evensong, for by now we knew that the purse was safe, even though we didn't have it yet. The service, sung by a choir of about 20 boys and 10 men, was just awesome, all you would expect from a major cathedral, and we're glad we could stay and enjoy it.

So here we are, after dinner, in another tiny European hotel room, but happy to have our goodies back. Tomorrow we'll be off on another tour, and I'll report about it then. I hope it will be not quite as exciting! Love to all from...

The Pilgrims

DAY SIX

Today started off with a bang. Well, with a siren, anyway. At 6:00 this morning the fire alarm in this “charming old hotel” began blasting everyone out of their beds and rooms. Mom was still in bed, and I was just finishing my shower, when the darned thing went off, and just as we were about to evacuate the word came that it was a false alarm. That, I guess, was the good news!

The rest of the day was anticlimatic after all that excitement. Our bus took us about an hour north of Durham, along the eastern coast of England, to Holy Island. It’s the only island we ever been able to drive to, for the main access route is a narrow causeway which at high tide is under water and impassible.

It’s also the site of Lindesfarne (above), one of the oldest English monasteries, having started in 635 A.D., and it’s pretty spooky to walk through a building that old and to know that people have worshipped here for so long.

I should mention, in terms of all these old places, that they began as monasteries, and continued that way until Henry VIII, in his struggle with Rome, “dissolved” all the monasteries and the ones that escaped destruction became (and still are) Anglican (Church of England) parishes. It’s a long story!

With the tide rising fast, we took off and went across the Tweed River into Scotland and the little village of Melrose, where an immense and imposing abbey was built in 650 A.D. Here, and in all these ancient sites, archeological work is ongoing to understand more about them.

From there we drove on to see Hadrian’s Wall, an even older site, for it was built by Roman soldiers before their empire passed into history. It marked the northernmost line of the empire, and was a stone wall, 15’ high, that ran completely across Great Britain. It’s pretty beaten down now, but it’s still impressive to be in its presence.

That was plenty for one day, so we headed back to Durham and our “charming old hotel” for the evening. Love to all from...

The Pilgrims

DAY SEVEN

Today we were back on the road again. This routine of spending two full days in a place before moving on to the next place is about the right pace for us, far better than spending only one night. Not quite as breathless.

So this morning we headed south along the east coast of England, stopping first at the abbey of Whitby (above), one of the most important sites for Christianity in the western world It was here, in 664, that the decision was made to follow Roman, rather than Celtic, Christianity. It’s a long story with a lot of implications for all of us in the western world, and if you want to learn more about it Google “Whitby” or “Council Whitby”.

Anyway, the abbey itself is immense, and sits on a high hill overlooking the coast and the village. Fortunately we rode up and walked down, rather than vice versa; it was 121 rock carved steps!

This little village of Whitby is also famous as the home and burial place of Caedmon, who wrote the oldest poem in English, and Bram Stoker, the author of “Dracula”. Pick your poison!

That took up the morning, so we grabbed a Ploughman’s lunch and went to another ancient site, also huge, but hidden in the desolate moors of the interior of England. This was the Rievaulx abbey, the first home of Cistercian monasticism, and therefore very important to us but for the details you’d better check out Wikipedia or somesuch; it gets complicated!

Now, and for the next two days, we’re in York, a truly medieval city, and to celebrate we went out and had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding! (It was good, but Mom’s is better!)

Love to all from...

The Pilgrims

DAY EIGHT

After a great visit in the delightful city of York, we jumped on the bus/coach bright and early this morning. Well, maybe we didn’t actually “jump”, but after a week on the road we’re doing (as the locals would say) rather chipper. This will be a “two-fer” day as we take in the cathedrals and towns of Lincoln and Ely, quite an assignment for one day.

Often described as “the greatest Gothic cathedral in England”, Lincoln (above) almost defies description. Work on it began in 1072, and people have been saying their prayers on this spot ever since; talk about a “holy place”! Although parts of the building were damaged by a fire and later by an earthquake, the main parts of the original structure are still there. It’s just a breathtaking building.

We had a delightful lady as our guide, and she showed us a lot of nooks and crannies, including the Lincoln imp, an ugly animal which legend says an angel turned to stone, although it was really the work of a stone mason with sense of humor!

Right now there are in the outside stone works several nests of peregrine falcons whose chicks have just been born, and the cathedral grounds are flocked (right term for bird-watchers?) with folks armed with binoculars and telescopes. Very exciting for the local pigeons, too, I imagine!

The cathedral is built atop a very high and steep hill, so we didn’t try to get into town and just ate lunch in their cafe, but still had a nice walk around the immediate neighborhood. Our bus picked us up and we headed for Ely, the next cathedral on today’s double-header.

The countryside here is flat as Pender County, so the huge cathedral can be seen from miles away. It is a Norman cathedral, I’m told, but I really don’t understand all the subtle differences in architectural styles; gotta do my homework!

Whatever, the place is impressive. It has a tremendous octagonal tower, different from anything else we’ve seen, and the stained glass windows from the top throw all different colors of light on the cathedral floor. We walked around in it for a while, and then went to another Choral Evensong done by the Men and Boys Choir,always an awesome experience.

But I do need to tell you about the dogs in this cathedral. There we were, sitting up on the choir of this imposing and dramatic building, quietly saying our prayers and waiting for the choirs to come in, when we noticed our neighbors on the other side of the church: two ladies each had a small poodle-like dog lying between their feet, and the dogs had their heads quietly placed on the kneeling bench! They stayed there through all the service, including the great organ and choirs belting out all this sound, and never batted an eye. When the service was over, the ladies picked up the pups and walked out, all four of them apparently regulars here in Ely Cathedral!

The inn where we’re staying here in Ely is pretty historic itself; it dates from 1416, and is so convoluted that I almost want to drop bread crumbs behind me when I walk to the room! Like all the inns where we’ve stayed, the rooms are small, there’s no A/C, and don’t even think about internet access, but they’re comfortable and fun.

We went back there after evensong for a light supper and a quick walk around town, and now are getting ready for tomorrow, our final day touring England. I’ll try to get this on the internet tonight, but then again, maybe not.

Anyway, hope all’s well with everyone, as it sure is with us, and we send much love from...

The Pilgrims

DAY NINE

Things are beginning to wind down over here as we get into our last day on the pilgrimage. We still have tomorrow, of course, but that’s mainly a travel day, so this will (probably) be the last report.

We’re staying in The Lamb, probably the nicest rooms we’ve had for the whole trip, and the daily and free breakfast is just wonderful. The menu has a quote from Somerset Maughan, “The best way to eat in England is to have breakfast three times a day.” And that’s the truth!

I mentioned earlier about cathedrals listing on a marble plaque their deans going back to 1300 or whatever, and today I noticed that this inn has a sign with the names of all the proprietors back to 1416!

Being Sunday, we crossed the street to the Ely Cathedral for their regular worship,and got to enjoy that great Men and Boys Choir again, as well as all the dignified ceremonial that the English seem to do so well.

Immediately afterwards we took a bus to Cambridge, just a few miles down the road, to explore that famous town. The university, we discovered, has no campus of its own, but is rather a conglomeration of 25 or so separate colleges, each with its own quadrangle, chapel, dining hall, etc.

The most famous of these, I suppose, is King’s College (above) and their famous Men and Boys Choir that we look forward to hearing sing the Festival of Lessons and Carols every Christmas Day on the radio; today we heard them sing Evensong in person, in their chapel. It was absolutely awesome. They were celebrating the birthday of Orlando Gibbons, himself a King’s chorister a few centuries ago, and had a viol chamber group accompany them.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As we walked from the bus into town we crossed one of several pedestrian (and bike) bridges over the River Cam and enjoyed watching the college guys pole the flat-bottom, wooden, gondola-like boats they call punts. A great picture.

We grabbed a sandwich to share as we sat in the shade of a King’s College building (today was the warmest it’s been all week), and then explored this historic town. The streets were packed with people of all ages and languages and dress, so it was great fun watching them as well as the town. There’s a large open market in the square which we walked through, and a couple of ancient churches and buildings to explore before stopping for a refreshment break prior to going to Evensong, which I’ve already told you about.

The bus took us home for a final bye-bye dinner in The Lamb, an elegant affair that all enjoyed. Then upstairs to pack, which on the return trip is really just throwing everything in and sitting on the suitcase!

It’s been a grand 10 days, all we’d hoped it would be, but now we’re ready to get home to our family, the house and yard, and our routines. Just for the record, we expect to arrive in RDU around 11:00 Monday night, and then drive home from there. At least that's our plan; hope American Airlines agrees! See you soon from...

The (Weary) Pilgrims

There'll Always Be An England

2008-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

That was to be the title of this week's Homeboy Reports, reflecting on some of our recent experiences as pilgrims in the Mother Country, but it just isn't going to happen! For any number of good reasons, that will have to wait until next week, so I take no small consolation in the fact that there will always be an England to talk about. Or, as we heard, "jolly good".

Please come back next Friday, when I'll have had more time and more energy to get my thoughts organized enough.

Pilgrimage

2008-05-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

When we think of Pilgrims we usually think of folks on the Mayflower and Thanksgiving dinner with Indians. Of course there's more to being a pilgrim than that, since they've been around a long time, for centuries, going on pilgrimages and whatever else it is that pilgrims do. The ancient Greeks, seeking the wisdom of the gods, went to Delphi nearly 3,000 years ago, where they received treasure such as advice to "Know thyself" and "Nothing to excess", bon mots which continue to confound us all these years later.

But I digress. The point I was going to make is that even today pilgrims travel far and near for reasons religious and otherwise. Years ago Ann and I went on a pilgrimage to Cooperstown and the baseball Hall of Fame, Ann once made a one day pilgrimage to Chicago for a Monet exhibit, and even right now the Tennessee Cooks (Jerry, Adrienne and children) are on a pilgrimage to Gettysburg and Hershey for culture and chocolate. I suspect all of us have, at one time or another, been on a pilgrimage of some sort, often without even knowing it.

All of which is prologue to the fact that Ann and I are about to embark on a pilgrimage which we've long dreamed about. Although we're fairly well traveled folks, there's one destination which has always eluded us: England, our roots. Our ancestors came from England, I was an English major, and both of us are deeply committed to the spirituality and traditions of Anglicanism, the Church of England. It's a natural for us to go there, but for one reason or another we never quite made it.

The closest we ever came was way back in our West Virginia days, in 1960 or '61, when the clergy of that diocese were organizing an exchange, a pulpit-swap, so to speak, with a diocese in the Mother Country, and we eagerly signed up for it, put down our deposit money, and began making plans.

One visit to Ann's Ob-Gyn changed all that, and instead of England we began making other even more exciting plans: twins would be arriving the same time we thought we would be arriving in Chester! Although we've talked about it for years since then, that's as close as we ever got to making the trip.

Until now.

We'll be leaving next Thursday (5/29) on a ten day tour, a travel course in Anglican history and spirituality. It's sponsored by Sewanee, a.k.a. The University of the South, my undergraduate alma mater, and is designed to be both an educational and enjoyable "sight-seeing" trip and a deeply moving spiritual pilgrimage. For those of you who know your geography, we'll spend two nights each in Chester, Grasmere, Durham, York and Ely, before flying home 6/9.

We'll explore cathedrals, monasteries and colleges, and most evenings participate in Choral Evensong, one of the greatest contributions of Anglicanism to Christian worship. A professor from Sewanee will accompany us to provide background on Anglican history and spirituality, and all of this tempered by the fun of going on our own to pub evenings, garden visits, and exploring the countryside.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, I know. (Gee, I just thought: maybe I'll learn to be a tea drinker over there!) It is ours, though, and we're both of us looking forward to this pilgrimage to the places where our religious and spiritual heritage was formed, grew, and continues. Especially now, when so much of our church's energy is dribbled away by its destructive obsession with sexuality, hetero and otherwise, it will be good to be reminded of another, and healthier, perspective on church and faith.

So for the next two weeks, Homeboy (and Homegirl) will be focused on our pilgrimage, and we'll give these weekly reports a rest until we're home. Until then, fellow pilgrims, if you'd like to tell about a great or small pilgrimage of your own, feel free to click on this "Comment" button.

Bluegrass

2008-05-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Ann and I enjoyed a bluegrass festival last weekend, something we do three or four times a year. When things in our lives begin to feel routine and we need a change of scenery, there's a quick "fix" we take: listen to some live bluegrass music.

Our appreciation for bluegrass took root back 15 or 20 years ago, when our children came home from something called "Merlefest", telling us about all the music, bluegrass and otherwise, that they heard for four days, and how much fun they had. We listened to their stories and felt their excitement and borrowed some of their tapes (in that pre-CD era), and decided to explore it ourselves. We were hooked.

About that same time our daughter fell in love with and soon married a banjo picker, and the hook was then firmly set. They were the ones who introduced us to old time music, the traditional dance music of the southern Appalachians, and soon we were going to camps and festivals throughout the southeast. As a result of all this, we're often asked (and occasionally ask ourselves) what is it about this so-called hillbilly music?

Well, for one thing, the music is fun. I looked at people sitting around us last weekend, and just about everyone was tapping their foot or nodding their head in time with the music. People smile during a bluegrass festival. So do the musicians, who are obviously having a good time themselves. Every now and then there'll be a slow tune with sad words, but nothing puts a long-term damper on the infectious good spirits of bluegrass music.

And speaking of which, that's about the only kind of "spirits" to be found at a bluegrass festival. Almost all of them say "no alcohol, no smoking", and they no-foolin' mean it, often checking backpacks and bags at the gate for the forbidden fruit. Every now and then a discerning nose can detect the fragrant aroma of the smoke from a controlled substance, but unlike other music festivals the happy atmosphere of bluegrass gigs is chemical free.

Another characteristic of bluegrass festivals is that those in attendance aren't all merely spectators. Many of them bring their own fiddles and banjos, and while the music on the stage is still perking along they gather, just as these folks (below) at last weekend's festival,
in small clusters to "jam" some tunes on their own. While the finesse of these jams doesn't match that of the groups on stage, the folks doing the jamming are having fun, which takes us back to point #1: it's fun!

At the same time, string bands (usually a fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass) play music that is anything but simple. I'm not enough of a musician to talk much about this element of old time or bluegrass, but those whose opinions and knowledge I respect testify to the complexity and intricacies involved in playing together. Just listening to a group like the Nashville Bluegrass Band or III Time Out or the Dry Branch Fire Squad (even the names make you smile!) reveals a high level of musical sophistication.

So whether we're talking about large scale festivals like Telluride or Merlefest, attracting 70,000 or 80,000 people to a four day (and night) event, or small ones like Conway, SC's Bluegrass on the Waccamaw (below) which we and a couple hundred other folks enjoyed one afternoon and evening last week, it's all bluegrass and it's all fun. Besides, you can't eat boiled peanuts at a chamber music festival!

And by the way, if you're interested in more bluegrass, check out the blog of my friend Ted Lehmann, who supplied the pics I've used here. I call them "bluegrass gypsies", for in their RV Ted and Irene travel the country from one festival to another, and the reviews and pictures this retired English professor covers in his blog provide a good insight into the world of bluegrass music. Besides which, they're just good people we're happy to call our friends.

I Wish I'd Said This:

2008-05-09T09:14:00.001-07:00

While I kind of hate to just pass on someone else's thoughts, this speaks my mind so clearly I couldn't resist. I couldn't possibly say it any better, or more clearly, than this:

============================================================================

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 4, 2008

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.

And us? Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in “downsized labs, layoffs of post docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions.” Today, she added, “China, India, Singapore ... have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere.”

Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

=========================================================

I can only add, "Amen"!

Hearing Aids

2008-05-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

Friend: "I see you got a new hearing aid; congratulations! What kind is it?"

Me (looking at watch): "Twelve thirty".

So let me say a few good words about hearing aids, probably the most reviled pieces of plastic since credit cards. I didn't just come into this world, either, for some of this plastic's been in both my ears for over 30 years. Blame my genes, blame the Marine Corps' grenade launchers, blame too many hours in swimming pools and the ocean...I've given up trying to figure out why my hearing's so terrible. It just is. It has been for years, so deal with it.

Without these gadgets in my ears I can't hear the telephone ringing, I can't hear the alarm clock even at maximum volume, I can't hear motel fire alarms (all false, praise be), and I sure can't hear conversations. So however much I try to deny it, the technical word for this is "Deaf". As in "can't hear a bloody thing". Some might say "count your blessings" or somesuch, but trust me: it's a blessing for about 10 seconds.

Remember those bull sessions that used to go on about whether it was worse to be blind or to be deaf? It's not even close: every study that's been done points to deafness as the "winner" in this sweepstakes.

Hearing aids help, of course, and have been around a long time. Years ago, before I started wearing them, there was an old gent in the congregation, Swede Gullickson, who had one of those ancient jobs with a wire going from the ear to a box (about a cigarette pack size receiver) which was usually hooked discretely out of sight. About ten minutes into the sermon I'd see Swede's hand slowly ease up to pull the plug out of his ear, after which he'd have the most beatific smile. What Swede didn't know is that taking the aid out created a feedback screech that would get everyone's attention (except, of course, Swede's), until a member of his family would reach over, again very discretely, and turn the thing off so that the sermon could continue. Swede was born a generation too soon.

Now, of course, hearing aid's are far more sophisticated. Some go into the ear canal, some in the ear, and some have all the electronics behind the ear. I've been the route with all three, and at various stages of hearing loss they all worked. Well, most of the time they worked. Since they are tiny little rascals that stay in a moist environment, they're prone to go bad and stop working, usually at the most inopportune moment. When (not "if") that happens there are two options: take it back to the audiologist who provided them, or (more likely) send it back to the factory. The only times they come out are when you want to sleep or (unless you forget!) when you take a shower. So sure, they're a nuisance. But wait: there's some good news about them, too.

One is that all the modern aids have a toggle switch which with a little experience can be turned off without anyone noticing it. Or create the same peace and quiet with the volume control dial. Or even better is the switch which mutes all the background noises without seriously affecting a sound that originates closer to you. The trick is to remember to turn the switch back on at the appropriate time!

They're wonderful machines, and without them I'd be using sign language. Me and countless others. While hearing aids don't restore your hearing as eyeglasses do for your vision, they make it possible to enjoy the great gift of sound. And to cut it off when the gift turns sour!

There's a little prayer I ran across many years ago, which nails it. Feel free to pass it on. It's "For One Who Is Going Deaf", and goes like this...

O God, the trouble about being deaf is that most people find deaf people just a nuisance.

They sympathise with people who are blind and lame, but they just get irritated and annoyed with people who are deaf.

And the result of this is that deaf people are apt to avoid company, and so get more and more lonely, and more and more shut in.

Help me, now that my hearing has begun to go.

Help me to face the situation and to realize that there is no good trying to hide it, for that will only make it worse and worse.

Help me to be grateful for all that can be done for deaf people like me.

If I have to wear a hearing aid, help me to do it quite naturally, and not be shy or embarrassed about it.

Give me the perseverance not to let this trouble get me down, and not to let it cut me off from others.

And help me to remember that, whatever happens, there is nothing can stop me hearing your voice.

Oops!

2008-04-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

I knew something was wrong. Actually I felt it before I knew it. I woke up at 1:30 this morning with that gnawing sense that something, somewhere, was wrong. Then it dawned on me.

I had forgotten to write the blog this week.

Now, in the normal course of affairs I'm not a very forgetful person. As a dutiful Virgo I make daily to-do lists and then scratch items off when completed. Occasionally something will slip through the cracks, but it's rarely anything important.

(Did I ever tell you about forgetting a funeral? It was years ago, in Keyser, WV, and the local funeral director had called me to ask for help. A lady had died with no in-town relatives, apparently no neighbors and friends, and no church connection. Digger ODell [remember him?] said the deceased should have a "Christian burial", and asked me to do it. I said sure, we firmed up the "where and when" details, and I promptly forgot it. His frantic call, about 10 minutes after the appointed hour, led me to an embarrassing afternoon with the lady's grieving relatives.)

Well, where was I? After locating the source of the mid-night angst I lay in bed, wide awake, in my mind writing and rewriting what should have been posted.

The normal process of these weekly efforts is to get an outline done on Monday, visit it during the week to flesh it out and pick the right words and phrases, and then on Thursday evening it gets written with a few last minute refinements for the Friday morning post. Not his week!

Oh, I've still got the outline, which now goes into the "potential blog" file, but for now these words of explanation will have to do. So here's a blog about no-blog!

And please: spare me any "well, at your age" comments!

Federal Court

2008-04-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

For almost a year now I've been immersed in reading for law school: casebooks, textbooks, outlines, briefs without end. It's been fascinating reading, too, although pretty slow going. Trust me: this is not the place to practice your speed reading.

So it occurred to me that it might be time for me to get away from the desk and books and markers and pads and pens, and see the law in action. Fortunately I have a good friend who is also a Federal Court judge, and he invited me to come down to the courthouse and, as much as rules will permit, get a taste of what comes out of the books.

The federal Court House (pictured above and below, or supra and infra in lawyer-speak), built about a hundred years ago on the site of the original Wilmington Custom House is indeed an imposing hall of justice. Although there are dozens of windows and doors available for entry, all must pass through one small door on the north side of the building and immediately go through a screening like that of airports. One exception, though: the bailiffs are all friendly, pleasant, and courteous.

Now sprouting my red "Visitor" badge I made my way up the large marble staircase to find Court Room 1, a large and imposing room where my friend holds court. Since I wasn't too sure about how all this would work I planned on getting there a few minutes early, but even so the room was already buzzing with men and women in dark suits carrying large briefcases and whispering to one another. If my "Visitor" badge hadn't tagged me, my blue sport coat and khaki trousers sure would have.

My first lesson in courtroom protocol (I haven't studied Procedural Law yet!) came quickly: when the judge says court begins at 9:00 it begins at 9:00. Sharp. There was no tolling of the bell as we have in church, but the "All rise" came precisely at 9:00 and the proceedings began.

The judge quickly read through the court's rules of behavior and procedure, including a description of the constitutional rights of the defendants and the probation and parole process. I rather suspect, as I looked over the assemblage, that they were already pretty familiar with what the judge was saying, but all were respectfully quiet.

Then, one by one, each defendant was called, and together with his or her lawyer, took a seat before the bench. The judge asked a series of almost formal questions of all the defendants, basically making sure they understood their position, and then asked how they plea. This process is the arraignment, the initial step in a criminal prosecution, and even though it seemed cut and cried, there were also lots of questions from the judge and from the attorneys, as well as many whispered conferences at the bench.

One particularly labored session involved the arraignment of two Hispanics who came to court in leg shackles and inmate clothing. There was an interpreter who did the best he could to translate the judge's questions, and the judge was himself very patient in making sure, as best he could, that they were aware of their situations. The care for these two persons was impressive, but it was also, for me, pretty tedious and boring.

So I took the time to look around the imposing courtroom, which except for the judicial trappings looked exactly like a big city train station of a generation ago. A full two stores high and surrounded by banks of tall but shaded windows, the marble walls and dark wood furniture seemed to emphasize the antiquity of the law.

At the same time there were plenty of evidence of the 21st century around: computer monitors on everyone's desk including eight in the jury box (there was no jury for this part of the process), a bank of electronic screens, mikes and boxes surrounding the judge, and more microphones than I could count. Although I never figured out where they were, I'm sure that cameras were monitoring the proceedings.

Before I knew it, the morning had passed and we adjourned for lunch. I, though, adjourned for the day to do other chores, and didn't return until the day after, when a trial was underway. The defendant was charged, I soon learned, with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and the testimonies were lengthy and complex. Unlike the court of Judge Judy or any of her peers, this one was extremely complicated and more than I could follow.

But I did notice something of special interest to me: my friend the judge, now 80 years old and with 25 years practicing law and 25 more years of service as a Federal judge, never missed a beat. He was able to ask questions that cut through all the obfuscations, didn't tolerate long delays, and insisted on maintaining the integrity of the court room.

Most of us, I suspect, after 50 years of work in our chosen field, might get a little weary with the inevitable tedium that comes with every job. Not this judge, and I must say it was impressive. His respect for the black robe and the capital-L Law was demonstrated in every thing he said and did. Perhaps, in all that took place over those two days in Federal Court, that was what will stick with me the longest.

Not a bad lesson for a 1L student!

Speed Bumps

2008-04-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

Topes. That's what they call them in Mexico. In Germany they're Drempels. Our ever creative British friends call them "sleeping policeman". We're talking here about the dreaded speed bumps, in the milder form known as speed humps, which we drivers have to be on the lookout for. On a good day there's a warning sign, or perhaps some well-worn stripes in the roadway, but more often than not it's just the speed bump, silently lying there, waiting for us to come by. These rascals are at best a serious pain in the neck and at worst a traffic hazard, but there's no doubt they work: they slow us down.

It isn't too much of a stretch, I hope, to point out that we have to deal with speed bumps as we travel down the great highway (or crooked two lane) of life. They're existential speed bump, I suppose we might call them, put there by the Cosmic Highway Department to slow us down, even as we gripe and moan about what a nuisance they are.

I blogged a few months ago about my fractured wrist, known in the trade as a Colles fracture, but known to me as a major and very annoying speed bump. It was just before Christmas that I took a tumble down some steps and managed to smash my left wrist pretty badly. That was followed immediately by surgery to install some hardware, after which I was introduced to "Mad Dog", who was to be my Physical Therapist during the recovery. (Mad Dog had just returned from duty as an instructor to military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.) (Just kidding, Dawn.)

I have, to give the devil her due, gotten most of my wrist functions back, probably as many as I'll ever have back, and I'm grateful for her skill and patience. The one thing my left hand still can't do (yet) is play the fiddle for much more than a few minutes at a time, but that will come. In the meantime I've learned to travel slowly over this speed hump, and in the slowing down process I've learned (a) the importance of taking baby steps in returning to normal activities like tying a tie or typing a blog, (b) of following the instructions of others who actually know more about this than I do, and (c), amazingly, of how easy it is to ask for help.

I mention all this because today I got the news that it was graduation time, no further PT was going to be very helpful, and they thanked me for being such a good patient. Green lights from all the medical people. Resume normal activities, they said. One of the first "normal activities" I'm going to do is make a batch of cookies which I'll take for Mad Dog and all her friends in PT.

That was the most serious speed bump of late, but certainly not the only one. As though it was sensing my impatience, Leroy my 'puter decided to act up. It would not do things it was supposed to do, and do things it wasn't supposed to do. I use it several hours every day working on this blog, doing all sorts of assignments as part of my Law School classes, taking care of normal correspondence, and all the other things we soon depend on our computers to help us do. Not Leroy here.

Leroy took a couple of months off to test my knowledge of these supposedly invulnerable Macs, push my patience to and just beyond the breaking point, and develop my ability to type only with my right index finger. More than once I gave old Leroy the finger, and I'm not talking about the right index finger. It drove me to distraction when, after several hours of work, it would quit. Sometimes I had automatic back-up going, but I'm afraid that's in the same category as daily flossing.

This particular speed bump is behind me now, for last week I took it in to my Mac guru's shop and said fix it or blow it up! Just like the medicos in the orthopedic shop, he knew what to do and now Leroy is back home, behaving like a good boy. If you know French, you know why my computer's named "Leroy".

I know this is getting awfully long, but since I took last week off and both wrist and Leroy are in good form I'm going to add one more speed bump I've encountered recently. Like a responsible citizen I take my obligations to the IRS seriously, but for a variety of reasons I've always relied upon a good friend and talented CPA to do the heavy lifting and insure I'll have a reasonably accurate set of figures for Uncle. So I put everything together in an organizer he sends to his clients, and, with a great sigh of relief, got it to him a month or so ago.

Here comes the speed bump. I'd forgotten something. Something important that was absolutely essential if I didn't want to take a major hit. So less than two weeks before April 15th I had cancelled checks and bank notices spread around the room, surrounding miscellaneous receipts and reports, and the printer was spewing annual summaries from a number of sources. There was no time to lose, so I couldn't resort to my usual strategy of putting it on the back burner. Griping and moaning all the way, I managed to recreate the missing documents and get them to the man in time to be folded into my returns.

In the larger scheme of things, of course, these were minor blips, imperceptible bumps, but to me they were speed bumps which did exactly what speed bumps are designed to do: take a deep breath or two, fix a fresh pot of coffee, and slow down. And the next time I see this bumper sticker, I'll be able to smile...

No news is good news?

2008-04-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

There will be no blog from Homeboy this week, for I'm up to my eyeballs in the mid term exams for Law School. Torts, Crimes and Contracts take precedence over the fun stuff like writing the blog, and I've given them all my attention this week, so let's all take a break from Homeboy Reports and pick it up again next Friday.

See 'ya...

For The Birds

2008-03-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

Birds are the life of the skies, and when they fly, they reveal the thoughts of the skies.
- D. H. Lawrence

I've never been too excited, to say it as gently as possible, about the hobby of bird watching. Looking for and at birds has always seemed to me to be a pretty dull pastime. 48 million Americans like to do it, I'm told, and that's fine, it's just never been my thing. For a couple of years I helped monitor the Audubon Society's bird sanctuary on the north end of Wrightsville Beach, and I still feed meal worms to the local bluebird population, but birds are just, well, birds. Perhaps it's my loss, but I'll pass on the bird watching expeditions, thanks anyway.

Which is why I'm surprised at how much I've enjoyed this book. The author, a wonderful and colorful writer of essays and novels, is Jonathan Rosen, a New Yorker who started birding in Central Park twelve years ago. Since then he's carried his enthusiasm for birds into countries around the world, as well as joining in the search in Louisiana for the allegedly extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Rosen is a practicing Jew, and one of his most poignant and insightful chapters deals with his birding experiences in Israel. Whatever I may think about bird watching, I can't help but admire someone who's as enthusiastic as he is.

This is, however, far more than a book about birds and birding. What he does, from my non-birding perspective, is to weave together a passion for poetry, his Jewish heritage, and American history in a creative tapestry in which birds are the common thread. One way to describe the book is to say that it's not so much a "how-to" watch birds as it is a description of "why" we watch birds.

That said, I did have one quibble with perhaps the central theme of his book, the potential loss of species to extinction. The sub-title says it: "Birding at the End of Nature". Surely all of us can agree that we have to find some way to stop the degradation of our environment, and all of us can agree that we need to do all we can to preserve what little wilderness and wilderness creatures remains. No one wants to see a species, whether plant or animal, become extinct, lost forever.

At the same time, it may help to remember that extinction, the "end of nature", is part of the evolutionary process; sad though it is, it happens. Dinosaurs became extinct, just as the Passenger Pigeon and, perhaps, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Some day before the earth collapses into its own black hole, Homo Sapiens will themselves become extinct. Certainly we must do all we can to protect the threatened creatures, yet for all our efforts, extinction is inevitable.

I don't want to end this review on such a gloomy note, so let's raise a cheer one more time for this fine book which held my interest from cover to cover. I suspect I'll never make much of a bird watcher, nor will I learn the subtle differences that real birders treasure. But it's highly likely that more than once this summer I'll take a chair into the back yard and enjoy watching the birds and reading this "Life of the Skies" one more time.

March Madness

2008-03-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've heard the term. Perhaps? "Perhaps" only if you've been living in a cave. Even a cave in North Carolina wouldn't protect you from March Madness. (Actually it often slides over into April, but never mind.) However, for those who actually do live in a cave, or who may not be familiar with the concept of March Madness, let me explain.

Here in North Carolina it's about two college basketball tournaments. First comes the Atlantic Coast Conference, a three-day extravaganza of basketball to cap the regular season and determine who is the conference champion. It's been estimated that there are 48,000,000 work hours which are lost each year by people calling in with the "ACC flu", a disease which lasts only until the following Monday. (Actually I made that number up but you get the idea.) Folks, this is serious stuff. Next year's dates are already on people's calendars, and lesser occasions such as weddings, trips to Europe, presidential visits, and even pregnancies are rescheduled to accommodate the ACC tournament. (I made up that business about pregnancies, too, but nothing would surprise me.)

Then, almost immediately after the ACC tournament, comes the true source of March Madness, the national collegiate basketball tournament, better known as the NCAA tournament. It consists of teams from 65 schools around the country who play basketball beginning this week until it concludes with the championship game on April 7th. That's this April 7th, 2008. Small schools like Mount St. Mary's, a little school in Maryland which won its first game of the tournament earlier this week, all the way to the "big boys" from perennial champions such as Duke, North Carolina, Indiana, and other powerhouses, play each other with a passion that truly defies description. First-born children, I've heard, are occasionally offered in exchange for tournament tickets.

Nor will you be surprised to learn that it's not just for the "big boys"; the "big girls" have their own national collegiate tourney, too. It doesn't generate quite the headlines that the men's tournament produces, but true fans (short, by the way, for "fanatics") of basketball know that in many ways the women's game is superior. At any rate, both tournaments are mixed in together at the same time of year, adding to the madness of March.

In addition to the games themselves, often filled with plenty of drama and excitement, there's a sidelight which adds to the festivities. It's called, in a made-up scientific word, "bracketology", which simply (well, not so simply) means that you get to predict who will win each of the games. A little back-of-the-envelope math will show that you'll need to predict the winners of 46 games, practically an impossibility, but to make it more interesting you also guess the score of the final game! Although it's officially illegal in many states, including North Carolina, I'm told that some people ever make a bet or two on their skill at bracketology; it's been estimated that this year several billion, that's billion, dollars will be bet in office pools and neighborhood gatherings.

Basketball, of course, is the major source of March Madness, but there's another piece of this puzzle. This is also the time when millions of us taxpayers are coming down the home stretch in preparing the myriad forms for the IRS. While that obviously doesn't generate the excitement of ball games, it certainly contributes to the anxiety which is part of March Madness.

One more thing. For those of us who are closely involved with the church, especially liturgical churches like my own, there's another ingredient in this stress-producing season. Here at the end of the six-plus weeks of Lent, the most serious and sacred days of Holy Week lead up to the great celebration of Easter, the grandest festival of the year. This week we ride the emotional roller coaster that takes us up Palm Sunday, down to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and then back up again to Easter Day.

For the clergy and others involved in preparing for all these disparate occasions, it's an exhausting time. Exhausting mentally, physically, and spiritually. But like a championship basketball game that your team wins, it's also incredibly exciting and rewarding to stand on Easter morning and announce news that dwarfs all of March Madness, news that in ways often only dimly perceived yet the whole world waits to hear: "The Lord is risen!"

Friendships

2008-03-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Sometime back I pontificated on my theory, now regarded as preposterous, that women tend to make and keep deep friendships better than we males do. I would point to the fact that Ann's college dorm roomies and sorority sisters still, after a half a century, exchange Christmas cards and correspondence, whereas I can only dimly recall just the names, let alone the home towns, of college roommates and friends, and as for "keeping in touch", don't make me laugh.

Any of a number of other examples were be called upon to witness to the truth of this grand theory that guys tend to be "loners" as opposed to the socializing tendencies of the ladies. Of course I allowed for general exceptions and qualifications, but they only prove the rule. The male of the species is the solo one, the Alpha Male, while the female sought out other females.

This grandiose "Theory of Female Bonding", as I preferred to call it, was only waiting for professional recognition before entering the pantheon of sociological truth. What grandiose hokum!

All this came back to mind as we enjoyed a wonderful reunion with some friends of many years who had come back to Wilmington and their old haunts. In the process of that short visit we talked about how we all of us bond with friends: men having strong friendships with men, women with women, couples with couples. We recognize many acquaintances, but only a few, perhaps a dozen, can truly be called "friends".

One of my favorite definition is that a friend is "the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out." Some of my friends I've known for many years, others for much shorter times, but all of them have that quality which tells me that all I need to do is to pick up the phone and call them. One phone call, that's all. No explanations, no qualifications, just a phone call. They'll be there for me with what ever I need, just as I would for them.

This is getting a little on the saccharine side (something else we males don't handle well!), so let me close with a comment made by one of my favorite philosophers cum psychiatrists Scott Peck: friendship is the willingness to be inconvenienced for the sake of another.

It doesn't get much clearer than that. Still I wonder...what's your definition or understanding of friendship? Press the "comment" just below to share your thoughts. And thanks!

Baseball Redux

2008-03-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

We are in Sarasota this week, going to Spring Training games, something Ann and I have enjoyed doing for the past several years. While it's fun, it's also tiring, and I'm just not up to being creative and/or clever right now.

Let me, instead, post here some comments about this grand game that I made last year. It has to do with college baseball, and was made a month earlier on the calendar, but I think it will apply equally well to the big leagues or to a bunch of kids with imaginations, sticks, and balls. At any rate, here's what Homeboy said last year in the original Homeboy Reports blog...

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

It's winter here this first week in February, just like everywhere else, of course. The yard is a dingy gray/brown, except for the few iris that were seduced by the brief January warm spell. "Cold enough for you?" opens every conversation. We're still singing Epiphany hymns, and Easter seems a long way off. No neighbors are out walking. We seem to be surrounded by winter, except for one place, one oasis: the green yard of Brooks Field, home of the UNC-W Seahawks baseball team, where it's always springtime.

Baseball is back, and life is good. Today we play our first game of the season, taking on Western Kentucky, followed by Oklahoma and South Carolina to round out the weekend. It's not professional baseball with its mega-million dollar athletes and stadiums (stadia?) where you sit in a different Area Code from the field and pay $10.00 for a lukewarm dog. It's college ball, where you chat with the players before the game and the coach sits three pews in front of you in church and the hotdogs are two for a buck on Fridays.

I'm not sure just where I picked up my affection for the game. My father, to some extent, who never talked to me about sex or politics or other things fathers are supposed to pass on to sons. He just took me to ball games, and to one I'll always remember in Yankee Stadium. Years later Ann and I went back to Yankee Stadium for their annual Old Timers Game where we saw DiMaggio and Rizutto and Ford and all those heroes who made me misty-eyed.

Another time I got misty-eyed from baseball was on a trip we were taking through the mid-west. As we traveled the gently rolling hills of eastern Iowa, seeing nothing but corn fields and telephone poles and telephone poles and cornfields, we suddenly crested one of those hills and right in front of us was the extravagantly beautiful Field of Dreams, the original site of the movie. It was a Sunday afternoon, Fathers' Day, and the field was filled with dads and kids, playing ball. No admission fee, no billboards, no hucksters, just baseball.

It's so simple, baseball is, and yet so complex. The trinity of strikes and outs, three times three innings and players, and though baseball puts a premium on speed of throw and foot, it's unhurried and unlimited by time. Baseball is not dangerous, like football or boxing, but if you've ever stood in the batter's box and watched a fast ball head toward you, you know fear. The field itself is laid out in a deliberately defined algorithm of 90 feet between bases, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the pitcher's rubber which is always 24 inches by 6 inches set on a 15 inch mound within an 18 foot circle.

Then there's the box score, what Bart Giamatti called the diamond in the mind, an artifice no other sport has been able to conjure up. What a work of art it is! To compress all that action in a few words and numbers gives baseball fans a daily treasure to explore with all the devotion of priests studying their scriptures. We don't "glance" at our team's box scores, we recreate the game with it.

Sometimes I hear the comment that baseball's "boring", an observation that could only be made by the Immediately Generation, those for whom instant gratification is too slow. To watch the strategy of the pitch selection and see how the defense responds, to see how playing for one run is far more challenging than a grand slam, to know that getting 26 outs is never enough...boring? Sure, just like "King Lear" is boring and Yorkshire Pudding is boring and the sunrise is boring.

So this afternoon in early February, scorecard in hand and a pocket full of peanuts, I'll head for the ball park. And life will be good again.

Mexico...in the rear view mirror

2008-02-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

It's been only a few days since we got home after just over a week in central Mexico, (see the previous blog below for more details of this trip), and since I'm really a "Homeboy" again it's time to post something in the weekly blog. The question is, how to do it?

The standard diary-like "first we did this and then we did that" format sounded deadly dull, and the travelogue of clever-to-cute vignettes seemed like more work than I had in mind. So forthwith, a third alternative: reflections on my experiences in Mexico.

We took a bus ride from the giant (22 million inhabitants) of Cuidad de Mexico (a.k.a. Mexico City) where the music of the organ grinders merged with the horns of impatient drivers, to the quiet of rural Santiago de Anaya (pop. several) where the dominant noise is the crowing of roosters. It's hardly idyllic, however, as the bus ride took us through miles and miles (kilometers and kilometers) of hardscrabble country that screamed "Poverty Central".

The dominant color was brown: brown faces, brown dirt, brown houses. Even the ubiquitous plastic grocery bags were brown. Dull green cactus in many forms was the only change in color. There were occasional clusters of people sitting around under jerrry-rigged tarps, but very little signs of liveliness. That was the view from the bus as we headed to our home for the next week.

But first there was an orientation session was led by Marilyn, the Anglo volunteer who would be working with teams like ours all summer. A school teacher from the cultured world of Boston, she began by telling us that she had visited here several years ago and fell in love with the place. My only thought was, What is this lady smoking? Fell in love with this place? I don't think so.

That was on Sunday. By Tuesday I had fallen in love with the place. Two reasons, I think. One, of course, is the people. They were uniformly cheerful and happy, and I haven't seen so many smiles since visiting the Mormon Temple. Despite their obvious lack of modern goods and conveniences, everyone greeted us with kindness and friendliness, and I soon became aware of something fundamentally different about these folks in Santiago de Anaya: poverty had not beaten them down, it had not destroyed their spirits.

I've been in poverty like this, back in the states, and with rare exceptions it produces people who are angry, people who want to escape, people who have lost their spark. This kind of poverty beats people down. Not here, however. Not these people, who knew, on some level, that their lives were different than ours, but they weren't poor. They shared what they had with us, they laughed with us (and occasionally at us!), they worked with us, soon we became friends, and terms like "poor" and "poverty" were dropped from our perceptions and our speech.

Still there was a gulf, and this is the second reflection which comes to my mind. The gulf is language. Sometimes the gulf was funny, as it was when I tried to make up a Spanglish word for "embarrass" only to produce gales of laughter because "embarazada" translates to the English "pregnant"! Despite linguistic faux pas such as that, we transcended the gulf with our "Spanglish", but it was always frustrating for me to not be able to communicate on any but the most basic level.

This was especially true in trying to talk to the children. They were so much fun, and they enjoyed hanging around the job site as much as we enjoyed playing with them. But there were limits, because of the language barrier. We could, using our limited Spanish dictionaries and their unlimited imaginations, connect with them, but only to a certain point. The same frustration came when we tried to ask a shopkeeper something, only to be stymied by our mutual lack of understanding.

A comic example of this was the experience Ann and I once had with the clerk in a farmacia (pharmacy) in Antigua, Guatemala. We were looking for some high powered Naprocin, using hand signals and made-up Spanish. The clerk tried to help us, bringing first this and then that, but no Naprocin. Finally, something we said or did made connections, and she proudly showed us what she thought we were looking for, a box of condoms! So much for Spanglish!

One final reflection on this unforgettable trip has to do with what we called "Mexican time", also known as "manyana time". It drove me nuts. Told that lunch would be at the job site at noon, it might get there at 1:00. Or 1:30. Or whenever. I'm very much an organized, time conscious/obsessed Type A Gringo. Whatever Type they are, Mexicans are not, to say the least, time conscious.

As I said, it drove me nuts, but at the same time I kind of envied them. There must be some middle ground, but I don't know where it is. Schedules and clocks have always been a part of my life. Just glancing around our living room there's the ship's clock on the mantel, an antique pendulum clock with a beautiful tone on the wall, a digital clock on the microwave and one on the stove, and over the TV are digitals on the DVD and the cable box. Oh, one's on the coffee pot, too, and one's on Ann's desk.

It was only a semi-joke when I told the choir that the only thing worse than starting church late was starting church early; 11:00 meant 11:00. That's why one of my first actions upon retirement was to take off my watch. I should have moved to Mexico. In fact, we did go to church there one Sunday, the Episcopal cathedral, and they started at 11:12. People wandered in much later than that, too; they were on Mexican time, of course.

So there, as I think about it, is my view of Mexico in the rear view mirror. I understand now what Marilyn meant when she said she fell in love with this place. It's easy to do. We had a wonderful week with some truly wonderful people, both Anglos and Mexicans. We worked on some houses, of course, but far more than that. We worked on our own hearts and souls as we shared that week with the rich people of Santiago de Anaya.

P.S. I didn't have much luck loading pictures into this week's blog, but daughter Jennifer, our group's interpreter and choir director, has posted some of hers which you're invited to see at http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=nb41198.7tmlx4tc&Uy=-xpueph&Ux=0.

Habitat For Humanity Mexico

2008-02-15T06:35:00.000-08:00

After months of planning, hundreds of emails, scores of conference calls, and more phone calls than I can track, our Habitat build in Mexico is about to get underway. It all began last spring, when an old friend, Gary Gloster, called and asked if I might be interested in helping organize a program to build 40 Habitat For Humanity homes in two small villages in the mountains in central Mexico during the 40 days of Lent, '08. Gary is, like me, a somewhat retired Episcopal cleric, he having served as the Suffragan Bishop of North Carolina. Our paths have crossed over a variety of projects and programs through the years, and if Gary was in, I would be too.

The three Episcopal dioceses in North Carolina, plus Southwestern Virginia, would take care of supplying volunteers for three of the seven weeks, and I agreed to crank up some interest here in East Carolina. The response was underwhelming. Most of the churches simply ignored the emails, personal letters, and phone calls, while others had more creative ways of dismissing the appeal. With two veryrewarding exceptions, it was a bad trip. The apathy and buck-passing of these fellow clergy was one thing, but the rudeness was even worse. The less said about that experience, the better.

So let me tell you about the two truly rewarding exceptions. There's an Episcopal church in the small town of Shallotte, between Wilmington and the South Carolina line. The church, like the town, is fairly small, yet these folks have recruited a team of six people who will go with us to Mexico, plus they have raised over $16,000, more than enough to pay for two of the 40 homes to be built. That's just awesome. The other exception is our own parish, St. James, which has given money for one of the houses as well as produced the volunteers to go to Mexico with me next week. In addition, while we're building a St. James sponsored home in Mexico, another group of volunteers is now building a St. James sponsored home in Wilmington. Our rector has really highlighted Habitat For Humanity, and I'm grateful to him and proud of our parish.

People, especially children, should not have to live in homes like this, so all 19 of us will be flying out of RDU early Saturday morning, en route to Mexico City. Once there and through customs we'll be met by Habitat For Humanity volunteers who'll get us to our hotel and give us an orientation for the week's work. The next day we'll worship with a local congregation and have the afternoon free to explore Mexico City.

We'll then travel about an hour north to Actopan, where we'll be staying in a hotel. It's a "two-star hotel", but they didn't say out of how many stars! Monday morning we'll drive about 30 more minutes to the village of Anaya, where we'll be building homes all week.

Actually, WE won't be building homes, for thanks to my broken wrist I'll turn in my hammer for a clipboard. Every job, after all, needs a supervisor! There are those, in fact, who say I was born for that job! But I'll have fun, nonetheless.

And, if all goes according to plan, you'll be able to share in that fun. The hotel where we'll be staying has, it's reported, internet access. I've been around the web long enough to recognize an ambiguous term when I see it, so there's no telling what that means.

The plan, if said "internet access" permits, is to post a blog, with pictures, every day, reflecting on our experiences in Anaya, and you're invited to drop in here at Homeboy Reports II whenever the mood strikes you.

The Chinese proverb applies: It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. We won't be able to give better housing to everyone in Mexico, but 40 families will have better.

So now we begin.

My Platform: Change!

2008-02-07T22:04:00.000-08:00

We've been following, at a respectful distance, the various political campaigns being waged, and it seems as though the Theme of the Year is not "the Economy, stupid", but Change. Everyone's for change. Candidates, media geniuses, Wall Street, even Wolf Blitzer, the most inarticulate TV person since Geraldo, is for change. A few quibbles here and there about how to effect this change and precisely who it is who will be changed and how we'll pay the price for these changes and who's the changee and who's the changor... but those are minor details. The battle cry is clear: "We need change, and we need it now!"

And so, my fellow 'Murricans, I've decided to heed the call to Public Service and throw my hat, er, my ball cap, in the ring. I haven't decided yet exactly what office it is that I'm running for, but my platform is clear: Change!

What, you ask, must be changed? Thought you'd never ask. For one thing, when I'm in charge we're going to change the bizarre election process that's developed in this country. First of all, to pick the candidates our states and territories hold primaries, or caucuses,or conventions, or whatever, that are being held willy-nilly, with absolutely no thought given to the needs of the larger body politic. "Retail politics"? Please... most of us can't get in the store. By the time we here in North Carolina, the state that elected Terry Stanford and Jesse Helms at the same time, are allowed to vote, most of the candidates will be broke and gone. I've harbored a secret wish that the candidates will be chosen, after millions of dollars and a gazillion words, by American Samoa!

Furthermore, we've got to change the election process itself, and we'll start with the hoary monster, the Electoral College. When you cast your vote for me, by golly, it ought not go to some unknown elector who may not even get to vote for me. So many people labor under the whimsical delusion that they're voting for the person on the ballot, and when anyone tries to explain the convolutions of the process, folks say, "Huh?" and never darken the door of their polling place again. And please, spare the lecture on federalism; any system which requires a Political Science guru to explain it should be changed. Which it will be, when our Change Party takes over.

But I'm not a one-issue guy; the platform of the Change Party doesn't stop with the election process. Another thing that has to be changed is our obsession with pennies. They have to go. Who needs them? Get rid of them, I say. They're useful for nothing except filling jars and piggy banks. Who bends over to pick up a penny? We could well make the same argument about the nickel, the five cent piece, but let's save that for another time when we can focus our energies on Nixing the Nickel.

One more plank in the platform of the Party of the Chameleon: there will be a uniform layout for grocery stores, everywhere stores will all be organized the same. No more going to a new store and searching for the peanut butter, only to be told that it's in aisle 9, across from the light bulbs. No more going into your old store where you knew exactly where the Pop Tarts were, except that now they've migrated into where the the bath and beauty section was. Once we're in charge there will be one floor plan for all! We'll take on the drug stores and hardware stores the next time around, after which well tackle the casual way TV stations and networks are organized, or disorganized, on your screen.

And there you have it, the basic platform of the Change Party. The next move is yours, for whenever we get around to voting, don't forget to cast yours for the candidate who's in favor of Change!.

Lent? Already?

2008-02-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

We Episcopalians are a strange lot. No one likes to party and have a good time any more than we do, and just about anything can provide the occasion, though we usually dignify it by saying it's a "celebration". I've been to more than a few good parties, to use an extreme example, either right before or just after a funeral, called "a celebration of Joe's life". Episcopalians are not, to put it mildly, a glum lot.

Except for once a year, starting on Ash Wednesday. It's called Lent. It's those 40 (or so) days before Easter when, in preparation for that joyful festival, we set aside the ways "of the world, the flesh, and the devil" (as it was until recently described) and entered a course of asceticism and forbearance. Perhaps you remember when we gave things up for Lent, transferring that dedication into a contribution for our mite box. Remember? Many of us Episcopalians still trudge that Lenten trail with dedication.

Dedication so devout, so energetic, that we even developed a three week pre-Lenten season to help us prepare for preparing for Easter. (Still with me?) The three Sundays of this mini season were Septuagesima (about 70 days before Easter), Sexagesima (60 days), and, naturally, Quinquagesima (50 days).

We never really did very much with these "gesima" Sundays, aside from rationalizing their existence. They were, truth be told, something of an awkward intrusion, and we figured if we ignored them, they would go away. We did, and so did they.

Except for Sexagesima, which I have, to some modest degree, rescued. Many of the younger folks, and more than a few of their elders, loved this annual Sunday, for its name on the hymnboard elicited many remarks and jokes, both old and new. When the time came that the Church calendar was revised and the three "gesimas" shunted into well-deserved obscurity, I felt it was my duty to preserve the name, and I have framed it for moderns to see, as above. My contribution to historical preservation, don't you know?

There was yet one more desperate gasp of pre-Lenten festivities in the form of the Great Pancake Supper, when on the eve of Ash Wednesday and Lent, the whole parish (save those who were dieting) gathered to eat pancakes, meat, and applesauce. The cooking chore, for reasons best left unexplored, always fell to the men of the church, sometimes assisted by the youth.

The rationale for pancakes, as opposed to, say, meatloaf, is that our ancestors made pancakes to get all the fat (lard) out of the house before Lent began. Oh. Thanks a lot. Why wasn't the fat or lard or whatever the offending substance just thrown to the hogs? Or why do we also cook bacon and sausage, adding to the lard larder? Don't ask. Some things just don't lend themselves to deconstruction.

I'll always remember being almost traumatized by my first Pancake Supper in the little town of Keyser, WV, where I had just been assigned as the Vicar (i.e., bottom-rung minister). Ann and I lived in the second floor of a house next door to the church, while the first floor served as the combo Sunday School/meeting rooms/my "office"/ fellowship hall, where once a year we packed in half the town for the annual feast.

That morning it began to snow. Harder and harder as it got colder and colder. The people were hungry and, I suspect, in a hurry to get home. I was already "home" and was cranking out the cakes as fast as our little stove could cook them. It was frantic. None of my theological training had prepared me for this, especially when a little boy, six or seven, came through the line, held out is plate, and clearly ordered, "I want two waffles!" He was very nearly baptized on the spot with a ladle-full of pancake batter!

There are other great stories, one or two of them maybe even true, about the Pancake Supper, but we'll hold them for next year when once again the celebration will start as we get ready for Lent. As our Cajun friends proclaim, "Laissez les bon temps roulez"!

(Top photo: Mission San Jose, San Antonio, TX)

Dining Out, Eating Out

2008-01-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

Let's be honest about this, right at the start: Ann and I love to eat. More precisely, we love to eat out. None of this "take-out" stuff, supper-in-a-bag, for us. Finding and visiting restaurants and menus and food and clientele and wait staff is our hobby. We explore cafes and diners and grills the way other people don SCUBA gear and explore the ocean, or wander through flea markets and antique malls in search of a "find". We've been pursuing this (mostly) delicious hobby for years, and even maintain a card file of "keepers", places around the country that some day we'd like to go back to, in the glove box of the car.

But we're eclectic about this, we try to keep an open mind about our roadfood, and will stop at any place with a neon sign shouting, "EATS". One glaring exception to the open mindedness: Hooters is out of bounds. I mean, we do have some principles, you know, some levels below which we will not stoop. So we don't give a hoot for "Hooters". I suppose we also try to focus only on places with a Health Department grade of B or above. Like I say, we gotta have some picky principles.

Other than those two exceptions, we're game for any eatery. For instance, the night before last we enjoyed a wonderful supper at Ruth's Kitchen, chef Donald Mathews presiding. (The difference between "supper" and "dinner"? Easy: dinner comes on a tablecloth.) Ruth's doesn't have a web site, and the "Daily Specials" menu is grease stained, but don't let that scare you away. Each day's specials are on the left (I had the moist and tasty meatloaf, while Ann enjoyed the lightly breaded fried shrimp), while the day's home cooked veggies are on the right. Lots of tasty choices.

One thing that sets places like Ruth's apart is that when diners arrived there was no hanging around the entrance, looking for a table. People walked in and straightway headed for their spot, and just as in church, there had better not be someone in "their" pew. The waitress sits down next to you to get your order, and the check's under the cornbread basket when the food arrives. It's a great place for supper eating.

Tonight, however we were at the other extreme: we had an absolutely wonderful dining experience. Thanks to a very thoughtful Christmas gift, we dined (not just ate) at the Port*Land Grille. The understated elegance allowed us to comfortably enjoy the finest restaurant in Wilmington, and the "Daily Specials" were [a-hem] somewhat different than Ruth's. Opening with a pan-seared lump crab meat cake over Southern style lima beans (no butter beans here) and smokey tartare sauce, I moved to the entre of charcoal grilled #1 tuna just flown in from Hawaii, and served over wasabi whipped potatoes, with grilled baby bok choy sauteed shiitake with edamame and a green curry paste sauce.

Ann had her heart set on the anise marinated antelope tenderloin, but that had sold out earlier, so she settled for a striped bass (caught this morning in Oregon Inlet) served over goat cheese, truffle whipped potatoes, sauteed butternut squash ribbons, roasted almonds and a red wine, cracked olive, roasted tomato, and fresh oregano sauce. This was preceded by several "Red Neck" eggrolls: pulled pork bbq, with collard greens and a mango fresh mint dipping sauce.

And let's not even discuss dessert.

Two different worlds, certainly, Ruth's and Port*Land, but each sources of great pleasure as we sat around with others at their own booth or table and enjoyed the breaking of bread. Bon appetit, indeed.

Battlin' Back

2008-01-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

It's been exactly one month since I fell and smashed up my wrist, and what a month it's been!

I have, over the course of all my years, been generally blest with good health. Sure there have been illnesses and surgeries, all of which fell into the to-be-expected category, but I've never broken a bone before, except for a collarbone that took several hits in lacrosse games back in my college days. Pain has been a visitor, but not for very long and even then there was always some analgesic available. Pretty darn lucky.

That's all changed in the past 30 days, thanks to my careless fall. One of the first victims of the accident has been my stubborn pride and misplaced sense of independence. Oh, I know philosophically that we need each other, all of us do, and I've now taken that to new extremes. Have you ever tried to peel a banana one-handed? Or clip your fingernails? And don't even think about tying your shoes! Humbling experiences, these are! Ann's been a patient and gentle help in that department, and I've even grown to allow total strangers help me into my jacket.

Three times a week I meet for an hour and a half with a physical therapist who specializes in hand and arm post-surgery recovery, and that's been a big albeit painful help; no pain, no gain, as we say in the PT world. I still can't connect any fingers with Mr. Thumb, nor come close to making a fist, but that will come in time.

The biggest adjustment has been in learning to deal with the pain, the constant 24/7 pain. Soon it gets on your nerves, like trying to sleep under a metal roof in monsoon season. I've always felt simpatico with parishioners experiencing pain, whatever the origin, but until now never fully understood their agony. Oh, there's medicine for the pain (percocet, vicodin, etc.) that lasts a few hours, permitting some sleep, but then the pain's back, and it's easy to understand how such folks can pull the covers over their head and slip into the consoling arms of depression or get hooked on narcotics.

On the flip side (there's always a flip side), this whole experience brings to mind one of the great quotations in some AA literature, "Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth." While I believe that's true, and while as a result of the fall there are a few more chinks in my armor of ragged individualism and bullet proof pride, that's about as much spiritual growth as I care for right now, thank you very much.

Time to knock down some more ibuprofen and scratch out another Sudoku. I hope this hasn't been too whiney, and won't bring up the subject again, but it sure helps to yak about it.

The Laughing Barrel

2008-01-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Not long ago I was reading an online presentation given by Maya Angelou. For those who don't know her, Maya Angelou is a kind of renaissance woman. She's done all sorts of things. She's a teacher, she's written a number of autobiographical works including one wonderful book called "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", she's a singer; she's been a dancer, she worked with Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights period in the sixties, she's written an opera, etc. At one point, because of economic necessity, she tells how she worked as a prostitute for a brief time. Perhaps you recall her reading one of her poems at President Kennedy's inauguration. Maya Angelou is a tall, elegant black lady with a commanding presence.

Anyway, she had given a lecture (which is what I had been reading online), and in the Q&A session afterward she made a remarkable comment I'd never heard before. She said, "You know, in slavery times the slaves were not allowed to laugh in many plantations." She elaborated and told how in some such plantations, when the urge to laugh became irrepressible, the slaves had a "laughing barrel" into which they would lean way down, in the pretext of getting something, and laugh and laugh and laugh, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing.

I say, let's bring back the Laughing Barrel! In every church there could be a Laughing Barrel, so that from time to time we could put aside the richly adorned vestments and silver crosses, the ancient chants and maudlin hymns, the miters and the incense and the audacious idea that we might be able to master the inexpressible grace and wisdom of God. Then we would all go deep into the Laughing Barrel and laugh and laugh and laugh, after which we could go back to whatever it was we were doing.

We would also have a Laughing Barrel, several of them, actually, at every election campaign and political rally, and at regular intervals we'd pause in the pretentious grand-standing and meaningless cliches and empty promises, and head for the Laughing Barrel to let it all pour out in gales of laughter before going back to the job of politicking.

Another place we'll need to install Laughing Barrels is at ball games -- football, baseball, all of them. It won't be long before some self-absorbed, over-dramatic athlete forgets it's a team sport and goes in for the chest thumping, fist pumping, "I'm-the-greatest" ritual dance, whereupon we all head straight for the deepest part of a Laughing Barrel and cut loose with side splitting laughter at this fool's demonstration of hubris. Thus relieved, we'll go back to enjoying the ball game.

There's an old story in AA circles which comes to mind. In its earliest days each group of recovering alcoholics pretty much went their own way with rules and organization. One in particular, which we'll call the Middleton Group, carried this to extremes with rules for every detail, so that eventually the group blew up in the resulting confusion and chaos. When things finally calmed down, the head promoter who had orchestrated it all did something that was to become an AA classic. On a card about golf-score size the cover read, Middleton Group -- Rule #62. When unfolded, there was the single sentence, "Don't take yourself too damn seriously."

Rule #62 -- another version of the Laughter Barrel!

Welcome to the 'Hood

2008-01-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since we lived in a real, sure 'nuff neighborhood. Thirty years ago we bought an old, summer rental house located smack dab in the midst of Wrightsville Beach's "combat zone". (I've written about that experience before, so if you'd like to hear the full story of that house's transformation, you can look up ""Wrightsville Beach"in the original Homeboy Reports from last summer. You can also read how this Blogspot place got the original consigned to the bloggers' purgatory, never to be heard from again.) There, it's off my chest (again) and I promise to let it go.

Anyway, the reason for bringing that up now is that back then we didn't really have a neighborhood there on our one block street. We were, for all intents and purposes, the only full time residents on the street. In the winter most of the cottages were winterized and closed up tight, except for college students renting two or three of the places, and in the summer, when rents rose astronomically (what had rented for $100 a week in the winter would cost $1,000 a week after Memorial Day) we had visitors from Raleigh or Charlotte or Ohio or who-knows-where. A few families from Wilmington would move in for the summer, otherwise it was just us. I was the (self-selected) "mayor of Birmingham Street"!

Now it's different. Very different. We've gone from having zero neighbor families to having over 100 of such wonderful new friends. We've built our own home (above) in the brand new Wilmington sub-division of (cue-in "How are Things in Glacamora?" music) The Cottages at Holly Glen. It's a perfect fit for us, with most of the action on one floor. Ann's studio is in the small room over the garage, her hidey hole for all her varied activities. My HQ is in what was designed to be the dining room, but we've reconfigured everything so that it's now my office providing oversight of the strollers being pushed, children doing whatever it is they do, joggers and walkers of all ages, and folks driving in and out if the neighborhood.

And to us being in a neighborhood is one of the parts we most enjoy about living in Holly Glenn. My very unofficial survey shows that about half of us have moved here from other parts of the Wilmington area (an interesting fact but I'm not sure what it means) and the other half from, as we say, away. One of our pre-move apprehensions is that it would be a boringly uniform community of folks just like us, but its turned out to be just the opposite. We have our share of older Anglo couples, but we're definitely a minority in a community of parents with preschoolers through teenagers, newly weds and nearly deads, and a delightful mix of races, cultures, and accents in our new neighborhood.

As you can see, we're kinda cozy here. All the homes aren't as far apart as some folks might prefer, but for us this is part of being in a neighborhood. Our homes aren't McMansions surrounded by acres of cuttable grass and privacy ensuring trees and bushes, but cottages where you can run next door for a cup of sugar or make an extra batch of cookies for the kids across the street. Ann spends a lot of time and energy with the back yard flowers (no lawn care service back here!) and welcomes advice, assistance, and admiration from neighbors walking by.

Welcome to the 'hood!

"Last Night at the Lobster"

2007-12-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

I've about had it with "Christmas Books". It seems as though every year there's a spate of these well intentioned books that flood the stores, all promising new insights into the ageless Nativity story, some new perspective to the Biblical tale. And it seems that every year I get excited about the latest Christmas book, excitement that lasts as long as the colorful holiday wrapping paper. I've found another such "Christmas book", this time one with that doesn't bill itself that way, one that mentions Christmas only incidentally.

The book is "Last Night at the Lobster", a short but powerful novel by Stewart O'Nan. All I knew about O'Nan is that he teamed with Stephen King to write "Faithful", a best seller about the championship year of the Red Sox. I intend to learn more about Stewart O'Nan, baseball fan and a spell binding writer.

The story is quickly told. (Actually the book is quickly read, too, being only 146 pages. But I suspect that, like me, you'll immediately want to re-read it.) The Red Lobster restaurant, tucked in a corner of an aging New England shopping mall, hasn't been meeting corporate expectations, so headquarters has pulled the plug and the Lobster will close at the end of tonight's shift.

Manny deLeon has tried his best as the Lobster's manager, working with a crew of characters whose seemingly ordinary but complex lives come to vivid reality under O'Nan's creative descriptions. In a few hours, minutes, the Lobster will close, but their lives will go on.

Should someone ask me, as they often do when I claim to have read a book, "What's it about?", I have my answer ready: it's about the value and importance of the daily-ness of life. There are no grand, sweeping themes here, only the repetition (and therefore the importance) of the routine and the ordinary, just putting one foot in front of the other. On his final shift, four days before Christmas and and in the midst of a crippling blizzard, Manny and his thinned-down staff insist on keeping the restaurant open and ready to serve, requiring them to go through all the menial preparatory tasks, step by mechanical step, because that's what a restaurant does. And it's important. Which is why I call this a "Christmas book".

At a time of year when I'm thinking about a dismal manger in an all-too-ordinary village, visited by smelly shepherds right from the field and exhausted gurus who knew but didn't know, presided over by a young girl who did what she had to do...but get a copy for yourself and see if "Last Night at the Lobster" isn't a Christmas book, a lovely Christmas book.

P.S. And for you who have inquired about my once smashed wrist, I'm happy to report that last Saturday morning a very talented surgeon managed to rebuild it with wires and screws and plates. While it's still pretty painful, I'm on the road to recovery, profoundly grateful for your thoughts and prayers.

Single Handed

2007-12-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Into each life, goes Longfellow's tired refrain, some rain must fall.

On Monday, it poured.

I had spent an hour or so delivering some information to people about an upcoming Habitat for Humanity project, and had almost finished my task. Two more stops and I could head home. I had walked out the door where I had just left a packet, crossed the small porch, and began the five steps down to the sidewalk. Just then a neighbor saw me and called, "Hi, Bob!" As I looked over at her I forgot about the steps, and down I went, head over heels, down to the concrete walkway.

My audience said I did a half-gainer in mid air, and it would be nice to say that my whole life flashed before me. I remember instead only one thought... Ohhhhh, shit... and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, chest down. I rolled over, perhaps instinctively, and laid there, looking at the sky, until the neighbor and others ran to my aid.

A quick inventory said there was no bleeding nor was there any great pain except for my left wrist, now bent at an angle the Creator did not intend. It was broken, and it hurt like hell.

I borrowed a cell phone to call Ann, explained my predicament, and she quickly arrived to take me to the emergency room of Cape Fear Memorial Hospital, fortunately a fine orthopedic hospital, where everyone could not have been more solicitous and professional. They quickly x-rayed the wrist and forearm and confirmed that the wrist was, indeed, broken in several places.

So a splint was applied to my forearm and wrist and wrapped in place like a mummy, I was given a prescription for Vicodin, they made an appointment for me to be seen by an orthopedist (orthopod? - I'm never sure) after the swelling's gone down in a few days, and sent me on my way.

Those next couple of days were bad, really bad. Despite all the kind ministrations of Ann, the pain was intense, and I had a bad time with the narcotic's effect on my tummy and environs (sparing you the details). Things were going from bad to worse, but after a couple sleepless nights and uncomfortable days the pain finally moved down the scale to an ache, and I was ready to see the doctor for his suggestions about what to do next: surgery, cast, or what?

After looking at the pictures, the doc gave his clinical analysis, "Boy, you busted that up pretty good." Translation: "Surgery Saturday morning". So that's where it stands now, even as we await more detailed instructions.

I have, during these travails, learned one important lesson, namely how hard it is to function with only one hand. Have you ever tried to peel a banana with one hand? Or how about that top button on your trousers, the one you have to suck in your breath to button? Or the usually simple act of tying your shoes? See what I mean?

Not to mention typing a blog with one hand!

Titles

2007-12-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

According to the Constitution of the United States of America (Art. 1, Sec. 9...and I haven't even had Constitutional Law yet), we don't in this country grant titles of nobility to citizens. Sounds pretty lofty and egalitarian.

Yet when we reflect on it, perhaps there are in fact titles we give to people, ordinary people, commoners even, who by virtue of education or politics or even sheer luck do have titles. Judge soandso. Dr. soandso. You get the idea!

All this has been stirring around in my mind since I came across a wonderful blog called simply, Dr. Tom Bibey's Blog. What especially interests me about Dr. Tom's blog is that he consistently identifies himself as Dr. Tom, and his role and work as a physician plays a prominent part in his jottings.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. What struck me about all this is my own reluctance to identify myself by my title. I carry it to extreme lengths, perhaps, but outside the world of the Church I would just as soon not be identified by title.

Part of that is my own paranoia (if that's the proper word) about the Preachers and Reverends and Fathers with whom I'd just as soon not be associated, thank you very much. Sure, it's a sort of an ecclesiastical snobbery going on here; the Homeboy likes to think of himself as a notch or two higher on the evolutionary tree than those still bogged down in 19th century theology and 18th century ethics. But I digress.

It's really a matter of power, as fellow blogger Ted Lehmann tagged it (He's actually a closet Dr., of Education!). Even a medic's staff, some of whom might have worked with him for years, call him Dr. Medic; surely they must know his first name, but don't count on them ever saying it out loud. And when Dr. Medic calls the restaurant for dinner reservations, you can bet he doesn't identify himself as Joe Medic. At least not if she doesn't want a decent table right away.

But what's a poor preacher to do? There are so many titles to identify her, and none really fit. There's preacher, which covers a minuscule part of the job description. The English favorite, parson, is one I always kind of liked but rarely heard. Father, in addition to being linked in my mind with our Roman Catholic clergy, also suggests a paternal role which I really don't want to exercise. And let's not even discuss Mother as a potential feminine clerical honorific.

Then there's the ever-popular "Reverend". Ignoring, at least for now, the grammatical problem of using the adjective as a noun, can you imagine calling your Congressional representative, Honorable? Don't make me laugh. The correct usage as a title is The Honorable... and the clergy's is The Reverend. I know it's a losing battle, like that over can vs. may or lay vs. lie. But again I digress.

Maybe a good way to wrap this up is to pass along a little quatrain (although there's a six line version which I can't recall)...

Call me Brother if you will,

Pastor, Teacher better still,

Minister, clergyman, counselor, friend,

Just never call me Reverend.

A---men.

Homeboy Reports returns!

2007-12-09T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are again! As you've already learned, this blog is back under a new title, "Homeboy Reports II". I gave some thought to calling it, "Son of Homeboy Reports" or "Return of Homeboy Reports", but they sounded, well, Hollywood-ish, so scrapped those ideas. So, while it will take a little while to get this back into the familiar shape, bear with me; we're off and running. It's been a long journey, from last Thursday's Homeboy Reports to today's Homeboy Reports II, and therein lies a tale. A whopper. A doozy.

It all began last Thursday. In the morning I cranked up the computer, signed on as always, went through the usual routine of checking email and reading newspapers, then went about the day's business. When I went through the same process that evening I was told by an Earthlink message that my email address, which I've been using for years, was refused or denied or excommunicated. I was locked out of my own computer. Not just my email, but since I've used "bob-ann@earthlink" as my log-in name for all the programs that require one, they had gone into hiding, too.

So I did the only reasonable thing a person could do: call Earthlink. After navigating a half dozen different menus, I finally contacted a living person. Living, that is, in Bangladesh. Or Mesopatamia. Or Jupiter. He spoke as though he was talking to me via a tin can and a long, long string. It was the most frustrating conversation I've ever had. Ann, who could overhear my end of it all, alternated between sympathy and laughter.

I spent the next 45 minutes trying to understand and then answer his questions as he searched for proof that this really was me on the phone, all to no avail. He kept asking me (I finally decoded) for the name of my first pet. My first pet? Can you imagine what that sounds like in broken English? I gave him the name of the only pet I could recall, but it apparently was not the right answer. We were getting nowhere fast.

I thought my problem was pretty simple and straight-forward: let me have my email address back. Well, think again. Nothing, in cyber-world, is ever simple or straightforward. Finally, he told me he could solve the problem by giving me a new email address. I recognized that this would be a nuisance, but exhausted by the whole experience, I said yes. Then I would just log on with that name and change back to my original.

Certainly the new name would be a variation of the original one, or perhaps some meaningless combination of letters and numbers. The name he gave me, carefully spelling it out for me, was (are you sitting down?) "soul4love@earthlink.net"! Perfect, just perfect. The address I've always wanted: soul4love. That will look just swell on my Church Pension Fund record. Plus, people might pay major bucks to get that address!

It was, however, easier for me to get it than it was to lose it, and after long struggles at my keyboard with the inner workings of Earthlink. I finally ditched "soul4love" and with a major sigh of relief got my old address, "bob-ann", back on line again. But hold on there, buckaroo...not so fast. There was one more dragon to slay.

I could get back into all my old programs and resources (Law School, newspapers, etc.) except for one: Blogger, the host program for this enterprise. They obviously have pretty high moral standards which "soul4love" did not meet, and Homeboy Reports became guilty by association. I had been cut off, terminated, defrocked, and orphaned. My harmless little Homeboy Reports had become anathema.

Back to the keyboard, this time dealing with the inner workings of Blogger, and to make a long story short wound up starting all over with this blog, Homeboy Reports II. Which you and others can now access (unless the Blogger censor is reading all this) and bookmark at www.homeboyreportsII.blogspot.com.

The moral to this sad and sordid tale? I'll let you identify it.