Heaven’s Campus

My sweet friend Connie died Saturday. I’ve known Connie longer than either of us have known our husbands. Connie was the first friend I made after relocating to Oregon from Georgia. We met at Metropolitan Baptist Church.

It was an odd church, tucked up on the hillside overlooking the Beaverton/Hillsdale Highway. I don’t even know how it was I first came to attend that church. I probably looked it up in the Yellow Pages. (Ask a history teacher, they can explain the reference.) Knowing me the way I do, I probably turned to the “Church” section and looked until I found the only Southern Baptist Church in the Greater Portland region.

Mrs. Geri Moore introduced us. Mrs. Moore was our Sunday School teacher. She and Connie both had red hair, though Connie’s was natural and Mrs. Moore’s came from a bottle. I think she hooked us up because she was hoping some of Connie’s mannerly ways would rub off my rough corners.

It never happened. That Connie and I were friends at all befuddled many a person. As her eldest son once said, “I can’t believe my mother is friends with you.”

I wasn’t offended. I completely understood the incongruity of a girl raised up rightly in Portland’s West Hills friending a girl who was so clearly trailer trash, but friend me she did.

You don’t give it much thought, really, the way a good friendship evolves. One minute you’re the bridesmaid at her wedding and lickety-quick just like that you are preparing to speak at her funeral.

I hate death. Hate everything about it. I am no scholar, but I think it’s safe to assume that I know as much about what happens to folks in the hereafter as any other theologian holding forth over a brew. Fact is, at least I have come to these conclusions in a wide-eyed sober-minded fashion. I don’t drink beer.

As a girl who came to grief early in life, I’ve pondered these matters for decades. I read Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s book on dying when I was a freshman in college. I identified with the stages of grief. I was stuck in the anger stage for way too long. I longed to be free like the bird in the book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” Connie had a roommate at OSU who chose a seagull pattern to decorate her room at the Kappa house. Every time I saw that room I thought of that silly book.

I once interviewed Jerry Sittser, a professor at Whitworth College in Spokane. The good professor lost his mother, his wife and his 4-year old daughter in a head-on collision. I don’t know how to grieve the loss of one person that I love, much less three of them, but I remember he told me, “I lost my past, my present and my future.” He wrote an excellent book on grief titled “A Grace Disguised.”

But the best book I’ve ever read on grief remains “A Severe Mercy” by Sheldon Vanauken. I first read it when Tim and I started dating back in the 1970s (Ask a librarian. They can steer you to the Time/Life Magazines). Tim has long been a C.S. Lewis fan. I started reading Lewis because Tim read Lewis. It was easier than taking up basketball because Tim played it.

It’s a story of a widower’s grief. Sheldon’s wife, Davy, died from a liver problem, the source of which doctors never identified. I intended to name my youngest girl Davy after my father and after the Davy in Vanauken’s book. Now I’m glad I named her after my good friend Connie.

Vanauken says that grief is a form of love — the longing for the dear face, the warm hand.
“It is not the grief that cuts one off from the beloved but the void that is loss.”

Grief, he adds, acts as a shield against the void.

It’s that void, that separation, that causes us such unyielding pain. That’s why we can go years and not weep over the death of a loved one but then something will happen — you get a whiff of Dove soap and it reminds you of standing at the sink in Granny’s house washing your hands and the comfort of knowing she was in the next room, that you could run to her for a hug if you wanted and then you realize Granny is gone and it’s been decades since you’ve been able to bury yourself in her arms — that’s when the tears rush forth.

God never intended us to live in separation from Him or from each other. God is a Creator, not a Destroyer. Death is not his tool. It is his enemy. It says so, right there in the Word: “The last enemy that shall be conquered is death.” 1 Corinthians 15:26

I don’t know how that could be any clearer.

The victory of the Christian faith is that it offers us the hope of stepping over that chasm into the presence of Christ and our loved ones again someday.

It does not erase the aching or loneliness that we have in the here and now. It simply fills us with an eagerness for what the future holds. A world without separation.

If we could somehow realize that we are living in parallel times, sort of like those talked about in that book “A Wrinkle in Time”, we would understand that while we can’t run to our granny’s bosom any more, that doesn’t mean she isn’t present and maybe longing for the same thing herself.

Vanauken and C.S. Lewis discuss this notion in his book. That perhaps the dead go through their own grieving. I know that will bother those people who think Heaven as one big party-house, but I don’t see how a loving God wouldn’t weep over some of the things he’s privvy to. Of course, God weeps. Of course, there’s crying in heaven. There has to be. What else would mercy be but a recognition of the pain of another and a desire to embrace them in that moment?

I came to the conclusion years ago that going to heaven is like going off to college. Everyone feels fortunate to have gotten in. They realize what a costly admittance price was paid on their behalf. They are so excited for the opportunity to learn new things, make new friends, to study history and science and every other form of knowledge they’ve ever wanted to know about.

But sometimes in the early evening or first thing in the morning, or particularly on their birthdays, they realize how much they miss everyone back at home. So they call their mamas, or their girlfriends, or a favorite teacher, just to talk.

It’s a moment of melancholy. They are thrilled for the new adventure and no way would they pass up the opportunity to be where they are at. Heck no. The adventure is way too great. But still, there’s that separation. That recognition of the distance between them and the people they love.

C.S. Lewis told Vanauken, “It is remarkable (I have experienced it) that sense that the dead person is. And also, I have felt, is active: can sometimes do more for you now than before — as if God gave them, as a kind of birthday present on arrival, some great blessing to the beloved they have left behind.”

It bugs me that so many of my friends have left me for Heaven’s campus. But I get the benefit of having them look out after me. I know they are scheming up some great adventures and learning all sorts of new things that they will undoubtedly share with me.

That doesn’t diminish the ache I have for the adventures we are missing out on in the here and now. But I am eager to see the ways in which they reveal their presence to me in the days, weeks and years to come.

Meanwhile, I’m still stuck here in high school with the rest of you delinquents.

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Village Books in Bellingham

Shelby and I took a quick tour around Fairhaven, a historic area above the bay, just south of Bellingham. It was a beautiful day, a nice drive up.

One of the gals that Shelby works with now used to work here.

Murals grace many of the village’s buildings.

The bookstore overlooks this courtyard where we saw children playing Red Rover.

We even found the bookmobile. As a child, I loved when the bookmobile came by the trailer park. It was always a place to cool down (thanks to the van’s AC) and to take in the sweet smell of books. (Try replicating that, Kindle.)

Shelby found a beautiful dress that I would have bought for her but she said it was like wearing a corset — she could only take short breaths.

But, gosh, she looked just like an 1940s movie star in it.

As you enter Village Bookstore, there are these wonderful quotes right by the doors.

Lots of folks turned out and they asked some really challenging questions. I wish I could have taken them all out for coffee afterwards.

But instead I followed Carol out to Bayview Cemetery where I visited the gravesite of Agnes Ferngren. Where’s Your Jesus Now? is dedicated in part to Agnes, the woman who taught me the skill of nurturing and homemaking.

When I first attended Oregon State University, I lived with Agnes and her three daughters. Gary, an OSU prof still, was on teaching ship for the term. Shelby and I are going to visit one of those girls today. Anne-Marie is now grown and the mother of six children herself. The last a set of twin girls.

As we drove away, Shelby snapped this shot of the sun setting.

There is so much more to tell you about last night but I made a promise to not share the story until the other party involved is ready for me to share it. But as I stood at the foot of Agnes’s grave I wept over the way in the incredible, intricate ways in which God redeems our lives. Ways that do not diminsh the grace of the Cross but reiterates it.

Thanks to David at Village Books and to all of you who came out, especially to those of you who came long distances, physically and emotionally, to be part of the Village event.

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Stuff White Christians Like

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the result of having grown up in a region of the country where even my granny would pull back the curtain with her cane and comment,”There goes those (insert N-word) again.”

Poor white folks made it their business to mind what the poor black folks were doing. I never considered Granny anything but godly, but the truth was she was as racist as anyone else of her generation.

And mine.
Family myth claims my uncle was a card-carrying member of the KKK.

It’s probably not a myth.
From the time I entered school until I was in my second year of high school, the only blacks I encountered either mopped the floors or spooned up tater tots.

If you knew my granny you’d be shocked. She was the kindest, sweetest, most loving woman, but she simply didn’t know any different.
I didn’t either.

Until I was in high school.
That was when all hell broke loose.

Joe Kirkland got into a fight in the school parking lot. Somebody cut him bad with a switchblade. I heard tell his mama had to carry him to the hospital where he got 20 stitches. Brother Frankie got sent off to military school and Mama threatened to send me off to boarding school in Virginia until I put my foot down and told her if she even tried, I’d run off to Florida. Mama didn’t want any of her other children going to school with blacks but running off to Florida was considered a worse fate. Florida had drugs and the Hell’s Angels.
Blacks had head lice.

Blacks ran in gangs.
Blacks would rape white girls.

It all seems so far away to me now, like watching 8mm reel of somebody else’s life. But the truth is white people all over town started pulling their white kids out public school and sending them off to private “Christian” schools. Schools where white girls couldn’t come into contact with black boys.
It’s changed now. I was in Atlanta recently visiting a girlfriend. Her kids go to one of the region’s most elite private schools. It looked like a college campus. There were kids of every make and model there.

I saw interracial couples embracing on a pier at Mobile Bay and outside the Cameo Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
That would never have happened when I was growing up. Somebody, probably a lot of somebodies, would have snatched such a couple by the roots of their head for PDA back in the day.

My friend Ralph’s grandaddy was white. His Mee-maw was black. It was against the law for them to marry. So they shacked up at the end of a dirt road. Ralph said it was so his grandaddy could see if the lynch mob was coming for him.
When you grow up in that kind of world, it makes you sensitive to stuff that doesn’t bother other folk. So I simply can’t be objective about this. But when somebody told me to check out Stuff White Christians Like I didn’t like it.

Where I come from, it’s just not funny.
Not in the least.
You might understand if you’d grown up in the world I did.

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Jesus Cake

I remember a time ohnotsolongago when our youth group caught heck because we wanted to host a fundraiser for a choir trip. It wasn’t complicated. We planned to host a hot-dog feed on Wednesday night. Everybody was at church on Wednesdays anyway. We figured instead of asking folks for more money, we’d give them something in exchange — a slaw dog.

Ha.

Such a conipiton fit you’ve never seen the likes of erupted.

Allegations flew.

It would be akin to bringing money changers into the church, the staunch regime complained.

At the time, I thought it was absurd, the way those old folks were carrying on.

My gosh. Alls we wanted to do was raise money so we could go on a road trip singing about Jesus to the tune of the House of the Rising Sun.

Now, I wonder.

Stories like this one make me wonder where we went wrong.

Any ideas?

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Is texting an addiction?

Remember the post I wrote about Sexting? The practice of taking snapshots of a person’s privates and texting them to one another? Well, that piece was published in a newspaper. One of the paper’s regular readers saw it and sent me the following note. I thought I’d share it with you. Ask for your response?

 

Dear Karen:

I don’t usually respond to articles in the paper, but after reading your article about Teens/Sex/ and Cellphones, I had an incident that totally blew me away and I wanted to share it with you , as well as some other “phone incidents”.
 
The day that your article appeard in our paper was the beginning of State Exams in our high school for the second semester. M. came into class and asked if she could use her cell quickly, to show me a recent dog picture. As she scrolled throuhg her data, I mentioned your article about how teens are sending provocative pictures to one another and they are frequently posted on the internet. She said, “I don’t care if anyone wants to watch me have sex and take a picture of it…doesn’t hurt me.”

I pulled back, shocked of course, and said M., surely you don’t mean that? You wanna be like Paris Hilton? She exclaimed..”I’d die to be her best friend. She’s the best. She’s rich, she’s sexy and I would want to be just like her.” Of course I threw up in my mouth a little, and exclaimed how she has no soul. M. exclaimed that Paris has plenty of money and she’d rather have that any day over a soul.” M. is 15 years old.
 
As a classroom teacher, finding little support from parents and school board members regarding cell phones and the battles we have with them, I perceive it as an addiction in the truest sense of the word. I have seemingly nice, respectful students, sneak and lie to be able to use their phones. Many of them feign illness just to leave class so they can text or call home directly rather than go the traditional route of office, parent and then student. They want what they want..now. I’ve had caring and productive students turn in to withdrawal monsters when they ar caught and asked to give up their phones. Recently, one very smart, academically gifted student, yell and scream, “I’m gonna kill somebody” after I took his phone.

When I called home to tell his Mom about the incident and let her know that our school doesn;t tolerate threats, she never apologized to me as a parent and agreed that he had a problem with his cell. With the pressures of my accountability to No Child left Behind and our own ranking system, cell phones are a continual distraction even by the kids who pay attention, constantly checking them on the sly without hesitation. School has digressed into a “mall mentality” and will continue a downward spiral with all blame going to the teachers because we can;t upset the tax-paying parents.
 
No one needs to be that connected and they should be banned from schools period. We had an EC (Exceptional Children) student who had 2 phones confiscated. One was to run his business and the other was for personal use. The parent was planning to sue because his business phone was turned on and images of naked girls were on his screen. The parent never once scolded the child.
One vocational teacher took a picture of one kid’s phone that had the test answers texted on it. The stories go on and on. It is a battle every day to follow the rules and many teachers just look the other way because they can’t take the disrespect time after time.

One of our expelled students was killed during a apartment invasion and within 10 minutes, kids were barging out of classes screaming and cursing because even though he was a Gang member, many students “loved” him and were out for blood. It was a scene out of a twilight zone movie. they corraled the distraught kids int the media center, mobilized out county grievance counselors and as I sat in the media observing, they were being screamed and cursed at because they wanted to kill the person who shot their friend, regardless of tha fact that he had broken into an apartment specifically to kill the residents. they went to the wrong apartment.
 
The last story occured at our school Improvement Team meeting last year as we were desperately trying to figure out a way to control the cell phone addiction. Grantd, the “good” kids just want to exercise their selfish behavior, but our gang and thug population break many rules and skip,etc. through their phones. It’s a criminal’s savior.

At any rate, we have to have a parent rep at our meetings and this one happened to be one of the Student Governemnt’s Moms and she was delightful. When we got to the part about the phones, she had to chime in to tell her story.

She proceeded to say how in the past, she would always defend the students (her daughter) because there were “good” kids who didn;t have that compulsion or lack of respect. Then she told us how she had gotten really angry with her daughter and took her cell phone away as a consequence. Being suspicious, she left the phone on the next day and her daughter received over 100 text messages all day long. She removed that program and now has completely changed her opinion about their addictive nature.Her honors level daughter was one of the deceitful types when it came to her phone and texting.
 
So thank you for the opportunity to share some of my stories and also do a little “shrinking” on myself. It always feel good to share some truths with others. Our young people never have to sit and think about life,love, or their future. There is always a cell phone.
 
Thanks again for your time.

A. C.Teacher (20+ years)

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My Three Virgins

I raised three girls who are hip, stylish, smart, engaging, sexy and virginal.

Okay. Well, that’s not exactly true. Ashley is married so she no longer fits the classification but up until she took that oath of allegiance to the man of her choosing, she had remained abstinent. Constance, the youngest of my three daughters is getting married later this summer. Like her sisters before her, she has also waited.

Her doctor went slack-jawed when she told him that.

“I’m getting married soon and I need birth control,” Constance said.

“Well what are you using now?” the doctor asked.

“Ummm..Abstinence,” she answered.

“Abstinence?” the confounded doctor repeated.

“Uh, yeah,” Constance answered. “It’s worked for the past 24 years.”

He laughed and shook his head in that disbelieving way of some people.

“Is there something wrong with that?” Constance asked.

“No,” he said. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve heard that.”

When my daughter told me that story I asked her if the doctor’s reaction made her feel bad about herself, her choices.

“No,” she said. “It makes me feel like a celebrity.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, chuckling. (If there is one thing my youngest daughter doesn’t lack it’s a healthy-esteem. She was born with it.)

“The look of shock on the faces of people when they find out I’m still a virgin,” Constance said. “They think that’s so awesome. They all say that you don’t see that very much.”

Besides, she noted, she’s seen the emotional distress that her friends have endured because of careless casual sex.

 There is no such thing as causal sex. It’s a misnomer. A lie. I know. It was because of me that my daughters all made the choice to wait.

 “I didn’t want to end up like you,” Constance said.  

 Shelby is 27 and the family’s only remaining bachelorette. She says that from the beginning, her decision to remain a virgin until marriage has been a faith choice.

 “A choice based out of my faith in God and a personal choice because my mother had an abortion at age 17 and I’ve seen the effects of that upon her life.”

She referred to me as if I was someone else. As if I wasn’t the one asking her all these questions. As if I wasn’t the one who’d had the abortion.

“Certainly her abortion was a catalyst for making the choices I’ve made,” she said.

 I worry sometimes that maybe I’ve scarred my kids with a red-letter A for the rest of their lives. Maybe I raised them in a bubble, for a world that no longer exists.

                                                                                                                                        ______

Brooke Shields recently said her biggest health regret is that she waited too long to have sex. She was 22 when she lost her virginity. “I wish I had just gotten it over with in the beginning when it was sort of OK,” Brooke said. “I think I would have been much more in touch with myself. I think I wouldn’t have had issues with weight.”

Shelby has never had issues with weight. She was a runner in high school and college. She’s fit and makes good eating choices. Thankfully, none of my girls have been troubled with the eating disorders that have plagued their mother.

Still, I worry. So I asked my daughters if they regretted being virgins.

“Absolutely not,” Shelby said. “I don’t know Brooke Shields personally, but it sounds like she’s equating her body image with sexual activity. My choice to abstain from sexual activity has nothing to do with my self-image. It does define part of who I am, but it’s a matter of who I am at the core, not who I am in outward appearance.”

Shelby works in the legal field of domestic relations. Co-workers who know she’s a virgin refer to her as “The V.” They don’t understand why anyone would choose virginity over unbridled sex.

“You hear it all the time,” Shelby said. “They can’t imagine having sex with one person for the rest of their lives. I know that I’m counter to that culture. I am probably perceived as being very strange or odd. Those who don’t know me would probably consider me a freak or religious fanatic. That’s okay. I think differently than they do. I think how great would it be to only share that kind of intimacy with one person?”

                                                                                                                              __________

Ashley hates that her sister is mocked for choosing to remain a virgin. Shelby and Ashley are identical twins. They have always been very protective of one another. But Ashley understands that such mockery is common in today’s culture. Her friends poked fun of her, too, before she married.

 “My friends thought that our wedding night was going to be terrible because neither one of us knew what we were doing,” Ashley said. (Her husband was a virgin, too.)  

 But all those worries were for naught.

 “My friends were basing their fears on their own experiences,” Ashley said. “Because they’d had sex in high school that was not that good.”

Ashley said she would have married her husband whether or not he was a virgin because she loved him. She’s bothered that the church sometimes pressures kids into marriage just so they can have sex, but Ashley is not the least bit unnerved by the notion that she’ll only have sex with one person her entire life.

“It’s a picture of intimacy that God has with the church,” Ashley said. “I can’t imagine wanting to have sex with anyone else.”

 What about those friends who didn’t wait, the ones who worried about her frigidity?

“I have one friend whose sex life was much better before she was married,” Ashley said. “She’s been married awhile and does not have sex that often.”

 Brooke Shields is applying flawed logic. Having sex at a younger age would not have ensured her a healthier body image. In fact, studies have shown that the younger a girl is when she becomes sexually active the more prone she is to a whole host of problems. The younger a girl is when she has sex the greater the age difference between her and her partner. The greater the age difference, the less likely she is to use contraceptives and the more prone she is to disease and unintended pregnancy.  Well, you get the picture.

I’d wager that the former child star’s self-esteem issues didn’t grow out of a longing for sex, but a longing for acceptance.

Isn’t it about time we helped our sons and daughters understand the difference?

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Under the skirt and Between the Covers

So you all know that I’m in Bend visiting the girls, helping Konnie with the wedding planning. How would you like to take a peek at the dress? I mean if you promise not to tell anyone? Especially not Jon? Konnie’s pretty old-fashioned. She doesn’t want him to see her in the dress until she’s walking with her daddy. But if you pinky-swear not to tell anyone I’ll let you take a peek…

 

I told you it was just a peek. This is Shelby upside down inside the dress.

You’ll have to wait till September to see the real thing.

But I did happen upon the most wonderful bookstore today and I took photos of it just for you. Shelby had told me about it and suggested I go by. I went over this morning and met Hayley, the owner of BETWEEN THE COVERS.

This is the photo that owner Hayley Wright keeps on the counter. It’s a picture of her when she was growing up in the very same Bend neighborhood where her bookstore is now located at on the corner of Delaware and Bond Street. Just up the road from my favorite coffee shop Strictly Organic.

Hayley opened the bookstore a little over a year ago. Shortly after I left for Alabama. She knew nothing about owning a bookstore.

“I didn’t even know what a POS meant,” Hayley said.

That’s Point of Sale for all the others out there who don’t make their living in retail.

Hayley has long been a reader. She loves books of all variety. Always has. But she was busy living the good life in Bend. Her husband is a plumber by trade and during the boom years in Bend he was making more than enough money.  Hayley said she couldn’t have imagined needing any more money that what they had at the time. They invested in property and other things. They built a big home. She’d been at home, raising her daughter. But figured, well, maybe she’d go back to school, get her Masters in Social Work.

“You sure that’ll make you happy?” her husband asked.

“I don’t know,” she told him.

“Well if you could do anything what would it be?” he asked.

“I’d buy the old grocers and open a bookstore,” Hayley said.

And that’s how it came to pass that during one of the nation’s worse economic markets Hayley Wright opened a bookstore.

Hayley is quick to point out that the bookstore actually opened just a few months before the bottom dropped out. When she and her husband were flush with cash.

Now they live upstairs.

Above the books.

Last Saturday they woke to see the balloons rising over Bend out the window at the back of the house. The one that overlooks the courtyard where Hayley sometimes hosts author events.

The store is spacious.

It has these cozy corners for reading or visiting.  

And Hayley keeps a shelf of candy because when she was a little girl growing up in this neighborhood she loved making afternoon trips to the candy store. Most book lovers would probably cringe at the thought of a sucker in a bookstore but Hayley’s store is kid-friendly. She told her daughter, 11, that one day she’s going to write the sentence: “When I was growing up above the bookstore…”

The Wrights moved into their bookstore because they own it and they can rent out the big house where they used to live for income. Owning any business  in this economy is tough. It’s especially so for locally-owned bookstores. People just don’t read like they used to. What with video games to play. I was visiting a manager of another bookstore recently — one of those chain stores — and I swear to the barefooted Bigfoot if he didn’t say these exact words to me — “I don’t read much.” That’s like having a doctor say, “I don’t treat sick people much.” 

Okay. So reading is down. Book buying is down. The economy is down. Building is down. Plumbers who were once flush with cash are now seeing their futures in the toliet.

It’s tough out there.

That’s why I admire people like Hayley even more.

I read a quote the other day. It said, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'”

That’s the kind of courage that a bookstore owner or any other small business owner needs in this economy. Just the courage to say, okay, I’ll keep putting one foot in front of another.

Like me, Hayley grew up in a trailer. She said they lived in a single-wide for a split-second before moving on to the Doublewide. I told her how when I was growing up in the single-wide I thought anybody with a Doublewide was rich. We laughed.

Wealth is measured more by perception more than dollars and cents.

We are all more blessed than we realize.

We are all more wealthy than we understand.

Hayley says these lean times are making her appreciate life so much more.

We think we want life on Easy Street but in truth when we have it, it bores us to death.

Life is meant to be a ride.

We need to learn to enjoy the adventure as we go.

 So the next time you are in Bend, stop by Between the Covers. Say hello to Hayley and the crew. And no matter what neighborhood your live in, buy local. Support your Independent Bookstores. And be sure to run your hands over the bookshelves. They were made by the very same folks who made the ones in that old Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flick “You’ve Got Mail.”

And be sure to ask Hayley and her crew for their recommendations.  As Hayley says, “Book lovers never have to go to bed alone.”

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NYTimes

You read it here first. That Q&A I did a few posts back with author Patti Callahan Henry.

Henry hit the NYTimes bestseller list for the first time ever with her current release, Driftwood Summer.

Just wanted you to know for breaking news and hilarious tales of adventures, bookmark this site.

Patti, who is a sweet and funny friend, called to share her tears of joy with me. It’s always thrilling to see a friend rewarded for their hard work.

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Summer Storm

I’m in Bend this week visiting the girls. I told them when I got back from North Carolina I’d come hang out with them for awhile and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing this week.

Konnie has had the past couple of days off work because she works those jarring hospital hours that will have her working all weekend long. So we’ve spent the time running around doing that thing brides and their mothers do. We’ve met with the florist and made runs to the craft store. We picked out music and talked with musicians. We ran by the church office and the bridal store.

It was such a beautiful day in Central Oregon that what we should have been doing was hiking.

But at noon, Konnie talked with Jon, who warned us that there was going to be some afternoon thunderstorms.

Boy. Howdy.

We’d run by St. Charles so Konnie could tend to a couple of things and when we came back out there was lightening over them thar hills.

One of her coworkers had ridden her bike to work. Konnie commented that there was no way her friend was going to be able to ride her bike home. Within seconds of that remark, pellet-sized hail started falling around us. Kids walking home from school put up their arms, their hoods, to shield the onslaught.

Konnie couldn’t get my defrost to work so she turned the windshield wipers to high gear. Still ice began to build on the windows, the doors, the sunroof.

The pellets came down harder, thunder shook the car, wind blew back the limbs of trees like hair on a Harley rider. Traffic inched along. Kids began running for cover.

A river of water and ice ran downhill. Kon turned left through a light and we pulled off the main roadway. The ice had gotten so thick on the windows that the arm of the wiper on the driver’s side window went spastic and upended itself. It jutted backwards between the rearview mirror and the driver side door. Konnie couldn’t see a thing.

She parked the car under a massive tree.

“I hope lightening doesn’t hit it,” I said, ever the imaginative writer and freak of a mother.

“I can’t see to drive,” Konnie said.

“You have get out and fix that wiper,” I offered.

“I can’t get out,” Konnie noted, wisely. “If I open my door, I’m going to break off the wiper.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right,” I said, ever the logistically-challenged one. Then it struck me. I had one of the most lame ideas of my lifetime. (I’m being optimistic here).

There was no way I was getting out of the car. The roadway was a sheet of ice. I had on flip-flops.

“I’ll go through the sunroof and fix it,” I said pushing the button that opened the roof.

Konnie screamed “NOOOOO!!!” as inches of ice fell in on our heads, our arms, down our shirts, on our phones, into our purses.

Two Venti cups of hail.

That’s how much we recovered from our laps after I realized that I couldn’t fix the wiper by going through the sun roof.

I peeled off my wet shirt. Wiped down the car as best I could. Slipped on the sweatshirt I’d carried with me that day, just in case we were in a place with air conditioning and I got cold.

Then I crawled out of my already wet seat and sloshed barefooted through the ice to try and fix the windshield wipers. I did a good enough job that Konnie could get out on her side. She repaired both wipers while we waited, wet and cold for the freak storm to pass.

I had to remind myself that it really is June in Central Oregon.

Good thing Shelby had that homemade soup in the frig. Konnie warmed herself up with a bowl soon as we paddled back across town.

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Update on the Subway Ad

First thing this morning I got this email from Jan Scruggs, CEO of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. He was asking that anyone concerned about an ad depicting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial but in reality listing the names of shops at Tyson’s Corner please contact a reporter at the Washington Examiner.

I sent off a note as did as did Marsh Carter, Chairman of the NY Stock Exchange and a two-tour Vietnam veteran. Carter sent me a note as soon as he contacted the reporter at the Examiner.

I asked many of you to contact the Examiner as well. Not because they were responsible for the ad but because they have the power to put the screws to the folks who did. And that’s exactly what happened. Thank you for writing those notes.

Here’s the follow-up article by the Examiner. Now would you please write a note and thank Michael for doing his job well and for bringing the appropriate attention to this poorly-contrived and executed ad?

Michael Neibauer
The Washington Examiner 
202-459-4948
mneibauer@dcexaminer.com

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Rethinking retirement

Konnie made us dinner last night. She’s really working on those homemaking skills of hers. She made these wonderful pita sandwiches with toasted almonds. That got me to thinking how far would you travel for a good meal? This Minnesota couple are eating their way across America via the FoodNetwork Channel. I don’t know how they have time to watch it, given the amount of time they spend eating and driving.

Asked why they chose to spend their retirement this way, Jane said it was because they’ve lost so many friends over the past few years.

Now that’s my idea of heaven — eat your way there.

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A Walk-About

We planned a hike. Not a long one. Just a day hike along the river. We arose on Sunday morning, the sky was perfect, not a cloud in it. But by 9 a.m. it looked like the above photo.  But do you see that look on Molly’s face? That’s how disappointed she and Poe both would have been if we hadn’t kept our promise to hike something.

So Sheryle, Tim and I headed off to Wallowa Lake, figuring we could at least take the dogs for a “walk-about.” That’s what Tim called it anyway.

This is the first lake my kids swam in and it is also the lake where Tim had his Come-to-Jesus moment. He’d nearly wrecked a motorcycle after hitting a rock in the road as he cruised around Wallowa Lake. Sheryle likes to bring her kayack up here at night and watch the moon come up over the moraine. She and Chuck used to kayack together up here but Chuck died a year ago of lung cancer. In September he and Sheryle had hiked up to the high lakes and a few short months later he was diagnosed with lung cancer. A few short weeks later, he was dead. We are all in shock over it still.

How does that happen to a perfectly healthy man? A man who never smoked? When our children were little I think we spent nearly every weekend with Chuck and Sheryle and their kids. We played Bunco. We watched movies. The kids played He-Man and Barbies, never together, though. You couldn’t cross genders in those days.

On Memorial Day weekends we would head off to the hot springs for a weekend of camping. The last time we did that we got snowed on, which explains why it was the last time we did that.

I think what I miss most about Chuck is his laughter. He laughed like one of those Saturday morning toon characters. A deep-throttle laughter. Chuck was laughing all the time.

Don’t tell anyone but Sheryle did find a new fella up at the lake, on our walk-about.

He’s not quite as good-looking as Chuck was, and he doesn’t dress nearly as well, but he has an ability to make a person laugh and that can be an endearing quality in most anybody.

Fortunately for us the clouds parted and we did not get rained on during our walkabout. It had rained buckets for two nights prior. But we managed to walk from the lake up to the powerhouse and back down to the lake again. It wasn’t as pretty a hike as it would have been along the river, but it was enjoyable.

And the best part of all is we didn’t get our shoes muddy.

Even Poe kept his paws clean.

Rain or shine. It’s always a good day for a walk-about.

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Computer Hell

I confess. I’m hard on laptops. Call it hazards of the job. I’m an author by day and a blogger by night. On average I spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours typing and/or researching. On some projects, I’ve been known to spend up to 15 hours with the trustworthy hardware that portends it’s my brain.

One of my biggest fears is losing the brain that is my laptop. Or, worse yet, having it stolen. I’ve been known to put the laptop in the car for trips to the grocery store, just in case somebody breaks into the house while I’m away. Think that’s silly? A writer friend of mine who lives in an upscale neighborhood in Atlanta had someone break into her home and steal hers – while she and her husband were home! They were upstairs and didn’t hear the thief rumbling around her office downstairs. I think the slime-balls who steal laptops ought to be sentenced to re-education camps where they are subjected to endless hours of prattle produced by the people who staff the “Repair and Technical Help” of any of the computer manufacturers. I don’t know what your idea of hell is, but that’s mine.

I can honestly say that I have never once been helped by any of them. And it didn’t matter what brand of computer I bought – Dell, HP, Toshiba. (I can’t afford a Mac, so I can’t speak for them). Here’s my theory: the folks hired for these jobs are really ex-cons. Their only job requirement is an uncanny ability to blame-shift. Whatever has happened, however it happened, it’s somebody else’s fault and the company they represent are just the innocent blokes who are now being falsely accused of poor performance, lousy management, inferior quality, or simply scamming the average consumer. Trust us. Nobody at (insert your own manufacturer here) is trying to rip off Joe Q. Public.

That was the message Melinda at HP rattled off when I called her about the laptop that my son sent in for repairs last week. My husband bought two laptops for Christmas. One for our son and one for our daughter. For the record neither my son nor my daughter are hard on their computers. Stephan’s an actor. Shelby works in a law firm. They do not take their laptops to work with them. They do not shove them under airplane seats or wrangle them through airport security the way I do. At the most they are on their laptops a couple of hours a day. They keep their laptops on a desktop in their respective homes and take care not to mistreat them in any form or fashion. My kids are anal that way. You’d think they were dealing with the Holy Bible or some other sacred scrit.

But it appears that laptops are like some people, the better you treat them the more fragile they become. Three weeks ago, Stephan’s laptop screen went black. Just kaput. He’d booted up and was getting ready to check his emails when all of sudden a flash of darkness entered the room. So Stephan packed it off and sent the computer off to the helpful folks at HP.

“It’s going to cost $417. 90 to replace the cracked LCD screen,” Melinda said. (The laptop only cost $450.)
“But isn’t it under warranty still?” I asked.
“Yes,” the former fugitive said. “But no damage is covered under standard manufacturer warranty.”

She said that in such a way that I thought perhaps I’d called the wrong number.
“Who’s the manufacturer then?” I asked.
“HP,” she said.
“What good is the manufacturer warranty if it doesn’t cover any damage?” I asked.

At this point, Melinda got testy and a flash of her criminal past surfaced.
“The warranty is available for anyone to download and read the details of online,” she responded.

Anyone with a working LCD screen, I was tempted to respond but refrained from doing so. The last thing I want to do is tick off an ex-con with connections to the Internet Mafia. No telling what sort of nasty viruses I am liable to be subjected to if Melinda tracks me down.

“How exactly does one end up with a cracked LCD screen if one isn’t prone to abusing one’s computer?” I asked in a voice void of tone.
“It can actually get cracked by opening or closing it,” Melinda said. “Or by applying too much pressure when adjusting the screen.”
“But the computer is only six months old,” I said. “If my son isn’t throwing his computer around, or abusing it, how can it be his fault that this happened?”
“I didn’t say he was throwing his computer around and I didn’t say it was his fault,” Melinda said. She’s just saying it ain’t HP’s fault: “The damage isn’t caused by the unit manufacturer.”

Bummer about the screen, dude, but hell no, HP ain’t taking responsibility for producing a lousy product. Sucks to be you, man.

Next time get your daddy to buy you a Mac.

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Speech given at Portland’s Vietnam Memorial

The similarities between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam, the war that my own father fought and died in, have been the topic of much debate. Everyone it seems has an opinion about it, from the local news anchor to the barrista at the local coffee shop.

They claim both wars were poorly conceived and poorly executed. Both misguided and hastily entered into. My friend and fellow compatriot military correspondent Joe Galloway says the parallels between Vietnam and the war in Iraq didn’t begin overseas, but in DC. Never one to mince words, Galloway doesn’t shy away from putting blame where he thinks it’s most deserving.

“It took Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon nearly a decade to fail in Vietnam,” Galloway said. “Cheney and Rumsfeld could do it in Iraq in a year.”

I suppose the wrangling over these wars and others to follow will continue long after you and I give up the ghosts of our nightmares past.

At least I hope they do, because for me FREEDOM means living in a country where wars should always be a matter of fierce debate, not a matter of accepted fate. But it’s not the similarities between these wars that I want you to consider today. Rather it’s some of their differences that I bring you:

– Today’s troops eat better. They don’t have to raid the chicken house in hopes of having a hot boiled egg. Their meals are often catered by American contractors. Although to be fair, the Vietnam veteran did have a better choice of drink – warm Tiger beer instead of blue Gatorade.

– Unless he was a career soldier, the Vietnam soldier did not have to serve more than one tour. He could volunteer for more, and many did.

– During Vietnam, exceptions to military service were rare. Today only one-half of one percent of today’s population serves in uniform. They carry the burden of freedom for the rest of us, over and over again, on multiple tours to the front lines. Many of those troops serving and dying are women.

– An average 66,800 causalities were carried off the battlefield of Vietnam during the peak years between 1966 and 1969. The average for Iraq during it’s peak between 2004 to 2008 was 6,500. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it’s due in part to the small percentage of people caring the burden for the rest of us.

– During the Vietnam war military widows and their families were given 30 days to vacate military housing following the death of a loved one. Today they are allotted a year.

 – The death benefit for families during Vietnam was $10,000. It had remained unchanged since World War II. Today Gold Star families receive up to half-a-million dollars, as long as their loved ones pay for and plan for that option.

These changes are a direct result of the advocacy work of Vietnam Veterans and their families and military organizations like VVA, DAV, American Legion, VFW, Gold Star Wives, Gold Star Moms and many others.

There’s one final difference. When my father died in 1966, I was 9 years old. I was in college by the time that war ended. From the time he died until I was in my late 30s I did not talk about my father or how he died. I felt a shame I could not explain. As if I had done something very bad that had caused his death.

Throughout my growing up years, Vietnam veterans were vilified for doing what America’s policymakers had called them, alas, commanded them to do – serve their country. Vietnam veterans were treated with disdain, and their families were treated even worse. Right here in Oregon, war widows were threatened by so-called peace activists.

As a child I didn’t understand that the people burning effigies of soldiers weren’t necessarily mad at my father. As a child I couldn’t make the distinction between the soldier who served and the unpopular war he served in. And neither could most of our citizenry. We weren’t only at war in Vietnam, we were at war with ourselves.

It took me buckets of tears and hours of prayer to sort this all out but I’ve finally come to a peaceful place. A place where I proudly speak the name of my father – Staff Sgt. David P. Spears – and of the life he gave for his family and his country.

Contrast that to my friend Destre Livuadais. Destre’s father, Staff Sgt. Nino Livaudais, was killed in Iraq. Destre and his brothers Carson and Grant spend a week during the summers with my husband Tim and I. We go hiking. We make trips to the Hermiston’s library and pool. We watch the pelicans feed at McNary Dam. Sometimes at night, after I’ve read Destre and his brothers a bedtime story and said a prayer with them, my heart aches so badly I find it difficult to breath. I see in Destre the child that I was, the child who misses the father who loved her.

Destre was 5 and living in Alabama when his daddy died. He’s 11 now and lives in Salt Lake City. During his last visit to our home I asked Destre if he tells the other kids about how his father died.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it hurts to talk about my dad,” he said.

“I understand that.”

“And there’s one more reason.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Because the other kids think it’s cool when a soldier dies in war. I know it’s not. I know it hurts.”

If Destre’s right. If kids think it’s cool to die in war, how then do we differ from the jihadists?

A Vietnam veteran friend recently shared these words with me. They were penned by his son, who has been serving on the front lines in Iraq:

Looking through the eyes of those before my generation, I see strength. Combat medic, supply, infantry, or whatever you may have done. You have seen the horrors of war. Families awakened in the middle of the night, houses blown into particles, kids running through the street because their family has just been killed, your friend dying in your arms. When I look at myself, I know that my eyes have not seen the worst. Only a glimpse of what happened to you. So as I lay in bed at night, why do I have nightmares?

 As a nation we have learned some hard lessons. Because of the promise you made to your fallen comrades, to never forget, today’s soldier is given a warm send-off and a hero’s welcome home. Just as it should be. Just as it should have been when you and my father served.

But as Vietnam veterans and their families, our mission will never be complete until we help this nation understand that for children like Destre and men like this young soldier serving now the pain of war continues long after the bombing stops.

Thank you for your faithful service to this country – then and now.

Welcome Home, friend. Welcome Home.

Copyright by Karen Spears Zacharias.2009.

 

Vietnam Memorial, Portland, Oregon

 

With Roger Fuchs and his beautiful family. That FNG pin stands for FINE NICE GIRL, the vets tell me.

That’s the 25th Infantry standing guard.

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