OUCH!

On Sunday afternoon, alone in our nearly empty house in MI, I fell from the top of a nine foot ladder and down a flight of eight wooden stairs. The ladder followed me down but, thankfully, landed on my legs and not my head. I went down the stairs on my back so I have bruises from my neck down to mid thigh. My right side escaped with only one small scrape and bruise but the left side must have hit the railing going down off the ladder and I am sporting several bumps, scrapes and bruises on that side. My left ankle is especially unhappy when I walk around.

Weird and fleeting thoughts that went through my head:

Oh great; these things always happen when I'm by myself with no phone.

How come on TV there's always something to grab onto?

Is this because I skipped church?

I think this happened in a dream once....

Wow! My glasses didn't come off!

Things really could have been a lot worse. If the steps had carpet on them I probably would have summer-saulted and been seriously injured. As it was, I was able to get up (slowly,) and walk away. Three quick release Tylenols made the drive back to Indy quite bearable. The real stiffness didn't set in until Monday morning and now I can take it easy for a day or two and begin to heal up. You can call me an optimist but I just say "God is good".

Anatomical fruit

Most days, I wake up feeling that my brain is like a plum, full of creative juices.

The unfortunate thing is that by supper all I usually have left is a prune.

Ethel again

With all the traveling we've been doing I hadn't been over to Ethel's for over a month so I popped in on Friday. Her kitchen, not large to begin with, was so crowded I could barely walk through. Plants cover one whole wall;large ones on the floor and smaller ones on tall stands or hanging in the window. A second wall is taken up with a large china cabinet, well packed. The kitchen table, which is pushed up against the plant wall and china cabinet wall, had only enough room to put the three loaves of bread she was just removing from the oven. The rest of it, as well as the counters, were covered with jars of freshly canned produce. Though most of it was salsa, both in pints and quarts, there was also a variety of fruits and pickles. She admitted to being so busy that she hadn't had time to make her bed. This woman is 92!! She had stacks of craft mags in the living room and several finished 'plastic canvas' projects neatly placed in ziplocs. She also does needle point and likes nature crafts. While I was there, someone brought her another bushel of tomatoes and she was delighted!

It's so inspiring to know that Wonder Woman lives five doors down....

Dental Drama

As I was driving back from the store yesterday I stopped at a red light. On one corner lot was a dentist's office. A boy and mom had just pulled into the parking lot on the side of the building. As soon as they were parked, the boy jumped out and ran ahead and, making sure his mom didn't see him, dove into the bushes in front of the building. I didn't get to see what followed but I'd have liked too!

Racial Musings Part III: A Long Way to Go

I'll let you know in advance that this will be difficult to wrap up and I apologize if I start rambling.
From sheltered Green Bay I moved to Grand Rapids, Mi at age 22. Here was my first encounter with black people who were not all well to do or well educated or even polite. I was distinctly embarrassed by my inability to understand many of them because of the heavy use of slang and a "black accent". Green Bay had poor areas of town but no slum areas or "hoods". I saw my first hooker, my first gang graffiti and my first drug dealer in GR. I know that a lot of this simply goes along with being in a bigger city (i.e., a city of 350,000 compared to a city of 90,000) but with the shock and embarrassment came the seeds of disdain and a sense of personal superiority. I also felt let down by the two black friends I made in my first year in GR when they both became pregnant out of wedlock. We all worked for a Christian publisher and had weekly chapels and prayer/share times so how could they do this? How could they not know any better? Didn't they know that they were perpetrating an ugly stereotype?

Being grieved over peoples' sin and failings would have been a lot more spiritually profitable than feeling anger or personal hurt. Grief leads rather easily to prayer while anger (sometimes useful if it's a "righteous anger",) usually leads to bitterness and pride. I needed lots of attitude checks in those early days of having my eyes opened. Praise God for the level headed people he placed in my life! They helped me be more discerning and make distinctions rather than generalizations as I sorted culture from race.

Every culture also has subcultures. While a race's general culture as a whole may be fine, there are always going to be subcultures which may be very destructive and undermining. Different crimes or problems* may appear to be more prevalent in one race than in another but that is a cultural thing, NOT a racial one. It's part of the old 'heredity vs. environment' thing. (*Some physiological problems do appear more in some races, i.e. sickle cell anemia in black females)
I happen to be having a real struggle with this again as our family is living in "the hood" for a year or so. Few people seem care about the trash laying around in their yards, or how foul their language is, or how rude they are yelling at each other under other people's windows at 2:00 a.m., or how they are completely blocking the road as they stop their cars to chat with each other or how loud their music may be or whose property has just been stolen.
Though I do not see eye- to- eye with Louis Farrakhan on many issues, he had a lot of good things to say about changing black society and the deteriorating culture of our country in general as he spoke here in Indy last night. He decried decaying sexual mores, drug use, violence, lack of education and the disrespect of men for women, adding that women have a responsibility to dress modestly. He made a very strong appeal for personal responsibility and respect for others.

Individuals. Every person unique. Each human being judged for who he or she is.
According to Galatians 3:28 God does not make distinctions among those who belong to Him; "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you all are one in Christ Jesus." If God sees His children as being of equal worth, should we not also see those who He made of being worthy of our individual attention? This being said, I do not expect an overnight change in my feelings or how I react when someone acts unkindly or thoughtlessly. What I do expect is that God, because I ask Him, will work in my heart to bring about a deep and lasting change in attitude which will become manifest in my feelings and reactions.

Racial Musings Part II: childhood

I am very thankful to have been born and raised in Green Bay, WI in the sixties. Racial tension was virtually unknown to those of my generation, being only a story of something that happened 'way down south or in BIG cities. I didn't meet any Hispanic people until collage or if I did, I never realized they were any different from me. We did have two Iranian kids at my high school and they were very cool.
In my three years of high school we had only one black student and she was the height of popularity, prom queen and all that . Does this sound strange? Remember, I'm talking about GREEN BAY. Mostly, when people hear that name they think football. Football players have status almost anywhere but we are talking small town here; and Title Town!! The Lombardi era and back-to-back Super Bowl wins and all that goes with such things. Football players had Status with a a capital "S". People loved to see their "boys" out in public but they weren't all easily recognized once out of uniform...except...for the black players. There were no other blacks except football player and their families and all were accorded the highest respect (at least by locals). They were all, from a child's perspective, wealthy, well educated and poised. Even into my college years there were relatively few blacks in GB and again, they were either there for football or to go to the university, proving, in my mind, that they deserved the "well educated" label.

In the first 22 years of life I didn't have a single bad experience with anyone of a different ethnicity than mine. FYI: by the time I got through college there was a growing Hispanic population and a fairly large population of Hmong (Asian). I also neglected to mention that the Oneida Indian reservation is adjacent to GB, the only really large minority group in the area.
My parents were careful how they spoke about other people and never gave us any reason to believe that prejudice was OK. I was blessed to be taught that each person was equal and judged on their own merit, not that of their race. Culture, however, is another matter....

Racial Musings Part I: My son

(This is the first of a three part series.)

Blaise, my eight year old, has a deliciously innocent view of racial differences. In our old neighborhood in MI, he had a couple white friends, (girls,) an Hispanic friend (Giovanni/"Joe")and a half-dozen black friends. He didn't have trouble remembering Joe's name but the girls were either "the one across the street" or the "girl down on our side of the the street". Similarly, the black kids apparently taxed his limited concentration/memory and were "my brown friends". I noticed that he never referred to anyone as black; always brown.

The new head of the maintenance dept. at Blaise's school was a black gentleman named Keith. Our church in Grand Rapids was kept in shape and running smoothly in all things physical by the amazing Michael Brown, a black gentleman of great mechanical and spiritual insights. When Blaise began greeting Keith in the halls at school by saying "Hi Mr. Brown!" I just assumed that he had the two men mixed up. One day, Keith asked Blaise about his use of the name "Mr. Brown", instead of his name, Keith. "Well," said Blaise, "You are brown!" Thankfully, this really tickled Keith instead of offending him so use of "Mr. Brown" continued.

Blaise's best friends in school last year were a little black boy named Vernon and a white girl named Elizabeth. I love the fact that race (and gender) mean nothing to him. These kids were nice and liked playing with him. What should be more important to a kid than that? Considering where we live and where he goes to school, most of his friends this year will be black. I hate to think of the day when the idea of 'political correctness' may creep in, making him and a lot of other little kids look at each other differently, more warily, less innocently.

Mom's REAL Vacation

Yippee! School started yesterday! I am down from three boys to one from 7:10a.m. until 3:30 p.m. I now have time to do laundry, dishes, vacuum, brush the dog, sit here, read (my own books as well as the 4 year old's,) and play pre-reader board games. There is no one for Camber to fight with and he hasn't yet developed a penchant for digging through the refrigerator
so life is considerably more relaxed. When the older boys come home I can be cheerful and calm. Now, if only the puppy would potty train....

HUH? But you just said....

Continuity is a rare and beautiful thing in the world of advertising. Just yesterday, I bought a jumbo size bottle of "Epil-Stop & Spray 6-in-1 Hair Removal System".

The box reads thus: "PERFECT FOR: Under Arms - Bikini Line - Legs - And More!"

The bottle says "IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE SPRAY ON FACE, NECK AND UNDERARMS." (italacs added)

Guess which company (Tactica International, Inc., NY, NY; www.epil-stop.com) is going to get a scathing e-mail?