It's Friday and the last day of February. It seems trite to state the obvious, but time passes more quickly as I age. Months go by so quickly that I am surprised by the passage of time. There have been a lot of things about retiring that have been different than I expected. Before I retired, I thought that the pace might slow down when I got retired. I would have more time for hobby projects, more time to sit and read, more time to work in the garden, more time to go for walks and take trips. Five years in, the pace of my life doesn’t seem to have slowed. The next few weeks seem pretty hectic with a trip to Cleveland, several events involving our grandchildren that I don’t want to miss, a couple of important doctor’s appointments, and a list of undone chores at home. To add to the sense of not having enough time, I have a summons for jury duty next week. That might mean I need to make a phone call and won’t have to report. It will likely mean that I need to report on Monday but will not be empaneled and will have the rest of the week off. It could, however, mean that I will be selected to serve on a jury, which could be a process completed in a day or take more than a week.

A little uncertainty is good for me. I don’t want to fall into my routines so much that I get stuck in my ways. One of the blessings of my life is that there has always been a degree of uncertainty combined with a degree of flexibility in the work I do. When I was working, a call might mean I needed to go out in the middle of the night for a couple of hours, but I might also have the flexibility to nap after lunch the next day. There are just a few jobs that I have had in my life that involved punching a time clock. Mostly, I didn’t have to think about how many hours I worked. I thought about work to be accomplished and kept working until the job was completed. Of course, I have always had deadlines. As a student, work needed to be completed to earn grades. As a working preacher, I had to be prepared for Sunday worship each week regardless of what other tasks also had to be done.

Unlike some places where I have lived, the end of February brings definite signs of spring. There is a daffodil blooming in our front bed, and many other bulbs are producing growth. Our daughter-in-law said she got peas planted yesterday, and some of my neighbors were mowing their lawns this week. I’ve got a bunch of mulch in the back of my pickup that must be unloaded and spread in various beds around our yard. The back fence needs to be painted. I can find a long list of seasonal chores to add to my to-do list.

Yesterday, we were in Skagit County, about 50 miles south of our home, and we noticed that the Trumpeter Swans and Snow Geese are starting to gather in the fields, preparing for their trip north. The Canada geese are ahead of them, and we’ve seen quite a few heading north over the past few weeks. Trumpeter Swans and Snow Geese are around about half of the year, but with warmer temperatures, they have been leaving a bit earlier in recent years.

They weren’t the only ones heading north. When we travel north on the Interstate, we pass a sign that gives the wait times for border crossing. Usually, wait times are less than five minutes, so people are used to crossing the border frequently with little difficulty. Yesterday, however, the crossing preferred by the big trucks showed wait times of more than 40 minutes. That is the longest wait time since a Taylor Swift Concert in Vancouver backed up traffic at the crossing enough to create gridlock in town.

Delays can occur for a variety of reasons. A single vehicle that sets off a full inspection can back up traffic. Most often, the delays are caused by increased traffic. The big trucks hauling all kinds of goods are part of a scramble of merchants trying to ensure their inventory is on the right side of the border when tariffs are imposed. The thread of hefty tariffs going into effect has many companies trying to get their goods to Canada ahead of next week’s expected impositions.

The geese and swans don’t bother going through the border crossings, and so far Customs and Border Protection haven’t been stopping them when they fly or swim across the border. I’ve even seen geese boldly walking across the border at peace park, and unlike human pedestrians, they encounter no contact with border patrol.

An international border is an artificial line in many ways. Not only do wild animals cross without being noticed, but there are also lots of families with members that live on both sides of the border. A family dinner might involve border crossing. Children who live at Point Roberts can attend elementary school in their town, but when they get to high school, they ride a bus that crosses into Canada, then crosses back to the US on their way to school and do two more border crossings on their way home. We have friends who live in the US and work in Canada and know others who live in Canada and work in the US.

Border crossings from Canada to the US are down by 30 to 40 percent in recent weeks. Our neighbors are feeling a bit of animosity over the rhetoric of the US President since the inauguration. He does seem to be confused about who your closest allies are and often speaks of friends as if they are enemies and cozies up to bullies and dictators as if they are friends. Enough Canadians have taken offense for local restaurants, gas stations, and shops to notice.

Spring brings lots to do. March brings lots to observe. Life goes on with a rapid pace, and the list of chores grows longer. Things are pretty normal around here.

I had a flat tire on my bicycle yesterday. Flat tires happen to those who ride bikes, especially those of us who ride a lot, and where there are blackberry canes that lie across paths and roads. I don’t know for sure what caused this particular flat tire. Some debris might have been left on the road. One of the things about riding a bicycle with an electric boost is that I go farther from home and therefore have the possibility of having a flat tire farther from home. In most situations, this is not a big problem. I have the tools and a portable pump on the bike with me. I carry a spare inner tube and can replace the tube, pump up the tire, and keep going. However, yesterday, when I tried to repair the tire, I discovered it had been damaged and would not seat properly on the rim. I was in luck. Susan was at home, and I had a cell phone, so I called her, and she came out to rescue me. While I was waiting for her to arrive, I walked in the direction from which she would arrive and probably got about as much exercise as I would have gotten from a bike ride without a flat tire.

I thought of a couple of things as I walked. The first was a saying from my father. We always had jeeps that were used by his flagging crews. Later, he became a Jeep dealer for a while. This was before four-wheel drive was common. Many of the ranches and farms in our area did not have four-wheel drive vehicles. Ranchers had tire chains and knew how to use them. They also developed skills for driving in snow, ice, and mud. My dad’s saying was, “The benefit of four-wheel drive is that it allows you to get stuck a lot farther from home than two-wheel drive.”

A bicycle with an electric boost can have a flat tire much farther from home than a conventional bicycle.

I still have my old bike, which I have been riding for 35 years. It is in good shape and works like it did when it was new. However, I decided to buy a used bike with an electric boost last year and immediately learned to enjoy it. I can ride into the wind with less effort. The boost helps me go up steep hills. My bike has what is called “pedal assist,” an electric motor that boosts when pedaling. When I coast, it is just like a regular bike. They make electric bikes with throttles that can be ridden like a motorcycle, without pedaling, but mine is designed for those who want to pedal but want a little boost.

Another thing that I was thinking about as I walked was all of the stories that my father and father-in-law used to tell me about the early days of driving cars. They both learned to drive in rural North Dakota when cars were relatively new. Many farms didn’t have vehicles, and the farmers used horses for the formwork and transportation. My father’s family and my father-in-law's family were early adopters of cars, both families having Model T Fords as their first vehicles. Tires were much less reliable in those days. Flat tires were common, especially on the rough roads of rural North Dakota. Early drivers got good at making various repairs, including fixing flat tires. They carried patch kits and hand pumps, and when they got a flat, they fixed the problem. Spare tires mounted on wheels like the ones we carry on our vehicles these days came about fairly quickly, but all of my elders had stories about having more than one flat tire on a journey.

When my father and his brothers got together, they liked to tell the story about when one of them was driving, perhaps a bit too fast. The car slid around a corner, and when they stopped, all four tires were flat. The story had different versions, with different brothers driving the car, so I don’t know which one was driving. It was always told with caution, with the implication that the flat tires might have been avoided if the car hadn’t been going so fast.

My father-in-law told how an uncle took a corner too fast and tipped the car on its side. He had my father-in-law’s grandmother with him, and they had to cut through the canvas top of the car to get her out. After everyone was out of the vehicle, they could push it back onto its wheels, repair two flat tires, and get her back to safety. She was, however, injured. I don’t know the details, but she recovered from her injuries, and my father-in-law was given the job of driving her to church. He was eleven at the time. This was before North Dakota required driver’s licenses.

I went to the bike shop, and my bike now has a new tire and tube. It is ready to go. I also added a liner inside the tire to protect it from punctures. I hope it works. That was my fourth flat tire in the past six months, and I’m looking for a system to avoid some of the flats.

I don’t know how long it has been since I have changed a flat tire on one of our cars. I don’t think I have ever had a flat tire on our pickup. Like most newer vehicles, it has a tire pressure monitoring system that gives me a warning when a leak develops, and so far, I’ve been able to drive to a tire shop to get the repair done. I carry a tire pressure gauge and a device to reset the pressure sensors because faulty sensors are often the culprit when the dashboard light comes on.

I don’t want a similar system for my bike. Being able to fix a flat tire and get home is part of my adventure. I ride for recreation, and I like the feeling of solving problems as they arise. Bikes are lightweight, and I don’t need a jack to fix a flat.

Most importantly, I need stories to tell my grandchildren. They never had the opportunity to hear my dad and his brothers talk about the early days of driving when flat tires were considered part of the adventure, and people didn’t allow them to ruin their day. I want my grandchildren to be able to encounter problems and come up with solutions to keep going. When that happens, a good story can help you maintain a positive attitude..

Recently, our son found an old iPod that had fallen into disuse in their family. After fiddling with it a bit, he discovered that it still worked. He and our grandson loaded songs onto it, and our grandson has been using it to listen to music along with a set of headphones they also had lying around. When I see him wearing the headphones, I frequently ask him what he’s listening to. Sometimes, I recognize the artist and the song, but often, they remain a mystery to me. I trust his father and mother to pay attention to what he is listening to and don’t feel that it is my responsibility to police his listening. My reason for asking is simply curiosity and a desire to know our grandchildren's likes and artistic sensibilities.

Thinking of what a fourteen-year-old is listening to got me thinking about what I was listening to when I was his age. Listening to music was different for us in part because we often heard without having direct control over the playlist. I was an adult before the first Sony Walkman cassette tape player was released. I come from the era of radio. We listened to what the DJs chose for us to hear. And in my hometown, we could only receive AM radio. FM existed in larger population areas, but there were no FM stations whose signal reached our town. We could only receive three or four stations, limiting our choices.

We bought records. 45s and albums. I remember some sought-after bands, including The Beatles, the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, The Beach Boys, Cream, the Byrds, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Monkeys, and the Doors. I wonder how often I played “Light My Fire” by the Doors or “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry. I knew the words to “If You’re Going to San Francisco,” “Happy Together,” and “All You Need is Love.”

Some of the songs I enjoyed then continue to be popular today. Music streaming services give us access to an extensive range of music. Unlike the days when my listening was limited by the number of records I owned or the choices of the radio DJs, I now have easy access to whatever I want to hear.

I’m not sure if I first heard it when I was 14, but around that time, I got my first guitar and began to play and sing popular songs. One of the songs I learned is a song I still enjoy. I can easily recall its lyrics, but I don’t imagine singing it as I did. I hear the voice of Joni Mitchell, the musician who wrote the song.

Rows and floes of angel hair
An ice cream castles in the air
And feather anyone everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

I will play it for my grandson. Maybe he’ll even add it to the playlist on his iPod. Joni Mitchell was in her early twenties when she wrote that song. It seems to me now that it is an expression of more maturity than she could have possessed at the time. Of course, my perspective is tempered by my age. Joni Mitchell is about a decade older than I am, and I’ve had many opportunities to hear her sing it over the years. When she showed up at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022, she sang “Both Sides Now.” The audience was mesmerized.

I’ve been singing that song to myself for a couple of days. I’m working on a chapter in a book I’m writing that has been particularly challenging. I’ve written several essays that fall short of my expectations, and I keep trying to find the right words. The chapter is about the love of creation. I keep thinking it will come easily. There are some natural places in this world that I love. Somehow, I can’t find the right words, however.

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

There are many poets whose writing inspires me. Some express ideas for which I have trouble finding the words. Maybe, like the song lyrics, I really don’t know love at all when it comes to writing a love chapter.

David James Duncan wrote in his novel “The River Why,” “People often don’t know what they’re talking about, but when they talk about love they really don’t know what they’re talking about.” That may be the problem with my writing these days. I really don’t know what I’m talking about.

I should know something about love. I’ve been blessed with love. I was born into a loving family. I never doubted the love of my parents for each other or me. I have been blessed with a loving marriage for nearly 52 years now. I have loving children and grandchildren. I loved the work I did. I fell in love with each of the congregations I served. I preached about love often. I can quote several Bible passages about love. I’ve sat with grieving families and talked about how love remains after death. I say, “I love you,” dozens of times daily.

I wonder, however, if I’m being presumptuous, thinking that I know enough to write a love chapter, even the love of nature. Chapters about mystery and grief seem to come easier for me than the one on love.

I know myself well enough to know that I will continue to ponder and struggle with my writing, and I will eventually produce the chapter and get on with the book. I have quite a bit down already. I think I’m on my fourth draft of this chapter. Maybe I’ll look back one day and see it as some of my best work. It is equally possible that it will not be the most substantial chapter of the book.

I hope that I will be able to write about genuine love rather than merely recall love’s illusions. On the other hand, the song that declares, “I really don’t know love at all,” is a powerful testimony, and I’ ’m grateful to Joni Mitchell for having written it.

1999 was year A in the Revised Common Lectionary, the pattern of Bible readings we used for planning worship and faith formation activities in the congregations we served. Year A follows a continuous narrative, providing worshipers with a series of texts around some of the foundational stories of the Bible. In late Pentecost, the readings from the Hebrew Scriptures tell the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. In Judaism, the story of Exodus is told as part of the annual recognition of Passover, which occurs in the spring of the year. The story appears in the fall for Christians following the Revised Common Lectionary. Both faith traditions take the biblical command seriously to teach the story to every generation.

Having the story land in the fall is interesting timing as in the northern hemisphere, fall is the season of returning to school after summer vacation, and in the churches we served, it was the time of returning to regular Sunday School programming after a summer break. In 1999, our congregation was led by a worship-based church school curriculum that followed the lectionary. We worked to closely coordinate faith formation activities for all ages through worship and church school. One of our goals was to have all ages explore the same biblical texts each week. Experiencing the story of the Exodus seemed like a perfect opportunity.

In our plans, we tried to develop a capstone experience for all ages. What we wanted to do, after several weeks of going through the story, was to have an experience for all ages that involved telling the whole story. We looked to the example of the Seder, which is celebrated in Jewish families and congregations as part of the annual Passover celebration. However, we were cautious about appropriating the celebration of another religion and wanted to respect Jewish authority over Seder. Later, we developed a relationship with a local synagogue that enabled leaders from the synagogue to lead Seder observances in our congregation as part of our Holy Week observances, but we had not yet developed those connections.

Our attention was caught by the popular animated movie Prince of Egypt, which had been released to theaters the previous Christmas. Many of the families of our congregation had seen the movie in theaters in those days before streaming movies. We explored renting a historic theater in our community and moving the entire worship service into the theater for a showing of the movie to conclude our series of learning experiences around the Exodus story. The theatre was open to the plan, but there was a significant problem. Movies were marked in a very different way back in 1999. The movie had been placed in blackout, meaning it was not being released to play in any theaters. The blackout was part of the marketing campaign around the movie's release on VHS, set for September 14, which happens to be our daughter’s birthday. The theater could not obtain the film to be shown on the date we wanted to use it.

Marketing was critical to what then was an emerging new company, Pixar. Prince of Egypt was the animation company’s second film. Still, the film seemed like such a good fit that we decided the worst they could do was say “no.” We appealed directly to Pixar. They not only agreed to allow us to show the film, they provided a copy to the theatre without charge for our exclusive showing. As far as we know, it was the only theater showing the movie during the official blackout.

The experience was positive for our congregation. People still remember that fall’s programming. Hopefully, children and adults learned some of the basic principles of the foundational story of our faith—principles that guide them in their lives a quarter of a century later.

One of the integral techniques the movie uses to convey the biblical story is music. The songs from the film continue to keep the story fresh in my mind. Recently, I found myself singing the song Through Heaven’s Eyes by Brian Stokes Mitchell. In the movie, the song is sung by Jethro, who becomes Moses’ father-in-law after Moses flees Egypt to Midian before God calls him. Moses is working as a shepherd for Jethro when he is called to return to Egypt by God speaking through a burning bush.

When Moses arrives in Midian, Jethro welcomes him with the song. The song's chorus asks, “So how can you see what your life is worth or where your value lies?” It is answered with, “You can never see through the eyes of man. You must look at your life through Heaven’s eyes.” Later in the song, Jethro poses another question, “How do you measure the worth of a man? . . . In how much he gained or how much he gave?”

The words ringing in my mind this week as I read the news from Washington D.C. come next in the song: “And that’s why we share all we have with you though there’s little to be found. When all you’ve got is nothing, there’s a lot to go around.”

The billionaire in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency is applying a scarcity formula to our nation. He is radically cutting programs and jobs on the theory that the government needs to save money. He sees programs that benefit those with needs as excessive and need to be cut because “we can’t afford it.” At the same time, he reaps personal benefits. Since Donald Trump's election, his personal wealth has increased more than all of the proposed cuts in government spending.

He doesn’t know the simple truth of the book of Exodus, illustrated by a simple song. There is never enough when you are wealthy - a prince of Egypt. There will never be enough wealth to satisfy the nation’s richest billionaires. They will never be satisfied. They will always want more. They will always see scarcity despite their inability to spend the money that they have.

Poor folks, however, understand abundance. They know that sharing is more important than acquiring. They know that abundance comes from community, not from personal wealth. I have seen it over and over again. On behalf of the church, I once received a donation of $2 from a woman I knew had only $20 to her name. A real tithe! I witnessed a family that didn’t have rent money invite the neighbors for a meal. Abundance does not come from wealth. It comes from sharing. Acquiring will never produce enough. The wealthy will always want more.

If you want to live abundantly, you must learn to give.

I don’t know how much of the lesson was taught in our program in 1999, but I know I have seen gracious generosity from some of those people and have learned to be more genuinely generous. I am not a wealthy man, but I am a happy one. I pray I will continue to give without fear and leave acquiring wealth to others.

Although I’m no fan of the woman who served a partial term as governor of Alaska and was chosen by John McCain as his running mate in his 2008 bid for president, to be fair, it is important to say that she never said one of her most famous quotes. “I can see Russia from my house” is a line delivered by Tina Fey in a Saturday Night Live sketch. The sketch based the line loosely on an interview Palin gave to ABC News in which she said, “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” This is true, even though Palin never lived where she could see Russia from her home.

On the other hand, you can see Canada from my home. The mountains we can see from our bedroom window are in Canada. When we walk to the bay, less than a mile from our home, some of the islands we see are in Canada. When I ride my bike to Semiahmoo, White Rock, British Columbia's skyscrapers are visible across the bay. Our mailing address is a border town where a park stands on the border. The people here are proud of the friendship between Canada and the United States. There are a lot of families who have members on both sides of the border. There are a lot of people who have dual citizenship. Married couples have one member who is a citizen of Canada and the other a citizen of the US.

Our town is a tourist town. Many beach cottages, mobile homes, and condos are second homes for people who live in other places. I do not know the current statistic, but the local lore is that at one time, 40% of the homes in our village were owned by Canadians.

We notice when things change between the two countries. These days, when I ride my bike along Birch Bay Drive, there are many empty parking spaces, and most of the cars I see have Washington license plates. This is a season of quite a few days with dreary weather, not the height of tourist season. Still, we are used to a healthy mix of vehicles and customers from Canada stopping for meals at local restaurants and making purchases at local stores. That mix is missing these days.

In late November, the incoming U.S. President told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada should become the 51st state. It is a ludicrous idea that ignores the geographical size, the population, and the sovereignty of Canada. Still, it was just the start of growing animus between the two countries. The president has threatened a trade war and announced that 25% tariffs on Canadian imports would go into effect on February 3. He later issued a 30-day pause, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was focused on making sure tariffs did not go into effect. Tensions expanded. Some Canadians booed the U.S. National Anthem at a hockey game in Montreal, though not as many as U.S. Citizens who booed the Canadian Anthem at the championship match of the Best of 4 Nations tournament in Boston last week.

The tensions are affecting everyday life here. Canadians are being encouraged to boycott U.S. products. B.C. Premier David asked citizens of his province to think carefully about spending money in the U.S., and Canadians are taking his advice seriously in the short term. Gas prices are generally lower on the U.S. side of the border, but local gas stations have seen dramatic decreases in sales as many Canadians have ceased driving across the border to buy gas. Grocery stores are reporting similar declines in sales. A local restaurant, Peace Arch City Cafe & Bar, has had to cut back staffing as business has dropped nearly 30% amid the tensions. Local business people are used to checking the highway signs that show the wait times for border crossings as a sign of how many customers to expect. However, the signs have been displaying the minimum wait times for weeks. Border crossings are down significantly. President’s Day weekend crossings were down 40% compared to last year.

These are the effects of rhetoric and threats. The tariffs are not yet in effect. If they do go into effect, things may become worse. People on both sides of the border are frustrated. We are used to being friends. Displaying a Canadian flag used to be a common occurrence in houses and businesses. Now, people wonder if a Canadian flag displayed on our side of the border might be misinterpreted as a sign that the home or business supports the idea of annexing our neighbors. We can see several new large Canadian flags flying at White Rock, and the White Rock museum gift shop reports record sales of t-shirts and bumper stickers displaying the Canadian flag. I’m not a drinker, but there have been rumors about US brands disappearing from Canadian stores and bars.

While Sarah Palin was misquoted in a comedy sketch, she was making a point about Russia and the threat posed to American security by the totalitarian state with expansionist tendencies. She made the comment as a show of strength in the face of a perceived enemy. These days, Republican politicians are afraid to criticize Russia or its dictator, Putin, while the leader of their party seems intent on increasing tensions with our closest allies. It is hard to believe that an entire political party could have switched sides, but it appears that is the case.

Meanwhile, those who live near the border know that the people across the line are our neighbors and friends. We know that our crossing, which is the third busiest between the two countries, is not a pipeline of illegal immigration and drug smuggling. We see the border crossing guards as diligent and good at their jobs, and we trust them. We are embarrassed by our president's comments.

I understand our neighbors’ hesitation to cross the border and spend money in our community. However, I plan to continue visiting their side of the border and making purchases in their restaurants and shops. Despite the rhetoric from Washington, D.C., we are committed to peace with our neighbors here in Washington State.

Last week, Susan and I began training to serve as volunteers in a library. I have a bit of library experience. My college experience started with a work/study position in the college library, where I learned to check books out and in, organize a book cart, shelve books, and perform other duties. This was when libraries had card catalogs that were actual cards before computerized catalog systems. I learned how to file cards in the card catalog when new books were added to the collection. I also serve as the volunteer librarian of our church’s small collection of books, keeping the library organized and promoting the circulation of books. In our volunteer position, we will mostly be shelving books as they are returned to the library. Like my college position shelving books will involve a bit of dusting and cleaning and general organization.

I plan to keep my smartphone handy when I am volunteering. I will make sure that my phone is set to be silent and not make noise if a call comes. I don’t expect that there will be any calls that I need to answer. People who call can leave a message. I plan to keep my phone with me as I work so that I can use the camera to photograph the covers of books that are interesting to me. I’m pretty sure that I will find a lot of books that I would like to read.

It isn’t as if I don’t already have a list of books I want to read. I have a stack of books that I have purchased that I have not yet finished reading. I’m a bit quicker to read books I have checked out from the library as they have a due date, and I know I will need to return them promptly. The library works for me for some books. Other books, however, require a trip to a bookstore.

I’ve already written about children’s books. Some books need to be in our house to read at will without requiring a trip to the library. I’ve read Go Dog, Go hundreds of times, and I want to read it repeatedly for as long as a child wants to hear me read it. Recently we bought Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons for our grandson because he wanted to bring that book home with him on each visit to the library.

There are other books, however, that end up on my shelves for different reasons.

The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Cambell is a book that is so densely written that I needed to read it very slowly. Sometimes, it would set me off on a quest to read another book, and I would lay it aside for days and weeks before resuming my reading of it. If I had tried to read it as a library book, I would have had to check it out, return it, and check it out again several times before finishing it. I also keep it handy because now that I have read it, I refer to it when writing or when another book sparks a memory of something I read there.

The novel Sun House by David James Duncan is a book I would not have finished had we not ended up with a copy we own. Now that I’ve read it, I’d gladly give it to anyone who wants it. I have no intention of rereading it. However, I probably won’t find someone who wants to read it because I wouldn’t recommend it. I looked forward to reading it. I have read other David James Duncan novels with great joy. We have two copies of his The River Why on our shelf, and I frequently use quotes from that book. It took him eleven years to write Sun House, and it reads as if he tried to cram every idea he had in those eleven years into a single story. Had I checked it out of the library to read, I would have returned it without finishing it and wouldn’t have checked it out again.

The memoir Mango Tree by Carey Newman is short but so densely written that I will read a chapter or two and then set it aside. Newman is in love with the English language and seems set on cramming as many words as possible into each chapter. Although I have a reasonable vocabulary, I need a dictionary when reading his book.

Amanda Gorman’s poems in Call Us What We Carry are too good to read only once. I like to read them silently, imagining her voice as she reads. I looked up some of them on YouTube to hear her voice. But I also like to read them out loud, allowing their rhythm to seep into my thinking.

I have a collection of Elie Wiesel novels. I read each as soon as I purchased it, and though I’ve reread some sections, I doubt I’ll ever read through them again. Still, they are books that I want to own. I like seeing them together on the shelf. I pull them out occasionally to show a guest or remind myself how they have impacted my thinking.

My copy of The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh by Walter Ross once belonged to my father. I still remember him taking it from the shelf and handing it to me to read. The same is true of my copy of We Seven, which was written by the first seven astronauts selected by NASA. I like to take it from the shelf because it reminds me of my father. We shared and loved many books together.

James Fowler’s Stages of Faith is a book I pull out every time I teach a Christian Education or Faith Formation class. I know it is dated, and I know I need to turn to newer books like Lisa Miller’s The Spiritual Child, but the ideas in that book are important and too often overlooked by those working with children in the church.

For now, my life is a combination of books I borrow and books I buy. I hope that the pictures I take at the library lean towards books to borrow. I don’t have much room on my shelves for more books.

Friends,
I am sorry that my journal entry was posted late yesterday. I failed to notice that it didn't upload properly until my wife reported that it wasn't up after I came home from errands around noon. I'll try to avoid that mistake in the future.

Our oldest grandson, who turned 14 this month on the day after his grandmother’s birthday, wrote in a birthday card to her, “What is your favorite book? I would like to read it.” Although the question was posed to my wife, who will come up with some great reading suggestions, it got me thinking. What is my favorite book?

That question is a definite challenge for me. I could say, “The Bible,” but it doesn’t function as a single book but as a collection. I read Isaiah and the Psalms more than other books in the Hebrew Scriptures. I have read and studied Genesis a lot, but Leviticus isn’t a book that one sits down and reads cover to cover. OK, I’ve done it, but only once. In the New Testament, I’ve read the Gospels many, many times, and I’m familiar with all of them. When asked by someone to whom the Bible is unfamiliar, I often say, “Read the Gospel of Mark first.” It is short and has a definite motion towards the crucifixion, which keeps the story going. I have also recommended that people read Jonah because it is a brief narrative story with several unexpected plot twists.

But I read a lot of other books. I love reading books. There are a lot that I count as favorites. Writers as diverse as David Sedaris, Elie Wiesel, Sherman Alexie, and Jess Walter are loved by me, and I find myself checking their titles on each trip to the library. I’ve read most of what they have written, and several of their books have been worth reading a second and third time.

A fourteen-year-old is old enough to read Night by Elie Wiesel, but I want to ensure we had time to discuss it as he read. There are a couple of Sherman Alexie short stories that I would quickly recommend, but some of his writing doesn’t seem entirely age-appropriate. It would be fair to say that The Idle Beekeeper by Bill Anderson is a favorite of mine, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who isn’t interested in keeping domestic honeybees. I would easily recommend First You Have to Row a Little Boat by Richard Bode to teens and adults, and it is certainly a book I’ve read multiple times.

I don’t think I could narrow it down to a single favorite book.

I frequently grab Go Dog Go as a favorite to read aloud for my three-year-old grandson. I’ve read it to our grandchildren so often that they can all exchange lines from the book from memory. That is one of the things that makes the book so much fun to read to our three-year-old. Even when we don’t have the book, if I say “Big dog,” he says, “Little dog.” I’ll say, “Hello,” and he’ll say, “Hello.” I say, “Do you like my hat?” and he responds, “I do not.” Every child loves the one dog who is awake when all the others are sleeping and then asleep when it is time to get up. And what can be better than chase scenes and romance that ends with a big party? I read that book over and over to our children and our grandchildren as well.

But our grandchildren also introduced me to other books that became beloved. I had never read Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons until a month ago. Our youngest grandson loves the book so much and has checked it out of the library so many times that we bought a copy for him for his birthday. He has that book wholly memorized. We don’t even need to get the book at our house now. He and I can tell the entire story from memory. When Pete loses a button, I say, “Did Pete cry?” and our grandson says, “Goodness, No! Buttons come, and buttons go!”

Last night, my favorite books were The Rabbit Listens and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. If someone were to be unfamiliar with that book and overhear me reading them to our grandson, they might think that the last line of each book was “Again!” I’m sure I read both of those books at least five times last night. They have to count as favorites.

One of the treasures of being a grandpa is that I have time to read a book repeatedly. When our children were little, I often had so many things to do that after I had read a book once or twice, I might say, “All done!” and go on to another task. With grandchildren, I often can reread a book over and over. Last night, his father had to say, “All done!” so they could go home for their bedtime routines, which I’m sure included reading a few more books.

Grandchildren grow up so quickly from the perspective of their grandparents. It seems like the first was just born, but I’m down to only two of the five who are small enough to sit on my lap while we read books. The fourteen-year-old will still hug me but doesn’t crawl into my chair with me. Since time with the children is so important and fleeting, I try to take advantage of every opportunity. I keep my poetry books next to my chair for myself, but I also keep the children’s books next to the same chair. You never know when you’ll need The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham.

It is still four months until my birthday, and it is unlikely that our grandson will write the same thing on a card to me that he wrote to his grandmother, but I keep pondering the question nonetheless. I want to make a good recommendation when he asks me. His father is a librarian and makes a lot of excellent suggestions for him. They have enjoyed reading and discussing science fiction for several years and have gotten me to read some books I might not have otherwise read. I’ll keep thinking. Being able to share favorite books with others is a blessing.

Last night, I sat on the wooden bleachers in the elementary school gym where our grandchildren are students. Next to me, our youngest grandson sat on my wife’s lap, and his parents and oldest sister were in front of us. We were there to hear our youngest granddaughter sing in a choral concert.

It was the school’s first public choral concert since the Covid-19 pandemic. I don’t know how they handled concerts before the pandemic, but this year, they are having three short concerts, with a couple of classes singing in each concert. We’ll be back next week when our oldest granddaughter will be singing.

Our granddaughter stood in the middle of the front row of the students. She knew all of the words and sang with enthusiasm. The concert consisted of four songs from the musical “The Sound of Music.” The children enjoyed the music and sang well. I was enjoying myself, too. Part of my enjoyment was watching our grandson, who just turned three. He listened to the songs and clapped with a big smile. The short concert was just the right length for him. Had it been much longer, he might have become bored. I probably wouldn’t have become bored, but a half-hour sitting on wooden bleachers in a school gym was the right amount of time for me, too.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, at how well the students sang. They were accompanied by a pianist and directed by a teacher who was a music specialist who served the elementary school and a middle school in the district. I’ve been to plenty of school music concerts over the years. Too many have involved recorded accompaniments played over a poor PA system. At the same time, the director tried to keep the children together, forced to follow the pace of the accompaniment instead of having an accompanist who could follow the director.

The director addressed the crowd of family members and reported that the children had been learning the songs and the story of the von Trapp family in addition to learning the songs. She reminded the audience that the musical is based on a true story. One of the students told the audience about the edelweiss flower before the chorus sang the song about it.

I know that the time for music instruction is limited in the school, and I doubt there was an opportunity to go into depth with the students. Still, the family's real story seems very relevant to life in the United States today. I doubt that the students had an opportunity to learn the difference between the fictional movie and musical and the real life of the von Trapp family.

In real life, the family didn’t leave Austria by walking over a mountain pass. When the Nazi regime took over Austria, Maria and Georg were already married. They were already established as a traveling music act. They took a train to Italy and from Italy to London, where they traveled to the US by steamship with their musical conductor and a secretary. They entered the US on six-month visas. When those visas expired, they went on a brief Scandinavian tour and were able to re-enter the US on six-month visas a second time. Maria gave birth to her third child during their first visit, bringing the family to ten children.

That means that Johannes, born in Philadelphia, was a citizen of the United States by birthright, a factor that would later help the rest of the family eventually become naturalized citizens. It is impossible to say what would have happened had they not had the means to travel internationally at their own expense or what would have happened had they not had a child born in the US. While the family did enter the US legally both times, their immigration status was questioned for a time as an official Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry for the family exists among publicly available documents.

I see a lot of connections between a family fleeing the authoritarian Nazi regime and some of the stories of the children in the school. The school, located just eight miles from the US border, certainly has families who are in the process of determining their immigration status. Some of them are likely trying to deal with visas that expire. Some family members have their documents in order, and some are still getting their immigration status worked out. The attempt at changing birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the US Constitution would have a tangible impact on some of the children in last night’s concert.

A music teacher doesn’t have time to go into the details and tell about why birthright citizenship is essential to many immigrant families. Still, most children understood that the family story involved leaving a beloved homeland because of an authoritarian dictator. The choice of songs for the concert was a good one because the music by Rodgers and Hammerstein is fun to sing and relatively easy to learn. There are just enough rhythmic and interval challenges to give opportunities for teaching basic group singing skills.

As a writer, I appreciate thinking about how Maria von Trapp’s 1949 memoir became a book by Russell Crouse and Howard Lindsay, which later was adapted into a musical from which a movie was made that is still being viewed and still paying royalties to its star Julie Andrews. Interestingly, the family whose story is told didn’t receive much financial compensation. Stories are like that. They gain a life of their own. They have different meanings to different people who read or hear the story. I doubt that many of the people sitting in the school gym last night were making connections between the von Trapp family and the chaos of the current US administration. They probably didn’t ponder the difficult choices faced by Georg von Trapp, a decorated submarine captain during WWI and whose first wife was the daughter of the inventor of the torpedo. He chose not to fly the Nazi flag at his home, refused to have his family sing at a birthday party for Hitler, and refused a commission to the Nazi navy. He was on thin ice with the political situation in Austria when they left their homeland.

The children’s concert reminded me of the power of story and song.

Clarence was an old-school carpenter. He had a penchant for hard work and an uncommonly good eye for measurement. His preferred measuring tool was a wooden folding ruler. He taught me to measure quarter-inch and half-inch increments with a carpenter’s pencil. And he taught me three ways to sharpen that pencil. Shave it from the broad side down just to the point where the lead is exposed, and it will draw a line that is ¼ inch wide. Turn it sideways and sharpen it the other way, and it will draw a line that is 1/8 inch wide. Sharpen it until the lead is pointed, and it will draw a fine line that is only about 1/16 inch wide. He carried two pencils behind his ear. One was sharpened on both ends, but differently, and a second one was sharpened only on one end to the finest tip possible. And when he needed an even finer line, he drew his sharpened pocketknife across the wood.

He told me he measured everything to 1/32 inch. I pointed out that his ruler only went to 1/16 inch. He said anyone can eyeball half of a sixteenth! And he did. When he cut a piece of wood, it was the correct size. Clarence did all his trim work with a hand-drawn miter saw and a homemade miter box. He didn’t need power tools to finish the job. His joints were precise.

Clarence never met another friend of mine. Ward was a production carpenter. He had supervised the construction of homes in a factory. He helped our church to build several homes in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. One day, I read my tape measure wrong and cut a piece of trim a quarter of an inch short. Ward laughed, took the piece from me, centered it in the opening, took a power finish nail gun, and put it in its place. I frowned, and he said, “Fill it with caulk. No one will ever know.” “I will,” I responded. “No, you won’t,” he quipped. “You’re not going to live in this house. You won’t even be invited back after it is dedicated.” Then he added. “We’re just building a house. We’re not building jewelry boxes here.” Ward believed in Habitat for Humanity and wouldn’t tolerate wasting any building materials.

I learned about beauty from both men, and I thought about both many years later when I was helping our son make repairs on their 100-year-old farmhouse. Artisans like Clarence built it. The only place we encountered any caulk was in the repairs made by recent owners. The original millwork was perfectly fitted. Our problem is that someone had removed and discarded all the baseboards. We decided to replicate them. No pre-milled boards at the big box store matched the original design, so I set up the router table and milled new pine boards to match the original woodwork. At least I tried to match it. I got within a sixteenth of an inch, but I couldn’t get within a thirty-second of an inch. I don’t have Clarence’s eye. We used a power compound miter saw to cut our angles. In my defense, the walls in that house are no longer square, and I had to do a fair amount of shimming to get the pieces to fit. Guests comment on the original woodwork and how remarkable it was all saved, including the baseboards. Sometimes, vanity takes over, and I tell them I milled the baseboards to match. I often keep quiet, not wanting them to look too closely. There is caulk in some of the corners and along the edges of the baseboards in some places.
I never studied art in school. I don’t consider myself an artist. However, I do have a deep appreciation for art. Some artists can capture and create beauty. Both Clarence and Ward taught me about art appreciation. Clarence’s art was based on attention to detail and careful precision. Ward’s art was based on understanding the function of what he was building. His compassion for the families occupying the homes he built was a different kind of art.

As is true of all kinds of beauty, comparing is not productive. Each of my mentors and teachers had their ways of creating beauty. They were different. The beauty they made was different. But each was a craftsman of beauty.

I now live in a family home in a quickly developed and built subdivision. The houses are very similar. The finished work in our house is what I expect from this style of construction. Joinery is simple, with fewer mitered corners. Cuts were all made with chop saws. Caulk was applied before the paint. When I am in a critical mood, I can see dozens of places where things don’t fit properly. It is functional but would have benefitted from more attention when the finishing touches were done.

In our dining area is a round oak table that came to us from my wife’s parents’ home. We have gathered around that table for family dinners. Our grandchildren have sat at the table working on art projects. Looking at the table brings to memory the smells of cooking, the sound of children’s laughter, and the love of family. Sitting at that table reveals the beauty of having a roof over our heads and a house that is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It recalls memories of countless other family dinners in many different locations.

As with any home, the real beauty is not in the construction details. Beauty cannot be perceived by the eye alone. We experience it with our hearts and minds.

Clarence and Ward are from two different places and periods of my life. They never met, and neither is alive today. Neither knows anything about our son’s farmhouse or the house in which we live. I never met the people who built either of those homes. Yet, in a sense, we are all connected by a shared appreciation for home and the meaning a home can contain.

God willing, these homes will someday be homes to others who will appreciate their beauty and find joy in their shelter.

We have five grandchildren. Each is unique and wonderful and a blessing to us. For our youngest, our home is one of the places he is growing up. Unlike his siblings or cousin, he cannot remember when we lived far away from where he and his parents lived. All the other grandchildren have had times when we lived more than a thousand miles away. For him, grandma and grandpa have always lived just down the road. We go to their house, and he visits our house multiple times weekly.

When our other grandchildren were little, their parents brought the specialized items for their care to our house. But with this youngest one, it has made sense for us to keep some things at our house for him to use when he visits. We keep a small supply of diapers and disposable wipes for him. There is a baby bottle in our cupboard that he used to use.

Babies change and grow. He no longer needs the bottle. We now have some soft plastic glasses from which he drinks when he comes to our house. When our kids were his age, we had plastic sippy cups that reduced spills when tipped. The lids to the cups were a transition as the child learned to manage a regular cup. Instead of that type of lid, our glasses feature reusable straws that fit tightly into lids to limit spills. We have a small brush that fits inside the straws for cleaning, and they can be sterilized in the dishwasher. However, it didn’t take long before the lids and the straws began to sit in the cupboard. He now drinks out of a glass like his siblings, though they are served in glass vessels while he still uses the unbreakable plastic. He occasionally spills his water, but so do the other children. The adults have been known to knock over a glass as well. We’re pretty quick with a towel when needed, and sometimes comment with a touch of surprise when we get through an entire family dinner without someone spilling something.

In our family, drinking from a glass without a straw marks maturity. I’ve commented on our grandson’s “big boy cup” and praised him for drinking from it without a straw. However, we have a small supply of longer reusable straws in a drawer for a special treat, like root beer floats.

Some people, however, get passionate about straws for drinking. The president has been signing stacks of executive orders directing the administration to follow specific policies. He has addressed immigration, directed the firing of federal employees, ordered congressionally-mandated programs to be defunded, and attempted to dismantle federal agencies. Amid the furor of orders that have prompted lawsuits and confusion, on February 10, the president signed an order titled “Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws.” Surprisingly, paper straws rose to the top of the emergency orders issued in the first month of a new administration, but there it is.

I didn’t realize that anyone was being forced to use paper straws. I haven’t used one in a long time. I prefer to drink from a glass or cup without a straw. When they are offered in restaurants, I don’t use them. Here in our state, a law prohibits cafes and restaurants from automatically including single-use plastic utensils and straws in takeout orders. If you want a straw or plastic utensil, you need to ask for it. Most restaurants set up self-serve stations so customers can pick up the utensils and straws they want. The city of Seattle does ban plastic straws in restaurants, and I assume they offer paper straws since plastic ones aren’t an option.

Reasons to discourage the use of plastic straws include the environmental impact of overconsumption, the danger of discarded straws to birds, animals, and sea life, and the mess of litter. Similar reasons exist for paper straws, which, although biodegradable and easier to dispose of, still involve carbon emissions in their manufacture and harmful chemicals to bleach the paper. Single-use items significantly impact the natural world more than ones that can be cleaned and reused.

There is a case to be made for limiting the use of paper straws, but I don’t understand how the President of the United States sees this as a priority for his administration. I’m sure that anyone working in or visiting any federal building has the option not to use a straw at all. Those who need straws because of medical conditions can certainly carry reusable straws. It might be slightly less convenient than a single-use straw but not impossible. I’m having trouble imagining how someone could be “forced” to use a paper straw.

Although the order addresses the use of paper straws, it is intended to increase the use of plastic straws, which have fallen out of favor among many environmentally conscious people. The authors of the executive order thought that using terminology about the forced use of paper straws sounded more responsible than issuing an order requiring federal cafeterias and coffee shops to use plastic straws.

The order may be designed as a distraction. By getting news agencies and even bloggers like me to focus on the silliness of paper straws, attention can be diverted away from executive orders that cost thousands of jobs, drive up the price of consumer goods, divide families, deny birthright citizenship, override congressional actions, and many other dangerous and anti-democratic actions. If that is the case, it is working. Local and national news sources have devoted articles and columns to the order ending procurement and forced use of paper straws.

It is good that I don’t work in the part of the administration that generates executive orders. I might be tempted to draw up an order directing cooks to use metal colanders instead of plastic ones or one favoring bar shampoo over bottled. I would like to see public restrooms equipped with soap dispensers that work without the soap being so watered down that it is ineffective. I’d love to see a rule that required all presidents to have pets. Spending time with animals reduces stress, promotes clear thinking, and provides a distraction from too many orders to sign. How about an order directing the practical design of wipers for eyeglasses when worn in the rain? With a president who proudly signs anything in front of him, the possibilities seem endless.

Over the years, I have taught in several programs to equip laypersons for leadership in the church. Most of the time, I was asked to teach classes related to Christian Education or Faith Formation. At the end of March, I will teach what may be my last class in that type of program. For a while now, I have been teaching a class in developmental stages as part of the Faith Formation Leadership Training and Certification program of the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ.

As I prepare to teach the class, I have been going through syllabi from previous courses that I have taught and reflecting on what is most important for this year’s students. As has always been true, simply repeating what I have done before is inappropriate. New research and information need to inform my teaching. In addition, the students change. Since the pandemic, church faith formation programs have undergone significant changes. Many congregations have reduced their professional staff in response to decreased donations. Others have experienced substantial changes in attendance patterns for families with children.

However, some elements in my classes have remained the same. I still rely heavily on developmental psychology to enable church leaders to craft programs appropriate to children's ages and developmental stages. I don’t ignore the new science on parenting and education for health and lifelong thriving, but I try to contextualize it in some of its historical precedents. Many important ideas take several generations to mature.

In each class, I present an overview of Erik Erikson’s Stages of Development. While Erikson was heavily influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, who also believed that personality developed in a series of stages, Erikson added further development of the ideas. He was one of the first developmental psychologists to offer a theory that covers the entire lifespan. It seems obvious now, but at the time Erikson was developing the theory, interest in studying adulthood and the changes that occur in later life was uncommon. Psychologists focused on childhood as if the work of becoming human could somehow be accomplished, and once one became an adult, they had succeeded.

Erikson described five stages up to adolescence, then added three more stages of development. In his schema, young adulthood spans roughly from 19 to 40 years, middle adulthood from 40 to 65 years, and maturity from 65 years to death. It is easy to quibble with the specifics of when various stages start and stop. Indeed, individual differences mean people don’t always have the same experiences at the same ages. Erikson’s theory does, however, still provide an essential framework for understanding ourselves and the others with whom we come into relationship.

Erikson asserts that adults (those aged 40 to 65) need to create or nurture things that will outlast them. He cites raising children, accomplishing creative work, and other tasks as essential to adulthood. He then describes old age as a stage focused on reflecting on life. In this stage, people experience a sense of accomplishment and may discover regrets about their lives.

As I reflect on Erikson’s stages in preparation for teaching, I am struck that there are significant challenges in transitioning from one stage to the next. I am nearly 72 years old, well into Erikson’s final stage. However, I find that I am still struggling with the tasks of adulthood. Yes, our children have grown up and formed families of their own. I am incredibly proud of them. But I have trouble looking at them as something I accomplished. While I have impacted their lives, who they are and how they contribute to this world are mainly due to their inherent creativity, intelligence, and initiative.

Regarding creative work, I might feel like I have accomplished that task. After all, I am retired after a long career with modest success. On the other hand, I can’t see the work I do with my daily journal as being finished. In many ways, retirement has been a work shift for me rather than ceasing to work. These days, one of the primary focuses of my work is writing and re-writing the manuscript of a book and preparing it for publication. It is a very challenging project for me. There are days when I wonder if I am equal to the task. There is some fear of failure. What if I never complete the manuscript? What if no one wants to read it once it is published? I can wrestle with self-doubt as actively as I did in the early stages of becoming a pastor and establishing my career.

My editor works with many authors my age who are writing memoirs. Memoir is a popular genre of literature, and his small press has focused on that segment. He has suggested several times that I should be thinking about my memoirs. I am taking a “Wisdom in the Aging Years” class focusing on memoir writing. The assignments for the class involve writing essays that tell our personal stories. However, I don’t feel ready to write a memoir. So many other stories need to be told, and I think I may be able to tell a few of them before I focus on my own story.

When I teach the class, I caution students not to get too hung up on the order of developmental tasks or the ages assigned to those tasks. Not every person goes through the tasks in the same order. Not every person goes through them at the same pace. Social and historical events change the stages. I often cite statistics about adolescence extending well into the twenties for many youth today. In our culture, it is a more extended stage than in some other societies. I need to remind myself of those things, too. I may still be working on the tasks of middle adulthood regardless of my chronological age.

Perhaps it simply is taking me longer than others to grow up. Patience will be needed for me to move toward maturity.

A couple of days ago, I was talking with my wife about this week's activities. She said that she wanted to run into town on Monday. She has a package that she wants to mail, and there is a book on hold for her at the library. Then, yesterday, when we were thinking about our week, we both realized that today is President’s Day. The post office and library will both be closed. She will have to run those errands tomorrow. It is not a big inconvenience for us. We are retired. One day is not that big of a deal for us.

President’s Day has been called the most confusing holiday in the U.S. In what my grandchildren call “the olden days,” when I was growing up, there were two important days for presidents in February. February 12 was Lincoln’s Birthday, and February 22 was Washington’s Birthday. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act, passed and signed into law in 1968, moved several holidays to always fall on a Monday, creating long weekends and avoiding midweek shutdowns. The law, however, did not take effect until 1971. For over 50 years, the federal government has had an official holiday on the third Monday of February. Even though the holiday has become popularly known as President’s Day, it is officially Washington’s Birthday in federal law.

However named, only 467 of the 50 states have a public holiday today. Indiana and Georgia celebrate Washington’s Day the day after Christmas, and Delaware has no public holiday for President Washington. Fourteen states have a separate holiday for Lincoln. Most of them recognize Honest Abe on February 12. However, Indiana has a day off for public employees on the day after Thanksgiving. Lincoln is credited with starting Thanksgiving in 1863.

Our state, named for the nation’s first President, recently had a hearing in the state legislature on a proposal to rename the state holiday, now officially known as President’s Day. The proposal is to make the holiday's name to honor just Washington.

As an old man looking back, I have trouble remembering how we celebrated Washington’s birthday when I was in school. All of the elementary school classrooms in our town had portraits of Washington and Lincoln at the front. We looked up at those portraits and the clock between them every day. We learned that Washington was the father of the nation and that Lincoln preserved the union. But I don’t have any distinct memories of how we celebrated Washington’s birthday.

On Lincoln’s birthday, however, a program was held in the school gymnasium, and one student was chosen to deliver the Gettysburg Address. I don’t remember which year, but we were all expected to memorize that famous speech in the fourth or fifth grade. I have a theory that it was the fifth grade, based on the fact that I can no longer recite the entire speech without making a mistake.

Last night, without consulting the Internet, any books or notes, I was able to recite the beginning: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here . . .”

And that is where I couldn’t recall the rest of that sentence, “that the nation might live.” The only bit I could remember was the end of the speech which is “ . . . these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The fact that my memory is incomplete supports my theory that I was required to memorize the speech in the fifth grade. There are a lot of things that I memorized earlier in my life that I can recite without a problem. I can recite the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, and other memory verses. I remember the piano songs I played for recitals through the fourth grade. I can sit at a piano and play “Italian Tarantella,” my fourth grade recital piece. I don’t know what piece I played for my fifth-grade recital. I know that fifth grade was my last piano recital because I was allowed to stop taking piano lessons after I picked up the trumpet as my primary instrument. My mother used to say that the reason I can’t remember my fifth-grade piano piece is that I quit practicing the piano in the fifth grade.

There is something unique about the things I memorized early in my life. I can still remember all kinds of things. I memorize passages of scripture to us in sermons. I can memorize short poems, but the stuff I memorize now I don’t retain. If I memorize a few lines from a play or a poem, I can deliver those lines for an occasion, but after the occasion has passed, I will no longer remember them.

If I were to invest the energy to recite the entire Gettysburg Address, it wouldn’t take long to memorize it and retain it for a few days. However, a year from now, I suspect I wouldn’t be able to recall it without a refresher. Part of it is lodged in my memory where I can access it, and part is not there.

The only George Washington quote I could come up with last night is one that has been falsely attributed to him. He never said, “I cannot tell I lie. I chopped down the cherry tree.” That is a fictional story. I suspect his most famous speech was his 1796 farewell speech, in which he warned against political factions and urged national unity. I cannot, however, recite even a sentence of that speech from memory.

So, happy Washington’s Birthday, President’s Day, or Happy February 17. However you recognize the day, may it make you smile.

In life, there are teachers we meet in classrooms who direct specific curricula and form individual relationships with their students. I have benefitted from some truly dedicated and excellent teachers. There are also teachers you never meet face to face, whose work you encounter through their writing. As a lifelong reader, I have felt a special connection with authors who have significantly contributed to my thinking. Walter Brueggemann is one such teacher for me. Although I have attended lectures, sermons, and other presentations by Brueggemann live, I know him primarily through his writing. I have used his commentary on Isaiah as the curriculum for bible study classes that I have taught. I continue to refer to several books of prayers by Brueggemann for personal devotion and use with small groups I lead.

I have a second and meaningful connection with Brueggemann. His biographer, Conrad Kanagy, is my editor at Santos Books. We have spoken of how Brueggemann has positively impacted both our lives and our writing.

Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar who has invested much of his career in studying the prophets. One of his simple insights, which has helped me understand the impact of the Bible, is that the characters we call prophets are also poets. Brueggemann asserts that poets call people back to the essentials and communicate what cannot be expressed in prose, especially in times of cultural or national trauma.

Early in my college career, I encountered the words “poetic” and “noetic” presented as a dichotomy. Noetic refers to intellect and mental activity, while poetic refers to emotional and imaginative expression. At the time, I preferred noetic pursuits. I enjoyed academic learning, but I read very little poetry for several years as I tried to hone my intellectual skills and academic writing.

Then I entered graduate theological seminary. I didn’t attend the school where Walter Brueggamann was a teacher. Instead, the first teacher I encountered at seminary was a professor of Christian Education named Ross Snyder. Ross quickly became a mentor and guide for my education and for the ministry that followed. Ross was a published poet in addition to being published in a more traditional noetic fashion. He also assigned poetry to us as part of our classes. I struggled with the poetic assignments. In addition, he pushed my more traditional academic writing by asking me to “say the same thing with half of the words.” He helped me learn to edit my work and showed me the value of re-writing.

Still, I didn’t think of myself as a poet. I didn’t read much poetry during the early decades of my career. However, I have returned to regular poetry reading in the last couple of decades. The collection of poets I keep beside my favorite reading chair is growing, and I read some poetry daily. I have also focused more on writing poetry in the last couple of years. I belong to a poetry writing group and have read poems at an open mic and church. I have contributed to a couple of informal poetry collections for special occasions at our church.

A couple of years ago, I sent a small collection of a dozen or so prayers to a friend who had a career as an editor. She helped format them and returned them to me with a note about appreciating my poetry. I hadn’t initially thought of my prayers as poems, but when she formatted them, I saw that I had been writing poetry without awareness.

These teachers- Brueggemann, Kanagy, Snyder, and my editor friend- have helped me see that the poetic and the noetic are not a dichotomy but companions in communicating important ideas and concepts.

I have been thinking a lot about the role of poetry in community recently. Part of that reflection is because I am working on a collection of essays, poems, and prayers. Part of it comes from reflecting on Brueggemann’s work with the prophet/poet Isaiah. The Biblical book of Isaiah covers a span of history longer than a single life. As such, it is not an individual author's work but a community of like-minded thinkers and writers. The book spans the time leading to the Babylonian exile when multiple regional superpowers threatened Israel. It then continues through the exile and the post-exilic period of return. As such, it provides a unique window on the effects of national and religious trauma caused by the conflict of culture that resulted in the displacement of people and forced exposure to different religious and social structures. Brueggemann asserts that the people's experiences were so disruptive and impactful that poetry was the only language that could address the complexity of their relationship with God.

If Brueggemann is right, and I believe he is, this time in our country is another pivotal moment in human history that is so disruptive that it demands poetry. Poets possess a unique ability to speak truth to power. It is not a mistake that poetry has been an essential part of political rallies and protests. Poets have contributed to the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, and poetry has marked many Black Lives Matter rallies.

In the disorientation of the political chaos that has descended upon our country in the past three weeks and spread across the world, creating a health crisis in Africa, causing an emergency political summit in Europe, leaving thousands with job insecurity, threatening programs for veterans and seniors, our world is once again in need of poets. I turn to Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, James Cagney, Julian Brolaski, Amanda Gorman, and others for words that speak powerfully to the human condition.

Now I am older. Whatever intellectual brilliance I once possessed is slipping. I don’t think as clearly as I once did. I make more slips of the tongue and often misspeak. I ramble on and on when fewer words would communicate more clearly. But I now understand what I did not when I was younger: how the poetic and the noetic go hand in hand. Intellectual intelligence is meaningful without emotional intelligence, and both require artistic intelligence.

For now, I am reading less news and more poetry. Here is a bit from Denise Levertov:

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

When I retired, I also resigned from several volunteer boards I had served on. This process was natural because I was moving from one state to another. The initial effect was quite pleasant. Within a relatively short period, I had fewer meetings taking up my time, which was a welcome change. However, it appears that the change wasn’t permanent. Somehow, I find myself with more and more meetings filling up my schedule.

I have no intention of living as a hermit. I like other people, and I enjoy getting to meet new people. I support many causes, and I gain a lot from getting together with others with similar interests and concerns. However, as I age, I have less patience for talking and more interest in doing. I still enjoy talking with others. There are friends with whom I enjoy connecting. Talking is the primary way that I connect with some of them. However, when it comes to an organization, there are a lot of times when talking gets in the way of accomplishing the group's goals.

One model that comes to mind when I think of the balance of talking and doing is a mission project that our Rapid City congregation undertook. A pine bark beetle infestation resulted in many dying trees in the Black Hills. The standing dead trees were very vulnerable to wildfire. Responsible landowners cleared dead trees and thinned the stands on their land to make their property less vulnerable to out-of-control fire. This created an oversupply of timber, which did not have commercial value. At the same time, out on the open prairie, especially on some of the Indian Reservations in South Dakota, there was a shortage of firewood. Electricity and propane are expensive, and families frequently install wood stoves for heat to decrease costs. Finding enough firewood, however, was a problem. Our group started with a single cut and split firewood delivery to an energy assistance program on a nearby Reservation. We borrowed a horse trailer to haul the wood and recruited a small group of volunteers to load and unload the firewood. That project led to other opportunities. Over the years, we added a couple of wood splitters, a few trailers, and more volunteers with pickup trucks. At the height of the program, we delivered nearly 100 cords of firewood to our partners each year.

The process was simple. We found a source of free wood from landowners who wanted it removed from their property. We got together and hauled the wood to the woodlot in our churchyard. Then, we had work days when we split the wood using power splitters. Some volunteers worked with chainsaws to cut the trees into stove length. Others ran the splitters. Others stacked the firewood. Then we would arrange deliveries to partners. When it was time for deliveries, we would gather to load trucks and trailers, caravan to our partners, unload and stack the firewood, and return home. Then, we would repeat the process.

We called ourselves the Woodchuck Society and said our rules were simple: no meetings and no budget. Dedicated volunteers planned work days and sent out notices. When we got together, we worked side by side. Volunteers stepped forward when we needed resources, such as fuel for chainsaws and splitters. We made it our practice to work with what we had. What wasn’t donated, we did without.

The project formed close bonds between people. Some years, we had a potluck picnic, and it was always a good time. However, the strength of the group was the value of working together.

However, there aren’t many examples of groups like that. I am currently serving on a volunteer board for an organization. I became involved after being recruited by other board members who got to know me because of an article I wrote that was published in an online newspaper. I was reluctant to get involved but was assured that the board only met four times a year and the time commitment was low.

However, the board has agreed to a planning retreat this spring that will take up most of a day. In preparation for the retreat, each board member is asked to schedule a one-hour meeting with the consultant leading the planning process. I have time for these extra meetings but am not eager about them. For the record, I was opposed to having a planning retreat in the first place, but I kept quiet and didn’t say anything, so I now feel obligated to participate in the process.

I’ve been through dozens of strategic planning processes. I’ve sat with groups as we created vision statements, set goals, planned strategies, and used a lot of newsprint. Rarely did those planning processes significantly affect the organizations' day-to-day operations. Show me a well-constructed strategic plan, and I will show you a document that will not be meaningful in five years. It probably will not be meaningful in one year.

The gap between planning and doing is significant. That doesn’t mean that organizations don’t need to plan. Setting goals and pursuing them is how things get done. However, strategic planning is a program, not a way of thinking. Many hours are invested in analyzing, but creative vision and leadership rarely emerge from planning programs. As an article published by the Harvard Business Review said, “Real strategic change requires inventing new categories, not rearranging old ones.”

I’m not expecting any breakthroughs from our planning process. We’ll check all the boxes, produce a few new statements, and maybe even develop a new slogan or two. However, the real work of change comes from thinking outside of the box and doing something different than what has been done before.

I am looking for a completely new direction for the organization. I hope for something I will be excited to work on and accomplish. I don’t expect that idea to come from a retreat. Chances are pretty good that the idea is something that is obvious but which we cannot see.

I’ve heard he story of how Edwin Land developed the Polaroid camera because his three-year-old daughter asked him why she couldn’t immediately see the picture of her he had just taken. The breakthrough came from a child’s question. I have a three-year-old grandson. Maybe my time would be better spent listening to him than attending a planning retreat. I’ll go to the retreat, but I pray I won’t forget to spend time with my grandson. Chances are the latter will be the most productive investment.

During my graduate education, I attended a conference where various scholars presented academic papers on how humans discern truth. Most of the presenters were ministers with years of experience or academic theologians. One presenter, however, the son of one of the conference’s organizers, was a cardiac surgeon. He focused on a famous quote by Danish theologian and philosopher Sören Kierkegaard in his paper. “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” He reflected on becoming a doctor, followed by two extended residencies, one in cardiac medicine and the other in surgery. He spoke of the skills required to open a human chest, connect an artificial pump to temporarily circulate blood while suturing transplanted tissue to create portions of arteries that supply the heart, disconnect the pump, restart the heart, check for leaks, and repair the chest opening. He spoke of the wonder of seeing and touching a beating heart inside a living person. The thing I remember most about his paper, however, was his telling of how he had to learn the skills of focus when he was going through his residencies. “To become a heart surgeon, I had to think about one thing and one thing only: heart surgery.” He had to teach himself to stop thinking about finances, food, family, and other vital parts of his life and to think of surgery only. Purity of heart for him came from focus.

I thought at the time, and I still believe, that I could never have become a cardiac surgeon. I am grateful that such people exist. A cardiac surgeon likely extended my life. He made an incision in my groin, inserted a needle in an artery followed by a catheter, proceeded to direct that catheter through my body to my heart, caused wires within the catheter to deliver radio frequency energy to specific nerve endings inside of my heart, then removed the catheter and repaired the wall of the artery in my groin. It is pretty technical stuff, and it worked. My heart has kept a regular rhythm since the procedure was completed.

I, however, lack the focus to perform such a task. I lack the focus required to learn how to do such a job. I am not a specialist. I am a generalist. I am the product of a liberal arts education and a graduate degree in Christian ministry. To do my job, one must be able to think of many things simultaneously. I had to plan and lead worship, provide counseling and care to individuals with confidentiality, manage budgets, supervise staff, plan mission opportunities, facilitate committees, teach classes, and chaperone youth events, with a reasonable amount of moving furniture, cleaning, and light repair on the side. For several years, I had a small note on my desk that reminded me, “The interruption is my job.”

Some of the things I learned in college classes served me well in my work. In an introduction to psychology class, which was the class in which I received the lowest grade of my undergraduate education, I learned about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s theory posits that individuals’ needs must be met at basic levels before achieving their full potential. At the base of his hierarchy are physiological needs. People must have sufficient food, water, shelter, clean air, and rest. Once those needs are met, people need security and safety. If all those needs are met, they need love and belonging from friends and intimate relationships. They can develop self-esteem and reach their potential only after meeting those needs. Understanding Maslow’s hierarchy helped me deal with individuals. I would check in with the basics: “Are you drinking enough water? Are you hungry? How are you sleeping?” At first, it surprised me how people who are grieving, for example, have unmet basic needs. Helping them meet those needs is part of assisting them in healing. As one whose job was to form community and practice love within the church, I often focused my attention on meeting basic needs and then on ensuring we were providing a safe space for people. Each level of the hierarchy became important.

First, ensure that people have food, clothing, and shelter. Then, ensure that they have safe spaces. Finally, help them form communities and caring relationships. Only after all of those things are done can teaching and learning occur. Whether or not they have studied Maslow, every elementary school teacher knows that hungry children can’t learn, children who don’t have safe places cannot learn, and children who have no friendships cannot learn.

Another basic from my college years that I have used throughout my life came from an introduction to sociology class. In “Invitation to Sociology,” Peter Berger outlines four tasks for sociologists: be skeptical, listen/observe, practice humanity, and nurture empathy. Those tasks can be applied to a lot of different pursuits in life. I’m no sociologist. That was the only class in the subject I took. However, skepticism, listening, humanity, and empathy are critical skills for working with people.

I don’t know if many college students study Maslow or Berger these days. I suspect that not many do. The high cost of education has forced them to focus on skills that can quickly translate into producing income. I have met some brilliant technicians and a few medical doctors who lack the relationship skills required for success. At this particular moment, our government is dominated by authoritarians and oligarchs who lack basic humanity and seem incapable of empathy.

As we advance, we would do well to teach the next generation those basic concepts. In our complex economy, very few jobs can be done by one person alone. To succeed, one must have skills for forming teams, working with others, and collaborating. Part of the intense political polarization at all levels in our country is a high degree of selfishness that prevents leaders and followers from developing supportive communities and empathy for others. When we fail at forming community, we fail to provide the basics for people to realize their full potential. And that is more than a personal tragedy. It inhibits our ability to realize the full potential of our communities and our country.

Like many congregations, our church has a small library. The collection is housed in a room with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a large conference table. There is seating for ten people in the room, and it is often used for meetings of small groups. There are currently just over 1,500 books in the collection. A small reference section contains bible commentaries, dictionaries, and atlases. There is a shelf of Bibles in various translations and versions. Theology, Bible Study, and Spirituality make up about little more than half of the collection. There are reasonable collections of faith formation, mission, and justice books.

I became the congregation’s librarian by default, in a way. I served as Interim Minister of Faith Formation for two years. The library was generally under the care of that position. We had a volunteer librarian who was a professional librarian with years of experience. She helped me choose software and create a digital catalog of the collection. She taught me how to use the software and organize the collection. The process of entering books into the software in a manner that made it possible to find books on the shelves was nearly completed when she died suddenly of an illness. At that time, I was coming to the end of my interim ministry and preparing to pass on the responsibilities of that position to others. As part of that process, I discovered that I was the only person in the church who knew the passwords to the library software and understood how the collection was organized. After consulting with the Congregation's Lead Pastor, I volunteered to become the unpaid librarian.

The job turned out to be larger than I expected. I knew several boxes of books were in the library, and I set out to deal with them. It took me months to sort through the boxes. Some of the books in the boxes were added to the collection, some were duplicates of books already in the collection, and many were books that someone had donated that, while being good books, didn’t fit into the categories of the limited collection.

Eighteen months after I became the librarian, we held a book giveaway. We set up tables in the fellowship hall and offered books to the congregation and our sister congregation, which shares our building. The books were displayed and offered for two weeks, and we gave away several boxes of books. Four boxes of books left over from the giveaway are being donated to various book sales in our community.

I thought removing the excess books from the library would make the collection more accessible and the room more comfortable. I was correct in that assumption. Accompanied by improvements in how books are organized and displayed, circulation has increased. I had not anticipated that people would continue donating books to the library. Most donations come in the form of books left in the room. Sometimes, it is just one or two books. Sometimes, people drop off boxes of books. Only a tiny percentage of the books donated fit into our collection. We do not have a fiction collection but receive many donations of fiction. Most bible study and spirituality books donated are ones the library already has in its collection.

There have been weeks when I showed up at the library to shelve returned books when the number of books donated exceeded those borrowed and returned. When I take a week off from going to the library, books pile up on tables around the room, even though I am careful to leave an empty cart for donations and new acquisitions.

We are a small library, and having a more extensive collection is not one of our goals. We host an annual book sale by a local independent bookstore that produces credit at the store that we use to add new titles to the collection. I anticipate the books that will circulate. The purpose of our library is not to have a static collection for display but to have a circulating library that serves our congregation. Our software lets me pay attention to which books are being checked out of the library.

At some point, we plan to develop a process of removing books that do not circulate from the collection to make shelf space for those our congregation is interested in reading. I, however, do not possess the right personality to trim the collection. Like the church library, my personal library seems to keep growing beyond the capacity of my shelves. Despite having shed 30 boxes of books when we moved into our retirement home, we still have books piling up beyond the capacity of our shelves. I just counted ten titles on my desk, which is not a large surface. In my defense, I am using some of those books as references for a writing project and others for a class I teach. In addition, the nonfiction book I am currently reading is on our dining room table, and there is a small stack of poetry books beside my recliner. I also have a stack of books that I intend to read next. I never want to run out of books to read.

Although I never got to know her well, I am particularly fond of the church’s previous librarian. As I work with the collection, I can appreciate her skill at organizing the collection and her attentiveness to detail. I can also see her love of books. She was no better at shedding books from the collection than I. While organizing, I found a box labeled “to be catalogued” but containing duplicates of books already catalogued. She had pulled them from the shelves, reused a box that once held books to be catalogued, and kept them though I do not know for what purpose.

When the time for me to step aside and allow a new librarian to take over my job comes, I know I will be leaving problems for my successor. I hope they are fewer than the ones I inherited, but it remains to be seen whether or not that will be the case.

Dear friend, I want to check in with you. As before, I am concerned about you. You told me I shouldn’t be, but I can’t help myself. I want things to work out for you. I want you to be happy and healthy and your family safe and secure. How are you? How is your family? I know there were some intense and angry conversations around your dinner table during the first term of the current president of the United States. I know some family members got so angry at Thanksgiving one year that they didn’t come for Christmas. We haven’t been close, but I am concerned about you.

You know who you are. I think you know which friend I’m addressing with this inquiry. You are the one who was proud to put the red sticker of the National Rifle Association on the back window of your pickup truck. I asked you about it, and you explained that it was all about freedom and that you were worried that there were evil people who intended to take over our government and rob you of your freedom. Your membership in the NRA was, for you, a way to protect your rights, if I understood what you said correctly.

I know we haven’t spoken in a while. I didn’t reach out to you a year ago when the CEO of your organization was found guilty by a jury of his peers of misspending millions of dollars of your organization’s money on pricy perks for himself. I’m pretty sure that you would disapprove of the dollars you sent to protect freedom being invested in private jets and trips to the Bahamas. I know you know the value of a dollar, and I suspect that the whopping $4,351,231 in restitution was enough to get your attention. But I didn’t want to appear gloating, so I kept quiet. I probably shouldn’t have.

So now, I want to check in with you to make sure that things are OK with you. I know you found my arguments weak when we last spoke. I suppose they were. I couldn’t imagine that there were evil men with lots of wealth who were preparing a hostile takeover of the US Government. I found it hard to accept your claim that there were evil people who would be convicted if they faced trial for their felonies who might seize power in an autocratic fashion. I didn’t take you seriously when you warned that a power-hungry person could take over the administration, ignore the courts, act without the consent of Congress, and get away with stealing our democracy. I guess I was wrong about all of that.

That is why I’m checking in with you right now. You said that if it ever happened, you and your friends would need your guns to defend democracy. Your guns, you said, were the only line of defense against evil people wanting to take all of the wealth and power from the people of the United States. And now that all those things have happened, now that a convicted felon who has escaped punishment for his crimes is ignoring court orders and acting with impunity and has subverted the authority of congress and seized control of the spending and budget without consent, now that people with vast amounts of money but no elected position and no constitutional authority are firing good people from government and refusing to spend money according to laws passed by congress, now I’m worried about you.

I don’t know where you are in all of this. I hope you aren’t preparing to use your guns to hurt someone. I know you said you and your friends would be willing to die for freedom, but I don’t want you to die. You probably remember that I was dismissive of your ability to use hunting rifles and a few handguns to stage a military uprising. I’m pretty sure I made you angry with my comment that the Second Amendment guarantees “a well-organized militia, not a bunch of random gun nuts and collectors.” OK, that was a bit harsh on my part, but genuine concern for your well-being was behind it. I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want you to die from a gunshot.

Maybe you remember that I told you that your guns posed a risk to you, that if you were ever to suffer from depression or fall into a fit of anger, they might become weapons of suicide or homicide. I’d been to too many homes where people used firearms to kill themselves. I’d sat with too many shocked and grieving family members not to notice how their guns got used.

I know you got caught up in collecting. I understand that some of the guns in your safe haven’t been fired in years and haven’t been cleaned and maintained as well as you imagined you would care for them. I know that you bought the heavy gun safe more out of a fear of burglars stealing your property than out of protection for yourself from those weapons. But I also know you stockpiled a lot of ammunition. You remember that I told you about two occasions when I visited with deputies who had been called to move firefighters back from burning buildings because the ammunition inside the buildings was exploding and creating too much risk for those fighting the fires. You thought my warning was silly and that such could never happen to you.

But now, I admit that I haven’t kept up. Still, I am worried about you. I don’t want to see an armed uprising. I know that our nation is in the grips of our history's most serious constitutional crisis. I know there are people in power who have no concern for the freedom of others and no respect for us, the people of the United States. But I’m asking you once again not to take up your guns and brandish them. I know your occasional trips to the rifle range don’t constitute military training. I know your impressive collection is no match for tanks, armored vehicles, missiles, drones, and robotic weapons.

So, please, take a breath. Calm your body and your soul. Join me in praying for our democracy, judges, and courts. Write letters hoping that some of the members of Congress still have a modicum of conscience and a sliver of spine. And whatever you do, remember that I do care about you. We might disagree about the sticker on the back window of your pickup truck. Still, we don’t disagree about our love for this country’s marvelous democratic experiment of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

My wife and I recently saw a coyote crossing the road near our home. The animal appeared in good health, with no sign of mange. It loped in front of our car close enough for us to get a good look before it disappeared into the brush near the road. We often hear the coyotes singing in the night, so we know they are around. South of our home is a reasonably sizeable undeveloped area with a few hay fields, plenty of woods, and other natural features. The BP oil refinery owns the land, and the company allows pedestrians and cyclists to use the space for recreation. When I ride my bike in the area, I often see people having fun with their dogs off-leash. It is a good place for pets to roam safely. I don’t know if that area is also home to the coyotes. I’ve never seen them in that area, but the one we saw was close enough to that space to have come from there. Our son has seen coyotes near their farm, but to date, the only predation of their chickens has come from domestic dogs owned by the neighbors.

Seeing the animal brings up a conundrum about describing it to my friends who have lived in Washington for a long time. I come from Montana, and I have lived in the Dakotas. Where I come from, along with Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska, we pronounce the name of the animal “kai-oat.” It only has two syllables. Out here, folks are most likely to say “kai-oat-ee.” I’ve also heard “kai-oat-tay.”

I understand that different languages have different pronunciations for animal names. When someone commented on how I pronounce coyote, I used to say that where I come from, coyotes don’t speak Spanish, so the name has only two syllables.

I have to admit, however, that there are a few outliers and renegades even in the places where most people use the two-syllable version. The clearest example that comes to my mind is the mascot of the University of South Dakota. To locals, it is pronounced “kai-oat,” and sometimes the teams are referred to with a single syllable: “yotes.” But if you hang around the university, you’ll occasionally hear someone referring to the mascot, Charlie, as Charlie “Kai-oat-ee.”

I blame television. Too many generations of children, including those from South Dakota, have watched too many episodes of the drama between the Loony Toons Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. That cartoon has been around since 1949. Making matters worse, too many people live in areas with very few coyotes, so their experience comes more from the cartoon than from real life. I understand the phenomenon. The first time I saw a real road runner was when I visited Arizona. I was surprised by the size of the bird. I expected it to be more on the scale of a coyote, which it is not.

I’m sure someone will point out, as often is the case, that most dictionaries favor the three-syllable pronunciation. As a fan of dictionaries, however, I respond that Noah Webster’s original 1828 dictionary didn’t even have the word. It first appeared in the Imperial Dictionary by John Ogilvie, published in 1885, where two pronunciations are shown, but “kai-oat” is the first. The first time a Webster’s dictionary used the three syllable version, they spelled it “coy-oh-te.” I don’t know whose accent that represents.

I’m sticking with “kai-oat.”

That brings to mind another unrelated issue. My friends from New England insist on calling garbanzo beans chickpeas. I point out to them that they aren’t peas at all. They are legumes. One of my friends pointed out that if you Google garbanzo beans, the first article is the Wikipedia entry for chickpea. The same happens if you search the New York Times recipe database for suggestions on preparing and serving garbanzos. It yields recipes for chickpeas. However, if you go to the grocery store searching for chickpeas, you’d better be willing to purchase a can of garbanzo beans because that is how they are labeled, at least around here.

In Washington, people often tell me I have a Minnesota accent. That didn’t happen when we lived in South Dakota. I was occasionally told I have a North Dakota accent and always accepted that with pride. However, I can hear the difference between how I pronounce Dakota when I say North Dakota and South Dakota. Despite what my friends from the East think, they are not the same. I know that the Dakota Territory was divided north and south instead of east and west because if they had divided it the other way, the western side wouldn’t have had enough population to qualify for statehood.

I also know that in North Dakota state history classes, teachers point out that North Dakota is the 39th state and South Dakota is the 40th state. In South Dakota, they teach that the two states were admitted simultaneously on November 2, 1889. November 1889 was a banner month for new states. Montana, where I was born, was admitted on November 8, 1889, and Washington, where I now live, was admitted on November 11, 1889.

For the record, my accent is a Montana accent, not a North Dakota or Minnesota accent. I just happen to know how locals pronounce their states' names. And in Montana, you can tell whether a person is a local by the way they pronounce coyote. And don’t give me the line about how Governor Gianforte pronounces anything. He is hardly a native. When elected in 2021, he hadn’t ever spent an entire winter in the state despite owning a home in Bozeman. The constitution of Montana requires the governor to live in Helena, but Gianforte found the Governor’s mansion lacking amenities, so he and his wife purchased a $4 million mansion in town.

I’m pretty sure that people who live in multi-million dollar mansions don’t know how to pronounce coyote correctly. They probably eat chickpeas too.

I was introduced to small business in 1965, moving from working as a salaried employee to running an independent small business. My salaried job was sweeping a feed warehouse. I began that job at 50 cents per week and worked my way up to $1 per week, but my income wasn’t keeping pace with my appetite for bowling and snacks. I applied and was accepted as a delivery carrier for the Billings Gazette newspaper. I was assigned a route with 55 customers. The newspapers arrived on the train every morning. The train did not stop. The bundles of papers were pushed out of the door of a train car as it passed through town. I found the bundles with my name on them, cut the wire that bound them, folded individual newspapers and delivered them to the houses on my route. At the end of each month, I visited my customers and collected their subscription price, which was $1.50 per month. From that amount, I paid the newspaper company for the papers I had received.

I quickly learned that there were a lot of tricks to the trade. One important trick was to order the correct number of papers. It was essential to have a few extra copies because inevitably a few were ruined by the wires that held the bundles and the process of being pushed from a moving train. Extra copies didn’t make any money, however. Another trick was ensuring collections were completed on time to avoid cash flow problems. Collections were the nemesis of my business. I delivered papers between 5:30 and 6:30 each morning. I didn’t mind getting up, and I could cover my section of the town with my bicycle pretty quickly. Collections, however, had to be accomplished after school or on Saturdays. If someone weren’t at home, I’d have to go back. Sometimes, they wouldn’t have the cash when I arrived. I learned to carry some extra cash to give change for larger bills. Most people were pretty good about paying, and a few tipped, which helped.

Another issue for me was building my business. New paper delivery routes were set up with 50 to 60 customers. Still, if you got new customers, you could develop your route up to as many as 150 customers before the newspaper forced you to divide the route and give some customers to another delivery person. There were two ways to gain new customers. The hard way was to convince someone who didn’t subscribe to do so. I worked on houses along my route that didn’t subscribe rather than expanding my territory. I paid attention when a new family moved in. I’d give them a few free copies to get them interested and then show up and invite them to subscribe. The second way to get new customers was to trade territory with another deliverer. I would always take new customers when another deliverer had a customer that was out of their area or wanted to shed a bit of work. Sometimes, I could gain by trading a block with five customers for one with seven if the other deliverer found a particular block convenient.

I was successful in the business. The sweet spot for a paper route in those days was 110 customers, which produced just under $600 a year in profits. Anything over $600 meant I would have to file income tax, so the goal was to come in just under that amount. I had no trouble managing 150 customers because I “hired” my brother to do collections and kept my income below the threshold. The brother who did the collections for me was lousy at delivering. He wouldn’t get up when the alarm went off. His mind wandered, and it took him much longer to cover my route than I did myself. The next younger brother was better at deliveries but was no good at collections. When he grew up, he became a first-rate salesman, but when he was young, he was too shy. On the other hand, he did seem to get more tips than the rest of us.

When I moved from delivering newspapers to mowing lawns and shoveling snow, the paper company divided my route into two routes. I had two brothers who bid on those routes and got them, but neither could grow their routes very much. The brother who was good at collections was first to give up his route. He tired of the seven-day-a-week grind even though I helped him deliver Sunday papers, which were larger and heavier most of the time, and I was his primary substitute when he took a day off. The other brother stayed longer in the business before giving up deliveries. He became a route supervisor for another daily paper when he became an adult. He picked up bundles of papers at the press plant in the middle of the night and delivered them to nearby towns for delivery. He could do that job for extra income and still do his day job. He was doing that job when a sudden heart attack ended his life.

These days, daily newspapers are almost a thing of the past. The Skagit Valley Herald only prints papers five days a week in our area. Cascadia Daily News, despite its name, only prints once per week. The Daily Herald also isn’t daily with five printings per week. Local journalism is moving to online formats. The Salish Current is an online-only news source. The big paper in our region is the Seattle Times, which still offers daily delivery for $14 per week. Customers are few and far between, and carriers all use cars for delivery.

We received a daily paper for many years. However, we found that we were getting most of our news from online sources and reading the paper less and less. When the newspaper raised the rates for obituaries and funeral home websites had more extended and more complete obituaries than the newspaper, I finally dropped our subscription.

However, I still look forward to the weekly small-town paper we receive. Something about having a newspaper in my hands still brings me joy.

Our youngest and oldest grandsons share the same birthday, and today is that day. One is turning 14; the other is turning 3. 11 years to the day separate the brothers. Between them, there are three other grandchildren. We have a cluster of family birthdays this weekend. My nephew’s birthday was on Friday, and my wife’s birthday was yesterday. Celebrating birthdays is one of he reminders of the milestones of our life’s journey. The birthdays serve as markers not only of the passage of time but of memories of our past experiences.

Our youngest grandson has a unique place in our family. He was born just five months after we moved into this house. He has no memory of us living anywhere other than just a few miles from his home. He is used to seeing us nearly every day. He is at home in our house. When his brother was born, we lived 1240 miles away from his home. We tried to visit as often as possible, but we didn’t get many glimpses of his daily life. With our youngest, it has been very different. I feel like I know him. I have unique relationships with all my grandchildren and feel blessed by every one, but there is something extraordinary about having constant contact with him. I associate his birth with our time of living in this home. Our other grandchildren visited us while we lived in different homes. From his perspective, we’ve always lived in the blue house on Clamdigger Drive.

Our oldest grandson was born just three weeks after my mother died. I was in the early stages of processing the grief of the loss, and into my life came this fantastic new infant. One month later, Susan’s father died. Life has moved on in many ways, but celebrating his birthday always reminds me of our turbulent year in 2011. In 15 months, my brother died, my mother died, our grandson was born, my father-in-law died, and our daughter was married. It was an incredible emotional roller coaster for us. The year was also a challenging one in my career. We had agreed to take a sabbatical leave differently than planned to create space in the church budget for a part-time pastor being called to our church staff.

Our nephew was the first grandson on both sides of his family. I had several nieces and nephews born to my siblings, but this was the first for Susan’s family. His entrance marked the beginning of a new generation. A few years later, we had a son, and then more grandchildren were born until my in-laws had five - the same number as we now have.

My wife’s birthday has been a significant celebration in my life for more than half a century. Yesterday was the 52nd time we celebrated it as husband and wife. We’ve celebrated in several places with several different events and activities. There have been a lot of cakes, a few practical gifts, and some that were less memorable. In addition to celebrating what an incredible gift she has been to me, each year’s celebration is an occasion for me to recognize my deep gratitude for her parents and sisters. Like our grandson and nephew, she was the family's first grandchild, the pioneer of a new generation.

In 2019, she experienced a serious illness, and there was a brief time when I was unsure whether or not she would survive. As a result of that experience, every birthday since has seemed like a bonus to me. I’ve gone from sitting at her bedside praying for just one more day and one more conversation to celebrating five birthdays. Every day is an extravagant gift for me. Those days have added up into weeks and months and years. I have been blessed beyond measure.

We have family birthdays in March, April, June, July, and September, and each is an opportunity to celebrate our love. February, however, is unique in its blast of birthdays. I had cake and ice cream with dinner last night, and the prospects are good for more celebration foods today.

Technically, the English language has 12 verb tenses. We tend to think of the three categories of these tenses more than about the different nuances. Past, Present, and Future cover the span of time. Although we use verb aspects of simple, continuous, and perfect, we often are unaware of their distinctions. I am a writer and rarely distinguish between past simple and past perfect continuous. However, the ways we talk and think about time in our language are not the only ways to think and speak. In Biblical Hebrew, there are only two primary tenses. Some events have ended, and some have been ongoing. The present is usually a part of the ongoing tense, but there are moments when it is attached to the past tense, such as the moment of a death or another significant ending. It can be confusing for translators to express the same understanding of time from one language to the other.

Albert Einstein taught the world that time is relative. Time passes more slowly for an object moving faster than another object. The physicist Carlo Rovelli theorized that humans can only perceive the past and future. Our experience of the present is always perceived as part of the past or part of the future. As a non-physicist, his concepts are very similar to the tenses in Biblical Hebrew. Rovelli hints that time might not be a one-way street always going in the same direction.

I don’t understand all physicists' theories, but I know how my memory allows me to journey back into my past. Events that have already occurred continue to be meaningful to me. Birthdays are an opportunity for me to use the Present Perfect Continuous tense. Some actions started in the past and are still ongoing.

As I age, I find joy in recalling significant moments and events. The celebration of birthdays doesn’t carry the same intense excitement as it did when I was younger, but there is a sweetness I didn’t recognize before I grew older.

Earlier this week, I got an email from a colleague in Cleveland asking others and me planning to participate in a meeting in March about how we felt about flying to attend an in-person Resource Retreat. A small cohort of consultants has been assembled to review an extensive collection of books, curricula, websites, podcasts, and other resources that will be part of our denomination's significant faith formation initiative. A few of us have been part of multiple curricula development projects over several decades. Others are younger and bring fresh eyes and fresh perspectives to the project. We hope to make these resources available to churches as soon as possible through a dynamic new website developed through our church’s “Love of Children” project. I have been very excited about the project because our congregations need those resources. It has been too long since our denomination has had the funding and focus to offer new resources of this type to congregations.

We need to accomplish work that can be expedited by a face-to-face meeting. While we are all experienced with remote work and meetings, there is a type of collaboration that works best when we are together. Because we bring different skills and types of expertise, we can bring multiple perspectives to the large volume of potential resources. Many of us have been at work proposing resources for possible inclusion, which need to be reviewed by others. Also, some of us have been working together as educational consultants for years, and we know that being together will spark our minds regarding additional resources that any one of us as an individual might miss.

The purpose of the email message, however, was to check in with the group specifically about our willingness to travel by air. The memo was written after the collision of an airliner and a helicopter over the Potomac River near Washington DC that resulted in the deaths of 67 and after the tragic air ambulance crash in Philadelphia that left seven dead and 24 injured. There have been other times when dramatic and tragic accidents have occurred in clusters, which often spur fears of flying.

While I am grateful for the concern expressed in the email message, like my colleagues, I quickly responded that the work we need to do makes the required air travel important. Those who know me expected me to answer that way. I know how safe air travel is. I grew up among pilots, and I know the statistics. I am quick to reassure those who have fears with information about the safest way to travel available to us. Still, I have been careful to restrict my travel because I know how inefficient airline travel is regarding energy consumption and carbon pollution.

I won’t be afraid to fly when the time comes. I enjoy flying every time I have the opportunity. I sometimes grow a bit weary of all of the security and waiting that is now required when flying, but it still makes me happy to board an airplane. I have so many good memories of flying as a pilot and passenger. I will, however, be traveling with a heavy heart and sadness for those who have lost loved ones in what has turned out to be a very tragic week. Yesterday, I kept checking my computer for news about the Behring Air flight that went missing while flying in harsh winter conditions over the Behring Sea from Unakleet to Nome.

Behring Air is an experienced carrier with scheduled airline service and Part 35 charter operations in Alaska. Alaska's Remote areas depend on air travel for essential goods and necessary travel. Large aircraft are not practical for many trips as the number of people and the amount of goods required are too small to require such big planes. Several smaller carriers have developed skill and experience in operating smaller planes in harsh conditions. Behring Air is known for using the best aircraft in the safest manner possible. They had never before had an accident involving losing an airplane.

The news that the wreckage had been found crushed hopes that there might be survivors. The pilot and nine passengers all perished.

It is essential to be clear that while these three tragedies occurred within just over a week, they do not share a single cause. They are related in time, but not circumstance. Accident investigators focus on heavy air traffic, night vision equipment, radio communications, and other factors in the DC accident. In the Philadelphia accident, investigators will examine voice recordings and other data to determine whether spatial disorientation was a factor as the plane entered clouds right after takeoff and did not follow the assigned path. In Alaska, investigators will focus on the plane’s TKO deice system. All three accidents likely had different causes. These accidents weren’t caused by disruptions following political changes in Washington. They could have happened under any director of the Federal Aviation Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct thorough and professional investigations into each accident. It is wrong to use such tragedies for political gain.

It would help if top administration officials acknowledged the depth of these tragedies and the pain of those who have lost loved ones. Although nothing can take away the pain of sudden and traumatic loss, having political leaders stand with the victims and share their grief can help. I have carefully read the statement of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said, “When tragedy strikes, we’re never far removed from the Alaskans directly impacted.” Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said he was “heartbroken.” “Our prayers are with the passengers, the pilot, and their loved ones during this difficult time.” I am grateful for their expressions of compassion.

I know empathy and compassion are not marks of leadership in the current administration in Washington, D.C., and I don’t expect the President to assume the role of compassionate healer. However, I wish his handlers would prevent him from making false claims, harsh attacks, and laying blame in the wrong places. He won’t weep for the losses.

I will, and I won’t forget them when I have the privilege of traveling safely later this spring.

Yesterday, my daughter-in-law and I went grocery shopping together. They have a family of six, and we have just two in our household, so I dropped her off at the grocery store, ran an errand, returned, completed my shopping, and put my groceries into the car before she was ready at the checkout. As I helped to bag her groceries, I noted that she had bought eggs. I had also bought a dozen eggs. The clerks at the store probably didn’t think much of it, but I noted the purchases because both households rarely purchase eggs. They raise chickens, and both families get our eggs from the farm. There are eggs to spare, which are given to friends and donated to a local food bank. This winter, however, there have been fewer eggs. An attack by two dogs resulted in the loss of most of their flock last year, and the current flock is made up of young birds raised from chicks since the attack. They only get three or four eggs daily at the farm during the cold weather. That isn’t enough for their family, so we have been buying our eggs at the store, and they have also had to purchase them.

The avian flu outbreak has resulted in high prices and low inventory of eggs across the region. At the store, eggs ranged from $2.99 to $8.99 a dozen. Some cartons with only a half-dozen eggs sold for $5.99. That’s a dollar an egg!

The shopping trip got me thinking about how many eggs we have purchased and consumed over the years. The year we were married, I had been living in a dormitory and eating at the college food service. Between the end of the semester and our wedding, I lived in our first apartment alone and without the wedding gifts that would soon stock our kitchen with pots, pans, dishes, and silverware. I had a single pot and a stack of paper plates and cooked my breakfast daily with two boiled eggs. I knew little about cooking but could boil water and produce cooked eggs. I don’t like it when the eggs are undercooked and the whites are runny, so I left them in the boiling water for ten minutes. Then I peeled them and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

I know a lot more about cooking eggs these days. I can fry, poach, scramble, and bake eggs. I can make omelets, breakfast burritos, and eggs in the hole. I use them in batters and bread and a lot of baking recipes. I know the sous vide technique, where an egg is placed in a 150F water bath for an hour, but I’ve never done it. Sous vide produces eggs with runny whites. I repeatedly tell the story of my grandmother asking everyone how they wanted their eggs prepared and serving them all cooked the same way at the same time.

Pellegrino Musto, a scientist at Italy’s National Research Council in Pozzuoli, recently published a paper with the recipe for cooking the perfect boiled egg. The paper claims that using computers to calculate how liquids and gasses flow according to the laws of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, they come up with eggs cooked just right with firm whites and soft, creamy yokes. They used Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and High-resolution Mass Spectrometry and chemical analysis of the boiled eggs to determine that eggs cooked according to their technique retain more polyphenols that give them antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Here are their instructions for the perfect way to boil an egg. Have a pot of boiling water and another vessel with water that is precisely 86F. While maintaining exact temperatures in both containers, start by placing the egg in the boiling water. Transfer it to the lukewarm water after precisely two minutes. Then, in two minutes, put it back in the boiling water. Continue the process for a total duration of 32 minutes for a perfectly boiled egg. The technique is required because, according to the scientists, the yoke needs to be cooked to 149F while the white needs to be cooked to 185F.

The method developed by the Italian scientists has been dubbed periodical cooking. While the technique has been published in a scientific journal, it will not likely be included in many cookbooks. Furthermore, I know a bit of science that might cause a problem with folks trying to cook eggs with periodical cooking. In our marriage, we have lived at an elevation of over 7,000 feet in the mountains, and now at just a few feet above sea level. The temperature at which water boils varies widely by elevation. All boiled foods cook faster here than they do at higher elevations. As far as I know, the scientists’ paper does not consider altitude. I’m sure that alternating the water bath for the eggs for exactly two minutes at each temperature only produces the exact result at the precise altitude. The paper doesn’t report the elevation of the research.

Without that critical information, I could not replicate their results even if I invested 32 minutes in boiling an egg. It would be disappointing to put in all that effort and end up with a dry and crumbly yoke, a runny white, or worse yet, both.

I might poach my egg this morning if I want to be fancy, but I’ll probably fry it instead. I can break the yoke, fry the egg hard, then serve it on toast with avocado and drizzle a balsamic vinegar reduction over it for a gourmet meal in less than half the time it takes to make a perfect boiled egg.

When it comes to cooking, perfection is not one of the things I achieve. I fall short of perfection in a lot of endeavors. My friend Ward, a good carpenter, advised me to ignore the eighths and sixteenths on the tape measure when framing a house. “You’re building a house, not a china cabinet.” A joyful life requires accepting a bit of imperfection.

Some of my friends tease me because I hardly ever know anything about movies. They will tell me about the movies they have seen and describe how their reactions to those movies gave them insight, stirred emotions, and told them stories they had not previously heard. I will never have seen the movies, and even though my friends say, “You’ve got to see this movie,” I usually never get around to seeing it. I’m not sure why this is. I don’t dislike movies. I have a deep appreciation for storytelling, and I enjoy art. I know that movies can be incredible displays of human imagination and collaboration. When I go to a movie, I usually enjoy myself.

I’ve tried to analyze my reaction to movies. I remember when video recorders and playback machines first became available. I was reluctant to own one. I told some of my friends that I’d buy them when I discovered a movie I would want to watch over and over again. I had to relent when our children were 7 and 9. In the first place, we were renting VHS machines from the video store fairly regularly. In second place, Disney released the animated movie Fantasia on VHS, and that was a movie that I could watch over and over again. It turned out that it wasn’t the only one. I’ve lost track of how often I’ve watched the first three Star Wars movies. I don’t know how often I’ve watched the Indiana Jones Adventures.

I’m not anti-movie. I don’t seem to get around to going to them very often. My kids can get me to go to movies, but these days, with children of their own, we usually end up going to a movie made for children. I’ve seen Sonic and Minions and Paw Patrol in theaters.

Going to a movie often invokes terrific memories for me. The drive-in theater was one of my hometown’s significant attractions when I was a teenager. Our town didn’t have many attractions for teenagers. One of my early dates with my wife was seeing Easy Rider at the drive-in.

This year, when my wife suggested that it might be fun to go to a movie as part of her birthday celebration, I responded positively. It was a great idea. The film about Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown,” is playing at the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham, an iconic theater. We went online and purchased tickets for a matinee showing. The plan was to head to town after I finished an online class, shop in the morning, have lunch, see the movie, and make it home around dark. Of course, things don’t always work out to plans, and we had some other important tasks to do before we headed to Bellingham, so we had lunch at home, did a bit of shopping before the movie, caught the movie, did a bit more shopping, got dinner out and returned home in the early evening. It was a lovely date with a very wonderful woman. Even though it was supposed to be part of her birthday gift, it seemed more like she had given me a gift by suggesting we go to the movie.

Chances are pretty good that most of my friends and people who read my journal have already seen the movie, so I don’t need to go into details. I had expected it to be a complete biopic spanning Dylan’s life and career, but the movie focuses on just the years 1961 - 1965, from Dylan’s arrival in New York as a complete unknown through his genre-breaking electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Bob Dylan is 12 years older than me. I knew all of the songs in the movie and could have sung along. I refrained. It wasn’t that kind of a crowd in the small theater.

I could give the make, model, and year of most cars in the movie. Though it didn’t detract from the power of the film, I did notice that the filmmaker seemed to have only been able to locate one 1960 Studebaker Lark, and that one was not the usual white, black, red, blue, or green that were standard colors for that model that year. It was a teal color and had more clear coat than any car of the ’60s ever had. It showed up in New York and Delaware in the movie.

To an old guy like me, the actors playing Johnny Cash and Joan Baez didn’t look as close to my memories of the singers, but Timothée Chalamet’s performance was spot on. His singing was just right.

I won’t offer a more detailed review of the movie. As I’ve already written, most of the readers of this essay know more about movies and have probably already seen this film or read better reviews than I can write.

I have discovered that in life there are big gratitudes and small gratitudes. I am thankful for some significant things, like health, a meaningful career, and wonderful children. I’m grateful that I met my wife when I did and that we decided to get married when we did. I’m grateful for sunrises and sunsets and snow-covered mountains. There is a lot of gratitude in my life. Yesterday, there was snow and slush in our area. I was feeling grateful for warm, waterproof shoes and a winter parka that I rarely get the chance to wear since we moved to a milder climate. Those are small things, but I like to note gratitudes big and small.

My enormous gratitude yesterday was that I got to go on a “date” to celebrate Susan’s birthday. I’m not particularly nostalgic. I do not wish I could go back and relive past years. I find the present to be engaging. A date with the woman I love was a sweet blend of treasured memory and present joy. There was a short time, back in 2019, when I didn’t know whether or not I would get to celebrate her 69th birthday. Every birthday since has been a gift beyond measure. I am more grateful than words can express.

We love to travel, and we’ve had the opportunity to make several long road trips over the years. However, we’ve lived in the West and Midwest and spent all of our lives there except for the four years we lived in Chicago. Plenty of people would say that Chicago is in the Midwest. A couple of trips have taken us to the East Coast, but we haven’t fully explored the East or visited much of the South.

One of the blessings of children is that they travel beyond their parents' territory. We’ve been able to visit England and Japan because our daughter has lived in those countries. When our son attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina, I joked that I was glad he was getting the culture of the North after having spent much of his teenage years in South Dakota. His venture there, however, did give us some experience with a new part of the country. We drove from South Dakota to North Carolina twice. The first trip was with a pickup, moving household items for him, and towing his car. The second was for his wedding in North Carolina. In addition, we made a bit of a drive across the south when we rented a car and visited him and his wife in North Carolina after a church meeting in Atlanta. And now, our daughter and her family live in South Carolina. We’ve made several trips to visit them, including a fantastic cross-country trip with our camper from Washington to South Carolina and back.

One of the stories we’ve told about our introduction to Southern culture was about our first stop at a Waffle House Diner. We hadn’t encountered the eating places before the first time we drove to North Carolina. There are over 2,000 locations across the south, though the chain claims to have restaurants in the midwest because they see Missouri and Arkansas as part of the midwest, while we think of those states as southern. It is all a matter of perspective. On our road trip, we saw many similar restaurants in size and design. Waffle House locations are open 24 hours a day and serve breakfast items whenever someone wants them.

On our first visit, Susan tried to order a Pecan Waffle, one of the top-selling items on the menu. Because of the difference in our accents, the waitress had a hard time understanding what she wanted, and when she finally understood, she said, “O honey, you want a Pee-can waffle!” At least, that is the way it sounded to us. We’ve laughed about the experience ever since. I don’t remember what I ordered, but we stopped for breakfast, so I probably ordered eggs, toast, and sausage. I might have also ordered one of their bowls of cheese grits with eggs and meat. I’ve since come to think of Waffle House as a good place to taste southern grits. Grits are not on our regular menu at home, but when we travel, we like to experience different foods as part of the experience.

Waffle House claims it is the world’s largest seller of waffles, ham, pork chops, grits, and T-bone steaks. I have no evidence to dispute that claim. They also claim that they sell 2% of all eggs consumed in the US. It is that last claim that has gotten them in the news recently as they announced that they were adding a surcharge of 50 cents per egg to all orders due to the high price of eggs. Avian flu has created an egg shortage and increased the cost of eggs nationwide. It seems as if the shortage is going to continue for a while. While we don’t appreciate the high prices, we haven’t cut back on our consumption. The high cost of eggs should benefit local farm stands this spring when the chickens return to greater egg production as the weather warms up. By then, the pullets at our son’s farm should be up to full production, and we’ll be getting free eggs once again.

There is a lot of other trivia about Waffle House. The dinners have jukeboxes with units at each table where diners can select tunes. The chain has its own record label, Waffle Records, that doesn’t produce consumer records. The songs available on the jukeboxes in the diners sport the Waffle Records label and focus on themes about waffles, restaurants, fast food, and the like. If you want the whole Waffle House experience, head to one of their locations, order a waffle and a bowl of cheese grits, and while you are waiting, select “Waffle Doo-Wop” on the jukebox.

I don’t know about franchises or how restaurant locations are chosen, but there is a diner in Surrey, British Columbia, just across the border from where we live that is called Waffle House. It doesn’t have the iconic yellow sign with black letters like the chain restaurants we visited in the south. And it isn’t painted yellow and red like the diners with which we are familiar. I haven’t yet visited it. The iconic diner in Canada is Tim Hortons. We have visited several of their locations. I did look up the Canadian Waffle House menu online, and it isn’t a place to go for southern comfort food unless your idea of southern is south Canada. You won’t find breakfast poutine or Turkish eggs at a Waffle House in South Carolina. The Canadian menu also features chicken and waffles, which I associate with a soul food cafe but would not expect at a US Waffle House. I’d probably go for the poutine. You can’t go wrong with french fries, gravy, and cheese curds.

As far as I know, the Canadian waffle house isn’t applying the 50-cent surcharge for each egg served. They’re probably feeling the pinch, however. I don’t think the supply of eggs is any better on their side of the border. I do know that raw eggs are prohibited. Once, when we were waiting for a ferry with our camper, the customs folks told us we could either surrender our eggs or cook them before the ferry arrived. Cooked eggs don’t carry the same prohibition.

For now, the plan is to eat breakfast at home. Though I admit, I’m tempted to drive up there for some poutine one of these days.

For the past several months, friends worldwide have been posting pictures of brilliant displays of the Northern Lights. A couple of factors have come together to yield these photographs. First, there has been a peak this winter in aurora activity caused by a season of solar storms. Secondly, sophisticated cameras in cell phones have meant that nearly everyone has a camera with them wherever they go. It doesn’t hurt that cameras record a slightly different light spectrum than the human eye. Many dramatic photos came from less stunning experiences to the naked eye.

We should have frequent opportunities to view the aurora, but this winter has not offered as many opportunities for us as some other winters. We are challenged by living in the moistest climate of our lives. The skies are cloudy more often here than in any place we have lived. We see less of the night sky because it is usually blanketed in layers of clouds. Another challenge for us when viewing the night sky is that we live only 40 miles from Canada’s third-largest city and only 10 miles from its brightly lit exurbs. There is a lot of light pollution in our north sky. On the occasions when we have clear skies, viewing the stars and planets is easier when looking south than north from this place.

For some people, interest in the night sky is sparked or renewed by a daytime experience. The April 2024 total solar eclipse path was such that a large percentage of the United States population could witness the event. I know how powerful and spiritual an experience of total eclipse is. Although we live west of the path of the 2024 event and only saw a partial eclipse from our point of view, we did experience a total eclipse in 2017 when we traveled a ways south of our home in South Dakota to a place of totality in Nebraska where we had an unobstructed view of the event. The change in the light, the feel of the chill, the appearance of Baily’s Beads just before totality, and the reaction of animals, including the rooster near our viewing place, were all-powerful. Since the sun is completely obscured by the moon passing between it and the earth, there is an experience of sunset and sunrise with a short time of darkness between.

The travel site booking.com has coined the name “noctourism” for the top travel trend of 2025. They surveyed more than 27,000 travelers and found that two-thirds have considered traveling to destinations with darker skies than their home location. Tours have been offered for activities as simple as visiting a place with clear skies and low light pollution to lie down and look up at the night sky. Some involve travel to exotic locations such as the Altacama region in Chile, the driest nonpolar desert on Earth. It has been known by professional astronomers for a long time and now is attracting more casual observers with its clear night skies. Other travelers have chosen to travel to festivals with lots of bright lights at night, such as the annual Up Helly Aa festival in the Shetland Islands of Scotland or a visit to the night markets in Taiwan. Travel planners also offer night safaris in Africa and views of the Northern Lights from hot springs in Iceland.

I’ve not yet been attracted by a need to travel to experience the night. I learned to rise before sunrise as a child, and as an adult, I’ve not been the best sleeper. I usually write my journal entries in the middle of the night, sandwiched between two sleeping periods in my bed. Before my retirement, I often was on call to respond to emergencies in the middle of the night. I am used to being awake and alert when others are sleeping. One of the surprises for me when I am awake in the wee hours is that I am not alone. I used to drive into Rapid City to respond to a call for a need at the hospital or the scene of a sudden death and be amazed at how many other cars there were on the roads. I wondered where all of these people were going. Here, I have a neighbor directly across the street from my study window who has a long commute to where he works on a ferry. He often departs for work while many of our other neighbors are sleeping. A mile and a half from our home is a refinery that operates 24/7 and is always brightly lit at night.

I learned to let my eyes adjust to the dark as a child. While some friends and siblings reached for a flashlight when venturing at night, I preferred not to use a light. I discovered that using light only allows you to see a narrow field of vision where the light is cast. Without a light, your pupils dilate, and you can see much more. If one learns not to use a light, there are fewer surprises when walking in the woods at night.

The researchers at Booking.com were uninterested in me. They were trying to assess the market and anticipate trends. I have no desire to pay to book a trip when I can experience it for free at home. Despite being surrounded by bright night lights and living in a place with frequently cloudy skies, I have plenty of opportunities to see the wonders of the night sky. I can go out my front or back door and look up to see planets and familiar constellations. When I cannot see the moon because of the clouds, I can be aware of its phases by observing the tide in the bay.

It is good that I find joy at night because here, near the 49th parallel, we are in our season of long nights and short days. Here, we exchange our gloriously long summer days for very long winter nights, and it doesn’t seem like a bad trade.

I was visiting with some people after church and the subject of Groundhog’s Day came up. I confessed that I hadn’t paid any attention to whether or not Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. It turns out that he did. That is supposed to mean six more weeks of winter. As usual, however, it depends on which groundhog you consult. Staten Island Chuck did not see his shadow yesterday so his prediction is for an early spring.

There is another reason I don’t put too much stock in what hibernating rodents forced to wake for the ceremonies of humans when it comes to weather. Groundhog’s Day is February 2. Our son’s birthday is roughly six weeks after February 2. He was born in the Ides of March. In the places where I have lived most of my life, March 15 would be too soon for an early Spring. Twelve weeks after Groundhog’s Day would be an early spring, and unless one has a greenhouse or similar structure, April 27 is too early to put out your tomato plants in those places.

It isn’t that I am any better than woodchucks at predicting the weather. I’m not. Since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, I haven’t experienced much of what I would call real winter. We’ve had a few cold days and there have been a few skiffs of snow, but the climate around her is very mild compared to the places I lived the rest of my life.

February 2 in the family where I grew up was Uncle Ted’s birthday. Uncle Ted was the brother of my maternal grandmother, so technically he was my great uncle. He was pretty special to me as we shared the same name. His given name was Edward, but according to the version of the story I was told, my father said, “If you’re going to call him Ted, why not name him Ted?” At any rate my name is Ted. I don’t have an Edward or Theodore behind the single syllable. And I lived all my life believing that I was named for Uncle Ted which is a definite honor from my point of view.

All of the children of Roy and Hattie Russell grew up in Fort Benton, Montana, when it was still pretty much a rough and tumble frontier town. Fort Benton was established as the head of navigation of the Missouri River. Just upstream from Fort Benton the Great Falls of the Missouri made passage by steamship impossible, so Fort Benton is where freight shipped up the river was transferred to overland transport, usually mule trains. The townsite was within the traditional hunting grounds of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The fort was established in the 1850s as a trading point for beaver hides and buffalo fur. The arrival of Steamboats in Fort Benton in 1860, marked a transition in shipping as soon afterward gold was discovered in several locations in Montana. The rush for riches in gold, silver, and copper mines brought a host of settlers to the area. Roy Russell was a trained court reporter and rode the steamboat to Fort Benton to become the first official recorder in the Montana Territory.

Uncle Ted grew up with a distinct flare for mechanics. He learned to repair and modify bicycles and made several long distance bicycle trips, including explorations of Yellowstone National Park and the territory that was later to become Glacier National Park. His interest in machines combined with is interest in travel and adventure and he eventually ended up in California working as a machinist. During the Second World War he and Aunt Florence were living in California when my mother rode the train to that state to follow her beau, a pilot she had met in Billings, Montana when she was in nursing school. They were married in the home of Aunt Florence and Uncle Ted. There was a special bond between my father and Uncle Ted forged in their shared interest in mechanical devices. After the War, Uncle Ted worked as parts manager of a car dealership and became an expert in auto repair.

When my father purchased a John Deere Dealership he needed a parts manager and the timing worked out for Uncle Ted and Aunt Florence to move to Montana once again. Once they arrived we were together for our holidays, including birthday celebrations. Aunt Florence died of a heart attack and Uncle Ted continued to be a part of our family and worked for my father until his health prevented him from working.

We have hundreds of Uncle Ted stories in our family. I remember clearly one winter day when he came from the parts department into the shop at my father’s business and proceeded to drill holes in the soles of a pair of work boots. Next he installed tire studs in those holes, giving himself a pair of homemade cleats. He put those on before heading outdoors to walk around town and believed himself to be the most sure-footed person on icy paths. Later he built himself a walking stick with a spike in the end to enhance his traction.

One day he invited me over to his house and informed me that the time had come for him to quit driving and since I was planning to get married, he was going to sell me his car. He said that the old Ford pickup I was driving was too expensive and too unreliable for a married man. The price was less than half of what he had paid for the car and he told me that it was less than 50 cents a pound. It is the only car I’ve ever owned where I knew the exact weight of the vehicle. It didn’t take much to convince me and that car saw us through the first five years of our marriage including numerous trips between Montana and Chicago.

We got a skiff of snow here yesterday and temperatures are supposed to stay below freezing for a week or so. That might mean a bit of extra work getting water to the cows at our son’s farm, but other than that, I’m not seeing much winter disruption in our lives. After all, it’s February. It is supposed to be winter in my way of thinking. It seems like a good time to let groundhogs hibernate. Six more weeks doesn’t seem like a problem to me.

A friend reposted a meme of a fictional weather alert on social media yesterday. I don’t repost items on social media, but I’ve shown it to several people with a smile.

SNOW ALERT
Expecting:
Zero (0) to 85 inches of snow.
Starting:
Saturday or Sunday or Monday maybe, but probably not happening at all.
Recommendations:
Stock up on all necessitates immediately and prepare for a snowpocalpyse or a beautiful weekend, either is possible.

Even in our fifth winter since moving to the Pacific Northwest, we continue to be surprised by the mild weather. We have tulips and hyacinths a couple of inches out of the ground. We have one pansy from last year that continues to bloom. It contrasts with our years in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Not only is this a place where it doesn’t snow very often, but it is also a place where few people know how to drive on slippery roads. Road conditions have not been bad enough to require chains on vehicles since we moved here. We don’t need all-wheel or four-wheel drive vehicles, though we haven’t traded since we moved, so we have very capable cars.

The talk of the weather makes me think of two people who were instrumental in my life and my way of thinking. One was my father-in-law, who frequently said, “It is a good thing we have weather. It gives us something to talk about.” He grew up on a dryland farm in North Dakota and came to age during the Great Depression. He understood how weather was a critical factor in human health and survival. It wasn’t just the weather that he understood. He also understood people. The simple question, “How about that weather?” was an entrance into another person’s life for him. He could tell by their responses whether they were new to the area or old-timers, whether they worked outdoors or spent their time behind a desk. A conversation about the weather might lead to discussing skiing, golf, fishing, farming, or ranching. It was a way to know and be known.

The other profoundly influential person that comes to mind is my graduate school teacher and mentor, Ross Snyder. I remember him saying, “I don’t have time to talk about the weather. I’m seventy-four years old. I don’t have time for trivia.” He wanted to get to depth in conversation and relationship as quickly as possible. He wanted to talk about significant and vital topics. He handed us reading and writing assignments at a rate that presented a big challenge for me, and I was a big reader and a pretty good writer before I met him. One of the conversations over coffee after his class was about how overwhelmed students felt. Despite his intensity, Ross was very good at meeting and getting to know new people. Every year, he welcomed a new cohort to the seminary. He taught a three-month intensive that was the first class all students had to take. The seminary had international connections. Our first intensive included students from the US, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, and other countries. Ross kept track of each and worked hard to help each integrate into the seminary's culture.

I am deeply grateful to both men and the many lessons they taught me. I emerged from theological seminary with the education and vocabulary to hold my own in conversation with theologians and biblical scholars. I was prepared to deliver sermons that wrestled with the meaning of life and death. My education had given me the resources to sit with those who were grieving and plan funerals for their loved ones. It helped me participate in congregations of people facing difficult questions about life and death. I also was ready to enter life in small congregations in small towns. I went out to farms and was at home meeting farmers outdoors. I knew how to climb into the cab of a combine without slowing the harvest. I could walk into a bar full of sheep and know how to behave. I could sit at the table in the city cafe and converse with the locals who stopped by. I had plenty of seminary classmates who graduated from seminary with excellent educational backgrounds but who lacked practical skills and were challenged by the task of fitting into the communities where they were called to serve. Like the locals in our small town, I could tell within a few conversations who would find it easy to live in our town and who would be looking to move within a few months of arrival.

Now that I am the age that my mentors and guides were, I understand that connection with others is not a matter of the conversation topic. When I get to church today, I suspect there will be conversations about the weather, politics, and football. One of the lessons I learned early in my career was to know at least which teams are in the Super Bowl. It doesn’t hurt to know who is headlining the halftime show, where the game will be held, and which teams were eliminated during the playoffs. Sports are a topic of conversation that allows the expression of passion without the fear of offending someone. I don’t need to hide that I’m not much of a sports fan. I just need to be aware of the culture enough to engage in conversation. More often than not, conversations about topics that are unimportant to me lead to other discussions. Once connection and trust are established, opportunities arise to speak of what is most important.

My mentors and many others have understood that we are connected by conversation about life's big and little things. We share the weather, times of grief and loss, stories from books and movies, and the sacred stories of our people.

How about those Chiefs? How can we honor the memory of those who died in tragic aircraft accidents this week? How do we develop less consumptive and more sustainable lifestyles? How do we plan for the death of loved ones? How about the weather? They are all important questions.

Sometimes, I feel like we are living an experiment. I still feel new to being retired, and it often seems like I’m figuring out how to settle into this way of life. I seem to be very busy. I have lots of projects in progress. I wake up with things to do and places to go. I’ve made some new friends and taken up a few new activities.

There is still a lot to learn about the place where I live. I have lived near the Canadian border before. Montana, North Dakota, and Idaho reach the 49th parallel. However, we not only live in a border state here but also in a border community. We can see Canadian islands from the shore of our bay. I can ride my bike to the border crossing, though I’ve never attempted to cross the border on a bicycle. The border crossing, just a few miles from our home, is the third busiest crossing between the two countries.

When Taylor Swift ended the Eras Tour with three nights of performances in Vancouver, the lines of cars waiting to cross the border backed up traffic enough to create gridlock in the tiny town of Blaine. I don’t know what I expected, but I was surprised that a concert could cause such confusion.

Over the past few weeks, we have noticed a steady stream of auto transport trucks unloading vehicles at a large lot a couple of miles from our home. The cars are packed into the ten-acre area. Truck traffic around a warehouse complex that we pass on our way to the interstate highway has also been heavier than usual. One local trucking company has trucks that have recently made two or three trips to Canada every day. The local newspaper reported this week that all of the warehouse space in the area is filled with freight from Canadian companies.

We are used to a lot of trade between the two countries. Most days, about a third of the cars in the Costco parking lot sport British Columbia plates. Canadians have to do a fair amount of calculating when considering purchases in the US. The Canadian dollar is very weak against the US dollar. Fuel prices are lower on our side of the border, but Canadians have to figure out both quantities and exchange rates. Fuel is sold by the liter in Canada and the gallon in the US. Right now, a Canadian dollar is worth about 70 cents in the US. The use of bank cards makes currency exchange on purchases easy. That means that people from Washington are going across the border to shop in Vancouver and take advantage of the exchange rate. Meanwhile, people from Canada come to Washington to take advantage of lower prices on some items.

What has changed since the US election is the uncertainty about tariffs. The threatened tariffs will go into place today. That might mean that those who have imported all the truckloads of goods before the tariffs going into effect made the right choice to get their goods into the US early. I don’t know how quickly the car lots and warehouses will empty, but presumably, the rate of imports will slow due to the tariffs.

There are other effects that one might not have anticipated. Point Roberts is a community in our county that is an isolated enclave separate from the rest of the continental United States. Residents of Point Roberts have to go through Canada to get to the rest of the county. That includes high school students who live in Point Roberts and attend public high school in Blaine. The only source of drinking water, sewage services, and domestic electricity for Point Roberts residents is purchasing those items from Canadian utilities. The specific terms of the tariffs are unclear, but I doubt that the US Administration has considered the effect of tariffs on Point Roberts homeowners. Homeowners will notice a 25% increase in utility costs.

We anticipate that the price of lumber will respond similarly to what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, when the border was closed, we decided that the farm couldn’t afford to buy any new pressure-treated fence posts because of high costs. We collected used posts from various sources and got by. We were relieved when lower prices returned, allowing us to do a fencing project last summer. Now, we’re bracing for lumber prices to go up again. Other items affected by the tariffs include groceries. Nature’s Path is an organic cereal company with operations on both sides of the border.

Tariffs don’t stand alone. Usually, there are retaliatory measures when they are imposed. We do not yet know how Canada will respond to US tariffs, but some potential responses could significantly impact cross-border families.

One of the things that I don’t yet understand is how the foreign trade zone under the Port Authority operates. Some items are exchanged duty-free, and other duties are deferred in a foreign trade zone. We can see the large BP Cherry Point oil refinery from our house, and several of our neighbors work there. Tankers carrying crude oil from the north arrive there regularly. Trains come and go from and to Canada as well. I can’t tell from watching the tankers whether they have come from Alaska or Canada. Coal from Wyoming on its way to Japan is shipped through the Port of Vancouver. Multiple coal trains cross the border every day.

The tariffs will significantly impact our community. Indeed, some importers anticipate a noticeable change. However, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about what will happen. The tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration did not increase the number of domestic jobs or close the US trade deficit as promised. Those claiming expertise are as confused as the rest of us. Local folks are nervous about the confusion and have trouble understanding what will happen. It is difficult to tell how tariffs will directly affect individual families. I guess we’ll see what happens.