Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two Person Button Club

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Wonderfully strange things happen. 

I received a phone call from Lois in August. 

Although she had never called me, my phone number has been in her address book for over ten years.  That’s because sometime in the late ’90s I put an ad in our regional electric cooperative magazine requesting buttons. 

You wonder why I was looking for buttons. 

One of the clearest pictures in my mind of my mom is her sitting at the table, needle and thread perched between her lips, rifling through the button jar for a close match.  I decided to begin my own button jar, even though my mending abilities are severely limited.  A tiny memorial. 

Here’s the thing.  Lois has lived in Idaho for over fifty years; in August she moved to my small town in Oregon. She is 87.  (One year younger than my mom would be if she were still with us.)  Lois remembered that I lived here and called me up to see if I wanted to start a Two Person Button Club. 

Well…….yeah!

I was intrigued with Lois.  For one, she sounded great.  Having just been through a major life transition, she was moving forward and making new friends.  Not one hint of self-pity existed in her tone. 

Then we had an oops.  I had promised her I would call her back.  But I lost her name and phone number. Oops. I searched and searched to no avail.  What was left to do?  I really and truly prayed that she would call back.  And yesterday she did!

So this morning we had our first meeting of the Two Person Button Club.  Lois is lovely.  And I’m learning about a hitherto unknown sub-culture of buttons out there. Button clubs. Button books.  Button magazines. Even-brace yourself-Button Conventions.  I do not intend to attend the button conventions.   

But I had fun at the first meeting of the Two Person Button Club.  All the buttons shown are from Lois’s collection.
  

   

 

      

      

Can You Cut Up A Chicken?

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Another getting to know you post.

While I was in Maine our small town/small university hosted Joel Salatin as keynote speaker of the Oregon Rural Action Annual Convention.  Several friends went and I’m soaking up their reactions.  Katie, an honorary member of our family, typed up her notes and sent them to me. 

This bit grabbed me:

50 years ago, all the mothers knew how to cut up a chicken —
now 50% of them don’t know that chickens have BONES!

It took me back to an afternoon (I was probably 11 or 12) when my father patiently taught me how to cut up a chicken. Sharp knife and all.  I remember having to feel for the joints between the leg and body and the joints between the thigh and drumstick.  The hardest part to master, as I remember, was cutting down the middle to divide the back from the breast.  You had to honk down kind of hard to cut through the bone.

Sooooooo………..

Who knows how to cut up a chicken? (I have to admit, none of my children learned from me since we started eating boneless breasts.)  Note to myself: teach youngest son how to cut up a chicken.

How did you learn? 

Any stories out there?

Do tell!

     

No Dancing in Waltzing Matilda

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File this under: “You Learn Something New Every Day.” 

I’m catching up on People and Places itching to get out of the “A” countries and into the “Bs”.  But the section on Australia is HUGE.

And next thing you know, I’m disabused of the notion that Waltzing Matilda is a nice woman on the outback.  Oh no! A waltzing matilda is an Australian hobo. 

Ay! 

A matilda is a blanket roll; to waltz matilda is to tramp the roads. 

The who knew? questions burns in my brain.  Tell me truly, did y’all know this already?

Fascinating Interview

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With Marilynne Robinson here. 

It is my lot in life to be the dissenter in tastes in books.  Earlier, when so many friends pressed Frank Peretti’s books in my palm with promises of enchantment, I had to tell them that, “no, I didn’t find them wonderful.”  Ditto all the apocalyptic pulp fiction of the last decade.  Shudder.  

In fact, I must confess, in a new circle of reader-friends that went bonkers praising Marilynne Robinson’s  Housekeeping, I felt like the one dissenting voice.  Granted the writing was good, but the storyline sure depressed me.  I found Gilead much easier to digest, but I didn’t go into paroxisms of joy over it.  These are two books, however, that I wonder if I should re-read someday and compare notes with my original reactions.

The Paris Review’s interview of Robinson has so many points worth printing out, pondering, discussing with my high school senior.  Much food for thought.    

P.S. – I came across this interview through a free weekly newsletter called Books & Culture.  You can subscribe here.   

Prayer for Monday Morning

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We need Your help and Your grace
as we are again returning to our daily task.

Grant us true faithfulness in the performance of our calling.

Guard us me against becoming selfish, careless,
and slovenly in the pursuance of our daily work…

Feed us with food convenient for us
and teach us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

Grant us that godliness and contentment
without which there can be no true happiness,
and
let us walk through the things temporal
that we may not lose the things eternal.

For Jesus’ sake.
Amen.

 ~ adapted from the Lutheran Book of Prayer

A Job From Heaven

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You know how a conversation, like a good  book or a thoughtful movie, can remain at the top of your sub-conscious mind and pop up into your thoughts long after it has ended?

I can’t stop thinking about a remarkable young woman-my kids’ best friend- and her job as a deaf interpreter.  As we sipped chai and nibbled on naan, she explained how she sits in a cubicle with a web cam and screen and makes phone calls for deaf clients.  The client and interpreter can see each other through the web cams; she makes the phone call to the hearing person and speaks the words that are communicated through sign language.  Then she takes the spoken side of the conversation and translates it in sign language through the web cam back to the deaf person.

The calls can be casual requests, birthday greetings, or bad news. 

My friend, the mediator, is required to reflect the mood as well as the words of her client.  She has to make decisions on the spot for the right word, and interpret groanings that have no words.  She can let the silence speak for itself or explain, “Sir, your sister is sobbing right now…” 

Also the moods and words of the two parties may be very different.  The interpreter has to switch back and forth to accurately translate the conversation.  It is a job which requires intelligence, empathy, integrity, quick responses, decisiveness, flexibility. 

“It’s so incarnational,” I exclaimed.  “You become the caller, and faithfully represent that caller to the receiver.  You don’t take on flesh and blood, but you become his or her voice.  It’s really quite a Christ-like job.”

But after a couple of days, it dawned on me how very Holy-Spirit-ish it is.  Because so many times there are No Words.  Only groanings.  Only cries of the heart.   We fumble, mumble and stumble;  we trip over syllables trying to capture the words to speak our hearts. 

Oh my.  A job that reflects two persons of the Trinity.  That’s what I call a job from heaven.

Blessings,

 

Random News

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I’m back in Seattle, enjoying time with my kids here.  Eating Indian food, going to bookstores (and I can buy books, since the trip home is in my car), talking and talking more.

Ahhhhh.  Life is beautiful. 

Lots of firsts lately:  my first cab ride (!), my first trip to IKEA in about ten minutes. 

Thoughts are swirling…and I’m eager to write again.

Soon.

Sweet!

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Jim and Kathie (my brother and his wife) are full of fascinating interests.
Jim casually asked me this morning if I wanted to see inside a beehive.
And, cough cough, he wasn’t talking about Sarah Palin’s hair.

Since I had already enrolled in the Gutsy-for-Wimps 101
when I went sailing yesterday
(I sailed once years ago and got caught in a squall),
I thought I continue the course
by letting bees crawl all over my face net.
Ha!
I didn’t get stung once!
 
Honey bees, after all, are our friends.


Sweet!

An Evening with Kathleen Norris

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It’s hardly fair to write a book review on a book I haven’t yet read;  but since I recently attended a book reading where Kathleen Norris gave the background of <A href="http://www.xanga.com/private/Acedia and Me and read from it, perhaps I can introduce the book. 

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Acedia is pronounced uh-SEE-DEE-uh.  It means boredom, listlessness, lack of caring.  Acedia is something Norris has struggled with all her life.  She said this book has been percolating for over twenty years.  She believes that it is a struggle common to humanity.

Back when (1000 years ago) the major sins were categorized, there were first eight.  Acedia was telescoped into sloth and the deadly sins were seven instead of eight.  Norris is careful to distinguish acedia from depression by calling acedia a spiritual condition and depression a medical condition. She also sees sloth as physical laziness and acedia more a state of the mind.  It can exhibit itself both as torpor and frenetic activity. 

Fresh from a series of caretaking roles (Norris’ father and husband died after long illnesses) and still caring for her 91 year old mother, Norris spoke of times when she was so numb that she couldn’t pray.  She wasn’t so worried because she knew how many others were praying for her.  Much of the book is memoir, recounting what she has learned in the last difficult season of her life.

One feature of the book which insures I will read it is the commonplace entries in the back: quotes Norris has been collecting about acedia all her life. 

Kathleen Norris came across as a person of integrity, a woman comfortable in her own skin. She was neither pretentious, condescending, or arrogant.  She is a person I would delight in inviting to my house for dinner.  The Q & A was most interesting, especially because the Portland audience was across the spectrum.  Because my theology is  more conservative than hers, some of her answers caused me some inward wincing (e.g. her off-the-cuff definition of a Christian in response to a question had more to do with community than with Christ).     

Why I call Kathleen Norris L’English.

Previous post about acedia here.

A nugget on the subject of pride from Norris’ Cloister Walk.