Hey, It's Not My Fault. The Babe DId It!

Our Sunday school class is discussing the "Bad Girls of the Bible." I've always found an attraction to bad girls. Case in point, my wife. But that is another discussion. Trying to get a take on the traditional evil girls of the bible has been a bit of a challenge. The book we are reading takes a very literal approach. If it was written in the Bible, that is exactly what happened. As a mostly modern guy, I find this rather hard to digest. Eve was tempted by the serpent, who said this and that, and as a result of that temptation, Eve ate the apple, tricked Adam into eating it (my interpretation, of course), thus sending man into the unending spiral of sin. The first one. Perfect before then. And we only had that one little fruit we were not supposed to eat. That seems really simple doesn't it? But then again, it was from the "Tree of Knowledge." We all want to be smart, but as smart as God? How could we resist that?

The apple is a metaphor for something we lost long ago. It is described in the Bible as a loss of innocence. Adam and Eve suddenly knew they were naked. Cain kills Able. The rest is history. Maybe it did happen this way. Perhaps there was an obelisk that appears one morning. We scratch ourselves, eat a bug from our neighbor and suddenly discover that if we take a stick, and whack him on the head, he dies. (Ask any SciFi geek if you need help on that one.) We really don't need an apple to pull it off, to become who we really are. 

Maybe we are who we are. Maybe we are just animals. At least we were before we got the idea that our actions make a difference in the world. There was a time when we whacked somebody's head it just was something we did. Only when we developed the ability to realize that whacking heads resulted in our friends or mates disappearing from our lives that we though perhaps there is a better way. And we found a better way when enough us stopped whacking heads long enough to form a tribe, a village, and a nation. I hope we find a way real soon to stop whacking nations.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving 2013

Before I go any further, I want to make something perfectly clear. I like Wegman's. For those of you who may not know the name, it is what you might call the Cadillac of grocery stores. A real "If we don't have it, you don't need it kind of place." Rita and I had the opportunity to go to the Mechanicsburg Wegman's on Sunday. Most any day, there is a certain guilty pleasure that goes along with me when I go. Walk in and you are assaulted with the sights and sounds of just about every market of the world, without the livestock. The bakery is pumping out delicious aromas of cinnamon and nuts toasted perfectly under 3 pounds of sugar coating. You turn the corner into the produce sections and your eyes are assaulted by the bright reds, yellows, and greens of the freshest vegetables you can find. One display has Dragon Fruit from Vietnam of all places. I still have a hard time getting my mind around something from there that does not explode, or is MIA, or is a Dove or a Hawk. We'll save that for another day. There is romanesque, which is an unusual clump of green and pale green that sort of looks like cauliflower but greener and more delicate and mysterious. Turns out is a flower bud with vitamins. We never had that at the Brogue store.

We could go on, but I would only repeat superlatives in just about every department, from fish (the smoked one with head and fins still attached stands out), to crackers (why we need more than Wheat Thins escapes me.)

So here we stand on the cusp of Thanksgiving, and boy do I have a lot to be thankful for. My wife is the best and after almost 39 years, we are still buddies. My kids aren't kids anymore, but they have turned out to be as different as night and day, and somehow they have seemed to have successfully made it to adulthood (close anyway) without driving me totally crazy. And my Grandkids are the best fun I've had since my kids were small. And we can send them home. My extended family, Mom and Dad, 2 brothers and 4 sisters, 8 nephews and nieces, and 13 of the last generation still manages to get together a Mom's on a regular basis. Forty Four of us all together, counting the in-laws. We aren't all there every Sunday, but over a month, you see them all. And we like each other.

I have a bounty before me, food, family and friends, and Wegman's. I rejoice. But deep down inside, I hear another voice. One that reminds me to temper my joy by remembering those less fortunate. Remember those who won't have a Thanksgiving feast of abundance. Those who find that no matter how hard they try, each day is a burden they may not be able to survive.

Perhaps we should suppress those feelings. Cover them up with a little more joy, a little more food, and a little more wine. I hope not. I hope we show real Thanksgiving by taking the extra step to support the food banks, the soup kitchens, the clothes closet. And not just at Thanksgiving, but for the 364 days after November 28.

The Time Machine

I have developed, or discovered a time machine. I know what you are saying. "But Joel, you are a woodworker, how could you know anything about a time machine." No one is as surprised as me. I have come to believe that time is more illusion, a construct developed by man to describe what he experiences. Quantum mechanics aside, the time machine exists and I know where it is.

The most unusual physical characteristic is that it looks remarkably like the blue  "Big Man's" lounge chair which happens to be located in my living room. It's true. Every time I sit in it I go somewhere that most definitely is not now. When I close my eyes just a little I see my kids, now with children of their own, running around the house, coming precariously close to the wall unit corners, laughing and playing. I see a little red haired girl helping a tall, skinny red head man planting a Christmas tree in the yard. They look familiar. I see a an almost teenage girl playing what appears to be her first basketball game, committing her first foul about seventeen seconds into the first quarter. A boy jumps into his dad's arms and sits on his shoulders, almost falling, but not really minding.

If I squeeze my eyes a little tighter, I see a somewhat gangly, mop headed teenager walking through the halls of a high school with a equally gangly and attractive young lady stealing a PDA, that's a public display of affection. In another instant, she is walking down the aisle to meet a young man who has no idea about the ride whose ticket he is punching. 

Everything becomes a whirlwind. A little read haired boy asks for some cookies, Archway Oatmeal Raisin, and a gray haired "Grandma" complies. Great Grandma actually. My real Grandma became "Itsy" by some twisted reference to a Howdy Doody routine. Cornfields and thunderstorms on a hot summer day roll towards the front porch of the farmhouse and that sweet smell of life overwhelms the senses of of a kid who has only the cares of youth, which mostly means knowing when to come in out of the rain.

Eventually, my eyes open. Looking down I find a granddaughter in my arms, her hand grasping my finger, which is strangely wrinkled, not like I remember. She smiles and slowly goes to sleep. As I rock her gently, the future envelops me. A young woman, escorted by a man who looks a little like me, walks down the aisle. They pass a man who looks familiar, grey hair, and happy to have made it to that day.  A smile crosses his face as he remembers, reaches the lever, puts down the footrest and carries his granddaughter to bed.

Here we go.

I have decided that 15 years, or more accurately 38 years, of procrastination should just about do it. I love to write, as stated by Mark Twain, "I hate writing, but Love to have written." Well, it may have been stated by Dorothy Parker, or maybe it is just one of the immutable truths of the Universe. Writing is painful.

The sad fact is I find myself drawn to writing nonetheless. So I expect there will be musings, questions, observations, and few answers. Any tears or bloodshed will not appear in this blog and should be considered completely incidental.

So it begins.