Mothers by my mother (thank her very much!)

All kinds of mothers!
Like the one you loved most,
the one who loved you and enjoyed you
and taught you and smiled with you
and told you of her own mother
and also her stepmother!

The other mother who was the mother of your love
who taught you so much!

And then you were a mother:
kissing babies, learning babies,
helping babies, bragging babies.

The years went on and one year your children
had children and you were a grandmother.

Each phase of motherhood better than the last,
even great grandchildren and mothers,
all mothers...

and nothing seemed so great as being one of them
those that mother one child or ten...

Motherhood so wonderful!
How come some women don't seem to want children?
How lonely their lives will be,
not even be able to think and remember them when they are gone...

Oh! Yes! It's work to be a mother,
but it's also interesting, and cudly,
and loving
especially the loving wonderful pleasure
that only a mother can have!

I'm grateful I'm a mother!
are you grateful that you are a mother?
Hope so!
For it is Mother's Day next Sunday...

by Melba Dungey,
mother of four,
grandmother of six,
greatgrandmother of still counting
(five and more coming and always welcomed!)

Easter in the Great Northwest, and my heart...

It is raining on Easter and the Sunrise in its glory is behind the clouds. Don't you know it is beautiful above the clouds and beyond the bounds of Gravity and Earth's grip? So often one has to be a pilot to see the beauty of our home -- far from the grit and grime of our lives. It rains here on Easter. A cool refreshing rain, turning the grass and moss into a gleaming green, rich and alive. The flowers are blooming, birds courting and flying off to safer nesting areas. It is Easter and I am reminded that Spring is a new beginning, to get started on that harvest for the returning Winter. We are blest with the opportunity to do it again, to do it even better; it is time to be about Love's business.

Daffodil Parade, tomorrow!

There is snow up north and in the mountain passes, the Daffodil Parade is tomorrow and the weather should be perfect, although my friend Hal said where he grew up seventy degrees was put on the coat weather, it won't get to sixty here until Monday, maybe - shorts and t-shirts.

What did you get for Christmas? wha'dgetyur wife?

One of the dreaded questions after the holidays? What did you get? What did Santa bring you? What did you get your wife? I say dreaded because I have whole issues with those questions and a real phobia about that portion of this celebration. One of my wife's responsibilities is to keep me civilized to the point of giving appropriate gifts when needed - she does that just fine. Well, I am almost impossible to civilize beyond a certain point, but she fools me into better behavior well.

About the gift I received, as always the sure knowledge that Christmas is about the babe born to bear my burdens - not the mortgage, the car payments, the food on the table and such - the burdens I build by my guilt and sin - which are normally the same, and if - as I often think, being old, that I am not up to my usual sinful worst (youth so foolish) - then I am way up there in the weight of my guilt for all that I was, am now and shudder to think that I could be. I will cherish that gift of a Savior forever.

And what did I get my wife? Well, I drove her to my church for Candlelight service at ten last evening. The church was full of music, Christmas colors, families re-united for the holidays, friends absent to their families far from here, it was warm and bright and we sang and prayed and thought about the light of the world, in a sanctuary full of candles and love. Not too impressed with that gift are you? Well, unless I was driving she hadn't been out of the house for two weeks, she does have women that like to see her at my church (no, I always behave but old men, stag, at the back of the room are as problematical as teenage boys at the back of the room to knowledgeable women). Since driving was my gift, the only one that counts, I drove to her church this morning at ten for their service - in Korean and English - I loved the subtitled Sermon, when the Pastor spoke Korean the English was on the screen above his head, when he was speaking English the Korean words were displayed and everyone could keep up. All the hymns were written in both, and you could sing out from the heart in the language you speak to God with, I always like that. I am amazed at how many Korean words I have lost since the last time I listened and tried using them. Use it or lose it - one day it will all be gone. About six times the number of people from the candlelight service, the Sun being out and perhaps the roads more drivable - although I have been watching people needing a push and help in several places I have driven recently, my Caravan has been fine. Her church is much larger and richer than mine - the Salvation is exactly the same, go figure, it doesn't pay to start too soon (you forgot about that burden of guilt above - start earlier!).

Lots of re-united families at church, and old school friends meet and talk about what college and working in where ever is like, and who is in the service and overseas and where. Both our churches have large old retired military, and youngsters of appropriate age to serve, so they do. If my son weren't so well married I would have been looking harder at the beautiful young ladies, but I will leave that to those who need to play match-making. I did get trapped into a real hug with a young lady last night, she meant well but gosh that disturbed my harmony within the universe of Earl. She never noticed the pistol, but then who would carry a pistol to church? What you don't look for nor identify was never there, basic principle of hiding in plain sight. I know I never look to see what others are walking around with, unless it is in the appropriate place for shooting activities. At church I check out the age of the personal Bible, the translation and the depth of the smile and the warmth of the greeting and conversation as we work in the kitchen or on something, I make coffee and do dishes with one of my friends mostly.

Well, the telephone has started ringing, my son and daughter-in-law sent some gifts which get put to use immediately, although the one I really want to wear to the range come warmer times, it is almost a wanna-be shirt, but then I was never associated with that group and I am already much too proud a paratrooper for my head to fit most of my head coverings. A matching coffee mug, so cool, so cool. For any that worry I was armed in church - it was probably my Leatherman Wave or my Canon digital camera - for those that think everyone carries, should carry and numbers me among the chosen few that do - nothing happened that would have needed more than gloves and a snow shovel these last few weeks so figure all that bulky stuff in my clothing is the weight I have been piling on with festive eating. There are still cookies waiting the visitors that can make it up the frozen hillside to our home, y'all welcome to have a few and save me a little more burden of guilt.

1960 School Office Window

One thousand words... for a little of my Thanks

Veterans Day, who and where are they...

I studied a bit of history, my mother made me - thanks, Mom! And I know that Veterans Day wasn't always such, it was Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month and the guns fell silent. That must have been wonderful and a bit unbelievable for the trench rats and their brethren the mud slogging combatants of the Great War, a perfect peace later ruined by politicians at large elegant tables with papers and punishment and plunder on their minds, such little men.

What I knew of Veterans from my early years was that they were the stuff of legends, they were the backbone of the troop formations and armies that I read about. They were the stiffening and the perfection of deadly thrust and totally unafraid in the face of thousands. I knew about the 300, about Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo. All that from the stories, movies and television - boy, did I know veterans and what they were good for. Of course being a Boomer, I was living with a veteran, his Ike jacket hung in his closet with his ribbons and patches on it, there was a Japanese saber, a pistol belt and an M1 bayonet, too. I didn't understand what that meant to him, why The Gallant Men and Combat! , some of my favorite shows, didn't excite him or even entertain him. Being a high school graduate of 1966, I knew the godless Communists were waiting for me in Vietnam, although I did waste a semester in Coral Gables before I went off to become a soldier. My father did tell me that I wouldn't like it as we said good-bye.

So I had to learn to go where I was sent, do what they wanted me to do, to do it well and to understand they would punish me for my failures and foolishness. Although the foolishness was always so much fun, I did have enough pride to really work at war and becoming a soldier.

I guess that I started to consider myself a veteran by the time I was a Drill Sergeant, I had served in Korea, Germany and Vietnam, had bit unfriendly fire in Korea and Vietnam and had done just fine. My father finally talked to me a bit about his war when I came back from Vietnam - he only had Leyete and Okinawa, as a Combat Engineer and a teenager - the year he lost being nineteen. His brother was in Italy and mentioned that he was glad he hadn't earned a bronze arrowhead on his campaign ribbons, that was given to the assault forces, my father had one. Another veteran in my life, my uncle earned a commission in Italy and stayed in the Army through the early Cold War years. I thought he was too tough on his sons, but then he had four of them. My grandfather, the Methodist minister and missionary to El Cerro in Montevideo, he had served in the American forces in France in the Great War, he hadn't served in combat duties since he was a Pacifist but he did serve. He spent most of his life working for International Peace.

My mother is still pushing History at me, yesterday's email:

Remember our ancestor   Jabez
Cleveland  who died in the Battle of Bunker hill. And our other
ancestor  who fought in the Revolutionary war, as a member of the
Virginia Militia, he was an Archer (last name, don't know his first
name).In the Civil War only Don's family fought in it.

Those Civil War veterans were named Bauer,
which in German (where they came from) means farmer or peasant.  Which
gets me to my point about Veterans Day, I have a point, really.

The Veterans that really ought to be thanked, are the ones that went to
battle and came home and built a life away from the terror and turmoil
of combat, that work hard to keep their children and grandchildren from
the fear and outright terror of killing or being killed by other men
trying their best to live through it all and get home to build a
different life. Don't get me wrong, most of them have exactly the same
courage to put on the war gear and go out and face the fury again, but
they also have the discipline to build that better life, the patience
to put up with a little stupidity and discomfort for the future, and
the intelligence to want to have Peace and know when it is time to go
back to War.  And to the unknown woman with daughter and husband that
stopped to tell me that she thanked me for my service in Vietnam, me
the tough guy that couldn't break through the fragile armor that hid my
pain to say anything - I want to say Thank you for that little touch of
kindness, it has always meant so much.  A Nurse and a Marine
are veterans worth reading, but there are thousands of stories out
there, think about the Veterans and those young people in uniform
becoming Veterans as I speak.

What are you doing on Independence Day?

I am getting ready to celebrate Independence Day, mine of course, the Fourth of July when men of courage signed a document that Declared the Independence of the united States of America from Great Britain and King George the Third. I will get up early and fly the American Flag from my home, all weekend, remembering the reason. I will then re-read the Declaration of Independence with a critical eye to see if I will join those long dead heroes and sign on with them. That is the point, there has just been a Supreme Court Decision about the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America - and although it was written in the same English language of the Declaration of Independence the learned justices don't understand what "infringed" means in regards to my Rights (and yours, too).

I am certain that George Washington did understand, Adams understood, Jefferson knew what all those words meant in all our founding documents. They argued over them, crossing off the ones that wouldn't work, crafting phrases carefully knowing that the World would study them and be encouraged by them. They expected that they would be a foundation of education in politics in America forever - after all men were dying for them already. It did help that the British had departed from Boston, and fortune telling wasn't predicting the defeats of Washington's Army on Long Island and in New York. Congress would play a dance with the British forces and still try and sustain the Rebellion, it wasn't a Revolution until later. Brave men, you can join them, sign up after you read the words. "Teach your children war and politics, so they may teach their children agriculture and business, so they may teach their children music and verse."

Maybe education was the problem, ever wonder at Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, they seemed to do so well without much public education, certainly no certified teachers. I am a library keeper, and to me, if I could bring back the founding fathers - I am sure they would be stunned by any restriction on a man carrying arms. But then they were willing to fight about it and get it right. Do the words "our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor" have meaning for you, would you sign the Declaration of Independence. Or are you waiting for a judgement from the Highest Court in the land?

Have a wonderful holiday celebration, a safe one, and remember what it is all about.

What to put away and what to keep about...

Christmas is so put away, the Library tree taken down.

At home the ornaments wrapped up to store,
the lights unplugged & coiled so shine no more.
My tree dismembered and packed in its box
joys of the holiday in my memory now locked.

The New Year arrived with noise, bangs and fizzles,
as cold gray winds rolling while blowing down drizzle.
Now Three Kings Day, I my mother's gift was to be
but I was late by one day, procrastination my destiny.

All that is left is more Love to spread about the Sound.