49

My birthday was fairly calm and fairly quiet. I got up early and made some music for worship and attended Sunday School at Cherokee. My little family then went out for lunch at Chili's. I took a nap in the early afternoon and then read for awhile--Susan Power's The Grass Dancer. My son and I went to Barberitos for supper. Back at Cherokee in the evening, I made some more music with the instrumental ensemble. Then I got my favorite Ben and Jerry's ice cream--Chubby Hubby--and went home, where I watched a little television and went to bed.

I got a card from my wife and son and several live birthday wishes from friends at church. I got a couple of birthday wishes from friends on my blog and a couple via email--from my older son and a friend in Knoxville.

It wasn't a spectacular birthday, but they can't all be. It was okay. It was just fine. Maybe that's the nature of these -9 birthdays. It's the next one--50--that's already getting all the attention.

Thanksgiving 2007

These are turkeys, living in the wilds of Madison County, North Carolina. They are bold turkeys, brazen, passing through my mother-in-law's yard on Thanksgiving day 2003. I was outside, needing to stand up after the meal I'd just consumed, including turkey, and I was impressed with their up-yours-not-mine attitude.

It's 8:15 a.m. on Thanksgiving 2007, a mere 386 years after the gathering in Plymouth that I wrote about yesterday. Compare their preparation and celebration to mine.

I've been neither fishing nor fowling. My land grows only grass--no Indian corn or vegetables or fruits of any kind. These I can purchase in a big well-lighted air-conditioned building just three miles away. (Usually when I go there, I eat at the Mexican restaurant next door first so that I'm not shopping hungry.) But because my family and I are to be familiar guests of somebody else today, I've done no harvesting of any kind (in addition to neither fishing nor fowling).

When I finish writing this, if it's not too cold, I'll walk three miles or so (not related to the aforementioned three miles' distance to the grocery store). This walk won't be through lush virgin forest but in a nearby park, to which I'll drive first. Then I'll come home and take a shower, get the wife and son in the car and drive across the mountain into North Carolina.

First stop: my mother-in-law's house in Marshall for a family meal at noon, where we'll eat and lounge around in front of the television. After about three and a half hours of this, we'll leave.

Second stop: my aunt's house in Walnut for a family meal at 5:00 or so, where we'll eat and lounge around the table talking and laughing or in front of the television. After about three and a half hours of this, we'll leave.

Third stop: Home again, home again, where we'll watch CSI. I'll probably go to bed. My wife will probably watch ER. My son will go play guitar or video game.

Along the way, no Indians will appear at the edge of the forest or on the side of the road. None will sit at our table. Neither will the poor or the wealthy of any sort. Except for some birds overhead, we're likely to see no wildlife beyond those bodies mangled and dead on the highway.

We'll be thankful, not for being among the few to survive last winter but for each other and all the good things we have. We'll be thankful in the way we believe most pleases God and honors Christ, but we'll probably be wrong about that. Fortunately God will forgive us our selfishness and excess.

What a difference 386 years makes!

From today's Writer's Almanac:

Today is Thanksgiving Day, the day Americans express gratitude for their good fortune by eating one of the biggest meals of the year. As early as 1621, the Puritan colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, set aside a day of thanks for a bountiful harvest. On October 3, 1789, President George Washington proclaimed the 26th of that November the first national Thanksgiving Day under the Constitution. On October 3, 1863, in the wake of victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln decided to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday in November national Thanksgiving Day. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Thanksgiving Day as the fourth Thursday of November, and in 1941, Congress made it official.

Thanksgiving in Plymouth, 1621

About 100 people were on board the Mayflower when it arrived at Cape Cod 11 November 1620. About half of these were English Puritans, Separatists in relation to the Church of England. We tend to refer to them as the Pilgrims. Knowing little of what they were doing, they planned poorly and arrived at possibly the worst time of the year, just at the beginning of a harsh New England winter. Given the shortages of shelter and food, about half of the 100 died that first winter. In his history, their leader, William Bradford, writes, "But that which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them."

But with the coming of spring and the help of the "locals," Samoset and Squanto in particular, corn was planted and life improved.

The first Thanksgiving took place about a year after their arrival. Bradford writes this about it:

They now began to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty; for as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod, and bass, and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. And now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when the came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty to their friends in England, which were not feigned, but true reports.

In a letter dated 11 December 1621, one of the Plymouth folk named Edward Winslow wrote the following to a friend in England:

Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor and upon the Captain and others.

It's a nice story about a time that it's difficult for us to imagine these days.

The Thanksgiving celebration still retains something of its origins. Perhaps being sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas, it has to some degree escaped the brutal commercialization that has ruined both of those.

Whether you care to remember Bradford and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation or not, be thankful this holiday for what you have, for the good that has come your way and the evil that has not, for your individual mind and heart as far as they are untainted by the worst (often posing as the best) of this world, for one another.

Criminal Behavior

It's Saturday afternoon, a little more than a week before my 49th birthday. I've been at Mom's since last night, and today I'm hanging out a little in Marshall, North Carolina, at Zuma Coffee, having a cup and eating quiche before going up on the bypass to buy Mom's groceries and head back to Walnut. In the picture, Zuma is up the street on the right, a little beyond where the second car on the right is parked and right across the street from the courthouse dome that is visible on the left. If you can make out the traffic light hanging over the stree, the coffeehouse is on the right at that corner. Take a right at the light, and you go across the bridge over the French Broad River. Although the bridge is being rennovated or redone, when I was in high school, the bridge had an unusual feature--an intersection. You could turn right and go down a short spur bridge onto the island where Marshall High School was. I went there my freshman year before the consolidated high school was completed.

*******

As I sit here and think of Marshall and the old times, I'm reminded of my brief life of crime as a teenager. It was mere feet from where I'm sitting right now that I leaned over the record bins at Home Electric--the business that used to be in this space--and drew a Grand Funk Railroad album up under my sweater and walked out. Although I know I'm forgiven for that event more than 30 years ago, I still feel the guilt that burned my face to ash before I even got a block away. But I wasn't caught, and I didn't return the album. Criminal!

*******

Emboldened by this, a few days later I swiped some candy from a store up on the bypass. This time, however, I was seen, and an announcement was made over the loudspeaker. I ditched my "take" and bolted from the store, my heart pounding in my chest, my neck, my head. Fortunately the new bypass stores were harbingers of this future we now live in and run by strangers who didn't know the county and its people. Had I been caught with the album, Mr. Baker, well known to me and my parents, would have had me by the scruff of the neck while he called my folks. Heck, he might even have whipped me himself, even though he was a gentle man. (My brother has rented a garage apartment from the Bakers for 20 years or so, and Mr. Baker just died a few weeks ago.) Anyway, that ugly rush of fear ended my criminal career after two jobs--one a success, one a failure.

*******

So there you have it--what's running through my mind as I sit here with a cold cup of coffee.

Beauty in Troubled Places

Iraq

Afghanistan

Myanmar

Pakistan

Iran

Darfur

This World

Arizona sunset



















Machu Pichu




















Chichen

Saturday at Home

This is O'Ryan, the cat we got as a kitten some years ago. Like most folks' pets, he seems to us more human than feline, smarter than your average puss. He's demanding in the way of cats. At turns sweet and annoying, endearing and spiteful. I like to give him the voice of South Park's Eric Cartman. Also like many pets, he could serve as an alarm clock. In the morning, at the first sign of stirring from our bed, he begins to talk talk talk until we get out of bed to feed him.

This morning was the first opportunity to sleep in that I've had in awhile. I went to bed last night thinking that I might get up and go to Cherokee UMC's men's breakfast, but when morning broke, I stayed abed, even through O'Ryan's crying about his poor empty belly until my wife fed him. So, I skipped breakfast and lounged around the house until the gym opened at 10:00. Then I put my mp3 player on and walked four miles, following that with a few rounds of weights.

Okay, so I haven't been home the entire day. After the gym, I made a brief stop by the office and then went to the Buc's Deli drive-thru for a hamburger combo. Then I came home, determined to stay here until suppertime at least!

On days like this, I often think of my ancestors or the people I study in my academic work. I'm talking mostly about folks from the 19th century and earlier. Think about it: in my "day at home" just described above, I probably traveled more and further than many in the old days would travel in a month. What's more, I left my cell phone at home when I went out, and I felt slightly uneasy the entire time I was gone.

Although computers and the Internet and Dish Network and cell phones and heat pumps have been in my life for only ten years or so (well, that's probably not true of heat pumps), I find it difficult to imagine life without them. Not that I like them all that much, really, but they seem to have become such essential tools that they've moved beyond being tools to giving meaning to our lives.

I think of myself just out of high school and attending Mars Hill College in, say, 1979. I can picture my life then, a life without all these gadgets, but I find it difficult to think about living that life again.

I sometimes sit at the redlight and try to picture all the cars gone and all the people just floating in that silly sitting position that we all settle into when we're driving. I think most of us think about our automobiles in much the same way we think about our homes; we might even think of them as somehow alive. But they are really just machines that we close ourselves inside and sit in while the wheels turn and we go places. Do we really have to go all these places that we go? I could have walked around the house and neighborhood instead of going to the gym. I could have eaten something from our refrigerator instead of going out of my way to buy this hamburger with too many onions on it.

Think again of the redlight in town. Imagine all the fuel being burned at that single redlight. Then imagine all the fuel being burned at all the redlights in town, at all the redlights in Tennessee, at all the redlights in the United States. How in the world do we even have any fuel left?

"Simplify, simplify, simplify"--that's what Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden. I doubt if that's possible for us, even in the face of a world winding down.

O'Ryan is a housecat. Except when he escapes and makes a run for it--and even when he does he never goes more than a few feet--he's here at home. I don't think I could live that life no matter how much I might want to sometimes.

Denver, CO

I like Denver. From what I've seen of it--and probably it isn't representative--it's a clean city. The people I've met are friendly, and the surrounding areas seem to fit together nicely. All in all, if I had to live some place other than where I currently live, this wouldn't be a bad choice.

Here's some interesting stuff about Denver, taken from a little pamphlet that came in my conference materials:

• Denver has 300 days of annual sunshine [not the best written blurb, but it's pleasant info]
• Denver is the second most educated city in the United States [anybody know what city's first?]
• There are 200 named peaks visible from Denver, including 32 that soar to 13,000 feet and above

Like Johnson City where I live, Denver isn't actually in the mountains with which it's so closely associated. It's up against them but not in them. It's actually on the high plains. In their movie, Dumb and Dumber could have easily said of Denver (what they said of Kansas, thinking it was Colorado), "Man, that John Denver is full of shit!" But unlike in Kansas, here you have only to look northwest and west to see that 140-mile-long panorama of mountains.

I like my hotel. It's a neat place called The Curtis. Check it out at http://www.thecurtis.com/. I'm on the 9th floor and from my window I can see the northern part of that mountain panorama.

Although not completely mended, I'm feeling much better. Hopefully my drive home this weekend will be much better than the drive here was.