Month: January 2020

January 31, 2020

People tell me they can’t remember their childhood. One friend says he has no memories prior to his tenth birthday. So sad.  My childhood memories can be documented to have occurred in my third year. For a project I am trying to reco  some, although they blink on and off like lightning bugs. Here is a sample.

 

the road grader makes the road nice to drive on … here comes papa for supper … they took the old barn down while we were at gramma goods … what is fashadie in the prayer at night?… housman’s goat jumps up on a table where papa can milk while the goat is eating … the train blows the loud horn when it comes out of the woods and then it goes into the other woods … gramma is 2981 and we are 2703.  2981 is bigger than 2703 … when we go upstairs for a nap, mama lies close to me, but when I get awake she is down in the kitchen … before we go to church, papa or mama cleans our ears … stauffers cows go to a meadow every day by the creek … the light from the airport goes very fast, then it stops then it goes fast again  … we can hear the landisville siren … jake snyders and sam bakers are brethren, peter nissley isn’t anything … papa said our new car is used … aunt fanny stutters a lot, aunt nora stutters,. and so does aunt anna sometimes but mama doesn’t stutter …

our name is little — hess, but some people have big names like hottenstein … the watkins man comes to our house and the bread truck and oscar newcomer with coal … airplanes fly over sometimes … the pump gets water from the ground not from the cistern. papa said … how far up is the sky? … is God on the other side? … papa puts tractor oil on the road to stop the dust … grandma makes junket for us … we can see snyders and ebersoles and nissleys from our porch … mama says never to laugh at tramps because they might be angels underwears … brubakers say the barberry bushes aren’t worth anything … when mama plays the piano I like to sit in the back so the music goes inside me … I like december because we get calendars from everybody … housman’s rooster chases us … when we go to the toilet we keep the door shut … papa planted a little weeping willow tree out front that mama said will grow big … papa took us to see the dream highway … this is hempfield … what if I wasn’t? … we jump on mama’s lap in the morning— she sits on the stove gate … grampa good shaves his face at the table, he makes a face when he scrapes … erma sings rehdonna and won’t stop when we ask her …  claude baker pours milk into a dish for the cats … it hurts when papa cuts our hair and he scolds if we move … we go to benders for groceries …papa changes tires when they go flat … in the car papa nods to people in other cars … yoder drives housman’s truck … we get up and sit down when he we sing the rule of Sunday school … grampa good goes to market and aunt kathryn goes to market and aunt laura goes to market but aunt laura goes to market in  lebanon 

January 27, 2020

My Bucket List

To planet earth: I have one wish, only one—
to see a sequence of images
showing the evolution of this planet.
Here is how you might do it:
On the first day of each month
show me, starting on earth’s first day,
a mile-wide picture of one spot —
let’s say a mile-high picture of the area
where the 40th degree latitude
crosses the 40th degree longitude —
and then for the second month
show how earth looked one million years later
and again for the next month,
another million-year leap. and so on.
I shall be delighted and thank you.

 

To earthling. By my calculation
I’ll need more than 375 years
for this project.
You will have kicked the bucket
long before I finish.

January 26, 2020

Do you have some time? Come along on a walk through the
“British estate” located just four blocks from our house. It got dusted last night with snow. Let your curiosity guide your steps and your imagination explain what you see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 25, 2019

A friend shared a prose poem written in 1953 by Howard Washington Thurman. He was an African-American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. I will share several excerpts.

The real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of man
     and to give his soul the contagion of inner disintegration.

… the evil in the world around us
     must not be allowed to move from without to within.

To drink in the beauty that is within reach,
to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness,
to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God
     in the quietness of the human heart
     and in the workings of the human mind—
this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.

It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces
    by which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained.

… the heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gracious deed.

January 24, 2020

Today working on a project, I came upon a card I wrote to my dad. It was read to him the day before he died (1994).

Daddy, you

• stood an erect six feet tall
• commented favorably on people who kept their shoulders back 
• didn’t want to be fussed over
• did not give gifts and seldom gave compliments; your charity was anonymous
• took a preacher to Martin’s Store in Elizabethtown for a new suit
• watched with us the coming of thunderstorms
• didn’t swim, jog, or exercise, but lifted feed bags
• took pride in a straight furrow
• talked to the cows
• refused to water the steers on the morning they went to the yards
• preferred to work the fields rather than sell produce on the streets
• took charge of a work crew, not by force or command, but by getting to work
• climbed the highest rafters at a barn raising
• mowed your own fencerows and then continued on to do the neighbors’
• valued the photograph showing the north field of potatoes in full bloom
• preferred Chevies to Fords, Farmalls to John Deeres, and de Laval to Surge milkers
• befriended the German prisoners who helped to harvest potatoes
• shied away from highfalutin people
• objected strongly to war
• refused to raise tobacco
• seldom if ever told a joke
• didn’t wax or polish cars
• thought Harry Truman used bad words
• never voted 
• grunted in disapproval after reading Drew Pearson in the Intel
• never uttered a racial slur
• had no stomach for high stress
• made no judgments but considered Mt.Gretna, Long’s Park, Hershey and the shore to be worldly locations
• suspected that formal education, high-career jobs, and even church mission caused some people to forget how to work
• cooked potatoes, string beans and ham
• seldom drank tea or coffee 
• praised your mother’s fried potatoes 
• distinguished between Herr, Stehman and Utz potato chips 
• scoffed at health fanatics who ate lettuce sandwiches
• smoked a cigar one time because the doctor told you to blow warm smoke into Harold’s infected ea
• didn’t use alcohol except to put a whiskey-soaked bandage on a chain-saw wound
• almost cried, when you were seventy, as you told about your accidental shooting of your dog when you were twelve
• sang high tenor for “On the Jericho Road” with Lester Charles, Arthur Miler and Hiram Strickler, Jr.
• read the Bible, the Intel, the Sunday School quarterly and Farm Journal
• enjoyed listening to sermons by Sanford Shetler, Harold Eshleman and Elias Kulp
• helped to start a youth group at church 
• paid tuition to send your children to Mennonite schools
• visited your Sunday school class members
• left farmwork behind to help set up the Lancaster Conference tent
• stayed home occasionally from Sunday night church to play ball in the yard
• hugged Mother at noon
• never protested or feared growing older
• thought you might live to see the second coming of Christ
• rejected the doctrine of eternal security
• believed that the earth was six-thousand years old, but commented kindly on a fossil collection from geology class.
• often began your prayers “Our kind and gracious heavenly father”
• said during your illness, with the assurance of someone who had purchased his ticket a long time ago, “I guess I’m headed for the Great Northwest.”

January 24, 2020

Privileged? Me, privileged? Indeed and today for reasons not clear to me I feel this privilege. Can I parse this privilege?

For part of my wellbeing …
I recognize the endowment of a set of genes, put together over the course of centuries.

For part of my well-being …
I owe gratitude to my foreparents for the values they handed down through the generations.  

For part of my wellbeing …
I can thank my lucky stars to have been born on a particular spot of this globe.

For part of my well-being …
I feel overwhelming gratitude to my family and friends. 

For part of my wellbeing …
I can thank Providence for blessings.

For part of my well-being– a small part…
I remember personal decisions have proved beneficial.

And for part of my well-being  …
I can only grieve the privileges exacted from prejudicial social, economic and religious powers that favor me and us.

 

January 22, 2020

I humbly offer you today’s photo, not really knowing what it is. 

A friend of mine, John Jay Boyce, a brilliant yet humble judge (as in the courts), took me to see an artist’s rendering of metaphor. I’m up on metaphor but this studio visit confused the heck out of me. I wish my Toronto buddy would have been along because he has explored metaphorical nooks and crannies not found in my storehouse. I know that this entry will expose me for what I am. Please never show it to anyone.

John Jay takes me to Cortellini Studio in Secina High School, about two miles from my house.The studio is empty, excepting for Mr. Cortellini, a man of about my age who says “hello” and “Work on the Feedback Fractal Project began in November of 2011. Using Autocad and 3D Studio Max and their embedded programming languages, a small section of the quintessential fractal, the Mandelbrot Set, was isolated and modeled in the computer.”

If I had been in third grade or fifth I would have raised my hand to say ….  but Mr. Cortellini goes on. “Subsequently, custom code was developed to assist in the unwrapping of  the incredibly intricate  geometry in order to generate a paper pattern for the construction of a paper rendition of the digital image.”

Folks, graduate level statistics wasn’t this far out. I had fallen off way back in the first sentence, so I just made polite and then took a picture before we left. That is what is shown above.

I came home and in one action, took off my coat and picked up a dictionary.

fractal: a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation

Mr. Cortellini had shown us a fractal (when I didn’t have the slightest notion of what I was looking at.) I should have taken a picture of it. Do I understand correctly: if I had a camera strong enough to take a photo of one little dot, and enlarged it, the resulting image would be like the original photo?

Then Mr. Cortellini does something strange and quite remarkable. Here is what I think he is doing. You know the dots in a photograph (dpi or dots per inch)? He asks the computer to show  the “height” of every dot in the photo of the photo of the photo of the fractal. And let’s say that the computer is smart enough to color each dot progressively according to its height and let’s say that Mr. Cortellini can persuade the computer to print out on a flat surface of paper an indication in inches the height of each dot, and let’s say that he can somehow or other coax people in central Indiana to the studio to cut out each of the blocks and affix them onto a common surface. Maybe this is what I was seeing.

Again, never show this to anyone. I would be sued for libel and/or slander.

But what results is shown in the photo at the beginning of this academic essay, and this photo, mind you, is just one tiny portion of a humongous wall-sized presentation of spine-tingling art. You should see it.

——

This new metaphor won’t let me go. So I’m taking my walk and stewing over fractals and dpis when I recall the dictionary saying something like “such as eroded coastline or snowflake.”  Eureka!  I head to Pleasant Run, crawl down to the edge, just about falling in, and take a picture that I shall label “Metaphor.”

January 20, 2020

After oatmeal, I bundled up. At the door was hit by cold. Once outside I asked my camera to show me cold. Here is what it gave to me.

January 19, 2020

A friend and I sometimes at coffee share short lists of what we are grateful for. At the close of our sharing, we feel better about life. This morning in my blog I will share five thank you items from yesterday.

1.Breakfast with Del, Elvin, Mike,Ted and Bob.

2.  Huddlling leeward on a cold day.

 

 3. Another couple of armfuls of free fire wood picked up off the street.  

4. A Private History of Awe by Scott Russel Sanders.

5. An evening fire inside as the temp drops outside.

Today’s photo — 14
January 18, 2020

We have enjoyed winter trips to Florida and Arizona, and thus we are well pleased to hear from our snowbird friends. But no envy. One essential reason for our remaining up north — we enjoy the seasons.

This morning I drove in a wintry mix to the Emporium for breakfast with the farmers. Tomorrow morning’s temp is forecast to be 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

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