Month: February 2020

Notes for February 20, 2020

1. During morning coffee a friend said, “I am disillusioned and disheartened by this moment in our nation’s politics.” There were no positive thoughts in my mind, no positive words on my tongue to relieve his frustration.
2. The afternoon’s highlight was a conversation with an author of two manuscripts nearly ready for publication. I eagerly await both of them.
3. I walked home from an appointment downtown. I had hoped to snap a photo or two, but alas, litter isn’t photogenic.
4. Today a pastor asked me to share any ideas on the theme “Fullness and Emptiness” which will be her congregation’s focus during Lent. Here is something I might share with her.

   Professor D. Ralph Hostetter, regarded across campus for his expertise in geology, took our class on a field trip, back toward the hills that delineate the western edge of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Our bus stopped by nondescript and unoccupied acreage. The professor alighted, so we students got out too. We saw no rocks to fuss over. Hardly would there be fossils in this bush. Nonetheless we followed “D. Ralph” back to the foot of a hill. He told us to gather around a hole, perhaps six feet across. We obeyed, but privately wondered about a group of college sophomores, standing . . . .  And just then the hole began to fill with water. No lie. It filled almost to the rim and then the water gradually sank.

   “OK” said the professor, “who is going to explain what happened?” We  looked at each other, unbelieving what we saw.  We wondered, he waited.  And then the hole began to fill again, and empty again. The professor caught the whispered words “water witching.” He shrieked, he scoffed, he scolded. “Students, this is not hocus-pocus; this is science. Look around. Discover science at work.”

   Another filling of the hole.

   He had everyone’s attention when he finally explained that a well, located up in the hill, was constantly fed by a stream, possibly a mountain spring. The well received the water, but when filled to the top, the well could take no more. And thus, it began to overflow into an underground channel, creating a syphon that pulled all of the water out of the well. Once the well was emptied, the syphon was caput. And so the well began to fill again.

   In other words, the well had to be full and overflowing in order to create a syphon. The well had to be completely empty in order to break the syphon.

Notes for February 19, 2020

1. Three cheers for Costco’s hearing aid service.
2. Exhausted after vacuuming and mopping our huge basement, I sighed aloud. From across the table, “Oh, that was just house work.”
3. The envelope is sealed and ready to go to TIAA. Mid February is our time to designate the charities receiving our RMD funds.
   
4. Heard a lovely Festival of Prayer concert last evening at the local Our Lady of Lourdes church. Featured were excerpts from Bach’s The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Matthew. A neighbor, Gregory Martin, composed and played Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis. Jennifer Christen’s oboe (she’s principal oboist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra) sent me skyward. 

Notes for February 18, 2020

One of my lively memories, sunshine on the brain, is my high school experience at Lancaster Mennonite School (Pennsylvania). Its teachers, classes, campus and values all worked together to form a trail that I have happily trod.

You might find it hard to believe but a cluster of my high school buddies gathers regularly after all of these years at a breakfast table in East Petersburg. This week Nevin Kraybill sent to me a photo of the old geezers at their February breakfast. Same buddies, but my, how they have aged!

Daniel Shertzer, David Shenk, Nevin Kraybill, Dale Stoltzfus, Donald Hershey, Ray Witmer, John Landis and Earl Zimmerman. Several regulars missed the February brew:  Lester Groff, John Rutt, Mel Barge, Jim Maust, Ross Mast and Roy Wert.

I’ll let you guess …

which one was center in our basketball team?
which one drove with me to high school?
which one was high tenor in our male quartet?

Just to play even, when I go to Lancaster, I enjoy re-connecting with Connie Stauffer and Esther Hess Becker. On Facebook my friends include Alice Herr Shenk and Marie Snavely. Lois Krady Hartzler and husband Roy are on my correspondence list.

You give up?  Earl Zimmerman (who with his teammates violated the school prohibition of athletic contests with other schools). John Landis (who also attended the same eighth grade class at East Hempfield). Nevin Kraybill ( who went to Africa shortly after high school for a three-year term and subsequently spent many years there as a guest house host).

 

Today’s notes — February 17, 2020,

1. This morning I joined a nature walk through an old growth forest, now identified as Meltzer Woods  two counties eastward. This event was sponsored by the Central Indiana Land Trust.
   We saw huge oaks, tall ash, wild cherry, shag bark and many more. This woodland has never been cut.

   
   Jamison Hutchins, our guide, pointed out the contribution given to the woodland by a large fallen tree. Note the hole that used to be the root. Such pools contribute significantly to moisture levels.

   
   Inside a hollowed log we saw where bees had built cells.

2. Back at the house I was cutting wood when I heard sandhill cranes returning to the north country. They were flying quite high. While I was watching, the flyers made a huge circle and at the close of the loop another large group joined them. Did the original group know that a second group a couple of miles behind them wanted to join? Is that why they circled? The photo captures the moment when the two groups united. Note several stragglers. (Again, these cranes were flying very high.)
   Indeed a rewarding day.

Today’s notes — February 16, 2020

1. Early morning we got two copies of the Sunday Indianapolis Star, but not The New York Times.
2. The channel to Duck Pond is free of ice.

   

3. Rumination on the term v-o-i-d. If a void doesn’t have essence or substance, can it even be?
4. In today’s Premier Crossword a number of ic-words: atomicnumber, cosmicconsciousness and microscopic- – – – – – – – (bacterium, for example).
5. Max and Liesel become friends. (The Book Thief, p 222)
6. The fireplace liked this evening’s wood better than what I used yesterday.
7. Another cousin and I are now connected by way of Facebook.
8. What a vast contrast of feelings in being an insider within a circle of acquaintances or an outsider to a circle of friends.
9. Our correspondence — fifteen years of sharing heart and mind.
10. Continued amazement that youth from the town of Crawfordsville (15,000) could be putting on so fine a production of “The Lion King.”

 

February 14, 2019

Frigid outside, a flame inside.

February 13, 2020

The day before Valentine’s Day

1. Why do errors in traffic provoke road rage?
2. Why do so many people hate Jews?
3. Who or what instituted the skin color caste system?
4. Why do so many children from poor families dislike school?
5. Why do crowds go wild when our president goes into ugly hyperbole?
6. What makes an extreme rightist? an extreme leftist?
7. Dare we admit to each other how many thousand bombs the United States has dropped since 2000?
8. Why are we trashing the planet?
9. How deep is our love for each other?

February 12, 2020

On my walk today I paid attention to nature’s designs.

Ice quickly grabbed my  attention.

Trees and wood offered designs that no artist could think up.

 Plants smaller than trees design at upper levels too.

  

 And then I saw these markings on a tree. 

The designs indeed are in the wild.

 

 

February 11, 2020

Sunday noon a thick snow fell heavily. By Monday morning rain had washed it away.

Everything seemed damp and dark. Then, out for a walk, I saw delights.

This little stream silently, slowly found its way to the creek.

Vinca looked out over a log.

Pine cones formed assemblies.

A rock bid me the time of day.

A cairn came to town.

Another quiet, joyous winter walk!

February 10, 2020

About twenty years ago I purchased Jacques Barzun’s latest book From Dawn to Decadence. Barzun had been on the top rung since my reading of The House of Intellect early in my career. His 2000-page volume, huge, commented on the past 500 years of Western cultural life. His commentary on the 16th century gave to me a much broader sense of those times, including the rise of Anabaptism.

Yet I admit to surprise when his close attention to the trajectory of culture led him to conclude that this current moment may be characterized by the term “decadence.” I read and re-read and continued to wonder. Is my cultural ambiance decadent? Of course there are many smaller yet vivid examples of decay, but has the whole been contaminated?

Then to my surprise yesterday’s New York Times devoted two entire pages of the “Week Review” to a long excerpt from Ross Douthat’s forthcoming book “The Decadent Society” in which he indeed cites Barzun. “Following in the footsteps of the cultural critic Jacques Barzun, we can say that decadence refers to economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development.”

I am going to re-read Barzun. I want to think more about statements such as the following:

“The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result.”

“When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.”

May I be delivered from being an old geizer, at odds with everything contemporary that differs from everything past. I don’t want to be a grouch. Yet I crave an understanding of this moment in the history of the world and more specifically in this nation that so baffles me, that makes me want to traipse over to my cave and shut the door. 

Perhaps Douthat and Barzun can speak to times such as these and to me personally.