Surprise

I am still around. I haven't published a blog post since February 4 this year. There are many reasons I haven't written but there really is no good reason for not writing a blog post once in a while. It doesn't take that long and there are certainly a lot of things to write about and the list of subjects continues to grow. There are so many terrible, wonderful, funny and tragic things happening that just invite comment that I could write a post every day. But the writing itself is the hard part. I don't know when I realized that. I used to think that writing was easy but that is because I wasn't critically looking at my own writing. If there were words on the page, I would think that was writing. Coming up with ideas is easy. Getting on to Blogger to write is easy. But writing a coherent, interesting story is not easy. Even spelling is made easy with Blogger's automatic wavy-red-underline marking for suspected misspelled words gives you the most obvious corrections. I even misspelled "misspelled" the first time and corrected it with a click.

So, rather than wait for tomorrow to begin my New Year's Resolution of writing in my blog, I'm starting today with this post. It's neither coherent (which I also misspelled the first time) nor interesting but I can work on that. It's the old story - If you want to be a writer, write!

I am hoping to write more blog posts in 2020. It shouldn't be too hard to do better than this year. The first few posts could be about what happened in 2019 and why those things worked against my taking time to write blog posts. Also, I've seen some interesting movies, read some interesting books and learned many new things. My faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, continues to grow. The pastor of our church continues to give us encouragement in his sermons and teach us new things about taking the gifts we've been given and using them in our community and spreading the Good News.

One final note, I'm going to read through the Bible this year using The Bible Project daily reading reminders. Of course, you can just read straight through the Bible but the resources at The Bible Project offer other things like animations explaining the layout of each book and other background resources. It also ensures that you read a Psalm each day, along with the main reading for the day.

Here is wishing you a happy New Year ahead.

The phantom police car

In this earlier blog post, I said I would try to write down stories from my childhood so my children could see how I learned as I grew up. Nothing is worse for a child (or young adult or anyone for that matter) than to think they should have all the answers and abilities they will need in life at a young age. And I think we, as adults, often assume that children (and young adults or anyone) should be as experienced as we are at their young age. We must remember what it was like when we were young and making mistakes. And we need to let our children know that it is not the end of the world when they make a mistake. So, I am going to try to remember stories about when I was unsure of myself or found myself in a difficult situation. Then my children can benefit from my struggle and mistakes.

Now, all that being said, this is a story from my teenage years and is not going to be a great lesson to anyone. It's just a funny story and my kids enjoyed it when I told it to them.

I was in a drum and bugle corps and had some great friends in that group and we often got together to go see other drum corps and marching bands in competitions when we got a chance. So, one time when four of us were driving home from one of those shows, we found ourselves behind a bunch of cars going a lot slower than teenagers in a car want to go. The guy driving the car was the director of our drum corps and was older (in his twenties) than the two of us in the back seat. The other guy in the front of the car was an old friend of the corps director. They had gone to high school together and knew each other better than us. So, as our frustration grew at the slow drive, our two older companions looked at each other and said something like, "It's time." Apparently, they'd been in this situation before and had a plan they'd used before. To their credit, they didn't do anything dangerous like try to pass the three or four cars in front of us. They didn't do anything annoying like beep the horn or flash the high beams to get the cars to move. They were the kind of guys you could trust to do the right thing. But not necessarily, exactly, the lawful thing.

They rolled down their windows, stuck their heads out and made an amazingly accurate recreation of a police siren with their voices. It was loud and clear but the the two of us in the backseat had to wonder if it would really work. The "siren" kept going for a while with no response from the cars in front of us but then, improbably, we saw a turn signal go on and the car directly in front of us pulled over. When that happened, the second car in front must have thought, "Well, I don't see a police car or flashing lights but that guy behind me must have seen it so I'll pull over, too." And the ripple effect worked. All the cars in front of us pulled over, too. Our driver knew it would work and he was ready. Off we zoomed and I thought I was going to die - not from dangerous driving but from laughter.

Now, after telling my children this story, for the first time, I wondered how long those poor cars stayed off the road. Obviously there was no police car so how long did they wait before deciding that they'd been had? I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Like a cat in the night

When I get up at night and don't turn on the lights (to keep from disturbing my wife), I have to be careful because I could trip over one of our cats. Why don't they get out of the way? Cats have great night vision and surely know I'm heading toward them. But cats are also lazy and only move if they have to move. I think the problem is that they assume we also have good night vision, like them, and will walk around them. Why wouldn't we have good night vision? Can't everyone see well in the dark? It makes no sense - to a cat.

Our cat Henry not ready to move

Well, we all know that's not the way it works. But we act like that in our own life. We're driving along in our car and surely everyone can see us. Surely everyone is as alert as we are. Surely no one is driving drunk or having a medical emergency or have an argument on their phone or falling asleep because they are coming home from work 18 straight hours at the hospital.

It's not just driving. If there is a government shutdown, why don't the furloughed workers just get a loan to tide them over? If you have an ache or are feeling sick, why not just go to the doctor? If you're lonely, why just go somewhere there are other people? These questions come from people who are either well-to-do or just fortunate.

My goal is to be less like a cat and try to think that everyone in the world doesn't have the same perceptions, abilities and benefits as I do. It's not just about driving. It's about how I interact with other people all day. The other person may be in a bad mood not because of me but because of something bad happening in their life. I need to be more empathetic and ask questions and not just offer "solutions".

Stories from my childhood

My kids and I were talking and my daughter mentioned how she gets nervous when needing to talk with people about things or needing to tell someone that she needs something. I thought it might help her by talking about difficulties I've had when I was younger, too. In fact, I'm going to try to find more instances of things I struggled with when I was younger so I can let my children know I had problems like they do.

This is a story from when I was in the second grade. I was about 7 years old. I always had trouble talking in front of a group. And I always had trouble memorizing things. Interestingly, I could memorize things if I wasn't purposely trying to memorize them. But as soon as the pressure of being forced to memorize was put on me, my brain froze!

In the second grade, we had to memorize poems and recite them in front of the class once a month. The teacher, to her credit, allowed us to volunteer to speak. She would allow a few students to recite each day until everyone had done that month's poem. I always waited until the end of the month.

My mother knew I had to do this and worked especially hard with me to help me memorize the poem. I would finally learn them but the standing in front of the class was what held me back. So, she would give me some kind of treat when I told her that I'd recited the poem. One month, I remember was especially trying. I don't remember why but I was putting it off and my mother asked me each day if I had finished and I finally just said yes - I had recited the poem. I hadn't, of course. It scares me how easily I lied when I was younger. I knew it was wrong but I guess I thought it was better to lie and, maybe, get away with something than to tell the truth and suffer.

Mom gave a sigh of relief and gave me the treat (I forget what she would give me). I just assumed I'd do the recitation on the last day of the month as usual. But my mother was also a good person who helped out at the school from time to time. She came to the school one day to prepare for a party we ere having at school and she happened to talk with my teacher. Mom mentioned how happy she was that I had gotten over my fear and had recited that month's poem earlier than usual. Well, the teacher, again to her credit, knew her students and knew who had recited and who had NOT recited and let Mom know. Well, I don't remember the look exactly but I remember that it was a mixture of disappointment and anger. It was enough to scare me. I can only imagine how she felt. I had really embarrassed her and she had always told me that lying was a terrible thing to do. Why had I not just told her I was afraid?

The teacher said I could recite the poem right there and I did. Crying the whole time. I don't remember what happened after that but I know my mother would have told my father, too, and he would have been upset, too.

I would like to say that this incident broke me of my habit of procrastinating but it didn't. I still have trouble with that like when our cars are due to be inspected.

I was wrong - how could that be?

Click to enlarge

Back on January 1, as part of my Happy New Year post, I mentioned an interesting bird that was hanging around our house. I was sure I had figured out that it was a Black-and-White Warbler. I crosschecked it in two bird books and on the Internet. I had compared it against similar birds - the Blackpool Warbler and the Black-throated Gray Warbler and was sure it wasn't either of those. At least I was right about that!

My wife put more pictures of the bird on her Facebook account and asked there about its identity and the answer came back that our mystery bird is a female Downy Woodpecker. I was thrown by the fact that it doesn't have a red spot on the rear of the head but that's because only the male Downy Woodpecker has the red spot.
I'm a little surprised that my bird books didn't include the Downy Woodpecker as similar birds to the Black-and-White Warbler but I guess there are limits to how many they can include. They probably figured no one would think a woodpecker was a warbler. I'll try not to make assumptions in the future but we all know how that will go. I'm just glad to know what to call our visitor. It's a little sad to not be able to announce that a bird that isn't normally in our area this time of year is still here. I'll have to wait for an Ivory-billed Woodpecker to show up!

Two comebacks

No, not sports comebacks. These are replies to someone who has said something critical of you.

1) What they say when they think you are staring at them:

"What are you looking at?"

    What your comeback should be

"Not much!"

2) What they say in response to your previous witty comeback

"Don't get smart with me."

    What your comeback should be

"Well, one of us needs to be smart about this."

25 years ago today

This is the anniversary of my marrying the most beautiful girl in the world. We'd known each other for years but only started dating the year before. I can remember having all the wrong ideas about what type of woman I would marry and what falling in love was all about. Then, the first time we went out on a date, I knew. Being with Cindy was completely different than being with anyone else. Everything seemed so effortless when I was with her. And she made me feel like I was always doing the right thing.

I was 42 years old and thought I would never find the right woman. I had given up and thought no woman would ever want to marry me. But God has a plan. We just need to acknowledge our need and that we aren't in control. In one way, I'm glad it took so long. In another way, though, I see how I was the problem - thinking I knew what I was doing and thinking I had it all figured out.

The last quarter century has flown by. I'm sure the next one will, too.

Happy New Year

Here we go - it's a new year. All the mistakes we made last year are forgotten (right?) and all the good things we did last year will continue (right?). I hope you will have a good and prosperous new year in 2019.

I'm starting off with a question - is this bird a Black-and-White Warbler? According to my identification books, it shouldn't be hanging around Cape Cod this time of year.I see it at the usual Internet sites here and here which seem to verify what I find in my book. But it does breed here in the summer so it's not unheard of.

There are similar birds but I pretty sure this isn't one of those. The Blackpool Warbler, from what I can see here and here, is not just black and white but contains some brown on its back and wings. But it does look like could be in this range at this time of year. The Black-throated Gray Warbler, seen here and here, is only found out west and, unsurprisingly, has a prominent black throat while the birds we are seeing here do not.

As usual, one of my New Year's Resolutions is to write more often in this blog. I always start out well in January and then drop off. But I did better in 2018 than I did in 2017 so maybe there is hope. Well, there is always hope!

[Update - to see the real identity of this bird, see my newer post here]