Mother of the groom: One of those moments

I'm keeping a list of moments that have the capacity to restore, in some small measure, my faith in how things are supposed to be.

It's getting longer all the time, with things like:

The wonder-filled smile of parents who have just heard their baby laugh for the first time.

The cautious jubilation of a child who has just mastered the fine art of riding a bike.

Two faithful friends enjoying a game of chess, as if it doesn't matter who wins as long as they play together.

A cool fall day and a walk to enjoy it in.

An April ramble down Sugar Ridge Road in Bristol, Texas when the bluebonnets are in full bloom.

A sweet Texas porch with a rocker.

The smoky tang of really great barbecue.

The feel of a really good book when you turn the page in expectation.

The swing of a tassel turned to the other side of the mortarboard at graduation.

Recently, I added a new moment to the list.

When a serendipitous double rainbow briefly claimed the sky over The Oaks on Aug. 10 like a benediction, a couple hundred wedding guests rushed to the massive plate glass windows of the historic Maryland country inn.

Photographers Brian and Rebecca Palmer knew what to do. They hustled the bride and groom out to the riverside grounds of the inn where Fay Wray and Gary Cooper stayed while making the last silent movie.

"We've never had a rainbow," Rebecca Palmer said later.

The groom was my son, and the pictures of him with new wife Megh under the arc that curves to form a circle in the reflection on the Miles River are so lovely they appear to have been Photoshopped.

Irish heritage runs deep in both the newlyweds' families, so it would be easy enough to draw the analogy that the pair had found love's gold at the end of the rainbow.

However, seeing them there, two lovely young people, an engineer and a teacher, their masters degrees behind them and their lives together ahead of them and their hearts openly brimming with newly-wedded bliss and love, at the risk of getting mushy and even completely maudlin, I make a mor e spiritual connection.

I remember some of the challenging places this young man has been, in particular. Our family has stories from his youth that would curl your hair – although the one about the six months he spent in a body cast after a go-cart accident comes to mind first, there are others. A number of them.

I see him, and her, and that rainbow, and I think of all the things I wish for them, and the things that have already come true.

It's my theory that the despondency we see in so many youth today comes from our failure as the adults in their lives to tell them what we've come through. Because they don't know – and we do – that the sun will come out tomorrow, like the song from the Broadway musical 'Annie' says. That there's a rainbow after the rain. That, like the Pink Martini song, 'Hang On Little Tomatoe!' says, it's important to dig in and hold on determinedly. That time heals all wounds, and all good things come to those who wait (and work.)

It's my observation that these are lessons we need to remaster, again and again, through life's rainshowers. Because the rains will come, oh yes they will – and they fall on everyone, sooner or later.

But for some reason, when I look at that extraordinary wedding picture that's now so dear to me, I'm reminded of the rainbow as a symbol of God's promise to Noah, and then to what English missionary William Carey said over 150 years ago.

"The future's as bright as the promises of God."

It's just one of those moments, I guess.

Bless their hearts

My son, 16, got his license today. His real one, the kind where you don't have to have your mum the backseat driver bugging you about leaving more distance between your car and the one ahead or unfurling impromptu lectures about the dangers of drinking or doing ANYTHING while driving or drinking, PERIOD.

Bless his pea-picking heart.

There's a spring in his step. He didn't whine about a single chore. If he could whistle while brushing his teeth, he'd do it. He's standing up straighter -- he looks to be about a head taller, five-foot-ten and hoping for an even six foot. Every teenaged pore seems to ooze the news -- he's not a kid any more.

Bless his heart.

He's already got plans for souping up his inherited 2000 Chevy with a better sound system that fits his iPod. The car's maroon, like the school colors, like his letter jacket with the fuzzy tennis rackets that says "District Boys Singles Champion" in maroon embroidery on the grey field -- the one that he wears even with shorts in the Texas heat despites its felt and its maroon leather.
In his spare moments, Patrick's reading the book I bought him called "So You Want To Be A Doctor" -- the medical field has captured his imagination after watching every single possible episode of the family's favorite show, House M.D. He's loaded his school schedule with every possible AP class and science and math, and he's making A's in every one of them, having connected the dots between grades and money for a bio-chemistry major.

And while the snarling, sneering monster of teenagedom rears its nasty head on occasions that are getting rarer all the time, little outbursts of sarcasm tinged with his own intelligent way of looking at the world he's rapidly growing up to, I see him purposefully striding toward adult status and navigating his way around the obstacles of temptation that so easily beset today's youth.

I remember the fair-haired, blue-eyed child of a dozen years ago, how he was so sweet-looking and irresistible that total strangers wanted to pat his head, the days when he starred as Ralphie Parker in the Ennis Public Theatre production of A Christmas Story. The time we were at the movies and an elderly gentleman came up to Patrick and patted his head, right there in front of us, and said "Looks like such a nice intelligent boy," and walked away.

I remember all those things and like Mary, I ponder them in my heart. and I think, Bless his heart.

I interviewed Sam and Kathy Harrell yesterday. Sam's one of the winningest coaches in Texas high school football history -- he coached the maroon boys, the Ennis Lions, to three state championships between 2000 and 2005.

And out of those Friday night lights, the most promising player to emerge to date was his son, quarterback Graham. Up for a possible Heisman, the Texas Tech Red Raider record-breaker is being courted for NFL stardom by a flock of Jerry Maguires.

Who knew?

When the Harrells recently moved into a new home in Ennis’ Oak Creek subdivision, Kathy ran across her son Graham’s favorite poster from his childhood days.

It was the shape of things to come.

At the bottom of the huge picture of Joe Montana, the fourth-grader and future Texas Tech record-setting quarterback had stuck a home-made label that read: “Graham Harrell – the next Joe Montana.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Bless his heart, he thinks he can play in the NFL!’ I didn’t want to burst his bubble, but I kind of felt a little hurt for him,” Kathy Harrell said, unconsciously putting her hand up to her heart.

To her credit, she didn't smack him down and put him in his place, nor did she take the opposite stance of hero-worship. At every stage, the Harrell have enjoyed their son's successes, without getting caught up in the idea that -- lo, and behold -- has come to pass.

Little Graham Harrell is all grown up, a dozen years later, standing within reach of that boyhood goal. He’s the nation's leading passer with 393.4 yards per game, moving into fourth place on the NCAA career passing yardage list with 13,829 yards. He has set school career marks in touchdown passes (117) and career touchdowns responsible for (129) and is the nation's active leader in both categories.

And pretty doggone sweet and unspoiled still, for all of it.

All's I'm saying is, sometimes you never know.

Bless our children's hearts.

Amazing story of the Prodigal Pup

In Winnebago County, Ill., Bob and Cheryl Moeller were startled Tuesday to get a call from animal shelter authorities.

Five years after he disappeared from their backyard at a Memorial Day picnic, their son Brent’s beloved purebred collie, Bo, had been found – and the chip in his neck had their family numbers.

When Bo went missing in 2003, the Moellers put up photo posters, canvassed door to door and went to 12 area police departments to spread the news of their missing pup. Strangely, last Sunday morning, the Moeller’s daughter, Melissa, had awakened after a vivid dream that Bo had come home. “She told us all about it, that we were all happy and playing,” Moeller said.

Tuesday, the family got the good news: the prodigal pup was back. At the county shelter, the dog immediately walked up to Brent, and remembered the old training commands as if dog and master had never been parted. Word spread quickly of the Moeller’s reunion with Bo; the animal rescue staff had never seen owner and pet reunited after so many years. Local newspapers and TV stations hovered to document the feel-good story that centered around a boy, his dog – and the chip that reunited them.

At the time they got Bo, then a puppy, the chip wasn’t optional.“It came with the initial shots,” Cheryl Moeller recalled.

Bedraggled and neglected upon his mysterious return, he was in ill health and showed evidence of having been caged. Although his city dog tags had been removed, he still wore the collar that had his name on it. “It’s so awful to think who in the world would do this?” Moeller said.

The Moellers, who are both in Christian ministry as family conference speakers and authors, see the hand of the Almighty in Bo’s account of reconciliation.“It sure makes you believe in miracles,” she said. “We give the credit to God – we believe this didn’t happen by accident.”

In Ellis County, Texas, Jennifer Kingsley saw the chip at work. She noticed an adorable Jack Russell terrier sitting on the running board of an antique truck in her neighborhood. “We were going to take a picture of him with our phone, and he jumped into the car,” Jennifer recalled. After determining that the truck owner was not the dog’s owner, Kingsley and her son Ryan walked the entire neighborhood, knocking on doors to see if anyone had lost a pet. Unable to find his home, they brought him to theirs. Kingsley chuckles when she recalls the dog’s brisk energy and the tendency to leap tall couches with a single bound. “He had so much energy,” she said.

Clearly, the pooch was the apple of someone’s eye. The question was, whose? The Kingsleys took the bundle of energy to the Ennis Veterinary Clinic, where a scan revealed the dog had a microchip that in turn led them to the breeder, who went through records to get in touch with the owner who bought the dog.

Chip to the rescue.

While a chip on your shoulder isn’t a good thing, the right kind of chip on your pet’s shoulder could save its life.

Thanks to new technology, with the simple insertion of a tiny microchip, lost pets can be reunited with their owners. But it takes forethought.At the Waxahachie Animal Shelter, senior officer Cindi Walters has made scanning strays for microchips part of the intake routine.

With every dog that is brought in, a chip reader is used to scan the shoulder area. When the scanner detects a number, she relays that number to the chip company, who then helps locate the owner.

“In the past year, out of 100 or more dogs [taken in as strays], we’ve only had one animal that had a microchip in it,” she said.Walters estimates that out of those same 50 dogs, perhaps half of them appeared not to be strays – they appeared to have belonged to someone.And that’s a heartbreaking statistic she said.

“I’ve got two in right now that no owners have called about, but both have brand-new collars on them, so I know somebody’s owned them somewhere,” Walters said.

Her advice to pet owners? Get your vet to put a chip in your animal. “A collar can always be lost, tags can always be lost, but the microchip is always there,” she said.

At Ennis Veterinary Clinic, Dr. Mac Boyd said the chip is an emerging technology many pet owners haven’t taken advantage of. “It’s a good program – amazing technology,” he said.“We put quite a few in – but the vast majority of pets don’t have them yet, because there’s some expense involved in it. We charge $41 to put on in – it’s not a tremendously high price, but it’s an extra expense some people don’t want to have.” Another benefit is if there’s ever a dispute about dog ownership, the chip can carry the truth about the owner. “It’s like a fingerprint,” he said.

The chip itself is the size of a grain of rice and undetectable, Boyd said.“ The dog doesn’t feel it – it doesn’t cause discomfort. It doesn’t give off signals, it just reacts when the scanner passes over it,” he said, echoing Cindi Walters’ advice to just get the chip put in. “Nobody thinks their pet’s going to get lost, but nationwide, lots of pets find their way back home because of those chips,” Boyd said.

The life you save could be your own dog’s.

E-mail J. Louise at jlouise.larson@wninews.com.

This article originally appeared in the Waxahachie Daily Light.

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2008/07/21/news/doc4884d630bf097302352268.txt

For more on the true story of Bo's return to his family, see:
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=221232

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-lost-dogjul16,0,430110.story

http://www.dailyherald.com/multimedia/?category=9&type=video&item=181

http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/lost.dog.reunion.2.772114.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/us/illinois/cook-county/arlington-heights-PLGEO100100501040000.topic

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/us/illinois/cook-county/arlington-heights-PLGEO100100501040000.topic

The Class Menagerie: Delinda Ruffino's just a country girl, at heart

BRISTOL — When Delinda Ruffino moved to Bristol, she realized a life-long dream: Some 29 acres for her horses to play on – and a little miniature horse to remind her of the importance of life’s little things.

“My dream has always been to live on acreage with animals and to have horses on the property ... I’ve always wanted miniature horses, and I even threatened to get them in Lancaster and hide them behind my tall fence,” she said with a chuckle.

Delinda and Carlos Ruffino and their children, Michaella, now 19, and Robert, 17, relocated to Bristol three years ago from Lancaster, where Delinda owned the shop, Delinda Doolittle’s On the Square.

Once she found her Sugar Ridge paradise, Ruffino began to populate it – a miniature horse here, a miniature Zebu cow there.

Little goats, pale-eyed with velvety noses, curious and infinitely nibbly, that will munch on a pant leg or a lock of hair. They are miniature Nigerian goats, technically milk goats.

She has a rooster, and seven hens to lay a steady stream of fresh, fresh eggs. Then there’s Max the Cat. A long-haired tabby, he’s big-boned, even by Maine Coon cat standards, tipping the scale at 23 pounds and as long in the torso as his mistress.

The Ruffino dogs include two dachshunds, a chocolate lab, a Great Pyrenees watchdog and a cowdog cross.

“I had my own little private petting zoo,” she said.

Without unlimited room to branch out, she had no interest in breeding the animals – and they seemed to get along with each other in a sort of peaceable kingdom.

But something was missing.“I didn’t buy them to procreate, like in the Bible - that was God’s idea,” she said with a smile. “But I realized that the animals liked to be with their own kind. I noticed they were kind of lonely.”

She got another miniature cow to hang out with Charlie, the diminutive Zebu. “They were like instant buddies, and they’d go together everywhere,” she recalled. “I got another donkey, and sure enough, the donkeys hung out together. I had the one miniature horse, then I got him a friend. They really like to be with each other. I guess it’s kind of a no-brainer. They had seemed fine without them, but it’s sweet to see them roaming the pastures together,” Ruffino said.

If the resulting configuration of animals tends to resemble something of a land-based ark, Delinda Ruffino has done her job by finding her animals running buddies.

“They all really do like to be with their own kind,” she said.

The Ruffino’s 29 acres overlook the rolling hills of Bristol, where they have become part of the local constellation of neighbors.

“Sugar Ridge is the prettiest road I’ve seen in North Texas – for sure in Ellis and Dallas Counties,” she said. “And the neighbors are just amazing. I have a handful of friends on this remote road, but there’s a real strong community feeling. And think of it, there are people who live in suburbs, 10 feet from each other, and they don’t know their neighbors. They never get together with them,” she said.

Together with three of her fellow Sugar Ridge equestriennes, Delinda Ruffino’s a member of the Polka Cowgirls, an equestrian group that decorates their horses as living floats for area parades.

It’s all far from the bustling world she once knew. Raised in Houston, Delinda had an international modeling career that began in New York, taking her to the West Coast and then Europe and points east – including Germany, Italy, Paris and Tokyo – before landing her in Dallas in 1984.“ Traveling was amazing, it was like an education, and it was my school,” she recalled.

She stayed in Dallas, working as a model’s agent for an agency and then working at an agency representing makeup artists and stylists for print and TV gigs.

In 1988, she got married, she got pregnant – she got retired.

An aspiring artist, she’s turning the pool house into an art studio. She favors a break from the traditional, preferring impressionistic and expressionistic design. Her whimsical works are frequently vividly hued, done in a variety of media, pastels, pen, watercolor and her favorite, multi-media collage.

She’s active with the Ennis Garden Club, and with her church in DeSoto. And the drama training she got years ago? Finally, it’s found a home as well. She has appeared in three Neil Simon plays at the Ennis Public Theatre, and she’s an avid supporter of the theater as well.“I’ve done three plays with Bill Rhoten – I really love that theater,” she said. “I’d love to do at least one a year.”

Waxahachie Daily Light article on Jack Kelley

Dr. Jackson Clay Kelley will be remembered for his irrepressible good humor – and an abiding affection for his Rotary Club, his adopted hometown of Waxahachie, Texas, and his family.

Honored for logging 49 years perfect attendance at the Waxahachie Rotary Club and as Most Outstanding Member of the Year by the Waxahachie Chamber of Commerce, Kelley, 92, died Thursday morning at home.

Memorial services will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Waxahachie, with reception immediately following in the Family Life Center.

Jack Kelley had just retired from his veterinary business on Brookside Road when David McSpadden came to town to construct the Econo-Lodge there a quarter-century ago. Seeing the construction under way, “Jack just walked across the highway and came down to meet me,” he said, recalling the information Kelley shared of the history of the area and the road itself. “He was just being neighborly – that’s just Jack,” McSpadden remembered. “He was a true Texas gentleman in the finest tradition.”

He remembers Kelley a walking library of significant information, “a steel-trap mind” – and untiringly upbeat. “It didn’t matter what the circumstances were, he had good things to say about anybody and everybody. With that as the foundation of his world, Jack got up happy every day,” he said.

A card-carrying member of the Choctaw tribe, Jackson Clay Kelley was born in Soper, Okla. He went to school in Antlers, Okla., before graduating from Beaumont’s French High School in 1933. He put himself through Texas A&M University, graduating in 1937 as a vocational ag teacher. He returned to A&M to get doctor of veterinary medicine degree, finishing in 1945 and moving to Waxahachie with wife Geneva in 1946. He was the first veterinarian in Waxahachie, his son Bill said.

The younger Kelley recalled the love for fishing, hunting and the outdoors Jack Kelley learned from his loving father, Ike Kelley, in rural Oklahoma – and then passed on to his sons.He also remembered his dad’s deep Aggie roots. “He was 100 percent maroon-and-white. In his large animal practice, the stall where the sick cows were unloaded was painted orange. When the cows got well, he would put them in a maroon stall,” Bill said with a chuckle.

Jack Kelley was honored for almost a half-century of perfect attendance at Rotary meetings. He and Geneva traveled all over the world – and when they got where they were going, the Kelleys attended Rotary Club meetings there.Two years ago, at 90, Kelley was the oldest Rotarian on the district conference cruise – his first cruise ever. He invited David McSpadden to go on the cruise with him for company.“That old guy wore me out,” McSpadden recalled with a chuckle. “We walked all over and saw every level, including the captain’s helm. He didn’t miss a thing.”

Former City Manager Bob Sokoll recalled the Paul Harris Fellow as “the Rotarian’s Rotarian – the most dedicated Rotarian I ever met.” McSpadden agreed.“He was dedicated to the prospect that attendance and participation were the key to fellowship – that if you don’t show up, you can’t get to know anybody,” he said.

At Rotary Club last week, the 92-year-old was still showing up. He had to be helped into a rolling swivel desk chair to get to the meeting room because it was too far for his walker.

“That was the kind of indomitable spirit he had,” McSpadden said. “I sat next to him at Rotary last week and we had a great conversation. One of my regrets is that Jack wasn’t looking very good and, when I got back from L.A., I wanted to get together and turn on a tape recorder and let him talk.”Hearing that Kelley had donated his body to science at UT Southwestern Medical School, his Rotary buddy wasn’t surprised. “That’s Jack – giving even beyond the end. That’s him. I’m not surprised whatsoever – he was one of the most generous men I ever met – he just had a generous heart,” he said.

Jack Kelley’s last living son, Bill Kelley, said the avid Rotarian would be remembered for his sense of humor and his devotion to Waxahachie and to his family. As a public service, the Rotary Club put stickers on cars to remind area residents when their license plates had expired. A gentle nod to his humor and his role as the program’s biggest booster, the family plans to put one of the stickers on the display table at Jack Kelley’s memorial service.

Jack and Geneva Kelley were married for 67 years before her passing three years ago. They were members of the East Texas Lakes unit of the Airstream Club and Jack was also an enthusiastic “84” player.

Jack Kelley’s life wasn’t without its griefs. In addition to surviving Geneva, he outlived three of his sons – Pat, Mike and Steve.“About a month after we buried my third brother, we were out riding around and Dad said, ‘God has blessed me so much – He gave me my sons, and I enjoyed them to the fullest,’” Bill Kelley recalled. “That was a tremendous testimony – he was always thankful instead of having pity for himself.”

Waxahachie City Manager Paul Stevens attended First United Methodist Church with Kelley and recalled his friendliness from the first day Stevens’ family started attending the church.“It’s a tremendous loss for Waxahachie. Dr. Kelley was such a nice man and such a strong Christian,” said Stevens.

Bill Kelley agreed. “His faith was very important to him. He had a strong faith, and a lot of it was because of his heritage,” he said. “If there’s a Rotary Club in Heaven, and a fishing and hunting club, and a Wild Bunch – I think my dad’ll be a card-carrying member.”

Gone Squirrelly

So was Sex in the City's Carrie Bradshaw about right when she said squirrels are rats with cuter outfits?

One fellow journalist walking in Union Square (New York City), saw a squirrel drag an entire copy of the NY Times up into his nest. He lost a few sections on the way up but got most of it in there. I'm thinking maybe he was a literate squirrel, a member of the squirrel intelligencia - or maybe he was in it for the crossword.

One day I heard chattering outside my front room window. Poised on the back of the willow rocker on my porch, probably staring at his reflection just two feet away, a fat squirrel. I stared him down, and he fell off clumsily -- ha!That's what peeping Toms get.

My dog chased him into our drained swimming pool that had about a foot of water and a bucket we'd used to finish draining it. He sat on the bucket, dripping, miserable, cursing in squirrel at the top of his tiny lungs, black eyes huge and accusing. We tried to extend every kindness, a ladder, a pool skimmer. Finally, we dangled a stretchy hose and after about a dozen exhausing (but amusing to watch) attempts, he finally scrambled out and ran off screaming about the poor service he'd received at our resort and how he wasn't going to come back.

Problems with squirrels? Might want to check this out:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRR4bOquEKQ&feature=related

According to National Public Radio, squirrel cuisine is gaining in popularity in (squirrel-ridden) England.No word on if it tastes like chicken, but you might want to check out this fine menu of squirrel recipes that includes Cajun Squirrel, Chicken-Fried Squirrel, Crockpot Squirrel, Easy Squirrel BBQ, Fried Squirrel With Mushroom Gravy, Squirrel Cacciatore, Squirrel Casserole, Squirrels in Cream Sauce, Squirrel Creole, Squirrel Croquettes, Squirrel Kabobs, Squirrel and Noodles and Squirrel Nuggets.http://www.backwoodsbound.com/zsquir.html

And there's always the old-fashioned fix, a nice, soft squirrel coat:http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Russian-Squirrel-Fur-Cape-Wrap-Stole-Coat_W0QQitemZ250245236440QQihZ015QQcategoryZ63862QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hose are dead! Long live legs!

Hose are dead! Long live legs!

Great news in the fashion world, and this time it has trickled down to the real world: That scourge of womanly comfort, pantyhose, are dead. This is not a sad obituary.

It's official: the Wall Street Journal has proclaimed the death of hose. (See obituary here: Here)

Even the most hose-insistent golf-shirt wearing Midwestern exec, Jim Holt, president of Mid American Credit Union, a small financial institution in Wichita, Kan., formerly adamant that his female employees were not fully dressed without hose even under their pants, has conceded the point.

Once again, the revolution was led by the young, just as prior generations raised hemlines, shocked their grandmas by climbing into pants and shrugging out of corsets.

The shoe is on the other foot! And now there isn't any hose in it. The pressure is off to conform, for women who might not ever dream of getting breast implants but still had to pretend their legs were an unnaturally tan shade of plastic.

I do believe hose are dead. Further, I believe they were invented by men -- misogynistic ones at that, perhaps the forebears of the few corporate dinosaurs who still want women to suffer like sausages stuffed into casings.

And to those few guy execs still trying to enforce their nylon standards on the legs of women in the workplace, I propose a new bumpersticker: If you can tell if I'm wearing pantyhose or not, you're staring too close.

If men had to wear pantyhose, they would have been chunked long ago. And no, I don't buy the argument that if men have to wear ties, women should have to wear hose. Joe Exec, if you don't want to wear ties, then you'll have to get your own revolution.

Do I feel sorry for Hanes now their leg-irons have gone the way of the hula hoop? No. It was a conspiracy to keep women trudging (hose-bound) to the store, run after run (so to speak), to feed their addicted lingerie drawers, to kow-tow to a misogynistic society.

Next thing you know, women will realize that high heels can kill.

We'll wake up to the fact that, hello, no one is really fooled by hair coloring -- that everyone knows there's grey under there and we are all, in fact, aging despite our bottled protests to the contrary, and that's okay, and then L'Oreal and Clairol will have to suck it up and find something else to sell to us.

I hear hula hoops and hose companies are for sale cheap...

Hose were predeceased by their mother, Garter Belts. They are survived by their step-siblings, Socks, Bare Feet and Winter Tights.

See an ongoing debate about this on mediabistro.com here: http://mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t39788_1.asp

Why I will miss George Carlin

Iconoclast comedian George Carlin died last night from heart failure at 71. That's a shock to me -- he always seemed so youthful -- his razor wit, those huge eyes, his long hair, hip demeanor and black garb.

I had a few favorite Carlinisms, including this one cited on his own Web site: "Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He was the eternal hippy, constantly bucking the status quo. Lines drawn in the sand served one purpose only for Carlin -- to be stepped over. He thought that was what made America a bit healthier -- the constant skepticism, the push against conformity.

Unfortunately, it was perhaps that push that drove him away from religion. The acerbic stand-up comedian saw only society's little -- and big -- hypocrisies, and he equated religion with them.
Despite his witty take on things and his keen observation, he is most widely remembered for "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television," the routine that got him arrested and led to a key Supreme Court ruling on obscenity.

His deeply philosophical view of obscenity -- or his shallow justification, depending on how you look at it -- had him blaming societal taboos on superstition."The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

While George and I were polar opposites on religion, I greatly admired his God-given wit (although he never acknowledged it as such) as well as his willingness to take on some of the stupid trappings that detract from life's meaningful issues.

And I do respect that for a man who, though he was raised by a single mother and never got past grade 9 and whose checkered history included military court martials no doubt caused by his perennial failure to conform, didn't underachieve.

He hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, despite being loaded up on cocaine all that week, the AP reported. Much later, he would tell NPR's Fresh Air host Terry Gross that he regretted the effect his drug use had on his own daughter.

Over the course of his career, he made 23 comedy albums, a number of TV specials, three books. His appearances ranged from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" to Thomas the Tank Engine.

Honors he racked up included Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will presumably be presented posthumously Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

And if imitation is truly a sincere form of flattery, Carlin should have been bowled over. His own website tracked rounds of emails falsely attributed to him. http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/home.html

It might be appropriate to offer up 10 seconds of silence in memory of his blazing talent. Of course, it might also be appropriate to fill it with bleeps, equally in his memory.

J. Louise Larson is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, the Dallas Morning News and a number of other publications. She is the editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor to the Waxahachie Daily Light.

When a child is lost

My heart goes out to Keltoi and his wife on the loss of their wonderful 2-year-old grandson who drowned two weeks ago, and to Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife on the loss of their 5-year-old daughter who was accidentally run over in their own driveway, by a car driven by their teen son.

I think I may know why they say "survived by" in obituaries.

To me it feels like a terrible travesty when parents and grandparents outlive their children and grandchildren.

Losing a parent is painful enough, but something that can perhaps be looked at philosophically when someone in their 80s or 90s dies. "He lived a full life," perhaps we can say.

In the play (and later movie) Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling (see the IMDB link here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/) M'Lynn wails that she was always ready to go first. I'm with M'Lynn.

While I was researching an article on Meals on Wheels of Ellis County, I was struck by the differences observed in two elderly women I interviewed. They were about the same age -- late 80s, and I recall.

One woman had 7 children, and she had outlived them all. The other had 10 children, and they were all still living. It's hard to describe (and harder to document as absolute proof) the difference in these two women's attitudes. Asked about their families, one said, "I had seven children and they're all gone." The other said, "I had 10 children and they're all still alive." The one whose children had all predeceased her was actually more fit and mobile, but I would have to say from just that brief meeting that the other one seemed much happier, like she had a purpose as the matriarch of that clan.

Someone on an online forum asked the question "What do you want to do before you die?" Sort of a "Bucket List" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/. I said I wanted to enjoy grandchildren. Even though I feel my articles, books, work will be a sort of legacy, I hope to live to see my children build their own nests, raise their own fledglings.

When that doesn't happen -- when a child dies, the pain is so acute it's hard to imagine that you could "get over it." It's more likely that the best we can do, at least in the short term, is to survive it.

Long live our children, and our children's children.

A free book to download for Moms

My longtime friend Cheryl Moeller is an inspiration in one way in particular: At 50, she is a popular Christian comedian whose delightful observations on parenting come from a very real, very wild place: Cheryl is the mother of six. No, that's not a "blended" family -- although some of Cheryl's days feel like she's in a big blender on smoothie speed. And it's not six dogs either (nice try, animal lovers) -- she has six kids, and she still has her sense of humor.

Of course, she couldn't have done it without her sense of humor, which is in evidence bigtime in her most recent book. Written with Jill Hart, Planet Mom is "a wild and wonderful place where kids swing on ceiling fans, diapers appear four days later in the trunk, and children think bread is made out of deer (think "(dough)…a deer…a female deer.")

Cheryl and Jill have come up with 99 reasons why you should become a permanent resident of Planet Mom (or be thankful if you already are). It's all a nod to the truth that moms are doing the most important job in the world…and the results are out of this world.

Download this book here: http://cwahm.com/wordpress/mothers-day-gift-for-you/

and have a wonderful Mother's Day.

"I love the “Planet Mom” book! Very cute. In fact, I will print it off for moms in my family for Mother’s Day. We all need reminders as to why we are in this profession of motherhood and this is the perfect reminder!"~ Lisa J.

Creativity helps shut-in parents stay interested in life

So you're the adult child of a shut-in elder. In honor of those days when you were little and dependent, when they amused you when you were ill and looked for things for you to do on rainy days, it's time to get a bit creative, perhaps.

If your elder parent is at all interested in handwork or art, look for safe ways they can nurture that tendency.

For example, art supplies are good for all ages. My mother was an artist in her day; she formed an artist community that is now 100-artists strong, and which recognizes her labor of love on their website.

And while her hands are very unsteady these days she has put her love of the visual into some really avant garde scrapbooking.

Don't be surprised if the creativity allows your elder friend to express some negative emotions. My sister got her a very fancy leather/parchment handmade scrapbook in Italy, expecting her to fill it with genteel pictures and memories, and was shocked to see what Mum did with it ;) Having an emotional outlet is a good thing, and some elders feel they have to be "up" all the time so people will enjoy being around them. While an inspirational elder is a wonderful thing, so is honest self-expression.

This stuff is like some of the really bizarre stuff you see from top artists -- a lot of cutting and pasting and such going on. I totally get it - she's like an avant garde Grandma Moses.

I came across some booklets of paper samples and gave those to her and she's having a ball with them.

Having a product -- actually producing something -- can be a satisfying thing for someone who has been productive all their life but been sidelined by disability. It can also be something to talk about and show visitors -- so if you can find something interesting about that product, do so. The use of color, the combination of textures -- even the neatness of the pages -- all are fodder for discussion.

Even if you're at a distance, you can get a cheap phone plan and find innovative ways to make airtime fly. When small talk got tiny as I chatted with my father, who was bed-bound, I read to him from favorite writers -- Emerson, Frost, Service, L'Amour, Dobie.

My mother takes an interest in the newsy emails I read to her that have come to me from others.

Even though some elders don't have access or capacity to use computers, they can experience the wonders of the Internet vicariously. I used Google to learn fascinating facts about my father's family, and then I read them aloud to him. He was genuinely fascinated.

Anything your elder asks or wonders about can be fodder for a computer search and shared discovery. As long as we live, our minds need input.

In art and in communication, this is one way to get another generation involved. Young ones can help cut or paste, or find things to bring to Grandma for her scrapbook. Older children and teens can read aloud.

And if you're not in the habit, it's very doable to close the conversation with "Love you, Mom" or "Love you, Grandpa" -- even if your elder's unaccustomed to talking in affectionate terms, at this time in their life, an assurance of love is likely a good thing. Right?

Missteps in the American education system?

Okay, so I got a little ticked off when I heard posters on mediabistro.com berating the American education system.

As the wife of an educator and a sometime education writer for Texas School Business and The Dallas Morning News among others, I'd have to say most American schools and educators are doing a great job of educating a very socioeconomically diverse generation. In the U.S., everyone gets an education. Granted it's better in some places -- your tax dollars at work, higher concentrations of literate parents raising kids in print-rich environments, parents whose incomes enable their kids to go to school on a full belly in the morning and in decent clothes. Those are huge advantages, right there.

Someone protested on the same board about school efforts to teach morals. I say they're a sign of the times, perhaps, and maybe a response to some of the terrible news about bullies and kids without scruples. And if parents are falling down on the job or too busy to do it, the schools do need to step in.

Complaints about renewed emphasis on phys ed? Surely, reviving PE curriculum is a response, and not a kneejerk one, to American homes turning out chunky latchkey kids who sit in front of the TV/computer/video game in lieu of family involvement or good babysitter. And afterschool programs that keep kids active and supervised would be a big step in the right direction.

With all this, a protest that in some schools economics is being phased out or made an elective? While I'd definitely say economics is an essential, I'd also like to see SAT/standardized test prep courses essential for kids who are passing, and tutoring courses essential for those who are not.

For people with as much education as they have, teachers are not lavishly paid, as some retorted. And with an increased emphasis on accountability, administrators are under a lot of pressure and their salaries are modest for their doctoral-level educations, compared the huge amounts lavished upon their counterparts in industry.

That said, there are some real dud educators out there, and if school systems weren't so desperate for educators, those bad apples wouldn't find a place at the chalkboard, living proof that good teachers couldn't possibly be overpaid because they're in short supply.

Education aside, it is certainly the parents' role to teach checkbook management, morals, ethics, reproductive essentials, faith, love of reading, early literacy, and to help their child develop their gifts.

I had someone tell me recently that it wasn't normal for parents to do all those things, that is the school's responsibility.

I don't think so.

Here's the thread on mediabistro I'm ranting about: http://mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t38970_1.asp

The Very Mean Big Sister, or How I Learned to Read

I still believe it was sheer bossiness that prompted my sister to play school with me. It was the only thing she’d let me play with her.
Laurel wouldn’t let me in the tree house; instead, she sat up in that massive cedar tree with my cousin Debbie, making up an imaginary language they could make fun of me. "Ishnakishnahaky Jackie," would be followed by gales of laughter. To this day, Laurel asserts that it was a genuine language. I'd say the test of a language is its usefulness, and ridicule isn't enough to recommend it.
She wouldn’t let me be in the Dog Club. I watched with longing from a distance. as she and her school friends pointed to the life-size chart of a dog and learned all its parts. She was that mean, I told my dad tearfully.
Laurel always pointed out in return, without much tact whatsoever, that I was a whiny brat. Okay, so I did give her doll Jane a haircut, exposing the secret place Laurel had written the doll's name in case she got lost. Jane, right there in neat printing, on her forehead. Touche. How was I to know it wouldn’t grow back?
But she let me play school – no, she MADE me play school, sitting me down in a chair and relentlessly learning me my alphabets until I could read. "I'm the teacher, you're the pupil," she ordered.
Secretly, the game pleased me, but I couldn't let her know that, or for sure she'd have suspended me from "school." I was displeased when my mother, for some reason, decided not to send me to kindergarten;I drew a large schoolhouse mural on the yellow wall of my bedroom.
The first two books I ever owned I got at about the same time. I’d had hand-me-downs, of course – my siblings’ vintage Winnie The Pooh books among them.
But my first two books, brought home by my mother from an out of town trip, were Easy Reader’s Barney Beagle and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I read them over and over and dreamed of going off to school where there would be many, many more books to read.
When I had clearly mastered that material, my mother moved on to more challenging books. There was Robert Louis Stephenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, and an odd satirical cartoon book she brought back from Expo 67.
By the time I did get to go to school in grade 1, I was eagerly snapping up every book I could find, and the teacher would have me read to the other children.
Books, I was to learn, were not just my best friends; they were my transit papers to other worlds.

Tell Your Teen: This Too Shall Pass

On the last day of vacation, we stayed with my sister and her family in Washington state. We'd had a splendid time with family and friends, showing our kids the beauty of Vancouver Island, reintroducing my family to my kids -- and showing off the new baby, Patrick.

Invited by their cousin, the strong silent type, for a ride on a go-cart, Ryan took the challenge. He'd never ridden a go-cart. Didn't know how to start or stop it. But after a vague permission from me as I yakked with my sister, he got on, fired her up, and pretty much took off screaming. Everything he did seemed to make it go faster, and in a matter of moments he had careened into the neighbor's garage at full tilt. He knocked over their motorbike, and sent a stationary loaded boat trailer skidding 4 feet.

But not before the go-cart -- and his femur -- buckled.

As we rode in the ambulance to the hospital in Port Angeles, he moaned, "Why did this have to happen to me?" Tactfully, I refrained from mentioning his decision to get behind the wheel of a vehicle he knew not how to steer or even stop.

By the time he got out of the hospital, he looked like a human Y. He was bound in a horrendous fluourescent green, orange and white striped body cast -- the surgeon joked that it was a tribute to Mexico, since Ryan lived on the border. His broken elbow was healing -- as was the scrape on his cheek that revealed the truth: he might have been totally toast if he hadn't at least had the forethought to wear a helmet.

I made do as best I could. I bought a used gurney from an ambulance service for $50. On that gurney, we went to a tractor pull, a county fair, movies, the library, fishing, a Randy Travis concert.

And we had to get home somehow, which ended up being a handicapped berth on Amtrak, Seattle to Chicago to San Antone. We were late getting into Chicago after the train hit a cow in Montana, which slowed us down. Didn't do much for the cow, either. Ryan's Grandma U.C. and cousin Jen came aboard in Minneapolis and rode with us to Chicago.

It is a beautiful train trip -- but hot tip? don't do it on a gurney, you won't see a thing.

The upshot? Six home-bound months of total dependence. And a heckuva time just getting a South Texas doc to cut a growing boy out of his cast -- all were too worried about lawsuits. After learning to walk again, he walked funny for a year or so, much to his chagrin.

When Ryan asked me, in the ambulance, why this had to happen to him, I told him all I knew: everyone had one worst day, and maybe he was getting his over with now. Like Annie sang: The sun will come out tomorrow, so you've got to hang on til tomorrow, come what may. This too shall pass.

I will tell you this much: for all that kid went through growing up, to see his success and happiness today, I can truly say it couldn't happen to a nicer kid.

Some 15 years later, he's in the catbird seat. Cushy job, masters degree from an Ivy League school, cool car, wonderful fiancee.

More important, I know the empathy and the character his trials gave him -- how he is a great alpha dog in the family pack, a wonderful big brother, and how he will be a better husband and father for all he has been through.

What Ryan couldn't imagine in adolescence -- recovering from pain and disaster -- because of his limited experience, I had to envision for him.

And when anyone asks what one message today's youth need to hear, tell them: everyone has one worst day, or worst year, and maybe you're getting yours over with now.

Disappointed in love? Boyfriends/girlfriends are like buses, another one will be along soon.

and like Annie sang: The sun will come out tomorrow, so you've got to hang on til tomorrow, come what may. This too shall pass.

The oldest Big Sister in the world

How old is too old to do some good?

Well, there's a nine-decade gap between Iva Broadus and DeAngela Williams. Other than making Ms. Broadus – who will turn 99 in two weeks – the oldest Big Sister in the nation, according to the organization's records, that little fact doesn't seem to matter much.

At Cockrell Hill Elementary School in DeSoto, 10-year-old DeAngela enjoys social studies and science. But the highlight of her week is the school bus ride to Grace Presbyterian Village, where she visits her Big Sister.

In the gentle give-and-take over cards or lunch, there are other kinds of teaching and learning between Ms. Broadus and DeAngela. Social protocols, manners that are best passed from older to younger – the same things Ms. Broadus learned, in turn, as a little girl from her Aunt Edna.

"People are going to like people who like them," Ms. Broadus told her young charge in a recent discussion. "That's why I'm here, to tell you little things you don't know."

Read more in the Dallas Morning News story that also ran in the Denton Record Chronicle: http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011308dnmetbigsister.23183b6.html

Grandma Laura: What love looks like when it's busy

So I was laying in bed thinking about how cold my feet were -- I'd been working in the draft, oblivious to my chilling tootsies -- and thinking I should really find my pink fuzzy slippers my kids got me for Christmas three years ago.

They're big and hairy (the slippers, not the kids) and you'd think they'd be really warm, for being so plush, but it occurred to me that no slippers could possibly get my feet as warm as the red woolen ones my Grandma used to knit for us every winter.

She was skilled in all sorts of fancy handwork, abilities learned at the knee of her Norwegian mother and aunts even before she sailed into New York harbor as a blue-eyed girl of 8, destined first for Ellis Island and then for a farming life in North Dakota.

The slippers she made us (and mittens too, for that matter) had to be red, as Grandma knew what most grandmothers seem to know -- that you will always lose just one, so the remaining slippers and mittens will need mates. She kept a drawer of singlet slippers and mittens by the door, hospitably ready for any visitor to come in and politely take their shoes off and warm up chilled toes in two little nearly-matched bits of hand-knitted heaven.

It's a scientific fact, her red mittens and slippers were the warmest, just as her sheets were the whitest and crispest and an education in and of themselves as outside their linen folds I had no understanding that sheets could be either crisp or white.

The truth is, my grandmother was the mother of all superlatives for me. Her laugh would charm the most hardened criminal; her look of disapproval from a flash of blue eyes the color of Norwegian seas under arched eyebrows, if incurred, weighed like an anvil on the shoulders of the mind.

Her pork chops were the most delicately seasoned I have ever consumed, the raspberries from her garden the sweetest, her roses the rosiest and her many species of African violets the violetest.

She served me grape Hi-C in glasses etched so pristinely it was like drinking from tiny chandeliers, quite a heady nectar it was, too. When I was more grown-up, there was hot tea with milk, and always her Scottish shortbread that melted at tongue temperature. Every piece of shortbread I've had since has failed to live up to the Grandmother standard.

With her clip-on mabe pearl earrings, true red lipstick perfectly applied and a light blue scarf at her throat, she was a picture of elegance each Saturday as we went to grocery shop, where I was assured a mint from her big clasped leather handbag.

My dad sent me all her handbags after she died, mailed me a big box of them because he didn't know what else to do with them, he said.

At the time, I was nonplussed at his gift of the ancient but still immaculate purses that had once been repositories for all that Grandma needed for our big weekly outing. I regret to say I could do what he couldn't -- I threw them out. I'd love to have just one of them now to put my cold memories in and warm them up.

But since my dad died I have her songbook from the Sons of Norway lodge, and I have her bean pot and the afghan and pillowcase that softened her gleaming maple rocker.

I know my grandma had her human side, but I never really saw it, or perhaps a glimpse when I exasperated or disappointed her -- which had to be often, but she was a patient woman.

She was something of a rock for family and neighbors, a legendary example of what love looked like when it was busy.

And she was the reason that every Christmas I searched for that perfect light blue scarf to give her, maybe one the color of the eyes of the morning glories on the vines that climbed over the trellis against her white storybook cottage that I now realize must have been just 600 square feet in size. She would always be surprised and delighted with each and have some nice remark about the fabric or the color.

When she died, she had a whole drawer full of light blue scarves because, of course, she couldn't throw them out.

My theory, and I could be wrong, is that when Grandma got to Heaven, she put a drawer full of nearly-matched hand-knitted red slippers by the pearly gates, waiting hospitably to welcome guests and take the chill of the journey off, and come in and have some and Scottish shortbread that melts at tongue temperature.

At least, that's my idea of Heaven.

I wasn't able to be there when my grandmother died; I couldn't go to her funeral or see her peers come to mourn her. Perhaps that's why I sometimes feel like she's still with me.

Call me sentimental, but sometimes I almost think I can hear -- more likely feel -- the sound of her chuckle as we cut up salmon filets for canning in the August sunshine or her voice warbling the last Norwegian she could recall -- the national anthem -- or calling me in from hiding under the all-enveloping green canopy of her weeping willow.

And it's almost like I'm in her warm and creaking kitchen once again and she's tucking me into snowy sheets on the rollaway cot and I think if I ever get a chance to be that memorable and meaningful to some child I would be honored beyond belief, and if I ever get a chance to live up to her gene pool and exhibit even a fifth of that old-fashioned hospitality and graciousness -- even in the face of grave circumstances -- I would have achieved true character. By the Grandmother standard, by which all truly good things -- from pork chops to sheets -- are measured.

And maybe I'll start by taking up knitting. I'm thinking ... slippers.

Do you have good memories of a beloved grandparent, or an idea of what Heaven must be like? Leave me a note -- I'd love to hear about them.

Giants fans should register at Macy's?

Giants won! Consider it a Giants leap for marketing and a great reason for our son and his Giants fan fiancee to register at Macy's -- they could put a Waterford Crystal Commemorative Football on their registry wish list. That's what I'm talking about!

Seriously -- within three hours of the New York Giants astonishing 17-14 upset Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots, Macy's online was emailing ads to crystal-collecting football buffs, inviting them to get their own Waterford Crystal XLll Super Bowl Champion Football for $185.

"Larger than life! On football's ultimate proving ground, one team stands alone – the New York Giants have won it all! Commemorate every bone-crunching tackle and triumphant touchdown with this limited edition Waterford Crystal football."

In case you were concerned about imitations, no worries: each individually engraved and numbered piece includes a certificate of authenticity, certifying that it is a real, authentic, genuine, top of the line crystal football from Waterford. http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=298539&EXTRA_PARAMETER=ZOOM&CURRENT_PAGE=0

It is lovely -- engraved with the Giants' M&M-looking logo and "Champions", it looks kind of like a real expensive two-ended pineapple. http://www.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=298539&PartnerID=email

Now, if you could get your hands on it, the real collector's item might be the New England Patriots version -- it's crystal clear they must have had two made up just in case, one for each team, especially considering the Patriots were heavily favored to win by everyone.

You don't suppose the real reason it will take 6-8 weeks to get the commemorative crystal football is because Macy's went with the pundits and only pre-made ones with the Patriots inscribed as champs?? Naaah...

(In case you haven't heard, here's a message to you now that you're back from outer Mongolia, which is the only place on the planet you could have managed to evade the news: With half a minute to play, the Little Football Team That Could ruined a perfectly good season for the New England Patriots, 17-14. There was no getting stunned and jubilant fans and well-wishers off the field for the final two seconds of Super Bowl XLII.

See the New York Times account: http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

Read it in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020301882.html?referrer=email)

Giants fan John Travolta, who gave 34-24 odds on the Patriots prior to the game, must have been delighted by the Giants win. Unless, of course, he actually cash bet on those more likely odds.

Where's a crystal ball when you need one? -- J. Louise Larson http://jlouiselarson.blogspot.com/

Family Accommodations Survey for the Wedding

Here is a real survey that was sent by MOG (Mother of the Groom) J. Louise Larson to groom's side family members in preparation for wedding accommodations.

1) Our son's getting married and we're planning accommodations for his wedding. If you were going to spend between a few days to a week at a rented vacation home, maybe with a couple of your dearest siblings and perhaps a couple of their kids -- what would your preferences be?
A - seaside place with water -- maybe a dock, maybe a kayak, depending, out of doors
B - quaint historic-type home in quaint history-filled city, walk to museums, dock, restaurants
C - quaint place in town in quaint seaside village
D - Neither -- my family drives me crazy, why would I do that? I'd just as soon smack myself on a bruise repeatedly

2) How likely are you to come to the wedding?
A - I'm not coming unless you have the wedding in Paris, France
B - i'm not coming unless you have the wedding in Paris, TEXAS
C - I'm allergic to weddings and sentiment of any kind. Sniveling women with hats on aren't my bag
D - I'm a single chick hoping to catch the bouquet. Will there be eligible groomsmen?
E - I'm a single dude and I just watched Wedding Crashers. Will there be eligible bridesmaids?
F - I'm single and above such sexist comments. Will there be a buffet?
G - You couldn't pry me out of this town with a crow bar. Have a nice wedding
H - Very likely
I - Not at all likely and that doesn't mean send them an invite anyway so they'll at least send a present

3) How long would you be interested in spending at said place?
A - Since we'll go to the expense of getting there, and there may be free food, might as well stay a week
B - I can't be away from my own bed hardly at all -- rehearsal night and wedding night is all
C - I wouldn't dream of shared accommodations as my family offends me or I am allergic to everything and everyone or I just need plenty of down time
D - I need to get out of town for a month as I've absconded with club funds. Count me in for as long as I can mooch

4) There will be meals provided for the rehearsal dinner, and for the wedding. Otherwise, which option appeals to you?
A - Take turns cooking
B - Restaurants; I want a break from cooking
C - I have all the money in the world -- bring in Wolfgang Puck
D - I plan to catch my own crab in the bay and cook it over a fire I start myself with two sticks like Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway. Can I do that in there?
E - I am a fruitarian; I believe food has feelings and I only eat fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts that have fallen to the ground and so are dead already. Don't eat that carrot salad -- it's been murdered
F - Just give me a crate of Kraft Mac and Cheese boxes to gnaw on and I'm good

5) There are a lot of historic and interesting places withing 15-55 minutes. How much sightseeing are you interested in?
A - Out of doors free/cheap: hiking, kayaking, crabbing, strolling and taking the air
B - Historic cheap -- free monuments, national museums, anything historic and free
C - browsing for antiques at a quaint historic cute stores
D - I want to see everywhere George Washington slept
E - point me to the mall
F - Set me down in front of the TV, I think there's a Monk marathon on

6) One last question. Which of these last questions do you want answered?
A - Where are the happy couple registered?
B - Who on earth are any of these people and why did I get this email?
-- J. Louise Larson http://familyrootsandwings.blogspot.com/

Bad News: Miserable Mid-Life? Good News: It's Not Just You!

Have you noticed things bottoming out in your mid-40s? An unexpected dip in your mood -- is your glass much less than half full? Before you reach for that prescription for upbeat-in-a-bottle (this is my problem with a perfume called Happy made by a company called Clinique -- it sounds like a prescription drug for mood swings) consider this: all your peers may be feeling the same way.

According to MSNBC, a new international study indicates that from America to New Zealand and everywhere in between, mid-life -- well, it sucks. It seems to possibly have something to do with reality sinking in: the things we expected to have, do, get, accomplish in our lives are receding like hairlines and notches in our belts.

The good news? Happy days are up ahead. Like the song says, "The sun will come out -- tomorrow." Or next decade -- by 53, for the most part, we're over it.

The study also says men linger in the downswing a little longer.

There, doesn't that make you feel better?

Check it out on MSNBC:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22896014/

-- J. Louise Larson

More Guts Than A Slaughterhouse: My Grandfather's World War I

Rough-hewn, trench-bound

As a rough-hewn trench-bound World War I soldier, my grandfather George Anderson "Black Jack" Vowel's career was marked by bravery and foolishness. At times, it was hard to tell which would get the upper hand.

The son of Calloway and Ellen Vowel was horse ranching in Hanna, Alberta with only the most modest success when World War I broke out. When the call came to go "Over There," he signed up in August of 1914. He was 23, ready for adventure. He would get it and then some.

His formal picture in uniform shows an athletic soldier with a strong jawline, a thick shock of dark hair and piercing blue eyes. "I am five feet nine and a half, weigh one hundred and sixty and look like a loose button on an overcoat," he wrote.

Letters to Miss Bebe

He made an acquaintance via letter with a young Irish woman living in London, Louisa Watson, "Miss Bebe," he addressed her, careful to season his notes with humor in the face of grim war. "It listens better if you grin when you read it," he said.

By April, 1915, he was in the thick of the Second Battle of Ypres. The front was "just the place for the person that likes thrills," he wrote. "The noise made by high explosive makes the hair stand and then along comes the flying steel and fragments slithering through the air making the most horrible sounds imaginable which makes a cold child run up and down the spine and puts a sinking sensation in the pit of the stomach and the brain starts urging the feet to beat it and the feet refuse to act and the knees get wobbly … his nerve breaks and he goes bugs. I have seen several cases of it and it isn't a pleasant sight to see."

Within months of arrival, his battalion was decimated. "I am thankful to say that I came through alright. Words cannot describe the scenes we went through at Ypres and I have often wondered since how so many of us ever got through alive. The battalion was fighting for six days. We went four days without anything to eat and some of the boys never had any sleep during the six days and nights … We will win out in time but at what a cost."

The journal accounts are a succinct blur. "Raid on German trenches failed. Germans waiting for us. Six killed, a dozen wounded. Quarantined for German Measles. Route march; After, played football ...

"Sandy Clarke was killed today. Shot through head by sniper. The Germans sent over ten thousand shells in an hour and a half. So damn homesick I can hardly do any work. Just waiting for next leave.

"22 kilometers march; we made it in less than 4 hours. One of the hardest marches I ever done. Rain makes impossible for observation. The country is a quagmire. Visited the old battle ground of Souche and the labyrinthe where the French lost so many men. There are thousands of carcasses lying up there yet. We are sleeping in an old trench with a piece of tin over us.

"Big airplane duel today. 25 planes in site. 12 German planes over our lines today. Our guns drove them back; tis a nice sunny day.

"Our boys went over at 5 this morning and advanced 4,000 yards. Lots of prisoners and guns. Our artillery just smothered everything. Watched attacks from north of Mont St. Eloi hill. It was the grandest sights that a person could ever see.

"Took the mumps … Doing very nicely, got a very fat face."

"The bullets were ripping the dirt up all around me for a bit, but none of them was marked Black Jack," he wrote from Flanders Fields, New Years Day, 1916. Desperate to keep letters from Bebe coming in, he scribbled under fire.

"They have started strafing again so if my spelling is bad don't blame me. I am doubled up in one corner of the dugout trying to make myself as small as possible and not making very much success of it. The beggars don't care where they throw the darned shells anyway – they are liable to hurt someone yet. I am supposed to be an artist at swearing but I choke up whenever I start in on the devils."

Four miles for a bath

March 18: Walked four miles for a bath today. The baths we get is about the only thing in this country we look forward to. The rats are worse than the Germans and the lice is worse than both of them togethers. .. they give us all kinds of dope to use, most of it just fattens. They give us one kind of dope and we used so much of it that it took all the skin off. It drove the lice off all right but the cure was worse than the reason.

"If a fellow gets a letter now and then it helps to keep his nose to the grind stone over the rough places. Please excuse the dirt – everything I touch seems to get dirty and just after a bath too."

Holidays in trenches were marked with little fanfare, memories of better times and much irony. "I guess we will be in the ditches on Christmas Day. Some prospect to look forward to. Xmas Day dawned foggy, wet and muddy just like many of the winter days in Flanders. With the occasional bark of a gun breaking in on our festivities to remind us that everything was not as it should be, we had a pretty lively day of it. Last year I spent Christmas on the plains. Two years ago I was working in a coal mine. Three years ago I was working on a ranch. Four years ago two boys and myself rode sixty miles to dance. We got snowed in and stayed a week."

Black Jack was witness to one of the famed brief holiday truces of the Great War.

On January 1, 1916, he wrote: "I was on guard last night when the New Year made her appearance and say talk about fireworks, I think I saw about the grandest display that was ever let loose at once. Right on the stroke of twelve about five thousand rifles cracked and flares by the hundreds were shot into the air. I reckoned that was the signal, for the artillery opened up and the country was lit for miles. It lasted a couple of minutes and died down as quick as it started. One of our fellows stuck his head over the parapet and wished Fritz (the Germans) a happy New Year, Fritz's answer was quite typical of him he pulled the trigger of a couple of machine guns and then made some unprintable remarks about the English pigs. As we were not English, we let that pass. We asked him if he had made any resolutions for the New Year and then he asked us if we had. I yells back it isn't time for us yet .. when the weather permits we will make some resolutions toward Berlin."

Another year, yuletide celebrations had to wait two days for a trek to a farm in Marcelles. "Very hard trip on the horses. Snowing and blowing," he noted.

As a child, he had watched his father make shoes for neighboring children from old harness leather; he spent a year as a shoemaker on the front, resoling boots worn through from marching.

He trained at a makeshift school in an abandoned convent as a Lewis Gun trainer, teaching soldiers how to kill Germans with the portable machine gun.

Black Jack's Roots

Black Jack always said he was proud to be from Texas. His great-great uncle, James Callison, died in the famed Battle of Goliad in Texas; George was a cowboy who liked to think he was made from that same rugged stuff. "If I don't quit drifting I'll get clear off my range," he'd write. He loved to tell stories from back home on the ranges in Texas and Alberta , Canada. He talked at length about his horse, "not a beauty he is just a cayuse but he is the most intelligent broncho that I ever saw."

He was an avid naturalist. Sometimes he enclosed a plant sample with his letters – a clover leaf from the battlefield at Ypres, a maple specimen from the Ploegsturt wood in Belgium.

He used homespun witticisms with a rural flavor. "As we are getting used to the mud, we are feeling better, we all are as happy as a pig fed on tater peelings." On a stubborn fellow soldier: "He is just like Paddy's pig. You can coax but he doesn't drive worth a darn."

One gruesome rumor that made it back home via a fellow soldier who was discharged got him in hot water. "He was telling my brother that I had a big Bowie knife and was cutting crosses on all of the German I ran across. It tickled my brother but it didn't my mother," he wrote.

George was raised in a fair-thinking home; his father, Calloway, quit a fraternal lodge in Oklahoma because he didn't want to also be associated with the affiliated Ku Klux Klan and had a vocal antipathy to their cause. At a time when Black Americans were demonstrating their mettle on the Great War's sodden battlefields but prejudice still reigned back home, George wrote, idealistically, "You will find the majority of Western Americans ready to hold out his hand to a person that proves himself a man whether he is white, red or black."

His love of cards earned him his nickname. "We were paid sixty five francs yesterday so the game is rather lively. I didn't tell you about the time we were playing poker when the Germans were shelling us and a shell hit the dugout and wounded three of the fellows. It sure spoilt the game."

Returning to the front from leave was hard. "Coming over on the boat I got so darned homesick that I had a notion to jump over board but I am all right now," he wrote.

Valor, Hardship at the Front

Still, accustomed to the hardships of the ranching life, he took the dismal conditions with resignation. "I was coming out last night for a turn in billets when I fell into a shell hole. It was pretty near full of water, so I got soaked to the neck, and I hit against a couple of dead Boches (Germans) in it, too. Not nice.

"June 14, 1916: My chum was wounded broken leg I carried him out to dressing station, mile and a half."

In September, 1916, Black Jack was gassed near Albert. Later, he managed to run through a barrage of heavy fire from the Germans to get to the front. Once there, he was buried by a shell but survived.

He received the Military Medal for bravery as a lance-corporal in a single-handed machine gun attack on a German company at the Battle of the Somme in October 1916. Marked for advancement, he attended officer's training. His opportunity was short-lived as he was apparently demoted for going AWOL, perhaps for self-professed fisticuffs or times he simply lit out to explore what he called "mighty pretty country." "Went to Abeele without pass or belt was caught and name sent into HQs. Drill and physical exercise all the damn time," he wrote.

He begged Bebe to stop addressing letters to him as a corporal. "I've had the skids put under me and am just a private once again."

Black Jack Vowel felt keenly the loss of many buddies he'd joined up with. "Tonight is the anniversary of the first trip in to the Trenches for some of us … We had a reunion of the old fellows in the YMCA and there is not many of them left. I came away. I couldn't stand to hear the boys talking of the poor devils that were here with us a year ago but are absent now," he said.

"The guns are getting a little louder each day in their proclamation that might is right and everybody is expecting and preparing for the final contest and we all expect it will be fought out on this front and everything seems to point that way too. It will be the biggest fight in history. Well anyway, Fritz won't find Tommy asleep," he penned from the front. "Our fellows seem to be throwing everything but the wheels at him. The whole country in a blaze of fire as far as a person can see to left and right. It seems as though both sides were trying to see how much ammunition they could waste."

As the war's tide turned, George's battalion advanced; carnage was everywhere.

August 10, 1918, Beauchamp le Benix. "From the looks of the trees and houses our barrage must've acted about the same way that a cyclone does. Dead Germans are lying everywhere all over the country. I went up the line today to see if I could get a look at Cambria. All I could see was smoke. The Germans have set it on fire before being driven out."

That was likely where he liberated his final notebook, a thin volume signed Paul Dilschmann, Weissenfels, with notes in German, presumably made before its author was killed fighting to the last. "Germans fought like Wildcats … The 13th was pretty badly cut up this trip. Fritz is contesting every inch of ground," he penned in October on the remaining pages.

On Nov. 11, 1918, it was over. A journal entry reflects his shoemaking responsibility: "Returned Boots" with the date underlined.

The End of Black Jack's Story

Discharged from the Army May 5, 1919, Black Jack returned home, snapping his war diary shut with a final entry. "Arrived home today finished with the Army after 4 years nine months absence."

A family history says he was in unrequited love with Bebe, who reserved two pages in her book, Mrs. Private Peat, for Black Jack Vowel. Bebe married a disabled soldier, the famed Private Peat that an enlistment film was made about. Her book cited George's wit and bravery. "Jack Vowel's letters are in themselves an epitome of the war. He has a power of description, a sense of contrast and a sense of humor, rarely combined."

Back on the ranch in Alberta, George married Laura Knutson, a lovely Norwegian immigrant seven years his junior. Family histories are full of contradictions about George Anderson Black Jack Vowel. One account said he was buried with full military honors; not true. Though he told Ms. Watson Peat he "Was raised in Texas USA and have lived on the ranges from Texas to Northern Alberta," this was likely a romanticization. Family records indicate he was born in Hays, Kansas, and that the closest he came to living in Texas was the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma where, on Sept. 16, 1893, his horse ranching father galloped to claim 160 acres on a race horse he'd raised and trained himself.

George was reputed to hold his liquor well, a talent he supposedly picked up in France. My grandma would later say he was scarred by the war, and that he was not a success as father nor husband. "He was more of a dreamer and probably would have done well with a proper education," his daughter Peggy recalled. George and Laura separated in 1944.

He died in 1955 when his tractor overturned on him as he tried to maneuver out of mud. A World War II volunteer, his son Don learned about his father's wartime exploits from a fellow soldier who had joined up with Black Jack back in 1914. "There was never a better soldier ever lived – George Vowel had more guts than a slaughterhouse. That's the way he was, he wasn't afraid of anything," he said.

An article written about George Anderson Vowel's World War I by his granddaughter J. Louise Larson experience appears in the November 2006 issue of Alberta Views Magazine. His letters to Louisa Bebe Watson Peat were turned into a radio program broadcast on CBC Radio.

Read Louisa Watson Peat's account of George Anderson Vowel in her book, Mrs. Private Peat, at this link. There's a picture of him in uniform, and you can read the whole book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=e0AEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=George+Vowel+Alberta+World+War+I+soldier+&source=web&ots=rBu8KeF2of&sig=ZQUTpnRKFKhbMgy3Ugeq0c_rlww#PPA168-IA1,M1

J. Louise Larson http://familyrootsandwings.blogspot.com/