The Handy Man

I looked out of the upstairs back window one afternoon to see a man working on his pickup truck in the snow. Fully exposed to the weather, he wore a t-shirt and heavy trousers. The temperature was about ten degrees and the snow was a couple of inches with the threat of more to come. The man and the truck were not on the side of the street but in a large grassy area behind the house. He had to be working on this truck in these conditions because of necessity. Certainly, he did not choose to be out in those conditions for the thrill of working on a truck.

Nevertheless, I admired the man for having the personal strength, skill, and shaking aside the rigors of a cold day. Now for me the truck would have stayed there until spring in its present condition. Not because I am not inured to the cold and snow, which I am not, but because I have no skill with anything mechanical. Owning tools such as a hammer, pliers, wrenches, and screw drivers is a waste of money. I own those things but every time I attempt to use them the project ends in failure and often with words that indicate a loss of religion.

But, there was that man out there in the snow and cold working hard to get his truck back to working order. Maybe he needs it for his work, or he needs to move it to someone who has purchased it. I do not know, but I know that truck was important to him.

There are things important to me that need making, repairing, or adjusting. However, they are better turned over to someone who knows how to fix things or to make things. How did it turn out this way? Men are supposed to be handy by tradition. Most of the men I know can do just about anything with a hand or power tool. If I turned on a table saw and tried to pass a plank through it, a destroyed piece of wood comes out the other end. I think the problem goes back to childhood. I wanted to make things, help my father fix things, or even invent some things, but abject failure characterized every effort I made. Finally, the decision was clear; I would not do anything that embarrasses me.

Yet, here I am writing about failure and now as I realize what I have done I am embarrassed. I only wish I could work on a truck in the cold and snow and fix things with ease. It is too late now, I am old guy and all I want to do is stay in and avoid the weather.

The Golden Globe Awards

I am not a good movie critic; in fact I am probably one of the worst. For example, I watched a German film the other night; it was on DVD and called the "White Ribbon" in English. This film, even though it won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival will never (and I emphasize never) be shown in the local six-plex. However, I liked it. The filming was interesting, the story strange and unresolved, the actors put you in the time and place of the film (the years just before World War I in rural Germany). Because my taste for films usually does not include most of the films at the six-plex these days I am not too interested in the Hollywood crowd.

In fact, I find many of them shallow and vapid. I am not too interested in the fact that they choose to have children without the benefit of marriage, or that they find nothing too terrible by frying their brains with drugs. Some of them are very talented and attractive, but I want only to see them in character and not in their real lives.

The Golden Globe Awards Ceremony on Sunday made me think of this. I did not watch much of it and the little I saw was about as interesting as watching grass grow; in fact, that may be more interesting. These people dressed to kill, as they say, chatted away, gave each other awards for doing their jobs, and told unpleasant jokes. Their acceptance speech, I think that is what they are called, only reveal that they do work hard, but so does the plumber that comes to the house, or the letter carrier that drops off direct sales mail in my mail box every day. Yes, they get paid for their labors, but we do not sit eagerly on Sunday evening watching them congratulate each other for doing their work.

Finally, I have not enjoyed the humor of the emcee, a comedian that often performs in HBO series. Getting laughs at the expense of another person by insulting words is playground stuff. Maybe that is the problem; those people have not matured well and are the victims of arrested development.

Hyphenated American

Returning from the "big city" after a medical procedure and listening to the car radio there was a discussion concerning hyphenated Americans. One listener called in asking if it would be possible to drop the hyphens and everyone just be American. I think that regardless of the hyphen, everyone who is a citizen is an American.

But that made me think of my heritage. I suppose I could be hyphenated as an European-American.  But what part of Europe best defines me? My family name is French, and I have enjoyed going to France and learning about my French background. However, as I continue my study of my origins and the gene pools from which I sprang, I have learned that I am English, Welsh, French Huguenot, and German. I have never thought about being Welsh, French Huguenot, and German. But there they are, my ancestors who have given me my genes and my DNA.

In the process of tracing family origins I have found that there are knights and dames in my family tree. There are Oxford dons and people noted for writing scholastic or academic treatise. Taking no particular pride in all this, I suspect some of the knights were rascals. All of them seemed to wear out their ladies by making them bear up to twenty children.

Well, not only have I been to France, I have also been to England. My maternal heritage is English. In fact, my maternal great-grandfather emigrated from England. When in England, notably London, I felt at home. I suppose being English is more of me than being French. On my paternal side almost all the antecedents I have found are English who came to North America as early as the seventeenth century. On my mother's side there are antecedents who were part of the early Massachusetts Colony, presumably Puritans, or what are later known as Congregationalists. I remember my mother using that word a few times.

All of that history, however, does not change the fact that I am an American, not a European. If I can trace my family history back to seventeenth century in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland, and if my family has a history in Mississippi, Iowa, and Minnesota, there is no European left in me. The hyphen does not work for me. But, I can understand why people who trace their ancestry to the dark times of involuntary servitude and second-class citizenship want to identify themselves by race and ancestry. I respect all that. However, I served in both the Marine Corps and the Army with many men of various ethnicities, and I never thought of them less than comrades who served the American people.

Squirrels in the Attic

Once, outside my front door, there was red maple tree. In the tree lived a nest or nests of squirrels. They could live there at various levels up and down the tree and enjoyed life mostly (sometimes the squirrels ended up in the street squashed, but generally they had a good life in that hollow tree.

The tree was deemed dangerous, because of its hollowness, and had to be cut down. Cutting down such an old tree is sad, but wind, lightening, and general old age made it a tree that was doomed to collapse. The potential collapse could mean that it would smash a passing car, bring down power, telephone, and television cable lines, and worst of all, smash into my house. I did not need any of that.

Of course there are always unintentional consequences to everything we do; the squirrels needed a new home and they found one. They relocated to the attic of my house.  Now squirrels are cute little guys up in the trees and out in the wild. People in nearby homes put out little platforms with ears of corn on them to feed the squirrels.  Nonetheless, I do not admire such generosity. I think wild animals, no matter how cute and fuzzy their tails, should be wild and kept wild.

Further, squirrels are rodents; you know rats with fuzzy tails. We do not want rats, or mice, in our homes, why then is it good to have squirrels in one's attic? It is not good, but I cannot find a single pest control company that will come to the house to get the squirrels out of the attic. If I said we had rats in the attic, or mice running about the house, they would be out in a flash, but squirrels are too cute and fuzzy to think of as pests.

Nevertheless, squirrels in my attic are pests. I can hear them running about up there. They have destroyed several vents and screens placed to prevent them from getting in, and recently they have gnawed a hole in the ceiling of one of my upstairs rooms. But they are not suitable pests for pest control.

One solution I have considered is to plant a new red maple tree, but that will take fifty years or more to be as tall and as hollow as the tree I had taken down. Then I thought I would build a replica of a hollow red maple tree, but I am not crafty and handy enough to do that. What is the solution to evicting the squirrels from my attic? Someone suggested that we shoot them and make squirrel stew. The shooting part may be a good idea, but the stew part does not work for me. However, I think there is an ordinance against shooting fire arms in the city. Another solution may be to trap them and move the little colony out to the woods somewhere, but requires more patience than I have and probably would mean I would have to climb up into the attic. My attic is a no-man's land, just like my basement is a dungeon. Further, my very old house means the attic is really up quite a distance from the ground.

I suppose now I have no solutions to squirrels in the attic. Maybe they are an indication of end-times when small mute animals will take over the world.

Riley

Being stranded in an airport for six hours is not as bad as being stranded for several days, but still the airport is not a place where I want to spend an excessive amount of time.

On Christmas Day my wife and I traveled to be with our son, his wife, and nearly two year old son. We chose Christmas Day on the grounds, or belief, that there would no hassles, everyone was at their Christmas holiday destinations, and the planes would not be full. Additionally, in our part of the country, the weather was good; cold, but good.

What we did not anticipate was that the airline would have to delay the flight. Apparently, our plane had mechanical problems and could not fly. I am glad the problems occurred on the ground and not in the air with us on board. Another aircraft had to be diverted to pick us up and fly us on to our destination. We arrived six hours later than we had planned.

No big deal. What else did we have to do anyway?

So, as we waited an elderly gentleman (I say elderly only because he seemed older than sixty) came to our spot in the waiting area with a child in tow. The child, a cute little girl, had her carry-on luggage in tow and seemed concerned that she would some how lose her grip on the elderly gentleman's hand.

The two sat down across from us. He smiled and gave sort of a greeting. Initially the little girl was shy. She kept messing around with her carry-on, and eventually it tipped in my direction and came close to hitting my right big toe. She looked up and smiled, picked up her carry-on and said, "I'm sorry." I assured her that it did not hit me so everything was all right.

Trouble is, this happened again and again. I began to think, "What in the world? Are we going to have to put up with this for another hour or two?" It turned out to be another six hours, but what seemed like a potential airport irritation turned into a delightful time.

The little girl, who told me her name is Riley, was as precocious as any five year old one could meet. She engaged everyone. She was polite, and responded to her grandfather's directions, and then she learned the names of everyone around her. No one did not want to talk with her. She is as cute as any five year old can be and if she is a view of the future, then we are not without hope.

If you have to be stranded in an airport for six hours, hope that you spend them with Riley.

Ancestors

Now that I am retired I have decided to study my origins and build a family tree. So far, I have found some evidence of family all the way back to the 13th century. Further, I have found people who immigrated from Wales, England, France, and Germany. There are even lords and ladies, knights, and damsels. There's even evidence that my wife and I have a common ancestor. Who would of thought?

However, I can only attest to the validity of five generations. The reason for that is I heard my parents speak of these people and I met some of the older ones. In those generations I learned that a great grandfather immigrated from England in the 19th century. No reason learned. I expect he had an opportunity for a good job. Another great grandfather came from France during the Civil War period. Do not know why, but I suspect he was a fugitive from justice some where. He does not show up in any census list. His headstone has been located and there is evidence of a marriage. After that he just stands in the mist of time.

A grandfather's name was something else than what I knew him as. He was taken in by a childless couple at a very young age.  Well cared for and educated he had his name changed to that of his foster parents. So the line of inquiry stops there. His wife's family, my grandmother, however is a different matter. It can be traced back to England on her father's side and back to pre-revolutionary times on her mother's side. No evidence, however, that any of my grandmother's relatives participated in the War of Revolution. Alas, a sad outcome for some in the family.

My paternal grandfather is totally unknown to me. I know his name, where he was born, the names of his two wives, and the names of all his children. But I do not know anything about him. My paternal grandmother has been idolized in my family ever since I can remember. We do not know much about her. She died of tuberculosis when my father was two years old.

In fact, I do not know much about any of the people past my maternal grandparents. I never met my paternal family. My father left his family at an early age to escape abuse (he reports that and I believe him). Nevertheless, on both sides of the family there is a sweep of history that ranges from the feudal period of Europe, to the colonization of North America, to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and all the history since then.

My wife's family tree is well rooted, leafed, and documented. So well documented that academic papers have been written about it. Her family tree also reflects the sweep of European and American history. It is that idea that interests me the most when I search for ancestors.

I cannot take any pride in being related to an earl or a knight, nor am I chagrined because somewhere in the past there was a brigand and a fugitive from justice. It is exciting, nonetheless, to bring them back to life in a family tree. I do not know what most of my fore bearers looked like, what they sounded like, and if we could even communicate, but they are the DNA or gene pool from which I evolved. On that fact alone all those men and women of the past deserve my attention.

Christmas Pageants

This is the best Christmas pageant ever!

When I was a child I think I participated one time in a Christmas pageant. I do not know why it was only one; other than I may have protested a lot after that experience. Nevertheless, I remember it well. I think the year was December 1941; we were living in Annapolis, Maryland, where my father was stationed at the Naval Academy's seaplane squadron. The event took place at the Francis Street Lutheran Church; a congregation my parents selected because a fellow navy man and his family went there. The Francis Street Church, I think, no longer exists. You had to walk to get to it, and you know what that means in the age of the automobile.

At any rate, the pageant took place on an evening before Christmas (it may have been Christmas Eve, but that is a detail I cannot recall). The non-speaking role of shepherd became my assignment. My mother dressed me out in a bathrobe, made me go barefoot, and put a dish towel on my head, held there with a ribbon. I hated it, I hated it a lot. I was embarrassed to be seen in my bathrobe and going barefoot and wearing short pants in December was a dumb thing to do.

Before the night was over, however, the embarrassment was overcome when a little girl, about three years old, came onto the stage to sing a Christmas song. Wearing a pretty satin dress that had a short skirt she stood in the spotlight and looked out at the audience of beaming parents. No song came out, but she smiled and smiled and smiled. From off stage came a whisper, "Sing your song." The little girl just stood there. Everyone felt exasperated; especially me. I wanted that night to come to an end so we could go home and I could take off that bathrobe and the silly thing on my head.

Then, suddenly, the girl lifted her pretty dress and announced to everyone present that she had gotten a new pair of pink panties for Christmas. Her mom came racing up to the stage and the Sunday school teacher raced from the wings and the little girl was quickly escorted out of view. All the shepherds laughed so hard they were useless as adoring extras in the pageant.

Much later, when I was a deacon in a parish in New Mexico, a pageant was staged and took place at the church's altar. All the usual characters were there; shepherds, wise men, angels, and, of course, Mary and Joseph with a baby doll. In addition to the human being parts (less the angels) were stars. Very little children wore stars with cut outs in the middle so we could see their faces. One child, a beautiful little girl of three or four, was the Star of Bethlehem. Her role was to stand on a chair behind the altar (a free standing altar) and beam. As we watched the pageant progress we began to notice that the Star of Bethlehem was fading. She began to sink behind the altar and then catch herself and stand up straight again. This went on for several minutes and finally the Star of Bethlehem disappeared completely. The child had fallen sound asleep and was sitting on the chair with her head held up by the star cut out.

Christmas pageants a long standing tradition and probably can be traced to the middle ages. A child performing in Christmas pageants is likely, however, to be a fairly recent phenomenon and also likely an Anglican based tradition, maybe starting soon after the invention of Sunday school in the mid nineteenth century.

Watching children, especially our children, perform in Christmas pageants is heartwarming and adds to the beauty of the season, but we need to be careful in that these pageants actually teach the salvation story of God.

I have been to Bethlehem and visited the Church of the Nativity. It is an interesting place where devoted pilgrims come to pray prostrating over the supposed place of the manger.  For them the story of the birth of Jesus is not a sentimental tale of a baby and his mother; with Joseph as a silent secondary character. For the devoted pilgrim the story is a miracle of birth and hope. The children in the annual Christmas pageants (and their parents too) need to see and feel that miraculous hope in the story of Jesus' birth.

This does not require us to overlook the comedy of children struggling with standing in front of parents wearing funny costumes, and it certainly does require adults to lecture or preach to children about this miracle of life, but there is need to somehow teach the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ through these little plays.

As the children prepare for Christmas and sing carols and songs, let us tell them that the story is about them. The Nativity Story is about their life as much as it about the birth of Jesus. Remind them that God so loved the world that Jesus was born and given to us so that we may have life in abundance.