The Raceway

I took my car to the raceway. Keeping even with the majority of the drivers, while other cars, obviously driven by drivers more unforgiving than I, wove in and around us, showing their contempt for our speed, as they outdistanced us, and moved out of sight. Construction on all sides, plus overhead bridges gave the track a semblance of long distance races over difficult terrain. The blending and weaving of the traffic – from semis to Geo’s – resembles the stereotypical drivers in Italy and Korea. Not for the fainthearted, this course. Returning at dusk, I pull into a deserted mall to take a call. Once full of life, the desolation of the area overwhelms as I avoid weed filled pothole, noting only one tiny building has any sign of still being in use. A guard shack perhaps, my mind wonders? In the 20 minutes I sit there on the call, only 2 cars pass by on an outer road, hurrying to get to the raceway or to escape the desolation? The call has delayed me long enough for darkness to descend. Now I drive the course in reverse, not only wary of other drivers and construction, but unable to see all the potential dangers as the oncoming lights blind me. Weaving myself now, I try to find a path through the other cars that will allow me to see the signs, to know I’m on the right path. I have driven this way before. Every time I venture to it, I’m filled with hope that this time it will be different: better, less congested, slower, less construction. All hope dashed quickly once I’m in the midst and seeing it for what it is. Reaching a more familiar section of the raceway, not as worried about obstacles, knowing the path, even with blinding lights, I feel my confidence building. For how many of us, does the pull of the raceway fill our days? Something to conquer as we careen around “obstacles”, filling us with both dread and excitement as we tackle it. Yet at the end of the course, finding only desolation before we turn back to our normal path.

Quiet

Quiet

The World is White

Ice, not snow, glistens

Only the Birds Are Out

The World is Still

Cars and Trucks Gone Away

Slowly the Ice Melts

The Day Warms

Snowing Now

Fat Fluffy not quite Hamster Size Flakes

Birds Flown On

Quiet Encompassing the World

We Wait

2020 Gone

2021, but hours old

We Wait

For a New Year

A New Beginning

The Canvas Blank Before Us

RePurposed

Re-Purposed I look around my home at all the things I’ve “re-purposed”. Some ite whilems were designed for a totally different function than I use them for now (Like using a tabletop phone stand to raise my IPad and books to a more ergonomic level). Some are things that someone else no longer needed or wanted that fit beautifully in my home - from furniture I got from my parents to a cabinet that holds Mike’s media equipment perfectly while fiitting in the space I needed it to fit into. I’m a “Queen” of Repurposing –when my office moved and the company was throwing things away, I “saved” stuff and found new homes for everything with people who could use the items - from office supplies to mouse race decorations, (though the 20 million odd mugs, did go to Goodwill which accepts things up till 7:30 at night). In many ways, all of us are “re-purposed”, as our lives change & evolve, we evolve & change as well. From Child, to Tween, to Teenager, to Young Adult, to Married Couple, to Parent, to Older Adult, to Grandparents, to “Seniors”. We don’t stay static. Most of us change jobs multiple times, move to different homes and communities, make new friends, lose contact with old friends. We develop new routines, ways to do things and priorities in the process. Some of us develop health issues, others work on going to the gym and exercising to stay healthy. Some of us find new passions and hobbies as we get older. Others pick up hobbies again, that they hadn’t had time for, for years. Each time we change and grow and “recreate” ourselves, we have a new opportunity to repurpose our lives and repoint them toward our Faith. To share with others, to be grateful for the opportunities that have come our way, to start participating in a new Bible study class, or join a Faith based group, or just to share what our Faith means to us.

Proverbs, Folklore and Other Things Our Parents Taught Us

Proverbs, Folklore and Other Things Our Parents and Grandparents Taught Us How many times did our parents and grandparents teach us things using what we considered to be “trite phrases” and little stories, as we were growing up, but that now we realize were the “golden nuggets” fed to us in small doses and light phrasing that made it easier for us to remember them? “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You” “One Step at a Time” “Make Hay While the Sun Shines” “Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today” “Red Sky at Night, Sailor’s delight. Red Sky in the Morning, Sailors take warning” How many cultural (TV before, now social media) and marketing “slang phrases” joined these “trite phrases” over the years? “Pay It Forward” “Just Do It” Or phrases that were mottos for different organizations "Always Be Prepared” (the Boy Scouts) These simple phrases guided us in how to live our lives, give back to other and to be better people. Have you ever stopped to think where the FIRST phrases came from? Perhaps it was when The Father of All of US, taught his children the 10 Commandments.

The results of selfishness

It’s a GORGEOUS Day. The sun is shining, it’s warm, the trees and flowers are starting to bloom. The world is awakening from its winter nap. And Yet. As the fears of the virus have us in lock down mode, venturing out as little as possible, my response is to open the windows and let the fresh air in, to sit on my deck, talking to my neighbor who’s working in her yard, well over 6 ft away, but IT WAS A CONVERSATION WITH A REAL PERSON!! who I don’t live with, that was face to face, rather than on the phone or with a text chat or an email! I contemplate going to the park for a walk. With the playgrounds closed, there is almost no one at the park these days, and those who are stay far away from each other. I decide to stay home, and pick up twigs and sticks in my yard that have blown down with the recent rains. My husband runs a few errands and reports back when he returns that while many stores are closed, essential places of business like banks, groceries and pharmacies are open. Surprisingly, the hardware stores and batteries plus are considered essential stores and are open as well. He tells me that the grocery store has flour again, and he picked some up for me. Our son in Florida, is seething under quarantine restrictions. Apparently an employee came to work with a hangover (not the first time she’d done that) and decided she wanted to go home early, so she went to the doctor’s, told him she wasn’t feeling well and badgered him until he gave her a note saying she should stay home for 7 days. Now we all know from the news that if the doctor thought she might have been exposed to or have COVID 19, that she would be placed on a longer restriction than 7 days, but because her doctor told her to stay home for 7 days, EVERYONE, she had come into contact with at the office, now has to go into a 14 day self quarantine period because she might have exposed them. If she had simply called in that day, rather than coming in, they would have been able to continue with their “regular” routines. My son, as the manager, had already put “working from home” procedures into place, but now, based on someone’s selfishness, she has placed her co-workers in the position of being under self quarantined, which affects not just the office and the co-workers, but their families as well. In this time of stress, we need to not only take care of ourselves, but we all need to recognize how our actions affect everyone around us, not just ourselves.

I Believe

I believe I believe that people are born essentially good. I believe however, that a corrosive environment during a child’s formative years can cause a person to become bad to the point of being evil. I believe that every society has its own “norms” and what may be considered “bad and evil” in one society, may be considered “good” or “normal” in another. When a person goes between societies, it can be difficult for them to “adjust” because of their upbringing and expectations of what results their actions will cause. As people migrated into areas that were inhabited by other societies, the more powerful society would often inflict their rules and laws and understanding of what was “good” on the less powerful society and would “look down” on them as being inferior. Over the years, mankind has used many things to differentiate themselves as they determined “inferiority”. Where someone came from, their sex, race, ethnicity, occupation, wealth, politics, religion and more were used to determine inferiority. Education systems often taught what the powerful wanted taught and ignored presenting the “other society’s side”, thus teaching the children social and cultural norms that strengthened one side being seen as powerful and the other as inferior. Children were taught to see others as inferior, perpetuating the problems between the different groups. To use taunts, insults, and belittling names and other bullying tactics to keep themselves “on top” and remind others that they were inferior. Through the years, I have known people who thought of themselves as “good Christians”, yet their behavior said otherwise. I have also known people of other religions and faiths, who exhibited a more Christian behavior and sense of ethics and morality. People whose caring compassionate actions spoke loudly. People who were often seen as “Angels Among Us”. While I understand that the Christian Bible says Jesus said that those who believed in him would go to Heaven, I believe that all of the “Angels Among Us” will be there also, regardless of their religion or faith. I believe that people need to share and work together to combat the sense of inferiority vs power, and that together we can make a difference.

Morocco as a Child in the 50's

Morocco as a Child in the 1950s – Dale Weir My parents firmly believed that seeing the world and experiencing different cultures was a very important part of raising us. I was born in 1953. When I was about a year old, my mother gathered up her 3 little girls and her father and moved us to Nouasseur Air Base, Morocco to join my father, who was in the military there. We lived there during the 1956 Moroccan Revolution (In 1912, France and Spain divided Morocco between them. In 1956, the Arabs won their freedom from France, then after that they got their freedom from Spain). We lived in both Casablanca and Rabat while we were there. For awhile, we were across from the palace in town and could see the soldiers on their big white horses with their scimitars come out of the gates, while the French in their little cars evacuated the city in one direction and the Arabs on foot, donkey and other animals evacuated in the opposite direction, then we moved out of the city to a farm on the outskirts, where we could raise some of our own food. It was an interesting time. I don’t know how much I remember because I remember it and how much I remember from being told about it so often. Initially, after arriving, my father having gone on a mission and not back yet, my mother took us to the market to get food. As she was driving along, she saw a car with US military license plates and stopped since she didn’t know any other Americans in town yet. The woman pulled us into the house and asked my mother, what in Heaven’s Name she was doing out on the streets during the curfew. My mother, being new to the area, had no idea that there was a curfew and we were all supposed to stay inside our homes for safety, she just knew that she needed food to feed her little girls. It was a very troubled time. The head of the American School, his wife and a teacher were driving home one day after a school meeting, when they encountered a roadblock by the local police, who were essentially paid mercenaries. They stopped their car as directed. The police opened the door and started firing their weapons into it. The superintendent/ principal was killed immediately. One of the women grabbed the steering wheel, the other stomped on the gas pedal and they managed to escape with their lives. Even in those troubled times, though, my parents took us to places to show us the world around us, as best they could. In one town that we visited, the local guide insisted that either he or my father carry me, which as an independent small child I didn’t like very much. It wasn’t until after we had finished seeing the town and were leaving, that the guide told my father that my red hair was considered a very “special” symbol and he was afraid I would be kidnapped if one of the men wasn’t carrying me. My mother was thought of very highly by the local people after there was a bus accident in front of our house one day. My mother, without thinking twice, took her car and started ferrying the injured to the hospital. She said later that she drank so much coffee to keep going that day, that she had a coffee hangover the next day. My grandfather died while we were over there. He drank the water from the well and it made him sick. He decided that he must have cancer and when my mother wasn’t home, he shot himself. My older sister, Lida, is the one who found him. She was the one who had to deal with the rest of us as we got off the school bus and keep us away from him. She was the one who went outside the gates around our compound and stopped my mother as she got home, to tell her what had happened. My mother was pregnant with my younger sister, Nissa, at the time. Nissa was born prematurely at Thanksgiving and didin’t come home from the hospital till Christmas. My parents put her under the Christmas tree like a present for us. As a preemie, she had many health issues, and had to be kept upright in a special chair at all times, because her esophagus wasn’t fully developed and anything she ate would “ flow right back out” if she was laid down flat. The Navy had the best of the US facilities. My father use to joke that when the Navy ran out of money for building their base and told Congress they needed more money, Congress initially said NO, until the Navy explained that they had built their housing and clubs and infrastructure first, but their hadn’t built the operational side of the base yet. Then Congress had to say Yes. We use to go to the Navy Club. The band, when it saw the children, would play our favorite songs – Davy Crocket was a big favorite and they were quite good at playing it. Vice President Nixon came to Nouasseur Air Base, Morocco in Mar 1957, and we all lined up to see him. (Photo from Gene Bane ©Stars and Stripes). I don’t think my sisters and I are in this picture, but we have some family pictures of that day that are similar. Coming back from Morocco, my parents showed us the world. We traveled in a Karmen Ghia across Europe, seeing Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, England, and many other countries along the way. Because there was a heat wave going on at the time, my father often drove at night, while the rest of us slept. My baby sister at my mother’s feet. Then the back seat was laid down and Lida slept next to my parents because she was the tallest, then Pat, then I was at the very end by the tailgate. I have been to more countries than states because of that trip. Consider, that this was a time period, without telephones, the internet, any way of communicating, (other than by letters that took a long time to go back and forth) and very seldom did we find someone along the way that spoke English (and my parents didn’t speak anything but English and a smattering of French and Arabic they had learned in Morocco). My father kept a very interesting log of the trip – how much cash money he had, where we stopped along the way, what it cost for gas, etc. We didn’t have reservations, we would stop and ask. My older sister Lida has the most memories of the trip since she was the oldest.