Happy 23rd Rachel

Lots of good memories happen when people are sisters for 23 years.

I stole, put needles in sand boxes, and lied my way into trouble during our one and only year of school in Brazil while you were just sweet you and won your way into everyone’s hearts.

When we first flew up from Brazil we thought that all of American was Disney Land, thanks to kind folks who paid for us to spend a few days in there before we drove to Idaho. You didn’t like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

We were chopping wood. I told you to hold a log while I swung the ax, missed and chopped your finger.

Practicing for hours, and hours, and hours on songs we were singing for church because you wouldn’t perform them unless they were perfect.

Getting you to loose your temper because I thought you were fun when you did.

Watching you elegantly and bravely play your nose flute for church, with your snot dripping. Everyone was so intrigued.

You carving up a squash to make a musical instrument out of it.

Writing scripts for you to use when you called people because you didn’t like to talk on the phone.

The day you told Dennis Dean and Rebekah that you wanted to try to grow a mustache, just to see if you could do it, and really meant it.

I caught my sweatshirt on fire, screamed, ran through the hall and jumped with all my clothes on into a full bathtub. You ran in to see what was wrong, laughed, ran out for the camera and took a picture.

The first day you tried to put gas in a car. You couldn’t get it to come out of the nozzle, so you looked down the nozzle to see what the problem was and pulled the "trigger." It worked, all over your face.

Whenever people were gathered around you, they were laughing.

The yearnings of three sweatshirts

Every morning I open my drawers, reluctantly pull out my summer shirts, and leave my sweatshirts alone in a stuffy drawer for a few more hot summer weeks.

It's really hard to leave them there because I know they really want to be in front of a television and fireplace with hot coffee, or passing over crunchy leaves in red, orange and yellow worlds, or getting moist with snow flakes.

My brown Oregon Trail sweatshirt remembers driving across the country in the winter time a couple of years ago and my dark blue Patrick Henry College sweatshirt wants to try that this year. Oregon Trail wants to go Shenandoah National Park for a weekend and also to Idaho. My gray Patrick Henry College sweatshirt is new to the drawer and so it can't wait to meet a ton of new sweatshirts and sweaters. Maybe it will organize a bonfire when it gets out.

But as long all of them can get out to enjoy crisp cold air creeping between their threads and hang out with other awesome sweatshirts, they will be thankful. Just a few more weeks.

Random song phrases

This is some of what I heard at the coffee shop during live music tonight...

Open the window to the world. You needn’t be so scared.

It’s a brand new low but that’s where you like to go. Would you ever hold a candle that was real? And the answer is no and that’s just the way it goes. You didn’t even care to ask me how I feel.

Everybody is down on me but the baldheaded woman. In her summer dress she dances with the trees.

I’m paining pictures of her from the opposite side of the road and she is painting pictures of me from the opposite of the road.

My train is coming around the bend, I think that’s what I heard. It could be her best friend, but I think that’s what I heard.

In the candy store you got your hands in all the drawers...

Singer/writer was Tim Parks, http://www.myspace.com/parkstim.

Cannery Row and incapable goodness

In John Steinbeck’s novel, Cannery Row lives Mack, a man who fulfils his needs and desires by taking advantage of people. Steinbeck calls him an "exploiter." Le Chong, the local grocer, "stiffened ever so slightly when Mack came in (p.13)." Doc "waited for the storm to break" when Mack came in to talk with him.
But yet the man cared about people in his way. He knew that despite Doc’s friendliness, he "was a lonely and a set-apart man (17)." Mack felt Doc’s plight so deeply that he himself would get a "dreadful feeling of loneliness" because of it and Mack and friends decided to throw Doc a surprise party. They planed to get the money for it by getting Doc to pay for frogs they gathered for him. Doc was a scientist and liked frogs.
Getting party supplies by promising in return what they couldn’t deliver, the friends finally threw Doc a party, but without him because they couldn’t wait to have one sip, and then another. And that’s when Doc’s party got out of control and his laboratory was destroyed and everyone in the town was not surprised because Mack could never do anything good. And when Doc got back, he beat Mack up and Mack was in "black despair (p.23)."

Whether or not he intended to, I think Steinbeck did a good job of using Mack's character to capture the struggle of incapably sinful humanity longing to do good because a perfectly good God made them in His image.

59 arrested for trying to drag race Sun. morn.

Fairfax County Police Department
News Release 06/197/0161/SB(7)
July 18, 2006

Police Intercept Street Racing Crowd

More than 50 people were arrested early Sunday morning after officers intercepted a crowd setting up to street race. Police were called to the Fairfax County Energy Resource Recovery Facility, located at 9850 Furnace Road in the Lorton area, around 1:45 a.m. on July 16. They observed numerous vehicles on the facility’s property setting their cars up to drag race. Officers acted quickly and blocked the vehicles in before the races began. Officers charged 59 adults and two juveniles with trespassing on private property.
Press release can be found at :http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/police/reports/Reports%202006/071806trespass.htm
___________

I've wondered if it is possible to do this around here.

a weekend with Charity Joy

Some of my best and earliest memories include a little girl who lived near me. She wore frilly dresses, carried around a block of old lace called "whacey," and called me "whywha."

Some of my best and most recent memories are of that same girl, this time all grown up and on her way to Indianapolis to finish her last year of college. En route to Indy from Idaho ( sorta), my cousin Charity stopped in D.C. and got to spend a day with me last weekend. We had fun and it was so good to see her.

home, just 'cause I miss it

what dawn looks like over the Palouse in the summer time
dusk
Photos courtesy of: http://www.travelimages.com/photoessaypalouse.html

Isaiah 30: 15 – 18

For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.
But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift.
One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.
And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.
For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.

The woes of apparels

I hate dressing up. I like looking nice, but I don't have the patience to spend any real time getting dressed and I paid for it this morning when I got to work and realized, by looking at my reflection in our building's glass doors, that somehow the bottom layer of my summer dress got about six inches longer than the top layer. It must have happened before I left home somehow but I didn't spend a lot of time in front of the mirror this morning.
Regardless of how and when, a black cheap material was drifting unevenly at the bottom of my fun polka dotted black dress, making me look really stupid. My first impulse was to turn around and drive the 45 min. back home to change. But I made myself dash for the bathroom where I tried to rationalize my unique outfit. That didn't work. Scissors, I thought. They are on my desk. I snuck out of the bathroom and tried to reach my desk through the back door, but it was still locked. I gracefully walked through the front part of the office, and in front of my editors' and co-workers' desks, thankful that only three of them were in the office and their eyes were on their computers.
Too composed, I set my bag down, grabbed my red and silver scissors and walked out of the editorial department back into the bathroom. I should have explained to the co-worker in the bathroom who saw me carry in the scissors. She said, “Good morning?” like she wanted to make sure I was okay. I didn't though. Before she could look my outfit over, I smiled at her, said that I was glad it was Tuesday and got myself and the scissors behind stall doors. Blocks of the unwanted material came off and went into the bathroom trash with the scissors.

Delight in fields of any color

If this day was a million years ago, when I was little, I would be probably be outside in a garden, watering, covering, weeding.
I would be surrounded by wheat fields that were turning gold, moving in gentle waves with the wind.
The grownups would be planning what to preserve for the next winter and getting the combines ready to sweep the fields clean of their gold.
And I would be longing to leave, to get away from the dust and heat to play in new places, and to do something that matters.
Vegetables, fruits, wheat weren't fun and didn't matter.
Well, I left and this day is now. I'm at my desk, with maps to look at on the wall, and fields of tree tops and building tops outside my windows.
Feel restless because I haven't found anything “that matters” to write about today, or yesterday, or the day before, but I'm trying to remember that just because I'm called by God to be here today, there is joy and purpose, and it is wonderful.

I love these verses:

Here is what I have seen: It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him; for it is his heritage.
As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor--this is the gift of God.
For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.

Ecclesiastes 5: 18 – 20

if ya can't get west

Check out Highland County, Va.( http://www.highlandcounty.org/ ). It's rough and the next best thing to being in the Rockies, according to someone who knows. A visit is on my want-to-do list.

Shut eye

If I could write a song right now, it would be about me, Mary Sue.

Laughing, smiling, dreaming Mary Sue, not really hearing him, her, you.
You need a star, a blink in the dark of your earth.
And she knows but she just sleeps in the park, under trees, in the flowers.
Not even clouds paint your dark sky, you're awake with no mirth.
You call, she answers, and when you talk, she just nods.
But the burdens she’s called to bear for His sake are still with you, in the dark.
And you’re blind while she sleeps and reads in the sun, in the park.
When you needed a star, a blink in the night to give hope, light the way.