You Never Can Tell

Today I had to visit Logan. His wife Beth has been in the hospital, and is now in rehab. The Senior Pastor said that Beth was concerned about Logan and suggested that I visit, which I agreed to do. It was a visit about which I had some trepidation. One of reasons for that is because in previous visits, Logan has been very very quiet, downright non-talkative, leaving the talking to me and Beth. I commented on that to Gerry, as I was on my way to Logan's. Gerry said he had confidence that I could carry on both ends of the conversation, if need be. (Come to think of it, I wonder what he meant by that???) It is true that I've had to do that in various situations before.

I got great training for almost anything during my Cornell years, but especially for ministry. One of the things I did was to interview candidates for admission. It was most often a parent and a prospective student, and it was mostly about information and questions, rather than evaluation or assessment. I learned quickly how to maneuver my way around when the student was very shy, or the parent was very controlling, as well as when no one had anything much to say. I learned to ask the questions I knew they had and then to answer them too! (I'm sure that's what Gerry meant).

In reality, Logan was quite talkative. I learned about his service in World War 2, and how Beth had been an Army nurse. I asked him leading questions to get him to talk. Then eventually, he began to open up about some family issues, which was completely unexpected. It was a much better visit than I had imagined it would be.

Once again I learned the lesson that I keep having to re-learn. You may think you have some idea of what to anticipate, but in reality, you just never can tell!

Paying Attention

The leaves of the squash plants are absolutely huge. I've been looking for zucchini, but unable to find it. I have seen lots of blossoms but not any fruit. Then yesterday I went searching again, planning to at least bring in a huge bunch of lettuce, which I can see is ripe and ready. I pushed apart the zucchini leaves to glance inside. I was stunned at what I saw. There was an enormous zucchini staring back at me accusingly, as if to ask 'where have you been'? It had grown to be a foot and a half long and five or six inches around. And yet despite looking, I had not seen it.

After that, I collected about a dozen other zucchini of a more reasonable, edible size. I was somewhat mystified as to how I had missed seeing them before. Gerry had looked too, and his vision was no better than mine. Could all those have appeared overnight? Doubtful!

I guess the lesson for me was how we can look without really paying attention, listen without really hearing. Perhaps most of the time there are no earth shattering consequences for that. But sometimes there might be. For the one giant zucchini, it was too far gone.

It does make me wonder what else I might not be noticing, before its too late!

Facebook World

I don't even remember what it was that sparked my curiosity. But yesterday afternoon, I somehow got to wondering what "facebook" is all about. In order to find out, one has to take the plunge and join. I did that. I set up my Facebook page, and went about the process of trying to figure it out from there. I could do the technical part, of uploading pictures, filling in the blanks about interests, favorite tv shows, etc.

As best I can tell, it is all about being plugged in, connected. Comments from "friends" are a couple of lines long (definitely not as satisfying as an email). As I looked at a couple of people's Facebook sites, it seems to be more about pictures, than communicating. In fact, Yo has multiple photo albums on her site, one for each fascinating trip. One learns quickly that there is a whole culture out there. The thing I'm not sure about is the "friend" part. That involves some difficult decisions. For example, one person became my "friend A". I noticed on her Facebook page comments from a person from my past that I definitely do not care for. So, while I like Friend A, I may not like one of her friends. In fact, if I were honest, I'd say that seeing her picture ruined my mood! In another situation, I might be friendly with one person in a family, and not really another. It is the "friend" business about which I am uncertain.

When one begins, and has a handful of friends, it doesn't take long to notice that other people have hundreds. Lady Gaga has ten million! The competitive nature kicks in and you want to up your numbers. That's a state I don't want to be in.

So my foray into Facebook may be fairly short lived, now that I have some idea of what it is. I also noticed, that in a very short period of time, one can get addicted.

I could instantly tell that I prefer email. And even more, I prefer blogging, which is a "writer's" medium. I think perhaps, Facebook is more for looking, than for communicating.

I'll see how it goes.

Day-cation

On Friday, Gerry and I took a little jaunt across the beautiful Finger Lakes area of Central New York to Hammonsport. Gerry wanted to visit a motorcycle museum. We had a lovely drive observing the villages, hamlets and countryside. We had a fine lunch at an excellent restaurant. It was a beautiful day, though hot. Fortunately, we were always in air-conditioning.

Actually, the Glenn Hammond Curtiss museum covered bicycles, motorcycles, and airplanes, as well as a little bit of everything else. It followed chronologically the life of Glenn Curtiss, whose life and career covered from about the early nineteen hundreds through the 1950's. It was quite interesting. He was an expert in motors, and eventually produced thousands of airplanes. In fact, much of the success of aviation can be attributed to his innovations and engineering inventions.

For some reason or another (it was not connected to Curtiss's time frame) there was a Civil War exhibit in the entryway. A life size statue was dressed in a Union soldier's blue uniform. I quipped to Gerry, "So that's what the enemy looked like." I was absolutely joking, but truthfully, the civil war is still not a joking matter to many of my southerner relatives.

So in homage to my heritage, I stood with the confederacy! (Probably because most of the rest of the museum was really a guy thing!)

The thing that I found most fascinating was that the uniforms from the Civil War were all clearly hand stitched! It was hard for me to imagine the women of that era sitting at home sewing uniforms while the men went off to fight. Obviously, some of them did.

It was, perhaps, the one thing from the whole museum that stood out in my mind the most!