down by the old Mill Stream

My high school alma mater festooned the 1890-built bridge across the Mill Stream, which meanders through the center of the campus, with a fabric display of performance art.  A big sign advertising the kick-off of a new $35 million capital campaign kind of spoiled it.  Can we do beauty just for the sake of beauty?  Because humans do beauty?  You can google "bridges wrapped in fabric" to see other examples.  But I'm proud of what my artist classmate, Emmet Murphy, did this evening.

the M. Div. graduation oil

At the local graduation recognition party--way back in April--guests were asked not to bring gifts, but, if they wanted to contribute to the purchase of an original oil by Christine David as the grande graduation gift, that gift would be deeply appreciated.

Finally the painting was chosen, framed, finished with varnish, signed, sealed, and delivered.  Here is the graduate receiving it from the artist, Christine David.  I can't think of the title, but it is an abstract poppy.

then the barn

As the house waits for filling nail holes, priming, and painting, the contractor worked on the barn, the west end, replacing siding boards that were rotting.  Here's before and after photos, although the after was taken before all the siding was replaced, to show the insides.

putting the puzzle pieces back

Today the crew of two is putting the trim back on the windows, upstairs and down.  Set up next to our freezer and washer and dryer is an air pressure pump to power the air nailers.  Set up outside are the saws.  The biggest task was to bring the window frames out a half inch to be flush with the new walls.

insulation goes in next

It looks like ground up newspapers to me, but I'm told it is cellulose.  Anyway, it insulates and saves energy.  The room almost looks pretty after what it's been through.  Ready for drywall.

gutting the back room

The remodeling continues.  The back upstairs room (Sarah's room) had compromised or totally missing insulation and drywall joints damaged by the tiny local earthquake several years ago.  So the thin paneling goes out the window and we wait for the insulation guy who blows it in.  Then drywall covers it all up.  Now I have to rent a trailer and take this junk to waste management.

Chanticleer

Seventy-five minutes away, in the Wayne-St. David, Pa., area, we spent three hours strolling around Chanticleer. (scroll down on the link and see the rooster we stumbled upon).  There are themes of water and art imitating nature.  One pedestrian bridge is made in the form of a fallen tree.  Bees and butterflies had long ago found this sanctuary, which a London newspaper describes as "planted to perfection."

new cellar doors

In the twenty-five years tending this property,  this is the third new set of outside cellar doors.  This time, instead of a board overlapping the center joint, which both covered the slit and strengthened the right side door, I braced both doors underneath (ouch! those metal 5-foot pieces cost $17 each) and used only an aluminum weather strip to cover the crack between the doors.  And, I added a lifting handle.  Final coat of paint yet to be applied.

new windows

First our house was just a square stone house, a cube if you leveled the roof.  Then a flat-roof addition was added, people guess about  1890.  Then came a porch in the back and then the porch was walled in.  The windows my father put in new in the mid-1950s were rotting.  So new ones go in.  Here's the back one facing west, ripped out, and a day later with the new.

Jefferson's mountain

Monticello was a great visit.  Lots of gadgets.  A window into Virginia when it was medieval, run by aristocrats whose wealth was in ownership of huge tracts of land and the people who worked for them.  Tom, I suppose, was not representative of his class, but one of the very few who was "responsible."  How many of his peers just blew their fortunes on themselves?

birthday gift from Paris

Look twice.  These are spun spheres of 6.5 cm (2.5 inches) bought in a "le cousin paul" shop by my son and daughter-in-law while in Paris earlier this year.  There's only one shop in North America where they can be bought--in Montreal.  You pop them over tiny tree lights to glow.  Great to have this color in my life!

bring your own bag winner

If you bring your own reusable bag you can enter a weekly drawing for $25.  After 30 shots at it I was thinking about quitting.  I looked at all those red tickets in the raffle wheel.  What if I give mine a slight twist?  Pure chance?  The little twist?  Two days later I got the call.  Twenty-five dollars!

I no sooner hung up the phone than I thought of spreading my good fortune.  Several times a week I benefit from those faithful, low-wage clerks.  So I bought six small cans of Planters Peanuts and gave them to the persons I see most often and one to the Leola Food Bank.

I got more fun out of that $25 than sometimes I get out of $250.  Giving makes me say something about myself and makes me vulnerable to others.  In accepting the recipient says something about themselves.  Face to face exchange--a rare thing.

birthday gifts abound

With my birthday on June 29, my daughter's on the 10th and my grand-daughter's on the 18th, here's a few of the gifts flowing through the house.   The box my fitbit zip arrived in.  About the size of a silver dollar, this computer chip rides with me in my pocket to count all the steps I take--that is, literal steps with my feet.  It tells me how many calories I burned.  I can log in what I eat, etc.  And my health should sustain a while longer, maybe decades longer.  Thanks, family, for the gift.  Hunch:  probably cost pretty much.  Two-- how to shop these days?  Order two shoulder bags online and send back the one you don't want.  I kept the bottom one, and used it daily already at the Hymn Society conference in Richmond.  Three, and most exciting--one of Leah's 2nd birthday gifts.  Art work by Dorcas

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Family boarders

My daughter and family moved intra-Lancaster City in mid-June.  While the U-Haul and vehicles held their household items, they camped out at Monterey for two nights.  Wonderful family time!

easy way to go

Squeamish content here, but part of the passing scene.  Rat taken by a trap. Guilt-free, I might add, with such a perfect snap.  This is the three-letter pest, not the cuddly ones.  Think medieval plagues.  But, hey, give credit where due--scientific research relies on this species.  Photo by request.

King Herod column

My humor column this Christmas vilified King Herod.  The column was picked up by Mennonite World Review (pg 6, Dec. 10 issue), but the juiciest bits parodying some crazy current political energy were edited out.  Here is the printed column.  To read the original, complete with Grape Leaf Party and Glenadus Beckum and Billium O-Reillius and other references that I think are funny and illuminating, see below.

 

 

Checkmating a king

by Glenn Lehman

Christmas was bad news for King Herod.  A baby scared him.  Foreigners from Magiland outsmarted him. 

The big money was on his side.  The military brass and veterans kissed up.  On the street everyone adored him.  On the far right, the Grape Leaf Party controlled the huddled masses, who were not yearning to be free.  Wherever the Roman eagle soared, Herod ruled.  How could he lose?

The day before started out okay.  By ten o’clock Herod was ready for a laugh and several doughnuts.  He called in a foreign delegation dressed like court jesters, sporting Turkish towel headwear and astrology charts.  Jokers they were not.  Gesturing and grunting in pig latin, thinking they were onto a great story for the Persian Post, they interviewed the king.  Then they asked about his plan to abdicate the throne, quoting sources of regime change based on quirky religious hocus-pocus. 

But no threat to national security should be ignored, Herod the Scared-Hearted had learned at the Caesar Augustus Military Academy.  Not even a threat in a cradle.  Semper stripsherchus infantati, the generalissimo had said.

So what to do?  Just dismiss these wise guys from Magiland as a joke?  Or, send his CIA to get the low-down before deciding if it’s a credible terrorist act or a media sideshow?

Herod had learned that lies are easier.  So before the photo op and the good-byes, he said, Let’s be buddies.  Let me know when you find the baby so I can send my regards and a few health care and education vouchers.  Of course, the brains from Magiland see through this ruse.  Scared by his goons, they track down the baby at night and sneak back across the border.

All is calm for a day.  The media goes back to dumb reality shows about dirt poor minorities traipsing across the land to register for an I.D. and getting into hilarious predicaments.   They run cooking shows on new dishes for grape leaves, olive oil and rancid fish. They tout Herod’s plan to privatize the centurions, thereby creating more jobs in horseshoes, harnesses, chariots, and sword sharpening.

But when he finds out that the Magilanders escaped, it all hits the fan.  Herod, full of sugar, dreams up a new enemy du jour--foreign babies.  They’re lazy, fat, and want things.   His media does what it’s good at--puts out stories of a baby epidemic and talking points to support it.  Media loud mouths like Glenadus Beckum and Billium O-Reillius snap it up like peanuts at a reunion. He cranks the national security index up to red alert. 

Christmas Day Herod fatefully pulls the big lever of fear, and the state machinery of hate begins to grind.  He flies into an insane rage of revenge and orders his military to eliminate a whole demographic—baby and toddler boys of the Bethlehem slums.  Judea becomes the land of the fearful and the home of the obeyers.  Herod lashed out and lost.  Checkmate.

Glenn Lehman is a writer and musician living close to Lancaster, Pa.