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.