Note: This series of essays first appeared on Thunderstruck in 2003, recounting my experiences of 2001.
Johnny Rabbitt's office at radio station WRTH is filled with bunny-related objects. Actually, the studio itself features a giant stuffed Bugs Bunny, a rabbit in a vest and top hat, toy rabbits in toy cars, plastic carrots, and the like. His office is almost subdued in comparison, with more emphasis on his books on local trivia and mementos of his decades-long radio career, but still rabbits abound. There is a soft cuddly example of the taxidermist's art perched atop a file cabinet.
I have stopped by the station to pick up my paycheck and have found Rabbitt's office open. I decide to sneak in and surf the web on his computer--Hotmail has been threatening dire consequences if I don't dump a couple hundred K's worth of messages from my inbox. Surely Rabbitt isn't around on a weekend, I think. All the offices were open; the cleaning crew is at work. But as I confront the agony of deleting precious email, a thick-spectacled shadow looms in the doorway.
"Angela! Hey, listen, fate may have brought you here. Are you a good writer?"
"I'm a great writer, Johnny."
"Oh good, oh good. Would you like to help me write something?"
"Sure! What about?"
"The Pink Sisters."
My heart honestly leaps at the thought. I know very little about the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters except that they wear eye-catching pink habits--not subtle pink, mind you; vivid pink like cotton candy, like the last color anyone who doesn't really know nuns would expect them to wear. I say "doesn't really know nuns" because pink would be perfect on some of the nuns of my acquaintance--the giddy young Vietnamese sisters at my church, my high school math teacher who cursed like a sailor--but I know the stereotype calls for a more sober hue. I know why these nuns are called "Pink Sisters" and I know they are cloistered. I know they prayed for good weather when the Pope visited St. Louis in January of '99, and that the temperature jumped up to 68 degrees during his visit. I know a woman who visited their convent and described to me the hospitality and the wise eyes of the Superior. I know and feel their mystique, the curiosity anyone feels about women who go in through a certain door and make a promise they will never leave. But I have never gone to their convent myself. I've always meant to but never have. I suppose I'm afraid they'll bite.
Still, things happen. Rather a lot of things have been happening to me lately. They are strange things. It feels as though words are being spoken to me just at the threshold of hearing, so I hear one phrase and then another one a little while later and then I must piece together the whole meaning.
Not long ago I heard a bit of a psalm in an unexpected place-a U2 concert. It was Psalm 116, and the verses were "How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me? The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord; my vows to the Lord I will pay in the presence of all his people." And then the same psalm, the same verses, I heard again in the expected place, at Mass. It felt as if a point were being made and underlined.
And yesterday--yesterday I read a prayer telling me to visualize mercy as an ocean. I marked the page with my fingers and closed my eyes, but I couldn't do it. My mind shrank from the image. Is mercy something to drown in? What sounds less life-threatening? Ah, I thought. Sunlight. Mercy I'll picture as radiant warmth. I went back to the book and discovered the rest of the prayer used no ocean imagery at all, but spoke only of "rays" and "light," and as I read the sun broke free of cloud--yes, it really did, and if it had happened in a movie the audience would shake their heads in disgust at the melodrama, but that's just the way things happen sometimes. Or quite a lot, lately, as I said.
So Johnny Rabbitt asks me to write about the Pink Sisters, an order whose official title is Sister-Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, and I've been intrigued by the Holy Spirit lately and wear a dove round my neck in His honor but chiefly because it is a symbol of a song I love called "Grace" and now I discover the sisters' place in St. Louis is called Mount Grace Convent. Little things. They can either be understood to be pointing toward a deeper meaning or not. They are clues that I am on the right path or they are meaningless coincidences. They are words spoken at the threshold of hearing, able to be heeded or ignored. I don't ignore them; it suits me to think the coincidences pile up for a reason. Next I suppose I must decide--is whatever's causing this malevolent or benevolent? If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd start shaking but as I'm just me I shrug and call Him melodramatic.
Oh--and there's a radio show I want to do--that's also called "Grace," as in "Amazing." My radio work is my connection to Johnny Rabbitt, but I'm not pursuing radio as a career single-mindedly. At the moment I have a music biography soon to be published, and as I work on that anything that might take me out of town (such as a job as a DJ in some small market, say, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico) is on hold. And yet the work I'm doing on the bio at present is of the thumb-twiddling variety, waiting for others to proof the book and print it. Thus it so happens that when Rabbitt needs someone to help him write about the Pink Sisters, I have both great curiosity about the subject and nothing but time to work on it. Meaningless coincidence, of course.
In a few days The Rabbitt and I take the highway to North St. Louis to interview the Superior at the convent. Some of the streets here have names I know from a lifetime spent on the South Side--Grand, 14th--but others are entirely unfamiliar. We pass a park much like any park I've driven past before. The houses are brick, and of a similar style to houses in my neighborhood. It gives me a strange sense of displacement. This is landscape I know and do not know, a mystery; I feel as if any moment we'll turn a corner and come to a well-known landmark. Then I will know where we are. But this never happens.
I have been to the North Side before--but not often. It looks shell-shocked, bombed-- Belfast or Sarajevo in miniature. We'll pass five intact buildings and one that is boarded up, yet it's the boarded-up buildings that define the mood here. I realize this is what my neighborhood must look like to outsiders. There, too, there are nice houses and burned-out ones, but because I live there I think of life as the prevalent mood, not death. Here it is different.
When we arrive at Mount Grace, Rabbitt first points out a high stone wall. "Behind that is the Sisters' garden," he says. The wall encloses a space as large as a downtown city block. We turn a corner and across the street we see the house of the benefactress of the convent, a still noble mansion. We arrive then at the chapel and the front gate of the convent. The building itself seems familiar--tall, red brick--not as sprawling as stately old City Hospital (another old St. Louis landmark though sadly one that has been crumbling for years), but I think City Hospital in its prime must have been kin. I am reminded too of my sturdy grade school, St. Thomas of Aquinas. Later I find out this convent and that school were built at about the same time--1935. This, in my unlearned opinion, was one of architecture's last great eras.
I have compared the Pink Sisters' convent now to a hospital and to a school. It has the bulk and sober facade of an institution. Most modern schools and hospitals seem featureless; they slide out of memory. Older institutions have their noble purpose stamped in their masonry. All of the convent's bricks appear to have been perfectly placed. Its beauty is in the parts adding to a whole, like the cells of a beehive. The roof supports and the gutterspouts are not overly ornamented but their lines are graceful. All the windows are new.
It is the survivor of a tradition, a sign that not all things pass away. I think at first it looks out of place amid the rubble and ruin of the North Side. Then I realize I've got it backward. The ruin is the interloper, this is the native inhabitant. In fact this sense of long history brought into the present is the mark of all the true beautiful places here.
I understand this better as Rabbitt talks of Crown Candy Kitchen and Mark's Hardware, two old businesses that have held on to the North Side while others fled. Stepping into Mark's, he says, is stepping into the past. "There are boxes of supplies in the storeroom stamped with dates from the 1800s," he says. "And the lightbulbs in there are the real old-fashioned kind, with the two long wires inside and no frosting on the glass."
I get the impression nothing in North St. Louis is new--there's so little infrastructure, no incentives for construction. But at Mount Grace, this appears to me virtue, not hardship. Newness is overrated. Here is elegant sturdiness, a red brick sanctuary for a way of life more than a thousand years old--for although the Congregation of the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration has only been around a century or so, there have been cloistered contemplatives for much, much longer than that.
If you like, you may trace a path back from the North Side of St. Louis in the 20th century to the Egyptian desert in the 3rd. That was where a man named Anthony went to live as a hermit after hearing the gospel passage, "If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and follow me" (Matt. 19:21). He said, in essence, "all right," and went to live by himself. This made him a very popular person. Others went in to the desert to see what he was up to out there, he taught them his simple ways of work and prayer, and so from the desire to be alone came the whole Christian tradition of religious community life. (That is why words like "monk" and "nun" and "monastery" have a contradiction at their heart. Today they are used in the context of life lived always in the presence of others, but they all come from the same root as "mono"--something that stands alone).
In the centuries afterward groups of people would come together to pray, work, and live together in varying degrees of separation from the world.
Cloistered contemplatives like the Pink Sisters have separated themselves about as far as you can get, which is illustrated to me when Rabbitt and I ring the bell at the convent entrance and are buzzed in to a small wood-paneled room. There is a door opposite us, and in the door is a window with a metal screen. The face behind it is hard to see. The voice belonging to the face directs us to open a door to our right into a parlor and to wait there for the superior, Sister Mary Gemma.
The parlor is divided into two by a grille made of transparent plastic in an open weave, like a herringbone pattern. When Sister Mary Gemma comes and sits on her side she reaches through and shakes our hands, but that is all the closer we can get. It's not exactly like visiting someone in prison, but it's not unlike it either.
My immediate sense of Sister is of an affable woman, prone to quiet laughter and gentle expression. She is the public face of the convent, the rest of the 24 sisters here are more or less anonymous, though they all take turns welcoming visitors at the door. She has email, reads the newspaper, takes phone calls through much of the day, and conducts tours (though "tours" is a misleading term, since most of the grounds are off-limits to the non-cloistered). Having to stand as she does between two realities that don't have much in common, she comes across as neither otherworldly nor worldly. She reminds me of nothing as much as the well-loved owner of a locally successful family business.
In the course of the interview I ask Sister, "Let's say a woman comes to the convent and says, 'I think I may have a calling to your way of life.' What do you do?"
She answers, "We'd meet with them a few times and then just talk about it and ask them questions and lead them to kind of open themselves. If they think that they very possibly could have a vocation to this way of life and we see that it also is a possibility we have them come and live two to three weeks with us. We call that the 'observer program.'"
After the interview, when I'm back at home, I start to think about this. I could interview Sister Mary Gemma for days but no matter what she says I'd never get the sense of what it's really like behind that grille. And I want to know. Sitting in that parlor listening to her, I found myself getting obsessed with that barrier, the seeming arbitrariness of it, the way it is both flimsy and absolute.
Maybe writing about the Sisters will give me an excuse to break through the barrier myself.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Book.
A few years ago, I was going through a difficult time.
The details of the difficult time don't matter much. The good thing was that I had people around who loved me and supported me in what I needed to do to get through it.
I didn't know what I needed to do, but I kind of had a sense. I heard about a place where one could have a silent retreat--which was important because an element of what was difficult about that time was that it was noisy. I was taking in a lot of stuff and had no place to put it.
On that retreat, something happened to me. My difficulties didn't all disappear at once or anything like that. But something happened, something that worked a transformation.
The story of that time, the journey I ended up taking, and what that journey held for my life was not something that I could talk about directly. I still can't address it head on, which is why this post is so choppy. The only way to get at it was to tell a story.
So, I wrote a story. The funny thing is that the story I ended up writing was about telling a story. It was about taking something that is inside of you and letting it live in the outside world, where it may have a life you did not plan for it to have. Storytelling is risky that way.
I have no children of my own, but the story also turned out to be about raising a child. It also turned out to be about a lot of other unexpected things. Storytelling is surprising that way.
I recently found out there's a website that lets you publicize a creative work if you want to invite people to help you release it into the wild, as it were. It helps musicians raise the money to release their own CDs, directors to create their own movies, and authors publish their own books. The story I wrote--which is called, of all things, "The Story"--has had much help along the way already from people encouraging it into existence. I would like to take the step of getting it out in the world more, so I am going to make it into a book, and I'm going to ask for help getting it published.
I've recruited a talented young illustrator, so part of the cost of publishing will be her fees--to be put toward her college fund.
Watch this space. I'll be announcing more details soon.
The details of the difficult time don't matter much. The good thing was that I had people around who loved me and supported me in what I needed to do to get through it.
I didn't know what I needed to do, but I kind of had a sense. I heard about a place where one could have a silent retreat--which was important because an element of what was difficult about that time was that it was noisy. I was taking in a lot of stuff and had no place to put it.
On that retreat, something happened to me. My difficulties didn't all disappear at once or anything like that. But something happened, something that worked a transformation.
The story of that time, the journey I ended up taking, and what that journey held for my life was not something that I could talk about directly. I still can't address it head on, which is why this post is so choppy. The only way to get at it was to tell a story.
So, I wrote a story. The funny thing is that the story I ended up writing was about telling a story. It was about taking something that is inside of you and letting it live in the outside world, where it may have a life you did not plan for it to have. Storytelling is risky that way.
I have no children of my own, but the story also turned out to be about raising a child. It also turned out to be about a lot of other unexpected things. Storytelling is surprising that way.
I recently found out there's a website that lets you publicize a creative work if you want to invite people to help you release it into the wild, as it were. It helps musicians raise the money to release their own CDs, directors to create their own movies, and authors publish their own books. The story I wrote--which is called, of all things, "The Story"--has had much help along the way already from people encouraging it into existence. I would like to take the step of getting it out in the world more, so I am going to make it into a book, and I'm going to ask for help getting it published.
I've recruited a talented young illustrator, so part of the cost of publishing will be her fees--to be put toward her college fund.
Watch this space. I'll be announcing more details soon.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
About where I work: Peaslee Neighborhood Center
I was reminded recently that I have not written an update in a while, particularly about my new job, which is Administrative Assisting at Peaslee Neighborhood Center. Peaslee is a non-profit with a unique history. I love telling the story of Peaslee because it is about seemingly overwhelming odds and the incredible tenacity of those who challenged the odds. I'll quote from the "Peaslee-for-the-People-Project," a well-photocopied paper in the file cabinet here:
"In the summer of 1982 the Cincinnati Board of Education closed the doors of Peaslee School. That corner at 14th and Sycamore in Cincinnati's inner city had served the education of our neighborhood children for over a hundred years. An old school building had been torn down several years before leaving a vacant lot and a small, modernly equipped, newer annex we called Peaslee Primary...
"The school stood vacant for fourteen months...We felt that the loss of the school was connected with the beginnings of loss of the fabric of the neighborhood.
"But our neighborhood, called Over-the-Rhine, had faced losses before and the people who were hit would rebound to fight harder next time. Those fourteen months proved to be such a time...
"Parents who had fought for the school, community supporters, our Over-the-Rhine Community Council, and our neighborhood development corporation pulled together to work out a proposal for usage of the school and an offer for purchase. After negotiating back and forth (over six months) with the School Board we came up with the agreement that the community would put $15,000 cash down and be given one year to raise the remaining purchase price of $225,000 plus that year's maintenance cost. We envisioned a building that would belong to the low-income community and be used as an educational and cultural center for our integrated neighborhood. Community control of this building would also help to stabilize the low-income housing around it. But the $240,000 plus price tag made that look like an impossible dream. We knew our real work had just begun...
"Our community has an average annual income of $6000/year per family. One person in our group sat down and figured out how many people would have to donate $10 to achieve our goal. I think that's when the $225,000 price tag really began to hit home and we began to realize that we'd have to get outside our community for financial support and explain what Peaslee was and could become for us. We'd have to convince 22,500 people!
"One thing that helped was...we drew up a tentative timeline so that we could see how much we would need to have raised by March, then by August, etc. This helped set goals along the way and broke down the enormous sum to smaller attainable amounts...
"The fundraising committee was made up of about six core members. We decided to meet every week for a business meeting then follow with a work session. The business meetings were times to discuss ideas, divide up tasks, and keep in touch. For the work sessions we'd invite more people and do things like fold brochures, prepare bulk mailings, and write thank you notes. We wanted to have a large-group meeting inviting more citywide supporters every six to eight weeks. We were able to do this about three times and it was helpful for us to feel the broader support, as well as to have fresh ideas and new contacts...
"With the help of the development committee we put together proposals for several foundations. A great breakthrough for us was a grant support of $25,000 from the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. This grant legitimized us with the more conservative Cincinnati Business Community. From there we were able to get a listing from the Chamber of Commerce giving us business addresses and pre-addressed labels. We sent out word about our grant and asked each business to contribute $100. Because we had been able to keep our project in the media, both through newspaper editorials and television coverage of events, the businesses began to adopt us as a 'community working to improve itself' and that increased their monetary support...
"During our fight to keep the school open we had met radio, television, and newspaper reporters. We renewed those contacts with the media during this campaign by inviting them to events and press conferences. For example, on Martin Luther King Day we were able to get into the building and held a 'Clean Up/Fundraising Kick-off,' where we invited neighborhood people to come straighten up and mop down the building and read Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech...
"As our last two months closed in we had to meet and assess where we'd come and how far we had to go...At this meeting we decided to approach the School Board, present the details of all we had done toward earning our money, plus all the positive things we had done toward education aside from Peaslee (work in other neighborhood schools, support of the tax levy, development of the Education Task Force at our Community Council). We were able to tell them that we were confident that we would have $200,000 in cash by the deadline...Because of our community's hard work and broader community support we were successful in having the purchase price reduced to $200,000 plus the maintenance costs...
"On December 14, 1984 we were able to turn over $209,239.13 to the Cincinnati School Board and received the keys for Peaslee School."
Dream the impossible dream.
"In the summer of 1982 the Cincinnati Board of Education closed the doors of Peaslee School. That corner at 14th and Sycamore in Cincinnati's inner city had served the education of our neighborhood children for over a hundred years. An old school building had been torn down several years before leaving a vacant lot and a small, modernly equipped, newer annex we called Peaslee Primary...
"The school stood vacant for fourteen months...We felt that the loss of the school was connected with the beginnings of loss of the fabric of the neighborhood.
"But our neighborhood, called Over-the-Rhine, had faced losses before and the people who were hit would rebound to fight harder next time. Those fourteen months proved to be such a time...
"Parents who had fought for the school, community supporters, our Over-the-Rhine Community Council, and our neighborhood development corporation pulled together to work out a proposal for usage of the school and an offer for purchase. After negotiating back and forth (over six months) with the School Board we came up with the agreement that the community would put $15,000 cash down and be given one year to raise the remaining purchase price of $225,000 plus that year's maintenance cost. We envisioned a building that would belong to the low-income community and be used as an educational and cultural center for our integrated neighborhood. Community control of this building would also help to stabilize the low-income housing around it. But the $240,000 plus price tag made that look like an impossible dream. We knew our real work had just begun...
"Our community has an average annual income of $6000/year per family. One person in our group sat down and figured out how many people would have to donate $10 to achieve our goal. I think that's when the $225,000 price tag really began to hit home and we began to realize that we'd have to get outside our community for financial support and explain what Peaslee was and could become for us. We'd have to convince 22,500 people!
"One thing that helped was...we drew up a tentative timeline so that we could see how much we would need to have raised by March, then by August, etc. This helped set goals along the way and broke down the enormous sum to smaller attainable amounts...
"The fundraising committee was made up of about six core members. We decided to meet every week for a business meeting then follow with a work session. The business meetings were times to discuss ideas, divide up tasks, and keep in touch. For the work sessions we'd invite more people and do things like fold brochures, prepare bulk mailings, and write thank you notes. We wanted to have a large-group meeting inviting more citywide supporters every six to eight weeks. We were able to do this about three times and it was helpful for us to feel the broader support, as well as to have fresh ideas and new contacts...
"With the help of the development committee we put together proposals for several foundations. A great breakthrough for us was a grant support of $25,000 from the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. This grant legitimized us with the more conservative Cincinnati Business Community. From there we were able to get a listing from the Chamber of Commerce giving us business addresses and pre-addressed labels. We sent out word about our grant and asked each business to contribute $100. Because we had been able to keep our project in the media, both through newspaper editorials and television coverage of events, the businesses began to adopt us as a 'community working to improve itself' and that increased their monetary support...
"During our fight to keep the school open we had met radio, television, and newspaper reporters. We renewed those contacts with the media during this campaign by inviting them to events and press conferences. For example, on Martin Luther King Day we were able to get into the building and held a 'Clean Up/Fundraising Kick-off,' where we invited neighborhood people to come straighten up and mop down the building and read Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech...
"As our last two months closed in we had to meet and assess where we'd come and how far we had to go...At this meeting we decided to approach the School Board, present the details of all we had done toward earning our money, plus all the positive things we had done toward education aside from Peaslee (work in other neighborhood schools, support of the tax levy, development of the Education Task Force at our Community Council). We were able to tell them that we were confident that we would have $200,000 in cash by the deadline...Because of our community's hard work and broader community support we were successful in having the purchase price reduced to $200,000 plus the maintenance costs...
"On December 14, 1984 we were able to turn over $209,239.13 to the Cincinnati School Board and received the keys for Peaslee School."
Dream the impossible dream.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Scott Christopher Damien Pircher, August 12, 1975--June 15, 2011
I've been flooded with memories, things I haven't thought about for years.
His kitten Trapper Keeper. He used to tease me with it because the kitten on it was so cute--we'd play a game where he'd hold it up and I'd pretend I'd lose all interest in everything else to coo over the cuteness of the kitten.
My sister had read me The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe while I was in kindergarten. I found out he knew the book then, too.
In first grade we sat next to each other--gosh, I think we sat next to each other in every grade, thinking back. We must have been organized in every room alphabetically, ensuring Pancella and Pircher would have a lot of interaction over the course of nine years. Other things we had in common--walking home for lunch, coming to school early to attend Mass before the start of the school day, even more than was required (the whole school was supposed to go on Mass on Wednesdays). I think he want because he was an altar boy. We were born in the same month. And we were both reading the same sort of books. I know because in second or third grade I wrote a story in which I mentioned the sea god Poseidon, having just read Robert Graves' Greek Gods and Heroes. When Scott read my story, he argued very insistently that I had the sea god's name wrong. He was called Neptune, he said.
The years we were in school together were the dawn of the computer age. In 4th grade or 5th, when we were 9, 10 years old--1984, 1985--we used to draw computer screens and "program" them. The computer screen would show a command prompt. We'd give it to a classmate and ask them to "type" in a command on the drawn keyboard. Depending on what command they'd type, we usually had to draw the next screen--we couldn't predict all possible results in advance--so we had a screen ready that said "PLEASE STAND BY" which we displayed while we got the next bit ready. A precursor of the hourglass cursor!
We also both wrote stories. I wrote a murder mystery once--there was a lot of Agatha Christie in the school library--in which Scott was the killer. For the next half of the school year, it seemed, he retaliated by writing a series of stories in which I was some terrible criminal or kept meeting untimely demises. It was my first hint that it was possible for me to hurt his feelings.
We were the two captains of opposing teams in Girls Chase Boys, which I've written about before. My chief memory of it now--besides how impossible it was to successfully caputre him; he could squirm out of any entrapment or turn double agent when appearing to ally with our side--is of the two of us meeting on the battlefield with the air of mutual respect one only has with a well-matched opponent. No firm boundary line between worst enemy and best friend.
In recent times--most of all this past year--we reconnected online, in touch through the magic of Gmail chat. Knwong someone else out there shared memories of being 5 to 13--not just that the memories were shared, but that we placed equal value on those memories--was a tremendous gift. He had to type but one line about Miss Rita, our first grade teacher, and I knew he remembered her how I did.
One day back in grade school, I was having a really rough time. We were all out in the park, and someone had done or said something that made me feel like dirt. I can't remember what it was now. But I remember that I was near tears when Scott came by, and I broke down crying and confided in him the sadness I felt. He listened and comforted, in an awkward pre-teen boy way. Later on--and I never found out why; maybe, probably, I again did something that hurt his feelings, because I was an awkward preteen girl, and I know now that I could be thoughtless--he mocked me by making fun of what I'd confided in him. Oh, how that hurt.
But, you know, there's grace enough. Recently I was in a spot where I really wanted a male perspective on matters, and I happened to be chatting with Scott. I plucked up the courage to confide in him about something I wasn't telling a lot of people. And he was great about it--asking good questions, giving me plenty of room to talk, ultimately offering wise advice. The risk was worth it. I can hear Scott now--"It's always worth it."
His kitten Trapper Keeper. He used to tease me with it because the kitten on it was so cute--we'd play a game where he'd hold it up and I'd pretend I'd lose all interest in everything else to coo over the cuteness of the kitten.
My sister had read me The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe while I was in kindergarten. I found out he knew the book then, too.
In first grade we sat next to each other--gosh, I think we sat next to each other in every grade, thinking back. We must have been organized in every room alphabetically, ensuring Pancella and Pircher would have a lot of interaction over the course of nine years. Other things we had in common--walking home for lunch, coming to school early to attend Mass before the start of the school day, even more than was required (the whole school was supposed to go on Mass on Wednesdays). I think he want because he was an altar boy. We were born in the same month. And we were both reading the same sort of books. I know because in second or third grade I wrote a story in which I mentioned the sea god Poseidon, having just read Robert Graves' Greek Gods and Heroes. When Scott read my story, he argued very insistently that I had the sea god's name wrong. He was called Neptune, he said.
The years we were in school together were the dawn of the computer age. In 4th grade or 5th, when we were 9, 10 years old--1984, 1985--we used to draw computer screens and "program" them. The computer screen would show a command prompt. We'd give it to a classmate and ask them to "type" in a command on the drawn keyboard. Depending on what command they'd type, we usually had to draw the next screen--we couldn't predict all possible results in advance--so we had a screen ready that said "PLEASE STAND BY" which we displayed while we got the next bit ready. A precursor of the hourglass cursor!
We also both wrote stories. I wrote a murder mystery once--there was a lot of Agatha Christie in the school library--in which Scott was the killer. For the next half of the school year, it seemed, he retaliated by writing a series of stories in which I was some terrible criminal or kept meeting untimely demises. It was my first hint that it was possible for me to hurt his feelings.
We were the two captains of opposing teams in Girls Chase Boys, which I've written about before. My chief memory of it now--besides how impossible it was to successfully caputre him; he could squirm out of any entrapment or turn double agent when appearing to ally with our side--is of the two of us meeting on the battlefield with the air of mutual respect one only has with a well-matched opponent. No firm boundary line between worst enemy and best friend.
In recent times--most of all this past year--we reconnected online, in touch through the magic of Gmail chat. Knwong someone else out there shared memories of being 5 to 13--not just that the memories were shared, but that we placed equal value on those memories--was a tremendous gift. He had to type but one line about Miss Rita, our first grade teacher, and I knew he remembered her how I did.
One day back in grade school, I was having a really rough time. We were all out in the park, and someone had done or said something that made me feel like dirt. I can't remember what it was now. But I remember that I was near tears when Scott came by, and I broke down crying and confided in him the sadness I felt. He listened and comforted, in an awkward pre-teen boy way. Later on--and I never found out why; maybe, probably, I again did something that hurt his feelings, because I was an awkward preteen girl, and I know now that I could be thoughtless--he mocked me by making fun of what I'd confided in him. Oh, how that hurt.
But, you know, there's grace enough. Recently I was in a spot where I really wanted a male perspective on matters, and I happened to be chatting with Scott. I plucked up the courage to confide in him about something I wasn't telling a lot of people. And he was great about it--asking good questions, giving me plenty of room to talk, ultimately offering wise advice. The risk was worth it. I can hear Scott now--"It's always worth it."
Friday, May 27, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Haggis!
S. called me up Saturday night; this is the S. of "Free Veggies" fame. "My neighbor is selling haggis," she said.
So yesterday afternoon I wandered down a few blocks, purse in hand, and knocked on her neighbor's door. "Word on the street is that you are selling haggis," I said. No, I didn't. I gave her a bit more context for my actions than that; I told her I knew S.
I bought $5 worth, which means I may have to conduct some haggis-tastings, because $5 buys you an awful lot of haggis. S.'s neighbor told me stories of the Cincinnati Caledonian Pipes and Drums Band and their Tartan Day Ceilidh, which had been the night before. The festivities included a haggis-eating contest. (I had to ask--just how much haggis would one have to eat to win a haggis-eating contest? Answer--one cup haggis, half-cup of neeps, half-cup of tatties. [Neeps and tatties are turnips--or in this case rutabagas--and potatoes.] The premium was speed, not quantity.)
I'm planning on letting the boys in the house try the haggis. I'll just tell 'em it's a type of sausage.
So yesterday afternoon I wandered down a few blocks, purse in hand, and knocked on her neighbor's door. "Word on the street is that you are selling haggis," I said. No, I didn't. I gave her a bit more context for my actions than that; I told her I knew S.
I bought $5 worth, which means I may have to conduct some haggis-tastings, because $5 buys you an awful lot of haggis. S.'s neighbor told me stories of the Cincinnati Caledonian Pipes and Drums Band and their Tartan Day Ceilidh, which had been the night before. The festivities included a haggis-eating contest. (I had to ask--just how much haggis would one have to eat to win a haggis-eating contest? Answer--one cup haggis, half-cup of neeps, half-cup of tatties. [Neeps and tatties are turnips--or in this case rutabagas--and potatoes.] The premium was speed, not quantity.)
I'm planning on letting the boys in the house try the haggis. I'll just tell 'em it's a type of sausage.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Work.
Last Saturday the Formed group had its monthly gathering to discuss the month's topic. (Follow this link if you're asking any of these questions at this point: "What is Formed?" Why do they gather monthly? Where can I find out more?") This month's topic was "work." Happily, one of the members of Formed is the man to whom I've referred in this blog as Our Glorious Leader, Kevin Rains, who owns a body shop, Center City Collision. Where better to discuss the concept of "work" than a place set aside for the fixing of cars, yes?
Kevin started us out with a short but meaty reflection on the place of work in Scripture. He pointed out that in the beginning God worked--the first passages of Scripture record God's six days of Creation. Because we believe in three Persons in one God, and that wherever one member of the Trinity is, the others are as well, we know Creation was the work of a community of artists.
Kevin also talked about order and chaos. He mentioned that in the Message, Peterson calls chaos "a soup of nothingness." The Spirit of God broods like a bird over this abyss--note this, Kevin said; God is not mired in the muck. He asked (he meant to ask rhetorically, but most of us raised our hands!), "How many of you sometimes feel mired in chaos when you work?"
The God who spoke light into existence can and will strengthen us if we ask. We should not forget work is hard, though. Our task as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, Kevin said, is to help bring order out of chaos. And good golly there's a lot of chaos out there. But discouragement and despair won't help. Kevin said he tried to frame work in this way, and it sounded to me like a useful prod to keep on keepin' on: "If you didn't do the work you do--if no one did the work you do--what would happen?"
The actual talk on Saturday was a discussion with Chuck Proudfit, Greg York and Robert Lockridge, who each first spoke on their own and then did a roundtable with questions. But if I do all the talking here, I wouldn't be engaged in creative work with a community of artists, so if someone else who was there wants to chime in about the rest of the day, this would be welcomed.
Kevin started us out with a short but meaty reflection on the place of work in Scripture. He pointed out that in the beginning God worked--the first passages of Scripture record God's six days of Creation. Because we believe in three Persons in one God, and that wherever one member of the Trinity is, the others are as well, we know Creation was the work of a community of artists.
Kevin also talked about order and chaos. He mentioned that in the Message, Peterson calls chaos "a soup of nothingness." The Spirit of God broods like a bird over this abyss--note this, Kevin said; God is not mired in the muck. He asked (he meant to ask rhetorically, but most of us raised our hands!), "How many of you sometimes feel mired in chaos when you work?"
The God who spoke light into existence can and will strengthen us if we ask. We should not forget work is hard, though. Our task as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, Kevin said, is to help bring order out of chaos. And good golly there's a lot of chaos out there. But discouragement and despair won't help. Kevin said he tried to frame work in this way, and it sounded to me like a useful prod to keep on keepin' on: "If you didn't do the work you do--if no one did the work you do--what would happen?"
The actual talk on Saturday was a discussion with Chuck Proudfit, Greg York and Robert Lockridge, who each first spoke on their own and then did a roundtable with questions. But if I do all the talking here, I wouldn't be engaged in creative work with a community of artists, so if someone else who was there wants to chime in about the rest of the day, this would be welcomed.
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