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“Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” - Rashi
For years I have taken in, fed, medicated if necessary and found a home for every stray that has come my way. I do this without thinking about it; I do it without weighing the consequences; I do it because it’s just something I must do. For this reason I’m a big fan of Hebrews 13:2, the Bible verse that says “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” The thought of entertaining angels unawares makes all the time and energy I spend on strays seem a little less nutty, like maybe it’s even some kind of spiritual pursuit…
The latest strays to cross my porch were not feline or canine – they were human – a pair of Estonian college students, both girls, here to experience America by selling educational books and software, door to door, for the whole summer – in Winder, GA. Now to me, that seems like a rough card to draw.
First off, Estonia is a small country up by Russia, Sweden and Finland. The hottest temperature there might be around 80 and most of the time it’s either cold or temperate. Imagine what our Georgia heat must feel like to them – especially during these days of heat indexes of 103-plus degrees.
Secondly, they use bikes for transportation. (Actually, one of them has an old car without A/C she uses because her sales area is Auburn.) According to the brochures they gave us about Estonia, you can drive from one side of the country to the other in about four hours. They have a lot of bike paths and a decent bus system. It might not be unreasonable to go door to door selling books from a bike in Estonia, however, here in Barrow County that seems like a stretch. Things are spread out too far; there are a lot of hills; and a lot of our drivers aren’t used to bike traffic.
Thirdly, the company they work for (a reputable American company established in 1868 doing door to door Bible sales) demands an exacting commitment from them. They are to work 13-hour days six days a week, and attend sales meetings in Augusta on Sundays. No dating; no alcohol; no TV; no time. But, since 300 of the 2,500 students the company has here this summer are from Estonia, it must sound like an okay deal to them…One of our girls is in her second summer and she has nothing but great things to say about her experience last year.
Before they came to our door on their first day in Winder, looking for “a room to rent, two bicycles perhaps to use or purchase affordably, and perhaps also a car…” I knew nothing of Estonia. But, having watched these two young women tackle challenge after challenge, calmly, quietly and always with a smile on their faces, I have developed a respect for the Estonian people and their history.
Apparently, some of the first humans in Europe lived in Estonia. Because of their location, or sparse numbers (Estonia’s current population is 1.5 million, compared to our 5.5 million in the Atlanta Metro area), or incredibly even temperament, Estonians have been invaded and ruled repeatedly, by Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and most recently, Russia. If our Estonians are any indication, they don’t have a cultural chip on their shoulder about that; they seem to be a people who simply takes what comes and continues to get the work done.
One of our girls told us, with some pride, that her boyfriend just got back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. She said Estonia sends 150 soldiers to serve alongside our troops and has since the war began. “Something to do with NATO,” she said. “It’s just part of our responsibility as a country.”
As most stray stories do, the Estonian one has evolved over time. Initially, it was, “Here’s some water and sunscreen, and yes, we have a couple of bikes you can use…” That turned into “Sure, you can stay for a week or two while you find something a little nicer - less dogs and noise and such…” Now, they’re with us for the duration, which is fine because they’re so hardworking and pleasant.
They leave the house every morning at 6:30 and return, rain or shine, sales or no sales, around 9:30 at night. And, in spite of the obvious toll all that bike riding, heat and door knocking takes, they are always cheerful, upbeat, and enthusiastic - ready to shower, pack their lunches and face the next day - whatever it may bring.
I don’t know if our Estonians are “angels unawares” or just a couple of college students seeing America the hard way. In either case, if you see a tall, thin, very blonde woman riding a bike or going door to door in your neighborhood, offer her a bottle of water and a kind word. I assure you, she’ll thank you profusely and it sure will help her along her way.
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” – Newt Gingrich
I have a special admiration for people with perseverance because it’s a quality I lack. I’m a person who does a really good job for a pretty long time, then quits right before the finish line. I can’t seem to complete things. I have shelves full of books that I’ve read all but the last chapter. I have closets full of projects taken to near completion then abandoned. It is not uncommon for me to shut the stair-stepper machine at the YMCA off at 19 minutes, rather than making it through that final 20th minute. I don’t know why I do this – I just do. It’s simply the way I am.
For this reason it was particularly inspiring for me to cover the Honors Celebration for the Winder-Barrow Coalition for Adult and Continuing Education (WBCACE) last week. Now those are some folks who can stick to a task!
The first set of awards was for Perfect Attendance, which as the presenter said, is particularly hard to achieve for an adult student who works full time, has a family and a lot of other responsibilities. There was a surprisingly long list of people who won this award, including one woman who walked all the way from the Fort Yargo area to the adult education offices in Winder so she wouldn’t miss even one evening of class.
The next set of certificates was presented to students who mastered English as their second language. Several of those had already received perfect attendance awards and a few were also recognized for becoming certified as substitute teachers. That’s a lot of hard work completed in evenings and on weekends.
There were awards given to students who earned their GED and to students who received scholarships to pay for taking their GED exam. One recipient of exam scholarship money had taken his GED test that day and passed. His dad and several other family members were with him and they were so excited and proud.
There was an award for Positive Attitude, Perseverance and Dedication, and this certificate seemed particularly precious to those who had earned it – like, wow, all that hard work and effort was actually noticed and recognized!
One woman with perfect attendance was also among those inducted into the National Adult Education Honors Society. She also received an Exceptional Achievement award for passing six levels of material on a single test. Her husband and little girls were in the audience cheering for her – making it obvious that her school work wasn’t’ the only thing she had to take care of.
A man was recognized for achieving U.S. citizenship, which I understand is a long, arduous, expensive process. His wife had already become a citizen and they have two sons, born in America and nearly grown, with long lists of academic and athletic achievements. Their excitement about the opportunities America offers was tangible; it shone from their eyes and lit up their faces. I got the sense that in that family even the sky might not be the limit...
The student speaker was a woman who started working towards her GED years ago. The twists and turns of her life meant that it took a long time for her to succeed, but with perseverance, the support of her family and “so many people praying for me,” she said, she made it and was a beaming example of how good achieving a dream can be.
I wiped more than one tear from my eyes that evening. “These people have worked so hard,” I kept thinking to myself, wondering why, at times, someone like me, blessed with English as my first language and surrounded by so many opportunities, can’t seem to follow through at times…
It took me 20 years to complete my bachelor’s degree. I dropped out of college my final semester just after my son was born and, two English credits short of graduating, never went back. Over the years, I ordered a couple of distance learning courses that I didn’t complete. Then finally, after working in newspaper for a few years, I found a dean at my old university willing to give me those two credits if I submitted a sufficient sampling of my newspaper work.
Thanks to her, I graduated in 2001 – with honors. It seems my old grade point average was high enough that she could enclose an honors metal with that not so hard earned, but long time in coming college diploma.
I’m not proud of that story although I’m glad it has a happy ending. There is no reason for someone blessed the way I have been blessed, to dilly-dally around and not complete something as major as a college degree for 20 years. There’s just no excuse for that…And, so, my hat is off to those adult education honorees; they clearly have exhibited a level of perseverance and dedication that continues to escape me.
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
I hate that Tipper and Al Gore are splitting up. It’s not that I was ever a big Al Gore fan (except for his work on global warming.) It’s just that theirs was such a sweet story – high school sweethearts, four kids, grandkids, years in politics and still a hot romance. After 40 years together, it seems like a shame they can’t make it.
I heard a lady on NPR talking about all the attention the break up is getting and how it seems to be making a surprising number of people sad. Her theory was that there is so much bad going on right now – the oil spill, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea threatening South Korea, etc. etc – that people are overwhelmed. Somehow, the only thing we can wrap our heads around to actually grieve is the end of the Gore marriage; everything else is too big. It’s an interesting theory…
I admire any couple who has been married for 40 years and now that Mr. Clark and I are in year 31 together, I can’t imagine the carrot life could dangle in front of me that would make me give up all the things our marriage is and has created over the years. What out there is so appealing that it makes you quit so close to the finish line?
Antoine de Saint-Exupery described love as, not “gazing at each other, but looking outward together in the same direction.” That seems like a pretty good way to approach the long haul marriage presents. Maybe, after all these years, Tipper and Al stopped gazing in the same direction. I just hope we don’t read about some global warming intern crawling out of the wood work to be Al’s new arm candy, once the smoke clears. Old wives like me hate reading about that - it’s just so tacky.
The other day, while working an emergency room social worker shift, I encountered a sad, but really touching love story between a pair who started out homeless and were finally right where they wanted to be, only to have him end up in the ER dying from some kind of horrible internal bleed.
While we were waiting for the doctors to work the miracle that ended up not happening, the wife told me their story. They met six years ago in a really rough homeless community. “He had my back,” she said, “and, I had his, and, we just ended up falling in love.”
In a few months they found their way to a less dangerous homeless place and since they both did odd jobs when they could find them, eventually they bought themselves a tent. (He had been a painter until a long fall off a high ladder ruined his back and she had been badly injured in a car accident years ago…no insurance, not much family, two people with limited abilities just trying to scrape by…)
She found a job at the Salvation Army as the night door person for the women’s dorm, which gave them an income steady enough to buy a little camper and get their names on the low income housing waiting list. Last year, she said, they made it to the top of the list and moved into an apartment. After a brief breakup last fall (“turns out we couldn’t live without each other,” she said) he dropped to his knees during the Thanksgiving dinner at the Salvation Army and asked her to marry him. She said, “yes!” and off to the courthouse they went, the following Monday.
Years of hard work and harder living had clearly taken its toll on these folks; they looked rode hard and put away wet. But, their love for each other shone through and lit up their faces, even as he lay there dying. She said she’d just qualified for disability, so their plan was for her to quit her night job at the shelter so they could travel. I asked her where they were going and she said “Panama City – we were going to leave next week. Neither of us has ever seen the ocean or Panama and we wanted to do that before one of us died. If only this had happened in a few more weeks…now we’ll never see Panama.”
It was gut-wrenching to watch her stroking his face, so strong and brave, holding his hand as his life slipped away. “You hang in there, Baby,” she said, staring deep into his eyes. “Don’t you worry, Baby. We’ll make it to Panama City yet,” was his reply. Their leathery, life-worn faces looked so bright and alive as they talked softly to each other, both knowing this was goodbye.
This couple seemed to have held on, to the very end, to what Tipper and Al lost somewhere along the way – the ability to dream the same dream, together, while moving forward in the direction of that dream, however slow the progress. Emily Bronte wrote, “Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” What a lovely way to describe true love, whether it’s found in a homeless shelter and lasts for life or fades away, gradually, in a fine home in Washington, D.C.
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? – Satchel Paige
Mr. Clark turned 55 this week and I must say that sounds like a daunting age. The age old (and never cliché when you’re the one asking it) question is, “Where did all the time go?” One minute you’re graduating from college and the next you’re eligible to join AARP. In between there is a whirlwind of child rearing, family and work experiences, good times, hard times, sad times and so many wonderful memories. And, while 55 may sound “old” to some and “young” to others, part of what all those quickly passing years teaches you is that each and every age you reach is a blessing.
If you had asked me what a scary sounding age was at 24, I would’ve said 30. At 30, the answer was 35 and when that pushing 40 thing started to happen, I shut down and took a few years off from counting how old I was. Around 42, when I started hearing that I “looked good for my age,” I got okay with being “old” again and I cruised on through to 49 relatively age-trauma free. In fact, when I took my still mobile and quite feisty 90-year-old grandmother to another grandchild’s wedding in Mexico when I was 45, I realized with some happiness that my life might actually only be half over.
Somewhere in my 49th year it hit me that I was about to have use the number 50 to describe my age and for awhile the thought of that made me unable to remember what year I was born. It wasn’t Alzheimer’s or early onset dementia – it was conscious denial. If I couldn’t tell you what year I was born in, you couldn’t do the math.
My most recent birthday made me 52 which feels just fine. With the exception of a few minor aches and pains, I still feel pretty much the way I always have. I don’t feel like I’m over 50 except sometimes, when the sight of that lady in the mirror catches me by surprise and, somehow, based on how good I feel, she should look younger than that.
Good genes are, of course, a key component to aging well; Mr. Clark and I are both blessed with that. His family stays healthy way on up in years and my family, well, the grandmother I traveled to Mexico with is now 96 and still going strong. My other grandmother has a sister still living on her own and driving a car at the age of 105. Imagine that!
Copious amounts of eye cream are another thing I believe in when it comes to aging gracefully. I remember hearing a woman I worked with when I was 22 or so talking about how she managed to look so young at the ripe old age of 38, which at the time sounded really old to me. It was exercise and eye cream…Well, I thought, if it worked so well for her, then taking those two precautions surely wouldn’t hurt me and so far, they have served me well.
Humidity also helps. Even though I’ve never gotten used to the climate here in the South, friends my age back in my native Colorado lack the “glow” I have; maybe it’s all that sweating I do...
Mr. Clark is like me – he doesn’t really look or act his age. In my mind a 55-year-old guy is sort of old and stodgy and grumpy and gray – weight of the world on his shoulders, not much fun to be around. Not Mr. Clark, he has the gift of a perennial child’s temperament in that he has a light heart and a cheerful air about him. He’s not a worrier; he wouldn’t know how to hold a grudge; and he rarely gets angry. He sings a lot; he really likes his work and he has several hobbies he enjoys. Those things, I’m sure, have contributed his youthfulness; the only way you might begin to guess Mr. Clark’s age is his salt & pepper hair.
For his birthday, our daughter gave Mr. Clark a card that said, “Men are like wine – some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” Pope John XXIII said that. I don’t know how old he was when he said that, but I bet he was no spring chicken. I do know that if Mr. Clark was a wine, he’d continue to improve with age because as a man, he certainly has done that.
Robert Browning said, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…” and for years I thought that was really cheesy and unrealistic. Not now though; these days I have it posted on the fridge and the thought makes me happy every time I look at it.
“A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.” – Chinese Proverb
The pair of cardinals that nested in the tree outside our kitchen window last year came back and built a nest in the same tree this spring. I was glad to see them because we so enjoyed watching them raise their first brood last summer. Cardinals mate for life and this pair seemed young, but they did a good job and it was a lot of fun to watch them raise their little family.
This year has not been as good to them. They had two babies hatched, well fed and almost fully feathered, big enough to peek over the side of the nest. Like last year, the parents worked diligently, flitting in and out of the tree, feeding, protecting and chirping to their young. It looked like they were all going to make it again and then, two days ago, I found a dead male cardinal near their tree, killed by my old tom cat.
I hoped it wasn’t our dad cardinal, but it turned out to be, because after I buried the bird I found, we didn’t see our dad flitting around the nest anymore. Now there was only the mom, working twice as hard to feed her family.
Then, yesterday evening, one of the babies crawled out of the nest and started trying to perch on a nearby branch. Judging by the way he flapped and swayed, he wasn’t quite ready to be doing this. He was chirping frantically, as if in distress, and the mom was flitting around, calling back just as frantically. The other baby wasn’t in the tree or the nest. Apparently, he’d already fallen to the ground and there, right under the tree, was the old tom cat.
Mr. Clark went out and got the cat then I went to see if I could find the fallen baby. No luck, so we turned off the kitchen lights and went out back, hoping the mom and her precariously perched baby would settle down, once things got quiet again.
The same scenario was playing out with a different cardinal family in the back yard. This time the baby was stranded on a patio chair, with both parents anxiously flitting around, trying to feed him and keep him safe from the screaming jays over head. That baby fluttered to the ground and into some nearby shrubbery and this morning, his parents are still going in and out the place where he disappeared, so maybe he made it through the night. Sadly, there is no sign of our mother cardinal or her baby, not anywhere near their nest or tree.
This happens every year - a heart breaking week or so during which way too many baby birds flop out of their nests and either survive until they learn to fly or die. I used to try to save them, but that never worked, so now I just keep the old tom cat in and watch the dramas unfold, saying a little prayer for each of the bird families dealing with this.
The week of birds falling usually comes right around high school graduation and, sure enough, last Friday night we heard the fireworks booming over the high school stadium, signaling that yet another crop of baby birds was about to leave that nest. I remember how proud I was when my kids graduated from high school and how sad (in a good way) I was when they left for college.
From my empty nest, their college years felt a little like watching young birds chirping and flapping about, almost ready to fly, but not quite there yet; enthusiastic about the journey, yet still so vulnerable. It’s a relief to have grown-up kids because I don’t worry about them they way I used to. Like the cardinal pair outside the kitchen window last year, they are young, but they have good life skills, solid homes and are happily mated for life…
If there is one message I’d give to graduates, it would be to live like the birds do – in the moment, fully engaged and productive. Sing your song loudly and proudly; and, whether cardinal or a crow, be comfortable in the colors you’ve been given. Take good care of yourself and your family, and as Henry Van Dyke said, “Use the talents you possess – for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best.”
As we all know and those birds experience, life can be fleeting; bad things happen; but knowing that need not diminish the power and enjoyment of today.
Going to hell in a handbasket: describes a situation headed for disaster without effort or in great haste. – Wickipedia
Well, there was plenty to rant about in last week’s local news. First off, how ‘bout those local builders? After running the idea of gutting local building regulations up the flag pole at a commission meeting in early March and getting nothing but negative feedback from the public, the media and the bloggers, the Barrow County Builder’s Association is back - this time formally asking the board of commissioners to agree to significant changes in the unified development code.
The changes include: reducing minimum home size from 1,600 square feet to 1,350; eliminating the one lot per acre requirement in subdivisions; eliminating sidewalk and open space requirements; reducing tree requirements and buffer widths; and reducing the sight distance required on subdivision entry roads.
The BCBA is also asking for a reduction in sewer tap fees and for the county to let builders pay half of those fees up front and half when the certificate of occupancy is issued…Doesn’t that sound like the builders are asking the county – our broke county – to give up revenue and “loan” them half the required tap fee until the home is built? In exchange for…what?
Oh, that’s right. Once all these cheap little homes in ugly subdivisions are built the county will be flooded with buyers who just couldn’t find what they were looking for anywhere else…Right. The logic doesn’t fly.
Anyone who can afford to buy a home - and qualify for a loan - has a fine selection of unoccupied subdivision and foreclosure homes, right here, right now, in Barrow County. Do we really think the only thing holding back local home sales is a lack of homes in the under-$150,000 market? Come on!
These requests are future profit-based nonsense being marketed as some kind of economic stimulus plan. I’m amazed the board of commissioners is even considering these requests, especially in the context of the intensely strained 2011 county budget.
While we’re on the topic of the board of commissioners, kudos to Commissioner Worley for uncovering the lack of building license and permit code enforcement that’s apparently been going on for some time in our cash-strapped county. At last week’s meeting, Worley told the board in his district alone (District 3) he had found some $6,400 in uncollected revenue due to building without the required permits.
When Mr. Worley contacted the head of the county’s License & Permits department, Mr. Lyn Clement (back on March 15), Mr. Clement’s response was that his department has “been so slow” they haven’t been riding the subdivisions to see what’s going on.
Whoa! I have so little to do that I’ve stopped doing the little I have to do? Now there’s a department head really earning his keep while setting a fine example for other county employees. Mr. Worley also discovered problems with soil erosion not being monitored - to which Mr. Clement replied that was not his department’s job. Oops! There it is, right there in the job description – soil erosion. But no worries, if what Mr. Worley saw in that department’s personnel files is correct, no one in License & Permits has been trained to monitor soil erosion anyway, so maybe it’s better they’re not doing it.
Do these people not have job evaluations? How can you still be on the ailing county payroll and not know what your job description says? In these times, you better not only be fulfilling those job requirements, but exceeding them. I wonder how all those folks who lost their county jobs last year feel when they read about all this…
And, finally, the City of Winder: At a time when city fathers should be pulling together (on the heels of the recent passing of City Administrator Bob Beck) the mayor and at least one councilman are sparring over who has the power to hire Mr. Beck’s replacement. What makes this even more counter productive is the city charter makes it very clear the mayor - not the council - has the power to hire city employees.
The irony is that the mayor and Councilman Dixon (the most vocal proponent for council involvement in the hiring process) seem to be saying the same thing. The mayor says he will consult the council during the search for a new city administrator, which is the very thing Mr. Dixon is demanding…Come on, guys, let your hackles down and cooperate.
Councilman Eberhart’s prayer plea at the end of last week’s contentious council meeting may have been the most productive thing said, “…we can disagree, but we shouldn’t be disagreeable.” Amen, Mr. Eberhart, Amen.
It’s never to late to be what you might have been, the expression goes, and I hope that’s true for the City of Winder and Barrow County. It’s past time for a return to reason and rationality in local government. Please, contact your commissioner and/or councilman and let him/her know what you think he/she is doing right and what you’d like to see go differently. After all, we’re in this handbasket, too, and too much is at stake not to get involved.
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