From 12:55 p.m. to 2:26 p.m.

 At 12:55 p.m. on a Sunday, at Ralph and Ary Chitwood's house in Harlan, Kentucky, they and their three children were probably enjoying Sunday dinner. While seven-year-old Mary Alice and three-and-a-half year old Thelma could feed themselves, Ary was probably helping one-and-a-half year old Jack with his meal. 

With dinner finished, Ary -- maybe with help from Mary Alice -- cleared the table, washed and put away the dishes, and bundled up any leftovers she had. (Before doing all of that, I'm sure she cleaned up Jack and took off his bib.)

Meanwhile, Ralph flipped on the radio, settled into a chair, and read the Sunday paper, while Thelma played on the floor in the living room or maybe in the bedroom she shared with Mary Alice. 

If Mary Alice, Thelma, and Jack had gone outside to play, Ary no doubt would have reminded them to put on their coats, hats, and mittens because it was cold outside, and told the two older girls to "keep an eye on Jack!"

Finished with her chores, Ary settled into a chair in the living room with Ralph, maybe with mending or darning socks; or perhaps she read the paper when Ralph was finished. 

*****

In another part of Harlan County, Rosspoint, Mary Sergent and her five children were probably enjoying a Sunday dinner cooked by Mary with help from 15-year-old Ruth, her oldest and only daughter. The four boys -- Wallace, 12; Arlie, 11; Tony, 9; and Jerry, 2 -- probably chatted around the table. In the back of Mary's mind were thoughts of her husband John, who'd just been killed in an accident last month. Occasionally, either Mary or Ruth would give Jerry some help with feeding himself.  

After dinner, either Mary or Ruth or both would probably wash and put away dishes and store any leftovers (after cleaning up Jerry and taking off his bib.). 

The boys, full of energy as preteen boys are, would probably have yanked on coats, hats, and mittens and ran outside to run off their energy. Or perhaps some of them stayed inside, read the paper, and played the radio in the background. 

*****

Up in Reading, Pennsylvania, Irwin and Emma Rapp were also finishing Sunday dinner with their children, Alice, 13; Curtis, 9; Shirley, 7; and Sylvia; 3. In Alice's mind were the additional responsibilities she was taking on helping her father, a banker, who had a heart condition. He would die six months later. In Pennsylvania, snow might have already been on the ground that Sunday. Or perhaps it was waiting for Christmas. 

With dinner finished, and Emma -- and perhaps Alice and/or Curtis helping -- washed dishes and put away leftovers. Alice turned her attention to her father while Emma, or maybe Curtis, turned the radio on. 

****

Farther north, in Mount Olive, New Jersey, in the house of Frank and Mabel Seward, they were perhaps finishing Sunday dinner as well. On Frank's mind were the cows in the dairy farm he ran; how to keep them healthy and producing milk.  He was an immigrant from England and had built a life in his new country. Since their marriage, Frank and Mabel had had the challenge of running a farm and raising a family that eventually numbered six children, Rena, 27; Elizabeth, 25; Mildred, 22; Annabel, 20; Caroline, 17; Reginald, 15 and the only boy; and Vera, 11.  

Rena would have been 27 had she not died earlier that year.  Her absence at the dinner table surely left a hole that nothing could fill.  

Elizabeth and Mildred may have been married by then, perhaps cleaning up after their own Sunday dinners.  

Annabel, Caroline, Reginald, and Vera, after enjoying dinner, may have gone outside in the New Jersey cold. Or maybe they wanted to stay inside, where it was warm.  

One of them put the radio on.

****

From 12:55 p.m. to 2:26 p.m., they went about their tasks in blissful ignorance. They played. They did chores. They rested. They talked about the coming week, what they would need to do . . . and since Christmas was only 18 days away, they talked about "what are we going to do for Christmas?"

At 2:26 p.m., during a football game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, with the announcer pattering and the crowd cheering, the sound stopped, quickly replaced with, "We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from United Press."

Over the sound, the audience -- probably mostly men -- groaned at the interruption. Who wants their football game interrupted?

Then the words:  "Flash. Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Five words that changed everything.

It was 7:55 a.m., 80 years ago today, when those first bombs dropped. 

In the four places I just described, it was 12:55 p.m.

The news broke an hour and a half later. 

For an hour and a half, husbands, wives, mothers, and children from the four families I just described did all of the things I just described, not knowing that five words were about to drop and upend their entire lives. 

Bombs dropped and exploded, men shot back, ships sank, trapping men inside, fires started, people panicked . . . and those four families had no idea.  Not until a football game was interrupted, not until the radio started buzzing with variants on those five words:  Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the days that followed, new words became part of their vocabulary:  Ration points. Ration cards. Draft. Enlistment. Blue stars and gold stars in windows. V-mail. Recycling. 

And one person in those four families, Reginald -- who then began using his middle name of Frank -- was drafted and became a calibration technician; the person who made sure that the instruments in the airplanes the Army Air Corps depended on worked.

Why did I choose to focus on those four particular families?

Irwin and Emma Rapp were the parents of my mother-in-law, Alice.

Frank and Mabel Seward were the parents of my father-in-law, Frank.

Ralph and Ary Chitwood were the parents of my mother, Thelma.

Mary Sergent was the mother of my father, Tony. 

 The parents were the members of the Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw called them.  The children were the members of the Silent Generation.  Both of them "bucked up" and did what had to be done. Whether it be following the draft, as Reginald Frank did; whether it be producing food, as Frank Seward did; or growing a Victory Garden, as all of these families probably did.  

They all learned to do without because of a greater cause. They learned the meaning of sacrifice. 

Our parents and grandparents rarely talked about the Depression and the war. They didn't talk about the sacrifices they made; or if they did, it was in the tone of, "this was what we had to do, and we did it".

Today, if Pearl Harbor were attacked, it would not take an hour-and-a-half to learn about it. It would probably only take a minute-and-a-half, and we'd see the "breaking news" alert on our smartphones or TVs. We wouldn't have the bliss of ignorance my parents and grandparents did.

Eighty years ago, our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents heard five words that upended their world. Like 9/11 for my generation and my son's generation, you can see the before/after, the abrupt dividing point in history where you can't go back to the way things were before.   

Eighty years later, how would we react? 

Would we take the lessons learned from the Greatest and Silent Generation and do what we needed to do?

Or, as I fear we Boomers, Xers, and Millenials are doing, would we object and complain that "my freedom" and "my rights" are the most important thing?

Would we come together?

Or would we fall apart?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Four days apart

Rachel and I are the same age, except that I am four days older. 

By coincidence, her father got a job on my birthday — and just in time, because he needed money to help support this second daughter.

Like me, she’s the youngest of two girls, and she probably grew up squabbling with her big sister. 

All similarities end there.

Unlike me, she didn’t spend the first six weeks of her life in an incubator. 

Unlike me, she was not born in the Appalachian Mountains.

And unlike me, she would never know her father.  

Because today, 58 years ago, her father was murdered.

Ever since I learned that Rachel and I were about the same age, I’ve wondered about her; I’ve wondered about the twists and turns of fate that landed her where she was and me where I am. 

Why this obsession with a woman named Rachel, born four days after me?

Well, the main reason lies with her full name:  Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald.

If that last name sounds familiar, it should. 

Her father, Lee Harvey Oswald, 58 years ago, on November 22, 1963, pointed a rifle out a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, pulled the trigger three times, and murdered President John F. Kennedy. He also seriously wounded Texas Governor John Connally. 

Two days later, a man named Jack Ruby wormed his way into a supposedly secure police garage, pulled a .38 Colt revolver, and shot Lee Oswald in the abdomen. Despite the efforts of doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital (ironically, the same hospital that treated Kennedy), Oswald died an hour and a half later. 

Rachel was 35 days old, probably just beginning to smile, and mostly unaware of the drama around her. 

In March, 1995,  Texas Monthly wrote an article on this daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. The article told about the life she’d led as a child and young woman. Rachel, in 1995, was working as a waitress to pay her way through nursing school.

Rachel was seven when her mother told her and her older sister, June, that Kenneth Porter, the man they knew as their father, was not their biological father.  Their biological father was Lee Oswald and “he had been accused of killing the president of the United States.” 

That, Rachel realized, was why her school bus sometimes got followed by the news, why some people shot at their mailbox, why sometimes kids asked her if her daddy shot the President. But at home, Rachel said, “we were just trying to be a normal family.” They didn’t really talk about what had happened. 

In the town she grew up in, Rockwell, Texas, everyone knew Rachel’s mother. They were “of interest to people” and “for the most part, people were nice, but they were always whispering things.” 

Despite the assertions of a 1982 tabloid article that claimed that the Oswald kids didn’t have “dogs or dates”, Rachel, as a teenager, was healthy and active, involved in gymnastics and ballet, made good grades, was a varsity cheerleader, and was even voted “most popular student” by her classmates.

She wondered, when do I tell a date about Lee? On the first date? The second? The third? She said, “What it boils down to is that every time I meet someone—every person at a party, every customer I wait on, every classmate, every teacher, every would-be friend—I ask myself, Do they know who I am? Are they looking at me that way because of me or because I’m the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald?”

Her opinion on the JFK assassination? “Lee was this 24-year-old guy . . . that got himself in over his head . . . I don’t know who else was involved, but clearly it was too big of a deal for one twenty-four-year-old kid to do by himself.” She continued, “There are just too many loose ends for it all to be dumped on my father. . . I’m sorry for my father’s pain, but basically I just want it to be over, one way or another, especially by the time I have kids.”

She described herself as a regular person who drove a beat up car, who had a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences, but that there were still people “who refuse to believe that I could be normal.  That’s what I hope my kids will never have to go through.”

Rachel did graduate from nursing school and found a job. 

Keith Kachtick, the writer of the Texas Monthly article, called Rachel “the daughter of a presidential assassin, an attractive and healthy woman who apparently wanted nothing more from life than to be a good nurse. If it is true that poetry is the silence between words, then there is something genuinely poetic about the life Rachel Oswald is quietly living between the headlines.”

I am four days older than this woman. Call it fate, coincidence, whatever you will . . . but just suppose I had been the one born October 20, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, and she had been the one born on October 16 in Harlan, Kentucky? 

Suppose my father was Lee Oswald, the man who killed Kennedy? 

Suppose her father was a small-town teacher? 

Suppose my mother had to explain who my father was? 

And suppose I had to grow up in that shadow, wondering if the people who knew me, or knew my name — was it about me, the person I am; or it is about my father? Do they want a relationship with me because they like me, they are attracted to me, they think I’m nice, cool, etc . . . or do they just want a link with an infamous historical personage? 

Would I, as Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald did, forge a path for myself, working to have a successful career?

Or perhaps would I have tried to capitalize on whatever fame I could get from the last name of “Oswald”? 

Would Rachel have decided to become a nurse, or possibly found another career?

I didn’t find any other information about Rachel after that 1995 article, which tells me that she’s mostly succeeded in living the normal life that she wanted. If she is still a nurse at 58, I hope that career is successful for her . . . and I wonder, too, how she has handled this pandemic. Does she suffer from burnout and exhaustion, like so many of our medical professionals have and do? 

Two women, born four days apart, who have never met, probably never will meet, who share nothing in common but a birth month and year . . . and it makes me wonder, had our circumstances and positions been reversed, who would we be, what would our lives be like, and what would the world be like? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

 

 

Forty years

Forty years ago today, I took a splash of faith.

After reading the Bible and studying with two women, I was baptized at the University Church of Christ on November 11, 1981.  I was 18.

I grew up religious. I attended the Baptist church with my family. Around the age of eight, I went forward and "prayed the prayer" with a very nice older woman who'd asked me, "Did you come to be saved?" 

We had all stood up and "gone forward" that particular day. I vaguely remember an older gentleman coming to the house and talking with us; my grandmother also told me much later that "your mother asked, do you understand what this means? And you said, yes."

I think my parents went forward because they wanted to place membership at that particular church. 

The next week, my sister and I were both baptized. I told the preacher my name and he said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

I started reading the Bible daily after a Pioneer Girls leader challenged me to read a verse every night. I thought, "I can do better than that, I can read a chapter every night!"

I prayed daily, read the Bible daily, tried to live a Christian life. 

So why get involved with a Church of Christ? Why get baptized again?

Well, for one thing, if I understand Acts 2:38 correctly, we're to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. I was not. 

Number two, if this was what God said, then yes, I wanted to do what God said.

Finally, and honestly . . . I was afraid of going to hell.

So I did it.

I didn't know at that time that the church I'd been baptized into was considered a cult. Or, at the very least, controversial. 

The church I was part of was also part of a network of churches loosely associated with the Crossroads Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida. They had a school of preaching and sent out preachers to other churches.  Crossroads had had great success with reaching their community, particularly college students. They used a variety of methods such as small group Bible studies and prayer partners, or discipleship partners. They encouraged people to turn away from their sins and to lead a life pleasing to God. They encouraged people to study their Bibles daily, pray daily, have close relationships with other Christians, confess their sins to other Christians, and share their faith with non-Christians.

None of those things are bad in and of themselves.

What happened at Crossroads and at other Crossroads-related churches was that these very good things became a method of control. The "prayer partner" relationship, instead of the one-on-one discipling method it was supposed to be, became a one-over-one relationship, with, "I'm the older Christian, so you need to do what I tell you," It also became a session where you were asked, "What are you studying in your quiet time (a period of daily prayer and Bible study)?" "What sins have you committed that you need to confess?" "How many people have you shared your faith with?" If you weren't having a "quiet time", why weren't you? If you weren't sharing your faith, why not? If you weren't having visitors at our weekly Bible studies (designed to attract non-Christians), why weren't you?

That term, "sharing your faith," really meant "inviting people to church, including total strangers." The more people you invited to church, and the more visitors you had at events, the more spiritual you were considered. And if those people you studied with were baptized into Christ, they were considered your "fruit" and you were considered to have "borne fruit". And the more people you lead to Christ, the more spiritual you are considered.

I have heard of at least one person who made it their goal to "share their faith" with every person they made eye contact with. Another person vowed to fast until they shared their faith . . . and fasted for eight days.

Groups of Christians that met together weekly as "discipleship groups" became meetings where you were asked "how many people have you invited to church this week? How many people are you studying the Bible with? If not, why not?" 

I learned much good during my years in Tallahassee, I learned ways to actually study the Bible, not just read it. I learned the value of Christian relationships. I learned that it was okay to pray and tell God how you felt, not just, "Dear God, thank you for this day, please be with everyone, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen."  I enjoyed going out on dates and getting to know other guys. 

But after five years in Tallahassee, I was exhausted and burned out, spiritually. The things that were meant to be good were vicious and controlling. Leaders became controlling and angry when they felt that you were not measuring up. After the last group Bible study I attended before I graduated from college ended, I felt a vast sense of relief that I would never have to worry about inviting someone to Bible study ever again. 

This is not the way to live a Christian life, riddled with guilt that you hadn't "done enough" and riddled with fear that someone would rebuke you -- sometimes very harshly -- for not inviting enough people to church events, or for not having a daily "quiet time", or basically, for not living the way they thought you should live. I had a prayer partner one time who walked into my dorm room, had a conversation with me and my roommate, and then at the end asked us, "Have you thought about rearranging your room?" I got rather ticked off and told her that we'd arranged the room the way it was because we only had two electrical outlets and were trying to get our stuff in a place so we could plug in what we needed to plug in. 

I deliberately moved to another church that had been part of the Crossroads movement. The church I moved to, I'd heard they taught grace, and I badly needed it. Right at the time I got there, in 1987, the Crossroads movement morphed into the Boston Movement. Chuck Lucas, the preacher at Crossroads, was fired for "recurring sins" in his life. One of his proteges, Kip McKean, was then preaching at the Boston Church of Christ.  Kip is bold and charismatic in his preaching, and he took over as the de facto leader of the Crossroads movement. He and the leaders under him began visiting churches, "encouraging" (i.e. practically ordering) the pastor to move to Boston for additional training, and then sending a replacement preacher in. At least two churches I'm aware of, one in Atlanta, the other in Tampa, split as a result of the actions by people from Boston.

My church, in Miami, refused to be taken over . . . so people from Boston planted a new church in Miami. At the same time, my church was having serious financial problems. So, in 1989, the solution the leaders came up with was to start meeting in independent house churches. It was sold to us mostly as "this is the way the early church met". There were those who decided not to go that route and went to other churches. I went the route of the house churches. 

The idea of an independent house church looks good on paper: having a small group of believers meeting weekly and sharing what they've learned, praying together, helping those who are struggling, etc. I think there's a lot we can learn from a house church movement. But we did house churches as a direct result of the abuse we'd experienced at the hands of Crossroads/Boston, and I think that was a mistake. We were so desperate to get away from what we called legalism that we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

By 1993, I was engaged to be married, and my father was ill with ALS. He would die four weeks before my wedding. 

Right before we got married, I told my now-husband, "The house churches are not working. We need to get out."

It took a year, but we eventually did get out. I took a job in Atlanta, and my husband and I moved and went back to a traditional church setting. We've been there since 1994, and while the place has had its ups and downs and turnarounds, I know that churches are not perfect and I believe the place we're at is doing the best it can. I believe our leaders love God, and they do not try to preach a "formula" for a perfect Christian life. 

Where am I, after 40 years? 

I call myself an imperfect follower of a perfect God. If someone asks, are you a Christian, I will gladly answer, "Yes." I struggle at times with believing God loves me. I wonder about what is literally true in the Bible and what is allegorical. I get very frustrated with "Scripture wars"; such as, "Acts 2:38 says you have to be baptized in order to be saved," "Oh, yeah! Well, I'll see your Acts 2:38 and raise you an Ephesians 2:8, where it says you're saved by grace!" And I can name more and more. 

And yet . . . if God exists, if Jesus of Nazareth was God in the flesh, who is the perfect, sinless sacrifice for us, if he did rise from the dead and go back to heaven, and if the Bible is true . . . that Bible says that God is love, and that God so loved the world. That means me. 

I don't understand a lot about God. I don't understand why evil and pain exist, especially when innocents are the victims of that evil and pain. I don't understand certain parts of the Bible where God commanded the complete destruction of a people, including men, women, and children. I don't understand why some prayers get answered "yes" and why some prayers get answered "no". 

There are also the questions I've seen people ask, such as, "Was the world created in six literal, 24-hour days?" "Can women lead/preach, etc. to both men and women?" "Is homosexuality a sin?" "Is there a  hell with a literal lake of fire? Does everyone get to go to heaven? Or are non-believers just 'annihilated'?" "Does someone have to be immersed in water in order to be saved? What about those who don't believe that, or who believe that immersion is 'an outward sign of an inward grace'?"

To be honest, the questions exhaust me. The extra-Biblical expectations placed on people also exhaust me, especially the expectations placed on women:  be a perfect "keeper of the home", which means household tips, how to please your husband, how to raise your kids "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (preferably by homeschooling them). 

But, when I strip it all down to what I understand the "basics" of Christianity to be, it comes out to: God loved us first. God created us in His image. God wants a relationship with us. He sent Jesus (God incarnate) to give himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. (I have heard Jesus' death on the cross interpreted as, "You're so awful you made God kill himself." That ignores Jesus' statement in the book of John, where Jesus himself said, no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord.")
But Jesus didn't just die for our sins. He came back to life -- the ultimate triumph over death. He went back to heaven and we're still waiting for him to come back to gather His people. 

If I accept that I'm a sinner (which I am) and I believe that Jesus came to forgive my sins (which he did), and I repent -- turn away -- from my sins, and -- I believe -- if I participate in the act of baptism upon confessing that I believe Jesus is Lord, and I want him to be in charge of my life and live how he wants me to live, then I am saved. I can call myself "child of God", "Christian," "disciple," etc.  And God will not leave me to wander in the wilderness. He gave me three things to help me: 1. The Bible, 2. the Holy Spirit, 3. Other Christians. He does expect me to turn away from my sins, but when I sin, God promises that if I confess my sins, he will forgive them. 

I do struggle with the fear of hell. Whatever hell is, I do not want to be there. More and more, though, I want to serve God because I love him back. Not because I'm afraid of what he'll do to me if I don't obey him.  He loved me first, I want to love him back. 

There are answers to questions I don't have. The longer I live, the less certainty I have. 

But after forty years? 

Even with the struggles, even with unanswered questions, even when I go "Huh?" when I hear/read certain things . . . I keep coming back to, there is a God, he is wiser than I and he knows best . . . and he loves me. He can take my pain and anger because he is bigger than my pain and anger. I don't know "why (fill in the blank)", but he does, and if he is a God of love -- which I believe he is -- I can trust him with the pain, doubt, unanswered questions, etc. that I have. 

It's been forty years of pain, struggle, sometimes triumph, questions unanswered, faith challenged.

I still choose to believe.

I still choose to put myself into the hands of a loving God. 

I look forward to more years with him.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Dare I hope?

When you live in Atlanta and follow sports, you learn very quickly to -- in the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts -- "get used to disappointment."

Atlanta is the home of the team that blew a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Someone later commented that Atlanta hadn't been burned that badly since Sherman in 1864.

So when the Atlanta Braves made it to the National League Championship Series, I didn't pay much attention . . . until they started winning.

The last time Atlanta was in the World Series was 1999 (the year my son was born). The last time Atlanta won the World Series was 1995, the year after we moved here. In the years since 1995, Atlanta has done a good job of winning their division, the National League East, but just couldn't seem to "seal the deal" and get to the championships. 

The last few seasons have ranged from good to mediocre and just plain bad. 

This year, bleacherreport.com said this about the Braves at the All-Star break (a game Atlanta was scheduled to host but that was pulled due to controversy about Georgia's voting laws, a controversy I will not get into here): " Relative to preseason expectations, the Atlanta Braves might by baseball's most disappointing team in 2021 because of their 44-45 record . . . A year after coming one win away from reaching the World Series, little has gone right."

But they did go on to say, "The wide-open nature of the National League East division of the National League East division means they are still only four games back in the standings even with a sub -.500 record, and that could be enough to chase another postseason appearance, especially with [first baseman] Freddie Freeman headed for free agency."

Despite that sub-.500 record, Atlanta staged a comeback, and last week, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two.  The morning after that game, I picked up my phone, dreading to see the results, and when I saw "Braves win!" I said to myself, "Yes!"

Now our city has been seized with World Series fever, everyone who owns any sort of Braves paraphernalia has dusted it off and put it on, and I'm sure that you cannot buy, beg, borrow, or steal anything with the name "Atlanta Braves" on it!

So dare I hope?

Dare I hope that this will be the year that the Braves will repeat 1995 and win the World Series?

Dare I hope that at least one of our sports teams will give us a reason to celebrate, especially in this year two of COVID?

Last night, in Houston, the Braves beat the Houston Astros 6-2. Game 2 is scheduled for tonight in Houston, and the Braves will come back for Game 3 on Friday. The slogan around there is, "Party like it's 1999!" and I'm guessing that Truist Park, the home field for the Braves, will blast the song so that it can be heard through the neighborhood at full volume. 

Dare I hope that the Braves will pull it off, despite the Astros having home field advantage?

Can Freddie Freeman and the guys do it?

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but when the Series comes around, I pay attention to who's playing, and I may or may not have a favorite team. 

This year, I'm rooting for the Braves.

If they win, I will treat myself to a large bowl of chocolate.

But, if my hopes are dashed, I will drown my sorrows . . .in a large bowl of chocolate.

So either way, I win. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"He'll never amount to anything."

When my Uncle Jerry was a young boy, a teacher told his mother -- my Granny Mary -- that "he'll never amount to anything."

Why she said that, I don't know.  Maybe it was because he didn't know how to tie his shoes yet (a skill which, by the way, I didn't learn until I was eight.) My father stepped in and tied my uncle's shoes . . . while my uncle read a comic book. (He couldn't tie his shoes yet, but he could read!)

But he spent the rest of his nearly 82 years of life proving her wrong.

My Uncle Jerry was born in Harlan, Kentucky in November of 1939, into a world that was just beginning World War II. He was the youngest of five children, and too young to remember the personal tragedy that hit nearly two years later, when his father was killed in an accident. 

He grew up in a world without a father, and in a world shaped by World War II and its aftermath. 

I don't know what made him pick electrical engineering as a path in life. But Harlan, Kentucky was not the place to do it. 

So he went to college and eventually earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a popular place for people from rural Kentucky to end up. One of his big brothers was already there. (Two of my mother's siblings also moved from Harlan to Cincinnati.) 

His doctoral dissertation had something to do with neutron-irradiated silicone. As an adult, I worked at a university library and used their interlibrary loan computer to look up Uncle Jerry's dissertation. When I found it, I read off the title to the other woman working at the reference desk.  She just looked at me and said, "Sure!"

The boy who would "never amount to anything" eventually moved to Clearwater, Florida, got a job at Honeywell, and taught engineering at the University of South Florida. He also traveled worldwide, visiting countries such as Israel, Japan, and Poland. I remember the slide shows he would have when he'd come back from one of his trips. I still have a pin he gave me after a trip to Moscow, an Olympic pin with "Mockba '80", It was the Olympics that the US ended up boycotting. 

Uncle Jerry would eventually live from coast to coast doing consulting work. He's lived in Colorado Springs, Bellingham, WA, Palmyra, New York (where he lived on what he described as "23 acres of weeds") and finally in Sarasota, Florida.

He and my father were very close, as befits the last two members of a family.  He once said about my dad that "he was my hero before I ever knew about heroes." 

My father fell ill with ALS in 1992, My now-husband proposed in May of 1993, and I knew there was a chance my father might not live to see me get married. 

So I wrote Uncle Jerry and asked, if Daddy can't give me away, can you?

He called me and said three words:  "I'd be honored."

My father died on September 11th, 1993. I was married on October 9, 1993, with my Uncle Jerry walking me down the aisle.  He also loaned Frank his wedding ring for our pictures because I had forgotten to bring Frank's. That is a funny story now. Then, it was tragic.

After his first marriage ended, he married again in May of 1980 to a woman who made him happy for many years. That marriage also brought him three stepchildren.  He had no biological children, but he stepped in as a father figure. 

It devastated my Uncle Jerry when his wife died several years ago. 

The last time I saw Uncle Jerry was right before my mother died.  He came to see her on the same day I did.  He told met, through tears, that you knew you were getting old when you started losing the people you loved. 

Uncle Jerry loved his work and contributed much. My father told me that Jerry was one of maybe ten people in the country that knew what he knew. 

In the end, all he wanted to do was go home. 

His health would not permit him to go back to Harlan, so he settled for assisted living in Ohio. It helped that his sister-in-law was at the same facility.  

Just a few days ago, I learned that he had a wound on his foot that was not healing. He made the choice to refuse amputation and signed paperwork for hospice care. He was going to leave the world on his own terms. 

Last night, at 11:15 p.m., October 20, 2021, he did just that. 

His stepdaughter, who's spent time and energy and love caring for him and keeping the family informed, told us that Uncle Jerry's body will be cremated and the ashes spread at Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, a place he enjoyed taking his grandkids (the children of one of his stepdaughters). 

So in a way, he will go home.

My uncle, Dr. Jerry Sergent, will be remembered as an engineer who traveled the world sharing his knowledge and who gave his knowledge to his many students. 

He will be remembered as a man who would live life on his own terms.  

He loved his family, his brothers and sister and sisters-in-law, and his nieces and nephews. 

Quite an accomplishment for someone who was never supposed to amount to anything.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Riot Reflections, 50 years later

Had the riots at Dixie M. Hollins High School in St. Petersburg, Florida happened today, I would probably be writing about a body count, who the shooter was, and what weapons he used.

But it was 1971, and what happened at Dixie M. Hollins High School resulted in fighting, injuries, multiple arrests, and at least one stabbing.

I was seven years old in September of 1971, the first school year when court-ordered busing went into effect in an effort to achieve racial integration. One of the school districting lines went down my street. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to Northwest Elementary. Instead, I was able to walk four blocks to Westgate Elementary. 

I didn't understand the controversy about busing.  That first year, I mainly remember the "bus students" listed on the roll in my third grade class.  They were Tonetta, Rita, Lolita, and Valarie, they were placed at the end of the roll and called out separately. 

But during September and October of 1971, Dixie M. Hollins High School was embroiled in controversy, a controversy that would end up making national news.  

In December, 2015, Tampa Bay Times reporter John Romano looked back on those days. He described the students who lived through them as "kids who fought with fists and wounded with words . . . who saw cops on the school's rooftop with rifles and saw adults inciting violence from across the street . . . who saw football games and school days canceled for fear of race riots."

It started a week after the school year began, when Dixie Hollins' principal got on the intercom and announced that the Confederate battle flag, the "Stars and Bars", would no longer be permitted on campus.  

For a school whose fight song was "Dixie" and whose athletic teams were called the "Rebels," this spelled trouble. 

The next day, angry adults, Confederate battle flags in hand, stood across the street, protesting.

For the next couple of weeks, they drove up and down the street, the Stars and Bars protruding from the backs of their cars, flapping in the breeze, as Black students arrived on campus. 

Tension built.  Fights broke out.  Students were sent home early due to fears of violence. 

The week of October 11, 1971, all hell broke loose. 

On October 12, 1971, the school had to be closed after what the St. Petersburg Times described as a "fist-swinging, rock-throwing, slogan-shouting melee." Afterwards, the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "God, I'm tired. They didn't have any courses like this in school administration." 

The next day, a 16-year-old girl brought a steak knife to school and stabbed a deputy in the chest.  Fortunately, the wound was minor.

Eventually, things settled down, though not without simmering unrest under the surface.

In 2020, although the official name of the school remains Dixie M. Hollins High School, the school decided to brand themselves as "Hollins High", and gave themselves a new nickname, the "Royals."

The irony here is that Dixie Martin Hollins, the first superintendent of schools for Pinellas County, supported education for all students, no matter what race, and he often hired people from Black colleges and universities. 

But with the first name "Dixie", the nickname "Rebels", and a mascot resembling a Confederate colonel, "we'd still be tied to a past that we needed to break free from," according to principal Bob Florio.  

This school year marks 50 years since those days of tension and rioting. I remember little about it except reading bits about it in the paper and seeing bits of it on the news. Two of the people arrested during that October week of violence were the father and sister of a girl in my sister's Girl Scout troop.

That Friday, I went with my mother and sister to drop my sister off at weekend camp. The father was there, and he and my mother had a long discussion. I heard none of it. Instead, as a seven-year-old going on eight, all I wondered were two things:  1. Why was he here and not in jail, since he'd been arrested (he was probably out on bail), and 2. Where were the marks of the handcuffs on his wrists? 

Such is the innocence of a little girl. 

I'd love to say that we've progressed in 50 years. 

But school violence? Confederate flag controversies? Racial tensions? 

Little, if anything, has changed.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Days 5-10 . . .

 I will just make it short and sweet:  

QUARANTINE IS DONE! 

I still have a mild amount of nausea but I can eat and nothing's coming back up.

And I will still wear a mask and wash/sanitize my hands.

But I can get out of the house.

Tomorrow I celebrate with a haircut!!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Days 2-5

 Both my son and I have now tested positive for COVID, and I’m having a hard time explaining why he tested positive when he got his shots. 

We are now all on quarantine, because my husband has also been told he can’t go back to work until I test negative. 

The biggest enemy of quarantine is boredom. While I have more advantages than my grandparents had when/if they were in quarantine, boredom is a universal problem. There are only so many games of solitaire you can play on an iPad, only so many websites you can visit. I fried my brain on too many solitaire games a couple of days ago. 

Tomorrow none of us will be at church.  We will go back to the days of online church, where I will make communion bread and we will dig out the last of the grape juice to drink. 

Quarantine also totally throws off an internal clock. I’ve lost a sense of what day it actually is and even had to check my phone to see what today’s date was. 

Fortunately, I fall into the category of “not that sick” and my husband took advantage of that . . . By having us go and do yard work in the back yard this afternoon. He mowed, I ran the edger. 

Tonight I got a nice infusion of courage from the movie “Darkest Hour”, the story of the first weeks of Winston Churchill’s term as prime minister in 1940.

None of us are lying in bed feverish and coughing. 

My release date should come on September 29th, barring another positive COVID test.  The test has already been scheduled.  

And I took advantage of Instacart to restock necessary supplies of apples, bananas and chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I had to settle for dark chocolate Reese’s cups rather than milk chocolate ones. :: places hand dramatically to forehead :: Oh, the humanity! Life is so unfair! 

On the other hand, if the lack of milk chocolate Reese’s Cups is an indication of how unfair life is, I think that is something I can put up with. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Day 1

 I have been ill off and on since around Labor Day. The worst of it was around the beginning of September, when I had a bad sore throat and it hurt to swallow.

I felt better right after Labor Day. Then I relapsed.

Finally, I did what I probably should have done when this whole thing started.

I signed up for a COVID test. 

The process took about five minutes and involved swishing a long-handled Q Tip in one nostril while the person counted to 12, then repeating the process in the other nostril. For those of you that had a COVID test where the swab was shoved up your nose almost to your brain, no, this was not like that. You just had to get enough to be tested.

After said swishing was completed, I broke off the cotton portion of the Q Tip into a vial filled with liquid, sealed it in plastic which contained the ominous orange and black warning "BIOHAZARD", then dropped it into the collection box. All of this was done at our pharmacy's drive thru. 

The test said "one to two days" and I had mine done Sunday, so I didn't expect to hear until Tuesday what my results were.

Last night my phone dinged with my results.

I tested positive.

First off, I was shocked but not really surprised. It's a shock when you see "positive" on a test where you wanted a "negative." Second, even though I've been vaccinated, I've heard about breakthrough COVID and I figure this is what it is. Third, I'm grateful I did have the vaccine because I would have been much sicker without it. 

Today I called my doctor's office.  I am to quarantine for the next 10 days. And my husband and son need to get tested.

When I told my son, he didn't get why he needed to be tested because he'd already had his shots. But I got him tested anyway. And my husband is scheduled for tomorrow. 

I am not really that sick. I just have lagging congestion, the occasional cough, and residual fatigue.

Last year, I would have been terrified at a positive COVID diagnosis. 

This year, I'm just annoyed because this morning, I was on either phone, e-mail or text notifying everyone who needed to be notified and changing appointments that needed to be changed. (I'm reminded of my mother in law's comment after she had a seizure -- probably due to a lack of magnesium -- a number of years ago. Her complaint was, it's in the middle of a busy week!) 

But, I'll take annoyance over hospitalization any day of the week. 

I can't use "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" as my theme song in this particular snarkfest because I don't "feel fine". If anyone can find a funny song about illness, send it my way. In the meantime, I will be waving from the sick room.  Cheers! 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Getting on with it, 20 years later

What more can I say about 9/11 that hasn't already been said, twenty years later?

We who are old enough to remember where we were, we've talked about where we were when we found out and how we felt. 

We've been through a 20-year war that began as a direct result of 9/11 and just ended in chaos a few weeks ago, and that's left everyone wondering, was it worth it? 

"Homeland Security" is now a regular phrase in the nation's vocabulary. 

We've grown used to the TSA's pat-downs, to taking off our shoes before we go through security screening, to buying 3 oz. bottles for our liquids.

This year's graduating seniors weren't even born when 9/11 happened. They learn about it in history class. 

Too many of us are too suspicious of anyone that doesn't look like us. 

And every September 11th, for too many, the bandage gets ripped off the wound, leaving it raw and exposed. We hear the reading of the names at Ground Zero, see the tears, see the photos of lost loved ones. 

Some want to remember. Some want to move on. 

Today, one of the "name readers" at Ground Zero specifically remembered her sister. I think the sister's name was Cathy.  

Cathy's sister said that one of Cathy's phrases was, "Get over it."

And then she said, "We've never gotten over it, but we've gotten on with it."

Getting on with it.

Maybe that is what should sum up these 20 years since 9/11. We have gotten on with it. 

But how well have we gotten on with it? 

Sixty-five children of 9/11 victims grew up to be first responders. 

Others enlisted in the military, wanting to serve and defend their country. 

And others looked for meaning in this tragedy. Some found a way to "get on with it" by serving others. 

Others have not.

They have "gotten on with it" by pointing fingers of blame at people who were not to blame, and encouraging hatred of people that should never be hated.

They have "gotten on with it" by using the phrase "America First" to excuse their hatred towards people and ideologies they do not like. 

Which leads to the question:  How am I "getting on with it"?

I'm remembering a personal loss today, in addition to the losses on 9/11:  my father died on September 11th, 1993, after fighting with Lou Gehrig's disease. He would probably be the type of person to say, "Get over it."

I also lost my mother in 2017. 

Like everyone, I am navigating a world dealing with a pandemic. 

I've spent nearly 20 years dealing with the reality of autism, the losses that it sometimes brings and the many gains it has brought.

There are days I seethe in anger and frustration at the finger-pointing and blaming going on in today's society. I fear that another 9/11 will not unite us. Instead, it will break us. 

My heart is especially broken over Christians fighting Christians over how to handle the pandemic, how to respond to racial issues, how to deal with the current political climate, and other subjects. 

So where do I go?  How do I "get on with it"? How do we all "get on with it"? 

Well, the longer I live, the fewer answers I have. 

But for me, I have to look to who is outside myself, and that is God. I know Him as someone who knows and understands my anger and pain, and my questions, and who can take it. I don't understand Him at times, and I don't understand at times why He continues to allow pain and evil in this world. 

And yet, I believe, in spite of my anger, in spite of my pain, in spite of the many times I have shaken my fist at God and demanded to know, why are you allowing this to happen?  I still believe He loves me, I still believe He is a God of love, I still believe He exists, and I still believe He is there.  

So how do I get on with it?

I reach up, put my hand in His, and together, we move forward.

Today is a day to stop and remember. For some, it's a day to stop and grieve. 

For all of us, tomorrow will be another day to get on with it. 

So, to combine the words of Cathy's sister and the last words of Todd Beamer, one of the heroic passengers of United Flight 93 . . . Get on with it. Are you ready? Let's roll.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Anyone have a hobbit hole for rent?

Okay, guys, I need a hobbit hole. Preferably in New Zealand, although they are back in lockdown after one case of COVID. 

It all started on Tuesday, when I went to a new skin doctor and was told that I needed, among other things, to wear a pair of compression stockings. After hearing that, I feel like I should also be shopping for a walker and/or cane. (The stockings are for a good reason; to improve blood circulation, but I still can’t shake the feeling that these are for people older than I am! I will be 58 in October.) 

Yesterday, I measured my leg to get a proper fit for said stockings. My thigh circumference is bigger than Scarlett O’Hara’s waistline in Gone With the Wind! (No, I will not reveal my thigh measurements.) No wonder Southern women were always getting the vapors and fainting.  They couldn’t breathe! 

Next, I spent thirteen hours over two days proofreading a transcript littered with inaudibles, mistranscriptions, dropped words, dropped portions of sentences, and sentences that were completely dropped from the transcript.  This was not the court reporter’s fault; she was working under difficult circumstances. Nor is it my employer’s fault.  They work to meet deadlines from above.  The person who did the transcription . . . I’ll be charitable and say that they probably need plenty of practice.

Then yesterday, I started seeing reports about a truck parked near the US Capitol which allegedly had explosives.  After January 6th, that would be frightening enough.  

When I heard where the truck was, my eyes nearly popped.  

It would halfway make sense if that truck was parked outside of the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, or even the Jefferson Memorial.

But the place where this nutcase chose to park his truck and air his complaints was . . . The Library of Congress.

I’m a former librarian. What this guy did was not just unlawful and dangerous. It amounts to blasphemy!

I was left shaking my head and thinking, The Library of Congress? Of all places? 

****

My above comments should be read with an appropriate amount of snark. These below comments are meant to be read without snark. 

When the nutcase parked his truck, employees at the Library of Congress and surrounding buildings had to be evacuated. I wonder how many people had flashbacks to January 6th, especially the Capitol Police. When you hear the word “bomb” you have to take it seriously. Especially in this day and age. 

I snark about wearing compression stockings, but they’re for a good health reason. At least I know where I can get them. And I hope it will help my skin problems (I have stasis dermatitis on my left leg.)

My job can be stressful at times, but I’m employed. Many are not. 

I told my husband that my experience proofing that particular transcript was a new definition of hell . . . but Afghani refugees, and Afghanis who can’t get out — especially women and girls — are living their own hell which is much worse than me having to proofread a difficult transcript. 

But yeah, I’d still like to have a hobbit hole to hide out in, if for no other reason than to have an excuse for a second breakfast. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"I'm too young for this!"

Several years ago, a young man in the youth ministry replied, "Yes, ma'am," when I asked him a question.

Later, I said to his mother, "I appreciated his manners, but I'm too young to be a ma'am!"

We both laughed as I said that. 

Today, I had another episode of, "I'm too young for this!" 

It all began with a trip to the dermatologist's office. I've been having serious discoloration and itching on my left leg for some time; have had two biopsies, both showing "spongiotic dermatitis", and finally decided to try a new dermatologist.  When I made the appointment, I said "eczema" was my problem.

The dermatologist came into the examining room, took one look at my leg, and said, it's not eczema, you've got some fluid buildup there.  The official name for my condition is stasis dermatitis.  

He's prescribed me a skin cream and also told me that there's a skin cream that can help with the itching. 

He's also told me to get a pair of . . . wait for it . . . compression stockings.  

He explained that it was supposed to help with the fluid . . . but all I could think was, "Compression stockings?  Those are for old people. I'll be 58 in October.  I'm too young for this!"

I am also supposed to keep the left leg elevated above the heart when possible.   

I told the doc, "Gee, thanks," sarcastically.  Later, I apologized for my snarkiness and said that what I hoped was healthy snark was one of the ways I dealt with things.  I think the doc understood.  I did tell  him, in all seriousness, that at least this was something that I could do (and told the nurse afterwards that it's better than hearing, there's nothing you can do.) 

On the way out of the building where the doc's office is, I stopped at their pharmacy and got a bottle of the over the counter stuff to help with the itching. 

So, I will be off to the Internet, that purveyor of all things necessary (and most things unnecessary) to find myself a pair of compression stockings. 

And since I'm supposed to be keeping my leg elevated, I am sorely tempted to call my insurance company and ask if they would be willing to pay for a La-z-Boy recliner because I need it for medical purposes.

I am sure, however, that their answer -- delivered with the appropriate snark, of course -- will be, "No."

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Two vaults, two outcomes

On July 23, 1996, American gymnast Kerri Strug, competing in the Atlanta Olympic Games, sprinted down a vault runway and launched herself into the air.

When she landed, she badly injured her foot.

Believing that she needed to vault again for Team USA to win the team gold medal -- and told by her coach, Bela Karolyi, that she needed to "shake it off" -- she sprinted back down that runway, launched herself in the air, and this time, landed, held her balance on one foot, and saluted the judges.

Then she collapsed onto the mat in pain. 

Team USA had the gold medal, the first team gymnastics gold ever.

Hooray for the USA!  Hooray for Kerri! What grit, courage, and bravery, to push through the pain for her team! 

Fast forward 25 years. 

On July 27, 2021, American gymnast Simone Biles, competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games, sprinted down a vault runway and launched herself into the air.

While in the air, she realized that she didn't know where she was. She had what in gymnastics is called "the twisties." She had no idea of her body position in the air, and when you're a gymnast, that is dangerous.

Through sheer grit and athleticism, she landed her vault.

Then she had a conversation with her coaches. 

Then she took off her bar grips, which she'd put on to compete in the uneven bars, hugged her teammates, and sat down. 

The news broke moments later:  Simone Biles, the best gymnast in the world, had withdrawn from the team competition. 

The remaining gymnasts, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Grace McCallum, stepped up and won the silver team medal for Team USA. The Russian team, competing under the name "Russian Olympic Committee" due to a doping scandal by other Russian athletes, took the team gold for the first time since 1992.

Afterwards, Biles explained that she was not in the right head space and feared that she would cost Team USA any chance for a medal, so it was best for her to withdraw. She also said that she trusted her teammates to do the job. 

And instead of leaving the arena, she stayed in her sweats, gave chalk to her teammates, gave hugs and encouragement, and was the first one to go and congratulate the Russian team for winning the gold medal.

Immediately, the social media sphere lit up, with both commendation and condemnation.

"Simone did the right thing."
"Simone let her team down."
"Simone could have seriously injured herself." 

"Simone should have stayed home and given someone else the chance to compete!"

Many condemners trotted out Kerri Strug's 1996 vault as an example of grit, courage, and pushing through. "Kerri didn't let her team down like Simone did!"

A Twitterer commented that "the team lost". To the reply, "The team won a silver medal without her; that speaks to their talent," the Twitterer answered, "Silver medal. The first loser." Then he posted a video of Kerri Strug's 1996 vault with the comment,"Now that's bravery. That's putting the team first. Your 'silver medal stance' is a loser attitude. The US Olympic team didn't go there to 'win' second. Anything short of gold is failure."

I'm very glad that this person is not Simone's coach. 

In 1996, Kerri Strug felt that she had to push through to win a gold medal. It turned out that Kerri didn't need to do that vault. The US would have won gold without it. 

What the general public didn't know at the time was that Kerri Strug, and the rest of the Magnificent Seven, the Fierce Five, and the Final Five (the nicknames given to Team USA in 1996, 2012, and 2016 respectively) were the products of an abusive coaching system where injuries were either ignored or not taken seriously, emotional abuse was rampant, and their team doctor was a child molester.

In fact, a photo from the 1996 Olympics shows an injured Kerri Strug being helped off the floor by Bela Karolyi . . . straight into the arms of Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexual assault in 2018. 

I don't know if Nassar abused any of the team members in 1996. We do know that he abused the team members of the 2012 and 2016 team, along with nearly two hundred other women. Simone Biles is one of the women he abused. She stated in an interview that she's the last survivor of Larry Nassar's abuse to be competing, and as long as she's around, USA Gymnastics, the governing body of the sport, would not be able to sweep abuse under the rug. 

Kerri Strug probably felt that she could not say "no" to her coach, that she had to push through for that gold medal. For all intents and purposes, she didn't have a choice.

On July 23, 1996, Kerri Strug didn't have a choice but to run on an injured ankle lest she risk the wrath of her coach.

On July 27, 2021, Simone Biles had a choice, and she said, no. It is not safe for me to compete. 

Those that believe she let down her team, that she is a "quitter", she is "selfish", she is "a sociopath" (that latter comment is from Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA), let me ask you: are you willing to pay her medical bills if anything happens to her? If she breaks her neck like Russian gymnast Elena Mukhina did in 1980 and American gymnast Julissa Gomez did in 1988?  

Elena Mukhina lived as a paraplegic until her death in 2006.

Julissa Gomez lived as a quadriplegic in a coma until her death in 1991.

The day after Simone Biles withdrew from the team competition, she also withdrew from the all-around. It's uncertain whether she will compete in the individual apparatus events. 

I'm disappointed that I will not see her compete in the all-around. I'm sad that she did not compete in the rest of the team competition.

But Simone Biles does not owe me or anyone else an explanation or justification for her decisions. Simone Biles is not obligated to display herself for our entertainment. If she does not feel safe competing, whether it be for physical reasons, mental reasons, or both, she has the absolute right to say, "No, I'm not going to do it."

Sometimes, a coach may need to give gentle encouragement or a dose of tough love to an athlete so that they can compete. 

Sometimes, a coach needs to empower the athlete to make the choice whether or not to compete. 

Kerri Strug did not have that choice in 1996.

Simone Biles had it in 2021, and exercised it.

The outcome for Kerri's vault was a gold medal, and a serious injury.

The outcome for Simone's vault was a decision not to risk serious injury, physically or mentally.

I honor Simone for her choice.

It's time we give it to our athletes.

They deserve it.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Glass + Hot Oil = One Big Mess

It all started on Sunday afternoon, when I thought I'd get a head start on a proofing job. 

I think most of the people who read my writing know that I proofread depositions for a court reporting firm in another state. The money I earn goes to pay back debt. Right now, we have my student loans (from a failed attempt at court reporting school), a loan we took out to help pay for a roof replacement, and our mortgage to pay back. There's allegedly a secret clause in every student loan contract that says that you are not allowed to die before you pay back your loans.  If that's the case, I will have a very long life.

The job I had was 270 pages and had a hard deadline of yesterday at 3:30. Deadlines are the nature of the business here; lawyers need their stuff back at a particular time, which means the people I work for have to have their stuff back at a particular time. 

So, I started work in mid-afternoon on Sunday. I thought, well, I'll just do what I can today, I've got until 3:30 tomorrow.  Plenty of time, right?

Then I realized, no, you don't have until 3:30 tomorrow. Because you have to leave at noon to take your son to an appointment at 1 p.m. and it's going to take you an hour to get there!  

Cue stress level rising exponentially. 

I had thought about asking my husband to start going to the gym with me early in the morning before we both start work (we both work from home). When I added up the amount of time I needed to get my work done before I had to leave, I realized that doing that was just not possible. I couldn't even get to the gym, and it's something I've been badly inconsistent in doing. 

Monday morning, I started work around 6:30 a.m. 

I finished at just before noon.

I've been using the pomodoro technique; a technique where you work for a certain amount of focused time, take a five-minute break, then go back to work. The particular app I am using tells you what time your job will be done based on the number of pomodoros you think it will take to finish the job. 

The app said I would be done around 12:30.  When the time was calculated, it included the time breaks.

Remember, I said it would take an hour to get to a 1 p.m. appointment. 

I couldn't even take the breaks I needed! 

Well, the job got done. I was also able to get my son to and from his appointment. 

We didn't get home until just past 2:30. And I still needed to eat lunch. 

I spent the afternoon recuperating, then started dinner.  I decided to make salmon patties.  Quick and easy. :-) 

So I mixed up everything I needed, which included putting oil into a frying pan to fry the patties.  

I made enough for today and tomorrow. 

And afterwards, I poured the hot oil -- keep in mind, the hot oil -- into a glass jar that I keep for that purpose.

In the middle of the pouring, I heard a crack. 

And I saw oil start to pour out from the bottom of the jar.  

You see, I had forgotten basic science:  that when you pour hot oil into a glass jar, the glass jar will break! 

My kitchen counter, my kitchen floor, and one of my kitchen cupboards ended up being covered with slippery oil.

My husband sprang into action and cleaned up the mess. After dinner, we washed the dishes (mostly my set of cutting boards) that were in the path of the spilled oil.

Just writing this out is exhausting. 

Fortunately, I made enough salmon patties for dinner tonight.  There will be no danger of me pouring hot oil into anything. 

And I have two more hard deadlines to meet. 

While I'm lucky to have work and grateful that my schedule is flexible, days like this can wear me out.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 365

One year.

For me, the pandemic began on March 13, 2020, when my son had his first day out of school.  We didn't know then that he wouldn't be going back until August and that he'd have to finish the school year online. 

We didn't know that my husband wouldn't be going to the office for about two months, and that he'd end up taking over my office four days a week.

We didn't know that March 8th, 2020 would be the last time our church would meet together until November. 

We didn't know that masks would become a fashion statement or that people would judge others by whether they did or did not wear one. 

So many things we did not know. 

I began journaling the pandemic here on March 13, 2020, thinking that I would write every day and bring a healthy dose of snark to everyone's pandemic coping skills. How wrong I was. I can't remember when I stopped writing a daily pandemic journal. Snark is a good way to cope, depending on the target of your snark . . . but you can only be snarky for so long. 

My good intentions to spend more time on writing and house cleaning were eventually sabotaged by, well, just pandemic weariness. 

It's been a long 365 days, and like just about everyone, I'm weary. 

In the beginning, there was a pulling together, an attitude of, "We're all in this together." But that faded as we realized just how long and how serious this pandemic would be. 

Now, Zoom meetings and online church are the norm, social distancing is expected, a "drive-by" refers to a type of celebration rather than a shooting, and when you extend a fist to someone, it is not an assault but a greeting.

Throw in the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor (who died one year ago today) and George Floyd -- along with others -- and a very contentious presidential election, and you have a recipe for both angst and exhaustion.

Right now, I lean more towards the exhaustion end of the spectrum.

One thing that helps is remembering that no one on earth is unaffected by COVID. If you haven't had it, you know someone who has; if you don't know anyone who has had COVID, you still have dealt with empty shelves, standing six feet apart in a public place, businesses closed, businesses requiring masks . . .

Monday, my husband and I become eligible for the COVID vaccine. It's the one time in my life I look forward to getting two shots. 

Right now, I just confess to weariness. 

TEOTWAWKI, for those wondering, is an acronym in prepper circles that means "The End Of The World As We Know It." (And you thought it was just a title of an R.E.M. song.)

To be honest, this past year? 

It has been TEOTWAWKI.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Adventures in transitioning

My son's school bus pulled up in front of our house for the last time on Wednesday, February 10 at around 1:15 p.m.

When it pulled away, it took with it many of the services that we've depended on for over 18 years.

We have now entered into the land known as "transitioning".

Matthew, right now, is in sort of the "no-man's-land" between school and work. We're working right now with our Voc Rehab to (hopefully!) find him work. 

Part of transitioning means learning how to manage money, and as a first step in that direction, I set up an appointment for today to open a joint account with Matthew at the bank. 

While my intentions for teaching Matthew money management were good, my schedule management hit a snag. 

You see, today is a Tuesday.

Tuesdays are the days my husband goes into the office.

With our car.

Which I didn't remember until I walked into our garage to manage laundry and saw that said garage was empty. 

To quote either Astro from The Jetsons or Scooby-Doo, "ruh-rho".

It crossed my mind that maybe I should reschedule the appointment.

But then I remembered another part of transitioning that is important:  learning how to use public transportation.

So I decided that this would be the best time to introduce Matthew and me to the wonderful world of Uber. 

I had the app, I've just never used it before. But, with a few taps, I figured out what I was doing and, to make a long story short, both of us were safely transported to and from the bank by two separate Uber drivers. 

Inside the bank, we were helped by a very nice young woman who got us set up with a joint account. 

I don't expect to be able to problem-solve as easily as I did today. But it was an, shall we say, interesting introduction to the world of transitioning! 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

When character no longer counts

In April, 1987, then presidential candidate Gary Hart, responding to rumors of marital infidelity, threw down the gauntlet.  He challenged the press to "follow me around".

The Miami Herald took up the gauntlet and soon discovered his relationship with a young woman, Donna Rice.  

Not long afterwards, Gary Hart quit the presidential race . . . only to reverse course several months later with the declaration, "Let the people decide; I'm back in the race!"

During those days, I heard people asking the question, "Does character really matter when you're running for public office?"

I asked myself, "Why is this even a question?  Of course character counts!"

Apparently, many Americans did not feel the same way, because in 1992, even amid rumors of past infidelity, Bill Clinton was elected to the Presidency, and then re-elected in 1996.  

In 1998, the Monica Lewinsky scandal blew up.  

At that time, certain evangelical Christian leaders -- including Franklin Graham and James Dobson -- stood up and declared, "Yes, character counts in a President!"

Some of those same leaders, in 2016, reversed course and supported Donald Trump for president, despite his known affairs with at least two women and his disgusting remarks about women that were leaked to the media.  

Did character count then?

Apparently not.  

This is what happens when you are so fearful of one particular candidate that you end up supporting the other, despite the character flaws that you condemned so forcefully when the candidate was not the one you supported.

There are Presidents who have done things for this country and have been adulterers and have committed other sins during their time in office.  Thomas Jefferson is now well-known for his dalliances (some would say, rape of) with Sally Hemings. John F. Kennedy left of trail of infidelity behind him.  And FDR's relationship with Lucy Mercer Rutherford is also well-documented.  

As many things as they did for this country, for me, their legacy is forever tainted by the way they treated their wives.  Or, as in Jefferson's case, the women around them (I say that because Jefferson's wife had died by the time he was in the White House.)  

Should a person who has committed adultery -- or, for that matter, any other sin -- be permanently barred from running for public office?

I don't know.  I can only tell you what I think:  If someone has committed adultery, if they have repented, if they have gotten help, if they have remained faithful to their spouse since the days of that adultery, then no, I don't think that should permanently bar them from public office. People do sin. People do repent of sin. God does forgive sin. 

What I resent is the cries of, "Yes, character counts!" from respected Christians only to have those same Christians turn around and say, "Yeah, the guy has rotten character, but look at King Cyrus! God used him!" Or, "King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and God used him!" Or, "He wasn't elected to be our pastor!" 

Number one, the prophesy about King Cyrus was fulfilled when he allowed the Israelites to go home after 70 years of exile. That prophecy was not intended to be extrapolated onto a future President of the United States.

Number two, although God did use David after he sinned, there are two things to keep in mind:  a) David repented (see Psalm 51) and b) David paid a very steep price for his sins. The son he conceived with Bathsheba died. His daughter Tamar was raped by her half-brother Amnon, and David did nothing about it. David's son Absalom attempted to seize the throne. Absalom raped ten of David's concubines, and then was ultimately killed by David's own general, Joab.

No President is perfect.  We all sin.  Presidents sin. 

But what we saw on Wednesday afternoon unfold on our TV screens is the ultimate result of what happens when we decide that character no longer counts in a President. 

We end up getting a President who is unwilling to concede an election until absolutely forced to, who continues to propagate a false narrative about a stolen election, and who whips a crowd up into such a frenzy that they feel free to storm the US Capitol, with Congress inside, and break into the House and Senate chambers in order to take selfies and trash the place. 

We decided way back in 1987 that character no longer mattered in a President. 

We are now reaping the consequences of that decision.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Day of Infamy, Redux

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by an out-of-control mob.

Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, we should have seen this coming, and many people did see something like this coming.

When a group of people who President Trump famously told to "stand back and stand by" announce that they will be in the nation's capital on the day the Electoral College was ratified, for the specific purpose of protesting the results of that Electoral College, and when the President of the United States himself welcomes them, tells people the time and date of a "stop the steal" rally, and then exhorts them informing them that "you will never take back our country with weakness", you should know that things have the potential to not end well.

Indeed, it ended badly.

The crowd, bearing Trump banners, Trump flags, Trump hats, probably Trump T-shirts, and most disgustingly, American flags and the Christian flag which hangs in many churches, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, right to the building where, in their mind, the greatest threat to the United States of America sat:  the 535 members of the United States Congress and the Vice-President of the United States.

Once there, they forced their way past a police barrier and swarmed the steps of the Capitol Building.

I was watching CSPAN on my computer, thinking that I just had a ringside seat to political theatre and ready to spend several hours mentally rolling my eyes at the hot air and stupidity of certain Congresspeople (I'm looking at you, Ted Cruz!) 

Then I started hearing reports of protestors surrounding the Capitol, so I decided to pack up the computer and move to the TV. 

I left the room briefly.

When I came back, I saw people marching into the Capitol.  This is the Capitol building which has been off-limits to the general public since COVID hit. 

And that's when I said, "Oh, my God."

The world now knows the evolving and the devolving of the situation over the next several hours.

They now know that protestors rammed the barricaded door of the House chambers.

They now know that protestors got into the House chambers and the Senate chambers. One protestor got his picture taken in the seat that the Vice President uses to preside over the Senate when it was in session.

One protestor got into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, plopped himself down in her chair, got his picture taken, and then swiped a piece of mail from her desk, leaving her a quarter to pay for it.  (Does he not know that the price of a stamp has not been a quarter for years?) 

A group of protestors were pictured scaling a wall to get onto the Capitol grounds.  If you are a Baby Boomer or an older Gen Xer, you may remember film footage of Iranian terrorists hoisting themselves over the walls of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1979.  I remember that footage, and the photo of the people climbing the wall brought back memories of that awful time.

Another group "borrowed" a scaffold to lower the American flag and replace it with a Trump flag.

Still other protestors broke windows of the US Capitol to get inside.  When I heard that piece of news, that, for me, was the point where that protest stopped being "peaceful" and started being "violent".

We also now know that there were people who acted at great risk to keep the members of Congress safe. They ordered everyone to get down, gave them gas masks, and had them lie on the floor while outside, people pounded on the barricaded doors.  

People in the building were ordered to stay away from windows and make no noise. Just like an entire generation of school children have had to do for the last 20 years to protect themselves from mass shooters.

One pipe bomb was found at the local offices of the Democratic National Committee.  Another was found at the local offices of the Republican National Committee.  Apparently, some protesters were non-partisan in their desire for destruction.  And if pipe bombs were not enough, the police also had to remove a cooler full of Molotov cocktails.  (I assume these were not on ice and were probably not intended to be served "shaken, not stirred".)

And where, during all of this turmoil, was our President? 

Sitting in the Oval Office, watching the unraveling of the law and order he so proudly championed during his campaign for Presidency and making no move to stop it.

Until he made a video telling everyone, we love you, you're special, the election was still stolen, but you need to go home.

Five people are now dead as the result of this madness.  One woman, Ashli Babbitt, 35, described as a pro-Trump California native and Air Force veteran, was shot by Capitol Police.  The other three -- one a woman from Kennesaw (metro Atlanta) -- died from "medical emergencies" on the scene.  The death of number five, a US Capitol Police officer, was announced as I was writing this.  

Over 50 police officers were hurt. I do not know how many protestors were hurt.  

In the camera shots of the front of the Capitol, if you watch long enough, you'll notice that there are protestors being escorted out.  When I saw that, I asked myself, "Okay, why are the cops not using their batons to break up this group?"

I wasn't the only one that picked up on that. A good number of people -- including President-elect Joe Biden -- commented that if these protesters had been mostly black, instead of mostly white, the police response would have been a lot different. I have friends who are convinced that the police would have started shooting into the crowd.  And, given the experiences of African-Americans with the police, I can't disagree with those who feel that way.

At the moment, we have growing calls for either impeachment or the invoking of the 25th Amendment, which calls for the removal of the President if he is deemed unfit to perform his duties.  We also have a list of staff members who've resigned, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is also the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, the now-traumatized Representatives and Senators, along with staff, went back to work.  For all of my criticism of Washington, DC politics, these men and women are to be commended for going back in and finishing the job they were Constitutionally mandated to do, which is, follow the Constitution and certify the results of the Presidential election.  

And, despite the stubbornness -- or stupidity -- of those who still protested the Electoral College results, Joe Biden was confirmed as the winner of the Presidential election, January 7, 2021, at close to 4 a.m.  

Donald J. Trump will be President for 13 more days, barring unforeseen events. 

I pray we last long enough to get to the inauguration.

I do not want another day of infamy.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Five letters, one hyphen, two numbers

Five letters.

One hyphen.

Two numbers.

Nothing else had a greater impact on our lives last year than those eight written symbols.  (And boy, am I glad to write those words, "last year".)

It was a year ago since the initial reports of "a new virus in Wuhan, China" first started trickling in.  In February, I visited my doctor and commented about how no, I didn't need to worry about "that new thing in China" because I hadn't been out of the country.

Just a few days later, I read a headline saying that the CDC was warning us to be preparing for "significant disruptions", and I thought, "This sounds like fearmongering, but just in case, I better start stocking up on food."

I count March 13th as the day all hell broke loose.

March 13th was the first day that my son was home from school on a school holiday that would have been a make up snow day.  He did not go back into a physical building until August. 

How to describe a visit to a local Kroger on that week?  People were not angry, or screaming, or shoving each other out of the way.  It was just a very busy buzz, people going up and down the aisles, grabbing the stuff they needed, standing in lines, not full of screaming anxiety but rather with jaws grimly set.  

I remember driving down the road that week in March, listening to the news, and thinking, "I will not panic.  I will not panic." I fall into the category of "prepper", and while I do not have an underground bunker against the unlikely possibility of thermonuclear war, I do believe in keeping a full pantry and a decent amount in savings. So when rumblings of a pandemic hit, my purchases were more in the category of comfort food (think Fritos, Lays, and M & M's) than in necessities. I did make a bread run and was nicely told at the checkout counter, next time, the limit is two or four loaves. I also yelled, "Score!" to someone who was coming out of Aldi with a package of paper towels.  She laughed. 

I cannot complain about how "no one else had to deal with . . ." because no one on earth remained unaffected by these five letters, one hyphen, and two numbers.  In fact, I feel rather bubbled.  My husband was able to transfer to working at home.  I already work at home.  Our biggest challenge was switching office areas and getting adjusted to a new schedule.  Going along with that challenge was getting my husband set up to be able to work at home!  

My poor son had a hard time adjusting.  Since he has autism, he has a difficult time with changes in routine.  And his poor mother had a meltdown when she couldn't get the scanner on her computer properly. 

But since then, we, along with the majority of the world, have learned how to work Zoom or whatever your communications platform is. ("You're on mute" is the sentence of 2020.)

We learned to work with online church and a chat room (which my son was the first to enter on Sundays.) And I learned how to make communion bread.  

For weeks, I mentally sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" while washing my hands.  When I got bored with that, I switched to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat". 

And, like so many in the world, I watched and listened in alternating pride, disbelief, horror, shock, anger, surprise, and other words in the gamut of emotions as the year unfolded.

The term "essential worker" is now a permanent addition to our vocabulary. So is "social distancing". 

Who can forget the pictures of doctors and nurses slumped over in exhaustion, their faces bruised from the hours of wearing a medical-grade mask? 

And while sitting at my home office desk in Atlanta, I watched as simmering fury over the death of George Floyd while in police custody boiled over into rioting. In the days that followed, we heard and saw protest, grief, lament, and expressions of exhaustion.  (I know people who participated non-violently in local area protests.  I was very proud of them.)

And as I write this, our President still refuses to accept that he was voted out of office by the American people. While the simmering political anger has not yet exploded into major rioting and major violence, I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Today is the first day of a new year, and like I said earlier, I was never so glad to say "last year" than I was when the ball dropped at Times Square and the socially distanced crowd counted down to "Happy New Year!" I nearly cried. 

I have no illusions that just flipping the calendar over, or putting a new calendar on the wall, is going to magically change anything.  I also have no illusions that a transfer of power on January 20th will magically pull our country out of our pessimistic funk. The best I hope for is a morale boost.  New starts, or at least perceived new starts, are helpful.

Today is a new start, a clean slate of sorts. 

But here is one of the biggest lessons I have learned from this pandemic.

Five letters.

One hyphen.

Two numbers.

COVID-19.

Those eight written symbols brought the entire world to its knees in 2020.  

I think we should all be humbled by that fact.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.