"PAPER WORK"

     
     "Of the making of books, there is no end, and much study wearies the body."  
           Ecclesiastes 12:12

I would like to offer a kind of parallel sentiment:  "Of the making of paperwork and forms, there is no end and too much of it becomes a  pain !"

        For the past several hours, I have been 'up to my elbows' in paperwork, specifically completing applications that require 'professional disclosure' statements.  Certainly, I support competency and adherence to ethical guidelines in my profession
(and all others, come to think of it).  But sometimes it begins to feel like 'busy work'.  

      It seems that I have been completing applications, writing 'essays' about my perspectives on many topics, and filling out forms and more forms  for most of my 75 years:
   Let's see; those that I can remember:
      .College applications
      .Seminary applications
      .Graduate School applications
      .Academic 'self-study' reports for the college's accreditation
      .Application for Residency in Psychotherapy
      .Ordination examinations in two separate Protestant denominations.
      .The innumerable forms and reports required of United Methodist pastors
      .American Association of Pastoral Counselors membership application
      .Professional licensure application
      .Various job and professional applications
      .Commercial financial transactions, e.g., house and automobile purchases
      .And, though my military service time was short, the motto seemed to be: "THINK . . . in triplicate"
     
 For one of those that I am currently completing, transcripts of my graduate work of almost FIFTY years (!) ago were required.  This notwithstanding that the organization to which I am  applying for a supervisory status already has had these on file for almost twenty years. (Now, I know, this  is one of the 'muttering' posts that comes along occasionally.)

    Many years ago, I saw No Time for Sergeants.  I seem to recall a scene in which someone was trying to educate Andy Griffith, playing the new soldier, on how to put 'last name first, first name in the middle, and middle name last'.  I had not thought of that scene (likely recalled with only partial accuracy) in a long time.  Isn't  'free association' wonderful !!  Beyond that, though, I find in it a delightful lampoon of 'forms for the sake of having forms'. 

   Rabbi Ed Friedman, who was a renowned systems therapist, once commented that great focus on forms was likely a strong indicator of the degree of anxiety floating within a system.  Now, what if the  anxious 'system' that impacts us all is our very society !?

   Henry David Thoreau complained that "our life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify . . . "  There is some question as to whether Albert Einstein actually said : "Everything should be made as simple as  possible, but not simpler."  Regardless of the specifics of the quote, I like the idea.
I wonder if I could apply it to the ream of forms that I am currently completing . . .
  
      Satchel

A TALE OF FOUR CHIMNEYS

When was the house here?

We have just made an overnight trip to the mountain region of our state.  Hiking and exploring, we saw these chimneys within a few miles radius.  The one pictured to the left was a long way off 'the beaten path.'  The one below now stands alongside a secondary paved road, yet still somewhat remote from 'the hustle and bustle.'

When was the nearby road built?

    In the 1970's and for a few years thereafter, wood heat was the rage.  Wood stoves, fireplaces and fireplace inserts were . . .well, 'hot items'.  There has been a distinct 'cooling' of the market for these items.  The time was when such were basics.

    However, seeing these structures prompted my reflections in a direction other than home heating.

"This Old House Once Knew My Children . . ."

     As a therapist who places great stock in "Family Systems Therapy", I often engage my clients with an instrument known as a genogram. (Google: "What is a Genogram")  While also an academic historian, I have little interest in mere genealogy . . . or, as I call it,

'who was kin to whom was kin to whom'.  Family relationship patterns and dynamics and legacies are other matters.

    It is a lamentable fact that very few of us know a great deal about anyone on our 'family tree' back more than two or three, at the most, generations. (What is also lamentable is the 'dysfunction' and regressive behavior that characterize so many families.) Those of us with grand-children and even great-grand-children know how tenuous the ties of relationship can become, especially with geographic mobility. 

    Sometimes clients seem a bit startled when I mention the obvious (to me) fact that their parents had parents who had parents who . . .  Here is an exercise that might yield novel perspectives: Consider the oldest 'ancestor' whom you knew . . . grand-parent, great-grand-parent, whomever . . . as having once been, say, four years old, then being 25, then middle-age.  Such an endeavor has 'humanized' the 'dead past' for many. 

    Ostensibly, within the structures that were around the first three of the above pictures, families went about many of the routines of life that still endure.  With some imagining, I can believe that there was birthing, chickenpox and whooping cough and flu epidemics, shared meals, work, hard times, games, laughter, Christmas, death, children growing up and moving away all taking place there. 

    And there are situations where not even a chimney is left to mark the place where important matters occurred.  Several years ago while visiting an uncle in Alabama, he drove me by the address where he had grown up and where my grand-parents had lived for many years.  Nothing there but a vacant lot!  Regretably, I have cousins in that area whom I have never met. 

    What became of those people in all the vanished cabins?  For that matter, what will  become of us?  Nor do I believe such ruminating to be 'morbid'.  I remember Dr. Fred Craddock's commenting that anyone whose perspective was no larger than the years between one's own birth and death was an orphan in the universe.  

   One possible consequence of  such an exercise (of imaging one's forebearers as 'young' ) could be a reconsideration of priorities or what will endure.  We learned that part of the local lore and legend in the area where these chimneys are located was that one particularly ambitious entrepreneur would often accept parcels of land, even homesteads, as payment for debts in his store.  Whether he was 'grasping' and 'cruel', we did not hear.  We did see his former place of business, now boarded up and dilapidated.  "A generation comes and a generation goes . . ."

     Now, this kind of thinking can be said to lead to a cynicism . . .'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die'.  We in the 'right now' are part of a link in the parade of humanity. As such, we are the benefactors of much that has preceded us.  In earlier posts, I have noted my belief that there is no such entity as the 'self-made person'.  Many people, events, circumstances, and 'chance' along with our own efforts have gone into helping make us who we are.  Unless we adopt what someone has termed a 'to hell with posterity' attitude, we have debts to and will leave legacies for people who will perhaps never know our names or where  we fit on their genogram.  I have just begun reading my fraternity brother, Charles Price's book, Nor the Battle to the Strong.  Though the genre is fiction, it is a thoroughly researched and well written narrative that gives tribute among others to a long ago kinsperson whose efforts helped 'make a difference'.  (And, that was neither a paid nor requested endorsement by Charles.)

      We also saw one other chimney on our explorations.  This one still has a house attached.  How long the house will endure, who knows.  I hope that what occurs within will 'make a difference' ---to those who are now there and to many who will come along when only a chimney is left standing.

    

                        Satchel

HOME TOWN (?)

   Ten days ago I was briefly back in the town where I lived from ages 4-16.  Except it was not the same town.  Proximity to the state's capital, the Research Triangle Park, several universities, along with burgeoning population growth has transformed this once 'small town USA' into something barely recognizable from 'once upon a time'.

    Nor was this my initial encounter with the changed landscape.  Almost thirty years ago, I wrote an essay for the local newspaper noting some of the differences.  I came across the article yesterday while searching for another item.  Re-reading it so soon after the most recent visit highlighted how many of the 'changes' have themselves been 'changed'.  Even so, I still resonated with many of the earlier observations.  What follows is an abridgment  of the 1985 article:

   "My boyhood friend Charlie is shutting down --or closing up.
Regardless of the directionality, the result is the same.  Victim of too many work hours, too many people who will not pay their bills, the proliferation of discount chain department stores that are called 
'drug stores', and the nation-wide growing distress of 'downtown', he's turning the key for the last time at the end of December. . . .

    [His] drugstore is the current version of a long-time locally-owned pharmacy on [the town's] main street, kind of a basic ingredient to the town for a long time. . . . Changes have come relatively slowly to [the town]. (The pace has definitely accelerated in the years since I wrote that last sentence.)  I remember the service station philosophers . . .of the '40's and '50's saying that 'the only way this town is going to grow is for there to be a few funerals', meaning apparently the deaths of those who controlled the real estate.  Never did they specify the obstructionists.  Still, there are today some surface changes --one wonders about the less visible changes of the heart of a small town. . . .
     Personally I am still a little jangled every time I see a swimming pool where our house once set, just a block down the street from where Charlie lived when we were kids. . . .

    Recently, when passing through town, I thought I would indulge my nostalgia and ask the principal of the middle school (which had been the old District School, not high school) [a new high school had been built on the edge of town.] if I might wander the halls and the campus.  Have you ever tried to kiss a ghost?  Gone!  Never again can we see the blackboard where Miss Linda Newton made us stand until we had figured the answer to the algebra problem or sit in the auditorium where the Sauline Players annually brought dramatic culture and couth to the provinces.

    First the house and now the school.  At least the Methodist Church was still standing.  For years Phil Tillerson, my brother Dennis and I were the only guys there, all our friends went to the immersin' church up the street.  Now that Baptist Church which in my boyish eyes had been about twice the size of the Vatican will soon give way to a more aesthetic and functional building.

   Will nothing stay the same?  But who wants to stand in the way of 'progress'?

    But anyway, back to Charlie and those less-visible changes of the heart.  I have never liked stores that want to see a drivers license, two other forms of I.D., my birth certificate, take my picture, make a thumb print and a voice print every time I pay for my purchase by check.  As a matter of fact, I avoid those places whenever possible.  Maybe I am an incurable romantic and out of step with the modern era, but I still appreciate a merchant or clerk's recognizing me and not wanting to see my life's credit history every time we have a commercial transaction.

   Someone once characterized Southerners as being a 'people of place'.  A predictable place surrounded by known and caring faces provided a sense of stability for lots of us during our formative years when we were trying to figure out who we were  and what life was all about.  As we became older we began realizing that the real world is never as cozy as it seemed during that brief time and that the way to survive mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and 
probably physically, is to make peace with the fact that life, ultimately, can't be controlled.  An ancient Greek philosopher observed that we "cannot step  twice into the same river."

    Even so, I think we are all diminished whenever the personal, human touch gets bowled over by 'progress' and that's why I am saddened by Charlie's closing and come January another [town] institution will be gone. "

     Satchel

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE . . .

           She was her parents' 'baby' . . .the last born of  twelve.  She was twenty years younger than her oldest sibling.  Of that 12, ten grew to adulthood; two died as infants. Now, she is the sole surviving sibling.  





        After 


completing high school, she came to live with us while pursuing cosmetology training in Raleigh. While there, she met Wade, her husband for over fifty years until his death several years ago.  They raised three of my cousins --each a distinctive kar'akter in their own right (as are many of our other cousins).

     Being only ten years older than I, as well as our having lived for several years in the same town, she has been a combination of aunt and 'big sister' for me.  When I was an adolescent, the older sister of my first 'girl friend' lived directly across the street from Rachel.  I have distant memories of 'courting' in her living room.

     There is a family story . . .mom told it as 'truth'; Rachel says it is more 'myth'.  One Summer while she was in high school, part of her family responsibility was to have a meal prepared when her dad, the village postmaster, came home for lunch.  Allegedly, she would often become immersed in a radio program (no t.v.'s at the time, remember !) and at the last minute open a can of English peas for grand-pa.  After a few times of this, he asked her if she liked them?  'Yes'.  Grand-pa: 'Good, because if you cook those again, you get to eat them all.'

    Now, even if there is an element of truth in that narrative, she has more than 'redeemed' herself.  Do you like chicken and dumplings?  Angels in heaven will eat hers.  Lemon pie?  She has no equal.  When her son operated a cafe in their hometown, Rachel's dumplings were a menu mainstay and always disappeared quickly.  Leaving her house last week-end after I had extracted a promise to cook some chicken and dumplings soon for us, she wryly noted: "I can cook other things as well."  My mom's three sons used to tweak her when one of her meals was especially good: "Has Rachel been by here?" . . . a supreme compliment.  

     'Growing Old' has not been part of her vocabulary or experience.  She has seen more of this globe than Marco Polo did in his travels.  She continues to be active and engaged with life in many ways and her 'friendship network' is extensive.     

                      (Always adventuresome.  One of her and Wade's many trips.)

     Many persons have commented on our strong family facial resemblance.  During our brief visit last Saturday, she told us of having been on an elevator at UNC Hospital years ago.  A brother and a sister worked there at the time and yet another sister (my mom) had once been there.  A man unknown to her but apparently the brother's co-worker entered the elevator, looked , no, stared, at her and in time exclaimed, "Another damned Cooper"!  Whoever that man was, he could have learned something of Gail Lumet Buckley's observation that "family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future."  Among the threads that hold her close to my heart are the memories of the many ways she continued to show her love to my mother during the latter years of her life, spent in an area 'nursing home'.  The 'family resemblance' included more than facial features . . .more like 'the heart'.
  
     She is a 'family treasure' . . . a link between the generations.  She is among but a handful of people who have known me for all my 75 years.  There are lots of good stories from that large family's past that need to be told and re-told and passed on to 'the next generation'.  'Stories' can be wonderful 'connectors' and given the fragmentation that is so ingredient to contemporary society, 'connectedness' can actually enhance our self-knowledge and functioning.  
  
   It could be said of our extended family that "some family trees bear an enormous crop of nuts."  There is absolutely nothing disparaging implied in that statement because as someone else has noted, "Family is a bit like a runny peach pie-not perfect but who's complaining ?".  Ogden Nash wrote that "family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about."  And, as some unknown (to me) person has written: "If you don't believe in ghosts, go to a family reunion" . . . you might just meet someone who reminds you of  . . .you.

                            (Second from right with several of her siblings)


And, an early 'Happy Birthday, Rachel !'  "Tell us some family stories."

     Satchel







  

     

BACK ON THE WAGON . . .

       I'm back 'on the wagon'.  NO, not that wagon !  Haven't been 'off ' that one.
     
       But, first a confession.  In a post last April (Solvitur Ambilando), I noted that I had begun to 'get back in shape' by resuming my walking regimen.  Even was feeling so self-confident that I issued a kind of 'challenge', especially to readers 65 and over, to walk various distances before Labor Day and to let me know of those achievements.  Then, it happened . . .the Season of too many "too's":  too long for Spring to arrive, then too hot, too humid, too many rain-storms, too busy, too tired, too many meals eaten out [we have been without a kitchen for five months], too many desserts [I love desserts], too . . . And, of course, there was always mañana. 

     If I did not 'fall off the wagon' of fitness, I had begun to slide --significantly.  Chose not to challenge the scales but did notice that my belt seemed to have shrunk.

     Once upon a time I could have claimed it as an occupational hazard . . . few pastors have ever met a covered dish dinner they didn't like.  And, while no longer a pastor and having attended but few of those events recently, the culprit lay elsewhere. 

     Several days ago, my wife made a loving observation which scuttled the other "too's" with an undeniable trump card: "You have worked too hard to gain back all the weight."  So, on went the sneakers and out the door I went.  An insight came during one walk: Discipline is not the same as Punishment.

    About this time, I was preparing a presentation for a group of area ministers on the topic of "The Emotional Health of Ministers".  The percentage of overweight ministers is, well, huge. Increased health care claims on self-funded insurance programs among several denominations led to the Clergy Health Initiative Program at Duke University Divinity School.  The connection between physical and emotional health is obvious.  (For more on this subject, Google the Clergy Health Initiative.)  I am very grateful for my good health at 75 and want to maintain that.  There have been a few challenges : gall bladder, prostate cancer (if you are a male over 55, see a Urologist NOW !), cataracts, slight PVC's, but able to go strong.  The physical maladies that potentially accompany 'poundage' are legion: e.g., cardiovascular disorders, g.i. disorders, arthritis, inflammation, sleep apnea, to list some evident ones.  There has been no lack of data; usually, something else is missing to influence behavior.

    Yesterday, we 'met' a couple of Feasts head-on with minimal damage.  At noon, dear friends of many years celebrated their Golden Anniversary with a Reaffirmation of Vows.  There followed a sumptuous Buffet.  Such restraint on my part !  Last night, a congregation that figures prominently in our lives had a Covered dish dinner.  More restraint . . .sort of.  Too many desserts to restrict the choice to one . . .I 'sampled' two.

      ("After the people had all eaten their fill, twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered up.")
                                                                Luke 9:17 b


   Then, today, a niece had a 'Surprise' 40th Birthday party. Since it was at a local restaurant, entree portion control was no problem. But, then there were the cakes . . . "Let them eat cake".  Whoever said that lost her head. (Sorry.)  Fortunately, I remembered what occurred a few hours earlier and did not totally lose mine.

    This morning, I met the challenge: 6.5 miles.  Time? Inconsequential.  Are my feet sore?  Is New York a large town? Sense of achievement?  Well, try it for yourself if your health and disposition allow.  Guaranteed that you will not look like this:

                                                         (After six and a half miles)

The original Satchel admonished: "Don't look back . . .They might be gaining on you."  Wonder if he were thinking "pounds"?

     Satchel

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS . . .

    
   "No one could measure what was lost when a man died before his time--the dreams he'd never dream,the children he'd never have, the house he'd never build, the work he'd never do."
   Charles F. Price, Hiwassee: A Novel of the Civil War,  page 32)

    He was killed on his sister's 17th birthday. He had turned 23 eight days earlier.  He died in what the family was told was the first-ever crash of a B-29 bomber in World War II.  Reportedly, this was their last training run before being deployed for combat.  I remember him in his uniform, home on visits.  Somewhere in scattered family picture albums is an array of photographs of Bob . . . as a young boy, as a soldier, with his girlfriend.  In local parlance, he was "good looking" and she, beautiful.  What kind of beautiful children might they have made together !

With Gretchen, 1943-44

    My cousin recently secured some declassified documents pertaining to the crash.  There is strong circumstantial evidence that the crash need not have occurred.  (The training flight had been interrupted to allow one officer who was "ill" to deplane.) Possibly, some "hotdogging" occurred by whomever was piloting the aircraft. He reportedly had family and friends living in the small town where the plane went down.  Flying much too low--only 200 feet, he hit a tree limb or some other obtrusion.  Everyone on board and two persons on the ground died.  After reading the military's documents, my cousin wrote: "the insinuation [in the report] is that the plane was 'buzzing' the town or certain houses around [the town] where there lived relatives and friends of the Co-Pilot. . . The official report charges the Pilot with the accident and points to the cause . . . Pilot carelessness; Direct Cause -Violation of Flying Regulations (flying below authorized altitudes) . . . .We may draw our own conclusions from the reports, eyewitness accounts and other related history associated with this incident, but we may never know for sure if this crash was one of those unfortunate losses caused by intentional disregard for regulations,or a mechanical failure with the aircraft."

 (My Uncle Bob, front row, second from left, with crew of B-29. 
                           All but one died in the crash.)

    I remember him in his uniform, home on furlough . . .a new word for my youthful vocabulary.  Once when he had spent an overnight with our family, I saw him stoop down to comb his hair by a reflection in a kitchen cabinet.  And I have a mental picture of his standing on the wrap-around porch of his parents' house.  Just snippets.  I was six and a half when we received the news.  Mrs. Tunstall, the wife of dad's employer, came to visit mom.  She talked about this and about that and at last came out with the news. . . a phone call had been received.  (At the time, we had no telephone in our house.) Mom's tears resounded in my ears and I grasped the meaning of the message and was inconsolable.

   In time a flag covered coffin arrived and, as was the regional custom in those times, was placed in a large room in his home.  His oldest brother locked the door, opened the casket, only to find a small metal box.  The army sent an escort ---his name was Robert Cassidy --and he was from Philadelphia.  For some time thereafter, some family members maintained contact with him.

    Funny, what a six year old remembers . . . standing in the vestibule of the small Methodist church in the village and seeing Mr. and Mrs. Tunstall and a friend, Helen Penny.  Then there was the military internment with the bugle and rifle salute.  Even now, when I hear Taps I have a kind of flashback. I heard my grand-parents crying audibly when they received the flag. In time a banner with three stars, including a gold one, appeared in the front window.

    Some days after the funeral, his older brother, Lewis, who was stationed in the Aleutian Islands, was driven up to the family home in an  army jeep - - -another sight that I witnessed, though I remember nothing of what occurred thereafter, including the duration of his visit.  As I noted in an earlier post, his youngest brother enlisted in the Navy soon thereafter.

    Were he now living, he would be almost 92 years old . . .a member of what Tom Brokaw called 'the Greatest Generation'.  LOTS of men and women died in that war . . .and subsequent conflicts.  So far, no feasible alternative to warfare has been durable.  Recently, I heard on NPR that, technically, there has been no year since WW II when the US was not in war.  As the quote above makes clear, the cost of all that in human terms -for all of us- is inestimable.  "And, the beat goes on . . ."

      Twenty-three !!  Development of the pre-frontal cortex of the human brain ---the so-called CEO of the brain that is responsible for cognitive analysis and abstract thought, i.e., maturity -- is barely completed by that time.  Yet, consider all that those people endured and what they achieved.  But, come to think of it, I wonder if that might account for the lapse in judgment of the person flying that airplane that night.  

     This post is not intended as an anti-war diatribe.  I am reasonably optimistic and idealistic but it can be a dangerous world (duh !).  No, my intended focus is much more specific.  Who would Bob have been, what 'gifts' might he provided the world and his own family ?  And, as my fraternity brother from another time, Charles Price, wrote this is true for all the "Bob's" who did not return.  In that way, while this is about one family's loss, there are 'universals'.

    My cousin concluded: "The men of the ... Crew are not listed as  combat casualties, but they were training for combat, so they probably should be.  They were just as young, just as patriotic, and unfortunately just as dead."

                                              (1921-1944)


     Satchel