10.24.2024 – growing up with my

growing up with my
sister Mary, hey do you …
remember Freddie?

I grew up in a group.

I have 10 brothers and sisters, though the last brother showed up after the first brother got married so there were never more than 10 kids in the house at one time.

And it was a big house.

We evolved into two groups of siblings.

The first five and the second five with one brother kind of lost in the middle.

I have memories of being a little kid but there are jumbled altogether with those ‘big’ kids in the first five.

They were ones who went everywhere on family trips.

They went to Disneyland and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and New Orleans.

Then they went off to college and we in the second five wondered who those people were.

They would be around in the summer and then leave in the fall but be back at Thanksgiving (when we would all watch the Michigan-Ohio State and scream at the TV) and then back at Christmas (when we would all watch Michigan in the Rose Bowl and scream at the TV).

Christmas also had the added attraction of the first family bringing back germs from college and we all got, in succession, the dread stomach virus or winter vomiting as the brits call it.

Through it all strode the indomitable force that was my big sister Mary.

Determined to be all she could be.

Determined to make us all be all we could be if we would just listen.

Before she left for college, her room was on the 2nd floor (or 4th floor … it was a split level) right over the room I shared with my brother Tim.

We had bunk beds and could knock on the ceiling to bug her and she would bang the floor.

We would knock again.

She would bang again.

We would keep this up until we would hear her get out bed, slam open her door, and stomp down the stairs.

We would dive under the covers and pretend to be asleep and she would kick our door open and yell , “KNOCK IT OFF – I KNOW YOU’RE NOT SLEEPING.”

And we had balanced a cup full of water on top of the door.

Even when she was off at college, Mary would reach out to us.

She wrote a letter to my brother Pete with a sketch of her finger on the paper.

She said her hand had been asleep on the page and she didn’t want to move her finger, so she drew it into the letter.

We read that over and over and just laughed and laughed.

She would put her return address on her letters as ME.

What else would the return address be but return it to ME and of course ME meant our sister Mary!

Which we thought was so cool … until she told us it was her initials (Mary Elizabeth).

About this time my brother Peter brought the word Freddie home from school.

We would be watching TV or in the car or anywhere doing nothing and Pete would say, “Freddie” and we would all crack up.

So Mary picked up on it.

She would write and at the end of her letters include, PS: Freddie.

And we would laugh and laugh.

Mom would call her long distance from time to time and Mary would ask to talk to us kids and Mom would hold the phone out to us and Mary would say ‘Freddie’ and we would fall on the floor laughing and laughing.

They thing is we never told Mary what Freddie meant.

We never told anyone what Freddie meant.

My Mom got upset at being left out of the joke and started guessing at what ‘Freddie’ meant and she really fell off the deep end with her off color guesses which made us laugh harder and made Mom madder.

So today, on my sister’s Mary’s birthday, I have to ask?

Do you remember Freddie?

10.23.2024 – cycling means freedom

cycling means freedom
we don’t allow anything
to interfere with that

It’s a joy from the start as cycling is so delightfully normal here: no one’s in Lycra, or wearing a helmet. “For us, cycling means freedom,” says our guide, Remco. “We don’t allow anything to interfere with that, like special clothing or helmet laws.” Old women are riding around in frocks; we see men in blazers and even one in a DJ and bow tie.

From the article, Really going Dutch: why I chose The Hague and Delft over Amsterdam by Liz Boulter in the Guardian.

I work on a resort island that is famous for biking.

Unlike that island up north in the straits of Mackinac, one of the perks of biking on this island is the hard packed sand at low tide that lets you ride along the water.

Be aware that most of the bike rental locations will charge you a cleaning fee if you bring back a bike covered with sand so make sure you give ur bike a good hosing off.

But for clothes …

Sure I see ‘bikers’ in their … ‘uniform’ but for the most part, the folks down here are biking in swimsuits and flip flops and it all seems so delightfully normal.

There don’t seem to be any helmet rules and the only rule is the rule of common sense.

Which I admit is non to common among these local bike riders but we all seem to survive.

I do remember watching a young lady walking from the beach to her bike that had been sitting in the blazing sun all afternoon.

The young lady was wearing the briefest of briefest bikini swimsuits and she leaped onto the bike and in the same motion leaped right off as her bottom came into contact with the sun heated bike seat.

It was like it had been choregraphed.

Cycling means to do what you want even if that means burning your butt I guess.

10.22.2024 – one day in thirty

one day in thirty
whole adult life to these
strange experiences

If you wish to know about elections I am the person to tell you. I have actually fought more parliamentary elections than any living member of the House of Commons. I have fought fifteen. Think of that! Fifteen elections, each taking at least three weeks, with a week beforehand when you are sickening for it, and at least a week afterwards when you are convalescing and paying the bills. Since I came of age I have lived thirty-five years, and taking an election as dominating one month of your life, I have spent considerably more than a whole year of this short span under these arduous and worrying conditions. In fact I have devoted one day in thirty of my whole adult life to these strange experiences.

From the essay Election Memories by Winston S. Churchill as published in Thoughts and Adventures in 1947 by Odhams Press Ltd. (a reprint of an earlier 1932 edition).

Churchill was 35 and had participated in 15 elections.

He had a few more to go including the one in 1945 where, thought the voters were happy that he, Mr. Churchill, had brought about an end to war, it was his Conservative Party that had brought the war on, or at least hadn’t done much more than try to appease Mr. Hitler.

Voters have long memories.

10.21.2024 – know enough to spoil

know enough to spoil
enjoyment – not enough to
feel happy themselves

D.M. Lloyd-Jones has a fascinating sermon about this group — an exposition of Mark 8 called “Men as Trees, Walking.” In that sermon (now a chapter in the book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures) there is an account of Jesus touching a blind man to heal him. When Jesus asks him if he can see now, the man replies “I see men as trees, walking” (verse 24, KJV). In other words, he could make out moving forms, but he still could not see clearly. Jesus touched him a second time and his sight was healed completely (verse 25). Lloyd-Jones then argued that the account can serve as a picture of many who seem to have been touched by Christian faith and yet still struggle with it. As a pastor, Lloyd-Jones had talked to many in this spiritual condition. It was hard for him to be sure if they were Christians or not and it was hard for them to say themselves.

“They seem to know enough about Christianity to spoil their enjoyment of the world, and yet they do not know enough to feel happy about themselves … They see and yet they do not see. I think you will agree that I am describing the condition, alas, of large numbers of people.”*

From Reconstructing Faith: Christianity in a New World By Tim Keller (Fall 2022: Gospel-Changed Minds).

The joke I grew up with was that Calvinism was the fear that somewhere, someone was having a good time.

Lots to admire about Mr. Calvin but wasn’t the message of salvation, the message of salvation, the message of Christianity called Good News for a reason?

I would be willing to bet that almost anyone American of a center age can recite, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” just like Linus did in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

Good Tidings.

Great Joy.

To ALL People.

A simple message.

A message to be separated from all the noise about being a Christian today.

Good News.

Glad tidings.

Great Joy!

To all people.

Come what may.

*D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, Eerdmans, 1965, 40.

10.20.2024 – looking out the car

looking out the car
grandson said to just himself …
the best day ever

“It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity and peace and goodness. ”

Excerpt From The Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White.

Had the pleasure … let me repeat that … had the pleasure of a visit from grandkids this weekend.

We went to the beach.

We went to dinner.

We played games.

We made and ate breakfast together.

And we talked in the tones of little kids to whom so much is so much more important.

I loved every minute of it.

I am not responsible for the daily maintenance and upkeep of my grand kids which lets me focus on the finer points like saying there is nothing wrong with waffles with chocolate chips and syrup and a powered sugar doughnuts and coffee for breakfast.

We spent the day at the beach and while 20 mph northerly breezes and 70 degree temps kept me out of the water, the grands spent the day in the Atlantic Ocean.

We had a picnic lunch.

We had boogie boards and sand toys and on the way home stopped at a local park known for its alligators and we were rewarded with a large prehistoric monsters lying just off shore.

As we drove back gone and went over the bridge to the mainland, I heard my grandson say to himself … “this been the best day ever!“

“It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity and peace and goodness. ”

I repeated this passage on purpose.