Musings

It’s that time of year again to wish you a happy holiday season and the best for the New Year. We do extend our best wishes to each and everyone of you. If this is as far as you read, you have received our main message and have probably read further than 90% of our friends and relatives. (Why can’t relatives also be friends?)

Annually, about 270 families receive this newsletter. Well, actually it’s not this newsletter. We do change it somewhat each year. In updating the newsletter we struggle as to what we should include and what we should deliberately leave out.  Like most holiday newsletters, we try to display our best and keep secret our failings. However, if you read this, you may think we are doing the opposite.

We do vary our material based on reader feedback. Based on the two comments we have received in the ten years we have produced this newsletter, we have made definite changes. For example, one reader returned some photographs, cut in two, of scantly clad women we sent in our  1998 edition. He also sent us a note reminding us whose birthday it was. In order not to offend, such photographs are now forbidden.

Believe it or not, we do realize that Christians are suppose to celebrate the birthday of Christ at this time and we do not set out to insult anyone or their beliefs. However, in case you haven’t noticed, the way most Christians celebrate the Christmas Season, it is hardly scared.

Recently Joe participated in an exercise in which 7th grade students were interviewed. One of the questions was, “What is your favorite holiday and why?” The vast majority answered that Christmas was their favorite holiday and the reason wasn’t because they got to go to church. It was presents and family gatherings.

The other complaint was from our son, Joseph Jr.,  who said we had too much in the newsletter about our grandson (a little intra-family jealousy?) and the yearly tome was more like an advertisement for the two of us. What we are trying to advertise, we are still trying to figure out. It certainly isn’t our aging bodies! In any event, we will try to advertise less.

Of the 270 families we send this to, we’ve only seen about 50 during 2002 and many of those were neighbors. So, we use this newsletter as a means to visit with you and say those things we would if you were to come into our house. Some topics will be about our family, what we’ve been up to (not much), our views about whatever and perhaps a story or two.

Therefore, pretend you’ve just entered our house, handed us the obligatory bottle of wine, sat in our living room, been handed the obligatory glass of wine or soda and you’ve been stupid enough to ask, “What’s new with you guys?” Your about to find out. But, just like you don’t need to listen to our response when we are together, now, you don’t need to read any further either. 

What’s new with us

Our biggest surprise of the year, other than George Bush II being so popular, was our daughter, Cathy, giving birth to a baby girl, EmmaRose Jennings, on November 2nd.  This is our second grandchild and the first sibling for our 12 year old grandson, Sean. Needless to say Sean has mixed emotions. He loves babies and is great with them. However, he doesn’t relish being dropped from only son-grandson to being just one among many.

 

Ella’s Back!

Ella’s back (not that she ever left) started acting up in a major way last July. While she still looks younger than her age on the outside, both the x-rays and MRIs show a 62 year old spine. Ella was in extreme pain and between the pain and her pain medication had to spend a great deal of time in bed. The problem persisted well into the fall and brought our active life from a crawl to a stand still. She is now feeling better, but is not yet up to par. Being somewhat out of commission, she had planned on Joe picking up the slack. Recently when she asked him to do this, he responded that since July he’s been looking for the slack and still can’t find it.

Oklahoma

In June The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) invited us to the dedication of a new laboratory animal facility. Joe had consulted on the design. We were particularly happy to return to  Oklahoma City because, not only did we get a chance to see the great job the design team and OMRF personnel had done, we got to make a return trip to the place of Ella’s birth, Stroud Oklahoma.

This time we did what we should have done prior to our visit in the year 2000. We talked to Ella’s eldest brother, John, and got detail directions to the exact location of Ella’s birth, the farm her parents were leasing at the time she was hatched.  He also put us in touch with a cousin on Ella’s mother side, Dorothy Skaggs, who was able to give us a lot of information of that part of the family. 

In addition, John had us contact Ella’s paternal cousins, Berniece (Yes, it is spelled that way.) and Tom Taylor. Tom, who was older than Ella when they were kids, remembered her as his family lived on the farm next door to Ella’s. Tom also attended school with Ella’s older brothers.

We won’t bore you with the details of the visit here. If you want details, go to the following website http://jss28.home.attbi.com/index.htm to learn about, Stroud, Ella’s family and why you don’t want to walk through Oklahoma fields with tall grass during the summer.  If you go to the website, use Internet Explorer and have your sound turned on to hear the background music.

By the way, unlike last year, the websites referred to this year should work. Last year the ink was hardly dry when ATT changed our e-mail address and our website address. We hope we will not have a repeat this year.

There are two things about our visit to Oklahoma that we did not report on in our website. In California we do not have fireflies. Joe had never seen them and, while Ella may have seen them in Oklahoma before moving to California at age 3, she did not remember ever seeing them. We took several walks at night to spot the florescent flies, but to no avail. Then on our last evening in Oklahoma, as we were dropping Tom and Berniece off at their

house, the yards in their neighborhood were full of the flashing lightning bugs.

The other highlight in our visit to Stroud was to visit the local high school to see prize winning science projects from the past. Among them was the one Ella’s brother, John, did in 1942. Realizing we were in a great war and that every inch of farm land was needed for food production, John reasoned if all two-seater outhouses could be double decked, an amazing amount of farm land could be reclaimed.  He designed and built the prototype. There were just two problems. No one was willing to use the first floor and there were no stairs to the second.

Remember the War?

Joe continues to volunteer at White Hill Middle School, where our grandson, Sean is doing his best to make teachers crazy. Sean is in the seventh grade and Joe assists students in the same grade. Joe enjoys the work, but has noticed a major change in the kids this year. He has a theory that all seventh graders, regardless of the sex, are in a state of perpetual PMS.

Seventh graders are amazed to learn that Joe was not only alive during World War II, but remembers it as well. They have no concept of rationing, blackout curtains, air raid drills nor the American secret weapon, Spam. Can any of you verify the urban legend that a U.S. Navy ship sunk one of our own supply ships that was reported to be loaded with Spam?

Joe’s memories of the war are from the perspective of a child. For posterity, he has offered the words to a song he and his buddies used to sing. It is to the tune of Whistle While You Work.

Oh Whistle while you work.

Oh Whistle while you work.

Mussolini is a weenie

Hitler is a jerk.

 

If you know about how 1940 gas stoves worked, the following may make some sense:

Dewey’s in the kitchen turning on the gas.

Roosevelt comes in and kicks him in the ass. 

Who says negative campaigning is new?

Poets Corner

Had he still been living, Ogden Nash  would have turned 100 this year. Joe has always enjoyed the wisdom and brevity of his poems. He has enjoyed sharing them with some of the seventh graders. For example:

The Parent 

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for. 

 

Supposedly, Ogden Nash wrote the world’s shortest poem. The title of the poem is Fleas. It states:

“Adam had’em.”

2002 California Politics

Our California November election was again interesting. Some say that the governor of California is the second most powerful position in the country because he is the chief executive officer of the fifth largest economy in the world. It is also  an economy that is in the toilet. The wrong persons ran for governor. The two major candidates were Grey Davis and Bill Simon. None of the Above  should have run, as poles showed this would have been the most viable candidate.

While a plurality voted for the incumbent governor, he should have won by a landslide given the ineptitude of his opponent. In fact Bill Simon ran such a bad campaign that we saw a shift in seventh grader support. He should have had 100% of the middle school kids in the state working on his behalf because Governor Davis has tried to increase the school year for middle schools by six weeks. The kids were up in arms and vowed to support who ever opposed Davis. Yet Bill Simon couldn’t hang on to this block of supporters.

We are tired of politicians, like Davis and Simon, whose loyalty is to special interests rather than the people. We are also tired of a media that makes so much profit charging for adds that it becomes extremely costly to run for political office.

Let’s hope and pray for real campaign reform. Also, the media, using public airways, should provide free advertising time to  candidates.

 

A just war?

We find it very interesting that there is so much support for going to war with Iraq during a time when Christians around the world celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace. No doubt some do so under the concept of  supporting a “just war.” Well, we ask, what are the criteria for a just war? Is it in response to a bunch of oil moguls’ statements that a country threatens world peace.

Isn’t Saddam more likely to use whatever weapons of mass destruction he might have if we attack? Haven’t we learned anything about terrorism from  our colleagues in the Middle East and Ireland? Has violence by one side reduced it or increased it by the other side?

Getting back to that Prince of Peace, while we don’t know a lot about his views of the world , we are pretty sure he was against violence towards his fellow humans, even those who were on the outs. He didn’t hate the Romans or the Samaritans. We’re guessing he would not hate the Iraqis either.

He stopped the crowd from stoning a woman accused of adultery. He also had some major negative comments about hypocrites who used organized religion to serve their own political or economic benefit. Wasn’t that why he was killed? 

We know that in all cultures individuals are just as loved by family and friends as they are here. In war each death is significant. Babies and seventh graders are just as cute and loved in Iraq as they are here. There is no such thing as collateral damage.

We all have our beliefs and we respect the right for you to believe as you will. Here’s what we believe. It is less sacrilegious to place a photo of a scantly clad woman in a holiday newsletter than it is to use the concept of a “just war” to kill and injure members of God’s beloved family.

 

Would you like another glass of something to drink?

In American culture it is often considered ill mannered to talk about sex, religion or politics. The weather, lying about how well your kids and grandkids are doing and bemoaning your interaction with aging relatives are all safe and polite topics.  Instead of talking about the weather, we much prefer to discuss those items that are more controversial. We appreciate this annual chance to do so.