Hebron Crossroads 4-25-04
By Jeff Gill
Laura Finkes, we mentioned here at the Crossroads recently, has set records not only at Lakewood High School but now for Denison University as a track and field star.
Laura holds records for discus and shotput distance in the North Coast Athletic Conference, and has the school record for the shot now, proceeding on to NCAA competition.
But did you know this Hebron woman is not only an All-American honoree, but has made the Senior Dean’s List, completed an Honors project in the Honors Program at Denison, and is in “Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges.”
Oh, and she’s a Heritage Scholar. In her spare time, no doubt.
This is not the result of careful, diligent journalism, mind you. She was an invited guest at a gala reception and dinner at Denison where various faculty and board members were honored (your correspondent was there to take charge of the shiny backing sheets you peel off of nametags, but that’s another story), and it was interesting how many Lakewood area folk were there, as participants or spousal units. We’re taking over, we Lakewood people are!
Another note in passing: the assembly of young trees and shrubs on the southwest corner of the Hebron Elementary property looks particularly beautiful in the spring, with a range of shades in green and accents of white and maroon. If southwest is confusing you, just think the view to your right as you go around the back corner of the building waiting in the pick-up line after school. Which tells you where I picked up that tidbit. . .
We’re still observing “National Poetry Month” around the Hebron crossroads, and you can see more than can be wedged into this space at http://knapsack.blogspot.com from Longfellow (in honor of Lexington and Concord, April 19!), Frost, Yeats, Kinnell, and Tolkien.
You can read some poetry, or better yet, write some. It isn’t hard; try haiku. . .you know, five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables, and they don’t even have to rhyme. (It was Frost who said free verse, poetry with no syllable count, rhythm, or rhyme scheme, was “like playing tennis with the net down.”)
A speedy example of a haiku:
My keyboard clicking
Words streaming across the screen
Crickets click outside
See? Give it a try.
Anyone can be a poet, but it takes a special kind of person to be a children’s author. Steve Isham came to Hebron Elementary a few weeks ago. . .from Australia! He spent some of his youth in Columbus, and still has some ties to the area, giving him and his wife, Marion, a list of titles that includes both “Tasmanian Tiger” (they live on the island of Tasmania just off the southeast corner of the Australian continent) and “Johnny Appleseed” of local fame.
Steve was truly an inspiration to the kids, as he talked about becoming a writer and artist and showed them his diligent working methods both alone and along with his wife. He wove into his talks question and answer on geography, history, biology, art and literature, and was clearly impressed by our kids’ immediate responses about everything from editing “sloppy copy” to what makes marsupials what they are.
Did you know that, while Australia has kangaroos, koalas, and perhaps the Tasmanian tiger, we have a distant counsin here on the other side of the globe. . .the opossum! Well, our kids knew that and more.
He was also inspiring to us grownups, teachers and parents, as he patiently spoke to every child in the building, signing literally hundreds of books with personal dedications and even a little original art. Every child knew Mr. Isham was delighted to be there, and to meet them.
Class group after class group came to hear him, and his program was tailored to the age in front of him. All of this was impressive, but my own perspective was also that of a reading tutor, and what I saw in my time reading that afternoon.
The impact on those young readers was obvious in the extra effort and energy students were putting into work they otherwise might have let frustrate and even halt them. Because it was Steve Isham’s book, and one he had told them about, they wanted not only to read it, but get the full measure of understanding they could from the pages.
When you hear about special days like this in our Lakewood schools, know that they aren’t a distraction from their educational aims, but a real fulfillment of their purposes.
And a hat-tip to Mr. Isham and his devotion to young readers, writers, and artists. You can still see in the halls at both Hebron and Jackson Elementary the art Steve inspired and reviewed.
Earth Day is observed this weekend at Dawes Arboretum and Licking Park District’s William Kraner Nature Center with an assortment of Saturday events. We certainly are with the farmers in hoping that the rich blessing of rain might be eased this weekend, and for a few weeks ahead. Fishing is picking up again for our area anglers, and May 1-2 is “Free Fishing” weekend at all public areas, with the Hebron Fish Hatchery on Canal Road holding a special children’s program on Saturday, May 1, from 9 to 1 pm. An adult must accompany each child.
Beauty all around
Not only up or around
Mud between your toes
Get outside and look for beauty; there’s plenty to see.
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and usually wears boots in the mud, to tell the truth; if you would like to leave your own tracks across this column with news or notes of local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
* * * * * * *
Hatching Fish Spawns Local Hidden Gem
By Jeff Gill
For the Community Booster
“We’ve got millions of fish here, but you can’t see them too easily from the bank,” says Jim Stafford, superintendent of the Hebron State Fish Hatchery.
Thousands, if not millions of Ohio anglers and tourists, take up the challenge to see some of those fish up close and personal at the end of their fishing line.
The job of this major local asset is to help ensure that there are fish to catch, and as the largest of Ohio’s six hatcheries, they provide a large portion of what go into fishing camp frying pans at the end of a long, relaxing day all over the state.
Superintendent Stafford and his crew have been working long hours through the spring, first with nearly 15 million eggs “harvested” from fish (think milking, but with even more dexterity required), then the fertilized eggs hatching in complexes of tanks into “fry” that grow into 6.5 million “fingerlings” which ideally result in close to 5 million fish.
They’re tired, but along with delivering the walleyes, saugeyes, bluegills, channel catfish, and striped bass to areas where no natural reproduction occurs, the staff at the Hebron Fish Hatchery take on an additional task: to teach a new generation of young fishermen and women the art and skill of catching your own fish.
Saturday, May 1, the hatchery will host a youth fishing event from 9 am to 1 pm. Children, who must have an adult along with them, will get a chance to learn about fish, fishing, and the work of the facility. “We’re inviting any young people up to age 18 to come out and get oriented to what fishing is all about,” says Stafford.
That weekend is “Free Fishing Weekend” around the state on any public waters, but the hatchery staff wanted to do something a little extra.
“We have nature trails, woods, and wetlands, along with the 63 ponds on this property, along with this building,” he adds with a sweep of his hand, pointing to the visitor’s area through the middle of the Administration/Education Building, one of the newest in the complex. Displays and interactive kiosks combine with an assortment of not only mounted fish (which you’d expect) but a number of other creatures you might find around the grounds, from herons to beavers. “That blank spot will have a bear soon,” Stafford notes, pointing back to the area above the entrance.
At the end of the display area is an outdoor observation deck looking across one of the rearing ponds. Birders have long known that this is a hot spot for observation, with over 250 species sighted on the 230 acres.
All of this is open to the public any weekday from 8 to 4:30 pm, and on the Saturday Fishing Day May 1 from 9 am to 1 pm. For specific information, call 928-8092.
The facility was built in 1938 with assistance from the Civilian Conservation Corps based out of Newark at what is now Great Circle State Memorial, “Camp Moundbuilders.” While the CCC finished work quickly, the first fish weren’t produced until 1941.
As a division of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the war slowed down progress at the hatchery, but picked up right after, leading to an expansion in 1951. Transferred to the Ohio Division of Wildlife in 1982, a renovation in 1992 led to the complex of buildings and 63 one acre rearing ponds you see today, also home to the Inland Fisheries Research Unit.
Another historical note is that the water for the ponds comes from Buckeye Lake through a working spur of the Ohio & Erie Canal, probably the only ongoing use of the canal along its formerly state-spanning length. So the living history at the Hebron Fish Hatchery goes back to 1826, in a way.
Local historians and archaeologists know fish were speared and netted in rivers, streams, and lakes going back thousands of years in the Big Buffalo Swamp area, now submerged beneath Buckeye Lake, the feeder reservoir for the canal. Salt licks, which attracted animals in search of minerals they craved, are also lost beneath the lake’s surface.
But the area around the lake and the hatchery still see flint knives and other traces of ancient hunter gatherers, who no doubt fished in their hunting camp time while waiting for herds of bison or even a stray mastodon (if you go back far enough) to come to the licks.
Contrast this ancient history for the art and skill of fishing with the science that mobilizes the hatchery staff each spring.
Biotechnology doesn’t have to be in a white coated lab. Here crews muffled against the cold wade out into half drained ponds, picking out the fish loaded with eggs, milking the thousands of eggs into containers soon mixed with the milt of the males to fertilize them, leading to the first set of hatching a fish.
The process varies depending on the species, and some few do things the old fashioned way out in the ponds (keep those thoughts clean; this is what biologists call an “external process” of fertilization), but the careful monitoring and managing of hatched fry, fingerlings, and yearlings is as scientific as rocket science, and hard work to boot.
“We have a success rate much better than Mother Nature,” Stafford says, referring to how many eggs end up being fish to stock at the end of the process. They also have a few tricks she doesn’t use, such as how “Saugeye,” a popular sport fish, come into being. Female walleye eggs are mixed with milt from male saugers; in the same way, hybrid striped bass come from female white bass and male stripers. All of this is very hands-on, labor intensive work, as is the monitoring of fry through the spring from hatching jars as they live off their egg yolk sacs, then swim up to where they can be skimmed off to rearing troughs. These steps take place indoors, until they are judged ready to be transported to the ponds, where each species gets the feeding and water management appropriate to their needs.
“We’re what they call a cool water hatchery, so we don’t raise trout, which require a cold water process,” said Stafford, pointing out that trout and other fish are raised at some of the other five state hatcheries. They all help each other out, as well as coordinating schedules for the stocking around Ohio. Special tanker trucks are used for transport of the fish ready to stock, and the count (done by sampling) will tell them at the end of the process how well they’ve done.
This is a great time of year to visit this mix of history and modern science, outdoor and indoor interests. You don’t have to be fascinated by fish to enjoy the Hebron Fish Hatchery (we saw a heron fly overhead driving in, and a foot-and-a-half snapping turtle stomping off to a pond as we left), but you will certainly find fish more interesting by the time you have to leave.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
When readers send along wonderful stuff like this, how can i not add one more?
pax, jbg
Saint Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
by Galway Kinnell
pax, jbg
Saint Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
by Galway Kinnell
Well, since you've asked (somebody, anyhow), two more by Robert Frost, including the aforementioned "Two Tramps in Mud Time," but don't forget to scroll down to read "Paul Revere's Ride" in all its glorious historical inaccuracy this anniversary week (Revere's and Lexington's, not Longfellow's):
Two Tramps in Mud Time
by Robert Frost
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn´t blue,
But he wouldn´t advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut´s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don´t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You´d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man´s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right -- agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future´s sakes.
. . .and
THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. 'Silas is back.'
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind,' she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
'When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I'll not have the fellow back,' he said.
'I told him so last haying, didn't I?
"If he left then," I said, "that ended it."
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there's no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
won't have to beg and be beholden."
"All right," I say "I can't afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could."
"Someone else can."
"Then someone else will have to.
I shouldn't mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there's someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money, --
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I'm done.'
'Shh I not so loud: he'll hear you,' Mary said.
'I want him to: he'll have to soon or late.'
'He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe's I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too-
You needn't smile -- I didn't recognize him-
I wasn't looking for him- and he's changed.
Wait till you see.'
'Where did you say he'd been?
'He didn't say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.'
'What did he say? Did he say anything?'
'But little.'
'Anything? Mary, confess
He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me.'
'Warren!'
'But did he? I just want to know.'
'Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to dear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times -- he made me feel so queer--
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson -- you remember -
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He's finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you'll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education -- you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.'
'Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.'
'Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger!
Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold's associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it -- that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong--
Which showed how much good school had ever done
him. He wanted to go over that. 'But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay --'
'I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself.'
'He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.'
Part of a moon was filling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die:
You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.'
'Home,' he mocked gently.
'Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
'Silas has better claim on' us, you think,
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn't he go there? His brother's rich,
A somebody- director in the bank.'
'He never told us that.'
'We know it though.'
'I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I'll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to-=
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he'd had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He'd keep so still about him all this time?'
'I wonder what's between them.'
'I can tell you.
Silas is what he is -- we wouldn't mind him--
But just the kind that kinsfolk can't abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don't know why he isn't quite as good
As anyone. He won't be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.'
'I can't think Si ever hurt anyone.'
'No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You'll be surprised at him -- how much he's broken.
His working days are done; I'm sure of it.'
'I'd not be in a hurry to say that.'
'I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He' come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan, You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.'
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned-- too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
'Warren?' she questioned.
'Dead,' was all he answered.
Two Tramps in Mud Time
by Robert Frost
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You´re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you´re two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn´t blue,
But he wouldn´t advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut´s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don´t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You´d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man´s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right -- agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future´s sakes.
. . .and
THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. 'Silas is back.'
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. "Be kind,' she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
'When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I'll not have the fellow back,' he said.
'I told him so last haying, didn't I?
"If he left then," I said, "that ended it."
What good is he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there's no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
won't have to beg and be beholden."
"All right," I say "I can't afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could."
"Someone else can."
"Then someone else will have to.
I shouldn't mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there's someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money, --
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I'm done.'
'Shh I not so loud: he'll hear you,' Mary said.
'I want him to: he'll have to soon or late.'
'He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe's I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too-
You needn't smile -- I didn't recognize him-
I wasn't looking for him- and he's changed.
Wait till you see.'
'Where did you say he'd been?
'He didn't say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.'
'What did he say? Did he say anything?'
'But little.'
'Anything? Mary, confess
He said he'd come to ditch the meadow for me.'
'Warren!'
'But did he? I just want to know.'
'Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to dear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times -- he made me feel so queer--
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson -- you remember -
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He's finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you'll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education -- you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.'
'Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.'
'Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger!
Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold's associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it -- that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong--
Which showed how much good school had ever done
him. He wanted to go over that. 'But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay --'
'I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself.'
'He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.'
Part of a moon was filling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die:
You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.'
'Home,' he mocked gently.
'Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
'Silas has better claim on' us, you think,
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn't he go there? His brother's rich,
A somebody- director in the bank.'
'He never told us that.'
'We know it though.'
'I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I'll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to-=
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he'd had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He'd keep so still about him all this time?'
'I wonder what's between them.'
'I can tell you.
Silas is what he is -- we wouldn't mind him--
But just the kind that kinsfolk can't abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don't know why he isn't quite as good
As anyone. He won't be made ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he is.'
'I can't think Si ever hurt anyone.'
'No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldn't let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You'll be surprised at him -- how much he's broken.
His working days are done; I'm sure of it.'
'I'd not be in a hurry to say that.'
'I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He' come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan, You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.'
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned-- too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
'Warren?' she questioned.
'Dead,' was all he answered.
April, National Poetry Month, continues here in the knapsack. . .
. . .and in honor of April 18-20, the first of this week's two:
Paul Revere’s Ride
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
>From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.
* * * * * * *
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Robert Frost, from “North of Boston” 1915
. . .and in honor of April 18-20, the first of this week's two:
Paul Revere’s Ride
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
>From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.
* * * * * * *
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Robert Frost, from “North of Boston” 1915
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 4-18-04
By Jeff Gill
After winter’s eraser has wiped the landscape clean, spring starts to color in the new portrait of growth and life.
Sharp slashes of yellow along roadways mark stands of forsythia, alternating with thinner, lower lines of gold where daffodils streak horizontal edges. Bursts of lavender and pink-tinged magnolia dot corners of homes and lots, while drifts of whiter dogwood blossoms pick out contrasts in woodier settings.
The billows of loose limbed willow in yellow-green jump out from what is still, for a few weeks, gray brown tree trunks, the maples casting down red brown forerunners of leaves still curled within their stems.
Get out for a walk in the woods now, if you can (wear boots, stepping cautiously between the mudruns) and get a map in your mind to lay against the more deeply shrouded dark green obscurity of summer. You can see across the landscape for a while yet, but also note where life (morels, trillium, squirrel nests) is breaking up the bark and leaf moldering monotony of the forest.
Much is going on in civilization, too, around the Hebron Crossroads. New shapes on the roofline of Clay’s Café on West Main Street, and don’t forget they’re still open for business through all this construction activity.
Go on out West Main past the municipal complex, where our next Hebron Village Blood Drive with the Red Cross is Monday, Apr. 19 from 1 to 6 pm, and climb Sunset Hill to where Trudy’s Attic is no more. . .
Now, welcome to K&C Cycle, Hebron’s Yamaha dealership and motorcycle shop. They had a grand opening last week, and many of you are stopping by to look at accessories as well as the possibility of a new ride on which to cruise the springtime hills of Ohio.
Head north of Main on High Street, and there’s activity apace at the former Water Works business, stripping down the old steelframe and sheathing structure. Has anyone heard what’s up for that site? Next door, at 149 N. High, Mantonya Chiropractic is cleaning out the building where their practice will move and grow, while the Adams’ have purchased the equipment of the former child care center there and are thinking of getting started in that business somewhere about.
And this coffee drinker is looking forward to a café/bookshop somewhere near the heart of downtown!
Next weekend, starting Thursday evening, actually, the Lakewood Drama Club is putting on the “biggest” show they’ve probably ever had, “The Wizard of Oz.” Huge sets, a cast of thou. . .OK, hundreds. . .alright, a hundred, but still! Familiar scenes and story plus local faces, some very hard to recognize behind complex makeup, and a full workout for the lights, sound, and pit orchestra: you don’t want to miss it. A second show has been added for Sunday Apr. 25, but call the Performing Arts hotline at Lakewood High, 928-4496 for ticket info. You really want to get your ticket in advance for the show you want, and Saturday night was nearly sold out two weeks ago, so call! Saturday will include some special moments we’ll report on in coming weeks.
No truth to the rumor that Don Thorp plays “the man behind the curtain” in “Oz,” but he’s always been a coach to say “pay no attention to” the guy on the bench and watch the young men on the field as they play, execute, and perform in their own art form of baseball. This “wizard” of the diamond has now won 700 games as Lakewood baseball coach; or, as he’d probably say, coached teams that won 700 games. Another big achievement for a Lakewood legend.
And did you know Laura Finkes, whose achievements with the discus in track and field with Lakewood are saluted at the village limits on signage there, is continuing her string of accomplishment in discus competition at the collegiate level? Denison’s Big Red has Laura making their name known in Ohio and around the North Coast Athletic Conference, and we should have some season’s end results to share next week.
Closing this week, before the month of April comes to an end: did you know this is National Poetry Month? Spring makes for poetry in many ways, and while space and formatting make it hard for us to run too much poetry in the Booster, we can point you to some wonderful online resources to browse and read poetry to your heart’s content.
Robert Frost is both one of my personal favorite poets and my ideal Spring poet, as well (think “Two Tramps at Mudtime,” f’r instance). His quote “poetry is a way of taking life by the throat” heads Frost’s page at bartleby.com, an excellent source for public domain classic poetry and an easy website to navigate.
Gutenberg.net has a large quantity of public domain material as well, both poetry and prose; poetry.com as you might guess from the url suffix is more mercantile in outlook, but poetry.net has an assortment of links to recent poetry, of all levels of skill and quality.
The Library of Congress is the abode of the national Poet Laureate, and their website, Thomas.gov, can link you to a number of websites on poetry, including that of Robert Pinsky, the incumbent in that office.
Locally, puddinghouse.org is the domain of Jennifer Bosveld, whom I was privileged to work with in the early days of the Licking County Coalition for Housing. I was saddened to learn in doublechecking her web address that her husband Jim, so recently ordained to the ministry in the Unitarian-Universalist Church, died a month ago. They had operated a B&B in Johnstown until a while ago, where their business publishing and sharing poetry was based; they had since moved to just over the line back into Franklin County, and made the internet their base of operations.
Somehow I doubt that this will stop Jennifer from writing and publishing poetry, and her website still has the best information on readings and performance venues as well as publishing opportunities in central Ohio for poets. Jim had a great heart, and that love of life will live on in the work he and Jennifer began through Pudding House, and I’m certain in Jen’s poetry, too.
Don’t know where to start in reading poetry? Well, aside from my favorites like Frost, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, and William Blake, all of whom can be found online (try Google or the sites above), today’s poetry in America is marvelously represented by Maxine Kumin, whom I had the privilege to meet and write a poem for a few years ago. She publishes regularly in book form (no small feat, that) and in the pages of magazines like “The Atlantic Monthly.”
Plus there are likely to be poems through the rest of the month at knapsack.blogspot.com. Or you could write your own! As William Stafford said, “write a poem a day. I didn’t say write a great poem, or even a good poem everyday. Just keep writing them, and you’ll start to see.”
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and poetry fanboy; if you want to send a poem to dare him to print it in this column, or have news of local interest, email disciple@voyager.net or call 928-4066.
* * * * * * *
Some poetry bloggage from Yeats & Tolkien:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats, 1925;
. . .and
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
. . .now, from fantasy out of reality, the supreme poet of reality out of pure fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien; four, in English and Elvish (Tengwar):
I sit beside the fire and think...
by J. R. R. Tolkien
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
The Road Goes Ever On
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Namárië
Also called: Galadriel's Lament
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.
Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbë met,
ar hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë.
Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar!
Nai elyë hiruva! Namárië!
Namárië
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The long years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls
beyond the West, beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble
in the voice of her song, holy and queenly.
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies
on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those of the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar!
Maybe even thou shalt find it! Farewell!
Elbereth
Snow-white! Snow-white! O lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Sea!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath.
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee
In a far land beyond the Sea.
O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sown,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown.
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
Silivren penna miriel
O menal aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-diriel
O galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, si nef aearon!
Ai! laurie lantar lassi surinen!
Yeni unotime ve ramar aldaron,
Yeni ve linte yuldar vanier
Mi oromardi lisse-miruvoreva
Andune pella Vardo tellumar
Nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
Omaryo airetari-lirinen.
Si man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An si Tintalle Varda Oilosseo
Ve fanyar maryat Elentari ortane,
Ar ilye tier undulare lumbule;
Ar sindanoriello caita mornie
I falmalinnar imbe met, ar hisie
Untupa Calaciryo miri oiale.
Si vanwa na, Romello vanwa, Valimar!
Namarie! Nai hiruvalye Valimar.
Nai elye hiruva. Namarie!
Ah! Like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
Long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The long years have passed like swift draughts of the sweet mead
In lofty halls beyond the West
Beneath the blue vaults of Varda
Wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice,
Holy and queenly.
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
For now the Kindler, Varda,
The Queen of the Stars, from Mount Everwhite
Has uplifted her hands like clouds,
And all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
And out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
And mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it! Farewell!
Gilthoniel A Elbereth!
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O menel palan-diriel,
Le nallon si dinguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!
A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!
Silivren penna miriel
O menal aglar elenath,
Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
JRR Tolkien
By Jeff Gill
After winter’s eraser has wiped the landscape clean, spring starts to color in the new portrait of growth and life.
Sharp slashes of yellow along roadways mark stands of forsythia, alternating with thinner, lower lines of gold where daffodils streak horizontal edges. Bursts of lavender and pink-tinged magnolia dot corners of homes and lots, while drifts of whiter dogwood blossoms pick out contrasts in woodier settings.
The billows of loose limbed willow in yellow-green jump out from what is still, for a few weeks, gray brown tree trunks, the maples casting down red brown forerunners of leaves still curled within their stems.
Get out for a walk in the woods now, if you can (wear boots, stepping cautiously between the mudruns) and get a map in your mind to lay against the more deeply shrouded dark green obscurity of summer. You can see across the landscape for a while yet, but also note where life (morels, trillium, squirrel nests) is breaking up the bark and leaf moldering monotony of the forest.
Much is going on in civilization, too, around the Hebron Crossroads. New shapes on the roofline of Clay’s Café on West Main Street, and don’t forget they’re still open for business through all this construction activity.
Go on out West Main past the municipal complex, where our next Hebron Village Blood Drive with the Red Cross is Monday, Apr. 19 from 1 to 6 pm, and climb Sunset Hill to where Trudy’s Attic is no more. . .
Now, welcome to K&C Cycle, Hebron’s Yamaha dealership and motorcycle shop. They had a grand opening last week, and many of you are stopping by to look at accessories as well as the possibility of a new ride on which to cruise the springtime hills of Ohio.
Head north of Main on High Street, and there’s activity apace at the former Water Works business, stripping down the old steelframe and sheathing structure. Has anyone heard what’s up for that site? Next door, at 149 N. High, Mantonya Chiropractic is cleaning out the building where their practice will move and grow, while the Adams’ have purchased the equipment of the former child care center there and are thinking of getting started in that business somewhere about.
And this coffee drinker is looking forward to a café/bookshop somewhere near the heart of downtown!
Next weekend, starting Thursday evening, actually, the Lakewood Drama Club is putting on the “biggest” show they’ve probably ever had, “The Wizard of Oz.” Huge sets, a cast of thou. . .OK, hundreds. . .alright, a hundred, but still! Familiar scenes and story plus local faces, some very hard to recognize behind complex makeup, and a full workout for the lights, sound, and pit orchestra: you don’t want to miss it. A second show has been added for Sunday Apr. 25, but call the Performing Arts hotline at Lakewood High, 928-4496 for ticket info. You really want to get your ticket in advance for the show you want, and Saturday night was nearly sold out two weeks ago, so call! Saturday will include some special moments we’ll report on in coming weeks.
No truth to the rumor that Don Thorp plays “the man behind the curtain” in “Oz,” but he’s always been a coach to say “pay no attention to” the guy on the bench and watch the young men on the field as they play, execute, and perform in their own art form of baseball. This “wizard” of the diamond has now won 700 games as Lakewood baseball coach; or, as he’d probably say, coached teams that won 700 games. Another big achievement for a Lakewood legend.
And did you know Laura Finkes, whose achievements with the discus in track and field with Lakewood are saluted at the village limits on signage there, is continuing her string of accomplishment in discus competition at the collegiate level? Denison’s Big Red has Laura making their name known in Ohio and around the North Coast Athletic Conference, and we should have some season’s end results to share next week.
Closing this week, before the month of April comes to an end: did you know this is National Poetry Month? Spring makes for poetry in many ways, and while space and formatting make it hard for us to run too much poetry in the Booster, we can point you to some wonderful online resources to browse and read poetry to your heart’s content.
Robert Frost is both one of my personal favorite poets and my ideal Spring poet, as well (think “Two Tramps at Mudtime,” f’r instance). His quote “poetry is a way of taking life by the throat” heads Frost’s page at bartleby.com, an excellent source for public domain classic poetry and an easy website to navigate.
Gutenberg.net has a large quantity of public domain material as well, both poetry and prose; poetry.com as you might guess from the url suffix is more mercantile in outlook, but poetry.net has an assortment of links to recent poetry, of all levels of skill and quality.
The Library of Congress is the abode of the national Poet Laureate, and their website, Thomas.gov, can link you to a number of websites on poetry, including that of Robert Pinsky, the incumbent in that office.
Locally, puddinghouse.org is the domain of Jennifer Bosveld, whom I was privileged to work with in the early days of the Licking County Coalition for Housing. I was saddened to learn in doublechecking her web address that her husband Jim, so recently ordained to the ministry in the Unitarian-Universalist Church, died a month ago. They had operated a B&B in Johnstown until a while ago, where their business publishing and sharing poetry was based; they had since moved to just over the line back into Franklin County, and made the internet their base of operations.
Somehow I doubt that this will stop Jennifer from writing and publishing poetry, and her website still has the best information on readings and performance venues as well as publishing opportunities in central Ohio for poets. Jim had a great heart, and that love of life will live on in the work he and Jennifer began through Pudding House, and I’m certain in Jen’s poetry, too.
Don’t know where to start in reading poetry? Well, aside from my favorites like Frost, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, and William Blake, all of whom can be found online (try Google or the sites above), today’s poetry in America is marvelously represented by Maxine Kumin, whom I had the privilege to meet and write a poem for a few years ago. She publishes regularly in book form (no small feat, that) and in the pages of magazines like “The Atlantic Monthly.”
Plus there are likely to be poems through the rest of the month at knapsack.blogspot.com. Or you could write your own! As William Stafford said, “write a poem a day. I didn’t say write a great poem, or even a good poem everyday. Just keep writing them, and you’ll start to see.”
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and poetry fanboy; if you want to send a poem to dare him to print it in this column, or have news of local interest, email disciple@voyager.net or call 928-4066.
* * * * * * *
Some poetry bloggage from Yeats & Tolkien:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats, 1925;
. . .and
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
. . .now, from fantasy out of reality, the supreme poet of reality out of pure fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien; four, in English and Elvish (Tengwar):
I sit beside the fire and think...
by J. R. R. Tolkien
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
The Road Goes Ever On
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Namárië
Also called: Galadriel's Lament
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.
Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbë met,
ar hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë.
Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar!
Nai elyë hiruva! Namárië!
Namárië
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The long years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls
beyond the West, beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble
in the voice of her song, holy and queenly.
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies
on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those of the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar!
Maybe even thou shalt find it! Farewell!
Elbereth
Snow-white! Snow-white! O lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Sea!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath.
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee
In a far land beyond the Sea.
O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sown,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown.
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
Silivren penna miriel
O menal aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-diriel
O galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, si nef aearon!
Ai! laurie lantar lassi surinen!
Yeni unotime ve ramar aldaron,
Yeni ve linte yuldar vanier
Mi oromardi lisse-miruvoreva
Andune pella Vardo tellumar
Nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
Omaryo airetari-lirinen.
Si man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An si Tintalle Varda Oilosseo
Ve fanyar maryat Elentari ortane,
Ar ilye tier undulare lumbule;
Ar sindanoriello caita mornie
I falmalinnar imbe met, ar hisie
Untupa Calaciryo miri oiale.
Si vanwa na, Romello vanwa, Valimar!
Namarie! Nai hiruvalye Valimar.
Nai elye hiruva. Namarie!
Ah! Like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
Long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The long years have passed like swift draughts of the sweet mead
In lofty halls beyond the West
Beneath the blue vaults of Varda
Wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice,
Holy and queenly.
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
For now the Kindler, Varda,
The Queen of the Stars, from Mount Everwhite
Has uplifted her hands like clouds,
And all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
And out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
And mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it! Farewell!
Gilthoniel A Elbereth!
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O menel palan-diriel,
Le nallon si dinguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!
A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!
Silivren penna miriel
O menal aglar elenath,
Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
JRR Tolkien
Monday, April 12, 2004
An Easter Communion Meditation
Seed & earth
Sun & rain
Life & birth
Joy & pain
Growing grain & seedling grapes
Stalks in sheaves & rounded shapes
Stone grinding mill & winepress of wood
Clay outdoor ovens by courtyards stood.
Deep in the earth, casks aging their wine
Preserving as drink the fruit of the vine.
Table all set, and dishes too
Plates and cups both old & new.
Loaf & chalice, broken & poured
A sacred meal, served by Our Lord.
Body & blood, symbol & sign,
Meaning & action as one, intertwined.
To us, and today
Meal & mystery now on display
Sharing & service, worship divine
For you & for me, now & always align.
Eternity's bread, & heaven's full cup
A banquet where all of God's people rise up.
Invited, accepted
Included, respected
Servants in all things Our Lord has directed.
Joy & pain
Life & birth
Sun & rain
Seed & earth;
From empty tomb
Recall & meet
In this room,
Take & eat.
Easter 2004
Seed & earth
Sun & rain
Life & birth
Joy & pain
Growing grain & seedling grapes
Stalks in sheaves & rounded shapes
Stone grinding mill & winepress of wood
Clay outdoor ovens by courtyards stood.
Deep in the earth, casks aging their wine
Preserving as drink the fruit of the vine.
Table all set, and dishes too
Plates and cups both old & new.
Loaf & chalice, broken & poured
A sacred meal, served by Our Lord.
Body & blood, symbol & sign,
Meaning & action as one, intertwined.
To us, and today
Meal & mystery now on display
Sharing & service, worship divine
For you & for me, now & always align.
Eternity's bread, & heaven's full cup
A banquet where all of God's people rise up.
Invited, accepted
Included, respected
Servants in all things Our Lord has directed.
Joy & pain
Life & birth
Sun & rain
Seed & earth;
From empty tomb
Recall & meet
In this room,
Take & eat.
Easter 2004
Monday, March 29, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 4-11-04
By Jeff Gill
Easter sunrise services are held all over, in unique venues like the Midland Theater in Newark, outside at Licking Baptist Church overlooking Beaver Run, or the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association service at Dawes Arboretum, watching the sun rise through the cypress swamp over historic Hog Run valley, where some of the earliest Christian worship services were held 200 years ago.
Those settlers’ descendants are still part of little churches like Whitechapel UMC and Fairmount Presbyterian, as well as newcomers like Hebron and Jacksontown UMC and my own Hebron Christian.
You are welcome to come join one group of us as we gather together to celebrate Easter at 6:30 am in the upper picnic shelter at Dawes, with breakfast following in memory of Nelson Werkhaven at the United Methodist Church of Hebron.
On Saturday, Apr. 10, children’s Easter Egg Hunts are offered by churches and civic groups from Infirmary Mound Park on Rt. 37 by the good folks of the Licking Park District in the morning, to Excel Academy in Jacksontown at 10 am, and to Buckeye Lake’s Ryan Park sponsored by the Buckeye Lake Youth Association at 2 pm. Hebron Christian is offering a crafts and activity time for smaller children at 3 pm on West Main Street.
Plus, you can walk by Kathryn Lockwood’s house on North Street at Seventh anytime and see her world-famous Easter Egg Tree in the front window. Go ahead, just walk up on the porch! After all, each of the kindergarden classes at Hebron Elementary do each year. Can you guess which are the new eggs this year?
Anthony Trollope, the British novelist and post office manager (he “invented” the bright red post-boxes you may associate with scenes of England, imitated here by the round-top blue mailboxes of American street corners) is famous for writing 1000 words each weekday morning before breakfast, accounting for his prodigious output, matching that of his contemporary, the prolific Charles Dickens.
Running across that bit of literary trivia, I nodded with appreciation of the large but achievable task Trollope set himself, since recently I had done some verbal accounting of my own, with the help of the computer’s word count function.
Every week, for this column, I usually write around 800 to 1200 words (this one, due to the pressures of Easter week preparations, is an unusually brief 696!); in preaching the message on Sunday mornings at church, what some call a “sermon,” 2500 to 4000 words. Each month, my pastor’s column in the congregational newsletter runs 400 to 600 words (plus a few other quick notes), and I write the Licking District page for the Scouting monthly tabloid, “The Scouter,” another 1000 to 2500 words. That’s 20,000 to 25,000 words of output each month this keyboard generates with the help of my fingers, not counting the Saturday church page in the Advocate, stray articles for my denominations’ publications or other freelance writing in history and culture, plus postings to web forums and comments boxes on religion and society. If I were writing novels, I’d be keeping up with Anthony pretty well.
But my toughest writing challenge? Every week or so, I try to put something eye-catching, thought-provoking, or amusingly meaningful on our church sign board. Long ago, I learned that posting sermon titles preaches only to the converted, and that less is indeed more; our sign’s configuration and letter size ruthlessly enforces the “less is more” rule, giving me about seven words on each side to make my point (and I try to put a different statement on each side, to boot). Add to that the fact that some word selections given the supply available in our letter bin leave me short a “T” or “N,” forcing a rephrasing, and those 14 words or so become the biggest test of my verbal ingenuity.
This week, however, I only need three words to say all I need to offer you for Easter week.
“Christ Is Risen!”
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and is fortunate in loving to write (not to mention read); if you have news of literary or local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Easter sunrise services are held all over, in unique venues like the Midland Theater in Newark, outside at Licking Baptist Church overlooking Beaver Run, or the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association service at Dawes Arboretum, watching the sun rise through the cypress swamp over historic Hog Run valley, where some of the earliest Christian worship services were held 200 years ago.
Those settlers’ descendants are still part of little churches like Whitechapel UMC and Fairmount Presbyterian, as well as newcomers like Hebron and Jacksontown UMC and my own Hebron Christian.
You are welcome to come join one group of us as we gather together to celebrate Easter at 6:30 am in the upper picnic shelter at Dawes, with breakfast following in memory of Nelson Werkhaven at the United Methodist Church of Hebron.
On Saturday, Apr. 10, children’s Easter Egg Hunts are offered by churches and civic groups from Infirmary Mound Park on Rt. 37 by the good folks of the Licking Park District in the morning, to Excel Academy in Jacksontown at 10 am, and to Buckeye Lake’s Ryan Park sponsored by the Buckeye Lake Youth Association at 2 pm. Hebron Christian is offering a crafts and activity time for smaller children at 3 pm on West Main Street.
Plus, you can walk by Kathryn Lockwood’s house on North Street at Seventh anytime and see her world-famous Easter Egg Tree in the front window. Go ahead, just walk up on the porch! After all, each of the kindergarden classes at Hebron Elementary do each year. Can you guess which are the new eggs this year?
Anthony Trollope, the British novelist and post office manager (he “invented” the bright red post-boxes you may associate with scenes of England, imitated here by the round-top blue mailboxes of American street corners) is famous for writing 1000 words each weekday morning before breakfast, accounting for his prodigious output, matching that of his contemporary, the prolific Charles Dickens.
Running across that bit of literary trivia, I nodded with appreciation of the large but achievable task Trollope set himself, since recently I had done some verbal accounting of my own, with the help of the computer’s word count function.
Every week, for this column, I usually write around 800 to 1200 words (this one, due to the pressures of Easter week preparations, is an unusually brief 696!); in preaching the message on Sunday mornings at church, what some call a “sermon,” 2500 to 4000 words. Each month, my pastor’s column in the congregational newsletter runs 400 to 600 words (plus a few other quick notes), and I write the Licking District page for the Scouting monthly tabloid, “The Scouter,” another 1000 to 2500 words. That’s 20,000 to 25,000 words of output each month this keyboard generates with the help of my fingers, not counting the Saturday church page in the Advocate, stray articles for my denominations’ publications or other freelance writing in history and culture, plus postings to web forums and comments boxes on religion and society. If I were writing novels, I’d be keeping up with Anthony pretty well.
But my toughest writing challenge? Every week or so, I try to put something eye-catching, thought-provoking, or amusingly meaningful on our church sign board. Long ago, I learned that posting sermon titles preaches only to the converted, and that less is indeed more; our sign’s configuration and letter size ruthlessly enforces the “less is more” rule, giving me about seven words on each side to make my point (and I try to put a different statement on each side, to boot). Add to that the fact that some word selections given the supply available in our letter bin leave me short a “T” or “N,” forcing a rephrasing, and those 14 words or so become the biggest test of my verbal ingenuity.
This week, however, I only need three words to say all I need to offer you for Easter week.
“Christ Is Risen!”
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and is fortunate in loving to write (not to mention read); if you have news of literary or local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 4-04-04
By Jeff Gill
What a fascinating publication date this issue of the Booster has: 04-04-04. Makes you think of some kind of magical, mystical code. . .well, see further down for the ?DaVinci Code? review.
If astronomy is more your source of awe and wonder, note well along with the Little Guy that for a little while yet, in early evening/late dusk you can see all five ?visible? planets in a row across the ecliptic, from rarely seen Mercury low on the western horizon to Venus, Mars and our own satellite the Moon together, Saturn right overhead and Jupiter plodding along in the east. It will be a very long time before the naked-eye planets are all together like this (OK, 2038; long enough), so step outside and enjoy the cosmic view.
But this second phase of Spring has a magic all its own; lawns grey-brown with winterkill start to glow, a very earthly glow. Green under yellow makes for a vibrant gold, and as you admire that look, you turn to open fields nearby and there?s suddenly a thin green coating across last Fall?s furrows. Turn again, and there?s high grass growing around the sprouting yellow daffodils and magnetically purple crocuses all in full blossom.
Spring. To coin a phrase, it?s a good thing.
Time Change! First Saturday of April means ?spring forward,? and no matter how you put it, I still think ?lose an hour of sleep.? Ah well, at least we?re not losing that hour on Easter morning when pastors get up at 4:30 am. . .but don?t show up at church as the last hymn is playing the third verse!
Severe weather is one of the hazards of warmer air from the south having a close encounter with the holdover cold fronts from Canada. Tornado watches and warnings are not to be taken lightly in central Ohio, especially just east of the ?heat island? effect that is Columbus? acres of asphalt and concrete. Does your family have an emergency pac (flashlight, batteries, radio, first aid kit) and a place with some blankets handy down in the basement (northwest corner) or an interior room without windows? And did I mention that time change weekend is a good time to swap out your smoke detector batteries and check your CO detector. . .
Speaking of Spring safety, ATV?s are humming in the fields of Union and Licking Townships. When we lived in West Virginia, and my wife was a state extension service staffer, we?d have our living room floor covered each Spring with 4-H posters for ATV safety. There are few possible slogan versions for ?don?t lose your head, wear a helmet? that we haven?t heard.
Seriously, though, wear a helmet and be just a bit more careful than you think you need to be. Quadriplegia is not fun, no matter how much of a kick zipping across mud bogs can be.
And I hear that riding a Segway can be dangerous if you don?t know what you?re doing and don?t take the training program included in the $5000 sticker price. Hebron Village learned that they won?t, in fact, get Segway personal transporters for everyone, since the First of April story on that was, believe it or not, an April Fool?s gag at the Hebron Crossroads.
No foolin?, there is no more ?Bowman Chevrolet? in Hebron. The new signs went up along Main Street for ?Coughlin Chevrolet of Hebron,? as they?ve been answering the phones for the last few weeks. You pronounce that ?Cog-lynn,? by the way, not ?cough-lan? as some Irish might have it. The Coughlin folks, with Joe Bowman, Jr. as general manager here, will be around for a while: there is a plan to develop a piece of land on Broad Street in Pataskala near their Kroger, but that?s a year or more away. . .so welcome to our Coughlin (say it, ?cog-lynn?!) neighbors.
?The DaVinci Code? has become a bestseller, which would be of little note to me (how can anyone, no matter how voracious a reader, keep up with every so-called bestseller on the market?) except for one thing. I?ve had a couple of people ask me the attention getting question ?Did you know Jesus got married to Mary Magdalene?? My first reaction was, bemused bafflement on the order of ?what have you been reading, anyhow?? After hearing the answer ?The DaVinci Code? both times, I realized I was going to have to read the thing (love the Hebron library!) to respond properly.
Normally, someone who wants to make wild speculative claims about the early Christian church has plenty of ?we don?t really know? territory to work with. In the case of Dan Brown?s ?DaVinci? thriller, he cheats, more than a bit, by putting a brief preface on his book under the header ?Fact,? while his details of history and events are filled with basic errors and untruths. A few examples? The nefarious popes of one episode Brown?s narrator magisterially describes are said to be up to no-good-ness in Rome. . .but the papacy was in Avignon, France during this time period. Whoops.
Scholars, so-called in the text, aver that there were ?over eighty gospels? at one time, and the ones not chosen other than the four ?canonical? gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were ruthlessly suppressed. . .no one in the whole wide spectrum of biblical scholarship can point to anywhere near that many gospels, and if they were so carefully suppressed, how come I have easily obtainable paperback volumes with all of them included on my shelves? Brown?s characters claim all sorts of silly things about Christian theology that ?weren?t true until the time of Constantine,? all of which can be quickly shown to be absolutely false by reading documents of the early church. . .available in searchable text on the internet (www.ccel.org being one good source).
And the ?secret? that Mary Magdalene was the bride of Jesus of Nazareth and hidden in plain view at his right hand in Leonardo?s ?The Last Supper? is based on assertions that don?t pass the common sense test, let alone explaining where John the youthful apostle is in DaVinci?s Milanese fresco if he?s actually a she. Is John out checking the bill with the caterer?
If you like murder mysteries with albino assasins in a European setting, and know not to learn theology, let alone history, from a fiction bestseller, enjoy the read. But Jesus didn?t marry Mary Magdalene, and no one with a lick of historical sense has ever claimed they did, liberal or conservative. As for their children, they are all adopted and easy to find, probably near you; like most adoptees, they?ve taken his name. Ask around, you?ll find ?em.
Speaking of which: Easter Egg hunts. . .call or e-mail me soon, folks, like right now! Contact info at the end (just keystrokes away) with day, time, and preferred age group.
Lakewood Schools schedule update: Friday Apr. 9 no school, Apr. 14 an early release Wednesday of two hours.
Mickey Mouse update coming soon, and more Hebron Crossroads Festival news!
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and a skywatcher from his own little guy days; if you have news of astronomical or local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
What a fascinating publication date this issue of the Booster has: 04-04-04. Makes you think of some kind of magical, mystical code. . .well, see further down for the ?DaVinci Code? review.
If astronomy is more your source of awe and wonder, note well along with the Little Guy that for a little while yet, in early evening/late dusk you can see all five ?visible? planets in a row across the ecliptic, from rarely seen Mercury low on the western horizon to Venus, Mars and our own satellite the Moon together, Saturn right overhead and Jupiter plodding along in the east. It will be a very long time before the naked-eye planets are all together like this (OK, 2038; long enough), so step outside and enjoy the cosmic view.
But this second phase of Spring has a magic all its own; lawns grey-brown with winterkill start to glow, a very earthly glow. Green under yellow makes for a vibrant gold, and as you admire that look, you turn to open fields nearby and there?s suddenly a thin green coating across last Fall?s furrows. Turn again, and there?s high grass growing around the sprouting yellow daffodils and magnetically purple crocuses all in full blossom.
Spring. To coin a phrase, it?s a good thing.
Time Change! First Saturday of April means ?spring forward,? and no matter how you put it, I still think ?lose an hour of sleep.? Ah well, at least we?re not losing that hour on Easter morning when pastors get up at 4:30 am. . .but don?t show up at church as the last hymn is playing the third verse!
Severe weather is one of the hazards of warmer air from the south having a close encounter with the holdover cold fronts from Canada. Tornado watches and warnings are not to be taken lightly in central Ohio, especially just east of the ?heat island? effect that is Columbus? acres of asphalt and concrete. Does your family have an emergency pac (flashlight, batteries, radio, first aid kit) and a place with some blankets handy down in the basement (northwest corner) or an interior room without windows? And did I mention that time change weekend is a good time to swap out your smoke detector batteries and check your CO detector. . .
Speaking of Spring safety, ATV?s are humming in the fields of Union and Licking Townships. When we lived in West Virginia, and my wife was a state extension service staffer, we?d have our living room floor covered each Spring with 4-H posters for ATV safety. There are few possible slogan versions for ?don?t lose your head, wear a helmet? that we haven?t heard.
Seriously, though, wear a helmet and be just a bit more careful than you think you need to be. Quadriplegia is not fun, no matter how much of a kick zipping across mud bogs can be.
And I hear that riding a Segway can be dangerous if you don?t know what you?re doing and don?t take the training program included in the $5000 sticker price. Hebron Village learned that they won?t, in fact, get Segway personal transporters for everyone, since the First of April story on that was, believe it or not, an April Fool?s gag at the Hebron Crossroads.
No foolin?, there is no more ?Bowman Chevrolet? in Hebron. The new signs went up along Main Street for ?Coughlin Chevrolet of Hebron,? as they?ve been answering the phones for the last few weeks. You pronounce that ?Cog-lynn,? by the way, not ?cough-lan? as some Irish might have it. The Coughlin folks, with Joe Bowman, Jr. as general manager here, will be around for a while: there is a plan to develop a piece of land on Broad Street in Pataskala near their Kroger, but that?s a year or more away. . .so welcome to our Coughlin (say it, ?cog-lynn?!) neighbors.
?The DaVinci Code? has become a bestseller, which would be of little note to me (how can anyone, no matter how voracious a reader, keep up with every so-called bestseller on the market?) except for one thing. I?ve had a couple of people ask me the attention getting question ?Did you know Jesus got married to Mary Magdalene?? My first reaction was, bemused bafflement on the order of ?what have you been reading, anyhow?? After hearing the answer ?The DaVinci Code? both times, I realized I was going to have to read the thing (love the Hebron library!) to respond properly.
Normally, someone who wants to make wild speculative claims about the early Christian church has plenty of ?we don?t really know? territory to work with. In the case of Dan Brown?s ?DaVinci? thriller, he cheats, more than a bit, by putting a brief preface on his book under the header ?Fact,? while his details of history and events are filled with basic errors and untruths. A few examples? The nefarious popes of one episode Brown?s narrator magisterially describes are said to be up to no-good-ness in Rome. . .but the papacy was in Avignon, France during this time period. Whoops.
Scholars, so-called in the text, aver that there were ?over eighty gospels? at one time, and the ones not chosen other than the four ?canonical? gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were ruthlessly suppressed. . .no one in the whole wide spectrum of biblical scholarship can point to anywhere near that many gospels, and if they were so carefully suppressed, how come I have easily obtainable paperback volumes with all of them included on my shelves? Brown?s characters claim all sorts of silly things about Christian theology that ?weren?t true until the time of Constantine,? all of which can be quickly shown to be absolutely false by reading documents of the early church. . .available in searchable text on the internet (www.ccel.org being one good source).
And the ?secret? that Mary Magdalene was the bride of Jesus of Nazareth and hidden in plain view at his right hand in Leonardo?s ?The Last Supper? is based on assertions that don?t pass the common sense test, let alone explaining where John the youthful apostle is in DaVinci?s Milanese fresco if he?s actually a she. Is John out checking the bill with the caterer?
If you like murder mysteries with albino assasins in a European setting, and know not to learn theology, let alone history, from a fiction bestseller, enjoy the read. But Jesus didn?t marry Mary Magdalene, and no one with a lick of historical sense has ever claimed they did, liberal or conservative. As for their children, they are all adopted and easy to find, probably near you; like most adoptees, they?ve taken his name. Ask around, you?ll find ?em.
Speaking of which: Easter Egg hunts. . .call or e-mail me soon, folks, like right now! Contact info at the end (just keystrokes away) with day, time, and preferred age group.
Lakewood Schools schedule update: Friday Apr. 9 no school, Apr. 14 an early release Wednesday of two hours.
Mickey Mouse update coming soon, and more Hebron Crossroads Festival news!
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and a skywatcher from his own little guy days; if you have news of astronomical or local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack – April 2004 “The Church Window”
One of the advantages of having a weekly column in a local paper (there are a few disadvantages, believe it or not) is that I can write stuff there are then expand on it here for the church audience. . .or sometimes vice versa.
There are two books I’ve been asked about quite a bit by church folk. One, “The DaVinci Code,” I’m going to address more generally in my “Hebron Crossroads” column, and spoke about at the Newark Lenten dinner last week. The other is actually the twelfth and final installment in the “Left Behind” series by LaHaye and Jenkins, out this week entitled “Glorious Appearing.”
Both bestsellers challenge the reader to ask “what do I believe about this?” In the case of Dan Brown’s “DaVinci” thriller, he cheats a bit by putting a preface on his book under the header “Fact,” while his details of history and events are filled with basic errors and untruths. If you like murder mysteries with albino assasins in a European setting, and know not to learn theology, let alone history, from a mass market paperback, enjoy the read. But Jesus didn’t marry Mary Magdalene, and no one with a lick of historical sense has ever claimed they did, liberal or conservative.
“Glorious Appearing” presents a different sort of challenge. Do we, as Disciples of Christ, believe that God is the Lord of History, with both creation and conclusion included in the eternal plan? Do we believe that the man, known as Jesus of Nazareth, will return at the close of Time itself and reveal in his person God’s glory and our everlasting salvation? Yes to both, and an Amen!
But the whole “rapture theology” which so many think is standard Christian belief is actually a fairly recent development, starting with a fellow named Darby in England in the 1800’s. This “premillenial apocalypticism” says that the correct interpretation of the Bible, using bits of many books in both Testaments, is that Christ will appear briefly, take into the air (“rapture”) all true believers into heaven, and step back with them for seven years of trial (the “tribulation”), and then after certain events have played out on earth, return to end history, Satan’s time of power, and usher in “the millennium” of Christ’s reign on earth as it is in heaven.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that of Alexander Campbell, our religious forebearer who called his Restoration movement journal “The Millenial Harbinger.” He held to the interpretation that, after Christ’s followers had truly followed his teachings for a millennium – a thousand years – Jesus himself would return to say “Well done, thou good and faithful servants” and wrap up the heavens as a scroll, ending history then. For those who claimed, even in the mid-1800’s, to have a date for this event, Campbell would impatiently cite “no one knows the day or the hour” and go about the business of making of Christ’s millennium a modern reality.
Which is right? Well, either points to at least one reminder both have in common. Whether by “Apocalypse” or auto accident, if you don’t know when your “history” ends, you’d best be prepared TODAY. Beyond that, I think we need to keep Revs. Darby and LaHaye in perspective. They have their interpretations, Campbell had his, and we each need to prepare our own hearts to open freely to God’s call here and now. Anything beyond that fits under the Restoration plea: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity!
In Grace and Peace, Pastor Jeff
* * * * * * *
Palm Sunday & Celebration of Completing
“The Purpose Driven Life” with a Pancake Brunch
after worship Apr. 4
Donations only; all go to Campership fund
Camp fees are $210 for grades 6-8 June 13 & grades 9-12 July 4 at Camp Christian,
$255 for grades 3-5 at Templed Hills July 11.
* * * * * * *
Maundy Thursday Dinner & Service, Apr. 8
6:30 Potluck downstairs and program,
7:30 Worship upstairs in sanctuary,
including communion
followed by Prayer Vigil
* * * * * * *
Good Friday Memorial Service
(no communion)
7:30 pm, Apr. 9
concludes the Prayer Vigil
* * * * * * *
Children’s Easter Party
Egg Hunt, activities, snacks, and crafts
Saturday at 3 pm, April 10
* * * * * * *
Easter Sunrise Service at Dawes
6:30 am at upper picnic shelter
Handbells, singing, and message
Breakfast following at Hebron UMC
* * * * * * *
Celebration of the Resurrection
10:30 am in the sanctuary,
beginning with Service of Baptism
Junior Choir Call to Worship
Handbell Choir offering
Senior Choir Cantata
* * * * * * *
Crafty Women
Third Thursday, Apr. 16
6 pm to ???
Crafts and Scrapwork in the parsonage, open to any women with any level of craft skill or interest!
* * * * * * *
“Date Your Mate” night
Sat. April 17, 4 to 9 pm
Following our study of “The Purpose Driven Life” asking (and answering!) “What on earth am I here for,” we will give married couples a chance to ask “what would a Purpose Driven Marriage look like?”
$50 per couple will get you child care at the church, a program from Hebron to Granville where our trail of activities will pause at the 1812 Buxton Inn for a full dinner and dessert together (all costs included), and return to the church for a conclusion together.
A sign up at the back of the church (or downstairs during coffee fellowship) will allow you to choose your entrée and help Pastor Jeff plan the evening.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
The Scouter – May 2004
Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
One of our own!
Licking District is proud to have Trevor Gamble as our District Chairman, and we are even prouder to announce that “Trig” is the first recipient of the Licking County United Way’s first annual “Ken Johnston Volunteer Award” for distinguished service to the community as a volunteer.
Ken was a very active part of the United Way for many years, working as a teacher and administrator (and earlier in his life, as a pastor in Hebron!); after his death a few years ago, the board of the United Way decided to take an idea they had been considering for some time – to honor a volunteer each year for their career of service across the community – and name it after Ken. For Trig to be the first to receive what will no doubt be a long-standing, prestigious award is no surprise to those who know him but still quite an honor.
The award was was presented at the annual meeting of Licking County United Way in the Reese Center at OSU-N, with hundreds in attendance. Licking District joins in saluting this fine scouter whose volunteer work has gone far beyond even his Scouting commitments, and whose hard work continues with leading our county into new heights of Scouting involvement.
We also appreciate our strong connection to the United Way in Licking County all the more after the difficulties Simon Kenton Council has had with the Franklin County United Way board; there too, Trevor Gamble has been a voice for Scouting on our local board of UW.
They say after you’ve made night landings on aircraft carriers everything else is pretty easy: Trig certainly makes it look that way!
* * * * * * *
If you have ideas for material you’d like to see in “The Scouter” on the Licking District section, call 928-4066 and leave a message for Jeff Gill, or better yet, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Which is also how you can offer material for publishing in this page. . .plus:
See http://www.lickingdistrict.org for all your latest updates!
* * * * * * *
Cub Day Camp 2004 is a “Circus” at the Rock
June 16 – 19, Wed. – Sat.
Licking District Cub Day Camp registration packets have been sent out to all the Cub leaders. If you haven’t received one, please call Angie or Ric Eder at 740.927.0357, or e-mail ldcsdaycamp04@earthlink.net.
Volunteers are coming in, but we still have some areas to be filled (contact info same as above!). We will be starting each day at 8:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm.
Stations include the ever popular creek walk in Rocky Fork, songs and storytelling by the Talestone, clowns, and of course, in keeping with the circus theme, we’ll see Cubmasters juggling paperwork!
Camp fee is $46, and for each additional scout registered from the same family before May 14, it is $40. All scouts must be registered when they arrive or they cannot attend, to protect the child and Scouting under our insurance. Registrations received after May 15 to June 11 are $56, and any postmarked after June 11 will cost $66. Camperships are available, but they must be turned in before May 14. Cancellations must be submitted before June 1, and are subject to a $20 fee for materials already purchased. Additionally it is $10 for the Friday Webelos overnight, and $10 for the Sibling Circle, limited to children of those working as part of Cub Day Camp, with required registration form.
We need to maintain a 1:4 adult:Cub ratio, so keep recruiting your leadership; they will need to be fully registered adults before the first day of camp as well – this helps us verify and secure the status of all adults who have access to children in a camp setting, in keeping with Ohio state law. The state and Scouting’s inspection process will check this, so please help out by verifiying registration before you arrive for everyone.
Thanks from the district to Ric & Angie who are putting so much careful preplanning into this major Licking District event!
One of the advantages of having a weekly column in a local paper (there are a few disadvantages, believe it or not) is that I can write stuff there are then expand on it here for the church audience. . .or sometimes vice versa.
There are two books I’ve been asked about quite a bit by church folk. One, “The DaVinci Code,” I’m going to address more generally in my “Hebron Crossroads” column, and spoke about at the Newark Lenten dinner last week. The other is actually the twelfth and final installment in the “Left Behind” series by LaHaye and Jenkins, out this week entitled “Glorious Appearing.”
Both bestsellers challenge the reader to ask “what do I believe about this?” In the case of Dan Brown’s “DaVinci” thriller, he cheats a bit by putting a preface on his book under the header “Fact,” while his details of history and events are filled with basic errors and untruths. If you like murder mysteries with albino assasins in a European setting, and know not to learn theology, let alone history, from a mass market paperback, enjoy the read. But Jesus didn’t marry Mary Magdalene, and no one with a lick of historical sense has ever claimed they did, liberal or conservative.
“Glorious Appearing” presents a different sort of challenge. Do we, as Disciples of Christ, believe that God is the Lord of History, with both creation and conclusion included in the eternal plan? Do we believe that the man, known as Jesus of Nazareth, will return at the close of Time itself and reveal in his person God’s glory and our everlasting salvation? Yes to both, and an Amen!
But the whole “rapture theology” which so many think is standard Christian belief is actually a fairly recent development, starting with a fellow named Darby in England in the 1800’s. This “premillenial apocalypticism” says that the correct interpretation of the Bible, using bits of many books in both Testaments, is that Christ will appear briefly, take into the air (“rapture”) all true believers into heaven, and step back with them for seven years of trial (the “tribulation”), and then after certain events have played out on earth, return to end history, Satan’s time of power, and usher in “the millennium” of Christ’s reign on earth as it is in heaven.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that of Alexander Campbell, our religious forebearer who called his Restoration movement journal “The Millenial Harbinger.” He held to the interpretation that, after Christ’s followers had truly followed his teachings for a millennium – a thousand years – Jesus himself would return to say “Well done, thou good and faithful servants” and wrap up the heavens as a scroll, ending history then. For those who claimed, even in the mid-1800’s, to have a date for this event, Campbell would impatiently cite “no one knows the day or the hour” and go about the business of making of Christ’s millennium a modern reality.
Which is right? Well, either points to at least one reminder both have in common. Whether by “Apocalypse” or auto accident, if you don’t know when your “history” ends, you’d best be prepared TODAY. Beyond that, I think we need to keep Revs. Darby and LaHaye in perspective. They have their interpretations, Campbell had his, and we each need to prepare our own hearts to open freely to God’s call here and now. Anything beyond that fits under the Restoration plea: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity!
In Grace and Peace, Pastor Jeff
* * * * * * *
Palm Sunday & Celebration of Completing
“The Purpose Driven Life” with a Pancake Brunch
after worship Apr. 4
Donations only; all go to Campership fund
Camp fees are $210 for grades 6-8 June 13 & grades 9-12 July 4 at Camp Christian,
$255 for grades 3-5 at Templed Hills July 11.
* * * * * * *
Maundy Thursday Dinner & Service, Apr. 8
6:30 Potluck downstairs and program,
7:30 Worship upstairs in sanctuary,
including communion
followed by Prayer Vigil
* * * * * * *
Good Friday Memorial Service
(no communion)
7:30 pm, Apr. 9
concludes the Prayer Vigil
* * * * * * *
Children’s Easter Party
Egg Hunt, activities, snacks, and crafts
Saturday at 3 pm, April 10
* * * * * * *
Easter Sunrise Service at Dawes
6:30 am at upper picnic shelter
Handbells, singing, and message
Breakfast following at Hebron UMC
* * * * * * *
Celebration of the Resurrection
10:30 am in the sanctuary,
beginning with Service of Baptism
Junior Choir Call to Worship
Handbell Choir offering
Senior Choir Cantata
* * * * * * *
Crafty Women
Third Thursday, Apr. 16
6 pm to ???
Crafts and Scrapwork in the parsonage, open to any women with any level of craft skill or interest!
* * * * * * *
“Date Your Mate” night
Sat. April 17, 4 to 9 pm
Following our study of “The Purpose Driven Life” asking (and answering!) “What on earth am I here for,” we will give married couples a chance to ask “what would a Purpose Driven Marriage look like?”
$50 per couple will get you child care at the church, a program from Hebron to Granville where our trail of activities will pause at the 1812 Buxton Inn for a full dinner and dessert together (all costs included), and return to the church for a conclusion together.
A sign up at the back of the church (or downstairs during coffee fellowship) will allow you to choose your entrée and help Pastor Jeff plan the evening.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
The Scouter – May 2004
Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
One of our own!
Licking District is proud to have Trevor Gamble as our District Chairman, and we are even prouder to announce that “Trig” is the first recipient of the Licking County United Way’s first annual “Ken Johnston Volunteer Award” for distinguished service to the community as a volunteer.
Ken was a very active part of the United Way for many years, working as a teacher and administrator (and earlier in his life, as a pastor in Hebron!); after his death a few years ago, the board of the United Way decided to take an idea they had been considering for some time – to honor a volunteer each year for their career of service across the community – and name it after Ken. For Trig to be the first to receive what will no doubt be a long-standing, prestigious award is no surprise to those who know him but still quite an honor.
The award was was presented at the annual meeting of Licking County United Way in the Reese Center at OSU-N, with hundreds in attendance. Licking District joins in saluting this fine scouter whose volunteer work has gone far beyond even his Scouting commitments, and whose hard work continues with leading our county into new heights of Scouting involvement.
We also appreciate our strong connection to the United Way in Licking County all the more after the difficulties Simon Kenton Council has had with the Franklin County United Way board; there too, Trevor Gamble has been a voice for Scouting on our local board of UW.
They say after you’ve made night landings on aircraft carriers everything else is pretty easy: Trig certainly makes it look that way!
* * * * * * *
If you have ideas for material you’d like to see in “The Scouter” on the Licking District section, call 928-4066 and leave a message for Jeff Gill, or better yet, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Which is also how you can offer material for publishing in this page. . .plus:
See http://www.lickingdistrict.org for all your latest updates!
* * * * * * *
Cub Day Camp 2004 is a “Circus” at the Rock
June 16 – 19, Wed. – Sat.
Licking District Cub Day Camp registration packets have been sent out to all the Cub leaders. If you haven’t received one, please call Angie or Ric Eder at 740.927.0357, or e-mail ldcsdaycamp04@earthlink.net.
Volunteers are coming in, but we still have some areas to be filled (contact info same as above!). We will be starting each day at 8:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm.
Stations include the ever popular creek walk in Rocky Fork, songs and storytelling by the Talestone, clowns, and of course, in keeping with the circus theme, we’ll see Cubmasters juggling paperwork!
Camp fee is $46, and for each additional scout registered from the same family before May 14, it is $40. All scouts must be registered when they arrive or they cannot attend, to protect the child and Scouting under our insurance. Registrations received after May 15 to June 11 are $56, and any postmarked after June 11 will cost $66. Camperships are available, but they must be turned in before May 14. Cancellations must be submitted before June 1, and are subject to a $20 fee for materials already purchased. Additionally it is $10 for the Friday Webelos overnight, and $10 for the Sibling Circle, limited to children of those working as part of Cub Day Camp, with required registration form.
We need to maintain a 1:4 adult:Cub ratio, so keep recruiting your leadership; they will need to be fully registered adults before the first day of camp as well – this helps us verify and secure the status of all adults who have access to children in a camp setting, in keeping with Ohio state law. The state and Scouting’s inspection process will check this, so please help out by verifiying registration before you arrive for everyone.
Thanks from the district to Ric & Angie who are putting so much careful preplanning into this major Licking District event!
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 3-28-04
By Jeff Gill
Leo climbs into the early night sky from the east, as Orion and his faithful dog Sirius chase Taurus the bull with his star-crowded heart of the Pleiades into the western sunset.
Venus plunges after the crescent moon, with Mars at her heels (as always), with Saturn at the zenith and Jupiter shining near Leo’s heart.
The Little Guy has been captivated by the planets lately, writing and making a set of the nine “wanderers” (which is what “planetarii” means in Greek), and going out on the now-warmer nights to trace the zodiacal path of the planets across the sky. And in the news, a tenth planet, or planetoid, called Sedna has been identified, perhaps out in the Oort Cloud and more an overgrown comet, a closer part of the Kuiper Belt. Sedna is the Inuit (casually and inaccurately known as Eskimos) goddess of the seas, and a rocky lump some thousand miles across circling irregularly close to the orbits of Pluto and our nearer neighbors.
Saturn is tilted so that the rings are visible through even my old binoculars, at least as ears on the glob of gold that is the sixth planet, and Jupiter’s moons can be seen near the gas giant’s orb in a modest optical device.
If you have the binox out for the birds passing through to the north, keep them handy for nighttime viewing; you don’t have to have a telescope to see remarkable, awe-inspiring sights in the heavens. A glance to the setting V of Taurus’ horns, capped to the left hand with Aldebaran, shows clustering clouds of stars around them and nearby Orion; nebulae and globular clusters are easy to spot. And wait ‘til Sagittarius rises after sunset. . .
Can you get over the amazing achievement for Licking County high school bands? In one week, Lakewood, Licking Valley, and Newark are all on display in one of the world’s top tourist destinations, Disney World.
If Licking County had three high schools in the sweet sixteen for basketball or baseball, we’d hear about it no end. Well, this is much the same thing, band fans, and kudos to Scott Coffey and all involved at the other schools. Well done, marching bands.
If your church or civic group in the area (Hebron to Buckeye Lake, Jacksontown to Kirkersville) has an Easter Egg hunt to share with the general public, or an Easter sunrise service to celebrate, please let me know this week at disciple@voyager.net or 928-4066. We’ll be delighted to share them at the Hebron Crossroads.
Thanks to the Licking Park District, who will have one of those big April 10 egg hunt activities, and Mary Beth Sills who led a program on the first weekend of spring to look in ponds for signs of warmth and life to come.
The pond probe, which was very well attended considering the threatening weather last weekend, will be followed by a May program looking at what some of the remarkable life in the margins of Infirmary Mound Park wetlands will develop into come another few weeks.
Nymphs of dragonflies and caddis flies and midges were seen under the magnifiers, and many young people (and their parents) learned about the richness of life invisible near our everyday paths, even through the heart of winter. . .now past, right?
Don’t forget the Saturday, April 3 feeding frenzy, at Jacksontown United Methodist in the morning for breakfast, and the United Methodist Church of Hebron for baked steak in the evening.
And as we approach the First of April, a new newsy note for Hebron Village.
Thanks to some aggressive grant writing by village staff, every full-time employee of Hebron will have their own Segway human transporter. These two-wheeled, gyroscopically balanced, battery powered wonders are normally $5,000 through Amazon.com, but the special “governmental package” will bring the price to half that at $2,500. Meter reading, sidewalk patrol, and code enforcement will all be done at eye-level from these rolling wonders, though Planning and Zoning is disputing with the Police department who gets the Segway HPV, or “high performance vehicle” that has the extra battery life and knobby tires.
Planning and Zoning has quite a few active construction sites to navigate through nowadays, but the Police usually require a more beefed up transportation option no matter how many wheels. Council may have to decide this issue, allocating the 8 mile an hour version versus everyone else’s 4 mile an hour standard Segway.
Our Hebron Fire Department says they don’t care either way, since you can barely carry a fire extinguisher and still steer one of these teetery zip-a-dee-doo-dahs, and they don’t plan on using one at all.
Did I mention that the First of April is coming soon? Happy April 1, all, and talk to you soon at the Hebron Crossroads.
By Jeff Gill
Leo climbs into the early night sky from the east, as Orion and his faithful dog Sirius chase Taurus the bull with his star-crowded heart of the Pleiades into the western sunset.
Venus plunges after the crescent moon, with Mars at her heels (as always), with Saturn at the zenith and Jupiter shining near Leo’s heart.
The Little Guy has been captivated by the planets lately, writing and making a set of the nine “wanderers” (which is what “planetarii” means in Greek), and going out on the now-warmer nights to trace the zodiacal path of the planets across the sky. And in the news, a tenth planet, or planetoid, called Sedna has been identified, perhaps out in the Oort Cloud and more an overgrown comet, a closer part of the Kuiper Belt. Sedna is the Inuit (casually and inaccurately known as Eskimos) goddess of the seas, and a rocky lump some thousand miles across circling irregularly close to the orbits of Pluto and our nearer neighbors.
Saturn is tilted so that the rings are visible through even my old binoculars, at least as ears on the glob of gold that is the sixth planet, and Jupiter’s moons can be seen near the gas giant’s orb in a modest optical device.
If you have the binox out for the birds passing through to the north, keep them handy for nighttime viewing; you don’t have to have a telescope to see remarkable, awe-inspiring sights in the heavens. A glance to the setting V of Taurus’ horns, capped to the left hand with Aldebaran, shows clustering clouds of stars around them and nearby Orion; nebulae and globular clusters are easy to spot. And wait ‘til Sagittarius rises after sunset. . .
Can you get over the amazing achievement for Licking County high school bands? In one week, Lakewood, Licking Valley, and Newark are all on display in one of the world’s top tourist destinations, Disney World.
If Licking County had three high schools in the sweet sixteen for basketball or baseball, we’d hear about it no end. Well, this is much the same thing, band fans, and kudos to Scott Coffey and all involved at the other schools. Well done, marching bands.
If your church or civic group in the area (Hebron to Buckeye Lake, Jacksontown to Kirkersville) has an Easter Egg hunt to share with the general public, or an Easter sunrise service to celebrate, please let me know this week at disciple@voyager.net or 928-4066. We’ll be delighted to share them at the Hebron Crossroads.
Thanks to the Licking Park District, who will have one of those big April 10 egg hunt activities, and Mary Beth Sills who led a program on the first weekend of spring to look in ponds for signs of warmth and life to come.
The pond probe, which was very well attended considering the threatening weather last weekend, will be followed by a May program looking at what some of the remarkable life in the margins of Infirmary Mound Park wetlands will develop into come another few weeks.
Nymphs of dragonflies and caddis flies and midges were seen under the magnifiers, and many young people (and their parents) learned about the richness of life invisible near our everyday paths, even through the heart of winter. . .now past, right?
Don’t forget the Saturday, April 3 feeding frenzy, at Jacksontown United Methodist in the morning for breakfast, and the United Methodist Church of Hebron for baked steak in the evening.
And as we approach the First of April, a new newsy note for Hebron Village.
Thanks to some aggressive grant writing by village staff, every full-time employee of Hebron will have their own Segway human transporter. These two-wheeled, gyroscopically balanced, battery powered wonders are normally $5,000 through Amazon.com, but the special “governmental package” will bring the price to half that at $2,500. Meter reading, sidewalk patrol, and code enforcement will all be done at eye-level from these rolling wonders, though Planning and Zoning is disputing with the Police department who gets the Segway HPV, or “high performance vehicle” that has the extra battery life and knobby tires.
Planning and Zoning has quite a few active construction sites to navigate through nowadays, but the Police usually require a more beefed up transportation option no matter how many wheels. Council may have to decide this issue, allocating the 8 mile an hour version versus everyone else’s 4 mile an hour standard Segway.
Our Hebron Fire Department says they don’t care either way, since you can barely carry a fire extinguisher and still steer one of these teetery zip-a-dee-doo-dahs, and they don’t plan on using one at all.
Did I mention that the First of April is coming soon? Happy April 1, all, and talk to you soon at the Hebron Crossroads.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 03-21-04
By Jeff Gill
Prime Producers 4-H Club has elected their officers for 2004.
Lexi Messenger is the new president, Christian Slater vice-president, Joey Cormican treasurer, and Whitney Mason as secretary.
Also elected were Drew Cable as health officer, David Cable safety officer, Josh Halter news reporter, and Alden Gowdy was tapped for recreation leader after a great nomination speech which the presidential candidates could take notes from!
Many thanks to the outgoing officers, Joey Cormican, Aaron Dunkle, David Cable, and Lexi Messenger as the “top four” last year. David Cable has also moved on to work on the Junior Fair Board for out at Hartford, with quite a bit of work upcoming in running some of the orientations for those bringing livestock projects.
As David’s mom Martha reminded the whole club, “those doing market livestock projects are raising food for America, and that’s an awesome responsibility.” Every livestock participant, from cattle to rabbits, must learn ethical, healthy, and appropriate methods to raise market animals for 4-H fair competition.
Watch the Booster for news of Prime Producers’ trip to the Hebron Fish Hatchery, where the crop is already “out in the field” so to speak; the club’s next meeting is March 28 at Hebron Christian Church, and they’ll have a service project out at Evans Park on Refugee Road April 25.
Saturday April 3 can be a full service Methodist meal day, if you plan your schedule correctly. In the morning, starting at 7 am, you can breakfast at Jacksontown United Methodist Church as always for a first Saturday. Then, beginning around 4:30 pm, Hebron United Methodist Church on East Main has their next baked steak dinner, with carryouts available. Cost is $5.50, $2 for children.
What about lunch, you ask? You haven’t been to the J-town breakfast, then. Eat up there, and you’ll be fine ‘til 5 pm or so. Trust me.
Lakewood High’s band program has no fundraisers planned this week at all: that’s because they’re all in Florida for Spring Break and marching at Disney World. Mickey may take over as drum major (sorry, Josh) when they march down Main Street, USA. We look forward to their tales of the Magic Kingdom when they return later this week!
The high school bands will be a big part of the Crossroads Festival planned for Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Along with the rides and games starting May 28 at Canal Park behind Bowman’s truck lot and Hayman’s Dairy Bar, the jazz band will be part of the gazebo schedule Saturday, along with some other local musical talent, plus the symphonic band concert on Sunday afternoon May 30 at Evans Park.
And part of the gazebo events Friday through Saturday is the “Crossroads Storytelling Festival,” with tales of history, stories for kids, and a tall tale competition, which is not to say a “Biggest Liar in Ohio” award might be given, but it just might. What story would you tell at the “historic crossroads of Ohio”?
Stories are still being told of “The Passion” both around our crossroads and far beyond. . . Bruce Feirstein, a Hollywood reporter for the New York Observer, wrote last week “So I’m sitting in a restaurant in Santa Monica on the Sunday night that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ clocked through $200 million at the box office, after only 11 days in the theaters. Not one of the other 10 people sitting at our table had actually seen the film, despite offering vociferous opinions about it. Then the Hispanic waiter spoke up. "I loved it. I usually don’t go to movies, but I went to a matinee, on the second day." In Hollywood, the real question of the age isn’t "Why does a movie do $200 million at the box office?", but rather "Why do so few of them do $200 million?" From The Passion of the Christ to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Something’s Gotta Give, how many audiences—how many groups of people—does Hollywood overlook, or miss completely.” A very good question, says your columnist.
Cub Scout Pack 141 had their Blue & Gold Banquet down at Etna UMC last week, and the turnout this winter at Scouting events in Licking County has truly been stupendous. Scouting is really on a roll in our area, thanks to youth interest and adult leaders like Ric & Angie Eader and our area’s Ed & Rexana Fuentes with Pack 33.
It was a century ago this summer that Robert Baden-Powell, British hero of the Boer War, sat down to start writing “Scouting for Boys,” the first manual that led to the World Scouting Movment. But the interest that led him to write that work grew out of the popularity of a book B-P wrote during the 1890’s that wasn’t aimed at youth at all, but started being read by young boys and youth leaders during B-P’s exploits in South Africa.
“Aids To Scouting” was a manual for soldiers that the man who became Lord Baden-Powell wrote as a colonel while serving on what the British used to call “the Northwest Frontier,” that is, of India. Before parts of the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Kashmir were split off of India to form Pakistan (P…A…K…I. . .get it? Geographic trivia for the day…), the tribal groups of the region kept the British hopping Baden-Powell wrote the first draft of “Aids To Scouting,” the forerunner of “Scouting for Boys” and the inspiration for the entire Scouting movement, while on a “working vacation” in the area of Kandahar and Quetta and Kabul.
We’ll see how my prediction streak keeps up, but that area B-P traveled and wrote in will be the area that I think we’ll hear shortly from, when the capture of Osama bin Laden is announced. Remember, you read it first in at the Crossroads. . .
Are you familiar with the Beloit College annual Mindset List, given to professors to help them get a sense of the worldview of incoming freshmen?
This is a bit late, but it hasn’t been much of year for filler; so here are some excerpts from the list illustrating the perspective of students born in 1983.
-- From their point of view, Ronald Reagan is an airport.
-- Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Martin Sheen are the only presidents they have ever known.
-- Dinner with the family happens only in the minivan.
-- Elections determine who gets kicked off the island.
-- Since Oprah has not yet recommended their books, today's freshmen don't know the names Alexis de Tocqueville or Adam Smith.
-- Although they've never heard of Ozzie and Harriet, they think Ozzy and Sharon are the ideal parents.
-- Everybody remembers where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy's plane had crashed into the ocean.
-- They have never sprayed on deodorant.
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and given to wild speculation; if you have a shot in the dark or random guess to share, or better yet, news of local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Prime Producers 4-H Club has elected their officers for 2004.
Lexi Messenger is the new president, Christian Slater vice-president, Joey Cormican treasurer, and Whitney Mason as secretary.
Also elected were Drew Cable as health officer, David Cable safety officer, Josh Halter news reporter, and Alden Gowdy was tapped for recreation leader after a great nomination speech which the presidential candidates could take notes from!
Many thanks to the outgoing officers, Joey Cormican, Aaron Dunkle, David Cable, and Lexi Messenger as the “top four” last year. David Cable has also moved on to work on the Junior Fair Board for out at Hartford, with quite a bit of work upcoming in running some of the orientations for those bringing livestock projects.
As David’s mom Martha reminded the whole club, “those doing market livestock projects are raising food for America, and that’s an awesome responsibility.” Every livestock participant, from cattle to rabbits, must learn ethical, healthy, and appropriate methods to raise market animals for 4-H fair competition.
Watch the Booster for news of Prime Producers’ trip to the Hebron Fish Hatchery, where the crop is already “out in the field” so to speak; the club’s next meeting is March 28 at Hebron Christian Church, and they’ll have a service project out at Evans Park on Refugee Road April 25.
Saturday April 3 can be a full service Methodist meal day, if you plan your schedule correctly. In the morning, starting at 7 am, you can breakfast at Jacksontown United Methodist Church as always for a first Saturday. Then, beginning around 4:30 pm, Hebron United Methodist Church on East Main has their next baked steak dinner, with carryouts available. Cost is $5.50, $2 for children.
What about lunch, you ask? You haven’t been to the J-town breakfast, then. Eat up there, and you’ll be fine ‘til 5 pm or so. Trust me.
Lakewood High’s band program has no fundraisers planned this week at all: that’s because they’re all in Florida for Spring Break and marching at Disney World. Mickey may take over as drum major (sorry, Josh) when they march down Main Street, USA. We look forward to their tales of the Magic Kingdom when they return later this week!
The high school bands will be a big part of the Crossroads Festival planned for Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Along with the rides and games starting May 28 at Canal Park behind Bowman’s truck lot and Hayman’s Dairy Bar, the jazz band will be part of the gazebo schedule Saturday, along with some other local musical talent, plus the symphonic band concert on Sunday afternoon May 30 at Evans Park.
And part of the gazebo events Friday through Saturday is the “Crossroads Storytelling Festival,” with tales of history, stories for kids, and a tall tale competition, which is not to say a “Biggest Liar in Ohio” award might be given, but it just might. What story would you tell at the “historic crossroads of Ohio”?
Stories are still being told of “The Passion” both around our crossroads and far beyond. . . Bruce Feirstein, a Hollywood reporter for the New York Observer, wrote last week “So I’m sitting in a restaurant in Santa Monica on the Sunday night that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ clocked through $200 million at the box office, after only 11 days in the theaters. Not one of the other 10 people sitting at our table had actually seen the film, despite offering vociferous opinions about it. Then the Hispanic waiter spoke up. "I loved it. I usually don’t go to movies, but I went to a matinee, on the second day." In Hollywood, the real question of the age isn’t "Why does a movie do $200 million at the box office?", but rather "Why do so few of them do $200 million?" From The Passion of the Christ to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Something’s Gotta Give, how many audiences—how many groups of people—does Hollywood overlook, or miss completely.” A very good question, says your columnist.
Cub Scout Pack 141 had their Blue & Gold Banquet down at Etna UMC last week, and the turnout this winter at Scouting events in Licking County has truly been stupendous. Scouting is really on a roll in our area, thanks to youth interest and adult leaders like Ric & Angie Eader and our area’s Ed & Rexana Fuentes with Pack 33.
It was a century ago this summer that Robert Baden-Powell, British hero of the Boer War, sat down to start writing “Scouting for Boys,” the first manual that led to the World Scouting Movment. But the interest that led him to write that work grew out of the popularity of a book B-P wrote during the 1890’s that wasn’t aimed at youth at all, but started being read by young boys and youth leaders during B-P’s exploits in South Africa.
“Aids To Scouting” was a manual for soldiers that the man who became Lord Baden-Powell wrote as a colonel while serving on what the British used to call “the Northwest Frontier,” that is, of India. Before parts of the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Kashmir were split off of India to form Pakistan (P…A…K…I. . .get it? Geographic trivia for the day…), the tribal groups of the region kept the British hopping Baden-Powell wrote the first draft of “Aids To Scouting,” the forerunner of “Scouting for Boys” and the inspiration for the entire Scouting movement, while on a “working vacation” in the area of Kandahar and Quetta and Kabul.
We’ll see how my prediction streak keeps up, but that area B-P traveled and wrote in will be the area that I think we’ll hear shortly from, when the capture of Osama bin Laden is announced. Remember, you read it first in at the Crossroads. . .
Are you familiar with the Beloit College annual Mindset List, given to professors to help them get a sense of the worldview of incoming freshmen?
This is a bit late, but it hasn’t been much of year for filler; so here are some excerpts from the list illustrating the perspective of students born in 1983.
-- From their point of view, Ronald Reagan is an airport.
-- Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Martin Sheen are the only presidents they have ever known.
-- Dinner with the family happens only in the minivan.
-- Elections determine who gets kicked off the island.
-- Since Oprah has not yet recommended their books, today's freshmen don't know the names Alexis de Tocqueville or Adam Smith.
-- Although they've never heard of Ozzie and Harriet, they think Ozzy and Sharon are the ideal parents.
-- Everybody remembers where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy's plane had crashed into the ocean.
-- They have never sprayed on deodorant.
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and given to wild speculation; if you have a shot in the dark or random guess to share, or better yet, news of local interest, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
If you came here looking for Jeff's "Notes" on "The Passion of the Christ," scroll down a few entries (plus a long e-mail from a Disciples' pastors' discussion and additional commentary in the last two "Hebron Crossroads" columns). And sorry about the sloppy looking nav bar on the left; if i knew how to fix it, i would!
pax et gratia, jeff
pax et gratia, jeff
Guaranteed Only Comparison This Week. . .
. . .that you’ll see of “The Passion of The Christ” and “Twin Peaks.”
[This is a response to a series of e-mails between Disciple pastors in Ohio (mostly) about "The Passion" and how to respond to it. Pax, jeff]
Full disclosure to start: yes, I have a reputation to maintain as a bit of a smart aleck, even for a pastor, and no, I’m not kidding. Seeing “The Passion” did, in fact, put me in mind of “Twin Peaks” so strongly that I had to go back and watch the pilot and episodes one and two of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking TV series.
Read on if you will, or no; but you may have to explain your decision in the Red Room to the Man From Another Place. OK, enough cheap “Twin Peaks” references. . .
I think to “get” Mel Gibson’s opus (and a work of art it is, absolutely no doubt and certainly too, too self-consciously) you have to speak the language of sacramental theology and devotional discipline. The fact that so many mainline Protestant, not to mention Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians are “getting” this movie means that you don’t have to speak it as a native, but it helps to have grown up around, if not within the traditions of “The Stations of the Cross” and the decades (three or now four) of the Rosary. A dash of Marian co-redemptrix piety sure helps, as does a working understanding of the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
With that armload of lexicons and interpretive keys, the “text” of “The Passion” is remarkably clear, coherent, and interwoven. The Judas and Satan themes are seen in their intended context of defeat and corruption vs. victory and incorruption, enduring witness Mary is our source of identification and point of relationship (resonating over into the other Mary, as sinful as mother Mary is sinless, but both redeemed by their encounter and embrace of Jesus), and the flashbacks neatly weave our own pre-understandings into the primary narrative of inflicted suffering, swiftly negated by the clear gaze of the resurrected Christ at the end.
Without them, while the story is comprehensible in a standard cinematic way, it becomes a morbid celebration of dying-before-he’s-dead Judas and a seductive Satan, we identify (within our capacities and fixations) with the twisting, shattered figure of the one on the receiving end of Roman lashes, while marveling at a mother able to watch her child’s torment, and we finally slump under the overwhelming weight of physical agony, jerking back to alertness in the sunlight entering the tomb where the winner prepares to stride out into day. The comic relief of Mary and carpenter Jesus, the jolt of his hop onto the finished table, the bemused interchange through the latticework – this is but one of many places where even those who profess to “like” the movie confess confusion, which may hint at the problems we will yet have to deal with.
But I only recently learned that, while Mel has gotten credit (not enough, I suggest) for his not appearing in the movie physically except to hold the nail for the first part of the crucifixion (clearing up for me, at least, who he thinks is responsible for killing Jesus), there is another, subtle, crafty way Gibson is in this movie he risked so much to make – and let’s not let its success obscure the fact that for two years he’s had not a reason to think he’d make a dime on “The Passion.”
If you’ve seen “The Patriot,” in which Gibson plays a colonial craftsman of sorts, he keeps trying to make a Windsor chair, a clever piece of skill in furniture. When Gibson’s character finishes the chair and seats himself in it, he gets a moment of self-satisfaction, and then crashes to the floor with the chair in splinters. When Jesus makes a piece of furniture, the so called “new kind of table,” and hops onto it, there is nary a creak. The table holds.
Friends, I saw that scene last Sunday, vividly overlaid across Hebron Christian Church’s communion table. And that is exactly what Mel Gibson wanted, with the light echo of our own work cracking and crumbling away beneath the weight of our pretensions.
What happens for those whose next worship did not include communion, whose last service before seeing the movie barely referred to the broken bread and poured out cup, if at all? I really can’t imagine. But my worry is that, for them, the usual practice of self-identification - no matter how distanced - with the star of the show puts us in Jesus’ place, and doesn’t tell us much about where to go with that identification. Will more folks think, out of this film’s influence, that we must suffer for our salvation? That paying a price, as opposed to not counting the cost (and theologically, saying salvation has a price vs. has a cost are very, crucially different things) is the way of Jesus? So I don’t commend the movie without reservation or qualification.
But you probably have been this patient with me because you want the “Twin Peaks” point: fair enough. David Lynch is also a very skilled filmmaker, whose attention to detail and nuance (and skewed vision!) is every bit as obsessive as we’ve learned Gibson’s is. The complex interlocking plot of “Twin Peaks” is purposely intended to evoke connections layered atop connections, branching and weaving around a central figure with whom it is essentially impossible to identify as the viewer. Because she’s dead. . .and wrapped in plastic.
So far, so good, but I think Lynch and Gibson share a fatal flaw, *hubris* in the Greek sense, where a gift uncritically used in a context where no one can critique the gifted one can turn on them, and bring them low. If you’re a “Twin Peaks” buff, you know that the killer of Laura Palmer, the young woman who is dead before we ever see her but who dominates the story, is BOB. BOB is. . .well, we know BOB is evil, but after a while, as the show ran down into incoherence (very watchable incoherence, but still), we stopped even caring if BOB was a demon, an alien, a government project, or whatever.
The genesis of BOB, though, is not in any of the original plot outlines. BOB is Frank Silva, a prop wrangler who accidentally ended up in a shot of Laura Palmer’s mother’s living room. Lynch, seeing the “rushes” on the day, loved the look of the unintentional footage, and decided to keep it, signed Frank Silva to an acting contract, and tried to do what he had already brilliantly done with a number of other pieces of “found footage.” But I would argue that, in the long run, BOB killed “Twin Peaks.” A story of how we are all connected, that we all have secrets, and how those secrets shape our lives (how we all need redemption?), and how Laura’s father could have loved her and killed her at the same time, as did many of her friends indirectly as well, became subject to the need to incorporate a mystical being named BOB into the story.
Or as my grandmother would have said, “he was too clever by half.”
There is my concern with Gibson’s wide release. I’m not sure if Mel kept track of where he was being subtly, usefully clever (the table evoking communion and his own collapsed chair), and where he was just getting self-indulgent (demon children chasing Judas, the DeMille temple earthquake tearing the floor, not the veil). As is said about some scenery-chewing actors, he steps on some of his own directorial best lines by obscuring them: hardly anyone is talking about the moving Simon of Cyrene sequence, or the very light touch (yes, I’m still talking about Mel Gibson) with the Veronica veil image and the actions leading up to it. There are many sections of this movie that deserve comment, and the fact that we’re not talking about them is a shame, and a lost teaching moment with the large questioning audiences of today. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I’ll have a chance to discuss this with study groups in the church, no doubt long into this century, but this public moment is indeed obscured by some of the artistic gore, no doubt about it. I understand why Gibson did it, just like I’m fascinated by the audacity of using a messed up shot of the prop guy to fix a plot hole, but that doesn’t mean it was really a good idea, and it’s a shame there wasn’t anyone else involved to tell them so.
My reaction to the fact of “The Passion” is to educate, inform, and discuss, using the movie as an opportunity. While I understand some of the concerns raised by some critics, the fact that people “aren’t aware/sophisticated/informed enough to experience this movie appropriately” doesn’t say to me that we should shun, ignore, or protest the release; it says to me we’re already behind in Christian formation, and like it or not, this sets the tone for where we need to go next. In many ways, Disciples of Christ have an opportunity second only to that held by Catholic Christians and other more sacramental groups to use this movie to teach what we mean alongside of, and at oblique angles to, this amazing work of art.
During this Lent, we’re doing the 40 Days of Purpose study through Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.” For many of the same “reasons” I hear from fellow mainline Protestants about keeping one’s distance from “The Passion,” there’s a wide-spread sense that a smart Disciple doesn’t dabble in Pastor Warren’s Southern Baptist pool. We dove in, and I have no reason to regret it.
Does Warren have problems with women in leadership? Nope, cause he doesn’t have any (insert strained laughter here). Does he let slip a literalistic, creationistic view of Genesis in those pages? Yes he does. Are these viewpoints readily available around and within the congregation, ours and yours? If you say “no,” you ain’t payin’ attention. But reading this book as a congregation has brought some of these conversations out into the cold light of dawn, and the mildew had better be off of my own teaching and arguments, let alone those of the Biblical literalists. “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you,” Peter said (or a pseudonymous student of the Petrine schola, OK), and this is one such moment. We create, in fact, myriad more such moments by taking such modest risks as exposing church members to healthy Christian debate.
When we as Disciples stand for “don’t watch that, don’t read that,” or even worse, an affected “well, at least I won’t be watching that, and I can’t imagine why anyone would,” we are seen as not having an account worth sharing. It starts to sound like we don’t even have a cheering interest in the race, let alone a personal stake. Mel Gibson has given us a flawed, but majestic opportunity to say, “Would you like to know *more* about this Jesus?” Or even better, to answer someone – as I have more often in the last few weeks than I have in years – who comes to us *asking* “Could you tell me more about Jesus?” I want to be seen as someone happy to hear that question, and as a Christian proud to try and answer.
Jeff Gill
Hebron Christian Church
Hebron, OH
. . .that you’ll see of “The Passion of The Christ” and “Twin Peaks.”
[This is a response to a series of e-mails between Disciple pastors in Ohio (mostly) about "The Passion" and how to respond to it. Pax, jeff]
Full disclosure to start: yes, I have a reputation to maintain as a bit of a smart aleck, even for a pastor, and no, I’m not kidding. Seeing “The Passion” did, in fact, put me in mind of “Twin Peaks” so strongly that I had to go back and watch the pilot and episodes one and two of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking TV series.
Read on if you will, or no; but you may have to explain your decision in the Red Room to the Man From Another Place. OK, enough cheap “Twin Peaks” references. . .
I think to “get” Mel Gibson’s opus (and a work of art it is, absolutely no doubt and certainly too, too self-consciously) you have to speak the language of sacramental theology and devotional discipline. The fact that so many mainline Protestant, not to mention Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians are “getting” this movie means that you don’t have to speak it as a native, but it helps to have grown up around, if not within the traditions of “The Stations of the Cross” and the decades (three or now four) of the Rosary. A dash of Marian co-redemptrix piety sure helps, as does a working understanding of the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
With that armload of lexicons and interpretive keys, the “text” of “The Passion” is remarkably clear, coherent, and interwoven. The Judas and Satan themes are seen in their intended context of defeat and corruption vs. victory and incorruption, enduring witness Mary is our source of identification and point of relationship (resonating over into the other Mary, as sinful as mother Mary is sinless, but both redeemed by their encounter and embrace of Jesus), and the flashbacks neatly weave our own pre-understandings into the primary narrative of inflicted suffering, swiftly negated by the clear gaze of the resurrected Christ at the end.
Without them, while the story is comprehensible in a standard cinematic way, it becomes a morbid celebration of dying-before-he’s-dead Judas and a seductive Satan, we identify (within our capacities and fixations) with the twisting, shattered figure of the one on the receiving end of Roman lashes, while marveling at a mother able to watch her child’s torment, and we finally slump under the overwhelming weight of physical agony, jerking back to alertness in the sunlight entering the tomb where the winner prepares to stride out into day. The comic relief of Mary and carpenter Jesus, the jolt of his hop onto the finished table, the bemused interchange through the latticework – this is but one of many places where even those who profess to “like” the movie confess confusion, which may hint at the problems we will yet have to deal with.
But I only recently learned that, while Mel has gotten credit (not enough, I suggest) for his not appearing in the movie physically except to hold the nail for the first part of the crucifixion (clearing up for me, at least, who he thinks is responsible for killing Jesus), there is another, subtle, crafty way Gibson is in this movie he risked so much to make – and let’s not let its success obscure the fact that for two years he’s had not a reason to think he’d make a dime on “The Passion.”
If you’ve seen “The Patriot,” in which Gibson plays a colonial craftsman of sorts, he keeps trying to make a Windsor chair, a clever piece of skill in furniture. When Gibson’s character finishes the chair and seats himself in it, he gets a moment of self-satisfaction, and then crashes to the floor with the chair in splinters. When Jesus makes a piece of furniture, the so called “new kind of table,” and hops onto it, there is nary a creak. The table holds.
Friends, I saw that scene last Sunday, vividly overlaid across Hebron Christian Church’s communion table. And that is exactly what Mel Gibson wanted, with the light echo of our own work cracking and crumbling away beneath the weight of our pretensions.
What happens for those whose next worship did not include communion, whose last service before seeing the movie barely referred to the broken bread and poured out cup, if at all? I really can’t imagine. But my worry is that, for them, the usual practice of self-identification - no matter how distanced - with the star of the show puts us in Jesus’ place, and doesn’t tell us much about where to go with that identification. Will more folks think, out of this film’s influence, that we must suffer for our salvation? That paying a price, as opposed to not counting the cost (and theologically, saying salvation has a price vs. has a cost are very, crucially different things) is the way of Jesus? So I don’t commend the movie without reservation or qualification.
But you probably have been this patient with me because you want the “Twin Peaks” point: fair enough. David Lynch is also a very skilled filmmaker, whose attention to detail and nuance (and skewed vision!) is every bit as obsessive as we’ve learned Gibson’s is. The complex interlocking plot of “Twin Peaks” is purposely intended to evoke connections layered atop connections, branching and weaving around a central figure with whom it is essentially impossible to identify as the viewer. Because she’s dead. . .and wrapped in plastic.
So far, so good, but I think Lynch and Gibson share a fatal flaw, *hubris* in the Greek sense, where a gift uncritically used in a context where no one can critique the gifted one can turn on them, and bring them low. If you’re a “Twin Peaks” buff, you know that the killer of Laura Palmer, the young woman who is dead before we ever see her but who dominates the story, is BOB. BOB is. . .well, we know BOB is evil, but after a while, as the show ran down into incoherence (very watchable incoherence, but still), we stopped even caring if BOB was a demon, an alien, a government project, or whatever.
The genesis of BOB, though, is not in any of the original plot outlines. BOB is Frank Silva, a prop wrangler who accidentally ended up in a shot of Laura Palmer’s mother’s living room. Lynch, seeing the “rushes” on the day, loved the look of the unintentional footage, and decided to keep it, signed Frank Silva to an acting contract, and tried to do what he had already brilliantly done with a number of other pieces of “found footage.” But I would argue that, in the long run, BOB killed “Twin Peaks.” A story of how we are all connected, that we all have secrets, and how those secrets shape our lives (how we all need redemption?), and how Laura’s father could have loved her and killed her at the same time, as did many of her friends indirectly as well, became subject to the need to incorporate a mystical being named BOB into the story.
Or as my grandmother would have said, “he was too clever by half.”
There is my concern with Gibson’s wide release. I’m not sure if Mel kept track of where he was being subtly, usefully clever (the table evoking communion and his own collapsed chair), and where he was just getting self-indulgent (demon children chasing Judas, the DeMille temple earthquake tearing the floor, not the veil). As is said about some scenery-chewing actors, he steps on some of his own directorial best lines by obscuring them: hardly anyone is talking about the moving Simon of Cyrene sequence, or the very light touch (yes, I’m still talking about Mel Gibson) with the Veronica veil image and the actions leading up to it. There are many sections of this movie that deserve comment, and the fact that we’re not talking about them is a shame, and a lost teaching moment with the large questioning audiences of today. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I’ll have a chance to discuss this with study groups in the church, no doubt long into this century, but this public moment is indeed obscured by some of the artistic gore, no doubt about it. I understand why Gibson did it, just like I’m fascinated by the audacity of using a messed up shot of the prop guy to fix a plot hole, but that doesn’t mean it was really a good idea, and it’s a shame there wasn’t anyone else involved to tell them so.
My reaction to the fact of “The Passion” is to educate, inform, and discuss, using the movie as an opportunity. While I understand some of the concerns raised by some critics, the fact that people “aren’t aware/sophisticated/informed enough to experience this movie appropriately” doesn’t say to me that we should shun, ignore, or protest the release; it says to me we’re already behind in Christian formation, and like it or not, this sets the tone for where we need to go next. In many ways, Disciples of Christ have an opportunity second only to that held by Catholic Christians and other more sacramental groups to use this movie to teach what we mean alongside of, and at oblique angles to, this amazing work of art.
During this Lent, we’re doing the 40 Days of Purpose study through Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.” For many of the same “reasons” I hear from fellow mainline Protestants about keeping one’s distance from “The Passion,” there’s a wide-spread sense that a smart Disciple doesn’t dabble in Pastor Warren’s Southern Baptist pool. We dove in, and I have no reason to regret it.
Does Warren have problems with women in leadership? Nope, cause he doesn’t have any (insert strained laughter here). Does he let slip a literalistic, creationistic view of Genesis in those pages? Yes he does. Are these viewpoints readily available around and within the congregation, ours and yours? If you say “no,” you ain’t payin’ attention. But reading this book as a congregation has brought some of these conversations out into the cold light of dawn, and the mildew had better be off of my own teaching and arguments, let alone those of the Biblical literalists. “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you,” Peter said (or a pseudonymous student of the Petrine schola, OK), and this is one such moment. We create, in fact, myriad more such moments by taking such modest risks as exposing church members to healthy Christian debate.
When we as Disciples stand for “don’t watch that, don’t read that,” or even worse, an affected “well, at least I won’t be watching that, and I can’t imagine why anyone would,” we are seen as not having an account worth sharing. It starts to sound like we don’t even have a cheering interest in the race, let alone a personal stake. Mel Gibson has given us a flawed, but majestic opportunity to say, “Would you like to know *more* about this Jesus?” Or even better, to answer someone – as I have more often in the last few weeks than I have in years – who comes to us *asking* “Could you tell me more about Jesus?” I want to be seen as someone happy to hear that question, and as a Christian proud to try and answer.
Jeff Gill
Hebron Christian Church
Hebron, OH
Hebron Crossroads 3-14-2004
By Jeff Gill
Spring isn’t astronomically official ‘til next weekend, but the signs, they are a changin’ all around.
A few weeks ago we saw a Coyote trotting through the field behind Chez Gill; in recent weeks, I’ve spotted a bunch of American Kestrels perched on roadside wires (usually with a dangling mouse or vole counterbalancing them under their perch); the Little Guy and I saw a Cedar Waxwing at Dawes Arboretum, along with a wide assortment of migrating birds, plus a huge flock of cowbirds heading north stopping through the area for a quick wormy forage.
Speaking of Dawes, we hope this is the last Spring without a Maple Syrup program, which should be all the better next year with the new improved sugar shack at the old log cabin.
True sign of Spring, accepted by all: Hayman’s Dairy Bar is open. You know what to do.
Not a sign of Spring, but your columnist was delighted to see a B-17 in flight, apparently taking off from Heath/Newark airport on what must have been a series of hops across the country. The distinctive long swoop of the tail up to the broad rudder, combined with the four props across a vast wingspan, left me certain; anybody know what this WWII flying monument to valor was doing across our fair county?
Cub Scout Pack 33, based at Jackson Elementary but covering all of Lakewood’s schools for first through fifth graders, enjoyed a very successful “Blue and Gold” banquet at the Ohio National Guard Armory in Newark. They made such a trip to have their annual awards and “crossover ceremony” for Cubs to Scouts because with 150 and more in attendance, there aren’t many places that can hold them (and for free, and on a Friday night!), which is a great problem to have. Congrats to Ed and Rexana Fuentes, who are doing a great job with the unit.
And major “attaboys” to Hebron Elementary’s Tim Nauer, who looked sharp on Cash Explosion last weekend! And the tie went with the suit, too. He didn’t win enough to hit him for a loan, OK, but congratulate him anyhow.
As for quizzes, as a born Cub fan (they could still win a pennant in ’04!), I had a good time finding a “real Chicagoan” quiz on chicagotribune.com; well, I had a good time until I took a second quiz aimed, it said, at younger readers. It turned out that, on the Chicago quiz, I got a higher score on the one that wasn’t called the . . . non-geezer version. Which makes me a . . .
Speaking of senior moments, as if getting the better score on what is apparently the “geezer version” of the Chicago history quiz isn’t bad enough . . . I called Laura Gallup something else (why repeat the mistake?).
Laura Gallup has the art exhibit going on in the public hallway at Brezina Design and Construction, aka the Hebron Mill. Her installation is meant to evoke history and culture, looking back at women in Licking County and American history, giving us new contexts to meditate on the role and place of women in religious and family life. She takes some “risks” in presenting the work that I might not agree with (same as with Mel Gibson, in fact!), but the technical execution is quite impressive.
Carlos Brezina is to be commended for creating a new public space in Hebron – don’t forget we’ve had community art in the lobby of the municipal building since it opened – and here’s hoping the idea catches on and continues. This exhibit is on through March 31.
Did I hear someone ask: Was there any part of Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” I didn’t like? Sure: the suffering went on too long. . .of Judas. This is just one of the many interesting questions “we” have yet to discuss about this very complex work of film art. Until everyone calms down over the faux-controversy surrounding “The Passion,” we won’t get to some intriguing problems and successes that deserve more conversation.
Judas is a necessary part of the passion narrative, and the device of the mule carcass was effective as a foreshadowing of what the texts say about Judas’ fate and a nice twist on the triumphal procession on muleback just days before. . .but we got more of his torment than I think helped the cinematic story.
Overall, the point can’t be made too often that Gibson’s point of view makes much more sense, extended suffering and all, if one is familiar with a) the devotional practice of the Stations of the Cross, and b) the Rosary. Many Protestant and Evangelical Christians have gotten access to the images through the remarkable use of communion imagery in the movie’s one humorous scene (“wha’?” you say; you didn’t know “The Passion” had a funny scene? That’s what I mean by needing to talk about the whole movie itself more than commentary about the movie). And whether you are part of a sacramental religious tradition or not, the table image in the flashback of Jesus the Carpenter is not only incredibly resonant, but I’ve recently learned is Gibson’s other “self-insertion” into the narrative, along with holding the nail at the crucifixion. If you’ve seen “The Patriot,” you may know that Gibson’s character keeps trying to make a Windsor chair, but everytime he sits down in a finished piece, it collapses. If you’ve seen “The Passion,” you know exactly where this point goes, so I’ll end it there.
Warning: Major subject change! Octagon State Memorial, home of one of the Seventy Ancient Wonders of the World, along with Chaco Canyon and Cahokia in North America, is holding an open house on Sunday, March 21, from 11 am to 3 pm. Just north of Licking Memorial Hospital, accessible off of Main at 33rd St. or by Moundview off of 30th St., there will be curators and the “History To Go” van from the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site, and Native American storytellers at Noon and 2 pm.
You may walk the grounds of the 20 acre perfect circle or the 50 acre connected octagon throughout that time, without fear of the golf balls often flying past when Moundbuilders Country Club, the longtime tenants, is active.
Come out and bring your family to learn and enjoy this global heritage in the heart of Licking County!
Wrapping up for now, can I just say, everybody ease up on Stephanie Hamrick; for the record, everybody is underpaid, and everything costs too much, and columnists in time will talk about both. . .but the one thing bites the other’s tail, and so on.
So we columnists are doomed to never make everyone happy; like not getting to details about the Hebron PTO & Village Crossroads Festival Memorial Day weekend! Tune in next week. . .
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and habitually tries to say too much in too little space. If you don’t want to contribute to this problem, avoid calling 928-4066 or e-mailing disciple@voyager.net to add stuff to this space next week. . .oh, why not; go ahead.
By Jeff Gill
Spring isn’t astronomically official ‘til next weekend, but the signs, they are a changin’ all around.
A few weeks ago we saw a Coyote trotting through the field behind Chez Gill; in recent weeks, I’ve spotted a bunch of American Kestrels perched on roadside wires (usually with a dangling mouse or vole counterbalancing them under their perch); the Little Guy and I saw a Cedar Waxwing at Dawes Arboretum, along with a wide assortment of migrating birds, plus a huge flock of cowbirds heading north stopping through the area for a quick wormy forage.
Speaking of Dawes, we hope this is the last Spring without a Maple Syrup program, which should be all the better next year with the new improved sugar shack at the old log cabin.
True sign of Spring, accepted by all: Hayman’s Dairy Bar is open. You know what to do.
Not a sign of Spring, but your columnist was delighted to see a B-17 in flight, apparently taking off from Heath/Newark airport on what must have been a series of hops across the country. The distinctive long swoop of the tail up to the broad rudder, combined with the four props across a vast wingspan, left me certain; anybody know what this WWII flying monument to valor was doing across our fair county?
Cub Scout Pack 33, based at Jackson Elementary but covering all of Lakewood’s schools for first through fifth graders, enjoyed a very successful “Blue and Gold” banquet at the Ohio National Guard Armory in Newark. They made such a trip to have their annual awards and “crossover ceremony” for Cubs to Scouts because with 150 and more in attendance, there aren’t many places that can hold them (and for free, and on a Friday night!), which is a great problem to have. Congrats to Ed and Rexana Fuentes, who are doing a great job with the unit.
And major “attaboys” to Hebron Elementary’s Tim Nauer, who looked sharp on Cash Explosion last weekend! And the tie went with the suit, too. He didn’t win enough to hit him for a loan, OK, but congratulate him anyhow.
As for quizzes, as a born Cub fan (they could still win a pennant in ’04!), I had a good time finding a “real Chicagoan” quiz on chicagotribune.com; well, I had a good time until I took a second quiz aimed, it said, at younger readers. It turned out that, on the Chicago quiz, I got a higher score on the one that wasn’t called the . . . non-geezer version. Which makes me a . . .
Speaking of senior moments, as if getting the better score on what is apparently the “geezer version” of the Chicago history quiz isn’t bad enough . . . I called Laura Gallup something else (why repeat the mistake?).
Laura Gallup has the art exhibit going on in the public hallway at Brezina Design and Construction, aka the Hebron Mill. Her installation is meant to evoke history and culture, looking back at women in Licking County and American history, giving us new contexts to meditate on the role and place of women in religious and family life. She takes some “risks” in presenting the work that I might not agree with (same as with Mel Gibson, in fact!), but the technical execution is quite impressive.
Carlos Brezina is to be commended for creating a new public space in Hebron – don’t forget we’ve had community art in the lobby of the municipal building since it opened – and here’s hoping the idea catches on and continues. This exhibit is on through March 31.
Did I hear someone ask: Was there any part of Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” I didn’t like? Sure: the suffering went on too long. . .of Judas. This is just one of the many interesting questions “we” have yet to discuss about this very complex work of film art. Until everyone calms down over the faux-controversy surrounding “The Passion,” we won’t get to some intriguing problems and successes that deserve more conversation.
Judas is a necessary part of the passion narrative, and the device of the mule carcass was effective as a foreshadowing of what the texts say about Judas’ fate and a nice twist on the triumphal procession on muleback just days before. . .but we got more of his torment than I think helped the cinematic story.
Overall, the point can’t be made too often that Gibson’s point of view makes much more sense, extended suffering and all, if one is familiar with a) the devotional practice of the Stations of the Cross, and b) the Rosary. Many Protestant and Evangelical Christians have gotten access to the images through the remarkable use of communion imagery in the movie’s one humorous scene (“wha’?” you say; you didn’t know “The Passion” had a funny scene? That’s what I mean by needing to talk about the whole movie itself more than commentary about the movie). And whether you are part of a sacramental religious tradition or not, the table image in the flashback of Jesus the Carpenter is not only incredibly resonant, but I’ve recently learned is Gibson’s other “self-insertion” into the narrative, along with holding the nail at the crucifixion. If you’ve seen “The Patriot,” you may know that Gibson’s character keeps trying to make a Windsor chair, but everytime he sits down in a finished piece, it collapses. If you’ve seen “The Passion,” you know exactly where this point goes, so I’ll end it there.
Warning: Major subject change! Octagon State Memorial, home of one of the Seventy Ancient Wonders of the World, along with Chaco Canyon and Cahokia in North America, is holding an open house on Sunday, March 21, from 11 am to 3 pm. Just north of Licking Memorial Hospital, accessible off of Main at 33rd St. or by Moundview off of 30th St., there will be curators and the “History To Go” van from the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site, and Native American storytellers at Noon and 2 pm.
You may walk the grounds of the 20 acre perfect circle or the 50 acre connected octagon throughout that time, without fear of the golf balls often flying past when Moundbuilders Country Club, the longtime tenants, is active.
Come out and bring your family to learn and enjoy this global heritage in the heart of Licking County!
Wrapping up for now, can I just say, everybody ease up on Stephanie Hamrick; for the record, everybody is underpaid, and everything costs too much, and columnists in time will talk about both. . .but the one thing bites the other’s tail, and so on.
So we columnists are doomed to never make everyone happy; like not getting to details about the Hebron PTO & Village Crossroads Festival Memorial Day weekend! Tune in next week. . .
Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and habitually tries to say too much in too little space. If you don’t want to contribute to this problem, avoid calling 928-4066 or e-mailing disciple@voyager.net to add stuff to this space next week. . .oh, why not; go ahead.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
The Scouter – April 2004
Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
Charters – What are they, and why do we care?
Many Cubmaster, Scoutmasters, and Pack or Troop Committee chairs see the charter as “just one of those annual annoyances” from the council office. What the rechartering and presentation period are – or can be – is a great opportunity to firm up the relationship between your unit’s chartering organization and Scouting.
The chartering institution, whether a church, PTO, or civic organization, is who “owns the franchise” for Scouting in your location. With developments such as United Way cuts and defunding, the charter relationship becomes ever more important in maintaining our ability to deliver the Scouting program of values formation, leadership development, and outdoor education.
Some units say, quite truthfully, that their chartered organization just signs a piece of paper, offers a meeting space (in many cases), pays the charter fee (if that), and that’s all. That may be the case for some units, but it doesn’t have to be.
Your unit commissioner can be a resource for renewing contact with a low-key charter organization. A presentation of the charter can be scheduled with support from your district staff, and can be a great way to spark – and right before Cub Day Camp or the Scout summer camp season starts! – new levels of awareness among the members of the church, board, or club that holds your charter, whether they knew it before or not.
If you haven’t had a formal charter presentation recently, discuss it at your next unit committee meeting. Scouting needs the support of our chartered relationships now more than ever!
If you have ideas for material you’d like to see in “The Scouter” on the Licking District section, call 928-4066 and leave a message for Jeff Gill, or better yet, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Which is also how you can offer material for publishing in this page. . .plus:
See http://www.lickingdistrict.org for all your latest updates!
Cub Day Camp at the Rock
“Circus” 2004
June 16 – 19, Wed. – Sat.
Licking District Cub Day Camp registration packets have been sent out to all the Cub leaders. If you haven’t received one, please call Angie or Ric Eders at 740.927.0357, or e-mail ldcsdaycamp04@earthlink.net.
Volunteers are coming in, but we still have lots of areas to be filled (contact info same as above!). We will be starting each day at 8:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm.
Camp fee is $46, and for each additional scout registered from the same family before May 14, it is $40. All scouts must be registered when they arrive or they cannot attend, to protect the child and Scouting under our insurance. Registrations received after May 15 to June 11 are $56, and any postmarked after June 11 will cost $66. Camperships are available, but they must be turned in before May 14. Cancellations must be submitted before June 1, and are subject to a $20 fee for materials already purchased. Additionally it is $10 for the Friday Webelos overnight, and $10 for the Sibling Circle, limited to children of those working as part of Cub Day Camp, with required registration form.
We need to maintain a 1:4 adult:Cub ratio, so keep recruiting your leadership; they will need to be registered adults before the first day of camp as well.
Thanks from the district to Ric & Angie who are putting so much careful preplanning into this major Licking District event!
Spring Camporee at Hartford Fairgrounds
April 23-25, 2004
Licking District Emergency Preparedness Camporee will allow scouts to
complete to complete the following requirements:
Tenderfoot: 12a-b
Second Class: 6a-c
First Class 8b-d
First class scouts will be able to earn their emergency preparedness
merit badge if they complete the following pre-requisites.
1, 2a-b, 3a-d, 4a-d, 8a-c, and 9c.
The Scoutmaster must sign off pre-requisites on a blue card.
We are planning to conduct an emergency drill with the corporation of
the Licking County Emergency Management team and local fire
departments. This Camporee will be held at the Hartford Fair grounds in
Croton OH. Registration will begin at 6:00 PM at the north fair ground
entrance. Cost for the weekend will be $6.00 per person. All units have received registration materials; come to April Roundtable at Central Christian on Mt. Vernon Rd. in Newark, Tues., Apr. 6 at 7:15 pm for more info!
Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
Charters – What are they, and why do we care?
Many Cubmaster, Scoutmasters, and Pack or Troop Committee chairs see the charter as “just one of those annual annoyances” from the council office. What the rechartering and presentation period are – or can be – is a great opportunity to firm up the relationship between your unit’s chartering organization and Scouting.
The chartering institution, whether a church, PTO, or civic organization, is who “owns the franchise” for Scouting in your location. With developments such as United Way cuts and defunding, the charter relationship becomes ever more important in maintaining our ability to deliver the Scouting program of values formation, leadership development, and outdoor education.
Some units say, quite truthfully, that their chartered organization just signs a piece of paper, offers a meeting space (in many cases), pays the charter fee (if that), and that’s all. That may be the case for some units, but it doesn’t have to be.
Your unit commissioner can be a resource for renewing contact with a low-key charter organization. A presentation of the charter can be scheduled with support from your district staff, and can be a great way to spark – and right before Cub Day Camp or the Scout summer camp season starts! – new levels of awareness among the members of the church, board, or club that holds your charter, whether they knew it before or not.
If you haven’t had a formal charter presentation recently, discuss it at your next unit committee meeting. Scouting needs the support of our chartered relationships now more than ever!
If you have ideas for material you’d like to see in “The Scouter” on the Licking District section, call 928-4066 and leave a message for Jeff Gill, or better yet, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Which is also how you can offer material for publishing in this page. . .plus:
See http://www.lickingdistrict.org for all your latest updates!
Cub Day Camp at the Rock
“Circus” 2004
June 16 – 19, Wed. – Sat.
Licking District Cub Day Camp registration packets have been sent out to all the Cub leaders. If you haven’t received one, please call Angie or Ric Eders at 740.927.0357, or e-mail ldcsdaycamp04@earthlink.net.
Volunteers are coming in, but we still have lots of areas to be filled (contact info same as above!). We will be starting each day at 8:30 am and ending at 4:30 pm.
Camp fee is $46, and for each additional scout registered from the same family before May 14, it is $40. All scouts must be registered when they arrive or they cannot attend, to protect the child and Scouting under our insurance. Registrations received after May 15 to June 11 are $56, and any postmarked after June 11 will cost $66. Camperships are available, but they must be turned in before May 14. Cancellations must be submitted before June 1, and are subject to a $20 fee for materials already purchased. Additionally it is $10 for the Friday Webelos overnight, and $10 for the Sibling Circle, limited to children of those working as part of Cub Day Camp, with required registration form.
We need to maintain a 1:4 adult:Cub ratio, so keep recruiting your leadership; they will need to be registered adults before the first day of camp as well.
Thanks from the district to Ric & Angie who are putting so much careful preplanning into this major Licking District event!
Spring Camporee at Hartford Fairgrounds
April 23-25, 2004
Licking District Emergency Preparedness Camporee will allow scouts to
complete to complete the following requirements:
Tenderfoot: 12a-b
Second Class: 6a-c
First Class 8b-d
First class scouts will be able to earn their emergency preparedness
merit badge if they complete the following pre-requisites.
1, 2a-b, 3a-d, 4a-d, 8a-c, and 9c.
The Scoutmaster must sign off pre-requisites on a blue card.
We are planning to conduct an emergency drill with the corporation of
the Licking County Emergency Management team and local fire
departments. This Camporee will be held at the Hartford Fair grounds in
Croton OH. Registration will begin at 6:00 PM at the north fair ground
entrance. Cost for the weekend will be $6.00 per person. All units have received registration materials; come to April Roundtable at Central Christian on Mt. Vernon Rd. in Newark, Tues., Apr. 6 at 7:15 pm for more info!
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