Faith Works 2-05-05
By Jeff Gill
Father Tom Shonebarger, pastor some years back at Blessed Sacrament in Newark, had an observation about the beginning of Lent that has stuck with me. (Yes, Lent starts this week!)
Father Tom suggested that “we should contemplate our mortality” as a spiritual discipline. Contemplate our mortality as finite beings, as human persons who will have a date on the other end of a “dash,” and meditate on the fact that the world will continue to rotate and vegetate and motivate even after we’ve, well, died.
Right: as a Catholic priest (now serving over in Columbus at St. Timothy’s), Tom affirms the Christian teaching of resurrection. But his point was that we shouldn’t skip right ahead to heaven and eternity, but let the solid grounding of our limitations enter into our hopes and dreams. Many of you will hear versions of this further on in Lent, when clergy of many denominations try to get us to not skip from peak to peak in Holy Week, neglecting Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to jump straight from Palm Sunday to Easter.
A different take on “contemplating our mortality” is making a splash on television right now, a show called “Medium.” An hour long drama based on a woman who claims to see and talk to the dead, helping to solve crimes (of course), has been one of NBC’s biggest new hits.
Meanwhile, Sylvia Browne is a regular on Larry King’s CNN show chatting with the dearly departed, with shows featuring James VanPraagh and John Edwards (no, not the coiffed lawyer who ran for something lately) racking up decent cable ratings while asking “do you know someone who has passed with a ‘T’ in their name? They’re behind you now.”
And this very newspaper runs ads from local psychic counselors who claim much the same skill, and are making enough of a living to indicate that there’s a market for mediums in this large county. In fact, just off the Sweet Corn Festival grounds in Millersport is Summerland Beach Road, almost all that’s left of a century-ago camp for Spiritualists who had organized an church around services where you talked to those who had passed over to the “Summerland.” Members of this church can be found dotted around central Ohio.
For many believers, this subject is a tricky one. Most Christians would strongly affirm “life after death,” while being, shall we say, “agnostic” about communications with the saints in heaven. Some point to Deuteronomic passages and call it wrong if not evil, while others can rightly note that Saul consulted the medium at Endor in I Samuel 28 to speak to Samuel’s shade…note how that all turned out, though.
Best known is the encounter known as the “Transfiguration,” where Peter sees Moses and Elijah standing conversing with Jesus. No one other than Jesus heard what the departed had to say, however, and putting ourselves in Jesus’ place is dicey for this kind of situation.
I’m quite certain that there are people who are sincerely convinced that loved ones have returned to communicate something important to them, most often in dreams. These encounters can be very significant for both the resolution of grief and and the solution of personal problems of the living, and I take them very seriously when talking to a person about them.But do people really hear from the dead? I can’t rule it out, scripturally or personally. They are, perhaps, moments when we are indirectly, gingerly acknowledging that endings and resolution are matters rarely far from our minds, consciously or not.With Father Tom, i'd have to agree that "contemplating our mortality" is harder to do than envisioning eternity, but might just be a good way to bring both mind and heart into alignment.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can reach him (while alive!) at disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Faith/Works 1-22-05
By Jeff Gill
Inauguration. You don’t see this word every day, and even in national political affairs you only see it every four years or so.
We know inauguration as the event surrounding the swearing in of officials, when the oath of office is administered by a judge or comparable public official.
Inaugural events are a good example of what Robert Bellah famously called "civil religion," that complex of symbols, acts, and rituals that take public life and give the community a wider sense of meaning through otherwise commonplace events.
Under the law (as not a few Democrats have pointed out), President Bush could re-take the oath of office in, well, the Oval Office, with Laura holding the family Bible, Chief Justice Rehnquist (pray for him, by the way, as the thyroid cancer progresses) showing up after lunch, and business proceeding on, with a champagne toast out since the President doesn’t drink, anyhow.
But the decision is made to keep the pomp and circumstance, the hailing of the chief by the Marine Band, a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and grand balls in the evening all across the district. We need these events for the common good, argue administration officials, and they shape our identity.
Without agreeing to the former, I can see the point of the latter. Did you know, for instance, that the very term "inauguration" comes from the rituals of ancient Rome around the beginning of any endeavor? "Augurs" are literally "intestines" in Latin (auger, spiral, twisting innards . . . how’s your breakfast, anyhow?), and the priests would ceremonially slaughter an animal the morning of a public event and read the markings on the entrails to see whether things "augured well" for the day, using ancient guides from the earlier Etruscans.
I’ve not heard of entrail reading on Jan. 20 before the noon swearing-in, but they are roasting a few sides of beef in Washington, so the opportunity exists, I guess. Yet we read much into these kind of superstitious signs. Think of all the sayings around a rainy wedding day, or Groundhog Day coming up shortly.
We look to public ceremony as a sign and indicator showing us how confident and eager our public officials are about the task they begin with their inauguration, and we all know that words alone can twist faster than a pigeon’s . . . well, you know what I mean. Rather than go just with what they say, we read into the music they choose (Fleetwood Mac for Clinton, Lee Greenwood for Bush) and the clothes they wear (Clinton’s sunglasses, Bush’s cowboy boots) to tell us what the future holds.
Licking County on New Year’s Eve didn’t kill any animals, but we did have a ceremony, with black robed solemn judges, the glory that is the West Courtroom in our courthouse, and family gathered near for an oath and the ritual act of . . .picture taking. With both parties present and common purpose affirmed in word and deed, it augured well for the democracy that is our community. That is civil religion at its best.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
Faith/Works 1-29-05
By Jeff Gill
In sermons and prayers and messages and reflections, worship leaders in many places wrestled with the question of theodicy these last few weeks. But they probably didn’t call it that.
Theodicy is not a word in general use. In fact, my version of word processing keeps angrily underlining "theodicy" in red, telling me that not only does the program not have it in the dictionary, but I haven’t used it enough myself to have put it in through spell checking. (There, now I have. . .)
Theodicy is the category of theology that deals with what’s also known as "the problem of evil." How can a God who is loving and also powerful allow evil to happen? How does one "justify God," which is the literal meaning of the term, just as "theo-logos" is "words about God," or God-talk as one of my seminary professors put it.
The narrow and sharp angle of theology that is theology was honed to a razor’s edge with the Tsunami Event on last Dec. 26. So many innocent lives lost, so much unjustifiable tragedy. How does a believer in a God who cares and has power beyond our own human limits explain this? Or, what’s your "theodicy"?
There are, even within the Christian community, a number of ways to approach the problem. The only one all religious thinkers agree about is the "ignore it" approach. They agree that won’t do.
So some say God has chosen to be limited, the "Camelot" option. God could intervene, as Arthur could to save Gwen, but does not because the entire structure of law and justice would be threatened if he did. The big picture approach, much as we hear at the close of the Biblical book of Job: "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?"
A very small, but vocal number argue that the reason God would permit such an event is sin: that of those who died. They might allow that children were innocent, but caught up in the sin of those around them. Before you write that off as the ravings of an angry few, note that the growth of Islam in, believe it or not, Sumatra (where the tsunami hit hardest) stems from such preaching that followed the eruption of Krakatoa and massive loss of life in the 19th century.
Much more common is answering this problem by pointing to sin as a general, cosmic problem. Sin is seen as having broken and fractured the world, and it is God’s grace that is about the work of healing that breach, which will not be completed until the end of time.
Theodicy may be a modern problem, at least in one sense. The term was coined by a German philosopher, Leibnitz, in 1710. In Bible times, people asked about whether God is kind and caring or stern and judging, or if a particular god is only interested in what happens between these two rivers and not on the other side, as opposed to the universality of one God in monotheism.
Modernism introduces the question: Is there a God? Theodicy is different entirely when one option is . . . this existent evil demonstrates that there isn’t.
How does your faith community justify "the ways of God to humankind"? How do you do theodicy?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Write him at disciple@voyager.net
c
By Jeff Gill
Inauguration. You don’t see this word every day, and even in national political affairs you only see it every four years or so.
We know inauguration as the event surrounding the swearing in of officials, when the oath of office is administered by a judge or comparable public official.
Inaugural events are a good example of what Robert Bellah famously called "civil religion," that complex of symbols, acts, and rituals that take public life and give the community a wider sense of meaning through otherwise commonplace events.
Under the law (as not a few Democrats have pointed out), President Bush could re-take the oath of office in, well, the Oval Office, with Laura holding the family Bible, Chief Justice Rehnquist (pray for him, by the way, as the thyroid cancer progresses) showing up after lunch, and business proceeding on, with a champagne toast out since the President doesn’t drink, anyhow.
But the decision is made to keep the pomp and circumstance, the hailing of the chief by the Marine Band, a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and grand balls in the evening all across the district. We need these events for the common good, argue administration officials, and they shape our identity.
Without agreeing to the former, I can see the point of the latter. Did you know, for instance, that the very term "inauguration" comes from the rituals of ancient Rome around the beginning of any endeavor? "Augurs" are literally "intestines" in Latin (auger, spiral, twisting innards . . . how’s your breakfast, anyhow?), and the priests would ceremonially slaughter an animal the morning of a public event and read the markings on the entrails to see whether things "augured well" for the day, using ancient guides from the earlier Etruscans.
I’ve not heard of entrail reading on Jan. 20 before the noon swearing-in, but they are roasting a few sides of beef in Washington, so the opportunity exists, I guess. Yet we read much into these kind of superstitious signs. Think of all the sayings around a rainy wedding day, or Groundhog Day coming up shortly.
We look to public ceremony as a sign and indicator showing us how confident and eager our public officials are about the task they begin with their inauguration, and we all know that words alone can twist faster than a pigeon’s . . . well, you know what I mean. Rather than go just with what they say, we read into the music they choose (Fleetwood Mac for Clinton, Lee Greenwood for Bush) and the clothes they wear (Clinton’s sunglasses, Bush’s cowboy boots) to tell us what the future holds.
Licking County on New Year’s Eve didn’t kill any animals, but we did have a ceremony, with black robed solemn judges, the glory that is the West Courtroom in our courthouse, and family gathered near for an oath and the ritual act of . . .picture taking. With both parties present and common purpose affirmed in word and deed, it augured well for the democracy that is our community. That is civil religion at its best.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
Faith/Works 1-29-05
By Jeff Gill
In sermons and prayers and messages and reflections, worship leaders in many places wrestled with the question of theodicy these last few weeks. But they probably didn’t call it that.
Theodicy is not a word in general use. In fact, my version of word processing keeps angrily underlining "theodicy" in red, telling me that not only does the program not have it in the dictionary, but I haven’t used it enough myself to have put it in through spell checking. (There, now I have. . .)
Theodicy is the category of theology that deals with what’s also known as "the problem of evil." How can a God who is loving and also powerful allow evil to happen? How does one "justify God," which is the literal meaning of the term, just as "theo-logos" is "words about God," or God-talk as one of my seminary professors put it.
The narrow and sharp angle of theology that is theology was honed to a razor’s edge with the Tsunami Event on last Dec. 26. So many innocent lives lost, so much unjustifiable tragedy. How does a believer in a God who cares and has power beyond our own human limits explain this? Or, what’s your "theodicy"?
There are, even within the Christian community, a number of ways to approach the problem. The only one all religious thinkers agree about is the "ignore it" approach. They agree that won’t do.
So some say God has chosen to be limited, the "Camelot" option. God could intervene, as Arthur could to save Gwen, but does not because the entire structure of law and justice would be threatened if he did. The big picture approach, much as we hear at the close of the Biblical book of Job: "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?"
A very small, but vocal number argue that the reason God would permit such an event is sin: that of those who died. They might allow that children were innocent, but caught up in the sin of those around them. Before you write that off as the ravings of an angry few, note that the growth of Islam in, believe it or not, Sumatra (where the tsunami hit hardest) stems from such preaching that followed the eruption of Krakatoa and massive loss of life in the 19th century.
Much more common is answering this problem by pointing to sin as a general, cosmic problem. Sin is seen as having broken and fractured the world, and it is God’s grace that is about the work of healing that breach, which will not be completed until the end of time.
Theodicy may be a modern problem, at least in one sense. The term was coined by a German philosopher, Leibnitz, in 1710. In Bible times, people asked about whether God is kind and caring or stern and judging, or if a particular god is only interested in what happens between these two rivers and not on the other side, as opposed to the universality of one God in monotheism.
Modernism introduces the question: Is there a God? Theodicy is different entirely when one option is . . . this existent evil demonstrates that there isn’t.
How does your faith community justify "the ways of God to humankind"? How do you do theodicy?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Write him at disciple@voyager.net
c
Notes From My Knapsack 1-23-05
By Jeff Gill
You Are In Training
Pretty much all of us have been in a training program of one sort or another. Workplace, volunteer, skill development, school all offer training to help us master a new technology or way of doing things.
We are all just about done with a training program that we have all been in without quite noticing it. Modern society is completing the process (will there be a certificate mailed to us at the end?) and we’ll go on using our newfound skills for the rest of our lives, I suspect.
You and I are becoming well-trained voice-mail menu operators. We’re getting good at this, aren’t we? Somewhere over the last five years, the idea of a human voice being the first, rather than the last step of a contact process with a business or institution started phasing out. Fewer and fewer places, even fairly small operations, have a "receptionist-operator" on the phone.
And now we expect to be greeted by "welcome to our voice mail network; some menu options have changed, so please listen for the option which most closely meets your needs."
Personally, I can’t be trained enough to ever like "your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line for the next available operator." What industrial psychologist did the study that told everyone who designs these things that we want to hear automated affirmation? And when the robovoice says "your call is extremely important to us," I can’t help but think, "No. If it really was extremely important, you’d sit by the phone, eyes locked to the handset, waiting for it to ring, or buzz, or chirp, or whatever. But extremely important ain’t Ms. Autophone, dude."
But there is a logic which has started to convince me about these menus. Many concerns or questions can be answered "automatically" with a touch-tone menu. Most of us have some kind of internet access, where we could be routed to get a better answer than a minimum wage part-timer would give us, no matter how politely, so thanks for the hints to go to the internet while I’m waiting on hold. And the amount of mindless work that can be punched in before I talk to a live person has got to be a savings for both me and the company in time and money.
So I’m getting myself trained, like all the rest of you. I’m getting better at navigating without hesitation or aggravation through the "press 2 for a billing question, press 3 for service options, and to register a complaint, hang up and shout at the phone."
A few tips from those of us a little further along in the training program: when you absolutely, positively, have to talk to a people-person, press 0. You may get another menu: press 0 again. Press it once or twice more, if you like (really, some places make it 4 tries at 0 to get an operator, in the theory that you’ll get frustrated enough between 2 and 3 tries to either stick with the menu or hang up), but that’s how every commercially available voice mail system routes callers to the elusive "live operator."
If any professionals with these systems are still reading, a last note. Aside from my own frustrations when holding a pencil, three forms with long numbers on them that all look alike, and a daily planner on my lap, I think of elderly relatives and friends when a system gives you about four-and-a-half seconds before either chiding you or routing your call into an unwanted queue. Guys, some of us out here in consumer land who understand you gotta have these systems and want to work with y’all: we can’t all see great, we’re a bit overwhelmed by life or events, we have shaky hands or uncertain reflexes. Can you put a "go slower" button in the menu as an option, before Aunt Tilly completely gives up on the modern world? Thanks.
And yes, I have moved recently. How did you know?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have adventures in voice mail to share, write (don’t call!) disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
You Are In Training
Pretty much all of us have been in a training program of one sort or another. Workplace, volunteer, skill development, school all offer training to help us master a new technology or way of doing things.
We are all just about done with a training program that we have all been in without quite noticing it. Modern society is completing the process (will there be a certificate mailed to us at the end?) and we’ll go on using our newfound skills for the rest of our lives, I suspect.
You and I are becoming well-trained voice-mail menu operators. We’re getting good at this, aren’t we? Somewhere over the last five years, the idea of a human voice being the first, rather than the last step of a contact process with a business or institution started phasing out. Fewer and fewer places, even fairly small operations, have a "receptionist-operator" on the phone.
And now we expect to be greeted by "welcome to our voice mail network; some menu options have changed, so please listen for the option which most closely meets your needs."
Personally, I can’t be trained enough to ever like "your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line for the next available operator." What industrial psychologist did the study that told everyone who designs these things that we want to hear automated affirmation? And when the robovoice says "your call is extremely important to us," I can’t help but think, "No. If it really was extremely important, you’d sit by the phone, eyes locked to the handset, waiting for it to ring, or buzz, or chirp, or whatever. But extremely important ain’t Ms. Autophone, dude."
But there is a logic which has started to convince me about these menus. Many concerns or questions can be answered "automatically" with a touch-tone menu. Most of us have some kind of internet access, where we could be routed to get a better answer than a minimum wage part-timer would give us, no matter how politely, so thanks for the hints to go to the internet while I’m waiting on hold. And the amount of mindless work that can be punched in before I talk to a live person has got to be a savings for both me and the company in time and money.
So I’m getting myself trained, like all the rest of you. I’m getting better at navigating without hesitation or aggravation through the "press 2 for a billing question, press 3 for service options, and to register a complaint, hang up and shout at the phone."
A few tips from those of us a little further along in the training program: when you absolutely, positively, have to talk to a people-person, press 0. You may get another menu: press 0 again. Press it once or twice more, if you like (really, some places make it 4 tries at 0 to get an operator, in the theory that you’ll get frustrated enough between 2 and 3 tries to either stick with the menu or hang up), but that’s how every commercially available voice mail system routes callers to the elusive "live operator."
If any professionals with these systems are still reading, a last note. Aside from my own frustrations when holding a pencil, three forms with long numbers on them that all look alike, and a daily planner on my lap, I think of elderly relatives and friends when a system gives you about four-and-a-half seconds before either chiding you or routing your call into an unwanted queue. Guys, some of us out here in consumer land who understand you gotta have these systems and want to work with y’all: we can’t all see great, we’re a bit overwhelmed by life or events, we have shaky hands or uncertain reflexes. Can you put a "go slower" button in the menu as an option, before Aunt Tilly completely gives up on the modern world? Thanks.
And yes, I have moved recently. How did you know?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have adventures in voice mail to share, write (don’t call!) disciple@voyager.net.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Homelessness at Home January 2005
Summary of Facilitation for LCHI task group
Jeff Gill – 13 Jan 05
Good news – What you heard as a pleasant surprise
Basic efforts of Salvation Army (SA), Coalition of Care (CoC), and
St. Vincent de Paul conferences & center (StVdP) – (x 5)
So much co-operation - (x 3)
How much is being put "out there" in resources - (x 2)
Focus already in community on shelter needs beyond current capacity – (x 2)
50 beds already on drawing boards – (x 2)
SA went from 6 to 18 beds (w/ a visit to 24 for a time)_
That SA and StVdP have met and are co-ordinating
This room and the cross-section it represents
Decrease in 2004 Point in Time count #
Support of faith communities
Focus on God
Child care available through DJFS
Meals available through SA (noted in later discussion, might have been a x 4 or 5)
Troubling News
Average age of a homeless person = 9 years old – (x 12)
Lack of immediate access shelter/services – (x 4)
Seeing the pictures of the where and how – (x 4)
Likely competition for $$$ locally – (x 3)
Lack of awareness of available resources – (x 3)
$12.43 an hour wage rate needed to afford 2 bdr rental in LC – (x 3)
68 turnaways at SA since Jan. 1, 12 days – (x 3)
The amount spent now for current results – (x 2)
Trends vs. pop. Growth, or will 50 beds be enough in 5 yrs.? – (x 2)
Amer. Red Cross (ARC) out of $$ right now – (x 2)
(including no renter’s insurance among all of the 70% cases that are renters)
No daily soup kitchen
Potential disagreements over priorities, esp. subpopulations
(i.e., you may have statistics, but I know what I see. . .)
Church response should be much better than 60 of 240
Family support shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting assistance
Prejudice against the visibly impoverished ("Them as got, gets")
Bricks & mortar vs. people
1 is too many/no one (even molesters) deserves homelessness
Noted in this section: Lancaster has "The Foundation" with 100 beds;
Zanesville has "Christ’s Table" daily soup kitchen; should look and learn
If I could tell everyone in LC one thing, it would be. . .
Average age of homeless person: 9 years old
12 days, 68 turned away from a full-capacity SA shelter
Tomorrow, w/out family & friends, YOU could be homeless
Homelessness is REAL, and could happen to anyone
Stop discarding your teens (18 emancipation, 50%? drop-out rate at NHS)
Homelessness is everyone’s responsibility;
A community thing, not an agency thing
345-HELP
Remember the ice storm, and how you felt
The Main Place exists
There is help, and hope
T
Summary of Facilitation for LCHI task group
Jeff Gill – 13 Jan 05
Good news – What you heard as a pleasant surprise
Basic efforts of Salvation Army (SA), Coalition of Care (CoC), and
St. Vincent de Paul conferences & center (StVdP) – (x 5)
So much co-operation - (x 3)
How much is being put "out there" in resources - (x 2)
Focus already in community on shelter needs beyond current capacity – (x 2)
50 beds already on drawing boards – (x 2)
SA went from 6 to 18 beds (w/ a visit to 24 for a time)_
That SA and StVdP have met and are co-ordinating
This room and the cross-section it represents
Decrease in 2004 Point in Time count #
Support of faith communities
Focus on God
Child care available through DJFS
Meals available through SA (noted in later discussion, might have been a x 4 or 5)
Troubling News
Average age of a homeless person = 9 years old – (x 12)
Lack of immediate access shelter/services – (x 4)
Seeing the pictures of the where and how – (x 4)
Likely competition for $$$ locally – (x 3)
Lack of awareness of available resources – (x 3)
$12.43 an hour wage rate needed to afford 2 bdr rental in LC – (x 3)
68 turnaways at SA since Jan. 1, 12 days – (x 3)
The amount spent now for current results – (x 2)
Trends vs. pop. Growth, or will 50 beds be enough in 5 yrs.? – (x 2)
Amer. Red Cross (ARC) out of $$ right now – (x 2)
(including no renter’s insurance among all of the 70% cases that are renters)
No daily soup kitchen
Potential disagreements over priorities, esp. subpopulations
(i.e., you may have statistics, but I know what I see. . .)
Church response should be much better than 60 of 240
Family support shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting assistance
Prejudice against the visibly impoverished ("Them as got, gets")
Bricks & mortar vs. people
1 is too many/no one (even molesters) deserves homelessness
Noted in this section: Lancaster has "The Foundation" with 100 beds;
Zanesville has "Christ’s Table" daily soup kitchen; should look and learn
If I could tell everyone in LC one thing, it would be. . .
Average age of homeless person: 9 years old
12 days, 68 turned away from a full-capacity SA shelter
Tomorrow, w/out family & friends, YOU could be homeless
Homelessness is REAL, and could happen to anyone
Stop discarding your teens (18 emancipation, 50%? drop-out rate at NHS)
Homelessness is everyone’s responsibility;
A community thing, not an agency thing
345-HELP
Remember the ice storm, and how you felt
The Main Place exists
There is help, and hope
T
LICKING DISTRICT
CUB SCOUT DAY CAMP 2005
"KNIGHTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE"
At: Camp Falling Rock
On: June 14 thru June 17, 2005
Tuesday thru Friday
Picnic and Awards Ceremony on
Friday, June 17th starting at 12:00 p.m.
The Webelos Overnighter
Will be Friday, June 17th
Registration Fees:
$45.00/Scout
Due On or Before the May 3rd Roundtable
$55.00/Scout
Due On or Before May 27th
NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER MAY 27TH!
Except New Tiger Cub Registrations.
Questions Contact Camp Directors Angela & Ric Eader At:
Ldesdaycamp@earthlinck.net
* * *
CUB SCOUT LEADER BASIC TRAINING
There will be a training course held on
Saturday, March 5, 2005
From
8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $5.00 per person
Location:
Church on the Rock
Etna, Ohio
Questions, call:
Debbie Neighbarger
P.O. Box 94
Utica, Ohio 43080
740-892-3671
740-745-2118
Send registrations to:
Simon Kenton Council, BSA
1901 E. Dublin-Granville Rd.
PO Box 29207
Columbus, Ohio 43229-0207
Attn.: Licking District Training
CUB SCOUT DAY CAMP 2005
"KNIGHTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE"
At: Camp Falling Rock
On: June 14 thru June 17, 2005
Tuesday thru Friday
Picnic and Awards Ceremony on
Friday, June 17th starting at 12:00 p.m.
The Webelos Overnighter
Will be Friday, June 17th
Registration Fees:
$45.00/Scout
Due On or Before the May 3rd Roundtable
$55.00/Scout
Due On or Before May 27th
NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER MAY 27TH!
Except New Tiger Cub Registrations.
Questions Contact Camp Directors Angela & Ric Eader At:
Ldesdaycamp@earthlinck.net
* * *
CUB SCOUT LEADER BASIC TRAINING
There will be a training course held on
Saturday, March 5, 2005
From
8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $5.00 per person
Location:
Church on the Rock
Etna, Ohio
Questions, call:
Debbie Neighbarger
P.O. Box 94
Utica, Ohio 43080
740-892-3671
740-745-2118
Send registrations to:
Simon Kenton Council, BSA
1901 E. Dublin-Granville Rd.
PO Box 29207
Columbus, Ohio 43229-0207
Attn.: Licking District Training
Notes From My Knapsack 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Been Homeless Lately?
Quite a few Licking Countians (a quarter? a third? half?) have recently known, at least in part, what homelessness feels like, from the inside.
Sure, it was an ice storm, and you knew the utilities would come back (they would, wouldn’t they?), and that you’d return to your home (but when?), but the experience was still there.
You didn’t want to go, you weren’t sure where to go (sorry, we’re full up tonight), and you were making stressful decisions under difficult circumstances (why didn’t we just go to cousin Jean’s instead of Aunt Bertie’s?), which probably didn’t always show you at your best.
For folks who work with the ongoing housing and homelessness problem in Licking County, this all sounds very familiar.
What’s been different is that people from Utica to Buckeye Lake, from Toboso to Pataskala had the experience – and are talking about it.
Actually, in any given year, people from that many different parts of the area, from about as many economic backgrounds, run into a slower motion crisis that results in the same impact as the ice storm: where do I go? How do I get heat and water for my children?
There’s quite a bit we know about homelessness. We know that the emergency shelter on East Main in Newark run by the Salvation Army, with 18 beds, has been operating at full capacity for over two years now. We know they are forced to turn away people because of capacity and fire code issues: 68 were turned away between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12 just in the start of this year. And we know the average age of a homeless person is . . . 9 years old.
How do we know things like this, that the average age of homelessness is 9? Local groups like the Salvation Army, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the American Red Cross, or Moundbuilders Guidance Center all are expected to keep careful records for the state and federal funds they receive, such as through FEMA. They want to know more about the how and the where and the who of homelessness, not to mention the why.
They work together, too, such as in a recent meeting at the Reese Center on the OSU-N campus, comparing notes and dreams, and making plans.
Next week, these groups are preparing to work together to try to do a "one night count" of both unsheltered and sheltered homeless people. Teams with training will go out between 10 pm and 1 am on Wednesday night, Jan. 26, and check their assigned area for people sleeping out and around. They will carry some items to give out that might be of use to those in that situation (gloves, blankets, flashlights), and they will walk away from anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered.
That’s not what happened last year, the first time this was tried in Licking County. From I-70 truck stops to railroad overpasses, most wanted to talk and appreciated the effort to find them and tell their story.
So if your own recent brush with homelessness makes you want to help, you can be trained this Tuesday, Jan 18. Show up from either 1 to 3 pm or 6 to 8 pm, your choice, at the MRDD Office at 565 Industrial Parkway in Heath, just east of Rt. 79 (think behind Wendy’s).
Last year they counted 97 homeless people in Licking County on that one night. We hope this year is lower, and suspect it’s higher. But why talk more about it, when we can go out and count, and talk to those folks who really know what it’s like.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. You can contact him for more information about the "1 Night Homelessness Count" through disciple@voyager.net.
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By Jeff Gill
Been Homeless Lately?
Quite a few Licking Countians (a quarter? a third? half?) have recently known, at least in part, what homelessness feels like, from the inside.
Sure, it was an ice storm, and you knew the utilities would come back (they would, wouldn’t they?), and that you’d return to your home (but when?), but the experience was still there.
You didn’t want to go, you weren’t sure where to go (sorry, we’re full up tonight), and you were making stressful decisions under difficult circumstances (why didn’t we just go to cousin Jean’s instead of Aunt Bertie’s?), which probably didn’t always show you at your best.
For folks who work with the ongoing housing and homelessness problem in Licking County, this all sounds very familiar.
What’s been different is that people from Utica to Buckeye Lake, from Toboso to Pataskala had the experience – and are talking about it.
Actually, in any given year, people from that many different parts of the area, from about as many economic backgrounds, run into a slower motion crisis that results in the same impact as the ice storm: where do I go? How do I get heat and water for my children?
There’s quite a bit we know about homelessness. We know that the emergency shelter on East Main in Newark run by the Salvation Army, with 18 beds, has been operating at full capacity for over two years now. We know they are forced to turn away people because of capacity and fire code issues: 68 were turned away between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12 just in the start of this year. And we know the average age of a homeless person is . . . 9 years old.
How do we know things like this, that the average age of homelessness is 9? Local groups like the Salvation Army, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the American Red Cross, or Moundbuilders Guidance Center all are expected to keep careful records for the state and federal funds they receive, such as through FEMA. They want to know more about the how and the where and the who of homelessness, not to mention the why.
They work together, too, such as in a recent meeting at the Reese Center on the OSU-N campus, comparing notes and dreams, and making plans.
Next week, these groups are preparing to work together to try to do a "one night count" of both unsheltered and sheltered homeless people. Teams with training will go out between 10 pm and 1 am on Wednesday night, Jan. 26, and check their assigned area for people sleeping out and around. They will carry some items to give out that might be of use to those in that situation (gloves, blankets, flashlights), and they will walk away from anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered.
That’s not what happened last year, the first time this was tried in Licking County. From I-70 truck stops to railroad overpasses, most wanted to talk and appreciated the effort to find them and tell their story.
So if your own recent brush with homelessness makes you want to help, you can be trained this Tuesday, Jan 18. Show up from either 1 to 3 pm or 6 to 8 pm, your choice, at the MRDD Office at 565 Industrial Parkway in Heath, just east of Rt. 79 (think behind Wendy’s).
Last year they counted 97 homeless people in Licking County on that one night. We hope this year is lower, and suspect it’s higher. But why talk more about it, when we can go out and count, and talk to those folks who really know what it’s like.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. You can contact him for more information about the "1 Night Homelessness Count" through disciple@voyager.net.
{
Monday, January 10, 2005
February 2005 "Scouter" Simon Kenton Council
Licking District Trailmarkers
(Insert CSLBT article first)
(Insert Cub Day Camp article second)
Boy Scout Leader Basic Training
For you troop Scouters, we've got training coming up for you folks as well; contact Kelly O'Reilly for details. They will be meeting for two weekends in February and March. We need a better percentage of unit leaders on all levels trained in Licking District, and especially on the Boy Scout level. Do you have assistant Scoutmasters or newer troop committee members who could benefit from exposure to the entire Scouting program? Give 'em a nudge!
Commissioner's Staff
Kudos from Trig Gamble, district chairman, and Mike Deeslie, district commissioner, to the unit commissioners and Bill Burgess' invaluable assistance: at year's end, 42 of 49 units were chartered On Time! This is an advance on recent years, and a good step forward. We can take a few steps more (about 7, it looks like), but this is great for starting 2005 the right way.
Cub Scout 75th
This month and next are most of our Cub Scout Pack Blue & Gold banquets, with special attention to 75 years of Cubbing in the Scout Movement. Do you have a "Friends of Scouting" presentation planned as part of the program? Call Larry Lorance or Bill Burgess if you don't have one set yet.
These presentations are simply to offer the opportunity to give to support Scouting, not an arm-twist session. Often there are parents and grandparents who would like to share something for the support of the district and council, but don't know how. And don't forget, it costs Simon Kenton and Licking District about $110 to provide Scouting per youth; United Way covers about $10, leaving $100 per Scout for us to raise each year for district and council operations.
So don't skip the FoS presentation!
Last Calendar Reminders
March 17, registration starts at noon in Indian Mound Mall for district Pinewood Derby
April 17, District Recognition Dinner
April 22-23, Spring Camporee
Licking District Trailmarkers
(Insert CSLBT article first)
(Insert Cub Day Camp article second)
Boy Scout Leader Basic Training
For you troop Scouters, we've got training coming up for you folks as well; contact Kelly O'Reilly for details. They will be meeting for two weekends in February and March. We need a better percentage of unit leaders on all levels trained in Licking District, and especially on the Boy Scout level. Do you have assistant Scoutmasters or newer troop committee members who could benefit from exposure to the entire Scouting program? Give 'em a nudge!
Commissioner's Staff
Kudos from Trig Gamble, district chairman, and Mike Deeslie, district commissioner, to the unit commissioners and Bill Burgess' invaluable assistance: at year's end, 42 of 49 units were chartered On Time! This is an advance on recent years, and a good step forward. We can take a few steps more (about 7, it looks like), but this is great for starting 2005 the right way.
Cub Scout 75th
This month and next are most of our Cub Scout Pack Blue & Gold banquets, with special attention to 75 years of Cubbing in the Scout Movement. Do you have a "Friends of Scouting" presentation planned as part of the program? Call Larry Lorance or Bill Burgess if you don't have one set yet.
These presentations are simply to offer the opportunity to give to support Scouting, not an arm-twist session. Often there are parents and grandparents who would like to share something for the support of the district and council, but don't know how. And don't forget, it costs Simon Kenton and Licking District about $110 to provide Scouting per youth; United Way covers about $10, leaving $100 per Scout for us to raise each year for district and council operations.
So don't skip the FoS presentation!
Last Calendar Reminders
March 17, registration starts at noon in Indian Mound Mall for district Pinewood Derby
April 17, District Recognition Dinner
April 22-23, Spring Camporee
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Faith/Works Column
The Newark Advocate
Intro column
Faith/Works 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Last week, I just started talking without introducing myself. The tsunami response (and the needs continue, which we’ll speak of again, I’m sure) took first priority, but I tend to do that kind of thing in person, too.
My name is Jeff Gill, and I’ve lived in Licking County on and off since 1989 (the off part was a six year sabbatical in West Virginia). As an ordained Disciples of Christ pastor who is now an active lay member of a Methodist church, directs camps at a United Church of Christ conference center and goes on regular retreats at a Roman Catholic convent, I like to think I have some good coverage in the ecumenical department. My knowledge of interfaith matters hasn’t caught up to my curiosity or interest, but I know that there are Tibetan Buddhists, Hindus, and Native American healers who are deeply involved in community leadership around this area, and I want to open up a window and even a doorway for Licking County residents to those traditions through this column.
Then there’s you. Yep, you. Well, maybe not you, but someone right behind or next door or around the block from you. There’s a big bunch of folks even in red-state, Bible Belt,
"values voter" America that Licking County represents so well, who do not attend a place of worship even twice a year. Some call them "the unchurched," others "unaffiliated," and few would say "the lost." I’m just gonna call you "You."
You have hopes and fears, commitments and areas of indifference, and you have beliefs you may or may not be comfortable talking about with your friends. You may even be in that 22% who told exit polls that "moral values" were a factor in your vote (which, when you think about it, could mean you voted out of concern that too much is being made of moral values and you voted against someone for that reason!), but we know one thing for sure about you.
You represent 50 to 60% of the population. You, my friend, are in the majority, even here in Licking County. What are you thinking about in regard to your faith, and the faith communities of your neighbors? I’d like this column to engage you, You, and your family.
Right, and then there’s all of us regular church-goin’ folk. We do tend to be more likely to vote, run for office, organize events and activities, report a higher degree of personal happiness in general (and, say researchers, even a better sex life!), so it’s no wonder the doings of congregations and ministries tend to get coverage. I intend to comment on all of that, including the parenthetical note, because from Alexis deTocqueville to Alistair Cooke, foreign observers have focused on voluntary involvement, stemming from faith commitments, as what makes the American experience unique.
E-mail me, talk to me on the street or around the programs we’ll bump into each other at, and we will learn together about the creative tension between faith and works for believers, and how faith works in Licking County!
?
The Newark Advocate
Intro column
Faith/Works 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Last week, I just started talking without introducing myself. The tsunami response (and the needs continue, which we’ll speak of again, I’m sure) took first priority, but I tend to do that kind of thing in person, too.
My name is Jeff Gill, and I’ve lived in Licking County on and off since 1989 (the off part was a six year sabbatical in West Virginia). As an ordained Disciples of Christ pastor who is now an active lay member of a Methodist church, directs camps at a United Church of Christ conference center and goes on regular retreats at a Roman Catholic convent, I like to think I have some good coverage in the ecumenical department. My knowledge of interfaith matters hasn’t caught up to my curiosity or interest, but I know that there are Tibetan Buddhists, Hindus, and Native American healers who are deeply involved in community leadership around this area, and I want to open up a window and even a doorway for Licking County residents to those traditions through this column.
Then there’s you. Yep, you. Well, maybe not you, but someone right behind or next door or around the block from you. There’s a big bunch of folks even in red-state, Bible Belt,
"values voter" America that Licking County represents so well, who do not attend a place of worship even twice a year. Some call them "the unchurched," others "unaffiliated," and few would say "the lost." I’m just gonna call you "You."
You have hopes and fears, commitments and areas of indifference, and you have beliefs you may or may not be comfortable talking about with your friends. You may even be in that 22% who told exit polls that "moral values" were a factor in your vote (which, when you think about it, could mean you voted out of concern that too much is being made of moral values and you voted against someone for that reason!), but we know one thing for sure about you.
You represent 50 to 60% of the population. You, my friend, are in the majority, even here in Licking County. What are you thinking about in regard to your faith, and the faith communities of your neighbors? I’d like this column to engage you, You, and your family.
Right, and then there’s all of us regular church-goin’ folk. We do tend to be more likely to vote, run for office, organize events and activities, report a higher degree of personal happiness in general (and, say researchers, even a better sex life!), so it’s no wonder the doings of congregations and ministries tend to get coverage. I intend to comment on all of that, including the parenthetical note, because from Alexis deTocqueville to Alistair Cooke, foreign observers have focused on voluntary involvement, stemming from faith commitments, as what makes the American experience unique.
E-mail me, talk to me on the street or around the programs we’ll bump into each other at, and we will learn together about the creative tension between faith and works for believers, and how faith works in Licking County!
?
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Winter Storm With Spring Impact
by Jeff Gill
Our Christmas week ice storm in Licking County has left piles of fallen branches and not a few toppled trees along streets and even across housetops.
With power restored over most of the area, residents are counting their blessings and starting the task of tidying up woodpiles or replacing gutters and shingles. The affected trees, though, may not be done having an effect on homes and structures.
“Some damage may not be immediately apparent,” said Howard Siegrist, OSU Extension Educator for Licking County. Even some very large branches could be cracked to the point where the added weight of leaves in the spring can bring them down. “Decay, as well as cracks, may lead to structural loss, causing the tree or large branches to become hazardous,” he adds.
While the inches of ice, adding up to several tons of weight, literally killed many trees, bringing them down in whole or in part, most of those damaged can survive: they may just need a little help. But work on damaged trees carefully!
“Homeowners working on their trees need to use extreme caution,” Siegrist urges. OSU Extension recommends not climbing a damaged tree, or touching trees near electrical wires. You should never climb a tree with a chain saw (lift it to yourself with a rope once you’re in place), and always assess your situation carefully with an eye to safety hazards.
“Most tree work needs to be done by professional arborists,” Siegrist notes, “especially when the work requires climbing or the tree is leaning against another tree or structure.”
Much “hidden” damage will be revealed in the spring, when discolored leaves or bare branches show that a limb that looks fine from below is actually broken through above. Breaks in the bark also will attract pests such as borers and bark beetles, so these diseased limbs should be removed to reduce the threat to neighboring healthy trees. If you have specific landscape damage questions, you can call Licking County Extension at 349-6900.
Outside of your own yard or property, a careful eye above will be vitally important for months to come.
“Widowmaker” is the term old woodsfolk use for dead tree limbs that hang high and out of sight, ready to drop without warning on passersby. A hunter climbing into a treestand, birders out to see warblers perching in the early spring, or just a family of hikers could find their day interrupted by a potentially fatal incident.
The existence of the term shows that this is a long-standing and well-known piece of woods lore that is all the more relevant this year. The ice storm that closed 2004 may have a second shot at Licking County long into 2005 if we’re not careful!
by Jeff Gill
Our Christmas week ice storm in Licking County has left piles of fallen branches and not a few toppled trees along streets and even across housetops.
With power restored over most of the area, residents are counting their blessings and starting the task of tidying up woodpiles or replacing gutters and shingles. The affected trees, though, may not be done having an effect on homes and structures.
“Some damage may not be immediately apparent,” said Howard Siegrist, OSU Extension Educator for Licking County. Even some very large branches could be cracked to the point where the added weight of leaves in the spring can bring them down. “Decay, as well as cracks, may lead to structural loss, causing the tree or large branches to become hazardous,” he adds.
While the inches of ice, adding up to several tons of weight, literally killed many trees, bringing them down in whole or in part, most of those damaged can survive: they may just need a little help. But work on damaged trees carefully!
“Homeowners working on their trees need to use extreme caution,” Siegrist urges. OSU Extension recommends not climbing a damaged tree, or touching trees near electrical wires. You should never climb a tree with a chain saw (lift it to yourself with a rope once you’re in place), and always assess your situation carefully with an eye to safety hazards.
“Most tree work needs to be done by professional arborists,” Siegrist notes, “especially when the work requires climbing or the tree is leaning against another tree or structure.”
Much “hidden” damage will be revealed in the spring, when discolored leaves or bare branches show that a limb that looks fine from below is actually broken through above. Breaks in the bark also will attract pests such as borers and bark beetles, so these diseased limbs should be removed to reduce the threat to neighboring healthy trees. If you have specific landscape damage questions, you can call Licking County Extension at 349-6900.
Outside of your own yard or property, a careful eye above will be vitally important for months to come.
“Widowmaker” is the term old woodsfolk use for dead tree limbs that hang high and out of sight, ready to drop without warning on passersby. A hunter climbing into a treestand, birders out to see warblers perching in the early spring, or just a family of hikers could find their day interrupted by a potentially fatal incident.
The existence of the term shows that this is a long-standing and well-known piece of woods lore that is all the more relevant this year. The ice storm that closed 2004 may have a second shot at Licking County long into 2005 if we’re not careful!
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 1-09-05
By Jeff Gill
“Three removes equal one fire” said Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Old firehorse that he was, Ben knew a bit about fires, and his earlier poorer days gave him and Deborah his wife some familiarity with moving.
The Lovely Wife and I have moved now ten times in not quite twenty years of marriage, five of them with the Little Guy and the appurtenances that come with a young’un (most of them clearly labeled “Matchbox,” which they are emphatically larger than, worse luck). By Mr. Franklin’s count, we’ve had over three fires together . . . but wait, there really was one fire (with flames and everything), just not in a house. Yes, I’ve managed to misplace one church I once served through conflagration, but it wasn’t me; at least, that’s what the arson squad said. LW still is thankful that we don’t have those hundreds of books still to move that added a nice blue tinge to the flames over the building, what with all the pretty colors in the covers.
Still, we have progressively more stuff each move, one way or another, which is a sobering experience to assess, and my back muscles have assessed very accurately that we either must never move again, or get rid of stuff.
She of the loveliness at home sayeth: Both.
And, of course, she is right.
More on getting rid of stuff in some future column, you can be sure.
But what about this “(re)moves and fires” business? Well, you have to recall that both fires were more common and moving was much more challenging in 1757.
If you visit Ben Franklin’s house site in Philadelphia, just a few blocks from Independence Hall, you’ll find just that, a site. The architect Robert Venturi designed a very nice steel framework that evokes the outlines of the building once behind the print shop which would have been his longest domicile, but it fell (as did most Colonial era homes) to a chimney fire.
Out in the wilds of a place like, say, the Ohio country in the 1700’s, the chimney was oftimes literally built on a slant, a pile of stone propped up with long poles that could be kicked out by a householder when the first whiff of fire was in the air.
In the city, where structures were so close, this simple method of fire protection was generally not possible, and so they tended to catch more often. Still, with large solid timbers, it wasn’t unusual for homes and buildings to catch fire many times over their lives. Smoke damage, singeing, and the stray splash of water from one of the volunteer fire companies (another area in which Franklin was a pioneer, perhaps out of no little self-interest); this would be the worst most fires would bring to your three linen undershirts, two waistcoats, and extra breeches and buckled shoes. Pottery rode out your average house fire quite well, and even the family Bible, thick and bound in thicker leather, might just pick up a stray scorch or two as a souvenir.
Moving, on the other hand, with wooden crates a precious commodity, meant goods heaped into the back of an open wagon, buffered by a few burlap sacks if you could find some not in use.
If you didn’t have a sharp eye and quick hand riding the tailgate as you bumped through the narrow, crowded streets of town to your new address, a sharper, quicker hand might filch a pitcher or plate.
On arrival, you could find that the jostling against the wagonbed could not only scramble your goods, but dent, scratch, and smash even pewter.
So it was that Franklin could say, to knowing nods of agreement, “Three removes equal one fire.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher in central Ohio; if you have tales to tell of moves gone well or awry, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
“Three removes equal one fire” said Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Old firehorse that he was, Ben knew a bit about fires, and his earlier poorer days gave him and Deborah his wife some familiarity with moving.
The Lovely Wife and I have moved now ten times in not quite twenty years of marriage, five of them with the Little Guy and the appurtenances that come with a young’un (most of them clearly labeled “Matchbox,” which they are emphatically larger than, worse luck). By Mr. Franklin’s count, we’ve had over three fires together . . . but wait, there really was one fire (with flames and everything), just not in a house. Yes, I’ve managed to misplace one church I once served through conflagration, but it wasn’t me; at least, that’s what the arson squad said. LW still is thankful that we don’t have those hundreds of books still to move that added a nice blue tinge to the flames over the building, what with all the pretty colors in the covers.
Still, we have progressively more stuff each move, one way or another, which is a sobering experience to assess, and my back muscles have assessed very accurately that we either must never move again, or get rid of stuff.
She of the loveliness at home sayeth: Both.
And, of course, she is right.
More on getting rid of stuff in some future column, you can be sure.
But what about this “(re)moves and fires” business? Well, you have to recall that both fires were more common and moving was much more challenging in 1757.
If you visit Ben Franklin’s house site in Philadelphia, just a few blocks from Independence Hall, you’ll find just that, a site. The architect Robert Venturi designed a very nice steel framework that evokes the outlines of the building once behind the print shop which would have been his longest domicile, but it fell (as did most Colonial era homes) to a chimney fire.
Out in the wilds of a place like, say, the Ohio country in the 1700’s, the chimney was oftimes literally built on a slant, a pile of stone propped up with long poles that could be kicked out by a householder when the first whiff of fire was in the air.
In the city, where structures were so close, this simple method of fire protection was generally not possible, and so they tended to catch more often. Still, with large solid timbers, it wasn’t unusual for homes and buildings to catch fire many times over their lives. Smoke damage, singeing, and the stray splash of water from one of the volunteer fire companies (another area in which Franklin was a pioneer, perhaps out of no little self-interest); this would be the worst most fires would bring to your three linen undershirts, two waistcoats, and extra breeches and buckled shoes. Pottery rode out your average house fire quite well, and even the family Bible, thick and bound in thicker leather, might just pick up a stray scorch or two as a souvenir.
Moving, on the other hand, with wooden crates a precious commodity, meant goods heaped into the back of an open wagon, buffered by a few burlap sacks if you could find some not in use.
If you didn’t have a sharp eye and quick hand riding the tailgate as you bumped through the narrow, crowded streets of town to your new address, a sharper, quicker hand might filch a pitcher or plate.
On arrival, you could find that the jostling against the wagonbed could not only scramble your goods, but dent, scratch, and smash even pewter.
So it was that Franklin could say, to knowing nods of agreement, “Three removes equal one fire.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher in central Ohio; if you have tales to tell of moves gone well or awry, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, January 03, 2005
You May Already Be Sharing9.0 earthquake, 500 mile an hour tidal waves, 60 feet high walls of water mixed with concrete block and palm tree trunks. These basic facts have become well known. The day after Christmas became something like the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" for southeast Asia.Less well known is that the day after that, a Sunday, was a day for giving and sharing whose impact will not be known for some time to come.In faith communities around the world, across the United States, and right here in Licking County where the roads to church were often still blocked by downed trees and power lines, churches and congregations started to open up their hearts and wallets in record numbers.Governmental assistance will fly the helicopters and float the large machinery for de-salting water and treating waste, but much of the disaster response will come from church-related groups that were heading into the affected area even before many of us knew the tragedy had occured.In fact, you may have already given aid to the relief effort. Licking County has a CROP Walk each fall, largely made up of walkers along a ten kilometer route who got pledges from fellow worshipers and neighbors (you?). CROP Walks are a major part of the budget for Church World Service (CWS), the combined agency for 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations to deal with international emergencies like floods, famines, or . . . earthquakes and tsunamis.CWS already has $900,000 in supplies on the way to Indonesia and Sri Lanka out of what they have on hand, and hope to send millions more.(See churchworldservice.org to share more in their work.)Catholic Relief Services is "the official international relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community"(See catholicrelief.org for their web site and secure link for donations.)Representing the 23% of the U.S. that is Catholic, they have sent $500,000 in aid and commit to another $25 million on behalf of their 60 million members.Five million souls are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Lutheran World Relief has sent $150,000, with a pledge of more to come.(See elca.org and follow the links.)Even more modestly sized denominations like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) with less than a million members in the U.S. and Canada have sent $55,000 to expedite shipping for CWS, and pledge a minimum of $250,000. They work through another co-operative body, "Week of Compassion," known in other denominations as "One Great Hour of Sharing," where the money and materials for disaster relief is held ready for a time like this.(See onegreathourofsharing.org for denominational links and donation options.)What all of these relief agencies have in common, along with their work in our names, are two more things.Each effort notes the importance of prayer in supporting the hearts and intentions of those who are face to face with tragedy, and they all remind us, cautiously, that the needs in places like western Sudan and Afghanistan continue.It's good that we've often already given, but the work clearly goes on. At least we're not alone, in many ways!
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Notes From My Knapsack 1-02-05
"Bicentennial Serenade"
2005 began, at least in Granville, with the first Saturday in December. The calendar is just catching up this weekend.
The official launch of a year’s events celebrating 200 years of Granville, from settlement to village, began in Opera House Park at the four corner center of town. Festivities began with town criers, a mayoral proclamation, then an ambling procession down Broadway along sidewalks, gutters, and parts of the roadway, to the Avery-Downer House for speeches, a poem, and a musical setting of the same, commissioned for the big bicentennial day.
In a nice historical irony, the technology for voice amplification was not up to the passing horse-drawn wagons, downshifting trucks, cheerily chattering crowds, and a stiff breeze; meanwhile, the archaic but well chosen criers were heard out to the far edges of the crowd, proven by the brief hushes resulting from their occasional pronouncements.
What resulted, for the participant, was a performance piece suitable for the occasion, of found sound and planned moments punctuated by reality, a fit product never to be repeated for a singular event, that can’t fit into the time capsule to be buried next December for the close of Granville 200.
As best as I can recall, it went something like this:
(intro: distant bells toll five)
"Hear Ye, Hear Ye . . ."
(Rumble of traffic, grinding of gears)
"Resolved, these 200 years . . ."
"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the . . ."
(A lighter set of bells that did jingle, in fact,
shaking off the collar of a slowly stepping horse.)
"We on the committee have been working on this day for years . . ."
(softer, not much:) "Did you bring more cups for the wassail?"
". . . what does that new store have for sale?"
"Let us now proceed . . ."
(Interlude: of jostling sleeves and scuffling feet,
a general movement to the east,
perhaps a salute to the first settlers from Massachusetts
and Connecticut, who came west to jostle for space
in this mound-strewn, Shawnee-settled land)
"Were we supposed to sing?"
"Angels we have heard on high . . ."
"Hey, good to see you! How’ya doin’?"
"Take a candle, here’s a candle, light stick for the little one?"
(Clopping hooves pace the introductions, as feet start to stamp,
Damp turf with fresh smell from heel gash and idle, turning toe.)
"My family came here in (drowned by passing truck,
the weight of years and the passing of time
in commerce and just dumb luck), and they found a land filled with . . ."
(whispered, piercingly:) "Do you know where the flutes are playing?
I meant to hear them last year, and don’t want to miss . . ."
(Second interlude: the passing of flame from hand to hand,
most quickly snuffed by an impersonal southwest wind, many
relighting from friends, from strangers, some persistent
and others indifferent, puddles of candlelight showing the
presence in the crowd of the earnestly stubborn
in the face of Nature – another settler image?)
"So we have come to this day, and I now introduce . . ."
"Who is that?" whispered in the ear.
"He just said as you asked me," the wry retort.
More greetings out by the edges of the spreading audience,
noise growing from outside in, silent near the center.
A general shuffle throughout the crowd, a mass
of people step to the risers, more introductions, a downbeat:
singers join in voice and gaze, stilling most and gathering more
by their faces unified in direction and intent, drawing passersby
into a circle of anticipation and expectancy.
Gently coming to a close, the end of the song marked by
New greetings and conversations, paused by the sharp bark
From the crier, "Enter the tent, see the displays, drink the wassail!"
And for once, everyone did as they were told.
Coda: "Good job, great work, what a relief, right?"
Answers; "more to do, many more to go, learn from lessons."
With night washing over us from the east (like the settlers),
the lights in the tent,
sharp smells of cut soil, spiced drink, and from canvas out of storage
are all the brighter.
Inside the Greek Revival home, tours begin mingling period costumes
with mail-order catalog parkas, wandering past windows
whose glass is age-warped and seasoned with bubbles,
an effect 200 years or so in the making,
framing the mix of commerce and hospitality
that is a bicentennial.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have an event to announce or news to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
"Bicentennial Serenade"
2005 began, at least in Granville, with the first Saturday in December. The calendar is just catching up this weekend.
The official launch of a year’s events celebrating 200 years of Granville, from settlement to village, began in Opera House Park at the four corner center of town. Festivities began with town criers, a mayoral proclamation, then an ambling procession down Broadway along sidewalks, gutters, and parts of the roadway, to the Avery-Downer House for speeches, a poem, and a musical setting of the same, commissioned for the big bicentennial day.
In a nice historical irony, the technology for voice amplification was not up to the passing horse-drawn wagons, downshifting trucks, cheerily chattering crowds, and a stiff breeze; meanwhile, the archaic but well chosen criers were heard out to the far edges of the crowd, proven by the brief hushes resulting from their occasional pronouncements.
What resulted, for the participant, was a performance piece suitable for the occasion, of found sound and planned moments punctuated by reality, a fit product never to be repeated for a singular event, that can’t fit into the time capsule to be buried next December for the close of Granville 200.
As best as I can recall, it went something like this:
(intro: distant bells toll five)
"Hear Ye, Hear Ye . . ."
(Rumble of traffic, grinding of gears)
"Resolved, these 200 years . . ."
"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the . . ."
(A lighter set of bells that did jingle, in fact,
shaking off the collar of a slowly stepping horse.)
"We on the committee have been working on this day for years . . ."
(softer, not much:) "Did you bring more cups for the wassail?"
". . . what does that new store have for sale?"
"Let us now proceed . . ."
(Interlude: of jostling sleeves and scuffling feet,
a general movement to the east,
perhaps a salute to the first settlers from Massachusetts
and Connecticut, who came west to jostle for space
in this mound-strewn, Shawnee-settled land)
"Were we supposed to sing?"
"Angels we have heard on high . . ."
"Hey, good to see you! How’ya doin’?"
"Take a candle, here’s a candle, light stick for the little one?"
(Clopping hooves pace the introductions, as feet start to stamp,
Damp turf with fresh smell from heel gash and idle, turning toe.)
"My family came here in (drowned by passing truck,
the weight of years and the passing of time
in commerce and just dumb luck), and they found a land filled with . . ."
(whispered, piercingly:) "Do you know where the flutes are playing?
I meant to hear them last year, and don’t want to miss . . ."
(Second interlude: the passing of flame from hand to hand,
most quickly snuffed by an impersonal southwest wind, many
relighting from friends, from strangers, some persistent
and others indifferent, puddles of candlelight showing the
presence in the crowd of the earnestly stubborn
in the face of Nature – another settler image?)
"So we have come to this day, and I now introduce . . ."
"Who is that?" whispered in the ear.
"He just said as you asked me," the wry retort.
More greetings out by the edges of the spreading audience,
noise growing from outside in, silent near the center.
A general shuffle throughout the crowd, a mass
of people step to the risers, more introductions, a downbeat:
singers join in voice and gaze, stilling most and gathering more
by their faces unified in direction and intent, drawing passersby
into a circle of anticipation and expectancy.
Gently coming to a close, the end of the song marked by
New greetings and conversations, paused by the sharp bark
From the crier, "Enter the tent, see the displays, drink the wassail!"
And for once, everyone did as they were told.
Coda: "Good job, great work, what a relief, right?"
Answers; "more to do, many more to go, learn from lessons."
With night washing over us from the east (like the settlers),
the lights in the tent,
sharp smells of cut soil, spiced drink, and from canvas out of storage
are all the brighter.
Inside the Greek Revival home, tours begin mingling period costumes
with mail-order catalog parkas, wandering past windows
whose glass is age-warped and seasoned with bubbles,
an effect 200 years or so in the making,
framing the mix of commerce and hospitality
that is a bicentennial.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have an event to announce or news to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Christmas Day Advocate 2004
(Your two choices follow; go with whichever fits or contrasts best!)
* * * * * * *
Christmas and Meaning
Jeff Gill
Many comment on the growing secularization of the public celebration of Christmas. Music on TV, public images in store windows and civic displays, all seem emptied of what those who call themselves Christian would maintain as "the reason for the season:" The birth of Jesus in humble yet marvelous surroundings, and the meaning of the life that baby lived for the world.
The issue has its points, but it can be interesting to look at the attempts to fill the manger shaped hole left in Christmas festivity by making it "the holiday season."
For instance, the songs. When songs about Christ and Mary are called out of bounds, the replacements are usually, from "White Christmas" in 1942 to the more recent ballad "Sending You a Little Christmas," about Home. Whether looking for Home or trying to get back there wistfulness goes deep around that longing for . . . well, a place where you can feel at Home.
Or the images. Pictures of Christmas-ey stuff that isn’t Bethlehemocentric are tied up with a fantasy of How Things Once Were. Santa talking on a wood-cased, cabled earpiece phone; writing his lists with quill pens; even riding in a sleigh! The images of this season are bound up with wooden toys (handmade, natch), mulled wine, and Grandma’s cookie recipe.
So even in the midst of attempts to secularize, to domesticate this essentially religious observance to a calendar date (with mainly retail significance), the basic need within each of us is to fill that God-shaped hole within us (as Pascal first said). We know deep down what is real and what is counterfeit satisfaction of our inmost desires, and our hearts are not made to let us settle for anything . . . anyone . . . less than their true fulfillment.
* * * * * * *
An unexpected birth
Jeff Gill
An unexpected birth is usually not good news for anyone, not now and not long ago.
A child born with questionable paternity to a young woman is generally destined for hard times, low repute, and a bad end. Mary was such a young girl, tradition tells us, as young as 14 was when a young girl in Roman Palestine would be committed to a particular fiancé.
Joseph was likely an established tradesman who perhaps had married earlier, had older sons, and lost his wife as was so common in childbirth. Perhaps an aged man in his 30’s, he had the lineage of David but none of royal wealth.
His betrothed also had good genealogy, linked to the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem (witness her cousin Elizabeth and Zechariah, who served in the holy sanctuary and was father to a voice in the wilderness known as John the Baptizer). Still, there was little of comfort or security in her family background. An unexpected birth was not what their families would have welcomed. Complication, difficulty and embarrassment cloud the future.
Yet this advent, or "bringing forth," leads to the fulfillment of hope, the promise of greater glory to come, and joy everlasting, in the birth of a child anointed to lead God’s people.
How many awkward encounters do we fend off, which difficult moments do we avoid, without thought or reflection, that might lead to a birth of new hope, better days, and renewed living? What unexpected births around us might tug us and turn us away from our ruts and habits, to pause in thankfulness and anticipation?
The meaning of Christmas, in 2004 Ohio and in the days of Caesar Augustus, is that God’s good news is breaking forth into this world, born somewhere nearby, in some unexpected manner, inconvenient but always amazing.
* * * * * * *
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio.
disciple@voyager.net
µ
(Your two choices follow; go with whichever fits or contrasts best!)
* * * * * * *
Christmas and Meaning
Jeff Gill
Many comment on the growing secularization of the public celebration of Christmas. Music on TV, public images in store windows and civic displays, all seem emptied of what those who call themselves Christian would maintain as "the reason for the season:" The birth of Jesus in humble yet marvelous surroundings, and the meaning of the life that baby lived for the world.
The issue has its points, but it can be interesting to look at the attempts to fill the manger shaped hole left in Christmas festivity by making it "the holiday season."
For instance, the songs. When songs about Christ and Mary are called out of bounds, the replacements are usually, from "White Christmas" in 1942 to the more recent ballad "Sending You a Little Christmas," about Home. Whether looking for Home or trying to get back there wistfulness goes deep around that longing for . . . well, a place where you can feel at Home.
Or the images. Pictures of Christmas-ey stuff that isn’t Bethlehemocentric are tied up with a fantasy of How Things Once Were. Santa talking on a wood-cased, cabled earpiece phone; writing his lists with quill pens; even riding in a sleigh! The images of this season are bound up with wooden toys (handmade, natch), mulled wine, and Grandma’s cookie recipe.
So even in the midst of attempts to secularize, to domesticate this essentially religious observance to a calendar date (with mainly retail significance), the basic need within each of us is to fill that God-shaped hole within us (as Pascal first said). We know deep down what is real and what is counterfeit satisfaction of our inmost desires, and our hearts are not made to let us settle for anything . . . anyone . . . less than their true fulfillment.
* * * * * * *
An unexpected birth
Jeff Gill
An unexpected birth is usually not good news for anyone, not now and not long ago.
A child born with questionable paternity to a young woman is generally destined for hard times, low repute, and a bad end. Mary was such a young girl, tradition tells us, as young as 14 was when a young girl in Roman Palestine would be committed to a particular fiancé.
Joseph was likely an established tradesman who perhaps had married earlier, had older sons, and lost his wife as was so common in childbirth. Perhaps an aged man in his 30’s, he had the lineage of David but none of royal wealth.
His betrothed also had good genealogy, linked to the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem (witness her cousin Elizabeth and Zechariah, who served in the holy sanctuary and was father to a voice in the wilderness known as John the Baptizer). Still, there was little of comfort or security in her family background. An unexpected birth was not what their families would have welcomed. Complication, difficulty and embarrassment cloud the future.
Yet this advent, or "bringing forth," leads to the fulfillment of hope, the promise of greater glory to come, and joy everlasting, in the birth of a child anointed to lead God’s people.
How many awkward encounters do we fend off, which difficult moments do we avoid, without thought or reflection, that might lead to a birth of new hope, better days, and renewed living? What unexpected births around us might tug us and turn us away from our ruts and habits, to pause in thankfulness and anticipation?
The meaning of Christmas, in 2004 Ohio and in the days of Caesar Augustus, is that God’s good news is breaking forth into this world, born somewhere nearby, in some unexpected manner, inconvenient but always amazing.
* * * * * * *
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio.
disciple@voyager.net
µ
Monday, December 13, 2004
Revised Cover Story
Booster 12-19-04
While You’re In Your Slippers
As the reindeer pull a certain sleigh back to a barn by the North Pole, around dawn on Dec. 25, some Licking County folk are just heading off to work.
Many fortunate local residents enjoy a meal with family and friends, made in their own kitchens on Christmas Day. Quite a few, on the other hand, are making and enjoying holiday meals in slightly different circumstances.
4 a.m. is when the first cooks show up at the Heath Big Boy on Rt. 79, where Skip Salome has opened up the doors for years with a volunteer crew on Christmas to make sure that people, especially seniors, have a place to go and enjoy some warmth and fellowship.
"Many senior citizens who come by thank us for being open," says Salome, who will serve customers from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at a buffet style arrangement. "We really see the largest interest in breakfast items, people are looking for that through 2 o’clock, and then it steadies down to individuals and couples wanting to have a meal with others around ‘em."
Salome says that cook Mike Lanning has been working this day for years, preparing 10 turkeys, but also going through 80 pounds of bacon for that breakfast crowd.
"We’ll go through five, ten, fifteen gallons of gravy probably," Salome laughs. "But the staff here and at my catering business fed 1,400 plus when the 211th ONG was mobilized, feeding them and families and volunteers over at the Armory, so I think we can handle the Christmas crew. We’ll cook non-stop, that’s for sure."
Homer Curry and his family have worked a different sort of Christmas meal set-up for years, in the basement of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church.
On Christmas Day at Noon, anyone at all who wants to join for a holiday meal is invited, at no charge, to come and eat together.
"We feed over a hundred people, maybe up to 175, along with all the police on duty that day," Curry says. "Lots of families with little kids come, and we’ve got hats and gloves people donate through the year, and my family gets some toys and stuff together for them."
Christ Lutheran Church in Heath has helped out greatly with clothing items; the Dairy Queen next door to that church is assisting as well.
"We’ve been working, all of us, on this dinner for 27 years," said Curry, "and my daughter Molly Phillips has really been organizing things the last few years."
"Starting in the spring, we start buying and picking up items for the next Christmas," said Phillips. "We’ll have 9 turkeys, 70 pounds of dressing, and Dairy Queen is donating 240 hot dogs and ice cream bars. My brother Denny Curry is our head chef."
A long-time firefighter and former Newark City Council member, Curry knows that there are people in need of company as much as needing a meal.
"Hungry isn’t everything on Christmas Day," Curry adds, "there’s people just hungry to hear a friendly voice. We feed all that. So many people say to us that they just don’t know what they would have done without having here to go."
The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren (with a new one on the way in February) plus friends who cook this meal haven’t really measured how much gravy or other recipe items they go through. "We just keep cooking ‘til we run out," Curry says.
On East Main Street, the Licking County Justice Center may feed as many as 320 inmates on Christmas Day. "That’s how many we have right now, but it could be a bit lower come Christmas," says Rhonda Barcus, food service manager at the county jail.
With three kitchen staff cooking and ten trustees (inmates who have earned the right to work and serve around the jail) doing the cleaning on two shifts, everyone gets a holiday meal.
"The first cook gets in about 4 a.m., with the others arriving around 11 a.m. and Noon, and we close out to get ‘em home by 8 p.m." says Barcus. She and the staff plan carefully to make a good meal out of lunch on Dec. 25.
"They may be in jail today," Barcus notes, " but these folks are also our neighbors and family members. No one wants to be in jail just to eat our sweet potatoes; we want them to go home soon wanting to be better people, and have Christmas dinner at home next year. This meal reminds them of that."
On the menu are five hams, 25 quarts of mashed potatoes, sixteen #10 cans of green beans, 30 #10’s of sweet potatoes, and 38 pumpkin pies.
"We make our own gravy," Barcus says proudly, "five gallons or more."
On down the street at the Salvation Army emergency shelter, Major Diana DeMichael explains that the shelter normally closes at 8 a.m., and only reopens at 5:30 pm, including Christmas. "We hope that most of our people find a place to eat, like Mr. Curry’s dinner at St. Francis or have some family that will take them in for at least a few days around Christmas." Some special arrangements will be made for Dec. 25 and the 50 some shelter residents, of whom half are families, with movies and games for the children.
But on Dec. 27, the residents are again expected to leave in the morning to go out in search of jobs and a place to live.
It all makes running out of milk, not getting a present you wanted, or finding out you don’t have the right size batteries seem like very small problems on Christmas Day.
@
Booster 12-19-04
While You’re In Your Slippers
As the reindeer pull a certain sleigh back to a barn by the North Pole, around dawn on Dec. 25, some Licking County folk are just heading off to work.
Many fortunate local residents enjoy a meal with family and friends, made in their own kitchens on Christmas Day. Quite a few, on the other hand, are making and enjoying holiday meals in slightly different circumstances.
4 a.m. is when the first cooks show up at the Heath Big Boy on Rt. 79, where Skip Salome has opened up the doors for years with a volunteer crew on Christmas to make sure that people, especially seniors, have a place to go and enjoy some warmth and fellowship.
"Many senior citizens who come by thank us for being open," says Salome, who will serve customers from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at a buffet style arrangement. "We really see the largest interest in breakfast items, people are looking for that through 2 o’clock, and then it steadies down to individuals and couples wanting to have a meal with others around ‘em."
Salome says that cook Mike Lanning has been working this day for years, preparing 10 turkeys, but also going through 80 pounds of bacon for that breakfast crowd.
"We’ll go through five, ten, fifteen gallons of gravy probably," Salome laughs. "But the staff here and at my catering business fed 1,400 plus when the 211th ONG was mobilized, feeding them and families and volunteers over at the Armory, so I think we can handle the Christmas crew. We’ll cook non-stop, that’s for sure."
Homer Curry and his family have worked a different sort of Christmas meal set-up for years, in the basement of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church.
On Christmas Day at Noon, anyone at all who wants to join for a holiday meal is invited, at no charge, to come and eat together.
"We feed over a hundred people, maybe up to 175, along with all the police on duty that day," Curry says. "Lots of families with little kids come, and we’ve got hats and gloves people donate through the year, and my family gets some toys and stuff together for them."
Christ Lutheran Church in Heath has helped out greatly with clothing items; the Dairy Queen next door to that church is assisting as well.
"We’ve been working, all of us, on this dinner for 27 years," said Curry, "and my daughter Molly Phillips has really been organizing things the last few years."
"Starting in the spring, we start buying and picking up items for the next Christmas," said Phillips. "We’ll have 9 turkeys, 70 pounds of dressing, and Dairy Queen is donating 240 hot dogs and ice cream bars. My brother Denny Curry is our head chef."
A long-time firefighter and former Newark City Council member, Curry knows that there are people in need of company as much as needing a meal.
"Hungry isn’t everything on Christmas Day," Curry adds, "there’s people just hungry to hear a friendly voice. We feed all that. So many people say to us that they just don’t know what they would have done without having here to go."
The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren (with a new one on the way in February) plus friends who cook this meal haven’t really measured how much gravy or other recipe items they go through. "We just keep cooking ‘til we run out," Curry says.
On East Main Street, the Licking County Justice Center may feed as many as 320 inmates on Christmas Day. "That’s how many we have right now, but it could be a bit lower come Christmas," says Rhonda Barcus, food service manager at the county jail.
With three kitchen staff cooking and ten trustees (inmates who have earned the right to work and serve around the jail) doing the cleaning on two shifts, everyone gets a holiday meal.
"The first cook gets in about 4 a.m., with the others arriving around 11 a.m. and Noon, and we close out to get ‘em home by 8 p.m." says Barcus. She and the staff plan carefully to make a good meal out of lunch on Dec. 25.
"They may be in jail today," Barcus notes, " but these folks are also our neighbors and family members. No one wants to be in jail just to eat our sweet potatoes; we want them to go home soon wanting to be better people, and have Christmas dinner at home next year. This meal reminds them of that."
On the menu are five hams, 25 quarts of mashed potatoes, sixteen #10 cans of green beans, 30 #10’s of sweet potatoes, and 38 pumpkin pies.
"We make our own gravy," Barcus says proudly, "five gallons or more."
On down the street at the Salvation Army emergency shelter, Major Diana DeMichael explains that the shelter normally closes at 8 a.m., and only reopens at 5:30 pm, including Christmas. "We hope that most of our people find a place to eat, like Mr. Curry’s dinner at St. Francis or have some family that will take them in for at least a few days around Christmas." Some special arrangements will be made for Dec. 25 and the 50 some shelter residents, of whom half are families, with movies and games for the children.
But on Dec. 27, the residents are again expected to leave in the morning to go out in search of jobs and a place to live.
It all makes running out of milk, not getting a present you wanted, or finding out you don’t have the right size batteries seem like very small problems on Christmas Day.
@
Notes From My Knapsack & Cover Story
Booster 12-19-04
While You’re In Your Slippers
As the reindeer pull a certain sleigh back to a barn by the North Pole, around dawn on Dec. 25, some Licking County folk are just heading off to work.
Many fortunate local residents enjoy a meal with family and friends, made in their own kitchens on Christmas Day. Quite a few, on the other hand, are making and enjoying holiday meals in slightly different circumstances.
4 a.m. is when the first cooks show up at the Heath Big Boy, where Skip Salome has opened up the doors for years with a volunteer crew on Christmas to make sure that people, especially seniors, have a place to go and enjoy some warmth and fellowship.
"Many senior citizens who come by thank us for being open," says Salome, who will serve customers from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at a buffet style arrangement. "We really see the largest interest in breakfast items, people are looking for that through 2 o’clock, and then it steadies down to individuals and couples wanting to have a meal with others around ‘em."
Salome says that cook Mike Lanning has been working this day for years, preparing 10 turkeys, but also going through 80 pounds of bacon for that breakfast crowd.
"We’ll go through five, ten, fifteen gallons of gravy probably," Salome laughs. "But the staff here and at my catering business fed 1,400 plus when the 211th was mobilized over at the Armory, so I think we can handle the Christmas crew. We’ll cook non-stop, that’s for sure."
Homer Curry and his family have worked a different sort of Christmas meal set-up for years, in the basement of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church.
On Christmas Day at Noon, anyone at all who wants to join for a holiday meal is invited, at no charge, to come and eat together.
"We feed over a hundred people, with some take-outs we get to folks we’ve heard about along with all the police and firefighters on duty that day," Curry says. "Lots of families with little kids come, and we’ve got hats and gloves people donate through the year, and my family gets some toys and stuff together for them."
A long-time firefighter and former Newark City Council member, Curry knows that there are people in need of company as much as needing a meal.
"Hungry isn’t everything on Christmas Day," Curry adds, "there’s people just hungry to hear a friendly voice. We feed all that."
The children and grandchildren and friends who cook this meal haven’t really measured how much gravy or other recipe items they go through. "We just keep cooking ‘til we run out," Curry says.
On East Main Street, the Licking County Justice Center may feed as many as 320 inmates on Christmas Day. "That’s how many we have right now, but it could be a bit lower come Christmas," says Rhonda Barcus, food service manager at the county jail.
With three kitchen staff cooking and ten trustees (inmates who have earned the right to work and serve around the jail) doing the cleaning on two shifts, everyone gets a holiday meal.
"The first cook gets in about 4 a.m., with the others arriving around 11 a.m. and Noon, and we close out to get ‘em home by 8 p.m." says Barcus. She and the staff plan carefully to make a good meal out of lunch on Dec. 25.
"They may be in jail today," Barcus notes, " but these folks are also our neighbors and family members. No one wants to be in jail just to eat our sweet potatoes; we want them to go home soon wanting to be better people, and have Christmas dinner at home next year. This meal reminds them of that."
On the menu are five hams, 25 quarts of mashed potatoes, sixteen #10 cans of green beans, 30 #10’s of sweet potatoes, and 38 pumpkin pies.
"We make our own gravy," Barcus says proudly, "five gallons or more."
On down the street at the Salvation Army emergency shelter, Major Diana DeMichael explains that the shelter normally closes at 8 a.m., and only reopens at 5:30 pm, including Christmas. "We hope that most of our people find a place to eat, like Mr. Curry’s dinner at St. Francis or have some family that will take them in for at least a few days around Christmas." Some special arrangements will be made for the 25 th and the 50 some shelter residents, of whom half are families, but on Dec. 27, the residents are again expected to leave in the morning to go out in search of jobs and a place to live
It all makes running out of milk, or finding out you don’t have the right size batteries, seem like small problems on Christmas Day.
Notes From My Knapsack 12-19-04
By Jeff Gill
Darkness really does get to be a tangible, physical presence this time of year.
We string our lights, classic white or festive multicolor, with little sense that we do so to fend away evil spirits or ward off bad luck, but this impulse to put candles in our windows and outline the rooftop with bulbs goes very deep.
You can call it seasonal affective disorder, cabin fever, winter blues, or what you will, but whether it’s the faint apprehension you feel on realizing that the sun is setting and it’s just past 4 p.m., or the overwhelming frustration that leaving for work in deep darkness punctuated with starlight can bring on, night seems to be in charge.
Daytime is more of a break, a temporary respite from the dominant experience, which is after sunset, and before . . . long before, sometimes, a new sunrise.
So the need to put up lights, string glittery garlands, and light candles is probably wired deep in our brains, along with how seasons of light are embedded in our culture at this time of year. All around the world, from Diwali to Hanukah, we want to see a flame burning bright; whether Christmas or Kwanzaa, magnifying a glow into a flicker into a shining hope is native to this season.
Good news: this week, the days start to get longer. It will start after the solstice, the "standing still," (which is what that means) when day and night find their balance swinging astronomically back the other direction, when the too-late sunrise pauses a few days on the horizon, and then begins a subtle march back to the north, to a higher arc, with days slowly and then more briskly lengthening.
Can you imagine what the experience was like for ancient peoples, with little built-up knowledge in almanacs and daytimers to assure them that day would reign again, that light would return to the majority experience? How nervously and expectantly would they watch, along an alignment of posts or between two well-placed mounds to see if the sun would, once again, pause in the journey south and start back to the brighter latitudes? How much excitement must there have been when the hesitant pause became a certain return, and the promise of spring, though distant, was clearly at hand?
For Christians, the fact that December 25 is celebrated as the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is well known to be a date of convenience. No date was recorded in Matthew or Luke, since no one other than Roman nobility celebrated birthdays then, anyhow.
Some scholars have used the nativity accounts in the gospels to propose a March date as more likely, and such a date was celebrated in the early church. But the opportunity to merge cultural observance with spiritual power was taken centuries ago, and Christians celebrate a star in the East and a light in the stable to good purpose at this time of year. Other faith traditions jostle uneasily in America with this season, but there is space and time enough, easily felt if you go out into the starry darkness and look up, for many to gather, and watch, and wonder.
This is, for us all, a season of light. Light may you have, with those you love around you, in this Christmas season, or whatever you call the brightness that lights your way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; share the light that has shone on your way through disciple@voyager.net.
2
Booster 12-19-04
While You’re In Your Slippers
As the reindeer pull a certain sleigh back to a barn by the North Pole, around dawn on Dec. 25, some Licking County folk are just heading off to work.
Many fortunate local residents enjoy a meal with family and friends, made in their own kitchens on Christmas Day. Quite a few, on the other hand, are making and enjoying holiday meals in slightly different circumstances.
4 a.m. is when the first cooks show up at the Heath Big Boy, where Skip Salome has opened up the doors for years with a volunteer crew on Christmas to make sure that people, especially seniors, have a place to go and enjoy some warmth and fellowship.
"Many senior citizens who come by thank us for being open," says Salome, who will serve customers from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at a buffet style arrangement. "We really see the largest interest in breakfast items, people are looking for that through 2 o’clock, and then it steadies down to individuals and couples wanting to have a meal with others around ‘em."
Salome says that cook Mike Lanning has been working this day for years, preparing 10 turkeys, but also going through 80 pounds of bacon for that breakfast crowd.
"We’ll go through five, ten, fifteen gallons of gravy probably," Salome laughs. "But the staff here and at my catering business fed 1,400 plus when the 211th was mobilized over at the Armory, so I think we can handle the Christmas crew. We’ll cook non-stop, that’s for sure."
Homer Curry and his family have worked a different sort of Christmas meal set-up for years, in the basement of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church.
On Christmas Day at Noon, anyone at all who wants to join for a holiday meal is invited, at no charge, to come and eat together.
"We feed over a hundred people, with some take-outs we get to folks we’ve heard about along with all the police and firefighters on duty that day," Curry says. "Lots of families with little kids come, and we’ve got hats and gloves people donate through the year, and my family gets some toys and stuff together for them."
A long-time firefighter and former Newark City Council member, Curry knows that there are people in need of company as much as needing a meal.
"Hungry isn’t everything on Christmas Day," Curry adds, "there’s people just hungry to hear a friendly voice. We feed all that."
The children and grandchildren and friends who cook this meal haven’t really measured how much gravy or other recipe items they go through. "We just keep cooking ‘til we run out," Curry says.
On East Main Street, the Licking County Justice Center may feed as many as 320 inmates on Christmas Day. "That’s how many we have right now, but it could be a bit lower come Christmas," says Rhonda Barcus, food service manager at the county jail.
With three kitchen staff cooking and ten trustees (inmates who have earned the right to work and serve around the jail) doing the cleaning on two shifts, everyone gets a holiday meal.
"The first cook gets in about 4 a.m., with the others arriving around 11 a.m. and Noon, and we close out to get ‘em home by 8 p.m." says Barcus. She and the staff plan carefully to make a good meal out of lunch on Dec. 25.
"They may be in jail today," Barcus notes, " but these folks are also our neighbors and family members. No one wants to be in jail just to eat our sweet potatoes; we want them to go home soon wanting to be better people, and have Christmas dinner at home next year. This meal reminds them of that."
On the menu are five hams, 25 quarts of mashed potatoes, sixteen #10 cans of green beans, 30 #10’s of sweet potatoes, and 38 pumpkin pies.
"We make our own gravy," Barcus says proudly, "five gallons or more."
On down the street at the Salvation Army emergency shelter, Major Diana DeMichael explains that the shelter normally closes at 8 a.m., and only reopens at 5:30 pm, including Christmas. "We hope that most of our people find a place to eat, like Mr. Curry’s dinner at St. Francis or have some family that will take them in for at least a few days around Christmas." Some special arrangements will be made for the 25 th and the 50 some shelter residents, of whom half are families, but on Dec. 27, the residents are again expected to leave in the morning to go out in search of jobs and a place to live
It all makes running out of milk, or finding out you don’t have the right size batteries, seem like small problems on Christmas Day.
Notes From My Knapsack 12-19-04
By Jeff Gill
Darkness really does get to be a tangible, physical presence this time of year.
We string our lights, classic white or festive multicolor, with little sense that we do so to fend away evil spirits or ward off bad luck, but this impulse to put candles in our windows and outline the rooftop with bulbs goes very deep.
You can call it seasonal affective disorder, cabin fever, winter blues, or what you will, but whether it’s the faint apprehension you feel on realizing that the sun is setting and it’s just past 4 p.m., or the overwhelming frustration that leaving for work in deep darkness punctuated with starlight can bring on, night seems to be in charge.
Daytime is more of a break, a temporary respite from the dominant experience, which is after sunset, and before . . . long before, sometimes, a new sunrise.
So the need to put up lights, string glittery garlands, and light candles is probably wired deep in our brains, along with how seasons of light are embedded in our culture at this time of year. All around the world, from Diwali to Hanukah, we want to see a flame burning bright; whether Christmas or Kwanzaa, magnifying a glow into a flicker into a shining hope is native to this season.
Good news: this week, the days start to get longer. It will start after the solstice, the "standing still," (which is what that means) when day and night find their balance swinging astronomically back the other direction, when the too-late sunrise pauses a few days on the horizon, and then begins a subtle march back to the north, to a higher arc, with days slowly and then more briskly lengthening.
Can you imagine what the experience was like for ancient peoples, with little built-up knowledge in almanacs and daytimers to assure them that day would reign again, that light would return to the majority experience? How nervously and expectantly would they watch, along an alignment of posts or between two well-placed mounds to see if the sun would, once again, pause in the journey south and start back to the brighter latitudes? How much excitement must there have been when the hesitant pause became a certain return, and the promise of spring, though distant, was clearly at hand?
For Christians, the fact that December 25 is celebrated as the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is well known to be a date of convenience. No date was recorded in Matthew or Luke, since no one other than Roman nobility celebrated birthdays then, anyhow.
Some scholars have used the nativity accounts in the gospels to propose a March date as more likely, and such a date was celebrated in the early church. But the opportunity to merge cultural observance with spiritual power was taken centuries ago, and Christians celebrate a star in the East and a light in the stable to good purpose at this time of year. Other faith traditions jostle uneasily in America with this season, but there is space and time enough, easily felt if you go out into the starry darkness and look up, for many to gather, and watch, and wonder.
This is, for us all, a season of light. Light may you have, with those you love around you, in this Christmas season, or whatever you call the brightness that lights your way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; share the light that has shone on your way through disciple@voyager.net.
2
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Notes From My Knapsack 12-26-04
(Please note that this is posted early, for the Community Booster's Christmas issue! We now return you to regular programming. . .)
Atop our Christmas tree in the living room is a little plastic angel that is my "Zuzu’s petals," my "you’ve had a wonderful life" moment.
She came from the top of a tree in the back room of an abandoned store in a half-empty mall, a tree half-heartedly decorated that was about to be trashed in a pile of frozen turkey boxes, empty tubes of wrapping paper, and the scraps from the largest Angel Tree program I hope ever to be involved in.
1,200 children from some 800 households in a county whose total population was well under 60,000. That’s just how many "applied" to the program through the Salvation Army. Often people would observe that they "knew" there were applicants abusing the system. My response was (and is) "I agree." Based on extensive and up-close experience, I’d allow up to 10% as "users," folks gaming the system to get stuff. 120 out of 1,200 seems like a modest price to pay . . .
. . . even more so, when I factor in what I saw when delivering some of the gift bundles to isolated ridgetop and holler-dweller homes where transportation plans had gone awry. Personally, I’m sure there were more like 2,000 homes and some 3,000 kids who could have qualified. If the families chose not to use assistance for Christmas, that can be an honorable choice, but those numbers left me impatient with those who were unsupportive because of the so-called "undeserving."
Overall community support in our West Virginia county was strong, from individuals, churches, civic groups & businesses. But for all that, we also walked parents (or grandparents, or guardians) through a room where they could get one more toy per child. There was little complaining and many "Thank yous" in that room, but for those of us who were escorts through the big space with the adopt-a-family bundles, the food pantry with the baskets sized per household, and into the "one more toy" room, we knew all too well the sidelong glance, the hesitating hand.
The choices that were made in that room were ones no person who loves a child should have to make.
As escorts, we had some latitude. If the "adoption" bundle looked awfully light, or was obviously just clothing, we could let families take an extra or two. But we also had to watch each other, because the temptation to be generous meant that there might be nothing left for the last families coming through, and some of us had seen that, too.
Some of us, anyhow. The job of escort had a fairly low return rate from year to year, and many just vanished after a few cycles through the rooms as escorts, even when they were signed up for all day. It was sad work, punctuated by moments of sheer joy, with a steady undertone of hopefulness that you could hear if you listened closely with your heart, hard though it was to hear over the chaos of 800 trips through the Angel Tree set-up in that empty grocery store.
Through it all, in the former meat department, this angel looked down calmly upon us all, from the peak of an afterthought piece of décor.
She was (and is) about to blow a note on a long golden horn, getting ready to call a halt to all our muddled uncertainty and announce a new day. The first few times I looked at her, I saw her as the anticipation of the end of a long day, then as a herald of the possibility that those two days would go by swiftly.
With the weary hours, she began to promise something more, as she patiently watched the parade of humanity pass by: the end of poverty, the close of hopelessness, the conclusion of sorrow. And I began to hope that her trumpet might point to a beginning, a brighter day to come.
When the last packages were gone, and the remaining half-thawed turkeys carried away, we swept and tidied the space better than we had found it when we moved in the previous week (we might want it again next year, after all). The tree in the toy room had been largely stripped of ornaments, and was revealed as the half-barren store reject it was. But the angel still perched on the top.
"I’ll keep her," I said, plucking her off as the last load went to the mall dumpster. She is on our tree today, still ready to play that note of ending, and beginning.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have a tale to tell of a new year, write him at disciple@voyager.net.
(Please note that this is posted early, for the Community Booster's Christmas issue! We now return you to regular programming. . .)
Atop our Christmas tree in the living room is a little plastic angel that is my "Zuzu’s petals," my "you’ve had a wonderful life" moment.
She came from the top of a tree in the back room of an abandoned store in a half-empty mall, a tree half-heartedly decorated that was about to be trashed in a pile of frozen turkey boxes, empty tubes of wrapping paper, and the scraps from the largest Angel Tree program I hope ever to be involved in.
1,200 children from some 800 households in a county whose total population was well under 60,000. That’s just how many "applied" to the program through the Salvation Army. Often people would observe that they "knew" there were applicants abusing the system. My response was (and is) "I agree." Based on extensive and up-close experience, I’d allow up to 10% as "users," folks gaming the system to get stuff. 120 out of 1,200 seems like a modest price to pay . . .
. . . even more so, when I factor in what I saw when delivering some of the gift bundles to isolated ridgetop and holler-dweller homes where transportation plans had gone awry. Personally, I’m sure there were more like 2,000 homes and some 3,000 kids who could have qualified. If the families chose not to use assistance for Christmas, that can be an honorable choice, but those numbers left me impatient with those who were unsupportive because of the so-called "undeserving."
Overall community support in our West Virginia county was strong, from individuals, churches, civic groups & businesses. But for all that, we also walked parents (or grandparents, or guardians) through a room where they could get one more toy per child. There was little complaining and many "Thank yous" in that room, but for those of us who were escorts through the big space with the adopt-a-family bundles, the food pantry with the baskets sized per household, and into the "one more toy" room, we knew all too well the sidelong glance, the hesitating hand.
The choices that were made in that room were ones no person who loves a child should have to make.
As escorts, we had some latitude. If the "adoption" bundle looked awfully light, or was obviously just clothing, we could let families take an extra or two. But we also had to watch each other, because the temptation to be generous meant that there might be nothing left for the last families coming through, and some of us had seen that, too.
Some of us, anyhow. The job of escort had a fairly low return rate from year to year, and many just vanished after a few cycles through the rooms as escorts, even when they were signed up for all day. It was sad work, punctuated by moments of sheer joy, with a steady undertone of hopefulness that you could hear if you listened closely with your heart, hard though it was to hear over the chaos of 800 trips through the Angel Tree set-up in that empty grocery store.
Through it all, in the former meat department, this angel looked down calmly upon us all, from the peak of an afterthought piece of décor.
She was (and is) about to blow a note on a long golden horn, getting ready to call a halt to all our muddled uncertainty and announce a new day. The first few times I looked at her, I saw her as the anticipation of the end of a long day, then as a herald of the possibility that those two days would go by swiftly.
With the weary hours, she began to promise something more, as she patiently watched the parade of humanity pass by: the end of poverty, the close of hopelessness, the conclusion of sorrow. And I began to hope that her trumpet might point to a beginning, a brighter day to come.
When the last packages were gone, and the remaining half-thawed turkeys carried away, we swept and tidied the space better than we had found it when we moved in the previous week (we might want it again next year, after all). The tree in the toy room had been largely stripped of ornaments, and was revealed as the half-barren store reject it was. But the angel still perched on the top.
"I’ll keep her," I said, plucking her off as the last load went to the mall dumpster. She is on our tree today, still ready to play that note of ending, and beginning.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have a tale to tell of a new year, write him at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Notes From My Knapsack 12-12-04
If you were to ask me if this story happened in Hebron or Utica, Granville or Newark, recently or a while ago, I’d be hard pressed to answer with certainty.
But I’m pretty sure it happened, somewhere, sometime.
The boy who came in the store, walking down the aisle past the wrapping paper and blue bulbs, standing in front of the bolts and faucets, barely looked old enough to be out on his own. He was clutching something in his hand.
"Can I help you," said the cashier, with something less than the usual boredom. It was a quiet time for December shopping, and even this teenager felt maternal looking at this nervous child.
"Yes," was the answer, followed in a rush with, "and do you have this stuff for sale?" He held out, stiffly, his hand with a silvery piece of paper in the palm.
She reached out and took the object, which up close was a label off of a bottle of perfume. Even if you couldn’t read the slightly shredded label, the odor off of just the scrap of packaging was enough to tell you what brand we were talking about.
"That’s one we carry, all right. Here, let me grab it for you," she said as the boy’s eyes widened with obvious hope and expectation. She trotted from behind the counter to a nearby aisle, got the box with the bottle of perfume, and came back to the register before the child could even move. With quick motions, she slid the bottle out of the box and held it up in front of him.
"That whatcha want?"
He didn’t even speak, just nodded his head up and down.
"This is nice stuff; your mom will like it. You got enough to buy it?"
Again, wordlessly, the boy reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Ones, crumpled up, which he flattened out carefully on the counter: one, two, three, four. Looking up into her skeptical face, he reached into another pocket, and pulled out a fat handful of change, which he very gently released onto the stack of dollars. Quarters, some nickels, quite a few pennies.
She paused a long moment, looking at the heaped offering, and then at the child.
"Let me get the manager."
Hollering a name out, a door opened in the side of an enclosure around the staircase in the middle of the store.
"Yep?"
"We’ve got a customer you need to talk to here."
The older fellow stood, carefully, in the slanted doorframe, leaving a creaking chair. He walked up to the front, and surveyed the scene. The cashier explained the situation over the boy’s head to the man, who also looked at the inexpertly twisted bandage around the finger still holding the original label, and the worried look on the child’s face.
"Come back to my office," he said to the boy. There was room only for a desk and the one chair under the steps, where the man seated himself again. The boy stood in the doorway.
"So you want to get a bottle of perfume for your mom?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. But I don’t have enough to buy it?" The boy’s voice was more of a statement that a question, really.
"Well, you might after all, but we have something else to talk about." Looking a bit relieved, the boy replied "OK."
"Here’s what I’m thinking. Someone was looking for their Christmas presents in a closet, up on a shelf, where they weren’t supposed to be." The boy’s eyes widened with a jerk of his whole body. "As they were poking about, a package for someone else, like a mother, fell off the shelf and broke. How’m I doin’?" Bobbing up and down emphatically, the boy’s head looked like it was on a spring.
"So then he tried to clean it all up, and cut his finger on the broken glass, peeling off the label so he could go get another one to replace what he had dropped. Is that where we’re at?"
"Yes, sir."
"OK, then. Was this on a carpeted floor or something like linoleum?"
A young face starting to fill with hope suddenly looked downcast. "Carpet."
"Of course. Well, here’s what we’re going to do." The man heaved himself out of the wooden swivel and expertly bobbed past the angle of the doorframe. He walked around two corners, the boy obediently and gratefully following.
"Here’s some carpet cleaner. Does your dad get home before your mom from work?"
"Yes, sir. About. . .about any minute, I guess."
"That’s just fine. Now let’s go back up front."
He took the spray can, put it in a bag with the box sitting next to the register. Looking at the pile still on the counter, he picked up a dollar bill, a quarter, and a couple nickels, and gave them back to the boy. Crouching down, he handed over the bag after the money was tucked into various pockets.
"Don’t use the spray cleaner ‘til your dad gets home. Tell him what you were doing, just like you told me," glaring briefly at the cashier after she snorted a strangled laugh, "and tell him you bought and paid for a new bottle of perfume and this carpet stuff. You guys ought to be able to get everything cleaned up before Mom gets home, and she’ll think you’ve been cleaning house for Christmas. If he has any questions, tell him to call the number on the bag," he said, pointing, "’cause I’ll be here ‘til ten. OK?"
He stuck out his hand, which the boy gravely shook.
"Thank you, sir. And Merry Christmas."
Like a shot, he vanished through the glass door. The manager slowly stood up straight, and said to the cashier, "Well, give me an employee purchase invoice."
"Geez, you had that kid thinking you saw right into his house and what happened," she said, handing him the carbonless triple form. "He must be thinking you’re one of Santa’s helpers, right from the North Pole."
"And how do you know I’m not?" he answered smiling. "Anyhow, I’m old enough to be an elf, and when you have as many grandchildren as I do, Santa’s just part of the job description."
"You were sweet, though. Can I cover half the difference with you?"
"No, but thanks. Get your boy something for me instead, OK? Put it in his stocking. Tell him Santa gave it to him."
"And how do you know he didn’t, right?"
"Right."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have a Christmas story to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
If you were to ask me if this story happened in Hebron or Utica, Granville or Newark, recently or a while ago, I’d be hard pressed to answer with certainty.
But I’m pretty sure it happened, somewhere, sometime.
The boy who came in the store, walking down the aisle past the wrapping paper and blue bulbs, standing in front of the bolts and faucets, barely looked old enough to be out on his own. He was clutching something in his hand.
"Can I help you," said the cashier, with something less than the usual boredom. It was a quiet time for December shopping, and even this teenager felt maternal looking at this nervous child.
"Yes," was the answer, followed in a rush with, "and do you have this stuff for sale?" He held out, stiffly, his hand with a silvery piece of paper in the palm.
She reached out and took the object, which up close was a label off of a bottle of perfume. Even if you couldn’t read the slightly shredded label, the odor off of just the scrap of packaging was enough to tell you what brand we were talking about.
"That’s one we carry, all right. Here, let me grab it for you," she said as the boy’s eyes widened with obvious hope and expectation. She trotted from behind the counter to a nearby aisle, got the box with the bottle of perfume, and came back to the register before the child could even move. With quick motions, she slid the bottle out of the box and held it up in front of him.
"That whatcha want?"
He didn’t even speak, just nodded his head up and down.
"This is nice stuff; your mom will like it. You got enough to buy it?"
Again, wordlessly, the boy reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Ones, crumpled up, which he flattened out carefully on the counter: one, two, three, four. Looking up into her skeptical face, he reached into another pocket, and pulled out a fat handful of change, which he very gently released onto the stack of dollars. Quarters, some nickels, quite a few pennies.
She paused a long moment, looking at the heaped offering, and then at the child.
"Let me get the manager."
Hollering a name out, a door opened in the side of an enclosure around the staircase in the middle of the store.
"Yep?"
"We’ve got a customer you need to talk to here."
The older fellow stood, carefully, in the slanted doorframe, leaving a creaking chair. He walked up to the front, and surveyed the scene. The cashier explained the situation over the boy’s head to the man, who also looked at the inexpertly twisted bandage around the finger still holding the original label, and the worried look on the child’s face.
"Come back to my office," he said to the boy. There was room only for a desk and the one chair under the steps, where the man seated himself again. The boy stood in the doorway.
"So you want to get a bottle of perfume for your mom?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. But I don’t have enough to buy it?" The boy’s voice was more of a statement that a question, really.
"Well, you might after all, but we have something else to talk about." Looking a bit relieved, the boy replied "OK."
"Here’s what I’m thinking. Someone was looking for their Christmas presents in a closet, up on a shelf, where they weren’t supposed to be." The boy’s eyes widened with a jerk of his whole body. "As they were poking about, a package for someone else, like a mother, fell off the shelf and broke. How’m I doin’?" Bobbing up and down emphatically, the boy’s head looked like it was on a spring.
"So then he tried to clean it all up, and cut his finger on the broken glass, peeling off the label so he could go get another one to replace what he had dropped. Is that where we’re at?"
"Yes, sir."
"OK, then. Was this on a carpeted floor or something like linoleum?"
A young face starting to fill with hope suddenly looked downcast. "Carpet."
"Of course. Well, here’s what we’re going to do." The man heaved himself out of the wooden swivel and expertly bobbed past the angle of the doorframe. He walked around two corners, the boy obediently and gratefully following.
"Here’s some carpet cleaner. Does your dad get home before your mom from work?"
"Yes, sir. About. . .about any minute, I guess."
"That’s just fine. Now let’s go back up front."
He took the spray can, put it in a bag with the box sitting next to the register. Looking at the pile still on the counter, he picked up a dollar bill, a quarter, and a couple nickels, and gave them back to the boy. Crouching down, he handed over the bag after the money was tucked into various pockets.
"Don’t use the spray cleaner ‘til your dad gets home. Tell him what you were doing, just like you told me," glaring briefly at the cashier after she snorted a strangled laugh, "and tell him you bought and paid for a new bottle of perfume and this carpet stuff. You guys ought to be able to get everything cleaned up before Mom gets home, and she’ll think you’ve been cleaning house for Christmas. If he has any questions, tell him to call the number on the bag," he said, pointing, "’cause I’ll be here ‘til ten. OK?"
He stuck out his hand, which the boy gravely shook.
"Thank you, sir. And Merry Christmas."
Like a shot, he vanished through the glass door. The manager slowly stood up straight, and said to the cashier, "Well, give me an employee purchase invoice."
"Geez, you had that kid thinking you saw right into his house and what happened," she said, handing him the carbonless triple form. "He must be thinking you’re one of Santa’s helpers, right from the North Pole."
"And how do you know I’m not?" he answered smiling. "Anyhow, I’m old enough to be an elf, and when you have as many grandchildren as I do, Santa’s just part of the job description."
"You were sweet, though. Can I cover half the difference with you?"
"No, but thanks. Get your boy something for me instead, OK? Put it in his stocking. Tell him Santa gave it to him."
"And how do you know he didn’t, right?"
"Right."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have a Christmas story to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
The Scouter January 2005
Licking District Trailmarkers
"Bobbie Merritt" bmerritt@skcbsa.org, bburgess@skcbsa.org
A new year and a 75 year anniversary for Cub Scouting! That’s right, 1930 was the start of our younger Scouting program, now starting in the first grade with Tiger Cubs and working up through Webelos in fourth and fifth.
The blue beanie cap with yellow piping may be gone, but Cub Scouts are everywhere (and our largest single branch); if you get invited to a Cub Pack “Blue & Gold” banquet in February or March, don’t miss it! And thank a Cubmaster or Den leader if you get the chance, since they really “make the pack go” as the Cub’s Akela.
And if you don’t know who Akela is/was, this winter would be a great time to read Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” (I’ve heard someone may have made a movie or two out of it), which was used as an imaginative foundation for the Cub program, just as Kipling’s “Kim” was formative for Baden-Powell’s vision of Scouting itself.
Scout Sunday – February 6
The first Sunday in February, near the anniversary of the national charter for the Boy Scouts of America in 1910 on Feb. 8, is often a day when units meet to worship together in a church that charters them, or a convenient place of worship for other Scouting organizations.
That afternoon, helping packs and troops “make a day of it” if they would like, is the District Bowl-a-thon at Park Lanes in Heath. Each participant, youth or adult, needs $20 in pledges to bowl (more is fine, too!); 40% goes to the unit, 25% to the event costs, and 35% to Friends of Scouting (FOS) for Licking District. Contact Bill Burgess, 366-7768, or come to the January 4 Roundtable for forms.
If your unit hasn’t scheduled their FOS presentation for their Blue & Gold banquet, family night, or troop program evening, call Bill or Larry Lorance soon!
Pinewood Derby for Cub Scouts – Mar. 13
A newer but still traditional part of the Cub program is the gravity-powered excitement of the Pinewood Derby. The district wide Pinewood Derby is scheduled for March 13 at Indian Mound Mall; more information will be available through the Roundtables Jan. 4, Feb. 1, or Mar. 1 at Central Christian Church on Mt. Vernon Road in Newark, 7:15 pm. The district elections will be immediately before the first Roundtable of the year, Jan. 4, at 7:00 pm, open to all chartered organization rep’s and at-large members of the district.
District Recognition Dinner – Apr. 17
It is certainly not too early to think about nominations for District Award of Merit, Scouter, or Rookie Awards. Bring your nominations to Roundtable, and more information will be in next month’s “Scouter” under Licking District Trailmarkers.
Looking WAAAAY Ahead
Bill Rissler, with Troop 11 at Central Christian, is working on a plan to provide a special camp experience for children of the 211th ONG deployed to the Middle East last month. More information on how you can help or assist will be in future issues as well, with Bill assembling a staff and setting some training weekends to prepare for the support and activities we’ll need to serve these children and their families.
Less unusual is Cub Scout Day Camp, but the unique opportunity you will have is to sign up your Cubs for this great activity early, at a double great discount! June 14th to the 17th at Camp Falling Rock, a Tuesday through Friday, will have a base cost of $40 if you register scouts in April. It gets higher with each passing week after that, but you don’t want to know how much: just start now to plan on getting your Cubs signed up in April for those dates.
And Looking Back . . .
The final results on School Night/Round-Ups from Fall 2004 from Bill Acklin is 275 new scouts for Licking District. We would have loved 300, and suspect from activity levels in our packs and troops that we may have 300 new scouts, but some registrations may still be in pockets and purses and briefcases. If you have unregistered youth in your pack, troop, or crew (Venturing for young men and women 14 to 21 is growing; look for the dark green shirts at a Scouting event near you!), please pass them along to your unit commissioner or call Bill Burgess at 366-7768. Let’s get ‘em insured, on the mailing list, and with the charter!
Our popcorn sales were great (no numbers as yet), and thanks to popcorn Kernel Mary Rose Lewis for her work this first year; if they’re selling popcorn, tho’, they’d better be registered – sign ‘em up today, and we may have our 300 after all.
More on the history of Cub Scouting in the months ahead: just follow the Trailmarkers! For your stories, send ‘em to disciple@voyager.net.
Licking District Trailmarkers
"Bobbie Merritt" bmerritt@skcbsa.org, bburgess@skcbsa.org
A new year and a 75 year anniversary for Cub Scouting! That’s right, 1930 was the start of our younger Scouting program, now starting in the first grade with Tiger Cubs and working up through Webelos in fourth and fifth.
The blue beanie cap with yellow piping may be gone, but Cub Scouts are everywhere (and our largest single branch); if you get invited to a Cub Pack “Blue & Gold” banquet in February or March, don’t miss it! And thank a Cubmaster or Den leader if you get the chance, since they really “make the pack go” as the Cub’s Akela.
And if you don’t know who Akela is/was, this winter would be a great time to read Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” (I’ve heard someone may have made a movie or two out of it), which was used as an imaginative foundation for the Cub program, just as Kipling’s “Kim” was formative for Baden-Powell’s vision of Scouting itself.
Scout Sunday – February 6
The first Sunday in February, near the anniversary of the national charter for the Boy Scouts of America in 1910 on Feb. 8, is often a day when units meet to worship together in a church that charters them, or a convenient place of worship for other Scouting organizations.
That afternoon, helping packs and troops “make a day of it” if they would like, is the District Bowl-a-thon at Park Lanes in Heath. Each participant, youth or adult, needs $20 in pledges to bowl (more is fine, too!); 40% goes to the unit, 25% to the event costs, and 35% to Friends of Scouting (FOS) for Licking District. Contact Bill Burgess, 366-7768, or come to the January 4 Roundtable for forms.
If your unit hasn’t scheduled their FOS presentation for their Blue & Gold banquet, family night, or troop program evening, call Bill or Larry Lorance soon!
Pinewood Derby for Cub Scouts – Mar. 13
A newer but still traditional part of the Cub program is the gravity-powered excitement of the Pinewood Derby. The district wide Pinewood Derby is scheduled for March 13 at Indian Mound Mall; more information will be available through the Roundtables Jan. 4, Feb. 1, or Mar. 1 at Central Christian Church on Mt. Vernon Road in Newark, 7:15 pm. The district elections will be immediately before the first Roundtable of the year, Jan. 4, at 7:00 pm, open to all chartered organization rep’s and at-large members of the district.
District Recognition Dinner – Apr. 17
It is certainly not too early to think about nominations for District Award of Merit, Scouter, or Rookie Awards. Bring your nominations to Roundtable, and more information will be in next month’s “Scouter” under Licking District Trailmarkers.
Looking WAAAAY Ahead
Bill Rissler, with Troop 11 at Central Christian, is working on a plan to provide a special camp experience for children of the 211th ONG deployed to the Middle East last month. More information on how you can help or assist will be in future issues as well, with Bill assembling a staff and setting some training weekends to prepare for the support and activities we’ll need to serve these children and their families.
Less unusual is Cub Scout Day Camp, but the unique opportunity you will have is to sign up your Cubs for this great activity early, at a double great discount! June 14th to the 17th at Camp Falling Rock, a Tuesday through Friday, will have a base cost of $40 if you register scouts in April. It gets higher with each passing week after that, but you don’t want to know how much: just start now to plan on getting your Cubs signed up in April for those dates.
And Looking Back . . .
The final results on School Night/Round-Ups from Fall 2004 from Bill Acklin is 275 new scouts for Licking District. We would have loved 300, and suspect from activity levels in our packs and troops that we may have 300 new scouts, but some registrations may still be in pockets and purses and briefcases. If you have unregistered youth in your pack, troop, or crew (Venturing for young men and women 14 to 21 is growing; look for the dark green shirts at a Scouting event near you!), please pass them along to your unit commissioner or call Bill Burgess at 366-7768. Let’s get ‘em insured, on the mailing list, and with the charter!
Our popcorn sales were great (no numbers as yet), and thanks to popcorn Kernel Mary Rose Lewis for her work this first year; if they’re selling popcorn, tho’, they’d better be registered – sign ‘em up today, and we may have our 300 after all.
More on the history of Cub Scouting in the months ahead: just follow the Trailmarkers! For your stories, send ‘em to disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Notes From My Knapsack 12-05-04
By Jeff Gill
Red kettles and ringing bells have long been part of the Christmas season; they are one of the best known fundraisers around, supporting the Salvation Army throughout the English-speaking world.
Our local Salvation Army post, which is both a provider of services to the poor and homeless and also a church with a congregation like all posts of this peaceful army, has a magnificent history of care and comfort in Licking County. Nationwide, the Salvation Army has one of the finest track records around for fair use and open accountability for all funds entrusted to them, going back a hundred years and more.
Which made it all the more newsworthy when Target, Best Buy, and Giant Eagle decided this year to ban the bellringers at their store entrances during the holiday season. In fairness to those stores, they all have a “no solicitation” policy to which, traditionally, they made an exception for the Salvation Army. So the change is, they would point out, not a ban but an end to making exceptions for anyone. Hmmm. OK.
Some have called for a barrage of e-mails and letters to the CEOs at corporate headquarters, complaints to store managers (who have no say in this, by the way), and even boycotts. For those who miss this Christmas staple of the shopping experience, there may be a certain sense to those actions, and for myself, having stood in the cold and rung the bells and worked with their programs to the point of being made an honorary captain in their army in West Virginia, my sympathy is with the “bring back the kettle” crowd.
There is another way of looking at this, however. These (insert insulting adjective here) CEOs may be doing all of us a favor, unintentionally.
First, they’re taking away our ability to kid ourselves that a few dollar bills here and there when convenient is really doing our part to spread Christmas cheer to the most desperate in our community. We can think of our kettle contribution as our own anti-Scrooge inoculation, but five to ten dollar bills don’t buy the goods and services they once did in our homes, so why would it be different for Major DeMichael on East Main Street? If you want to shop exclusively at kettle-friendly stores, fine; better yet, send a check to 250 E. Main, Newark 43055 and make it $20 or $50 or $100 . . . you know what you can do. Or make a donation through a virtual kettle at salvationarmy.org, where you can designate our area for your gift on-line.
And how’bout that on-line shopping, anyhow? If more and more people are shopping through the internet, then the kettles at the door are passed by less of us no matter where they go, and we need to learn new ways of giving.
Or even virtual cash is part of the changing landscape: with less cash changing hands, the fiscal model of “break a twenty at the register, give the change at the kettle” doesn’t work as well. Swipe your card to purchase, to buy dinner, in making reservations, and pass the bellringer without a qualm because you have nothing that goes in the slot on top, right? Even churches are having to rethink Sunday offering with the rise of a truly cashless society, with committed, regular giving the only kind that really is going to show up in the plate or on the financial secretary’s desk.
Will I miss the Salvation Army presence in Christmas shopping? Sure I will, but I won’t miss the good feeling of knowing I’m part of the solution, not part of the problem. Give consciously, give intentionally, and give generously, whether through your church, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the Center for New Beginnings, or the American Red Cross (they’re all in the book). Those are some that have a solid reputation and that I know to do good, gracious work here in our area.
And smile at the bellringers you do pass; they appreciate it more than you know, even if you don’t have any cash to contribute that time around. Nothing is warmer during the Christmas season.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Red kettles and ringing bells have long been part of the Christmas season; they are one of the best known fundraisers around, supporting the Salvation Army throughout the English-speaking world.
Our local Salvation Army post, which is both a provider of services to the poor and homeless and also a church with a congregation like all posts of this peaceful army, has a magnificent history of care and comfort in Licking County. Nationwide, the Salvation Army has one of the finest track records around for fair use and open accountability for all funds entrusted to them, going back a hundred years and more.
Which made it all the more newsworthy when Target, Best Buy, and Giant Eagle decided this year to ban the bellringers at their store entrances during the holiday season. In fairness to those stores, they all have a “no solicitation” policy to which, traditionally, they made an exception for the Salvation Army. So the change is, they would point out, not a ban but an end to making exceptions for anyone. Hmmm. OK.
Some have called for a barrage of e-mails and letters to the CEOs at corporate headquarters, complaints to store managers (who have no say in this, by the way), and even boycotts. For those who miss this Christmas staple of the shopping experience, there may be a certain sense to those actions, and for myself, having stood in the cold and rung the bells and worked with their programs to the point of being made an honorary captain in their army in West Virginia, my sympathy is with the “bring back the kettle” crowd.
There is another way of looking at this, however. These (insert insulting adjective here) CEOs may be doing all of us a favor, unintentionally.
First, they’re taking away our ability to kid ourselves that a few dollar bills here and there when convenient is really doing our part to spread Christmas cheer to the most desperate in our community. We can think of our kettle contribution as our own anti-Scrooge inoculation, but five to ten dollar bills don’t buy the goods and services they once did in our homes, so why would it be different for Major DeMichael on East Main Street? If you want to shop exclusively at kettle-friendly stores, fine; better yet, send a check to 250 E. Main, Newark 43055 and make it $20 or $50 or $100 . . . you know what you can do. Or make a donation through a virtual kettle at salvationarmy.org, where you can designate our area for your gift on-line.
And how’bout that on-line shopping, anyhow? If more and more people are shopping through the internet, then the kettles at the door are passed by less of us no matter where they go, and we need to learn new ways of giving.
Or even virtual cash is part of the changing landscape: with less cash changing hands, the fiscal model of “break a twenty at the register, give the change at the kettle” doesn’t work as well. Swipe your card to purchase, to buy dinner, in making reservations, and pass the bellringer without a qualm because you have nothing that goes in the slot on top, right? Even churches are having to rethink Sunday offering with the rise of a truly cashless society, with committed, regular giving the only kind that really is going to show up in the plate or on the financial secretary’s desk.
Will I miss the Salvation Army presence in Christmas shopping? Sure I will, but I won’t miss the good feeling of knowing I’m part of the solution, not part of the problem. Give consciously, give intentionally, and give generously, whether through your church, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the Center for New Beginnings, or the American Red Cross (they’re all in the book). Those are some that have a solid reputation and that I know to do good, gracious work here in our area.
And smile at the bellringers you do pass; they appreciate it more than you know, even if you don’t have any cash to contribute that time around. Nothing is warmer during the Christmas season.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Booster Cover & Notes/Knapsack -- 11 - 28 - 04
Jeff Gill
Traditions Old & New in Licking County
Tradition is where old and new intersect, and traditions can start from scratch or have many years behind them.
Along with the long-standing tradition of Newark Courthouse Square lit for the holidays, a new regular event among many in the local holiday season is “Sights & Sounds of Christmas” organized by the City of Newark and a number of downtown churches.Thursday, December 2, 2004 from 6 to 9 pm is your chance to take a walking tour of many downtown Newark churches with music played at each church stop, along with the chance to see the interiors of each decorated for the season.The cost is $5 per person, and all proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry.Tickets are available at Park National Bank offices and each of the participating Churches. They are: Second Presbyterian Church, Trinity AME Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Plymouth Church, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, First United Methodist Church and St. Francis DeSales Church.
Terry Mooney with the City of Newark and a committee of local church leaders have been working since last year to build a strong base for an ongoing tradition in downtown Newark. With buildings that date back to the Civil War in the case of Second Presbyterian, or featuring beautiful art glass windows by the famed Tiffany Studios at Trinity Episcopal, there are many architectural features that the average Licking Countian may not ordinarily have the chance to see.
While musicians in each building will be sharing their Advent and Christmas best with visitors, most churches will have guides available to tell the story of their worship space, whether ancient symbols filling the stained glass at St. Paul’s Lutheran or a new and bold Christ figure at First Methodist.
And even many long-time residents of the area have not seen the renovations and additions at St. Francis de Sales, including the Lamy Center, named for their first priest, who later built a cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was fictionalized by Willa Cather in “Death Comes For the Archbishop” (look for his statue!).
Stories aplenty have been written about the venerable tradition of the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour. Held on the first Saturday of December each year from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, the day falls in 2004 on Dec. 4.
What makes this year unique is that the candlelight walking tour will be the first “cornerstone event” of seven through Granville’s bicentennial celebration. Founded in 1805, the next year will focus on the settlement and pioneer history of this transplanted New England village.
With a slight head start (to get so much into the year), the 200th anniversary activities launch with the setting sun on Dec. 4, luminaries aglow, churches offering music through the evening, tours in a number of downtown museums and historic homes, and the unveiling of music written for the bicentennial celebrations.
Commemorative items (mugs, t-shirts, and many other objects) will also be open for sale starting with the walking tour.
New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, will see a special event downtown as well for the dedication of a new signature element of Granville’s history. The Booster will have more coverage of this and other cornerstone events in the bicentennial later this December.
Next year, the walking tour will close (on Dec. 3, 2005 for those planning their social calendar well ahead) with the placement of a time capsule that wraps up the 1805-2005 activities.
May your days be merry and bright, as someone once said in song, and let one of your evenings take you for a walking tour somewhere in Licking County!
* * * * * * *
Notes From My Knapsack
By Jeff Gill
Coming back from Gettysburg for Remembrance Day, I got caught up with what went on in the 21st century while I was enjoying the 19th with my dad.
Without beating a deceased equine unnecessarily, can I observe that some NBA players should have seen the images and reality I enjoyed at the stone wall along the Bloody Angle, where Pickett’s Charge on July 3, 1863, was repulsed with some of the most horrible losses on both sides seen anytime in American history.
For those who are part of the re-enactor community (those who wear the uniforms and carry the weapons of the Civil War period) or are involved in the heritage associations (descendants and interested parties from the soldiers of the conflict), there is a single compelling image of the after-war years that sticks.
1888, the 25th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, began interest in placing what are now an orchard of granite, marble, and bronze monuments across the fields and hills of central Pennsylvania. With that activity began tourism in earnest, headed by the veterans themselves, and a growing sense of reconciliation and healing among veterans both blue and grey.
Approaching 1913, the 50th anniversary, efforts to build a Peace Memorial were begun (not finished until the 75th in 1938, just in time to see World War II begin in Europe . . . sigh), and somewhere around these years, as the surviving veterans grew older and fewer, something happened one Remembrance Day weekend, which is now re-enacted with as much passion as anything else they do.
A contingent of old soldiers, walking up from the Emmitsburg Road toward the stone wall where the last great charge of the Confederacy met its savage end, were met by a band of veterans of the U.S. Army, members now of the GAR, the “Grand Army of the Republic.”
They eyed each other warily, men who in youthful days had fired Springfield rifles pointblank into their opposing ranks, watching less fortunate friends and brothers fall around them.
And then a great cheer went up from elderly throats, and once again the two groups met at the stone wall, and shook hands. Blessedly, a photographer was positioned to capture the moment that many thought would never come.
And each year, at Remembrance Day with Lincoln’s words echoing in everyone’s ears, the soldiers dressed in Union blue or butternut and grey Confederate garb step to the wall, where not only was a great battle once fought, but also where a remarkable moment of reconciliation was held.
And they shake hands.
The camera crew this year was from Japan; maybe ESPN should come and get some video next time.
(possible addenda follows)
Less seriously, Rolling Stone magazine just put out their results from a poll of “top Rock-and-roll songs of all time” (or at least the last 50 years); their top 20 are:
Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones
Imagine, John Lennon
What's Going On, Marvin Gaye
Respect, Aretha Franklin
Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys
Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry
Hey Jude, The Beatles
Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
What'd I Say, Ray Charles
My Generation, The Who
A Change is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke
Yesterday, The Beatles
Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan
London Calling, The Clash
I Want to Hold Your Hand, The Beatles
Purple Haze, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Maybellene, Chuck Berry
Hound Dog, Elvis Presley
Let It Be, The Beatles
Some suggest that the high placement of “Imagine” may well be a reaction to world and national events (9-11, War on Terror/Iraq theater, Bush-Kerry election tension); “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is kind of an odd fit on this list if you ask me (but I’m tellin’ ya anyhowse).
If you discount the Nirvana song (and I do), nuttin’ in a quarter century? Does this say more about the state of RockNation, or of the dwindling and aging subscriber base of Rolling Stone?
I’m tempted to the latter, not having felt compelled to read it in years, but perhaps there’s something to the idea that pop music has had little to offer in the way of vitality and inspiration for decades now. “Classic Rock” and “adult contemporary” niches fill commercial radio that’s not teen pop while folks play mp3s of their old favorites off their computers. The only actual sales growth in the music business is contemporary Christian niche, while most other genres are shrinking everywhere that’s measurable.
Satellite radio, where both Bob Edwards once of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and Howard Stern are heading, may offer new microniches that could paradoxically grow faster than certain musical approaches do in a mass market. As they used to say in old fashioned analog broadcast radio, “Stay tuned!”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Traditions Old & New in Licking County
Tradition is where old and new intersect, and traditions can start from scratch or have many years behind them.
Along with the long-standing tradition of Newark Courthouse Square lit for the holidays, a new regular event among many in the local holiday season is “Sights & Sounds of Christmas” organized by the City of Newark and a number of downtown churches.Thursday, December 2, 2004 from 6 to 9 pm is your chance to take a walking tour of many downtown Newark churches with music played at each church stop, along with the chance to see the interiors of each decorated for the season.The cost is $5 per person, and all proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry.Tickets are available at Park National Bank offices and each of the participating Churches. They are: Second Presbyterian Church, Trinity AME Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Plymouth Church, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, First United Methodist Church and St. Francis DeSales Church.
Terry Mooney with the City of Newark and a committee of local church leaders have been working since last year to build a strong base for an ongoing tradition in downtown Newark. With buildings that date back to the Civil War in the case of Second Presbyterian, or featuring beautiful art glass windows by the famed Tiffany Studios at Trinity Episcopal, there are many architectural features that the average Licking Countian may not ordinarily have the chance to see.
While musicians in each building will be sharing their Advent and Christmas best with visitors, most churches will have guides available to tell the story of their worship space, whether ancient symbols filling the stained glass at St. Paul’s Lutheran or a new and bold Christ figure at First Methodist.
And even many long-time residents of the area have not seen the renovations and additions at St. Francis de Sales, including the Lamy Center, named for their first priest, who later built a cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was fictionalized by Willa Cather in “Death Comes For the Archbishop” (look for his statue!).
Stories aplenty have been written about the venerable tradition of the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour. Held on the first Saturday of December each year from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, the day falls in 2004 on Dec. 4.
What makes this year unique is that the candlelight walking tour will be the first “cornerstone event” of seven through Granville’s bicentennial celebration. Founded in 1805, the next year will focus on the settlement and pioneer history of this transplanted New England village.
With a slight head start (to get so much into the year), the 200th anniversary activities launch with the setting sun on Dec. 4, luminaries aglow, churches offering music through the evening, tours in a number of downtown museums and historic homes, and the unveiling of music written for the bicentennial celebrations.
Commemorative items (mugs, t-shirts, and many other objects) will also be open for sale starting with the walking tour.
New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, will see a special event downtown as well for the dedication of a new signature element of Granville’s history. The Booster will have more coverage of this and other cornerstone events in the bicentennial later this December.
Next year, the walking tour will close (on Dec. 3, 2005 for those planning their social calendar well ahead) with the placement of a time capsule that wraps up the 1805-2005 activities.
May your days be merry and bright, as someone once said in song, and let one of your evenings take you for a walking tour somewhere in Licking County!
* * * * * * *
Notes From My Knapsack
By Jeff Gill
Coming back from Gettysburg for Remembrance Day, I got caught up with what went on in the 21st century while I was enjoying the 19th with my dad.
Without beating a deceased equine unnecessarily, can I observe that some NBA players should have seen the images and reality I enjoyed at the stone wall along the Bloody Angle, where Pickett’s Charge on July 3, 1863, was repulsed with some of the most horrible losses on both sides seen anytime in American history.
For those who are part of the re-enactor community (those who wear the uniforms and carry the weapons of the Civil War period) or are involved in the heritage associations (descendants and interested parties from the soldiers of the conflict), there is a single compelling image of the after-war years that sticks.
1888, the 25th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, began interest in placing what are now an orchard of granite, marble, and bronze monuments across the fields and hills of central Pennsylvania. With that activity began tourism in earnest, headed by the veterans themselves, and a growing sense of reconciliation and healing among veterans both blue and grey.
Approaching 1913, the 50th anniversary, efforts to build a Peace Memorial were begun (not finished until the 75th in 1938, just in time to see World War II begin in Europe . . . sigh), and somewhere around these years, as the surviving veterans grew older and fewer, something happened one Remembrance Day weekend, which is now re-enacted with as much passion as anything else they do.
A contingent of old soldiers, walking up from the Emmitsburg Road toward the stone wall where the last great charge of the Confederacy met its savage end, were met by a band of veterans of the U.S. Army, members now of the GAR, the “Grand Army of the Republic.”
They eyed each other warily, men who in youthful days had fired Springfield rifles pointblank into their opposing ranks, watching less fortunate friends and brothers fall around them.
And then a great cheer went up from elderly throats, and once again the two groups met at the stone wall, and shook hands. Blessedly, a photographer was positioned to capture the moment that many thought would never come.
And each year, at Remembrance Day with Lincoln’s words echoing in everyone’s ears, the soldiers dressed in Union blue or butternut and grey Confederate garb step to the wall, where not only was a great battle once fought, but also where a remarkable moment of reconciliation was held.
And they shake hands.
The camera crew this year was from Japan; maybe ESPN should come and get some video next time.
(possible addenda follows)
Less seriously, Rolling Stone magazine just put out their results from a poll of “top Rock-and-roll songs of all time” (or at least the last 50 years); their top 20 are:
Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones
Imagine, John Lennon
What's Going On, Marvin Gaye
Respect, Aretha Franklin
Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys
Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry
Hey Jude, The Beatles
Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
What'd I Say, Ray Charles
My Generation, The Who
A Change is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke
Yesterday, The Beatles
Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan
London Calling, The Clash
I Want to Hold Your Hand, The Beatles
Purple Haze, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Maybellene, Chuck Berry
Hound Dog, Elvis Presley
Let It Be, The Beatles
Some suggest that the high placement of “Imagine” may well be a reaction to world and national events (9-11, War on Terror/Iraq theater, Bush-Kerry election tension); “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is kind of an odd fit on this list if you ask me (but I’m tellin’ ya anyhowse).
If you discount the Nirvana song (and I do), nuttin’ in a quarter century? Does this say more about the state of RockNation, or of the dwindling and aging subscriber base of Rolling Stone?
I’m tempted to the latter, not having felt compelled to read it in years, but perhaps there’s something to the idea that pop music has had little to offer in the way of vitality and inspiration for decades now. “Classic Rock” and “adult contemporary” niches fill commercial radio that’s not teen pop while folks play mp3s of their old favorites off their computers. The only actual sales growth in the music business is contemporary Christian niche, while most other genres are shrinking everywhere that’s measurable.
Satellite radio, where both Bob Edwards once of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and Howard Stern are heading, may offer new microniches that could paradoxically grow faster than certain musical approaches do in a mass market. As they used to say in old fashioned analog broadcast radio, “Stay tuned!”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Notes From My Knapsack 11-21-04
By Jeff Gill
Johnny Appleseed in his wanderings around east central Ohio carried a pot on his head and a knapsack over his back, says the legend.
He may well have slept in what’s now the downstairs tavern of the Buxton Inn, and knew folks now resting eternally at the Beard-Green Cemetery on the grounds of Dawes Arboretum, or at the Old Colony Burying Ground south of Granville. As a lay preacher in the Church of the New Jerusalem, John Chapman carried in his knapsack Bibles and tracts to give away on the teachings of Swedenborg, from which the New Church folk drew their scriptural interpretations, along with sacks of appleseeds and even bundles of saplings ready to plant.
But other than a few Kokosing-side lots in Mount Vernon, the traveling horticulturist carried his possessions and his passions in a simple knapsack.
With the last of some 170 “Hebron Crossroads” columns, I’m beginning -- or actually continuing! – a column title I’ve used in one setting or another since 1977, “Notes From My Knapsack.” In Scouting and church-related newsletters this caption has been useful to me for collecting thoughts, stories, and news under, and it feels good to continue writing with that header.
The knapsack will still stroll up and down the old National Road, from Gratiot to Reynoldsburg, and it may (like another well-traveled knapsack, that of John Muir) roll down the hills ahead of its bearer into Raccoon Creek, and back up again past Highwater to Homer and ‘round about the long way through the Welsh Hills.
And the old columns and new are still archived at http://knapsack.blogspot.com for those who are interested in yesterday’s news, where the knapsack was always in use!
Lakewood, the name of the school district and region (from Buckeye Lake to Dawes Woods, of course), is holding a Community Thanksgiving Service at the high school on this Sunday night at 7:00 pm. Nov. 21 you can begin your week of Thanksgiving with youth in leadership at the Staffilino Performing Arts Center auditorium, representing Hebron Christian, Hebron United Methodist, Jacksontown United Methodist, Licking Baptist, New Life Community, and Water’s Edge Ministry among others.
The offering will help support a special Thanksgiving meal program run out of the Jacksontown Food Pantry. Come give thanks, or find a service near you, but the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association will do a great job with theirs!
It has been a pleasure to be associated with this steadily growing community worship event the last five Thanksgivings, with this the fourth year at the new high school as we get closer to filling even that auditorium. The middle school and high school youth from many different area churches have brought a whole new vitality to the style of worship and music shared there, along with traditional tunes from bell choirs and younger childrens’ choruses.
They are also pleased to have again a group from the Lakewood High School choirs led by Judith Rauch, which always brings a strong sense of community in concert to the service.
I will miss being with them, but I’m also looking forward to sharing a weekend with my dad at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While July 1, 2, and 3 are the key dates in 1863 for the battle fought there at the hinge of the Civil War, Nov. 19, 1863 is also a key date in their history.
On that date, some four months after Pickett’s Charge and the long, slow retreat back into Virginia by Robert E. Lee, the Union set up their first National Cemetery at Gettysburg, and asked the finest speaker in America to deliver an address for the dedication.
Oh, and late in the planning, the committee thought they probably ought to invite the president to come and offer a few remarks at the end.
So Senator Edward Everett of Massachusetts gave a two and a half hour oration praised mightily at the time, but try even with Google to find a text of it. And President Abraham Lincoln spoke for less than two minutes, including one great error in that little time.
He said, “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” There Honest Abe was wrong.
Yet he was speaking to the ages when he went on to say of the Army of the Potomac, “. . .but it can never forget what they did here.”
So I go to remember, and to give thanks.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Johnny Appleseed in his wanderings around east central Ohio carried a pot on his head and a knapsack over his back, says the legend.
He may well have slept in what’s now the downstairs tavern of the Buxton Inn, and knew folks now resting eternally at the Beard-Green Cemetery on the grounds of Dawes Arboretum, or at the Old Colony Burying Ground south of Granville. As a lay preacher in the Church of the New Jerusalem, John Chapman carried in his knapsack Bibles and tracts to give away on the teachings of Swedenborg, from which the New Church folk drew their scriptural interpretations, along with sacks of appleseeds and even bundles of saplings ready to plant.
But other than a few Kokosing-side lots in Mount Vernon, the traveling horticulturist carried his possessions and his passions in a simple knapsack.
With the last of some 170 “Hebron Crossroads” columns, I’m beginning -- or actually continuing! – a column title I’ve used in one setting or another since 1977, “Notes From My Knapsack.” In Scouting and church-related newsletters this caption has been useful to me for collecting thoughts, stories, and news under, and it feels good to continue writing with that header.
The knapsack will still stroll up and down the old National Road, from Gratiot to Reynoldsburg, and it may (like another well-traveled knapsack, that of John Muir) roll down the hills ahead of its bearer into Raccoon Creek, and back up again past Highwater to Homer and ‘round about the long way through the Welsh Hills.
And the old columns and new are still archived at http://knapsack.blogspot.com for those who are interested in yesterday’s news, where the knapsack was always in use!
Lakewood, the name of the school district and region (from Buckeye Lake to Dawes Woods, of course), is holding a Community Thanksgiving Service at the high school on this Sunday night at 7:00 pm. Nov. 21 you can begin your week of Thanksgiving with youth in leadership at the Staffilino Performing Arts Center auditorium, representing Hebron Christian, Hebron United Methodist, Jacksontown United Methodist, Licking Baptist, New Life Community, and Water’s Edge Ministry among others.
The offering will help support a special Thanksgiving meal program run out of the Jacksontown Food Pantry. Come give thanks, or find a service near you, but the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association will do a great job with theirs!
It has been a pleasure to be associated with this steadily growing community worship event the last five Thanksgivings, with this the fourth year at the new high school as we get closer to filling even that auditorium. The middle school and high school youth from many different area churches have brought a whole new vitality to the style of worship and music shared there, along with traditional tunes from bell choirs and younger childrens’ choruses.
They are also pleased to have again a group from the Lakewood High School choirs led by Judith Rauch, which always brings a strong sense of community in concert to the service.
I will miss being with them, but I’m also looking forward to sharing a weekend with my dad at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. While July 1, 2, and 3 are the key dates in 1863 for the battle fought there at the hinge of the Civil War, Nov. 19, 1863 is also a key date in their history.
On that date, some four months after Pickett’s Charge and the long, slow retreat back into Virginia by Robert E. Lee, the Union set up their first National Cemetery at Gettysburg, and asked the finest speaker in America to deliver an address for the dedication.
Oh, and late in the planning, the committee thought they probably ought to invite the president to come and offer a few remarks at the end.
So Senator Edward Everett of Massachusetts gave a two and a half hour oration praised mightily at the time, but try even with Google to find a text of it. And President Abraham Lincoln spoke for less than two minutes, including one great error in that little time.
He said, “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” There Honest Abe was wrong.
Yet he was speaking to the ages when he went on to say of the Army of the Potomac, “. . .but it can never forget what they did here.”
So I go to remember, and to give thanks.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio and Licking County. If you have news or notes to share for the knapsack, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Hebron Crossroads 11-14-04
By Jeff Gill
“So, What Next?”
Getting ready for my transition from being a voice for the “Hebron Crossroads” to a wider view in “Notes From My Knapsack,” I wanted to look back and ahead.
Regular readers know my taste for history, and history does offer a useful guide for the future . . . in the old saw, “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme!”
The strength of these crossroads has been in being ahead of the curve. What curve, asks the driver on the National Road? Right, our roads don’t tend to ramble ‘round here like they do across Flint Ridge or the Welsh Hills, but the trend line of growth and development has always followed us, even when we were a ways out ahead and out of sight.
In the first phase of growth at Licking Summit, soon to be renamed Hebron by some unknown early settler who was well versed in their Bible, this was a hub for the service industry. Hostelries, distilleries, and all and sundry for the traveler was where we grew in our first few decades. Hotels, bars, and shops catering to the wagoneer or pioneer made our historic crossroads swell to bursting (see the muddy but well-traveled street in the picture down at Kroger).
Then the railroads passed us by, and times looked tough; but while agriculture’s future was seen as heading west and to the Great Plains, local farmers developed cutting edge approaches to draining swamps, ploughing fields, rotating crops, and increasing yields.
Leisure, not even an industry by anyone’s standards at the turn of the 1900’s, was quietly working down from the upper classes into the middle classes, and Buckeye Lake positioned itself for that huge market, even as the Interurban laid rails across central Ohio, connecting Zanesville to Indianapolis through Hebron. Our downtown may have burned in 1901, but the economy caught fire in the next few decades when we got ahead of even the automobile.
Cars gave new life to US 40, and the 1920’s brought gas stations, auto dealers, and trucking companies to the mix with the boom years of the Crystal Ballroom, the Lake Breeze Hotel, and Buckeye Lake Park, well before the US became an automotive nation from coast to coast.
“The Park” gave up the ghost before the federal interstate system might have given it a fresh start, but the arrival of I-70 paralleling US 40 took some energy out of the Hebron crossroads, but gave a boost that took a few years to discern around the edges. With the elimination of heavy through traffic, “Main Street” could start becoming just that again, with recent developments extending from the far east edge of the village where bulldozers are at work on a new retail strip, west past the upper edge of what will be some 180 or more homes in Lake Forest, on through downtown and Carlos Brezina’s restored Hebron Mill to the field just before the new municipal complex, which looks to be professional and retail development soon right across from the always bustling Creative Catering/Hometown Deli campus.
We have health/medical offices going in to our north behind the still-new McDonald’s, and just before and beyond Enterprise Drive are new businesses in our area, with new construction at the long empty WaterWorks warehouse and atop the Alford Drive hill. We were a distribution center across half a continent long before “just in time” inventory was a watchword, and we’ve been global for almost as long, with native speakers of Japanese, Hindi, and New Jersey finding a home in our town.
So, what next? There is always a little anxiety in such a question, and folks can justly feel a bit of concern over prospective vacancies in downtown with Coughlin Chevrolet heading for Pataskala or empty spots like Anchor Pharmacy selling out to Kroger.
But the history of this area has always been to be out ahead of the curve, anticipating the next big thing before anyone else even knows what it will be. Why would that change now?
What I’ve seen in the last few years is a renewed commitment to investment in community, in the creation of a new community around the framework of the old ways and means, just as the canal built on the pike’s traditions; the interurban supplanted, but ultimately accented the roadways; the interstate drained some businesses of life but pumped new energy into others.
The old model, that every one is still talking about, but may well be played out, is the bedroom community. Many are concerned about Hebron becoming a ghost town from 7 am to 6 pm weekdays as commuters head to Franklin and Delaware Counties, and equally empty on weekends as those same “rootless” folk drive back the same routes for their shopping and even worshiping.
Being ahead of the curve, and where I see our area going, is to pioneer again on the suburban frontier. What I hear people looking for is local community, with florists and coffee shops and auto mechanics and good pizza right at hand. They want to be part of a community where they and their families can belong and feel at home, and spend less time in their cars, not more.
True, the kind of business and church and club they want to participate in and join doesn’t always look exactly the way we’ve been used to, but the homogenous, bland bedroom community isn’t what they want to make of Hebron, either.
They want to order by fax and e-mail, pay by swipe card, and hear music that isn’t even always to my taste (but I’m over 40, so who cares?), but they love our school building in a residential neighborhood, they like even the 60’s shopping plaza ambiance as “sort of retro”, and you should see some of the ideas for across the street at the old Bowman’s.
These families may prefer soccer to baseball (horrors!), but they’ll come and cheer and even help out (hooray!). They may order their DVD rental on-line shipped by UPS from California, but they want to invite a real live neighbor over to watch it with, after grilling meat they bought locally (Spirits?)and that, better yet, may have even been raised locally (Cable Farms?).
Crossroads of Hebron Floral, Sunrise Café, the new Bee Dubs Pizza, the amazingly renovated Clay’s Café with paved parking no less: these are the new community centers. Let’s see who our new neighbors are, and work with them to make the next Hebron, as folks have at these crossroads since 1827.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher; if you have a story to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
“So, What Next?”
Getting ready for my transition from being a voice for the “Hebron Crossroads” to a wider view in “Notes From My Knapsack,” I wanted to look back and ahead.
Regular readers know my taste for history, and history does offer a useful guide for the future . . . in the old saw, “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme!”
The strength of these crossroads has been in being ahead of the curve. What curve, asks the driver on the National Road? Right, our roads don’t tend to ramble ‘round here like they do across Flint Ridge or the Welsh Hills, but the trend line of growth and development has always followed us, even when we were a ways out ahead and out of sight.
In the first phase of growth at Licking Summit, soon to be renamed Hebron by some unknown early settler who was well versed in their Bible, this was a hub for the service industry. Hostelries, distilleries, and all and sundry for the traveler was where we grew in our first few decades. Hotels, bars, and shops catering to the wagoneer or pioneer made our historic crossroads swell to bursting (see the muddy but well-traveled street in the picture down at Kroger).
Then the railroads passed us by, and times looked tough; but while agriculture’s future was seen as heading west and to the Great Plains, local farmers developed cutting edge approaches to draining swamps, ploughing fields, rotating crops, and increasing yields.
Leisure, not even an industry by anyone’s standards at the turn of the 1900’s, was quietly working down from the upper classes into the middle classes, and Buckeye Lake positioned itself for that huge market, even as the Interurban laid rails across central Ohio, connecting Zanesville to Indianapolis through Hebron. Our downtown may have burned in 1901, but the economy caught fire in the next few decades when we got ahead of even the automobile.
Cars gave new life to US 40, and the 1920’s brought gas stations, auto dealers, and trucking companies to the mix with the boom years of the Crystal Ballroom, the Lake Breeze Hotel, and Buckeye Lake Park, well before the US became an automotive nation from coast to coast.
“The Park” gave up the ghost before the federal interstate system might have given it a fresh start, but the arrival of I-70 paralleling US 40 took some energy out of the Hebron crossroads, but gave a boost that took a few years to discern around the edges. With the elimination of heavy through traffic, “Main Street” could start becoming just that again, with recent developments extending from the far east edge of the village where bulldozers are at work on a new retail strip, west past the upper edge of what will be some 180 or more homes in Lake Forest, on through downtown and Carlos Brezina’s restored Hebron Mill to the field just before the new municipal complex, which looks to be professional and retail development soon right across from the always bustling Creative Catering/Hometown Deli campus.
We have health/medical offices going in to our north behind the still-new McDonald’s, and just before and beyond Enterprise Drive are new businesses in our area, with new construction at the long empty WaterWorks warehouse and atop the Alford Drive hill. We were a distribution center across half a continent long before “just in time” inventory was a watchword, and we’ve been global for almost as long, with native speakers of Japanese, Hindi, and New Jersey finding a home in our town.
So, what next? There is always a little anxiety in such a question, and folks can justly feel a bit of concern over prospective vacancies in downtown with Coughlin Chevrolet heading for Pataskala or empty spots like Anchor Pharmacy selling out to Kroger.
But the history of this area has always been to be out ahead of the curve, anticipating the next big thing before anyone else even knows what it will be. Why would that change now?
What I’ve seen in the last few years is a renewed commitment to investment in community, in the creation of a new community around the framework of the old ways and means, just as the canal built on the pike’s traditions; the interurban supplanted, but ultimately accented the roadways; the interstate drained some businesses of life but pumped new energy into others.
The old model, that every one is still talking about, but may well be played out, is the bedroom community. Many are concerned about Hebron becoming a ghost town from 7 am to 6 pm weekdays as commuters head to Franklin and Delaware Counties, and equally empty on weekends as those same “rootless” folk drive back the same routes for their shopping and even worshiping.
Being ahead of the curve, and where I see our area going, is to pioneer again on the suburban frontier. What I hear people looking for is local community, with florists and coffee shops and auto mechanics and good pizza right at hand. They want to be part of a community where they and their families can belong and feel at home, and spend less time in their cars, not more.
True, the kind of business and church and club they want to participate in and join doesn’t always look exactly the way we’ve been used to, but the homogenous, bland bedroom community isn’t what they want to make of Hebron, either.
They want to order by fax and e-mail, pay by swipe card, and hear music that isn’t even always to my taste (but I’m over 40, so who cares?), but they love our school building in a residential neighborhood, they like even the 60’s shopping plaza ambiance as “sort of retro”, and you should see some of the ideas for across the street at the old Bowman’s.
These families may prefer soccer to baseball (horrors!), but they’ll come and cheer and even help out (hooray!). They may order their DVD rental on-line shipped by UPS from California, but they want to invite a real live neighbor over to watch it with, after grilling meat they bought locally (Spirits?)and that, better yet, may have even been raised locally (Cable Farms?).
Crossroads of Hebron Floral, Sunrise Café, the new Bee Dubs Pizza, the amazingly renovated Clay’s Café with paved parking no less: these are the new community centers. Let’s see who our new neighbors are, and work with them to make the next Hebron, as folks have at these crossroads since 1827.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher; if you have a story to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
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