Notes From My Knapsack 2-13-05
By Jeff Gill

Tuesday, Feb. 15 is certainly just around the corner, but there’s an event and opportunity coming up just around that corner you should know about, but that I didn’t think I could promote loudly and widely until just now. But first…
If you are interested in the long (I mean looooong) human history of Licking County, going back to what appears to be the very first human occupants of this area 12,000 years ago and on down to the latecomers from Europe a mere 200 years back, then you should read the rest of this column.
If not, check back next week under this header. Bye!
OK, for those of you still with me, one more request before I get to the meaty details. Don’t turn the page just because I happen to use the words “Granville Bicentennial” in a sentence, because this is a program of interest to anyone who lives in and is intrigued by the Native American prehistory of central Ohio.
Tuesday at 7:30 pm is the next featured speaker in the Granville Bicentennial series, and I was reluctant to shout too much from the housetops because the venue was going to a relatively small room. But the huge turnout for the opening talk by Dale Knobel, Denison president and historian in his own right, led the wonderful management at the Granville Inn to offer their “Great Room” for the rest of the series, with seating enough for hundreds (as we had for Pres. Knobel).
Brad Lepper, curator of archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society, was one of the authors of the new Granville history volume(s), and is widely known as not only the leading expert on early residents in Licking County from after the glaciers to just before the settlers arrived, but also as a great public speaker. In the interests of full disclosure, Brad is a good and longstanding friend, but for many who have heard me rattle on interminably about the Newark Earthworks, the Burning Tree Mastodon, Alligator Mound, Flint Ridge, etc., may I note that all my A-list material has been swiped directly from Brad.
Dr. Lepper, in his professional persona, also has a book coming out this month titled “Ohio Archaeology” (go ahead, check Amazon.com for details; we’ll be here when you get back). His many publications, appearance with former National Park Service director Roger Kennedy on the Discovery Channel, and column in (ahem) another newspaper mean that many of you have read something or another by Brad, but if you’ve never heard him speak on Ohio’s First Residents, you should head for the Granville Inn this week and get a good seat before 7:30 pm.
I will personally offer a money back guarantee for your enjoyment of the evening’s program, which is free and open to the public.
You might also note that Dick Shiels, another author for the Granville history books and a presenter a few weeks on down the road, and Brad are working on co-ordinating a number of events next fall relating to the Octagon Moonrise, the “once in a generation” alignment of the largest assembly in the Newark Earthworks and a unique moonrise that won’t be seen again until 2024. Check out octagonmoonrise.org for the first stage of a website that will tell you more as the big date gets closer. Dick teaches at OSU-Newark, and between he and Brad Licking County has a remarkable wealth of teaching talent and public presentation skills to share our “land of legend” story with a national and global audience.
So come on into Granville Tuesday night, where the natives are friendly (just don’t speed, fer Pete’s sake), and hear a story where we all have a part in telling the growing tale of Licking County wonders.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he’s been known to do an archaeology talk or two himself. If you have local stories of general interest, send ‘em to disciple@voyager.net.

The Scouter -- March 2005Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
23 counties across two states are in the Simon Kenton Council BSA, with 16 Silver Beavers awarded here this year.
Licking County is proud to claim Trevor Gamble as our honoree in 2005, but Licking District has to share him with Connecticut, his wife Carolyn and family, the US Navy, Denison University, and the United Way.
Amazingly enough, there’s Trig to go ‘round for all of those claims. Our district chairman was honored at the council court of honor along with a distinguished crew gathered from the Ohio River banks to Delaware’s northern edge. Among that throng, what stood out in the photo montage at the end of the evening were the pictures of our guy on his carrier-based aircraft with a bit more and darker hair, and then a shot with his missing twin brother, a more recent snap with two distinguished men of whom one looked very like John Glenn…or as we’d say in Licking District, John Glenn bears a striking resemblance to Trevor Gamble.
As you get this, our district should be about at mid-point of a flurry of “Blue & Gold” banquets for Cub Scout packs , celebrating the 75 year anniversary of this arm of the Scouting Movement. 1930 began a program which, with the expansion into Tiger Cubs almost 25 years ago (how the time flies!), is the Cub Scout program we know today. It isn’t too late to work on the Diamond Anniversary Award for Cubs, units, and leaders, with opportunities to celebrate the long history and accomplishments of Cub Scouting.
One interesting suggestion on the requirement sheets in the yellow and blue packets is for adults and youth to read Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” Those who only know the (very fine!) animated version done by the Disney folks may not catch the degree to which much of the Cubbing program is indebted to Kipling’s great children’s book: Akela, Baloo, bears and wolves and tigers, growing and mentoring, all are part and parcel of the book and the program.
In fact, this could lead you to a slightly more obscure work by Kipling, a kind of “Jungle Book” for older kids and a good read for the grown-ups: “Kim.” Kim is another orphaned young boy who is raised and mentored by an assortment of parental figures who give both his mental and physical development careful and loving attention, with special care to introducing him to the outdoors as a tool to inner growth.
Historians of Scouting have long acknowledged that “Kim” is one of the two fictional works that shaped Baden-Powell’s work on the original “Scouting for Boys,” the source of Scouting itself whose centennial is coming in another couple years. B-P quotes “Kim” frequently, and a number of the activities in the book are taken directly from Kipling’s tale. Thanks to Amazon, you can run down a copy in a heartbeat…but if anyone in the Scout Shop is reading this, “Kim” and “The Jungle Book” would make a bunch of sense to stock!
One of two, you say? What’s the other, you ask? I’m glad you asked that…
“Finding Neverland” is a recent movie many of you may have seen without thinking too much about a Scouting connection. One more in what seems like an annual stream of “Peter Pan” movies, remakes, different takes, and background shadings about Sir James Barrie, a very popular author and playwright of the late 1800’s. The book and play “Peter Pan” were greatly beloved by Baden-Powell, and he and Barrie became good friends. The original Scout handbook, “Scouting for Boys,” contains many quotes and references to “Peter Pan,” as does the first “Scoutmaster’s Manual.”
And in “The Chief Scout’s Last Letter,” the note Baden-Powell wrote before his death to World Scouting and to all Scouts who would come after, he quotes from “Peter Pan” not once, but twice.
So there’s some late winter reading for you all as we prepare for Spring Camporees, Cub Day Camp, and summer camp at Falling Rock. You might even want to carry your copy with you to read by the campfire. They’re great for boys and for the men who never stopped being boys in the best way, just like Trig Gamble!
Yours in Scouting,Jeff Gilldisciple@voyager.net(Please send info for April or May to this e-mail,and we'll print it right here)

Notes From My Knapsack 2-06-05
By Jeff Gill

Avalon.
The name has such a ring to it: “Avalon.”
A place of wonder and mystery, Avalon appears in Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur,” the story of Britain’s mythic early king, his court at Camelot and his final battle with Mordred. Wounded, King Arthur is borne off by three queens to the Blessed Isle, with a Vale of Apples, Avalon, where he might heal from his injuries and weariness.
The word “Avalon” has looked over West Main Street in Newark for a century and a quarter or so, just across from the new library. An apartment block with bay windows and balconies, turrets and peaks, the mystique has in recent years been more one of the Castle Perilous, with decay exhaling from broken windows and cracked slate askew marking the roofline.
But no more! Healed from its grievous wounds, returning like the once and future king himself, the Avalon Apartments have returned to health and beauty, looking proudly back across to the shining windows of the library that reflect back a reborn building.
And what Merlin accomplished this wizardry? No less than the workaday magic of Licking County LEADS, our local community action agency headed by Ken Kempton. With yeoman (or yeowoman) efforts from Charlene Wray who now works elsewhere, and many, many other local partners, Ken proudly shared the restored and renewed building with the community last week.
Shirley Colley from Buckeye Lake was among the visitors delighting in the new apartments, reserved for older Licking Countians below certain income guidelines. She recalled visiting her aunt and uncle in brighter days, when the Avalon was an address claimed with pride, and marveled at the views, so different and still the same, out what would have been their windows.
For everyone involved, from public officials to architects to builders . . . but most especially, to the staff at LEADS, thank you for bringing Avalon back to our community as a place for secure rest and a base for new adventures. There’s more than a bit of romance in the idea of a reborn building, and with a name like Avalon, the mist clears and the magic is seen clearly by the bright light of day.
What blessed isles of refuge could yet be restored? Let’s support our public officials and organizations like LEADS and the Licking County Coalition for Housing as they work to preserve our built heritage for a very human but still magical present.

Jeff Gill is an Arthurian troubadour and occasional scribbler who can be reached, when not attending building dedications, at disciple@voyager.net.

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.

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
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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.

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

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

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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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

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!
?

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!

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.

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!

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.

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
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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.

@

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

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.

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.