You might be amused to read one of my early fiction efforts. I think I wrote this piece when I was in high school. Here it is and I’ll give some commentary on it at the end.

THE CYCLOPS OF TYRANNOSAURUS PEAK

I am going to tell you the most blood-curdling story that has ever been written into the annals of time. Back into the mists of prehistoric ages the story will take you on a horrifying journey into that which has previously been unknown to man.

But wait! We must begin in a different time, where this all began. It begins with a stranger on a spring night. His name was David Koestler. He walked slowly down the Main Street in the little town of Charlottesville. His hat was pulled down and the shadow it created made his features indistinct and unrecognizable. H seemed to have no particular destination in mind until he reached the Butler house on the corner. He paused as if not quite sure; then took a decisive step towards the door. We must leave him now to pursue his quest alone.

Another important event must be duly noted in the course of this history. Across the street is a brightly lighted house from which one can hear the sounds of joyous laughter from both children and adults. Inside is the happy family of Mr. Bartholomew, the music teacher in the local high school. His oldest daughter is sitting on the rocking chair. Her face is bright with reflected laughter as her sister makes a fool out of herself by pretending to be their mother. Their oldest brother is rolling on the floor, a far cry from his usual dignified self. their other brother is holding the baby in an extremely precarious position as he joins in the fun. Their mother and father are watching the entire proceedings from the kitchen. She is pretending to be offended while his eyes are twinkling with mirth, the tired lines in his face relaxing for the first time in months.

Into this happy domestic scene we must inject a note of tragedy. A shadow is about to pass over this house. It will not be lifted until each has undergone many heart-breaking trials.

The unsuspecting Bartholomew’s did not know of the lurking evil that might have been just minutes away. But David Koestler did. He was sent to crush, kill or destroy it. But there was one thing he did not know, and that was what it was. He had also been sent there to find that out too. He was prepared for something big enough and strong enough to kill him with one blow, but as he used his binoculars, he saw something on Tyrannosaurus Peak. It was big. It was huge. He put the binoculars down and rubbed his eyes, then put the binoculars on again. It was still there, but most fantastic, was that it looked far more bigger and stronger than he had ever expected. But then it disappeared. His eyes strained to find some traces of it, but he could find none. It had just disappeared and that was that.

He then knocked on the door of the Bartholomew house. The oldest daughter, Leslie, answered the door.
“Hello,” he said, “what’s a pretty thing like you doing in rough country like this?”
Leslie blushed a rosy red. Then she answered him.
“Well, you darling thing, I’m not rightly pretty at all,” she said, as if expecting another compliment. And he seemed to read her mind, for that is what he gave her.
“Why yes you are and you know it” he said. “You’re just modest.” Leslie blushed again, this time a poppy red.
“Well, whoever you are,” she said, “What do you want?” Her manner was surprisingly rough and she seemed to forget that he just gave her a compliment.

“You see,” she tartly said, “I don’t rightly take to young men that just come up to a woman that he hardly knows and acts like they’s married. It just ain’t right. And you ought to know it, too.”
The young man looked at her in surprised and said, “I have to offer you my deepest apologies to you. I guess I just wasn’t thinking right. You see, I’ve just taken the long way up the mountain to find a house to rest at in the town of Charlottesville, and yours was the first one in sight, so I just figured if I say nice things to you maybe you will let me stay here for the night.” This said, he backed off as if he were going to look for another house to stay at.

“Wait!” Leslie cried, “I didn’t mean to scare you off with all my rough talk. I guess you can stay tonight. But I’ll have to ask Ma or Pa first.” With this she disappeared into the house to ask her parents. As soon as she disappeared out of sight, she went to her Pa and said, “Oh, Pa, there’s just the handsomest man you ever saw at our door, and he wants to stay overnight. Isn’t that grand? Will you let him stay Pa? Please?” She then stopped for a breath.

“Well,” said Pa, “Let me have a look at him first. For all you know, he might be a criminal type or something. Let’s just think things over carefully, okay?”
“Oh, Pa!” She said mournfully, “How could you think he was an indecent man or something like that? Iffen only you could see him.”

---

I desperately want to believe that I wrote this in a satirical fashion, but alas, I think it’s the real deal. I don’t know about you, but I laughed my whole way through as I read this. So many things promised and not delivered – although I suppose one may assume that I had planned to write more. The “dialect” is hilarious! This is clearly written by a young girl, since nobody else would write a story in which a mysterious young man comes to the house wanting to stay overnight and “Pa” doesn’t immediately turn him out on his ear.

I hope you were as entertained as I was.

The best part of the whole post is the drawing my son Ian did many years ago, not realizing it would be so appropriate for this story.

Iffen the handsomest stranger comes to the door asking to stay overnight, I’ll have my husband turn him out on his ear before deleting this post.

It’s been seven months since our last hike and our first hike in 2021 was going to be an ambitious one: the 6.2 mile hike at Beaver Creek Valley State Park. I was feeling confident without any reason whatsoever. I haven’t been walking regularly, nor have I been doing the daily water aerobics classes of last year. I was feeling good, though – bring it on!

We arrived at BCVSP around 11:30 a.m; it’s about a 2 hour and 15 minute drive from our house and that doesn’t include some backtracking when roads aren’t well labeled. It was overcast and 50 degrees – perfect for hiking.

We stopped in at the park office to pick up a map and to get our 75-mile patch from last year. I took advantage of the moment to chat the park guy up about the lay of the land, so to speak. What I really wanted to know was how difficult the trails were, especially that part that would include some hiking uphill. He reassured me that the uphill part wasn’t too tough. More on that later.

There weren’t a lot of people at the park, which is just how I like it, as I’ve said before. The hike started at a bridge, the best way to start.

The first part of the trail was on level ground, but I got my hiking poles out anyway. The knees I save may be my own, if I can twist Flannery O’Connor a bit. It was a lovely trail, really – wide and often going right by the creek. You often hear a special kind of silence at these parks, the absence of man-made sounds. Kris mentioned having heard a podcast that featured the story of a man who has made it his life’s work to identify places where you can go and not hear man-made sounds like highways and airplanes. There aren’t very many. We stopped for a moment to see if BCVSP was one of them – it was hard to tell; was that the hum of a highway in the background, or was that the wind?

We saw lots of spring ephemerals, most of them wood anemones. You could say there was a whole sea of them. (See what I did there?)

We also saw some Dutchman’s Breeches, of which I did not get photos, and possibly some hepatica, which is another form of anemone.

There was another couple there about our age with their dog and we bonded with them in the way that you do with other hikers – as long as everybody stays in their own lane. We didn’t want to hike too close to them so when the path split, we went one way and they went another. Eventually, we ran into them again by the creek where the dog was taking a little refreshing plunge. Kris called out “He’s braver than me!” and the guy called back, “He says it’s good – you should try it!” This is the kind of camaraderie you can expect when hiking. It’s downright jovial.

All that hiking by the water got Kris musing about trout fishing and the need to plan a fishing trip soon. We’ve got it all worked out: I’ll come along with some good books to read, and he’ll do the fishing. He also told me an entertaining story he’d heard about some poor woman who was using a pit toilet somewhere and a bear bit her in the butt. You can’t un-hear that kind of thing, sadly.

We left the creek after awhile and ended up hiking a big loop around an area that had burned. Was it a planned burn or an accidental one? We thought perhaps we’d ask the park ranger when we finished the hike, but didn’t, so we still don’t know.

We finished the first part of the Hiking Club trail by about 1:00 p..m. and I figured we’d probably done about 4 miles of the 6 by that time, so the remaining loop, while hilly, shouldn’t be too bad. Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

We stopped at a picnic table at this point and I went to go use the pit toilet, trying unsuccessfully to forget about the specter of bears waiting underneath to bite me in the butt. We had our usual repast of Clif bars and water, and girded ourselves for Part 2.

You will see very few photos from this point on. Gone were the wide and level paths. If Part 1 was Dr. Jekyll, Part 2 was definitely Mr. Hyde. We walked steadily uphill for quite a ways. I tried to focus my mind on the beauty of the landscape, but my challenged legs were always trying to get a word in and interrupting the other conversation. Early on, Kris said, “Naked tree up ahead – don’t look!” which really cracked me up. I had to get a photo of that.

The path would level out briefly (ahh…) and then cruise uphill again, the paths getting narrower and narrower, next to steeper and steeper drop-offs which seemed to be right next to where we were walking. Kris will tell you that I am exaggerating and he’d be right, but don’t listen to him. It felt like my life was in imminent peril – that’s the important part.

At last we got to the top. I sat down for a breather (not the first time, either) while Kris enjoyed the view. It had been rough, but now the going should be all downhill. It was a nice halfway point! Let me say right here and now that those hiking poles were worth their weight in gold on this part of the hike. Gold!

We started our downward hike and could see in the distance down below one of the camping areas – the last part of the trail would take us right past those, so I knew we were getting close. Kris dragged the map out when I was taking one of my many breathers and pointed to where he thought we were, which was barely 1/4 of the way through the hike. I rejected it out of hand. But naturally, he was right as he usually is about these things. The place where I had thought we’d be going down to the camping area, was actually a fork in the road…and our trail led away from that nice downward path and BACK UPHILL.

I’m sorry to have to report that these kinds of challenges usually bring out the worst in me and I revert to the dark, inner pessimist of my soul. It’s not so much a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde transformation as it is Winnie-the-Pooh/Eeyore. I felt a little bit like Adrian Plass in the highly amusing book The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Aged 37 3/4. He’s generally a cheerful fellow, always full of the milk of human kindness, but then he gets a toothache that gets progressively worse and tries to hide it from his wife, Anne, afraid she’ll make him go to the dentist. He prays and feels the Lord is telling him “I will heal you. Don’t go to the dentist.” Finally the pain becomes so bad that his journal entry devolves into this: “Toothache BAD!!! Wife ugly. Son ridiculous. God non-existent. …Why doesn’t God heal my tooth if he’s so wonderful? Pockets awash with empty pain killer packets. I think Anne suspects.”

What I’m trying to say is that I was pretty close to saying “Everything HURTS! Pain BAD!! Landscape ugly! Husband ridiculous!” Meanwhile, Kris was trying to stay cheerful (thank God – we certainly didn’t need two of me on this trail). The sun came out briefly and he burst forth with the John Denver song “Sunshine…on my shoulders…makes me happy.” I had a brief impulse to throw one of my hiking poles at him, but mercifully this evil notion passed and left me ashamed for having thought of it.

And upward we continued to go, with me stopping more frequently to rest. My dear sweet husband said, “C’mon Frodo – not much farther now!” He knows that a well-placed LOTR quote is a balm to my soul. I said, “Sam actually carried Frodo when things got difficult, you know.” We chuckled over this notion. I began thinking about that hike we did at Crosby-Manitou State Park in 2019. That was a tough one and I made it through that – in fact I had the exhilarating experience of getting my second wind after awhile. There was no second wind at BCVSP, however, just the grueling experience of forcing one step after another. But you know what? That kind of experience is just as valuable as the other. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”

So, endure, I did. Uphill eventually became downhill, and it wasn’t long before we could see the campground at the bottom. I told Kris that I wanted to go and rebuke the park ranger for telling me that the second part of the hike wasn’t too bad. Kris said, “He probably looked at you and thought ‘she’s up to it!’” But I think it’s more likely that he looked at me and thought “You can’t handle the truth.”

We got back to the car at 2:48 p.m. For all my whining, I want to put it on record that BCVSP is really a lovely park! You should definitely go there. Bring your hiking poles, though.

Knee Score (1-10, 10 being the most difficult):
Part One: 2
Part Two: 10 (only the second park to receive a 10 rating from me)

It’s nice to know that we started the year off with one of the more difficult hikes and can cross that one off the list. We’ve done a total of 86.6 miles now!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but you never know.

Next hikes: Kilen Woods, Lake Shetek and Split Rock Creek

I’m still working through the Watercolor Trip to Italy book, but decided to take a break from that this week and work on a couple more watercolors from photos I took out of my Mom’s old calendars.

There are some watercolor artists who can make their paintings so realistic that it’s like looking at a photo. I have freed myself from that particular goal. I’m perfectly content for you to know that you’re looking at a watercolor rendition of something in the real world.

Those two photos have been sitting out on my work table for about 3 months so I’m glad I finally got to them. I much prefer painting plants and birds to trying to paint people. It’s all good practice for me. I painted these into a watercolor journal that I bought last year. I thought I would use it a lot more than I have.

Time to go! Thanks for joining me.

I’ll probably delete this at the right time in the right place with the right tools.

I’ve been systematically going through all our books and entering them onto the book cataloging app that I put on my phone. I’m up to 956 books and still haven’t gone through the 5 bookcases down the basement.

One of the best parts of doing this is that I’m discovering all sorts of books that we have that I had either forgotten about or never knew we had in the first place. The first prize award for today’s entries has to go to a book by E. O. Harbin engagingly titled The Fun Encyclopedia, subtitled “A Comprehensive, All-purpose, Entertainment Plan-book for the Home, Club, School, Church and Playground.” Phew! That’s pretty impressive – why did I never consult this amazing resource when I was homeschooling our six children?

The first line of the preface reads, “This book is an attempt to provide in one volume a wide variety of ideas of interesting things to do in leisure.” There are 948 pages in this volume – just think what I could have done every time one of the kids came up to me during the summer complaining “I’m bored!” I could have replied with a page number at random – “Go do something from the Fun Encyclopedia, page 423!”

Sure enough, E.O. Harbin didn’t let me down. “Spot ball” or “Tennis Spot ball” would have been just the ticket. Oh, the opportunities lost! I just turned to another random page (318) and found a nature quiz. The first question is: Which runs faster, a greyhound or a whippet?

Do you know?

So, that’s all for today. If you give me a random page number the next time you’re bored (or even if you’re not), I’ll be glad to give you E.O. Harbin’s suggestion for having FUN.

I’ll probably delete this unless the greyhound finally beats the whippet in a race.

I’ve known this day would come since early last year – WordPress warned me that I’d only be able to avoid using the Gutenberg Block Editor until some time in 2021 and the day has arrived. I’m not a big fan of the blocks, but one of my sons works with WordPress a lot and tells me that most people prefer them to the old system. I shall do my best to “adjust, adapt and accept” (as my Grandma Veda always used to tell me was her motto). You probably won’t be able to tell that there’s a difference from your end. Let me know if you do.

I wanted to tell you about my relationship with Coffee. I first made his acquaintance back in college when I was taking 8:00 a.m. classes. It was sort of a marriage of convenience at that time – I needed to stay awake during those early classes and Coffee played a key part in that, which was convenient for me. Oh, and never black – always with cream and sugar. That was part of the agreement.

The only problem in this new relationship was Coffee’s tendency to give me insomnia at night. Also, he was an expensive partner to keep. He and I went our separate ways after awhile.

I spent the next 30 years without Coffee, except when eating mocha-flavored things (totally yummy) and when in his aisle in the grocery store. I would buy coffee beans for my husband and take in that heavenly smell in deep, satisfied inhalations. It always seemed to me that he was a cheat, smelling so good and tasting so bitter.

But after all these years of estrangement, we’ve come together again. My husband and I started going to a Bible Study that meets at 6:30 a.m., requiring me to get up at 5:45 a.m. Ugh. I had to swallow my pride and go back to Coffee, asking his help in keeping me not only awake, but alert. We have a new arrangement: half Coffee, half milk, and a couple teaspoons of sucanat. So far, it’s just a once-a-week deal, but who knows, maybe it’ll become something more.

I guess the Gutenberg Blocks aren’t that bad. I could get used to this. I don’t want to get too lazy, though, and start relying on the stock photos. Ta ta for now, peeps!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning while hanging out with my friend Coffee.

Fairy tales often begin with a kingdom, a king and a queen, and a beautiful princess with golden curls. And she is, of course, of the age to marry. And what fairy tale would be complete without a curse? But this isn’t a fairy tale; there is no kingdom, just a small city. There is no king and queen, just loving parents. But the beautiful daughter with golden curls – she’s quite real. And the curse? I’m afraid the curse is all too real.

No one knows why the baby Katara was cursed at birth, but the giver of the curse, Magissa, appeared to have had some kindness. She let the curse that was meant for the whole world fall upon just one little girl. This was a grief to her poor parents, but they were powerless to stop Magissa. And so, Katara lived a cursed life. What she meant for good always turned bad. She couldn’t grow plants – they shriveled up and died under her care. When she made something, it would turn out malformed. When she sang, she destroyed music so thoroughly it brought tears of anguish to the listener, so she kept her songs to herself. When she cooked a meal, it would burn or just simply taste awful. When Katara’s parents gave her a hen to take care of, the poor creature immediately began to look unwell and after clinging to life for a couple days, the hen gratefully went to its death and out of its misery. A gift from Katara would be sure to break. A gift to Katara suffered the same fate. But Katara learned at an early age that because she was cursed, everyone else was free from the curse, so she accepted her life as it was and kept her expectations low.

By and by, Katara grew to the age when young women marry and she was, despite the curse, a beautiful woman. Men were irresistibly drawn to her face, but no one was brave enough to marry her, for certainly a woman of that sort would be a disastrous wife and mother. It was untenable! Men would come to call, quickly come to terms with the state of affairs, sigh sadly, and leave.

But you’ve read enough stories to know that someone must come along to break the spell, someone brave and with a true heart. His name was Tharros. He not only took pity upon Katara, he loved her and wanted to make her his bride. But he was not foolish; he could not marry her until the curse was broken and the key to doing that was known only to Magissa. Everyone knew where the evil Magissa could be found, but until now, no one actually wanted to find her. She didn’t want visitors, so this was a good arrangement for all concerned. Love is a powerful motivator, and Tharros was well motivated, so off he went, determined to do whatever was necessary to free Katara from that which bound her.

Instead, Tharros found out just how diabolical Magissa’s plan was, for she told him that when Katara married, the moment the vows were spoken, the curse on Katara would be expanded to include the whole world. A lesser man than Tharros would have given up at this point and no one would have blamed him. This was quite a dilemma.

He went to the scientists in the town and asked them to come up with a cure for the curse in their labs. They were confident that science would be the answer and threw themselves into their work, creating many different vials of serums that Katara dutifully drank to no avail. They grew things on their Petrie dishes that they spoon fed to her, but this, too, had no effect, other than to make her vomit.

Tharros and Katara grew despondent. This is where I came into the story. You need not know my name; it’s enough to know that there was a holy place in town where hope and wisdom resided with the holy man, a place that was often overlooked. That place was my abode. The two young lovers came to me in desperation (why must people always be desperate before they come?).

I heard their story and gave them my answer: the curse could only be broken by vocalizing its opposite during the wedding ceremony. Only a blessing could cancel the power of the curse! And only Tharros could utter the Words of Cancellation. But I knew Magissa and I knew that we would have to be crafty, so as not to arouse her suspicion, for she would be sure to hinder Tharros from speaking. I told Tharros and Katara that all of the people at the wedding ceremony would have to be part of the plan. The couple agreed to prepare those who would attend and to impress upon them the need to keep silence about what they would do.

The wedding day arrived and so did Magissa. She would not miss this day, the culmination of her evil desires. As the holy man, I presided over the ceremony. The time came for the exchange of vows. I nodded at Tharros to begin. At the moment Tharros began to speak the Words of Cancellation, those powerful Words of Blessing, the entire congregation began shouting at him, telling him to stop, creating such a din that Magissa could not hear the words he was saying. She only thought they sought to stop him from speaking the vows that would curse them.

Tharros finished speaking and there was silence. Katara smiled at him and began to sing:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

I wept for the beauty of her voice and the glory of the song. Good things come in threes, for on that day Katara was freed, Tharros and Katara were married, and Magissa was vanquished.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I wanted to write a story based on a dream. I often write my dreams down, especially when they are interesting, like this one was. I added names and a few details, as well as an ending, since I woke up just as the bridegroom was uttering the words of cancellation. I borrowed the names from the Greek language: Katara means “curse,” Magissa means “witch” and Tharros means “courage.” I wanted to change Katara’s name at the end to the word that means blessing, but it was “Evlogia,” and that didn’t strike me as very much of a name. The parents were hardly part of the dream, so they were hardly part of the story. Seems like a shame – maybe I’ll make it a longer story at some point.

Thanks for joining me on Fiction Friday. I always love your feedback and don’t mind constructive criticism. I’m trying to learn the craft of writing fiction, so don’t hold back.

I’ll probably utter the Words of Cancellation over this blog post in the morning.

Gnomishness
Gnomes among tulips
Keeping the secrets of spring
Feeling fit to burst

I wanted to get a photo with the tulip in focus instead of the gnome. It’s funny how that makes the gnome look somehow more malevolent in the background.

May your garden gnomes whisper the secrets of spring to you.

I’ll probably…shh…it’s a secret.

I decided to try soaking and stretching my watercolor paper, as mentioned last week.

Step 1:

Those don’t look submerged, but they are. After a time, I put them out on my table and taped them down.

I didn’t have the right kind of tape, but they don’t call me the Queen of Substitutions for nothing. It turns out that the kind of tape you use is important. My paper didn’t stretch as it dried, it just pulled away from the tape and took on an undulating look. I re-taped it, but the damage was done.

I’m telling you this so you can avoid making the same mistake.

Watercolor Travel in Italy, Lesson 10: Venezia. Corte del Fontego.

My husband and I actually had an opportunity to go to Italy about five years ago. He had a business meeting there and I flew over and met him when the meeting was over. We traveled by train down to Genova and stayed at a sweet little Air bnb. When you looked out the window over the neighborhood, this is exactly the kind of thing you saw – laundry hanging out of people’s windows. I thought it was charming!

Does anyone use clotheslines to hang out their wet clothes anymore? We did it all summer long in the back yard when I was growing up. As a young married couple, we also hung our laundry out in the early days. When we lived in Indiana, we lived next door to an Amish family who (for obvious reasons) hung their clothes out on a line all year long, winter and summer. I was always surprised that the clothes got dry at all when it was icy cold out.

That’s all for today, folks.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning and hang it out to dry.

I’m trying hard to understand poetry, but it’s a real slog some days. I’ve been making my way slowly through three poetry books: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Richard Wilbur, and Selected Poetry of Ogden Nash. It’s not uncommon for me to have to look up words, phrases, places and names to help frame a context for poems in the first two books, but thank God for Ogden Nash – there’s nothing oblique or esoteric about his poetry.

Here are some examples:

The difference between Despair
and Fear – is like the One
Between the instant of a Wreck-
And when the Wreck has been-

The Mind is smooth – no Motion –
Contented as the Eye
Upon the Forehead of a Bust –
That knows – it cannot see.
Emily Dickinson

I’ve read that one several times and am still not sure what she means.

Here’s another Dickinson one:

I send Two Sunsets –
Day and I – in competition ran –
I finished Two – and several Stars –
While He – was making One –

His own was ampler – but as I
Was saying to a friend –
Mine – is the more convenient
To Carry in the Hand –

I like that one! I believe she is talking about the difference between her making a painting of a sunset, and the Day’s making a real one.

Now here’s the first four stanzas of one by Richard Wilbur entitled “To Ishtar”

Is it less than your brilliance, Ishtar,
How the snowfield smarts in the fresh sun,
And the bells of its melting ring, and we blink
At the light flexing in trickles?

It is the Spring’s disgrace
That already, before the prone arbutus
Will risk its whiteness, you have come down
To the first gate and darkened.

Forgive us who cannot conceive you
Elsewhere and maiden, but love you only
Fallen among us in rut and furrow,
In the shade of amassing leaves,

Or scrawny in plucked harvest,
Your losses having fattened the world
Till crown less, starless, you stoop and enter
The low door of Irkalla.

I felt pretty clueless by this time. I looked up Ishtar: Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. Not helping. I looked up arbutus: a flowering evergreen shrub. Irkalla: ancient Mesopotamian underworld. I was starting to get the idea that this poem might be about going from winter to spring. I did some more googling and ran across a reference that said “the descent of Ishtar marks the death of the year (winter) which is reborn as spring with her annual resurrection.” The word Easter apparently comes from a form of Ishtar.

I’m sorry to put you through all of this, but perhaps some of you speak “poesy” better than I do. It seems so HARD to penetrate some of this stuff, but I’d like to at least try. I went to Goodreads to look at reviews for Wilbur’s book, thinking that maybe I wasn’t the only one who was struggling. Nope – I’m definitely the only one. People were giving it glowing reviews…

But here’s a little poem by Ogden Nash:

Oh, once there lived in Kankakee
A handy dandy Yankakee,
A lone and lean and lankakee
Cantankakerous Yankakee.
He slept without a blankaket,
And whiskikey, how he drankaket,
This rough and ready Yankakee,
The bachelor of Kankakee.
He never used a hankakee,
He jeered at hanky-pankakee;
Indeed, to give a frank account,
He didn’t have a bank account.
And yet at times he hankakered
In marriage to be anchachored.
When celibacy rankakles,
One dreams of pretty ankakles.
He took a trip to Waikiki
And wooed a girl aimed Psycheche,
And now this rugged Yankakee
‘S a married man in Kankakee.
Good night, dear friends, and thankakee.

If you’re like me, you probably skimmed this whole post – it’s hard for me to make myself read poetry. No judgment from me on that score.

Anyhoo, good night, dear friends, and thankakee!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning with a book of poetry in my hand and a puzzled look on my face.

I listened to a podcast last week, the whole of which was about the proverb “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.” (Ecclesiastes 11:1). I admit that I haven’t given much thought to that particular proverb, so it was interesting. The main idea seemed to be that whatever you give or contribute with generosity will somehow return to you. The speaker applied this to his career as a teacher, that what he poured into the lives of his students would return dividends from some of them as they went on to do something with their lives and could look back to his teaching as a valuable contribution.

The next day, I went to a friend’s house and while I was there, her husband called me over to the piano and said, “Hey, have you ever heard of this song by the Imperials?” It was called “Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters.” I took note of this repetition; a phrase I hadn’t paid much attention to had wound its way into my life twice in a short time.

In the meantime, I’d recently had a couple dreams in which three people, siblings, all appeared at one time or another. Our family had known their family back in the day and they are all adults now. I don’t have much contact with them, but for various reasons, we have been praying for this family for some time. The dreams put those three very much on my mind, so I decided to act on it and sent each of them private messages on social media, hoping that at least one of them would get back to me. I mentioned this to my husband, and he commented, “Casting your bread upon the waters, eh?”

He had no idea that his mention of that proverb was the third time I’d heard it in just a few days and I hadn’t connected my sending of those messages with it either. Sometimes the Holy Spirit works that way. I was, indeed, casting my bread upon those waters with much prayer, asking the Lord for a return on it.

One of the three replied with an openness I hadn’t expected.

Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.

And that’s the Mondays Musings from Lynniebee.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but I expect I’ll find it again after many days.

From the journal of Beulah Bartimaeus.

One of the things I like about my job is that people pretty much keep to themselves there. I mean, it’s practically company policy not to fraternize with the co-workers much (something to do with proprietary information being kept in bounds). This suits me fine. The last place I worked people were everlastingly doing office parties, taking up money for someone’s birthday gift, going out as a group for lunches, putting on silent auctions to raise money for something or other. It’s not that I’m antisocial – well, maybe I am a little – but I feel so crushingly out of place in social settings. Mom always warned me that if I didn’t get my face out of my books and do more things with friends that eventually I’d be like…well, like what I am.

Ironically, since I work in the Human Resources department, I have a lot of interaction with the humans that work there. I wonder who thought up that soulless term, Human Resources, anyway? If it were up to me, the department would be named something like “We’re Here to Cover Our Asses – We Don’t Really Care About You.” Or maybe “We Make You Sign Forms…Lots of Them.” New employees always look vaguely ill at ease when I drag out the three confidentiality clauses that they have to sign to work within these very secretive halls. One guy actually read them over carefully and decided this wasn’t the place for him. Part of me wanted to say to him, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dearborn, now that you’ve read the forms, you already know too much – I’m afraid I’m just going to have to kill you.” I stifled it and sent him off to live another day.

The funny thing is, I’m actually not even sure what all the secrecy is about. You’d think I’d know, being in the HR department, but the inner workings of the company are pretty thickly veiled. I’ve tried doing a little research surreptitiously, but I don’t dare do it at work because I’m not sure how secure the computers are. Here’s what I know: we have about 35 employees that work in the building compartmentalized into different sections, each of which operates more or less independently of the others in terms of how much specific information is shared. The Research department is the largest section and they do a lot of traveling. There’s the Finance department, composed of Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable people. We also have the bogus sounding “Strategies for Success” section – I dislike them on principle. My section, HR, is the smallest, composed of my boss, Mr. Jandrich, and me. The company president, Mortimer Pressman, has a big important office, but is hardly ever there. I think the section heads report to him regularly.

Okay, now for the weirdest part. I recently got an email from some entity called “BOII,” an acronym with which I am not familiar, nor could I find any explanation for it. They claimed to be a covert part of the company and their existence is to be kept strictly confidential. What? Secrets within secrets? The BOII communication was short – basically just said that I would receive assignments from them occasionally, but nothing that would cause me to break the confidentiality agreements. They didn’t mention whether or not these “assignments” would cause me to go against my own moral code, but maybe they don’t think I have one. Confidentiality or not, I couldn’t just assume this was a valid communication, so I asked Mr. Jandrich about it. He said the name sounded familiar to him – he thought it was one of our international affiliates. It didn’t seem to bother him that I had gotten something from them, nor that they might be giving me independent assignments. “Let me know if you get a request from them that you feel you cannot fulfill as part of the performance of your job here,” is all he said.

So far, though, I haven’t heard anything else from BOII, although it’s been less than a week since I got that first email.

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Those of you who have been following the Martin Chronicles may remember the name Beulah Bartimaeus from Part 4, published last week. The plot thickens!

I’ll probably delete this over the weekend. Have a good one!