Sarah finds Katie Curic’s questions annoying. I find Sarah annoying. I
don’t care for her sexy red high heels, or her winks, or her tight
skirts. She looks like a game-show hostess or a cocktail waitress.
Further, I am appalled at her lack of knowledge—she has NO
background of knowledge about American history, Supreme Court
decisions, government policy, or serious public issues. She is very poorly
educated and yet has shocking self-confidence.  Brash rather than
humble, she sure doesn’t embody the traditional Christian virtues.

Her ideas on abortion are repellent, too….ugh….insisting that victims
of incest bear their father’s or brother’s or uncle’s children. I remember
the old days of coat-hanger abortions–and much prefer the era
of Roe vs Wade. Further, if she were really “feminine,” she would
know that life is abundant on earth; when one seed is crushed or fails
to grow, many more are there to flourish. I prefer other choices than
abortion, but I also believe that no woman should have to bear a child
she does not wish to bring into the world—for whatever reason.
A woman should have total control of her body and any issues about
pregnancy should be between her and her doctor.

What I really believe in is birth control—and would
have it handed out at the high school door. A society that truly loves life
would help hormone-laden adolescents learn to develop their
sexuality in a protected and informed manner. Holding on to the myth of
protecting virginity until marriage is a really STUPID idea, one more in
line with patriarchal property rights than about learning to love.  And—guess
what—sexy Sarah doesn’t believe in that idea either. She seems to have
jumped the gun a bit on her first child and now finds herself with a
pregnant teen. What I really don’t like about her ideas is that a “shotgun”
marriage seems to be her only solution to the problem. Woe betide Black
teens in the same situation…..the Republicans cannot find enough evil
words to denounce them.

Something Sara did in the debate really annoyed me—refusing to
answer the questions. I had students use that tactic when taking
tests or giving speeches or writing research papers. Basically—the
student, or the vice presidential candidate, does so because he or she
is not prepared to do the serious work required. Sarah has only talking
points and cue cards, beyond that she does not seem to know anything
of substance. Only fools would think that being a mayor of a small city of
7000 is substantial “executive” experience. She is very poorly prepared to
be on a national ticket.

I think her religion is scary, and her ambition is scarier. Why are
Republicans so hot for her? Because she is so entertaining compared to
their usual deadly-dull politicians? Because she so devoutly embraces
their ideas, even if she doesn’t understand them? Because she’s sexy?
They didn’t like old sexy Bill….

This past winter I have been reading some early American/Colonial and post-Revolution history, because I am interested in the genealogical context. Understanding the settling of our country and the Indian wars does change one’s point-of-view. The books about the French and Indian War, also called the Seven Years War and the first-real-world-war, are interesting in that they are so far from the cowboy-and-indians movies that set the frame for today’s thinking. It is no longer politically correct to discuss the violence between the settlers and the Indians. Yet, through my reading of Allen Eckerd’s Conquest of America series and several other academic historians, I have had to face the reality of the hatred between the settlers and the Indians. The Indians were lied to again and again, and played off against each other by the French and British. The tribes, too, were quite willing to play the French and British off against each other, in their desperate efforts to protect their homeland. The settlers were land hungry and the clash of cultures along the frontier is a fascinating, and disheartening, story. The savages were savage, torturing and eating captives, killing viciously, etc—no wonder the settlers hated them. If your enemy is eating captured people, it is hard to see that they might have noble qualities or that their culture might have things to offer. Because my family lines were here shortly after 1620 and some, such as Captain James Parsons, fought on the frontier, I have been interested in digging into the info. That the settlers had no right to encroach on Indian territory and violated treaty after treaty is also part of the mix. The accounts of getting the chiefs drunk and having them sign paper treaties are too numerous. After all, taking land from savages was no bad thing to do, at least in the settlers’ minds.

When I tire of bloody battles with the savages in the wilderness, I read Regency novels from England—the post-Revolutionary period just after the bloody French and Indian Wars and the American Revolution, but across the sea, which tends to give one an interesting context of both sides of the pond. Fops were equally savage in their social wars, but they only maim and eat others metaphorically.

So then, I move forward in time and read British novels written and set in the mid-20th century—post WW I through the 1950’s. My favorites are Angela Thirkel’s 37 volume Barsetshire series, an up-take on the Barsetshire novels of Anthony Trollope set in the Victorian times. What she does is start with the grandchildren of his characters and go forward. Her father was a poetry don [professor] at Oxford and her literary references and allusions are marvelous. Since I taught British poetry and literature for 28 years, I can actually see where she has taken phrases from Hamlet or Macbeth or Dickens or whatever and woven them into her dialogue. It’s delightful, but probably most enjoyed by those with a solid foundation in British lit. I re-read her books every couple of years—in order. She writes during the time of WWII and the post war years—-a severe look into what happens with the loss of empire through the eyes of those out in the provinces [i.e. us out here in the Midwest].

In the past six months, I have read 25 + books about American Colonial history and settlement, British novels, British biographies and autobiographies, and books about British culture—in addition to a number of American novels for my book club and books dealing with my other interests. I also read a lot of web articles from progressive political sites, plus magazines such as The Atlantic, Harpers, Newsweek, The American Spectator, genealogy periodicals, not to mention that great American entrepreneur, Martha Stewart’s magazines: Living, Body & Soul, and Food. My sons think I am an idiot, but actually I am quite well read in my particular interests, which are not their interests,
as I loath philosophy as a discipline [well, European philosophy is what I loathe, as I find Buddhism fascinating] and I seem to be unable to deal with numbers at all—-son #1 is an Assistant Professor of Buddhism at U. of Calgary and son #2 is a number crunching businessman. One of the delights of retirement is time to read—and the ability to delve into my interests instead of reading endless student-written journals and essays.

In May and June, I began reading and re-reading many books about the Mitford sisters, which I discuss in my next posts.

Oh….well….so much for “Adventures in Third World Medicine.” It got a LOT worse before it got better!

Max and I are safely home after a week’s “adventure” at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, KY. On Wednesday afternoon, March 5, Max drove himself to our local hospital with chest pains—-he seems to always drive himself to the ER. When nothing showed up on the EKG, our local internist insisted on “aggressive measures,” so Max was sent to Jewish, in Louisville, a nationally ranked heart and lung facility. Since he refused to go in an ambulance, I drove him down there, arriving after dark. We wandered around until we found the ER, and finally he got to his room, which was full of SIX people from another family. Good Lord! The next day he had a heart catherization, or at least they tried. When the probe would not go through, the cardiologist sent him for a CAT scan, which revealed a massive abdominal aorta aneurism. The cardiologist came out into the waiting room, grabbed my hands, and pulled me over to a seat, saying we had “big trouble.” I didn’t quite grasp what was wrong at first—I though he had a brain aneurism. The cardiologist kept saying, “None of us have ever seen anything this big!!” Oh…my! Since we were in a nationally known heart & lung center, I realized we had a big problem. 

Finally, the cardiologist took me back to see Max, who was already full of tubes and quite upset, as they really were not sure he could live through the night. Dr. Stokivoc, the cardiologist, was very blunt and had also told Max he was in “big trouble.” Surprisingly, I appreciated their bluntness — better to know exactly where you are in a crisis. The family arrived late in the afternoon and we were allowed to see him in the critical care unit several times, each time progressively sadder and more frightening as our awareness of the seriousness grew. In Critical Care, two nurses hovered over him and a huge array of machines blinked on and off. Numerous IV pouches hung on the rods and he had tubes everywhere. A sense of crisis hovered in the air as we all knew that he might not live through the night or through the surgery. He was already bleeding internally and the aneurism could “blow” at any minute. The time of surgery was changed several times—from “this evening” to Saturday and then to Friday morning. The family was teary—there was that awful sense of no time left to say all the things that needed to be said. A squeeze of the hand and “I love you!” had to express all we wanted to say. 

As I drove home on the dark and silent roads late that night, I was determined to send him to surgery with a spiritual focus. When we gathered in the Critical Care Waiting Room on Friday, our pastor, Sara, joined us. We were allowed to see him before surgery in small groups. When grandson Ethan and I were alone with him, we held his hands and the three of us repeated the 23rd Psalm and The Lord’s Prayer. After that, the family came in together, with Sara, who led us in a beautiful litany. When the others left, I stayed with Max as he waited to go to surgery. I held his hand, and he and I repeated The Jesus Prayer together, again and again. Finally about 11:15 am, the surgery team arrived and I went with him in the elevator to the door of surgery. I kissed him good-by and good-luck—and went off to join the others in the waiting room for a very long afternoon of waiting. The ladies who run the surgery and critical care waiting rooms are tough—and we were assigned seats in order for the doctor to find us quickly. The surgery to repair the aneurism took four-five hours. The surgeons had a mix-up and neither came out to talk to us, so we had to wait for Dr. Rumisek to finish another surgery. Then Max popped the stitches fighting the ventilator as he came out of anesthesia and was rushed back to the OR for three more hours of surgery to repair the graft and completely re-close the wound. The very weary surgeon told us at 10:30 pm that he had ordered Max to be “completely out” all night. Max was in surgery from 11:30 am until after 10:30 pm. In the midst of all this, Louisville had a blizzard Friday night, so I was trapped down there a couple of nights—got low on cash, clothing, etc., as everything in the city ground to a halt.

Saturday and Sunday in ICU were just awful; the more anti-agitation medicine they gave him, the more agitated he became. He kept pulling out his tubes, driving the nurses nuts. He removed the ventilator tube on Saturday morning and the stomach tube on Sunday morning, way ahead of schedule. The nurses have terms for removing-tubes- without-approval, and shook their heads angrily about Max. Sunday, he was even more restless, and kept moving from bed to chair–and then back again–which is quite a chore with tubes running everywhere. No sooner would we get him settled in bed then he would insist on moving to the chair. Sunday afternoon, I thought he was going to pull out the swan clamp in his jugular vein, and I was beside myself. This clamp is a 8-9 inch tube surgically inserted into the jugular vein and then used to inject meds directly into the blood stream. The nurses took me into the hall and explain that if he pulled it out–and blood spurted—they would be there in 30 seconds with pressure pads to “save” him. The image of that possibility was not comforting. Finally, late Sunday afternoon, Dr. Rumisek, the surgeon, was called. He came in and after examining Max, ordered the clamp removed. Then, Max became even more upset and told off the nurse, refused to lie down, and kept trying to escape. The nurse finally called security. Suddenly, four burly security guards arrived in the room. Max, shifting into principal mode and his
authoritarian principal voice, kept telling them he had to go down the hall and fix a problem. He really was not rational at all. The nurse said his condition is called ICU psychosis and the doctor later said it was drug induced– [Refuse to take Adavant!] –and exacerbated by the noise and lights of ICU. 

Finally, Dee and I were sent home and his lights were turned off, the thought being that no-stimulation would calm him down….Wrong! As soon as I got home, the phone rang, with the nurse supervisor on the line, saying Max was more agitated than ever. I called several family members for advice and then I called the nurse back and requested that he be allowed to walk around some to calm him down, telling her I was sending Master Sergeant Rick Smith, our son-in-law. I knew that if Max could walk, and regain a sense that he was in control of his body, that he would settle down. The doctor agreed and our son-in-law and our grandson walked him around the ICU, taking about fifteen laps. After that, Max agreed to lie down again. This ICU was for patients on respirators—-someone up and fighting like Max was not in their protocol. Fortunately, that night he had a male nurse who calmed him down—the female nurses tended to be bossy, which set him off. He went to sleep and slept for 22 straight hours. In the midst of that, the doctor sent him to a private room, with an executive decor, saying he wanted to remove Max from the distraction of noise and lights in ICU. That move helped, too. They asked me to stay with him Monday night and brought in a recliner for me, so everything calmed down. When he awakened on Tuesday at 4 a.m., he was himself again.

By Wednesday, he was up walking around and recovering rapidly. The doctor sent us home two days earlier than expected—and it is so nice to be home again. When I stood in the living room the night before the surgery, I wondered if he would ever come home again. 

When we asked the surgeon to describe the aneurism, he gestured with his hands—-
the whole length of the aorta was the size of an orange in width. They also had to remove the spleen as its aorta was also greatly enlarged. Dr. Rumisek, a man of few words, said, “He beat the odds!” Later he told us “The aneurysm was the size of a football.” No wonder the surgeon and cardiologist got so excited and told me Max was the luckiest man alive, in that they caught it in the nick of time. They were astonished that he had survived. I teased Max, saying the operating room video will probably make all the thoracic/vascular conferences. Max’s scar is a good 14 inches; this was quite
a surgery—none of that LAP stuff. They cut him wide open and removed his internal
organs to get to the aneurism.

We were on many prayer lists. Our family, our friends, and especially our church family
have been beyond wonderful. We felt we were carried along during the ordeal by their
prayers and love.

Do you miss school?, people ask. No, I reply, but I miss the kids. And, I do. The kids were fun, usually, and I loved working with teens. I also loved the atmosphere of high school—bubbly kids, sullen kids, confused kids, nice and pleasant kids, the drama and intrigue, the enthusiasms, the daily emotional fluctuations from high to low and back again, the excitement of encountering new ideas: of making projects [essays and research papers for English class] and reading new books, the pressure and intensity, the cliques and the loners, the kids like Justin who walked into my classroom and said, “Hi, I’m Justin and I’m gay!,” the kids who muttered their answers, the kids who talked and talked, the quiet kids who wrote profound essays, the loud kids who wanted to out-shout everyone, the kids who told me their secrets, the kids who wrote about their dreams, the kids who took on leadership roles, the kids whose faces lit up when I read poetry. Oh….I miss the kids and the fun of being in school. I miss my teacher friends and staff friends, too.

Of course, there are lots of things I do not miss: grading papers, data-processing grades, conferences with irked parents, among others. I figure I graded a lot of papers: thousands of research papers and essays, and tens of thousands of student journals, which I called “Logs,” one or two page typed journals on a variety of topics in a type of writing called “free writing.” Free Writing is a type of unstructured writing, a technique used to help students let their thoughts flow without stopping to correct construction errors; it is not quite stream-of-consciousness, but in the vicinity. In the early years of my teaching career I read and corrected tens of thousands of vocabulary sentences—probably a lesson in futility, but I persisted. Then, too, twenty thousand and more daily homework papers crossed my desk each year; I was a paper-a-day teacher, meaning that students had to complete some task and turn in the paperwork, daily or every other day. Daily tasks included vocabulary sentences, vocabulary definitions, punctuation and grammar exercises, paragraph responses to literature, notes from literature, questions and answers from literature. I was firm about students writing in response to a lesson and I checked to see what they had learned. Miffed students sometimes sniffed: busy work. But, the research on the importance of taking notes and of responding in writing to concepts in the lesson was on my side. The learning comes in making the written response…i.e., thinking on paper.

One of the “lessons” I took from my teaching career, that I use daily, involves transferring notes from one source into my brain and then from my brain into my computer. I mean, in my genealogy research, I transcribe notes from various sources by typing them into my computer program. If I just cut-and-paste, I don’t “learn” the content; I have merely mastered cut-and-paste. Far too many of my students did not grasp this concept: that the hands, the eyes, the ears, the voice [i.e. the senses] must be involved in learning. To quote Dr. Walter Palk, “The more senses involved in learning, the stronger the neural trace.” 

Thirty minute lunches, rushing to the restroom during passing period, pushing-pushing-pushing to get through the day and get all the tasks done, hall duty, sitting though stupid convocations, sitting though stupid committee meetings and boring in-service meetings, arguing with students about assignments—-lots of things to not miss.

What do I miss:

* the fun of working with teens
* the challenge of developing lessons that helped students learn specific concepts
* the dialogue and interaction with students

I miss the intellectual aspects of teaching Senior English. I miss teaching the vocabulary lists, teaching sentence structure, teaching writing techniques, teaching research skills, teaching all the aspects of expository composition. But, most of all, I miss working daily with the greatest literature written in my language. I miss reading Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and all of the other English poets. I miss reading poetry aloud, day after day. I miss the images, the metaphors, the alliteration and assonance, the grandeur of British poetry. I miss reading about the grim world of Beowulf and its warriors. I miss the panoply of The Canterbury Tales, the humor and wit, the spectrum of English life reflected so humorously in the characters. I miss the glories of Shakespeare, “Can I Compare Thee to a Summer Day?” I miss Hamlet, so depressed, uncertain, lost, confused, fencing metaphorically against his murderous uncle. I miss Milton. I miss Blake, “Little Lamb Who Made Thee?” I miss reading Pride and Prejudice, Cry, the Beloved Country, Jane Eyre. I even miss reading student responses and analysis of this great literature. 

While it is more politically correct, and true, to say that I miss the students, what I miss most vividly is the poetry and my daily immersion in the glories of the English language.

Mothers’ Day, 2007
Salem Presbyterian Church

My mother, Carol Jeanne Parsons Shafer, was a member of this congregation from 1960-1968. While she was here, she was a wife, a mother of three including two teens, a homemaker, a “minister’s wife,” an occasional organist, the director of the Children’s Choir, a university student working on her teaching certification and later her master’s degree, and an elementary teacher, among other duties. The word “multi-tasker” describes her life; she was busy. She was an equal partner with my father in all of her duties. When I read the following scripture, I think of my mother and the devoted care she gave to her family, her church, and her students.

Just as we know from the Parable of the Good Samaritan that everyone we encounter is our neighbor, we also know that we are all mothers and fathers to each other, husbands and wives to those we love and to the institutions we serve. I invite you to listen to this ancient scripture— those who are mothers, those who mother others, and those who have been mothered—and to think of how these ancient words describe a woman who is the CEO of her home and family, the administrator and manager of her life and the lives of her extended family—- a woman, single, married, divorced, or widowed—any woman who uses her skills to be the creative source within her home and her world, watching over, nourishing, protecting, caring, and mothering those who come within her realm.

Proverbs 31: Verses 10-31 are an acrostic poem, each verse beginning with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Proverbs 31:10-31

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still dark; and provides food
for her family and portions for her servant girls.
She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable; and her lamp does not go out at night. 
In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. 
When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. 
She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom and dignity, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.
‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. 
Give her the reward she has earned and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”
“This is the Word of the Lord”

The Proverbs 31 woman is charitable, entrepreneurial, fashionable, financially astute, healthy, industrious, loving, managerial, productive, prudent, resourceful, responsible, reverent, self-confident, skilled, trustworthy, virtuous, wise, praiseworthy as a wife and mother. She represents the essence of womanliness and is the mother to us all.