So, I was fortunate enough to spend the Sunday before Christmas attending a Christmas cantata with my family, sitting with my niece and nephew.  It was an enlightening experience, sitting with small children in a crowded chapel on a packed church pew......like while we were sitting there, waiting for the bread and water, and my nephew got his hands (=my mother handed him) a frog hand puppet.  In the (near) dead silence of the most reverent part of the meeting he slips the puppet over his little fist, turned to me and said "RRRRRRiiiiiiibbbbiiitttt!" in a voice akin to that of a sports announcer announcing the third triple play in the first inning of the game.  Yeah, well.....Sounds remarkably similar to this past Halloween, which happened to fall on a Sunday, which also happened to be the day for my niece's children's program at church.  We all showed up, shuffled into the very front pew and waited for the entertainment to begin.  Again, during the quietest moment of the meeting, my nephew stands up on the bench, turns to face the congregation, all of whom are seated behind him, throws his blanket over his head and begins to imitate a particularly vocal ghost.  It went something like this "WWWWHHHHOOOOOO!!!!" (my sister)-"you need to sit down, please......"  "WWWWHHHHHOOOOOO!!!!!!"  My sister, struggling in vain to make contact between rear and upholstery......"NO! 'TOP!" (translated, "No! Stop!")   "WWWWWHHHHHOOOOO!!!!! NO! 'TOP!"  My sister, gathering him gently from the pew and beating a quick retreat.  My nephew, down the length of the aisle "NO! 'TOP!  MAMA! DADDY, DADDY, GRANDADDY!"  (Can you tell who his advocates are?)  Fast forward to this Sunday.....I've got the kid in a choke-hold by the collar of his sweater because it is the only way I can keep him from taking a literal face dive over the back of the pew.  He's got one foot thrown over the back and is resting precariously on the thin wooden trim decorating the top of the bench.  "No! Huhlehahleh! (Which somehow translates in some foreign tongue into my name.....)  Just out of curiosity, I wonder why they make white crayons; it doesn't show up on paper.  Want to know what it does show up on?  Church pews.

You know how they say "Watched water never boils"? I've often wondered if that means that neglected water actually boils faster or if it simply eventually boils, unlike 'watched' water which never boils? It's a valid question, right? Well, apparently, 'un-watched' holidays get here faster than 'watched' holidays.  I think Christmas got here faster than Friday does in the course of a typical week.  We've already had a little snow down here, which is remarkable to say the least and my niece has already found where I hid her stash of presents.  It is officially Christmas.  I've had to parry questions about gifts and divert begging about how much longer the wait will be.  And that was just my parents.
I was on the floor playing with my niece the other day and we were putting the furniture in this dollhouse I used to have when I was her age.  It is supposed to be a log cabin style house with a country store downstairs.  There is a small plastic pot-bellied stove which fits into a corner and I was explaining to her that people used to use that to stay warm.  I showed her where the wood was put into the stove through the tiny door at the front, and where the pipe fit which funneled the smoke through the chimney.  "How did Santa fit down something that little?" Oh. Crap.  "Ummm......" She waited expectantly.  "Ahhhh....."  I could see her doubt in my abilities begin to grow.  "That's a great question.  For your mother."  Hey, at least that meant she was paying attention to my explanation, I suppose.
I'm hoping sincerely she never meets this one little boy who came into the library a few months ago, even if he was as cute as the devil.  I would say he was about four, as it was during school hours and he didn't appear to be quite old enough yet, anyway.  He was dressed to the nines in a little button-up 'man shirt' and khaki pants.  Unlike most kids who just have clothes on, he was 'dressed.'  His mother left him standing at the desk for a moment while she went outside to get the library bag out of the car.  Striking up a conversation as I checked out the books, I asked if he was going to receive a visit from the Easter Bunny.  "Yeah, I guess."  Then he leaned into the desk and looked at me intently.  In a very conspiratorial whisper, and as if attempting to help ease the burden of my ignorance, he said, "But you know, its really just my parents."  I was still laughing when his mother returned and recited to her the information I had just received. I asked if he had put that one together on his own; she replied that as far as they could tell, he had.  "How long do you think....."  "S-A-N-T-A?"  "Yeah."  "This year will probably be the beginning of the end, we think."  Sad, I know.  But it was still funny.  And, truth be told, I liked that kid.  He was logical and level headed without being a know-it-all.  I just hope it is a few more years before my niece meets anyone that pragmatic.
But, as logical and pragmatic as I like for things to be, come this time of year, I'm just as much of a push-over as the next girl.  I get all weepy every time I hear 'Silent Night' or 'Joy to the World.'  Heaven forbid I hear some kid sing 'Away in a Manger,' no matter how off-key it might be.  I love Christmas music; in fact, if no one else is around, I'm 100% okay with playing it in June or July.  So, it is a bit odd to find a 'traditional' carol that I'm not too fond of.  However, for some reason, 'I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day' had never really been one I cared for too much.  I use 'had' because I changed my mind last year.  I caught a re-run of an Christmas program with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with guest Edward Herrmann.  For some reason, I've just always liked him anyway.  He played a great grandad in the Gilmore Girls.  I've always loved Longfellow's poems, but to be honest, I never really paid much attention to the words of  'I Heard the Bells.'  Then, on this program, I learned the story behind the words, and suddenly the meant something more. 

There are some who argue that because there is pain and suffering in the world, because we endure deprivation, sorrow or loss, there must be no loving Father in Heaven.  It is claimed that those who believe otherwise live in a fool's paradise, using religion as a crutch to avoid reality.  There is nothing more real than pain, anyone can attest to that fact.  Yet, it is as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "...ponder for a moment that the great religions were first preached in a world without chloroform."  That Longfellow, or anyone else for that matter, could live through the experience of mortality and still find joy is a testament that there is hope.  It is not an avoidance of reality, but rather a recognition of  what reality truly is.  Mark Twain once said that a pessimist is just an optimist who never arrived.  That joy can be found in the sound of ringing bells, a joy at nothing more than the mere sound, or the fact that one can hear, that joy can be found in feeling the heartbeat of a small child as you rock him to sleep, that joy can be found in listening to Handel's Messiah or a four-year old sing "Give, Said the Little Stream,"  that joy can be found in dandelions as well as orchids is a proof that there must be a loving Heavenly Father.  I have a hard time believing that joy developed during an evolutionary process.  It does nothing to perpetuate a species or ensure survival.  What other purpose can it serve than to remind us that we are loved?  Those who populate the scriptures from which we teach hope did not teach of a Savior of all mankind from the comforts of well-furnished ancestral halls.  If pain were the only reality, joy would not exist.  That joy can exist in spite of pain, and sometimes because we have experienced pain and yet somehow survived, is neither naive nor idealistic.  It is, in some ways, a rather sobering fact.  Joy is not superficial, nor is it transient.  It is sometimes masked by loss or sorrow, but, unlike pleasure or even simple happiness, it is not lost unless it is relinquished.  That is what is so moving about Longfellow's poem, now.  Not necessarily the words, but the conviction which was found in the pain which became the source of those words.  "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep...."  Merry Christmas, everyone. 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I was just thinking the other day about how everything must be in its proper season.  Not just right time, right place, but right order, right waiting period.  This led to thinking about how this applies to something as small as words; the same words, used differently, in a different context or a different order, have incredibly different meanings.  I mean, saying that your shirts are laundered is a good thing, but saying your money is laundered lands you in prison.  Think about it.....seriously.  So, as hard as it is to be patient, I have to tell myself all the time: not just right time, right place, but right order, right amount of time spent waiting.  Nothing earth-shattering, just difficult to adhere to for the long haul, I suppose. 

I have to admit that even as a kid, I wasn't so caught up in Halloween as far as the candy was concerned.  My mom would make my sister and me these really great costumes, but other than that I could pretty much take it or leave it.  What I loved, and still love, about Halloween is the atmoshpere; not the overly hyped, commericial horror movie kind of atmoshpere, but the atmosphere that revolves around the history of legends and tales.  Ghost tales used to be original, now they're just....well, computer generated.  I mean, who else remembers the first time they read The Tell Tale Heart or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Just as it was tradition to watch The Snowman every year at Christmas we had to watch the 1958, Bing Crosby narrated Legend of Sleepy Hollow every year at Halloween.  There was also this other cartoon, The Old Mill, produced in 1937 that also had a great eerie tone.  (Even with all of the new technology now, the old-school stuff is still the best.)  Its odd when you think about it, people are the only animals who enjoy being frightened.  Go figure.


As a kid, Night on Bald Mountain freaked me out to no end.  I adored Disney's Fantasia, but I would make my mom turn it off as soon as the first notes played.  It was the same freaked-outedness that came in later years when hearing the first few notes of the theme song to Unsolved Mysteries.  Sometimes you do wonder why some editor(s) thought this was a good idea for children......Obviously they didn't remember some of the disconcertingly vivid nightmares you can have as a child.  (I was going to put up a clip from that one, but, honestly, I still find it too disturbing.....And think, some people wanted to ban Winnie the Pooh because he doesn't wear pants.  Clearly they've never seen Night on Bald Mountain.)

(Nope, haven't read this, but it fit, so.......)

Went to the county fair this evening, just to experience the atmosphere.  Something about the mixed smells of fried food, spun sugar, hamburgers and farm animals, eh?



I had the opportunity this weekend to photograph the wedding of some friends of mine, which was fun in itself, but also allowed for the fun of 'getting there.'  I love road trips-the feeling of actually going somewhere.  I don't know how to adequately explain it, but there is something about having a destination, but getting to see new things along the way that is just......fun.  Add in the fact that I've always loved the fall, maybe even more than spring, even though it's a close competition, but in the end, like I said, I think fall wins out.  Which is why I completely understood, when I read C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy for the first time, I understood to what he was referring when he said that the first time he felt that pleasant pang of something resembling, but not entirely like, nostalgia was when reading Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, and being affected by the idea of Autumn.  Anyway, to get on with the story, my mom and I had to go down near the coast, so the landscape changes somewhat between here and there, but it was great.  We stopped at the Wilbur Tyndall Tractor Museum.  Seriously, that was the name, and according to the sign, volunteers were needed.  So, although no one was there (not enough volunteers, I guess) we got out and took some pictures.  Down the road a bit was a road-side stand selling pumpkins, chrysanthemums, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, jellies and jams, and various other items.  (You know you've been a history major too long when you stop to photograph pumpkins and start thinking about how they were part of the Columbian Exchange.....)  But, the best part was, I found a guy I wanted to bring home.  He was adorable.  He was friendly without being annoying.  He actually whimpered when I had to leave.  And did I mention he was the cutest thing I've ever seen?  I have photographic evidence that he actually exists, too......

You also know you've been a history major too long when you take pictures of gears and start to think about Descartes and his mechanical theory of the universe....and I wonder why I have no social life.....

Didn't I tell you he was adorable?

Is it September already?!  When did it become September?!  When did August happen?!  Did we have August this year?  I feel like the character Ned in one of my favorite movies, 'Holiday,' with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.  During the opening scenes of the movie, Ned wakes with a bad hangover and a butterfly bandage on his head.  After church services that morning someone casually asks, "Have a little accident there, Ned?"  "So they tell me; I don't seem to have been there when it happened."  I don't seem to have been there when August happened.  Does that ever happen to anyone else?  Please say it does, even if it doesn't, lie.  Anyway, here's how I know August happened:  August 25.  "What is the historical significance of August 25," I hear you asking from across the webbed universe?  Simply this: public school commenced.  And after the torrential floods, a rainbow appeared, promising the earth would never again be so cursed....at least until June 2011.  I like children, really, I do.  I like them like you like looking at a python at the zoo.  It's fine as long as he is on the opposite side of a plexiglass wall, but let him slither out among the throng and suddenly things shift dramatically....No, really, I do like them.  At the public library you have to like them because the end of school means your sudden assignment as foster parents to nearly half the city's population.  But, when all's said and done, it can be worth the medication.  (However, you do have to learn to live with a perpetually bleeding heart.)  Anyway, August 25-first day of school!  I think I even saw some scraps of manna still on the ground when I left the house that morning....It brought to mind a few things: first and foremost, this brilliant commericial from eons ago:
 
I hope the marketing department got a standing ovation for that creative achievement.  They deserved it.  All the librarians walked around humming that tune and smiling.  Later that afternoon the phone rang.  Me:  "Hello, --- Library,"  "Yes, I have a question."  Long pause.... "Yes ma'am?"   "Is this the library?"  Me, grinding teeth, "Yes ma'am...."  "Do you have after school programs?"  "In theory or in practice?"  "I'm sorry?"  "Nothing, never mind....No ma'am, we don't."  "You don't?"  "No ma'am."  Click.  Me, hanging up receiver:  "Who wants me to pick them up a milkshake on my way back from lunch?"  Other librarians, frantically scrambling for spare change.
At work, we all like children, but we can also find a rather morbid sense of sympathy for all of the wicked stepmothers, always painted as the villain, in children's stories.  We are the wicked stepmothers.  Reviewing the summer with the rosy tint of nostalgia photoshopping out the more depressing hues, this clip from Bill Cosby came to mind:
   
Which then made me think of another clip from that same stand-up.  (Keep in mind, I do like children,  really....)

All prospective parents should be required by some pre-parenting class to work one summer in the public library......We had a group of children frequently come in throughout the summer that we assumed after a few days were siblings.  Why did we make that assumption?  Because they bickered constantly.  I overheard the youngest, of I would say about five or six years, say to his older brother, "You do and I will slap you into outer space."  Personally, I kinda believed the kid.  He was short, but short people learn to be tough.....

I don't know if there are any statistics to vindicate my opinion, but I have an extremely deeply rooted opinion that hot weather, truly sweltering weather, makes people crazy.  And it's not just the whole 'three days in the desert and you start seeing ice cream stands' kind of crazy.  We've been topping 100 on the thermometer for the past few hundred years, or at least since the middle of July.  As if in synchronization, insanity begins to show glimpses of itself, finally revealing its face in all of its glaring glory just as the needle quivers over the '100' mark.  And then, when all outdoor activity is rendered impossible by threats of dehydration, heat stroke, and death, everyone simultaneously descends upon the library. 
If I or any of my co-workers actually knew how to play poker it is a given that we could never play each other; after a few days like these past few, we all know the stress induced tics and muscle spasms of the others.  In a group-therapy kind of way it brings us a bit closer together; something about the shared sympathy among soldiers as you watch a building full of heat-crazed 'people' rattling the bars of their cages. 
Think I'm exaggerating?  Let me take you down the rabbit-hole, then......

Just the other day, any typical day, we had a swarm of children, led by none other than Conan the Barbarian himself, fall on us in the wrath of boredom.  I grabbed my whip, chair and black top-hat.  "Don't turn that off, please!"  "Don't press that button!"  "Stay on your side of the counter, please!" "No running!"  "Don't stand up on the couch, it'll tip over.....Actually, you know what, go ahead.  Have at it with that one....."  "When did you last wash your hands?"  "Where are your shoes?"  "Where is your mother?!" "Don't point the scanner at your eyes unless you want grow up to be Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder......"  etc. etc.  Having sucked down about five bottles of water that day, due to the heat, I took a short break and walked back to the staff restroom.  The door was closed and I heard the sound of running water, and knowing that two of my co-workers were at the front desk, I assumed it was the third.  I walked back out to the desk, patiently awaiting my turn with some slight sense of building panic.  Suddenly, the third co-worker appeared.  Now, I'm definitely more of an English person than math, but I can count to four.  Being neither a math person nor Sherlock Holmes in the powers of deduction, I was still able to grasp that something was amiss....all four were at the desk, but water was running in the restroom......did I really want to know?  I knocked on the door, and, receiving no answer, proceeded to open it.  No one.  Nothing.  Only the toilet is making a rather strange sound......I removed the 'lid,' but saw nothing amiss.  I went back out to inform my boss, and was detained by a patron.  Finishing with the patron, I made my way towards the back, only to be met by a sound which seemed somewhat out of place.  I didn't know why, or even what the sound was reminiscent of....Then it hit me.  The eruptions of Mt. St. Helen and Old Faithful.  A new island being created in the tropics.  The sound of a toilet spewing water ceiling high.  Panic and disgust pushed aside, we combined efforts and attempted to stem the angry tide.  The floor was now half an inch deep; fortunately it was clean water.  4:30 found me with mop and bucket, swabbing deck.  As I'm attempting to soak up the remains of Hurricane Katrina of the public library, a co-worker stepped back and informed us that there had been a shooting in the neighborhood and the perpetrator was not as yet apprehended; the police suggested we lock the doors.  Great, I am shoe-deep in toilet water and now on lock-down.  At 4:30.  Thirty more minutes and I would've been home-free.  Just then I heard the metallic tinkling of the ice-cream truck making its afternoon rounds.  Playing, I kid you not, Christmas carols.  "Deck the Halls," to be precise.  It was like something straight from hades.  For some reason the metallic sound of mechanized music reminds me of some 1950's horror movie.  You can just see it: half a dozen or so All-American be-sweatered and saddle-oxford sporting Bobby-Soxers enjoying a day at the fair.  That same metallic tinkling commences, strangely juxtaposed and ominously foreshadowing the coming slaughter.  Finished with the floor, I went back to the counter, where my boss was, to inform her of as much, and ask if Public Works was on its way.  (Hope springs eternal.)  As I approached, I became privy to a conversation between my boss and a child who was in the act of asking my boss what her favorite swear word is......Today's not a good day to ask that, Tonto, you might get an answer.  I was called away by a man who needed to apply for a library card.  As I was filling out the information in our system, he began casually chatting.  "You know," he said, "I don't think I could work in a library....."  Apparently this was not a rhetorical statement, as he waited in vain for a moment for me to ask why.  "I would get too bored.....Just sitting here all day like this, and I don't really like to read that much......"

Today I began a P.G. Wodehouse novel; as I was reading I began to think how much of a book depends on the first lines, and likewise, how much depends on the last lines.  So, I began to think-what are some of my favorites?  There are of course, the standards: "It is a truth universally acknowledge, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."  "Two houses/both alike in dignity/In fair Verona where we lay our scene/From ancient grudge break to new mutiny/Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." "All children, except one, grow up." "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..." "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."  "The Opera Ghost really existed." "It was a dark and stormy night." (Okay, just kidding about that last one......)  I started thinking, though, how many other, lesser known, but equally great opening and closing lines there are:  "Three hundred and forth-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today the Parisians were awakened by the sound of loud peals from all the bells within the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town." (Hunchback of Notre Dame)  Although everyone knows the opening line from "A Tale of Two Cities," I personally think the last line is the most powerful: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."  (Of course this could have something to do with the fact that I have been completely in love with Sidney Carton since I was thirteen-I still think Lucy Manette was a total idiot for not marrying him......)  "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.  It was true, too."  And, simply because this book scared the absolute be-jeebies out of me the first time I read it-"The offing was barred by a black band of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." ("Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad)  "Once there was a tree....and she loved a little boy." ("The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein-the absolute epitome of what every children's book should aspire to be.)  "Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency." ("The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis)  "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."  ("A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean.)  And, although it is a paragraph rather than a sentence, I also love the last paragraph of that novella, "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.  I am haunted by waters."  (Have to love it, don't you?)  "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."  ("The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis)  "Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently."  ("The Horse and His Boy" by C.S. Lewis)  Another paragraph I love is from Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant"- "Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden.  He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child.  And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.  'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant; 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.' 'Nay!' answered the child; 'but these are the wounds of Love.' 'Who art thou?' said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.  And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."  "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation."  "And for the support of this Declaration, with firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, or Fortunes, and our sacred Honour."  "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"  "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measures of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
This is why, when writing papers all through my school years, the introduction and the conclusion were the most difficult to construct.  I mean really, with that level of precedent set, what can you really do with a paper on the effects of the Bon Marche department store on the retail world of mass-production consumerism?

(Atticus and Scout Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, the BEST book/movie ever in existence....seriously.)

Although I know it is now past Independence Day, and I therefore should be posting about history and our nation (that will come, never fear), I still have yet to post about Father's Day.  Let me just say, my mama is my best friend, but I think I'll always still be a Daddy's girl.  Plain and simple.  I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time and finding Atticus a very familiar character.  I'm not sure how he managed it, but my father was quite a bit like Atticus in that he did not expect my sister and I to behave like adults, but neither did he treat us like children, if that makes any sense.  It's one thing I've learned to appreciate very much as I've grown older.  However, there have been some amusing incidents between my father and I during those transitional years; I suppose it is just inevitable that parents will invariably revert to 'parenthood' no matter the number of years you've long since stopped wearing pigtails.  We were sitting around the dinner table one evening, my mother, father and I.  I was saying something to my mother, apparently in a very animated fashion, and, being my mother's daughter, I was using hand gestures to accentuate my statements.  Not "You'll shoot your eye out!" style gestures, just vague waves of the hand.  My father watches me for a moment, reaches across the dinner table, takes the fork out of my unresisting-due-to-shock grip, places it on the table and explains simply, "You'll hurt yourself."  The 'amusing' point of this story?  I was a full time college student managing a job at the public library and another at the college, two time-consuming jobs at church, and a few minor photography jobs on the side. This memory relapse is apparently common at some point to all fathers, as so deftly illustrated by this scene from "Father of the Bride."

It is common also, however, for daughters always to remain their father's daughter.  For some reason, I'm always more pleased when I can make my father smile than anyone else; it's always been that way, I suppose.  A couple of months ago I was sitting in the breakfast room in a hotel in Illinois and overheard a few words of the conversation next to me.  Two women were discussing 'Take Your Child to Work Day,' and how fun it was to pack a lunch for two and eat in the office.  I had to smile because it was so different from the lunches my sister and I shared with our father on those days.  My father is third generation lumber man, and so we grew up out of doors.  I think we stayed filthy as often as we stayed clean, and enjoyed every minute until we discovered it was considered 'work.'  We tromped through dense thickets of briars, slogged through marshy swamps, came home smelling of gasoline, machine oil and tree sap and covered in insect bites.  It was a great way to grow up.  It's why I became a librarian.  Anyway, every morning before we headed out, our father would give us the lecture: don't get around the machinery-they can't see/hear you and could easily accidentally slice you into deli meat, don't distract the workers and if a tree starts to fall, run like hell.  (Sorry for the language. And no, my father never swore in front of us, but that was the general idea, trust me; we could understand that even at that tender age.)  For lunch we would stop in the convenience store and get Lance crackers and a soda, drop the tailgate and feast.  It was glorious. 
My obssession with history began while listening to my father's stories of his father during the war, and his own experiences growing up during the tumultuous years after that horrendous event.  One story from my own childhood is one that only in the years succeeding has become amusing.  Growing up, I had nearly every orthodontic device contrived by man.  I once tripped the metal detector at the airport.  True story.  Anyway, one day, when I was in fourth grade, all of the bottom brackets of my braces, excluding the two on the molars, popped off, leaving the wire free.  It immediately hooked itself around the brackets on the top row of teeth, creating a synthetic form of lock-jaw.  Well, here's a pretty pickle.  I finally conveyed my emergency (in a non-vocal manner) to the teacher who immediately marched me to the front office and phoned my father.  What transpired afterwards, in the way of phone calls to the orthodontist I have no idea-my part in it picks up when my father actually arrived, in person, in the school's front office.  With a pair of newly acquired nail clippers soaking in alcohol.  I was instructed to lie down on the couch, like a shrink patient, which, trusting in my father's superior judgement, I did.  He then proceeded to do emergency orthodontic work in the head office, clipping the thin wire with the clippers and telling me to 'go back to class, we'd get more brackets put on tomorrow.'  Kid you not, you can't make this kind of stuff up, trust me.  Isn't it always nice to have inventive minds around to handle the unexpected?
There are hundreds of other stories about my dad I could share, but I suppose I'll wrap up by saying that Father's Day or any other day, I'll always love my Atticus dearly, no matter how old I get. 

(Just a note: since things are always better with a good soundtrack, I've added a few arrangements of some favorite hymns for this post.....I know, I know.....I'm a dork.....too late to change that now, though.)

In writing this post I am committing an historical faux-pas; relating things out of the order in which they happened.  Yet, it is the post which has been the most difficult.  It may sound insane to say that a vacation can be emotional, but for me, the entire trip to Illinois was emotional.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that each of the places we visited, each of the people we learned more about, had already claimed a portion of my heart and mind from a very young age.  C.S. Lewis was as dear a friend to me as any child could have, Lincoln, as I said last time, was a hero to a small child born over a hundred years after his death, and Nauvoo....well, if a city can, of itself, be dear to the heart, Nauvoo is to mine.  In Hebrew 'Nauvoo' means 'beautiful place' or 'place of rest.'  I suppose to the physical eye, it is a fairly typical mid-western town.  Not very prepossessing in terms of wealth, prestige or glamour.  Its beauty is of a different sort.  The history of Nauvoo is short, but not simple.  In 1839, after fleeing Missouri, the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints settled on the banks of the Mississippi.  There they built from the swamps a home, a beautiful place, a place of rest.  There also they began, in 1841, the construction of a temple.  It sits on the highest point of land, overlooking the broad, majestic river.  Yet, the Saints were driven again to flee their homes, this time leaving behind not only buildings and stores, homes and gardens, but the beautiful place of rest they had sacrificed so much to build for themselves out of wilderness.  It was here also, that Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were taken from their families and carried to Carthage, from where they did not return.  The feelings one has, standing in a place such as this are indescribable.  I thought I would feel pain at the thought of the pain and loss which was endured, but I didn't.  The peace which was mixed into the mortar and stones, plowed into the fields, still remained.  As the Saints were driven to the banks of the Mississippi, they watched the temple they had built burn.  Yet, here I was, standing on the steps and looking at the same river they had been forced to cross in the month of February.  The temple was rebuilt.  People were once again able to enter its doors.  

My mom and I, on our last day, drove down to the place where the members crossed to the opposite shore; as I stood there, many things filled my mind.  I thought of the part, in Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant," after he has forced the children out of his beautiful garden, where they had been wont to play.  Wilde wrote, "They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside.  'How happy we were there,' they said to each other."  I remember watching the short animated film of that story as a child, and how, when the narrator spoke that line, the lonely longing of those words struck me.  "How happy we were there."  As well, I thought of the line from one of my favorite musicals, "Fiddler on the Roof."  The Jews are being forced from their village of Anatevka to wander where they will; some of the villagers are standing in Tevye's yard, saying their goodbyes.  One line always stands out to me-"Anatevka.  Where else could Sabbath be so sweet?"  The day was overcast and cool, but not unpleasant.  The grass was deep and green, tree branches trailed in the flowing river-how my heart broke for those who had left this beautiful place.  But, as we were standing there, listening to the peaceful lapping of the water on the shore, looking for the last time on Nauvoo, the bells of the temple began to toll.  A peace which carried with it a certain power of strength and courage became so tangible it was nearly palpable.  I myself, in only two days, had come to love this city, and the people in it.  There was Elder and Sister Wilson, a man who worked in the sandwich shop where we ate two or three times, and the countless others we had come to truly love, through their kindness.  It was indeed a beautiful place, with beautiful people.  I finally realized then, that the same reason the members had to leave was the same reason they could leave this place of rest.  One of the only consistent things about history is the human race's inability to reconcile differences of religion, therefore the early Latter-Day Saints were fleeing their homes.  Yet, because of that same religion for which they were being persecuted, they realized that the place of rest was not in the city they had built, but within the knowledge they had of their Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ.  This they could carry with them, even if they must leave behind their possessions and trust in His care, that they would find another place of rest, whether in this life or the next.  This may sound cliche, but it was an important realization for me to arrive at.  That realization was the peace which permeated that verdant corner of Illinois.  That was what made it beautiful.  It was re-enforced to me that, although this life is fraught with pain, loneliness, uncertainty, loss and fear, it is also full to the brim with love, kindness, beauty and, if we know to which source to look, peace.  Not a peace of mortal proportions, but a peace in the knowledge that we are indeed precious in the sight of Heavenly Father, that our pains and sorrows do not go unnoticed, nor our prayers unheeded.  They may not be answered in the manner in which we would like, but that does not mean they go unheeded.  

There is a book I have on my shelf, which, should the house suddenly spontaneously combust, and I only had a moment to choose which books to escape with, and it came down to this or my C.S. Lewis, I'm sure dear Lewis would understand.  It is called, "Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?" by Jeffrey R. Holland.  It is a book about Christmas.  Notice I didn't say, a Christmas book, but a book about Christmas.  Please forgive the long quote, but bear with me, it is worth it, I think.  

"As they made their way toward the temple that day, the Holy Spirit was resting upon a beloved elderly man named Simeon, one whom the scriptures describe as 'just and devout.'  It was revealed to this gentle and venerable man that he would not die before seeing the Messiah-"the Lord's Christ," as Luke phrases it.  The Spirit then led him to the temple, where he saw a young carpenter and his even younger wife enter the sanctuary with a new-born babe cradled in his mother's arms.  Simeon, who had waited all his life for "the consolation of Israel," took that consolation in his arms, praised God, and said: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.  And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.  And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.' He was joyously happy.  He had lived to see the Son of God be born.  He had held the child in his very arms.  He could now die the happiest man in all of Jersualem, maybe in all the world.  But his joy was not of the superficial kind.  It was not without its testing and trying....his joy had something to do with 'the fall and rising again of many in Israel,' and with this child's life-or at least his death-which would be like a sword piercing through his beloved mother's soul.  We might well ask, "Was such an ominous warning, such a fateful prophecy, appropriate in this season of joy?  Surely such was untimely, even unseemly, at that moment-when the Son of God was so young and tender and safe, and his mother so thrilled with his birth and his beauty?"  Our answer is, yes, it was appropriate and important.  The true meaning, the unique and lasting and joyous meaning of the birth of this baby, would be in the life he would lead and especially in his death, in his triumphant atoning sacrifice and in his prison-bursting resurrection.  It is the life at the other end of the manger scene that gives this moment of nativity in Bethlehem its ultimate meaning.  Special as this child was and divine as was his conception, without that day of salvation wherein he would gain an everlasting victory over death and hell on behalf of every man, woman, and child who would ever be born-until that day should come-this baby's life and mission would not be complete.  Worse yet, without that triumphant atonement and resurrection he might have been remembered only as one born in abject poverty, scorned in his own native village, and tortured to death by a ruthless Roman regime that knew everything about torture and death.  But wise old Simeon understood all of this-that the birth was ultimately for the death-and it thrilled his soul that salvation was come.  Yes, for me the most important Christmas visitor of all may have been old Simeon, who, not in the absence of hard days and long years but because of them, would sing with us tonight at the top of his voice, 'Joy to the world, the Lord is come; let earth receive her King!...No more will sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground; he'll come and make the blessings flow, far as the curse was found.'"  

The same reason the inhabitants of Nauvoo were forced to leave was the same reason they could leave.  Although they stood on the banks and watched their homes burn, that burning could not destroy the knowledge they possessed.  That is what I learned from Nauvoo, the beautiful place, the place of rest.