Eighty-Three Tomato Plants

A typical every-other-day harvest from my gardenThe other day I was chatting with Lois, the retiree who has been volunteering at the reception desk in our lobby. Lois cracks me up. I can't even begin to reproduce our conversation here, so let me just sum it up by saying that she's a dramatic, poetry-reciting, intuitive, twinkle-in-the-eye storyteller. At one point in our conversation, she suddenly popped out with: "I have 83 tomato plants in my garden this year."

"You WHAT???" I exclaimed. "Eighty-three? How on earth do you manage that? I have only eight, and I can't give them away fast enough."

"Well," she explained. "You know Wal-mart sells seeds. When they get their first seed packs in, they go for a dime a pack. I always watch for those first seeds. If you wait, you'll have to buy the little starts later for $2.99 a piece ... or even more. So I got a packet of tomato seeds and threw them out in a garden patch to sprout. And when they came up, there were eighty-three."

I laughed. "And then you couldn't bear to abort them," I said.

"That's right," she said. "I've been harvesting tomatoes and canning them."

Ick, I thought. I hate canned vegetables. Serve them fresh or freeze them, or even dry them and I'm okay. But I want to chew my food, and canning makes that less likely.

Since then I've been mulling over the implications of growing eighty-three tomato plants in one's garden.

And I've been thinking about whether there are spiritual lessons to be harvested from Lois's garden.

I'll be watching for that ten-cent Wal-mart seed sale next spring.

Barnaby and Cash

Barnaby has come to live with us, along with his sidekick "Cash" (to be featured at some other time).

Barnaby and Cash's "dad," our 24-year old, has decided to go back to school after graduating with a 4-year business degree a couple of years ago. He's quit his job on the west side of the mountains and moved back into the familiar digs of home and the community college in this valley.

So these two mild-mannered felines are wandering around, checking out the house and so far striking terror into the heart of our own sweet little Moca. A three-cat house is probably stretching it; we're waiting to see if the wished-for adjustment takes place or not. In the meantime, I'm appreciating the beauty of the two interlopers.

A Passing Observation

Does anyone else find it really ironic that someone can take a stance against abortion on one hand, and send their sons off to war on the other hand?

That's all I have to say about that.

P.S. Okay, that's not all I have to say about that. I tend to assume people can read my mind, and Nicole's comment reminds me that they can't! So I apologize for lack of explanation. Let me try again; be patient with me as I think aloud.

It seems to me that when you buy into the belief that life belongs to God, you can't have it both ways: you can't think for yourself and protect morality and ethics and trust the government or laws to do it for you.

Right now we have a government that doesn't protect the life of a child until shortly before birth. Neither do we have a government that is guaranteed to rightfully protect life after birth. In other words, abortion is allowable. And behaving aggressively in terms of taking the lives of people in other countries is also allowable, with the decision being that of the government, whoever that is.

So let's say you think that it's a moral issue that the life of a child prior to birth should be protected (as I do, for the most part; I won't get into specifics here on that issue). This is the question I was trying to ask: If you believe in individual moral responsibility regarding life at that point between conception and death, then how can you give up individual moral responsibility when it comes to your country going to war? That's what is very difficult for me to understand. Would you not also logically have to consider whether it was a "just war" in which you were participating, assuming you believe it is OK to kill in some circumstances? Would you not have to buy into an approach that would say, "I will fight in this war for my country, but not in that one"?

It just seems to me that our righteous indignations and the way we relate to the sanctity of life (I don't feel comfortable with that phrase, but it'll have to do for now) are rarely congruent or consistent. And that's where I find irony.

Integrity Versus Despair

Having interacted with several older folk lately, including retired employees of the university where I work and seniors at various churches, I've been thinking a bit about growing old. I realize--reminded by my sore feet and aching knees in connection with training to walk the marathon in a couple of weeks--that old age, with its accompanying physical implications, will be upon me seemingly in a flash. The conversations have reminded me that along with the physical fallout will come the changes of the mind.

I perceive that there are several ways that aging people can go in attitudes as they reach that time of life. In the area of human development, which was my area of study for my graduate studies, Erik Erikson described this stage as "Integrity vs. Despair." Erickson said that in this stage, if we're successful with the task we must accomplish, we will look back on life happily and feel content, "feeling fulfilled with a deep sense that life has meaning and we've made a contribution to life." If we don't negotiate this stage successfully, he said, we may feel despair over our experiences and perceived failures. If that is so, we fear death as we wonder if our lives served any purpose. Or, on the other hand, we may become extremely dogmatic in what we have to say, believing that only our views are correct. It's difficult for these older people to see the world through multiple perspectives, and thus they are less empathetic.

As I have watched, I've seen some older folk I know become aggressive and critical. I suppose that's the dogmatism showing up. They can make life extremely difficult for those around them, and are likely to end with some people around them breathing a huge sigh of relief when they're gone, sad though that may be. They get angry and lash out, and don't seem to realize the dynamics they're setting into play by their actions. Do they think of the ruined legacy they're building? It's almost as if they have to be horrible just to remind others that they exist and still have some sort of power in this world.

Others have become depressed and sort of withered away. They're not uplifting to be around as they voice negative views of themselves, and often of others as well. You want to comfort them, but they don't stay comforted. The stories are all bad. The attitudes are all sad. The sparkle that was once there is gone, and you just wish you could put it back, but it tires you out to try.

And then there are others who, as Erickson describes in his theory, achieve "integrity." I think my grandma (pictured here at about the age of 35) was one of those.** She may have said something negative at some time, but I don't remember it. I remember her avid interest in reading books, and her gentle interest in what her family members were doing. Often she would say, "I have so many blessings for which to be thankful," and then would start naming them, beginning with her two children and extending to her five grandchildren. It must not have been easy being old, getting herself out with her walker ever day to get exercise when she would rather have sat in her chair and read, needing help to get her dress over her head in the morning or having to tend to her false teeth every day. In fact, my parents remind me that she once said, "Getting old stinks." But I remember her as a lady in her late 80s who was content and focused in positive ways on others. I wish I had appreciated that more, at the time.

Now, as I think of it, I wonder if grandma had things that were ever sad in her life. Did she have any regrets? Any tough things that she wished hadn't been, or situations she'd lived through or participated in that she'd rather not remember? How can any person get through life without some of those? But I have no indication of any of those in her life, because she never spoke of them to me, never alluded to regrets or sorrows.

In some ways, I suppose I'm trying to prepare myself for growing old. I don't want to be the lady that is a pain in the rear of my former employers, coworkers or students. I don't want to be the guy who gets mad and speaks through gritted teeth because someone made a mistake in scheduling him for something. I don't want to be the person who disappears off the scene, becoming self-absorbed and not interacting with others, but just sort of fading away.

I want to count my blessings, like my grandma did. I want to sit and chatter and work with the volunteers who send out the care packages to college students. I want to tend the desk at the local gospel outreach organization and greet everyone who comes in with a smile and a quip. I want to be gracious about the times when I have to depend on someone else's schedule for getting around, or ask for help to do something. I want to be like that guy I see in the mornings who wears his funny rain hat while walking six miles with his cane, determinedly regaining his strength and mobility after his stroke. I want to be kind to myself when I'm becoming forgetful (I must admit, at times I feel like that has already begun). I want to be like my dear retired friend who lights up when a former student comes into the room and reminds them she's praying for them every day.

Getting old, they say, is not for the faint of heart. But I do think it can wear well on some folk. May the Good Lord help me go there graciously.

**There are other relatives to whom I could refer as examples, but I'll elect to protect the privacy of my family for the purposes of this post.

A TCK's Mood Lifter

I have been totally stressed out. Totally.

I've had to present orientation sessions this week. And tomorrow I team teach two "Craft of Teaching" sessions for faculty with a former colleague who's great, but he's driving 150 miles to come do it with me, so it's going to be "by chance" whether it goes well. I'm also the point person for three days of programming for 120 faculty from Thursday through Saturday. I want it to be good, but there's still so much to do.

And then yesterday, to top it all off, I realized I had double-scheduled a performance of men's chorus (for which I'm pianist) and my whole family being in Portland for the weekend of the marathon. There's no one else to blame for this fiasco. It was my fault.

This has not been good for my state of mind.

Then this morning I caught this video on Bloglines and it made me so happy I teared up and grinned at the same time. So here it is:



I can't explain it; you will just have to take my word for it as to how much this warms a Third Culture Kid's heart. It reminds me that the universe is much bigger than me, and that there are cool people all over this "big blue marble." Somehow that brings a bit of balance back to my perspective.

And for you readers who always ask "How did he do that, anyhow?" here's a bonus clip for you:


(Laurie C., I thought I saw the original clip in Bloglines from you, but I can't find it now.)

Ketchikan

Ketchikan treated us well. The morning, as we pulled into port, dawned bright and sunny over this colorful town.

The town is all a-bustle with boats and planes running hither and yon.

People even create special parking places for their planes. I suppose there’s a car garage hiding somewhere in that picture, as well.

The boats and planes are pretty much focused on one thing: salmon. We took a “duck tour” in an amphibious vehicle (truck/boat) that took us by this salmon cannery. See all the gulls hanging out on the water, waiting for the cannery throw-aways?

Being an old fishing village with a lot of men working on their own, Ketchikan had its own Creek Street for the “ladies of negotiable affections.” It’s a popular place to walk now; I kept thinking that we were seeing a sanitized version of a place that was once rather skanky.

My very, very favorite thing, though, was looking down in the creek and watching the salmon run. It was amazing! I’ve never seen anything like it. At first I challenged our 17-year old tour guide about the fish being salmon; they looked too dark. “No,” he said, “those are salmon. They’re turning black because they’re starting to rot. They’re here in the stream to spawn and then to die, and they’re almost dead already.”

Those fish were struggling to swim upstream through the rapids of this creek. If you look carefully, I caught the teeny nose tip of one fish starting to jump up in the top part of the photo. It was rather sad to see some of them struggling and then being washed backwards. They seemed awfully tired.

There were other nice things to see in town. My parents posed for me in front of a totem pole. I forgot to make them mimic the two little singing guys up on the totem behind them.

And now we wave an adieu to Alaska. Well, Mama does, anyhow. We’re on our way to home port in Seattle. Cheerio!

Glacier Bay

As always, clicking on the pictures makes them bigger and prettier.We woke up this morning to a foggy, low overcast as we glided into Glacier Bay.

Thankfully the overcast lifted enough to see the magnificent Margerie Glacier at the top of the inlet. She’s a beauty, her jagged 200-year old chunks jutting into the air as they approach the final edge of their trip down from the ice fields.

A tribe of seals was hanging out on a broken-off piece of glacier, waiting for something to happen.

A National Geographic boat loaded with sightseers waited, too.

Sure enough, Margerie emitted various cracks and thunders, and then she calved. That falling chunk was at least as big as a house!

On the way out of the bay we passed Lamplugh (“Lam-ploo”) Glacier at the mouth of the Johns Hopkins Inlet.

And we bid adieu to Glacier Bay, leaving it to its foggy quietude.

Oh yes, just outside the mouth of the bay I spotted the distinctive dorsal fin of a Minke whale, and later the tail of a humpback in the distance, but I was too surprised to catch them on camera. Sorry.

Skagway

Our cruise ship peers up the main street of Skagway.Our visit to Skagway began with a tour of the Jewell farm, which made its reputation in growing vegetables—particularly rhubarb—for the “stampeders.” The stampeders were hopeful but unprepared would-be gold miners of the Yukon gold rush in the late 1890s.

The owners of the farm have created a lovely garden, including this little area which is a nod to the “ladies of negotiable affection” in gold rush Skagway.

Up close through the doorway of “Lilly’s and Daisy’s” façade: Note the cleverness with which the nasturtiums have crawled into their bed and the boots have filled up with forget-me-nots, the Alaska state flower.

Many of the flowers in the Jewell gardens are edible including the begonia petals, which tasted rather citrus-y.

The zucchini cake, served with a berry sauce in the greenhouse café, was decorated with yellow petals from these sunny-faced posies.

Here’s the largest wildlife we saw in Alaska so far, with the exception of seagulls and some distant mountain goats. Every flower we photographed seemed to have a fly or mosquito crawling in it.

The gardeners have a clever eye for design. The garden is planted so that it resembles a very large set of flowers when seen from the air. And as you can see, these vegetables are planted on the diagonal.

Behind the gift shop is a glass blowing workshop. How this was determined to fit with the farm I don’t know, but it makes for a very pleasant and educational visit. That glass bowl sells for about $225.

The latter half of our day was spent on a White Pass railway trip up the route taken by the stampeders.

The railway climbs up steep mountainsides where many men and horses sacrificed their lives in a greedy rush for gold. If you click on the picture and look carefully, you can see a cruise ship parked down in the harbor.

It’s hard to tell what the scale is from the following photo, but the narrow trail looks like it would barely fit my two feet side by side. Men traveled this trail 15-20 times round trip in order to transport the supplies they needed to the top of the pass, and from there via boats down to Dawson Creek in the Yukon.

Here’s our train traversing the White Pass area. The elevations is only 2865 feet at the summit, but the snow drifts were over 50 feet deep during those gold rush winters, the worst winters ever, as remembered by the native peoples.

At Fraser, British Columbia we hopped off the train, boarded a bus, and headed down the Klondike highway back to Skagway.

Back in Skagway, where two out of every three shops is a jewelry store (for some mysterious reason which never became apparent to me), we walked around and—unlike the stampeders both lucky and unlucky—left as rich as we came.

Journey to Juneau

I've headed off up the Inside Passage...

...with my parents...

...on this ship.

Juneau has stairs...

...and bears (this picture is for Husband to enjoy).

Back later. Maybe.