Since my granddaughter is now enrolled in Driver's Ed, and her brother isn't that far behind her, I have gathered my thoughts to provide these hints. I have NO idea if they will ever see this, but it won't be because I didn't try! Robin, Ryan, some of this will be a repeat of what you've already been taught, but every one of these hints comes from personal experience that wasn't always fun!
1. When you leave the car, roll up the windows. Even if you think you will only be away from the vehicle for a few moments on a beautiful day, roll up the windows. Make it automatic.
2. When you step out of the vehicle, stop and ask yourself: Are the lights off? Do I have the keys? Do not proceed until you can answer "yes" to both questions.
3. Leave nothing in the car that is valuable. Not even small change. Computers and cell phones and/or cameras need to go with you when you leave the vehicle. No exceptions.
4. Never, ever, deliberately run over something in the road that looks harmless, if you can help it. I can list example after example of when that cost a bunch of money in flat tires, undercarriage damage, and other ugly stuff.
5. If you take the only family car out on an errand, consider what will happen if you do something stupid like lock your keys in the car. How will the family get to you for rescue?
6. Whenever you leave a vehicle, make certain that all non-automatic lights are OFF. If you leave a door open, the lights on, or an inside light on, the battery will drain to the point of not being able to be restarted the next day. Some cars have "dummy" circuits that shut them out automatically, but not all. Make sure you know before you get stuck in BFE with a car that won't start!
7. If the "check engine" light comes on, alert the parents. If the "check engine" light comes on and FLASHES, pull over and call the parents for help.
8. Never leave the car so low on fuel that people can't run errands the next day. If the needle is close to bottom, tell somebody if you don't have the funds to gas up. And don't attempt to go anywhere if there isn't enough gas to get you there and back.
9. However tempting it may be, put the cell phone down. You can address texts and calls when you get where you are going. Funerals are quite expensive and ruin people's lives forever.
10. A motor vehicle is a guided missile. Driving one without parents may seem like freedom for awhile, but driving maturely is a HUGE responsibility.
11. Do NOT get into a vehicle with an impaired person at the wheel. Get out and call your parents to pick you up. It may be embarrassing for a moment, but your parents will be much happier knowing that you are safe than if you had one moment of stupid that proved fatal.
12. Understand that driving is a privilege and not a right. If you break the laws of your state or your home, you mess up your own independence. This is serious stuff.
13. Whether you are changing a tire or loosening a screw, remember "righty, tighty; lefty, loosey".
14. Until you are 18, your parents are responsible for what you do or don't do. Don't get stupid enough to risk all they have done for you.
15. If you get pulled over for any reason but feel uncomfortable about it, continue to drive to a well-lighted, safe location before pulling over. If you have an operative phone, record your experience. Do NOT allow anyone to take you anywhere unless you have broken the law and the arresting entity can tell you about it.
God bless you as you learn!
Grandma
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
The Last First
Wednesday of next week (September 27th) marks the one-year anniversary of my brother-in-law's passing. He had suffered for years with Fronto-Temporal Degeneration. Dementia. His widow (my sister) had been his faithful wife for 55 years. The last few of those years were the toughest for her while dealing with his combativeness, moods, demands, and (finally) his inability to accept her being out of his sight. I'm sure he was terrified at the changes in his life. She had no respite.
The last month of his life was the worst for her. She was being asked to make decisions about his care. He could no longer really walk. Couldn't swallow. Wouldn't bathe; wouldn't shave; wouldn't change clothes; and wouldn't let anyone help him do those things. He was hospitalized for sepsis with a diseased gall bladder, urinary bladder, and an obvious decline in his ability to communicate. She just wanted to take him home to his recliner and his familiar surroundings in order to make him comfortable, but God had other ideas. She finally understood that there was very little she could do for him at home. Then came the quest to find nursing facilities that she/they could afford that would even accept him. Just about the time that she found a place, he took a turn for the worse, and she had still other decisions to make. The doctors were urging her to put him in hospice. She was reluctant, thinking perhaps that it meant she was giving up on him. Again, God took over. Mere days after allowing him to be in hospice, he passed peacefully. Finally, peace. No more pain for anyone.
The morning that he passed, she came home from the hospital and cried in my arms for a bit. Then she did what all Covill/Armstrong women do. She started to take hold. The problem with that is that she was very, very sick with pneumonia, partially because she hadn't been taking care of herself in all of her trials. I arrived only late in the day before, but thankfully, I could somewhat take over while she was ordered to bed by her pulmonologist. She was in control of everything, but it swirled around her as she struggled to breathe. She should have been in the hospital, herself, but it couldn't be just then.
I can't imagine what it is like to lose the love of your life after that many years. I was also doing the Covill/Armstrong woman thing. Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead. What needs to be done? Okay...let's git 'er done. I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about her grieving, figuring that she had been grieving the loss of her husband long before he actually died. We were surrounded by every kind of grief possible, from a daughter throwing herself across her father's casket saying, "Don't leave me, Daddy!" to a grandchild writing poetry to Grandpa. Some of it was, to me, unnecessary drama, but who am I to judge? We all do what we do in special circumstances.
After Roger died, the whole family had to deal with "firsts". The first Thanksgiving without Roger. The first Christmas without Roger. The first birthday, Easter, Father's Day without Roger. My sister has gotten through it all with her usual aplomb--by helping others in her family, however treacherous to herself all that may be. And now, a year later, we are facing the first anniversary of Roger's death. This is the last "first" to get through. It won't be any more difficult than the others, but it is a day when moral support may be required. I will be going to Illinois next week to be with my sister. She didn't ask. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that she can navigate this day successfully on her own, bless her. So why am I going?
I am going because it will be a tough day for her.
I am going because I don't want her to have to stand alone among her family that is filled with drama.
I am going because I loved her husband and want to be there as she lays a special wreath on his grave site.
I am going because I know she would do the same for me.
But most of all, I am going because she is my sister.
The last month of his life was the worst for her. She was being asked to make decisions about his care. He could no longer really walk. Couldn't swallow. Wouldn't bathe; wouldn't shave; wouldn't change clothes; and wouldn't let anyone help him do those things. He was hospitalized for sepsis with a diseased gall bladder, urinary bladder, and an obvious decline in his ability to communicate. She just wanted to take him home to his recliner and his familiar surroundings in order to make him comfortable, but God had other ideas. She finally understood that there was very little she could do for him at home. Then came the quest to find nursing facilities that she/they could afford that would even accept him. Just about the time that she found a place, he took a turn for the worse, and she had still other decisions to make. The doctors were urging her to put him in hospice. She was reluctant, thinking perhaps that it meant she was giving up on him. Again, God took over. Mere days after allowing him to be in hospice, he passed peacefully. Finally, peace. No more pain for anyone.
The morning that he passed, she came home from the hospital and cried in my arms for a bit. Then she did what all Covill/Armstrong women do. She started to take hold. The problem with that is that she was very, very sick with pneumonia, partially because she hadn't been taking care of herself in all of her trials. I arrived only late in the day before, but thankfully, I could somewhat take over while she was ordered to bed by her pulmonologist. She was in control of everything, but it swirled around her as she struggled to breathe. She should have been in the hospital, herself, but it couldn't be just then.
I can't imagine what it is like to lose the love of your life after that many years. I was also doing the Covill/Armstrong woman thing. Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead. What needs to be done? Okay...let's git 'er done. I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about her grieving, figuring that she had been grieving the loss of her husband long before he actually died. We were surrounded by every kind of grief possible, from a daughter throwing herself across her father's casket saying, "Don't leave me, Daddy!" to a grandchild writing poetry to Grandpa. Some of it was, to me, unnecessary drama, but who am I to judge? We all do what we do in special circumstances.
After Roger died, the whole family had to deal with "firsts". The first Thanksgiving without Roger. The first Christmas without Roger. The first birthday, Easter, Father's Day without Roger. My sister has gotten through it all with her usual aplomb--by helping others in her family, however treacherous to herself all that may be. And now, a year later, we are facing the first anniversary of Roger's death. This is the last "first" to get through. It won't be any more difficult than the others, but it is a day when moral support may be required. I will be going to Illinois next week to be with my sister. She didn't ask. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that she can navigate this day successfully on her own, bless her. So why am I going?
I am going because it will be a tough day for her.
I am going because I don't want her to have to stand alone among her family that is filled with drama.
I am going because I loved her husband and want to be there as she lays a special wreath on his grave site.
I am going because I know she would do the same for me.
But most of all, I am going because she is my sister.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
In Search of the Perfect Cocktail Sauce
Yeah...I know. This is a First World problem!
In my world, there is only ONE use for cocktail sauce, and that is SHRIMP.
I was never a seafood aficionado in my youth, but I came to love the stuff when I became adult enough to understand that it is expensive. (It's expensive for a reason, right?) The rest is history.
Our family always gathered at my grandparents' farm for holidays. Mom was busy cooking a huge holiday meal (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and so didn't want to have to also cook breakfast or lunch for us all. Thus was born the hors d'ouevres table--or "horse's ovaries", as we called it. The card table in the living room held raw oysters, crackers, pickled herring, cheeses, shrimp and cocktail sauce, California onion dip and chips. The cocktail sauce for Mom's shrimp was always excellent, flavored with just enough wasabi from Japan to make it zesty, but I never thought to ask for a recipe! Unfortunately, Mom passed in 1986, and I've been left on my own to find the perfect sauce ever since.
In my quest to duplicate Mom's sauce, I thought the secret ingredient was wasabi. When we came home from Japan in 1958, Mom had a quart-sized tin of powdered green wasabi. (That tin lasted 20 years!!) But since I didn't have that resource, I kept trying to find the right sauce. I have powdered wasabi now that the US has discovered it, but my sauce still doesn't match Mom's.
A few years ago, I bought cocktail sauce from Aldi's. It was "their" brand--Tate's--and it was GOOD. It didn't need to be doctored to be just the right combination of thick and zippy. The very next time I went to Aldi's to get more, they had changed their brand from Tate's to Burnham's. Not quite the same. And just last week, I went to Aldi's to get some Burnham's Cocktail Sauce, only to discover that it is now considered seasonal and not carried at the moment. Huh? Cocktail sauce is seasonal??
Who'd a-thunk it?
My sister told me that she always uses Holland House Cocktail Sauce, so I ventured out to find some. At the time, I couldn't find it at Walmart, which is where I was shopping. I picked up their store brand. Meh! Too bland. Had to be doctored to make it zestier.
The last time I made the long distance trek to Trader Joe's, I ran into their version of cocktail sauce. They always sell good stuff, so I got a bottle. OMG! Too watery and too sweet! Couldn't even get it to stick to the shrimp!
Then I started shopping at Meijer. Couldn't find Holland House there, either, at first...so I got the Meijer brand Zesty Cocktail Sauce. It wasn't too bad, but the next time I went to get it, they were out. Got the regular non-zesty Meijer brand cocktail sauce. No twang to it. Had to doctor it. Yuck!
The last time I went to Meijer with cocktail sauce on my shopping list, I was delighted to find both Holland House AND the Zesty Meijer brand--so I bought one of each!! I'm going to try the Holland House first. Wish me luck!
It would seem that I eat a lot of shrimp. Actually, I do now. I always have some in the freezer. It is low in calories and fat (although high in cholesterol), easy to thaw and eat as a diet treat. Love it!
The verdict is still out on which brand is the perfect sauce for my precious shrimp. I'll keep you posted!
In my world, there is only ONE use for cocktail sauce, and that is SHRIMP.
I was never a seafood aficionado in my youth, but I came to love the stuff when I became adult enough to understand that it is expensive. (It's expensive for a reason, right?) The rest is history.
Our family always gathered at my grandparents' farm for holidays. Mom was busy cooking a huge holiday meal (Thanksgiving and Christmas) and so didn't want to have to also cook breakfast or lunch for us all. Thus was born the hors d'ouevres table--or "horse's ovaries", as we called it. The card table in the living room held raw oysters, crackers, pickled herring, cheeses, shrimp and cocktail sauce, California onion dip and chips. The cocktail sauce for Mom's shrimp was always excellent, flavored with just enough wasabi from Japan to make it zesty, but I never thought to ask for a recipe! Unfortunately, Mom passed in 1986, and I've been left on my own to find the perfect sauce ever since.
In my quest to duplicate Mom's sauce, I thought the secret ingredient was wasabi. When we came home from Japan in 1958, Mom had a quart-sized tin of powdered green wasabi. (That tin lasted 20 years!!) But since I didn't have that resource, I kept trying to find the right sauce. I have powdered wasabi now that the US has discovered it, but my sauce still doesn't match Mom's.
A few years ago, I bought cocktail sauce from Aldi's. It was "their" brand--Tate's--and it was GOOD. It didn't need to be doctored to be just the right combination of thick and zippy. The very next time I went to Aldi's to get more, they had changed their brand from Tate's to Burnham's. Not quite the same. And just last week, I went to Aldi's to get some Burnham's Cocktail Sauce, only to discover that it is now considered seasonal and not carried at the moment. Huh? Cocktail sauce is seasonal??
Who'd a-thunk it?
My sister told me that she always uses Holland House Cocktail Sauce, so I ventured out to find some. At the time, I couldn't find it at Walmart, which is where I was shopping. I picked up their store brand. Meh! Too bland. Had to be doctored to make it zestier.
The last time I made the long distance trek to Trader Joe's, I ran into their version of cocktail sauce. They always sell good stuff, so I got a bottle. OMG! Too watery and too sweet! Couldn't even get it to stick to the shrimp!
Then I started shopping at Meijer. Couldn't find Holland House there, either, at first...so I got the Meijer brand Zesty Cocktail Sauce. It wasn't too bad, but the next time I went to get it, they were out. Got the regular non-zesty Meijer brand cocktail sauce. No twang to it. Had to doctor it. Yuck!
The last time I went to Meijer with cocktail sauce on my shopping list, I was delighted to find both Holland House AND the Zesty Meijer brand--so I bought one of each!! I'm going to try the Holland House first. Wish me luck!
It would seem that I eat a lot of shrimp. Actually, I do now. I always have some in the freezer. It is low in calories and fat (although high in cholesterol), easy to thaw and eat as a diet treat. Love it!
The verdict is still out on which brand is the perfect sauce for my precious shrimp. I'll keep you posted!
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Single Parenthood
I was watching a re-run Dr. Phil program this morning. Dr. Phil was dealing with parents of violent children, one of whom was the father of a school shooter. In May of 2001, the then-15-year-old boy had taken a gun to school, killing two students and injuring 11 others. (He is, of course, in prison now.) When he spoke to Dr. Phil on the phone from prison, he said that he had only intended to create a ruckus that would cause the police to shoot him. He said he wanted to die that day; that he was only going to shoot people in the legs until the police came. Considering the fact that the two people he killed were shot in the back and in the head, Dr. Phil told him that his story wasn't consistent with what actually happened, but he didn't dwell on that.
Dr. Phil also interviewed the young man's father in person. The dad was understandably devastated that his son had done something so tragically wrong. He made the comment that he had "raised [his] son for the last 12 years, alone". There is something in that statement that made him believe that the whole world--or at least the whole caring world--would understand. Single parenthood is a trap. It's one of those circumstances that makes a parent victorious if the children turn out to be model citizens, or victimized if they become Public Enemies. Parents come in pairs. (Pair-ents?) It takes two to make them. Shouldn't it also take two to raise them? Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer kids coming from intact homes, and even fewer still whose divorced parents can even get along well enough to distribute the responsibilities of child-rearing evenly.
What is it about parenting that makes us feel that we need a partner to do it? Misery loves company? Many hands make light work? More like: it's the most important and most difficult job in the world, and everyone who creates babies thinks parenting should just come naturally. It has been said that kids don't come with an owner's manual. That, and the fact that being a parent is a full-time job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no respite for responsibility. And it lasts a lifetime. No "backsies".
My stepchildren obviously came from a "broken home". It was, perhaps, because of them that I made it my classroom policy never to give homework over weekends or holiday breaks. (By the way, research doesn't support not giving homework. Kids who have it--and I should add actually do it--perform better in school, grade-wise.) The stepkids didn't come for weekends often because we lived probably three hours away from them, but when they did come, we had things to do. There was little time to do homework (although we encouraged it if they had it), and I was stricken by how unfair it was for the kids, through no fault of their own, to have visitation weekends fraught with the stress of trying to get homework done with very little time to do it. And then there was the weekend that we delivered the kids back to their mother on Sunday evening, only to discover that my stepson had left his school books at our house. Their next visiting weekend wasn't to be for another few weeks, so what to do?? I don't remember how it was handled, but I'm pretty sure it required a day trip to Munster, IN, to deliver the books a week later. Thus was born my homework policy!
In my years as a teacher, I didn't pay a lot of attention to students' home situations unless they were pointed out to me. I should have, perhaps. I was fairly secure, however, that I could tell which students were from single-parent situations based on a number of things. Fortunately, no one ever asked me to do that, but I'm betting that I would have been correct at least 80% of the time.
Then there is the simple truth that, even when I was still married to our daughter's father, I was a single parent. He didn't pay much attention to our kid--my only child (his third)--and I worked all the harder to make up for it. On the two or three occasions that I had to leave him in charge, it didn't go well. Once, I took the 25-mile drive to go over and see my mother for an hour or two. She asked me where Megan was. I said, "I left her at home with J." Her response troubled me some. "Do you think you should have done that?" Well...uh...he IS her father, right? I should be able to trust him to take care of things for a couple of hours...right? Right??
"Daddy" and I divorced when our daughter was 12. The trouble started when she was 11. I hung on and hung on until, finally, one day she said, "Mom, we would all be healthier if you and Dad got a divorce." Ah...the wisdom of children! It was all I needed to move forward. In the divorce process, I decided that, by damn, I was going to FORCE my soon-to-be-ex-husband to be a father by spelling out all of the visitation arrangements. All my ex wanted was "reasonable visitation with prior notice". My attorney wasn't pushing for anything else. When I questioned that, she said, "I thought you told me that your daughter and your husband don't have a very good relationship." I said, "They don't." She responded, "Then why do you want to do that to your child?" As my father-in-law would have said, she had me by the whing-whang. She was right. I just hadn't looked at it that way before.
The first thing I came to know as a single person/parent was that I was all alone in the world. My ex wouldn't be doing things to benefit us. He would continue in his quest to establish his new life with his secretary/lover/eventual wife. One of my parents was gone, and the other was many miles away. I made MANY parenting mistakes in those days, some of which were caused by our new circumstances, and some of which were caused by a lack of coverage at home...but hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20, and I couldn't make up for two parents minus one. God knows I tried.
I wasn't a single mother because I wanted to be. It was foist upon me. Were it up to me in those days, I would still be married to my daughter's father. (Oh, God...what a thought!) It didn't take long for me to understand that I was doing the best I could. I wasn't raised in a broken home, nor was he. It was tough to deal with the perceived failure, but staying in that marriage would have resulted in unacceptable outcomes. Reality bites! I couldn't hang my child out to dry. When she went to high school, things were exciting. She was active with the school's show choir, Belles et Beaux, which received all kinds of awards for their musicianship and precision. It was so much fun to be a parent then. Meg sent her father a copy of her competition schedule each year. He never came. The last year, she told me that if he didn't show up for at least one competition, she never wanted to see him again. I couldn't fix it. Thankfully, he and his "new" wife showed up for one competition during her senior year. They watched Belles et Beaux perform but didn't stay for any other performances or to see how they placed in the competition. He missed out on getting a taste for our daughter's hard work and passion, how very good she had become with her dance moves. In those moments, I was not sorry to be a single mom. I would not have traded my involvement for his lack of involvement for anything in the world!
Although my ex lived less than 35 miles away at the time, my daughter didn't see him very often. "Reasonable visitation" apparently meant whenever he took the time to see her--maybe once a month. Sometimes less often than that. Even when she got her driver's license and a car, she didn't initiate visits with him. Very few of their visits were for overnight. (I can only think of three times in all those years.) Much, much later, when Meg became a single mother, herself, her children spent every weekend with their father in a town 90 miles from us, and they traded holidays. (She and her two young children lived with me then.) I once made the absent-minded comment that I would have killed to have had that kind of visitation arrangement for her. Oh, the joys of having a free weekend or two! Meg seemed shocked, maybe even offended, as if my saying that was some sort of indictment about life with her in her younger years. Nope! Not even close! I was simply bemoaning the fact that single motherhood without an active ex-parent is tough stuff.
I never, ever regretted the closeness that I had with my daughter. We did things together. We sang in the car on trips. We followed the Ben Davis Marching Giants everywhere they went. We watched movies together. We became show choir devotees, loving every second of it. But even the most dedicated, loving parent needs a break, sometimes...to recharge the batteries that keep the energy flowing.
Make no mistake: I wasn't a martyr. I never felt sorry for myself. I had a job to do, and I did it. If something needed to be fixed, I fixed it. If something needed to be done, I did it. I gave up on the notion that someone would rush in to rescue me (mostly), and that was sometimes difficult. (I think my generation of women was raised to believe that we should have a husband to do those things.) I'm reminded of a time when the kitchen sink--the side with the garbage disposal in it--stopped up and wouldn't drain, even if the disposer was running. While Meg and her then-husband stood scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do about it, I got out the toilet plunger and--plunge, plunge, plunge--down went the water. Megan looked at me and said, "Mom! You're such a MAN!" I took that as a compliment!
Single parents are either the good guys or the bad guys, with not much in between. Self-doubt and guilt go hand-in-hand with the position, along with the joy; however, even the married parents in an intact family suffer from that. It's in the contract! I am happy to say that our daughter and our grandchildren are doing very well for themselves in spite of us. Her husband is handsome and intelligent, attentive and an excellent provider. Her children are attractive and smart and talented. She has carved out a relationship with her father. Life is good for them. And isn't that all ANY parent--single or not--can hope for?
Dr. Phil also interviewed the young man's father in person. The dad was understandably devastated that his son had done something so tragically wrong. He made the comment that he had "raised [his] son for the last 12 years, alone". There is something in that statement that made him believe that the whole world--or at least the whole caring world--would understand. Single parenthood is a trap. It's one of those circumstances that makes a parent victorious if the children turn out to be model citizens, or victimized if they become Public Enemies. Parents come in pairs. (Pair-ents?) It takes two to make them. Shouldn't it also take two to raise them? Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer kids coming from intact homes, and even fewer still whose divorced parents can even get along well enough to distribute the responsibilities of child-rearing evenly.
What is it about parenting that makes us feel that we need a partner to do it? Misery loves company? Many hands make light work? More like: it's the most important and most difficult job in the world, and everyone who creates babies thinks parenting should just come naturally. It has been said that kids don't come with an owner's manual. That, and the fact that being a parent is a full-time job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no respite for responsibility. And it lasts a lifetime. No "backsies".
My stepchildren obviously came from a "broken home". It was, perhaps, because of them that I made it my classroom policy never to give homework over weekends or holiday breaks. (By the way, research doesn't support not giving homework. Kids who have it--and I should add actually do it--perform better in school, grade-wise.) The stepkids didn't come for weekends often because we lived probably three hours away from them, but when they did come, we had things to do. There was little time to do homework (although we encouraged it if they had it), and I was stricken by how unfair it was for the kids, through no fault of their own, to have visitation weekends fraught with the stress of trying to get homework done with very little time to do it. And then there was the weekend that we delivered the kids back to their mother on Sunday evening, only to discover that my stepson had left his school books at our house. Their next visiting weekend wasn't to be for another few weeks, so what to do?? I don't remember how it was handled, but I'm pretty sure it required a day trip to Munster, IN, to deliver the books a week later. Thus was born my homework policy!
In my years as a teacher, I didn't pay a lot of attention to students' home situations unless they were pointed out to me. I should have, perhaps. I was fairly secure, however, that I could tell which students were from single-parent situations based on a number of things. Fortunately, no one ever asked me to do that, but I'm betting that I would have been correct at least 80% of the time.
Then there is the simple truth that, even when I was still married to our daughter's father, I was a single parent. He didn't pay much attention to our kid--my only child (his third)--and I worked all the harder to make up for it. On the two or three occasions that I had to leave him in charge, it didn't go well. Once, I took the 25-mile drive to go over and see my mother for an hour or two. She asked me where Megan was. I said, "I left her at home with J." Her response troubled me some. "Do you think you should have done that?" Well...uh...he IS her father, right? I should be able to trust him to take care of things for a couple of hours...right? Right??
"Daddy" and I divorced when our daughter was 12. The trouble started when she was 11. I hung on and hung on until, finally, one day she said, "Mom, we would all be healthier if you and Dad got a divorce." Ah...the wisdom of children! It was all I needed to move forward. In the divorce process, I decided that, by damn, I was going to FORCE my soon-to-be-ex-husband to be a father by spelling out all of the visitation arrangements. All my ex wanted was "reasonable visitation with prior notice". My attorney wasn't pushing for anything else. When I questioned that, she said, "I thought you told me that your daughter and your husband don't have a very good relationship." I said, "They don't." She responded, "Then why do you want to do that to your child?" As my father-in-law would have said, she had me by the whing-whang. She was right. I just hadn't looked at it that way before.
The first thing I came to know as a single person/parent was that I was all alone in the world. My ex wouldn't be doing things to benefit us. He would continue in his quest to establish his new life with his secretary/lover/eventual wife. One of my parents was gone, and the other was many miles away. I made MANY parenting mistakes in those days, some of which were caused by our new circumstances, and some of which were caused by a lack of coverage at home...but hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20, and I couldn't make up for two parents minus one. God knows I tried.
I wasn't a single mother because I wanted to be. It was foist upon me. Were it up to me in those days, I would still be married to my daughter's father. (Oh, God...what a thought!) It didn't take long for me to understand that I was doing the best I could. I wasn't raised in a broken home, nor was he. It was tough to deal with the perceived failure, but staying in that marriage would have resulted in unacceptable outcomes. Reality bites! I couldn't hang my child out to dry. When she went to high school, things were exciting. She was active with the school's show choir, Belles et Beaux, which received all kinds of awards for their musicianship and precision. It was so much fun to be a parent then. Meg sent her father a copy of her competition schedule each year. He never came. The last year, she told me that if he didn't show up for at least one competition, she never wanted to see him again. I couldn't fix it. Thankfully, he and his "new" wife showed up for one competition during her senior year. They watched Belles et Beaux perform but didn't stay for any other performances or to see how they placed in the competition. He missed out on getting a taste for our daughter's hard work and passion, how very good she had become with her dance moves. In those moments, I was not sorry to be a single mom. I would not have traded my involvement for his lack of involvement for anything in the world!
Although my ex lived less than 35 miles away at the time, my daughter didn't see him very often. "Reasonable visitation" apparently meant whenever he took the time to see her--maybe once a month. Sometimes less often than that. Even when she got her driver's license and a car, she didn't initiate visits with him. Very few of their visits were for overnight. (I can only think of three times in all those years.) Much, much later, when Meg became a single mother, herself, her children spent every weekend with their father in a town 90 miles from us, and they traded holidays. (She and her two young children lived with me then.) I once made the absent-minded comment that I would have killed to have had that kind of visitation arrangement for her. Oh, the joys of having a free weekend or two! Meg seemed shocked, maybe even offended, as if my saying that was some sort of indictment about life with her in her younger years. Nope! Not even close! I was simply bemoaning the fact that single motherhood without an active ex-parent is tough stuff.
I never, ever regretted the closeness that I had with my daughter. We did things together. We sang in the car on trips. We followed the Ben Davis Marching Giants everywhere they went. We watched movies together. We became show choir devotees, loving every second of it. But even the most dedicated, loving parent needs a break, sometimes...to recharge the batteries that keep the energy flowing.
Make no mistake: I wasn't a martyr. I never felt sorry for myself. I had a job to do, and I did it. If something needed to be fixed, I fixed it. If something needed to be done, I did it. I gave up on the notion that someone would rush in to rescue me (mostly), and that was sometimes difficult. (I think my generation of women was raised to believe that we should have a husband to do those things.) I'm reminded of a time when the kitchen sink--the side with the garbage disposal in it--stopped up and wouldn't drain, even if the disposer was running. While Meg and her then-husband stood scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do about it, I got out the toilet plunger and--plunge, plunge, plunge--down went the water. Megan looked at me and said, "Mom! You're such a MAN!" I took that as a compliment!
Single parents are either the good guys or the bad guys, with not much in between. Self-doubt and guilt go hand-in-hand with the position, along with the joy; however, even the married parents in an intact family suffer from that. It's in the contract! I am happy to say that our daughter and our grandchildren are doing very well for themselves in spite of us. Her husband is handsome and intelligent, attentive and an excellent provider. Her children are attractive and smart and talented. She has carved out a relationship with her father. Life is good for them. And isn't that all ANY parent--single or not--can hope for?
Monday, September 11, 2017
The Christian Life
As it happens, I am a member of one of the adult Sunday school classes in my church, Plainfield United Methodist. (PUMC.) Members of the class are grouped in teams that take turns, quarterly, to teach the weekly lessons. Most of the time, we teach from "canned" materials: books with DVDs and leader's manuals, but there is usually a lot of wiggle room to adapt a lesson to the demographic of any particular class group. When it is my team's turn to teach, I am usually the one behind the book, although we do share the responsibilities. And, as my former students can attest, I tend to see the inter-connectedness of all things which can take me off on tangents. I have to remind myself often to get back to a lesson's main point after looking at all of the issues associated with it.
My class consists mostly of retired folks who have raised their families and are quite set in their beliefs. Some are conservative fundamentalists who take every word in the Bible in a literal sense. Others are more liberal in their approach to scriptural understanding. It sometimes makes for some interesting discussions in class. I am reminded of a scene in the TV show Big Bang Theory, in which Sheldon, who is a quirky scientist, tries to corner his born-again Christian mother in what he considers the absurd stories of the Bible. He challenges her by saying something like, "Oh come on, Mom. What did Noah feed the lions in the ark?" Her immediate response is, "The bodies of drowned sinners, of course." Funny? You betcha! Or is it?
When one is trying to have a searching, fact-finding conversation about matters of faith, it can be frustrating to be met with answers such as this. The seeker is looking for things that make sense, while the Bible is full of stories that just don't. What separates two people in dialogues such as these is a rift in the basic premise: you are either a believer, or you aren't. Either you believe in God and believe that the Bible is His unerring word, or you don't believe in God and think that the Bible is a collection of myths designed to explain natural phenomena, like folklore. Or, perhaps, the latter doesn't know what to believe and is just seeking answers.
Unfortunately, conversations such as this often end in frustration. People get divided into "camps". The believers, armed with what the Bible tells them, work feverishly to persuade the non-believers in their "truth", forgetting about the flaw that divides them. If you don't believe in God or the sanctity of the Bible, no amount of convincing is going to convert them. When cornered with natural facts, many Christians retreat to comments such as, "God works in mysterious ways", or "We are human and imperfect, but we know we are forgiven...saved". That doesn't help those who don't feel accepted into the faith.
A week or two ago, I happened onto a very intellectual and pointed discussion on a Facebook friend's account. He is a former pastor/missionary; a very devout and learned Christian. He has also discovered that he is bisexual, and that has thrown everything in his life into, as we say, a cocked hat. He posted something (right now, I forget just what) to which another of his FB friends responded that he felt the duty as a Christian to point out people's sins to them. Whaaaat? Does he really believe that sinners don't know their sin? It's like telling an overweight person that they are fat. Yeah...so?? Is that announcement something he/she didn't already know? Will it inspire them to change? I don't think so. I chimed into the online conversation saying that I took issue with his heartfelt need to tell others what they are doing wrong makes a judge out of him, when the Master (Jesus, Himself) tells us "Judge not lest you be judged." His response to that shocked me. He wasn't as concerned about the sins of others but about how those sins would dilute Christianity. (And I found that same sentiment in my SS class on Sunday!)
I consider myself to be a Christian. Why? I'm not sure. Even as a child, when I saw the contradictions in life between what we know through science and what the Bible tells us, I would pass it off, choosing not to deal with it in any intellectual way. I said my prayers faithfully every night, as if they were some sort of magic spell that would protect me from boogeymen and bad guys; then, I would feel guilty if I fell asleep while praying, thinking God would be angry with me for my inattention. As far back as I can remember, I always believed in God, and in Jesus. If anyone influenced me in this, it was my grandparents. My parents weren't church attenders. I am a Christian because, I think, that's what I was supposed to do.
Frankly, I don't believe some of the stories in the Bible--at least not in a literal sense. I don't believe there is a Satan, no matter what the Bible says. There is evil, for sure...but it can't be attributed to anything other than the bad feelings within us. Yes, even us! I struggle every time I am confronted with a situation that calls for "What Would Jesus Do?" What Jesus would do isn't popular politics at the moment. I am just living my elderly life believing that Right Makes Might. If things aren't "right", we will fail....right?
My class consists mostly of retired folks who have raised their families and are quite set in their beliefs. Some are conservative fundamentalists who take every word in the Bible in a literal sense. Others are more liberal in their approach to scriptural understanding. It sometimes makes for some interesting discussions in class. I am reminded of a scene in the TV show Big Bang Theory, in which Sheldon, who is a quirky scientist, tries to corner his born-again Christian mother in what he considers the absurd stories of the Bible. He challenges her by saying something like, "Oh come on, Mom. What did Noah feed the lions in the ark?" Her immediate response is, "The bodies of drowned sinners, of course." Funny? You betcha! Or is it?
When one is trying to have a searching, fact-finding conversation about matters of faith, it can be frustrating to be met with answers such as this. The seeker is looking for things that make sense, while the Bible is full of stories that just don't. What separates two people in dialogues such as these is a rift in the basic premise: you are either a believer, or you aren't. Either you believe in God and believe that the Bible is His unerring word, or you don't believe in God and think that the Bible is a collection of myths designed to explain natural phenomena, like folklore. Or, perhaps, the latter doesn't know what to believe and is just seeking answers.
Unfortunately, conversations such as this often end in frustration. People get divided into "camps". The believers, armed with what the Bible tells them, work feverishly to persuade the non-believers in their "truth", forgetting about the flaw that divides them. If you don't believe in God or the sanctity of the Bible, no amount of convincing is going to convert them. When cornered with natural facts, many Christians retreat to comments such as, "God works in mysterious ways", or "We are human and imperfect, but we know we are forgiven...saved". That doesn't help those who don't feel accepted into the faith.
A week or two ago, I happened onto a very intellectual and pointed discussion on a Facebook friend's account. He is a former pastor/missionary; a very devout and learned Christian. He has also discovered that he is bisexual, and that has thrown everything in his life into, as we say, a cocked hat. He posted something (right now, I forget just what) to which another of his FB friends responded that he felt the duty as a Christian to point out people's sins to them. Whaaaat? Does he really believe that sinners don't know their sin? It's like telling an overweight person that they are fat. Yeah...so?? Is that announcement something he/she didn't already know? Will it inspire them to change? I don't think so. I chimed into the online conversation saying that I took issue with his heartfelt need to tell others what they are doing wrong makes a judge out of him, when the Master (Jesus, Himself) tells us "Judge not lest you be judged." His response to that shocked me. He wasn't as concerned about the sins of others but about how those sins would dilute Christianity. (And I found that same sentiment in my SS class on Sunday!)
I consider myself to be a Christian. Why? I'm not sure. Even as a child, when I saw the contradictions in life between what we know through science and what the Bible tells us, I would pass it off, choosing not to deal with it in any intellectual way. I said my prayers faithfully every night, as if they were some sort of magic spell that would protect me from boogeymen and bad guys; then, I would feel guilty if I fell asleep while praying, thinking God would be angry with me for my inattention. As far back as I can remember, I always believed in God, and in Jesus. If anyone influenced me in this, it was my grandparents. My parents weren't church attenders. I am a Christian because, I think, that's what I was supposed to do.
Frankly, I don't believe some of the stories in the Bible--at least not in a literal sense. I don't believe there is a Satan, no matter what the Bible says. There is evil, for sure...but it can't be attributed to anything other than the bad feelings within us. Yes, even us! I struggle every time I am confronted with a situation that calls for "What Would Jesus Do?" What Jesus would do isn't popular politics at the moment. I am just living my elderly life believing that Right Makes Might. If things aren't "right", we will fail....right?
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Washington Fire
It seems that all of the Pacific Northwest is on fire these days. I've been watching the situation with interest because my daughter lives in a suburb of Seattle, Washington, and forest wildfires in that area, all the way down through Oregon, have produced enough environmental smoke to make outdoor activities inadvisable. Ash from the fires is falling like snowflakes for miles and miles. Precious natural features are burned and/or threatened. Firefighters are doing their level-best to contain the fires and mitigate the damage.
Washington is known as the Evergreen State. They are proud of their trees, considered one of the most precious resources of the area, yet it is dry as cardboard out there right now. They need a soaking rain, which is ironic for an area that is known to be misty and wet much of the year. Outdoor burning and campfires have been banned until relief comes, but that hasn't stopped the fires from occurring.
Unfortunately, one of the fires--known as the Eagle Creek fire--didn't happen by accident. It apparently occurred through juvenile stupidity. The story that is reported in the news is that there was a group of boys in that area--a park with trails--who were "horsing around", as we call it. A female hiker saw one boy in the group, a 15-year-old, throw what looked like a smoke bomb into a canyon. She continued on her hike, then turned around a few minutes later. When she passed the spot where the smoke bomb went down, she notice a great deal of smoke coming up, smelling of a wood fire. She ran to the parking area in order to alert the authorities. There, she saw the boy who threw the firework. She said, "Do you realize you just started a forest fire?" His response was, "What are we supposed to do about it now?" Very quickly, the whole area was ablaze--a fire that has burned many thousands of acres, burned or threatened to burn homes and park lodges, and taken probably millions of dollars to battle. (And it isn't even close to being contained, as I type this.) The boy was interrogated by police as part of their on-going investigation into the fire. He has not been arrested...yet.
I wasn't there to hear the boy's tone of voice or see his attitude when confronted by the hiker, but I do know kids of that age, having worked with teenagers for more years than I care to count. Their hormones and peer situations take over their still-immature ability to think things through. (The human brain doesn't physically stop growing until about age 26 or after, which is the cause for auto insurance rates to be so high for young drivers, and especially for guys. The part of the brain that matures last is the part that affects reasoning--predicting the consequences of one's own behavior. Dr. Phil calls it "being able to see around corners".) That's why kids do stupid things. Most don't do stupid things to be destructive or mean. They just think what they do will be funny or impress their friends. (How many times through my years of teaching did I hear, "It was just supposed to be a joke!"?) Witness the countless senior pranks that go awry every year...or the fraternity hazings...or the fast and reckless driving for which some teens are known.
When I was an upperclassman in high school, a freshman boy took the spindle note-holder that everybody's-favorite-speech-teacher had on his desk and put it on the teacher's chair before he entered the classroom. The student thought that the teacher would see the spindle before he sat. The whole class would get a kick out of it, and so would the teacher! As it happened, the teacher did NOT see it as he sat down. The spindle impaled him and perforated his intestines. He was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery to repair the damage. The student didn't intend to harm the teacher; he just wasn't thinking about what COULD happen if things didn't go as planned. Of course, all of the rest of us blamed the kid for being a jerk.
And so it will be with the 15-year-old alleged fire-starter in Washington. If he is charged and convicted--and maybe even if he isn't-- he will be largely hated for what he did. (Fueled by anonymity, people on the Internet can be particularly cruel, especially when they don't have or understand all of the details.) His parents will be chastised for not supervising their young'un closer. I seriously doubt that the boy went to the park that day with the intention of starting an epic conflagration. More likely, he and his buddies thought it would be "cool" to throw a firework into the canyon and see it do its thing. Who knows?
The only thing the kid is really guilty of is being a kid. Yes, what he did was irresponsible, especially considering the dry environmental circumstances. Yes, he needs to be held accountable, if he actually was the culprit that started the fire. How else will he learn? One of the harsh realities of growing up is that, no matter what kind of punishment the authorities may bring to bear, that boy will have to live the rest of his life knowing what he did. Every time he passes that area and sees the charred remains of the forest, he'll be reminded that he caused that damage. When he thinks about the resources wasted, the man-hours expended, the countless animals that lost their habitats or their lives, the people who were displaced, the atmosphere that was befouled so badly that outdoor activities for miles around had to be canceled or moved indoors, he will think, "I'm the idiot that did that. I didn't mean to, but that's what happened. I can't take it back." And it won't just happen over a short time. The forest will only have just begun to renew itself thirty years from now when the boy is a middle-aged man. Unless the young man is totally without conscience, he will pay for his immature behavior in lost self-esteem, public scorn, parental sacrifice, and maybe even financial hardship for the family and/or loss of freedom by way of incarceration. It won't be a good time, regardless of what happens.
I hope I'm right. I hope the kid, if he truly was at fault, does have a sense of shame that will lead him to be a more thoughtful, responsible person that will spell redemption in his personal life. I'll pray for that.
In the meantime, the fire still burns out of control. I feel sorry for all that has happened to that region of beauty that is known as the Pacific Northwest. I feel sorry for the harm that has come to so many. I feel sorry for the senseless waste of energy and resources, both financial and natural. Maybe I really am a "bleeding heart liberal" because, most of all, I feel sorry for that kid.
Washington is known as the Evergreen State. They are proud of their trees, considered one of the most precious resources of the area, yet it is dry as cardboard out there right now. They need a soaking rain, which is ironic for an area that is known to be misty and wet much of the year. Outdoor burning and campfires have been banned until relief comes, but that hasn't stopped the fires from occurring.
Unfortunately, one of the fires--known as the Eagle Creek fire--didn't happen by accident. It apparently occurred through juvenile stupidity. The story that is reported in the news is that there was a group of boys in that area--a park with trails--who were "horsing around", as we call it. A female hiker saw one boy in the group, a 15-year-old, throw what looked like a smoke bomb into a canyon. She continued on her hike, then turned around a few minutes later. When she passed the spot where the smoke bomb went down, she notice a great deal of smoke coming up, smelling of a wood fire. She ran to the parking area in order to alert the authorities. There, she saw the boy who threw the firework. She said, "Do you realize you just started a forest fire?" His response was, "What are we supposed to do about it now?" Very quickly, the whole area was ablaze--a fire that has burned many thousands of acres, burned or threatened to burn homes and park lodges, and taken probably millions of dollars to battle. (And it isn't even close to being contained, as I type this.) The boy was interrogated by police as part of their on-going investigation into the fire. He has not been arrested...yet.
I wasn't there to hear the boy's tone of voice or see his attitude when confronted by the hiker, but I do know kids of that age, having worked with teenagers for more years than I care to count. Their hormones and peer situations take over their still-immature ability to think things through. (The human brain doesn't physically stop growing until about age 26 or after, which is the cause for auto insurance rates to be so high for young drivers, and especially for guys. The part of the brain that matures last is the part that affects reasoning--predicting the consequences of one's own behavior. Dr. Phil calls it "being able to see around corners".) That's why kids do stupid things. Most don't do stupid things to be destructive or mean. They just think what they do will be funny or impress their friends. (How many times through my years of teaching did I hear, "It was just supposed to be a joke!"?) Witness the countless senior pranks that go awry every year...or the fraternity hazings...or the fast and reckless driving for which some teens are known.
When I was an upperclassman in high school, a freshman boy took the spindle note-holder that everybody's-favorite-speech-teacher had on his desk and put it on the teacher's chair before he entered the classroom. The student thought that the teacher would see the spindle before he sat. The whole class would get a kick out of it, and so would the teacher! As it happened, the teacher did NOT see it as he sat down. The spindle impaled him and perforated his intestines. He was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery to repair the damage. The student didn't intend to harm the teacher; he just wasn't thinking about what COULD happen if things didn't go as planned. Of course, all of the rest of us blamed the kid for being a jerk.
And so it will be with the 15-year-old alleged fire-starter in Washington. If he is charged and convicted--and maybe even if he isn't-- he will be largely hated for what he did. (Fueled by anonymity, people on the Internet can be particularly cruel, especially when they don't have or understand all of the details.) His parents will be chastised for not supervising their young'un closer. I seriously doubt that the boy went to the park that day with the intention of starting an epic conflagration. More likely, he and his buddies thought it would be "cool" to throw a firework into the canyon and see it do its thing. Who knows?
The only thing the kid is really guilty of is being a kid. Yes, what he did was irresponsible, especially considering the dry environmental circumstances. Yes, he needs to be held accountable, if he actually was the culprit that started the fire. How else will he learn? One of the harsh realities of growing up is that, no matter what kind of punishment the authorities may bring to bear, that boy will have to live the rest of his life knowing what he did. Every time he passes that area and sees the charred remains of the forest, he'll be reminded that he caused that damage. When he thinks about the resources wasted, the man-hours expended, the countless animals that lost their habitats or their lives, the people who were displaced, the atmosphere that was befouled so badly that outdoor activities for miles around had to be canceled or moved indoors, he will think, "I'm the idiot that did that. I didn't mean to, but that's what happened. I can't take it back." And it won't just happen over a short time. The forest will only have just begun to renew itself thirty years from now when the boy is a middle-aged man. Unless the young man is totally without conscience, he will pay for his immature behavior in lost self-esteem, public scorn, parental sacrifice, and maybe even financial hardship for the family and/or loss of freedom by way of incarceration. It won't be a good time, regardless of what happens.
I hope I'm right. I hope the kid, if he truly was at fault, does have a sense of shame that will lead him to be a more thoughtful, responsible person that will spell redemption in his personal life. I'll pray for that.
In the meantime, the fire still burns out of control. I feel sorry for all that has happened to that region of beauty that is known as the Pacific Northwest. I feel sorry for the harm that has come to so many. I feel sorry for the senseless waste of energy and resources, both financial and natural. Maybe I really am a "bleeding heart liberal" because, most of all, I feel sorry for that kid.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
A Tale of Two Organizations
With the horrible disaster of Hurricane Harvey devastating parts of Texas with heavy rains and storm surges, comes the usual flood of people wanting to help but scarcely knowing what to do. Also with it comes a spate of television commercials of organizations asking for financial donations to help their responses to the human suffering at the disaster sites. Two of the biggest such organizations are the American Red Cross (ARC) and The Salvation Army (TSA).
Both organizations, made up of some leadership and many, many volunteers, are known as "first responders", although not in the sense that they show up to dig through piles of rubble or float boats to rescue victims of a disaster. Instead, they provide support for the rescuers and the rescued by providing food, hydration, supplies, shelter, and after-care for those affected, whether from a local building fire or a tragedy the size of Texas (pun intended). As such, they rely heavily on the financial support of the masses who are high-and-dry and (hopefully) grateful enough for their safe status to be willing to chip in to assist those who aren't.
I have a little bit of experience in the disaster arena to know how these organizations work. Let me share some of that with you.
First, a little history.
Back in 1997, I caught the radio bug and became an amateur radio operator, also know as a "ham" operator. It changed my life. Suddenly, I was introduced to a whole new eclectic group of people--mostly men--who took me into the radio "brotherhood" and would come to my rescue whenever things went wrong, from my daughter's locking her keys in my car while visiting at her boyfriend's house in Indy, to replacing a failed water heater. I had inadvertently become the sweetheart of the local radio club that ran a respected repeater in our county. It seemed that I was always listening and would always respond when appropriate.
One day, I overhead a radio conversation between one of my local friends and someone I hadn't heard before as he traveled to the Indy area on business. The next day, I overheard the same fellow calling for my friend on his way back out of town to his home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Since my friend didn't answer, I did. Just to be social, I talked to the gentleman until he drove out of range of our repeater--maybe 40 or 50 miles. Two days later, I received a packet of information in the mail, with an application form to join a radio organization known as SATERN--the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network. It seems that the fellow I had talked to was the National Director of SATERN, and was also the Director of the Salvation Army's Emergency Disaster Services for the entire metro-Chicago division! His call sign was WW9E, and his name was Pat. Major Pat, by rank.
After weeks--maybe months--of phone calls, Major Pat and I became friends. He liked my enthusiasm for radio and what he called my "can-do" attitude. He worked on me to become the SATERN Coordinator for the Indiana Division. I eventually said yes, not because I wanted to but because he was so persuasive! I also became friends with his wife (also a TSA officer/minister) and the rest of his family. He included me in many disaster training exercises. I spent a lot of time driving to the Chicago area and back in those days. He even included me in some exclusive (and expensive) Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) training. It was through all of this that I learned that both the ARC and TSA had their own radio support groups. It would be part of my job to work with the ARC in any disaster situations that involved both groups.
There was, in my local radio repeater club, a fellow (I'll call him "Doc") who seemed to have his finger in every radio pie in two counties, and made sure everyone knew it. He was a bit quirky and not at all the kind of person that people accepted as being a good spokesman for any organization or amateur radio, for that matter. He did, however, apply to become a SATERN member when I was recruiting. He was well known to be heavy into ARC dealings. Eventually, he was appointed to do the same things for the ARC radio group that I was doing for SATERN in Indiana. I thought it a bit of a conflict of interest for him to be on my SATERN team during a disaster situation when he would be expected to be functioning with the ARC group, so I excused him from membership by email, wishing him all the best and telling him that I looked forward to working with him in our disaster capacities. Oh, my! You'd think I had put him in stocks in the town square for public ridicule! He whined to the local radio club's president that I had kicked him out of SATERN, which resulted in a four-hour one-on-one meeting with him during which he lied his socks off with rambling banter and self-aggrandizement. The following morning, I joined some other repeater club friends for breakfast and told them that I never again would meet with Doc without an escort to witness his insanity. I never restored Doc to the rolls of SATERN, but I did let him volunteer when I didn't think he could do too much harm.
Just as I learned how TSA operates and handles disaster situations from Major Pat, I also came to see how the ARC operates through Doc. It wasn't pretty! One event that made me absolutely furious occurred at Amateur Radio Field Day one June years ago. Field Day is a 24-hour disaster preparedness event during which radio groups or clubs throw up antennas and start making as many contacts as they can during the hours of operation. Major Pat had been suggesting that I enlist EDS in Indianapolis to send a canteen (a mobile feeding unit) as support for Field Day. With a little finagling, I was able to get a commitment for just that.
The little gal in charge if TSA's emergency disaster services in those days didn't know the area very well but arrived just a few minutes before I did at the Field Day site. She pulled into the parking lot of the site, slightly downhill from where the radio operators would actually be. The first person she ran into was Doc, who told her that the parking lot was just the perfect spot for the canteen. (He told me that he told her it would be okay for her to park there until I showed up to tell her where to park.) Up at the operating site, he had parked a Red Cross ERV--similar to a canteen but without kitchen facilities. (It was more like a storage truck.) It was immediately apparent to me that he didn't want the canteen up where the ERV would be, for publicity reasons. He had also plastered signs and banners all over the canteen, calling the event the Red Cross Field Day (it isn't) and listing all of the local business sponsors of the ARC. That's like putting a Donald Trump sign in the window of a Planned Parenthood building. Blasphemy! The gal that drove the canteen was new to Field Day and amateur radio business, so she didn't know any better. I soon got that straightened out. Had her move the canteen up to the operating site and got the signs off. A bit later, I noticed that the ERV had been re-parked, nose-to-nose, with the canteen, again for publicity. It would have been impossible for the reporters who came from the local media to take a picture of one without taking in the other. What enraged me the most about the whole deal was how many times Doc lied to me (and to the canteen driver), and the fact that the ERV wasn't functional but shared some of the spotlight with the canteen, which provided us with generator power for our radios, ice, cold drinks, and luscious strawberry shortcake at the end of the first day of Field Day--and took the TSA gal away from her station for the whole day. Grrrr....!!
One would think that was just a solitary event, not indicative of how the ARC works. I wish that were the case. During my days as SATERN Coordinator, I would run a SATERN booth at various hamfests in Indiana in order to introduce people to SATERN as well as recruit members. More than once, I had military veterans come up to me and thank me, as a representative of TSA, with tears in their eyes, for the times that they were far from home but given free cups of coffee, donuts, and other things for free, while the ARC would charge them.
Back in 2002, a tornado hit in Martinsville, IN, just south of Indianapolis, and was on the ground for 119 miles before it dissipated. TSA was going to station canteens in the Martinsville neighborhoods for the cleanup. Since I had been on the road to Chicago when this all transpired, I needed to turn around and head back to the Indy area to get a team of radio operators together to be communicators for the canteens and TSA leadership. (Thankfully, the authorities in Martinsville shut down the town at dark each day, to prevent looting and injuries, so I only had to find operators for the daylight hours.) Martinsville is in a geographic hole. Cell phone signals didn't do well there at that time. I needed a radio operator at Incident Command on the south side of Indy, an operator at the top of the hill at the outskirts of Mville (a church on the hill allowed us to set up in their parking lot), and a couple of operators to stay with the canteens, etc. Fortunately, we got that covered.
The first thing that happened was that TSA managed to get a room in a business building for the Incident Command Center, at which point the ARC came in to share the space and all but nosed them out. They slapped up all kinds of signs, "This way to Red Cross", etc...and usurped the tables, etc., that should have been shared.
The first full day of tornado clean-up, Doc showed up where my net control operator was set up in the church parking lot. Just across the road, the ARC had parked a trailer that came all the way up from Kentucky to use as their radio control center. Doc told me that we were welcome to come and use the restrooms in the trailer, etc. He wanted to show it off to me, so I did go and poke my nose in. Impressive, I thought! There were no personnel in it, but it sure looked nice. However, when I went over there to use the restroom, as invited, the place was locked up tight with no one around. I never did see anyone there, and the very next day, the trailer was gone, as was the ARC. TSA and SATERN stayed in Martinsville for nine days. I went to school every day to teach, then headed straight to Martinsville to see how things were going. We were a well-oiled machine! I was so proud of my people!
Time after time, I have seen people come up to Salvation Army canteens with money in their hands to buy a bag of chips or a banana or a cup of coffee or tea. They are turned down. TSA will not accept donations at their points of service. Donations can be made through the organization by phone or online, but unless it is Red Kettle season, you won't see them take a nickel for anything they do. But, of course, since TSA is a church--a faith-based organization--they don't get the kind of press that the ARC does. They usually lag behind the ARC in donations because TSA doesn't make big publicity splashes. TSA is one of the most effective charities around because a very high percentage of what they take in goes directly to the goods and services provided during disasters. Can't remember the exact figure. It's something like 93%. I'll have to look that up.
There is something else that I consider a bit shady about the ARC. Their head honcho has a salary of more than a million dollars a year. The top dude of TSA gets a salary of maybe $20,000 a year, plus perks. (Officers have to pay tax on the perks as income.) It seems that the Red Cross can never quite say exactly where all of the donated money is going. Their excuse for not distributing everything they take in for a particular disaster is that they will need money for the NEXT disaster. But people aren't donating now for the next disaster. They want to help with THIS one. Something seems a bit dishonest about that.
I'm not saying that the American Red Cross doesn't do good work. I just think their methods are a bit off. They come roaring in to a disaster site, make a big splash by tacking up signs everywhere, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV time for donation solicitation, then get quiet about how much is spent where and on whom. They are gone almost as fast as they show up. Most disasters the size of Harvey in Texas is long-term. The assistance victims get needs to occur over months--maybe years--not just in the first few days. The Salvation Army, however, comes in quietly, assesses needs, and stays as long as necessary to get the job done without fanfare. An added bonus is that the TSA officers (who are ordained ministers) will even pray with you, or for you, just for emotional support and comfort. They don't ask for a thing in return. They are just present to do God's work.
And do you think I am the least bit biased? You bet I am!!
Both organizations, made up of some leadership and many, many volunteers, are known as "first responders", although not in the sense that they show up to dig through piles of rubble or float boats to rescue victims of a disaster. Instead, they provide support for the rescuers and the rescued by providing food, hydration, supplies, shelter, and after-care for those affected, whether from a local building fire or a tragedy the size of Texas (pun intended). As such, they rely heavily on the financial support of the masses who are high-and-dry and (hopefully) grateful enough for their safe status to be willing to chip in to assist those who aren't.
I have a little bit of experience in the disaster arena to know how these organizations work. Let me share some of that with you.
First, a little history.
Back in 1997, I caught the radio bug and became an amateur radio operator, also know as a "ham" operator. It changed my life. Suddenly, I was introduced to a whole new eclectic group of people--mostly men--who took me into the radio "brotherhood" and would come to my rescue whenever things went wrong, from my daughter's locking her keys in my car while visiting at her boyfriend's house in Indy, to replacing a failed water heater. I had inadvertently become the sweetheart of the local radio club that ran a respected repeater in our county. It seemed that I was always listening and would always respond when appropriate.
One day, I overhead a radio conversation between one of my local friends and someone I hadn't heard before as he traveled to the Indy area on business. The next day, I overheard the same fellow calling for my friend on his way back out of town to his home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Since my friend didn't answer, I did. Just to be social, I talked to the gentleman until he drove out of range of our repeater--maybe 40 or 50 miles. Two days later, I received a packet of information in the mail, with an application form to join a radio organization known as SATERN--the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network. It seems that the fellow I had talked to was the National Director of SATERN, and was also the Director of the Salvation Army's Emergency Disaster Services for the entire metro-Chicago division! His call sign was WW9E, and his name was Pat. Major Pat, by rank.
After weeks--maybe months--of phone calls, Major Pat and I became friends. He liked my enthusiasm for radio and what he called my "can-do" attitude. He worked on me to become the SATERN Coordinator for the Indiana Division. I eventually said yes, not because I wanted to but because he was so persuasive! I also became friends with his wife (also a TSA officer/minister) and the rest of his family. He included me in many disaster training exercises. I spent a lot of time driving to the Chicago area and back in those days. He even included me in some exclusive (and expensive) Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) training. It was through all of this that I learned that both the ARC and TSA had their own radio support groups. It would be part of my job to work with the ARC in any disaster situations that involved both groups.
There was, in my local radio repeater club, a fellow (I'll call him "Doc") who seemed to have his finger in every radio pie in two counties, and made sure everyone knew it. He was a bit quirky and not at all the kind of person that people accepted as being a good spokesman for any organization or amateur radio, for that matter. He did, however, apply to become a SATERN member when I was recruiting. He was well known to be heavy into ARC dealings. Eventually, he was appointed to do the same things for the ARC radio group that I was doing for SATERN in Indiana. I thought it a bit of a conflict of interest for him to be on my SATERN team during a disaster situation when he would be expected to be functioning with the ARC group, so I excused him from membership by email, wishing him all the best and telling him that I looked forward to working with him in our disaster capacities. Oh, my! You'd think I had put him in stocks in the town square for public ridicule! He whined to the local radio club's president that I had kicked him out of SATERN, which resulted in a four-hour one-on-one meeting with him during which he lied his socks off with rambling banter and self-aggrandizement. The following morning, I joined some other repeater club friends for breakfast and told them that I never again would meet with Doc without an escort to witness his insanity. I never restored Doc to the rolls of SATERN, but I did let him volunteer when I didn't think he could do too much harm.
Just as I learned how TSA operates and handles disaster situations from Major Pat, I also came to see how the ARC operates through Doc. It wasn't pretty! One event that made me absolutely furious occurred at Amateur Radio Field Day one June years ago. Field Day is a 24-hour disaster preparedness event during which radio groups or clubs throw up antennas and start making as many contacts as they can during the hours of operation. Major Pat had been suggesting that I enlist EDS in Indianapolis to send a canteen (a mobile feeding unit) as support for Field Day. With a little finagling, I was able to get a commitment for just that.
The little gal in charge if TSA's emergency disaster services in those days didn't know the area very well but arrived just a few minutes before I did at the Field Day site. She pulled into the parking lot of the site, slightly downhill from where the radio operators would actually be. The first person she ran into was Doc, who told her that the parking lot was just the perfect spot for the canteen. (He told me that he told her it would be okay for her to park there until I showed up to tell her where to park.) Up at the operating site, he had parked a Red Cross ERV--similar to a canteen but without kitchen facilities. (It was more like a storage truck.) It was immediately apparent to me that he didn't want the canteen up where the ERV would be, for publicity reasons. He had also plastered signs and banners all over the canteen, calling the event the Red Cross Field Day (it isn't) and listing all of the local business sponsors of the ARC. That's like putting a Donald Trump sign in the window of a Planned Parenthood building. Blasphemy! The gal that drove the canteen was new to Field Day and amateur radio business, so she didn't know any better. I soon got that straightened out. Had her move the canteen up to the operating site and got the signs off. A bit later, I noticed that the ERV had been re-parked, nose-to-nose, with the canteen, again for publicity. It would have been impossible for the reporters who came from the local media to take a picture of one without taking in the other. What enraged me the most about the whole deal was how many times Doc lied to me (and to the canteen driver), and the fact that the ERV wasn't functional but shared some of the spotlight with the canteen, which provided us with generator power for our radios, ice, cold drinks, and luscious strawberry shortcake at the end of the first day of Field Day--and took the TSA gal away from her station for the whole day. Grrrr....!!
One would think that was just a solitary event, not indicative of how the ARC works. I wish that were the case. During my days as SATERN Coordinator, I would run a SATERN booth at various hamfests in Indiana in order to introduce people to SATERN as well as recruit members. More than once, I had military veterans come up to me and thank me, as a representative of TSA, with tears in their eyes, for the times that they were far from home but given free cups of coffee, donuts, and other things for free, while the ARC would charge them.
Back in 2002, a tornado hit in Martinsville, IN, just south of Indianapolis, and was on the ground for 119 miles before it dissipated. TSA was going to station canteens in the Martinsville neighborhoods for the cleanup. Since I had been on the road to Chicago when this all transpired, I needed to turn around and head back to the Indy area to get a team of radio operators together to be communicators for the canteens and TSA leadership. (Thankfully, the authorities in Martinsville shut down the town at dark each day, to prevent looting and injuries, so I only had to find operators for the daylight hours.) Martinsville is in a geographic hole. Cell phone signals didn't do well there at that time. I needed a radio operator at Incident Command on the south side of Indy, an operator at the top of the hill at the outskirts of Mville (a church on the hill allowed us to set up in their parking lot), and a couple of operators to stay with the canteens, etc. Fortunately, we got that covered.
The first thing that happened was that TSA managed to get a room in a business building for the Incident Command Center, at which point the ARC came in to share the space and all but nosed them out. They slapped up all kinds of signs, "This way to Red Cross", etc...and usurped the tables, etc., that should have been shared.
The first full day of tornado clean-up, Doc showed up where my net control operator was set up in the church parking lot. Just across the road, the ARC had parked a trailer that came all the way up from Kentucky to use as their radio control center. Doc told me that we were welcome to come and use the restrooms in the trailer, etc. He wanted to show it off to me, so I did go and poke my nose in. Impressive, I thought! There were no personnel in it, but it sure looked nice. However, when I went over there to use the restroom, as invited, the place was locked up tight with no one around. I never did see anyone there, and the very next day, the trailer was gone, as was the ARC. TSA and SATERN stayed in Martinsville for nine days. I went to school every day to teach, then headed straight to Martinsville to see how things were going. We were a well-oiled machine! I was so proud of my people!
Time after time, I have seen people come up to Salvation Army canteens with money in their hands to buy a bag of chips or a banana or a cup of coffee or tea. They are turned down. TSA will not accept donations at their points of service. Donations can be made through the organization by phone or online, but unless it is Red Kettle season, you won't see them take a nickel for anything they do. But, of course, since TSA is a church--a faith-based organization--they don't get the kind of press that the ARC does. They usually lag behind the ARC in donations because TSA doesn't make big publicity splashes. TSA is one of the most effective charities around because a very high percentage of what they take in goes directly to the goods and services provided during disasters. Can't remember the exact figure. It's something like 93%. I'll have to look that up.
There is something else that I consider a bit shady about the ARC. Their head honcho has a salary of more than a million dollars a year. The top dude of TSA gets a salary of maybe $20,000 a year, plus perks. (Officers have to pay tax on the perks as income.) It seems that the Red Cross can never quite say exactly where all of the donated money is going. Their excuse for not distributing everything they take in for a particular disaster is that they will need money for the NEXT disaster. But people aren't donating now for the next disaster. They want to help with THIS one. Something seems a bit dishonest about that.
I'm not saying that the American Red Cross doesn't do good work. I just think their methods are a bit off. They come roaring in to a disaster site, make a big splash by tacking up signs everywhere, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV time for donation solicitation, then get quiet about how much is spent where and on whom. They are gone almost as fast as they show up. Most disasters the size of Harvey in Texas is long-term. The assistance victims get needs to occur over months--maybe years--not just in the first few days. The Salvation Army, however, comes in quietly, assesses needs, and stays as long as necessary to get the job done without fanfare. An added bonus is that the TSA officers (who are ordained ministers) will even pray with you, or for you, just for emotional support and comfort. They don't ask for a thing in return. They are just present to do God's work.
And do you think I am the least bit biased? You bet I am!!