ALPHABET SOUP

When my kids were in elementary school we often had soup for lunch. That's if we lived close enough for them to come home for their midday meal.


Our old standby was Cream of Tomato Soup, served with a toasted cheese sandwich. Warm, filling, yummy.

I tried other flavors of soup--some, as you might expect, went over better than others. Bean and Bacon was tasty. Chicken and Rice was merely okay. Beef and Vegetable was acceptable.

A fun meal was Alphabet Soup, so-called because the little bits of pasta were in the shapes of letters of the alphabet. I always thought that was a clever way to get kids to eat as well as help them identify their letters.

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In college-level history classes I learned that Alphabet Soup had a totally different meaning: it was a handy way to refer to all the government acronyms (and other references) that had emerged during the 20th Century. I recognized WPA and CCC from the 1930s (read about those--wasn't born yet); AWOL, WAC, WAF, GI, SNAFU from the 40s when I got old enough to know some of my cousins who'd been in the military; then, when I became aware of political stuff, there was FDR, and later on JFK and others.

This shorthand way of speaking had been around for quite some time. And it's still with us.

Fast-forward to the late 20th Century and the advent of Internet. Once we got into the swing of email, we had a whole new way to communicate:

LOL - laughing out loud
TTYL - talk to you later
TTYS - talk to you soon
BTW - by the way

Soon folks were talking about WIPs and UFOs. I wasn't sure about the WIPs, but I knew about UFO's--they'd been all the talk in the 40s and 50s, along with crop circles and movies about aliens invading Earth.

How wrong I was! UFOs, folks, are UnFinished Objects.

WIPs, used in many circles, meant Works in Progress; or if you were in accounting, Works in Process.

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I asked my oldest daughter, who has made quilts for many years, to share her treasury of alphabet soup. Besides WIPs and UFOs, here are some I especially like:

BDNQ: Bad Day, Not Quilting

HIPS: Hundreds of Ideas Piling Skyward

HSY: Haven't Started Yet

PIGS: Projects in Grocery Sacks

SABLE: Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy

TGIF: Thank God It's Finished

WOMBAT: Waste of Money, Batting, and Time

WIWMI: Wish It Would Make Itself

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BDNQ could easily be adapted to anything: Bad Day, Not Reading (BDNR); or Bad Day, Not Napping (BDNN); or maybe Bad Day, Not Shopping (BDNS).

On second thought, I'll not use that one--don't like to call any day a "bad" day. Gotta be a silver lining somewhere.

No doubt you've developed some of your own Alphabet Soup to use in emails or snail mails or messages on the family white board.

Until next time, TTYL, keep LOL, and BTW, have a blessed week!

PATIENCE!

Practically everyone has heard the ironic prayer: "Lord, give me patience, and right now!"

The importance of patience in our lives isn't easily defined--isn't easily obtained--and certainly isn't going to appear by a genie floating out of a bottle with a cloud of Patience to wrap us in.

Patience--like many other good and desirable characteristics--begins at home.

My daughter shared her thoughts on Patience: There's an element we call letting go--of preconceived ideas about what should happen, of timelines that suit us.

Most of all--we need to avoid the trap of thinking lack of success is somehow our own fault. It may be, that's true. But it may not. 

It all boils down to trust--things will happen when they happen. Many factors are out of our control. What seems simple to us may involve countless people between us and success. . . unknown hoops to jump through . . . procedures no one told us about.

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So! Perhaps Patience is not only hard-won but serves a purpose beyond the immediate attainment of a goal--Patience is a lesson to be learned. And if we accept Helen Keller's belief, the only way to learn Patience is through non-joyful events and circumstances.

I can't say I'm thrilled to suffer, even in a minor way, in order to learn Patience. But if I can accept that premise, then I know I'm in good company, for everyone is learning along with me.

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Hal Borland wrote many essays and books about nature. He lived among trees and mountains and gardens. He observed life through the lens of nature. And he shared his insights into human life by exploring and explaining life in the natural world.

People who live close to the land, like farmers, or who find joy in gardening and landscaping, know that Patience is a standard requirement if the end result, the harvest, is going to happen. 

Patience, along with persistence, is what accompanies the carpenter who builds a house, the sewist who embarks on a year-long project to make a quilt, the student who works year by year toward graduation; or the artist who brings a scene to life, the writer who tells the story of real people or fictional characters, the musician who practices for hours (perhaps for years) for one performance.

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My own understanding of Patience has come with age and aging. In my youth I was eager to get on, go higher and farther, not spend too much time in any one place or time. Keep going! More often than not, I got in my own way. 

Having children was a full-on lesson in Patience--every day, practically every hour, Patience was required. (Sadly, I wasn't very good at that lesson. Took a long time to cultivate a sense of letting go of unrealistic expectations.)

In an odd way, our current pandemic has increased my sense of Letting Go and biding my time. I can't make a difference in the curing of the virus. But I can look for ways to be safe and keep other people safe. Yes, I mourn the loss of freedoms we had--such as going to church, worshiping in person, receiving communion. But my life has slowed down and not only do I smell the roses, I see sunsets and meteor showers and planets that don't often come our way. 

Have a blessed week! And may Patience be yours.

AUGUST. . .

August is well and truly with us. The eighth month of the year, middle month of the summer season. A time of picnics, final vacation trips before school starts, gearing up for a new school year with fresh-bought gym shoes, backpacks, shorts-and-tees, and whatever supplies the school decrees are required for the coming year's attractions.

Except--not this year.

Schools have started in my geographical area--some last week, some this week. 


Attendance is (1) at school, in person, wearing a mask; or (2) at home, in front of a computer, for e-learning provided by the school district; or (3) at home, provided (usually) by parent(s) of the student; or (4) perhaps in a multi-family pod that creates a small school feeling.

Online classes at colleges and universities have become the new norm, not an option. 

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My friend's daughter, a second-year college student going for a nursing degree, has made a tentative peace with online studies for some of her courses. Her travel to the campus is reduced from four or five days to two, thus saving her money on fuel.

Some students don't have the option to remain at home; in some schools, athletes have to attend classes in person if they want to continue in their sports.

Bands and choirs are mostly discontinued in my area. 

Schools are limiting attendance at athletics events to two tickets per athlete. This allows for social distancing in the bleachers.

No, it's not what we expect when we talk about a new school year starting.


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August is also the month that heralds Labor Day--in my community, that's the time for classic car buffs to gather for food, auctions, and various types of hoop-la and fun. That's been cancelled also.

Looking ahead, the county fair is also off the calendar.

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I'm trying to come up with a positive outlook here. Not that we want these events and formerly well-established activities to be gone for good. That's not positive.

But, when something's gone, we do have to deal with that as a fact. It may come back another year, yes. And, it may not.

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Here are some suggestions for silver linings:

--we're being given the opportunity to make our own fun. Won't be the same, goes without saying. Can still be fun. For those of us who were around in the pre-electronic period, there were only home grown activities. Home movies were made and shown. Kids wrote their own plays and produced them. Older kids learned what is now called a trade--woodworking, sewing, quilt making, cooking and baking. Folks visited with each other--wrote letters and sent cards--took drives in the countryside to see the crops, other people's flower gardens, or buy veggies at roadside stands.

--less travel to school or job means a savings on fuel, as my friend's daughter quickly realized. In a time when money may be scarce, that savings can be valuable.

--we're also finding we can grow our own food (lots of folks have had gardens all their lives); even if we don't can and freeze the produce for next winter, we'll enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits from our own plants and bushes and trees.

--if we need to make space for others to live with us, we can finally go through all those boxes of stuff that have accumulated in the spare room. Old pictures? Share them with the grandchildren so they'll know what their parents looked like as youngsters. (One of my grandsons said looking at his grandfather's photo was like looking in a mirror.)

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August may not be what you hoped it would be, or expected it to look like. But we can still experience summertime. The grass is brown until we get a few more rains. Mowing is down to every ten days. The outdoor plants need watering nearly every day. Bird feeders need filling often. And when there's a nice breeze, we can sit outside and enjoy it.

I see a few big yellow school buses making their rounds. And I see kids in my neighborhood riding bikes or walking to the bus stop.

In ten years, or twenty, new adults will be telling their children and possibly grandchildren all about the years when so much of life was shut down and we had to make our own fun, had to rely on each other in different ways, learned a lot about staying alive and healthy in a time of uncertainty and stress. 

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Have a blessed week! Stay safe . . . help others . . . give thanks.

Always arriving in early August

MEMORIES, AND SHARING THEM

[My local library is open again, after a 3-year major renovation following an arson fire in 2017. This re-opening is probably THE major event of a year that is going down in history as a year that mostly didn't happen. So I'm repeating a post about library books because I (1) love books, (2) love libraries, and (3) believe we ought to share our passions with each other. AND, as a bonus, you'll find something to fill in your own unscheduled hours.]

Biography section is a convenient umbrella that includes autobiography and memoir. I love memoir. Memoir is a way of living part of another person’s life and understanding not only what happened, but one view of why it happened, and how it has impacted the writer’s life.

Looking at my home-grown library, collected over the past fifty-plus years, I find a large number of non-fiction books that are based on memories and recollected stories: All of May Sarton’s journals; the James Herriott animal stories from his veterinary practice in Yorkshire; Russell Baker’s Growing Up, about his youth in the 1930s; C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. . . .

The list is endless. There’s even a category on Amazon.com called “100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime.” Here are a few you might recognize:

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Anne Frank’s Diary

Seabiscuit and Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen

Night, Elie Weisel

As you can tell by the variety in the above list, there’s no one way to write a memoir. Bill Bryson’s is a humorous tale of outdoor life. Hemingway writes of the explosive political times in the 1920s and 1930s. Frank McCourt tells of an Irish childhood lived in poverty. Anne Frank’s diary recounts her family’s hiding from the Nazis in World War II. Helen Keller writes about her life as a multi-handicapped child.

Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit brought the 1930s horse scene to life; her Unbroken, a World War II survivorship story, was painful to read, but remains one of my favorite books about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness.

The late Maya Angelou was a poet, but her memoir helped her rise above an abusive childhood as an African-American girl.

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa became a lovely movie, based on the Danish woman's various writings—her stories, letters, and articles.

Elie Weisel’s Night is book one of a trilogy in which he ponders serious questions that arise for a survivor of the Holocaust.

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There you have a starter list of books to look for, if you want to experience someone else’s life, culture, and time frame.

Now for the big question—Have you ever thought about writing a memoir of your own?

(Don’t make ugly faces; you haven’t heard the rest of the idea.)

If you’ve managed to live through childhood, marriage/career, children (your own or someone else’s), you have a built-in audience. For example: Do your children know where you grew up? What it was like to live on a farm, in a big city, on a river, in the mountains, in another country? Do your children know their grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins? Did your great-grandfather fight in the War Between the States? (Mine did.)

There’s more to Life than kids’ll learn in a museum. Why not tell them your story? Write about the time you won a blue ribbon for your prize animal/plant/project at the 4-H Fair. Never won one? Write about not winning. Who did win? How did that feel? Did it makes you try harder? Or give up?

What did you do for fun before technology came along and gave us hand-held games, computers, and videos? What was a treat in your family? How did you celebrate birthdays (if you did)?

My family never travelled much for vacations. In fact, vacations times were when we "got caught up on things around the place.” (Maybe that’s why I was never a fan of summer vacation once I went to school.) If you were one of the families that went to Grand Canyon, Grand Ol’ Opry, Epcot Center, camping in the wilds of Montana . . . wherever . . . write about it! Make it come alive.

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Okay, you don’t like the idea of writing about yourself. Just remember—no Memoir Police are going to come along with a red pencil and mark your comma splices or circle a misspelled word. This is not for publication, except for whoever you share it with.

What about--speaking your stories into a little hand-held tape recorder? Anyone who wants to read a paper copy can transcribe them.

OR--I like this one a lot--gather the little guys around (everybody has little guys in the family) and tell them stories of what life was like when you were their ages. (BTW, "guys" includes girls, too. I loved hearing stories about when my mom and dad were kids, and also my grandparents, whenever I could get them to talk about the old days.)

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So--here’s another take on the subject of Memoir.

Do you know folks who live in nursing homes, retirement communities, assisted living, or other such types of housing, who may have stories to tell?

I used to walk at the Y with a man twenty years older than I, who hadn’t grown up in our town, but had moved here as a young man and become acquainted with—to hear him tell it—practically everybody over the age of ten. Wow, did he have stories to tell! And his memory was prodigious. He collected stories the way I collect books. I wanted him to go to the genealogy center here in town to record some of his stories (I knew he’d never write them down), but he hasn’t done it yet. He now resides in assisted living locally and continues to get out and about if someone drive him.

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There are many, many books in print, along with helpful websites, that tell how to write a memoir. But you don’t need to read those yet. Just get a spiral notebook, a good pen, and put on your smile. Sit down in a comfortable place, and let the memories roll.

If you're writing someone else's story, let that person decide if the story is to be shared.

if you’re writing your own story, don’t share it till you’re ready. And if you’re never ready? Hey, that’s okay, too.

Keep in mind that you may not have been old enough to remember some world-wide things going on in your or your subject's early life—such as The Great Depression, World War II, or the Korean Conflict, or the Beatles’ invasion of the U.S. So, do some research. That’s what Google is for! You’ll be glad for the details to make these remembrances live for the reader. And details provide a context for what you or someone else can remember about family, work, or school.

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Kodak has us already in the mindset of “making” memories.

How about putting a few of them on paper? Or tape? Or telling them to young folks?