Happy Birthday to My Daughter Stephanie Kay McCullough

It is probably not possible to permanently elevate life with words; but as you know, I never give up on the idea. I sit here trying to be fresh, witty, to give you a lasting thought, or at least something to let you know how it feels to be me thinking of you, and loving you without bounds. As I have told you before, I will be disappointed if I leave this planet before giving a full account of myself in writing, and any such account must include an expression of my love for you; hence these words.

One of the great challenges of my life has been to find people with whom unedited speech is possible. Often the only choice I have had is to find a way of talking closer to the way those around me talk. I am not saying I cannot relate to people or engage in plain speak with them, but rather, that from time to time; it is nice to relax my editor and let the words come out the way they first appear in my brain.

                   

I have had a few friends who allowed me this unedited speech, but my fondest memories have been of you and me in the car with the words coming easily for us both.

You are someone with whom I can talk and never feel the need to edit. And when you speak with that beautiful rhythm of yours, it’s as if I can feel my mind relaxing. When I talk to you and we are really communicating, I feel compatibility between who I believe I am and what we say.

We now live separate lives and I am sure you love the freedom from my cloying nature. I can tell your current project is to find inspiration to guide you, to stay active, progressing; all while appreciating your life more than my driven nature has permitted me to. You have already demonstrated the capacity to enjoy each moment in ways I have never attained.

        

When we are young, people discuss our potential, our ability.  At my age, no one speculates any longer, but now they look at my productivity, at how effective or efficient I am.  We only have a short period of time to spend in what might be called “The Ability Years”, the precious time of expectancy, future-mindedness, of being a caterpillar. You are still in those years, despite your milestone birthday today.

But a few things you have already clarified, such as that you travel well, your memory is sharp and your perceptual habits keen, and that as your two 4000 mile drives this year indicate; you seek more from life than sitting on a couch or in an office chair.

Where we start our lives tends to be due the decisions of those responsible for our birth. From those put up for adoption to heirs of fortunes, the once placid embryos take what’s dished out.  Something wonderful happens, though, if we are at least mildly blessed by circumstance, because up from the horizon of our minds can come light enough to work by. 

          

My father prayed for my soul on a daily basis, wanting less for him and more for me each passing day.  His blind mother brooded over his future.  Her parents would have cringed to think she would spend her last twenty years in total darkness. 

I follow in that line. I use you as a compass, sun dial, and road atlas, all in one.  For better or worse, I am never any better or worse than what’s going on in your life at any given instant. I know, your life is not a possession of mine but yours to work out and it is that process I have learned to enjoy. I remember early glimpses of the wonderful adult you would become.

Do you recall the short period at age ten or so when you became fascinated by butterflies and moths?  We bought you the Audubon book of moths and butterflies and you and I went out into the field near our house and caught butterflies trying to match them to pictures in the book.  There was this one large brown moth that stayed for days on the rail beside the walkway leading up to my office at work. You figured out what kind it was. We even bought you a net and a type of scrapbook where you could “mount” the ones you caught, but you lost interest in the project when you realized you would have to kill the poor things and then look at the slaughter every time you opened the book. That was my first real insight into the depth of your compassion for other sentient beings and this is the greatest capacity we humans can demonstrate.

Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, in 1997; we drove past a dead deer that had been hit by a car. You told us later, seeing that deer caused you to reflect on how unnatural and cruel it was for human beings to keep and kill animals for food.  So you decided to become a vegetarian, partaking of your last hamburger at Backyard Burgers in late November, 1997. I was glad for your decision, but mostly pleased to learn of your reasoning, knowing it demonstrated the depth with which you were experiencing life.

As long as you live in such a way that brings you increasing hope and sustains this abiding love for the living; I will be thrilled to watch your progress, and no matter where your journey leads, my spirit will still try to reach yours, to send this message:  you are loved and your life is affirmed.  If you get your own heart’s permission for the choices you make, you never need ask for mine.

I love you Stephanie Kay McCullough and Happy Birthday!!!

Let Me Tell You About Our Alaskan Cruise 2011

Thoughts from Alaskan Cruise of 2011

Mountains have inspired writing at least since Moses returned from Mount Sinai with commandments written by God knows who and Moby Dick, arguably the greatest novel since Don Quixote, was in part about the ocean; so if you are like me and one who mulls over how to describe in writing everything he sees, a trip to Alaska by ocean-going ship beside all those mountains, is almost too much to take in.

The trip occurred between June 25 and July 2, Saturday to Saturday, this year, 2011, which meant we traveled north soon after the summer solstice during long days and less cold conditions. The temperatures on our trip probably ranged from a high of 69 or so in Juneau to a low of high 30s in Glacier Bay, but I say probably, because I did not pay that close attention to the readings, since thermometers are not the most interesting part of an Alaskan cruise.

Just as the best cities offer treasures to those willing to seek them out, so too do cruises, except that with cruises you have hidden treasures onboard as well as on land. If the ship is like a city, the land; especially in the case of an Alaskan cruise, is more akin to a walk in the woods. Moments of pleasure ashore are stumbled on like streams in a dense forest. You are not sure how you got there and there will be no finding it again.

Sitting inside our stateroom looking through the closed glass sliding doors over the balcony at choppy gray waters and Canadian mountains, I was reminded that a few weeks ago our daughter Stephanie drove across those hills on her solitary, but adventurous journey to Alaska. Our watery means of travel was considerably less of an ordeal, and afforded us all the food and drink we could hold, not to mention excursions at exotic ports of call and the diversion of being able to talk to or at least look at other people, as the occasion arose.

On Saturday evening, our launch day, I danced to live upbeat popular music with a group of maybe 70 others as the ship pulled away from Seattle, while Tanga took video footage from the deck above. We did the song that best highlights my inability to follow the simplest of choreography: “It’s fun to stay at the YMCA.” Seeing the footage since, I need to rethink my tendency to dance in public, given how poorly I do it.

Here are some of my thoughts recorded while we were on the trip, thus mostly written in a present progressive tense.

As I am writing this, we have been at sea nearly a day and only within the last hour or two have I begun to notice wavy walking and nausea-inducing gentle tilts of the floor. At lunch I said: “Not to be too dramatic, but my plate just moved as I was taking a bite.” To which Tanga said: “Your family is so dramatic,” to which I replied: “Your family is not observant enough to notice a plate moving.” And in that manner of speaking we enjoyed another lunch.

My veganism (sounds bad when I put it that way) has not been much of a problem, what with all the fruit and vegetables available. Sources of protein thus far have included kidney beans on a salad, and uh, well okay, so the sources of protein have not been that numerous, but I have protein bars and soy nuts enough to last the rest of the trip unless I get too desperate for protein and start eating them in rapid succession. [Later our m’ aitre d’ took me on as his cause and found some tofu on the ship and even presented me with an ice bed filled with sticks of carrot, pepper, zucchini, and asparagus.]

I met with Jimmy Lee, the cruise “choir master” on Monday, who was going to teach us to sing in unison as a group, six popular songs - rehearsals starting tomorrow morning, with our performance being on Friday afternoon in the Piazza, where other cruisers will be milling about. I was not the first one to arrive and when I walked in, he asked if I would like to do the first audition and I said, “Sure”, to which he said, “No, I was just kidding, there are no auditions, that was supposed to scare you”, which it obviously failed to do. My recent morning meditations have included breathing in fear and out courage, so I was prepared. I asked if participating in the choir would preclude my trying out for the star search later tonight and he said it would not. Alas, however, the time conflicts did not allow me to participate in either the chorus or the star search, the latter of which was late each night and I was in bed at a reasonable hour by Central Time each evening.

It’s a good thing most people on the cruise do not mind sharing tables during meals, or perhaps more aptly, it’s a good thing people have little choice but to share tables during meals; since there are few tables for two and not everyone could take a number and wait until a table for six was finally available for a couple. We have shared and been shared with thus far, having met BJ and Lisa from Souix Falls, SD, Clint and Geri from Las Vegas, Evelyn from Maryland and Carl from Arlington, VA, Becky and Rollin from Fresno, Rick and Julie from Chicago, Steve and his daughter Jessica , also from Chicago, the couple from Reading Pennsylvania who had paid for the third cruise for seventeen members of their family in the past six years (I should have asked if they were interested in sponsoring me starting a vegan restaurant in West Tennessee). We also met a couple from Houston with whom we did not exchange names, the wife of whom said: “You must be from the south, I noticed you ordered water with your lemon”. We said we were from Tennessee and that confirmed for her the theory that only southerners from the U.S. ask for lemon with their water.

We had our time with Stephanie in Skagway on Tuesday and it could not have been better. We drove into Canada, which is not far at all, less than twenty miles, I suspect; which sort of surprised me. Canadian customs is not right at the border so we turned around before we reached their booth, but we had to provide our passports to the guy at the American booth on the way back down. He had Steph roll down the window so he could get a better look at me, the old man in the back seat.

While we were on that drive into Canada we saw tremendous waterfalls and mounds of lichen and moss-covered rocks; and when we drove back into Alaska, it was those tall dark mountains with the White Pass Railroad line hanging off the side. The river far below was a bright green, what I would call pure cold. We had bought sandwiches, so we drove to Diyea for a picnic on the flats, and when we left, Stephanie said now that we are leaving I will tell you a number of my friends have encountered bears where we just ate. We saw no animals on our trip, not even the plentiful porcupine. We learned there are no raccoons or moose in Skagway, although they are numerous in other parts of Alaska, but the porcupines are as big as dogs, Stephanie said; and although it is not an animal, one of the six or seven stalks of rhubarb laying on the counter in her house could be used to kill a bear, they were so long, thick and hard.

On Wednesday we saw the Marjorie Glacier and while we were there it “calved” several times, sounding much louder than small sized chunks falling off, chunks no doubt much larger than they appeared from the ship. Tanga said some people call the roar, white thunder; making it sound like something an Inuit might have said. There was a glacier on each side of us where we stopped for about an hour, the one on the starboard (right facing the front) side was black and the one of the port (left facing the front) side was white. Tanga and I stood on the fifteenth deck on the port side until the captain turned the ship around, at which time we returned to our fourteenth deck stateroom on the starboard side so we could continue viewing the much prettier bluish-white Marjorie Glacier. I do not recall the name of the dark glacier, but it was said to be a mile and a half wide and the blue-white one about a mile wide and 250 feet above the water and about 150 feet below the water.

They played great music on the fourteenth, open-to-the-air deck on which we mostly “lived”. The fifteenth and sixteenth could be seen from our deck and hanging from the fifteenth deck was a giant movie screen, on which they played countless movies, providing blankets in the cool evenings for those lying in the lounge chairs watching the film. Everywhere you looked there were people walking with popcorn, ice cream, hotdogs, hamburgers and the pizza so widely acclaimed as superb. One couple said their grandson, by the fourth day said he had eaten 47 slices of the pizza.

I made notes on my phone for this journal as we spent quiet afternoons at sea, and on the way north, I made note there was little space between the mountains and the clouds and in some cases, the mountaintops were white and in others, not visible for the clouds. I noted it would have been a good place to “start a roller coaster”, a note which seemed much “smarter” at the time. There were no sandy beaches as we cruised north with the Canadian coast on our starboard side of the ship. In fact, the mountains rising to as much as several thousand feet straight out of the water, were covered with coniferous trees right down to the shore. When we got into Juneau, we did see a rocky “beach” and there was this couple on it in lounge chairs all by themselves, with the temperature around 60 degrees or so and clouds overhead. They seemed a little desperate from my seat on the bus.

Here are a few of my journal entries to give a flavor of what I was noting as we went.:

This must be how the earth was 10,000 years ago, just land and sea and animals with no design on making a buck.

Three layers of mountains, dark, lighter and lighter still in the rear.

Occasionally the ship seems to ever so slightly hover and settle.

Radio station on which our bus driver has a show: Alaskanscorcher.net NPR radio from Juneau

U of A southeast, 2800 Mostly study environmental sciences…someone asks whether the students believe in global warming and our guide simply says yes.

Black wolf Romeo in Juneau –this black wolf that befriended dogs and people alike was killed and a 10 thousand dollar award offered for the arrest. Arrests were made, but it appears they may get off light.

Jerry Jenkins our bus driver guide in Juneau, was the anti-tour guide guide, telling us lies we would hear such as the first hotel in Alaska variously said to be in Juneau, Skagway or other towns.

He told us to not book excursions on the ship because they would always be more expensive. He did not want to work for the ships because he could not tell the truth about how bad the Mexican food was in Juneau and how many of the shops were owned by ships.

He told of how Eagles would steal catch from ravens, but how smart Ravens were and how they would gang up on Eagles and return the favor, stealing their catch. Ravens can mimic a cat in heat, a car alarm and people screaming.

Cruises are primarily food festivals as far as I can tell. The fourteenth deck, our deck, had a buffet and grills, from which foods of all types were walked all over the ship. At Bernini's, on the fifth deck, the wait staff did their best to keep a relaxed atmosphere from breaking out. There were stuffier restaurants than that though, where you paid s $20 cover charge.

Our bus driver in Ketchikan stopped on a bridge spanning a swiftly flowing stream to the left of which was a manmade wooden box of width, depth and pitch allowing water to pass through at a less violent volume, which, as he explained, the smaller salmon would instinctively choose and thus pass safely.

The driver spoke in clear terms of what happened to the salmon starting around he second week of July, getting so thick in another stream over which we stopped, that "you could walk across the water on their backs". He said late in September and October you could smell dead salmon for a mile.

Married man's trail was the name of a street that led to brothels. One Spanish-speaking guy on our bus translated for all of us: "whorehouses".

They had a museum called Dolly's house in front of which stood a young lady convincingly dressed to play the part.

They get 180 inches of rain per year. We waited for our bus beside the giant rain gauge as tall as a two-story building, at the top of which was proclaimed the record rainfall of 1949, when they received over two hundred inches.

Our driver spoke as admiringly of the cruise ships as he had the salmon, saying how they docked sideways when they arrived. Ketchikan receives ships from May through September and in the middle of it all the salmon run, making Ketchikan the "salmon Capitol of the world", while doing pretty well in the cruise ship competition as well.

The instability of being on the top sleeping deck of a cruise ship at sea must be somewhat like that of being on the top of a tall pole in a windstorm.

On some days Stephanie is assigned to Diyea, the failed town in the beautiful flats at the start of Chulcutt Pass, where she is to offer her services for morning and afternoon tours to those not part of some already organized tour.

The music, so joyful on day two, seems sad as I walk the deck on day six. The seven days of a cruise are like the seven decades of a life, and after day five few references to days are heard.

The water temperature was said by our room tv to be 57 degrees before we got back to Victoria, and I recall them saying it was 47 in Skagway, and that at 47, a person could float alive in the water for about fifteen minutes. If it happened on a cruise, that fifteen minutes would do double duty as fame and the final quarter hour of the newly-famous life.

Wrapping it up

Once while we stood on the deck waiting for the glacier to calf, I detected the attitude Tanga only gets on vacation, the one that permits me to say anything all the way from the self-important to the adolescent, with impunity; and I thought of how many days she has spent driving to and from work for the last fifteen years, and what a release this must be for her. It also occurred to me she was representing her family on this cruise, two brothers who hate flying or being on ships and so will likely not cruise and her mother and other brother who are no longer with us but who would have thoroughly enjoyed it. They would be proud of how well she represents the family, with her easy, smiling accommodation of the new and unusual; noting it but never effusive. She is one of those people who are completely unable to hide it when they are completely relaxed, and since I know her so well, I know how rare it is. Neither of us are drinkers, but she seems calms way down on vacation without chemical assistance.

If the money and time are there for you, I would recommend a cruise, and the Inside Passage to Alaska in particular. If the money and time are not there, believe me I know how it feels. But I must say, and Tanga and I could not help but comment on it, it does feel nice to have reached a point when a cruise is possible. It sure was a long time in coming for us.

Let Me Tell You About My Friend Nathan Evans

While some people appear better suited for Mars or Venus, Nathan Evans seems perfectly at home on Earth and in the USA, owing perhaps to his singular genetics; for Nathan, and his sister Lindsey, had a paternal grandfather on the USS Tennessee, bombed in Pearl Harbor in December, 1941; and a maternal grandfather who served as a paratrooper in the 29th Army Infantry division that stormed Omaha Beach in June, 1944; so I suspect if you could check Nathan’s DNA, you would find a marker for courage on one of his chromosomes.

So, I guess I am saying it takes courage to be a good earthling, and of course, patience, creativity, and a willingness to get up every day and do what life asks. Those qualities sum up Nathan, who unlike many of us; is not too full of himself to let others get the limelight while he works in the background. Determined artists, like Nathan, who operate in the physical realm baffle me with their eye for detail, painstaking movements, and drive for perfection. But the greatest message they send is that the most we can hope for is to leave the best of ourselves in the works we produce.

Yes, Nathan had two brave grandfathers, but despite not being challenged to serve in a similar way, he passes the courage test given us all, to be steady during the storms of life. I have seen Nathan work way into the night on art projects after a long day of attending classes and mowing the University grounds, and it did not seem to matter if his day had gone well or not; if something needed done, he went about doing it. I wish I had more of whatever it is he has when it comes to pleasantly setting aside the trivial for the necessary.

On November 19, 2004, my wife Tanga had a severe car wreck in Brownsville, Tennessee, when I was on a work-related trip to Louisiana. Nathan was living with us at the time, while he went to a nearby University. The wreck occurred early in the morning, so by 9 am or so, Tanga was in the Brownsville hospital for observation. Nathan dropped what he was doing, drove the 60 miles round trip to bring her home, and then went to the pharmacy for her medicine. He impressed Tanga with his calm and resolved manner of caring for her. It’s at such times, people unwittingly yield up evidence of their true nature.

Tanga says Nathan’s brand of humor reminds her of comedian and actor Kevin James, which I believe is because they are both so likeable and refreshingly at odds with the normal view of the world. Nathan finds humor in surprising places, usually by turning something completely around, and using his keen sense of irony. For example, one night when Nathan’s favorite sports team, the Louisville Cardinals, were down by a large margin in basketball, he said: “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” For him, a strong reaction to a tight game, would be to get up from his green recliner, his chair while he was at our house; and go over to the indoor basketball goal and start firing shots.

If the game did not go the way he had hoped, he would not mope, fume or worse, the way I sometimes would; but he would simply go about his business or even on some occasions, head over to the University to work on an art project. Nathan, being the master of understatement; would say something like “Not so much”, if you asked him whether his team played well in a game they had lost. It’s not surprising then that after he had lived with us a while, he would leave the upstairs area all to me as I watched my favorite team play, knowing I might say rough things or hit the arm of the chair with a little too much force. I might have learned a lot from Nathan’s approach to being a sports fan, but I am not sure even he can help me when it comes to that.

Nathan has a unique take on the world. Most people will have an opinion either predictably right or left in politics, or they will evaluate things either as right or wrong or fair or unfair or momentous or insignificant, but Nathan invariably sees things somewhere between the extremes and in a way you would never have anticipated. The only thing predictable about his take on the world is its unpredictability.

If you like showy, Nathan is not your guy. If you want someone to flatter your wardrobe or your taste in automobiles, keep looking. If you prefer those out to win friends and influence people, Nathan will likely disappoint. If, on the other hand, your taste in people runs to the quietly humorous, sweetly sarcastic, and mildly enigmatic; you might want to give Nathan a test drive. Nathan has all the best qualities of the artistic temperament without the moodiness or explosive temper.

During his time of living at our house we had the enormous pleasure of playing host to he and his future wife Kathryn Johnson; cooking out on the weekends, eating the occasional weekday meal together, and, as I said, watching sports if it involved the University of Kentucky (our favorite team) or the University of Louisville (his and ultimately, their, favorite).

Many nights, sitting upstairs, we heard his key unlock the front door and knew what was coming, since it was his custom to walk heavily up the steps as if to give us ample warning someone else was in the house and then silently turn the corner with a sheepish grin on his face. Tanga would usually say something like: “There’s food on the stove if you are still hungry.”

Before he came to live with us, in 2003; I gave Nathan a small, faded, black and white photo of Tanga’s father sitting on a child’s rocking chair, in front of the TV in their old home place around Christmas 1965 (before he was to die in April, 1966); and asked Nathan to turn it into a painting for me to give to Tanga for our anniversary. The painting hangs in our living room as a reminder of Tanga’s father, our favorite artist and the fragility of life.

Nathan and Kathryn Evans married in North Augusta, SC in October, 2006 and the party afterwards was held in a textile mill turned reception hall in Augusta, GA, along the canal. They had a DJ and a number of us, not prone to public dancing, cut loose that night; in my case, due in part to a feeling of euphoria to see two such dear people, so clearly right for one another, make a public decision to become a couple.

For these reasons and so many more, Tanga and I would have adopted Nathan if his own family had not supported him so well (darn it).

Happy Birthday Nathan. Our house is your house, when you and Kathryn are ever in the area.

Let Me Tell You About My Friend Trent Ashcraft

When I was a young adult, I saw many of today’s young adults as babies and one of those is Trent Ashcraft, son of Phil and Denise (Holbrook), college friends. Trent’s parents, like my wife Tanga and I, met as a result of attending the Baptist Student Union (BSU) at Morehead State University. Our class of BSUers produced at least a dozen marriages and now Trent and his brother Jason have added two new sets of marriages from the next generation to that list: Jason Ashcraft/Jessica Gabbard and Trent Ashcraft/Erin Nowak.

Funny smart people are fortunate since humor makes their intelligence easier to tolerate. Trent Ashcraft is a funny smart person, gifted at the art of lively conversation and full of opinions, but always on the lookout for ways to keep from offending others, by employing his favorite conciliatory device - humor.

Trent is also cool. The coolest people are the least likely to be fawned over, because fawning is uncool and the cool person frowns on it, so the way to tell the cool how cool they are, is to pay them the respect they are due; which of course, means by coming right out and saying Trent is cool, I am officially, uncool.

I mean if you got on an elevator and there stood Chris Rock, would you blurt out, "Chris Rock, you are so cool?" Hopefully not right? To me, the cool person seems to always keep his balance, no matter the situation. If you put Trent on stage, as many of his friends know, and ask him to stand there and be funny, he will figure out a way to do it. I am sure he is a serious teacher, but I have a feeling his students get a pretty good dose of entertainment as well.

I have to admit, the way I think of Trent is based on recollections of him as a comic prodigy. Trent was born into the first generation to have VHS recordings made of their childhood and I hope someday, we can get our old tapes digitized; and when we do, we are going to shock the world with video clips of a five-year old Trent Ashcraft doing standup at parties where he had the adults rolling in the aisles. His specialty was telling stories originally told by Jerry Clower. When you see him next, just say: “I just want to make sure he knows I’m a bull too” and see if Trent smiles. Or say: “Pastor you’re kneeling on my oxygen hose, back up.” Or: “When I first saw that dog, I thought it was a lion too.”

One thing I've noticed about building people up in your imagination is that; sometimes when you are finally with them, you can think of nothing to say. It's as if the pressure is too much; you have often wished them to be near so you could trade witticisms and now you are together there is this stone cold silence.

It's sometimes that way when we all get together. We will be sitting on the couch, me and this boy I treasured watching grow up, now a grown man of his own; and the only thing I manage is: "How bout them Reds?"

But ever once in a while things will flow, someone will say something like: "How long did people think Lindsay Lohan could stay clean, anyway; it's no surprise to me." ...and Trent comes up with the perfect clip, such as: "I don't know, about anyone else but there are some people, and she's one of them, that just about never cross my mind, unless someone mentions her or something."

And I'm thinking, is nobody writing this stuff down? He speaks lines that should be in a Broadway play and we sit here shelling peanuts or yawning or looking at our watch or scratching our itches. The rest of us could no more speak English as craftily as he does than we could speak one of Africa's click languages.

Trent would be the counterexample I would offer to anyone of my generation who produced a Humvee full of frat boys as evidence of how the next generation of young men leave a lot to be desired, with their high regard for self and anything money can buy. Trent, like hundreds of other young people dedicated to learning and transmitting it to the next generation, followed his lifelong dream to do what his father did – teach young people history, social studies and what it means to be a citizen of the United States. These young people are the best hope to “keep our Republic”.

I read somewhere that a modern urban person is hit with as much information in a day as someone 100 years ago was in a lifetime. Of course we know being hit with information is different from absorbing and assimilating it. The young person of today, who seeks, processes and makes sense of the world; is potentially more knowledgeable than Thomas Jefferson and wiser than Ben Franklin. Trent is one of these young people, so not only is he cool like Chris Rock, he is Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one.


In Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse", Mrs. Ramsey is watching rooks (sort of like crows) she had named Joseph and Mary, cavorting in the air outside the window and brings them to her daughter Rose's attention, because: "One's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards." I agree with Mrs. Woolf, it is the primary purpose of the young to give your “perceptions a little thrust forwards”. But that is not all they do.

Here are some more things young people like Trent do for me:

They laugh at the things I still find funny but am not supposed to. They invent word play that makes everyone involved feel smarter. You can trust their instincts for what is cool when you can't trust your own. Their thinking is attractive and efficient, making others try to think like them and solve problems quickly, leaving time for fun.

And when you see them enjoy something you find childish or less than sophisticated, you indulge them, gaining insight into how the most patient and admired adults in your life must have felt when they abided your youthful fun and games. So with that in mind, let’s all think of the tune: “Pomp and circumstance”, and give Trent a hearty “Oh Yeeaaah”, in honor of his recently fallen hero Macho Man, and of course, his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Trent.

Let Me Tell You About My Friend Trent Ashcraft

When I was a young adult, I saw many of today’s young adults as babies and one of those is Trent Ashcraft, son of Phil and Denise (Holbrook), college friends. Trent’s parents, like my wife Tanga and I, met as a result of attending the Baptist Student Union (BSU) at Morehead State University. Our class of BSUers produced at least a dozen marriages and now Trent and his brother Jason have added two new sets of marriages from the next generation to that list: Jason Ashcraft/Jessica Gabbard and Trent Ashcraft/Erin Nowak.

Funny smart people are fortunate since humor makes their intelligence easier to tolerate. Trent Ashcraft is a funny smart person, gifted at the art of lively conversation and full of opinions, but always on the lookout for ways to keep from offending others, by employing his favorite conciliatory device - humor.

Trent is also cool. The coolest people are the least likely to be fawned over, because fawning is uncool and the cool person frowns on it, so the way to tell the cool how cool they are, is to pay them the respect they are due; which of course, means by coming right out and saying Trent is cool, I am officially, uncool.

I mean if you got on an elevator and there stood Chris Rock, would you blurt out, "Chris Rock, you are so cool?" Hopefully not right? To me, the cool person seems to always keep his balance, no matter the situation. If you put Trent on stage, as many of his friends know, and ask him to stand there and be funny, he will figure out a way to do it. I am sure he is a serious teacher, but I have a feeling his students get a pretty good dose of entertainment as well.

I have to admit, the way I think of Trent is based on recollections of him as a comic prodigy. Trent was born into the first generation to have VHS recordings made of their childhood and I hope someday, we can get our old tapes digitized; and when we do, we are going to shock the world with video clips of a five-year old Trent Ashcraft doing standup at parties where he had the adults rolling in the aisles. His specialty was telling stories originally told by Jerry Clower. When you see him next, just say: “I just want to make sure he knows I’m a bull too” and see if Trent smiles. Or say: “Pastor you’re kneeling on my oxygen hose, back up.” Or: “When I first saw that dog, I thought it was a lion too.”

One thing I've noticed about building people up in your imagination is that; sometimes when you are finally with them, you can think of nothing to say. It's as if the pressure is too much; you have often wished them to be near so you could trade witticisms and now you are together there is this stone cold silence.

It's sometimes that way when we all get together. We will be sitting on the couch, me and this boy I treasured watching grow up, now a grown man of his own; and the only thing I manage is: "How bout them Reds?"

But ever once in a while things will flow, someone will say something like: "How long did people think Lindsay Lohan could stay clean, anyway; it's no surprise to me." ...and Trent comes up with the perfect clip, such as: "I don't know, about anyone else but there are some people, and she's one of them, that just about never cross my mind, unless someone mentions her or something."

And I'm thinking, is nobody writing this stuff down? He speaks lines that should be in a Broadway play and we sit here shelling peanuts or yawning or looking at our watch or scratching our itches. The rest of us could no more speak English as craftily as he does than we could speak one of Africa's click languages.

Trent would be the counterexample I would offer to anyone of my generation who produced a Humvee full of frat boys as evidence of how the next generation of young men leave a lot to be desired, with their high regard for self and anything money can buy. Trent, like hundreds of other young people dedicated to learning and transmitting it to the next generation, followed his lifelong dream to do what his father did – teach young people history, social studies and what it means to be a citizen of the United States. These young people are the best hope to “keep our Republic”.

I read somewhere that a modern urban person is hit with as much information in a day as someone 100 years ago was in a lifetime. Of course we know being hit with information is different from absorbing and assimilating it. The young person of today, who seeks, processes and makes sense of the world; is potentially more knowledgeable than Thomas Jefferson and wiser than Ben Franklin. Trent is one of these young people, so not only is he cool like Chris Rock, he is Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one.


In Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse", Mrs. Ramsey is watching rooks (sort of like crows) she had named Joseph and Mary, cavorting in the air outside the window and brings them to her daughter Rose's attention, because: "One's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards." I agree with Mrs. Woolf, it is the primary purpose of the young to give your “perceptions a little thrust forwards”. But that is not all they do.

Here are some more things young people like Trent do for me:

They laugh at the things I still find funny but am not supposed to. They invent word play that makes everyone involved feel smarter. You can trust their instincts for what is cool when you can't trust your own. Their thinking is attractive and efficient, making others try to think like them and solve problems quickly, leaving time for fun.

And when you see them enjoy something you find childish or less than sophisticated, you indulge them, gaining insight into how the most patient and admired adults in your life must have felt when they abided your youthful fun and games. So with that in mind, let’s all think of the tune: “Pomp and circumstance”, and give Trent a hearty “Oh Yeeaaah”, in honor of his recently fallen hero Macho Man, and of course, his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Trent.

Let Me Tell You About Betty Kincaid

The reality that Betty Kincaid was made of human flesh and was therefore mortal, matters only in that she could not stay with us forever, but it does not diminish the impact she had on my life; since to me, she was a perfect saint, more heavenly than any angel. I have no idea, honestly; if she had faults and I do not care to hear of them if she did. The first evidence I received that Betty Kincaid was not supernatural came a little after four pm local time today, when her son and my best friend, Raleigh Kincaid, texted me that his mother had passed. The text read: “My mom just passed. We’re all ok.” What is strange to me in the text is that it did not say: “Mom just passed. We’re all ok.” It is as if Raleigh was reminding me that she was never really my mother too. That’s ok Raleigh, but we both know differently. You were texting under awful circumstances, so you are forgiven.

“Betty Jo, Betty Jo,…”

“Yes Ernest, what young man? Oh, my you’ve done it again, you spilled that all over yourself, you slob, what am I going to do with you son?”

“I’m pitiful Betty Jo”…

“Oh, yeah, you’re pitiful alright, either that or you’re trying my patience.”

That’s Ernest Kincaid talking to Betty Kincaid somewhere around 1968 or 1969, as he lay in his roll-away bed on the glassed-in porch just off the eat-in kitchen where Raleigh, Davie, Betty and I would eat our Saturday-morning breakfasts, because I had come home with Raleigh after school on Friday evening.

In the warm months, humming birds fluttered around Betty’s feeders, strategically placed for Ernest to enjoy through the window. The house would have been “mildly cluttered”, although never but a few minutes from being “well-kept”. There were notches on the door jamb to chart Raleigh’s growth. During the years when I spent days and nights there, those marks marched up the door facing well above my head, until they reached six and a half feet tall by the time we were done with high school.

Ernest had been diagnosed with MS not long after Raleigh was born, so he was discharged from the military and he and Betty moved the boys back home to the Cann farm, a farm that sat across the North Fork of the Kentucky river in Lee County Kentucky, just above Saint Helens; and to get to it you had to drive across a rickety wooden/cable bridge. Boards lay on the bridge about wide enough for car tires. Larger vehicles had to take a different road into the back of the farm.

Ernest and Betty lived in a modest brick house about halfway back a narrow paved lane, situated on a large pond, in front of which Raleigh and I dug up the grass for a truck to pour asphalt on, to make us a basketball court. We literally built the court we had so many battles on in the blistering sun or stinging cold.

Betty read her library paperbacks, cooked tirelessly for us, took care of Ernest and spoiled her series of Boston Terriers. She was right around my dad’s age, so nearly forty when I first “came into the family”. By that time, Ernest required a wheelchair and spent all his remaining time in bed. Betty and the boys were adept at wrestling him in and out of vehicles.

The first time I can recall seeing them was when Betty wheeled Ernest beside the bleachers behind home plate at Beattyville Grade school where Raleigh and I played little league. Ernest’s speech was slurred by then, but both he and Betty would yell their encouragement to Raleigh and as I became more a part of the family, to me as well. My parents did not attend our games, so Betty and Ernest were my cheering section too.

After we had spent all of a hot Saturday beating one another senseless on the basketball court, we would head into the house and Betty would be waiting with dinner. She liked to sit down and talk to us while we ate. She would try to draw me out, because for some reason, I had little to say to anyone but Raleigh while I was there. Sometimes I would even whisper to Raleigh that I wanted something passed or needed more to drink.

“Mike honey, you’re just gonna have to be like these two animals here and fend for yourself. Don’t be shy.”

Raleigh and I talked philosophically and about important subjects, trying out the minds we were just coming to know and Betty would listen appreciatively and occasionally interject something that made it clear where Raleigh got his intelligence. I can recall trying to sound as smart as possible when I knew she was listening. I now do that for a living, but I think I first learned it by having her as an eavesdropper.

She would say things to put me at ease while I was visiting, but I distinctly remember she never said: “Make yourself at home” and as time went on it became clear she was far too sophisticated to say that, because she understood the underlying message that comes from it, something like a subtle reminder that as a guest you were not really at home.

After dark and the Kentucky basketball game came on either TV or radio, she popped corn and made us milk shakes. I can recall feeling guilty after a few times of being over there and having popcorn, basketball games and milkshakes with my little brother Earl home in the trailer with none of those things and nothing to do. So, once I was old enough to drive, I would take him with me and Raleigh would sit on him during the game (Raleigh had been abused by his older cousin, so he abused people younger, other than me. It’s a long story, Raleigh’s cruelty to Earl, but it was actually not cruelty, but his way of dealing with someone from my family who was not me.)

Betty would repeatedly tell Raleigh to lay off Earl. “He is never going to want to come over here again, Raleigh Mark. Get off him.”

“But mom, he likes it, don’t you like it Earl?”

Earl looks at me and I shrug my shoulders.

Raleigh: “If he didn’t like it would he come over here?”

Me: “It might be the milkshakes he likes, I am not sure.”

Betty took care of Ernest like a nurse for at least two decades, the prime years of her life. She was so, so smart, so witty, so full of natural charm, as I look back now, and even then, I marveled at her patience and willingness to stay out of the excitement life would surely have afforded someone with her talents. She sang like a bird, but never to an audience bigger than the few of us. She poured herself into raising her boys, letting their news from life at school, ballgames, band trips, or other adventures, be her chance to stay connected with the bustling world off the farm and away from the porch where the man she loved lay.

Her dignity and worldliness stood out by contrast, the few times when she was around my parents. She was nearly as firm a believer in the Bible as my dad, but she was not a fanatic and she had read widely other than the Bible, and was far better educated generally, having grown up in a family with a good deal of coal money; but most importantly, she had manners and social graces my family could observe, but hardly describe.

Betty doted on me as if I was her son. I think she thought I was perfect the way I thought she was until one day when on the drive home from college, Raleigh and I had our worst fight, maybe even our only fight ever. When he got home, she recommended we both go for counseling. She must have been distraught and I found it hard to face her afterwards, knowing I had not lived up to her expectations.

She was proud of Raleigh and he and I competed for her approval. He was wicked smart in every way, but between the two of them; they had me so pumped up with belief in myself, there was precious little difference between us on school performance. He sang and I sang too. He even wrote in our senior memories book that his dream was to someday sing better than me. If you have heard Raleigh sing you know why I bring that up. He and his mother believed in me so much, they could not even hear how much more resonant his voice was, or at least they never pointed it out to me.

Betty was the strongest-willed person I have ever met, other than my father. I was unable to be around her much for the last few decades, due to my moving away. But, I have stayed in touch with Raleigh and his admiration for her is roughly the same as it was back when I came to respect her so immensely. Her passing is going to be rough for Raleigh, and I know that is almost always true when sons lose mothers, but the bond they established during the years I was there as witness, was much like a story that might well have been written by one of the Brontes, Jane Austen, or George Eliot. The stuff of literature, really; the sort of literature she read while waiting for Ernest’s next request.

I told Raleigh in the last few weeks, after Betty had fallen and her health was in severe decline; I needed to write her a letter. I suppose this is that letter. She will not read it, but one night when Raleigh was there in the hospital beside her bed he texted me that he was there and I texted back for him to tell her I loved her. He texted back that she said she loved me too. She is enough like Raleigh and I like to think me too, that she meant what she said and she knew I meant it too. That’s something at least, right?

I spoke to the faculty at another University earlier this week and during my presentation, I compared the servant mentality of many faculty members I have known to that of Betty Kincaid, in as much as they are like her in making the decision to devote their life to service.

Betty Kincaid, you were a true servant of others on this earth. You have earned your rest. Thanks for demonstrating how to live a great life in ordinary, and sometimes trying, circumstances.

Betty Kincaid, I love you.

Let Me Tell You About My Friend, Jason Ashcraft

Young Mr. Jason Ashcraft, the oldest son of two of my oldest friends, Phil and Denise Ashcraft, today turns an age many people pretend to be years later; 29, or twelve days older than our daughter. The plans Jason announced when they were about five years old, in the backseat of our car, driving through the Smokey Mountains - for he and our daughter to marry and live in the woods; never materialized, so to be perfectly candid, I don’t trust the guy. He wound up marrying someone far superior to himself in intellect, physical attractiveness and personality, but gees, a promise is a promise, right?

A couple of months before his wedding on December 3, 2005, I was at a shopping mall in Tampa, Florida killing time after attending sessions at a conference when my cell phone rang and it was Jason asking me whether I would be willing to sing Elton John’s “Your Song” at the ceremony. I said yes, even though as I have gotten older my singing is pretty much limited to the shower or while driving. If I did a less than satisfactory job, which could be the case, since it was after all a song by one of Jason’s favorite artists and I was not sure of my pitch on all the notes for whatever reasons, then let me just say right here, that is my revenge for him breaking his promise to my daughter. His dad noticed that Denise, Jason’s mom, was crying while I was singing and told her he didn’t think my singing was THAT bad.

In case you could not tell, I have tried to be funny up until now, but I do have a few serious things to say. Somehow Jason has been able to land jobs that me and a lot of the boys I hung around with as a kid would have killed for, jobs having to do with college sports. Right now he has a job where he has to follow the Xavier men’s basketball team all over the place writing up reports on what happens. Once we saw him on TV sitting at a press table in Gainesville, Florida, at the Florida-Xavier game and I texted to see if that was him in the blue shirt down in the corner behind one of the goals and he texted back and said, yes, that’s me. How cool is that? This coming week he flies to Spokane for a game and it is always something neat and interesting with his job.

I have trouble keeping up with Jason when it comes to talking about movies, TV or really esoteric stuff on practically any subject. With his dad as a social studies teacher and his mother so fully aware of everything going on in the world, he could not have turned out any differently. I still enjoy trying to talk to him though, given that I am in the field of education and I am supposed to know a lot of the stuff he really does know.

Jason is a pilot, a motorcycle rider, and the husband of an equestrian. They also have cars, so if it has to do with transportation, he and his wife pretty much have it covered, from horses to planes. Jason, here’s the link to Amazon’s array of Segways:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=segway&x=0&y=0

In closing, let me say, I am thrilled that Jessica, Jason’s wife is such an understanding person, given my joking above and also, that my daughter does not do the whole Facebook thing.

Happy Birthday Mr. Jason, age gracefully the way your wonderful parents and I are.