women in the pulpit

This is the sort of thing that gives some people a case of the rash, but our church now has a woman in the pulpit. I'm talking about the First United Methodist Church of Clearwater, Florida. This lady is not a "light-weight." She was pastor of a Methodist church in Oldsmar, just up the road, and led them in a campaign to build a new sanctuary. She became a district superintendent out of Fort Myers. Her district was one of the hardest-hit during last year's hurricane season. She returned to the pulpit after five years when the Florida Conference reduced the number of districts from 14 to nine. We are happy to have her.

I mention this because I (father of three daughters, and married to a most excellent lady) have been thinking about the role of women in many parts of the world, such as the women who walk around bagged head-to-toe in some parts of the Muslim world, and who don't have much of a future even if they are allowed to go out with their faces exposed. The men of such societies don't know the talent they are wasting.

I've also been thinking of the Catholic Church and the radical right religious groups we have right here in the United States, none of whom would allow a woman in the pulpit. They don't know the talent they are wasting, either. It's a scientific fact that men and women do not think alike. It's also becoming more and more self-evident to me that women - or at least educated thinking women - tend to have a view of the world that men should pay attention to.

In my office, half the lawyers are women. The city administrator is a woman. Two of our city council members are women. My doctor and my dermatologist are women. If they were forced to go home, put on head-to-toe bags, and stay at home unless escorted out by a man, we would all be the poorer for it.

on cleaning house

We are, once again, cleaning house. This involves (among other things) sorting through the piles of paper that build up, deciding what to keep and what to shred. It is amazing what builds up if you don't systematically sort and discard - such as statements from banks that no longer exist. This is like looking back through your own life, one receipt at a time.

I was digging through the back end of a file drawer and found a folder of papers from my father's time in the Army (I consider my packrat tendencies to be a thing of honor, inherited from my father). I found his Army medical examination report from 1942, when he was 30 years old. He had low blood pressure, like I do, which is remarkable because he smoked three packs a day until he quit, "cold turkey," after I was born. He had 20/200 vision, like I did (before it got worse). His vision disqualified him from serving in what the Army calls the "combat arms" branches - just like me. He was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 137 pounds. I was taller than him when I came back from Boy Scout camp at the age of 14. This is the sort of thing that prevents you from cleaning house - you get caught up in the details of what you are reading and go "off task." So, I put the papers back where I found them, to be sorted through on a day when I have nothing else to do, which might be this time next year.

Charley's anniversary

People outside of Florida may be unaware, but this is the first anniversary of Hurricane Charley. Charley was aimed directly at our house until, without warning, it took a right-hand turn, rolled over Punta Gorda, and cut across the state. I should have said, rolled Punta Gorda over. They have empty buildings and busy construction crews at work even today. I do mean "cut" across. Imagine the power it takes to snap a tall, mature pine tree like a match stick, or roll a mobile home over and leave it like a crushed can.

Our newspaper had a story this morning about the bravado being expressed today by fools who think "they never come here" and last year's evacuation warnings were "false alarms." I truly hope they live the remainder of their lives seeing no proof to the contrary.

At least I'm prepared for the next one. If the power goes out again and stay out like last time, I can brew coffee on the gas grill with my new, campfire-style coffee percolator. I just hope the gas grill stays where we left it and doesn't end up on the bottom of the swimming pool.

July in Florida

The problem with going to Boston on the Fourth is, you have to come home soooner or later. It's July, and it's hot. Danged hot. We don't get 100-degree days here like in some other parts of the country but when the humidity is 99 percent the "hot as" factor is about 300 degrees. I mowed my front and back lawns today - don't usually mow them both on the same day in the summer - and I'm sitting here recuperating. Good news: The crape myrtle I planted a year ago is finally showing blooms. I'll put up a photo later. Bad news: The key lime tree has about six limes on it and no evidence of wanting to bear any more this summer. But she's a tough tree, having survived a freeze and two close calls from hurricanes, so there's always hope. After what she went through last summer she's entitled to rest, like I am right now.

Fourth of July in Boston

Of all the places to be on the Fourth of July, I can't think of a better place than in Boston, home of the Tea Party, Paul Revere, and all that. Never mind that they throw a party on the banks of the Charles River complete with the most amazing fireworks synchronized to music from the Boston Pops. Never mind that our twins live there and their siblings think of Boston as a second home town. That's just part of the charm of being there. On the Fourth, this is where it started, here and in other places like Philadelphia, but who wants to go there?

on seeing your daughters turn 30

We aren't old enough for this. Our twins weren't born that long ago and their mother and I aren't old enough to have children that old. But they were, and we are, and they've celebrated one of those birthdays with a zero in it. Good news: They won't have to worry about such a traumatic event for another ten years.

When they were six months old I met a father of six-year-old twin boys who said he felt sorry for me. It doesn't get better, he said. It only gets different. He was wrong. It got different, for sure, but it always got better. Daughters are great; twin girls as good as ours are more than twice as great.

When I turned thirty I'd finished law school, and I had a job with the state legislature that seemed like a good job at the time. Our twins have finished college. One then earned a master's degree while the other completed the requirements to become an R.N. Both have jobs which are much more valuable to our society than the job I had. They are sweet and caring young ladies who know how to enjoy life, too. I am sure my parents were proud of me, but they couldn't have been prouder than their mother and I are of our little girls.

on seeing your son become a husband

I threw in a paragraph about the Devil Rays the other night just to demonstrate that I'm still on line and my computer hasn't fried itself despite my best efforts. But the Devil Rays are the least significant aspect of my life.

I am remiss in not reporting that our "Numbah One Son" (and only son), Colin, married a beautiful young lady two weeks ago, in Colorado. This is almost too profound to speak of in a blog, but I have to say that his mother and I, and his sisters, are as proud of him as we can be. As the old cliche goes, we have not lost a son but gained a daughter, and her four sisters, and her parents, as part of our extended family. Colin met Sarah after moving from Boston to Boulder two years ago. Four years of college and we never heard a word about any of the gals he dated or made friends with, but when he met Sarah he fell like the proverbial ton of bricks. Sarah is like Colin in many respects - they are motivated, serious minded, hard workers, yet fun loving in an "extreme sports" sort of way - snow boarding, rock climbing, running, kayaking, etc. - and also family oriented. They are the greatest match and they have been inseparable. Megan captured the event and added her own classic captions in a web page she created for the event, and you can see it here: http://www.megangalbraith.org/wedding.html
Thanks, Megan. Pictures are sometimes more eloquent than words, but I can think of one exception. If you will send me your speech I'd like to publish it here.

Devil Rays amaze, daze, in phases

I cannot figure the Rays out this year. They are so consistently inconsistent. The conventional wisdom is, they cannot win on the road but then they go to NY this week and beat the Yankees two of three games. The loss was a horrible blow-out, 13 runs in one inning. True to form, they had a huge lead going into late innings but then the real Rays went back to the hotel and sent their bogus clones out on the field to "close." I hope Lou Piniella is not looking at Yankee Stadium too fondly. If he goes, there goes the franchise. I predict that you will be able to buy the Rays on E-Bay before this year is out. Starting bid will be $100.00. I won't make a bid.

back on line again

I refuse to admit how long it took me to upgrade the operating system on my computer, a task made necessary by the gift of an iPod Mini. I installed Windows 2000 Professional over Win 98, hoping not to lose a few old programs I can't find the installation disks for. They survived the installation. But I can't find the disk for my fairly new HP printer. I've tried to download the drivers from HP's web site without success. The installation goes so far, then fails with no explanation whatever. I also lost my favorite places in Internet Explorer but I'm going to start using Mozilla anyway so they were in jeopardy of being lost.

But the important thing is, I got my iPod functional. That's a different painful story. I think Apple has sabotaged their software for PC users to make it less functional. How, for example, do you delete a song from your iPod? If you have home-made disks, like I have, consisting of songs I bought on line, why is it necessary for me to type the titles and artists' names in manually, and how do you do that efficiently? Ah, well. Tomorrow I'm spending the day on a big jet plane and I'm ready to listen to a little Ray Charles, a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with stellar county performers ("Will the Circle be Unbroken"), a touch of jazz (Weather Report), and a half-ton of oldies. Life could be worse.

here's hoping

I am about to upgrade my computer from Windows 98se to Windows 2000 so I can use an iPod. I'm getting conflicting advice about whether to spring for Windows XP, but I have this installation disk for Win 2000 Professional handy and I'm saving my money for a digital underwater camera. I'm going to back up everything I can, then attempt a "dirty" installation so as not to lose too many programs. If that chokes, I will wipe the hard drive clean and do a "clean" install, then re-install the programs I have installation disks for. If that doesn't work I will either go get Windows XP, or kiss the camera goodbye for another year and buy a computer with XP already installed.

A few observations here: (1) At first, I thought the failure of iPod to work on Win 98 was Apple's revenge on PC users until I realized how much money Apple is forcing PC users to spend on Microsoft products. No, we aren't migrating to Apple just for the sake of a portable music player. (2) Market saturation of personal computers in the U.S. is now complete. Americans who do not have a computer now will never buy one because they are too dang much trouble. (3) The old saying, "If everything works perfectly, it is time to upgrade," proves itself true again.

I once converted a 486 computer running Windows 3.1 into a Linux machine. It took hours and hours. It worked, but when it worked it was like watching paint dry. If I didn't think of it as a hobby it would have been a total waste of time.

Wish me luck on this conversion. Who knows when I will be able to access Blogger again?

what's an "awscom?"

In case someone other than one of my children should accidentally stumble into this and wonder what an "awscom" is: Back in the good old days when the Cold War's thermostat seemed permanently set at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the U.S. Army maintained missile sites in Europe. These weren't just missiles. They had nuclear warheads - "tactical" warheads, not the "strategic" kind that could wipe out a continent. These missiles demanded the supervision of the Artillery Corps, maintenance services of the Ordnance Corps (not "ordinance," which is the kind of thing I write for a living nowadays), the Military Police (to stand in the towers and watch the encircling trees), and a few administrative support types like me (Adjutant General Corps). As the story went, "If the balloon goes up, we fire the missiles and our job is done." The headquarters for all this activity was the Advanced Weapons Support Command or AWSCOM, a fancier name for what was also called the 59th Ordnance Group. Until computers came along I had no use for the acronym, AWSCOM. Now, it has a ring to it - a cross between "awesome" and "dot-com." So, there. Now you know.

61 is nothing to fear

For my birthday last year, my sister-in-law sent me a card that said, "Just because you're 60 doesn't mean you are too old to do all the fun things in life." Inside, it read, "61 is too old. You have one year to do everything."

Cute. With a message like that weighing on my mind for a year I knew we couldn't do dinner-and-a-movie on my 61st birthday, assuming I should live so long. So when the 61st rolled around earlier this month, I did the only sane thing an elderly codger could do.

I went scuba diving. I joined a group from my dive shop, and we ran up to the Rainbow River, just north of Dunnellon, Florida. I haven't been "wet" since last November. My buddy hadn't been diving for a year and a half, so we made a good pair. We spent the first 20 minutes remembering how to achieve neutral buoyancy, which is the state you want to be in. I'd get "heavy," bump the river bottom, give my vest a puff of air, and ascend like a balloon. We were in 20 feet, so getting an embolism wasn't a major threat, but it was embarrassing. I'd get back down, look around for my buddy, and find him up at the surface. We went up and down like a pair of yo-yos until we began to get the hang of it again.

The real fun of diving is seeing the fish. I never was big on fresh water fishing but I saw several that would look fine on a dinner plate. We saw a huge gar. I missed seeing a huge turtle. The limestone river bottom has small openings from which water flows, and other openings from which bubbles escape. The grasses bend with the flow but give about 18 inches of dense cover for fish and other critters. This is a great place to cool off on a hot day, with a snorkel or dive gear, and a great place to go kayaking - my next toy after I splurge on an underwater camera.

the Southern Blogs Ring

I've just joined up with something called the "Southern Blogs," a "ring" of (at the moment) 21 blogs that you can read by clicking on "previous" or "next" in the little box, top of right margin. This is described as "a ring defined by latitude as much as anything; if your blog is south of something, an idea, a state of mind, or even a popularly held misconception then you will probably be comfortable here and most certainly south of where you are at."

My four regular readers will probably think I've finally lost my mind. Their image of me as a father does not include what they probably think of as a "typical Southern male." If that's correct, then we raised them right. I am Southern in the same sense that Kentucky, where I was born, is Southern. Kentucky was a Border State during the war of 1861-1865, when brothers fought brothers. That fits in with my being a Gemini, which means (as we should have learned from our high school's speech and debate class), every issue has at least two sides. As a lawyer, I can argue either side for a fee. As a thinking person, I believe the "truth is out there," hidden in the middle of the bleatings and pontifications of the extreme right and extreme left. I am also Southern in the sense that I was raised in a Southern Baptist Church, but I am now proud to call myself a Methodist ("open hearts, open minds, open doors"), thanks to my beautiful wife of 33 years.

If you are reading this for the first time it must mean you are a member of the "ring," because you can't find this blog using Google. If so, don't expect recipes or gardening tips. I don't even have the recipe for a mint julep. I can't tell you what to expect because I never know what will come out next. This is mainly for our children but sometimes takes on the tone of a letter to the editor. . .a place to vent. I'm a fan of the Devil Rays but a bigger fan of the Red Sox, and I've seen enough of the world to believe the South is a nice place to live but it is not God's Back Forty. I am a Democrat the way Will Rogers was a Democrat. ("I don't belong to an organized political party.") I believe the judge made the only correct decision he could make in the Terri Schiavo case, and I believe conservatives have forgotten what they have historically stood for. I also believe the Red Sox can do it again this year, but the season is still early yet. Stay tuned.

Summer has arrived

In Florida, we measure the passage of Spring into Summer by the date we turn on the air conditioner. It's still pleasant in the mornings but the afternoons have become hot and muggy. It is unusual for Spring to hang on this late in May. This evening it was 86 degrees and humid and the house felt like a microwave, so we reluctantly agreed to flip the switch. "I'll turn it off when we go to bed," I said. But I probably won't. It's been on for an hour and it feels better already. Thoughts of diving in 72-degree spring water (see below) are beginning to creep into the random thoughts of odd hours. Right now I'm thinking of celebrating my 61st birthday diving in the Rainbow River with other divers and instructors from my dive shop. You can check out their web site at: http://www.macssports.com

if it's Saturday I must be in Home Depot

But not this Saturday. Instead, I bought a new garage door opener at the local Genie dealer. I love garage door openers almost as much as remote controls on TV sets. This is my third one and I installed the other two myself, so who needs to spend 70 bucks on an installation charge? I refuse to admit how many hours I spent on this project. For 70 bucks I wasn't paying myself minimum wage by the time I finished. That's OK. I needed a project that I could do with my hands and take pride in when it's over and done with. I spend my normal working days reading, writing, thinking, talking, and sometimes arguing, not necessarily in that order. My hands have no calluses. Rarely can I point to something at the end of the day and say, "I did that." Removing an old garage door opener and installing a new one is a good thing to do. The work requires all the home repair skills a man needs to know except plumbing. The new opener is quieter and smoother, and has electric-eye sensors inches off the floor that stop the door if something is blocking the path. The remote doesn't work, yet, but I had to leave something to do tomorrow.

p.s. -- Does anybody need about 14 feet of old bicycle chain?

finally, photos

I just uploaded two photos (see below). Memo to the Blogger people: The programs we are to use for photos, Picasa and Hello, are not winning new friends from people like me. Getting a photo on the board is a very klutzy process. Ah, well. For free, it is worth every penny.

Ginnie Springs 

that's me on the right 

thinking ahead to Summer

We've had a delightfully prolonged Spring in Florida. It is still cool in the mornings and nearly perfect in the afternoon. The Gulf waters are warming up. It is time to think about getting wet again! Above are two photos of me at Ginnie Springs, underwater, in dive gear, which I've posted as a reminder of what the antidote for a hot summer day looks like. (OK, it took me two days to get the photos up but, hey, they're up.)

hooray, Rays

I love the Rays this year for their total unpredictability. They get "up" for the best teams in baseball, defeating the White Sox (second win tonight), the Red Sox, the Yankees (four out of five so far). Then they turn around and drop two against the Twins. Hmmmm, maybe there's some predictability in this pattern. Give these kids a chance to mature and jell as a team and they will have a better second half. We've said that before - like, every year. "This could be the year" worked for the Red Sox. Stay tuned!