The Ultimate in Point-And-Shoot

Take a cheap disposable camera with no zoom and a tiny, curved viewfinder; hold it up to your snorkel mask, which keeps the viewfinder two inches away from your eye;  hope that you've actually put your subject in front of the lens. Click. And still come out with a photo like this. That's what's amazing about Hawaii.

(thank you to John and Pat, who talked me into buying the camera)

It could happen.....

We don't usually see this much standing corn and this much snow in the same field at the same time.

This grain should have been put to bed in November.  But God's plans for the weather and our plans for harvest didn't quite coincide last fall.  So we, like a lot of other folk, still have corn standing in out in the wide world.

Earlier in the winter I made jokes about hooking the disk behind the combine to save a pass through the field.  I didn't think we would really harvest in March and plant in April.

But I'm starting to believe.

Silver White Winters

(that melt into springs?)

Locks of Love

Time after time over the past year,  Audrey has asked her hairdresser to get out the ruler and measure before the first snip.

Not yet.

Not yet, Audrey.

Not this time.

But this time, the hair did  measure ten inches.  That's the minimum needed to donate hair to Locks of Love, an organization that provides wigs to children who've lost their hair to a medical condition.  For a full year, Audrey has been growing out her hair, waiting until it gets long enough to donate.

Today was the day.

Somewhere out there
 a little girl is fighting against a medical problem that has stolen her hair

and a self-consciousness problem stealing her joy.

Maybe, a few weeks or months from now,

she will walk out into the sunshine wearing Audrey's hair. 

Blessings upon your head, little girl.

Nice job, Audrey.

No Sweat

No kidding!

Horse Play

"Normally, the sight of a Belgian gathering her hindquarters underneath herself would put the fear in me, but today, as they prepared to launch themselves through those drifts, it was just fun!"
                                                                                        ---John

The girls thought it was fun, too.  You can't tell in this photo, but they are laughing hard and hanging on tight.

The laughing stopped, temporarily, when the farm fuel tank...er....bench seat on the sled...tumbled itself and its passenger into the snow while cornering.

John's next comment:  "It's great to have a couple of farm girls on board, ones who will just wrestle the ol' fuel tank back onto the sled."

At the Choral Concert

Today is sunny and sad.  Our little family of six, so rarely all in one spot for long stretches, has carefully, purposefully torn off the calendar pages for three weeks of winter break together.  Reading and running, playing Settlers and Wii, laughing, baking, working crosswords, watching the traditional movies at the traditional times and places.  Meeting new people, catching up with some we've known forever.  Disposable time has become more precious than disposable income, and today marks the end of a large chunk of easy, sweet family time.  I'm sad to see it go. 

John reads a lot.  He consumes a whole magazine, or newspaper, or sheaf of Sunday comics, and regularly points out for me the one bit he thinks I would enjoy.  He nearly always hits the mark (well, except with the comics).  I love having my own personal Reading Editor.

This morning, while he was pecking away at the Sudoku in the Sunday paper, I mentioned feeling sad that such a beautiful, restful vacation was coming to an end.  My editor flipped over the newsprint and handed me this poem: 

_____________________________________________________________________________
At the Choral Concert
by Tim Nolan

The high school kids are so beautiful
in thier lavendar blouses and crisp white shirts.

They open thier mouths to sing with that
far-off stare they had looking out from the crib.

Their voices lift up from the marble bed
of the high altar to the blue endless ceiling

of heaven as depicted in the cloudy dome--
and we--as the parents--crane our necks

to see our children and what is above us--
and ahead of us--until the end when we

are invited up to sing with them--sopranos
and altos--tenors and basses--to sing the great

Hallelujah Chorus--and I'm standing with the other
stunned and gray fathers--holding our sheet music--

searching for our parts--and we realize--
our voices are surprisingly rich--experienced--

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth--
and how do we all know to come in

at exactly the right moment?--Forever and ever--
and how can it not seem that we shall reign

forever and ever--in one voice with our beautiful
children--looking out into all those lights.

______________________________________________________________________________

Happy New Year and Hallelujah from one standing with neck craned,
                   to see our children
                                   and what is above us
                                                  and ahead of us,
                                                           looking into the light
                                                                            until the end.

Darn That Global Warming

The head of Climate Research at England's University of East Anglia wrote, in a private email, about using a "trick" in his scientific data to "hide the decline" that he had found in global temperatures.  He and many of his colleagues are locked into a mindset that wants to squash any scientific voices that may disagree with their politically correct opinion about man-made global warming.

Another prominent man-made glabal warming advocate, and head scientist for Climate Analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote in an e-mail: “The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

The hacked emails are full of references to hiding or destroying data that doesn't support the concept of an alarming global warming problem..

I'm not suggesting that the 3.6 degrees outside my window screen, or my last three snowy winter posts, are any sort of evidence against global warming. I'm just saying that the real travesty is that scientists will compromise intellectual honesty in order to advance a political agenda.

View from the Igloo

Winter Driving Conditions

This girl needed to get to work. 

She works at a nursing home.  Even if it's Christmas, and even if there's a blizzard raging, some folks still can't hold their own forks, or pull themselves out of their wheelchairs and into bed, or cope with other necessary daily matters that you and I don't think twice about.

The blizzard meant that lots of other employees-----people who don't own tractors and four-wheel drive trucks----couldn't get to work without spending time in a ditch first.  That made Erica's presence and skill set even more valuable.

We wouldn't have made it without John blading a path in front of us.  Sometimes it's really nice to be married to a farmer.

Old Time Farming

What else would we do when we're snowed in and it's 10 degrees out, but go for a little horsey ride?  After all, the cows needed hay.  John could have used a tractor to deliver it, but this was more fun.

The cows were hungry. 

Cows and calves are thrifty.  They wander through our cornfields all winter after we have removed the grain.  They forage, thriving on spilled corn and ears that the combine missed, along with the husks and leaves that we leave in the field.

But when everything's covered with snow, they appreciate a little supplemental feed.  So we haul hay.

Kandy, on John's right, is starting to tire of posing for the photographer.   She starts doing a little chicken dance to say it's time to go home.  Jess is telling her to just settle down.

Eskimo Joe might be ready to go home, too.

We decided to pull into the shed for unharnessing.  Outside, you could hardly see for the blowing snow.

Inside, you could hardly see for the rising steam.

Kind of puts the romance back into old time farming, wouldn't you say?

Winter Colors

Winter finally showed up in Nebraska, and the landscape is predictably bleak.  Even so, if you look, you can still find color.

Color outside.

Color inside.

Thanks to God for sunsets.  Thanks to girls for color in my living room.

Tourist Attractions

Sometimes I like driving by myself. It's a chance to be thoughtful and quiet, a chance for my mind to shake off the dust of everyday affairs and feed on higher things.

That's where I was yesterday when I passed this sign.

Kinda sad, isn't it? But what did you expect? I mean, after all, this is Nebraska.

It's not that we don't have any tourist attractions. There's Chimney Rock--home of the state's earliest graffiti--where Oregon Trail travelers carved messages for those yet to come into its soft clay and sandstone. Many weary travelers plodding across half a continent rejoiced when they spied Chimney Rock; travelers hungry for a sign of progress or a message from those who had gone before.

And, speaking of the Oregon Trail, there's a rest stop on I-80 where you can go and see some of the ruts--actual ruts--left by wagon wheels of those early sojourners. Men and women and children who left homes and loved ones and familiarity to walk seventeen miles a day for six months into the unknown. They gave birth and buried children in lonely places, sustained through hardship by hope, prayer, and grit.

Some tourist attractions are more powerful the more you think about them.

Not only that, but we also have Carhenge.

Some tourist attractions are not more powerful the more you think about them.

Maybe the state Tourism Board felt kinda funny putting a rock, ruts, and junk cars up on the sign, but they shouldn't have. Nebraska is an understated kind of place, and most of the Nebraskans I know are comfortable with that.

Except when the Huskers play.

web photoweb photo

Today's Fourteen

A while back, Rachel started posting lists of fourteen things she was thankful for at that particular moment. I want to make my own list of fourteen, so it's handy that I had fourteen young ladies staying in my home over the weekend. Fourteen beautiful souls who came to a church conference seeking the Lord, and left determined to overcome every enemy, determined to know God as richly as they can and to follow Him closely.

Soo......my fourteen for today?

1. Jubilee

2. Katie

3. Merrill 4. Lydia 5. Tabea

6. Rachel

7. Erica

8. Susie

9. Sarah 10. Hannah 11. Sarah Beth

12. Elizabeth

13. Debi 14. Audrey

I'm also thankful for two great boys who stayed at my house. Two great boys surrounded by fourteen girls; two great boys wanting to press forward in the Kingdom of God.

15. Caleb 16. Joshua

thanks giving

Lord God, I am so thankful.

(The Lord God reads my blog.)

Thankful for many hands and the resulting light work.

Thankful for a reason to mash three huge bowls full of potatoes.

For fresh.................FRESH!!................bay leaves in the turkey stuffing. (Thanks, Mom!)



Thankful for enough self-discipline to refrain from sampling every one of the eleven pies.

Little Pilgrim and his wife didn't have enough self discipline, and look what happened to their waistlines!

Thankful for the blessing of daughters who surprise me with a spotless kitchen when I've left it a pretty big mess.

Thankful for twenty-six Thanksgivings with the same man. Well, actually twenty-eight, if you count the two in Texas before we were married, where he cheerfully met and made conversation with my mother's entire family tree, and then penciled in all the generations and marriages and names of descendants on the back of a grocery sack, just to keep them all straight. Thankful for a grocery sack full of relations and for a man who thought it was fun to map them out.

And thankful that the page edges of his Bible are looking pretty worn.

Thankful to hear the power of God's word, sometimes from the pulpit;

sometimes across the table.

Thankful to worship with the same silver-haired people I've been worshipping with since our hair was dark.
Lord God, I am so thankful.

(The Lord God reads my heart.)

(The Lord God reads your heart, too.)

(He loves you so very much.)