Cowboys

ish

Have you noticed that "ish" has become all the rage?

We used to be home around seven-ish, or maybe her eyes were bluish-grey.  But the new vernacular seems to allow the attachment of "ish" onto any word or phrase, in order to mean "sort of, but not quite all the way."

"Did it work?"   "Yes...ish."
"How was the film?"   "It was good, ish."
"The exam went well, ish."

I can either roll my eyes or roll with this, and I've decided to just roll.  I'm not saying I like it, since my nature leans me toward grammar stickler.  But I can flex, and I no longer cringe every time someone adds "ish" onto the end of her sentence.

But yesterday I had to draw the line.  The answer to "What is the slope of this line?" on an algebra paper was written as "3.5 - ish."

Because my student is a visual learner, I used a Venn diagram to make my point.  You remember Venn diagrams, don't you?  Circles or ovals that represent sets, with the items that belong to both sets written where the ovals overlap?  I first illustrated with "people genetically related to your dad" and "people genetically related to your mom," each represented by a separate oval.  And then there you are, right in the middle where the two ovals overlap.

Then I made a Venn diagram for algebra and ish.

There is no ish

in algebra.

Missing Those Curls

Photo by Merrill

Can You Blame Him?

Good Times

 Same old boots and blue jeans,

 same old husband fencing the same old cows

 

same old cornfield, same old horse. 

Good times  before winter.

A Short History of Baseball

My dad has been rooting for the Rangers for the better part of four decades. 

Before that, he was an Astros fan from our Houston home.  He took his kids to the old Astrodome every once in a while, where he taught me about singles, steals, and strikeouts--the basics of baseball. 

Then we moved to Dallas, where you could buy a seat overlooking the Rangers' outfield for three bucks.   We sat on those bleachers a few times every summer, where Dad passed out peanuts in the shell, washed them down with Dr. Pepper, and illuminated the finer points of the game:  come-backers and pitchouts, small ball and the suicide squeeze.  I didn't date much in high school, nor did I party much.  But I learned baseball, falling asleep each summer night to the soothing rhythm of the play-by-play drifting out of my bedside radio.  Another pitch, another 'tink' of numbers on the clock radio, another game in the record books.  Night after night, summer after hot Texas summer, the Rangers had my ear as they predictably dropped through the standings like a Fergie Jenkins sinker ball.

I don't know that I ever even hoped to see them in the post-season.  I simply understood that they wouldn't last much past July's All-Star break.  I was right.

Childhood disappeared.  I married and left Texas, and the clear-channel radio station that brought the nightly Ranger game to my home in Nebraska sadly quit its coverage.  I shifted to the Kansas City Royals, whose daily broadcasts I could pick up.  I joined my husband in rooting for the Red Sox, and used the back of a napkin at our local sports bar to teach my kids how to score a baseball game, pitch by pitch.  And, like most stadium relics from the era before ballparks were named for orange juice or beer, the Rangers' Arlington Stadium literally bit the dust, and the old Astrodome crumbled into dilapidated disrepair.   

Over the years, lots of things changed, but my dad still cheered for the Rangers.  We still took in games together when we could, and the Rangers---no matter how far ahead they got in the spring and early summer standings---still died their annual deaths. 

And in his nearly forty years of Ranger fandom, I never sat at a playoff game with my dad.  I never had the chance.

Until this year. 

Go Rangers!  Thanks for the memories.

Headed for Home

We're still shadow

and not the very image,

 laboring to enter rest;

 a house not made with hands

whose builder and maker is God.

Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence

and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

Heb 10:1, 1 John 3:2, Heb 4:11, 2 Cor 5:1, Heb 11:10, 3:6

What's Missing From this Picture?

And this one?

You got it.........

The Lord is filling Erica's sails at college in Michigan.  We miss her a lot around here.  But she is where she is supposed to be, learning lots about chemistry and Homer, God's grace and how to get along with people who are different from herself.

It is a joy to watch her laying hold of big things.  It will also be a joy to see her face smiling in my doorway again.

Facts of Life

Fact #1.

Insects have discovered my raspberries.

These greasy bugs are sucking the juice out of the raspberries' individual drupelets, leaving a patch of dried-up skin and hard seed. 

It's unappetizing, unsanitary, 

and, I think,

rude.

Fact #2.

Arachnids are helping me deal with Fact #1.

This is an orb weaver.  She has eight eyes.  May they help her in her quest to snack on raspberry thieves.

This is the air I breathe..........your holy presence living in me.      

This is my daily bread.........your very word spoken to me.    

and I am desperate for you

and I am lost without you  

words by Michael W. Smith

 photo by Alice

flower and butterfly by the King of the universe

chiseled. angular. intense. strong.

gentle.

D.C. Cops

The current whirlwind seems to have slowed long enough for a bit to drop out and settle into my blog.

Today’s nugget: photos from our Washington, D.C. trip last month.  Our week in the capital gave me plenty of chances to line up shots with my new camera. Shots of art,

and of artists,

of Paul Blart and the Mall

of two sets of sisters

of special people and historic edifices

But my favorite photo of all was mostly an accident.

John, Erica, and I stumbled across an anti-war protest taking place in front of the Treasury Building. After spending a week immersed in our nation’s founding documents and principles, including a close look at the original Bill of Rights, here was an example--right in front of us--of people exercising their right to peaceably assemble. But the protesters were ringed by burly D.C. cops who refused to let us or anyone else join the gathering.   What's up with that?  What about my right to assemble?

I worked up my nerve to ask one of the gendarmes.  Turns out the assembly wasn’t peaceable.  Paint balls had been thrown at policemen, protesters defaced public property, and arrests were made as we watched.

Arrest photo by Erica

After a bit of cautious onlooking, we went on our way, past the White House, where sharp shooters stood by, surveying the surrounding terrain from Obama's rooftop.

D.C. security protection was out in full force, some observing the protest while others waited quietly in the wings. We turned a corner to discover thirty or forty more policemen and women, passing the afternoon just out of sight in case things got out of hand.

photo by Erica

Then we lost Erica.  One moment she was striding alongside us toward the metro station; the next instant she was not. I looked back, and got a chance to take my favorite photo of the entire week.

Apparently Erica asked some of the gathered power if she might take their pictures. I was out of earshot for the ensuing conversation. I only know that it had something to do with a policemen urging Erica to put him on her Facebook page, and that there was a lot of merriment.

The photo still makes me laugh. The girl does, too. Thanks, Erica.

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.