Hospitality is a Gift

I'm not exactly sure how we got roped into it, but this past weekend we welcomed our third group of nursing students from Liberty University. This time it's three girls, all juniors, who will be with us every other weekend as they do their clinicals at St. Mary's hospital. They arrive on Thursday afternoon and head back to Lynchburg Sunday afternoon.

The guidelines for the program say that we are not to provide them with meals or anything really,  except a place to sleep each night. Whoever wrote up these guidelines never met my wife. For Pam, this is like Christmas morning in September. And, I must admit, I love having kids in my house. It goes back to my days in the youth group at my church when every weekend dozens of starving, loud and impossibly energetic teenagers would descend upon my house. Besides, we have three empty bedrooms, so...why not?

Pam doesn't do anything different than normal for the girls. She always cooks hot meals for me every night. Now she just makes those meals for five people rather than two. But, if I was being truthful about the matter I would have to admit that Pam does go out of her way to spoil these kids. She makes up little welcome bags for them their first night. She fixes them a bagged lunch to eat on the way back to Liberty, complete with their name and a smiley face on their bags. This semester we have one girl who is gluten-free, so Pam studied up on how to make sure that she gets gluten-free peach cobbler,( she made a small gluten-free cobbler in a separate bowl ). Part of the reason why she goes to so much trouble is that we have seen over the last couple of years how hard these nursing students work when they are here. They leave the house at 6:30 in the morning and don't get home until after 6 in the evening. Then after dinner, they are up until all hours doing homework and studying. 

But the real reason Pam goes all out is that she has this amazing gift of hospitality. Nothing makes my wife happier than being able to pamper guests in our home. She's always the first person to volunteer to house traveling singing groups from church. She always says "YES" whenever anyone asks if anyone might be interested in hosting twenty college students in our home for a meal...even though our house isn't big enough for any such thing. She finds a way to make it work. It's a fascinating thing to behold.

So, this semester it will be Jen, Jessica, and McKenzie. They will all eat every single thing put in front of them and then ask for seconds. They will marvel at all the little things that Pam will do to make them feel totally and completely at home. And, we will be sad when they head back to Liberty for the last time.

Observations From the World of Sports

Time for a few random observations from around the sports world:

The Washington Nationals are done. How is it possible for a team with that pitching staff, and one of the best players in the game not even make the playoffs? Good bye, Matt Williams.

The Washington Redskins haven't even played their first game of the season and they are already the worst team in the league. Is it something about the city that makes professional sports teams dysfunctional?

The last race of the NASCAR season just happened in my own city and I couldn't tell you which drivers made the chase. That's how far stock car racing has fallen off of my radar screen over the past four or five years.

Arkansas Razorbacks coach, Bret Bielema started his week shooting off his mouth about how hard his schedule is compared to Ohio State's. Then his team goes out and gets beaten by....Toledo...in Little Rock! Here's a hint coach...until you actually win something, keep your pie hole shut!

There was a tennis tournament in New York this week. I think like sixteen people actually watched the women's final.

There was a high school football game the other day where the final score was 104-90. Some kid ran for over 700 yards and 10 touchdowns. The game was momentarily stopped  halfway through the third period when some kid actually made a tackle. He was immediately recognized with a ceremony on the 50 yard line, hugged by his proud parents and given a trophy.

The St. Louis Cardinals have the best record in Major League Baseball, despite the fact that their lineup contains players named, Piscotty, Moss, Garcia, and Pham, all players that no one besides their parents have ever heard of. How do they keep doing this year after year??

The NFL season begins in earnest today and my predictions are as follows:

The Dallas Cowboys will underperform and Jason Garrett will keep his job, proving that he has pictures of Jerry Jones having sex with Dan Snyder.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will make the playoffs with their rookie of the year winning quarterback leading the way.

The Philadelphia Eagles will lose their starting QB Sam Bradford to injury in week one, then backup Mark Sanchez will throw ten interceptions in his first three games as the starter, forcing coach Chip Kelly to call up Tim Tebow who will then lead them to the Super Bowl, causing every television anlalyst to have a nervous breakdown.

Peyton Manning will not make it through the season.

JJ Watt will score more touchdowns than RGIII.

Johnnie Manziel will enjoy his first taste of success as a NFL quarterback, only to be suspended for the season after getting caught punching out a woman in a strip club after failing a drug test.

The Philadelphia Eagles will lose the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots, when the game is decided by a crucial first down measurement late in the game, with Tim Tebow coming up inches short . After the game it will be discovered that a New England employee managed to add two links to the chain during a television timeout. The resulting investigation will be personally overseen by Roger Goddell who will ultimately determine that there is insufficient evidence to overturn the Patriot victory.

The Battle Continues

Wednesday evening I finished up some reading, brushed my teeth and went to bed at the normal hour. When the sun came up Thursday morning, I woke up with a fiery pain in my right shoulder of unknown origin. As the day wore on the pain got more and more severe. If I were a betting man I would have been willing to wager an awful lot of money that something had torn loose. I couldn't lift my right arm above parallel, and when I tried to the pain became sharp and stabbing. In other words, I was certain that I had blown out another rotator cuff and was in store for another surgery and rehab. Needless to say, I was very unhappy.

I decided to rest it and get through the night and see how it felt Friday morning. The morning brought more pain and more frustration. I had a Chiropractor appointment set for 9:30 and wasn't sure if I should go or cancel, so I posted my dilemma on Facebook, asking for medical advice. In less than thirty minutes, I had over twenty five replies offering all sorts of recommendations. The four nurses who replied all agreed that I should go to something called Ortho on Call, a walk in doc-in-a-box sort of place which could X-ray the shoulder right on the spot. I decided to take the nurses' advice and cancel the chiropractor appointment.

By the time the X-ray was taken, the shoulder was killing me. So, imagine my surprise when the doctor at Ortho on Call walks in and says, "I could find no tears." Instead, Dr. Douglas Okay offered the opinion that it was probably tendinitis, or a frozen shoulder, or a pinched nerve, and he couldn't rule out a rotator cuff tear, since an X-ray can't reveal what might be going inside the rotator cuff. Oh, and it also could be related to my ongoing bulging disk issues. In other words, he had no idea what the hell was wrong with my shoulder...and that will be $250 please.

He prescribed some pain meds and sent me on my way. Words cannot describe how frustrated I was leaving that place. Dr. Okay's non-diagnosis was NOT Okay with me. How was it possible to have so much pain coming from a joint that showed no damage? I was about ready to write a sternly written letter to God himself demanding an explanation.

Last night I went to dinner with my two sisters and their husbands to celebrate Linda's birthday. I had taken all the meds I was supposed to take to make the shoulder feel less horrible, and while it did feel some better, I couldn't drive or hold much of a conversation with anyone at dinner. So, I mostly sat there listening to everyone else, privately seething at my three year string of bad health luck. Three years ago two disks in my neck began their bulging. Two years ago, I had rotator cuff surgery on one shoulder and now I was facing a second surgery. It was not a good night.

So, this morning I am awakened by Lucy licking me in the face. I stumble out of bed and begin my routine...when I suddenly notice that it's gone. The pain in my shoulder...is gone. I slowly test it out by raising my arms in all directions....nothing, no pain, complete range of motion! As suddenly and ferociously as it had come upon me...it was gone, just like that. The first thought that popped into my head was, "if I had only hung in there one more day I could have saved myself $250!!"

So, that's the latest in the ongoing tale of the relentless, degenerative collapse of my body post age 50. It has not been pretty. But, to all of my 50 plus friends out there let me just say...we will beat this. We will prevail! It might take a dump truck full of medicine, six heating pads, crutches, two sets of reading glasses, enough Pepsid AC to crush a small child but we will prevail!!

Pam and Lucy

My dog Lucy is still the most neurotic beast ever to grace the inside of a Dunnevant home, however, she is the most adorable dog ever. I find that I love her even more than the other dogs I've had because of her emotional instability. She's still afraid of practically everything, especially thunder storms. Whenever they are in the area and way before we are aware of them, Lucy begins her terrified vigil...pacing around forlornly. But when crunch time comes( the first distant rumble of thunder ), only one thing will do...Mom!

Lucy isn't much of a snuggler. She prefers to be on the couch with you, but at the other end of the couch. But when the thunder storm monster comes, she finds Pam and plasters herself next to her. This all started months ago during a particularly violent storm, when Pam took her into our walk in closet, closed the door and held her tightly in the dark, singing to her until the storm was over. Now, every storm demands a repeat performance. It's quite adorable to watch. There's Lucy, shaking like a leaf, head buried under Pam's arms. It's the only time that Lucy will allow herself to be good and hugged, and only by Pam. It's quite touching to watch.

I took this last night, after the worst of the storm had passed through and Lucy finally dared raise her head to look around.

Crazy dog...

What's in a Name?

About a year ago I read an article about a reporter who had an impressive resume drawn up and sent to a couple hundred employers. The name at the top was something very generically white, like Jeff O'Leary. Then he sent the exact same resume out bearing a generically black name, like Jamal Lewis. The resume with the white sounding name got several positive responses. The one with the black name at the top...not a single one. It was a disturbing story and illustrated the very real obstacles still standing in the way of minorities in this country.

But now...this:

Michael Derrick Hudson is an aspiring poet from Indiana. He wrote a poem that he thought was his best work and submitted it to 40 different publishers for their consideration. He got 40 rejection letters. But then he got the idea that he might have a better chance of getting published if he used a more ethnic pseudonym. He changed the name on the work to Yi-Fen Chou, and after only 9 rejections, got it published in the Prairie Schooner. Now, the poem..."The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve," has appeared in the American Anthology of Best Poems of 2015, and the literary crap has hit the fan.

Chinese poets are furious, reasoning that now any poems submitted in the future by poets with Asian-sounding names will be more skeptically scrutinized. An angry blogger who goes by the name Angry Asain Man accused Hudson of committing poetry using yellowface. Oh dear.

Of course, none of this is new when it comes to art, especially literature. How many women authors two hundred years ago used male nom  de plumes (George Eliot, B. A. Evans)?  Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of race-cheating going on in our super-charged grievance culture. A few months ago, we discovered that NAACP activist Rachel Dolezal was actually a white woman. And who can forget the advantages that accrued to Senator Elizabeth Warren during her academic career by her ingenious usurpation of favored status as a Native American?

But, I suppose that we will see more and more of this sort of thing in the future. When a society tries to right past racial sins with a regime of set-asides, quotas, and nose counting throughout all of society, hucksters will arise to take advantage. Any system can be gamed by the cunning and industrious, including a well meaning system trying to level the playing field. The trouble is, at what point do we all get cheated by such a system? In an era of social promotion, grade inflation and affirmative action hires, how will we ever know who the best people are? 

When confronted with Mr. Hudson's treachery, the editor of the American Poetry Anthology of 2015, admitted, "I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese-American...I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle."

I'll say! As for Mr. Hudson, he admits that this isn't the first time he has employed the Chinese nom de plume strategy. He uses it whenever he is having trouble getting something published as a boring white guy from Indiana, and it has been successful in the past on several occasions.

Well....so much for artistic integrity! 

Despite the hubbub, the literary-Justice-dispensing editor of the American Poetry Anthology of 2015 has no plans to remove the offending poem. "When I reread the poem after learning of the deception, I still loved it."

What a concept, publishing a poem because it's a great poem!?

Is Kim Davis a Martyr?

While I was away I completely disconnected from news. So, I wasn't aware of of the firestorm story of the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis. Well, I had heard of her because Facebook was dotted with references to her and I had seen a quote from Mike Huckabee about how this was proof of the "criminalization of Christianity" or some such thing, but for the most part, the specifics of the story had escaped my notice. No longer.

It would seem that Kim Davis is a county clerk in Kentucky who's job it is to issue marriage licenses in Rowan County. In Kentucky, this is an elected position, and Mrs. Davis is a democrat. I mention her party affiliation not because it has anything whatsoever to do with the case, but because if she were a republican it would appear in the first paragraph of every news story, and in the headline at the New York Times. Anyway...Mrs. Davis is a relatively new convert to Christinanity, and as such burns brightly with enthusiasm for her new faith. As such, she made the decision to refuse the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples after the June ruling by the Supreme Court making gay marriage legal, because to do so would be a violation of her faith and of God's Word. Her view, and the view of her legal team from Liberty Councel is that no one should be required to violate their religious beliefs by the demands of a job...or something like that.

In a democracy, compromise is the oil that lubricates the engine of daily life, which while no doubt true, may very well be the worst metaphor I've ever come up with... but it's all I can manage at the moment.  The point is, we make a million compromises daily to get along with others in this country, even religious compromises. Pam informs me that she has seen Muslim check out girls at Target refuse to touch a bottle of wine purchased by a customer. Then another employee comes over and handles the bottle for her. While this may be awkward, it seems to work. That's the thing about compromises, they aren't always convenient or efficient, but they get the job done. 

My first thought when pouring over the many articles I've read about this case is...is there not some sort of workable compromise that can be forged out of this mess short of a high profile and devicive incarceration? Is there no one else in the Rowan County Clerk's office that could issue the licenses in question? If the problem Mrs. Davis has is signing the document, why not allow someone else in the office to sign? Cannot grown thinking adults fashion some sort of work-around to avoid all of this drama? Apparently not, so she's in jail. My thoughts:

To Mike Huckabee let me just say, you're a dope. This isn't the "crimilization of Christianity". You, Mr. Huckabee are criminalizing the English language by using such a dim-witted phrase. There was a time, Mr. Huckabee, when Christians provided the fuel for street lights in Nero's Rome. Right now ISIS is burning Christians alive simply for being Christian. That's the criminalization of Christianity.

To Kim Davis, let me say, you should resign your position. I don't pretend to judge your intentions or impugn your character by dredging up your past divorces as proof of your hypocracy. I accept the genuineness of your faith and the transformative power it has produced in your life. However, your job is to uphold the law. The New Testament that you read everyday includes admonitions for Christians to submit to the civil authorities, and it is my belief that if you find that to do so violates your religious convictions, and if you are not willing or able to accept a work-around compromise, you need to resign. I would also ask you if you have had equally dramatic dissonance when confronted with the prospect of issuing a marriage license to a couple who had been previously divorced? Rowan County, I suspect is a small town sort of place, the kind of spot where everybody knows everybody else, so I'm sure this has happened. Did you refuse them a license based on your religious convictions? If not, why not? The bible is very clear on that subject as well.

Finally, I would say to my Christian friends, there may come a day when Christianity will be criminalized. I'm not naive. But this isn't that day. As a Christian, there are things I can't in good conscience do, and if my job demands that I do them, I need to find another job. It's not the job of the culture around me to honor and obey God's laws, it's my job to do that. There are thousands of Christians being martyred for their faith in the world right now. Let's not dishonor them by pretending that Kim Davis is one of them.

Until Next Year...

And suddenly, just like that, seven days has come to an end. This morning the lake is blanketed in a thin fog and the thermometer that hangs on the front porch says...46. We will have breakfast, pack up and head to the airport in Portland for a late afternoon flight home. We will leave this place, but it will be some time before this place leaves us.

When we get back home, we will finally turn on a television. We will shuffle through our mail. We will fall back into the comforting routine to which we have become so accustomed. But it will not be a seamless transition. Spending a week up here rearranges your expectations of what life can be...at least what it can be without an itinerary or humidity. 

We thought about taking the ferry over to Islesboro or Vinalhaven one day but we both secretly resented the fact that the ferry company insisted upon a fixed schedule of departure. We knew what they were up to with their scheduled departures. They were trying to impose order on our vacation and we were having none of it!

We would have been more inclined to make some of the many tantalizing side trips that abound here on the Midcoast of Maine had the weather not been so radiantly sublime all week. It's difficult to make yourself put the rental car in reverse and back out of the driveway leaving a sun-splashed lake and 75 degrees to go...anywhere. 

But, what makes vacations special is the fact that they are rare. To appreciate them, one has to have the sort of sufficiently vigorous life from which vacations are needed. So we come back to Richmond and crank that life up again. But something is changing for us. We are in the process of planning out the next act of our lives and that next act will feature a lake house in Maine. Next summer, a month rental. The following summer, the hope and prayer is, our own place and an entire summer here. The kids will come and stay for a week or two, our families for another, and then friends. It will be like running a bed and breakfast that doesn't charge anything, sorta like vacation welfare! Neither of us can imagine anything more fun than the chance to introduce the people we love the most to this glorious place.