March madness?

Today is the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Nathan Silberman of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. He died in 1970 when I was 29 and he was 95. Today I am 81 and he would be 147. No one has been that old in a very long time. According to the Book of Genesis, Adam lived 930 years, Noah lived 950 years, Jared lived 962 years, and Methuselah lived 969 years. Compared to them, my grandfather was just a kid.

Three days ago, my own birthday rolled around again. The day, like so many of my birthdays, was a yukky one -- cold, damp, gray, dreary, and full of rain. Weather in the middle of March is very unpredictable, at least around here. One day it is 75°F and the next day it is 20°F, and I am not exaggerating.

The full moon occurred on my birthday this year. March's full moon has a variety of names -- Worm Moon, Eagle Moon, Goose Moon, Crow Comes Back Moon, Sugar Moon, Sap Moon, Wind Strong Moon, Sore Eyes Moon, Lenten Moon -- the list goes on and on.

But this post cannot, as it may win the prize for being the most boring post ever.

Before you go, though, if it were your job to name it, what would you call the March full moon, and why?

Happiest day in our family in a very long time (self-explanatory)

Wait, what?

I know and you know that it has been more than a week since I posted anything on this blog, but I won't hold it against me if you won't. Actually, I won't hold it against me even if you do. I do apologize (British, apologise) for leaving you, my readers, few though you may be, high and dry for that length of time. I trust that you managed to find sustenance elsewhere.

Little things bug me, things that wouldn't bother others at all. For example, our pastor has referred two or three times in the past few months to "Francis Schaeffer's book How Then Should We Live?" when that is not the title at all. The title is How Should We Then Live?, a little thing, to be sure, but it bugs me.

There is someone to whom I am related by marriage (it is not Mrs. RWP) who wished a friend on Facebook a happy birthday, congratulating said friend for "completing another trip around the moon." No, no, no. We don't go around the moon, the moon goes around us. We go around the sun. Again, a little thing, but it bugs me.

Am I perfect? No way, José. I make plenty of mistakes. Somehow, though, it is easier to spot the mistakes of others than one's own. Jesus addressed this all too human tendency, telling us in the Sermon on the Mount to remove the beam/log/plank/telephone pole/railroad tie from our own eye first and then we would be able to see clearly to remove the mote/speck/cinder/eyelash/grain of sand in our neighbor's eye.

So far I have managed to restrain myself and not correct our pastor or my relative. I intend to keep it that way.

In the overall scheme of things, these things are not important. Invasions, bombings, fleeing refugees, pandemic diseases, these are the important things.

What little things bug you that aren't worth mentioning to anyone?

Pontifications

There are five stages of life (no matter what Shakespeare said about seven ages of man) and at the beginning of each stage we make a great discovery.

The five stages are:

1. Infancy
2, Childhood
3. Youth / young adulthood
4. Middle age
5. Old age

and these are the great discoveries:

1. Toes
2. Bubble gum
3. Sex
4. Arthritis
5. Death

How's that for pontificating? You may have other ideas, like roller skates instead of bubble gum, or drugs/rock-and-roll instead of sex (you're kidding, right?), but this is my blog and I'm the one doing the pontificating. Go write your own post if you have other ideas.

Better yet, let me know your choices in the comments.

141 for, 5 against, 34 abstentions

On the U.N. General Assembly's vote on March 2, 2022, to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine, here are the bad guys:

I think (you should excuse the expression) something is rotten in the state of Denmark, because 141 plus 5 plus 34 equals 180 nations and according to what I read today there are 193 member nations in the U.N. General Assembly.

If you don't vote for, and you don't vote against, and you don't abstain, what is left? Perhaps there were 13 nations not present at the meeting? I'm just wondering. Were they playing hookey? Home sick with a cold? Attending Grandma's funeral?

As Yul Brynner once sang in The King and I, "Is... a puzzlement!"

What think you?

The eye-catching chart appeared in the March 3, 2022, edition of the U.S. Sun.

I think that I shall never see

...a poem lovely as a tree, wrote poet Joyce Kilmer in 1913. His poem became very popular and soon schoolchildren all over America were reciting its 12 lines ending with "Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree". A few years later, humorist Ogden Nash wrote, "I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all." But I digress.

Atlanta is known far and wide as "a city in a forest". North Georgia had lots of trees until the inexorable advance of civilization removed them to make way for things it deemed more important like multi-lane highways, busy industrial parks, and vast residential subdivisions.

In my neighborhood, however, the opposite occurred. I think of it as Nature's Revenge. After our subdivision was built, the only trees to be seen were single hardwood trees planted in each front yard. One neightbor had a red maple, we had a silver maple, and the neighbor on the other side had a Bradford pear. To my eyes it looked rather devoid of vegetation. Then Mother Nature took over, and on the bare hills behind us to the east and north, trees began to grow of their own accord. Over the past 18 years, without human help, scrub pine trees started their own self-instigated reforestation project, so much so that during the past couple of years, Mrs. RWP and I began to fear that our neighbor's trees might come crashing down on our bedroom in a strong wind or that large, ice-covered branches would damage our roof during an ice storm. Though the trees did afford some privacy, the reality is that they were dangerous to live around.

In the last week of January, that all changed. Our neighbor hired Dave's Tree Service of Talking Rock, Georgia, who came equipped with a big red machine and a big yellow machine and a big noisy wood chipper. In three days time they removed more than 20 trees from our neighbor's back yard (British, garden). The result is not as private as before, but we feel a lot safer when we lay our heads on our pillows each night.

Here are some before, during, and after pictures. My stupid computer (translation: the dummkopf at the keyboard) is not able to rotate some of the photographs, so you will just have to turn your head sideways. You might even try standing on your head. I'm sorry, but it simply can't be helped. It apparently takes a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

The really amazing thing is that three days after the trees were cleared out, our Homeowners Association picked our yard as yard of the month for February (I bloggged about it earlier). My theory is that they could finally see my house as they drove up the street because they were no longer distracted/blinded by all the greenery.

Until next time, I remain....

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P.S. -- You may be scratching your head at this point about the paragraph preceding the photographs in which I mentioned dummkopfs and better men than I am, Gunga Din. I found such a man, or rather he stepped up to the plate voluntarily and sent me copies of my photographs all going in the right direction, and I have now replaced the askew pictures with his kind gifts. Many thanks, and I mean that sincerely, to blogger Adrian Ward of Auchtermuchty, Scotland, for rescuing me from my dilemma. If I were independently wealthy I would send money to him, but since I'm not. I won't.

From the archives: Aunt Faye (November 23, 2009)

In March 1967, Mrs. RWP and I were living in Poughkeepsie, New York, with our two young sons. I had been out of the Air Force for about eighteen months. I was 25 years old, about to turn 26. My mother had died of cancer almost ten years earlier. My dad, who had remarried, lived in Texas and was slowly dying of pancreatic cancer. Mrs. RWP and I had obtained an Eastern Air Lines credit card in November 1966, and we had flown to Texas with our little boys to be with the family at the time of my Dad’s operation. I had not been able to speak with my Dad since January because he had grown gradually weaker and was confined to his bed and no longer able to get to the telephone. Cell phones had not yet been invented; everything was land line in those days. I called every week and spoke with my stepmother, though, and I could hear the weariness in her voice.

At work on a Friday morning I received a call around 8:30 a.m. from my stepbrother Eddie in Texas.

“Bob,” he said, “your Dad is going downhill rapidly. You should probably think about planning to come to Texas soon.”

I thanked him for calling and alerted my supervisor that I might be taking some time off in the near future. At the supper table that night I said to Mrs. RWP, “I wonder how Dad is doing?” and she said, “Why don’t you give them a call?” It was a big deal in 1967 to call long distance, not nearly as common as today, and definitely not inexpensive. I dialed the number and heard my other stepbrother’s voice at the other end of the line. After making small talk for a couple of minutes, I said, “Bobby Gerald, how is Dad doing?”

“Well, Bob,” he said, sounding a little surprised, “he died at nine o’clock this morning. I thought you knew. We thought you were on your way here.”

To say I was in shock is putting it mildly. It really had not registered with me from talking to Eddie earlier that things were that bad. I could say I was busy with my new career and my family, but in reality I was young and stupid. I told Bobby Gerald I would be there the next day. Because our funds were low and the children were small, Mrs. RWP decided not to make the trip.

It was early Friday evening and the banks were closed until Monday. There were no automatic teller machines in 1967, so I drove to four different supermarkets in Poughkeepsie and wrote a check at each one for $25.00, the maximum. I called Eastern Air Lines and made a reservation for a flight out of Newark, New Jersey, ninety miles away, on Saturday morning.

After a two-hour drive to the airport, I handed the Eastern agent my credit card to pay for the round-trip ticket I had reserved. The charge was denied. A mixup in credit card processing had occurred, which eventually was straightened out a couple of weeks later, but at that moment, standing at the ticket desk at Newark airport, the only thing I could do was pay $88.00 cash for a one-way ticket to Dallas, Texas. I got on the plane with $12.00 in my pocket, not knowing how I was going to get back to New York after my Dad’s funeral.

My stepbrother met me at the Dallas airport in mid-afternoon and took me to my stepmother’s house. There seemed to be a party in progress. Everyone was laughing and talking, eating and drinking. It seemed out of place to me at the time, inappropriate, but in retrospect it was understandable; the tension of the previous couple of months had been broken and people were just relieved that the ordeal was over. It was a natural response to what had been a very stressful situation. I just couldn’t see it at the time.

After supper I asked when we were going to the funeral home. The laughter and talking stopped and everyone looked at me. “We went last night,” someone finally said. “We weren’t planning to go back tonight.” My oldest stepbrother said “I’ll take you” and he did.

Since I was the only one coming from a distance, the funeral had been planned for 3:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon at Coppell Methodist Church. I was very glad I had made that phone call on Friday night; otherwise, I would not have been there for my Dad’s funeral.

No one went to church on Sunday morning, and family members began to arrive at the house before noon. My stepmother had five brothers and four sisters and most of them lived in Dallas County. She was putting food on the table when she turned to me and said, “Bob, I think your Dad would like it if you sang ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ at the service.”

I was receiving shocks on a daily basis, it seemed. I had played the organ at funerals before and I had sung at funerals before, but never for someone in my immediate family. I walked out into the back yard to get some fresh air and to clear my head. Aunt Faye, who was thirteen years younger than my stepmother, was there. She took one look at me and asked me what was wrong.

“She wants me to sing at Dad’s funeral,” I said.

“Oh, my. Can you do it?” asked Aunt Faye.

“I don’t know,” I said, "but if I’m going to sing I need to go over to the church and familiarize myself with the organ and rehearse.”

Faye said, “I’ll take you.” We arrived at the church a few minutes after the morning service had ended. A Hammond organ sat at the right front corner of the sanctuary, facing the pulpit and perpendicular to the pews. I broke down twice while rehearsing.

On the drive back to the house, Faye said, “When will you be going back to New York?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question,” I said. “I have no idea.” I told her what had happened at the Newark Airport and said I was taking one thing at a time and right now I was just trying to get through the day of the funeral.

As we got out of the car Faye said, “I want to lend you the money,” and handed me one hundred dollars.

I thanked her and said, “I will have to pay it back to you a little each month.”

“That will be fine,” she said.

After the funeral, one more shock remained. One of my stepmother’s brothers came up to me and said, “That was great! It was just like in a Hollywood movie!”

He meant it as a compliment, I suppose, but it wasn’t really what I needed to hear at that moment.

I flew back to New York on Tuesday and began mailing a check to Aunt Faye each month for ten dollars. I mentioned that we were expecting another child. After the third month, I received a letter from her. In it were my three checks, uncashed, and a note saying she wanted me to consider the entire one hundred dollars as a gift from her for the new baby.

Aunt Faye died this week in California, where she lived with her son Danny. Her children Libby, Danny, and Larry, and her niece Janice accompanied her body back to Texas for burial there. She was in her eighties.

Shakespeare said, “The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” It may have been so with Caesar, but I have written this post to honor Aunt Faye and to make sure the good in her is not going to be interred with her bones. The good in her became a part of my story and helped me when I needed it most. I will never forget her kindness.

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Back to the present day (February 17, 2022). I neglected to say that not only did Aunt Faye's generosity enable me to buy a one-way plane ticket from Dallas back to Newark, New Jersey, it also (and this is no small thing) enabled me to pay for having parked my car at the Newark airport from Saturday until Tuesday and, having retrieved it, to drive all the way back to Poughkeepsie.