Your Pet's Best Friend

Long-time Scouter

Here's a link to a story about my wife's receiving the "Thanks II" award for her work in Girl Scouting.   [Third from the left, back row,the only lady in uniform]  I cannot adequately describe how proud I am of what she does, and how much I appreciate her.

Yesterday, I went up to Camp Lewallen to run the climbing tower for our Cherokee District camporee.  The camp-master gave me an "attaboy" at the campfire that night, describing me as a "long-time Scouter".  I'm only working on my tenth year, here.  Compared to my better half, I'm a just a newbie. 

Bad decisions and minor consequences

This picture was taken right before I decided to scoot up the ladder and help that guy over the wall.  I made a bad decision. The young man is a great Scout and his buddies could (probably) have done it without my help -- I was there to observe and advise.  This young man also weighs 215 pounds.  It turns out that I am really supposed to be in a lighter weight class in the Scout-lifting competition.  My back is getting better, but it's a slow process.  Still, it was a good day, and I think the memories of the boys' success will outlive the soreness in my back.  For one thing, I took pictures of the boys, and I'm not taking a picture of my sore back.

Last week, I dumped my motorcycle and came away with only a couple of bruises and a sprained wrist and elbow. Everything but the elbow is hunky-dory already and I rode the motorcycle home (after a good Samaritan helped get it out of the ditch; my headlights were full of minnows and my saddlebag sleeps with the fishes).  A new headlamp and mirror (and a few hours of wrenching) will put me back in business.  I made a bad decision about how fast to enter a curve.

In both cases, I've learned a valuable lesson and feel lucky to be able to go about my business.  It's hard to be very annoyed about any of the usual things when I think about how I might be in a hospital bed, or permanently disabled.  Instead, I'll be pretty much okay in a few more days.  Then I can get back to complaining about the small stuff...  punctuated by giving thanks for being spared.

On my honor...

I've posted on this before, but two things happened this week to bring it to mind.  The first was a meeting with ten new Scouts (and five older ones).   As usual, my question "What is your honor?" was met with blank stares.  As usual, I was dismayed (but no longer surprised).  A few boys essayed an answer, but none had a clue.  Thirty minutes later, I think maybe they had a glimmer of this currently unfashionable concept -- a concept that was part of the universal consciousness perhaps a generation or two ago.

The second thing was an article in today's Wall Street Journal:  "Girl Scouts Seek an Image Makeover".   "The Girl Scouts was started in 1912 as a way to give girls more opportunities outside the home.  It has since focused more on helping girls work together in groups and develop leadership skills.  The Girl Scouts has long offered programs on everything from running a business to mountain climbing."  They see their problem as an old-fashioned image that isn't reaching tech-savvy teenage girls who are "non-joiners".  They've added programs on topics such as managing busy schedules and on-line bullying to better reflect current issues.

I have to wonder if they'll be successful.  I hope they attract girls to the traditional values, rather than adapting the organization's image to the currently popular values (if "values" is the right word).  I think that's the goal, and it's a great organization.

My own feeling is that there are lots of places (even the internet) to learn this or that.  There aren't many places to have fun while learning those old-fashioned values that mold character.  Character is what you do when nobody's looking.  Too many people today don't think that's important.

A beautiful day for a much-needed ride.

Sometimes you don't realize how much you needed something until you get it.  In my case, what I needed was some fresh air and open space.  I've either been working or going to meetings or working the little league basketball games for Kiwanis, or going to funerals or just about anything except riding my motorcycle.  Thursday is my "afternoon off".  I don't schedule appointments, but I usually have at least an hour of paperwork, plus errands to run, plus visit my CASA kid, plus patients in the hospital.  Today we had three emergencies in the morning, including the second case of eclampsia this week.   When you start the eleven o'clock surgery at 12:30, it's hard to finish by noon.  When I ordered supplies, it was the telephone rep's first day.  I ordered triple-antibiotic eye ointment and she asked me how to spell it.  "Eye? Ointment? Antibiotic? Triple? I - T ?"  It's two o'clock and I haven't had lunch yet, and yes, we've more errands to do. Hey, isn't it time to take the income tax stuff to the accountant?

Then, I went outside and found the beautiful weather.  Serendipitously, the foster family for my CASA kid were on their way out of town for the weekend.  Suddenly, I had time for a ride.

We saw many flooded fields, ditches lapping at their banks, and the St.Francis River spread even farther into its bayous than usual -- as in places you can usually drive to are under water today.  Of course, one of the plus-points of living in a flat delta devoid of scenery is that floods tend to be miles wide and two inches deep.  You folks with your pretty hills and valleys have floods that are fast and deep and dangerous.  We just get soggy down here. 

Mostly what I needed today was some space.  Man, do I feel better now!

In Memoriam: Martha Locke Wallace-Masters

I have heard it said that "...if you want a big funeral, be sure to die young: before  you've outlived all your friends."  The other approach would be to live a long and full life, and keep making new friends as you go.  That's what filled the church for Martha's memorial service.

I didn't get to know her until after she had risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of her personal demons.  I only knew her as intelligent, gracious, kind, and fun.  I knew her as my client, my church family, and my friend.

It's okay to out-live your friends if that means you're getting more out of life than they are.  Of course, you only get more out of life if you put more into it, and Martha was much admired for that.

Dum vivimus, vivamus.

Wildcat Ridge Scout Adventure

Regular readers may remember me whining about a cancelled camp-out.  It finally got rescheduled and I took a rare Saturday off to get the new boys off to a good start.  We had a combination of orienteering (using your compass to find stuff), problem-solving, team-work, and physical challenges.  The weather was absolutely perfect.

The cargo net looked easy from the ground.

Then they started up and it still wasn't so bad.

Then they had to go over the top.  It became a little more challenging at that point.  Most of the boys remembered this as one of the more difficult challenges, as they had to get their entire patrol over -- not just the little athletes, but the big, the small, the short and tall, the slow and the fast -- everybody.

Making a stretcher with a tarp and two poles is very simple, but only if you remember how.  The older Scout accompanying these new boys had sort of forgotten how to do it.  Hence this mess that resembles a bathtub while they drag their hapless victim across the forest floor. 

A quick refresher course in stretcher design made the passenger a lot more comfortable on his second trip.

The challenges weren't all physical.  The goal was to get these guys to think about the problem, talk it over, listen to each other and make a plan that would work the first time.

Retrieving the bucket from the "ruin" without entering it was just such a problem.  I wish I could tell you that this successful attempt was "plan A".  Of course, it sort of was their first plan, since their earlier attempts didn't actually have a plan to speak of.

Getting everyone throught the spider's web requires a lot of planning and cooperation, plus a little physical exertion.  There's always a lot of talking on this event... not so much listening, but a lot of talking.

They finished the day with a little zip-line ride, and they all seemed pretty fired up about Scouting by the time we sat down for a bowl of chili and some jokes around the campfire.  This time, all the Scouts were cheerful... even me.

Did you ever have a Tarzan swing?

There are some things that are inherently dangerous, but if you start them early enough as a kid, you just don't think about it.  Working with horses is like that.  Intellectually you know it's potentially very dangerous, but when you grow up doing it, you just aren't scared (cautious, yes, but not quaking and shaking). 

I was not an athletic kid, but I loved climbing trees and swinging on a rope like Tarzan (sort of like Tarzan in the movies, anyway -- I wasn't exactly "speeding through the upper terraces").  Sure, you could fall out, but if you start young enough, you don't think about that so much.  Then, after you've done it, you know you can and so you don't worry about it.  That's the point of getting Scouts through the Challenge Course.

When I was a kid, we had a big cottonwood tree in our yard.  It was too big around to climb the trunk, and the first branch was way high off the ground.  It looked to me then the way this tree does to me now.  My nephews need a Tarzan swing and this looked like a great place to put it.  When I was a kid, I'd throw a rope over the limb and climb up hand over hand ["Go play outside."].  I cheated today and used a ladder to reach that first limb. [Zoom in: I'm on that limb in the middle somewhere. Cousin Max is on the ground, looking up.] 

The hardest part was getting from the ladder onto the limb.  After that, I felt pretty secure -- there was no wind, and that limb is so big that you feel like you're sitting astride a horse -- it didn't take much balance.  Then it was just a matter of "scooching" [I thing that's a contraction of scooting and ouching.] out till I got where I needed to be.  I used parachute cord to haul up a piece of carpet to protect the limb, then some rope to tie the pivot ring, and finally the swing rope and the shackle to hold it.

The second hardest part is the dismount, but I'd done it a million times as a kid.  Lean over, grab the rope with both ends, and slide off.  The hard part is pretending you're a kid when you're fifty-four.  Scouting helps with that quite a bit.   

I'd hoped for more pictures of my descent, but I didn't waste much time getting down. 

After I hit the ground, I found that my adrenal glands had been working overtime.  I hope I don't need to get excited again for a while.

And here's the finished product: cousin Joe swinging.  Cousin Max was swinging so fast I couldn't get a picture of anything but a blur, so imagine a blur.

Navy Band comes to Kennett

If you're a regular reader, you may recall that I'm a band nerd, and an old euphonium player.  Tonight I had the rare pleasure and privilege of seeing and hearing the United States Navy Band in concert right in my old home town.  Despite the funky acoustics of the high school gym, the sound was wonderful.  I'm not given to superlatives, but this concert deserves them.  I am greatly indebted to the hard-working folks who managed to put Kennett on the band's 27-day concert tour.

I particularly enjoyed hearing Roger Behrend play his "Nautical Variations".  He is a virtuoso euphonium player, one of the best in the world.  I like to think I got a little more out of his performance than the non-band-nerd-non-euphonium-players, but who knows? 

Every moment of the concert was transporting.  If you could have been there tonight and weren't, you missed a chance to enrich your life.

Wednesday Music Club

I like a lot of different kinds of music.  My favorite is vocal ensemble close harmony.  Think Barbershop Quartets, the Mills Brothers, The King's Singers, the Andrews Sisters, Rockapella, Take 6, and cowboy songs (of course).  I like brass quintets, Renaissance and Baroque music, and Sousa marches, among others.  Upbeat, peppy Bluegrass and old-time thumping bass-line gospel music are good, too.  I don't much care for music that's depressing or whiney or things that sound like a drum-track waiting for a melody (i.e. a great deal of current "popular" music), but that leaves me a pretty big variety to choose from.

That's why I often get a call to help with programs for the Wednesday Music Club (is that an imaginative name, or what?) The last gig was to celebrate Founder's month.  Since the Federated Music Clubs were founded around the turn of the (last) century, they wanted music from the 1890s and early 1900s.  Those are some of my favorite songs, plus I got to work with one of my favorite performers.

Brandt Roberts is in town for a while.  He got his theater degree, then did some professional gigs for six months. I supect he'll be treading the boards again pretty soon, but you should have been there for his rendition of "Who Threw the Overalls in Mistress Murphy's Chowder?".  For just a little while we turned the Presbyterian Activity Center into Murphy's Saloon.

Back in the saddle (for a day)

It hit sixty today with plenty of sunshine.  So, even though there is still some snow beside the road, I figured it was time to blow the cobwebs out of Ol' Red. My wife had bought me a little heated vest from Hammacher-Schlemmer.  It runs on a little rechargeable battery pack and has three settings. It doesn't have the power for a cross-country trip, but it worked fine (for a short ride) and no wiring required.

There was melt-water across the road when I went up in the hills in the Campbell peach orchards, but most was in full sun.  There was one shady stretch with black ice covering half of one lane, but it was a straight section of highway. 

The scenery wasn't much today, and I was pretty conservative in the little twisty section, but I don't often get in 60 miles on February 2.  There were plenty of other things that didn't get done today, but they didn't need doing as much I needed the airing out.  I feel almost as good as I did visiting with my motorcycle-riding classmates at the MVMA convention.