Discover Magazine

The new Discover magazine arrived and I read through it last evening after supper. On page 19, there was a small article, "The Origin of Schizophrenia", which cited a new study suggesting that the disorder is related to "the process of neuron creation". A disrupted gene causes new neurons to migrate to the wrong places within the brain, causing connections between parts of the brain that shouldn't be connected to each other. Interesting. It may explain the feeling that the world is speaking to you.......you notice too many little things in the world around you and you take them too personally. Your brain simply has mixed up wiring. But, then again, maybe some of the greatest human creativity over the ages can be attributed to mixed up brain wiring.

On page 24, there is a fascinating map of disease connections, developed by researchers at Columbia University. They gathered info from 1.5 million people with 161 different diseases. Here's one of the findings: "......some diseases were found to compete with one another. Women with breast cancer, for example, were not likely to have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and vice versa."

And on page 58, an article entitled, "Can We Cure Aging?", talks about the ongoing research into inflammation as the root cause of the adverse effects of aging. I remember studying the inflammatory process back in nursing school years ago. Here is my view: The inflammatory process is like the fire department of your body........it responds big time when your body is injured in any way, large or small. Think about fire trucks.......as they rush along on roads and streets, over time those byways will become worn out from all the traffic. Combatting aging will involve maintaining the infrastructure of the roads and streets in our bodies. The key to good aging may be to protect the body from the effects of its own protective mechanisms!

Discover magazine is always informative and interesting!!

Whoa......the Schwans truck and the milktruck are in a traffic jam out in our farmyard, and the vet just arrived to possibly do surgery on Barbie the Barbarian's twisted stomach.

Watching: The Astronaut's Wife

A day of not much to say. Husband had a really bad morning. When he got to the barn, a cow named Freckles had delivered a stillborn calf. A water pipe had broken to the cows' drinking cups. One of the silo unloaders stopped running. Just typical dairy farm stuff.

Husband sent me to the general store up the road to get a new piece of water pipe. The store owners had left a note on the door, they were gone for a couple hours. When I got back home, a hawk was floating, wings out, back and forth, keeping watch over our farmstead......cool.

After a long walk in the cold wind, I fiddled around the house this afternoon, folding laundry, washing and trimming my hair (I do my own haircuts.....saves $$$), and thinking about balancing the checkbook. I ended up baking Mississippi Mud Bars while watching a movie on my daughter's little portable DVD player which she didn't take to college with her. The movie is "The Astronaut's Wife", starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. I wasn't too impressed with the first part, but now its starting to get a bit interesting. Her husband may not be her husband......he may be a space alien or something. It's getting creepy........I'm not usually into creepy movies.

The only other time I've seen Johnny Depp in a movie was in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"........now, there's a film with some interesting characters, particularly the mother, and what took place at the end. A most unusual gesture of a son's love and respect.

I'd better sign off.......its time to go out for evening chores.

Silly Squirrel & Dreams

I'm so totally amazed this photo loaded that I can hardly type these words.......

I did end up missing the mailman and this silly, apple-munching squirrel is to blame! As I left the house to walk down the lane to the mailbox, this squirrel was right there staring at me, so I ran back in and grabbed my camera. We don't often see squirrels around our farm due to the surveillance of our two alert Australian Shepherds. As I was taking the pictures, the mailman's vehicle went by-----meaning I'll have to waste fuel on a trip to the post office in town.

All in all, I think my early morning dream (detailed in the previous post) sort of came true. Instead of being too late to talk to my friend, I was too late for the mailman, who also is my friend. And this morning while feeding calves I had to walk to the house to wake up my son, and on the way I happened to see the schoolbus stopped at the neighbor's place, which was unusual-----normally, I never see the bus. That's how dreams seem to work for me.......they're a bit off the mark. In the past, when keeping dream journals, I noticed this many times. I would dream of a certain person, and the next day in real life, I would run into, not the person in the dream, but a family member of theirs. Also, as this story indicates, dreams usually concern themselves with the trivial and the humdrum, because that's what our lives mostly consist of, and dreams are usually about our own lives. Occasionally, dreams will give you insight into someone else's situation, but not very often, and only if there's a reason you need to know.

Woolgathering & Sick Cow

Anyone who receives the "Doctor Dictionary Word of the Day" by email knows that yesterday's word was "woolgathering". Its definition is "indulgence in idle daydreaming" or "an absorption in daydreaming". I've gone 49 years without ever hearing that word, though its been part of my life all that time. My report cards in grade school used to show checkmarks under the category of "makes good use of time"........I tended to dawdle and daydream, and still I do that on a daily basis. We are who we are. Probably blogging is a symptom of being a "woolgatherer"! I've added it under Interests in my Profile.

This morning in my waking up dream I was seeing a deceased friend of mine get on a school bus at a house a few miles from here. I was hurrying to talk to him, but got there too late.......he was on the bus, heading south......I could see only the back of his head. Also in my mind was the song "Hard Times" by the Desert Rose Band, a band now defunct, but one of my favorites----fantastic vocal harmonies and guitars-----Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, John Jorgenson. I actually saw them in concert at a county fair years ago. I had forgotten to include them under Favorite Music in my Profile, so I remedied that this morning.


Why "Hard Times" came to mind, I have no idea.

Hard times can't hold us down forever
Hard times are gonna fade away
Hard times, we can't let them stop us, darlin'
There will be a better day............

High as the wild birds fly
Wild and free, that's how I dream
I gotta keep on dreamin'

We can have what we cannot see tomorrow
On the highest mountain
On the highest mountain
We can watch those wild birds fly

Find our own blue sky
As long as you are with me
I'll never stop dreamin'

*************************************

Husband had to call the vet out this morning for a cow named Barbie. (Husband calls her Barbie the Barbarian.) She's been acting like she doesn't feel good.....not eating, and going off by herself. The vet diagnosed her with a bad case of peritonitis due to an infected uterus......she had calved back in mid-October. Her treatment is a high dose of penicillin for few days to see what happens. The vet says its a serious case, so she may not get better. He says she may also have a DA-----that's a displaced abomasum, a twisted stomach. Poor thing. She earned her nickname because she's a fighter, so hopefully that trait will help her survive this illness.

Now, I need to cease this woolgathering and hie myself down the lane to the mailbox with a letter for my daughter, so I don't miss the mailman.

Buying An SUV

Everything seems out of kilter this morning......due to daylight savings time ending and my routines being thrown off over the weekend. On Saturday morning, Husband shocked the heck out of me by announcing he wanted to drive to Winona, Minnesota, to look at a vehicle. For the past several weeks, we've been searching online for a midsize SUV to replace our beat-up '90 Dodge Ram van. We browsed on AutoTrader.com and CarSoup.com. When Husband started typing in searches of over 100 miles away, I laughed and said, "There's no way you will drive that far to look at a vehicle!" He proved me wrong, bless his heart!

We hurried to get barn chores all done, and then headed for Winona. The day's weather was sunny, making the two-hour drive a pleasant one. We stopped for lunch at Subway in Spring Valley, MN, and arrived in Winona by 2 p.m. Quickly, we took a test-drive in the SUV, crossing the Mississippi and going into Wisconsin a few miles. We had test-driven a few SUV's in our local area, so we had an idea of what we were looking for----leather seats for sure and an exterior color that will hide the dust from our gravel road. Plus low miles and a good price, of course! This one seemed to have everything we wanted, so we took the plunge and purchased it.

After an hour or so of paperwork with the business manager, we were on our way home by 4:30......with lucky me driving the SUV! A great pleasure! Husband followed in the pickup. We decided to take a different way home, heading straight south on two-lane roads toward Mabel, MN. The wooded, winding roads led us through the little burgs of Hart, Choice, Rushford, Bratsberg, and Prosper, MN. Interesting names! At Decorah, Iowa, I turn off to get groceries at Walmart, while Husband continued homeward to see how our son was doing with the milking chores.

In Walmart, I suddenly felt completely exhausted, and in slow-motion mode. Everyone else seemed that way, too! Maybe it had something to do with all the fluorescent lighting in the enormous store, I don't know. It felt like I was in a trance. The Christmas music playing overhead seemed bizarre. The check-out clerk moved very slowly and deliberately. I decided that maybe my problem was that I hadn't eaten for several hours, so I ordered a Big Mac-to-go at the McDonald's that was inside the Walmart, on my way out. I had never seen a McDonald's inside a Walmart before!

To test the SUV's CD player, I had bought the new Eagles' CD, "Long Road Out Of Eden", that was in a big display there at Walmart. Joe Walsh sings of solitude in track 5 of disc 2, in "Last Good Time in Town"......that describes how I feel most of the time, too! Staying home is great!

While driving up our farm drive, I pressed the CD eject button. Whichever Minnesota radio station that had beened tuned in came crackling through and the first words I heard were, "Get your copy of the Eagles' CD, "Long Road Out of Eden" today......exclusively at Walmart!" I laughed and thought, "Funny thing.....I just did!" You've got to love those cool coincidences!!

Wasp Attends Church

Today in our church service, All Saints Day was observed. Glancing at the list of hymns in the bulletin, I was dismayed to see that I would have to somehow survive singing two hymns that always bring me to tears. "For All the Saints" and "Behold a Host Arrayed in White". During verses 4, 5, and 6 of the first one the tears started flowing and I had to stop singing to avoid making blubbering sounds which might cause my pew neighbors to think I was sinking into another nervous breakdown.

During the sermon, the pastor droned on, reiterating the power of the rituals of Baptism, Absolution, and Communion. About halfway through his message, my eyes closed-----don't worry, I was still listening, but also praying. My reverie was broken by the sudden crying of the baby in an infant seat next to me. I opened my eyes to see a wasp hovering near the baby. I swiped it away and it swooped into a pew where several little girls were sitting. A woman batted at it with a bulletin. Then the wasp landed on the edge of the pew one row ahead of us. It walked slowly along the top of the pew's back.......I wished the man ahead of us would slap it to get rid of it, but he didn't. Then a ladybug landed a few inches from the wasp. They walked towards each other, stopping seemingly to exchange insect greetings, and then they flew away in opposite directions. By then I was laughing, in silence, of course; it lightened my mood enough to get me through the post-sermon hymn, "Behold a Host Arrayed in White", with no tears. Hooray!

Maybe my sappy emotionalism is a midlife thing. There's not much I can do about the feelings that come during certain hymns. I'm a poor Lutheran.....they're not supposed to have feelings in church. I've tried to ignore the hymn words and think about something else, but it never works. Today, maybe an angel of tearlessness took pity and sent the wasp and ladybug to my rescue!

Recipe for Synchronicity

Today is All Soul's Day, established by the ancient Catholic Church to remember and pray for souls in Purgatory, if you believe in such a place. Purgatory......a place of purging, cleansing, purification......maybe the belief developed from the ancient myth of the river Styx which the dead must cross. Maybe if your unconfessed, unforgiven sins make you too weighty to ride the ferry, you must have those sins washed away by going through the water itself. Good thing Jesus took care of all that on the Cross.

For the sake of All Soul's Day, I will light Jack-of-the-Lantern's candle this evening, just to see his goofy, glowing expression one more time. His lid has shrunk and his teeth are shrivelling inward, but no matter.

Yesterday afternoon, a fun little synchronicity occurred. My sophomore son had arrived home from school earlier than normal-----he had a one-day reprieve from football practice after the big win the night before-----and he, in starving mode, raided the pantry and refrigerator. I asked him if he wanted me to bake bars or cookies, and he chose cookies. So I riffled through my recipe box to find a favorite, pulling out a card hand-written many years ago by my church friend, Andrea.

When I joined my Lutheran church nearly 30 years ago, Andrea was, of all the young women there, the most welcoming to me. Probably because she herself had been a newcomer, too, shortly before I arrived on the scene. Not to complain, but our church had been very insulated there in a community of exclusively Germans, and the members seemed somewhat stand-offish at the time I joined. And, of course, I was an alien of sorts, having come from a Baptist Church, and a rival high school community. Admittedly, too, I'm naturally an introvert, though I've learned to act extroverted when that is called for.

Andrea was from another part of Iowa, and she had been raised Catholic. She was like a breath of totally different air. We shared many fun times over the years, cheering our kids on at games, carpooling to far-away Lutheran school events, etc., and enjoying many good visits. Our now eighteen-year-old daughters played together often as toddlers, as I babysat when Andrea started working outside the home. Also, we attended a Bible Study together years ago, with some of my old Baptist friends.......it was then that she gave me the recipe.


Anyway, I had just pulled out the big bowl to mix the cookie dough ingredients in when the phone rang. It was Andrea!! She was stalled with a flat tire on her way home from work. At first I thought maybe she needed some assistance, but she said that her son was coming to help her. She had called me so she could get the phone number for the church basement......she was going to be late for the Ladies Aid potluck. I looked the number up in the phone book for her, and we chatted a bit. I said, "Andy, I was just thinking of you because I'm about to make your good oatmeal cookie recipe!" She sighed and said she hadn't made cookies for a long time, being so busy with going to work everyday. We agreed that we don't see enough of each other anymore, and that was that.

What a chuckle, though, to have her call right then, when I was about to start her cookie recipe! Fun, fun! Synchronicities are scientific fact, something to do with quantum physics and nonlocality.......impossible to understand, but most of all they are great fun when they occur!

All Saints Day

Recently, I discovered a great website about Christian saints. Its called "Saints Alive", www.stthomasirondequoit.com/SaintsAlive. A Catholic priest, Father McNamara, has compiled this information over the years for his congregation in New York state. The saints are listed alphabetically and there is an entry for today's commemoration of All Saints Day, the day to remember unofficial saints, loved ones and friends who lived the Christian faith and have passed from this earthly life.

In 1967, when I was nine years old, my much-loved grandfather passed away on Halloween. Many fond memories remain of "Grampy", as I called him. Probably, his kindness and attention caused me to be what at that time would have passed for being spoiled. I was his first grandchild. He often took me to the park, he bought me dime rootbeers instead of nickel ones, he colored with me, he taught me to draw three-dimensional geometric forms, he taught me how to plant seeds, he played cribbage with me......on and on I could go.

Anyway, the evening he died, my mother came into my room and sat down on my bed and cried. She had just received the call from the hospital that her father had died. He had suffered greatly with a painful form of cancer. Through her tears Mom said that she wished she could jump into the grave with him.......later, at the committal service in the cemetery, my childish mind actually did picture the possibility of Mom jumping into the grave with the casket. She had her reasons for entertaining such a thought back in those days.......a reason beyond the bounds of my understanding at that time, 40 years ago.

Jump ahead many years to one rainy autumn afternoon in 2004-----I was doing housework and somehow began to think about Grampy. Actually, I hadn't thought of him in a long time. I must have been tired or in a down mood, for I then decided to lie down for awhile. My tears were flowing and I was wishing I had some tangible remembrance of Grampy, like a letter in his handwriting, or something similar. And then, honest to goodness, this really happened-----the phone rang and it was my mom. She said excitedly, "Guess what! I was just up in the attic looking for a cookbook, and I ran across some cards and a letter that Grampy wrote to you when you were little!"

I nearly dropped the phone! I said, "Mom, you've got to be kidding", and told her that I had just been thinking about Grampy and wishing I had a letter from him!! She seemed not too surprised, actually.......she's open to unusual happenings, and she and I have occasionally shared other moments similar to this, as I have with my own offspring.

What is the mechanism of an incident like this? Is it thought transference between loved ones? The Holy Spirit at work? Angel activity? Do our departed loved ones have a hand in it? Or is it just an amazing meaningful coincidence, AKA synchronicity? Whatever the case may be, it seems very special when it happens. And I'll have to admit, experiences like this have sparked my interest in learning about the saints and the reasons for the origin of the concept.

My mother had one sister, whom I was named after. That aunt of mine died on this day, November 1, All Saints Day of 2000. A couple years after her death, something odd happened on her birthday, and eventually I will post about that. The aforementioned letter from my Grampy was dated December 17, 1965, and has a Christmas theme, so I'll post about that next month, too......God willing.

Maybe everyone experiences unusual things like this, but few ever discuss it. Or maybe the tendency towards the unusual runs in families. Many years ago, one of my mother's cousins (Grampy's niece) gave me a genealogy of his side of the family. It said that Grampy's great-grandmother, a washwoman in London in the mid-1800's, had the gift of "second sight". I've researched second sight a little bit. The term seems to have originated in Scotland, and referred to people who experienced premonitions, precognitive dreams, etc. Grampy told me once that we were "Scots-Irish", so who knows, maybe it is in the family line.

By the way, our team won the play-off football game last night, by a very lop-sided score, on a very chilly evening. Thankfully, I splurged several years ago on a long down coat. In it I look kind of poofy like the Michelin Man, but it keeps me toasty warm. Football games are tolerable......cheering makes me feel idiotic, though, so I just clap my mittened hands and paste a smile on my face while inwardly praying that no players get hurt. You can gain much yardage in life by being quiet and smiling! Go, Team, Go!!

Halloween By Any Other Name

Interesting it is to find out that ancient cultures all over the northern hemisphere celebrated or recognized a day of remembrance of the deceased at this time of year. What is it about this time of year? Actually, in observing the seasonal changes that occur in mid to late autumn, I can understand the perception of closeness to the otherworld. Nature seems to gain a voice to speak to us through the rustling of stalks and leaves. The veil between the worlds seems less opaque for a time.......it feels like a "thin place".

October 31 falls right between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, so it was a special time for those ancient cultures who were aware of and followed celestial solar events. The Christian Church aptly chose November 1 to be All Saints Day to provide for a smooth transition from the pagan seasonal observances.

Yesterday, I made a jack-o-lantern, and enjoyed every minute of it despite knowing the tradition probably has a pagan origin. Seems like I read once that it had to do with a spell being cast causing someone's spirit to be confined to a pumpkin. If only evil could be dealt with as easily as that......cast a spell and lock evil up inside a pumpkin! It makes me wonder about the old nursery rhyme, "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater.......had a wife and couldn't keep her.......put her in a pumpkin shell......and there he kept her very well." I also wonder if it has any connection to when we refer to someone "being a vegetable". When I was a kid, I would hear my parents say that phrase now and then......usually about someone lying in a coma from a head injury or something. My childish mind would envision a carrot or squash lying in a bed.

Anyway, Happy Hallowe'en......All Hallow's Even......Holy Evening......Samhain, or whatever you may call this day on the calendar. I'm going to go outside and light the candle in my jack-o-lantern and laugh at his inanely grinning face!

After milking chores are done, Husband and I will bundle up and head off to a high school play-off football game. Brr.....I can hardly wait!

Church and Haunted House

What a lovely Sunday here in Iowa yesterday! Sunshine the whole day long. The colors in our church's stained-glass windows were distilling the sunlight beautifully as our little congregation absorbed the Divine Service. Pastor doesn't chant very well, poor guy.......probably he can't help it that he can't stay on pitch. Husband said later, "Why doesn't he just speak the parts instead?" Good question.

I had attended the Bible class before church. There we continued our study of the "End Times", but today's section was on how the Mo-Synod Lutherans have correct Christian doctrine, and no one else does, evidently. Pastor also read a declaration put out by the Synod in the 1930's stating that we hold no belief in millenialism, the rapture, etc. That is fine with me. Dwelling on those weird beliefs can cause myriad problems for people.

It was also Reformation Sunday, so one of our hymns was Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God".......one of my all-time favorites. Even as a Baptist kid, I loved that hymn, although a different version of it than what we sing here in the Lutheran church. These words from that version in our Baptist hymnal have always stayed in my mind: "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper He amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing." The words are different in the Lutheran versions, probably due to varying translations from the original German.

Little of the day's sermon comes to mind right now......it started out with something about the right to bear arms, the 2nd amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. After that, I must have become distracted by the cute babies in front of and behind us......we had entered the service a bit late, so we sat in the back, in the "zoo section", as Husband calls it. It brought back memories of when our own four children were little, and we sat back there every Sunday, surrounded by other families with babies and toddlers. Fathers in suits with shoulders supporting chubby baby faces, every now and then a toothless smile and burp, followed by spit-up oozing down. Mothers rummaging in diaper bags, looking for a favorite book or some Cheerios, or a little notepad and pencil to give to a pouty older child who had scooted to the end of the pew. Occasional squawking and screeching, and the sound of a book or toy hitting the floor......those were special times.......all far in the past now. Most of those babies have grown up and left the area, although a few remain. In fact, the brown-eyed baby girl in the pew ahead of us was being held by her father, who once was a cute baby himself who would peer at us from over his own father's shoulder! Ah, the cycles of life.

After our Sunday noon meal, I headed out into the gorgeous sunshine for a nice, long walk. Our two dogs trotted happily along with tongues wagging and smiles on their faces. Even a black and white kitty, Tuxedo, joined in with our ragtag little troop of walkers.

Late in the afternoon, my sister dropped off her three kids.......I had called them earlier to see if they would go to a haunted house with me. It was being put on by the ELCA youth groups in our nearby town to raise funds and collect canned goods for the local food bank. The youth leader is my son's girlfriend, so I wanted to be supportive and attend the event, but I had to round up some kids to go along with me. My oldest niece is fifteen, so she didn't come in a costume, but her younger sister, a fifth-grader, and brother, a second-grader, were dressed as a witch and a cowboy train-robber, respectively. My nephew was very excited to be going to a haunted house.......he said he wanted to get really, really scared!

The haunted house was set up in the basement of the old dance hall on main street. It was the perfect setting.......an old, dark flight of stairs led down to several scenes of macabre mayhem. A bizarre dentist's office......a creepy cemetery with heads, arms and legs reaching out of graves.......a ghoulish dining room with horrid things on the menu.......a glowing monster rising out of a casket.......all accompanied by spooky howlings and growlings from here and there, and cobwebs everywhere! I laughed and laughed----it was such great fun. My little nephew, however, announced afterwards, in disappointment, that he had not been scared at all! So after some trick-or-treating on nearby streets, at whatever houses still had porch lights lit, we decided to go through the haunted house again! By then, quite a crowd had gathered and we had to wait in line for our turn, which was not so bad------it was great to see the good turn-out for some community fun. My son's friend had spent a lot of time planning the haunted house and setting it up, and I was happy for her that it was a success!

Heifer, Soaring Bird, and Old LP's

Moving away from my grumpy opinions of church, let's see what fun this week has brought......

I've survived TWO steer sortings, managing not to get trampled or do anything to get yelled at for. Hooray! One big galoot got away from us on Monday, but it wasn't my fault-----he just wanted to live a bit longer!

Tuesday I colored my hair.....exciting, yes. As long as I can cover the gray easily and with little cost, I will keep doing it. Clairol Natural Instincts is the coloring I use and have been satisfied always with the results. It costs me about $7 every three months, and takes about 30 minutes to do. Not a problem, in my opinion. Some folks might argue that I should just leave my hair alone, that God wants me to be gray, but I would argue that God must also want me to tolerate blurry vision from the nearsighted eyes He gave me. For that I wear corrective lenses.

Recently, we've had several new heifer calves to think of names for. The mothers' names are Chess, Buttercup, Muffy, and Solstice, so we chose these names for the calves: Miss Muffet, Yahtzee, Eclipse, and Yogurt-----you can probably figure out who belongs to who.

Last evening we had to have the veterinarian out for a rare visit-----a first calf heifer named Mildred was having trouble calving. The vet examined her and said she had a twisted uterus. I watched as he reached inside her to attach chains to the calf's feet. Then he attached the chains to a rod which he then twisted around for awhile to accomplish untwisting the uterus. It looked painful for the heifer, but she just stood there chewing hay as if nothing was going on. When the vet was done, he said her cervix needed to dilate overnight, and then he left. Later, after chores and supper, Husband went back out to the barn to check on her and found the calf's feet coming, but the head bent down backwards. He was quite sure the calf was dead, but it needed to come out soon for the sake of the mother. So he called the vet back out. Ouch......we will have a big vet bill coming! Yes, the calf, a bull, was stillborn, but Mildred is doing fine this morning, thankfully, and milked well.

Yesterday, we baled big round cornstalk bales. I drove the AC 8030 tractor pulling the stalk chopper......a fairly easy task with no need to worry about using hydraulic levers when turning on the ends of the field, since the chopper can stay at one level. So I zoned out to the radio tunes blaring in the noisy cab. One of the first songs was one I haven't heard for years, "Alone Again, Naturally", by Gilbert O'Sullivan. It was from the late 70's, I think. It's a sad song, and I did cry a little today as I listened to it. It seems to me that the singer took his own life eventually, but I will need to look that up to be sure.

When I was finished with the rows that needed chopping, then I had to switch to the John Deere 630 to run the rake to gather the stalks together for the baler to pick up. That required me to go back to the house and fetch my winter coat, since the 630 is a cabless tractor, of course. It was a lovely, sunny day, but the north wind was cool and brisk, making for a very invigorating experience. Needless to say, I slept very well last night!

Before starting the fieldwork yesterday, I took my daily walk. After sorting through some jeans the other day and finding several pairs that are just too tight around the waist, I have renewed incentive to take longer walks (and hopefully eat less). As I headed down the field drive, far up above was a large, soaring bird. Probably a hawk. His outstretched wings were completely still and he was gliding effortlessly to and fro on invisible wind currents. For a time, he seemed to glide in big figure 8's, and then in spirals, all the time never once flapping his wings at all. It was amazing to watch. How wonderful that would be to have such moments, soaring high, effortlessly, on invisible support. Of course, the bird had to use his own wing power to get up to the level of the wind current he was enjoying.

For the rest of my walk I tried to apply these thoughts to human experiences in life. The invisible wind current is like the invisible God that we believe in, supporting us as we float along in life. Of course, He gives us our "wing power", but we have to make choices to make the effort to follow that upward path to where the true support (salvation, sacraments, whatever) is.

Watching that bird up there reminded me of a song I hadn't thought of in years....."Let Everything Else Go", by Phil Keaggy. Later in the day, when I had time, I rummaged in a cabinet to find my stash of old vinyl LP's. Yep, there it was, on the album entitled "Town to Town" (1981, Sparrow), with a cover photo of Keaggy's band trying to get into an old yellow cab in a rainstorm.

"Let Everything Else go" by Phil Keaggy

**************************************

Chasing down hot air balloons

On Sunday morn

In pace with a familiar tune

I reach for nothing less

Than something more

All the day

And the wind is at my back

Most of the way

Holding conversation with a friend

I know is there

Great anticipation fills my soul

It fills my heart

It fills the air

All the day

And the wind is at my back

CHORUS:

Oh, I can't wait to see you Jesus

Face to face

Nothing in this world

Can take your place

All the pride of man laid low

And all his works of gold

Nothing can compare with what you are

Let everything else go

Let it go

*******************************

Anyway, its a nice little song, and the words of the chorus are worth remembering. Years ago, I liked this song well enough to buy the album. Back then I listened to contemporary Christian music quite a bit. In my old LP collection there are several Evie albums, a couple Amy Grant, an Andrew Culverwell, and a Chris Christian, among others. Probably, I should relisten to them while I still own a working record turntable.

Another Communion Gripe

While the subject of Communion is still on my mind, here's another gripe I have......the wafer. How did our church ever come to use that very artificial, paper-like wafer for the Communion bread? I've seen Communion done at the nearby ELCA church (the Lutherans on the wrong side of the tracks, supposedly), and they use a loaf of bread, which seems more like what Jesus did at the Last Supper. Their pastor breaks off a little piece for each communicant. A lady from their congregation bakes the loaf of unleavened bread.

The confessional pastors in our synod have a fit over the mention of other denominations that use grape juice instead of wine, but these same pastors have no problem in using that very unauthentic wafer. It makes no sense to me. What if they were marooned on a deserted island and had to use coconut juice and coconut meat for the Communion elements........would it matter? The main thing is the Words the pastor speaks over the bread and wine, anyway, right? By those Words the bread and wine become the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood.......so they say. Presto.....chango.

The "Real Presence" is a bit of a stickler for me because in growing up as a Baptist, I never heard of such a thing. The bread and grape juice were symbolic of Christ's Body and Blood. The Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans view the bread and wine as being literally the Body and Blood of Chirst, required nourishment for a Christian. They take the words of Jesus, "This is my body.....this is my blood", literally literally. Baptists take those words symbolically literally. Both sides can be said to take those Words literally, in my view. Real theologians would not agree with me, I know. And Lutheran theologians will argue that their doctrine of the "Real Presence" differs from the literal presence of Catholic belief......but I think it is basically the same.

I try to figure out why each side holds so strongly to their beliefs on the subject. The Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans seem to believe that Communion gives salvatory benefits.......taking Communion keeps salvation intact or updated. That's probably why in our church there are certain people who attend church only on Communion Sunday once a month. Baptists hold no such view that Communion itself imparts salvation to the recipient.

I've read that the Orthodox view themselves as sinners who are sick and in need of "the medicine of immortality", which is Communion. Lutherans view themselves as dead in sins, so Communion imparts life, I guess. Baptists believe salvation comes by believing in Christ. Honestly, I don't know which side is more right. I didn't join the Lutheran Church because I thought they were more right------I joined simply because I was marrying one of their members. When I receive Communion now I just pray for God to use it to do whatever He wants it to do for me. Its impossible for me to know for sure what's really going on.......that's why its called a mystery! I think its a shame that there is so much arguing and disunity amongst Christian denominations over what Communion is all about. Why can't we be unified in agreeing that it is a divine mystery. Ah, humans have that overwhelming need to be right so they can revel in their rightness. God must be just shaking His head in consternation.

Church and Communion Thoughts

I was a substitute Sunday School teacher today in the "upper grades" room. Our attendance is so small that 4th through 8th grades are lumped together-----there were six kids there. Our lesson was about Moses and the burning bush, from Exodus chapters 2-4. The kids took turns reading the story from the Bible, and I tried to spark some discussion here and there. At the end of classtime we had a litany prayer.......I asked each child to say a sentence, such as "Dear Lord, thank you for my family", etc., and after each one spoke we all said, "Lord, hear our prayer", in unison. The kids seemed shy to say anything-----typical of Lutherans!

During the church service, we sang the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" for the third Sunday in a row! Pastor must really like it. Did I mention that this hymn was often sung in the Baptist church I grew up in, but we have only now begun to sing it here in our Mo-Synod Lutheran church, because it is in our new hymnal, The Lutheran Service Book. I should inform Pastor that its a Baptist hymn......then he would probably quit putting it in the service!

Today being the third Sunday of the month meant that our church service included Communion.....or the Sacrament of the Altar. The confessional Lutherans make a huge deal of it, and that's only right, I'm sure. But, I have some gripes which have been with me since I joined the Lutheran church many years ago. For Communion, we congregants have to traipse up the middle aisle in groups of eight, stand there in the aisle and wait our turn to go up to the Communion rail. Pastor has to take the time to say to each one of us, "The blood of Christ given for you." I know he wants everyone to look at the wafer as he says those words, but I have never done that. It seems right to keep my head bowed. To be symbolically correct, we should probably have the wafer put right on our tongue, but we hold out our hand to take it, thank goodness. I would not feel comfortable opening my mouth for the wafer to be placed on my tongue by the pastor. No, thank you. Actually, to be totally symbolically correct, the pastor should probably pry our mouths open to put the wafer in, since sinners are unable to do anything on their own to receive God's grace.

Honestly, I have never cared for the Communion process here at the Lutheran church. Usually, my main concern is, "Is my hair sticking up.....am I walking to the correct side of the rail......I don't want to do anything wrong". In the early years, I would worry about being the lead person of my group of eight, in case I might turn the wrong way and lead them astray! Needless to say, often I wasn't thinking at all about the true meaning of Communion as I downed the wafer and wine. (It may not matter anyway.....what you're thinking about, that is.) And then you have to walk in front of everyone again to go back to your seat. I just don't care for it. I don't watch the other communicants as they walk up to the altar and back, and I hope everyone returns the favor and doesn't watch me either.

In the Baptist church, the ushers would pass the little plates of bread pieces and grape juice to the congregation in the pews. Once everyone had their bread, Pastor would speak the Words of Institution and everyone would eat their bread at the same time. Ditto for the grape juice. To me that was more meaningful in a way than all the traipsing around we do in the Lutheran Communion service. If our church ever goes to weekly communion, I hope they figure out a different way to do things.

Today we sat in the balcony, so I couldn't have watched anyone even if I'd wanted to. The lovely stained-glass windows over the altar were all I could see. Three tall pointed windows, the middle one being the tallest, all facing the eastern morning sunlight. The design looks almost like a luminous quilt pattern, little triangles and squares of red, blue, green, gold, purple. Near the top of the middle window is a circle containing a gold Communion chalice. The window to the left has a circle with a golden sheaf of wheat in it, and the right window's circle contains a cluster of purple grapes. I've always considered them amazingly beautiful windows. Some sunny morning I should take my camera there and get some photos. As long as I can sit there and contemplate the beauty and meaning in those windows, annoyances in sermons and chanting are tolerable.

Our church building is quite old, having been built in 1873. The windows described above were installed in the 1960's, however, during a remodeling project. The other stained-glass windows, tall ones on either side of the sanctuary, are from the original construction, I think. It's truly a lovely old church building, built to accomodate the large farm families in this neighborhood in the late 1800's. Since that time, farming has changed drastically, along with family sizes, meaning that many empty pews are in view during church services.
Sometimes I wonder how long we can survive as a congregation.

Saints of October

While in the murky mist of waking up this morning, a list of people needing prayer went through my mind. One was a friend named Audrey who would be flying out west on a plane today. The thought of flying makes me nervous, so I prayed for her safety. I subscribe to a daily email of obscure historical facts and saints' days.......and today is the feast day of St. Audrey! So I was quite sure my friend on the plane would have a safe flight.

We Protestants miss out on knowing the stories of the saints, unless, like me, we get interested in them as we get older, and do our own research. I have a calendar from the Fellowship of St. James which lists the historic church feast days for saints and important people from the Bible. On today's date, in the Western Christian tradition, the honored person is Ignatius of Antioch (a bishop martyred in 115 A.D.). In the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, the Prophet Hosea is honored. Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist.

Last Monday, October 15, was the feast day of Teresa of Avila, a Roman Catholic saint who lived in the 1500's. She was a Carmelite nun in Spain who became intensely interested in prayer after having a vision of a heavenly castle. Another Carmelite Catholic saint of a similar name, Therese of Lisieux, in France, had her feast day on October 1. Last week on a chilly, rainy afternoon, I huddled on the couch under a quilt and watched a DVD movie, "Therese", made in 2005, starring Lindsay Younce in the title role.

The movie relates the story of Therese Martin, who was born in 1873 and grew up with four sisters in Alencon, France. Her mother died when Therese was just four years old. All five Martin sisters ended up becoming nuns. Amazing! Therese was fifteen when she begged to join her older sister at a Carmelite convent. Therese died at age 24 of tuberculosis. Before her death, she wrote down her life story, the method she had found to grow closer to God. It was called "the little way"----doing little things with great love. Mother Theresa of Calcutta's famous quote, "We can do no great things----only small things with great love", must derive from these writings of St.Therese of Lisieux.

Near the end of the movie, Therese on her deathbed says, "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth." Supposedly she also said, "I....after my death, will send down a shower of roses." This prompts people to ask Therese in prayer to "send a rose" as a sign that their prayer requests will be answered.

The more I read of saints and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions of praying to them for intercession with God, the more I believe Protestants have really missed out on something. Something very comforting. It may all be tied in with attitudes toward the afterlife. We Protestants seem to bury our dead and then forget about them. It seems I read somewhere awhile back that when Christian missionaries establish churches in African tribal villages, they end up accomodating some of the native beliefs about ancestor spirits----that these spirits come back to aid their loved ones in times of trouble. It sounds similar to the saint system to me, and sounds like something I could be comfortable with.

The booklet that came with the "Therese" DVD included the following definition of a "saint": "Saints are real human people who showed in their lives a great love for God and who are now in heaven. They had lives every bit as happy and sorrowful as ours; they faced challenges and some of them committed serious sins. Some lived lives that drew the world's attention and others were absolutely ordinary. There is every variety of persons in the catalogue of saints. What they had in common was a great love for God----in the end that love was the defining thing in their lives."

Recently, also, I read a booklet from the Orthodox Church, explaining their belief in praying to saints and departed loved ones, who are now closer to God. The departed ones retain love and concern for their loved ones still on earth, and they are in a position to provide intercessions to God on behalf of earthly brethren. I find these concepts very comforting, and not at all a "worship" of saints, or something that threatens faith in God. If anything, it is faith-strengthening. Maybe I look at this all very closely because I feel I may have been acquainted with a saint. There was just something that struck me about the person from the first moment of our acquaintance to the last moment, and I can't shake the feeling that this person is still very much involved here.

I might be called a heretic by some. As I get older, some things just seem very right, and some things very wrong. The idea that our departed loved ones want to be remembered and are waiting for our prayers so they can intercede with God on our behalf seems very right to me. The Orthodox booklet claims that these beliefs were part of Christianity's earliest days up until the Reformation when many Catholic traditions were discarded in the new Protestant doctrines that were formulated. The Orthodox, of course, were not involved in the Reformation, and thus have always held on to their ancient traditions.

Anyway, in closing, the month of October has the privilege of beginning with the feast day of Therese of Lisieux, is supported in the middle by the feast day of Teresa of Avila, and ends with All Saints Eve......or All Hallows Eve, better known as Halloween. In today's newspaper, an article states that some public schools are now dropping the word "Halloween" because it has a religious connotation. Its instead called "Orange and Black Day" or "Harvest Day". Can you believe it??

The Lutheran "End Times"

We awoke to rain this morning, as had been forecast. I snuggled deeper under the comforter, relieved by the fact that all our lawn is newly-mowed. Prompted by the wet weather forecast, I had spent all of yesterday's chilly afternoon bundled up in winter coat and scarf and bouncing on the lawn tractor. My stiffness this morning is a testament to that.

Our church has a adult Bible class before Sunday services. I heard they are studying the "end times", something Lutherans rarely discuss, so I decided to go this morning. Yes, the name of the study is indeed "End Times", part of the "Lutheran Difference Series", by Mark Brighton. I have no idea who he is.....probably a LCMS pastor or professor. This week's chapter was entitled "The Mysterious Veil"----that veil being death. The first paragraph said, "Lutherans begin their study of the end times with a topic that many people hate to discuss: death. The Bible describes death as a veil or a burial shroud (Isaiah 25:7). Sooner or later all people face this mysterious veil. Until Christ reappears, death remains the entry point for the end times."

Great, here I thought this would be a study of prophecy or something. Actually, when I was growing up, my parents put too much emphasis on end times speculations. It wasn't so much a part of the Baptist church teachings, as just something my parents were interested in, I guess. We attended a Bible study with some people from another church who were really into Revelation prophecy at that time. It brought alot of fear into my life when I was a teenager, because I believed the world was going to end soon. I would often look to the eastern sky to see if there was any sign of Christ coming in the clouds. For some reason, I feared that my family would be "raptured" without me, and I would be left behind to experience the "tribulation". Needless to say, I have never had any desire to read the "Left Behind" book series! When I became a parent, I vowed to never instill that kind of fear in my children, hence our household has been free of end times discussions, which also fits with the Lutheran way of doing things.

So, this morning's Bible class was not quite what I expected, but it was enjoyable. If nothing else, just to interact with fellow church members. As I stood chatting afterwards with a friend, another lady came over and gave me her bag of Sunday School materials, as I will be the substitute teacher for her class next week. I put the bag on the shelf above my coat there in the church basement.

I should have taken my coat with me up into the sanctuary, though, for it was freezing! The pastor announced, "Oh, by the way, the deacons couldn't get the furnace to start this morning". Wonderful.....we shivered all through the service. Our pastor, who is not really our pastor since he's filling in as a vacancy pastor, preached his usual heavily confessional Lutheran sermon, basically a sales pitch for the Sacraments. My attitude about his sermons is probably a sin, but his preaching really grates against my old Baptist sensibilities. About halfway through his sermons I feel like beating myself over the head with my hymnal.

Today's Old Testament reading was Ruth 1:1-19, which tells the story of Ruth and Naomi. Pastor said, "This reading is not really about Ruth and Naomi......it is all about Jesus". But, he never did point out how so. Ditto the Epistle reading, 2 Timothy 2:1-13.....although it made slightly more sense to say this reading was "all about Jesus". His preaching got very intense as he explained how God formerly had resided on earth in the Holy of Holies of the Jewish temple, but then when Jesus came to earth, God resided in His earthly body. Now God resides in His Word, preached by pastors in sermons and handed out by pastors in the Sacraments. All of his sermons end up on that same basic note.

After yakking a bit with church people after the service, I went to the basement and grabbed my coat and headed for home, five miles away. Halfway there, I suddenly realized I had forgotten the bag of Sunday School materials, so I turned the pickup around and went back to the church. By then, everyone was gone. Down in the church basement, though, all the lights were still on! Turning them off gave my forgetfulness a purpose.....at least that's how I'll view it. Wink!

Autumn Appointment

My 15-year-old son had an orthodontist appointment this morning. I rode along while he drove, ala Josh and his mother in recent "Zits" cartoons. My son does well driving out on open roads and highways, but I'm not totally comfortable yet with his city driving. He needs to slow down as soon as he sees brake lights come on up ahead on busy streets, and he needs to pay better all-around attention to what's going on around him. We had one close call while turning through an intersection----we had a green light, but not a green arrow, and he failed to yield for an oncoming car. It didn't help that we were following in the wake of a big square Frito-Lay truck, which prevented us from seeing oncoming traffic, but that's no excuse. Also, I had looked away for some reason, and didn't see that the car was coming. It had to brake for us, and the driver honked, probably in great annoyance, understandably.

After the orthodontist appointment, Son and I made a quick dash through Target, grabbing a few needed grocery items, and paper towels for washing cow udders in the barn. Normally, I don't ever get to Target at the time of day we were there, 9:00 a.m. I noticed several tired-looking dads with babies or toddlers, shopping for groceries. Maybe after working a night shift, they take care of their little ones while their wives head off to work a day shift job. Bless them all. I'm thankful to have been able to stay home with my kids.

Later, back at home, while I was picking the last red raspberries of the season, Husband showed up and asked if I would make a trip to pick up some supplies. He needed netwrap to make big round cornstalk bales, and tines for the hay rake. He didn't need to ask me twice. Quickly, I headed to the house to make him some sandwiches for lunch, and grab my purse, also tossing in my camera for good measure. The New Holland dealership I had to go to was about 45 minutes away, in a hilly area that might provide nice autumn scenery.

Being asked to run for parts is not a problem----long, solitary drives are one of my favorite pastimes, and they don't occur often enough. Such a wonderful time to think and be aware of random thoughts that float in. My route took me past many fields where combines were dustily chewing their way through brittle rows of corn. In the end rows of the fields sat waiting tractors and wagons, or grain trucks. Nowadays, too, there are often semi-truck-size grain trailers also in the fields waiting to be filled up. With an ethanol plant nearby, some farmers send their corn right in there for processing, or to the waiting storage bins on farms or at the co-ops in each town. When the co-op bins get full, then corn will be piled up in bunkers on the ground.

After the netwrap and tines were loaded into the pickup, I went and got a turkey sub at Subway and headed to a roadside park high on a hill nearby. When I was a kid we used to stop there often on Sunday drives to enjoy the nice patchwork view of surrounding farms and, down in the valley, a little town with a twin-steepled church to catch the eye. I ate my sub on a park bench which had a metal plaque indicating it had been placed there in memory of someone named Jeff, 1957-2000. Maybe he had enjoyed the lovely view from this vantage point, too.

The autumn leaf colors did seem rather dull and muted, however.....possibly it will not be a season for bright fall foliage, as in past years. The unseasonable warmth and humidity of September and early October may be a factor. I did find a few bright sumac branches bordering the park to take close-up photos of, though. Then hopping back into the pickup, I headed down the road toward home, savoring the pleasant memories of the day.

October Chill & Sychronicities

October inches onward, the chilly weather finally kicking in a couple days ago. Last weekend was very warm and humid, which felt absolutely wrong for October. At church Sunday many comments about this were heard, considering how the favorite subject of conversation amongst parishioners is usually "the weather". Rain fell most of Sunday afternoon, which I spent pleasantly curled up on the porch reading a book. By Wednesday morning, the north wind was blowing, and temperatures plummeted to more normal levels. I bundled up in a winter coat and scarf for my morning walk today and yesterday.

To quickly update, our crops are all harvested now. Soybeans were combined by our neighbor last week, and on Saturday our remaining corn was combined, too. Husband decided a few years ago to hire someone to plant and combine our corn. It saves him the stresses of trying to maintain a planter and combine, both very expensive pieces of machinery. He has enough to do with taking care of the cows each day, and worrying about baling hay in the summer and filling silo in the fall.

This afternoon I'm baking two pans of bars to take to the weekly Thursday night football team supper at the high school. Pumpkin bars and Mississippi Mud bars, with candy corn sprinkled on top of the frosting for a seasonal touch. As I was putting the beaters in the mixer to make the first batch of frosting, my cell phone beaped indicating an incoming text message. The message was from my college daughter, saying, "thanks for the beaters."! My first thought was, "What"!? Did she know I had just put the beaters in the mixer??? But, she was referring to the "wife-beater" t-shirts I had sent her in the mail because she told me she needed some. (I don't really care for the nickname "wife-beaters", but that's what the kids call the shirts.) Anyway, it was a cute little coincidence.

Another interesting little synchronicity/coincidence occurred last week. My older son, who is in college two hours away, recently found out he has mononucleosis. He had been having headaches and running a temperature. Then last week he also had the very sore throat that can be part of the mono experience. We talked on the phone Wednesday evening, and I could tell he was miserable, his throat very swollen and sore. He had been to the campus clinic and was given antibiotics and a steroid to help with the swelling. As I lay in bed that night I thought about making a batch of tapioca pudding for him, something I used to do quite often when the kids were little. By Friday night, though, he was feeling much improved, thankfully. On Sunday afternoon he called and as we were talking he said, "Hey, Mom, guess what I made........a batch of tapioca pudding."! I said, "You're kidding!" He has never made tapioca pudding before, and I had not mentioned to him that I had thought of it. He actually had bought the kind of tapioca that has to be soaked overnight, so he really made the authentic version. I had always used the quick tapioca that needed to soak for only 20 minutes.

Anyway, it was interesting. We had not discussed tapioca pudding at all. Were thoughts moving from me to him, or from him to me? I wonder who thought of the pudding first......was it me as I lay in bed that night? Or did my son think of it first that night and somehow his thought was transferred to my thoughts? I find all of this fascinating even though I'm sure many people would scoff.

Daughter's Scary Dream

This post will connect somewhat to the previous one. The morning after Sam's funeral my daughter the college student sent me a text message on my cell phone. It said, "Give dad a hug for me. I had a dream that he died in my arms last night and so did brother. I didn't sleep good because of it." Husband was standing nearby so I hugged him and showed him the message. Before I could even feel a bit fearful, something dawned on me........it was because of my daughter's words, "he died in my arms". The same words that Sam's sister had said to me yesterday at the funeral.

Because I've had many experiences that seem to indicate some sort of thought transference going on, especially with people I'm close to, like my daughters and my mother, I wondered if this might be what happened. These are just my theories, based on what I've experienced over the years.

Yesterday, when Sam's sister was telling me about Sam's death in her arms, we were crying and hugging, making for a very emotional moment. Perhaps in this emotional, somewhat distressed state, my mind sent out a message, and my college daughter's unconscious mind picked it up. She would have been in class right then, though, so her conscious mind was in command. Maybe the message concerning his death "in my arms" lingered in my daughter's unconscious mind and came forth in a dream that night. The message was distorted and garbled, but it contained "he died in my arms", a brother dying, and a father dying. Sam was my friend's brother, and my friend had also lost her father tragically many years ago, and that memory was in my mind as I spoke to her by Sam's casket.

This theory may sound crazy to some, but it seems possible to me. I want to also say that for a few seconds there by Sam's casket, when his sister was describing his death in her arms, I almost felt like I was on holy ground. Her faith in God is very strong, and she must have been a great comfort to Sam in his last hours. None of us would wish to have someone die in our arms, but maybe it is very much a privilege when that happens.

I quickly replied to my daughter's text message, telling her I might know the reason she had the dream, and that she should just relax, say a prayer for dad and brother, and not worry.

A Special Funeral

We're past the middle of September now, with sure signs of autumn and harvest all around. Today, even the orange ladybugs (Asian beetles) arrived! How nice! Hoards of them leave newly-harvested soybean fields, and fill the air and invade houses. Most of the time, they don't bite or sting, except on very warm days, like today.....then they do. They get into every little cranny possible, between window sashes, in door frames, in woodwork. When smashed, they smell bad, and once I accidently chewed on one while eating popcorn, and believe me, they taste as bad as they smell!

This morning, on my walk, I missed a perfect photo opportunity.......I was walking by the edge of a cornfield from which a huge flock of blackbirds suddenly arose and flew en masse up to the adjacent power lines. They hovered for a few seconds over the cornfield, with the luminous morning sky in the background......that would have made a great photo, if only I had had my camera with me. Darn. In the ditch along our gravel road, there are lovely purple asters blooming, with Indian grass waving above them. Other various foliage are turning gold and red. Not many leaves have changed color on the trees, though, yet.

This afternoon I attended a funeral at a nearby country church. The deceased was the 37-year-old brother of an old school friend of mine. Sam had been born with special needs, and his family had lovingly cared for him all these years. His father had died suddenly when Sam was only three, and his mother was left to care for him and run their farm. She was incredibly devoted to Sam. Anyway, the funeral was unique and special, as I knew it would be. First of all, before the service started, as we were awaiting the entrance of the family, part of a light fixture suddenly fell from high in the ceiling, fortunately falling onto an empty pew. As if someone up there wanted to get our attention!

The pastor gave a nice eulogy and then there was a chance for anyone in the audience to stand up and share remembrances of Sam. There were a few that did, mostly neighboring farmers with memories of how Sam enjoyed riding along in the combine at harvest time, or how he would peek out from behind trees to watch them working in the fields near his home.

Sam never learned to speak, except that he could say the word "no". He could write some words, too. The only TV show he seemed to like was "M.A.S.H.". He loved to watch trains, and was delighted whenever he and his mother had to sit and wait for a train to go by at a railroad crossing. He enjoyed musical toys and had many of them, and loved to annoy his mother by starting up all the toys at once to make lots of noise. When company came over, he would play his musical toys for the visitors.

The church building we were in is only six years old, because seven years ago a tornado ripped through the neighborhood, destroying the church and several farmsteads, including Sam's. Sam's mother had gone to get groceries that afternoon, so Sam was home alone when the tornado came through. His brother and sister-in-law, from their farm across the section, could see the tornado approaching. They phoned Sam and told him to go to the basement, but he was stubborn, and would not go. Later, when Sam's brother arrived, he found the house flattened and no sign of Sam. He started searching and eventually found Sam covered in dirt and stuck down in the hole of an uprooted tree! He had a badly broken leg, but otherwise was OK. It was an amazing story which made the local news. Sam's sister, my old friend, made a wonderful scrapbook, which we looked at before the funeral, showing the tornado story, and the subsequent building of a new house for Sam and his mother.

This was the first funeral I've attended where the casket was left open at the front of the church during the service. Maybe it was because of what the family planned to do at the end of the service. They took Sam's favorite musical toy up there, and wound it up and let it play. It was a thanksgiving turkey stuffed toy, but I couldn't tell what the song was. When the toy was done playing, they put it in the casket by Sam and the funeral directors shut the lid. All of a sudden we could hear the toy start to play again......quite a moment......I literally was laughing and crying at the same time, as were many others in the crowd!

The pastor gave a meaningful little message about Sam's life. He said that sometimes in God's rose garden there are rosebuds which never manage to mature beyond the bud stage, for some unknown reason. They are beautiful in their own way, however, as Sam was to his family and to all who were acquainted with him. The pastor also said that the family told him that Sam had been stacking boxes by the door of his home lately, as if getting ready to go somewhere. And go somewhere he did.......to Heaven!!

Filling Silo

Fun, fun.....we're filling silo today! That means we're chopping the whole corn plants into bits and blowing the conglomeration up through a pipe into the top of the silo. Our neighbor and his son from across the road are here to help. They brought their big newish John Deere tractor and their chopper. We have a chopper head to put on it.......their chopper head is the wrong size for our corn rows. The chopper blows the corn mix into a silage wagon pulled behind it. The full wagons are brought to the silo and unloaded into a blower which forces the silage up the pipe and into the silo. Its a great plan if everything works! So far, things are working well today.

For the guys' lunch I fixed maid-rites, with corn, grapes, chips, lemonade, and raspberry crunch with ice cream for dessert. We had a fun visit around the table, catching up on the latest neighborhood and family news.

The weather today is really warm.....hot, actually. I love September warmth, though, because it is less humid than earlier in the summer.

Guess what we did on Labor Day, the day before yesterday.....we labored! But, it was fun labor. Husband baled hay into big round bales and we spent the afternoon bringing them up from the field. I got to drive the old John Deere 630 tractor pulling two hayracks, onto which Husband would put several big round bales with the skid loader. As I drove the Johnny-popper back and forth from the field, it reminded me of being a kid and driving our old John Deere A tractor.......the first tractor I ever learned to drive. I don't know for sure, but I think the A is from the early 1940's, and the 630 from the 1950's. There are many similarities in the two. The have the same hand clutch on the right side, and the same gear shifting apparatus. Throttle up above the steering wheel on the right. The 630 has power steering......the A did not, hence the need for the spinner knob on the steering wheel. Both tractors have that characteristic popping sound when they run.

When I was a little kid, we also had a really old Farmall F-20 tractor. It had to be started with a crank, and I would cover my ears and almost cry when it was started, it sounded so scary to me. I think its still sitting in my brother's barn. We also had a Farmall IH 560 tractor, which I drove alot for fieldwork and hauling corn wagons. It had no cab, and my dad would put the canvas "heat-houser" on it when the weather turned cold, to help keep the driver warm. I loved the 560, and the sound of it accelerating......great fun to drive, for it felt so powerful! We didn't get a cab tractor until I was in high school......that one was an IH 656......having a cab to sit in seemed like an absolute luxury!

When I got married, I had to switch allegiance from red tractors to orange, because Husband's family used mainly Allis-Chalmers tractors, and then Husband bought the JD 630 later. I think we should fix it up nice and drive it in parades.....that would be fun!

Anyway, silo-filling here will take a couple of days, and then Husband will help the neighbors do theirs. I'm glad we're doing it this way now, so there's enough help. My father-in-law is just not able to help with this anymore, and our sons are in school, leaving us with not many helpers around.

I need to go fold laundry and sweep the kitchen. Part of the lawn needs mowed, but I'll wait until later when the sun is less intense. I got sunburned the other day out on the tractor all afternoon. I also need to go hunt for our mother cat.....she got in a fight with the dog this morning and went sulking into the machine shed. Her kitties are crying for her, even though they're old enough to be weaned.

I could never have a job off the farm.......there are just too many things to do around here!