Life Should Imitate Art

Copyright 2005, The Edmond Sun. Reprinted with permission.

In the book version of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," sisters Lucy and Susan have to make a decision.

The Daughters of Eve had met Aslan, the great lion. They were reunited with their brother, Edmund, who betrayed them and cast his lot with the White Witch, taken in by lies of becoming king -- and a generous helping of Turkish Delight.

When the witch confronted Aslan about the magic of Narnia and demanded Edmund's blood as the magic required of traitors, the girls watched Aslan and the witch quietly negotiate Edmund's life. They followed Aslan as he walked deep into the woods, and watched the witch's servants bind the lion, shave him and drag him to the stone table to be slain by the witch's knife. Grieving Aslan's death, Susan and Lucy saw Aslan reappear because of the deeper magic, and they watched Aslan restore Narnia, breathing life back into those turned to stone by the witch's wand.

But the conversation that couldn't be avoided in the book was skipped in the movie. Should they tell Edmund what Aslan did to spare Edmund's life? Susan didn't think so. "It would be too awful for him," she reasoned.

Say what?

There are many excuses for why I haven't shared the truth along life's way with some who desperately need to hear it.

"Oh, they don't live in a vacuum. They've heard it before. They haven't listened then, why should I think they'll listen now?"

Or "their lives are too perfect. How can I ever make them see that they need a savior?"

But never "it would be too awful for them" if they understood Jesus' sacrifice.

I'd be a better man if my own recognition of that sacrifice was harder for me to handle than I allow it to be.

The movie's not as good as the book, but I recommend it regardless.
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I hope you've noticed changes in recent weeks in the Edmond Sun's coverage of religious news and events. My goal is to share the stories of the people in Edmond's religious community. I'm guessing half or more of Edmond's population worships regularly somewhere. As newspapers try to reconnect with readers, better coverage of the religious community is one effort we're making to that end.

In 2006, The Edmond Sun will, through the religion section published Friday, encourage readers to read through the Bible during the year. We'll publish on Friday the list of scriptures to be read each day during the coming week. You can easily clip the list and participate, even if you don't have a one-year Bible. If you don't have any Bible and need one, call or e-mail me. Churches in the Edmond Ministerial Alliance have agreed to get a Bible to you if needed.

I've also assembled a team of writers --local pastors and ministers -- who will furnish a column each week about one of the passages or stories you'll read in the Bible that week. I have 15 pastors who have committed to help on a rotating basis. I'm looking for more. If you're a pastor who'd like to participate, e-mail me at mailto:atdhartman@edmondsun.com.
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I need your help. There are hundreds of stories to tell of people in the religious community in Edmond. Problem is, there are more than 70 churches and religious organizations in Edmond, but only one of me. So if you wait for me to come to you, you might wait awhile.

If you have a story idea, send it my way, along with your name and a phone number so I can contact you for more information.

Thanks.

(David Hartman may be reached via e-mail at dhartman@edmondsun.com.)

The Sins of My Youth

I have a confession to make. It'll likely make you think less of me, if that's possible. But they say that confession is good for the soul, so here goes:

I've never read C.S. Lewis. As in none of C.S. Lewis. I'm 0-for-Lewis.

It's hard to explain why, exactly. Most of my friends started reading C.S. by 11 or 12 or 13. But I was different. At least I wanted to be different. Growing up in the home I did, I couldn't express my individuality by coloring my hair pink, getting a tattoo or piercing various and sundry body parts. Not that I wanted to.

So it wasn't uncommon for me to be different by doing things other kids didn't do, or by not doing things others did. Yeah, I took shop in high school, but I also took a sewing class. Made me a pretty cool shirt, pockets with snaps, buttons, western-style yoke, the whole nine yards. Needless to say, I was the only boy in the class. And most of my friends read Lewis, which was a perfect reason for me not to.

But I'm sure rebellion wasn't the only reason I said "no" to Narnia. It's kinda funny...I didn't watch a lot of TV growing up, but I still have the rather short attention span, especially when it comes to entertainment, as if I'd grown up in the 80s. I read back then, but I read newspaper columns, not books. And I wasn't into fantasy or make-believe, so the thought of reading about make-believe places with make-believe cartoon characters just didn't do much for me when I was a kid.

So now I have a lot of catching up to do. I have to admit, I'm kinda looking forward to the movie release of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in December. Not that I've read the book. But to prepare for the movie, which I'll no doubt write stories about for the newspaper, I did buy the story on CD, a dramatized reading produced by Focus On the Family. I was impressed. The Magician's Nephew, which I bought next, didn't do quite as much for me, but The Horse and His Boy is already copied to my Dell-pod, waiting for me to spend some time in the car to start that story. I reckon that I'll listen to the entire chronicles now, and when I know my Narnia, I'll probably move on to other Lewis works. Don't know which ones yet. Depends on if any are available in audio format, or if I have to buy a book.

My Lewis literate friends, provided the choose to still claim me, can feel free to recommend which titles I should explore first.

Turn me on, dead man

Decades ago, when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity, an urban legend circulated that Paul McCartney was actually dead and had been replaced by a look-alike. Fans went so far as to say that the Beatles planted clues about Paul's death in their music. It was said that if you played Revolution Number 9 backwards, you'd hear the phrase "turn me on, dead man."

I never owned The White Album as a kid, so I never had the chance to spin the song on my turntable to see if it was true.

Regardless, it looks like I'll have a new weekly feature in my day job that has nothing to do with religion. Currently, I have to write a weekly parenting story for our features section on Sunday. But soon, I'll pass the parenting to someone else and write a weekly feature about someone in the community who has died within the last 7-10 days. I'll browse the obits, find a dearly departed that interests me, and start calling the relatives to probe into the deceased's life and tell his/her story. We'll see how it goes, but it has to be better than writing stories about how to pick a daycare, for example.
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But speaking about parenting, perhaps you saw news accounts earlier this month about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' (San Francisco, which explains a lot) ruling that determined that parents don't have the fundamental right to determine when their children learn about sex in school. If you haven't heard, and if you're a parent, this ruling should bother you.

The court ruled that "“there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it."”

The ruling stemmed from a case filed by parents of students at Mesquite Elementary School in the Palmdale, Calif., school district after a survey administered at the school asked first-, third- and fifth-grade students questions of a sexual nature.

Seems the parents were told in a letter from the school that their first-, third- and fifth-grade students would be participating in a survey designed to establish a community baseline measure of the students' exposure to trauma, and to identify internal behaviors like depression and external behaviors likaggressionon.

Parents weren't told in the consent letter they were asked to sign and return that some of the survey questions would focus on sex, including questions about "“touching my private parts too much,"” "“thinking about touching other people'’s private parts"” and "“having sex feelings inside my body."

Needless to say, a few parents were unpleasantly surprised when their kids, ages 6-10, told them about the questions after the survey, and they filed a lawsuit against the school district. The 9th Circuit court rejected the claim, stating, "“We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."

Even though Oklahoma isn't under the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit, Oklahoma Baptists this week passed a resolution against the court's opinion. You may not be under the 9th Circuit either, but if you're a parent of a child in public schools, this is a ruling you should be aware of. I'm only an adjunct parent at best to a five-year-old, and the last thing I want is him learning about sex in the first grade.

Won't Blog for Food

Many years ago, fresh out of college and still unemployed, I spent a day standing at one of the busiest intersections in Oklahoma City holding a sign that read "Will work for state fair tickets." That gig paid me $40 if I recall, and did draw some media attention, which was the state fair's purpose for having me do it, anyway.

A friend of mine and one of my loyal readers suggested I add a "tip jar" to my blog, where visitors/readers can reward me with pictures of dead presidents through my PayPal account. I'm flattered that she thinks I'm good enough to get paid for what I offer here, I'm just not convinced I agree. Besides, it raises a lot of issues.

If I blog for cash, I blog what sells, not necessarily what I want to say. I already get paid to write, albeit in another forum. And this is the one place I can say what I want without having some "editor" -- to use the term loosely -- coming in behind me and messing with my work.

So I don't think I'll be adding a link to my PayPal account anytime soon, though I'm smart enough to reserve the right to change my mind down the line, especially to raise money for specific causes, like the Norske Nook Pie Fund, for example.
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Was shopping in the hardware section at Wal-Mart the other day and found some adhesive bandages there made from duct tape. Pretty sweet. They were on clearance, so I got several packages. They'll be great -- and manly -- for use at camp.
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They're not exactly the tools of great price, but they're not cheap, either. So when I thought I had lost not one, but both of my Leatherman tools recently, I tore up the bedroom looking for them. Best I could figure, I left the Crunch in the glove box of a car I sold months ago. And I believed the Wave was left at the preacher's retreat. As fate would have it, I found both of them last weekend. The Crunch was in my dad's tool box; the Wave was hidden in the suitcase I took to the retreat.

That's good news for me, but not so good news for my friend Monica Hosler, who works for the president of the Leatherman Tool Group. She just about had me convinced I need a Surge, one of the newer models. Oh well. It's not like they won't get more money from me in time. Leatherman is releasing a new line of knives, not tools, and I reckon I'll "need" one of those down the line.
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Jerry Falwell was a no-show at the Oklahoma Baptist Convention this week, so I didn't get to hear him speak. But popular Baptist author John MacArthur was there, and gave a great presentation on prayer. J Mac has written a set of commentaries, has his own study Bible, and has written a slew of other books. He's on my list of authors to read now.
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Hope you're enjoying 40 Days of Free Indeed. I know I am. And I think I've remembered to change the song every day so far. Of course, writing that probably jinxes it.

I'm Shallow, Too

I've mentioned Gary Cleveland's blog here recently. One of my favorite entries on South Moon & A Cup of Java is one of the earliest, so you have to search the archives for August to find it. It's titled "Way Down Deep I'm Basically a Shallow Person." I enjoy that entry because I've often thought of myself that way.

Some of my friends are academicians. I admire them. It just makes my head hurt sometimes to try to be like them. I've concluded that some of us are destined to be deep thinkers, and others of us were made to appreciate deep thoughts. I'm with the second group.

Maybe it's not so much that I can't/don't think deeply, it's just that I don't do it quickly. I'm what happens when you replace the incandescent light bulb with a flourescent one — the light just comes on a little slower after you flip the switch. I'm definately a crock pot rather than a microwave.

So even though the event in this entry is almost 100 days old now, and though it's not particularly deep, it needed some time stew in the mental crock pot for me to figure out what it all meant. My profile mentions that I spend two weeks every summer counseling at a Christian youth camp in Wisconsin. I've done it for many years. Except for this last summer, when I needed to stay home. Many of my closest friends meet me in those woods the first two weeks in August every summer, and I missed them deeply this year. Wasn't a waking hour during the session that I didn't think of them.

One of the moments that defines our camp session each year happens on the second Thursday of the session. We call it an annointing. It's a tradition that started....I don't know, eight years ago maybe, if that long, yet it's hard to remember camp without it.

It's remarkably simple, and it works like this: a couple of bowls of oil — baby or olive, doesn't matter, the magic's not in the oil — are placed on a table in the center of the Great Hall. You dip your fingers in the oil, and go find someone in the room you want to annoint with love. When you find your person, you rub that oil into their palm and tell them what you want to say. And it's a speech, not a conversation. Only the annointer can talk. If the anointee wants to annoint the annointer, he has to go get oil and repeat the process as the annointer. For about two hours, campers and staff navigate through the maze of bodies in the Great Hall, looking for the ones they want to annoint.

Simple, but powerful. It's an emotional time, and frankly, I often find myself dreading it for that reason. I've never yet made it through an annointing night without having to walk outside for a few minutes to get some air and clear my head before going back for another run at it. The evening is intense, and worth it. Campers and staff alike love it, and I pity the person who somewhere down the line decides to put that tradition to rest.

Of all of the days I was away from camp this year, that Thursday was the hardest, because I knew what I'd be missing. All day long there was a gnawing somewhere in my stomach that wouldn't go away. I felt like I was missing out on something I badly needed.

One of few neat things about missing camp was it gave me the opportunity to participate in an outreach program at my church here in Oklahoma City that before I never got to experience because of camp. Our church is located in a rather poor neighborhood of the city, and a few years ago, we started providing school supplies for neighborhood children who needed them. And there are a lot who need them. We hand out flyers in the neighborhood door-to-door on a Saturday to advertise the giveaway, then the following Friday and Saturday the parents and children come to the church to pick up their school supplies.

So on Friday — the last day of camp and the day after the annointing — I volunteered to help pass out the school supplies as people came to get them. In addition to bags of paper and pencils and binders and stuff, we also offered Bibles to families who wanted them, and an opportunity to pray with a minister or elder from the church.

It's a sad indictment on me I guess that I don't even remember her name. But she came into the church with her children to pick up school supplies, and she wanted to take us up on the offer of prayer. Trouble was, all of our ministers and elders who were there that night were currently busy praying with other customers. She would have to wait for the next available minister to hear her call.

I could tell she was getting a little impatient — it's hard when you have three small children with you and they're bored. But I didn't want her to give up waiting and just go on home. So I went ahead and asked her: "You know, if it doesn't matter to you if the person you pray with isn't a minister, I'll be glad to do it." It didn't matter to her, so off we went to the training room outside the auditorium — a quiet place to talk and pray.

I remember the story about how her brother died in the spring. Suicide. I remember her talking about being a single mother, about her anger toward God for her brother's death and how she didn't want to take those frustrations out on her kids. And then we prayed, hugged, and on her way she went, kids in tow. Ten minutes, tops.

It took awhile, weeks in fact, for all the carrots and potatoes and meat of that encounter to become stew in the crock pot of my head. Shouldn't have been a big deal to me, but I couldn't get it out of my thoughts. Eventually, I figured it out.

God provided the annointing.

He knew what I needed and made it happen, even if it wasn't the way I was used to having it happen. In the act of listening to and praying with the woman, I was annointing. And in that simple act, the oil was turned on me by God Himself.

Different place, different people. Same mercy and grace. He is good.

Riters bloc

I haven't posted in awhile. Been busy at work, and just haven't been or felt creative.
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Africa is in the house! According to Stat Counter, someone in Cote d'Ivoire had visited wysiwyg twice now. I didn't know there was such a place, so thank goodness for Google.

Turns out the little country in western Africa — about the size of New Mexico — has about 17 million people and produces oil and diamonds. It's a French-speaking country where the males live to about 48.62 years of age, and the females about 51.27 years. About 570,000 of the country's adults are living with AIDS, I'm told.
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Jerry Falwell is coming to my town. Seems the popular evangelist will be preaching Monday at the Pastor's Conference that's part of the Oklahoma Baptist Convention. I look forward to what Jerry has to say.
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Speaking of Baptists, the folks from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, were in my town this week picketing the funeral of a local soldier killed in Iraq. It really isn't fair to link them to other Baptists, since I haven't been able to find another Baptist church that claims them. And anyone can call themselves whatever they want.

If you're not familiar, Fred Phelps started the church, which consists mainly of his dozenish children and 50+ grandchildren. Some — encouraged by Fred himself no doubt — say Fred is a prophet.

Fred's/Westboro's message to the world is very simple. God hates fags. In fact, they feel so strongly about it that the address to the church's web site is www.godhatesfags.com. They have another site, godhatesamerica.com, which is a little different than the first but the same rhetoric of hate.

In Fred's mind, it's real simple. God hates fags. And He hates people who enable them. And since America has, in Fred's estimation, turned itself over to them, God has turned his back on America and America is irreversibly doomed. They picket soldiers' funerals with their signs because if you fight for America, you're fighting against God, and you're in Hell when you die.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't suggest people expose themselves to this stuff if they didn't have to, but I'd encourage you to check out www.godhatesfags.com. You have to see it for yourself to believe it. If you have an hour of your life to waste, listen to one of Fred's sermons, links to which you can get from the website. I listened to the one he preached on the Sunday after the last space shuttle explosion. A real piece of work.

Saddest for me was that of the six Phelps protestors who showed up to picket the funeral this week, three of them were kids, including one boy who was only 8. There he was, in his blue t-shirt with bold white "God Hates Fags" printed on the front, holding a sign of hate high in the air. I pray for those kids. Not so much for their parents, though I know I should do that, too. But I hurt for those kids.

Love Of My Life, Show Yourself

Time's a-wastin'.

My friend Julie, previously written about in the blog and referenced as "Nurse Lady," frequently forwards me chain e-mails of various types. Sometimes I read 'em, sometimes not — but I do have to admit I have a pretty good history of breaking the chain. I'm just not good about forwarding stuff on to other people.

But I've been bugged by a stomach virus or something the last couple of days, and when I got the Feng Shui Horoscope from Julie, I decided to play the game. Might perk me up a bit, I thought.

Let's take a look at the "horoscope," what it says about me, and whether it's remotely accurate:


1. Which is your favorite color: red, black, blue, green, or yellow?
2. Your first initial?
3. Your month of birth?
4. Which color do you like more, black or white?
5. Name of a person of the same sex as yours.
6. Your favorite number?
7. Do you like California or Florida more?
8. Do you like a lake or the ocean more?
9. Write down a wish (a realistic one).

My answers:
1. blue
2. D
3. Dec.
4. white
5. Tom
6. 7
7. Florida
8. Lake
9. Get married before I die.


1. If you choose:
Red - You are alert and your life is full of love.
Black - you are conservative and aggressive.
Green - Your soul is relaxed and you are laid back.
Blue - You are spontaneous and love kisses and affection from the ones you love.
Yellow - You are a very happy person and give good advice to those who are down.

I picked blue, and right out of the chute this horoscope has credibility problems. Oh, I've been known to be spontaneous now and then, and I've even smooched on a girlfriend or two in my day. But beyond smoochin' on the girlfriend, I'm pretty much a hands-off guy. Don't be touching me without a good reason. The quickest way for a waiter or waitress to forfeit their tip is to put their hand on my shoulder while taking my order, or even worse, skooching me over in the booth so they can sit down next to me whilst I order.

 
2. If your initial is:
A-K - You have a lot of love and friendships in your life.
L-R - You try to enjoy your life to the maximum and your love life is soon to blossom.
S-Z - You like to help others and your future love life looks very good.

Since I'm a "D", I have a lot of love and friendships in my life. I'd say that's fairly accurate.


3. If you were born in:
JAN - MAR: The year will go very ! well for you and you will discover
that you  fall in love with someone totally unexpected.
APR - JUN: You will have a strong love relationships that will not
last long but  the memories will last forever.
JUL - SEP: You will have a great year and will experience a major
life-changing  experience for the good.
OCT - DEC: Your love life will not be too great, but eventually you
will find your soul mate.

So my love life is pacing itself. Tell me something I don't know. But even this is a problem for the horoscope, as we'll discover further down in the survey.


4. If you chose...
Black: Your life will take on a different direction, it will seem hard at the time  but will be the best thing for you, and you will be glad for the change.
White: You will have a friend who completely confides in you and would do anything  for you, but you may not realize it.

I chose white, but I don't understand the revelation. I have more than one friend who would do anything for me, and I know it, and appreciate them deeply for it.


5. This person is your best friend.

Swiiiiiiiing and a miss. I picked Tom because it's the first male name that came to mind. But I don't have a best friend named Tom, nor anyone named Tom on the short list, that I can think of.


6. This is how many close friends you have in your lifetime.

I picked 7 because it was lucky. But I don't really have a favorite number, other than 150,000,000, the amount — after taxes — I win in the Powerball, not that I'm holding my breath or buying any tickets.


7. If you chose:
California: You like adventure.
Florida: You are a laid back person.
  
I'd say I'm fairly laid back, yes.


8. If you chose:
Lake: You are loyal to your friends and your lover and are very reserved.
Ocean: You are spontaneous and like to please people.

I reckon I'm loyal and reserved.
  

9. This wish will come true only if you send this to 1 person in one hour. Send it  to 10 people, and it will come true before your next Birthday.

Well, now here's where we've got problems. Even though I haven't actually forwarded the e-mail, to 10 people, I have put it here on wysiwyg, which is viewed by more than 10 people per day, so I think that should count for something.

Per question 3, the love life aint looking so hot in the immediate future, and yet I have a birthday in less than 50 days. That's a little quick for a courtship and planning a wedding, I'm thinking.

But wait....there's a compromise....maybe I don't marry for love. Maybe I marry some rich old woman with an estate valued at $150,000,000 — after taxes — and after a brief, six-week marriage she dies and leaves me the cash!

Maybe there is something to this Feng Phooey stuff after all....

The Spam of the Spirit

If only I had a nickel for every dollar I've won in some international lottery I never entered. Just a nickel for every long-lost distant relative who has died in some African country, and after an extensive search for heirs, I finally was located so I could inherit the estate left behind. Oh for pennies on the dollar every time someone needs to move an obscene amount of money from a foreign bank account to an American account, with a generous cut of that money for me if I'll do nothing more than be the American account the money is transferred to....

I used to keep a file where I saved all of the e-mails I got like that. But I got so many, that I quit saving them. Today's spam was different though. It's the first one I recall that came in the name of religion.

For your reading enjoyment, today's spam, from a Reverend Jones Smith:

Dearest in Christ, Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am Revrend Jones a member of Redeem ministry, basically a prayer and deliverance ministry. During a Prayer and fasting session in my Minstry, I asked our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the oppotunity to redeem my life and purify what remains of my wealth. God deliverly revealed to me to Invest in His Kingdom through you and your organisation and also give to the needies,orphanages,widows,and charites. You should immediately get back to me so that i can go ahead to send the funds according to the will of God so that you can distribute to the needys and hence further the works of the lord. Remain blessed Revrend Jones.

Rev. Jones Smith. How clever. Of course, that's not the most glaring giveaway that this e-mail is a fraud.

When was the last time you ever heard of a preacher doing the prayer/fasting thing and when he's finished, start looking to give money away? I mean, every time Oral Roberts holes himself up in his tower on the ORU campus in Tulsa, when he's done, he comes down asking you to give money to him. It's the American way. Sometimes Oral even threatens to stay in the tower and starve until we pony up the dough necessary to nourish his spirit. And for some reason, folks in Oklahoma always seem to fall for it.
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In the mailbox yesterday was my recently-ordered copy of Beginnings, a CD produced by the praise team of the Northtown Church of Christ in Milwaukeeish, Wis. (They might be in Waukesha, I don't remember.) My understanding is that it's the group's first recorded effort, and it's not bad. They credit Free Indeed as inspiration, and there's certainly some FI influence in the music. It's a little lite, only eight tracks and 26 minutes of music, but at least the price was lite too -- just $10 from the place I ordered it.

It was worth every dime if for no other reason than the song Someday, a standard at WCYC and a favorite song of one of my favorite people, Roger Dunnam, who has counseled there since I was a camper. One day I'll write in this forum more about Roger, which I can easily get away with because Roger's a technophobe. He has no computer, and will never see this blog. But I'll refrain from posting about Roger until I can get a good picture of him to include with the post.

At any rate, while I don't usually play songs on the blog before I get permission from the artist, I'm thinking that Northtown isn't likely to sue me anytime soon, so I'll loop Someday from Beginnings for your listening pleasure.

Enjoy.

Blog this

I learned this week that a good friend of mine in Wisconsin, Gary Cleveland, has entered the blogosphere, and I'm adding a link to his blog in my links list. I encourage you to check it out.

Seems like Gary and I have been friends forever, but our relationship dates back only about a dozen years or so. At the time, he was directing the senior camp session at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp, and I was putting down roots in Oklahoma City after graduating from OC a few years earlier. I was a camper at WCYC in high school when my family lived there, and counseled for a couple of years while in college. But when it came time to work for a living, with limited vacation time that you had to actually earn before you got it, it had been a few years since I'd been to camp.

The more I talk to folks associated with other Christian camps, the more I come to appreciate WCYC and often find myself in awe of what takes place there. Unlike most Christian youth camps, we offer a two-week session per age group. Many just offer a week. And unlike many camps, our staffs are 100 percent volunteer. From the director on down to the college kid scraping trays and running the dishwasher in the dining hall, no one gets a dime. That way, overhead is lower so more campers can afford the experience. I always get a kick out of seeing the looks on the faces of counselors at other camps when they find out we do what we do for nothing, while they're getting paid for their work, even if it isn't a whole lot of money.

The remarkable thing to me is that it takes a staff of about 25 to pull off a two-week camp session for 90-110 kids. Most of our staff work both weeks. You'd think that if you're asking someone to give you two weeks of their life for no money, you'd have a hard time filling up a staff. And yet most years I'm told we have to turn away some folks who want to be on staff because we simply don't have roles for them to fill or beds for them to sleep in.

I don't know if way back in the early 90s Gary Cleveland had to turn someone else away -- maybe someone he already knew and trusted -- to take a chance on some guy from Oklahoma whom he'd never met before. But because of that opportunity he gave me, some of my most cherished friends on earth are the folks who give themselves selflessly to that effort every year. It's hard for me to imagine who or what might be filling the void in my life had those relationships never happened. I'm not sure even Gary understands the significance of that gift -- that opportunity -- that he gave me.

At any rate, I encourage you to check out his blog, South Moon.

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If you like gospel music and if instrumental accompaniment isn't a Heaven or Hell issue for you, I highly recommend Randy Travis' Glory Train, released this week.

I'll be seeing Travis in concert this weekend at Crossings Community Church, where he'll perform an inspirational concert -- as opposed to a country concert -- drawing largely from this new CD. On some of his other gospel CDs, like Rise and Shine, Travis sing songs with Christian themes. Most of them are good songs, but not necessarily songs you've heard before. On Glory Train, you get a good number of traditional and folk gospel songs you already know and love, like Were You There, Precious Memories, Are You Washed in the Blood, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Nothing But the Blood and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. In other words, songs you can sing along with the first time you spin the disk. I knew from the first listen that 13 of the 19 tracks from Glory Train were going to be transferred to my DellPod.

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My stat counter service tells me that someone in Slovakia loaded wysiwyg on Tuesday. Twice. Cool.

Housewares and lingerie

A woman's place is in the kitchen. Well, when she's not in the bedroom, anyway.

Now, if this was my opinion, it would be even easier for you to understand why I'm still single. And you'd have some choice words for me, I'm sure.

But it's not my opinion. It's apparently the opinion of retailer J.C. Penney. Stick with me here and I'll explain it.

I was working today on a feature about a dinner for needy folks the local Catholic church sponsors once a month. One of my sources for the story, who works outside her home, called me from her job at the aforementioned retailer. But I was in the car, driving back to the office, and I asked if I could call her back when I got to my desk.

So when I got back to the office, I dialed the number: (405) 755-5500. No one at Penney's was available to answer my call, so I got the dreaded automated message/extension prompt system:

"For the salon, press one.
"For the catalog or credit departments, press two
"For the home or children's departments, press three
"For housewares or lingerie, dial extension 268..."

Huh? Housewares or lingerie? What? Are they in the same department or something? So if I go to the store and ask a sales person to point me to the food processors, I guess he or she will say something like this: "follow this carpet all the way to the next wall and take a left. You'll find our complete line of KitchenAid small appliances off to the left, right next to the red lace teddies."

I'm not making this message thing up, lest you think I would take creative liberties with the facts on wysiwyg. Call the number if you don't believe me. Best to wait until after store hours to make sure you get the recorded system. Otherwise, there's a slight chance a real employee might answer the phone. Then you'll have the awkward task of explaining to that person that you really wanted to hear the recorded message and can she transfer you to it or do you need to hang up and call again? Been there, done that when I called back to make sure I wasn't hallucinating on Diet Dr. Pepper the first time I heard the message.

Thing is, it's not like they couldn't group the lingerie, at least for the purposes of their phone message, with the women's department. And they do have one, because the rest of the message goes like this:

"For the women's department, press four
"For custom decorating, press five
"For the men's department, press six
"For shoes, press eight,
"For all other calls, yada yada yada..."

Wouldn't you think that lingerie would fall under the domain of the women's department? I mean, absent the male members of the Boy George or Michael Jackson fan clubs and guys who think Texas Hold Em is a sport, women tend to be the primary consumers of lingerie. But even men buy kitchen appliances.

Old stereotypes die hard, I guess. Now if I could just find some sweet young thang to fill my pipe, and then go fetch my slippers....

Comfort food

When I don't have anything really compelling to say (do I ever?), I can always talk about food. It's one of my favorite subjects.

A Sunday evening supper routine at my house these days is chicken and rice, a dish that has evolved slowly over the last couple of years. I like it because you don't really need a recipe to make it, just some general guidelines. I like to tinker in the kitchen, and this presents endless possibilities.

It actually started, believe it or not, in an apple pie class I took a couple of years ago at the local vo-tech. I love pie. Don't mind making them, except I do have pastry issues. Never could seem to get the crust quite right. So I thought the class might offer some help with that problem.

After we made our pies that night and put them in the oven, the teacher started talking about the pastry recipe we'd made, and good ways to adapt it to other uses. Because Thanksgiving was on the horizon, he mentioned that a good way to use up all that leftover turkey was to make a turkey pot pie. A batch of pastry, a couple cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, a can or two of Veg-All and some turkey are all ya need, he said.

Well, I don't like mushrooms, and am fundamentally opposed to putting anything biologically related to athletes foot (both mushrooms and athletes foot are fungi) in my mouth. And I'm not much of a Veg-All man, either. The problem with canned mixed veggies is that the carrots taste like carrots. And the potatoes taste like carrots. And the peas taste like carrots. You get the picture.

But the discussion did get me thinking. The same concept could just as easily be used for chicken pot pie. Sub chicken for turkey, use the Cream of Chicken soup and buy individual cans of the veggies of your choice, and you're on your way. So I started with large casserole dishes of chicken pot pie, complete with a pastry top crust brushed with a little egg yolk and water just before baking to give it that wonderful brown color when baked. Now, if you're wanting a shiny surface on your pastry, you'd brush a little egg white and water on your pastry instead.

Later, I'd do chicken pot pies in little individual serving dishes with top and bottom pastry. The advantage there is that you can customize the pie to the consumer. My geezers like onions. I don't. With the individual pies, you can lay a slice on onion somewhere between the crusts, or drop in some little pearl onions with the soup and veggies, and the onion lovers are happy. Don't like peas? Leave 'em out of your pie, put them in everyone else's.

As for the chicken, you can buy some breasts, cook 'em and dice 'em up. Or, better yet, if you live near a Wal-Mart SuperCenter like I do, go buy one of Wal-Mart's rotisserie chickens already cooked. $4.88 gets you a cooked whole chicken, and all you have to do is take the meat off the bones. I'm all about convenience.

While I still make pastry now and then for pot pie, the meal evolved away from the crust as a time-saver, and now includes rice instead. Ladling some of the "filling" for the pie over plain old white rice works just fine, but take a walk on the wild side. Try cooking your white rice in chicken broth instead of water. Yum. Or, use brown rice or a wild rice blend.

Now I use a wild rice blend. It's a bit more expensive, but adds to the flavor possibilities. Since most wild rice has a nutty kind of flavor, go ahead and toss some nuts into the rice. Slivered almonds work great, but I suppose black walnuts or pecans would be just as good. Never had a pine nut that I recall, but I might try those one of these days. This last Sunday, I explored even more, adding some cooked barley and dried cranberries to the wild rice. Barley is kinda nutty-flavored too. It's very cheap, stretches the rice if you need to, gives you a contrasting shape in your rice bed, and is high in antioxidents and soluble fiber, I'm told. Dried cranberries are GREAT in rice dishes. I suppose raisins would be good too, if you're into those. As soon as pomagranites are in season again, I'll try it with that. If you don't own a rice cooker, buy one. You'll love it.

Anyway, chicken and rice makes a great meal. And it's cheap. You can feed a family of four for $10-12, and that includes the $4.88 Wal-Mart chicken. Give it a try.

I'll have the sushi, please

Developer Frank Battle was my red male Japanese betta fish.

I've kept bettas off an on for several years, and at one point had 23 bettas at one time. If you're not familiar with them, bettas are interesting because they'll live peacefully with other fish, but they don't much care for each other. Put two males in the same tank or bowl, and they will fight to the death of one or both of them. That in itself is amazing, because bettas have very small mouths, and as fish, they don't have arms or legs or anything else with which to fight. But the males have long, flowing fins — beautiful fish, really — so they fight by clamping down on those fins with those powerful jaws and ripping and tearing fins until somebody dies. A male betta will do the same thing to a female betta, except for those brief interludes necessary to carry on the species. But you can put as many females together as you want, and they'll all live in harmony. Must be a testosterone thing.

Frank was named after Frank Battle, a real estate developer who builds Wal-Mart SuperCenters for a living. I got Frank about the time Wal-Mart was negotiating with our city officials to build a second SuperCenter here in Edmond. Another interesting factoid about bettas is that they can live in very small amounts of water. In their native environment, many of them live in small puddles, I'm told. I've heard stories that they're shipped from Japan to America in a plastic bag with two or three tablespoons of water in the bag. That's not a lot of water for a two-week trip inside a carboard box, but the fish don't seem to care. Most betta bowls you buy only hold eight to 16 ounces of water, and that's enough to make the betta very happy, they say.

But Frank was special, because when I bought him, I put him in a 2 1/2 gallon tank, which to a fish is kinda like living at Micheal Jackson's place to a kid. He was named after Battle because his tank was to him the size of a Wal-Mart SuperCenter.

Eventually Frank was moved into even better digs — a five-gallon hex tank that I had some goldfish and other critters in. Among the other critters were two African dwarf frogs.

One of those dwarf frogs was an albino named Mayor Saundra Naifeh. I hope the frog was a girl, but I don't know. Naifeh is our mayor here in Edmond, and she's a blonde, like the albino frog. But the name is fitting for other reasons, including the fact that the mayor authorized the city to use public and private funds to buy a sculpture of a toad wearing a golden crown, which is prominently displayed outside our city hall, for some reason. I bet you think I'm making all this up. The mayor thinks the toad is art. Most of the rest of us think the toad makes us look like Six Flags over Edmond.

In reality, Saundra the albino frog was probably a boy, or at least he/she/it ate like a boy. The little girl at the pet store recommended I feed the two dwarf frogs shrimp pellets, which are specifically designed to sink to the bottom for bottom-feeders in your tank. Higher in protein than flake food designed for the fish, she said.

The average shrimp pellet is much too big for a dwarf frog to swallow, and they don't have teeth, so they can't exactly chew those up, either. So I usually have to break the pellets in two so the frogs can eat them. The other frog never took to the pellets, and is still alive and well, but the same size as he was a year ago. But albino Saundra wasted no time the first time I dropped pellets into the tank. She was so small at the time — and the pellets so large in comparison — that you could actually follow the pellet's progress through the digestive tract because of the bulge it created. I'm sure that first pellet had to hurt. But that didn't stop her from eating them whenever they were offered.

But the protien in the pellet made her grow. And grow. And grow. Grow to the point that she was a good 2 1/2 times the size of the other dwarf frog.

Well, as nature would have it, Frank died yesterday. Don't think he was sick, I think it was just his time. He'd lived a good long life in the Taj Mahal of betta worlds. I could tell Frank was dying when I got home from work yesterday. He had that "dying fish" look, which is not only noticeable by humans, but by other fish as well. It's not unusual in a community fish tank for other fish to help the process of dying along a bit when one of their mates is in that process. Nothing like kicking your friends when they're down.

When I came home from supper, I looked for Frank, to see if it was time to fish him out and take him to the big toilet bowl in the sky. When I found Frank after dinner, Saundra was trying to have him for dinner. Forget the shrimp pellets. She was having sushi. Frog had about the first one-third of Frank in her mouth and down her throat. Her poor little mouth was stretched as wide as it could go. I'm not exactly sure how the frog planned to eat this fish, since the betta was at least as long as the frog, and there would be no tearing Frank up into little bite-sized pieces. I didn't think it was gonna be possible, but then I don't think it's possible for a snake to eat a rabbit, either. Happens all the time, though.

By bedtime last night, Saundra still had Frank in her mouth, and didn't seem to be making much progress. But I figured she'd be much farther along by morning.

When I checked this morning before work, Saundra — like Frank — was dead, Frank still firmly entrenched in her mouth, with only his back half outside the frog's mouth. Not sure what happened, but I guess the size of the fish affected the frog's ability to breathe or something, and the frog was either unwilling or unable to spit the betta out.

I'm sure there's a lesson here, but I have no clue what it is. Even though the frog learned a valuable yet fatal lesson about eating sushi, I have to admire the little critter. She saw what she wanted and went for it, undaunted by the enormity of the task at hand.

Thanks for stopping by.

It's a marathon, not a sprint

Forgive me, bloggers, for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last entry.

I've thought about it some, but frankly, I've just been too busy catching up from being gone for five days. But now I can relax and post some random thoughts.

Today is the day my fantasy baseball team, the Sons of Thunder of the Fellowship Fantasy League, clinched the 2005 (human drafted) Championship. This comes after spending more than a month in dead last in my league early in the season. We took the human-drafted lead for good on Friday, and cruised from there. In case you're wondering, the team actually finished second, but the guy who won had his team drafted by the computer, because he didn't show up on draft day. So the rest of us don't recognize his championship since the program made his player picks for him. :)

The trip to Wisconsin did me much good. On Saturday night I stayed with Terri and Charley Rydmark in Tomah after I got off the bus. Terri and Charley are two of my favorite people in the world. Terri counsels with me every summer at youth camp, and I admire her heart for that ministry. Her sister, Julie, and her daughters Brandi and Tarra and grandfetus joined us for dinner along with Sue Foster, a friend of the Rydmarks' who worships with them in Tomah.

Julie is the camp nurse during my session, and Brandi and Tarra are former campers. Actually, we've had this long-standing joke about calling ourselves by titles, rather than names. Because I'm a reporter, I'm known as "he who writes for the newspaper." Julie is "nurse." Terri is "the nurse's sister who is also a nurse," because she too, is in fact a nurse, just not at camp. Brandi would be "the nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who is an EMT and wants to be a nurse." Tarra's a bit tricky, because she's also a nurse's daughter and niece, but she has no desire that I'm aware of to be a nurse. But we can still work her in, because she's eight months pregnant. So I guess that makes her the "nurse's daughter and nurse's niece who soon will nurse." Works for me.

Anyway, dinner Saturday was a wonderful time. The food was good, and the company was better. Julie and Terri are typical sisters. And they have some stories to tell, for sure. We laughed even more than we ate. It meant a lot to me to have Julie and the girls come in to see me that night since I didn't get to see them over the summer.

I always enjoy worshipping at the Tomah Church of Christ once a year when I'm up that way. The difference between it and my church here in Oklahoma City is refreshing in a way, but it also makes me appreciate what I have here at home. It's a small church, 50 or so folks including children, which is considerably smaller than Wilshire. They've been between preachers for more than a year now, so the men of the congregation have to step up and get it done until a full-time guy gets there. It's very relaxed there. The preacher du jour used an interesting illustration about dog poo in brownies, which is an illustration I'm not likely to hear here in Oklahoma City. So I remember it. I'm sure you're wondering, unless you've already heard it. Essentially, two siblings wanted to go see a new movie, except that it was rated "R," which they're not allowed to watch. So they try to reason with dad that there's only a little bit of bad language, only a little sex...otherwise, the rest of the movie is good. So the next day dad makes them some brownies. But these aren't your typical brownies. Seems dad went outside to the yard, picked up a little dog poo out of the grass, and mixed it in the batter. The dad tells the kids they can go see the movie -- but only after they eat the poo-laced brownies. "It's only a little bit of poo," he says. At any rate, you get the point. They pass on the brownies and the movie. Ward Cleaver wins again.

Church also was neat because during communion, Terri and Charley hummed Twila Paris' Lamb of God. Where I'm at today, I tend to believe the theory that our observance of the Supper should be celebratory, not a mourning atmosphere. So listening to them hum when otherwise you'd hear only silence was refreshing.

The preacher's retreat itself was pretty good. Probably safe to say I didn't get from it what the preachers got, but I got what I needed. So it was worth the trip. Got to see some longtime friends who are like family to me, and got to spend some time by myself at Hilltops of Glory, one of our devo sites.

Didn't meet anyone like Jessica on the bus ride home. The buses were more empty than on the way up, so I didn't have to share a seat with anyone, except for the stretch from Chicago to St. Louis.

I'll post more down the road. Thanks for stopping by.

Firm Foundation

The stone that formed the tablets on which God etched his covenant with Israel. The stones pulled from the Jordan by the 12 tribes as they crossed on dry land into the Promised Land. The smooth, small stone hurled from David's sling that brought down a giant. The stones clutched by the Pharisees but not hurled at the woman caught in adultery.

They're all still around. Somewhere. And just as the stones are permanent, so are the promises and characteristics of God that each stone represents.

That's the premise of Living Stones: Bedrock Truths for Quicksand Times by Oklahoma Christian University Professor Philip Patterson, published this year by World Publishing.

It's hard for me to objectively review the book, because Patterson is the one who taught me much of what I know about writing. And books like this one remind me how much I still have to learn.

Living Stones is not only readable, it's relevant. If you've ever struggled with seeing God as real; if you've ever failed to see the God of the little things -- the details of everyday life -- this book is a must read. Each chapter begins with a Biblical passage about a rock or stone, followed by an explanation of what the story -- the stone -- tells us about God.

After the Bible story comes personal anecdotes from Patterson's life that illustrate how the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is God of Philip and you and I. And some truths, like a few prominent stones in God's eternal plan, never change and never go away.

For a fresh look at timeless truths, ask for Living Stones at your local Christian bookstore. Suggested retail price is $16.95.

In keeping with the Living Stones theme, your music for today is Free Indeed's Firm Foundation, available on Volume 5 of the Sing a New Song Series.

Enjoy.

Boston in the fall

In case you're wondering, Sept. 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey, hence the get-up.

I can't really look mean, even when I try. But you'd think I was a hardened criminal if you didn't know any better.

After not getting a traffic ticket in more than six years, seems yesterday I made a right turn on red at an intersection in OKC where one isn't supposed to do that.

No warning, no slack. I'm not female.

The price for such a heinous crime? $172 shekels of gold.

Aaargh!

Shiver me timbers and pillage my booty. Guess I'll pick me two weeks here in the next month when I can do without eating so I can pay me fine.

It's not about the money, they say. It's about the lesson. Which I find kinda funny, because a warning or a $5 ticket would have taught the same lesson. People should respect the law, they say. How patronizing. I'd respect the law a whole lot more if, rather than sticking a plainclothes cop at a sparsely-traveled intersection on a Sunday afternoon they'd assign that officer to something useful. Like maybe trying to find out who broke the window in my car last year and rummaged through the glovebox. Or maybe the person who stole the car I had before that two years ago. To my knowledge, no one has been brought to justice in either case.

I'd respect the law a whole lot more if we convicted a rapist and made him serve more than six months of his 15-year prison term before we let him out on parole.

But $172 for an illegal right turn, not to mention three years of increased insurance premiums? That doesn't make me respect the law; that gives me an attitude about cops. And I don't apologize for it. One of these days they'll wake up and figure out why public perception is what it is. Meantime, violent criminals will continue to be underpunished by the system while absent-minded drivers walk the plank.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Reminded me of my favorite pirates, Larry, Pa Grape and Mr. Lunt of Veggie Tales fame -- the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. I've taken a break from Free Indeed today to play you the Pirates' song from the movie Jonah.


Ahoy.

Bloggus Interruptus

Burned a little nighttime oil at the office, and was thinking about what to write about in the blog tonight as I was shutting down the work computer and getting ready to head for the house.

Then the call came out over the scanner -- armed robbery at the local golf course. So, since it was pretty close to evening news time, I was fairly certain none of the local TV stations would come up to Edmond to do a live shot from the golf course. I figured if I ran out there, I could have the story in tomorrow's paper, and my loyal readers could get it from me before anyone else, assuming TV even bothers to follow on it tomorrow.

Being a reporter really isn't as exciting as it sounds. In cases like tonight, it can be a whole lot of "hurry up and wait"....which is what I did in the parking lot of the golf course for nearly an hour and a half before I could get someone official to come out and talk to me. In case you're wondering, no one was hurt, a gun was shown, but not discharged. A lone male suspect in his 40s, medium build with dark hair and a one-week beard wearing a green shirt and blue wind pants is the guy they're looking for. If you've seen him, by all means, call the Edmond PD.

I did get to spend some quality time with a little green frog while I waited in the parking lot. For whatever reason, he wasn't afraid of me, or at least he wasn't going to show it if he was. Nudged him from behind with my shoe. He didn't hop away. Put my shoe in front of him; he wasn't fazed. Brought back memories of times when, as a younger man, I would walk the mall at Oklahoma Christian University sometimes at night. In the summer, there would be dozens of toads/frogs on the mall, and now and then I'd go collecting them...tossing them into the fountain in the center of the mall whenever I caught one. Hey...I was bored. What can I tell ya?

Of course the downside to the experience for the frogs was that they couldn't get out of Mr. Fountain -- at least not on their own. So in a day or two, someone would happen by the fountain during the day, see the exhausted frogs in the water and fish them out.

Not a whole lot for a frog to do in a body of water he can't get out of except swim, and maybe see if any fair young froggie maidens were among those trapped in the water at the same time. Turns out there were some. So froggie(s) went a' courtin' and ......uh huh.

I know this, because several days later I happened by the fountain during the day and the bottom surface was almost completely darkened by the wiggling bodies of little tadpoles, who no doubt had me to thank for bringing their anphibious parental units together.

At any rate, it's late, and I can't remember what I was gonna blog about before the robbery, so this is it for the day.

The new musical selection is Free Indeed's Days of Elijah, which is available on Vol. 9 of the Sing a New Song series. Enjoy.

Life Group Lifesaver

Forsook the morning assembly today to be with my dad, who is still battling a nasty viral infection of some sort, along with a little extra angina than usual just for good measure. And since we were traveling last Sunday, I'm not exactly up to date with the local church happenings.

So I had that brief moment of panic about 1:30 this afternoon when I remembered I have a life group meeting tonight after church, and will be expected to provide a dessert for the group, as is my custom.

I ended up choosing the peach cobbler recipe I've already shared, primarily because I had enough time to put it together, but also because I've got a hankerin' for peaches today. But it reminded me of an even simpler - though just as tasty - dessert recipe that takes even less prep time, and you can buy all the ingredients (exactly three of them) ahead of time and keep them in the cupboard without a lot of overhead. It's a "dump" cobbler recipe, and I learned it at a dutch oven cooking class. It's popular with campers because it takes few ingredients, doesn't require refrigeration, and can be mixed entirely in the dutch oven if you want. The heat issue also is somewhat flexible, which is handy when you're cooking with wood coals or charcoal briquettes. But it also does equally well in a cake pan in the oven.

What you need:
2 cans of fruit pie filling, whatever fruit excites you
1 box cake mix
1 can of soda pop

If you're making it in the oven, go ahead and preheat to 350ish, or whatever it says on your cake box.

Spread the pie filling in the bottom of your dutch oven or cake pan. If you're in the woods and have limited utensils on hand, you can then spread the dry cake mix evenly over your fruit, then pour on the soda pop, and mix the cake mix and the pop a little bit with a fork until it's blended. You don't have to get it mixed like you would for cake, and you'd want to be careful not to mix down into your fruit. If you're doing it at home and don't mind messing up a mixing bowl, go ahead and mix the cake mix and pop in a mixing bowl, then spread it over the fruit. But don't mix too much....we're not after cake here, we're after crust. A few clumps of powder left in the mixture won't hurt it, and will probably bake right out anyway.

Bake a good 45 minutes or so, until it's done. The general rule is it's done when it smells done, but I usually wait until the crust starts to crack a little on top. Then I know it's done.

That's all there is to it. The beauty of this simple recipe is that the flavor combinations are pretty much left to your imagination. Cherry pie filling with the darkest, fudgiest cake mix you can find in the store is excellent. Apple pie filling with a spice cake crust is also excellent, especially if you were to serve it with say, some homemade caramel sauce on top. While any old pop you have on hand will do, you can also deliberately choose your beverage. When I'm going cherry/chocolate, I get a can of Cherry Coke. For apple/spice, ginger ale is a nice touch. If you're using a white or light cake mix, a clear soda like Sprite or white cream soda will keep that cake mix white.

You can usually get pie filling for around $2 a can or less, and a cake mix for under a buck. Both keep indefinately in the cupboard, so you can always have the ingredients for this quick fix on hand for short-notice needs.

By the way, I'm reading "Living Stones: Bedrock Truths for Quicksand Times" by Philip Patterson. When I've finished, I'll post a review.

Gotta go check my cobbler now.

UNION, OHIO -- I never really expected Smokey Joe Burgess to still be alive when I got here.

That may sound odd, considering Smokey Joe is just in his early 20s. And it's not like his is a hard life. He spends a few hours each day in the summer on the lounge chair on the back patio, taking in some nature between naps. The rest of the day he lounges in the converted garage apartment. He eats when he wants, sleeps when he wants, goes to the bathroom when and where he wants and generally acts cantankerous when he wants.

I guess he's earned that right.

Smokey Joe is a cat. He was my grandmother's cat, and when she passed away some three years ago, I guess I just assumed that Smokey, already pushing 20, wouldn't be far behind. He's just not ready to leave yet, I guess.

Best we can figure, it was 23 years ago that my grandmother, "Nanny," took Smokey in as a stray. No one knows how old he was at the time, but we know it was 23 human years ago when he first marked his territory in Nanny's living room as only a male cat can do. In cat years, that makes Smokey.....well, pretty dadgum old. He's kinda slow gettin around these days, but my uncle tells me he can still bust a move when he wants to.

His was pretty much a mutual love-hate relationship with Nanny. He'd aggravate her by marking early and often and by going into rooms he wasn't supposed to go into. She'd aggravate him by bopping him on the head with a plastic bat whenever he misbehaved or by throwing an empty milk carton with a few marbles in it his direction when ventured some place he wasn't supposed to go.

Still, at the end of every day, Smokey Joe would be there with her in the bed until the next morning.

I can't figure this cat out, but I have a theory.

I think it's love and companionship. My aunt oozes love and kindness. I don't know many people who will pick up a spider with a tissue and put it outside rather than stepping on it. She's one of them. And she's always had a soft spot for cats. Smokey's one of 12 on the current roster. There are no strays in her neighborhood. At least not after they find her house.

So Smokey has plenty of other cats to keep him young, a soft bed to sleep in, and as many square meals a day as he will eat. Life is good.

Love and companionship. The older I get, the more I understand that God gives us things for a reason.

And life is good.

I am blessed.

For about a dozen years or so, I've been fortunate to spend two weeks every summer at a Christian youth camp in Wisconsin, working alongside some great people. A handful of those people have been there consistently, year in, year out. They are an integral part of my faith family.

One of few regrets I have from those many weeks is that most of my extended blood family lives several states away, and because I get only limited vacation time each year, I don't get to spend nearly as much time with my blood family as I have with these special members of my family of faith.

As it turns out, I didn't get to spend that two weeks in the woods this summer; and as I expected, I missed my time with the people far more than I missed the smell of the pine trees, the cold water of the upper falls, the sand in my sleeping bag, the mosquitoes on my arms, legs, face, neck, growing bald spot and wherever else.

Today I started a long trip from Oklahoma to Ohio to visit blood family, with an overnight stop in St. Louis. After dropping my parents off at my aunt's house, I made a little side trip, 62 miles up the highway to visit Dianne Kinzer.

Dianne is an inspiration to me for many reasons. While I've worked at camp for a dozen or so years, Dianne and her husband, Bill, were counseling the camp when I was a camper, which if you're counting, is closer to two dozen years ago.

I wasn't much at 17 or 18, not that I'm much at 40. But at that time, I was very socially awkward, not very popular and the textbook definition of "nerd." Today's pic is me as a teenager. That should give you some idea. I don't know what Dianne saw in me then, but she saw something. She took an interest, and she took time to care when it would have been just as easy not to.

And I've never forgotten it.

So nothing could have made me happier after 560ish miles of driving today than the opportunity to spend a couple of hours drinking coffee with Dianne Kinzer in a Ruby Tuesdays in Litchfield, Illinois. It wasn't quite the same as two weeks together in the woods, but I'll take what I can get.

Thanks, Dianne.

My good friend Dianne Kinzer is a visitor to my blog. But she didn't like the picture in my profile. Said I wasn't smiling, which I wasn't.

So, in honor of Dianne, and to bring back a sense of nostalgia, I decided that for the next several days, I'll change the picture in my profile to various pictures taken throughout my life, mostly from my youth. If you wanna see them, check back often. I'll be seeing Dianne, if all goes well, sometime on Wednesday on my way to Ohio with the family. I'll try to post now and then from the road.

For the last couple of days, I've done nothing but rant. So today I thought I'd switch gears and give you something you can really sink your teeth into. I'm gonna share a recipe. After all, momma used to say: "If you can't say something nice, say something nice to eat."

Or something like that.

Today's recipe is for lazy peach cobbler. It's lazy because you don't have to make pastry for it. But it's yummy regardless. I'll give you the recipe straight like I learned it first, then give you some ideas for adapting it.

Preheat oven to 350.

Ingredients:
1 29 oz can of sliced peaches, drained well
5 slices of white bread
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 T flour
1 egg, beaten
1 stick butter or margarine, melted

Layer the drained peaches on the bottom of one of those 8- or 9-inch square baking dishes. Remove crust from the bread slices, and cut each slice into four equal strips. Layer the bread strips over the fruit until the fruit is completely covered. Mix the other stuff together, and spread over the bread, coating the bread completely. Bake 35-45 minutes or until brown.

Dave's suggestions:
Multiply the recipe as needed. I always use the longer, oblong baking dish, so I use two cans of peaches. Doesn't really matter how much fruit you use, except that there are few things sadder in life than fruit cobbler that doesn't have enough fruit. So be generous. If you use a bigger dish, you'll need more bread. You can be even lazier I suppose and buy the bread that already has the crust removed, but I'm neither too busy or too proud to buy the cheap bread and cut the crust off myself. For the remaining four ingredients, just increase the amounts in equal proportions. For an oblong dish, I double it.

I've found that regardless of how well you drain the peaches, the fruit under the crust gets pretty watery. If it's gonna take you awhile to eat the cobbler, do this: mix a tablespoon or two of cornstarch with twice as much sugar, and sprinkle that mixture over the fruit before you put the bread on. The cornstarch will help the liquid thicken as it cooks, but you need the sugar to keep the starch from clumping.

Yes, you can adapt the recipe to use other fruits. I've used frozen raspberries, fresh blackberries....both did well. Haven't tried fresh apples yet, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work, so long as they're sliced thin enough to cook all the way through. But if you're using a juicy fruit, add the cornstarch. It'll turn out better for ya.

Now, if you're gonna go to the trouble of making cobbler, have the decency to serve it with some fresh whipped cream. That's easy too. Just get you a pint of whipping cream and whip it -- with an electric mixer, on high speed, until it's thick like whipped cream. Then add some sugar, 1/4 cup or so, and a dab of vanilla. Use the mixer to blend. Much better than Cool Whip.

If I was a lesser man, I'd gloat.

Well, maybe I am gloating. But if I was a lesser man, I'd be doing the obnoxious "I told you so" dance whilst I gloat.

If you're unfamiliar with the "I told you so" dance, watch the Maury Show for a couple of days. The topic of most Maury Shows is "who's your daddy?" — shows where women who have a child but no clue who the father is bring a guy on national TV for a paternity test.

First, the woman comes out and tells her story, expressing in R-rated terms her disdain for the fact that the man has been such a deadbeat dad to her darling little child, though she's 350 percent sure that of all the people she was sleeping with at the time, he's the daddy. Then, the man joins her on stage, talks about how easy the woman is, and how about half the studio audience has just as good a chance of being that baby's daddy as he does. When we've had all of that we can take, Maury opens the big yellow envelope and reads the results: "When it comes to 14-month old Shayronda... Tyreshon....you are NOT the father!" Tyreshon then breaks out into dance, usually in the face of the stunned, devastated woman. He's overjoyed that he can continue to spend his money on gold jewelry and boxer shorts and all the other essentials of being a playa, instead of having to sell more heroin to school kids or mug more old ladies to buy diapers and formula. Unless Tyreshon IS the daddy, in which case momma do the dance in Tyreshon's face. It's riveting entertainment. Would be funny, except that these are real people -- real babies. But anyway....

It's time to introduce you to Alex, who was supposed to be kinda like my son. Except he isn't. But given the previous reference to the Maury Show, I wouldn't want you thinking a paternity test was necessary to figure that out.

Alex's mother and I were friends since college. When she suddenly found herself a single mom a few years back, I offered to help, giving some free babysitting and such while mom was making the adjustment from single and carefree to single and less carefree.

Then, one day I heard the lie. And I bought it. Hook, line and sinker.

The lie, guys, goes something like this: "You know, I really love you, and I wish you could/would be (child's name)'s father." When you hear it, save yourself the heartache you have no idea is coming. Run fast and far.

Translated, when she SAYS "I love you, I want you to be the father..." what she MEANS is "Hey, I'm really diggin this free babysitting so I can hang with my friends. I love the fact that you have no problem changing diapers or giving baths. It's great to be able to trust and use you until the child gets old enough where he/she is less work or until his/her real daddy starts coming around, at which time you'll be on the curb like yesterday's garbage."

So when you hear "I really love you, and I wish...." don't even let her finish. Fast and far. Trust me.

But back to Alex. When I bought the lie, I immersed myself in it. So I do love the little feller like he were my own even though I don't get to see him much anymore. I do my best not to hold my issues with his mother against him.

Alex started kindygarden this year, and apparently he's not doing well. Teacher tells mommy that Alex won't mind, acts bored, and makes animal noises at inappropriate times. All of the other children get smiley faces on their daily report cards every day. Alex hasn't gotten one yet. Instead, he gets notes to take home to mommy. Less than two weeks into his kindygarden career, mommy and teacher have already had a conference. Mommy was stunned. Devastated.

I'll spare you the dance, but not "I told you so!"

For five years, "no" in Alex's house hasn't meant "no, and if you do it anyway, you'll regret it" but "no, and please, if you'll just let mommy have her way on this one, King Alex, we'll go get an ice cream cone or maybe a doughnut." Inapproriate behavior doesn't get punished; good behavior gets rewarded. So Alex learned early he makes the rules. He can behave as he wishes until the reward for doing it the parent's way reaches a level that satisifies him. I'm no Hebrew scholar, but I'm pretty sure Proverbs 13:24 wasn't originally translated "He that spareth the pastry hateth his son." At this rate, by the time he's a teenager, he'll be insulin dependent.

Oh, that every child would obey their parents out of love and respect from the day they were born. That's the means to the end of obedience you hope they'll grow into. Meantime, if fear of punishment is the reason for obedience, that's just as effective and justified a means to the same necessary end. Worked for me.

I'm trying not to take it too seriously. Wouldn't matter if I did, since I have no input into how the child is raised anyway. When I bought the lie, I assumed I would have input. But I was set straight pretty quick, the first time I smacked his bottom in front of mommy because "no" was going in one ear and out the other.

It's just kindergarten, and it IS a big transition. I don't think animal noises today necessarily mean axe murderer tomorrow. But it's time for the parent to be the parent, and the child the child. If that doesn't happen soon, I'm sure next year at this time, some quack will think Alex has attention deficit disorder. Maybe a drug would help, they'll say. That's when I'll come unglued. The only disorder the child suffers is firm-hand-on-the-bottom deficit disorder. Being a parent fixes that. No prescription necessary.

Maybe this weekend Alex and I will have to spend some time together. Then we'll sit down and have us a man to boy chat about his behavior in school and how disappointed I am that he doesn't behave as I expect him to. It won't be the kind of chat he's used to. There will be no promise of sugar or toys if he changes his ways; only that I'll continue to be disappointed in him if he doesn't. Guilt is powerful. And appropriate. I have no problem using it.

But knowing Alex, at the end of our chat, he'll just look at me with those pouty "Uncle Dave is mad at me" lips, the big puppy-dog eyes, and say "Meeeeeoooooooow."

"I am NOT a crook!"

I was a mere lad of eight when President Richard Nixon uttered the famous phrase to reporters in 1973 while denying his involvement in the Watergate scandal. As presidential soundbites go, that one ranks right up there with "Read my lips: No new taxes!" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman — Miss Lewinsky."

But more than three decades after Nixon's attempt at damage control, I now know how the late president felt. Well, except that I REALLY am not a crook.

Or at least I'm not a cook.

The (long) story begins on Monday with a trip to a local pharmacy to order a couple of bottles of Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia, a chemical or "medicine" that was commonly stocked in the drug store of yesteryear. In the old days, folks would mix a little Spirits of Ammonia with Coke as a home remedy for everything from upset stomachs and headaches to hangovers and menstrual cramps. (For the record, I've only suffered the first two.) We have better medicines these days, so the demand for Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia has decreased to the point that if you want it, usually the pharmacist has to order it for you.

Why my interest? Glad you asked. Some time ago I read a newspaper story about how the head trainer of a major league baseball team would soak cabbage leaves in a solution of ice water and ammonia spirits. The players would wear the cabbage leaves on their heads -- under their caps -- to help keep cool on the field, where temperatures can exceed 120 degrees during some day games. Online, I found references to "ammonia towels" used by college sports teams, high school marching bands, and even sports officials. Instead of cabbage leaves, you simply soak a towel in ice water and ammonia spirits then wipe yourself down with the cool towel during breaks in the action. They say it's refreshing, a sensation akin to a cold shower on a hot day.

So I want to try it. Why? It gets hot here in Oklahoma, and when you're outside in the heat, such a remedy might be helpful. Second, anyone who knows me at all would tell you that putting a cabbage leaf soaked in water and a smelly chemical on your head and under your cap has David Hartman written all over it. Why cabbage? Why not iceberg, or perhaps a big leaf of romaine lettuce? Beats me.

In case you're wondering, Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia essentially is smelling salts dissolved in alcohol and some other stuff. So yeah, it has an aromatic bouquet. I'm not sure exactly what the aromatic ammonia is supposed to do in the mixture, but I suspect it just gives the respiratory system the same "Hello!" the nervous system gets when you douse ice water on it.

So Tuesday, I strolled back into the local pharmacy to pick up my two bottles of Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia.

I got suspicious when the clerk -- who I think was the manager or owner -- asked me for my driver's license, which I'm not accustomed to having to show when I buy something with my Visa debit card. Then she wrote all my driver's license information on a preprinted sheet that was designed for pharmacists to report who buys pseudophedrine and how much they got. She wanted to know how I'm going to use it, etc. I resisted the urge to tell her it was none of her business, and explained the whole ammonia towel/cabbage leaf principle. She seemed skeptical. I asked her if in the future I could get a larger, perhaps cheaper per ounce bottle of it rather than the two, two-ounce bottles I got that day. Then she went from skeptical to snippy. Told me I wouldn't be getting any of the stuff from her in a larger quantity, and for that matter, I wouldn't be getting more from her anytime soon in any quantity at all.

As I was driving back to work, it hit me: she thinks I'm cooking meth. A 2004 Oklahoma State Law (House Bill 2176) now restricts the sale of all cold and allergy medications containing pseudophedrine, because it's the key ingredient in the manufacture of meth, and Oklahoma has the distinction of having more meth labs per capita than nearly any other state. We don't have many honest high-paying jobs here, so when people figure out they can turn about $50 worth of ingredients into a drug with a street value of about $1,500 in a matter of three or four hours, a lotta folks here become entrepreneurs. You can still buy pseudophedrine, a package or two at a time, but you have to sign for it, and the pharmacist has to report the sales -- including who's buying it -- to Big Brother.

Besides that restriction, law enforcement agencies have gone to great lengths to educate merchants about precursors -- ingredients used to make meth. Things like lithium batteries, wooden matches, drain cleaner, rubber tubing, etc. Be the poor schmuck who puts enough of those things in your shopping cart at any one time, and you might just get the chance to wear the shiny metal interlocking bracelets during your free ride to the police station. There, you'll enjoy a complete physical -- or at least a full cavity search -- compliments of the State of Oklahoma.

Another key ingredient in cooking meth is ANHYDROUS Ammonia -- a chemical farmers use in large quantities to fertilize crops. That particular chemical also is regulated, so the meth cooks have to steal it from farmers instead of buying it themselves. So my pharmacist, who I'm sure was well-intentioned, confused anhydrous ammonia with aromatic spirits of, and decided to do her civic duty to save society from my evil scheme. Except of course that it isn't her job to restrict me from buying something I'm legally entitled to buy. If she's gonna be a pharmacist, she ought to know the rules.

I Googled. I felt guilty afterward and wondered if I need to go forward in church on Sunday because of it. Seriously though, I Googled "aromatic spirits of ammonia" and "meth" and got all of four hits. None of them made any reference to spirits being used as an ingredient in meth. Google "anhydrous ammonia" and "meth," and you'll get more than 30,000 hits. Hmmm.

So now I'm indignant. Mine might be a face only a mother could love, but it's not the face of a drug dealer. But now, any time I go back into that pharmacy, I'm a drug dealer. It's about principle for me.

Reminds me of the time when I was a junior in high school and got a detention. I was late for class, and was running in the hall toward said class. A teacher, in his write-up to the principal, said that he told me to stop running; I refused, and therefore was "willfully disobedient." I've never been willfully disobedient in school in my life. The hall was crowded and noisy. I never heard anyone say "stop." You wanna write me up for running in the halls, fair enough. I did that. I'll serve that detention. Willful disobedience? Not a chance. So I didn't show for the detention. It was about principle. Later, the principal called me in after I passed on the detention and told me I had the choice of serving the detention or spending three days at home under suspension. Then it became a matter of where my parents would line up on the issue: with the principle, or with the principal? And what would the consequences at home be if that didn't go my way? But I digress.

So I reckon in the coming days I'll just march back into that pharmacy, educate the pharmacist on the law and clear my pretty good name. I might also insist she cross out the information she took off my driver's license from her log. If she won't, maybe I'll threaten litigation. Or just write a good story for the newspaper. When we're finshed, she'll be smarter and I'll still have a place to get more aromatic spirits of ammonia overnight whenever I decide I want or need more.

Of course, she could also kick me out of the store and tell me to take my business elsewhere. In that case, I'll find me another ammonia supplier, and she won't have David Hartman to kick around anymore!

I never met Vera Mae Eversole. And I'm poorer for it, because her life is an inspiration to me.

Vera Mae lived most of her life in Alva, a somewhat remote city in northern Oklahoma that we sometimes jokingly refer to as Alvatraz. She taught high school math in a school across the Kansas border and lived a quiet, modest and uneventful life.

Those who knew Vera Mae say she never owned a car newer than 10 years old, and didn't drive far in the ones she did own. She rarely bought new clothes for herself, spent a big chunk of her adult life caring for her aging mother and sick brother until they died, and had a soft spot in her heart for stray dogs and cats, often to the irritation of her neighbors. Her "extravagance" in life was regular trips to the hairdresser.

Vera Mae was an avid gardener and a longtime member of the First United Methodist Church in Alva, where she sang in the choir. She was engaged once, but never married. By all accounts, Vera Mae Eversole loved and was loved.

Because of the outward appearance of her life, when Vera Mae Eversole died in 2003 at the age of 85, it would be easy to assume that she would live on only in the memories of those who knew and loved her — not through the things she couldn't take with her. So the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation — who had never heard of Vera Mae Eversole — and the Oklahoma United Methodist Foundation were surprised to discover they had been remembered as joint beneficiaries of her estate.

An estate valued at about $3 million, including property, mineral rights and other assets.

I'm inspired by Vera Mae not for what she could teach me about saving, investing or living the frugal life, though I'm sure she could teach me a thing or twenty there. I'm inspired by her life, which was undeniably rich even without the bells and whistles she chose not to collect along the way.

I'm a gadget man. If it lights up, makes noise or has an insatiable appetite for batteries, I'm all over it. Yet none of them bring me true happiness or lead me closer to where I ultimately want to be.

...

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.'"

"Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger... "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." ...At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there... "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
...

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?
...


On the surface, Ken Moore seems like a normal guy. Nothing special. A single parent with sole custody of a seven-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, Moore was just trying to make a living for his kids as best he could.

On Dec. 16, 2004, Moore was southbound on Bryant Avenue in north Edmond, heading home from work with his daughter in the family's Dodge Durango. That's about all Moore remembers of that day.

What he can't remember is how his life was changed by George Crafton, who hasn't gone to trial yet and is innocent until proven guilty. Crafton was northbound on Bryant that evening in his Chevy Suburban, munching on a taco and sipping a vodka and Coke he fixed for the road at his girlfriend's house. Drawn later at the hospital, the alcohol level in Crafton's blood was 0.23 percent, nearly three times Oklahoma's legal limit.

The collision left Moore with compound fractures in both arms and legs, a ruptured aorta, liver damage and a punctured lung. His daughter also was hurt in the accident, though not as badly. During Moore's hospital stay, his heart stopped beating seven different times, so he now has a pacemaker to go along with the titanium rods and pins that hold the bones in his arms and legs together.

Moore is looking forward to Sept. 1. He's hopeful, without getting his hopes up. That's the day Moore is tentatively scheduled to go home from the hospital for the first time. Eight and a half months after the accident. Only two things have to happen in the next week for a Sept. 1 discharge. First, the abscess on his liver has to heal so the tube in his chest can be removed. After that happens, he'll need another surgery on his right leg to replace the original rod and pins that were inserted there.

Perhaps going home would be more exciting for Moore if he had a home to go to. Because he hasn't been able to work for eight months, the house was lost long ago. He probably won't be able to go back to work when he's released from the hospital, either. Moore had no health insurance, Crafton only minimal insurance, and the medical bills already exceed $1 million. The kids are in Kansas with a relative. Moore hasn't seen them in forever, but he calls them every night from the hospital.

Ken Moore doesn't know what he's going to do on Sept. 1, other than trust in God to provide. Sometime in the future, Moore will meet Crafton at Crafton's trial, which, if the state has its way, will result in a lengthy prison sentence.

But Moore doesn't want Crafton to go to prison. He'd much prefer a deferred sentence, with counseling, rehabilitation and a chance for Crafton to get his life back together again. That, he says, is what God has put on his heart.

"Everything happens for a purpose. That's what I believe," Moore says.

On the surface, Ken Moore seems like a normal guy.

Oh, the joys of being a cop reporter and reading an endless assortment of police reports every day. Cops are good folks; they're just not always English teachers in waiting. Here's the gem of the day from Monday, Aug. 22nd:

According to report #200504720, a victim told police his 18-foot car-hauling trailer with wench was stolen from a self-storage location. I asked, and there's no word yet on the wench's identity or what she was wearing when she was last seen. If I find out more, I'll let ya know.