Cranial Evisceration

As I plunged in the knife, I could feel and hear the skin pop and the hard shell break under the sharp, piercing blade. There was no other sound but the “snicker-snack” of the slicing as I enlarged the hole…around the top, a slight ooze following the slick steel. I was careful not to slip and cut myself, too. It was difficult to hold the cold, damp head and work the knife.


When the blade completed the circuit and arrived at the original puncture, I carefully lifted the newly separated dome and peered into the cavity below. I could smell the sharp sweetness and see the stringy, mushy innards clinging to the sides. Laying aside my knife, I pushed back my shirtsleeves and plunged my bare hand into the gory dampness. I squeezed a handful and felt the tendrils and the flesh and the hard seeds squirt through my fingers. Filling my hand again, I pulled out as much as I could and dropped it on the outspread newspapers on the table. Splot!

I love carving jack-o-lanterns. It’s a Fall ritual I have enjoyed since I was too small to attack a pumpkin with a knife myself and only watched my grandfather or my father create the yearly face of horror. I don’t think I saw a “friendly” face on a jack-o-lantern until I was an adult. I still am not a fan. It just seems wrong to me to see a smiling face shining into the night dedicated to ghosts and goblins. I always try for the ugliest, scariest jack-o-lantern possible.

Halloween is my father’s favorite holiday. He and Mom used to dress in costume and sit on their front porch to greet the Trick-or-Treaters. It really threw some of the little kids to go to their pastor’s house and find a couple of really ugly old characters in rocking chairs on the porch!

He and I passed along our pumpkin carving to my sons. Some of my favorite memories are watching the boys play in the pumpkin “guts”…to their mother’s disgust. When they were old enough to be able to carve the rinds themselves, we started them with special pumpkin-carving blades—not sharp, but serrated so they would cut through the shells. It required some hard work to saw through those thick skins, but they were determined to try to make faces scarier than the one’s Dad was creating.

I have had the pleasure of a carving session with my older grandson. Soon it will be time to introduce his younger brother to the ceremony. That should be fun. Their dad and mom have been carrying on the tradition, too.

We have some good pumpkins sitting on the deck. It’s still a bit too early to transform some of them into our front porch guardians for this year. Next week, the week of Halloween, is supposed to be colder, maybe with a snow flurry or two. A good time to perform a late night craniotomy. Bwahahahaha!

No Degrees of Separation

I grew up in and lived in small towns in northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa until I moved to Omaha in my late forties.  Like everyone else in the whole country, I watched movies and television programs and wondered about the actors—who they were and what they were like.  I listened to music on the radio and thought that the singers and musicians must be really interesting people.   News programs and newspapers told me about important people—those politicians—public servants, for instance, who made significant decisions about my life and my country.  Celebrities and Very Important People were fascinating, but they weren’t part of my small town existence.  I hadn’t even graduated from high school, however, when I began to realize that it was possible to meet those celebrities.  Sometimes I’ve been surprised by the unexpected opportunities I’ve had to rub elbows with them both as part of a crowd and one on one.

In the spring of my junior year in high school, my English teacher assigned the class to write essays that were to be entered in a contest.  It was the first time that I had ever written anything like this, but I actually won!  The prize was that I spent five days the following June touring Washington, D.C., with 900 other high school juniors from 27 different states.  We were typical tourists, gawking at the statues and monuments and all the buildings we’d read about in our history books and always looking and hoping to see someone famous.  One afternoon my delegation from Missouri was at the White House when President Johnson came out to greet us on the lawn across from Lafayette Park.  He made some comments about our abilities as students and then spent a few seconds shaking hands as politicians do in any crowd.  Since I was standing close to the sidewalk where he passed, I got to shake his hand.  That was my first close encounter with the “rich and famous.”

Several years later, I had become an English teacher myself.  In 1991 I was attending the National Council of Teachers of English fall convention in Atlanta, Georgia.  Part of the excitement of that convention was that we were to be the first public audience for Mel Gibson’s new movie version of Hamlet.  Almost 1,000 of us crowded into a large theatre in Atlanta to watch the movie.  It was terrific!  I very much liked the interpretation.  Mel was good as the tragic Prince of Denmark and he had also made his directorial debut with this film (I don’t know what has happened with him since then). When the movie was over, NCTE President Shirley Haley-James came on stage to talk briefly about this opportunity and, the biggest surprise of all, to introduce Mel Gibson!  He was there in person to gauge the reactions of those he thought would be his toughest critics—English teachers.

I had been a member of several committees for NCTE and had worked with Shirley Haley-James and a few of the other national officers.  After the movie, I was standing outside the theatre talking with some of the officers, when Shirley came to our small group with Mel in tow!  I met him, shook his hand, and told him how much I had enjoyed the movie.  That was a real treat for me to meet someone whose work I enjoyed, but my appreciation for Mel Gibson grew a few months later when I received in the mail an autographed picture of him!

When I’ve gone to places like the nation’s capital or to a national convention—places where famous people might be found—I haven’t been too surprised to see them or, I guess, even to meet them.  It’s a much bigger surprise, however, when I’ve been doing something fairly routine, part of my daily activities, and have the same experiences.  While waiting on my flight to be called at Eppley Air Field early one morning, I had a pleasant conversation with then-Nebraska Governor Kay Orr.  She was on her way to Washington, D.C., to talk about teacher education, so I took the opportunity to give an insider’s point of view.  She had some questions for me, as well, about teacher preparation in Nebraska.  Former Nebraska governor and senator Bob Kerrey and I spoke together briefly while sharing an elevator at Midland Lutheran College one afternoon.  Again, I was able to talk informally with an important decision-maker about my profession.  Both Mrs. Orr and Mr. Kerrey were friendly and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.

A few summers my friend Jim and I went to play golf at Miracle Hill Golf Course in Omaha.  It’s a popular public course and, as usual, the course was busy, so we were paired with another couple of fellows to make a foursome.  Neither my friend nor I had any idea who these other two were, even after we all introduced ourselves.  We chatted good-naturedly through the first couple of holes, talking mostly about the game and how badly we all played.

At one point, one of our new partners, a very tall, stocky man in his late 40’s who was sporting a long blond ponytail, proceeded to make a phone call.  He spoke at length to someone and then discussed the conversation with his partner.  Jim and I could tell from what we were overhearing that the two of them had something to do with the entertainment industry, so we asked what they did for a living.  We were just making small talk to kill time.

The shorter of the pair, who called himself BoBo, introduced his friend as Trace Adkins, a country-western singer.  BoBo was the drummer in his band.  Neither of us recognized the singer’s name, so BoBo rattled off the titles of a few of their well-known songs and Jim said that he had heard of some of them.

We enjoyed the rest of our golf game and talked mostly about the game.  Afterward Jim and I gave them a ride back to their hotel and Trace was kind enough to autograph some pictures for us.  A few weeks later we saw a biography about Trace and his life and discovered that he’s very well known among real Country & Western music fans.  Since then, I’ve been a fan myself.

From the White House to the clubhouse, I’m never too surprised anymore where I might run into famous or important people.  They lead interesting lives, but they still have to get from one place to another; they need to know that the work they do is appreciated; and they make time to enjoy themselves . . . just like everyone else.  We are separated from them merely by circumstance—or happenstance.  Sometimes it would be nice if they remembered that.

In Sickness and in Health

My Good Wife and I married almost 38 years ago. Although she held a few part-time jobs in the first few years of our marriage, when our first son was born, she decided that the only job she wanted was wife and mother. Luckily, we could make this work. Most of our “division of labor” was a result of that decision, but we did talk about a few of the family chores, and, in general, I take care of the outside of the house and she takes care of the inside. I do a few things indoors now and then—I run a mean vacuum (but too fast, according to all the women in my family). She does some planting outside and enjoys “supervising” everything else.

During my youth and bachelor days, I did learn how to do a little laundry. (I have a pink football jersey to prove it. The white jersey did not like my red boot socks.) My maternal grandparents were custodians and I cleaned bathrooms at a very early age. Both of my grandmothers and my mother were outstanding cooks and taught me to follow a recipe and experiment. I’m a pretty good cook, if I do say so myself. Breakfast is my forté…or cooking over a campfire. Since I’ve been married, however, the Good Wife has taken care of most of these chores, and I’ve confined my cooking skills to mastering the grill. It’s been a good arrangement (for me, anyway).

Getting older has brought us both its numerous challenges and new experiences. After years of fairly good health, we’ve had our share of aches and pains and interesting maladies; nothing too long term, fortunately. That all changed last month when my Better Half decided it was time to do something about the pain in her right heel. She was diagnosed with acute Achilles tendonosis, and the orthopedic doctor she was seeing finally recommended surgery. She new it was coming and put it off as long as possible—when would be “the right time” to be in a cast for a month, a walking boot for another month, at least, and who knows how long for physical therapy?

We live in a two-storey house. The master bedroom and bath are upstairs—15 steps. There is no bedroom on the main floor and only a narrow half-bath. My Good Wife has never been on crutches before and doesn’t do well with them. She’s not one to sit for very long…too busy…”a woman’s work is never done.” The essential confinement to her chair and the inside of the house on first floor were her great dreads. The idea of eating my cooking and knowing that I would be responsible for keeping her house clean were the subject of nightmares.

A pre-surgery physical therapy session helped her understand how to use the crutches, but also introduced her to a walker and—her salvation—a knee roller. The grandsons think Grandma’s “scooter” is cool. The biggest problem throughout has been the steps…not to the upstairs, but into the house itself (there are three, plus the doorsill) and the one step down into the living room—now our bedroom.
Today is “cast off” day, and we’re both looking forward to this milestone in her healing and recuperation. My cooking hasn’t been all that bad…and we’ve had some good meals provided by our sons and daughter-in-law. We have done some take out, of course, but not much more than usual.
We’re both very ready to get our lives back. I’m not sure that’s really going to happen, though. Every year brings new challenges merely because we’re growing older. We keep adjusting to new aches and pains, joints that aren’t as limber as they used to be, strength that seems closer to weakness.

One thing that has been made quite clear to us as we’ve weathered this new experience, however, is that after almost 40 years together, together we can handle anything life throws at us.

I’d like to think that in the near future it’s going to throw us some peace for a while!

Honor

A few years ago a friend asked if I could define honor.  I gave it a good deal of thought then, and address the topic again here after a bit more consideration…

It’s easy to start with a basic definition—“personal integrity”—from one dictionary or another.  It isn’t easy, however, to then define integrity.  With my students I tackle these abstract notions with a T-chart and a discussion of what honor or integrity would look or sound like. It makes it more concrete:  What does honor look like?  What does it sound like?  Applications are always fun.

A classic definition of honor would come from the chivalric codes of the Middle Ages.  That being said, only those who were from the upper classes were expected to have honor or even be able to attain it.  This is why some of the characters from the tales of Robin Hood, for example, (and the stories themselves) were so popular with common people, but still the hero is of noble birth—Robin of Locksley was the son of a Saxon lord in most stories.  With the advent of the American democracy, however, and our quest to establish the rights and responsibilities of the individual, comes the idea that all men/people are not only created equal but that they should also be honorable.

It is difficult to define a notion such as this when it is so easy to pick out examples of what is dishonorable among even the "best" people.  When our national leaders—political, religious, sports and entertainment stars—are found to be the foulest of criminals and lechers, most people, young people in particular, are apt to say that there is no honor in this country or in humanity.  Trying to define it is one thing, and instilling a sense of it in high school or college age people is daunting!

But the definition. . . mine, at least:

Honor is of the individual.  It can not be a group virtue.  A group of honorable people is a wonderful and powerful thing, but history has always shown these groups to be only as strong as the individual honor of its members.   Honor is honesty, bravery, trustworthiness—recite the Boy Scout oath.  An honorable person has a conscience and understands the many different manifestations of Good and Evil and chooses always to be a champion of the Good, a model of what is Right, even when no one but he/she knows of his/her choice.  It's as simple as driving the speed limit or waiting on a traffic light to turn green at four in the morning in a town with only one light.  The hard tests are easier to understand:  Refusing to "help" a buddy on a test.  Telling the underage friend that he/she will have to settle for a Coke when the keg is sitting right there.  Giving your life for a Good cause, whatever it might be.  These are in the “what does it look like?” category.

I think it might be easier for parents to understand the essence of the definition by just thinking of their children.  What kind of men and women do we want them to be?  What kind of models do we hope we have been for them?  At the same time, for us parens, it is also easier to go the other direction: are we the kind of people our parents hoped we would be?

It’s popular to sport bumper stickers asking, "What would ___________ do?"  Insert Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.  To apply this to the definition of honor, think about what makes those people role models.  What makes them honorable?

The kicker: if you model your life after an honorable person, “so what?”  What difference will this make.  Look how most of them ended up.

That’s the personal aspect of true honor again, though.  I don’t think an honorable person is honorable or does honorable things to impress others.  They do these things simply because it is honorable to do them.

It will be interesting to see (if I’m around that long) who among our current famous folk will be considered to have been models of integrity.  My guess is that most people will look closer to home for their role models…somewhere among the average people who steadfastly go about their daily lives, not thinking about impacting a state or nation or world but simply seeing that those they care about are safe and loved, doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.  Imagine what a nation of people like that could be for the world….

Out of the Country

We moved to the city about eleven years ago (apologies to my friends in LA and New York) so we could take advantage of all of the things we kept coming here to enjoy.  I don’t think we’ll ever completely work the country out of our souls, however.  Living almost fifty years in small towns makes it hard to “erase” those conditionings.

Don’t get me wrong.  We were ready for a change.  The boys were both out of high school.  I needed to change jobs.  We were looking to the future (retirement looked like it would be possible much earlier then).  It seemed like we headed to Omaha every weekend anyway for shopping or the theatre or a concert or something.  I thought I’d be in heaven with all the golf courses from which to choose!

It is nice to have friends and relatives come and “vacation” with us now and then.  We’ve been in the right place as emergencies have arisen and family members have ended up in the hospitals here.  Both boys are here, and now we have two grandsons, as well.  It’s nice to be close.  We do get to the movies once in a while and enjoy the opportunities and variety for shopping.  Everything we think we need is nearby.  We typically go out to hear live music at least once a week, especially with son Matthew making a name for himself with his songwriting and solid band.

Some things aren’t quite what we had hoped, though.  All of these golf courses cost quite a bit more than the annual membership I was paying for Shenandoah’s great 18-hole course.  All of our friends are back there, too, and although we see them fairly often, there aren’t the drop-in visits or spur-of-the-moment get-togethers that were so much fun (especially on football Saturdays!).

One of the things that I’ve been noticing more and more lately is the noise.  I miss the “quiet” of small towns and countrysides.  Sitting on my deck now I hear the emergency sirens of the fire station a couple of blocks away and the roar of tires on West Maple Street…tens of thousands of tires each day—and night.  These are the sounds that have replaced the morning bird songs and coyotes’ midnight yelpings, foxes’ barking, or owls’ hooting.

I don’t know if we can find an in between.  The reasons we came here are still good reasons, and they become moreso the older we are.  I’d hate to be even another half hour away from our grandsons.  We’re already going to T-ball games this summer.  I’ll just have to make more time to visit the many parks in the area and make the reverse trip back to the country now and then…and the Welcome mat is always out for family and friends.  I guess I’ll go feed the birds and sit on the deck.  Come join me.

“Lest We Forget”

The following is a sort of memoir I wrote some time back.  I've been to DC many times and always make it a point to visit the VietNam Memorial.  This is a combination of thoughts and experiences from those many visits.  I decided Memorial Day was a good time to share it with you.

"Lest We Forget"

The black wall draws me each time.  Despite the fullness of emotion that inevitably brings tears to my eyes, I cannot stay away.  Too much of me—my generation, my country, and its future—carved in the growing rows of names demands the same silent recognition, pride, and frustration that I see in those, like me, who come to stand and weep.  I have tried to honor those who served and died and not be overcome, but I always fail.  The depth of that scar in the earth and the nation’s soul is too much for me; I shiver in despair at the loss it represents.  Whether late at night, in the brightest summer afternoon, or in cold rain or snow, the shining glory of unselfish sacrifices listed there demand of me a pride and strength of will that keep me coming back.

I first visited the Vietnam Memorial one sunny spring morning.  Cherry blossoms bloomed; the city showed off its best look.  The country was in the midst of economic boom, and everyone enjoyed life. I had taken the afternoon off from meetings to do some sight seeing.  After a quick look at the Lincoln Memorial, I started down the walk, following a crowd of other noisy tourists.  We jostled and joked and enjoyed ourselves.

The closer we drew to the edge of that ebony stone, the quieter we became.  Soon voices were nothing more than part of the quiet murmurs of the wind in nearby trees and the background noise of city traffic.  I walked farther, watching different people gather there under the spell of reverence for the growing expanse of the Wall.

A wide-eyed little girl in cornrows and pigtails held her mother’s hand. “Nanna, is that Grandpa’s name?”  The sobbing woman knelt before the Wall.  Three grieving women, young and old, offered sorrow and a handful of flowers.  The air was heavy with the scent of lilies, roses, lilac, and cherry blossoms already placed against the Wall that morning.

Nearby, a graying veteran in old fatigues wept audibly.  From his wheelchair, he drew himself erect to salute his fallen comrades.  A silent file of onlookers passed, their sympathy a physical presence.

School-uniformed teenagers under the sad, watchful eyes of their teacher, made pencil rubbings of names.  One boy whispered to a nearby friend, “Dad says I’m just like Uncle Mike.  I never knew him, but he was only three years older than I am when he died . . . his second tour.”

I gazed at the countless tributes.  Families, small groups of friends, individuals— hundreds passed by the Wall and left behind flowers, Teddy bears, notes, cards, letters, photographs, medals, rings . . . memories . . . innocence, and, most of all, tears.  The Wall is a place for personal grief.

Black granite panels rise out of the ground on the east and west and meet in the center at a height of more than ten feet: an alphabetical listing of 58,235 fathers and sons and brothers, and eight mothers and daughters and sisters—an entire generation —lost.  The first names in the center honor Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand, U.S. servicemen killed in the 1959 attack at Bienhoa.  They were originally recognized as the first to die.  Then in 1983, a year after the Wall was dedicated, Army Captain Harry C. Cramer was added.  Captain Cramer died on October 21, 1957, in a training action.  Also in the center is the last panel, where the list of names continues to grow.  Veterans succumb thirty and forty years later to the war’s silent killers.

The long list from 1968 includes those who graduated from high school when I did, and in the last years of the war, those who might have been my friends from college.  PFC Douglas Beckman, my sister-in-law’s cousin, was turning around a troubled life, but stepped on a mine in Quang Tri and lost his chance.  Captain Wayne McConkey, a reservist from Shenandoah, Iowa, where we raised our sons, died when his helicopter was shot down and didn’t get to see his daughter become a person who would make him proud.  Captain Mary Klinker enlisted to help the children and died when her transport plane went down while evacuating orphans from Saigon following the truce.

I’ve been back to the Wall many times since then.  I can’t stay away when I’m in the capital.  If I don’t have time to visit anywhere else, I make time to go there.  I feel as if I’m living their lives as well as mine, and do the best I can to remember the debt I owe.  Each time I visit, each step along that 493-foot headstone is painful.  When I see the names and think of the loss, when I see the others who come, I remember . . . and let the tears fall.

Call of the Wild

I like wolves. They’re sophisticated pack animals with a complex society. They take care of one another—the old are respected and supplied with their needs when they can no longer hunt for themselves. The old teach the young the survival skills they will need and, when the pack has overextended its range, they help the young find new territories and establish themselves. Occasionally the old pack and the new run into one another. Their late night songfests fill the forests with ancient music—the call of the wild.


I like to think that my affinity for canis lupus goes even further and I share an animistic association with this ubiquitous, worldly predator. I would love to have that kind of connection to the natural world. It’s probably a reason I like some science fantasy and shamanistic religions. I’m not a fan of lycanthropy, however. The contortions of the werewolf are different from the more spiritual transformations, which are not cruel shape-changing but a sharing of essence, a sort of higher order connection with the natural world. Of course, that is an example of the human egoism that places the human “animal” on a higher plane than the other beasts. Animism also assumes a spiritual consciousness in the non-human animals. It’s all a complicated philosophy. If you don’t think about it too much as a religious practice, though, and merely a blending of spirits, what fantastic mental meanderings can occupy a fertile imagination!

I used to sit for hours in the woods of the river bluffs around my home and look out over the river valleys. I would imagine myself loping easily along in an effortless gait, aware of everything around me. I hear the red tail hawk floating high above as he adjusts each feather in the wind. A vole is digging furtively just beneath the surface, making his blind way through the roots of the tall grasses. My belly is full, so I don’t stop at the spasmodic hammering of the rabbit’s heart as he cowers in the brush nearby. The sun is warm. The world is mine, and I am the world’s. With involuntary joy I lift my head and sing.

It’s imagining a better world, too. The wolf’s territory is never more than can sustain the pack, and the size of the pack is adjusted to the territory and what it can sustain, changing with the foibles of nature: weather, disease, age, available game. There is no waste. Or war. Or wantonness. Even the struggle for life is peace. Some people don’t understand or have a real appreciation for the world of tooth and claw. It’s egoism again, I think. We feel more sophisticated than my shadowy gray friends because we don’t pull down our enemies with our jaws fastened around their throats. On the other hand, wolves and the other animals don’t have enemies—there is only hunter and prey—except for man.

Philosophy again. This old wolf would rather just keep it simple. Breathe deep. Listen closely. Feel the warm hope of the sun, or the life in the rain, or the cold peace of wind and snow, and the comfort of home and the “pack”…and sometimes, when the moon is full, just step outside and howl!