Home Safe

We are home in Dummerston, safe and sound and deeply grateful. We arrived home about 9p.m. Wednesday night (2/23). My son John had come in earlier to build a fire in our new wood stove, so we were greeted by warmth, not stone cold. That was wonderful. The lower driveway was icy so we could not get the Toyota up the driveway. We put on our Yak Tracks and walked up, dug out the Subaru and brought it down, transferred everything into it, went shopping for groceries, and finally got into bed about 11:00p.m., a bed warmed somewhat by heating pads. Today we are doing the hundred and one errands one has to do after having been away for five weeks. A storm is expected tomorrow, and Ellen has to be with the grandkids so she may go down tonight after choir rehearsal to get ahead of the storm. We send everyone our love!

Long ride!

Yesterday we drove from Riverton, WY to Sioux City, IA-- 700 miles! Yeah Ellen! We finished the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein (reading aloud) that we've been working on for over a year. What a fascinating, brilliant, troubled, productive, thought-provoking life! We both have been touched by him. I think we'll be exploring some of his ideas further. I already have "downloaded" a work by one of his closest friends, Maurice O'C Drury, titled The Danger of Words and love what I've read so far. Drury was a psychiatrist in Dublin, very much influenced by Wittgenstein. The chapter on "Madness and Religion" is particularly "right on."

Today we'll drive across Iowa and Illinois to Bartlett, IL. A mere 460 miles!

No Problem

We're in Riverton, WY which is on the eastern side of the Wind River Range. The snow seems to have been mostly on the western side of the mountains. The road was snow-packed between Hoback Jct. and Bondurant, but then as we approach Pinedale, it was clear and dry road. Then when we turned on to WY 28 and headed to Riverton, as we came up over South Pass, there was a lot of blowing snow over the road which created some slick spots but we never felt we were slipping. We just had to stay at about 40m.p.h. So it took us about six hours to get to Riverton (normally more like a 4 1/2 hour trip or less), but it was gorgeous scenery and without incident. And that did include some stops. We could have kept going but we had made a reservation just in case we had a long, grueling trip to Riverton and wanted to stop. So we'll have a long trip tomorrow, first a four-hour trip to the Nebraska border, and then a LONG trip across Nebraska, which we intend to do on US20. But the roads should be clear and dry all the way. I'm still reading Ray Monk's Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius out loud. It continues to be very interesting. Also, as we drove along today, we listened to Handel's Israel in Egypt an Oratorio that we are performing with the Brattleboro Concert Choir in May (and we are missing several rehearsals). It is quite a stirring work, with many wonderful choruses, but the libretto is also somewhat disconcerting because it is very triumphalist, and the "enemy" is the Egyptians. Chorus after chorus celebrates their destruction, which is out of synch with current events. I'm not sure how the revolution in Egypt is going impact on how this work will be heard and received. There may need to be some pre-concert contextualization!

Adventure Day!

We're heading out on the return journey. It snowed about 4 inches last night, so the roads are snow-packed and "slick in spots with blowing snow." There is no really easy way to get around those mountains into Eastern Wyoming. We're planning to take US 191 to Pinedale, and then go through South Pass to Riverton (unless we change our minds!). From Riverton east it looks ok. Hope to be in Chicago by Saturday but we may be delayed. Wish us well!

My current project

Well friends, we've had some down time. Ellen got a flu bug that's goin' round last Thursday, and had a couple of miserable days, but she's pretty much back to normal in strength now. Then I felt sort of poorly Monday and Tuesday of this week, but am out and about today. Neither of us are going out to slay dragons but we're gaining.

In and around all of this I've been working on an editing project (leading to the publication of a book) that has been in progress now for a long, long time: a "complete" edition of my late wife Shirley's children's stories (and mine as well). I have been collecting them from audio tapes for well over a year now, and also combing the files for written drafts that Shirley left. I think I have actually got on my hard drive 99% of what's extant at this point, and there about 350 stories, depending on how you count them. But a few days ago I decided to completely reorganize the way I'm going to publish them. Originally I was going to do it chronologically, but now I've decided to organize them thematically, and more or less according to the liturgical year, starting with Advent and Christmas. This requires a lot of additional work, mostly of the cutting and pasting variety. Very tedious. But I think it will make for a much more attractive and useful book. When it's all done, I think it will be an almost unique collection: I at least know of no collection of original stories gleaned from a church ministry spanning 20 years or so. The collection will include photographs and drawings made by children in response to some of the stories.

Just to give you a taste of this, here is one of my favorites: Stop Frying Eggs. It was inspired by a mechanical toy that Shirley had - a little pig in a chef's hat holding a frying pan with two eggs in it in her right hand, and a salt shaker in the left. When you wound it up, the pig flipped the eggs up into the air and caught them in the pan again and again, while her other hand shook in the salt. It is an amazing toy to watch -- the eggs actually land in the pan about 95% of the time!

Stop Frying Eggs! (First told on June 23, 1991)

I just love to take naps! Do you love to take naps? (Child: No!) I love being able to go to bed early -- do you like going to bed early? (Several children: No! No!). Well, that shows the difference between adults and children. Children don't like to take naps and adults love to. But we are created by God to both be busy and to rest. So today I'm going to tell you a story about Patty Pig who was not able to rest.

Patty loved to work in her mother's diner. She loved especially to fry eggs. (At this point, Shirley takes out the mechanical toy and winds it up). See -- there are two eggs in Patty's frying pan. She got so much into the rhythm of frying eggs that she just couldn't stop. She found herself frying eggs all day and all night. Pretty soon the diner was filled all the way to the top with fried eggs -- no one could even get into the diner! (The toy is continually flipping eggs up into the air and catching them, which evokes cries of surprise and delight from the children and the congregation).

All day, all night, Patty was frying eggs and her mother said, "Stop! Patty, stop! Stop! Stop frying eggs!" But Patty said, "I can't stop! I can't stop frying eggs!"

But then Patty remembered something from Sunday School -- she remembered the phrase, "And God will give you rest." And she cried out, "Oh God! Help me! Help me to stop frying eggs!" And gradually, she found through her prayer that she was able to stop constantly frying eggs. (At this point, the spring in the mechanical toy was winding down and eventually it stopped altogether). And Patty said, "Thank you God for rest!" Patty prayed and she was able to stop. She didn't fry any more eggs until Monday morning!

Sometimes we all need to ask God to help us stop for a while. We get so busy frying eggs (or whatever it is that we are so busy doing), that we just need to stop and rest our bodies and our spirits.

Here is a photo showing "Patty Pig" in the front row along with several other puppets and toys Shirley used in her stories:

Where we are now

We're in Alpine, WY at the home of Ellen's son Paul Baker, his wife Jenny and two-and-a-half-year-old Max. Paul built his home - the green house in the lower left corner of the photo, and it is in a spectacularly beautiful place, mountains all around. It has been clear and cold since we arrived, though the bright, strong sunshine makes it seem pretty comfortable if the wind isn't blowing. But tonight it will get down to -30! A big dog-sled race is coming through town tonight and tomorrow - 16 or so dog-sledders, many of whom have competed all over the world, including the Iditarod in Alaska. It could be quite a sight. Also, just down the road from Paul's house is a big winter elk refuge where they are fed by the state, so you get a nice view from the car of hundreds of elk. Ellen and I are helping with taking care of Max and having fun with him. He is very verbal and extremely active. Where does all that energy come from? He is also extraordinarily sweet -- when you give him something, he croons, "Thank you," and if you have to take something away that he probably shouldn't have, and explain why, he says, "Okay" and goes back to playing. Usually. He can get tired and cranky like anyone, but his basic nature is very sweet. Paul introduced us to "Texas Fold'em" (a version of poker) which Ellen and I had never played before. It was fun. We also had a good Scrabble game last night. Ellen won both games, but they were close.