ST. PATRICK'S DAY 1966

St. Patrick’s Day reminds me of the birth of our third son forty-six years ago on this day.  We were living in England.  The arrangements for childbirth there, at that time, were considerably different than they had been in the United States for our first two sons.  In England most children were delivered at home by a midwife.  Those who could afford to go to a private convalescent home, had their baby there, but it was still delivered by a midwife.  The Army paid for my wife to go to Duchy House.

The day arrived that the baby was on its way.  I called for one of the soldiers’ wives to come and watch our two sons.  I took my wife to Duchy House and they took us upstairs to her room.  It was a large room with a hospital bed, a sofa, a coffee table with a tea service, an armchair, and an oriental rug on the floor.  After my wife was settled in the room, I started to leave.

“Where do you think you are going?”

“I thought that I would go home and wait so I’d be out of the way.”

The midwife was dressed in a crisp, white uniform.  She was tall and slim with bright red hair. She spoke with a distinct Scottish accent.

“You are not going anywhere, Yank. You are going to stay right here and help me.  The other patients are waiting for me to bring them their supper trays.”  She then gave me a list of things she wanted me to do.  I was also to keep checking on my wife and to shout if I needed the midwife.

When she returned she checked my wife and then we rolled the bed into the delivery room.  She gave my wife a shot which numbed the pain but allowed her to remain alert.  The midwife kept me busy assisting her throughout the delivery.  When our son arrived, she gave him to me to carry up to my wife.  After she had cleaned the baby, we rolled the bed back into the room.  The midwife carried the baby off to the nursery, brought my wife her supper tray – roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables, and tea.  I was allowed to go home at last.

Our third son was born in England, delivered by a Scottish midwife, on St. Patrick’s Day, and was named David, the patron saint of Wales.

CHURCHES INSULTING GOD

As the years have gone by and I have grown old, I have seen much of the religious nature of Christmas replaced by a steady secularization of the holiday. First there was the widespread replacing of the word Christmas with Xmas. Radio stations played less and less carols that told of Jesus' birth with sappy songs about Rudolph, snowmen, sleighs, holiday meals, holiday romance and anything but Christ. Many of the stores stopped using the name Christmas and just used the generic Holiday. Even Christmas cards had less and less scenes of the first Christmas. All religious meaning was removed from the verses inside the card. All of that could be blamed on unbelievers and Scrooge-a-likes in corporate offices.

Now that secularization has been adopted by Churches! Already there are listings in local papers of churches that will not be holding worship service on the Sunday that falls on Christmas. Santa Claus trumps Baby Jesus even in those churches now. What is the explanation? Do they really believe that if they are open for worship no one will come? Are the churches saying like Elijah that there are no more believers in God except him? Or is it that the pastor and the assistant pastor and the organist and the Sunday School teachers don't want to work on Christmas? How soon until the Easter bunny closes the churches on Easter - Easter always comes on Sunday.

RETIREE APPRECIATION DAYS, Ft. SILL, OK

For years I have received an invitation to the Retirees Appreciation Event at Ft. Sill, OK.  This year my wife and I attended it.

On Thursday we went to the huge Reynolds Army Hospital on Ft. Sill.  They really treated all the retirees grand.  There were a lot of medical tests available.  There was an eye clinic, dental clinic, heart health, etc. My wife and I received a shingles immunization.  A doctor of pharmacology & diabetes educator went over our medications and treatment and made suggestions.  I can't express how nice they treated everyone.  There were 475 retirees and their spouses and about 25 widows.  They were coming and going all day.  We had lunch in the Hospital's Cafeteria.

The Army has a new program called Privatization of Army Lodging.  We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on base.  It is the largest Holiday Inn Express anywhere - 544 rooms in two buildings.  It was very nice and only $65/night including free breakfast.  They have several amenities not offered in other Holiday Inn Express hotels including free telephone call home when you check in, shuttle service anywhere on base, Wednesday night barbeque social, and a snack shop open  24/7.  Thursday we also went to the AAFES and shopped,  then went back that night for pizza.

On Friday we went on a bus tour to the historic Mattie Beal home in Lawton, OK in the morning, ate in a huge chow hall for lunch (what a change from the chow halls I remember).  That afternoon the bus took us to the Ouachita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.

Friday evening there was a banquet in the Patriot Club (I'm guessing it is an officers' club or a joint officers/senior NCO's club)

Before the meal there was an invocation, posting of the colors by an eight member honor guard, pledge of allegiance, national anthem, then some awards, a really good meal, entertainment by an Army Jazz Band and two speakers.  One was SGM Asepermy, an American Indian, who gave an illustrated talk about the Indian Code Talkers in World War I and World War II.  The other speaker was a woman, retired Major General in the Oklahoma Air National Guard, La Rita Aragon, a former school principal in civilian life, and now Oklahoma Secretary Veterans Affairs.  She had an interesting talk and she brought down the house by ending her talk with a video of Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American."  The video showed wounded warriors and caskets coming off the plane in Delaware.  Everyone spontaneously rose to their feet.  There wasn't a dry eye in the place.

Two things impressed me. I'm not used to being "appreciated" because I am a veteran.  They really conveyed that message in  spades.  The other thing is that I had forgotten how easily you are accepted as a friend when you are in a military environment.  It was a long drive there and back but it was more than worth the effort. 

"CAVES AND GRAVES"

     When Sarah died, Abraham bought the field and cave of Machpelah for a place to bury her.  When Abraham died he was buried in that cave alongside Sarah.  When his oldest son, Isaac and his wife Rebekah died, they were buried in that cave with Abraham and Sarah.  When Leah, the first wife of Isaac’s son Jacob, died she was buried in that cave.  Even though Jacob died in Egypt, his sons brought him back to the cave at Machpelah to be buried.  Those were the only persons buried in that cave.  It became a lodestone for the Israelites.  Their religion was called “the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.  They trusted the covenant promises God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They worshiped the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.  The cave at Machpelah can still be seen today.

A hundred years ago my grandfather bought three cemetery lots, each with four graves.  He buried his father and mother in the graves on the northwest corner.  Later, he would bury two of his own infant children in graves at that location.  He and his wife were buried there.  His two sons and their wives are buried there.  Just as no one else was buried at Machpelah, no one else will be buried in those three lots.  The great grandchildren and their progeny have scattered to more than half dozen states.  For all of them, those graves in that place are the stake that establishes their origin, their clan, their heritage.   

Thoughts While Standing At My Father's Grave

My father died last year at the age of 93.  In four more days he would have been 94.  I wasn’t able to be at his funeral because of a snowstorm.  He is buried in a cemetery a thousand miles from where I live.  This past Sunday I visited his grave.  My father and mother are buried on a lot that adjoins the graves of my paternal great-grandfather and great-grandmother, my paternal grandfather and grandmother, and my aunt and uncle.  Nearby is the grave of a great-uncle. 

Why do we have graves in cemeteries with headstones and markers?  We make every possible effort to return the bodies of servicemen and servicewomen from foreign countries where they died so that they are buried in their home town or one of the national veterans’ cemeteries.  Their grave is marked with their name, date of birth and date of death.  For the Christian the body is placed in the earth to await the second coming of Christ.  “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.”  At the very least the grave and its marker are a long-lasting declaration “This person lived upon the earth during these years; he/she is not forgotten.”

The Russians have a saying they use about someone who is not a likeable person, “Who will tend to his grave?”  I noticed that the graves of my uncle and aunt were decorated with flowers, an American flag and a tiny lantern that holds a candle.  They have two sons in town.  In another part of the cemetery the headstones of my maternal grandmother and maternal great-grandfather were knocked over as were a number of grave stones surrounding them.  They were either the objects of vandalism or maybe a tree had fallen in that area.  All of the graves are old.  My grandmother died almost fifty years ago and my great-grandfather before then.  I doubt if anyone in that town remembers either one of them.  Their headstones have become a moot point.

I am told that in Spain the cemeteries are so crowded that grave lots are leased for a year.  After a year the body is dug up and cremated.  It is nice that great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents can lie together resting in peace in adjoining grave lots.  That belongs to the past.  In our modern culture parents and children are often separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.  They will die, be buried, and their graves marked with the names, date of birth, and date of death.  No one in the nearby communities will care that they lived upon the earth during those years.  Will their children drive hundreds or thousands of miles to stand over their grave?

DIGITAL DEPENDENCY

About two weeks ago we lost internet access.  I made two calls to Technical Support.  On the first call I couldn’t understand the technician and I know that he wasn’t understanding me.  On the second call the technician determined that I had a short in my modem/router.  I thought that it would be a simple matter to go to the Big W and buy a new modem/router.  The desktop computer that the modem/router was connected to was over ten years old.  I decided to replace it at the same time I replaced the modem/router.

I bought a new desktop computer and it came with a 20 inch flat screen monitor.  Before I could install the new computer I had to remove from the old computer the pictures and files I wanted to keep.  That was a task that required hours of work.  Finally, I installed the new computer.  That was fairly easy – at first.  I opened the box to the new “modem/router”, took out the instructions and in the first paragraph read, “Plug your new B….. Router into the existing modem.”  It was only a router, not a modem/router!  I returned it to Big W the next day, talked to the salesman and he said, “Yeah, we used to have modem/routers but now all we have are routers.  Why don’t you try the phone store?”   I thanked him and went across the highway to the phone store and bought a modem/router just like the one which had shorted out (after three years satisfactory service).

Installing the new modem/router should have been easy and it was.  Making it work was another story.  First I tried using the installation/activation scheme on the internet.  I was able to get the host computer on the internet.  However, none of the other computers in the house could find a signal and the installation/activation scheme failed halfway through. I called Technical Support. Here we go again.  After two hours on the phone my laptop and my iPad were able to get a Wi-Fi signal from the router and go on the internet.  The desktop in my study found the signal.  I put in the password but the router rejected it – “invalid IP address”.  I will have to call Technical Support some day if I want my desktop back on the internet.  Frankly, for the time being I’d rather not!

While we are on the subject of Digital Dependency – Our television programs come to us by two satellites.  A dish antenna on the roof captures the signals.  A sweet gum tree in my neighbor’s yard is blocking the signals from one of the satellites and sometimes interferes with the signals from the other satellite.  The technician who came out to the house to fix satellite reception said that we have two options – chop down the neighbor’s tree or wait for winter when the leaves will fall.

THE DEBT CRISIS

The current negotiations over the debt crisis are not unlike a husband and wife quarreling when the family has reached the limits of its credit and must do something immediately.  The husband charges the wife with spending too much on the household and the children.  She yells back that he spends too much money on golf and fishing trips in the summer and hunting trips in the fall.

He tells her to get a job and add some money to the budget.  She says that if she gets a job they will have more expenses – babysitting, better clothes for her, transportation, and meals out while she is at work.  She asks if he is willing to do half of the housework if she is working full-time outside the home.  It would be better if he got a second job part time.

They go back to arguing over cutting spending.  If they are going to solve their problem and become solvent, both are going to have to make deep cuts in the spending AND one of them will have to get another job.  They may not do what is necessary and resort to divorce, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.  More domestic debt crises end this way than by making draconian cuts in spending and finding an additional source of income.

Congress is deadlocked between Republicans (the husband) who think that the crisis can be solved by making drastic cuts in the Federal budget.  Democrats (the wife) want to increase taxes for the rich and the big corporations.  The Republicans are right in calling for cuts in the Federal budget – where to cut will be the sticking point.  The Democrats are right in calling for increased taxes.  What neither side is willing to face is that to really make this nation solvent, we must raise taxes for everyone and make large cuts in spending.