Outside the Box

We are often asked to think outside the box. I was born with a box whose sides were too tall for me to look into. One day out of curiosity, I pushed the box over and found it was empty, so I have always thought outside the box.

Miss Essie and her saving grace

Miss Essie was my eighth grade teacher. She was shaped like a pear with the stem attached. Her hair was in a bun and she wore gold-rimmed glasses. I liked her for she demanded from students the most she could get out of them. She also had a rear view mirror concealed in her bun so she could detect our mischief even when she faced the blackboard.

At the beginning of the year she announced that we were going to learn a new word once a week to improve our vocabulary. After stating the new word she would give us the rest of the period to write a short story in which we were to use the word as many times as we could manage. She said with this practice the word would be in our vocabulary as long as we lived. On this particular day she chose the word frugal, which she said meant to save.

This is the story I turned in but I will not share with you the grade I received.

Many years ago a beautiful young maiden was taking a morning walk along the shores of a lake near a castle. As the morning warmed she decided to wade out into the lake to cool off. She lifted the billowing long skirt and walked slowly into the lake. The cool water felt so soothing she kept walking with her arms out-stretched until the skirt floated up to them.

She stumbled on something sending her off balance and into the water. The skirt kept her from swimming to shore and she shouted, “Oh frugal me, frugal me, please frugal me I’m drowning.”

Now a young prince happened to be taking a morning stroll to the lake from his castle and heard her screams. He ran to the lake edge, swam out and frugaled her right in the water. He carried her to the beach where she clung to him thanking him again and again for frugaling her.

The handsome young prince took her to his castle and with his mother’s help and the application of many towels was able to frugal her from her wet clothing. His kindness created an instant bond between them and they fell in love, had a storybook wedding, and lived happily ever after.

The prince, however, despite of his good fortune, felt something was missing in his life. The satisfaction he felt after first frugaling his wife in the lake led him to wonder if he might have a talent for frugaling. While walking along the lake one morning he experienced an epiphany that affirmed his instincts. He did indeed have a gift for frugaling. How could he use this gift for the good of humanity?

He did what any up-standing prince would do. He was led to the financial markets. He established the Princely Frugaling and Loan Bank. This enabled him to accept the frugalings of hundreds in his realm plus paying them interest for the privilege. His bank prospered and his stature rose as a benign ruler.

Well, Miss Essie was right. The word has stayed with me to this day and I am in my 10th decade. Although Miss Essie taught me to frugal in eighth grade, I didn’t fugal very much until my early twenties for I had little with which to frugal. Eventually, like the prince, I met a beautiful young maiden who was a committed frugaler and we married. My wife and I have always been good frugalers. Just because you reach retirement, is no reason to give up frugaling. One is never too old to enjoy the rewards of aggressive frugallling. It’s a great habit to establish when you are young. Then there is that true old saying “There is no frugaler like an old frugaler.”

My friends, this is my story I turned in to Miss Essie as I can best recall. There is actually more to the story but I frugaled it and sent it to Paul Harvey for his radio segment “The rest of the story.” Unfortunately, Paul Harvey died before it aired. I have always wondered if he read it and if he was a frugaler. If he did, I’m sure he would have remembered it the rest of his life but not as long as I have.

Hank's observations

The early bird may get the worm but the owl doesn't give a hoot.

Hank's observations

There is no short cut to living experience.

Henry Swain: List of Books by Author Henry Swain

LEAVES for the raking

WHY NOW ???
The evolution of a conscientious objector

Cows and global warming

Greenhouse gasses have been accumulating for centuries but were of little concern for they were maintained in relative balance. Only recently has an increasing imbalance caused alarm. Methane gasses are produced in landfills, in animals and humans as a byproduct of digestion often expressed by the other “f” word. The current discussion of global warming reminded me of a methane gas encounter I had as a teenager.
One of my un-favorite chores while growing up was to milk our Jersey cow. I actually came to have a special relationship with our cow Sook-jerz, the name we had attached to her. Farmers often called their cows in from pasture with a special call. Sook was a common prefix. Since our cow was a Jersey we would bring her to the barn by calling Sook-jerz repeatedly until she came in to be milked.
This worked except for springtime when the early pasture was lush. I would have to take my prodding stick and go fetch her for she was reluctant to leave the abundant grass.
On this particular day I had her heading nicely toward the barn with an occasional prod to keep her on course. Suddenly she swished her tail aside and exploded an invisible woosh of methane toward me followed by a rather loose defecation. That was the last thing I remembered for a while.
Vaguely I recall seeing a patch of hazy blue sky with some nebulous figure hovering over me. I lost consciousness again and had an out-of-body experience, except I did not see a bright tunnel with a blinding white light at the end, which most describe who claim such experiences.
Instead I saw a dark tunnel with maximum dark at the end. Oh my, I thought, I must be headed for the other place. I felt a rough wet swipe across my forehead. It slowly restored my consciousness and I realized I was looking deep into the flaring nostril of Sook-jerz who had heard me fall and had come back to investigate. I raised my hand to stroke her long nose to let her know I had returned to this world.
At that moment I sensed my right bare foot was warmer than my left. Oh my, cow pie. A few deep breaths of fresh spring air enabled me to do a clean up job and get the milking finished liberating Sook-jerz back to green pastures.
I did not seek to blame Sook-jerz for she was only doing what came naturally and had no consciousness of timing and how it might affect me. We had developed a symbiotic relationship. We needed the milk and she needed to be milked. I did learn however, after this experience, to walk behind her a couple of paces to the windward.
I’m not certain how much this connection has to do with global warming. It is interesting to note, however, that at that time there were estimated to be a little over a billion people on earth, while now the population is an estimated six billion. Lots more people, lots more steaks, lots more cows and lots more methane.
When I extrapolate my experience with Sook-jerz and add millions more cows and people, all that new methane had better be going somewhere up and not hover near the ground where we breathe. If there isn’t some way to dissipate this gas, global warming may go on without us.
A few years ago scientists were worried about finding a hole in the ozone layer that protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun. That hole automatically closed again. I suspect if we observe this phenomenon over time we will discover that the hole in the ozone layer fluctuates and will return. It may be nature’s exhaust fan with an automatic switch that comes on when needed. But then I worry about where all that gas goes after it leaves the hole in the ozone layer.
Astronomers claim they have discovered black holes in space that have such intense gravity they suck everything around it into it. Maybe that is where the gas goes.
They also say that when it gets enough stuff sucked into it, it explodes with a big bang. They also claim everything started with a big explosion. They even name it the Big Bang theory of the beginning of the universe, which might explain the saying “What goes around comes around”.
Sook-jerz has since migrated to even more lush spring-green pastures in Cow Heaven. The methane seizure I experienced by following her too closely many years ago affected my imagination for all the many days since. I bet a psychiatrist would have fun with this.

Choices

We live with the consequences of the choices we make, even those we don't make, for they too become choices by our inaction.

A matter of trust

I write to the word trust and the practice of the word. We find the word trust over the doors of many government buildings. It is found on our money. Banks often use it in their title name. Trust is found in the titles of some legal documents. In these cases, the word is used to apply confidence to whatever entity it is applied.
Trust is much like a good reputation. It is hard to come by, easy to lose, and difficult to repair. The word trust implies honesty and the simple belief in human goodness.
What are some of the things that can cause a lack of trust? Simple greed is one. Jealousy, a condition that often has its roots in insecurity is another. Add covetousness, selfishness, and a desire for material advantage by deception often at the expense of others.
Our own desire to get a "good deal" or to get substantial reward with little effort makes us susceptible to having our trust violated by others. Our own greed can make us easy marks for trust violation in which one person's greed becomes victim by the cleverness of another's greed. In such cases, both suffer.
The breeching of trust can often be very rewarding for the party breaking the trust. Too often, the breakers of trust suffer little penalty for their behavior. Even when penalties are applied, there may remain a large advantage for those breaking the trust.
There have been several recent instances where corporate executives betrayed the trust of stockholders bringing great material advantage to themselves, but at great cost to the stockholders.
Can broken trusts be repaired? Sometimes, but never fully for there will always remain the memory of the breech. There are times when the law can restore to the victim a reasonable balance of trust through restitution and possibly punishment. .
There are degrees of broken trust. Hurtful gossip about someone can more easily be repaired than damage caused by the chicanery of corporate executives who rob employees of their pension funds.
On a more personal level, if the instance of betrayal of trust was not too severe, trust may be restored through the process of forgiveness, recompense, and the recognition no one is able to resist all temptation. Trust once broken, increases our alertness to the subtleties of betrayal.
Trust and greed are eternal adversaries. Betrayal is the tool of greed. Restitution and forgiveness are counterpoints. How important is trust to the health of societies, governments, and individuals? It is the glue, which keeps societies from falling apart. To realize how important trust is in our society, try to imagine any society worth living in without it.

Sex education -- country style

Farm boys got their early sex education by observing animals in heat. The mechanics of animal
sex was loosely transferable to human sex through our imaginations, although the positioning didn’t quite match. While the sexual urges of animals occurred intensely maybe once or twice a year, this intermittent desire was not transferable in our imaginations to humans. In fact, during the teen age years our attraction to the opposite sex seemed to grow with every passing day.
Parents were very reluctant to talk about sex with their children then. I think they still are today, hoping the school or television will do it for them. Alas, television pictures a lot of sex without any sense of context or commitment between two people. I recall vividly one of my first experiences with sex education farm style.
Ours was a mini-farm of five acres set like a lonely island in a sea of larger farms. It had a house, barn, out-buildings and a pasture large enough to support a Jersey cow we named Sookjerz.
It was customary for farmers to call the cows to the barn for milking by calling out loudly, sook-cow, sook-cow. The cows had been conditioned by this call to come to the barn where they would get grain feed in their stalls while being milked. It was my chore to do the milking. We brought our cow to the barn by calling sook-jerz, sook-jerz. .
One morning I was awakened by Sookjerz bellowing repeatedly as though something were bothering her. After breakfast Dad asked me to come to the barn with him before I milked Sookjerz. He fashioned a rope halter and told me to help him take Sookjerz to the bull at our neighbors.
Our usually docile Sookjerz was agitated and bellowing. She behaved like a penned dog let out on a leash. Dad and I both held on the rope to keep her in check from running on ahead of us.
Our neighbor was ready when we arrived and opened the gate to the barnyard. Sookjerz soon found neighbor bull and they had several encounters of what appeared to be joyous, energetic sex in diminishing interludes. Sookjerz finally seemed ready to go home to be milked.
Dad pulled out his wallet to pay our neighbor, but he put up his hand to stop Dad from paying. “No charge” he said. “I rather like to watch them getting it on.” Some farmers get their kicks in strange ways.
Sookjerz’s walk back to the barn was just the opposite of the trip to the bull. She had to be prodded occasionally when she stopped to look lingeringly back. The bellowing had ceased entirely.
I put the grain in the stall bin and flipped the stanchion lever to keep her in place. Sookjerz had a dreamy contented look in her huge charcoal eyes as though she had encountered a bovine epiphany that only one of her kind could understand.
I set the milking stool, put the pail between my knees, placed my head against her warm side and began to pull. I don’t ever recall the milk flowing so easily. I got a full pail of contented 100% hormone-fortified milk without a switch of her tail in my face or any attempt to put her foot in the bucket. Good ole Sookjerz. Bless her teats. She kept us well supplied with milk and cream during the lean years of the Great Depression. Some may think this a tall tale. To the contrary, it is a true story of one lonely cow and a lot of bull.

gravity smile

Gravity and old age turn the smile of youth upside down.

Untitled

When I die, someone will fill my space but none can take my place.

Crooked Rivers and Crooked Men

During my formative years, my father often repeated a saying, “Following the line of least resistance made crooked rivers and crooked men.” This was good advice to keep me on the straight and narrow path while I was growing up. But an experience during the summer after my freshman year in high school showed me a different view.

Three of my buddies and I put two canoes in White river below Anderson. For five days we floated to Broad Ripple dam at Indianapolis and then paddled back to Anderson. It was a formative experience. By the end of the two weeks I found that I had absorbed the rhythms of the river.

Rivers have a pattern of rapids followed by longer stretches of drift water. Rivers divide its travelers into two kinds, whitewater people and drift water people. I was of the latter designation.

The white-waterers live for the excitement of the rapids and are rather bored by the long wait in between. The drifters relish the leisurely gift of the current and the chance to observe the wild life that accompanies the moving water. Coming around a bend might stir up ducks or grebes that would take flight down the river ahead of us and land again in the water. Sometime we would consume the whole morning playing tag with them.

Then there is the opportunity to witness the ravages of flood time still visible on the eroding banks, leaving the riverside roots of trees exposed. Some are so eroded that their trunks lean dangerously over the water. I marveled at the strength of the roots still in the bank to keep the trunks so suspended against the pull of gravity. Some eventually fall and change the flow of the water to the opposite bank. The river constantly remakes its path.

Then there are the eddies that often occur immediately below the narrow channel the rapids. There, a leaf or piece of driftwood may circle again and again as if resting before eventually being caught by the edge of the current to move downstream.
I came to see the river as a metaphor of life, my life, all of our lives. We start at the headwaters and continue to grow until we reach the ocean, our final resting place. There is no shortcut in the accumulation of living experience.

We all have our moments of rapids and our longer moments of tranquility. Sometimes we get caught in an eddy and spend time circling in moments of confusion or needed rest. Much like traveling on the interstates and pausing at a rest stop to let the rest of the traffic go on without you. Sometimes we are caught in flood stage and speed on without control only to be tossed on some elusive promontory saved by the grace of luck.

The river may not run a straight course yet it has understood through experience that some objects in its path cannot be moved even in flood stage and the water must flow around them to get to its destination. We discover that sometimes we must accommodate in order to move forward.

The river intuitively knows its destination and how to get there. It meanders endlessly, but because of its persistence and flexibility eventually reaches the ocean. I learned early in life to follow my river. I am closing toward the end of my journey. Unlike my experience in high school, I can’t turn around and paddle back to where I started. I must accept I am nearing my journey’s end. The river has been good to me; it has been a wonderful drift and continues.