More on Quiet

At my granddaughter's school, Warstler, in Plain Township they tried something a couple of years ago.  It's called mindfulness.

Each morning the children would gather and spend about 10 to 15 minutes in silence.  They could pray, meditate, take a quick nap, or whatever they wanted to do as long as they were quiet.  The principal who is a very upbeat and funny kind of person saw that it was helping the children a lot.  That quiet start to the day got things off right.

However, because they used a gong to signal the start of the quiet and because it reminded some people of Buddhism or other religions not commonly practiced here in the U.S., Mrs. Ditchler canceled mindfulness.

One of our state reps actually wrote the book about mindfulness that got all of this started.  He was doing it himself before the start of each busy day and claimed that it did wonders for him.  There were health benefits too.  And none of this should really be too surprising, because our faith should give us moments of pause, moments to contemplate the absolute wonder of our world.

About eight years ago, there was a brouhaha about fitting creationism into the science curriculum.  There were strong proponents on both sides and passionate ones at that.  It was one of those huge divides in thinking that doesn't come along often when one thinks about the Ohio State Board of Education, a normally very "under the radar" group. 

Those opposed said that there is no scientific basis for creation, but that isn't actually true.  In fact, some scientists studying life have gone from being unbelievers to believers because of what they found.  The more one delves into what makes us tick, the more miraculous it becomes.  We are absolute marvels.  And the last frontier, the one that we are still struggling to understand, is the human brain.

Frankly, I would have liked to see mindfulness continued at Warstler and at all the schools.  Children are exposed to so much noise in their lives that a quiet start to the day is just what they need.  They may find that it makes them feel so much better that they find quiet times on their own. 

Maybe you've seen the ads on TV for a brain exerciser app.  It's some kind of program that helps the brain work better.  And there are books of exercises that promise the same kind of result.  It's another "stage" that we are going through, I imagine.  Another "one thing fixes all" gimmick in a sense.  But it's never just one thing, is it?

Life is a balancing act, I've always thought.  We have to learn to balance our faith life, work life, and play life.  And it's a constant battle.  There isn't stasis in this; we are always growing, changing, and adapting.  So one day maybe we worked too hard, and now we feel lousy and have sore muscles to boot.  The next day we take off and do something else.  But when we consistently go through life out of sync in the balance of faith, work, and play, there is a price to pay for that.

So on these lovely spring days, find a quiet time and practice a little mindfulness of your own.  

Diggin' in the Dirt

"Diggin' in the dirt; it's a wonderful thing," is a song I made up for my grandson.  At the time I was thinking more of him than of me.

But over the last so many years, digging in the dirt has become one of my wonderful things too.  A nice, big bag of potting soil is a great purchase for me and I love to use an extra plastic plant pot to scoop it out in big shovels full. 

We went to the doctor's office yesterday and they had a sound system going continuously.  The music choice was fairly modern, although almost every one of the patients was a senior citizen.  Oh, how I wished I was home with a bag of potting soil and peace and quiet in the yard. 

Our neighbors (we can't see the house from ours) have a son who is into rock music.  And starting last summer, he started some sort of garage band.  Sound carries in the woods more than most would realize.  We can hear even faint conversations if someone is walking in them.  So the band's sound carries all too well, and I find myself annoyed at times.  If I'm in this room where I write the blog, the sound penetrates the walls and windows and I can still here it, particularly the bass and the drums.

Fortunately, it isn't all day, every day or we'd probably have to ask to have him turn down the amps. 

We can also hear Sluggers and Putters sometimes, usually their public address system announcements.  But honestly, it's been much quieter from them than the garage band.

There is such value in quiet, in silence.  How are we to hear God if we don't give Him a chance to have our ear?  The silence that has been practiced for centuries in monasteries is balm for the cloistered monks or nuns living there. 

For those of us who live more ordinary lives, silence still has an important place in our mental and physical well being.  By giving ourselves the gift of quiet without something sticking in our ears as we walk or garden, we let the sounds of nature in to sooth us and heal our disquieted minds.  Maybe that's what draws people to gardening in the first place; the chance to dig in the dirt hearing the sounds of a trowel or shovel, birds singing nearby, and our own breathing.

Progress shouldn't be measured by all of the do-dads and gadgets we can own that noise up our world.  Progress might just as easily be measured by the moments of quiet and peace we can tolerate before we need to "hear" something.  That kind of progress in our daily walk in life yields dividends when we couple it with an openness to God. 

Our poor young people haven't learned that lesson, so if you have access to a young person, make sure to plead your case for times of quiet and silence.  Tell them to just try it for say ten minutes at a time and see if it helps them feel better in almost every way. 

Find a quiet time for yourself today, if you can, and breathe in the peace. 

Not so great fortunes

I don't really like fortune cookies to eat, but I just have to look at the fortunes and taste just a bit of the cookie too. 

A few weeks ago we were hungry for something but the usuals just didn't sound good -- so we went off to our local Chinese restaurant and got some dinners, fried rice, and egg rolls. 

So this is the first fortune I opened:  "Show your true face to the people who really matter."
Well, I can't agree with this.  You should show your true face to everyone.  Anything short of that is being two-faced and duplicitous.  Too many politicians have mastered the art of showing their true face to almost no one.  Their families would be lucky to see the real father or mother, sister or brother.  So this fortune cookie gets a few Pinocchios today.  (A Pinocchio, I'm sure you already know is an indication of something not truthful -- and thus the nose grows as the puppet's did when he lied.)  We were created by God to be a specific person, not something manufactured in a slightly different way for every circumstance in life.  Like being one way with people at work and being another way with your family at home.  Not cool.

But don't despair.  There's another one.  They always give us two, one for each dinner.  Maybe we'll find some wisdom here.

The second fortune cookie says:  "When you do make a mistake, do not treat yourself as though you were the mistake."  Hmmm.  Is this just another way of saying, "God doesn't make junk."  If so, sure, I can go along with that.  However, if this is some way of trying to distance yourself from your mistakes/sins, then I can't agree.  When we try to run away from our sins, they always have a way of finding us.  When we face our sins, that's when we can find the peace we seek.  When we ourselves absolve ourselves from our sins, it is worthless.  Only God can forgive us. 

So the fortune cookies didn't carry the usual punch that they do this time.  I'll try again one of these weeks, if Swenson's, Subway, Wendy's, or Guiseppe's doesn't win out. 

By the way, if you are looking for something good (not low calorie and not as cheap as Subway), try Philly Connection up on Portage near BJs in a little plaza; it's good.  A woman who teaches at UA owns it.  I always get the chipped steak sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, and banana peppers.  There's something else, but I can't think of it.  And their onion rings are great.  THAT's what I'm hungry for today, but we're having something else.  Oh, well.

Anyone out there have a good fortune cookie message to share?

Have a little fun with paper

If you've been to the craft stores in the past couple of years, the aisles that seem to have increased the most relate to paper crafts -- like stamping, scrapbooking, and the like.  There's a reason for that.  It's fun and it's not hard to be successful.

The picture today is my Mother's Day card from my daughter-in-law, Joanne.  She has been doing scrapbooking and paper crafting for many years now, and she has a lot of the tricks and tools of the trade.  She is also a Stampin' Up representative, a company that is celebrating 25 years in business. 

When I was a little kid, if I would have had access to the punches, papers, do-dads, and inks, I would have gone crazy.  A good day for me and my friends was some canning wax and the Sunday funnies in color.  We would coat a piece of paper with the canning wax and then lay one of the comics on top, then use the edge of a glass to rub over the top until the color seeped into the wax.  Ouila!  A perfect reverse impression of the Sunday funnies. 

Cards are quite expensive these days -- even a simple one -- and what I've noticed is that they just don't often convey the sentiment that I am looking for.  So I end up with something but it's something that doesn't really do the trick.  Making a card does not take that long and it is fun.  You can personalize the card in many ways, with stamps, add-ons, dimensionals, pearls, and with your own words inside. 

Really getting into the craft, you can buy a non-electric machine that die cuts paper and also does embossing.  It is remarkable.  Crafters share their die cuts to avoid having to buy all of them, since they are fairly expensive.  And there's another good side of that.  Crafters get to know other crafters, and friendships form. 

If you like the card I got on Mother's Day and would like to find out more about Stampin' Up products, feel free to email me at knelsen@uakron.edu and I'll put you in touch with Joanne.  She can do a party for you where you and your guests make several lovely cards during the two-hour time frame.  And if you have children or grandchildren, nothing would occupy their time like some stamps, ink, paper, and the like so you can stock up on that kind of thing.  The Christmas ideas are really enjoyable too.

Some are even using paper crafting to create their own wedding, anniversary, milestone birthday, or graduation invitations.  Getting a group of people together to make the invitations is just part of the joy of such an event, and in itself is a memory maker.

Receiving a handmade card is really something special, because you know that the person who gave it to you spent time thinking of how to best capture the occasion.  It's personal and meaningful. 

Among the charisms that we might possibly have is craftiness.  It's a gift from God for us to explore and develop over our lifetimes. 

Have a wonderful day!!  Should be pretty hot.

A dear friend

As I was driving somewhere yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps years ago I reached out to others a little more.  I don't know if that is true, but if it is, then I need to start heading back in that direction.

As a newbie to Canal Fulton, I just couldn't get enough of its history.  My son, Greg, was just a baby and I had started writing a column for The Signal as a community service (no pay).  There were old books at the library to read, vestiges of the old town all over, and there were kind old folks to meet too.

While I was researching the old hotel in town, the foundations of which can still be seen across the street from the canoe livery, I found out that two brothers had owned it at the end.  Apparently, they were planning some renovations but the place burned.  It was called the Easley Hotel and famous people like presidents stayed there back in the canal era.  The hotel was large enough that it stretched from Rt. 93 to Market Street where the front doors were.  There are a few old pictures of the place.

The brothers were Ed and Al Nichter.  So way back thenI looked in our Massillon phone book and checked to see if maybe there was someone named Nichter still living in Canal Fulton --- there was -- Howard Nichter.  This was in around 1978 and I was just nosy enough to call him and find out some more about him and maybe his family.  Well, he was related to the brothers who owned the hotel and he told me what he could about that.  To be sure, he was a little guarded at first while we spoke on the phone, but after a while he started getting a little more comfortable.  I could tell because he told me I could call him back anytime.  From his voice I knew he was elderly and he was also endearing and lonely.  I did call him back many times.

It was Howard whose father owned the livery in town, and it was Howard who was called upon to drive the famous Doc Dissinger here and there in a hired buggy when his own horse was tired and worn out.  It was Howard who had the knack of telling a story, including the little known fact of Doc Dissinger's whiny voice.  He made history real for me.  I could visualize a livery, the doctor's office, and a little boy who was getting an adventure.  I could picture Howard in a canoe taking supplies to the folks on the other side of the canal/river after the 1913 flood.

One day Howard finally came to my house to meet me in person.  He brought along some pictures of his deceased wife whom he must have loved very much.  He told me the story of how she wasn't permitted to be buried in the cemetery behind SS Philip & James.  It must have broken his heart because after that he quit going to church.

The librarian I wrote about on Saturday, Miss Elizabeth Bliler, who lived in what is now the bread and breakfast on Rt. 93, was a kind lady.  I went to her house one day to get something, and she mentioned something that rang familiar.  I said innocently enough, "My friend, Howard Nichter, told me about that."

Elizabeth looked incredulous.  "Howard Nichter is your friend?" she asked.

"Well, yes, he is.  We talk on the phone," I explained.

"Well, my dear, you are probably the only person in this town he has ever spoken to in years," she said.  She explained that something had happened years ago that had caused Howard to pull away from the townsfolk.

I was stunned.  He came to my house and sat at my kitchen table, and he was so winded when he made it up a couple of concrete steps that he could hardly breathe.  He was kind and sweet and he stayed just long enough, and then I could tell he needed to go.  But that was fine; I'd just call him on the phone and we'd stay in touch.

One Canal Days weekend in around 1980, I'm not sure, I tried to call Howard and there was no answer.  That wasn't like Howard at all to be out in the evening.  I called again a couple of days later and still no answer.  I was getting quite concerned.

Somehow I found out that Howard had died, and I was very sad about it.  I never got to say goodbye.

Someone told me that a lady who lived on Rt. 93 at that blinker light at the top of the hill had been a friend of Howard's, so I took a chance and called her.  She was actually very nice and happy to hear from me.  She was able to fill in the details of the end of Howard's life.  She told me that she and Howard had become friends and that she had convinced Howard to go to church with her at the Lutheran Church.  She told me that he had called her to say he was being released from the hospital and she was just leaving the house to pick him up at the hospital in Massillon when he collapsed and died in the hallway.  His lungs or his heart must have finally given out.  When she got there, he was already gone.

She said the police had found him during Canal Days weekend at the church cemetery wandering around.  The road was probably closed going into town and it might have confused him.  They took him to the hospital and the staff were treating him for a number of health problems.

But my joy was that Howard had gotten right with God; he had let his bitterness go.  Picking up the phone and calling a complete stranger must not have bothered me too much back then.  My curiosity pushed me and I punched back any fears.  Maybe that call started a flicker of something in Howard that allowed him to reach out to his new friend.

Is it just youth or something else that accounts for such behavior?

Howard, his brother Raymond who died of a ruptured appendix at 12, and his parents are all buried behind SS Philip & James Cemetery.  He once asked me if I knew the name of some flowers that grew by the side of the road that he had seen.  They were purple he said.  I never could figure it out.

The Library

When I moved to Canal Fulton in 1973, it didn't take too long to discover the Canal Fulton Public Library.  It is an imposing building, a former house, that occupies a prominent corner on Market Street, intersecting with High. 

The Daily family occupied the home and were the ones who had it built for their family.  They were in the funeral business, although the home was never used for that purpose.  The Daily family moved to Canton becoming Daily Monument and a local couple purchased the home for the purpose of a library.

It has undergone numerous renovations, with the addition of a children's room, and more recently with the complete renovation of the main floor of the house including a big change -- the all-white library was painted yellow.

Some of my earliest memories of going there included seeing the mural painted on one wall that must have been the dining room.  The stacks of books hid most of it, but you could see the mural anywhere there was an empty spot.  It made the library feel like a home.

There was a shelf-like area near the ceiling of the charge-out area of the library back in the 1970s.  On it were all sorts of things that beckoned a patron to look.  I spotted a guitar, but there was also a tracing machine, a sewing machine, and countless other familiar objects, and some not so familiar.  What were they doing there?  Tom Brownfield, the librarian, believed in having the library be a beehive of activity.  He wanted the library to be useful beyond books, so the objects on the shelf could be borrowed.  In later years, you could even borrow a have-a-heart animal trap, as I recall.  The concept of "borrowing" in this library has always been unique.

The children's librarian, Miss Filicky, continued the warm welcome with her tall stacks of comic books.  I was surprised that the library had comic books, since many libraries would consider them a poor choice.  Her response was that she would rather see children reading something than nothing.  The comic books were often the bait to get a disinterested child interested. 

The library has jigsaw puzzles on a shelf near the front desk.  Just bring one and take one.  Don't have one to give?  Bring it another time and take one anyhow.

Entering into the tech world, the library increased the number of computers for adults in the last redo.  And you can also get "books" and other media on your Kindle or other electronic reader.  They have a large section of DVDs too, as well as books on CD. 

For a time I worked at the library checking out books.  It was during the time when my sons had gone off into the world and it was quiet at the house.  I'd get there at just about 5:00 and work until 9:00 maybe two nights a week.  That was when I got to see the second floor for the first time, because that's where the employee lunch/break area is.  It was really neat to be able to look out a second floor window and imagine what it must have been like when the house was built in the 1800s.

You can google the Canal Fulton Public Library to see what it looks like.  They have a neat graphic at the top of the webpage that shows part of the library as it is today, joined with a black and white photo of what it looked like years ago. 

One of the first librarians was Miss Fletcher, and another one was Miss Bliler.  In a small town, the greatest thing is you get to know more people especially when you are nosy and curious.  I got the distinct pleasure of having tea in Miss Fletcher's kitchen while her many cats climbed here and there, and she told  me about her lambs and chickens and how one of the lambs had died the week before because it bled out when its tail was bobbed.  I got the distinct pleasure of getting to know Miss Bliler when she was retired, because she cared about the town and its history, and so did I.  She and her neighbor across the street, Catherine Hammer, were members of the Canal Fulton Heritage Society.

Character is what some people say a small town has.  And a small town also has characters -- people who are special and unique and interesting.  Canal Fulton has always had those kind of folks in spades. 

Sometimes love is fostered in a place as much as by people.  Canal Fulton is a place for me that fosters love.  And love, as the one priest said, leads us to God.

Have a beautiful Mothers' Day.  No mind about the weather -- enjoy.

The Game

Yesterday afternoon, the house was a mall and the porch was a boutique.  My granddaughter was over and wanted to pretend.

The boutique sold all kinds of things:  trays, furniture, earrings, bracelets, art work and cats.  Gracie was purchased by a buyer (me) and I was given the how-to of caring for this small cat who occupies the "mall".  Gracie doesn't like it when the door to the boutique is closed so she has learned to nudge it open and then push it with her paws.  And she doesn't like it part-way open; she likes it all the way open.

Gracie escaped into the "mall" area several times and the first couple of times Lauren dutifully went and brought her back.  Finally, at about the third escape she said, "Oh, well.  She'll find her way back."  Gracie had become a distraction to the real workings of the boutique which was interacting with the customer (me).  Several times she told me, "Well, now we have to get back to the game."

Lauren is seven; how does she know what a boutique is?  But she does and she is a really good salesperson!!

Yesterday Lauren brought home an art project.  It was a cut-out of a paper Jesus suspended on some string from a cup crayoned blue.  On the way home from school, she was trying to remember what the project signified and then she thought of it.  It was to represent Jesus going to heaven -- his ascension to go the Father.  So she pulled on the string and the cut-out of Jesus went skyward into heaven where you could not see him anymore.

After we arrived home, I tried it out too, and then I made Jesus come back down on the kitchen counter.  "Jesus thought of something else he wanted to say," I told her.  And I would quote something from the Bible, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me."  Or, "Love others as I have loved you."  Or "the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed."  Well, that was a big hit. 

"Make Jesus say something else," she asked.  So I did, but explained that Jesus really would not come back until the end of the world when there will be a new earth.  Lauren really loved the idea that all sorts of flowers and plants would grow and there would be no killing frosts or plant diseases.  Already she shows a great interest in plants and flowers.  And a great and abiding interest in Jesus.  She recounted a couple of His miracles, like curing the man who could not walk.

Going back to Lauren's housed, we counted flowering trees and flowers that are out right now like mounded phlox.  It was a really good day.

Oh, and we watered the new drift roses that I planted and gave some boxwoods a good drink.  They looked a little wilted.

The more time you spend with a grandchild, the more comfortable the relationship becomes.  The grandchild gets to know the real you, and you get to know the real grandchild.  The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we get to know the real Jesus.  Simple, but profound.  The amazing, mystical gift of our faith.