Trinity Sunday

As if on cue, Father Al used Eucharistic Prayer C today. The lines from that celebratory prayer have been running in my mind all week. It was good to be at Barney’s Church & Bar (also known to the world as St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Roanoke) today. It is a pretty little church, decorated as one would expect of an Anglican structure – simple, tasteful, dignified. I counted a dozen communicants today but understand that many were on the lake, or visiting relatives, or getting away to New York for a few shows, or jetting to Barbados. Episcopalians are a cosmopolitan bunch, with lots of places to go and people to see. It is easy to see that I am going to be very happy at Barney’s. As I was talking to Father Al this morning, I flashed on a memory from the mid-1980s when I took the job as a city manager in Missouri. I asked my hiring city to provide me with the name and phone number for the Episcopal church. Once in hand, I called the priest and blurted out, “I am heading your way, I want to be a part of your parish, put me on committees, sign me up for service projects, I am ready and eager.” The priest later told me that he about passed out from the enthusiasm and was intimidated by the prospect of my arrival. I tried to be less animated with Father Al today. I transferred “my letter” from Missouri to Barney’s some months ago. Apparently, I have been something of a mystery to the parish secretary who received “my letter” but didn’t believe it. Alabama Anglicans must be a suspicious crowd.

After Mass, the communicants gathered on the church steps to chit-chat. I related that I was leaving for the Southwest Adventure and would not return until mid-July. One of my fellow worshippers commented on a place to stay near the Grand Canyon. I reminded him that I was dragging the Airstream and would not need a hotel. Another offered, in humorous repartee, that there would be “no Marriott for you.” I thought about that comment as I drove home to Welch. A Democrat Episcopalian would offer “no Marriott for you.” A Republican Episcopalian would have said, “No Ritz Carlton for you.” A good earnest Methodist would say, “No Holiday Inn Express for you.” A devote Southern Baptist would say, “No Comfort Inn for you.” A wild-eyed snake-handler would say, “No Motel 6 for you.” And, a tree-arbor evangelical would say, “No back seat at a truck stop for you.” Yet another thing about my fellow Barney-folk is that I spotted several O’Bama bumper stickers on cars in the parking lot, proving that Barney Episcopalians are either politically brave or hopelessly intoxicated.

It is Trinity Sunday and Father Al did a nice job of trying to untangle this deepest of Christian doctrinal knots. Immaculate conception, no problem. Virginal birth, OK, I can accept that. Accession, easy. Resurrection is challenging and requires faith. But, the Trinity is a tough nut to crack. A Bloody Mary before the homily helps in accepting the explanation. It makes more sense that way. While in Iraq, I was asked several times by Muslims how I could believe in a pantheistic religion. I responded that I did not because of the Trinity. Made the mistake of pulling out the Creed of St. Athanasius which brought more confusion to the discussion. Imagine having a discussion of the Trinity filtered through an Arabic translator. That is one of the reasons I was paid hazard pay.

The Fading Art of Fine Letterwriting

The Next-Nevill-Shute, one of my finest former students, graciously provided me with a wonderful piece of letterwriting that I feel compelled to share with you.

Quoting Next-Nevill-Shute, this is "a letter by Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr to a Major General Connor. Buckner descends from the General Buckner of the Confederate army who surrendered Ft. Donelson to General Grant in the Civil War.
In this letter Buckner outlines his “recipe” for the Mint Julep, and my God, if it doesn’t have you salivating for one by the end of the letter, you should just move to Iowa and start drinking warm cans of Schlitz like us Yankees."

“My Dear General Connor:
Your letter requesting my formula for mixing mint juleps leaves me in the same position in which Captain Barber found himself when asked how he was able to carve the image of an elephant from a block of wood. He said that it was a simple process consisting merely of whittling off the part that didn't look like an elephant.
The preparation of the quintessence of gentlemanly beverages can be described only in like terms. A mint julep is not a product of a formula. It is a ceremony and must be performed by a gentleman possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion. It is a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician nor a Yankee. It is a heritage of the Old South, and emblem of hospitality, and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewn paths of a happy and congenial thought.
So far as the mere mechanics of the operation are concerned, the procedure, stripped of its ceremonial embellishments, can be described as follows:
Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source. Follow the stream thru its banks of green moss and wild flowers until it broadens and trickles thru beds of mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breeze. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home. Go to the sideboard and select a decanter of Kentucky Bourbon distilled by a master hand, mellowed with age, yet still vigorous and inspiring. An ancestral sugar bowl, a row of silver goblets, some spoons and some ice and you are ready to start.
Into a canvas bag pound twice as much ice as you think you will need. Make it fine as snow, keep it dry and do not allow it to degenerate into slush. Into each goblet, put a slightly heaping teaspoonful of granulated sugar, barely cover this with spring water and slightly bruise one mint leaf into this, leaving the spoon in the goblet. Then pour elixir from the decanter until the goblets are about one-fourth full. Fill the goblets with snowy ice, sprinkling in a small amount of sugar as you fill. Wipe the outside of the goblets dry, and embellish copiously with mint.
Then comes the delicate and important operation of frosting. By proper manipulation of the spoon, the ingredients are circulated and blended until nature, wishing to take a further hand and add another of its beautiful phenomena, encrusts the whole in a glistening coat of white frost.
Thus harmoniously blended by the deft touches of a skilled hand, you have a beverage eminently appropriate for honorable men and beautiful women.
When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden where the aroma of the juleps will rise heavenward and make the birds sing. Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblets to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.
Being overcome with thirst, I can write no further.
Sincerely,
Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr.
VMI Class of 1906”

Life's Balance

Just when I cozy up with the notion that justice is relative and yen and yang are convenient constructs to explain unexplainable phenomenon, all hell breaks out. It all occurred innocently enough, with a slight miscalculation in one instance and a random act of mechanical retribution in another. As I have posted previously, I am engaged in a fight to the finish with the privet on my land. The effort extracts an exacting cost, given my advancing years and State Department level of physical conditions -- I can sit in front of a computer for hours without effort, I can sip tea and discuss issues of the day with foreign and domestic leaders, I can even fire off a pointed, even stern, memorandum. When I disengaged from the Privet War last evening, I paid little attention to the storm clouds gathering to the south. As usual, I parked the truck near the Airstream, put away my tools that prove to strike terror up and down the bark of the enemy, and joined Tinker for a light meal and some congenial conversation. As we were enjoying some Blue Bell ice cream (a flavor I have never experienced -- Banana Pudding), the "cloud came up" as we say in these parts and the place was drenched. I scampered to the Airstream, and being exhausted from the day's labor, fell into bed. The sound of the rain on the Airstream was a tonic and I was quickly asleep. Upon rising, I stepped outside the Airstream for a few moments and, upon returning, discovered that the door was securely locked. Naturally, my keys were securely locked inside the trailer. Thinking that I might have an extra key in the truck, I discovered that I had failed to roll up the window on the driver's side and the interior was soaks -- I am talking a puddle of water in the floor board. Stranded outside in a pair of gym shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops, I had no alternative but to report all these facts to The Old Goat and Tinker. Both, in unison, quetioned me on not having a spare set of keys readily available in an accessible location. Knowing that stewing about the matter would accomplish little, I called the Airstream dealer to determine if they might have a pass key to the trailer. I am awaiting a return call now.

So, what does this have to do with justice? If all things balance, then the good fight in the Privet War, the careful planning in anticipation of leaving State and Iraq, the due diligence paid to a close financial discipline that made the truck and the Airstream and the land possible, then something has to go wrong. Flooding the truck and being locked out of the Airstream may well qualify as the balancing events that bring equilibrium to my life equation.

(The Airstream dealer telephoned to say they do not have a pass key. And, neither of Roanoke's locksmiths do Airstream locks. The cost of gaining entry into my home is mounting.)

Fixed Notion

I described the Airstream to WitchWoman in an email. Being from Kansas, she is not exactly long on the imaginative arts. When her son-in-law snapped a picture of a classic truck and travel trailer, the image fixed in her mind of how any truck with Airstream attached coming out of Alabama must look. I am afraid I will never convince her otherwise. The first picture is my rig with the playful lime green Adorondak chairs. The second is Jethro Bodein's get-up.

The High Sheriff

Received a civics lesson today from the Chambers County Sheriff's Office. Some jaybirds dumped a couple dozen used tires off on Tinker's land. Rather than live with it -- something The Old Goat and Tinker have done foreever -- I called the Sheriff's Office. It is clearly illegal dumping, an obvious violation of the law, even in Chambers County. Instead of treating it as a breach of the civil code, the Sheriff's Office referred me to the county health officer. It was, in the Sheriff's opinion, not a "real" crime that demanded allocation of resources. I called the health guy and and he told me that we had to move the tires onto the county right of way along County Road 248 (that is the dirt road on which I live). He would get a gang of county prisoners to pick up the tires, probably sometime next week. If the tires remained where they were dumpted -- on Tinker's land -- he would be powerless to do anything about it since the prisoners cannot go onto private property to pick up stuff. I thanked him and Tinker and I stacked the tires onto the right of way, as directed. Now it is a waiting game until they are picked up. What is instructive is that the Sheriff has his own view of what rises to his attention. Granted, if the cracker-jack Sheriff's Department was actually solving murders and breaking up drug cartels, I would agree with him that discarded tires are a low priority. Such is not the case. After the conversation, I thought about it for a while and remembered that the infamous FBI crime statistics that tell Americans how much crime is infecting their communities are compiled from reports from county sheriffs. If a sheriff wants to show a decline in crime, don't report any crimes. If a sheriff wants to demonstrate his toughness in anticipation of an election, report more arrests. In a word, the crime statistics over which we all make such a fuss are faulty. I can guarantee that Chambers County never reports illegal dumping as an issue although it clearly is. I wonder if the Sheriff would think it a crime if some mysterious person dumpted a truckload of used tires on his front yard? I wonder if he would leap into action and investigate? I wonder if he would even take the call reporting that his front lawn was strewn with used tires?

The other part of the civics lesson was The Old Goat and Tinker. It never occurred to them to call the Sheriff about the tires. They are the best of citizens for elected officials such as the Sheriff. They never complain, they don't bother him with calls, they expect (and get) nothing. The Sheriff can run his department without fear that The Old Goat or Tinker are going to bother him with pesky calls for service. Now, if they would not vote, they would be perfect citizens.

Well, they will be voting, even if I have to drag them to the polls. We are a block of three votes. Watch out!

Hand-to-Hand Combat

My ass is worn slap out. Finished the bush-hogging today then turned my attention to land clearing, specifically my aggressive anti-privet hedge campaign. The dag-gone privet almost got me today. At a critical juncture in the battle, I surprised the foe by whipping out the chain saw and letting that little beauty sing a few chorus of "O Solo Meo." In the end, I puttered home on the tractor, tired and sweaty but victorious. The privet campaign is critical to placement of the Airstream on the land. And, since the Airstream will be home until I build, this is an essential struggle. Not to mention that privet is an invasive species. My suspicion is that the US Department of Agriculture introduced privet to the South in the same way that it blessed us with kudzu. (I am from the Government and I am here to help you.) And, who says that Reconstruction is over? Privet can grow on concrete. It crowds out native plants. Auburn did a study on the impact on privet and concluded that it is kills off hundreds (as I remember 530 or so but my fatigued memory cannot call up the precise number now) of native species. Privet is my enemy. And I am on a crusade, dare I say a jihad, to wipe it off my land. But the battle has its costs. I am exhausted. My clothes are soaked from sweat. My arms and legs are rubbery. The prescription for this situation: long shower and a couple of beers.

Stuck in the Mud

My wallet is $85 lighter after I had to pay Mr. Ward to come wench the tractor out of the mud. It got there when I drove a touch too close to the stream feeding the lake. I knew better but persisted, nevertheless. Still, I finished most of the bush-hogging yesterday and will turn my attention to some clean up work on my land today. That is, after I file for unemployment compensation. Yes, after over forty years of paying and bitching about the public dole, I am lining up with my hand out. OK, I am embarrassed. I plan on wearing sunglasses and a hat into the office. I am not sure which will prod me more to get a job -- health insurance premiums or the shame of feeding at the public trough.

Tinker and I are taking the Airstream to West Point Lake this weekend for a three-day music festival. May do a little fishing in between the musical acts. I asked The Old Goat to join us but he declined. The Lake is just a few miles from the house so we will be close in case he needs something.