Opa and Little Westley

 

Fun at Sunnyside Oyster Bar

Making It Official

Joining with the congregation at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach. 

Pictured with Pastor Carlos Rodriguez.

Baby Teddy Loves Opa!

 

"Dry Dock" Sailing

Here is a little “dry dock” sailing to give you an idea what’s  behind it all. Have fun!

The Physics of Sailing—KQED QUEST



* This post is from an email sent to granddaughter Elanore. 

Some Thoughts Concerning Homeschooling, on Olivia's Graduation

I & L,

J'ellen Yeatts asked how the graduation was. I dropped a few 'tea-time' words and then thought that some more thought would be in place. I share the following just now. (See my letter to her, below.) If you can agree, fine; if you do not, correction will be welcome for my own edification. In all, it is a condensation of my personal views. I started out with a negative disposition to homeschooling, way back, when it all started. You may read in and between the lines my present disposition towards your kind of homeschooling. Laurie, I have not here mentioned the schooling you actually gave to all four of yours / ours before they reached KEYS. Consider the compliment to extend to all of you: "No house can stand on a week foundation, oh no! Oh no!" (Harry Belafonte?)

Hope your vacation was grand and your recollected energy will be boundless.
Opa

 

Hi, Ellen!

I owe you more than the few assorted words I granted to you in my remarks about Olivia's graduation.  Here is a tad more.

Iivo and Laurie had their kids home-schooled. That you knew already. Evie was the first to graduate, and she is now settled in her professional life and married. Philip was the next to graduate, and he captured a National Scholarship award. You know that also. Olivia was not so lucky as that, but she got an invitation from VA Tech—the Hokies, in the medical school. She aims to be a surgeon! I see so many high school kids around here clamoring for the high position of greeter at Walmart. And Rosewood High is listed as a national high achievement school.

Just looking at the scores of these of my grandchildren, this is not small potatoes! My hat is off to what the homeschoolers have done in VA Beach. For the ceremony, each student had a spot to articulate his/hers experiences and his plans and how he/she expects to support those endeavors with previous experiences, current qualifications, and upcoming efforts. There were some very impressive articles in the graduation pamphlet. 

And the thing is, having experienced this with Evie and Philip first, and having the scheme and results duplicated with Olivia, the thing is impressive. This is not having homeschool. This is private academy standard with not only teachers and students,  but also parents and families involved throughout.

As each student was called up to receive his papers, he was met by parents and siblings on the stage. One or the other of the parents would present a more or less cutting speech of recognition and expectation, and, usually the father, would hand the diploma to the son or daughter, and then the mother would move the tassel on the pancake. They'd do the hugging stuff on the stage and then move off to make room for the next graduate. On an overhead screen, selected pictures of the student's life were projected during this ceremony. 

It was not the oration that impressed me, but the absolute proof that this stage was not achieved by teachers guarding the temporarily forgotten kids of parents and siblings busy elsewhere during this schooling period. It was the fact that whole families had worked together with the teachers.

Hope this helps to transmit my impressions worthily! 

Rich

I&L,

If you want to protest my thoughts, you know where to plant your objections.

Impressive work! All of you! Really! 

Carry on! Only one more to go!

Love, 

Opa 

Moving

No! This is not about my moving. I am adding yet another real estate agent to the list of those who have craved to sell ol' White Rock—for a commission, of course. I had to look for a new agent, because the most recent one fell by the wayside. All previous ones in the past twenty years or so have done that. The White Rock is an agent killer!

This new deal is going to be electronic. No tedious meeting in stuffy offices with reams of papers being solemnly passed from hand to hand, each one receiving the participants' initials under the eagle eye of the lawyer and his assistant.

I simply got an email with a pen as a signing symbol and the advice to click on that symbol in order to sign the listing contract. But no contract! Sign a blank sheet! I, the signer, turn all my personal property over to the person from whom this invitation-to-sign originated. So simple have things become! How could I miss those many decades of slow evolution from legal suffocating protraction to a handshake with a computer? I do, of course, remember that sometime in our very remote past a handshake was the seal to an unbreakable contract. You try to slip away, one of the six slugs of the Colt will get you, sooner or later.

The suggestion that this has to do with moving comes from the following apparent line of thought: you deal with a real estate agent, of course you want to sell your house. If you sell your house, logically you must move to another house. Here is the deal: Without having asked for any of it, you are now swamped with offers from every listed business even remotely connected with the selling or buying of real estate property, and each of them says, 'If you sign up with me for my services, you get a discount of 10%, or 15%, or even 25% or more.' If you are diligent in contrast surveying and combining all these discounts, you might sign up for an overall deal that returns money to you! It'll take a lot of effort and zillions of papers to sign. So don't get your hopes up too fast nor too high.

Want a country store that has been in business since 1945? Here's the deal, and here's the handshake.

Ol' Jonah he lived in a whale . . .

The story that is normally and in the Bible told us about Jonah is only a fraction of what really transpired. Listen, and be amazed!

History records that Jonah, a disciple of the prophet Elisha, was told to bring bad news to Israel: for their sins, they were to be destroyed. Israel repented and the destruction did not take lace. Thus, Jonah earned the reputation of "the false prophet". Next he was ordered to visit the heathens and tell them of their impending destruction. On his way he reasoned that, when the heathens heard of their doom, they would repent and God would take pity on them and forgive them, and so he, Jonah, would become known the world over as the false prophet.

To escape this fate, he decided to go to the sea. He came to Joppa on the coast and eventually embarked on a vessel. This in itself is a tale of adventures and miracles and through this Jonah was taught that there is no hiding from God. As they were two days out, a storm arose and put the ship in peril. A crew of sailors from all seventy nations on the earth were on board, each with his own idol representing to each their personal god. They decided to pray to each of these gods and the one that would help them out of the storm they would recognize as the true god. But none of them proved effective in the rescue. At last, the captain woke up Jonah who was peacefully asleep while all this was going on and asked him what nation he was from. Jonah said he was a Hebrew and the captain responded that it was known that the Hebrews had a pretty powerful God and Jonah should pray to Him for their rescue. Jonah confessed that he was really the cause of their peril and they should set him adrift. The passengers first refused to do this cruelty, but as the storm grew in intensity, they held him over the side and the storm abated. They pulled him back and the storm picked up. So they let him overboard till his feet were in the water and again the storm calmed and they pulled him back and the storm picked up strength again. Next they dunked Jonah into the see up to his knees and the same sequence occurred. Thus, in stages, they proved to themselves that they could not be saved unless they set Jonah adrift so they eventually let him go.

During the days of creation, God had fashioned the one fish that was destined to swallow Jonah and so it happened that he wound up in the stomach of the whale. This was such a spacious adobe that he was quite comfortable. The eyes of the whale served him as windows so he could see all the sights and there was also a large diamond that shone so brightly that he could observe everything that happened all around him and his fish, all the way to the bottom of the sea. The whale wanted to be kind to Jonah and swam hither and thither to show him the sights. He even showed him the spot in the Red Sea where the sons of Jacob crossed when they left Egypt.

Thus, Jonah was the first human who cruised from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea through the straight of Gibraltar and down along the western coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and cruised up along the eastern coast of the continent and into the Red Sea. They also returned back to the Mediterranean Sea along the same route, presumably, even though this part of the story is not detailed in the ancient records.

The whale must have traveled at a very high rate of speed, for only thee days Jonah spent in the big fish. He felt so comfortable that it never occurred to him to pray to God for his deliverance.

Then God sent a big female fish across their way and the female told the whale that she would devour him including his passenger, and so she did! She bore three hundred and sixty-five thousand little fish inside and Jonah had to share the rather tight space with this crowd and he was very uncomfortable. So he prayed to God and promised to repent and that he would redeem his oath and God heard him. So the female fish spew out Jonah over a distance of nine hundred and sixty-five parasangs, and he alighted on dry land.

The parasang is a historical Iranian unit of itinerant distance, the length of which varied according to terrain and speed of travel. The European equivalent is the league. The parasang may have originally been some fraction of the distance an infantryman could march in some predefined period of time.

The league originally was defined as the distance that one person can walk in an hour. This is between three to five miles, which is a very great stretch. Thus it is not clear from the records just for what distance Jonah was airborne. It could be anywhere around four thousand miles of our today's measure, which would indicate that the two big fish met somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean, or that the female fish was waiting for Jonah's vessel even in the Red Sea. What happened to him is by any perspective very amazing. Also, even though all the while Jonah  was in the stomach of one fish or another, the ship's crew that had abandoned him must have been aware of what was going on because it is recorded  that “These miracles induced the ship's crew to abandon idolatry, and they all became pious proselytes in Jerusalem.”

Excerpt From: Ginzberg, Louis. “The Legends of the Jews — Volume 4.” iBooks. 

Retold in abbreviated form by the present author.

.  .  . but the things you're liable

To read in the Bible,

They ain't necessarily so. 🎤

At the Start of the Last Clambering

Dear Laurie,

To your Birthday I wish you much Happy! 

May the friendly spirits make their nests on your shoulders and never leave you. According to folk tales, this is the beginning of your last year of fighting up hill. In 365 days, life is supposed to get easy, as your reach the crest and from there it is supposed to go down hill. 

Of course, all of this is just for fun and full of bologna. The truth is that life is beautiful and loaded with peace and love, which is ours to take if we just open our hearts to it. 

The counting of years has no merit at all. Every new day is a reawakening, and may each morning's sun ray brighten your entrance onto another day. 

To make the start to this ‘last clambering’ easier, I contacted this body spa and ordered a gift card for you to spend a half hour under the doings of a therapists hands, elbows, knees and feet, whatever tools they apply. This gift card will wait for you at the Spa and you can redeem it by mentioning the magical numbers 010916A.

For further identification, I talked to Michelle, the receptionist, today, on the phone and all you need to do is schedule your appointment with them at your preference.

Love, and have a lovely evening celebrating with my family,

Opa

New Year

Every year, when the old year ran towards its end and the new year reared its head above the cradle frame, Mims, mine and Lulu's mother, would set to work that nothing old would be carried across the threshold on New Year's night. She would make sure that every room was spick and span , nothing laying about waiting to be put away, all laundry done, pressed and folded, no dirty dishes and the pantry full to look the new year squarely and unblinkingly in the face. She made sure that all pending correspondence was taken care of and that all bills were paid, even anticipated ones, like the milk man, who would leave his weekly ticket with his delivery on Friday early morning, even if Friday was New Year's Day. In the evening befor the very formal dinner, she would strip us, her children, and give us a serious scrubbing in the tub; before that she would have made sure that our fingernails had been clipped according to rules and while we were soaking in the hot water she'd wash our last set of clothes and laid out fresh ones to wear that evening. Even the towels we used after the bath were washed. That was before the days of automatic washing machines and dryers so, although clean, these last pieces of clothing were allowed to be left hanging on the line to dry in fresh air.

Such traditions carry over. Lulu had it in her blood and I would approve of and support any move in that same direction in my family. Being a male chauvinist, sometimes my contributions to the end result were not very effective. 

Now I am living alone and have little traffic in my far off location and as it is, with age one becomes not lazy as much as increasingly unable to keep up with everything. It must be unsiversal that one in such a situation begins to make short cuts and avoids extra motion and effort. Is from this that th expression 'dirty old man' originated? Thus, it came to pass that this present year was running towards its end and I began to contemplate defection. What's so big about doing more for December 31st and January 1st that I do not do for the other 363 days? Have I ever been punished for leaving the dishes of my dinner table in the sink - other than having to touch them again for cleaning the next morning? The plan continued to grow, or the will to subject myself to old practices began to crumble until at last there was the unspoken but firm intention to completely ignore the and of the old and the birth of the new year.

That's when my Mims' soul reached out and took control. Four or five days ago, just after the Christmas celebrations with Kaarin and Karl and Steve and also Riina and  Kristjan I was struck by a mild bug. It was mild, I say, because when you are living dependent only upon yourself, you may not get sick. Vital things come to a standstill if you do. So I continued with my ordinary routines and assumed now that I was feeling poorly I had the perfect alibi to not do what Mims had taught me to do was right and moral and pleasing in the eyes of the Lord. I took my vitamin C and my zinc and drank my teas and took my reconstituting naps and then - 

This morning I woke up,at four and was swimming in sweat. My fever had broken and I felt like reborn but was not comfortable because of the soaked pajamas and the wet sheets and because the thermostat at this hour has not yet told the furnace to go to work and heat the place to comfort level.

There was another unbroken tradition wherever I went in my life: night sweat results in a shower or a bath, fresh bedding and fresh clothes. I could have coped with all of this but suddenly I realized that this was Mims' gentle way of admonishing her children when they got off the proper path and the realization set me straight.

Before breakfast, the bedding was in the washing machine, and I stood in the shower. Then the kitchen sink was cleared out and a breakfast served. After breakfast the first load was finished and loaded in the dryer, the washing machine was working on the second load with my laundry and the shower towels, I put my boots on and dropped my check at the electric company (that bill had arrived just yeaterday and was not due till idle of the next month) I went to town and got more laundry soap and at the grocery store. Stopped for some eggs and sausages for the festive breakfast tomorrow and I needed not more because my larder is stuffed in anticipation of a real snow storm which might tie me down for days. 

I came home and the failures began to heap up on me: that snow and ice storm we had a few days ago formed the foundation for a permanent ice cap on Town Hill. Snow had dropped off the roof over the garage doors and began to pile up to prevent coming out and going in with the car and made it extremely uncomfortable to climb over even to just go to the mail box. But the stuff took no picking. After I had moved four shovels of packed ice I was finished.

Upstairs, I found the Blue Jays raiding the feeder and I refilled it. When I hung I back up, one of the lines broke and the bird food dropped to the ground and in the snow. I fixed that and tried to shovel some of the snow off the deck but my stamina gave up and I dropped on the couch to rest.

Partial salvation came through Jason who arrived with his front loader and 'dug me out' at the garage and the front door, even though his machine had to take just one or two bites do that. Blessed be Mr. Diesel whose invention powered that Ford tractor and all the Hydraulics.

Now I am ready to meet the New Year face to face without a blink.

And blessed be Mims who made it all come to pass.

Happy New Year, all!