I MISS YOU!

Hi, His Scribe followers! I leaped to His Scribbler January 1st, thinking some of you would leap with me. It's attractive and comfortable over there, has a totally different feel. It isn't as wordy and it's more intimate and personal. I think you'll like it. I miss you!

Thank you for your company these past 8-1/2 months

NOTE: Your final exam is below. 

REMEMBER, TOMORROW WE'LL CONTINUE ON His Scribbler - 2011.  

Who is This Man? Online Bible study begins on that website January 2nd.

As this year and this blog end, I want to thank those of you who took the trouble to come visit His Scribe this year, including any who have followed anonymously, with or without strong opinions you have kept to yourself, or any who have barged or tiptoed in by mistake.

Hope to meet you on the other side! 



You may be passing the time counting down to midnight, waiting for that dumb ball to fall. Or counting your blessings of the past year and committing the coming year to Him. But if you have nothing better to do, here's your final exam on the Reynolds family and the Phoenix:

Multiple choice: my dad Earle Reynolds was 1) part of a circus, 2) a scientist, 3) a playwright, 4) a championship tennis player, 5) a yacht designer, 6) captain of Everyman III, 7) a convicted felon.

Which Reynolds sibling navigated the Phoenix around the world and how old was he when the trip began?

Which sibling opted not to sail with the Phoenix (because of the peppermint pudding incident--also mentioned here-- which not one of you asked about!) and went back to the States to enter college instead?

Wikipedia has posted three articles about our family, the roving, radical Reynoldses: Earle L. Reynolds, Barbara Leonard Reynolds and Phoenix of Hiroshima. Doing the research for these articles, I learned things I didn't know about our family (like I just learned that my mother had met with President Truman!). Here's one even the navigator of the Phoenix didn't know: When we left Japan to sail around the world, we sold our "Woody" station wagon as a _____________. 


How about this: When we sailed to the USSR to protest Soviet nuclear testing, the Russian Coast Guard insisted on giving us ____________, ____________, and ___________. (You can also find this out in my recently published book, To Russia with Love.)

Which of the following family phrases do you recognize from these posts and how many can you explain? (Not all of them have been introduced on my blog yet. Maybe we'll have this part of the exam again next New Year's Eve.)

Happy New Year! And don't forget, when you mess up next year, as we all will, the Lord gives us New Days and New Hours as needed, too: "His mercies are new every morning!"

See you on His Scribbler - 2011.

Making no resolutions

On January 1, this blog will continue on His Scribbler - 2011.   

     I don't know about you but I don't make New Year's resolutions. I just like to plan movement in a certain direction. Then it's harder to fail. And I like to get a running start the last week of December.     

     Like, in the coming year I want more--and less. I want more of Him and less of me. I want to spend more time listening to Him. I'd like to "grow deeper" (as Westmont College puts it).

     I want to spend more time doing the things that matter to Him. I want to be more of a blessing to my husband, children and grandchildren. I want to watch God do more in the lives of people we know--see more of them start following the Shepherd or follow Him more closely, more of them let him heal them at their deepest level and deliver them out of bondage.

     I want to worry less. I want to be less controlling.
     I hope to write less--be less wordy.
     I hope to say less--less that's critical of others, less that's critical of myself. Less grumbling and complaining. Less gossip, less adiaphorons. That's a word my brother Tim just used in an email to me. When I asked what it meant, he wrote back, "Try the OED." So I did, having to turn on a lamp near it and peer through the magnifying glass that comes with our 20-pound, 13-volumes-in-two Compact Oxford English Dictionary. It said, "Adiaphoron. . . Non-essential." Seems to me Tim could have just said "non-essential" but I guess that wouldn't be any fun for him. Anyway, I hope to say less that's trivial and irrelevant.           
   
     If your resolutions include studying the Bible in the new year and you don't know where to start, you might like to try my weekly study, Who is This Man? I'll run it on Sundays for nine weeks on His Scribbler 2011. The conclusions which came out of this personal study/meditation were so breath-taking and faith-expanding I developed my study into a study for others. For some years it was used as a correspondence course in our church's prison outreach.
     Lord willing, it will start posting on January 2.

FAMILY: Correction regarding genealogical facts below

     Gina wrote she "just had a huge light bulb go off" in her head. She suddenly realized she and I descended from Oliver Ketcham Sammis through two different daughters of Capt. Nathaniel Webber!
     First OK married Sarah Frances Webber (1827- Jan. 26, 1917), my ancestress, and they had five children. Our line came through their son David Sturges Sammis. Then he divorced her (Gina has the divorce notice), married her sister Jeannie  and they had eight more children. Gina's line came through their son Whitefield.
     So Jeannie the poet, alas, is not in our direct line after all and was not, according to family legend anyway, the one married by her father on his sailing ship--but we get to keep John H. Sammis, the author of Trust and Obey)
     I hope Gina and I are still cousins (and friends)!

(SAMMIS) FAMILY: I have cousins!

     I discovered recently I am related to these people! This year I connected online with Gina Sammis, who turns out to be my third cousin. She is also my first cousin, since I never had any cousins (or aunts or uncles) before! And she only lives about half an hour's drive down the coast. We have gotten together, compared notes, shared pictures, filled in gaps and had lots of fun doing it. (Gina is the cute one in red, flanked by her daughters Alena, Savannah and Chelsea.)

     Gina and I share a humdinger of a great-great-great-great grandfather: Capt. Nathaniel Webber, (1795-1867), commander of the clipper ship Tradewind. Although a sea-captain, he is on my mother's side, not my sea-captain father's.
     An ancestor of mine, he is the father-in-law of an ancestor of Gina's and she has compiled a huge binder of information about him, including a journal he kept (now typed, it is ten pages single-spaced) as (First) Mate aboard the brig President.
     On the President, a merchant ship, Grandpa Webber sailed from New York to the island of Tenerife in "182-," under "Captain B." (By an interesting coincidence, Tenerife is featured on today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.) The round-trip took six months.
     His detailed and absorbing diary is full of examples of "Captain B." making really dumb and dangerous decisions which Webber was constantly trying, by tactful suggestions or secret countermands, to correct.
     The account is so peppered with nautical terms I can feel the deck buck and taste salt spray on my lips.
     He later commanded the clipper ship Tradewind for her second and third voyages in the 1850s. Over her third voyage she was in an exciting race with the clippers Witch of the Wave, Raven, Mandarin, Hurricane, and Comet.
     Commissioned by Jacob Bell, New York and launched August 12, 1851, the Tradewind was the longest and largest U.S. ship of its time.

 

     Family legend has it that Capt. Webber's daughter Jeannie Olivia Berry Webber (1835-1915) married Oliver Ketcham Sammis (1815-1880) aboard one of her father's ships and that her father performed the ceremony.
     Jeannie was a poet. "Granny O'Reilly's Wake" (put to music by David Braham, April 25, 1884) is long but amusing:





Granny O'Reilly liv'd in a palace,
On the bogs of Barrymore;
You could put your hand down thro' the roof,
And open the parlor door!
Old Granny was an honest dame,
She'd pigs, and hens, and goats;
From a knothole in McClosky's barn,
She borrow'd all her oats!

CHORUS: [sung after each verse]
But oh! we had such lots of drink,
And all for friendship's sake,
And the boys and girls had so much fun! At Granny O'Reilly's Wake.

And, Granny she was neat and trim,
As a piece of brand-new silk,
For she always hung her night-cap up,
Just after she strain'd the milk!
But when at last old Granny died,
They 'laid her out' so neat;
With a 'Rob-Roy' shawl around her head,
 And brogans on her feet.

Then poor Granny was 'laid out'
Behind the kitchen door,
And when they brought the coffin in,
They lay it on the floor.
Said Mary Ann O'Reilly 'Now,
I'll tell ye's waht to do:
Come, now, fall on your knees, you marc'less bastes,
and pray ould Granny thro'!

And then we bow'd out heads and cried,
And would no comfort take!
'Till some-one said 'Let's take a drink!
All for poor Granny's sake.'
And when they all had eat a bit,
And each had got a sup,
Pat Rooney held Mike Duffy while
He screw'd the coffin up!

Then to the Burying-ground we rode,
All in such splendid style!
And we didn't leave a soul behind,
No, never a mother's child!
We laid her then, quite gently, in
Her deep and narrow bed;
And many a houl, and many a groan,
And many a tear we shed.

But what do you think, when we got home,
We saw behind the door!
But old Granny O'Reilly, all laid out,
Where she had lain before!
Some said, 'Why, it's old Granny's ghost!"
They all began to shout!
But sure we'd burried the coffin up!
And let old Granny out!

So there were writers in the family even back then! My "new" third-cousin Gina Sammis is an author in her own right, having published (through HeritageMaker) several delightful hardback books of her family history woven around photographs.

For more on Sammis family, see FAMILY: Trust and Obey, May 10, 2010; FAMILY: My grandfather Sterling, July 21, 2010; and FAMILY: Missy Granny/Family crest, July 22, 2010.

Unexpected gift for friends of the Phoenix

     This email just came from a Japanese (hibakusha) friend of my mother's now living in Pittsburgh (boldness added): "My daughter just had 8mm movies transferred to a digital format and guess what.......we have movies of the launching of the Phoenix with you and your parents on it.  It is so exciting....
    "We are going to try to make copies and send it to you.  It was very nostalgic to see the pictures.... almost felt as though I could remember the excitement and all the heat and conversations, the well wishing and then the crashing into the little boat that was too close!!!!
     "Tamiko"               

The gods must be crazy--er, sleeping

I send a daily Bible verse to a dozen friends with stressful life situations. This went out yesterday:

 

"Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." Psalm 121:4

Jerry and I took a friend out for Christmas dinner and the only restaurant we could find open was Chinese (shades of A Christmas Story)! I had hoped for festive Christmas decorations; what we got was two huge bare-bellied Buddhas, one of them stretching as if he had just awakened. . . which reminded me of the following (slightly shortened) anecdote we received recently from Jay Bell, one of our Grace Brethren missionaries to the "nations" within our nation: 

                     Why go on a Temple Trip? 

It's one thing to listen to a lecture on world religions, it's quite another to be able to ask questions of one who practices the religion.

It's one thing to visit a religious establishment while on an overseas short-term missions trip. It's quite another to be able to drive to one. No plane fare necessary! No U.S. passports necessary! No inoculation shots necessary!

It's one thing to hear about the number of unreached people groups "over there."  Iit's quite another to meet them here.

                Temple Trip story: "We're going to let them take a longer nap " 

Two hundred fifty students signed up for the afternoon trip to the Hindu Temple. Late that morning one of the Hindu priests called and informed us they were going to let the gods take a longer afternoon nap.

"Yikes," I thought, as I approached the podium to make the announcement.

As I looked out over 2,000 high school students I announced, "For those going on the Temple Trip this afternoon, we have to make a correction in the orientation and departure time. We just received a call from one of the priests informing us that they are going to let the gods take a longer afternoon nap."

I watched 2,000 jaws drop. Total bewilderment. I thought that maybe a joke might break the silence. I said, "You know, those aren't bad hours for being a god." Complete silence! They were still hung up on "gods?. . . naps?"

Aren't you grateful that OUR God is the God of Psalm 121:4?

Reynolds v. Shaver (2 of 2)

     From seeing Shaver values as materialistic, I grew to think that the Shaver way of doing things was the only way. I looked down on Reynolds social ineptness, including my own. I washed things that shrank if washed and ironed things at temperatures that dissolved them. I set hot pans on wooden furniture, leaving permanent circles. I scraped Teflon pans with metal utensils. When I dropped Shaver dishes, they didn't bounce.
     The fine distinctions between what would clean wood, glass, leather, and silver were all mysteries to me. The only labor-saving device I knew how to use was a typewriter.
     My mother-in-law gave me an African violet at the peak of health when our son was born. I watered it, but all the blooms fell off. I didn't know any more about African violets than I did about babies. I found them both intimidating. So I stuck the plant on the floor of our bedroom closet and closed the door. (By the grace of God, I did a little better with the baby!)
    Gradually, my contempt for "things Reynolds" gave way to an ability to evaluate these things on a case-by-case basis. My mother-in-law, whom I consider infallible on all domestic matters, is always open to culinary innovation. She mentioned one day that turning bacon often was no longer recommended in the magazines she was reading. From now on, she was going to turn it only once. This gave me pause. Reynoldses had never turned their bacon more than once. Was it possible we Reynoldses had been doing something right?
     Then the Shavers cut back on bacon and red meat, focusing more on nuts and grains. Reynoldses already lived on cereal and peanut butter sandwiches.
     Shaver have electric pencil sharpeners. Reynoldses always whittle pencils sharp with a penknife. But one day I found my father-in-law honing a pencil with a knife in spite of the electric pencil sharpener. Maybe it was all right to do some things the Reynolds way.
     Rick and I still don't see eye to eye on the graduated income tax. We didn't vote for the same candidate for president. But we've agreed to disagree. It's worked for 25 years of marriage, come December.

(Published in the Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, Nov. 8, 1992)

Note: Reynoldses laughed at this article. Shavers were not amused.

 

Reynolds v. Shaver (1 of 2)

     I'm not sure where to put this article in what has turned out to be so autobiographical. I wrote it when my first husband, Eric Shaver, and I were coming up on our 25th anniversary. (Jerry and I have 18 years, 3 months and a week to go until that milestone.)
     But it seems to fit here, where I seem to be wrapping up the Reynolds part of my life. I think you'll enjoy it--and Jerry says he doesn't mind.

INCOMPATIBILITY KEEPS MARRIAGE INTERESTING

     I come from a family of Democrats--liberal, secular humanist, anti-nuke Democrats. My husband Rick comes from a family of Republicans--conservative, Bible-believing, card-carrying John Birch Society Republicans. Both families were concerned for our country, but they didn't agree as to what was wrong with it or what to do about it. Our first full-blown argument was over the graduated income tax.
     The differences were not just philosophical. The culture shock reverberated down through the most minute of habits. The Shavers' clothes fit; they are clean, pressed, and stylish. The last time I saw my dad, he had on a pair of pants with frayed cuffs and splotches of grease, and a baggy sweater; he'd worn the same ensemble when I saw him the year before.
     Shavers carefully select furniture and buy quality when they can afford to pay for it with cash. Reynoldses pick up furniture as needed, at a thrift store or yard sale, and they don't worry about children standing on it or guests setting wet glasses on it.
     Shavers have carpets, sofas, and dinner. Reynoldses have rugs, couches, and supper.
     Everything in the Shaver household is chosen for its restful and artistic effect; everything utilitarian is covered or hidden in cupboards. Reynoldses buy nothing merely for decoration. Doorknobs are for hanging shirts on. If there is a bowl of flowers on the table, it is propping up piles of unanswered correspondence.
     Shavers carpet their whole house, even the bathroom. Reynoldses think wall-to-wall carpeting is sissy.   When I visited my dad at the Quaker retreat center where he serves as overseer, he made scathing comments about the fact that some of the cabins had been carpeted. Later he gave me a tour of the center and when we stepped into one of the cabins he pointed out its shabby indoor-outdoor carpeting with a contemptuous snort.
     By contrast, the first time I met my future father-in-law, we were having corn chips and home-made guacamole dip around the oval pecan-wood coffee table in the living room of their ranch-style house overlooking their swimming pool and the Catalina Channel. Nervous, I knocked over a half glass of water. Rick ran for paper towels and I patted the wet spot on the carpet, apologized profusely, and reached for another handful of chips.
     But Rick's father, without a word, had gone to the kitchen for towels of his own. Now, as if in some solemn ritualistic rain dance in reverse, he was folding each one into a precise square, laying it on the damp spot and gravely, with total concentration, jogging on it, picking it up, re-folding it and trotting in place again, while I watched with disbelief.
     My in-laws drive an immaculate pale-green Mercedes--carefully. When they come to see us, they park down the block so the car isn't under a tree and they come to the front door. The members of my family drive whatever car, their own or a loaner from a friend, happens to be functioning. They park right by the house, under the trees, and let themselves in the back door. (My mother mourned when we moved to a house without a back door.)
     When Shavers travel, they don't like to impose on the hospitality of friends they are visiting. Reynoldses assume their friends will take them in. They organize their routes according to the locations of friends they can stay with.
     Shavers make mealtimes a sacrament. The whole day revolves around three meals, which are each a work of art. Reynoldses think of cooking and eating as an interruption. They make meals when they get hungry, stirring with one hand while holding a Dostoevsky novel in the other.   
     Shavers serve condiments in little dishes; Reynoldses eat around ketchup bottles and mustard jars.
     Shavers save their orange peels to run down the garbage disposal last to leave a fresh scent; Reynolds don't have garbage disposals.
     Shavers wrap each Christmas present so it is worthy of display in the Louvre. Each member of the family takes as much time to admire the wrappings as to exclaim over the contents. Reynoldses stuff Christmas presents into wrinkled brown bags which are whisked away and reused several times during the exchange.
     The contrast between the families is never more pointed than in their attitude toward gifts. Shavers keep them. Reynoldses pass them on.
    
(To be continued)