His Scribe

I MISS YOU!

2011-01-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-30T00:01:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-29T00:37:00.000-08:00

     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!

2010-12-29T00:36:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

     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

2010-12-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-12-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

     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)

2010-12-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

     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)

One more--Merry Christmas from YouTube

2010-12-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

Where's the line to see Jesus? Song by Becky Kelley

Merry Christmas from Jerry and Jessica

2010-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends,
   We are enjoying your cards, newsletters and e-missives. I (Jessica) love receiving your photos and updating our Fridge Family. Last year we lost 14 friends or acquaintances--make that 15: we just heard that another friend died suddenly yesterday. We're praying especially for the newly-widowed this season. On the bright side we gained 21 new-borns: Lily Ann, Landon, Emmy, Zachary, Eva Shalom, Darby, Samuel, Lucas, Elijah, Serenity, Josiah, Joseph, Adele, Levi, Mia, Kaylynn, Presley, Lacey, Sophia, Kenneth, and Hannah Ruth. We're rejoicing with those families. So the cycle of life continues.
     Other people's Christmas newsletters have cute titles using the senders' names: Hires' Heartbeat, Life on the Farr Side, Our Spiel, Mission Bells, Fitzpatrick Gazette. So ours, our-year-in-links, is going to be:

                                   RENSHAW RAMBLINGS
Jerry and I are enjoying his retirement. This year we rambled through south-western Canada on the Rocky Mountaineer and took a Travel Club Tour bus trip up the California coast to Alisal Ranch and further, to see monarch butterflies and elephant seals (quite a contrast!) near Pismo Beach.

We were thankful, in our ramblings, to be able to see one of my brothers, one of Jerry's brothers, all three of our children and four grandchildren this year--barely. We saw Becky, David and Katherine (then 5 years old) for part of the first day of 2010 as we flew out of Oklahoma City after spending a snowy Christmas, 2009, with them. (We hope to see them for more than one day in 2011! In fact they're due here only 22 days from now.) This is last year's photo (when Katherine had six more teeth):

In September we flew to Cleveland, Tennessee, for our oldest granddaughter Cheryl's wedding to Don Stuart. Here they are with Cheryl's adoptive parents (we're her birth grandparents) and her sister Emily.

And here are our middle grandchildren, Jessie and Jake, who were in the wedding:

Ben and Jill moved to within an hour's drive of us, from San Diego to Corona del Mar. Jill is especially delighted to be back where she grew up and just six blocks from the beach where she was baptized and where Ben proposed to her. We haven't seen Ben's feet touch the ground since their wedding and she says he makes her "smiley." They celebrated their second wedding anniversary six days ago. Ben has only one year to go until he will be Ben Shaver, D.Ed.

Jerry read 98 novels this year (so far), by authors from LaHaye, Thoene, Alcorn, and Dekker to Austen and Bronte. I read almost all of Karen Kingsbury's books--oh, and the Apocrypha. (One year we both read almost all of C.S. Lewis, another year it was the other Inklings, the next it was George MacDonald. One year it was Jan Karon.) Our favorite movie of the year: the long-awaited Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In April I started a blog. God weaned me away from keeping a journal just for myself and gave me the greater pleasure of sharing my ramblings with you. On January 1, His Scribe will move to the more modest His Scribbler.

Even though I did not write any books this year, I had one published in English for the first time and one (long out of print) posted online. In January, Gianna: Aborted and Lived to Tell About It is due to be re-issued.

We hosted the powerful Beth Moore "Breaking Free" Bible Study after I went through the study at church and we had the privilege of praying with and for many people going through rough times. We housed several friends long-term so they could be near their work or ministry or could take time out to work on their marriage. We also boarded two (incompatible) cats long-term when their owners were temporarily unable to care for them.

We appreciated being able to sing in two marvelous church concerts: On Easter we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, the whole point of Christ's coming. For Christmas, we celebrated the two advents of Jesus Christ in "Poised Between Memory and Hope." May you live with us between those two comings, poised between memory and hope.

WISHING EACH OF YOU GOD'S VERY BEST TODAY AND EVERY DAY THROUGHOUT THE NEW YEAR!

Love from Jerry and Jessica (and sleepy blinks from Sudoku)

Merry Christmas from YouTube (3):

2010-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

For our third Christmas gift to you, please watch:

That's my King! by Dr. S.M. Lockridge

Merry Christmas from YouTube (2):

2010-12-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

For our second Christmas gift to you, please watch:

Hallelujah Chorus - flash mob

Merry Christmas from YouTube (1):

2010-12-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

For our first Christmas gift to you, please watch:

Steve Harvey introducing Christ

Golden Rule, Phoenix and Greenpeace connection

2010-12-21T00:01:00.001-08:00

   I just found out that Greenpeace developed out of the Golden Rule and Phoenix protests against nuclear testing by private boat:
     Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner, author of the new book, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press) has an article out on The History News Network, "The 'Golden Rule' Will Sail Again." An interesting paragraph from the article shows the influence of the Golden Rule and Phoenix protests, including the birth of Greenpeace:

   "Inspired by the voyage of the 'Golden Rule,' an American anthropologist, Earle Reynolds, and his family promptly sailed their own yacht, the 'Phoenix,' into the testing zone. Antinuclear demonstrations sprang up around the country and debate over the issue reached new heights. Later that year, the beleaguered U.S. government agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium. In 1963, still reeling from popular protests, it signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere. Although nuclear testing continued underwater and underground, it was challenged in a similar fashion by a new organization, Greenpeace. Indeed, Greenpeace's 'Rainbow Warrior' was a lineal descendant of the 'Golden Rule.'

For more about the Golden Rule-Phoenix-Greenpeace connection, Google "Greenpeace, Marie Bohlen, Dorothy Stowe, and Golden Rule,"as, for example:

The official Greenpeace USA website: Dorothy Stowe - 1920-2010

Greenpeace: How a Group of Journalists, Ecologists, and Visionaries Changed the World by Rex Weyler, p. 65

The Long Voyage: The Golden Rule and Resistance to Nuclear Testing in Asia and the Pacific by Lawrence S. Wittner

Wikipedia: Albert_Bigelow (captain of Golden Rule), Search for "Greenpeace"

Greenpeace, Earth First! and The Earth Liberation Front: The Progression of the Radical Environmental Movement in America by Christopher J. Covill

Environmental activism and world civic politics by Paul Kevin Wapner, p. 45

My mother met President Truman!

2010-12-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

I just found out my mother, Barbara Reynolds, and some of the survivors of the Hiroshima bomb (hibakusha) met with President Truman during their World Peace Study Mission in 1964! I've edited the following interview, sent to me by one of the translators.

This is a translation of the excerpts for the book entitled “Pilgrimage to Hiroshima” written in Japanese by Mizuhoko Kotani. The book was published in 1995 by the publisher Tsukumashobo. Chapter 4, from page 135 to page 139 was translated into English by World Friendship Center members, Michiko Yamane, Takako Hiramoto and Mieko Yamashita.

An Interview with President Truman

On the afternoon of May 5, [1964] the World Peace Study Mission from Hiroshima and Nagasaki met former President Harry S. Truman, who had given the order to drop the Atomic Bomb, and was interviewed at the Truman Library in Independence City, Missouri.

The Library has not only many documents and historical records from during his presidency but also a room that looks exactly like the Oval Office in the White House. The historical interview with hibakusha was held in the big auditorium with a capacity of 250. Truman appeared on the stage received by a lot of TV camera lights and flash-bulbs from the news reporters who thronged there.

Truman had made official announcements about the reason for his decision to drop the A-bombs. However, he had never met hibakusha until then.

Truman was eighty years old. Takuo Masumoto was 76. Matsumoto, leader of the delegation, had experienced the A-bombing at the campus of Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, a prestigious mission school, of which he was headmaster. He had lost his wife and 350 students. On the stage the two men shook hands firmly, smiling as if to say, “an enemy yesterday is a friend today.” Behind Matsumoto seven other hibakusha were present, including Hiromu Morishita [current chair of WFC], a high school teacher, Shizuko Abe, a case worker, Hiroko Takahara, Chie Yoshida, and Akira Mitsui, a newspaper reporter.

While explaining the reasons for his decision to drop the A-bombs 17 years before Truman said, “In August 1945 I used it in order to end the war without adding half a million more casualties on both sides. I could not help but use it under the circumstances.”

It was true, as Truman remarked that there had been a plan to invade the mainland of Japan through Kyushu with 775,000 soldiers, and 31,000 casualties were expected during the first three days alone. Japan had not accepted the Potsdam Declaration, despite the fact that not only Tokyo, but most major cities, were bombarded by countless B-29’s almost every day. On the contrary, the government [of Japan] was urging people, including women and children, to carry bamboo spears, and take to heart a slogan that we must defend Japan, a divine land, as long as the last soldier remains.

The order was issued that an atomic bomb should be dropped on any of the cities of Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki unless Japan surrendered by August 3^rd. It came from Washington to Tinian US Air Base. Japan didn’t surrender, even after the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6^th. The second one was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9^th.

Barbara [Reynolds, founder of WFC] and Matusmoto talked about the interview with Truman. The conclusion was that if they had asserted the inhumanity of the A-bombs and brought the issue of violations of international law up to Truman at the interview, he would have criticized the way the Japanese Military urged citizens, including women and younger people to fight on even if they were the last person in Japan. They believed that they would have been at a loss and would have had a fruitless argument. They had to be satisfied with Truman’s assertion that “It never happened again.”

“After both Japan and the US once fought a desperate fight in the war, both countries created better cooperative relationships than other countries. Let’s make this friendly relationship more important than any other thing.” Truman always led the talk with Matsumoto with a smile.

This interview was broadcast all over American TV networks and made a front page headline “Historical Interview” in the New York Times.

Some A-bomb survivors who were present at the interview were indignant, saying, “the interview ended in a whitewash. We should have overtaken [insisted on his recognition of] his responsibility for mankind.” Barbara [Reynolds] calmed them down and said, “It was so good that we informed American TV viewers of the living situation of the people of Hiroshima through this interview.” The hibakusha's feelings toward Mr. Truman were only natural. They thought: if only President Truman had not given an order, the disasters in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never have happened and they would not have to live with fear of the A-bomb disease even now.

Thirteen years later when Truman was interviewed by CBS TV on the argument over America’s hydrogen bomb testing, he again explained the grounds of his decision for using the A-bombs. “In those days America was planning to invade Japan and face the enemy, at the Kanto Plain and the south-western part of Japan. One and a half million soldiers would have been needed and 750,000 casualties, including 250,000 deaths would have been inevitable. Since we had this new type of powerful weapon at hand, I did not feel any conscientious torment for its use simply because it was a mass murder weapon. Nobody would want war, and I oppose war. However, if you did not use the weapon at hand knowing it surely would bring you victory, you would be a fool. I hope hydrogen bombs would not be used, but if the world were thrown into chaos, it might be used.”

Barbara thought they would have to be satisfied with the fact that hibakusha could meet Truman for the first time in 19 years since the war, where Truman admitted that the A-bombs should never be used again. If used, the world would be destroyed. She tried to satisfy herself by thinking that it was at least good that tens of thousands of Americans who watched this interview on TV came, hopefully, to realize the possible results – the end of the world – if the hydrogen bomb were used. If used, instead of putting the world back into order, it would create a greater chaos with the gigantic explosion.

Response from my brother (the one who navigated the Phoenix around the world): "After meeting with the hibakusha, later in the same session, with the hibakusha still present, Truman was asked by an interviewer what he most regretted in his life. He responded "That I didn't meet my wife earlier."

"When Barbara told me that, I hoped for Truman's sake that there was no afterlife, because that comment would surely have gotten him an extra millenium of Hell."

Ted

HAPPY 2ND ANNIVERSARY, BEN AND JILL!!!

2010-12-19T00:02:00.000-08:00

KIDS: Teaching kids about Santa Claus

2010-12-19T00:01:00.002-08:00

     One night-before-Christmas when I was two or three, I needed to tell Mummy and Daddy something after they'd tucked me in. I worked my way out of bed and was halfway down the stairs when I heard their voices. I peered through the railing and saw my parents standing before the fireplace. Murmuring together, one bent to pick up objects and hand them to the other, who was stuffing them into our stockings.
     They were doing Santa Claus' job and I knew at once they wouldn't be doing his job if he existed to do it for himself. Although they never knew I saw them, I never believed in Santa again. I felt betrayed. It was hard to believe Santa had betrayed me since he didn't exist. So I knew Mummy and Daddy were the frauds.
     I lost the first third of my trust in my parents' credibility and I haven't liked Santa Claus since. (I've already told you about the other two-thirds: 1. When we moved to Japan, I didn't like fish and Daddy tried to get me to eat our weekly swordfish steaks by assuring me when we had eaten the whole fish, we'd get the sword. We ate that fish for three years. I left Japan wondering how big that thing was--but underneath I knew the truth.
   (2. On our maiden voyage from Japan to Hawaii on the Phoenix, Daddy had me make yards and yards of baggy-wrinkle. He said the practice was good for me; when we reached Hawaii (he said) there was going to be a baggy-wrinkle-making contest and I'd win for sure. I'm still waiting.
   On the Phoenix, even though none of us believed in Jesus Christ, we set up our nativity scene on the top of the encyclopedias by Ted's bunk and each day we inched the camels across them toward the baby Jesus. (We also wrapped crepe paper around the trunk of the mast, the part that was below decks, as a Christmas tree.)
     I probably wouldn't have wanted to raise my children believing in Santa anyway, but when I became a believer at 19, my commitment to the only Source of "good and perfect gifts," who is a jealous God and will not share His glory with another, cinched my convictions. An invisible Being who was omniscient about motives and actions and who was omnipresent at least on Christmas Eve--a Being who could reduce himself supernaturally to fit down a chimney--was definitely competing with my God for His glory.
     I knew the person of Santa Claus was based on St. Nicholas, who was good to the poor. It didn't make any difference. I didn't want my children finding out one invisible, omniscient, omnipresent Being we'd taught them to believe in was a fraud. Wouldn't they doubt the other One, the real One--the One who could supernaturally fit Himself into a manger, even into a woman's womb? Wouldn't they doubt us, the ones who had taught them myth and truth side by side? Wouldn't they throw the Baby out with the blarney?
   But my first husband didn't see any problem with including Santa Claus in our Christmas. Santa had been a fun part of his growing up. He dismissed my fears (not that I was as assertive about them then as I would be now) as groundless. Of course our kids would be able to distinguish between J. C. and S.C.!
     So on Christmas Eve, we'd send the kids to bed early "so Santa could come." Sometimes Rick got them really excited as they lay there trying hard to sleep, by telling them he could hear hooves scrabbling on the roof or distant whinnies. In the morning, a couple of the gifts would be labeled "from Santa." For my part, I downplayed the portly elf. I avoided Santa-decorated wrapping paper and figurines (except for the one where Santa, hat off, kneels before the manger).
     I don't know when I realized the kids were playing the game with us--as a game. Maybe it was the first time Becky spoke into the lull after she and Ben had emptied their stockings: "Oh, I think Santa's coming back! He forgot something. Mom and Dad, I think you'd better leave the room."
     When we came back, our own stockings were bulging with all our favorite treats: nuts and sugar-free syrup for Rick, peanut M & Ms and marinated artichoke hearts for me. We gave Santa big hugs by proxy and the tradition was set.
     Time passed. Now Ben and Becky were teenagers and the only child in the family was their cousin Andy. One Christmas morning when Andy's mother Linda (Rick's sister) went into the living room to turn up the furnace and turn on the tree lights, she discovered that the bichon frise had chewed through the wrappings of a package containing something edible and had ingested a good chunk of it (with no effects on him at all).
     It took all of us to convince a dubious Andy later that Prancer had eaten the left rear panel of his new chocolate Ferrari.
     Somehow, through it all, the kids grew up believing Jesus Christ is God and Santa Claus is a game. I underestimated them. They're not confused and their faith survived intact. And each year I add an angel or madonna to the branches of the Christmas tree.

Tooth Fairy Project - Good News!

2010-12-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Follow-up on Tooth Fairy Project (see August 7 and 8, 2010 on this blog).

Joseph Mangano, Executive Director of The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) writes: RPHP is a research group that studies cancer risk from atom bomb tests and nuclear reactor emissions. Since its founding in 1985, its members have published 27 medical journal articles and 7 books on the topic, and have been covered by many media. For more, please visit RPHP at www.radiation.org.

RPHP has the pleasure of announcing 2 new and exciting developments.

1. BABY TOOTH/CANCER STUDY. On December 1, our 27th journal article was published in the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first study to examine atom bomb fallout cancer risk using actual levels of fallout measured in human bodies, so it is a landmark. Even though bomb testing has been halted, it has current relevance, as nuclear reactors routinely emit the same cocktail of radioactive chemicals into the environment as did bomb tests.

We found that the average radioactive Strontium-90 level in baby teeth of "Baby Boomers" who died of cancer by age 50 is more than double (122% higher than) the level of Strontium-90 in those who are alive and healthy.

The New York Times wrote a story on the article in its December 14 issue. We hope that other media will pick up on the Times story, and we will receive national coverage.

2. NEW BOOK, PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. In late November, Oxford University Press committed to publishing a book by RPHP Executive Director Joseph Mangano on the risks of nuclear power. Oxford is one of the pre-eminent academic publishers in the U.S.

The book, which should take about 6 months to complete, will be followed by a "speaking tour" which would include universities, book stores, media, blogs, and other means of informing the public.

PLEASE HELP

RPHP is a highly effective organization who does work that no other U.S. group does.

We struggle to raise even the modest funds needed to support our work. Thus, we are asking that those who recognize the importance of our work make a contribution at this time. A number of people have committed $500, but we will gratefully accept any amount to defray our modest costs.

Your contribution is tax-deductible, and you can be assured you are helping a group that, if successful, will reduce future radiation exposures, so that we will have more healthy people in the future, and that fewer will suffer from cancer and other awful diseases.

Checks can be made out to RPHP, and sent to

Joseph Mangano

Radiation and Public Health Project

716 Simpson Avenue

Ocean City NJ 08226

Thank you - and tell your friends!!!!

GIVE HALF A LLAMA FOR CHRISTMAS

2010-12-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

   We have a new family tradition. Last year we started giving our children and grandchildren less but letting them give more. We emailed them the website for WorldVisionGifts and let them choose something they would like us to give third-world children in their names. Some of the gifts they could choose came with bead bracelets or small stuffed animals for the giver.
     This year we added SamaritansPurse and Heifer.org, expanding their opportunities to include llamas (or shares in a llama), water buffalo, honeybees, wheelchairs, infant incubators, and airline tickets to help children receive life-saving surgery.
    Our daughter Julie wrote us:

"Jessie (16) loves animals, she would like to give the gift of a goat. Item 1423 would give a goat to someone and a cute plush goat as a reminder to Jessie.

"Jake (12) would like to give to the maximum impact fund/orphans. Item 0549 would give him a bracelet from Uganda as a reminder.

"Dana (Julie's husband) would like to give a gift of food. . .

"I would like to give a non practical gift of toys."

Our daughter Becky gave money for mosquito nets for five families; her husband David donated $50 to help get girls out of sexual slavery. Their 6-year old ordered two chickens to provide eggs for a family and received a plush chick as a reminder of her gift.

    It's a win-win-win for all three generations. The children learn unselfishness which makes the parents happy and we grandparents get the pleasure of making their gifts possible.
     As a child my mother's Christmas list was never a list of things for herself but of the secrets she was excitedly keeping from her parents and friends--the handkerchief she was embroidering for her mother and the new pipe she was saving up to buy for her father. You can't read about Christmas in the Little House of the Prairie books without wishing kids today (not to mention we ourselves!) could be grateful for an orange and a penny instead of disappointed because they only got 5 of the 6 new electronic gizmos they put on their Christmas (read "shopping") list. I liked Mum's priorities and always wanted them to be mine and my children's.
     During extended Christmas mornings when I was married before, I used to watch the porcelain figurines of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus on the lamp table by the Christmas tree gradually disappear until piles and piles of wrapping paper and ribbon. It made me sad.
     The United Nations defines "rich" as "having more than you need." The Bible speaks of "godliness with contentment" as being great wealth. Wouldn't you rather be contented with what you already have than discontented with all you don't have?
   There is nothing more fulfilling than giving someone else joy at Christmas or anytime. Other ways to do this include giving a loan to an entrepreneur in a poor country, through KIVA. Their motto: "What gift do you give to someone who has it all? A chance to help someone who doesn't."
     Or maximizing your contributions to the spread of the gospel by giving to ChristianAid, which supports indigenous pastors and missionaries already reaching their own people, sometimes in countries closed to our missionaries. Fifty to $100 for a bicycle, $200 for a burro or $500 for a camel can enable them to expand their ministry at a fraction of the cost of our sending Americans to learn a foreign language in a foreign culture.
   For evangelical organizations, the ECFA seal assures you that they are audited and approved by the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability.
     I think I can stand before God a little straighter if I have remembered that JOY is spelled "Jesus and Others and You."

Our opinion of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"

2010-12-16T00:01:00.001-08:00

Critics gave "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" a C. Sounds like prejudice to me. We would give it an A.
Reuters claimed the new Narnia movie "bombed" in North America, having only earned 24.5 million the first weekend: "Industry pundits had predicted a $30 million to $40 million start for the third adaptation of C. S. Lewis' Christian-themed books."

They admitted the film got off to "a much better start overseas, earning $81 million, and distributor 20th Century Fox said it was 'excited' about its overall prospects. . ."

How making $24.5 million could constitute "bombing" beats me but oh well.

Jerry wrote the following comment on Movietickets.com, where we bought our tickets:
"True to the book.

     "My family and I were very happy with this new episode of the Chronicles of Narnia. Eight of us (preteen to 70+) went for my granddaughter's 16th birthday. The only problem was that it was too short. I realize that some of the scenes had to be left out (specifically Eustace's change to the dragon and what happened to the Dufflepuds) but all in all we were thrilled and can't wait for the next one (which I assume will be the Silver Chair, which will star Eustace and a new character -- Jill Pole)."

   A review, Fantastical by Megan Basham on worldmag.com, starts, "Except for a detour into green mist, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader sails smooth and straight. . ."
     In response I posted a comment: We thoroughly enjoyed the long-awaited Dawn Treader! As usual, delightful characters, lots of adventure, touching scenes that left both our faces wet. Unlike Prince Caspian, this movie followed the book closely except where it dealt with the dragon--and then it improved on one aspect of it.

     Why the fuss about the green fog? How else would a movie show the subtle pervasive creep of temptations affecting each person in the area of his or her own vulnerabilities--of course they would come to Edmund as a lust for power, Lucy as a desire for her sister's beauty, Caspian as inadequacy compared to his father, and Eustace as greed.
     Don't trust the critics and the opening numbers--which after all, only reflect expectation, not an actual opinion about the film as seen--and, as someone above wrote, were affected by the weather (heavy snow in Indiana).
     Go be happily surprised.

Fourth day: Sandcastle Inn, Pismo Beach

2010-12-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

Our room for two nights.

Partial view from our room (on third floor).

View from our room (first attempt at "stitching" three pictures together--I didn't know our camera could take panoramas!)

Sunset from our balcony.

Sunrise. Saw spouting whales traveling north (north? in December?).

Continental breakfast--and off to see elephant seals!

Five hundred elephant seals litter Moonstone Beach near Cambria.

Reigning patriarch.

Younger males.

(Females and babies of both sexes are spared unsightly proboscoses.)

Challenging bull roars off-shore.

Have to start home. . .

Third day: Monarch butterflies

2010-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Our tour guides, Linda and Ron Hodge, pointing out monarchs. There are 17,000 of them in this grove.

From a distance, butterfly clusters are just brown clumps.

Even closer,they look brown or gray.

But zoom lens captures color of wings opening to sun's warmth.

How to distinguish between genders: males have two additional dots.

Pairs meet on ground; he carries her into tree, where they mate. Isn't that romantic?

Second day: Frosty morning at Alisal Guest Ranch

2010-12-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Frosty corral.

Frosty us.


Picking horses for guests who will ride today.

Releasing rest of horses into corral.

View from van as we tour the 10,500-acre ranch.

Lake on ranch.

Lakeside.

Persimmon tree.

Log branching vertically.

Alisal wildlife.

Four days, three nights along California's coast, Nov. 29-Dec. 2

2010-12-12T00:01:00.001-08:00

We just got back from a bus tour of the California coast from Orange County to Pismo Beach (just north of San Luis Obispo and the Hearst Castle). Southern California was having record cold temperatures and we woke to frost in the mornings. Here are pictures:

First night: Alisal Guest Ranch just outside Solvang:


Looking back at entrance to Alisal Ranch


Alisal grounds, looking toward dining hall (1).

Alisal grounds, looking toward dining hall (2).

Dining hall, inside.

Rooms

Lobby of fitness center/spa.

Looking toward pool.

Dry stream bed through grounds.

Library, outside.


Library, inside (open 24 hours): fireplace, large-screen TV, 2 computers, Christmas tree--even books!

Our room (before Jerry lit a fire)

Our room, with Jerry about to light a fire. Then we'll curl up in the living room; he'll read Randy Alcorn and I'll read Karen Kingsbury.

A new cook in the family!

2010-12-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report there is a new cook in the family! Our son's wife of almost two years loves to cook, cooks well, and cooks creatively--she never uses a recipe! Hurray for Jill!

Three holiday recipes I'm not so scared to make

2010-12-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

   (Maybe I'm not scared to make them because none of them involve cooking. Just assembling and refrigerating. I can do that!)
     A new favorite recipe of ours for the holidays is Church Mice. Here's Jerry about to eat one. I'll put the recipe at the end of this page.

     Here's a Shaver family traditional dessert for any summer meal:

YOGURT PIE

Beat 14 oz. KoolWhip into 32 oz. berry yogurt. Pour into 2 pre-made Graham cracker crusts. Chill 4-5 hours. (Chill the pie, too.)

Maybe I'll make it with lime yogurt this year and see if it tastes like key lime pie. (Ooh, I'm getting creative.)

Here's a Shaver family traditional Christmas dinner side dish. (I don't know where we got the recipe):

RASPBERRY-APPLESAUCE JELLO (8 servings)

Mix two 3-oz packages of raspberry Jello, 1-1/2 c. hot water, 1 large package (12-14 oz.) frozen raspberries and 1-1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce. Chill in mold (or is that muld?) or plastic bowl.

Optional: You may top it with a mixture of mayo, sour cream and 2 cups of small marshmallows. I like it that way and we have a special Tupperware bowl that has assorted lids which leave holiday design indentations in which you can put the mixture, for a festive color contrast--but no one else likes it so I never go to the trouble of making it.

Church Mice
Jerry and I got this recipe from our friend Tom Hawks, who got it from someone who brought a plate of mice to a church potluck in Arlington, Texas. I was so excited about them last Christmas that we made church mice for half the people we know. I may try to make them for the other half this Christmas.

Granddaughter Katherine adding gel eyes

Each mouse has its own personality

Squeak!

Church Mice
1 jar maraschino cherries with stems (for tails). Drain off juice. Rinse and pat cherries dry.
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (comes in box of 1-ounce blocks in baking aisle of store. Didn't know there was a baking aisle, did you?)
1 tube clear red gel icing (baking aisle)
1-ounce paraffin (comes in a box--baking aisle. I think.) Chop paraffin up so it will melt faster.
1/2 teaspoon butter or equivalent
1 large bag chocolate kisses (1/2 cup for this recipe, the rest for the cook)
Sliced almonds, two per mouse

Lay a sheet of waxed paper on a cookie sheet.
Slowly (i.e., over low heat) melt chocolate, butter and paraffin until smooth. Don't let it burn! (I.e., don't wander off to watch the sunset, read a novel--or write one)
Dip cherries by their "tails" into the chocolate, let drip dry a second in the air and swing over to waxed paper. (Keep some room between them so you can work on the faces.)
Immediately apply a chocolate kiss (nose) to the end of the cherry opposite the tail, tuck two slices of almond between kiss and cherry (ears), holding them there until they don't slide out. (Takes several fingers.)
Let tray of mice harden in fridge.
When cold, take out tray and add 2 red gel eyes to each nose with toothpick or by squeezing dot of gel directly from tube.
Refrigerate.
Take to any party where they will cause a sensation.

These aren't exactly easy. They take time and they are messy--the ears slide off and the gel clumps. But they're fun and it's only once a year.

TODAY--VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER IN THEATERS!

2010-12-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

We hope you will join us in going to see Narnian movie #3, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, sometime this opening weekend. Here's the latest trailer:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/11/08/watch-another-theatrical-voyage-of-the-dawn-treader-trailer/

Cooking under the Renshaw administration

2010-12-10T00:01:00.001-08:00

     About the time Jerry and I married, my daughter Becky started selling a product called Homemade Gourmet. She would send us little packets of Grandmother's Sunday Roast Seasoning and various rubs and marinades with recipes which weren't hard to make and tasted great.
   Since she lived in Oklahoma with a husband and a new baby (not that there was an old one) and hadn't been able to get out and make many friends yet, she couldn't promote the product there.
     Homemade Gourmet was unheard-of out here in SoCal (still is) so I was building up her customer base. A friend with a hair salon became enthusiastic and offered to sell them for Becky through her store.
   But the company told Becky she couldn't let someone sell them for her because "other people don't have that option." Since that was Becky's only option, she stopped representing the company and since we found out there is a lot of sugar in the product (why isn't it "products"? Having to say "product" about plural things is so annoying) and Jerry is diabetic, we stopped buying them.

But before we did Jerry and I made such beautiful meals I actually took pictures of some of them. It was fun to make them together. The one Jerry is holding is Latticework Beef Casserole. (Jerry made the latticework.) The one above is stir-fry made with their Sweet 'n' Sour Mix and the one below is Taco Meatball Stew made with their Southwest Seasoning Mix.
Or maybe it's the other way around.

I'm scared to cook

2010-12-09T00:01:00.001-08:00

     I don't like to cook. If a dish involves more than throwing several ready-made ingredients together and serving it, I probably won't make it, even though I loved it at Rita's house and carefully copied down the recipe.
     Cooking is too complicated, for one thing. My idea of homemade vegetable beef soup is bringing home a quart of it from Bake 'n' Broil (with corn bread). I can cook a rack of ribs in the crockpot with a bottle of BBQ sauce squirted over them. I'll broil salmon--as long as it's in a broiler that's sprayed with vegetable oil so it's easy to clean afterward.
     The problem is, I do like eating and I love eating dishes which take someone a lot of work to make, chopping and mincing or bringing to a soft ball stage, is it, for chocolate?
     I don't like cooking because it is too mysterious for me. How do I know when meat is done in the middle if it isn't thick enough to stick a thermometer into? I have to slice into a steak 5-6 times to see if it's cooked in the middle and the 6th time, it will be overcooked. I have to fork a cooking fish to pieces until it "flakes easily" and by then it's mush.
     Recipes call for impossible things like stirring a tablespoon of liquid into 8 cups of flour and pouring the resultant mixture into-- Lady, that ain't gonna pour! Or keeping a pot of something covered--while stirring constantly. Well, which is it?

   I did cook. I cooked for 34 years under the Shaver administration. But the results were haphazard. Meat was tough. Casseroles were cold in the middle. My husband assumed any woman he married would be just like his mother, who was a perfect cook (and hostess and housekeeper). He should have been disabused of that notion when, during our courtship, I made him not one but two pumpkin pies from actual pumpkins for our first Thanksgiving together--that tasted like cardboard.
   We'd been married about five years when we had a young couple over for dinner and the wife liked whatever I'd cooked so much she asked for the recipe. I wrote it out for her, including the bit in the cookbook that said one could vary it with oregano, sage, thyme, or garlic salt. (I don't remember which spices exactly.). Next time we saw the couple she looked troubled and a bit miffed.
     "I made that recipe," she said. "You didn't say how much of the spices to use, so I put in a teaspoon of each. It was terrible!"
     And I thought, Wow, someone who knows even less about cooking than I do!
     Jerry's didn't have any idealistic expectations of me based on women in his past. His first wife called her mother long distance to sob, "My meat loaf didn't rise!"
     You'd think I'd have learned to cook well by doing it three times a day for over three decades. There were things I did learn to cook, some of them surprisingly difficult. My Made-in-Advance Cheese Souffle and Gaston Beef Stew (both from The Joy of Cooking) were excellent. From that same culinary bible I learned to make great bread (Cornell Triple-Rich Flour Formula) from scratch, without a bread maker. I was always the one assigned to make the rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas and when Becky was little, that's the only part of those meals she would eat. Pancakes, waffles, biscuits--anything with buttermilk--all prize worthy. But most of the time--well, late in our marriage, my husband exclaimed in exasperation, "You don't try! You don't care!"
   I was ashamed to admit he was right. But I'm even more ashamed to say I was not ashamed enough to permanently change.
   Between husbands I lived on cold cereal, tuna salad, and pb-and-j sandwiches.
     That's why I asked God for a husband who doesn't mind cooking. He brought me Jerry. Jerry doesn't mind cooking. I don't mind letting him. It's a perfect match. Actually, I don't mind cooking with him, either. (By cooking I mean mostly just setting the table and rinsing off the dishes so he can put them in the dishwasher.)
     If we do it together, I actually enjoy it.

How to marry a chef

2010-12-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

   When I told God I did not want to marry again, I added, "But if You want me to marry again, I'd like him to be a handsome widower who likes to cook." I didn't know there was one.
     But God did!
     Jerry not only cooks, he is creative and he is flexible. If we're out of milk, he's just as happy submerging hot or cold cereal in juice--whatever juice we're not out of.

Here are photos of two lunches he made lately. The first is an open-faced peanut butter-and-pickle reduction on a bed of chilled California grapes. (He didn't know about peanut butter and jelly--in combination--until he was an adult.) With sides of spotted banana and diet green tea.
Don't worry, he's used to my photographing his food. He's also used to my asking, "Okay, now that I have pen and paper--What was that cute thing you said in the shower?"

   The second luncheon entree is tournedos of beurre de peanut crunche (acute accent on "e") folded around free-range fromage blanc de string, with a Trader Joe's dark chocolate-covered-nuts-and-caramel Nutty Bit for dessert.
   (The descriptions are mine. Jerry just calls it "whatever's available.")
   You'll know why it was important to me to avoid cooking through another 34 years of marriage when I tell you that--
   I'm scared to cook.

   The reason I'm posting this series now, out of the blue, is in order to offer you some "Holiday recipes I'm not scared to make" before Christmas. I'm already gearing up to leap to a new blog with the new year but it didn't make sense to post holiday recipes after the holidays.

Bon appetit!

Thanks for Nothing

2010-11-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

(First published in Moody, November, 1988; reprinted in Sing a New Song, Pulpit Helps, SPIRIT, God's Chicken Soup for the Soul and as a tract for American Tract Society, 1990--since discontinued.)

SKIPPER and MUM: The Divorce

2010-11-24T00:01:00.001-08:00

     My parents did divorce when Mum came back from the World Peace Study Mission in 1964. Ironically, peace was part of what drove them apart. Their different approaches to seeking world peace, each of which became a full-time cause for them, leached the peace out of our family--and out of our hearts.
     But of course that was not the core issue. The core was much more personal. For the two of them, 29 years of hurts and resentments had built up; now they came to a head. When they finally sat down to talk them through, they couldn't get beyond them.

Dad and his new wife, preparing to sail to Vietnam.

    Looking back, symbolizing that lack of personal communication--and the lack of intimacy--to me now is the fact that Dad had designed the Phoenix with separate quarters for his wife and himself. He designed a small cabin in the stern for himself and put Mum and me in a "ladies' cabin." The boat was home to our family for ten years and the only room with a door was the bathroom. (Dad scoffed at the head as "only for women." At sea, he urinated over the side of the boat.)
     He would yell at her and put her down in front of Ted and me; she was amazed after the divorce when friends told her how he had bragged about her to them, about how she had cooked three hot meals a day for seven people for over three years even when she was seasick--compliments he never told her.

    Out of the pain of the divorce for Mum and me had come peace of a new kind: the peace of God.
     But not for Dad. Thirty years later he told me he had not found resolution.
     Within days of the divorce Dad married his 21-year old Japanese secretary Akie Nagano, a graduate of the Hiroshima Women's College where he was a visiting professor of anthropology, a woman he was already living with.
     I was only two years younger than she was. I felt as if Dad had replaced both his wife and his daughter. I wrote him an anguished letter, offering to come live with and take care of him. He wrote back, "Why? As my companion, my wife, my lover? Akie meets all my needs."
     Together he and Akie continued his voyages in the Phoenix. In 1967 a multi-national crew delivered nearly a ton of medical aid to the Red Cross Society of North Vietnam for civilian victims of the Vietnam war.
     Betty Boardman, one of the crew members on that trip, described Dad as "nervous," "hostile," "impatient," "irritable," "furious," "autocratic." He "screamed," he "stormed." The divorce wound was raw; Akie was jealous of the "other woman" on the ship and Earle sought to protect his new wife. Betty writes, "The fact that [Barbara] and I were long time friends and superficially resembled each other probably bothered him."*
     Before the crew sailed for Haiphong, Betty and Mum had silent meditation and then breakfast togther and talked about the trip. Mum never spoke against Earle or Akie; she blamed herself more than Earle for the divorce. She said she knew it was hard for the two of them to keep running into her at Quaker meetings and peace conferences. (Mum made a point of responding to their uneasy avoidance of eye contact with a friendly greeting whenever they ran into each other or had to pass in halls).
     Although I knew Dad to be fully capable of meeting her description of him, Betty may have been just a tad prejudiced when she criticized him so harshly. In the same book she described Mum: "Barbara glowed with the conviction that there is a light within all, and her joy was contagious. I loved her, and I found her spirit healed mine."
     The crew spent eight days visiting hospitals in Hanoi and Haiphong and observing the effects of American bombing on outlying villages--and of course the communists made full political capital out of that. Two other voyages to Vietnam followed.
     Earle and Akie made two attempts to sail the Phoenix to Shanghai as a gesture of "friendship and reconciliation" from an American and a Japanese citizen to the people of China, although the Japanese government refused to grant Akie a passport on the grounds China and Japan had no diplomatic relations. In 1968 the Phoenix was stopped on the high seas by a Japanese ship. Two years of litigation followed in Japanese courts. In 1969, with a crew of six Americans, the Phoenix was stopped 20 nautical miles (37 km) offshore by Chinese authorities and their entry was prohibited.
     After these attempts to sail to China, the Japanese government passed a new immigration law cracking down on "undesirable aliens" (1970) and Dad was expelled from Japan, his adopted country of 13 years.
     He and Akie sailed to San Francisco and settled in Ben Lomond, California. He taught Peace Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Cabrillo College while Akie earned an MA in Peace Studies from Antioch College and worked as a career counselor at UCSC, specializing in peace-making careers and in placing students in overseas jobs.
   Meanwhile, not knowing how to evaluate my first 19 years in light of the truth I was finding in Jesus Christ, slammed the door on that life and fled to Bible School in Portland, Oregon. I graduated (my first graduation ever), married a nice, conservative fellow student, moved to his part of Southern California and gave birth to Ben and Becky, steering clear of all things controversial.
     At the time of the divorce, Akie had asked Dad not only to sever all contact with Mum but with the three of us "kids." He had explained this to me somewhat apologetically, saying it was "the Japanese way" and the only demand she was making of him. Other than two brief visits which Akie granted him while she was back in Japan visiting her parents and a third one when I just showed up on their doorstep with my 11-month old son, determined to make him acknowledge he was a grandfather, I didn't see him again (except on TV) for 30 years.

*Boardman, Elizabeth Jelinek, The Phoenix Trip: Notes on a Quaker Mission to Haiphong, Burnsville, N.C.: Celo Press, 1901 Hannah Branch Road, Burnsville, NC 28714, 1985

Please don't shoot me!

2010-11-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,
     Of all the long posts you have read, skimmed, or skipped on this blog, today's will be the longest. You'll find a lot of good quotes and psychological insights (including an extensive and important quote about my father, which has implications for things to come on this blog, a kind of foreshadowing) especially in the last half of the article, but of course you don't have to read any of it.
     Please don't give up on this blog. I know I am aiming a fire hose at you, that I am writing faster than you can read unless you have no other life. For some reason, I feel driven to get the story of the Phoenix and my parents online while I can so that, as history, it will be available to whoever wants it.
     Jessica

MUM: from City of Silence

2010-11-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

"The Symbolic American," from Rachelle Linner, City of Silence, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995.

MUM: from Lives That Speak

2010-11-22T00:01:00.002-08:00

Left-click twice, separately, to enlarge each page.

Over the past few days Mum--Barbara Reynolds--has described her life to you candidly, in her own words. Now I want to let you see her through the words of others, in two chapters about her published in books by English-speaking authors. (There are also four books about her by Japanese authors, including Moments of Peace: Two Honorary Hiroshimans by Dr. Tomin Harada, which has been translated into English.)
A lot of the facts duplicate what you already know from this website but the latter parts of these chapters contain probing insights not only on Mum's life and thought but on the perspective of the hibakusha and of the world's reactions to them.

Beth Parrish, "Barbara Reynolds: Friend of the Hibakusha" from Lives That Speak: Stories of Twentieth Century Quakers by the Religious Education Committee of Friends General Conference, edited by Marnie Clark, 2004.

MUM: from Facing the Danger

2010-11-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Barbara Reynolds," from Sam Totten and Martha Wescoat Totten, Facing the Danger, Interviews with 20 Anti-Nuclear Activists, Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984.

MUM: from Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence

2010-11-20T00:01:00.003-08:00

I have let Mum share with you how God led in her life after our voyage "to Russia with Love" through her book The Phoenix and the Dove. Now I want to let her share her perspective on her life as she looks back on the trip around the world and the two protest voyages, on the marriage that ended, and the lessons she learned from all of it.

From "Barbara Reynolds: Sailing Into Test Waters," in Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, edited by Pam McAllister, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982.

MUM: Help me, God!

2010-11-19T00:01:00.001-08:00

See also post on this website for August 2, 2010: "A Little Toad Shall Lead Them?" by Barbara Reynolds and Jessica Reynolds Shaver. (Left click on article twice to enlarge it.)

From Chapter 6, "Help Me, God!" in The Phoenix and the Dove by Barbara Reynolds, Nagasaki Appeal Committee, 1986.

MUM: World Peace Study Mission

2010-11-18T00:01:00.002-08:00

From Chapter 5, "World Peace Study Mission," in The Phoenix and the Dove by Barbara Reynolds, Nagasaki Appeal Committee, 1986.

A different kind of peace

2010-11-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

   While Mum was spending Christmas Day, 1961, fasting and praying, I wandered from the empty Phoenix to the lonely Peace Park and back. My thoughts were not as lofty as my mother's. I was 17. I was cold and hungry, lost and confused. Why weren't we spending Christmas as a family? Why was there no Christmas dinner to go home to? As much as I loved and idolized my mother, I felt abandoned.
     After Mum came home from the 4-month long Peace Pilgrimage with Hiro and Miyoko, she started planning an even bigger and more ambitious World Peace Study Mission, this time with 25 survivors instead of two, from Nagasaki as well as Hiroshima.
     But Dad told me that when she came back from the Peace Study Mission he would be divorcing her. I went into shock. He told me why, adding, "Don't tell Mum you know. It would kill her."
      Torn in two between the parents I loved, I made several not-very-serious attempts at suicide. I had been thrust from Eden into a be-wilderness. Behind our sincere efforts at creating peace in the world, we had ceased to have peace in our family or peace in our hearts.
     But now out of this loss and anguish, at least for me, came peace of a different kind.
     God's peace.

(Click twice on article to enlarge it.)

MOODY MONTHLY, December 1986

MUM: Hiroshima Peace Pilgrimage: Miyoko's story

2010-11-16T00:01:00.004-08:00

From Friends of the Hibakusha, edited by Virginia Naeve. Denver: Swallow Paperbooks, 1964.

MUM: Hiroshima Peace Pilgrimage: Hiro's story

2010-11-15T00:01:00.003-08:00

     I am sorry that I cannot talk to you in your own language. But please listen to the message I bring from Hiroshima.
     I am 18 years old. I graduated from Hiroshima Public Commercial Senior High School this March and this is a Japanese school uniform. In Japan all students must wear this uniform. I say this because somebody thought this was a military uniform. I am glad to be here and present to you messages from the first atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima. I am glad so many of you could attend this meeting.
     My parents died when I was two years old. My parents and all relatives were victims of the first atomic bomb, except for my grandmother. Since then, I have been living in very difficult circumstances. I was only two years old when the bomb fell and I could not do anything for myself. Since she took care of me, she could not work for money. In addition to this, she was so old that nobody wanted to give her a job. She applied for work, but everywhere in vain. This meant slowly starving to death for both of us. She tried to sell soap from door to door, carrying me on her back on top of her heavy load of soap. Whenever I heard my grandmother telling this story, I could not help crying and being so thankful to my dear grandmother.

     However, we were so poor that we could not support ourselves. This difficult situation continued until I was four years of age. At that time, I began collecting old iron and copper in the streets. In this way I used to earn about two shillings a day, or sometimes three shillings, in order to help my grandmother and make her more comfortable. Were there children anywhere as poor and miserable as I? Yes, more than 8,000 orphans in Hiroshima had had hardship as I have. My grandmother was then 64, and still working to support herself and me. This made her very sick, and finally she often could not go out to work at all.
     At the Commencement ceremonies of my primary and secondary schools, I had nobody attending with me. It was very hard to see my classmates happy with their parents and relatives on these occasions. My eyes were filled with tears and I was almost crying. Then, I tried to find out why I had to suffer and why I was unhappy. And I have reached a point where I understand--everything was caused by war. It is war that has given me this suffering and unhappiness. I am not the only example. Today there are a very great number of people who are still suffering from atomic bomb sickness and the results of war.
     A week before we left Hiroshima, on the day the United States announced the resumption of their nuclear tests, a policeman died in Hiroshima. He had been transferred to Hiroshima on the day after the explosion. He helped victims of the nuclear weapon, and that was the reason he got radiation in his blood. But for 16 years, there was no sign on him. Six months before we left, he became sick. When he died he left two children, and it is true to say that these children have been orphaned by the effect of that bomb. . .
     I would like to emphasize again: please put a stop to nuclear testing and the arms race!
     Thank you very much.

          Note: Hiro was my age when he went on the Hiroshima Peace Pilgrimage with my mother. He was an intelligent, solemn, earnest, duty-oriented young man. He served his grandmother and when she urged him to accept the offer to go with Mum and Miyoko to speak wherever possible in all the nuclear powers, he served my mother, becoming like a son to her. He learned English and was able to be an interpreter on the next, much more ambitious pilgrimage around the world.
     When they came back to Japan in 1964, Hiro fell in love with a young Japanese woman named Atsuko but as an orphan and a survivor of Hiroshima, he had "nothing to offer" her parents as a potential son-in-law. Mum went to bat for them, acting as their go-between. Atsuko's parents, who had two daughters but no sons, agreed to let Hiro marry Atsuko if he would assume and carry on the family name and the family business, spending six years training to become a dental surgeon.
     Hiro did.
     He and Atsuko married and had seven children--an especially great blessing for an orphan! At least one of his sons is following in the family business and they are probably the best-known dentists on the island of Shikoku!

NEWS: NOBEL LAUREATES IN HIROSHIMA TO APPEAL FOR DISARMAMENT

2010-11-14T00:02:00.001-08:00

Condensed from article by Jay Alabaster for The Associated Press, Friday, November 12, 2010:
HIROSHIMA, JAPAN -- Six Nobel Laureates gathered near Hiroshima's Ground Zero to urge the end of nuclear weapons. At the opening ceremony, laureates were given necklaces of paper cranes, Japanese symbol of peace, by Japanese schoolchildren. A hibakusha (survivor) of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing, described his journey home through the carnage of that day.
"I hate atomic bombs, but I know we cannot erase hatred by hating others. Hatred has to be overcome," said Akihiro Takahashi, who was a boy when the bomb was dropped.

MUM: Hiroshima Peace Pilgrimage

2010-11-14T00:01:00.001-08:00

(To enlarge page, left-click twice, separately.)

Miyoko, Mum, and Hiro (taken by Richard A. Brown, Fairfax, CA)

From Chapter 4, "Peace Pilgrimage to U.N.," in The Phoenix and the Dove by Barbara Reynolds, Nagasaki Appeal Committee, 1986.

After we sailed "to Russia with Love"

2010-11-13T00:01:00.004-08:00

                                                     Press Statement

     On October 21, 1961, the yacht Phoenix of Hiroshima, with five Americans aboard, was stopped 10 miles outside of Nakhodka, Siberia, boarded by Soviet military authorities and, while under surveillance by three Soviet vessels, was refused permission under any circumstances to enter the port.
     We were carrying messages and petitions from thousands of Japanese and Americans, protesting the resumption of nuclear testing and appealing for a positive approach to world peace through understanding.
   The Soviet authorities put food and supplies aboard our yacht, but refused to accept any of the petitions or to permit any communication whatever with the Russian people.
     Therefore, after 16 days at sea, under very severe weather conditions, the Phoenix then put about without making port and started her return voyage. For over one day she was followed by a Soviet vessel.
     On October 28, almost exactly 5 weeks after sailing from Hiroshima on our mission, we dropped anchor in the harbor of Fukuoka, under stress of weather.
     The entire voyage was the most difficult passage the Phoenix has encountered in over 60,000 miles of sailing around the world, during the past seven years.
     We, the crew of the yacht Phoenix, are deeply disappointed at the refusal of the Soviet authorities to accept the messages and petitions. We continue to strongly protest the testing of nuclear weapons by any nations.
     Fukuoka, Japan, October 29, 1961
                                                                  Signed:
                                                                  Earle Reynolds (Captain)
                                                                  Barbara Reynolds
                                                                  Ted Reynolds
                                                                  Jessica Reynolds
                                                                  Tom Yoneda

     Mum (Barbara) wrote our friends, "Our reception has been heartwarming. Taxi drivers, shop-keepers, even strangers who pass us on the street, bow and said: "O-kaeri" (Welcome home!). To meet with such affection in Hiroshima touches us deeply and makes us very humble. More than ever, we are determined not to let these people down, these people who have suffered so much and are still falling ill and dying from the effects of a bomb dropped 16 years before."
     She wrote to the Peace Action Center in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 1961 (By the way, we had no organization sponsoring or underwriting either of our protest trips): "As you may know, the Russian authorities refused to accept our letters and petitions. (They suggested that we take them to the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo--which is coming full circle and promises no opportunity of getting our concern to the Russian people.) We are now trying to consider what we ought to do with this responsibility and trust, as we still feel obligated to get the feelings of the Japanese people to the world.
     "It has been suggested that we raise money to send one or two representatives from Hiroshima to the UN, to deliver the messages in person to Zorin or to U Thant.
                                                                                        "Barbara Reynolds
                                                                                        "Yacht Phoenix
                                                                                        "Hiroshima, Japan"

Documents quoted in Friends of the Hibakusha, Virginia Naeve, Editor. Denver: Swallow Paperbooks, 1964.

CANADA, Autumn 2010: Banff (and Calgary)

2010-11-12T00:01:00.002-08:00

My favorite picture of the Fairmont Banff Springs, from the cover of a menu at the Fremont Hotel in Banff.

     Jerry and I stayed in the Fairmont Banff Springs. I had been wanting to share it with him since we married. When I was in Banff in 2003, I was with the whole Shaver family. A friend from Plano, Texas had told me about it ahead of time, told me to be sure and sit in every window seat and grouping of chairs in the Rundle Hall with its grand staircase.I did my best--then and now.
     There are wonderful views everywhere, not just outside but looking down into lounges and club rooms of leather armchairs and fireplaces with elk heads over them. I love the suit of armor in the two-story high Mt. Stephen Hall; it's around the corner at the bottom of the steps. Don't miss it.
     This time we were in a room near the elevator and I had Jerry and his unerring sense of direction with me. But in 2003, I had to write myself the following map and directions to find our room from the lobby:

CANADA, Autumn 2010: Lake Louise

2010-11-11T00:01:00.001-08:00

Sunrise, Lake Louise

Fairmont Lake Louise

Chandelier in lobby represents Swiss women putting candles in their windows to help Swiss guides find their way home.

View from lounge

Our room

View from our room, window on left.

View from our room, window on right.

What are they looking at?

Strolling along shore.

Jerry and Jessica, Doris and Don, Ellen and Doug.

Note: This is where our camera battery died. So much for recording Banff and Calgary. Our last night together, the six of us gathered in Doug and Ellen's room for prayer. We celebrated the Lord's gift of His body and blood for us in an informal communion of chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne, gifts from the hotel.

CANADA, Autumn, 2010: Columbia Icefield

2010-11-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

CANADA, Autumn 2010: More of Jasper

2010-11-09T00:01:00.003-08:00

Jasper was more than elk. It was the Jasper Park Lodge on the shore of Lac Beauvert.

New friends Doug and Ellen Van Mater from Yardley,PA

It was mountain reflections in serene lakes, rapids through gorges, golden aspens, a 360-degree view from the top of the Jasper Tramway.

Pyramid Lake

"They made up for it in elk"

2010-11-08T00:01:00.002-08:00

Last month when Jerry and I were in Canada, we stayed in some very nice hotels, all very different but all part of the Fairmont chain. There was a luxurious one on the shore of Lake Louise, There was the Fairmont in Banff, which looks as imposing as a Bavarian castle.
Jasper was much more rustic--wooden cabins scattered across grassy lawns. But, as Jerry said, what Jasper lacked in elegance, it made up for in elk.

It was the elks' mating season and signs reinforced our guides' warnings to stay away from the bulls. They are grumpy, aggressive, protective of their females. STAY AWAY FROM THE ELK. We got it, loud and clear. But nobody told the elk to stay away from us. We came around a corner of the lake and saw a small elkess (I don't want to call her a cow) grazing behind a tree. We were all excited and positioned ourselves to take pictures. But we didn't get any closer.

Then we saw a larger female, perhaps the younger one's mother and we clicked away at both of them.

Waiting for Mr. Tumnus

Then we realized there were several beyond those two, tranquilly nibbling the succulent newly-rained-on grass.

Word came from other people walking our way. "We just saw a bull. He's - right - around - the - corner!" We were with another couple. We peeked around the corner--and leaped up onto the low porch of someone's cabin (while the "someone" watched us, amused, and offered us cans of beer). Here he came, a 14-pointer!

He looked pretty relaxed. Jerry and his new friend stood their ground on the porch and kept taking pictures. They didn't need telephoto settings anymore.

He wasn't pawing the ground, lowering his head, breathing out smoke. We women hid inside the cabin, peeking out through the window and screen door and yelling at our men to be careful and watch out and come inside.

He posed for photos, showing off his rack. . .

. . .and walked on by. He knew we weren't threatening his harem, just admiring them.

Wow, thank You, Lord, for evidence of Your mighty creation! Jerry stepped it off after the majestic beast passed on. The bull had stood looking at us from 24 feet away.
That night we heard an occasional call between distant elk--the high-pitched sound of a whistle piping a captain aboard his ship, ending in the rusty bray of a donkey. At 1:30 I suddenly sat up in bed. This time the call had come from right outside our door! I tiptoed over to the window and peeked out between the curtains. There, lying on the ground just off our low porch, was an elk. I grabbed the camera and shot. The flash made the doe lift her head and look toward me. I shot again. Here's what I saw. I didn't have to use the zoom:

Our own personal elk spent the night in our yard!

Of course I named her Elke.

CANADA, Autumn 2010: Kamloops to Jasper

2010-11-07T00:01:00.003-07:00

Now we were really in the Rockies and the scenery was more beautiful.

New friends, newlyweds Don and Doris Coop from Temecula, CA

Approaching Mount Robson

Passing Mount Robson

Our view windows (everyone else is down at dinner)


Jerry and me, happy, wind-blown, over-exposed.

Mount Robson?

At Jasper, the train leg of our trip was over. The Rocky Mountaineer and our wonderful wait staff would be taking a new trainful of tourists back to Vancouver the next day. (They're not saluting; the sun is in their eyes.)

GIANNA: ABORTED AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT

2010-11-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

To all those who received our email saying that my book Gianna is being re-issued in mid-January with a new cover and a new last chapter by Gianna herself I need to make a correction. I just found out that there is no new content in the upcoming edition after all, just a new cover.
I sent so many emails about the three books that Verizon says I am sending out spam and won't let me write a letter with any cc:s now so this is the only way I could let you know.

CANADA, Autumn, 2010: Riding the Rocky Mountaineer

2010-11-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

It is not without good reason that BBC viewers list riding the Rocky Mountaineer among The Fifty Things To Do Before You Die.
Jerry and I boarded the Rocky Mountaineer in Vancouver, British Columbia October 1st for two days' travel across the Canadian Rockies. The food, service (especially attentive and informative Zubulon, below), scenery, wildlife, and in this case even the weather were marvelous. The train stopped overnight in Kamloops and Jasper so we wouldn't miss anything along the way.

I took the above "title shot" at the end of the ride; the train was so long we always boarded in the middle and only saw the locomotive in the distance if we happened to be rounding a bend--sometimes saw it entering and exiting tunnels at the same time.

Day 1 - Vancouver to Kamloops

Fraser River

Hell's Gate

Sheds to protect tracks from landslides.

Coming into Kamloops

Outskirts of Kamloops

Smoke from Kamloops' pulp factory at dusk.

South Thompson Inn, Kamloops

Our room in the inn.

View from our balcony the next morning.

LEGIBLE TEXT, Part 3: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way"

2010-11-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

LEGIBLE TEXT, Part 2: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way"

2010-11-04T00:01:00.001-07:00

LEGIBLE TEXT, Part 1: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way"

2010-11-03T00:01:00.002-07:00

To enlarge, left-click two separate times.

Constitutional rights: A Long Day at the Polls

2010-11-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, June 7, 1988

Let's not vote this way

2010-11-01T00:02:00.001-07:00

I had jury duty in Long Beach in 1995 while a very famous trial was going on in Los Angeles. As a fellow juror and I walked into the courthouse she gushed, "I know O.J. couldn't have done it--he's so handsome!"
She was serious.

Constitutional rights: Jerry Duty

2010-11-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

     Ever since Jerry was called up for jury duty awhile back I think of it as Jerry duty.

   Last year it was my turn. Our granddaughter Kate called from Oklahoma and asked what I was doing.
     "I have to go to jury duty," I said.
     "What's that?"
     How does one describe jury duty to a five-year old? I took a deep breath and said something like, "Well, when one person says another person did a bad thing, they go to court to decide if the person really did the bad thing or not. I have to listen to both sides and help decide who is right."
     She asked a question here and there and I floundered around out of my depth trying to answer them. Still, I felt I'd explained pretty well considering--until Kate asked me anxiously, "How many bad people do you have to pick?" and then, "How long do you have to be in jail?"

   Back in 1981 I was watching the news on TV when I saw my dad among a group of pacifists swarming up ladders into the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Five hours later his wife called to tell me he had been arrested.
     I'd been with him the first time he was arrested, of course. Three years after we sailed back to Japan from our protest to the USSR Skipper and Mum divorced and he married his secretary, a graduate of the Hiroshima Women's College where he taught, a Japanese woman only two years older than I. They made many protest voyages, taking humanitarian aid through the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the heavily mined bay to Haiphong, during the Vietnam War. I was married and raising a family by then; I didn't even know about most of the trips at the time or how often he was arrested.
      But I wasn't surprised to see Dad at Diablo Canyon. And I wasn't surprised that he was one of the first ones arrested. I had to admire a 70-year old scientist and professor willing to be jailed for his convictions. Most grandfathers I know are content to work in their yards and play with their grandchildren. How many, for the sake of those grandchildren's futures, are climbing ladders into nuclear plants? I admired my father because he channeled his anger and indignation at the wrong he saw into a "protest of presence"--a peaceful, unequivocal statement with his own body.
     It didn't feel good to know my dad was in jail but I had to smile when I thought of him there. He was a tough old bird and under the circumstances, I knew he would rather be in jail than anywhere else in the world.
     Ironically I watched my dad's arrest on the morning news while I was sitting in a jury room, waiting to be assigned to a trial.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JERRY, MY LOVE!

2010-10-31T00:02:00.000-07:00

PHOENIX publicity: "Pixie from Ohio"

2010-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

From N.Z. Women's Weekly, New Zealand, January 12, 1956.

PHOENIX publicity: "The Ice Cream was a Reward"

2010-10-30T00:01:00.004-07:00

From my journal, November 15, 1954, on the rough maiden voyage from Japan to Hawaii: "Skip made us a promise: for each bruise we have he will buy a chocolate soda or its equivalent when we reach Hawaii. Or, for every 10 bruises, they can have a steak dinner. Small bruises count but must be Bruises, not dirt. They have to stay three days before counted.

    "Mum has a million bruises but I've got only four."



     When we reached Honolulu a reporter from the Star-Bulletin found out about Skip's promise. The newspaper treated us all to sodas--and me to my first banana split--setting them all in front of me for the photograph.

     This was the cover of Hawaiian Life, the week-end magazine of The Saturday Star-Bulletin, Honolulu, T.H. (Territory of Hawaii), February 5, 1955. They filled two tabloid-sized pages with quotes from the first volume of my journal plus five other photos of life aboard the Phoenix.

SEP: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way, Part 3 (last)

2010-10-29T00:01:00.001-07:00

SEE NOVEMBER 5 FOR LEGIBLE TEXT

First page, top

First page, bottom

Second page, top

Second page, bottom

Third page, top

Third page, bottom

SEP: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way, Part 2

2010-10-28T00:01:00.004-07:00

SEE NOVEMBER 4 FOR LEGIBLE TEXT

First page, top

First page, bottom

Second page, top

Second page, bottom

Third page, top

Third page, bottom

Fourth page, top

Fourth page, bottom

Saturday Evening Post: We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way," Part 1

2010-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

SEE NOVEMBER 3 FOR LEGIBLE TEXT

First page, top

First page, bottom

Second page, top

Second page, bottom

Third page, top

Third page, bottom

Fourth page (all)

Fifth page (all)

Sixth page (all)

Seventh page, top

Seventh page, bottom

PHOENIX publicity: "'LOST' YACHT ARRIVES" (right on time) Dec. 11, 1954

2010-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 6 (ages 13-14)

2010-10-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 5 (ages 12-13)

2010-10-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

Belem, Brazil: my 13th birthday

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 4 (age 12)

2010-10-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

"An exuberant wave [from cyclone in Indian Ocean] carried this book off my lap and across the cabin."

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 3 (ages 11-12)

2010-10-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Marine biology lesson floats by between Fiji and New Zealand.

Jessica's Journal was taken from volumes 2 and 3. More on BONUS FEATURES

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 2 (ages 10-11)

2010-10-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Sighting Kauai after 47 days at sea.

Jessica's Journal was taken from volumes 2 and 3. See BONUS FEATURES for more.

Traditonal Values Voters' Guides for November 2

2010-10-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

Traditional Values Coalition

California Family Council

National Right to Life

My journals: Glimpses into Volume 1 (age 10)

2010-10-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Leaving Hiroshima: "At least a thousand people were there to see us off and everyone (including us) had streamers."

See BONUS FEATURES for more.

Link to Jessica's Journal - Three Years Between the Masts

2010-10-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

About half of Jessica's Journal (Three Years Between the Masts) is online now at a new blog so you can read it free! The rest should be on by the end of the day. Thank you, Jerry my love, for your skanning skills!
Note Peter Spier's illustrations. He wasn't well known when he illustrated my book but he later wrote thirty books of his own and won the 1978 Caldecott Medal. He also received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award (1977) for his book, Noah's Ark and a Christoper Award for his book People in 1981, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1982.

BOOKS I NEVER WROTE: Riding the Third Wave

2010-10-19T00:01:00.003-07:00

     At Multnomah University (Multnomah School of the Bible back then), we were taught to seek the Giver, not the gifts. I still believe that. We are not to seek experiences. But the experiences we in the third wave* are having as we seek the Giver, worship Him and team with Him in using His gifts in other people's lives are incredible.
Since 1998 I have been part of a prayer ministry at the Center for Prayer Mobilization founded by American Baptist pastor Paul Cox (now with www.aslansplace) in the mountain community of Idyllwild, California. I have found nothing in the Bible to refute the reality and legitimacy of what we have seen God do--in fact, the Gospels and the book of Acts would have us believe they represent the normal Christian life.
     Since I began ministering at CPM, I have gone through formal training in spiritual warfare, power encounters, generational deliverance and inner healing with John Wimber, Dr. Neil Anderson, Dr. Charles Kraft, Paul Cox and Tim Price (current director of the Center) plus Restoring Shattered Lives (of DID and SRA survivors, by Dr. Tom and Diane Hawkins) and Theophostic ministry (Dr. Ed M. Smith) as well as learning from books by Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner, Frank and Ida Mae Hammond. I have been through Beth Moore's Breaking Free video series--twice. I have served on prayer teams, heading many of them, in nearly 40 intensive ministry weekends at the center.
     But when we intercessors come together before a ministry weekend begins, we come with an empty toolbox. Every person we pray for is unique and even if their symptoms are similar, God's healing is custom-designed for each one. We have to depend on Him minute by minute for guidance, listening to Him with one ear and to the hurting person with the other. We seek, as Jesus did, to "go only where we see the Father going, do only what we see the Father doing, say only what we hear the Father saying."
     I have noticed when I need it for ministry, God gives me a level of spiritual discernment I do not normally have. The gifts are His, after all, not ours, and He can give them to us for a lifetime--or loan us those we need for a particular occasion.
     I've also noticed God's healing is not like man's. When I used to go to psychologists, I would get a "professional hour" (i.e., 50 minutes) of their time and when the hour was up I would have to climb off the operating table in the middle of surgery, exposed, bleeding, raw, and try to stay alive until the same time the following week.
   By contrast, when God operates, He almost always does a complete healing in whatever time is available. He won't heal everything in an hour or an afternoon or a weekend--but He will heal and give closure to something, even if we only have ten minutes.
      And, as Ed Smith, who founded Theophostic ministry, points out, even when we are learning healing ministry and "trying out" a method for the first time, experimenting with it, God works. He heals. He doesn't experiment.

     *The first wave was the Pentecostal movement itself, swelling out of the Azusa Street Revival at the beginning of the 20th century. It had its roots in the holiness movement and revivalism of the 2nd Great Awakening in America during the 19th century. Modern Pentecostals are distinguished by three main doctrines: the baptism of the Holy Spirit following conversion, with the manifestations of speaking in tongues and divine healing.
      The second wave was the Charismatic Renewal movement in the 1960s with the movement of the Holy Spirit through such manifestations, producing increased faith, hope and joy in a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ within Roman Catholic and some mainline Protestant churches. While Charismatics believe in the doctrine of Tongues, they do not place as much of an emphasis on this doctrine as Pentecostals do. In other words, it is possible to receive the baptism and not speak in tongues. Charismatics teach that you can get more of the Holy Spirit by being filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
     The term "third wave" originated at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1981 under the classroom ministry of John Wimber, founder of the Association of Vineyard Churches. Church-growth specialist C. Peter Wagner   first used the term, “Third Wave Movement” in his book "The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit: Encountering the Power of Signs and Wonders Today." Those associated with this movement do not wish to be labeled “Pentecostal” or “charismatic” despite sharing Pentecostal-like experiences and doctrines. They--we--simply wish to be known as evangelicals who are open to the Holy Spirit. Tongues may be part of an individual's experience but are downplayed.
     We believe God can and does communicate outside of the Scripture and directly to His children, giving revelation apart from Scripture. All such "revelation" must be tested against written revelation and rejected if it contradict the Bible.

We cite passages in the Old Testament regarding the last days, in which God promises to do "a new thing" (Isaiah 43:19), to give "latter rain" (Deuteronomy 11:13-14) and the gifts of prophecy, dreams and visions spreading to "all mankind: your sons and daughters, old men, young men, male and female servants" along with "signs and wonders." (Joel 2:28-30)
We believe individuals can be demonized; that is, a demon can live within a part of the body. Even a Christian can be demonized. A demon cannot inhabit the spirit of a Christian, but a demon can live in the body of a Christian.

   We believe in Power Evangelism and Power Encounters. Jesus and the apostles met the needs of people by healing, casting out demons, and even raising the dead. A Power Encounter happens when the Kingdom of God encounters the Kingdom of Satan. It is here when God shows his power over Satan and gives enslaved people freedom and victory.
   We also believe in Truth Encounters.

     In this book I do not want to dispute doctrine. I just want to share what I watched God do during my first year of this ministry. To God be all the glory.

Today on BONUS FEATURES: PHOENIX MEMORABILIA: My journals

Happy Birthday, Skipper!

2010-10-18T13:02:00.001-07:00

My dad would have been 100 today.

DID YOU READ THE MINERS' T-SHIRTS?

2010-10-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

Check them out at: Campus Crusade for Christ
and Miners' T-shirts.

BOOKS I NEVER WROTE: Little Ones

2010-10-18T00:01:00.002-07:00

Introduction

When you have a friend with multiple personalities, you have a lot of friends. I am blessed to have several friends who have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and each one has enriched my life. From spending time with multiples and watching God heal them in many, many ways, I have learned a lot. I have learned some things about human beings:

--we are emotionally and psychologically complex.

--we are incredibly tough and we are incredibly fragile. We can survive unbelievable stress, pain and trauma but one lie can cripple us for life.

--if subjected to severe enough trauma, any human being can split. Some of these splits can be so total one part is not aware of other parts within the system.

--splitting is a survival mechanism, God’s provision for the severely abused, a “way of escape.”

--splitting can occur any time in life but the younger one is when subjected to severe trauma, the more likely one is to split.

--splitting is a normal reaction to a severely abnormal situation.

From multiples, I’ve learned some things about God:

--Although God is not a split personality, He is multiple. He is three personalities in one. Seeing how separate personalities within one human being can be many within one, I get a glimpse of the nature of the Godhead and the relationship, functions and mutuality of Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the Godhead. For instance, God is love. That is His nature. He not only loves us but He loves each person within Himself, one could almost say, He loves Himselves.

--Although He does not often interfere with a perpetrator’s free will to prevent or stop abuse, He hates the abuse, weeps with the victim and promises to avenge the abuse and redeem it for the victim.

From multiples, I’ve learned some things about multiples:

--Being multiple is not being crazy. It keeps one from becoming crazy.

--Every part/personality has a purpose and the purpose of each part is meant to contribute to survival. Some are committed to the survival of that particular part and some to a number of parts or to the survival of the whole person. Some are dedicated to keeping a certain balance within the system. This is also for survival. Their attempt to survive may take the form of sabotaging the rest.

--Parts may be highly developed personalities, with distinctive names, likes, dislikes, abilities, attitudes, character traits, and memories. Or they may be fragments, splinters of a separate personality. These are often disoriented. They don’t know who they are or where they are or why they exist.

--There is always an original self, a core, the “victim.” This is the self that suffered the actual abuse, the self that is abandoned when all the others leave. This self endures any repetition of the abuse or any event that “feels” abusive in the same way as the original abuse. For the survival of themselves or of the entire person (human being as a whole), the other parts reject the core. They may deny its existence or encapsulate it in some way, like symbolically locking it up, burying it, freezing it, or putting it to sleep. They tend to speak derogatorily of this part of the self, who remains little (the age when the abuse took place), and to despise this one for having been “weak,” for “allowing him/herself to be a victim.” The purpose of the core self, or at least of the encapsulating of the core self, is to protect the rest of the Whole from feeling overwhelmed, so that s/he can function. The core part is the only part who is passive, acted upon, with no choice, rights or say in anything.

--There is often an enforcer. This is the part that identifies with the perpetrator and perpetuates the lies and attitudes of the one who “won.” The purpose of this part (in order to survive) is to prevent further abuse by being strong, maintaining control, even though it is often at the expense of smaller, more fragile parts. This part may seem cold, hard, uncaring, perhaps contemptuous of everything but his/her own interests. (It may be playing a male role, even if the person is female)

--There is often a hyper-vigilant part, a self on constant alert. (Either the enforcer or the vigilant one can be a “guard” but in different senses.) This part is usually very anxious. The purpose of this part is to prevent being subjected to further abuse.

--There may be one or more separate parts to carry anger, grief, or other responses to the abuse that are considered “negative.”

--There may be parts to hold various good qualities of the Person who split: one who paints, one who dances, one who is compassionate, one who is efficient and capable. For instance, if the other parts are all very young, there may be a part who comes forward (“out”) when necessary to drive the car or pay the bills or have sex.

I’ve learned from watching God work with multiples that:

--When the abuse is over and the separate personalities are not needed for survival, God can integrate them. Just as adrenaline can help you leap up a tree when a bear is chasing you or lift a car to rescue a child beneath its wheels, when the danger is over and the adrenaline is no longer an asset, God can help you climb down or put the car down and live normally again.

--God can heal the pain of the abuse. Usually He heals the physical pain over time. He can also heal the mental and emotional pain in the memories of the abuse. He can do this because much of the pain is not in the abuse but in the lie or lies one believes because of the abuse, lies about Him, about life, about the abuser and/or about oneself. Your lie(s) may not be the same as anyone else’s but it will be in one of a number of predictable categories. For instance, you may believe (by “believe” here, I mean “feel as if it is true that—“) you aren’t safe, that the abuse will happen again even if the abuser is dead. You may believe you are dirty inside or that you are poison to others or that you are unlovable and don’t deserve anything good.

--God knows and loves the fragmented person, loves each part and can meet the needs of each part and heal his/her trauma.

--Every part needs the real Lord Jesus Christ.

--God can redeem the pain, restore, make the person whole and one’s life even better than it would have been without the pain and fracturing.

Today on BONUS FEATURES: Childhood artifacts: Journal-carrying case

Corrections made

2010-10-17T00:02:00.000-07:00

I have corrected the links to BONUS FEATURES which wouldn't work during the first week of the month (while we were traveling through western Canada on the Rocky Mountaineer!) and the link to my new book.
As of this date, To Russia with Love still isn't on amazon.com. There are four copies of my first book, Jessica's Journal, on amazon but the cheapest copy is $264.65. I still plan to scan it into the computer and link it to His Scribe so you can read it free. There are so many Jessica's Journals online now I think I will give it a subtitle: Jessica's Journal - Six Years Between the Masts.

BOOKS I NEVER WROTE: Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio

2010-10-17T00:01:00.002-07:00

     A few months ago I did a series of posts on toddlers during the "language acquisition" years and called it "Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio." Actually that title was reserved for a book I never wrote. So I have gone back to July 10, when I began that series and retitled it one of Ben's early definitions: "Emergency is a gorilla--or the house is on fire" so I can use this one where it belongs.

                                                         Introduction
     Some years ago publishers got smart. They began marketing books for babies and toddlers with floppy rag pages that didn't tear. Then they produced some soft plastic books which could be sponged off.
     This was a start. But what makes publishers think children only chew, rip, or scribble on their own books? Don't they know kids hurl their own books off the couch and then reach for Mommy's romance novel, Daddy's manual from the office and the volume of impressionist paintings on the coffee table?
     What we parents need is a book--for ourselves--that's indestructible. It has to be made of a material able to withstand flood, fire, and saliva. It has to survive grabbing, pulling, twisting, wrenching, cutting, pasting, shredding, coloring, dropping, kicking, passing, and slam-dunking.
     But that's not all.
     It has to be lightweight and printed in large enough type to be read over the newborn's head while baby is nursing or sleeping. It has to be easy to understand while the reader is being bombarded simultaneously with noise: sobbing, singing, squealing, screaming, drumming, whining, whistling, hiccuping, splashing, talking, giggling, and gurgling.
     It has to be big enough so it can't be flushed down a toilet.
     It has to consist of anecdotes which can be read in any order, so there is no place to lose when a toddler jerks out the bookmark while grinning a wet, toothless grin.
     This is it: the first great big, washable, easy-to-read, indestructible book of devotions for parents.

Today on BONUS FEATURES: PHOENIX MEMORABILIA: Victrola record player