I Held Your Hand

I Held Your Hand
Written for My Wife Barbara

In Honor of Her Birthday

The Nineteenth Of May

5/18/09

You know the time-worn story I tell,

And I still remember the details so well,

I slipped, wondering where I might land,

On that first date, I held your hand.

You reached out and clasped my hand so tight,

You kept me from falling down the hill that night,

It just happened, it wasn’t planned,

But I’m forever grateful that I held your hand.

So often I’ve had to head into surgery,

For my back, my wrists, or even my knee,

It could have been more than I could stand,

Except you were always there to hold my hand.

I have often spoken of my bruises from childbirth,

From where you squeezed my arm for all it was worth,

I was glad when fathers-to-be were not banned,

So I could watch over you, and hold your hand.

You’ve been there for me all through the years,

You’ve laughed with me, you’ve shared my tears;

There’s no way that I can make you understand,

How great I feel when I hold your hand.

We both are growing older, (though you don’t seem to),

But we share every moment ;yes, we always do,

That long ago it just happened, it wasn’t planned,

But I’m forever grateful that I held your hand.

So, today brings another birthday wish from me,

A wish that it will be as happy as can be,

And remind you of all the falls that were not planned,

That you saved me from, as I held your hand.

I Love You DEAN

A Couple of Play Reviews

(First of all let me go ahead and say that I am more of an apologist than a critic.)

M*A*S*H -- Millbrook Community Players. April 25, 30, March 1, 2 at 7:30; Apr.26, 2:00 Robinson Springs Elementary School Auditorium, Millbrook, AL.

Stephanie McGuire directs this very family friendly play. It is a lot of fun, with some poignant moments. It minimizes the sexual induendos of the TV show, and presents a very neat story of the 4077th.

I am a little prejudiced, since our son Chris is in it, playing Walt, the Dentist who wants to commit suicide. He is his normal hilarious self (in my totally unprejudiced view). Michael Snead plays Trapper John; long and lankey Stan Rosenthal is Hawkeye; John Collier is Duke. All of them do a very good job at their respective parts. Daniel Harms is Radar Reilly, and plays the part to a tee. I have been privileged to work with all of these in the past. Of course Collier and his wife Rae Ann (Hotlips Houlihan), Chris and Daniel have all performed at Faulkner over the years. Snead along with Randy Burdick (Father Mulcahy) are regular attendees of Faulkner plays as well. Charlie Mulchahy is pleasently befuddled as Colonel Blake, and John Chain is every bit the general as General Hammond.

One pleasant surprise is Robbie Ricks as the young Korean houseboy who dreams of being a doctor. He plays the part with enthusiasm, and is the easy recipient of the audiences empathy. I don't mean to leave anyone out, but this is a large cast. They do a very fine job of entertaining the audience as an ensemble cast.

IF YOU CAN AT ALL, PLEASE TAKE AN EVENING OR AFTERNOON AND GO SEE THIS VERY GOOD PLAY. I believe that you will be glad you did!


A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. The Wetumpka Depot Players
April 25, 30, May 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 at 7:30; May 3 2:00 at the Wetumpka Depot, Wetumpka, AL.

Under the very capable direction of Kristy Meanor and the always outstanding musical direction of Marilyn Swears, the Depot puts on an outstanding ensemble-driven show. Kristy has done a marvelous job of casting, and each performer perfectly fits the part assigned. Again, my personal prejudice comes through: Jason Morgan (Hero), Jennifer Haberkorn (Philia), Bill Nowell (Eronius), Kurt Geopinnger (a Protean - and about 5 other parts), and Kari Gatlin (a Geminae) are all folks that I have worked with at Faulkner, and I count each of them as a friend. But my estimation of the job they do in this play does not require any predujice toward them. They are outstanding. I have also had the pleasure to work with Steve Phillips (Lycus), Jacob Aldredge (Protean), and others in the cast as well. Tom Salter (Pseudolus) does an amazing job in a very pivotal role. William Harper (Senex) and Layne Holley (Domina) as a very unhappily married couple are hilarious as well. And a wonderful take-yourself-too-seriously comic job is done by Paul Travinsky as Miles Gloriousus.

I have to admit that I think that a newcomer to the Wetumpka Depot, (who graduated with my daughter Carol Leah from Prattville), Jonathan Conner very nearly stole the show. In a show full of wonderful and hilarious acting, he was outstanding as the very nervous Hysterium.

It is a wonderful show. It is not quite as family friendly as MASH, due to the storyline and the inherent innuendoes, but it is a great deal of fun, and well worth your time if you keep that in mind.

AGAIN, I HOPE YOU WILL GIVE AN EVENING OR AFTERNOON TO SUPPORT THE DEPOT, AND FOR A RIB-SPLITTING HILARIOUS TIME.

Barbara Kelly's Reflections on Life - Entry Two

Possibly one of the cruelest ways to punish a vibrant, energetic, full of life child of around twelve years of age is to hold them captive and make them participate in singing lessons. That was the last thing on this beautiful God-given planet that I wanted to do. About the only thing that could make it worse would be if your step-father was the teacher. Well, that was the plight in which I found myself.
My step-father’s name was Mr. Tharp, at least, that what I called him to his face; I won’t mention what I called him to his back. He was a very old man; he was in his sixties when my mother married him and he seemed ancient to me. (I still think Mom married him just because he had an inside toilet). He was an old farmer, very old fashioned, sternly of the old school of mind and very fussy. I think he spent more time agitated with my niece and me than anything else. (Of course, looking back over our lives together, we provided him with plenty of things to be agitated about.) We took for our own personal use just about everything that was his including his tools, his wheel barrow, his mules; nothing was sacred. And most of the time, whatever we took would wind up broken, left out in the rain or some other misfortune would come to it. But the part of him that I hadn’t remembered until recently is that he was a music teacher. My step-father had sat at feet of such men as Virgil Stamps, of the Stamps-Baxter quartet, in singing schools. He had taken the knowledge he gained from singing schools and applied it wherever and whenever he could. He had conducted singing classes in church any time that he was allowed or encouraged to. He enjoyed singing and most of all he enjoyed teaching singing. The problem was, when it came to me, he had a very unwilling student. I remember many days when I sat in our living room singing the scale over and over…do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. I sat there trying to recognize half notes from quarter notes on his chalk board and hoping to guess them correctly so I could escape that much more quickly and get on with my life. I would look out the screen door and my faithful old dog would be looking in, panting and wondering why I wasn’t coming out to play and explore new and exciting things with him and, of course, that made me want to go even more. After multiple looks at the doors or yawns of boredom and slouching down as far as I could in my chair to make it obvious how I felt, Mr. Tharp would finally give up in frustration and tell me to go. I would burst out the door running with my dog, on to the next adventure in the expanse of the many fields that were our farm.
A few days ago, I was called upon to sing at a memorial service for someone in our small community. I have been asked to do such things over the years, but with this one particularly, there was a song that I didn’t know; actually had never heard. The song wasn’t that difficult and I was to sing harmony. A friend helping out with the song, leaned over to me and said, “I’ll just follow your lead!” We engaged in a quiet conversation at that point and I found out that she had always wanted music lessons when she was a child and her family couldn’t afford them. My friend and I are about the same age and the thought struck me, I had within my own house where I lived what she had wanted so desperately as a child and couldn’t have. Yet, I didn’t want to take the time to appreciate it. All I can think now is, “Thank you, Mr. Tharp”.

Barbara Kelly's Reflections on Life - Entry One

Life can be quite coincidental. In February of 1978, I entered the only hospital that was located in Osceola, Arkansas having a miscarriage. It was a sad occasion indeed made more so by our excitement and readiness for a baby. The hospital was extremely small, and while private rooms had not yet been conceived of in that part of the world, my first night there I was fortunate enough not to have a roommate. Shortly after that first night, the life that might have been was gone and we were left to deal with the loss in the best way that our young hearts could. I had plenty of Job’s comforters to come by with “comfort” and advice telling me such things as, “it’s for the best, you know, after all it might have been deformed in some way”. (My husband has always told me, and I quite agree with him, that people need to have lessons on hospital visitation and what not to say when visiting patients). Nevertheless, we each have our own unique ways of dealing with sadness and anxiety and the best way for me then, and even now to some extent, is to be alone. And when I say alone, that doesn’t exclude my husband. Even then, we were such a part of each other that it didn’t feel right when we weren’t together. By the second day, after a D & C and with the help of drugs that made the room spin, I was doing all right with my sadness and frustration. By late afternoon, nurses rushed into the room rolling a bed with a woman on it. Oh no, a roommate! That was the last thing in the world that I wanted! But ready or not, and whether I wanted it or not, here she came. She was a very young black woman and she was exhausted having just given birth. After nurses got her settled in, we were alone. This had really messed things up for me because now my husband couldn’t stay with me tonight. And to be honest, the last thing that I wanted was someone happily talking about the baby they had just given birth to, although she had every right in the world to be happy. One of the first questions from her was, “what did you have?” I told her a miscarriage. She just said, “Oh”. What else was there to say? A few moments elapsed and I said, “And you?” She told me she had had a little boy. This short attempt at conversation seemed to break the awkward silence between us and we engaged in amiable conversation thereafter. Time passed and eventually, the door of the room opened. A nurse entered bringing the woman’s baby for her to hold, feed and get to know. I remember thinking he was the cutest thing I thought I’d ever seen. Plump little cheeks, dark eyes and the prettiest shade of skin a baby could have. I asked the girl what his name was to which she replied, “I don’t know; I haven’t named him.”
The following day, during one of the baby’s several visits to our room, the mother asked if I wanted to hold him. I told her that I’d love to. He was so sweet and it felt so good to hold him. I remember thinking; one day… I gave the baby back after a while and the mother looked at me and surprised me with a question, “What’s a good name for a boy?” It took me by surprise and I just looked at her for a moment wondering if she was seriously asking me what to name her baby. After I concluded that she was, I replied, “I don’t know…I’ve always sort of liked the name Christopher.” She repeated the name a couple of times and looked down at the baby and said, “How do you like the name Christopher?” She looked back up at me smiling and said, “I really like that name. That’s what I am going to call him”.
As I write this, I wonder what has happened to that Christopher that I only knew for a short couple of days. Did he live all of his life in that small Arkansas town; did he play sports when he was in high school; did he go to college? Did he grow up and have a family of his own? It has been thirty years since I held and helped name that baby boy. My Christopher, our third child, celebrated his twentieth birthday last week.

AN ENCORE!
My wife and I go to the fair for three things: #3 – to look at the exhibits; #2 – to eat a sausage dog; #1 – to eat a funnel cake. (Sausage dogs and funnel cakes just don’t taste as good anywhere else.)

The preceding is true – until this year. This year, for the first time, we took our grandson, Thomas. He will be 2 in just a few days. All of a sudden all of the lights were brighter, and the cows bigger, and the circus more fun: just watching the pure joy on his face as we looked at the pigs, or bunny rabbits, or horses.

He had gone a few days before with his parents, and we knew he loved the circus. We took him back. He had told us about the clown and the car that went “boom.” He would lay his head to the side, like the clown that was blown off the car, but then he would put up his little hands and say, “Okay.” This, of course, meant that the clown was Okay despite the boom. He couldn’t wait to see the car again. The first time he went, however, it was so hot that they did not stay to see the elephants. This time we did, and he was so amazed as the “funts” came out and we could almost touch them. He told me several times “big funt.”

After the circus we went and got our funnel cakes, and he dug in and ate a large chunk of one. We found a seat right near the shark exhibit. Thomas and I finished before MawMaw, so we walked over to see the live sharks. We were looking intently at them, when he realized that MawMaw was not with us. He looked over where she sat, and said, “’Mon MawMaw, mon.” He just thought it was awful that she was missing out on such an exciting moment. Next year, when he is almost three, I hope that his mom and dad will let us watch him as he begins to ride the rides for the first time.

Through it all, it made me think of the joy of watching a little one’s pure pleasure at the simplest things. It made me remember what made the fair truly fun, not what we did at the fair, but what our little ones did. Of course, our “little ones” are pushing 20, 27, and 30 as I write this. So, this was kind of like performing, and enjoying the performance, but then being called for an encore. Maybe that is part of what makes grandparenting so special – it is like the encore performance. It is less complicated than the original, but is just as enjoyable. Now I really look forward to the fair next year, and it means more than just the food (Hey, I didn’t say the food would be left out!).

I love the phone calls and hearing the little voice saying, “Hi, PawPaw.” I love to hear the excitement when he is expecting to see me and he does. It tickles me to hear him say, “PawPaw peach” when I am in the pulpit. He brings unadulterated pleasure into our hearts.

I never knew an encore could be so great!

Kelly's Korner Komment and Komplaint

KELLY’S KORNER KOMPLAINT
You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me!
Did you know that you are guilty of causing others to have Kidney Stones? Your driving your car, combined with bovine flatulence, and having children, that is.
Kidney Stones Tied to Global Warming
By Dan Vergano,
USA Today
Posted: 2008-07-15 16:06:52
Filed Under: Health News, Science News
(July 15) -- Global warming could do more than hurt polar bears: It could force a rise in kidney stones, scientists warned Monday."We see a relationship between kidney stones and temperatures everywhere," says study co-author Margaret Pearle of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. "Even in places with air conditioning, warmer temperatures mean more stones."

As I read this article it amazed me how much speculation is involved in these wild comments about global warming:
The kidney stone finding, reported Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combines the panel's projections of higher U.S. temperatures with Medicare and Veterans Administration health records stretching from 1982 to 2005 to estimate how many extra U.S. kidney stone cases will result from global warming.
And of course they are very congratulatory about their combination of fiction with maybe a little fact:
"Everyone in warmer temperatures is at higher risk for kidney stones, so the findings make perfect sense," says nephrologist David Goldfarb of New York University Medical Center, who was not part of the study. "What's so impressive about this study is how they've brought together models of warming and kidney stones for the first time."
Now, take note of these words from Apologetics Press, an article entitled, “Cows, Kids, and CO2” by Dr. Dave Miller (http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3365 ):
A 400-page United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization report has identified rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the environment (Lean, 2006). We are told that the 1.5 billion cattle of the Earth are responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming—more than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation combined. More than a third of the greenhouse gas, methane (which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide), is emitted by cows and their manure. And it’s not just methane, since cattle also produce more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world’s emissions of ammonia—one of the main causes of acid rain (Lean, 2006). That’s right, gaseous expulsions by cows do more to damage the planet than cars. The environmentalists are beside themselves.
Miller goes on to state:
But it doesn’t stop there. While it is common for environmentalists to blame mankind as the prime perpetrator of environmental destruction, now one environmentalist insists that, more specifically, children are significant culprits in the human assault on the natural order. Parents, we are told, should limit their offspring to no more than two children in order to reduce carbon dioxide output. The report published by the environmentalist group, Optimum Population Trust, insists that the greatest thing one could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child (Templeton, 2007).
So, maybe if we got rid of all the cows and all the kids things would be better, do you think? Actually that has been basically suggested by Dr. Eric R. Pianka, “the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist,” (http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3740 ) that to save the world 90% of the population should be eliminated, possibly by intentionally using a deadly virus (see documentation at the URL provided above).
Miller continues:
The arrogance of measly man thinking he can control the forces of nature by his paltry tinkering with the created order—as if he even had the knowledge and wisdom to do so. Ultimately, this feeble, faltering faux pas manifests willful ignorance and a lack of faith in the Creator. The environmentalists need a healthy dose of spiritual reality—the same one Job received when he thought it necessary to question God’s superintendence of the Universe (Job 38:2-5,21; 40:2,14)…. When humans eliminate God from their thinking and jettison the biblical worldview, insanity begins to sound sensible. That’s the real “inconvenient truth.”
I have stated many times that I believe that we are responsible for taking care of this world that God has given us, and has put under us (Genesis 1:26-27). But too many are being sold an empty barrel of foolishness based on a denial of God. And that is my Kelly’s Korner Komplaint for today.
P.S. You can check out many great topics concerning God, Atheism, etc. at http://www.apologeticspress.org/.

INNOCENCE - Monkey Dan and Little Man

Monkey Dan and Little Man

Hold on, Monkey Dan, keep him company

While he takes a break from all his activity,

While he dreams the dreams of a toddler's mind,

Of Mommy, Daddy, and animals of every kind.

He has been so busy just exploring things,

That this great big world just to him brings,

He saw a bird flying high into a tree,

He saw a lizard as green as it could be.

He sings the songs he hears in his own special way

And he gains more knowledge every day,

But there with Monkey Dan in the midst of sleep,

I pray that God will this little one keep.

I look at his little face so sweet,

His little arms, his little hands and feet,

And a picture as plain as it can possibly be,

Of innocence, that is what I truly see.

So many things will do their very best

To give that innocent little heart unrest;

Right now he has a heart that is pure and clean,

May it never be filled with what's dirty and mean.

Right now he can hold onto Monkey Dan,

And he is definitely our Little Man,

But may we always teach him the way

To keep innocence in his life each day.

So, for now, Hold on Monkey Dan, keep him company,

While he takes a break from all his activity;

While he dreams the dreams of a toddler's mind,

And may there alwasy be love there for him to find.

Love, PawPaw