Just Life
What does it mean to be a good neighbor?
Oh, man. I should’ve known that if I preached three weeks on what it means to be a good neighbor that a test my authenticity might be arranged. The photo above is what I woke up to on Saturday. My neighbor, who is building a new home next door, needed to pump out his flooded basement. So he removed a piece of fence between our yards and piped the water into my backyard… that’s what the photo is, his pipe that emptied his basement into my yard. All I know is that the words popping into my head weren’t learned in seminary.
That pipe has to be chalked up to “bad neighborliness.” The question for me is, “What is my response? What is my responsibility as a neighbor, regardless of his?” Believe me, I thought about tearing the pipe up and throwing it in his yard. I thought about calling County offices. I wondered what exciting things I could pipe from my house over to his.
I’m hoping that may not be exactly what he told his construction crew to do. I don’t know because there wasn’t anyone around yesterday or today to ask. I’ll be watching tomorrow. I did find out that one of the church office assistants told him he could do something, but she didn’t think he was planning to pipe into my backyard. So he probably acted with something he felt was akin to permission.
So, I’ve been cool… no graffiti next door, no hexes or curses on anyone’s holiday shopping. I’m trying to find that happy place, that place and time of contented cool out of which I can express my extreme distaste for that pipe, a sincere hope it will leave and never return, and a real conviction that I will use County authorities to make sure it doesn’t, but only if I am forced to it.
So, here’s hoping…
We’ve come a long way, baby…
So, I scootered down to DC today for lunch with some folks in our church family, and I figured, my scooter needs to meet the mall and the capital! That’s a long way from Keller, Texas, folks!
(See the wee Washington Monument in the background?)
Edgar Allan Poe
Yesterday, Oct. 7th, was the 158th anniversary of Poe’s death under mysterious circumstances in a city he loved, Baltimore, Maryland. I trekked out from Bethesda and spent an hour at the grave site.
Poe was originally tucked away in the back of the church yard, out of sight and pretty much forgotten. Pretty much. He was in fact remembered and many people, including penny-wielding school children, donated the funds to move him, with his wife and mother, around to a much more prominent spot. My first photo here is the newest grave, and the second is the original site.
I sat for an hour or so… I read Eleonora at his grave and Shadow – A Parable. Shadow opens with these lines: “Ye who read are still among the living / But I who write / Shall have long since gone my way / Into the region of shadows.”
I also took a bunch of photos and sketched the newer of the two grave markers with watercolor pencil. The marker for the original grave was in a spot of retina burning sunlight.
I wasn’t much impressed with Baltimore… but, you know, “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”
Who’s got time to blog?
Wow… I just noticed we’re only a few days shy of it being a month since I last blogged. My apologies. I’m not blogging right now, just apologizing.
Peace.
we finally made our summer beach trip…
Everyone relax… Josiah made it to the beach. He’s been talking about the beach since January. So, since school starts Monday, we packed up the kids and headed to Delaware on Saturday. we spent some time on Rehoboth Beach swimming and playing putt-putt golf!
Yes, that was DELAWARE, the First State. None of us had ever been there. Kinda cool, kinda cool.
Here are the boys at putt-putt… complete with fiberglass shark.
(As if a live shark would strike such a “dolphin” pose!)
Next is Hunter at the beach…
Josiah blissfully sanded…
And Ike at after putting a deuce!
If any of these photos seem to be of a lower quality it’s because we left on this momentous trip without grabbing any of our cameras. *sigh* So, I was stuck using my phone. I cleaned them as best I could.
Peace out.
The National Zoo…
Well, we finally got away from Bethesda today and Metro’ed down to DC to check out the National Zoo. Very nice. We were impressed with the Pandas… but the Amazonia building was the bomb! It’s built around a big aquarium with the scariest-big fish we’ve ever seen along with an astounding array of fresh water Sting Rays. It had a tropical rain forest room and a big science lab with all kinds of microscopes and cool things to look at.
A very cool exhibit is the Golden Lion Tamarins. They have a section of the zoo in which they simply roam free. There are volunteers throughout that area and the rest of the zoo to help you spot cool things and feel different kinds of animal fur, etc.
The boys enjoyed it, but since the zoo is built on a hill, the walking was pretty brutal by the end of our little excursion. And no train! There obviously wasn’t a Texan on the committee when this zoo was built or there’d be a train to catch at one end and avoid back-tracking up hill the whole thing when you’ve seen it all.
Anyway… here’s the fam.
Anyone up for a pilgrimage?
So, I’m thinking about a pilgrimage in October. It was only 158 years ago on October 7th that Edgar Allen Poe died at the young age of 40. I’m thinking of trekking over to West Baltimore to mark the anniversary of his death.
I grew up with an eccentric aunt and uncle who were always the element of mystery in each Christmas. They didn’t have kids, so their Christmas gifts were always the last things we wanted, but in retrospect, some of the coolest. One year when I was maybe 8 or 9 they gave me a hardback copy of some Edgar Allen Poe short stories and poems. It was gorgeously illustrated and had a full-color skull/death motif on the cover. Did that gift make me into a depressed kid or did being a depressed kid allow me to better empathize with Poe? I’m not sure which came first, my depression or my reading Poe, but either way an empathetic bond was created between myself and this emotional wreck of a romantic who lived so long ago. (“Long ago” is a relative thing… I’m only 37.)
A story that Poe wrote, Eleonora, has been a favorite of mine to read and a muse for several artistic projects over the years. It has the romantic elements of beauty, love, tragic death and a good old haunting, although a happy kind of haunting. The story is amazingly not a tragedy. Sometime soon I’ll post a digital image of the painting I did a few years ago when I returned to oil painting… it is based on the place where the story of Eleonora begins, in the “valley of the many colored grasses.”
Anyway… October 7th is a Sunday which means I wouldn’t be able to leave Bethesda until 1 or 2pm, unless anyone would like to make a Saturday trek the day before the anniversary of his death. Either way, I’m thinking of a little sight-seeing visit to his grave, sharing a little reading of some of his poetry there, and maybe some port wine.
Well, anyone up for a pilgrimage?
“They who dream by day
are cognizant of many things
which escape those who dream
only by night”
– Edgar Allen Poe, from Eleonora
Home at last…
We are in our new home, at last. After three days of driving and lots of yelling from both offspring and parental units, we are here in Bethesda. The church family plans to welcome us in a special way during the service tomorrow, and that’s very cool. I wanted to write a note tonight just to say a special word of thanks to God for answering our heart-felt prayers. We have safely made it to Bethesda, with good measures of joy and peace.
God is good, all the time… God is good.
it’s almost official…
OK… pigs are flying, the devil’s shoveling snow and we were actually prepared for a move for once! We packed our U-Haul today. Tomorrow we’ll clean the house and then we’ll be out of Keller, officially.
Huge props to Jarred, Erich, Nino, Sam and Jay! They were troopers and we made packing that 26 foot truck look easy. Thanks, guys!
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