FIGHTS

THEME: FIGHTS
It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.
~ Mark Twain

SWITCHING CHANNELS
ELLIE SEARL

Sometimes my husband speaks from brain quarks.  The other day, as we drove past the hideous concrete landscape of strip malls, auto dealerships, and fast food restaurants, Ed said something unintelligible to me in a nasally, Mr. Peavey voice.  I thought he was referring to the ugliness.

 “Huh?” 

I expected him to say something funny about obese alley – those side-by-side hip packers:  Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King.

"I'm channeling Harrison Ford," he said.

I took a beat to reconnoiter.  "Yeah, right,” I said.  “Harrison Ford.  A dweeb."  MORE . . . 

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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
CAROLYN B HEALY

As soon as we landed in Christchurch, New Zealand our group of 44 piled into a luxury bus equipped with soft seats in a flashy fabric and a bathroom. We met our driver Malcolm, a strapping blonde gent who over the next week was to narrate our way across his country. You could quickly see that Malcolm was not a chatterbox, but one of those folks who was worth listening to when he spoke.

  It was January 22, 2011. He loaded our bags and we headed out of the airport on the exit lane. As he approached the traffic circle that would lead us to town, there was a loud clunk and we stopped dead. He shifted, and tried and this and that, but there we sat.  His jaw twitched, he traded a couple of quiet comments with Mark, our cheerful guide, and got on the phone. MORE . . . 

PAYING ATTENTION

THEME:  PAYING ATTENTION
I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.

~ Diane Sawyer

HEARING THE CHANT

CAROLYN B HEALY

It was Saturday, February 4, 2011. The Auckland Hop On Hop Off bus was transporting us through our last full day in New Zealand. We had already seen the grass-covered cone of an extinct volcano that sits above the city. I snapped a photo of my daughter peering into the top, while we tried to imagine what it had looked like 60,000 years ago when it was spewing lava. We couldn’t.

We’d also passed a suburban park with its own sheep, chomping grass within feet of the busy road. There are 4,000,000 people in New Zealand and 45,000,000 sheep. After a few days it seemed normal to see them anywhere.

We climbed off at the museum which sits above the city in a huge park. We looked down on a cricket match which we couldn’t understand and climbed the steps to the museum which we figured we could. We’d heard about the Maori show there, an authentic depiction of the music and practices of the indigenous people of New Zealand.

We were ushered into an elaborately carved meeting house, asked to remain silent for a welcoming ceremony, and then guided through a series of songs, games and dances. There was a cast of eight, 4 women and 4 men, dressed in traditional garments of muted patterns and ornamental beads. The men wore elaborate loincloths, the women grass skirts. The men held guitars, the women tucked poi balls at the waist. The oldest and most serious member of the troupe narrated. MORE . . .

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SPOT ON

ELLIE SEARL
Drawings and Spot's Story by Clinton Searl

My mother and father-in-law, Mary and Clint Searl, are 94 and 95 years old. They are in such good shape - body, mind, and soul - they could put most teenagers to shame. They'd probably tell you they're getting too old for this or too tired for that, but they have spunk and spirit and drive and a boatload of positive energy – the kind that adds spark to life and makes children giggle.


They tell the stories of their lives, most of which they've told many times, but which I never tire of hearing. Mom, the daughter of Austro-Hungarian parents and the eldest of ten children, growing up on a New Jersey farm. Dad, one of five children, growing up in a New Jersey mill town. They tell their stories, and I ask questions to stretch the details. MORE . . .

 Photograph by Natalie Searl

ENDINGS

THEME: ENDINGS
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. ~ Orson Wells

  

MY TV HALL OF FAME

Carolyn B Healy

I have friends who claim that they do not watch TV. They are too high-minded to engage with the sludge of popular media. “I never turn it on,” they declare, patting themselves on the back. Liars. Lure them into a conversation and they turn out to be surprisingly well-informed about the latest plot twists in Brothers and Sisters or The Good Wife.

Me, I make no such claims. I’m still making up for lost time because I spent several of my formative years with no TV. In fact, I have created a personal TV Show Hall of Fame. Let me tell you about my top ten. MORE . . .

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THE ESSENTIALS
Ellie Searl
 

It’s nearing the New Year - time to reconnoiter - time to think about how I’ve lived my life and see if my activities stand up to snuff. What unpleasantness could have been avoided if I’d been a better person? I don’t want to go into 2011 continuing behaviors that screech along the chalkboard.

Usually end-of-year self-scrutinizing comes in the guise of New Year’s Resolutions. However, this year I’ve decided to think of my life in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins. If I’ve fallen into the mire of sin, I'll cleanse my soul and waltz into 2011 with angelic purity.

Note: The sins aren't in the order I found them on the Internet. I alphabetized them. Makes me feel organized.  MORE . . .

BOUNCING BACK

THEME: BOUNCING BACK
A hard fall means a high bounce . . . if you're made of the right material. ~Unknown

  

     

S.M.A.R.T.

by Ellie Searl

I received my Master's Degree in Guidance and Counseling in 1978 from Youngstown State University. I've never been particularly proud of that - Youngstown not the garden spot of the universe, and the local university not the finest example of scholastic institutions. When a university names its football team The Penguins, something's off kilter. Penguins can't fly, and they can't run. They flap. Football flappers? Not a good image.


Right from the start, I worried about the educational quality of that town. Higher learning I didn't expect. However, Youngstown State was the only school in the vicinity that offered a postgraduate degree in counseling, so I enrolled there a few months after Ed, Katie, and I settled into our apartment and Ed began his ministry at the First Unitarian Church.

I wasn't particularly optimistic for lower learning, either, but I hoped Katie's education wouldn't be a huge disappointment. We had moved from Fayetteville, New York, a suburb of Syracuse, where Katie had attended an excellent school.

While I studied Carl Rogers' Client Centered Therapy and role-played I-messages with fellow students at the university, Katie became ensconced in fourth grade at Harding Elementary School. Her teacher, Miss Miller, was a single woman who lived with her ailing mother, and who, according to Katie, couldn't get married until her mother died.   MORE . . .

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THE SPOT YOU STAND ON
by Carolyn B Healy

I sat in my fourth grade art class, flummoxed. I stared at the large piece of art paper, my 48 crayons standing ready. The assignment: Draw a picture of your dad for Fathers’ Day.


It was 1956 and I was the only kid in the class who had a problem with this. I approached the teacher, careful to keep my voice low.

“Mrs. Albright,” I said, “My father died.”

“Oh, well then,” she replied, “An uncle? Your grandfather?”

I shook my head.

“Do you want to just do a picture of your mother instead?”

Good. Clarity. Permission to do the only logical thing. I turned out a very nice giant head of my mother in her pearl earrings which she rarely wore, but which gave a bit of glamour to my picture. As I glanced at my classmates’ pictures, I had that familiar outsider feeling, my nose pressed to the glass of their normal families. MORE . . .

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OUT OF THE ASHES

THEME: OUT OF THE ASHES:   
It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes. ~ Anne Baxter

UP IN SMOKE
Carolyn B Healy

It was a sunny Saturday morning. I trailed my friends around a lovely suburban garden center on a sunny Saturday morning. More enthusiastic gardeners than I, they examined odd varieties of ferns and rusty garden sculptures while I daydreamed. Old college friends, we gather every once in a while to talk for hours and tour around spots of interest while our husbands go off to regress into their long-ago frat boy selves, to everyone’s entertainment, especially theirs.

My cell phone rang and my heart sank when I saw it was a counselor who worked with me in my practice. Sigh. This must be a client crisis bad enough that she had to notify me.

“Maraline,” I said, “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Um, Elburn, or St. Charles, not sure. For the weekend,” I said.

“You don’t know what happened to the office then,” she said.

“No.”  MORE . . .
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BURNING BRIDGES

Ellie Searl

Camping became our temporary way of life in June of 1970 when Ed, our almost-two-year-old daughter Katie, and I left our townhouse in Burlington, Vermont, and crossed the border into Canada, thinking we'd never return to the States again. As many readers already know, we had left our country for Canada because we didn't support the war in Vietnam.

We purchased supplies at the Hudson Bay Company in Montreal –green canvas tent, two-burner Coleman stove, three red sleeping bags, plastic dishes, eating and cooking utensils, wrought iron frying pan, two pots, five-gallon water container with a spigot, yellow and white cooler, picnic basket, clear plastic tarp, some rope, and a folding potty with disposable plastic bags that clipped under the seat – for emergencies, we said.  MORE . . .

CORRUPTION

THEME OF THE MONTH: CORRUPTION

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

THE LEGACY OF PAUL POWELL

CAROLYN B HEALY

As a lifelong resident of Illinois, I was brought up on corruption. One of my favorite examples comes from 1970. Paul Powell was Secretary of State. Two days after his unexpected death, $800,000 in cash was discovered squirreled away in his home/hotel room in shoe boxes, along with 49 cases of whisky, 14 transistor radios and 2 cases of creamed corn, presumably ill-gotten gains from his $30,000 per year position. I was fascinated that anybody could have that assortment in their closet. And at the lack of security – anyone could take off with that cash and who could he report it to? MORE . . .

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ACROSS THE GENERATIONS

ELLIE SEARL

FAIRLAWN CEMETERY

Located in the Town of Prattsville, NY, on the left had side of the road on Rte. 23, about one mile past the bridge heading towards Grand Gorge. This cemetery is active and is in excellent condition.

Section 4, Plot 84

Louise A.K. Volckmann, b. 1884, d. 1957

Frederick P. Volckmann, b. 1883, d. 1968

I don’t remember much about my grandmother, other than she was very generous, sweet, and loving, and she adored my father, her only child. Her home smelled like violets and her lemon sponge cakes seemed to rise a foot off the plate. She had married my grandfather in 1907 when she was 23 years old, and my dad, born in 1912, became a new love in her life. Her husband, my grandfather, spent the remainder of their marriage resenting that his wife’s attention needed to be shared with his son. MORE . . .

BORROWING

THEME OF THE MONTH: BORROWING
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. ~ Woodrow T. Wilson

              

IN A BORROWED WORLD
Ellie Searl

A conflict of values can alter a state of well-being at any time.  Such conflicts might cause discomfort, complications, or upheavals.  In our case, a conflict of values caused us to transform our lives, and in June of 1969, my husband Ed, our two-year-old daughter Katie, and I moved to Canada.  It was like borrowing a country.  MORE . . .

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BORROWING MAGIC
Carolyn B Healy

My first book incident occurred when I was eight. My mother discovered me hiding under the covers late at night with a copy of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and a flashlight. She ordered me to turn it off and get to sleep. She did not see the tears streaming down my cheeks – you can tell where I was in the story – so did not perceive that there would be no going to sleep until I finished it.  Despite my generally compliant nature, I waited about ten seconds after she left before I flipped the light on and plunged back in. Any reader would understand. MORE . . .