School Board Standoffs

I have heard that whatever anxiety a town has, it tends to focus on its education system. Maybe that's true. Education and children represent the future, and Smalltown has one or two concerns about its future, to put it mildly.

Anyway, the school board volcano erupted this week. An editorial ran in the Smalltown Sentinel saying that board members always proclaim, "It's all about the children." The author opined that the activities of the school board have little or nothing to do with what the students care about. He sarcastically stated that the children being discussed are not in the schools, but on the school board. He fully expected the Texas Education Agency to bench the whole team. Recently the school superintendent was suspended with pay for two weeks, according to the same newspaper. I do not recall anywhere I have lived where the school board was so acrimonious. It makes me wonder what Jesus would do if he were on the school board or living in Smalltown. ""Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you," he said. Can I be an agent of peace here? Can others? Or will we continue to see our school board tattle on each other and throw spitballs?

Expressing Oneself Oddly

Language has its odd expressions. I heard a mother complain that her growing boy was "eating her out of house and home." Now, does that mean she has both a house and a home? Is it easier to eat someone out of a house than a home? If her house is her home, then he is only eating her out of one house/home. Eating someone out of either a house or a home is a strange picture upon which to reflect. It might mean consuming a La-Z-Boy lounger and other unappetizing materials.

Then there is the expression "It stinks to high heaven." Years ago one of my relatives explained that when he smoked a cigar he did not stub it out like he would if it were a cigarette. He gave this stinky expression as the reason. I recall laughing a lot as I had not heard anyone say this before. Is heaven really high? Jesus said heaven was either within us or between us, depending on the translation, so it may not be up in the sky at all. It may be at eye level. Even if it does turn out to be way up there, we do not know how high up it is. Astronauts have gone to amazing elevations relative to the earth and they did not find it. Perhaps we should say, "It stinks to low, medium, and high heaven," to allow for heaven to exist at any level. Or better yet, we should say, "It stinks to (fill in opposite of heaven here)" as that is surely a much stinkier place with its sulfur and brimstone and all.

Drying Off, Drying Out, Drying Up

It's a full "drouth" here in Smalltown these days. I can't hardly remember the last time it rained. When it did, it just kind of spit and moved on. I strolled outside in the backyard this morning with the dog and fell into one of the cracks out there. It didn't completely swallow me up at least and I climbed out. We're all praying for rain and I suspect the farmers are praying hardest of all. Gloria Pearce, one of our elderly members, asked me to pray for her because she gets quite a bit of her income from farming and is worried about losing all of her crops this year. She asked me to pray that she would not be sitting beside the road begging for money with a tin cup in her hand so she could pay her taxes. I promised her I would, and I did. I owe Gloria big time because she taught me one principle for saving water that she learned in the Great Depression in the 1930s. Its context is obvious. "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." So far I have not applied this principle and I hope I will not have to. On the other hand, never say never.

These are tough times for everyone but I keep on praying; for rain, for economic relief, for peace of mind not just for me but for everyone here. I hope they know I'm on their side and so is God.

Lots in a Name

It's interesting to follow fads and fashions in naming. For instance, if a woman is called Betty or Ruby she is probably elderly. If her name is Lisa, she was probably born in the 1960s. If her name is Caitlin or one of its numerous spelling variations, she is probably in her teens or twenties. Male names vary less. Thomas and Robert and John have been around forever. The name Ethan was popular a century or so ago, and now it is back in style.

People get creative sometimes, and naming their children brings out the muse in many of them. Sometimes they name their offspring based on something going on around them at the time. I wonder what it does to the child who then gets named Cyclone. Years ago in England, we worked with a travel agent called Miss Bottomley. I wonder what it was like to give that as a last name in school. Too bad her parents gave her the first name of Floral. Floral Bottomley. Now that's an image. Rock musician Frank Zappa was enterprising enough to name his son Dweezil and his daughter Moon Unit. I bet he was on some fancy drugs when he came up with those. Or maybe not.

While in college I worked in the tutoring center with a young woman called Spring Scales. Another woman had the first name of Chestina. Nicknames for that one boggle the imagination. Frankly, when it comes to naming someone I would go for conservatism. It is easier to sign checks with Susan or Brad Williams than with LaSquisha Perone or Theophilus Giles Goody-Ballard.

Yes It Really Happened

Made-up stories don't compare to what people are really up to. I talked to Cheyenne recently. She has a friend, Trevor, near Central City. He is on the police force. He was on duty at three o'clock in the morning, hiding around a corner by the side of the road in a small town. Suddenly a pickup truck roared by in the darkness going 80 miles an hour. Trevor put on his lights and siren. He went after the driver and pulled him over. He made the man get out of the truck. Then Trevor looked inside. The vehicle was a mess. It was piled high with fast food wrappers, boxes, cups, and straws. There were Skoal cans scattered around. Trevor waded through it all and under the dashboard he pulled out a giant marijuana plant.

He looked at the man in disbelief. "What were you thinking?" he demanded. "You speed through town going eighty miles an hour at three o'clock in the morning, AND you've got drugs in the vehicle?" The guy replied weakly, "I didn't know y'all worked at night."

Facebook Multiplies the Multitudes

I surfed Facebook tonight as I am prone to do. It is fast becoming the social networking tool of choice. It is mentioned in the national news more often than MySpace, its nearest rival. On Facebook people can send fake fish to a Li'l Blue Cove to oppose pollution, donate virtual plants to save acres in the Tropical Rain Forest, play trivia games, pass an online Long Island Iced Tea to someone...it goes on indefinitely. It is like the old story of "Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." As the story goes, a fox makes a grinning human figure out of sticky tar to trap a rabbit. The rabbit gets offended at the smiling, inanimate tar baby and hits it. His paw naturally sticks to the tar. The rabbit gets mad. He hits it again. Another paw sticks. And it keeps getting worse. Facebook is somewhat like that tar baby. It is enjoyable if you just grin at the tar baby and enjoy what's there, but it has so many applications and sub-applications that it's easy to feel like Br'er Rabbit with all four paws stuck in its myriad tentacular, sticky-tar activities.

I have drawn the line. I am absolutely not getting involved in Facebook's "Twenty-Five Things I Don't Want to Know About You."

Comedy Night

I can't believe Myra MacDonald asked me to do standup comedy at the Sweetheart Banquet tonight. And I had the temerity to say yes. Well, who am I kidding? It was fun. Especially telling about that bumper sticker, "Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I drive by again?" And telling the crowd how each religious group dedicates its new cars for its pastors. The Catholics sprinkle the car with holy water; the United Methodists have communion and pour Welch's Grape Juice on the car; the charismatics pray and lay hands on the car so it stays healed; and the Jews cut the tailpipe off.

On the way out, Lola Flushpoole mentioned that her daughter Michele had looked at her young husband, Pierre, this morning at breakfast. She told Lola, "I was thinking that this marriage is still so wonderful. I looked at Pierre and even after being married several years, I was still getting this nice warm feeling in my chest when I saw him. Then I looked down and saw that I had dunked my left boob into my coffee."