Weekend Fun
Probably it’s the weather. As soon as the humidity and temperatures dropped back into humane levels, I got a burst of energy and felt like doing something besides sleeping and eating. I had begun to wonder if old age had finally caught up to me.
Anyway, heat or no heat, yesterday was busy. We started by packing lunches at trinity Memorial Church, then shadowed a birthday party at the zoo. This was a delightful group of four or five year olds that were excited to see the fox, interested in the snake, curious about the bird and happy with the rabbit. If you notice a steady decline in the level of excitement, good, I was accurate. Seems no matter what is going on, four and five year olds have about 13: 45 minutes of attention in them. Beyond that, we could have had a working dragon and it wasn’t going to work.
We got back home, hung out in the air-conditioned room upstairs until 5, then headed back to the zoo for Ice Cream Safari. Great fun. A really large crowd, enough help to not be run frantic, support showing up with ice cream at the right time and just a generally well run event.
Today, after Mass we started painting the Hall.
For those unaware, we have been redoing our entry hall for , well a really long time. Several years ago, I started redoing the door trim. I built a really fancy head piece for each of the three doors and redid the upright pieces with a neat inlay of carved wood. That used up all my skill for two years. Then we designated this summer as the summer we would finally finish the hall and rebuild the outside back stairs.
We started by installing a ceiling. The old one was determined to become part of the floor at any moment. By working really carefully, we kept the old ceiling up, and secured it with the new one. Then all the trim under the stairway, including the closet door was removed and some put back. (The closet door and the side trim is waiting for wallpaper to be applied) I rebuilt the upper Newell post and wrapped it in oak. Finally, phase one required 11 oak treads, 12 risers, four side pieces to be cut and finished and ready for installation and the walls prepared for painting,.
Then the fatal, hated, although absolutely correct words ---
“ While we’re at it, we should paint the ceiling over the stairs.”
I painted this ceiling twenty years ago, and I am certain the plan was for it to last at least 60 years., because I clearly remember saying, “I am not painting that again until I am 105!!”
I do not mind painting walls, the paint can only splatter on the floor in front of me, which it will do. Ceilings open up whole new dimensions of splatter. It can go behind me, on me, over me and somehow transmute itself into blob like spectacles in the middle of the room. You scoff, but I have witnessed each and every possibility, while holding a wet paintbrush and sporting a stupid expression.
Anyway, we covered, stapled, masked everything in sight, and this morning primed the walls and painted the ceiling. We’ll be done cleaning up the splatters Tuesday.

Dentists
A few weeks ago, a filling fell out of my head. Not unusual. Simple wear and tear. Anyway, I made an appointment and Tuesday was the day. I arrived at 8:10, was stuck with Novocain at 8:12, shot the breeze with Dr. Bain until I started to slur words and had developed a serious lip leak. A few whirrs, a few twirls and I was out the door by 8:30 and eating breakfast by 9:30. No fuss, no muss, no pain.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!
My first experience with a dentist was in a Dr’s office who shall remain nameless. ( because I forgot his name and have not been able to resurrect it not matter how hard I try) His office was right across the street from the old Johnson City High School and I still wince when I drive by. In his defense, he was about 65 when I first went there at the age of seven or eight, so he probably started his practice around 1914. He apparently never replaced any of his equipment. He used a treadle drill, that he pumped furiously with one foot, occasionally switching to the other foot when he moved to get a better angle on the “problem” --ME! It is not the pain I remember. Whether what he did was not terribly painful, or he was really good at what he did I don’t know. I have no horrible memories of Novocain shots or gas or anything. What I remember was the smell of burning tooth. Yuck. Double yuck when you realize the smell is coming from your tooth. Once or twice he hit a spot that made blood shoot up into my line of vision. That was a highlight of my visits.
A few years later we graduated to another dentist who again I don’t remember. ( I’m sensing a pattern here) All I remember about him was sitting in his office, much improved over the first dentist’s, and hearing him tell my Dad that since I had buck teeth I was generating 18 gazillion tons of pressure on my teeth and if I did not get braces, they would all fall out by the time I was thirty. “ Do you want that to happen to him??”
My Dad inquired into the price and when he heard it he allowed as how if he paid that much for braces, I wouldn’t need them because I wouldn’t have anything to eat. End of braces. (Dad always felt guilty about that, which is another reason I don’t have fond memories of this dentist.} Anyway, I decided if they were falling out by thirty, to heck with it. Unless there was a gigantic hole, I never paid much attention to my teeth until a remarkable incident when we were living in Sydney, New York. I was chewing on a Mary Jane, alias “filling remover” and not surprisingly, it removed my filling. This one hurt, so I went to a local dentist who was pretty upset with me about not taking better care of my teeth. I explained they were all falling out pretty soon anyway because of the gazillion pounds of pressure and he quite literally hit the roof. Seems that was never the case and he explained quite clearly that if I took care of them, there was no sane reason I would not die at the age of 105 with all my teeth.
From that day forward I have never had a new cavity. Don’t really need any new ones given all the old ones I had. Periodically, a filling shoots out, or a tooth breaks, but so far it has been easily and painlessly fixable. So the next time you hear about the good old days, I vote that where Dentistry comes in, I’ll take these old days anytime.

it doesn’t always seem fair that other people are so much better at writing things than i am. but what is below is just perfect and what could i add?


LOVE
Wednesday, July 14
Kateri Tekakwitha,
Mohawk Holy Woman


Question of the Day:
Why does God love us?
God cares, for some wonderful reason, despite all of our smallness and silliness. Divine love does not depend on our doing nice or right things. Divine love is not determined by the worthiness of the object of love but by the Subject, who is always and only Love. God does not love us if we change, as we almost all think; but God loves us so that we can change.
No matter what we do, God, in great love and humility, says, “That’s what I work with. That’s all I work with!” It’s the mustard seed with which God does great things. Our life experiences, “good and bad alike,” are invited to the great wedding feast (Matthew 22:10). They are the raw material that God uses to prepare the banquet.

~Richard Rohr
June 2010

JOY and happiness
We often mistake happiness for joy and joy for happiness. They are no more related than weather and climate. Certainly there is a connection and some dependence on each other, but not to the point of interchangeability.
From birth we are taught to seek happiness. “Do what makes you happy!” “Go for it!” (it being somewhat elusive!) We pursue happiness in purchased form, in escape form, in thrill form, in unimaginable forms. And we find it. Short term.
I remember as a child wanting a radio in the worst way. I am just old enough to have experienced a time when radio was fun. We listened to story after story. Space Cadets, Johnnie Dollar, Our Miss Brooks, Fiber McGee and Molly, or The Great Gildersleeve. Who could forget lying in bed in the dark listening to Gangbusters, or Inner Sanctum or Suspense? But, we had only one radio and it was in the other room, so I never had control of what was listened to, and worst of all, when the powers that be determined it went off for the night, silence. I wanted my own. So one Christmas morning, I woke up and was presented with my very own radio. A clock radio no less. That radio and I enjoyed many great years together, even after it developed a nasty habit of shocking you whenever you tried to change the alarm setting. I found I would rather wake up at 6 AM on Sunday than get shocked blind Saturday night. That radio made me happy. It did not bring me joy.
Later in life I decided I wanted a telescope. I saved my money until I had the princely sum of $34.98 and I mailed a money order to Edmonds Scientific Corporation, and several weeks later my beautiful 3 inch reflecting telescope arrived. Despite the fact it no longer reflects anything, I still have it because it seems disloyal to throw it away. Plus I still want my $34. 98 worth. That telescope made me happy. It did not bring me joy.
I could go on. We bought an umbrella for the pool deck when the kids were little. I have no idea why, but I loved the bright colors. Looking at it made me happy, but guess what? It did not bring me joy.
I know we say, “You can’t buy happiness.” Poppycock. Money can buy you lots of happiness. It will be short term, it will not last and it will not be joy- but it will be happy.
Joy, on the other hand, is inside out. The feelings of Joy come from satisfaction, from peace, from love. When I look at Kay rocking Z, I am filled with pure Joy. To see someone else so happy and so devoted is special. When I rock Z, I feel the same Joy I felt when I rocked Jeremy and Nick and later Lydia. Nothing can steal that joy from me. And no money could buy it.
When I walk out on a perfect 63 degree, bright blue morning, I feel Joy. That is a gift from God and must be appreciated. I am astounded when I am passed by joggers plugged in to I Pods, and missing the moment that never comes again. And yet how many years did I walk around with a mental I Pod blocking out the special moments?
Good food brings happiness, but sharing it with good friends brings Joy. I still remember a dinner at the Treadway Inn with Nick, Kate, Jeremy, Denise and the two of us. It was one of the most joyous moments of life.
How many great meals did we share in Baltimore? And how much pure Joy has come in the Adirondacks with all of the friends from college?
In the end, I think Joy comes from being at peace with yourself. It is no secret that I spent many years convinced I was not good enough, not smart enough, not funny enough, not skilled enough. Then I learned that I was good enough. That not only was I good enough, God actually liked me, thought I was just the way I was supposed to be. With that one cosmic hug, came a great inner peace that has allowed me to see and enjoy the world around me. All the anxiety and fear and worry, has been replaced with peace and Joy.

Ice Cream
I have often imagined being in a Doctor’s office and having him say, “Sorry, you can never eat candy or cake or pie or pudding or cookies again in your life!!”
The reply would be, “OK! I’ll miss them but what are you going to do?”
If on the other hand he says, “Sorry, you can never eat ice cream again!” the reply would be far less civilized.
My first encounter with ice cream, or the first I remember, was sitting in a cigar store on Main street in Johnson City sharing an ice cream cone with a Beagle. Why we were lingering in that store I have no idea. Since the dog and I were sharing licks, I’m pretty sure my mother was not around.
After that, I can remember going to a tiny store on the upper end of Grand Avenue, only one house from the end. Paul and Marjorie something ran it. Dad knew them from down home or he worked with them in the factory or something. Anyway, we would stop on Sunday nights and get hand packed quarts to take home. I must have still been cute or something because they would always slip me a little free taste.
Then, I remember a summer that must have been especially hot. Dad was working the 3 to 11 shift and when he got home we would all pile in the car and drive to a Carvelle’s on Riverside Drive. That is still there, but I don’t think it is a Carvelle’s anymore.
One glorious year an ice cream store opened on the corner of Hudson and Grand. Goodrich’s Ice Cream. We stopped there nearly every night after baseball in Floral Park. Not long after they went out of business, and another shop opened farther down Grand Avenue, right across from Philadelphia Sales. Today it is a hair dresser, but once upon a time it was a haven for summer joy.
It seems ice cream was supplanted in my hierarchy of recreational nourishment for several years between 1964 and 1971, but then it reclaimed the top spot. By then we were living in our brand new house and ice cream was purchased at the very end of Chenango Street in an old Dairy run by a man I had worked with in the Grand Union. That store lasted for many years, right through Jeremy and Nick growing up. The construction of route 88 put an end to it.
We were in a dessert for awhile with no decent ice cream places anywhere around us. One tried to make a go of it in a little plaza just down the street from us, right across from the Police Station, but it didn’t last. But good things come to those that wait.
About 6 years ago, a retired CV teacher and his wife opened Susy Q’s in the shopping plaza where Chenango and Nolan Road meet. Without a doubt it is the best ice cream I have ever eaten. We frequent it often, deluding ourselves into thinking the mile walk to and from Susy’s will make up for the extra calories. Then, just before it shuts down for the winter, I make a final run and fill our freezer with 14 quarts. These stay pretty much untouched until Fat Tuesday, the Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday each year. Then we host an ice cream party and our friends show up and get the season of Lent started with the spirit the early church envisioned. With good timing, Lent ends just about the time the “Open for Business” sign goes up on Susy Q’s door. All is good again.

Blessed White Space
When we used to go to Disney with the kids, we would stay at the Polynesian Hotel. One of snack bars there, Captain Jack’s, had an offer that anyone who could eat their fifteen scoop, extra topping Sundae would not have to pay for it. Now of course I was living with a sane person who required I be a good example to the children in tow, but a part of me wanted to give it a try. What could be better than two scoops? Fifteen! Anyway I am sure that half way through I would have caved and been out $32.98
The point is that too much of anything is not good. We need some sort of balance in life. Now I want to stress that this is not a woe is me story in any way. I would not have missed teaching the plant classes or planting with the kids at Port Dick for a second. And I loved the time we spent at the zoo for special events and tours. Likewise our own gardens bring me an immense sense of peace. Sister Bridget’s class and the Book club have been wonderful. The time spent reading and meeting with the Franciscan group has been cherished. The social engagements that have filled our evenings were blessed events, and the Port Dick Park, the Angel of Hope, the tree planting around the village were inspirational. The time spent preparing for guitar lessons has been joyful.
And I can not thank God enough for the Zoey time! What a precious, wonderful gift to be any part of her life.
I have to confess that thrown into the mix was the decision to take advantage of a good deal, $300 worth of oak, so I would have it on hand for the summer project of rebuilding the hall staircase, only to discover that if I left it in the cellar until I had time to use it, it would turn into $1.50 in value because it would be warped beyond use. Therefore, In between other activities, I needed to do a major building project. I really enjoyed it, but it was stupid to get in that position to begin with. Now the blessed white space news!
Every Saturday morning I plan the following week. (Too many years in a classroom to let go of the habit!) This morning, I did a double take when I saw white space. Is it possible? We have all the gardens planted and mulched, well almost. Book Club is taking the summer off. We are back to a sensible, interesting, joyful stretch with lots of time to enjoy the gardens, enjoy Zoey, go to Hudson and Amsterdam and Oneonta to visit people we have not seen enough of in the last few months. We can get out to the cottage and celebrate the Fourth without needing to be anyplace else. And best of all, I can finish the hallway and start on the outside repairs, all in a slow, relaxed pace. I can get back to stretching and Pilates and exercise. I will have time for the bike riding and finally some horse time. I may get the books that have been piling up read and best of all, I may write down some of the stuff that has been flowing through my head for two months. Balance, balance, balance.
And maybe someone is offering a fifteen scoop sundae contest????

At some point in your life, you begin to know the endings. Early on, you only know the beginnings. Lives are built with certainty and absolutes. We search for defining images and reflections. We encourage and support each other in our delusions. Everything is so clear, so black or white.
“I am a teacher, a Catholic, an Irishman. I love chocolate, dogs and pizza. I don’t like succotash, cats or people that make me uncomfortable.”“ I believe --- and so on for ever.” And we are so certain we are right.
Then one day you wind up with a cat and you learn they are just as loveable as dogs. Then you meet someone who makes you terribly uncomfortable, but also makes you think and grow and you come to value them immensely.
One day being Catholic seems less important than being Christian. You learn the real history of Ireland and you see that they are just as screwed up as the rest of humanity. You retire and you are no longer a teacher, yet it is important to be something, so you recreate yourself into what you always wanted to be. If you are especially blessed, it is what you were always supposed to be.
In the arrogance of youth, you are certain you will never do “That” (Whatever that is) only to find that under the right stress you will indeed do “that”.
Immaturity allows you to hate, to reject, to throw away people who do not meet your standards. And then you see that the only one hurt was yourself. That far from “protecting” yourself, you cheated yourself out of the joy of diversity, of shared companionship.
Finally you start to attend funerals. And now you know the endings. All the contention and hurtfulness and revenge and pettiness seem just sad. What real harm would have come from forgiveness, from appreciating someone’s unique qualities? What great joy and good might have come from those acts?
And so I start each morning with a prayer asking for the Holy Spirit to work within my heart this day to remove any hate, any hurt any anger and to work to make me accepting and forgiving. It is a long, long struggle, but I am making some progress. Tomorrow I may try succotash again.