Gardener

My daughter tells me that is the day to blog about Global warming and so I thought I would go back about 15 years to the first piece I ever wrote about global warming. Here are some excerpts. Imagine a man living his entire live in a modest and sober manner but then upon reaching the age of fifty suddenly going on a wild and extravagant week-long orgy. And further, in the course of that binge, he contracts a terrible, incurable disease and lives out the remainder of life suffering the consequences of that disease. This is the analogy Tim McKibben uses in his book The End of Nature to describe humankind's use of energy. For thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution our energy consumption was modest and the resulting production of carbon dioxide was also modest. But during the last two centuries we have engaged in an orgy of fossil fuel consumption, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates. Now, says McKibben, we have changed nature to such an

My wife and I went to a movie the other night. Up. It was okay—a couple of really heartwarming scenes that show the pain in the loss of a mate were great. The accompanying music—a simple piano—was really moving, especially to people who realize they are getting older. What was not okay was the volume—especially the volume at which the 12 or so inane previews were presented. As an older person, I recognize that my hearing is not what it used to be, but even to me, the volume was so loud it nearly drove me from the theatre. I felt assaulted. I sat through the 15 minutes of previews with my fingers in my ears the entire time. When the movie finally began, the volume was turned down a bit, but it was still much too loud. I will admit that when I watch TV at my kids’ home, I miss half of what is said because the volume is too low, and when they watch TV at our house they complain that we have the volume turned too high. Having said that, let me assert that the theatre’s use of such high-dec

Last week I was power-touched twice—or at least I think I was. When it happened, I did not know whether such a thing as a Power Touch existed. I thought the phrase “power-touching” was my invention, but I googled the phrase just to make sure and discovered it is not my invention at all. But more on that later. What is Power Touching? In my experience, it usually occurs between two males—one who occupies a position of authority in relation to the other. The person in the authority position will at some point in the conversation put his hand on the shoulder or back or arm of the other. He may even rub the back or arm in a caressing manner. The intent of the touch, I believe, is to put the other person at ease—create a sort of comfort zone. As I experienced my touchings last week, one was done by an expert, so naturally that it seemed just a part of the conversation. But the other was done so awkwardly that I had the feeling that the person doing it was doing it as some sort of a

Here's a poem I have been tinkering with ever since April 1 when my MSN Home page spit out the information that April was genocide awareness month. It seemed so bizzare, almost obscene, to try to stuff something as immense and horrific as genocide into a month. As so often happens, the poem went in a somewhat different direction than I expected. Upon Learning that April Is Genocide Prevention Month As if you didn’t have enough to do, April, here you come babbling about genocide prevention. Sweet, hippie-girl April, with your daffodils everywhere shouting their happy yellow song and waving at me as I pass, your grass so green it hurts my eyes, and the pale green leaves of trees, like tiny cupped hands that catch and drink the misty air. Oh, April, bright, fragile, hopeful April, all the tender trees are dressed in their thin green-gold ingénue frocks, ready to dance the night away. Will you cancel the prom? And what would you have us do? Shall we send a flower to a warlord? A bouque

Illuminated Manuscript OUR LORD REIGNS BANANAS--2LBS FOR 39 CENTS FLOWERS During a spring snowstorm I saw the brightly lit sign in front of a fruit market, but laughed it off. April snowstorms being conducive to cynicism. But a brief flurry of crocuses two weeks later chipped away at my doubt and then one day on the road to work I was nearly blinded by daffodil and forsythia shine. After that, doubt didn't stand a change. Petunias, tulips impatiens pattered down, catching in window boxes, along sidewalks. Rhododendrons thundered in lavender clouds, dandelions crackled in jagged lines across green lawns. Oh, yes! Our Lord reigns, rains flowers. Fruit showers, forecast for later in the summer, came as expected. Strawberries and raspberries gushed through gutters, a Red Sea miracle. Plums the size of golfballs pelted unprotected cars. Bananas whirling like boomerangs filled the air. Apples, peaches, pears came down like cats and dogs, all together, all singing a rainbow promise: Our L

As I write this, two men are in my kitchen, sanding and sawing and hammering. I know them slightly, they are good men, a father and son team that restores old floors. We discovered a fir floor underneath the linoleum of our kitchen, and we hired these men to take off the layer of gunk—linoleum adhesive, I suppose—and make the floor smooth. Some of the boards were damaged and there were other places where non-flooring boards had been inserted in a remodeling project of the past , so our workers had to replace some of these boards with fir, carefully fitting in the tongue and grooved old fir pieces they had found at a store in Paulina. The father of the team must be 75 years old but he crawls around the floor on his knees with no knee pads (his son uses them) and seems happy in his work. He saw my boat in the garage and commented on it, saying, he found no pleasure in fishing: “A half hour on the lake and I’m ready to come in.” His joy seems to be his work. His son, who knows I recently

I found them lying side by side, dead, heads firmly clamped to the base of the trap. Liebestot, Wagner calls it, love in death. I hope their deaths were instantaneous, that these “wee, cowrin’, timorous beasties” had no chance for a “panic in [their] breasties.” Notice how tenderly the little hand caresses the partner's head--love in death. The trap had been set the day before, after my wife, coming in from the garage, surprised one of them in the entryway. We assumed they had gained entrance through the garage door which had been left open frequently during the past week by the carpenter doing some remodeling in our kitchen. I imagine them as mates, drawn to the warmth of an open door and, later, to a midnight snack of peanut butter. And then, death! The romantic in me wants to find a silver lining in the fact that they died together, lovers. Neither of them will have to grieve. But if I can believe Bobby Burns, and I do on this point, mice—and most animals—live in a kind of const

It must have been early in the morning, of the fourth day that God in the pre-dawn deep blue-blackness whispered to himself, “Music,” though it wasn’t the English word,"music," English not yet existing nor, for that matter, any other earth language. So God said softly in God language, “Music” as he imagined all those birds at dawn—though why it had to be birds that sang and not, say, rodents or cats or large non-human mammals, I don’t know. (Blue whales,of course, sing and have actually made a best selling album; still it’s birds that are the earth’s primary singers—they do it for a living so to speak.) He must have heard in his mind’s ear all those birds waking up, breaking the silence with their first hesitant chirps and cheeps, trills and gurgles, then gradually gaining confidence and soaring into songs of dawn. But what a good idea, music—maybe his best creation though it’s hard to pick one best thing, Eve being a pretty terrific idea and all the tasty foods and, of c

Our lives are like lawns full of dandelions. I know it’s a clichéd metaphor, but it’s a pretty good visual image and besides it fits the picture. Wouldn’t it be lovely if our lives were as flawless as this lawn? But they’re not, and I was reminded of that the other night after church. Here’s the scene: People are milling around in the narthex after a church service when a former student from long ago, someone who looks nearly as old as I do, sidles up and after a bit of small talk says, “I just gotta tell you this—I plagiarized in your class. You handed back a paper and said to me, ‘Did you write this? It doesn’t sound like you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I wrote it,’ so you smiled, handed back the paper and walked on.” How should one respond to such a confession—forty years after the deed? I’ve had this experience three or four times, and this last time I said something like, “Oh, well, I suspect most of us have done something like that at one time or another. I remember when I handed in somethin

When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, preachers and teachers and professors and, perhaps, medical doctors were the most influential voices in our CRC sub-culture. Businesspeople are the dominating influence in our culture these days. If someone is successful in business—which usually means “makes lots of money”—we have a tendency to genuflect as he passes by. The conventional wisdom of our time is that business people, bankers and lawyers are the smartest guys in the room. Of course, this tendency to venerate successful business people has been a major characteristic of the larger culture for a much longer time--which leads me into my topic for today, the film documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I had seen the film a couple of years ago, but seeing it now, in the context of the international economic meltdown, it spoke to me even more powerfully, and it prompted some observations about whose influence should dominate in our culture. The Smartest Guys in the

Here's a poem I wrote yesterday. It's not polished yet but that will take a few weeks of playing around with it. I am not even sure it works, but perhaps there's an old Kuyperian hanging around somewhere who will tell me. January Thaw Finally today, temperatures above freezing, blue sky and a bright sun teasing me into thoughts of spring. The edges of eaves drip a steady chatter of happy gossip and the snow, so white and sparkly, almost blinds me. I could dance were it not for the dark blue shadows of the ash trees that slash across the frozen lawns to remind me that nothing is ever one thing. The blue sky darkens, snow turns black, hoar frost grows on the gray walks, and the dark windows of houses suddenly flower, bright as marigolds. This is what it is to live in a world which is straining to become the Kingdom of God--a blue-white, January-thawed, happy-sad, half-baked kingdom. A world of “already” and “not yet.” --Dave Schelhaas

One of the good things that happens each cold, snowy January is the arrival of seed catalogs. Well, good and bad. They are jam-packed with summer—fruits and flowers and vegetables and leafy trees; pumpkins the size of volkswagons and watermelons so red and juicy your mouth waters just looking at them. A seed catalog is a wonderful escape from the plain white world of winter. But it can also manufacture discontent. Three months of mostly cold, dead weather lie ahead of us before we will see growing things. In addition to the seed catalogs that come in the mail, one can find all kinds of online seed catalogs. I spent some time yesterday browsing the Seed Saver catalog online. It contains primarily heirloom varieties and the wonderful pictures make your mouth water. In the squash section I found the Pennsylvania Dutch Crookshank squash that we grew last summer—squash so big that each one provides us with at least four meals. They are supposed to have a curved neck, but most of ours have s

Of all the commentaries I read and heard after President Obama’s inauguration, the one that spoke to me most powerfully was an open letter to the president by George McGovern in today's Washington Post. In his letter, McGovern calls for a five year moratorium on war unless our nation is in grave danger. McGovern, the old history teacher, argues most persuasively against going to war in Afghanistan noting that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union experienced excruciating losses in Afghanistan and eventually limped home defeated. “I have believed for some time that military power is no solution to terrorism” he says, and as I look at Iraq and Israel and Afghanistan, I must agree. McGovern acknowledges that he will be called too idealistic, but suggests that sometimes idealism is the best realism. He concludes, this old politician who has been warring against world hunger for more than a quarter of a century, by suggesting that programs that help feed and educate the children of th

I do a little radio show called "What's the Good Word" for Dordt College Radio (KDCR).  Here's The one I wrote for today, January 20, the inauguration day of Barack Obama.                        The menu for the inaugural dinner, held shortly after the inauguration of President Obama, had as its main course a “brace of birds.”  The word brace immediately caught my eye.  I thought I knew what it meant, “a pair of birds,” but I wanted to explore it a bit, since to my mind immediately came a number of other, quite different meanings of brace , both verbs and nouns. Other noun meanings include a pair of suspenders (braces), a kind of drill (a brace and bit), devices attached to the teeth to shape and strengthen them; and a related word, bracelet, the decorative jewelry worn on the wrist.  Some verb meanings are as follows: “to strengthen or support; to make ready for impact; to stimulate or invigorate; to tighten by stretching”; and the variation, embrace, “to hug.”  The