A Chicken With My Name On It

Somewhere out in the world there’s a chicken with my name on it.

I just learned of this fowl creature last night after a hectic few days.

Back on December 15^th our telephone lines went out, then last Thursday afternoon my internet connection died and it’s been a hassle getting it restored.

I attempted all the remedies I knew how to do before calling my guru son Donald. He and Helen came over Saturday and geekified my system without luck. He called the DSL company rep in India who sent out a repairman Sunday morning.

Early Sunday Donald and Helen unexpectedly appeared at our door bringing all sorts of yummies to cook for our breakfast. Helen even brought her own frying pan and all the ingredients for a lavish out-of-the-blue feast. She chased everyone out of the kitchen and filled the air with the aroma of frying sausage and bacon and grits and eggs and coffee and raisin toast.

After that repairman left, Donald and Helen stayed over chatting for a couple hours. They, with Ginny and I, discussed a question which had arisen when I was at lunch with my friend Barbara on Friday. The question involves the relationship between body, spirit, free will, and chemicals.

I’ve kicked the question around for three days and discussed it with these spiritual advisors whose opinions I respect, then I spent two or three hours trying to write a blog posting about this subject …

But it proved too complex for me and I just had to give up.

Sometimes I need to leave deep questions in the hands of people smarter and more spiritual than I am.

Sunday night, my internet connection died again.

Again I called in a company repairman who wanted to charge me $85 for service that used to be free. When I pointed out that we pay a monthly service fee for such repairs, he relented somewhat and did half the work I requested.

Don’t you just love the phone company?

Anyhow, my daughter Eve came over this evening and let me know about the chicken.

As a special late Christmas gift to Ginny and me, Eve donated a gift in our name to a charity called Heifer International. Her donation goes to buy a flock of chickens which is given to an impoverished family in an undeveloped country. The receiving family pledges to give the offspring of their flock to establish another flock for another poor family in their country.

I know little about Heifer International but Eve and Mark checked out various reports concerning them. The reports reveal how donated money is spent, how much for overhead and administration, how much is spent in fund raising, and how much actually goes to the charity’s stated objectives. Eve says this organization checks out.

She says that depending on the amount she was able to give, she and Mark could have bought a water buffalo, a cow, a sheep, a llama, or what-have-you.

Eve and Mark bought a flock of ten to thirty chickens in the name of Ginny and me.

Eve suggests that next Christmas we encourage our family so that instead of giving eachother gifts (like my tin Gort robot) that we each make a surprise donation to some charity. Then we alternate years between gift exchange among ourselves and giving to a charity.

Sounds like a winner to me.

Weather reports project that today will be the coldest day here that Jacksonville has seen in decades. Temperatures will drop into the 20s as an artic front moves South.

As a result all day today hundreds of birds swarm around the fountain in our backyard. Most of these are species I have never seen before. I suspect they are fleeing ahead of the artic front.

I hope the chicken with my name on it is someplace warm enough.

I can’t get over the fact that some chicken somewhere is named for me. It’s so cool to think that somewhere out there in the world there’s a chicken with my name on it.

In my mind’s eye I have this vision of my chicken…. I’ll bet it was given to this white-haired old man in Appalachia, the poorest region of the United States. I see him as living in a shanty farmstead deep in the Blue Ridge mountains of Kentucky.

I see him hobbling around on his cane scattering chicken feed to the flock. I envision this poor old guy, who only owns one suit of clothes (you never see him in anything else), as treasuring his chicken and using it to increase his meager livelihood.

Yes, In my mind’s eye I can even see him cradling one of the chickens with my name on it in the fold of his arm right now. I’m proud to help.