How I Burn To Be A Writer!

Writers should burn their own books.

That would save so much wear and tear on the nerves.

Why would I, a writer, think that?

Sunday evening, following the advice about track confirmations from my son-in-law, and advice on pasting into a new Word document from my son, and the helpful instructions in the Word Help Menu (HA!), I solved the problem revealed in the error messages mentioned in last week.

Remember? “A Microsoft Word pop-up box informed me that I have insufficient memory and no further change can be undone… then, another pop-up box said, I’ve made too many edits and my text can not be saved”.

Yeah, that problem—not being able to save or change over 300 pages of text.

It’s infuriating, but I can’t tell which thing I did solved the problem.

Oh well, one of the many things I did finally worked.

Once that I’d solved that, I restructured section breaks, realigned pagination, confirmed the accuracy of and formatted 163 footnotes, created an index, gave the manuscript a final going over—then uploaded the book to the printer for a proof copy.

Joy, Oh Joy—my history of firefighting in Jacksonville is FINISHED!

After working on this manuscript off and on since 1986, and especially concentrating on it for the past two years, it’s finally FINISHED!

Joy. Joy. Joy. Happy. Happy. Happy—then yesterday afternoon, the phone rang.

A source I’d asked for information back on September 9^th (actually, I'd begun seeking this information more than a year ago) Information about heroic acts by local firemen called… He has the additional information.

His additional information looks to cover about another three to six pages to be inserted about two/thirds of the way into the book…

His information involves tales of bravery, courage, risk, dramatic rescues and inspiration… As it stands now, the inspirational highpoint of my text quotes a 1950s newspaper article about how firemen at one station planted petunias all around the entrance to beautify the firehouse.

But, if I add the information provided by my late-calling source, then I’ll need to scrap my proof copy, restructure the section breaks, realign pagination, confirm the accuracy of and formatted 163 footnotes, created an new inde…

Like the rigging of an old clipper ship, in a book manuscript, if you change the tension on one line to one sail, you have to adjust the tension on all the other ropes on every mast. There are no simple changes.

Someone whispers in my ear, “Ignore the additional information; your book will stand without it. You don’t want to do all that work all over again. Who’ll know the difference?”.

The voice in my ear even repeated a famous quote:

“What I have written, I have written”.

That’s a verse from the Bible.

That’s a verse I can live with….

Er, who was it who said that?

Oh, that was Pontius Pilate talking about the sign he had tacked above Jesus’ head on the cross.

Is that a Scripture verse I want to live by?

This Living-For-Jesus thing on a day by day basis, while observing the guidelines of Scripture, can be tricky.

I’ll either have to revise my “finished” manuscript again, or find another portion of Scripture… Oh, here’s a good one:

In Acts 19:19 many former occultists at Ephesus had become Christians and:

“Many that believed came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men… So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed”.

Notice—this is important—they did not burn anybody else’s book—only their own books. Never anybody else’s.

I’d against censorship in all forms…

But, I’m beginning to think, when it comes to my own books… Especially this fire history which has plagued me for years and years and years, maybe those ancient Ephesians had a point.

My fire history book in a bonfire…

I see a certain appeal in imagining that.

Sort of a poetic vision.

Calming to the nerves.

Soothing to the mind.

Warming to the heart.

Marshmallows!

I need some marshmallows—and a thin stick.

Repercussions From An Ancient Kindness

Saturday Ginny decided to refurbish her wardrobe at a thrift store across the river on the far side of the city, an area of town we rarely drive to.

She has a degree in finance and a frugal turn of mind; so she saves money buying at this store where the used clothing is cheap and the store profits go to helping children with life-threatening illnesses.

Jacksonville covers 844 square miles and bleeds over into surrounding counties, so there are some areas which we rarely even see. In fact, we rarely even cross the St. John’s River which bisects the city.

But Saturday we ventured far afield into the wilds of Southside.

She bought cloth things…. For hours!

Since we were on that side of town, we drove to a restaurant in Arlington for a late lunch.

There we met a lady who has been a waitress for many, many years. We did not recognize her, but she recognized us from having served us at another restaurant in the Northside many, many years ago.

You know, sometimes I get discouraged at trying to live like a Christian. Sometimes it seems a thankless task.

You do good. You do your best. You try to treat other people with respect and kindness; you try to spread the good news about Christ and His resurrection … and nothing happens.

I see no results.

It all seems so futile.

Sometimes I feel as though I’m wasting my time. In fact, I often feel as though I’m pissing against the wind…

The …er, lets say mature… waitress greeted us effusively. She remembered us from that other restaurant where she worked long ago…And, she remembered something Ginny did, something so tiny we’d both forgotten.

You see, when that waitress was younger, she could not afford a babysitter for her little boy. She had to bring the kid into work with her and park him at a corner table and make him sit for the eight to ten hours a day she served tables.

Ginny noticed that this little boy was bored out of his skull! He had absolutely nothing to do while his mama worked.

The next time we ate at that restaurant, Ginny carried a box of children’s books and gave them to the kid. to read while his mother served tables. We thought little of it. No big deal. Such a little thing… Just a handful of books our own children had outgrown.

We’d forgotten all about it.

Saturday, the lady, still waiting tables but at a different place, reminded us about those books. She thanked us again. She told us that her little boy is now a grown man. He and his wife live up in Tennessee. They have four children.

He reads to them.

He reads to them all the time.

His mama says he does that because of Ginny’s long ago kindness…

After she left our table, Ginny and I got to talking, trying to figure out how long ago that had happened… She said it must have been 15 years ago; I said it may have been 20 years ago. We just couldn’t pinpoint the time…

“What does it matter,” I said, “Fifteen, twenty years, what’s the difference”?

My smart-ass accountant wife said, “Five years”.

So Near--So Far

Know how it feels when you stack up a house of cards, how the base seems stable, then how you add layer after layer till the tower gets two feet tall and you still have six or eight cards to ease onto the wobbly top?

Know how that feels?

That’s where I’ve been all weekend in writing my book on the history of firefighting in Jacksonville.

So close to finishing; so many final steps to add.

Each time I touch the thing, it threatens to topple.

Every comma I add makes the structure tremble.

But I think once I construct the index, the book will be ready for the printer to make me a proof-copy. It’s that close to publication.

Then Saturday morning, as I made a section break for the index… a Microsoft Word pop-up box informed me that I have insufficient memory and no further change can be undone… then, another pop-up box said, I’ve made too many edits and my text can not be saved…

I’ve worked (off and on) on this book since I wrote its first edition in 1986. I’ve updated it to 2007. What does Microsoft Word mean saying my text can not be saved?

My son-in-law says I need to go into the page set-up menu, then the tools menu, then to the confirm tracking box and click on that—but I may loose existing formatting.

My son Donald says that I need to create a blank Word document, re-set mirror margins and gutters, then paste my existing text and graphics into that—but I may loose existing formatting.

My beautiful wife Ginny says, “Calm down, John. I think you’re loosing it”.

Hey, I just yelled at the computer a bit; I am not loosing it.

I am calm.

I’ll get it done.

Whatever it takes.

In my mind’s eye, I see a finished copy of my book.

I imagine my finished book will look a lot like this:

In my mind’s eye, I see a finished copy of my book printed on fine velum with gold inlay encrusted with precious stones, and …

Oh, that’s not really my book; the photo really shows an illuminated manuscript in Coptic of Mark’s Gospel. Way back, when I worked at the Library of Congress, I actually got to handle a few such manuscripts. I’m not scholar enough to actually read one, but I did the heavy lifting to move ancient manuscripts from place to place in the library.

What a thrill.

When you handle an illuminated manuscript, you know you’re touching treasure!

I marvel at the precision the scribes exercised in transmitting God’s Word through the ages. These guys, working by lamp light, copied the Scripture in pains-taking detail. Like the guy who cut the facets of the Hope Diamond, the copyists knew they were handling something exceedingly precious and they treated the Scripture with the respect God’s Word deserves.

And when today I hear someone babble about not trusting the Bible because of copyists mistakes, I think he only displays his ignorance.

Anyhow, back to the relationship between my fire history book, my computer’s pop-up boxes, and the gold-encrusted Coptic Gospel in the photo.

The illumination shows St. Mark seated writing his book with a quill pen.

Mark is close to the end of his Gospel.

After the events of my morning with the computer pop-up messages fresh in my mind, I fancifully reconstruct what I think happened…

This angel pops up in front of Mark and says, “I have a message from God. Your subject/verb agreement is all wrong… You have to write the whole thing over”.

I imagine that if you flip to the next page of that codex, you’ll see an exquisite illustration bordered in lapis-lazuli with amber highlights—

I imagine it shows St. Mark strangling the angel.

My Workaday World

In a sense, for the past couple of weeks I could have gotten by repeating a single journal entry—yes, my days recently have had that much sameness to them:

Got up at 3 a.m. Posted journal entry. Worked on fire history book. Shaved and showered at 4 p.m. before Ginny got home from work. Started dinner. Worked on history book till 10 p.m. Watched news on tv.

That’s my exciting life.

I like it.

Ginny says I’d make a great troll in a cave.

Of course this summary misses the frustration of the fire history book. Drives me nuts!!! For years I’ve gathered materials for a history of our fire department—which is actually a history of Jacksonville told from the viewpoint of how many times the place has burned down… or would have without firefighters.

All this mass of materials, over 2,000 pages of it, I’m condensing into a 300-page book. But it all comes in different formats, different sized photos, different formatting, different section breaks, different formatting for scores of footnotes, different headers and footers, different pagination, different sized fonts—

And I’m trying to make a consistent whole of this mess—while my computer system thinks it should make helpful auto-changes without bothering to tell me!

Thus I see my life as a miniature model of the cosmos—the sort of thing God deals with all the time… Only He does it with hundreds of millions of people’s lives..

Good thing He loves what He’s doing.

Well, back to my manuscript…the little box on the monitor is flashing ...

What's a vindictive font with 12-pt kern?... Or maybe that's a veranda font???

Oh, here’s a joke:

Two fonts go into a bar to order a beer.

Immediately the irate bartender starts yelling, “Get Out! Get Out! This is a nice place. We don’t serve your type in here.”

Yesterday I Sinned

I knew before I picked up the phone that I courted sin.

I buried that uneasy feeling in the back of my mind and called her anyhow.

Oh, I justified what I was doing. I told my self that this was not a big deal. I assured myself that it hardly mattered.

I knew in my heart that I was doing wrong. In the split second before she answered, I could have hung up the phone, but the pulsing dial tone convinced me to hang on and go through with it.

My action betrayed Christ.

I publicly espouse Christianity, but I demonstrated a lack of trust. My action proves that I do not believe Him. Not really. Not when the faith hits the fan.

O, it’s easy to believe in a Savior when it comes to eternal salvation, some far away afterlife. But for the here and now?

Is Christ my Lord in practical matters, or in just the esoteric?

Getting to specifics—yesterday I bummed some money from someone.

Like some Wall Street swindler, I finagled a bail-out.

I treated the Lord God as though He isn’t real.

OK, it wasn’t much money. I could have lived without it, but I treasure my comforts and our recent expenses deprived me of a few things to ease my soul and body.

She brought the cash I asked for right over. No hesitation.

I had what I asked for.

But my soul felt lean.

Then, about an hour after she delivered the cash, I read a passage from Charles Spurgeon, a 19^th Century preacher in London. In his day Spurgeon was called “The Prince of Preachers”.

He meditated on how, in the Bible, Ezra led a caravan of God’s people from Babylon to Jerusalem. And crossing the bandit-infested desert, Ezra did not ask of an armed escort.

"For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, ‘The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek Him; but His power and His wrath is against all them that forsake Him’."--Ezra 8:22

Spurgeon observed:

A convoy on many accounts would have been desirable for the pilgrim band, but a holy shame-facedness would not allow Ezra to seek one. He feared lest the heathen king should think his professions of faith in God to be mere hypocrisy, or imagine that the God of Israel was not able to preserve His own worshippers.

Ezra could not bring his mind to lean on an arm of flesh in a matter so evidently of the Lord, and therefore the caravan set out with no visible protection, guarded by Him who is the sword and shield of His people.

It is to be feared that few believers feel this holy jealousy for God; even those who in a measure walk by faith, occasionally mar the luster of their life by craving aid from man.

It is a most blessed thing to have no props and no buttresses, but to stand upright on the Rock of Ages, upheld by the Lord alone. Would any believers seek state endowments for their Church, if they remembered that the Lord is dishonoured by their asking Caesar's aid? As if the Lord could not supply the needs of His own cause!

Should we run so hastily to friends and relations for assistance, if we remembered that the Lord is magnified by our implicit reliance upon His solitary arm?

My soul, wait thou only upon God.

"But," says one, "are not means to be used?"

Assuredly they are; but our fault seldom lies in their neglect: far more frequently it springs out of foolishly believing in them instead of believing in God.

Few run too far in neglecting the creature's arm; but very many sin greatly in making too much of it.

Learn, dear reader, to glorify the Lord by leaving means untried, if by using them thou wouldst dishonour the name of the Lord.

You know, (this is John again, not Spurgeon) it looks like after close to 50 years of being a Christian, I would have learned this lesson by now.

To my shame, I haven’t.

The love of God is shown toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Christ died for sinners.

I qualify.

What Floats My Boat (a long post)

Back before macular degeneration began to dim my eyesight, I built model sailing ships. In fact, one of the proudest accomplishments of my life is that I once constructed a schooner inside a beer bottle.

Pretty pathetic, isn’t it. Looking back over almost 70 years and seeing a main highpoint of my life in a beer bottle—and the bottle was empty before I got it!

Last week I heard from Mike, my friend and former son-in-law. When he and Jennifer got married, as a wedding gift I built them a beautiful clipper ship in full sail. Worked on it for months and months. Thought of it as an heirloom for them to treasure…

The model ship did not last as long as their short marriage.

They had this cat.

The vile beast viewed that full-rigged tea clipper as a mortal enemy. Shredded the sails, clawed the rigging, chewed the hull—utterly mangled the heirloom.

This week gave me three other occasions to think about ships:

Yesterday, some new e-friends, Bill & Michelle Leep up in Michigan e-mailed me a scanned copy of a print by John Fryant showing an 1885 riverboat once stationed in Jacksonville:

The Queen Of The St. Johns was built in Ohio, then sailed down the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico, around the Florida Keys, up the East Coast to Jacksonville.

Yes, during the 1800s more paddlewheelers plied the St. Johns than the Hudson. One chapter in my book Crackers & Carpetbaggers tells their story; and another chapter tells about the worst maritime disaster on the river when the City Of Sanford wrecked.

On the back of Bill & Michelle’s print is a full account of the Queen Of The St. John’s career on the river. The Leeps say they are interested in selling the print; if you’re interested, their e-mail address is billmichelleleep@gmail.com .

This week also, ZOM e-mailed me a clipping from: Daytona Beach News-Journal at http://www.news-journalonline.com/index.htm .

Archaeologists feel they’re hot on the trail to discovering the wreckage of an entire French fleet shipwrecked between Daytona and St. Augustine during a September hurricane in 1565.

I find that exciting news because the Jacksonville area was settled by French Protestants who tried to drive a wedge between the Spanish at St. Augustine 20 miles south of us, and the English on St. Simons Island, 20 miles north of us.

The Daytona archaeologists, working with the Center for Historical Archaeology in Melbourne, and the Lighthouse Archaeology Maritime Program, in St. Augustine, have uncovered a camping spot where French survivors of the fleet’s wreck got to shore. They figure the ships lie underwater near that spot on Mosquito Lagoon.

The camp site yielded coins, ceramics, personal articles and iron ship's spikes worked on a forge.

The fleet included the La Trinite, a 32-gun galleon, and the 29-gun royal galleon Emerillon, and many smallere ships..

French survivors struggled up the beach for weeks until they reached Matanzas Inlet (the name Matanzas means slaughter or massacre). When the French surrendered pleading for mercy, the Spanish rowed survivors across the inlet a few at a time in a small boat, then, once they wee separated from the group, slit their throats—all 250 of them.

The survivors’ trek reminds me of the one undertaken by the Dickenson party (see my July 23, 2008, “Seven Months Naked On The Beach”, blog post in the archives).

Both the Spanish site on Mazanzas Inlet and the site of the French settlement at Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River in Jacksonville are now national parks.

Still with me?

I’m interested in this stuff; hope you are too, because I have one more.

Take a look at this ancient boat:

As I’ve been thinking about other ships this morning—this stuff floats my boat—I also remember how I used to use the measurements of this one as an illustration back when I taught adult Bible classes.

During a drought in Israel in 1986, two brothers, Moshe and Yuval Lufan, discovered this boat buried in mud along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Radiocarbon tests dated the boat as being 2,000 years old.

Some people went ape!

They concluded that a 2,000-year-old boat found in the Sea of Galilee just had to be the very boat Jesus taught from.

Not necessarily.

At best, this archaeological find shows us the type of boat used in New Testament times. Nothing at all directly connects this boat with Jesus. Nevertheless, many people named it “The Jesus Boat”; others call it “The Galilee Boat”; still others simply term it a roman boat.

Luke’s Gospel tells an incident involving such a boat:

And He entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And He sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.

Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught”.

And Simon answering said unto Him,” Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net”.

And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”.

For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken:

There were other boats mentioned in that same passage of Scripture. The boat found in 1986 was not the only one afloat on the sea 2,000 years ago.

However, from mosaic pictures uncovered in the same area, the Galilee Boat seems typical of ships of that day.

And to me the most interesting thing about the boat is its measurements:

Although the superstructure wore away under the mud, the remaining depth is almost five feet; the ships length is almost 30 feet long, and the width… the width is only eight feet.

No wonder Simon Peter was wowed.

He’d fished all night. He knew what he was doing; he was a professional fisherman. He knew the futility of a waterhaul when your nets come up empty.

That’s on one side of the boat.

“Nevertheless, at Thy word…”

On the other side of the boat—a mere eight feet away—swam a huge school of fish.

On one side of the boat we see the best of human endeavor. Eight feet away, we see the abundance of God.

What made the difference?

Obedience.

“Nevertheless, at Thy word…”

The Yigal Allon Museum in Kibbutz Ginosar, Israel, displays the Galilee Boat.

It is safely preserved.

I have it on good authority that the museum does not allow cats.

Back To Normal

Sunday Ginny and I lay long abed talking and cuddling and listing to heavy rain drum on the roof.

After all our recent focus and thoughts about disaster training, it’s good to return to normal life—such as it is.

We drove up to a crowded Dave’s Diner for breakfast where I ordered pancakes and Ginny ordered sausage and gravy biscuits. Three waiters, Chris, Billy and Nicole, brought Ginny’s dish to our table laughing like fiends. Turns out the two fresh- baked biscuits rose to a peak in the oven—they looked like perky breasts!

The five of us laughed like crazy making risqué comments.

Well, maybe you’d have to have been there to see how funny that was.

Afterwards Ginny and I drove to the grocery store. My feet hurt so I sat on a bench outside while she shopped. As I waited, my thoughts turned to charity and how our giving to the poor has slacked off recently.

As she came out of the store, a young man approached Ginny. He’d been shopping too and his grocery bill cost more than he expected so he did not have bus fare to take his bags of groceries home. At first she passed him by, but she said, “I felt a check in my spirit” and she turned back to give him the bus fare he needed.

I’d watched the whole transaction as I walked to meet her and I just knew she was doing the right thing. We enjoyed a long talk about charity and the Spirit of God as we drove home.

Strange.

Back home, with an exciting football game on tv, and an exciting book open on my lap, I dozed for three hours in a more exciting nap.

Now, it turns out that our CERT training has not prepared us for every eventuality—sometimes, improvisation is the order of the day.

For instance:

That’s a scene from a video I watched last night; it’s called 30 Days Of Night.

The pack of vampires is attacking the sheriff in a town up on the Artic Circle where the sun disappears for a month. Without sunlight to thwart them, the vampires run amuck, burn out the town’s people, chew their throats, and drink their blood leaving only six survivors.

Well, what else can you expect to happen where there’s no CERT training and the governor of the state is off campaigning in the sunny lower 48?

In another area, Friday my daughter-in-law e-mailed me an Associated Press news story about Hurricane Ike in Texas. It carried this photo:

Yes, that’s a lion.

In a hurricane shelter.

Seems a zoo keeper tried to outrun the hurricane, but his truck got flooded out. He and a lion he was trying to save swam to the Baptist church on Bolivar Island, Texas.

People already in the church helped him get the lion inside; they shut it in a separate room to ride out the storm.

The full news story can be found at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080917/ap_on_re_us/ike_tales_of_survival .

Water in the church sanctuary deepened to four feet during the night.

People and lion survived. "They worked pretty well together, actually," said the lion's owner, Michael Ray Kujawa. "When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."

So, vampire attacks and lions showing up in hurricane shelters—they did not cover such contingencies in our CERT training classes.

Or, if they did, I may have dozed off during that exciting class.

I’m Proud Of CERT Training. Can You Tell?

Our CERT Mock Disaster Drill ...

Drat!

Bad weather plagued our JaxCERT class.

Instructors postponed two classes when the Emergency Operations Center had to be activated because of tropical storms. Then Saturday morning our disaster drill was postponed for a couple of months because of heavy rain storms over the site.

Ginny and I feel both relieved and disappointed.

Relieved because the prospect of screwing up the disaster haunted us; disappointed because we were loaded for bear.

I mean, here we’ve studied and reviewed our manuals and class notes and talked of little else for weeks, then our disaster fizzled. We drove over the Fire Training Academy ready to perform amateur tracheotomies and then didn’t even get to apply a band aid with Fred Flintstone’s picture on it.

Drat!

All psyched up at 4 a.m. for nothing.

Just kidding about the tracheotomy thing, that’s beyond our training. Maybe they’ll cover that in the advanced class.

Our training teaches us the bare minimums to give disaster victims their best chance for survival. What I call the Ku Klux Klan Plus One:

Keep ‘em breathing.

Keep ‘em from burning.

Keep ‘em from bleeding out.

Plus, Keep ‘em from further shock.

But, although this morning’s drill was postponed, Ginny and I and all the other students did graduate!

First our instructors registered us in a restricted group for communications on the web. Then Jennifer, the program director, called our names and gave us certificates, hard hats, badges, backpacks full of safety/rescue goodies, and other equipment.

Here’s a photo of my new CERT helmet and backpack:

In addition to the backpack they supplied, I’ve equipped an emergency kit of my own containing essentials the Fire Department may not have thought of—pipe, matches and tobacco pouch, fruit bars and juice, pliers, scissors, red bandannas, a small Testament with Psalms and Prayer Book containing the burial service, a pry bar, small bolt cutters, dry socks and canvas shoes, a headband with LED lights, curved off-set tweezers, mosquito repellent, folding trowel, permanent marker, clorox wipes, flat and phillips head screwdrivers, etc.

Here’s a photo of me with some of the equipment CERT issued:

And here’s a photo of Disaster Ginny in her new CERT rig:

And, no, they didn’t let us take the fire truck home.

Drat!

Anyhow, I am now certifiable… Er, that doesn’t sound right.

What I mean is that like Superman, I’m “faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap off tall buildings in a single bound…”

Er, Ginny says the phrase is “Leap over tall buildings…” Maybe leaping over them will be covered in advanced training.

Anyhow, with my first course of CERT training I may not be Superman, or even Batman, but today I feel as though I can kick Robin’s ass.