Our Thanksgiving With Ducks

As a treat on Thanksgiving day, Ginny and I fed ducks in Riverside Park a few blocks from our home. We saw a bald eagle soaring above as we strolled beside the lake.

Here’s an early 1900s postcard showing where we enjoyed this beautiful day:

Feeding the ducks reminds me of three things:

· Tony Soprano, the tv gangster;

· Our youngest daughter, Patricia, who plans to marry on January first;

· and The Lord God Almighty And His Duck Matilda.

I identify with Tony Soprano more than with any other character on tv. He’s my kind of guy. Sure, he cracks heads and breaks legs and makes problem people “go away”. I haven’t done any of that stuff, yet. But Tony and I are on the same wave length when it comes to ducks.

You’ll see why by the end of this posting.

Then there was the incident when our daughter fed the poor starving people…

Once when Patricia was 13 or 14 she encountered a poor family on her way home from school. Neither Ginny nor I were home at the time so Patricia decided to make up a food basket from canned goods and food from our kitchen. She packed a couple of grocery bags with cans of Spam, tuna, beans, powdered milk, etc. Also in her food basket for the poor, she placed a loaf of bread from the freezer..

Now for ages, Ginny has saved all bread scraps from family meals (crusts, moldy slices, half-eaten toast, broken cookie crumbs, etc) so that when we go to a park we’d have something to feed the ducks. It was Ginny’s custom to store these scraps in an old bread wrapper in the freezer until she accumulated a bagful. Also, she’d buy several loafs of real fresh bread at a time and freeze it till she was ready to use it.

You guessed it.

Patricia inadvertently gave the poor, starving family the duck food in the bread wrapper when she carried her two food packets to their house.

It wasn’t till Ginny got home that evening that the error was discovered!

Ever since then the whole family has teased Patricia unmercifully about being cruel to poor starving wretches by making them eat duck food.

Naturally, Ginny and I remembered that incident and laughed about it all over again yesterday.

Then, on a sad, sad note, as I fed ducks yesterday I remembered an entry in my diary on May 31, 2006. I repeat it here:

The Lord God Almighty and His Duck Matilda

My hat is old.
My teeth are gold.
I had a duck I liked to hold.
And now my story is all told.

These words of that great American poet Theodor Seuss Geisel, Dr. Seuss, (1904-1991) sum up my day Tuesday.

Yes, Matilda the duck is no longer with us.

Beginning on May 13^th, my blog has periodically chronicled how this wild duck came to stay in our back yard after being attacked by a raccoon.

We have fed the duck. We bought a pool for the duck. We protected the duck from neighborhood cats.

And we learned from the duck.

Ginny and I enjoyed a perfect day together yesterday. We lingered over coffee talking. We lounged in our swimming pool. We read our books. We napped. We enjoyed a two-hour lunch at a favorite restaurant talking about raising children, Indonesia, computers, and a host of other topics.

We decided that Matilda the duck no longer needs the refuge and safety of our yard. We decided that we should take her to a local park with a lake sprinkled with other ducks. We feared that as her wings became stronger she might fly over our fence and land in a neighbor’s yard among dogs. We decided that the best thing to do for her was to set her free.

It may sound dumb but we prayed about our decision.

Yes, we prayed for a duck.

The Scripture says that God knows every sparrow that falls.

Maybe so, but are ducks included in God’s care?

One of my favorite hymns is All Creatures Of Our God And King, written by St. Francis of Assisi. In his poem, Francis calls upon all nature, clouds, winds, birds, animals, men to praise our Creator.

When I looked at Matilda the duck, I’d also remember the words of the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878).

Bryant watched a waterfowl flying across a marsh and thought about how the good Lord God guides us through life:

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Ginny and I tossed a wet beach towel over a protesting Matilda.

We were carefully not to squeeze her or to break a feather.

Ginny drove while I cradled the frightened duck in my lap.

We parked as close to the lake as possible.

Here’s an old postcard showing where we released Matilda:

We carried a bag of bread scraps. Ginny scattered the crumbs in one place to attract the other ducks away while I unwrapped Matilda at the far side of the pond.

Oh, she was happy to be free.

In her own element, she flapped and dove and preened…

Then three male mallards saw her and attacked. They chased her around the edge of the pond. They chased her out of the water, pecking and grabbing her neck and fighting over her.

Were they killing her?

Were they mating?

I ran over and kicked the three males away.

Matilda ran quacking up under a hedge with the three males charging in hot pursuit. Great squawking and shaking of bushes.

Soon the three mallards emerged.

Alone.

They began chasing another female across the grass.

We searched the undergrowth, but saw no further sign of Matilda.

We think they killed her.

As a Christian I believe (barely) that Scripture which says, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose”.

That’s a tenant of my faith. But why does it so often seem otherwise in my day to day experience? Why do so many of our efforts seem so futile?

Why would God allow us the nurse this duck back to health only to have her raped or killed by her own kind?

That makes no sense to me in my limited human experience. Maybe it does make sense in some vast eternal plan, but it doesn’t seem right to me in the here and now where I live.

My faith says “Good”.

My experience says “Crap”.

I can not deny my personal observation of life; neither can I deny the love of God.

It’s hard for me but I try to move beyond my own observations and experiences to a place where I can say with Paul, the quintessential realist, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

I believe that.

On a shallow level I really do believe that..

But sometimes, even when you do what is reasonable, even when you act with the best intentions, even when you plan ahead, even when you do what is right, even when you do what is logical, even when you pray — even then, your duck gets screwed.

Or worse.

Two "Almost" Lessons

By going to afterburners, working intensely, and putting in overtime, I pushed through and reformatted all 22 of my books so they now are available in three formats: print copies, downloadable to desktop computers, and e-books which can be read on e-book reading machines.

I’m proud of myself.

This represents an enormous accomplishment for me since normally my only computer skills are limited to cutting, pasting, and finding porno sites.

Thus, my on-line book catalog stands ready for the onslaught of book buyers which the newspaper tells me will surge onto the internet on the day after Thanksgiving. If my surge goes like last year’s, that means about three people will actually buy one of my books between now and New Years.

Hey, a surge of three people is better than no surge at all.

Personally I have never read an e-book. I like a physical ink and paper volume. But there is a new age of readers out there in the world. I’ve even met one lady who can read books on her smart phone! My son’s e-book reader holds the text of hundreds of books in a little device hardly bigger than one of my paperback books. He loves the gadget.

While preparing the additional new formats for my writings I… er, learned is too strong a word… observed is also too strong a word…. maybe noticed …. Or even thought about…two lessons.

Maybe God is trying to teach me something and I’m just beginning to get a hint.

First thing I noticed is that I learn how to do something after I’ve already done it and am not likely to ever need to do it again.

I learn how—after the fact.

For instance, AFTER I reformatted and resized 19 book covers for this e-book project, working one file at a time—I learned how to do that operation to dozens of book covers as a batch in one single computer operation!

If I had know how to do that beforehand, I could have saved hours and hours of time.

And here’s another thing, after I had individually worked with 17 files of my 22 book files uploading them one at a time… I discovered that in computer jargon the words unpublish project and delete project do NOT mean the same thing.

You don’t want to know how I found that out!.

You really don’t.

Had I known the difference beforehand, I could have saved a full day’s work on this endeavor. But I didn’t find that out till only five books remained to be processed.

I doubt that I will ever again in my life need to do this kind of clerical/editorial work again… so I wonder why it is that I learn how, after I no longer need to know how?

Is there some spiritual insight to be gained here?

I don’t know.

Another thing that strikes me… the other day I expected a visitor, a friend of my son’s and his wife’s. I wanted to make a good impression, so I made all sorts of preparations. I emptied the ashtrays. Swept the front walk. I shaved. I bought special cookies to serve. I unstopped the bathroom sink—which in the divine order of the universe always clogs up when company’s coming unless there’s a whole bunch of company coming then it’s the toilet that clogs just hours before they are due to arrive.

In other words, I prepared.

The visitor postponed our meeting.

I realized that, not just this week, but all my life, I have spent inordinate amounts of time preparing for things which never happened.

Now here is my puzzlement—I’m writing a book about how God leads us—and I can’t help but wonder that if I am led by the Spirit of God, then why do I get ready for stuff that doesn’t happen? Couldn’t the Spirit have told me, “Hey, back off, John. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. Just do your normal jobs and quit obsessing about making a good impression”.

Did the Spirit tell me that?

If He did, then I didn’t hear Him.

Oh.

Have I stumbled onto something here?

Perhaps God would have taught me how to batch-manage files if I’d read the instructions beforehand. Maybe God’s Spirit did tell me to relax and not go to afterburners and not obsess about that postponed meeting, but I was not listening.

Maybe this whole work week has not been about preparing manuscripts but preparing me.

The kingdom of Christ on earth may just possibly muddle through without my real books or my e-books… maybe what needs reformatting here is me.

On another note:

Our family decided to each one spend Thanksgiving in their own homes this year instead of gathering for a massive feast in one place.

Ginny and I are looking forward to that; we never get enough time alone.

Weeks ago, Donald and Helen had invited us to Thanksgiving dinner at their home.

Then last week Donald called to un-invite us.

He said, “Dad, we’ve met this really nice couple at church and they asked us out to Fleming Island for dinner with them. They are really nice and we want to go there instead of having you and Mom here”.

So I said, “Well, if you’d rather spend Thanksgiving with nice people instead of with us, go ahead”.

Lord, but we laughed over that!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope to see you after the weekend surge.

John

Thumbnails

Yesterday someone had asked me for help, but they did not show up to get it.

That missed appointment freed me to work on turning my 22 print books into E-BOOKS to add to my online book catalog in addition to my hardcopy, real book print editions.

Same book text but in different formats.

Because I was not spending the time I’d expected to in helping, I’ve been able to expand my E-BOOK editions by another nine volumes.

I’ve never read an E-BOOK myself, but I’m told that people buy these things to read on their little machines, and I want to have them ready for the Christmas shopping season which starts next Friday… So I’ve really felt pressed for time. Problem is…

In my on-line book catalog, an e-book thumbnail looks to me exactly like a real-book thumbnail. How can buyers tell them apart?

I know.

I’ll make a different thumbnail. One with a little gold seal on the book cover saying, this is not a real book but an E-BOOK.

I’m proud to announce that John Cowart, King Of The Geriatric Computer Geeks, solved this knotty problem with my usual hi-tech skills.

All I needed were Ginny’s nail scissors, a paper oval, tweezers, something with my Bluefish Books logo, a glue stick, a post-it note, 22 books covers, and a pack of cigarettes.

So, I printed out a smallified Bluefish Books logo. Using Ginny’s nail scissors, the kind with a curved blade, I cut it into a perfect oval. I unraveled a pack of Ginny’s cigarettes so I could take out the gold-foil lining. I glued the little paper oval to the foil from the back, then traced a bigger oval around the little oval. Then I—am I boring you with all this hi-tech computer jargon?

All I needed to make was 22 of these shiny seals for my book covers…

Problem is I can’t cut ovals.

Can’t cut along the traced lines.

I remember back when I was in the first grade, my teacher, Miss. Ink… midway through my first grade something happened to Miss. Ink and her name changed to Mrs. Skeleton. That was a shame because Ink was so much easier to spell than Skeleton… Anyhow, Miss. Ink whacked my fingers with a ruler because I could not cut out the mimeographed figure of this purple pumpkin. I could not stay on the lines and she checked the scraps to see if there was any purple showing and to hide my scraps I turned them face down on the desk but she turned them over, saw the purple where I cut outside the line and she whacked my fingers and fussed at me and I cried.

Anyhow, yesterday I needed to cut out 22 oval shapes and I couldn’t.

Damn, Miss Ink/Skeleton anyhow!!! She was supposed to teach me not whack my fingers. If I had ever learned to cut pumpkins, then ovals would be a snap.

Being a hi-tech genesis, albeit a clumsy one, I figured out a way to transfer the one seal I did manage to cut into a mostly oval shape from one book cover to another.

What I did was I folded a post-it note into eight little folds, sticky-side out and stuck it to the back of the one foil oval. Then I could use the tweezers to peel it off and move it to another book cover.

Damn but I’m cleaver.

So I stuck my shiny oval Bluefish Books seal onto the front cover of a book and scanned the whole cover in anew. Because of the bright light of the scanner, the gold foil reflects down and comes out scanned looking gray… but people who buy E-BOOKS should be computer literate enough to see that this is an E-BOOK not a real book that they are buying.

When they buy an E-BOOK, they get it in-hand immediately. Since production costs are lower the price is cheaper. And there are no shipping and handling fees to pay, so you save more money that way.

Here is a scanned copy of one of my book covers with a shiny seal to prove that it is an E-Book, not a real book:

I still have a bunch of these thumbnail thingies to make, but I think I can have all 22 E-BOOKS available on line in my catalog at www.bluefishbooks.info by tomorrow night.

The 22 E-BOOKs are added at the tail end of my catalog. The same book in print editions, I put at the top of the catalogue listings.

Oh, by the way, the person who had asked my help, said she wanted “to pick my brain about preparing her books for publication”. Alas, She could have learned so much about writing and publishing from me. Always glad to share my expertise with young writers.

I’m proud of my technical ability in preparing these E-BOOKS for publication. I keep abreast of the latest technological developments. Stephen King must be able to cut out ovals quicker than I can because he has a lot of such E-BOOKS available on line. I’m trying to catch up with him as America’s best-selling author, so if you see him—hide his nail scissors.

We Received A Kindness From Davy

As soon as we got back from vacation out in the woods where there was no cell phone service, we learned that Ginny’s 86-year-old mother had been seriously ill.

Three different hospitals in two weeks.

She returned home with a pacemaker and appears to be recovering nicely now.

Much loved, her being down generated much prayer, much concern, and a flurry of long distance phone calls. Her seven children live across the U.S. Scattered between California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, and Virginia. Reams of e-mails and replies between brothers and sisters burned up the airways.

In the midst of all that inbox activity, I received a special kind missive from a stranger in Scotland, a man I had never even heard of before. All his e-mail said was “Repaired with my compliments. Davy from Scotland”.. Attached were several restored family photographs.

Back on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 Treasured Photographs I posted a blog entry about some old family Danny, one of Ginny’s younger brothers, sent to us. Here’s a copy of one of the ones I posted:

Out of the blue, David Wilson, the gentleman in Scotland, picked out several of these old family photographs from my site, and beautifully restored them. He did this out of the goodness of his heart.

Here’s the same photo after Mr. Wilson fixed it:

I hesitate to say just how old this antique photo is, but my wife is the smallest person in the picture; her mother, Alva, stands in the back row on the left.

What a nice surprise this gift from a stranger was, especially coming in a time of family crisis.

I replied to his e-mail: “Thanks Davy. The photos are from my wife's family I'll show these to her. Your unexpected gift comes at just the right time. Ginny's father died last summer and her mother is seriously ill in a hospital this week. Perhaps the Lord directed your timing. Thanks again!”

David Wilson (at dw010f4707@blueyonder.co.uk) replied, “John, if you have any more old or new photos that need some tender loving care just email them to me and i will do my best. I do this sort of thing for fun, i hate to see old photos that have been through the wars. Most are easily fixed and bring a smile to someone’s face at no cost. Davy.”

I am really touched by his kindness from across the world.

Thank you, Davy.

In a different vein…

As Ginny shopped for groceries this morning, I sat on a bench outside the store watching pretty girls wag by and praying. If these activities seem inconsistent, they are, and I am. The most consistent thing about my Christian life is that I’m inconsistent.

Anyhow, aggressive drivers intent on holiday shopping squealed through the parking lot vying for close parking spots in the rain. Saw several near-accidents.

An elderly man pushed a shopping card down a lane; it supported him as he pushed it. Through puddles.

A Ford Expedition wheeled from one lane to another. The driver, I’d guess a vice-president type, brooked no interference as he drove, window down, CD blaring.

The tottering old man blocked his way. The driver shoved forward and forced the old guy to step back into a puddle. Way clear the Ford zipped into a parking space…

And as he did, several bills of money blew out of the driver’s side back window. I could not see the denominations but it looked to be three bills. Unaware, the driver jumped from his car and marched (looked like that executive stride they teach up-and-comers ) toward the store.

The old man let him stride. Then he bent painfully over and picked up the cash. For one moment I thought he was going to call the asshole back and tell him he’d dropped the money. I could see the wheels turning in his brain. On mature reflection he let the guy stride away. He folded the money and stuck it in his shirt pocket and kept pushing his cart through the rain toward the store.

When I told Ginny about the incident, she said, “He was just conducting an exercise in justice”.

God bless the old guy.

As my Aunt Hazel, God rest her, once told me, “Youth and skill is never a match for old age and treachery”.

At Silver Star

Thursday my friend Barbara White treated me to lunch at Silver Star Chinese Restaurant—great food!

Hadn’t seen Barbara since before Ginny and I went on vacation so we had lots of conversation to catch up on both at my home and at Silver Star:

Barbara’s chemotherapy seems to have taken. Hardly any cancer markers left in her blood. But she feels bone weary and lethargic.

I said that feeling is natural. After all, when Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, He did not tell him to go hoe corn; He said to loose him from the winding sheets and give him dinner—relaxation before activity.

Ever notice that Jesus has common sense?

Barbara’s doctor tells her that her cancer may reoccur; statistically this kind often shows up again in three to six months after a first round of chemo. Barbara feels well at the moment and is still thinking about starting the evangelistic/Christian life meetings we talked about last time.

Barbara, an award-winning newspaper columnist, is the author of the Along The Way series of books at www.bluefishbooks.info .

I told her about my continuing frustrations over writing the book on the will of God, (haven’t touched it since before vacation) and that led us into an interesting discussion of Scripture.

Barbara is a groupie. She meets with a bunch of different groups. Yesterday she’d joined nine other ladies in a tea room for a two-hour discussion of whatever a group of nine ladies discuss. (Do nine ladies with tea leaves make a quorum or a coven?).

Barbara also attends a Bible study at her retirement home, church functions, and she faithfully goes to her Tuesday Night Group—which for the past 15 years has met on Thursdays.

In one of these groups the discussion touched on Luke Chapter Eight, where Jesus claimed kinship with “:These which hear the word of God and do it”.

(Mathew, Chapter Eight; and Mark, Four and Five, cover more or less the same series of incidents.)

“Now it came to pass on a certain day, that He went into a ship with His disciples: and He said unto them, ‘Let us go over unto the other side of the lake’. And they launched forth”.

Jesus went to sleep in the bow and there arose a great tempest in the sea.

“Lord, save us! We Perish,” the disciples yelled as water filled the boat.

He woke up, and first rebuked the disciples “Why are ye fearful?”, then He rebuked the waves, and the sea obeyed Him.

They may have been afraid of the storm waves, but now they were even more afraid of Jesus!

“The men marveled saying, “What manner of Man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him”?

The boat no sooner landed in the country of the Gadarenes, than a wild man raced from the tombs screaming and frothing. The demons in him made him cry and cut himself with sharp stones. He broke the chains when people tried to control him… “But, when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped Him”.

Jesus cast the demons from the man into a herd of pigs which ran off a cliff.

When the villagers came out to see—they “see him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion, sitting, clothed, and in his right mind: And they were afraid”!

They begged Jesus to—Go Away.

As Jesus got back into the boat, the man that had been possessed with the devil prayed Him that he might be with Him.

Jesus would not let him come.

“Go home,” Jesus said, “To thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee”.

Barbara noted how many things people were afraid of in this passage: The storm, the sea, Jesus stilling the storm, the demon-possessed man, Jesus casting out the demons, the loss of the pigs…

This Jesus is one scary dude. Strange things happen around Him.

And in a letter addressed to Christians, the Scripture says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”.

Barbara said the Gentleman Formerly Known As Legion did the will of God. He did not go with Jesus. He did not get in the boat. He did exactly what Jesus said. “He departed and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel”.

I don’t know the reference, but Barbara said that at a later time Jesus visited that same territory and a crowd of 4,000 people gathered to hear Him—perhaps as a result of the obedient, healed wild man who did the will of God.

What a cool conversation we had over egg foo young.

Barbara also mentioned that in one of her groups, one guy began talking about the return of Christ quoting Thessalonians, another man waded in with verses from Revelation…

With a groan, I put in my own two cents worth.

“I go along with Paul,” I said. “Wherefore, beloved brethren, confront one another with these words”!

Cancer will never get Barbara—she’ll choke to death on an egg roll laughing at my stupid jokes.