Reading

It may be that Calvin, of the three boys, is the one who most enjoys reading in and of itself. Today getting off the bus, traffic came to a halt in front of the church as usual. Calvin got off with book in hand, and nose buried deep in the pages. Usually he charges on across the street and up the front steps, but today was different. A utility truck was stopped forward of the bus. Calvin made his way across the street much slower than usual, wrapped up as he was in his reading. He finally made it to the sidewalk, and taking two more steps bumped into the handrail for the front steps of the church. He bounced backward a little, finally looked up, and adjusted his trajectory up the steps to where I was sitting waiting on him. I took my eyes off him to wave to the bus driver, who was chuckling. I spotted the truck driver as he began to drive past: he too was grinning. Calvin was oblivious to the humor he had inadvertently provided us all. He remained engrossed in the book, barely acknowledging me and headed straight to my office to finish the book. This picture captures those remarkable final moments.

Helos

View of the staging area, fuel trucks and helicopters

The plan today was for me to take Briggs and Calvin up to Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock for the day. The only dicey part was that Briggs spent the previous night with a friend and wasn't ready to go early like he often is, and too he had a football practice in the evening we had to be back for. On the way up we passed a sign cautioning about traffic related to the Forest Service trying to put out a brush fire, north of Marion. I slowed and stole a glance as a rudimentary staging area, including 3 helicopters. There was a tent, several Forest Service vehicles and several folks. One of those folks was a member of our church! He's a "smoke jumper." I mentioned all this to the boys and made note to tell Eli when we got home.

Well, our travel tanked at Linville: traffic everywhere. There was a jam in Linville. There was another at Banner Elk. And finally a miles-long back-up going into Blowing Rock. We endured it as long as we could. But finally the boys asked if we could just turn around and go home. I didn't need much convincing! We drove back to Banner Elk and had fastfood for lunch. Briggs remarked that it was a case of 4 hours of driving for a fastfood lunch! We set off for home.

Waiting in the parking area for the helicopter to take off

As we made our way back toward Marion, I wondered if there might still be people at the brush fire heliport, and how much trouble I would encounter for stopping to see if our church-friend was still around. I tried to be discreet as I pulled into the parking area, but we were greeted by a very friendly Forest Service employee. We exchanged introductions, and I explained what I was interested in (seeing the church guy if he was still around). The short answer was that he had left. But we got shuffled up to various others in the staging area, including ultimately the captain, or boss, or chief of the heliport. I was struck by the several layers and branches of command: personnel for fighting fires, personnel for the helicopters and personnel to run the impromptu heliport. There was Kenny who first met us; then a heliport supervisor-trainee whose name I forgot; and finally Denise, from Rome, GA who was boss of the whole place. We met several other fire-fighters and pilots, and the radio-operator. Denise guided us through what was going on.

Crews' hangout: middle of a field

We were told that indeed Steve was no longer there, but that we were welcome to hang out and see what was what. We got word that a flight would be leaving soon (30 minutes) and once it had left we could get a close-up look at the remaining helicopters. The boys were game to stay. We got invited into the tented shelter area the crews use. We watched the pre-flight briefing and its take-off and then got escorted on a tour of a Bell 407 helicopter by its pilot, and guy named Brad from Colorado who (with his wife) worked for a helicopter leasing agency in Atlanta.He has been flying for 10 years, servicing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, running EMS in Colorado, and finally supporting fire-fighters for the US Forest Service.

You can't tell it but the rotor on the second helicopter is turning

We had a blast, though most of the time I regretted that Eli was not along. Realizing that we're only 45 minutes from the place, I covenanted with myself to bring Eli back soon.

At home later, Eli filled us in on specifics of the helicopter was saw, and was able to track down a news report on the fire in McDowell County they were trying to contain. The plan is to go back Friday morning and see if Eli can score some quality time at the same place.

 

 

Personal tour!

Personal tour!

Take-off!

Pastoring days

I just finished reading Stanley Hauerwas' memoir, Hannah's Child. I somehow missed reading him while I was in seminary and pastoring. It got me thinking about those days, especially my brief tenure as associate pastor at Trinity UMC, Durham. The previous associate had had a rocky relationship with the pastor. I don't know really why I was sent, certainly not to try and repair anything; maybe just to be a somewhat stabilizing presence. Trinity was coasting on its history of being a high-profile congregation, though its glory days were mostly behind it. There were plenty of heavy-hitting folks still around, including a former governor and several faculty and staff from Duke Divinity ( where I did not attend). As I was reading this book, and enjoying how Hauerwas reflected on his arrival at Duke, I wondered if maybe that was why I was appointed to this particular church: simply because I was _not_ a graduate of the local school (I had attended Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC). I certainly wasn't going to "do" anything that grew out of being an alum of another school: I was far too timid and unsure of myself at that point. But I wonder if my superiors had this in the back of their minds. It's on my mind now. As it turns out, the pastor left the following year. I felt like I wanted to give the church a clean slate, so I opted to move along also (to Goldsboro). A couple of things spring to mind about those days: a major screw-up: I accepted a preaching gig at a neighboring church for a mid-week service and then completely forgot about it; I wrote a pretty scathing letter to the local paper in response to an article and learned that I don't like negative blow-back; I met the woman who would become my wife. A fascinating year.

Organs I have played: Brevard

The Porter Center at Brevard College is a multi-use concert hall on the main campus. The front of the hall includes a small gallery holding Jaekel opus 43. At 69 ranks it's one of the largest instruments in this region of the state. I played the instrument as part of a hymn festival in 2013. We actually presented the hymn festival at Black Mountain Presbyterian, which our choir leading and then mounted the same production in Brevard, with the local choral society leading the singing a few weeks later. We had brass instrumentalists for both events. They were with me in the gallery for the Porter Center event. With them there was not much room for anything else! Logistics were a bit tricky, but we used closed-circuit monitors for me to see the conductor. The instrument was a delight to play. It fills the room well. I would like to get back down to Brevard soon to play it again at my leisure.

Graduation

Eli may actually make it out of high school. (We know he will, but it's been a struggle, and he is more than ready to be done with school.) He did well on report cards for the current term. He took his senior photo a couple of weeks ago. His graduation swag arrived this week. He's made application to do AmeriCorps this year. Even studying firefighting at the community college, put him off. We are hopeful he can get an outdoorsy placement through VISTA or a similar program.

Grandfather mountain

I was on vacation (post-Easter) last week, and enjoyed some much-needed alone time. Eli went on a camping trip with kids from church Friday-Sunday. Libby and I heard Sam Bush Friday evening (with Martha and Russ) at Isis (standing!!! hated that, but enjoyed the music, including the opening act, Wisewater, and dinner was nice). Sunday I took the younger brothers to Grandfather Mountain, giving Libby some of her own alone-time. We packed a picnic lunch and had a good time. It was a bit chillier up there than it was at home. Briggs may be developing a slight fear of heights: he made it only about 1/3 across the mile-high bridge and then had to turn back.But he did scamper up the split rock near the entrance to the park.

Wildfire

The big news around here happened at the very end of the month. A homeowner burned some debris on Monday evening. On Tuesday a wildfire broke out, supposedly as a result of blowing embers. Whatever, the fire raged in the woods in Ridgecrest, about a mile from us. I saw the smoke from church as I sent the younger brothers home with my mom. Libby got a couple of photos later in the evening. Ultimately the fire burned about 750 acres, one home totally, with a handful of others getting some fire damage. The second photo is a couple of days after the fire was out, right outside our house, looking northwest between Ridgecrest and Montreat.

Libby was in California for a work-related event for a few days in February. She got a couple of cool plane pictures for the boys. She was in Newport Beach, and went to the shore and got videos of a whale cavorting in the surf.

On March 14 I celebrated Pi Day by making a quiche for breakfast, and a spaghetti pie for lunch. The plan was for chicken pot pie for supper, but I was pied-out. I did manage to make my 4th pie, a dessert buttermilk pie to end the day. We had the 3rd pie a day later for supper.

Winter 2015

A couple of random shots from last season. We had very little snow. But there were a couple of really cold snaps. Mostly however it was a mild winter for us. Briggs did manage to cobble together a snowman from the one measurable snow we had. We were stuck inside quite a bit because of the cold, and I caught 2/3 of the brothers behaving nicely at one point.

Calvin's birthday 2015

Like most of our birthday celebrations this one carried over to several days: special meal and dessert one night, presents from us a different time, from Ganny yet another, and from Uncle G even another, plus whatever comes in the mail. Doesn't matter; got presents.

I was pretty proud of the cake. It was store-bought, but I decorated it with stuff Calvin enjoys

and did the lettering.

Gratuitous cat pic

Winter basketball

Both Calvin and Briggs played basketball this winter. Briggs' team had a rough season, not winning anything. The younger teams don't keep score. Both boys seemed to enjoy the season however. Briggs got new shoes from his uncle, so he was very happy about that.  Most often Briggs would go to Calvin's games just to see who else was there. Once we took a buddy of his who had spent the night.

Briggs' birthday

Once again, simple and low-key. We took one of Briggs' friends to Fun Depot for a couple of hours. We had dinner and cake in the evening, and the friends stayed overnight.