Christmas lighting and displays

I absolutely love bright, sparkly and colorful Christmas decorations. I wait in breathless anticipation for this season to arrive. Not everyone feels that way I guess but I certainly do. When I was a little shaver and my family lived in a very small house way out in the middle of nowhere my folks packed up my brother and I, borrowed the neighbors car and drove all the way into town just to ride around looking at Christmas lights and displays. I must have smeared up the windows of that car terribly with my face pressed tightly to the glass so as to see every bit of color. One entire neighborhood, three or four streets of them, had cooperated in placing lighted, wooden figures in their front yards up and down the streets depicting all the people and animals in the Christmas story, right down to the huge Christmas star and the Magi who came a little later. As young as I was I could hear in my head the voices of the census takers, the crying of the baby and the bleating of the sheep. (or was it maybe someone had an outdoor speaker system? Didn't matter then or now.)

Some lament the commercialization of Christmas, what with all the blowup snowmen, reindeer, Grinch's and elephants, you know things like that. Not me! I love that stuff too. Anything to do with Christmas is just fine with me as long as it is in good taste and does not disrespect the real reason for the season. After all, it's "Christ" mas. Rudolf is kinda cool with his bulbous red nose always trying to save someone from disaster and guiding good old Santa's sleigh. Some yards create an entire theme based on Rudolf. Then, of course there are the computer driven lights displays featuring the Christmas rock music of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. A blatant display of electronic ingenuity but fun, intriguing, fanciful and in many ways creating a joyful noise. Can't get much better than that.

I'm an adult and have been one for yea, these many years. I walk through my neighborhood slowly so I can take in every aspect of the the Christmas spirit reflected in each yard. Some are whimsical, playful and show hardly the slightest sign of spirituality. Some are strictly faith based religious offerings. Some are a mixture of new and old, electronic, hand made, and more recently the huge, air blown, lighted within balloon type displays. Some of which even have snow blowing around inside or a train going through it. I just don't know where it will go next with the new technology. It's the way of progress and it's been going throughout recorded history. Only a century ago, candles were the mainstay and electric lights were a novelty. I wonder what people thought about that?

Thanksgiving is only a day or two away. I have a great deal to be grateful for. One of them is to have driven my little shaver kids around town as they pressed their faces to the window to catch every last bit of the color and sparkle from the Christmas displays. The look in their eyes was something I'll never forget. And then the fun we had after looking at the lights by going to the homes of friends and family and throwing toilet paper on them. Now that's what I call a real Christmas spirit.

Adoption, domestic or foreign?

As an adoptive parent for over 35 years my ears are keenly attuned to the word, "adopt." My eyes are drawn to it when I read like radar locking on a UFO. Adoption as it is today, is a unique situation and filled with wonders as well as challenges. As short a time ago as the mid 1930's kids were shipped off on orphan trains to just about anywhere, to people that never received any sort of background check by well meaning institutions in the name of charity. We've come a long way from that. Tens of thousands of kids have been placed in homes and adopted by incredibly caring parents and become as one family. I applaud those families. I do wonder about a trend that has developed over the past decade or two though: Prospective adoptive parents in the United States don't seem to like American kids!

There isn't a week that goes by that I don't hear about this family adopting a child from one country or another, but not from the good old U.S of A.. A child is a child, no matter the place of birth, in my opinion. All children deserve an opportunity to experience family love. I'm getting the feeling though that many people have given up hope on our homegrown kids for some reason. Actually to the point of where some people are wearing the foreign adoption thing like some sort of elite badge of honor. Not all of them of course, but enough that I would notice it as a trend. I spoke with one guy and he stated, several times that he has adopted a couple "Chinese kids." Another couple mentioned, with emphasis that they had adopted, "Russian kids." And another couple adopted an "African child." I don't ever recall telling anyone I adopted anything other than a "child." I find it rather confusing. Obviously, there is something about this foreign adoption situation that I don't understand and I am not doing any judging of motives here, but as an adoptive parent myself I feel I do have the right to wonder about the reasons or need behind it. Are foreign kids smarter? Are foreign kids healthier? Are foreign kids supposed to be something different that I am missing? On the other hand: Are American kids not worthy of adoption for some reason? Are we, as Americans not responsible for our own orphans? Why not? Is it easier for some reason to explain a difference in the appearance of an adopted child if we say they came from a particular country of origin. More "pure" a strain perhaps? Does that make us better because we adopted from another country. Are we making up in some way for things we feel our own country has done wrong by ignoring those kids already here in need by bringing in replacement kids because ours are defective simply by being born here?

Like I said, no judgement here. Simply some questions that I do not understand the answers to. When I ask those who have or will be adopting foreign kids they seem to get a little defensive and huffy because, "If I understood I wouldn't have to ask questions about it." Like one parent said, "Adopting a domestic child is very selfish when there are so many others around the world who need parents more." I am all the more confused by that statement. My confusion will not change anything. Nor will it change the fact that even kids born here are important enough to receive love and consideration. Yeah, they really are.

Kids, aliens, werewolfs, vampires and cowboys

Listening to young kids and their logic can be an enlightening experience. As adults most of us have forgotten our youthful perceptions of reality. TV shows and fantasy films had a profound affect on our impressionable minds. Why, far into my adulthood I still entertained thoughts of riding the open range rounding up steers or capturing rustlers. Although perhaps the particulars of childhood ideas may have changed, the line between reality and fantasy is still as blurred as ever.

While discussing the upcoming Halloween activities with a couple neighborhood boys I found out a thing or two that I hadn't realized: Ghosts don't exist. It is ridiculous to even think that something can be made out of thin air. That only happens on TV. Zombies and aliens are real though. Zombies can pop up out of the ground or the side of a building. Aliens can hide inside someone Else's body or a dog or other animal. Aliens hide their spaceships in houses a lot and pretend to be regular people so they can spy. Werewolfs aren't really people. Werewolfs are actually dogs disguised as people in order to get people so they can eat them. Another thing, werewolfs sometimes just bite and chew people for fun. Centaurs live by the mountains only because anywhere else people want to fight with them too much and they don't really like to fight that much. They like to run more because of their horse feet. Vampires are scariest of all. Vampires fly at night looking for people to suck blood from. If a vampire sucks blood from your neck you turn into a vampire too. But, and listen carefully, if a vampire bites you anywhere else you can get away and not be a vampire. So make sure you put up your arm for them to bite and when it bites you hit it hard and run away. You'll be OK then and not a vampire too.

I was left with one more bit of juvenile wisdom: Cowboys can kill vampires, werewolfs and aliens with their 50/50 guns and sometimes they train centaurs to ride them. Cowboys can do almost anything and they protect us just like the Army. I guess some things only change a little.

Yesterday and today, keeping up.

My, how times have changed things. Cell phones, computers, electronic games, electric cars and wind turbines are so common they don't elicit a second thought from most people. Record players, crystal radios, slide rules, mimeographs, carburetors and tinker toys are almost ancient history. New countries pop up overnight causing maps become irrelevant even as they are printed. Language too evolves at nearly light speed and words and their meanings change sometimes overnight. It's kind of difficult to keep up with all the changes. Particularly, for me anyway are the social and cultural differences so far removed from what I learned in school. Here are a couple examples from my high school classroom days.

In social studies the teacher described how the communists had the citizens bring their kids to a "government" provided day care. "That just goes to show you how much the communist government controls their people and take their freedoms away." She said.

All through junior and high school the hot topics of conversation most often surrounded sports, college prep, getting a part time job, practical jokes and cars. Girls were mixed in like seasoning.

In high school, getting into trouble usually involved being late, chewing gum in class, smoking in the bathroom, passing notes in class, running in the halls or squealing tires in the parking lot.

Most guys showed respect to the girls and did things like open doors for them, pay the check at restaurants, not swear around them and would almost die before passing gas in front of them. Girls flirted and giggled and mostly left it at that when they were with boys.

When fights broke out between the guys, as it sometimes did, it usually ended with a bloody lip, a bruised ego and if a teacher found out, detention. A couple of regular trouble makers were sent to "Juvy." (juvenile home)

About three or four times a year the entire high school had an "assembly" and a recent graduate would talk about his or her success due to their education. At least one was enlisted in the armed forces giving us local heroes to think about.

Being "nice" was considered a good thing, something to strive for in spite of raging hormones and unlimited innocent, youthful ignorance and stupidity. Even if we failed at it we admired it.

History will determine if today is better for us or yesterday was more beneficial. I just know that it's a interesting ride either way. There are advantages on both sides and it's good for some of us to step back and take a look at the differences from time to time. How far have we come?

Katy Perry and Sesame Street

It's all over the web, Katy Perry's duet with Elmo gets dropped from program. Viewed as inappropriate by thousands of concerned parents around the country the producers took the right step and decided not to air it. Now the video is on YouTube, most believe that is where it belongs. Censorship? Not hardly. Simply doing what's right after making a not so good decision in the first place.

I read over hundreds of comments on a site dealing with just that issue. Most agreed that Sesame Street is supposed to be a bastion of safe programming for kids and this skit didn't fit that mold. Some bullies pulled the freedom card and said that any show should be able to present anything and it is the responsibility of the parents to guard the child from what they deem inappropriate. So much for the "It takes a community" theory in Hillary Clinton's book.

My take on it is that some places should be expected to air child friendly, non-controversial material. Leave them alone. They did the right thing. There is only one Sesame Street and it's for kids. There are hundreds, thousands of sit-Com's that show adult material every moment of the day. I suggest that those who enjoy Good old Katy Perry: Turn the channel, tell your kids that you just don't agree with the excellent programming on Sesame Street, you prefer the "anything goes, every parent for them self" programming.

Now, lets get on with the day. ArtPrize is here in Grand Rapids, the garden is filled to overflowing with ripe vegatables and the weekend is filled with sunshine. who could ask for anything more? Baseball and football are on the radio so I'll probably never turn on the TV all weekend long.

Finding the gold

We overheard the counter guy at the surplus store quietly talking to another customer about a long protected secret concerning the Pikric Acid plant. Our ears perked up to listen. The counter guy looked both ways to make sure no one was listening, I guess he didn't see us, and then he told the other guy about how some gold bars had been buried by the United States government to protect it just in case the country was invaded. Now it seems that the government forgot about the gold somehow they said. Some other guy had just discovered a drawing of some hidden caves in between the smoke stacks and the small river just South of them. Those guys were going to there in a couple days to find and dig out the gold and they'd be rich forever. Jim and I were dumbfounded, we had actually been in the entrance to those caves! We didn't go too far in because they were pretty dark and stunk awful. We suddenly thought dark and stinky weren't so bad after all. We made plans for the next morning.

So around 8:00 am we were on our bikes riding across the hills and knolls on our way to the caves. I had a hatchet and Jim had a small army shovel his dad had left from being in a soldier. Each of us carried a flashlight and extra batteries too. The sun was already burning down hot on our backs, the grass was still wet from the dew of the night, causing us to slip and slide as we raced towards the cave opening. We stopped just down a hill behind a small grove of bushy trees that hid the cave entrance. No one else was around that we could see. We certainly didn't want to share our gold with anyone. We made sure our bikes were covered under low hanging branches and walked to the side of the hill where the opening was. We hesitated for a minute and just looked at each other. Wow! All we had to do was go inside and pick up that gold.

We bent down and entered the cave entrance, shining our flashlights ahead of us, water trickled down the side walls and settled in small pools in between the rocks, spider webs hung along every surface and across the opening, getting into our faces and feeling kind of creepy. Noises came from inside but they weren't scary though, we thought it was just the wind. The wind is always in caves, we knew that from movies and stories. The cave opening was small, only about two or three feet high but as we crawled further in the ceiling got higher and wider. The ceiling was pock marked with deep holes and cracks. We penetrated deeper and deeper, excited as we were the darkness was all encompassing except for the steady beams of our flashlights. We stopped and shone our lights around, checking out every square inch of the inside to make sure we didn't overlook any gold.

Over our right, about ten feet away the wall had broken away slightly and we could see the corner of what we thought was a steel box. The edge was shiny but the side was rusty. We had to climb over some large, slippery rocks to get to it. Halfway there an bright light filled the cave to almost daylight, blinding our eyes. A loud voice yelled out, "What are you kids doing in here?" "You gotta get out right now!" We started to say the we just wanted to get that steel box but the guy yelled even louder and said we had to leave right then. We couldn't play in there any more. He helped us get up, back through and out the entrance to the outside. He was nice enough but wouldn't listen to anything we had to say. We just had to leave. We got on or bikes and left. When we got to the edge of the trees we saw a huge tractor with a front loader on it with a another small caterpillar with a plow on the front. A bunch of guys were standing around, some had shovels. We went home, all those grown up guys would have made arguing useless. Later that day we rode our bikes about 20 miles to Green Lake and went swimming. No sense in wasting a good summer day without school.

The next morning,right after peddling papers and doing chores, without breakfast we headed out to the caves. They had been plowed over and covered with dirt! We figured those guys with the tractor and front loader must have dug up the caves and found the gold and got rich. We had been that close...................................Joe

Food allergies,

Food allergies and sensitivities are a terrible health condition to deal with. If a person has an allergy to a specific food they can become deathly ill if they are exposed to it, accidentally or not the results are traumatic. Hundreds of thousands of young parents choose to raise their children on diets free of some of the most common allergy foods, peanuts, red meat, gluten and dairy products. Instead of finding out naturally if the children are sensitive or allergic they choose to simply avoid the possibility entirely. I wasn't raised that way. I think I was exposed to almost everything, including but not limited to dirt and a not so tasty bug or two. Limiting certain life experiences seems to be an ever increasing trend.

Listening to a program concerning health issues related to food allergies and sensitivities the other day I heard another side of the story. It seems a majority of those in the health care and research concerning these allergies have found that the upsurge in allergies is a result of growing up in such a sterile lifestyle. In other words: by not being exposed to a variety of food throughout our lives we put ourselves in jeopardy of not being able to tolerate those very foods. After thinking about that premise it sounded like simple common sense.

Many medicines and vaccines are made with small amounts of the offending germ or flu bug. We accept a tiny bit into our systems and our natural defences develop into a tolerance of sorts and we don't get sick from it. It's easy to transfer that same theory to our ability to process food.

According to much of this research, our desire to protect our kids and keep them safe from everything appears to be the cause of many of our most serious problems. They say we are protecting our kids into ill health, we are raising them to be weak and delicate instead of able to deal with life as it comes so they have to be protected all their lives. What an eye opener.

I've seen movies that portray the human experience as a form of evolution ending in a mindless, weak, sickly society that requires a caretaker for even the smallest need. I wonder how true those science fiction movies will become?..........I kinda like the dirt thing. I had a lot of fun doing it and my mom got some pretty funny pictures too.............................Joe

Language and being ten years old.

This short story is an example of the type of thing that occupies the mind of a typical ten year old kid. Learning to speak another language really sounds cool at that age, especially when you've been unable to get a handle on spanish, german or french. Exactly who put this language together obviously had a great deal of time on their hands and a very short priority list. There is a legend going around that this particular language actually saved the lives of a group of soldiers while being questioned and incarcerated in Germany during the second world war. Have a little fun with it. After all, there is still a little of a ten year old kid left in us somewhere no matter our age.

Ister may able Gay ad hay a ay eak lay in ay e thay oof ray over ay is hay ining day oom ray, o say e hay alled cay a ay epairman ray. "en why id day ou yay otice nay e thay eak lay? e thay epairman ray inquired ay.

Ister may able Gay owled scay. "ast lay ight nay, en whey it ay ook tay e may o tway ours hay o tay inish fay y may oup say!"

So there it is. If you can decifer this language you are ready to enter the 5th grade or save a group of captives. You also qualify as a rather fun type of person and probably will use this to resurrect a failing conversation or write a letter to someone you really want to frustrate. Admirable qualities, even if you are older than ten........Enjoy your newfound skill in linguistics.......................Joe

(P.S. In case you've forgotten, it's pig latin.)