Cyberhymnal

Years ago, I was part of a group that sat with the dying at night when family members couldn't be there. I did that until I developed a sleep disorder. These days, when I perform at nursing homes, I sometimes am invited into a hospice situation, to sing a song or two with someone near death.

This week I was in a room with an old woman who is not expected to live much longer.  I am to play an old song, "Shadows", at her funeral. She sang it at her father's funeral and it was played at her mother's funeral, too. I never heard of it before.

The best site for old time songs is http://cyberhymnal.org  At this site I found "Shadows" with a piano score, lyrics, a recording of the song, and the story of the composer. I printed out the score and brought it along today, along with my notebook computer.  I played the piano part on the computer and my friend and I harmonized as we sang "Shadows" to her mother, who sang along with us.

When we cross the valley there need be no shadows,
When life’s day is ended and its sorrows o’er;
When the summons comes to meet the blessèd Savior,
When we rise to dwell with Him forevermore.

Refrain

Shadows! no need of shadows
When at last we lay life’s burdens down;
Shadows! no need of shadows!
When at last we gain the victor’s crown.

This led to us singing one old hymn one after another, using Cyber Hymnal and a paperback collection of hymns.  These old songs took the patient back to her childhood, soothing her as she once was calmed by her mother.

On Monday, I am to join Gary at Lake Ottawa for a week, but I expect I will be called to come back as the end nears.  I will go immediately because I learned years ago that we cannot live until we face death.

Alone Again

Gary left this morning for another camping trip.   He'll be at Lake Ottawa for the next two weeks, then will move on to Laura Lake, always our last campground of the year.

He called from the campground to tell me that with the cold (39 degrees F. tonight) autumn colors are starting to show.  My favorite time of year, but for the time being I am staying here in Seymour.  My friend Norma's mother is declining so I need to be here in case I'm needed. I do have to go to Laona to tell stories on Monday and I intended to continue on to Lake Ottawa, but we'll see. Sometimes plans have to change.

Today I went to Sissy's downtown to sit at one of the outside tables and test out the wi fi.  The idea is to show passersby that the system is available and sure enough, another woman pulled up in her car, grabbed her laptop and went into the restaurant to have lunch and catch up on her e-mail.  I'll be working there more in the future, both to draw in customers but also because for some reason, I can work well there.

I wrote the latest short story for Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com while I was sitting there.  Despite traffic and people stopping by to ask me what I was doing, I kept typing away and within an hour had a short story.  This makes me think about J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter series in a coffee shop.  Maybe changing my writing location from time to time will inspire me.

I posted the story, which rounds out our first year of writing weekly short stories.  Our first anniversary is next Thursday.

Calendar

My goodness, it's the middle of September and I don't have my 2013 calendar.  How did that happen?

I usually get the next year's calendar in mid-August. That may seem early to some but over the next two or three months I'll be working on two storytelling tours, if not three.

In late January and early February, I will be touring the Deep South if all goes well.  I've never been in Mississippi, but to get there, I'll need to tell stories in other states, too. That's how I pay my way when I want to travel.

Next summer, I want to go the East Coast and if possible, tell stories in Delaware and Rhode Island, two other states I've somehow missed.   If there is time, I want to go back to Canada.  At every venue I performed in last summer, I received an invitation to come back in the summer of 2013.  

In between there will be local performances, family time, camping and work on short stories and novels.

All of that has to be fit together like one big old jigsaw puzzle.  That's where my calendar fits in.  

The one I am using in 2012 is a Workman Page-A-Day calendar.  Each page includes a notepad with enough room for my list of about 25 things I want to accomplish plus a sudoku puzzle that I finish at the end of each day.  I found it at Goodwill and haven't seen one at any of the local stores.  

It's the perfect calendar for me, none other will do.  I guess I will have to order one on line.

Tidbits from a Busy Week

Update from my cousin Charles, his partner Sean, and friend Chris who are coming to the end of their great adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail.  They now have less than 300 miles to go to reach the Canadian border, but winter comes to the PCT early.  They have been hiking in cold rain, sleet and snow and a couple of nights ago, after a freezing rain, their tent froze solid.  The views keep them moving on in spite of the hardships.Their photos are outstanding.   Check out 3gaycaballeros.blogspot.com  Figuring they hike an average of twenty miles a day, they should be heading for home within the next ten days. Then I expect them to begin work on a book of their adventures.

Wade Peterson and I have been working on our own book, a collection of our best short stories from a year of writing at http:blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  On Tuesday, we settled on the stories, designed the cover, and figured out the logistics.  We hope to have an e-book by next week, followed by the paper edition a week later. I'll post the details here.  

Meanwhile, we have to keep on writing our short stories for the blog. I am scheduled to finish one by Friday, then Bettyann Moore takes the following week.  Here in Seymour, Sissy's Treats and Treasures, our local coffee and tea shop, now has wi-fi.  I think I will try writing there tomorrow for a change of pace. Or is it the cheesecake that pulls me there?   

Then there's my other career as a storyteller. For the past couple of weeks I've been contacting libraries in the southern states with hopes of doing a tour down to Mississippi in February. I never know if a tour will happen, but it won't if I don't make the effort. 

The October mini-tour in Illinois is a done deal with five performances. I am picking up nursing home and assisted living facilities here in Wisconsin in October and November.  I never get any work in December since schools, libraries and nursing homes have plenty of entertainment with the holidays. After Thanksgiving, I won't tell stories again until January.

I spent part of Tuesday with my friend Norma, who came up from Chicago to spend time with her mother at an Oshkosh nursing home. It seems Nadine's life is slowly coming to an end.  When I can I drive to Oshkosh and take Norma out to get some relief.  On Tuesday we walked to the point at Menomine Park to watch the cormorants fly and the waves crash in. The ebb and flow of nature has a way of putting life and death into perspective.  

Poor Kitty

Rascal is getting old.

The last two days his fur has been a mess.  Gary says it is just that he got into something that makes it tangle.  The problem is that he hasn't been anywhere that that could happen. Every old cat I've had over the years had that sticky fur just before it became time to take that last visit to the vet.

Another sign of aging is the size of the clumps in the litter box.  The bigger the clumps, the more problems Rascal is having with his kidneys.  Those clumps used to be the size of a quarter.  Now they are the size of a small saucer.  So far, he is making the litter box but for how long?

He is losing weight and muscle tone.  We know he is hurting.  The steps are too much. He no longer is coming upstairs to wake me up in the morning. He still manages to leap up on my lap most of the time, but sometimes he misses and stalks away embarrassed.

We are getting old, too.  Today, Gary had to see the doctor about the aches in his arms. He was told to avoid lifting weights for a while and given a prescription for prednisone.

My fingers are getting arthritic. Playing a piano is in the past, I'm afraid.  Even typing can become painful.

Gary says that sooner or later one of us will have to be stored in the freezer before we can be buried, so I had better make room.

Forever

I am getting annoyed with the word "forever".  It is being overused to the point of being meaningless.

When someone dies, odds are that the family will put that word in the obituary. "We'll remember Oscar forever."   Since the survivors won't live forever, they can't possibly remember someone else forever.   Go to any cemetery on Memorial Day and look at the plots that have abandoned. In one or two generations, the deceased are forgotten. There's no "forever" there.

When we were checking out at our supermarket this evening, I noticed a celebrity magazine.  A headline proclaimed that something would happen at some reality television show that would be so shocking that we would remember it forever.  I seriously doubt that.

We Americans have abysmal memories.  A recent survey asked voters who killed Osama Bin Laden.  Eight percent thought it was Mitt Romney.  Seriously?  If the electorate can't accurately remember something that took place a year ago, how can they remember anything "forever"?

What happened on December 7, 1941?  Who remembers that Day of Infamy?  Why do we celebrate Veterans Day on November 11...if we celebrate it at all?  When I was a child we celebrated a moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. on that day, but I doubt schools do that any more.

September 11, 2001, which we were told we would remember forever, has smaller and smaller memorial services as the years go on.  Instead of 9-11, we are now supposed to call it Patriots Day, but we don't get the day off and in time I expect our memories will wear thin.

Today, we got the sales flyer for Don's Quality Market with the Patriots Day sale. Perhaps "forever" in America has more to do with merchandising than anything else.

Kitty Shower

Friends of ours from Illinois are camping in the Nicolet Forest.  They've just adopted two rescue kittens, Malachi and Micah.  Because Brad and Merrilee spend much of the summer camping, even running their business from their camper via the internet, they wanted their two cats to come along.  So far, so good.

Gary, who loves cats, wanted to meet these two kittens, so he decided we needed to go to the campground for a kitty shower, bringing them toys.  So we drove north, once I had finished making a pot of soup to set on simmer on the stove.

We found Brad and Merrilee and their daughter at their lake.  It was an amazing site because it was the only one at the end of the road. Merrilee says there are about 35 sites like this in Wisconsin, isolated spots at the end of long forest roads.  There's no access to water and the only toilet is outdoors, very primitive, but the privacy is superb. There are no dogs, no loud campers, no boom boxes, no motorboats, and no beer parties.  Just peace, perfect peace.

So where is this jewel? Years ago, I discovered Laura Lake and with great enthusiasm told friends about it, even wrote about it in my newspaper column.  Today, Laura Lake is only quiet in the early spring and late fall.  So I will keep Brad and Merrilee's little campsite a secret though we might try it when they aren't using it.

We met Malachi and Micah who are doing kitten things including climbing up the screen door and scratching  up furniture.  So far, so good, Merrilee says.  They are champion travelers, though I expect the camper will get a bit cramped as they get bigger.

Good conversation and we came back home to the pot of soup, now cooling.  Time to freeze it into pint containers.  This is the fourth batch of soup I've made since the tomatoes began to ripen.  We'll take some along when we go on our next camping expedition a week from now.