Long awaited

Back in 2005 when Cindy Lou retired from the classroom, she talked about how she’d like to take me to England as her big celebration trip.  Sounded great to me. 

Now here it is 2013 -- and we’re finally taking flight tomorrow afternoon for London.  A first for me.  A third for Cindy Lou.  An adventure for us both! 

It’s not that we didn’t want to get off our chairs and jet off to the United Kingdom.  We started the reservation process a couple of times, but other things just seemed to get scheduled and, well, you know how that goes.  

A bunch of this trip was designed with the help of an American Automobile Club counselor, but the centerpiece of the excursion, as far as I’m concerned, is a week at Holy Hill Hermitage in County Sligo, Ireland.  If you and I chat very often, you are aware of my affection for the Nada Hermitage in Crestone, Colorado.  Been there a couple of times and even hauled a grandson to Crestone for a family week a year ago.  Nada is operated by the Spiritual Life Institute.  The SLI runs Holy Hill as well. 

If the truth be told, though, Cindy’s highlights will be in London and vicinity.  She’s eager to get me out in the neighborhoods where she says, “Everything you see is some part of history you’ve already read about.”  She even bought tickets for us to see Spamalot -- in London!  I cannot imagine a better place to experience the Monty Python mentality than in England’s capital city!  

Right now it’s mid-evening the day before we fly.  My suitcase and carry-on are assembled and waiting at the front door.  They’ll get a couple small things yet tomorrow morning, but they’re ready to fly.  I’ve assembled a few books of poetry for the trip and look forward to visiting a London bookstore for a leisurely peruse.  I have an updated poetry notebook prepared and another steno book ready for thoughts and ideas.  A few good pens and pencils are stowed, as well.  And, of course, there is the laptop that will provide the communication link to the outside world.  No phones this time, smart or otherwise.  I am looking forward to an experience without tons of technology.  Digital photography should be amazing. 

I will be blogging along the way and including some images of what we experience.  I hope you’ll stop by The Back Porch over the next three weeks to see how it’s going.  

Did I say yet how excited I am to get to Holy Hill?  ;-)

Today’s elder idea:  The tag line on the Holy Hill website:  

A retreat centre where people of all faiths can immerse themselves in silence, solitude, and beauty along the west coast of Ireland.  

For more on Holy Hill, see:  http://www.holyhill.ie

Purpose

Back in the day when the clock rang at 6 am and both Cindy Lou and I groaned about getting up in the winter dark for showers, lunch making, and heading off to school at an ungodly hour, life had plenty of purpose.  We’d show up at our buildings with smiles on our faces to work with 100+ young people each every day, trying our best to lead them to writing, thinking, and academic success.

Following our retirement, though, purpose has been a bit more difficult to discern. 

For me, I must say, the transition was not too hard.  I’m a morning person who likes to get up when the sun does (well, not at 5 am in the summer!) to get my day going.  It usually begins with a glass of orange juice or chocolate milk and thirty minutes of personal time with the Dayton Daily News, sitting next to our lovely dining room windows, reading and watching the Natural world getting going for another day.  Pretty soon it’s off to my computer for another news update, catching up with email, and maybe getting going on a new blog entry or continued work on other writing.  Generally speaking, I don’t have trouble finding stuff to do.  

For Cindy Lou it’s been a bit more difficult.  She’s one of those folks who is a slow daily starter, but then by evening she might get a burst of energy and stick with a project until 3 am.  The other night she unpacked and photographed the entire collection of demitasse cups and saucers left to her by her mother.  Must be at least thirty sets, I’d say.  It’s easy to understand, then, why she likes to sleep late into the morning.  Besides, I am advised, her vivid dreaming is just kicking in about dawn and heavens, does she love getting involved in those and so many other fictional narratives. 

I’ve heard plenty of folks say that they don’t look forward to retirement because they are afraid they’ll be bored.  A month or so of sleeping late and they won’t know what to do with themselves.  I think some are concerned, too, that hanging out all day in the same space as their spouse will get on everybody’s nerves before too long.  And I’m sure that can happen. 

  

I offer these situations, including the lovely Cindy Lou’s, as case studies of those who somehow struggle with what to do with unassigned time.  Employment undoubtedly gives our day purpose.  No daily preassigned job equals a different personal equation. 

I don’t know that I have a definitive solution to this conundrum facing so many of us Baby Boomers these days.  Maybe what I have to say is specific to those morning types who love to engage with a new day, just because.  If one is not made up that way, I suspect it could be a perpetual challenge for later years. 

For me, though, it seems to resolve around the concept of zen.  Not zen meditation so much, though I’ve tried that unsuccessfully a handful of times.  For me it has more to do with finding some good thing to do today because it calls out for attention.  

Wikipedia says zen used as an adjective means ‘extremely relaxed and collected.‘  I suppose when one relaxes and considers the day, a zen purpose emerges.  Cindy Lou might use the term gestalt, since that is so big in her professional and personal background.  Wikipedia defines gestalt as ‘a whole, unified concept or pattern which is other than the sum of its parts.’  I like to think of it as being grounded in the moment.  

In any case, as a member of the working class, purpose might not be hard to define.  Answer the bell, do your work, and enjoy Reds games on summer evenings.  

But for those who struggle with unassigned days, I think taking time daily to stop and quietly listen for the voice or spirit or whatever the entity -- or non-entity -- can offer the insight needed to lead us into good work that the world needs, whether it’s holding babies at Children’s Medical Center or raising tomatoes in the front yard.  Some purpose surely has broader and deeper ramifications, but all daily purpose works toward the good of the one, which overall is beneficial for the whole community.  

As solitary as we might be, we’re all in this together.  Finding personal purpose and working on it makes the world in which we all live a better place and from what I can tell, is much better for one’s health.  

Today’s elder idea:  Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness.  It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. 

Helen Keller

image:  Scavenged from Google search at purpose.edelman.com

Home

for Jerry Thaman 

1.

I said good-bye to him on Friday night 

and learned on Sunday afternoon 

he had lost consciousness.  

Such was drug induced but the only 

alternative to intensifying pain. 

I gave him a lucid week or more 

when I grasped his hand that night, 

looked into his eyes, 

and told him I loved him

and that there was much love present

to help in whatever happened next -- 

that lots of people were sending energy

for whatever was needed. 

His grip and his eyes showed something 

that seemed like understanding.

2. 

I walked out into that warm Florida night

and just stood by the rental car in the dark, 

not wanting to get in --

not wanting this next part --

my going away from him for what would inevitably be 

the last time on this plane of existence -- to begin. 

Next time I see him, I thought, 

he’ll be in an urn.  I cringed, 

but knew that it was true.  

I turned around in the palpable darkness, 

facing the porch-lit house 

to consider what was inside: 

a dying fifty year old man

with all three natural brothers at his side, 

or at least in the room.  A sister.  A sister-in-law.  A niece.  

The hospice nurse that everybody likes so much. 

And a wife, exhausted, crashing while the others

hold vigil before her shift, motivated by love, 

begins again. 

3.

I don’t know much about death. 

I understand hospice practitioners refer

to the process of dying as a transition: 

a gradual easing from the world of the living 

into a place of unconsciousness where the body 

can let go of the life spirit, freeing it from matter

to become part of whatever it is that happens next.  

I only hope that when he began moving in that direction 

it felt at least as good as home. 

Tom Schaefer

23 September 2013

prior & post Jerry’s leaving

Island time

Yow.  I know my goal is to write here weekly but that it’s usually more like once every couple of weeks.  I’ve never missed a whole month.  Until now.  Sorry about that.  

But know that life has been rich.  I was able to spend two of the last five weeks on stunning Hog Island in Maine.  Most of that time was spent scrubbing pots in the kitchen, but it was done with good people for a good cause:  feeding moms ‘n dads ‘n grandfolk ‘n kids that made up Family Camp.  That means about 60 folks for each meal, including the big lobster feast their last night on island.  

Lots of silverware and plates went through the Hobart.  I took it upon myself to sweep the dining room after every meal, which meant lifting a raft of heavy chairs first, then sweeping, then lifting them all down.  I almost always got help from one or two folks moving chairs, which was much appreciated.  And, it should be noted, my sweeping technique proved to be quite effective, if I don’t say so myself.  ;-)

Aside from the busy days at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, I did take time off from my volunteer responsibilities for some personal island meditation -- and came away a bit different from when I came aboard.  Islands can do that to you, I’m told.  Still, this was a special stay on Hog Island for me.  

It was thirty-two years ago this July when I made my first visit to the Audubon Ecology Workshop in Maine on Hog Island.  With a non-scientific brain in a very scientific atmosphere, I made some good friends and discovered a piece of Emily Dickinson history that would impact the rest of my life.  

As you know, I am writing a second book of Hog Island history, once again focusing on the family of Mabel Loomis Todd.  Miss Todd, as all Dickinson scholars know, is the person most responsible in the world for our being exposed to Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. She brought important pieces of Emily’s poetry into a public place where we all can grapple with their complexity and beauty.    

And, oh, some of those letters are as rich as the poetry.  We have Mrs. Todd to thank for saving them. 

Eighteen years after the publication of that first volume of Poems by Emily Dickinson, Mabel Todd went in with a friend from Boston to purchase huge tracts of Hog Island, which was said to be one of the largest pieces of spruce island wilderness left on the Maine coast.  She would come to build a compound of summer buildings on the west side of the island that she would call her Camp Mavooshen, a term celebrating Native American influence in the region.  She spent many summers there.  

Mabel Todd and her husband, David, spent time most every summer from 1909 on in the Hog Island area.  First they stayed at the summer camp of the other Hog Island investor, Etta Glidden, who had a summer place of her own at Martin’s Point, located on Bremen Long Island near Friendship.  Day trips on the water took the Todds to Hog where they climbed, hiked, waded, had lunch, and marveled at the beauty of the place. 

By 1910, the Todds spent weeks at the Point Breeze Inn and Bungalows, also located on Hog Island, but on the developed small, northeast peninsula.  The Point Breeze opened as a summer resort in 1908 and was the proud home of a small group of New York and New Englanders wanting a place out of the heat where they could read, listen to music, commune with nature, and find some peace in America’s vacation land of Maine.  

By 1915, the Todds occupied buildings at their family compound and took on the tasks of improving the property and living a comfortable summer life there.  And they did.  

In any case, on the two days when different groups of campers trekked the island, I asked if I could meet them at Camp Mavooshen.  There I talked with everybody about the family and what went on there.  I ended up going on a bit too much about Emily, as it turned out, but it felt so good talking about the Todds in that place that meant so much to them.  At another time that week I read aloud Mrs. Todd’s unfinished essays about the island, The Epic of Hog.  I concluded it was most probably the first time in decades that writing was heard in that place.  Felt pretty damned good.  

Near the end of my time on Hog Island, I found myself on a Sunday afternoon composing my eleventh new poem of this road trip.  I very creatively called it ‘Hog Island 11.’  

I leave it with you today.  

Today’s elder idea:

Hog Island 11

The most vivid memory of my first 

coming to Hog Island long ago 

is sitting behind the Fish House

on huge expanses of exposed granite 

watching a yellow orange sun 

rise over Bremen Long Island while 

the bay was still morning still at mid-tide.  

The only sound was silence

and the occasional lobster rig’s diesel 

and cawing American crows

announcing the day and direction overhead. 

It was transformational.

I remember.

Here I am again on the east side 

just south of the Slade cottage, 

only now on a Maine-cool August

afternoon thirty-two years later, 

loving how the sun spotlights Crow Island, 

while this side of Hog experiences

the first sensation of dusk. 

Little water traffic this blue sky Sunday.

Not many birds, either.

A second cormorant takes off, 

slapping water with wingtips 

as speed and lift build in the cooling air currents.  

No gulls, no loons, no warblers, no osprey. 

No seals. 

The lap of rising tide on granite

headdressed with sea wrack the nearest sounds.  

Crickets have begun their evening discourse.

Now a red squirrel rattles.  Other of Nature’s people, 

unrecognized, add to the Natural conversation.

I try to be grounded here in paradise,

wanting to know what new life is born 

of this visit:  

          the hope to be more prepared 

to tell Mrs. Todd’s story fairly and with color -- 

animating dear David & Millicent & Mr. Lailer -- 

seeing the Mother move about her island life 

seeking to shed New England tensions and find peace 

astride this spruce covered eruption of rock and soil

bringing loved ones’ lives to ‘God’s own heaven,’

where circadian rhythm adjusts all quieter

and, after a morning of hard work, able to savor 

an hour prostrate on a forest of moss 

or lying prone in the hammock behind the main house

bordering a universe of ferns, watching 

treetops dance in the afternoon breeze. 

Tom Schaefer

on Hog Island 

25 August 2013

Informed opinions

I must say, there are times when I put the daily paper down after having read the opinion page when I don’t feel very good about my Dayton neighbors.  Comments that demonize whole classes of people as less-than-worthless Americans makes me shake my head and wonder what kind of world we not only live in, but are leaving to our grandchildren.  

Informed opinions, I think, are key to the process of making the world a better place for everybody.  

One aspect of the daily newspaper that I always enjoyed perusing was the newspaper’s opinion on issues.  These are the people, after all, who are out interviewing folks and trying to get to the bottom of issues by ferreting out the facts.  

Oddly enough, in recent changes the Dayton Daily News has opted out of writing regular editorials.  Instead, they ask readers what they think about the issues, then assemble a variety of public opinion to print on the editorial page.  

Don’t get me wrong:  I like letters to the editor, even if I shake my head when I’m done reading.  Still, public opinion does not take the place of the newspaper’s thought process. 

With that in mind, I wrote a letter the other day to Julia Wallace, editor of the Dayton Daily News, expressing my disappointment with the paper’s new practice of running only syndicated columnists and ‘letters to the editor.’  

I thought I’d share it with you: 

***

Dear Ms. Wallace:   

I am a dedicated fan of local news and, therefore, a subscriber of the Dayton Daily News.  As a former Journal Herald newspaper carrier in my youth and a retired teacher who employed Newspaper in Education issues in my high school history classrooms, I’ve not only used the Dayton Daily News myself, but encouraged my students to be aware of its value as well. 

That being said, sometimes I’m a little slow on the pick-up.  I just realized that recent changes to the Dayton Daily News editorial page leaves readers without opinions regularly written by DDN editorialists. 

I understand that the editorial department queries readers for their opinions on a variety of subjects and publishes them.  This practice certainly continues a long and proud tradition of giving Miami Valley residents and others a venue to publish and have their voices heard. 

But asking residents their opinions is not the same as the Dayton Daily News publishing its own viewpoint.  As a newspaper actively gathering news and therefore aware of trends and practices in local governance and business through news gathering and interviewing decision makers, your writing staff is in the unique position to understand more than the rest of us about what is really going on. 

I find your investigative reporting crucial.  Answering the all important who, what, where, when, and why questions provides readers with the information needed to comprehend issues.  Still, I would like to know what you -- meaning your editorial department -- think about what is happening.

Tonight on televised news, a report quoted a number of Virginia newspapers’ opinions on the questionable behavior of their governor.  I realized then that the Dayton Daily News no longer has the capability for synthesizing and explaining government practices via editorial columns.  

I, for one, am disappointed as well that the Dayton Daily News has given up the progressive bias of your founding editor, James M. Cox.  In today’s news, I recognize the practice of giving editorial voice to both sides in the persons of syndicated columnists and cartoonists.  As a Democrat, I miss the Dayton Daily News’ leaning to the left.  I am sure in this day and age Mike Peters would never have been given the editorial cartooning post at the News.  My guess is, the DDN would not even have an editorial cartoonist and just print syndicated postings for fear of being called a liberal rag by conservative critics.  

I think that the opinion of the Dayton Daily News is important to many of us in the Miami Valley.  We certainly don’t need to agree, but to read the opinion of the local print standard that has by definition paid attention to all the details, is a most valuable service to the Miami Valley community.  I feel that by your withdrawing from this practice/responsibility, the Dayton Daily News has left our hometown area diminished.  

***

Today’s elder idea:   Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. 

Mark Twain

Thoughts of a recovering Catholic

I was born and bred Roman Catholic and was taught way back then that ‘once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’  

I must admit that there are days I still feel Catholic, but in my heart of hearts I know I’m not.  That’s not to say my upbringing has been uprooted and I am free from what I was taught as a kid.  That kind of thing runs deep and still informs the fabric of who I am. 

I bring this up today because of a request for a financial gift I got the other day from my Catholic high school alma mater.  Such a request isn’t new.  I get one a few times a year.  And I’ve written checks a few times.  Not much.  Twenty-five bucks here.  Fifty bucks there. 

But now I’m not sure if I can continue sending them money. 

First off, let me say how grateful I am for the education I got at Carroll High School here in Dayton back in the 1960s.  I learned how to write pretty well in the classes of Mr. Hemmert, Sr. Mary Christopher, and Sr. Marie Irene.  I know I learned about social responsibility in those Vietnam years while working at Dakota Street Center on Saturday mornings and tutoring one afternoon a week in a Dayton public school.  I was proud to be a member of the school’s Backyard Peace Corps.  Civil rights for all Americans was pretty new back then and I felt strongly that we celebrated such progress in every class where we talked about such things.  I think the school staff trained me to be a leader and I am very grateful for that. 

It was a time in the Catholic church, too, when centuries-old practices were being rethought and restructured.  The mass went from Latin to English just before I got to high school and we were re-taught that not just Catholics would make it to heaven.  I felt pretty good about the direction of the church back then. 

But now I’m not so sure. 

You see, the Catholic church has a thing about accepting sinners after the sin.  As a divorced and remarried person, I am not welcome to participate in mass at the communion rail.  I changed my mind, got divorced, then remarried. That means I am not welcome to share the body and blood of Jesus because I am living in sin.  I’ve often ‘joked’ with friends that if I were a murderer and confessed that sin, I’d be forgiven and free to act as a full member of the church.  I might be going to mass in prison, but I’d be forgiven and embraced in the body of Christ.  Divorced and remarried?  Not so much.  

And then last week I read that in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, teacher contracts are being rewritten so that if a single woman becomes pregnant, she can be fired for violating a morality clause.  Guys?  Likewise, not so much.  

And how about priests messing with kids?  To be fair, the church is intolerant of such behavior these days, but for years those men were merely shuffled off to another parish.  When I was in college, I sought out a priest for counseling after a particularly tough break-up with a girlfriend.  After a few hours talking, I was feeling better, but it was pretty late.  The guy invited me to stay over and even offered me a spot in his bed.  He jumped in nude and invited me to do the same.  I declined, thought it a bit unusual, but survived the night with my virginity intact.  When it became known of this priest’s affinity for boys, his order shipped him off to be a chaplain in the US Army.  Talk about a guy being given a key to a candy store.  

I can forgive the church for its mishandling of pedophile priests.  It took bishops too long to act, but I think church people of good intentions are trying to set things right.  At least I hope so.  

Then a week or two ago, to add to my unease, I got an email from a Carroll graduate who has served as alumni president who encouraged me to send letters to Congress encouraging our national leaders to exempt the church from offering employees birth control in their health insurance programs.  It has something to do with religious liberty, I was informed.  But isn’t it some of those same representatives, like Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a proud Catholic, who want to cut benefits to those in need but can’t find a way to protect us from gun violence by requiring background checks at gun shows?  

Somewhere in the process of absorbing all this, I am having difficulty opening my checkbook to support an organization that from my point of view is way too politically conservative.  When I was a kid, I would say my church and school were more liberal in embracing ‘the other’ in a changing world.  Now I sense Catholic organizations have reinstalled their pre-Vatican II blinders to hold more righteous positions regarding personal freedoms and choice.   

The Catholic church is as male dominated today as it has always been.  Women are not accepted as equals, and even if an organization of nuns presses for equality, American bishops can disband the group or put some man in charge to keep those women in line.  Gays in committed relationships are living in sin, too, you know.  Birth control is unacceptable as is artificial insemination.   Can’t have a child?  You can’t pursue medical assistance at a fertility clinic.  You and your spouse are pretty much stuck, but feel free to pray for God’s divine intervention.  

‘Right to life’ is the official position of the Roman Catholic church.  Unborn life is sacred.  I don’t disagree with that, but what makes human life so special?  Isn’t all life sacred?  Not so much.  Drowning unwanted cats?  No problem.  Women taking a pill to plan for the children they will raise?  Unacceptable and sinful.

I am still a church goer, but now am an Episcopalian.  Some joke that the Episcopal church is ‘Catholic light.’  We do, in fact, use the Nicene creed in liturgy and so say that we believe in ‘the holy catholic church.’  For us that means universal, not exclusive. Gays and lesbians are welcomed in our churches in full membership.  Our church ordains women.  Shoot, our national presiding bishop is the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori.  Not all Anglicans agree with the American branch of the church today, but they supported slavery back in the day, too.  But they came around.  

Until the Catholic church does, I’m afraid I’m done writing checks to further the influence of a high school that promotes its narrow conservative practices.  My idea of Jesus is as a prophet who embraced all, not excluding those who didn’t have the proper authenticated membership card.  Where I go to church, we have a saying, ‘Don’t check your brain at the door.’  That’s where I need to be.

Today’s elder idea: 

This is my simple religion.

There is no need for temples, 

no need for complicated philosophy.

Our own brain, 

our own heart is our temple.

The philosophy is kindness. 

Tenzin Gyatso

The 14th Dalai Lama

Sci fi & humanity

I’ve been a fan of reading science fiction since I was in grade school when I found a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel at the Belmont library.  Some time after that I stumbled upon various Arthur C. Clarke novels and soon found him to be my favorite.  And when CBS had Clarke join Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra on set for live coverage of Apollo flights, including the moon landing, my liking of his approach to science and fiction grew.  

Of course, just about the time of all those amazing Apollo flights, Gene Roddenberry cranked out a couple of seasons of Star Trek -- complete in front of plywood sets -- and my affection for science fiction was set for life.  Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Checkov became heroes of mine.

But something has changed in science fiction over the last ten to twenty years that leaves me pretty disappointed.  

The thing I liked best about Clarke was that his fiction was really based on science.  Distances, orbits, and complications of space travel were key components to his stories that then added human elements that made for truly engaging reading.  When 2001: A Space Odyssey was made into a movie my senior year in high school, I can remember walking home from the DaBel theater really pumped, while my girlfriend was totally confused by the whole affair.  I didn’t quite understand everything Stanley Kubrick and Clarke tried to do in the movie, but it somehow made some kind of mystical sense that really got my blood pumping.  I still like the idea that when the good spaceship Discovery moved through space, long exterior shots were completely silent.  These days when I see space movies, vehicles out there make huge rocket noise -- when in fact there is not sound in airless space.  

I was pleased, too, to see new Star Trek series make it to television.  When we were first married, Cindy Lou and I often spent two hours a weeknight with dinner in front of the tv together:  the first hour watching Little House on the Prairie, the second watching reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.   I liked Voyager well enough, and Deep Space Nine, but I think Enterprise became my favorite Trek spin-off for the same reasons I ended up liking Arthur C. Clarke so much:  it seemed plausible and, well, hopeful.  

What disappoints me so much today is the extreme violence included in science fiction.  Enterprise, with Captain Archer at the helm, was about the first human folks setting out for space with the help of cautious space-savvy Vulcans along in a supervisory role.  Sure, there were firefights, but the episodes I liked best were about Earth-folk making contact with other civilizations.  It was the problem-solving humanity of the crew that enticed me to watch to see how all would turn out.  

A few years ago, cable television created a Syfy channel.  Great, I thought.  A whole network devoted to my favorite type of fiction.  But after only a few seasons, it became obvious that what Syfy thought was science fiction, I thought was  horror.  Tonight’s prime time presentation is from a series called Defiance with an episode paraphrased as ‘Down in the ground where dead men go.’  

Sorry, zombie shit isn’t what I call science fiction.  

And as much as I liked this summer’s newest Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, it revolves way too much around huge blow-em-up events for my taste.  Gene Roddenberry’s original idea of humanity discovering others in space has been reduced to the basic elements of Hollywood blockbuster destruction movies.  And what was released last week that qualifies as science fiction?  Will Smith’s After Earth and Brad Pitt’s World War Z.  Do you see the pattern?  

I am drawn to this topic today because of a preview I saw at Into Darkness of the upcoming holiday release of Ender’s Game, a novel written by Orson Scott Card.  In my search for good science fiction years ago, I bought a copy of Ender’s Game on a recommendation.  I tried to read it, but gave up after just a couple of chapters because I just couldn’t get into it.  With the movie coming out, though, I thought I’d give it one more try. 

This time I couldn’t put it down.  And last night I started book two of the series, Speaker for the Dead.   

True, there’s plenty of death and destruction in Ender’s Game, but it is an engaging story of kids put in unnatural situations where they bond and become able to accomplish things the adult world could not.  Sounds like Stephen King, now that I think about it.  And Jaden Smith in After Earth.  And heroic kids in Hunger Games.  

I’ve got copies of Isaac Asimov and Ursula Le Guin on my sci fi shelf.  I’m liable to try them next to see how I do.  If the truth be told, I’m not a very good reader.  If the story doesn’t grab me quick, I have a tendency to put it down and watch baseball or Rachel Maddow instead.  They keep my interest better.  

I’ll miss the late Arthur C. Clarke’s unwritten stories of we Terrans trying to make sense of our finding probes sent by civilizations light years away trying to make contact with whomever they find.  

I wonder what will happen when some consciousness in some distant star system locates our Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 drifting in space, complete with explanatory plaques?  I hope my great great great grandkids then will know how to be friendly -- and human.  

Today’s elder idea:  Years ago while teaching, I can remember talking to students about a short story I loved and most of them were bored with.  I invited them to pick it up again when they were older for another try.  So it was with me and Ender’s Game.  I’m glad I listened to my own advice.