Golden Anniversary

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

~ William Shakespeare

Renewal of Vows for Marion W. & David J. Carriker
Led by our brother The Rev. Bruce L. Carriker
Someone once said that the only thing required for a marriage to work is two people too stubborn to give up on each other. Anyone who has known Dave and Marion for any length of time knows they both have a stubborn streak. And we're here tonight because, for fifty years, they've been too stubborn to give up on each other.

The 13th Chapter of Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinithians is often read at weddings. It is a challenge and a charge to newlyweds, laying out what love requires. But, when we read it tonight, not for newlyweds, but for a couple renewing their vows after fifty years together, we read it as a testimony to their life together; an explanation for how they've made it this far:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is slow to anger and quick to forgive; it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

There is a scene in the movie Parenthood where the husband, whose marriage is going through a rough patch, is talking to his grandmother; and the grandmother says this:

“You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride! I always wanted to go again!
You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all at the same time!
Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing to it.
I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.”

Dave and Marion will both agree that their marriage has been a lot more like a roller coaster, than merry-go-round. But, they're here tonight to say, in front of all of us, “Oh, what a ride! I want to go again!”

(Dave, Marion join hands. David first, then Marion.)

(Marion/David), 50 years ago I promised to love you, honor you, comfort you, and keep you;
To be by your side in sickness and in health, for better or worse, for the rest of our lives.
Together, we have created a family, a home, and a lifetime of shared memories.
Today, in the presence of God, our family, and our friends, I affirm to you that I love you more now than I did then; that all those promises are still true; and that I will be here for you, for the rest of my life.

Prayer: Gracious and loving God,
We give you thanks for fifty years of blessing Dave and Mation's life together; for the love, joy, strength, support and happiness they have brought to one another; and to those of us lucky enough to be their family and friends.

We ask your continued blessing on them, individually, and in the life they have built together and will continue to build together, all the days of their lives.

You May Kiss the Bride!

Eye Contact

A couple of years ago, when my nephew Hans
was recovering from surgery, he wondered aloud,
"What the heck is wrong with people
who refuse to make eye contact?"

I am proud to see that none other than Maya Angelou (above)
agrees with my response to him (below):

Dear Hans --

Keep on striving for that eye contact and don't worry about those who don't acknowledge. A few will and it will make your day -- and theirs. Years ago, when email was first a thing, your dad [my oldest brother, Dave] and I had a correspondence going about this same topic.

He was up in Pittsburgh, KS, at the time, and I was in Philly. Our plan was that he would walk around campus all day civilly nodding to all who crossed his path, and I would do the same in my neighborhood -- which was typical behavior for us anyway, but this time we would keep track of how many would respond with eye contact. The disappointing result was -- very few! Sometimes not a single person in an entire day!

What's wrong with them? Somehow it just seems to pain many people to acknowledge that they are surrounded by fellow travelers on the planet. Something has made them afraid and tight in their hearts. But don't ever stop trying to share that smile! I'm still at it, and soon your energy will return and you'll be back at it too!

XOXO, Aunt Kit

Post Script from Dave:

"And it didn't stop me from continuing to nod in open acceptance
and truly enjoy the occasional return. Hang in there Son."

****************

Post Script from Tony ~ 2019

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

Magical Typing

A few days ago, one of my brothers posted an article whose title asks, "Should you feel sad about the demise of the handwritten letter?" In response, Dave comments:

Dave: I have lamented this trend for many years now. Its especially tough because I used to be both prolific and skilled in this lost art.

Bruce: I set out on a mission a couple of years ago to write at least one handwritten letter a week. I think I made it about two months. Maybe it's time to try again.

Kit: I'll take a birthday card!

It's true -- a simple card with handwritten signature would be great! One or two lines are just as welcome to me as one or two pages. In fact, I gladly receive, read, and respond to letters of any length -- hand - written, type - written, or conveyed electronically. Of course we value calligraphy, chirography, and longhand; however, technology not only facilitates communication but has its own artistry and even magic.

As a coincidental complement to this discussion, just a day after my brother's facebook post, I started a new book and encountered this tribute to typing. I like the connection he makes between typewriter and piano:

" . . . teaching me slowly and patiently how each letter represented a sound . . . On [my father's] typewriter I learned the whole alphabet, the numbers and all the punctuation marks, which may explain why a keyboard -- much more than a pencil or pen -- is for me the truest representation of the act of writing. That way of going along pressing sounds as on a piano, to convert ideas into letters and words, seemed to me from the start -- and still seems to me -- one of the most extraordinary acts of magic in the world."

from Oblivion: A Memoir, p 13
by Hector Abad (see also "Judging Time Aright")

Cubs

Cardinals Fans Aaron & Pam

World Series Thoughts from my brother Aaron, "A True Statesman"
With Responses from my brother Bruce
Aaron: I'll probably catch hell from many in Cardinals' Nation for saying this, but Go Cubs!! Congratulations to Cubs fans, the city of Chicago and the Cubs organization for making it to your first World Series in 71 years!!! As a life-long Cardinals fan I can't imagine how they must be feeling right now. I mean, an entire generation of Cubs fans have come and gone just waiting and hoping for this day to come. As Cardinals fans we've become spoiled with play-off baseball and World Series appearances (and victories!!), so when they don't make it, it doesn't seem right. The worst drought they've experienced in my lifetime was the 1970s. Actually a little longer; 1969-1981 with no post-season baseball. So at 55 years old, I can't imagine what it would be like to have never seen the Cardinals play in a World Series game. Unfathomable!!! So Congratulations & Go Cubs!!!!

Well, whether they beat the Indians or not, I'm happy for them.

After thinking about it, the Cardinals' longest World Series appearance drought in the past 55 years was 15 years; 1988-2003. They made it into the post-season four times, but not to the World Series. Still, it doesn't compare to 71 years!!!

I wouldn't go so far as to start putting Cubs stickers all over, but since the Cardinals didn't make the playoffs this year, yeah, I'll root for the Cubs.

Bruce: Five years ago I had just witnessed the fifth Cardinals' World Series championship of my lifetime. This was the last paragraph of my five-year FB memory this morning:

"The older I get...the more seasons that pass without the Cubs winning a pennant...the more I realize that this could easily be the last Cardinals' World Series win I ever see. And if that happens, I can't be sad or upset. I'm just grateful that somehow, for whatever reason, fate allowed me to be a Cardinal fan. My life as a baseball fan has truly been blessed, and I consider myself very fortunate."

go cubs

Lower case to denote lack of heartfelt enthusiasm for the sentiment, though intellectually I'm in agreement.

go cubs

For my friends who are Cubs fans: The first loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine wasn't built until 1912. So, if you're a Cubs fan, winning this World Series really would be the best thing since sliced bread!

Dave: I saw my first Cubs game in the early spring of 1968. I had been back from Vietnam about six months and TET was upon us (ancient battle). I was in desperate need of something to occupy my mind. A fellow at work gave me a ticket to watch the Cubs and after clearing it with my SgtMaj I caught the "El" and went to my first professional ball game.

It was a very interesting experience. I had almost no idea of how the game was played but I could still see the symmetry and grace of how it was played. In the next two years I went to probably four or five games. Somehow, their message of "never give up" and "wait til next year" infused me and I took it for my own. In many ways, it was similar to learning how to become a Marine.

I have never regretted adopting The Cubs as MY team.

Christmas Shomily

1961: Boo, Kit holding Di, Peg holding A, Dave
[Look how Little Di is patting me on the knee ~ I just love that!]

1967: Bruce, David, Aaron, Diane, Peggy, Kitti
On Christmas Evening, my twin brother posted on facebook:

"Sorry-- no Christmas shomily (short homily) this year. But, to all of you who make my life better by being a part of it, Merry Christmas!"

But, actually, he was just being modest. For, in fact, earlier in the day, he had emailed the family with this perfect "shomily":

"Merry Christmas, sibs! I was thinking last night about what an unlikely, eclectic mix we are; what each one of us brings to that mix; and how it just wouldn't work if any one of us weren't part of that mix. I love you all very much, and hope you all have a wonderful Christmas."

To which my older brother Dave replied with a "shomily" of his own:

"A very Merry Christmas from the Dave Carriker household. I agree with what Bruce had to say. Our branch of the clan is far and away the most unusual and had no chance of being otherwise. Our various life experiences have created an entity that is both blunt instrument and surgical tool."

Some Christmas Pictures:
Us Four Little Kids ~ 1967

A New Bike for Aaron ~ 1970 (best guess)

See also my
Haiku For the Family

Factotum

Maybe I should read the book
& see the movie.
Last summer, I received the following note and word - a - day definition from my brother:

"Back when I was in the Corps, after Vietnam and Chicago,
I was assigned to 3rd Recruit Training Battalion at MCRD San Diego.
They set me up with a desk just inside the office complex where I
was supposed to "greet" and direct personnel to the correct clerk
for assistance. In addition to that I was given about 12 or 15
unrelated tasks such as ID cards, etc.
Now I find out after all these years that I had a real job title.
Wish I had known this word then!"

Brummbaer aka Sgt Carriker, USMC

********************

factotum

PRONUNCIATION:
(fak-TOH-tuhm)

MEANING:
noun: A servant or a low-level employee tasked with many things.
From Latin factotum, from facere (to do) + totus (all).
Earliest documented use: 1573.

USAGE:
"Now, a reporter trying to interview a business source
is confronted by a phalanx of factotums."
David Carr; The Puppetry of Quotation Approval;
The New York Times; Sept 16, 2012.

********************
How timely for me that my brother shared factotum when he did because I was right in the middle of reading a novel -- The Elegance of the Hedghog by Muriel Barbery -- in which I encountered this unusual word not once but twice. Without his note, I would surely have had to look it up!

In one passage, Barbery says that the housekeeper of a fancy Paris apartment "found herself reigning over a laughable kindgdom whose subjects were the cleaning lady (Manuela), the part - time butler (an Englishman), and the factotum (her husband)" (49).

In another, a young man is describing his work at a "ship's chandler's." A childhood friend asks him, "What do you actually do at your job?" And he replies: "I'm sort of a factotum, stock man and messenger boy, but I'm learning as I go along, so now from time to time they give more interesting things to like repair sails or shrouds, or put together the provision inventory" (293 - 94).

Thanks to Dave, I was able to read through those passages without skipping a beat! Of course, I still had to look up "ship's chandler." But it made more sense than it would have had he not written to share the day's vocabulary word. Thanks Dave!

For more Elegance,scroll down to
Building Well, Thrilling Quotidian and Bouquet
See also
Fortnightly & Book Blog

Behold the Boy

Mystical Groundhog Day photography by Nancy Allen

Happy Birthday James Joyce
2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941
James Joyce (and my brother Dave) both share the honor of arriving on the cross - quarter day known as Imbolc, the half - way point between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox (which accounts for cultural observations such as Groundhog Day and Candlemas).

So many poems and passages are appropriate for this day, but my favorite has to be the bittersweet poem that Joyce wrote in 1932, shortly after the death of his father, John Stanislaus Joyce, on 29 December 1931, and the birth of his grandson, Stephen James Joyce, on 16 February 1932:

Ecce Puer

Of the dark past
A child is born;
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.

Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!

Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.

A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!

James Joyce

Happy Groundhog Day Birthday Greetings
to my brother Dave Carriker;
to the master, James Joyce; and belatedly to

Carl Sandburg, a child of Epiphany
6 January 1878 - 22 July 1967
Whereas James Joyce was born on Candlemas Day, Carl Sandburg had the distinction of arriving on the Epiphany (celebrating the Feast of the Three Kings, immediately following the Twelfth Day of Christmas).

Sandburg's birthday poem "Harsk, Harsk," captures the almost eerie joy of entering the world on an auspicious date in a whirl of snow. I nearly posted this poem last month, on Sandburg's actual birthday, along with his Epiphany poem "Star Silver," but in the spirit of a poem for every poem, I saved it for today.

Harsk, Harsk

1
Harsk, harsk, the wind blows tonight.
What a night for a baby to come into the world!
What a night for a melodrama baby to come
And the father wondering
And the mother wondering
What the years will bring on their stork feet
Till a year when this very baby might be saying
On some storm night when a melodrama baby is born:

"What a night
for a baby
to come into the world!!"
Harsk, harsk, the wind blows tonight.

2.
It is five months off.
Knit, stitch, and hemstitch.
Sheets, bags, towels, these are the offerings.
When he is older -- or she is a big girl --
There may be flowers or ribbons or money
For birthday offerings. Now, however,
We must remember it is a naked stranger
Coming to us, and the sheath of the arrival
Is so soft we must be ready, and soft too.
Knit, stitch, hemstitch, it is only five months.

3.
It would be easy to pick a lucky star for this baby
If a choice of two stars lay before our eyes,
One a pearl gold star and one pearl silver,
And the offer of a chance to pick a lucky star.

4.
When the high hour comes
Let there be a light flurry of snow,
A little zigzag of white spots
Against the gray roofs.
The snow - born all understand this as a luck - wish.

Carl Sandburg

Thanks once again to my perceptive sister - in - law - in - law
Nancy Allen for sharing her photographic talents!

Bonfire Night

While the Brits may not go crazy for Halloween the way we do here in the States, they have something that we don't -- Bonfire Night every year on the 5th of November, otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Night. (See my post last year on Guy Fawkes Day.)

The tradition originated back in 1605, during the reign of James I of England (VI of Scotland) when the traitor (or hero) Guy Fawkes participated in an unsuccessful rebellion against Church and State. The occasion no longer carries a revolutionary connotation -- though fans of the renegade movie V for Vendetta will recognize it as a subtext in the film.

Over the years the historical commemoration has been modified into a night of fireworks and bonfires, though in England as in America, the tradition of an autumn bonfire right in your own backyard, or even a larger communal bonfire, is becoming more and more prohibited in the name of safety and environmental friendliness.

Bonfire illustrations by J. H. Wingfield
from the Ladybird Book
Helping At Home by M. E. Gagg












My brother Dave writes from Kansas: "I am fortunate to live in Kansas and in the County because we are still so 'backward' as to allow burning of leaves. Soon, I will be heaping up my own funeral pyre to autumn and invoking the solemn vespers of the season."

Autumn Vespers
You can't burn just - fallen leaves anymore,
something about the frail environment.
Oh yes, you can rake them into neat piles
(Just so many to each pile),
shake them down into plastic, shroud-black bags
(Just so many to each bag),
and line the bags in front of your house
(Just so many bags to each leaf - gatherer)
for execution in the morning.

But you can't lean on an old, wooden rake
at dusk, as companion to the evening star,
to watch flames, like small orange flowers,
burn through long lines of dead, rebellious leaves
and reverently contemplate blue smoke
spreading like incense from a swung censer
and rising, like prayer, to an autumnal god
who had contrived the red apple, purple plum
bursting joy of tree, bush, vine, and kitchen bowl,
and you can't, like a ministering priest,
bend to the faint pulse of the failing day
convinced that you alone are confidant
to the last sigh of the dying earth.

poem by Frank Ryan
found in the Fall 2007 edition of my
favorite poetry magazine, Plainsongs,
published out of Hastings College, Nebraska

A Recent Bonfire in Missouri
photographed by Jay Beets