Archive for August, 2010

I’ve been a church-goer long enough to know that nothing gets people riled up quicker than talk about styles of worship. I once attended a church where, I kid you not, we sang Victory in Jesus every Sunday. Every Sunday. We sang it so much the kids and I made up hand motions just to give it a bit of diversity.

I can’t say for 100 percent sure but I think the first song I ever learned was Jesus Loves Me. The next one was Goodnight Irene. I remember that because it was the first 45 I owned. I’d listen to it over and over again on the plastic record player Mama and Daddy bought me. I still know the lyrics to that song.

God gave me a strong voice.  It is this one here, behind the keyboard. I can sing but not so anyone would want to hear me. I do better in a choir, preferably one loud enough that it drowns out my voice.

Still, on any given Sunday, you can find me making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I enjoy praise and worship – humble as it may be in a Nazarene church. I like all sorts of styles of worship. I like formal choirs and fancy organ music. I like banjos and mandolins and guitar pickers, too.

I love me a little Matt Redmond or Andrew Peterson from time to time. I can worship to Kate Campbell, Gillian Welch or Jennifer Knapp. I’ve wept over Elvis Costello songs and drank coffee with him the next morning. Okay. Well he was sitting at the table next to mine. We weren’t actually talking. We were just drinking coffee. Him at his table. Me at mine. I have interviewed Michael W. Smith and I’ve been onstage with the Newsboys. My taste in music is so messed up, I can worship to a Grayson Capps tune or The Wiyos as easily as I can to Third Day or Casting Crowns.

But, despite all that, I have come to the point in life where I can no longer abide tunes that propogate a military mentality. Go ahead. Call me ugly names. If this makes me a Pacifist, well, buddy, let me quote you William Stafford — Every war has two losers.

Our worship team has recently introduced the congregation to a new song, which it turns out isn’t really that new, but did I mention I attend a Nazarene church? I like the tune of the song. I like the drum beat. I just cannot abide those lyrics:

My voice is the sound of a thousand bells
Hear me nations, hear Israel
My song is the water of the purest well
Hear me heaven, fear me hell
My dance carries thunder from the throne of Yah
Look at me, and know He is GOD!

Let our praises rise like a weapon in Your hand
Let our praises rise O God
Let our praises rise like a weapon in Your hand
Let our praises rise O God

I don’t want my praise to be a weapon in God’s hand. I, personally, don’t care much for the image of G.I. God. That’s not to say that I don’t understand the power of praise — I do.

Madeline L’Engle tells a story in Irrational Season of the boy who, while praying, says to God, “And God bless yourself.”  Her point being that while all praise begins with God, it is only made complete when we offer up praise to God. Or as the old hymn says, “Oh, how I love Jesus because he first loved me.”

When my children were small I taught them the tune that everyone learns in VBS — I’m in the Lord’s Army. But that was some 10 years post-Vietnam and long before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve heard one too many sorrowful tale from a grieving war widow or held the hand of too many dying veterans. Maybe I’m just tired of all this talk about the glories of war, and how successful we’ve been. Perhaps, I’m just jaded, but I honestly do not see how when you add up the number of lives & limbs & livelihoods lost, you could consider war a success.

Ever.

But then, maybe I’m just a cranky Jesus Freak. I don’t own a Rosary, much less a set of love beads,  but I think it’s high time the church shed itself of its nationalistic and militaristic rhetoric. If that means singing Jesus Loves Me every Sunday, I think we could come up with some hand motions that don’t involve the use of weapons, don’t you?

When I was a young girl living in a Filipino village on Oahu’s North Shore I used to have this strange thought. I don’t know if it’s a thought all kids have, or just one all military brats have, or perhaps it’s a pattern for the weirdness to come.

But I clearly remember walking the paved road between our home in the cul-de-sac and the little grocery store and thinking “What if everyone else around me is an alien and I’m the only human? Well, Mama and Daddy would be humans, too. Maybe Linda. But Brother John and everybody else are definitely aliens.

“Like that Grandma lady over there, using the water hose to wash up after going to the bathroom in the yard? She’s one for sure. Who goes to the bathroom outside except an alien?”

I would get totally creeped out on that block-and-half walk. I was a paranoid-in-the-making. By the time I’d arrive back home, I didn’t want to do anything except sit on the back stoop and ponder how scary it was living in a land of aliens and flying cockroaches.

Georgia had cockroaches but Oahu had cockroaches with wings. A gal couldn’t walk into the mud room after dark without donning a suit of full-metal armor first for fear of those bombardier roaches. It was all part of the weirdness of living in an alien world. A world where even the roaches are a mutated form of Japanese Kamikaze pilots.

I don’t know when I grew out of the stage where I thought everyone else was an alien. I suspect it happened when we left the island but I can’t be sure because of the chaos that became my life six weeks later when Daddy died. Perhaps I quit thinking everybody else was an alien when we moved into the trailer park. Trailer parks suck the imaginings right out of person. All a gal is left with is the harsh reality of beer can pyramids and nightstand handguns.

I thought I had left the alien life behind me.

Until last night, when the security gal at the Fair started telling me things, remarkably scary things. Right there in front of God, Jack Ingram and half-a-dozen gals from Hermiston High’s Leadership Team.

Tim says I have this uncanny ability to attract people to tell me things. It happens to me wherever I go. People start spilling the beans, telling me their entire life stories, telling me things they wouldn’ t tell a priest in a confessional booth. I missed my calling, I guess. I should have been a therapist. At the very least, I should have been the White Trash Oprah.

The security gal is as wide as she is tall, which is not as bad as it sounds, since the gal is only about 4 ft. 8. She might be five feet in heels. Hard to tell. She wore shorts, a grayish polo and her hair tucked up underneath a dark FBI looking cap. The few wisps of hair that stuck out were neon pink. I thought she had done that for fun, to be in the spirit of Fair week.

Nope. She told me her hair is really long and it’s wild, with lots of pink throughout.

“I own the title for Miz Oregon Fetish,” she said.

I don’t know why I can’t just leave these things alone. If you told Tim you held the title of Mr. Gator, he would not ask you if you won it because of the number of gators you had wrestled from swamp waters or if you won the title by parading around in a gator-skin Speedo and gator-skin boots. He simply would think you are an alien either way. He would not be unkind or speak ill of you but he would never, ever ask you to dine with him. He would keep his distance from then on out. If he saw you in the grocery store, he’d turn his cart and head the other way.

But not me. Oh. No. Tell me that you won the title of Miss Oregon Fetish and the first thing out of my mouth is, “What’s  a person have to do to win a title like that?”

I say it before I even consider that’s a question better left unasked. Blame it on all those years of reporting, I reckon. I always think it’s better to ask questions first and then to shoot ‘em.

“Nothing sexual,” she says.

Even in the dusk without the aid of a flash light she could tell I didn’t believe her. Newspapers and TV news shows don’t typically report on the title of Miss Oregon Fetish. There must be a reason why. They report on the fight between Perez Hilton and Miss California’sCarrie Prejean, for goodness sake.

“I belong to the community of leathers,” she continued, unprompted.

“The community of what?” I asked. I’m sorry. I can’t help myself.

“The community of leathers.”

Who knew there was such a thing? Okay. If you knew that already please don’t write and tell me how you knew that.

This squat woman with the soul patch piercings and the multi-colored push pins in her tongue told me that she likes to play dress up and do scenes. She described in some detail how her best scene involves a clown. (In keeping with the fair theme, I reckon.)  

She went on to tell me that she belonged to some play group. Now I knew she didn’t mean like Mothers of Preschoolers, but she could have been talking about some Thespian Club for all I knew. But her play community is so exclusive they are like the military — they go by their acronyms instead of their names.  I had no idea what the acronyms meant so yes, I googled it when I got home. I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. That’s when I began to wonder if that the security guard was telling me all this stuff because she was hitting on me. Ewwweee. Yuk. Grossness.

I had no idea such communities existed. I’m dumb that way and honestly, gladly so. 

At one point, as the security gal kept talking — honestly unprompted – one of the leadership gals put her fingers in her ears and shouted, “Virgin ears, Virgin ears!” and turned and walked away.  I was relieved myself when the security gal stopped telling me her life story.

I mean I know Jesus loves her, leathers and clowns and all. And I know The Marine could have found something affirmative to say, something that would have let this woman know that she had worth and value beyond the clubs and get-ups.

But me? 

I just went to bed thinking how it seems like I’m the sole survivor living among aliens once more.

Uncle Buck has been out digging goeyducks from the mud and Sister Tater has been out on the rolling seas, hauling in the big ‘uns. Looks like fun, doesn’t it? Only when I talked with Sister Tater about this, she didn’t mention the big fish as much as she did the big swells — some 15-20 feet swells. Tater said the boat was rockin’ & rollin’.

I was dealing with my own version of rockin’ & rollin’ — a sold out concert for Uncle Kracker.

Who’s Uncle Kracker?

Some fella who wears black t-shirts and baggy jeans. You’d think I’d be best friends with him since his first release was called “Double Wide.” All I know is that the crowd last night loves this man.

I’ve been at the concerts this week, volunteering, selling tickets and helping supervise the Hermiston High Leadership Team who has been working their behinneys off, ushering folks in the reserved seating.

There weren’t any tickets left to sell since Uncle Kracker has been sold out for a week or two now, so last night was simply about making sure the ushers got folks to their right seats since in a sold-out concert people expect to have  seat.

Keep in mind this is a county fair so there is plenty of beer being consumed. Drink enough beer and pretty soon you’re going to do or say something stupid.

You can’t fix stupid but you can ask it to leave.

That’s exactly what security did when the big burly fellow tried to get into the reserved seating area without a ticket.

“Hey, I’m deploying to Iraq on Monday,” the fellow bellowed. “Lemme have a seat.”

“If you’re deploying to Iraq on Monday,” said the security gal, “then you ought to be at home with your family instead of out here getting wasted.”

Then she asked Stupid to leave. How sorry is that? she asked. Trying to exploit his military service that way.

Sigh.

The stories I could tell her.

But she was off and running, there was another Stupid standing on the cattle guard railings near the stage.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then she threw that Stupid out.

He wouldn’t go.

So she called for police escort. Then he left but not before lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke in her face.

Another well-dressed Stupid muscled his way through the crowd and presented me with what he hoped would be an entrance to reserved seating.

Sorry, Stupid but these are rodeo tickets.

These are good for the concert, he insisted.

No, sir. They’re good for the rodeo. Not the concert.

Just beyond the reserved seating area, people were packed like jar peaches, flesh pressing in on unfamiliar flesh. It’s a good thing it was dark because it’s best not to see some of that.

I wish somebody would explain to me how White Trash got to be a fashion fad. I didn’t get a picture of it but one fella wore a t-shirt that read “Genius by birth, Slacker by choice.”  Trust me, the kind of person who dons that t-shirt in public doesn’t need the advertisement. I never thought I’d say this but I’m beginning to miss the days when grannies wore housedresses and hosiery rolled at the kneecaps. At least everything was covered up in little calico flowers.

The worst moment of the entire week came last night as I escorted a couple to their seats. Somebody was sitting in them already. A couple of kids. I asked to see their tickets and their mama, sitting in the row ahead of them says to me, “Why do you need to see the tickets? This is where the ushers sat us.”

“No,” I said. “The ushers would not have sat you in the wrong seats and these seats belong to this couple. Can I see your tickets please?”

Oh. Brother. You’d have thought I was performing a strip search on  her the way she began ranting.

“What’s your name?” she yelled. “Why are you being so rude?”

I’d simply asked the lady for her tickets so that I could make sure everyone was in the seat that corresponded with the ticket.

“Who are you?” she screamed. “My mother runs this fair! Go call my mother!”

Keep in mind this gal was old enough to know better but did it anyway.  She pitched an absolutely hissy fit, right there in front of God and Uncle Kracker.

The thing is, I didn’t care if her mama ran the World’s Fair. I don’t get paid enough to be abused. I walked off and got the security guard who then helped her produce the tickets and as I suspected, she was sitting in the seats she wanted to sit in — not the ones that corresponded with her tickets.

Geeish.

Like I was saying, you can’t fix Stupid but you can ask it to move to the right seat.

The next time Uncle Kracker and I get together I hope it’s on a boat, hauling in fish with Sister Tater.  We’ll talk about how he came up with the songs for Double Wide and I’ll tell him how I found the stories for Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?

Until then, though, it seems even the vehicles around here have to have their say about something. I’d stick around to chat with you more about the sorry state of our country but there’s men in white shirts and black ties knocking at my door. I don’t know if they are Jehovah Witnesses or the FBI. But if you don’t hear from me anymore just assume they came to haul me away.

I’ve seen this booth or one exactly like it for the past several days at the Umatilla County fairgrounds. There are usually longer lines at the booth where Elephant Ears are sold but I’ve seen people at this booth, too. Last night I saw an elderly woman lean through the window and hug a heavy set woman on the other side.

Tim’s boss saw me at the in the exhibit hall and gave me a sideways hug. I think that’s the first time he’s ever hugged me. It was sweet. I like getting hugs.

What I don’t like, however, is taking tests, of any sort.

I have this nightmare that comes to me during stressful times of my life. I’ve registered for a college math class only I never actually attend any of the classes until the last one, when I show up to take the final. A test I’m not the least bit prepared to take. Needless to say I wake up from this dream feeling totally discombobulated.

I steer clear of anything in life that resembles test-taking. I haven’t stopped by the Heaven booth, so I don’t know what two questions determine if you are going to get past the pearly gates or not.

I was raised to believe that heaven is a gated community. Only card-carrying members who’ve paid their dues are allowed inside.  I don’t know about you but I’ve never wanted to live in a gated community. I’m hoping heaven is a lot more diverse a place.

Writer Madeline L’Engle said, “Wherever God is, heaven is, and if I don’t have a glimpse of it here and now, I’m not going to recognize it anywhere else.”

So if you were asking people to take a test to determine whether they are good candidates for the community of Heaven, what two questions would you ask?

It’s fair week in Umatilla County. Shelby and Konnie were home over the weekend and we headed downtown on Saturday to take in the parade activities. I don’t know if the girls think it’s as much fun as it used to be, back when they could chase after the candy for their own selves and not for the kids sitting next to them. But even I got a tootsie roll tossed my way. I kept it, rather than sharing it with the girls. That’s the kind of mother I am — selfish with the tootsie rolls.

Joining us at the parade was a classmate of Konnie’s who has spent the last 8 years living in New York City. They have different kinds of parades in NYC. Instead of elaborate floats crafted from flowers, we have big rigs. Our rigs come in every size, shape and color. There are rigs from Wal-Mart, rigs from the Volunteer Fire Department with signs the read: In case of fire, write or call. We have Walchli rigs that haul their famous watermelons around the nation and rigs that haul musicians around the Inland Empire.

But, of course, everyone’s favorite rigs are the John Deere rigs. Brigades of John Deere are a common site around these parts. They come up over the horizon in billowy clouds of sand, flattening stalks of golden grain in their wake. If you ever get a chance to ride in the cab of a John Deere combine during harvest you better not pass it up.

Several years ago the Oregon Wheat League hired me to write a book in tribute to their 75th anniversary. I traveled around Oregon interviewing as many of the former presidents of the OWL as I could track down. I enjoyed hearing their stories in much the same fashion as I enjoy the stories of the veterans I know.

These farmers are veterans of hard times. They are survivors. They know how to live with and without, and to complain about it either way. Okay. That was meant to be a joke.  They are some of the hardest workingest people you’ll ever meet.

I was thinking about all that and all those farmers I’ve interviewed over the years as those John Deere rigs came motoring up the street. Kids and adults alike stood, ooohhhing and aaaahhhhing.

Then I had this thought  …

What if, instead of soldiers and humvees, we had a sent brigades of farmers and their John Deeres into Iraq? How differently would Iraq and its people look today had we contracted with the nation’s farm leagues, instead of with Blackwater and Haliburton?

There are plenty of different kinds of weapons we can use, if only we’d think of warring as something we do on behalf of others and not against them.

Ham biscuits cause Sam McLeod to go weak in the knees. So does his mama’s meat loaf, fried chicken done right, mac-and-cheese with oysters, and pie of any sort, although chess pie is his favorite. Like a lot of southern folks, Sam McLeod has rarely met a meal he didn’t like.

Sam gives the skinny on several of his all-time favorite dishes in his uproariously funny book, Big Appetite: My Southern-Fried Search for the Meaning of Life. It’s a memoir gone wild and seasoned with dash of southern cuisine.

Imagine if the Little Rascals had invited Will Ferrell to be a member of their gang. Those are the kinds of romps that Sam takes the reader on as he revisits the Nashville neighborhood of his youth.

Sam doesn’t live in Nashville any more. He lives 30 miles up yonder from here, in a sweet little spot that could pass for a holler if the West had hollers but it doesn’t. It has wide open spaces and big blue skies.

How two southerners found their way West and became writers is one of the tales Sam McLeod and Karen Spears Zacharias swapped at Detour Farm, the McLeod’s 160-acre farmstead, a few miles due west of Walla Walla, Washington.

Big Appetite has been selected by the Southeast Independent Booksellers Association as an OKRA book pick. But like his Aunt Wiese’s strawberry pie, this book is bound to be a favorite with readers on both sides of the country.

Karen: When you were growing up in Nashville, did you think you’d grow up to be a writer?

Sam: Yes. I’ve thought about writing this book since I was 16. I’d go to bed thinking about these stories. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about these stories. The stories grew in importance and I would embellish them. I’d wake up at 3 in the morning just to write them down.

Karen: Where did you go to college?

Sam: University of Virginia. (Sam met his bride Annie at UVA. She is a Richmond native. They’ve been married 35 years.) I majored in English and studied under Irby Cauthen. I was thinking about going to graduate school and went to his office to ask if he would write a letter of reference. He leaned across the desk and asked, “Have you ever considered banking?” Irby knew me pretty well. I think he realized that teaching English was not my calling.

Karen: You went into banking?

Sam: Not right away. I worked as a Haberdasher – a thread salesman – for a year. I took a job in banking and we moved to Chicago for three years. We loved Chicago – we were young and had two incomes – but the winters were brutal. That first winter we were there they got the most snow in Chicago’s history. The next was the coldest in history. That third year we moved back to Virginia and I enrolled in law school at Washington & Lee.

(Sam worked as a corporate attorney for 10 years. It was a job that gave him plenty of opportunity to fine tune his writing skills.) I was writing briefs and business plans and letters. Anything that needs to be written was passed off to me.

Karen: How did you end up out West?

Sam: I thought I’d try my hand as a Venture Capitalist. The job required me to be in Seattle. I’d fly to Seattle on Monday and back to Virginia on Friday.

(That routine lasted until the couple’s three daughters reached high school age, then Annie suggested that maybe they ought to make the move to Seattle.)

Karen: How did your family react when you told them you were leaving Virginia for Seattle? Are they praying for your salvation?

Sam: Yes. They think we’re crazy. They can’t figure out why in the world we’d want to live way out here. They keep asking when I’m going to come home. But by home, they don’t mean Richmond, or even Nashville – they mean Jackson, Tennessee – the original homestead.

Karen: Seattle is a long way from Richmond. People who haven’t made the move don’t appreciate the culture shock of such a move. Did you experience any of that?

Sam: At first it was like moving to a foreign country where they spoke English. It is a different world. But in Virginia we’d been doing the cocktail party scene with the same set of people for years. They were good people but they were lawyers or a spouse of a lawyer. I remember one of our first dinner parties in Seattle there was the gardener, a cabinet-maker, the fellow who coached a soccer team. People from all walks of life. People who weren’t lawyers.

Karen: So how did you get to Walla Walla from Seattle?

Sam: We were in Seattle with the house on the lake, all the cars, TVs and things that we’d been taught that if we lived the right way we’d have. Our girls were grown and gone. There we were, in our 50s, staring out on the lake one day, and we realized that even though we had everything we’d worked for, it didn’t make us happy.

We’d vacationed in Montana for 20 years. Every time I went to Montana I felt like I could breathe. All those years I spent working, flying to and from Virginia, I would dream about living in a cabin in Montana somewhere.

Our middle daughter was in college in Walla Walla at that time. During trips over to visit her, we’d find time to tool around town. We realized that Walla Walla was a lot like Montana. It had the wide open sky, the mountains in the distance, a vibrant downtown and good medical care for our doddering years.

It was that move – to a whole new way of life – that enticed Steve Johnson to adopt a pen name – Samuel Archibald McLeod, a respectful nod to Mark Twain – and to refer to his wife Neal by her chosen moniker, Annie.

Karen: What do people around here call you, Sam or Steve?

Sam: It can get confusing. I get called both names.

Karen: So what do you grow here?

Sam (laughing): It’s supposed to be natural grasses and shrubs for wildlife but it’s mostly weeds. For the past 50 years this has been a cattle ranch. They didn’t worry about the weeds. They’d put the cattle out to graze.  We took the cattle off, so the weeds are only 50 years deep.

Some famous people have passed through the house that Sam and Annie built to resemble the beloved Fish Camp homes of the South. Everyone who enters is encouraged to sign the rough-hewn beam that separates the kitchen from the living room. Diane Rehm’s name is one of dozens scribbled there. Bright paintings by local artists adorn the walls. Colorful throws made from the fleece of alpacas that roam the north side of the farm are tossed on chairs. There’s even an outdoor shower that Annie had to fight for tooth and nail. The builder could not believe that anyone really wanted an outdoor shower.

And there’s that barn, the one where Sam stripped down to his nether regions and climbed on the scale used to weigh the farm animals, and groaned. But you can read more about that in the book.

This is not his first book. Sam self-published a trilogy about his bumbling experiences as the big-city fella come to roost in the small-town. Welcome To Walla Walla, Bottled Walla and Blue Walla, were big hits with the locals. The books are carried by the various wineries and eateries about town. Sam writes a popular column for the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and from time to time, he performs in a show View from the Porch, modeled after Prairie Home Companion. One thing led to another and soon enough, New York came a’calling. Big Appetite is published by Simon Schuster and it is being promoted in Waffle Houses nationwide.

Karen: What’s the connection to Waffle Houses? How’d you get them to promote you?

Sam: My Uncle Joe opened the first Waffle House in the 1950s.

Karen: So you had a pretty idyllic childhood? That’s where you draw your stories from?

Sam: My early life was a bed of roses. I write about all the unusual characters in our neighborhood but in a nice way.

Karen: You call your mother Coco? Not Mama or Mother?

Sam: She wanted to be called Coco. That was her name. I think she liked being called something different than all the other moms. She is the driving force of the book, of course.

Karen: So what does Coco think of this book?

Sam (laughing again): She called me when she got a copy and asked, ‘Who is this kid on the cover?’ I said I didn’t know. Coco said, ‘Well, thank God they found this photo. This kid is way cuter than you ever were!’  She couldn’t wait to take it to the beauty parlor to show to all her friends.

Karen: So did you find the meaning of life while writing this book?

Sam (blue eyes moist): The creative process has opened up a whole new community of people to me. I spent a great deal of my life so busy I wasn’t paying attention. I was leading a helter-skelter life. I missed a lot because of that. I never slowed down long enough to hear the characters speak to me the way they had when I was younger. Moving to Walla Walla and writing has enabled me to reconnect with people and discover community again. I found my muse here.

Karen: Readers everywhere are going to be delighted about that. To find out more about this engaging storyteller or to schedule Sam for an event go to sammcleod.net or email sam@detourfarm.com

Dear IRS: Sam gave me a copy of his book.  I gave him a copy of my book. Oh. And Annie gave me a dozen of the prettiest eggs I ever did see.

Eat your heart out.

This is the place where I want your thoughts on something. You know that I wrote that letter Miz Rice and that it was published at a couple of different places — Burnside Writers.com and RelevantMagazine.com. Well, the discussion over at Relevant has been lively, to say the least. Some of the comments are longer than the original post. That always makes a blogger like me smile, because one of the points of writing is to spark dialogue. Or as I like to say, I don’t want to tell you what to think — I just want you to think.

So I try and write in a fashion that sparks those engines.

But there was one comment on the Relevant site, pretty early into the discussion, that stuck in my craw. (That’s southern-speak for gave me a wedgie).

Here’s what he said:

I made a trip to Detour Farm this week. I will be telling you more about that on Monday.

While I was there Miz Annie gave me a gift — a dozen of the most beautiful eggs I’ve ever seen. Aren’t they pretty?

I didn’t even color ‘em. They came this way. Naturally. I don’t even wanna crack ‘em open.

Maybe I love this gift because for the past few weeks I’ve been helping out over at the Fair office. When I worked as a reporter I covered the county fair but I never really could participate in it.

I didn’t grow up going to county fairs. Our lives revolved around military events — not county events. And after daddy died, it revolved around court events, or so it seems the way I recollect it now.

My introduction to fairs really came after I married. Tim and I got married the week of the Oregon State Fair, so we spent an afternoon wandering around the exhibits. Tim isn’t much of one for roller-coasters and such.

My friend Amy wrote a column this week about the fair in her neighborhood. You can read her piece by clicking here.

My mother and father met at a county fair. And speaking of gifts, my buddy Paul Young sent me the following poem that he penned and I asked if I could share it with you and he said sure thang. As we go about our days, planning for fairs and such, let’s be grateful for these moments — each one a colorful and perfectly beautiful gift.

We Regret to Inform You

by Wm. Paul Young

Sometimes the evening finds you unprepared

When the guests have gone

And the silence descends demanding attention

And patriotic families try to fill the empty

table seat with the hollow sounds of

bravery and sacrifice and honor

Day words

that bring no comfort to the shard-like

stillness of the night

Sometimes the evening finds you unprepared

When drawn by irresistible need

You find his shirt

unwashed for all these days

a treasure with his scent still lingering

the nearest that you have to presence

and burying your face you let

the memories come crashing in

Breathe in a breath of life

And let the waters flow

Till all this ache within me ebbs

And heals my darkening soul

Relevant Mag picked up the Letter to Anne Rice. The discussion continues on their site. Click here to join in.

Dear Ms. Anne:

You don’t know me, so please excuse the intrusion. I hope you won’t think this too forward but I read about your recent remarks about quitting Christianity: