My Commonplace Book

The Carpenter’s Son

He must have grown anxious as the sun gave way
to stars and darkness and bitter cold,
blamed himself for not pushing them harder,
for his inadequacy, his poverty, the thin
rags his wife drew tighter against the chill.
The night filled with distant stars;
the cold cracked his hands gripping the reins,
and he forced the mule another mile, then another,
around them the desolate emptiness of fields,
a few stray sheaves of winter wheat.

The dream must have seemed only that, a dream,
and he must have been afraid, afraid for his wife,
the child she carried, afraid of the night, the cold,
the empty loneliness they traveled.
Perhaps he cursed, softly, under his breath,
softly, so his wife would not hear, softly,
so the stars would not hear,
and he jerked the reins harder,
hearing his wife’s silent whisper of pain.
And then, the lights of the town,
the promise of shelter,
warmth, a hot meal, a soft bed.

In town–faces at the doors–
each repetition a reminder of his failures,
until finally, at the far edge of town,
he accepted the small charity of a stable,
glad at last for a few frostbitten blades
of grass, anything to answer
the fear in Mary’s eyes,
the pain–

His hand caught the baby as it came,
His blade severed this life from its mother,
this baby, like any baby, dark-haired,
dark-eyed, so like its mother.
Did he smile as she nursed his first-born son;
did he whisper to himself, “This is my son”?

Then, what were his thoughts
when the shepherds came,
when the dream surrounded him?
Did he kneel with them
or stand forgotten in the shadows
as gnarled hands claimed
the child that was his?

                          –Bill Stifler

© 1996, Bill Stifler. At the time I wrote this, I had been memorizing poems by Richard Wilbur. I would like to think his style influenced this poem.

For the Love of Christ

They are quick to push Christ
back into Christmas, these
religious zealots who condemn
homosexuals and abortionists,
liberals and atheists,
having hitched the Christmas star
to the Republican party of Christ,
forgetting Christ was born to out of town
visitors so poor a manger offered shelter,
to a carpenter and his much younger wife,
a tradesman, who worked with his hands.
They forget Christ chose the poor
as his disciples, chastised the religious,
tossed out the money changers quick
to make a buck off religious piety,
dined with prostitutes, the destitute,
political outcasts, the socially improper,
and, most importantly, have forgotten
his condemnation of the self-righteous,
so certain of the rightness of their causes
that they condemned Him to die on a cross,
a cross resembling the first Greek letter
for the Messiah, commemorated in Xmas.

                                                            –Bill Stifler

© 2012, Bill Stifler

Terry Kay stands looking at the students gathered to hear him.  “Writing is the easiest thing in the world.  You just put one word after another.” It’s the last day of a week of activities, lectures, book signings, casual conversations, Q&A sessions, and Kay hides his exhaustion, sipping water and apologizing.  “I have diabetes,” he explains.

He regales the crowd with anecdotes. Erich Segal, author of Love Story, wrote the first chapter twenty-two times until his editor told him to stop and finish the book.  Kay encourages students to take a paragraph from the middle of their writing and re-write it every day for weeks or even months.  “You’ll learn how to take chances and how many ways there are to say a thing.”

“We’re so afraid of looking stupid,” he tells them.  “It’s okay to be stupid.” Writing is not the voice of the muse. Writing is a skill.  It’s work, rewriting and rewriting. He explains to students that his own writing often does not take shape until the third draft.  “The Book of Marie took me twenty years to write.”

“Don’t write about how you feel.  Write about what made you feel,” he tells them.  He builds his own stories around characters, discovering what they feel, exploring what if—the differing choices characters can make that lead to interesting stories.  “Stories are built on contrasts.” He tells students to limit their description of main characters so readers sense them rather than see them and expand their description of minor characters so readers see them rather than sense them.  “Writing isn’t about the writer,” he explains, “but the characters and the reader.” “Writers are a medium for characters.  Characters are not a medium for the writer.” The writer is a wordsmith.  “Readers finish the novel” because their imaginations fill in the details that writers only suggest through verbs and dialogue. “Writing is a collection of fragments,” he tells one group on Wednesday.

Earlier Friday morning, most of our planning committee met with Kay and Dr. Catanzaro, President of Chattanooga State, in the Chattanooga State Foundation boardroom for breakfast.  After we eat, Dr. Catanzaro opens his iPad, showing us pictures he has taken.  Watching him, I am reminded of my father explaining a complicated videotaping setup involving three VCRs, one an RCA, another a Mitsubishi, which he repeatedly calls a “Mitsubibi.” I ask my father again and again to repeat the name until he realizes I am teasing him, and he sets his jaw.

Kay shares a story about a commercial, featuring an old man slicing parsley while his daughter works at the stove.  After a bit, the old man takes his cutting board covered with chopped parsley to the stove, and sweeps it into the cooking pot, revealing his cutting board is an iPad which he then rinses and places in the dishwasher while his daughter stares in stunned silence.  We all laugh.  Dr. Catanzaro takes a picture of us with Kay and then sends me to find someone to take a picture that will include him.  He sits beside Terry Kay, finger jabbing the iPad screen, demonstrating how easy it is to crop a photo.

“People often talk about whether the glass is half full or half empty,” Terry Kay says.  “I think it depends whether you are pouring water in or pouring it out.” He touches Dr. Catanzaro’s shoulder, “Your glass is half full, and you are constantly filling other people’s glasses.”

In several of his meetings with students, Kay explains that writing can be reduced to two tricks: verbs and rhythms.

Understand verbs; connect them from sentence to sentence, he tells students.  He illustrates his point with an example from theater.  Constantin Stanislavski required actors to stand back to back whispering a script until they reached a verb, which they must shout.  Kay suggests that actors trying out for a part skim through any script they are asked to read, identifying the verbs, and then, as they read, to “punch the verbs.” In fiction, he tells students “focus on verbs you can see and verbs you can hear.”  Connect them to the sentence before and the sentence after.

His explanation of rhythms focuses on the horizontal rhythms of sentence lengths and the vertical rhythms of paragraph lengths.  In teaching high school students ways to write better, Kay tells them to track the length of their sentences and vary the lengths.  “70% of good writing is rhythm.”  He teaches students “blueprinting,” marking sentence lengths on tracing paper.  He recommends students think about how the lengths of paragraphs reflect the emotions the paragraphs express.

“What do you do?” one student asks. “I have so many things I want so much to say, and I can’t get them down in words.”

“That’s where we’re different,” Kay says.  “I don’t have anything to say.  Never have.”  He walks back to his bottle of water.  “Here’s what you do. Go down to the pharmacy, and buy some Alka Seltzer. Take it home and drop an Alka Seltzer into a glass of water, and when the fizzing stops, drink it.  You’ll burp.  And then you’ll feel better.  It’s not a burning desire to write that’s bothering you.  It’s heartburn.” Then he leans toward the young man, speaking sotto voce.

Of all of his works, only To Dance with the White Dog was written in a single draft.  “I wrote it in two months,” he says.  “I wrote it in a single draft because I couldn’t bear to read it again.” He often had to stop after writing a scene, overcome with tears.

During the week, he often described To Dance with the White Dog as his signature book even though it was a book he never thought would be published, a book he wrote for his family.  Repeatedly, students asked him if the white dog was real.  “Of course,” he’d answer. One young woman asked if he believed the white dog was his mother. “My father believed,” he said.  “And I believed my father.”

Of all his books, the only one he had read after it was published was Dark Thirty. “I think,” he said, “that it is the most violent book in Southern literature of the last fifty years.”  The book describes the horrific and random murder of a Southern family—wife, children, grandchildren—and the man who must face his loss, his need for justice, his desire for vengeance.

The story, based on an actual event, develops the struggle of the main character.  Kay remembers talking with his two minister brothers about the relationship between justice and vengeance.  “In the end,” Kay says, “I realized the answer is simple.  Vengeance is what you do. Justice is what I do.”

On Thursday night, Kay had read from several of his works, including To Dance with the White Dog, the scene where Sam Peek struggles to make a few biscuits.  “That really happened to my father, and I knew I had to work it into the novel.”

Throughout the week, he had shared stories about his family that had influenced scenes in the book—catching his father searching through a phone book for the name of an old girlfriend; the day his brother came home from Vietnam and surprised his mother; one of the black women on whom Neelie was based, who, rushing into the house after Kay’s mother’s death, is swept up in the arms of his father, both crying, something he had never seen his father do, before or since.

“My favorite character is Lottie,” he said, reading the scene in Taking Lottie Home of the events following her husband, Foster’s death, and her leaving with Ben. Lottie is interesting to me, he explains, because she struggles with her past, where, because of poverty, she had been a prostitute, and with her future and her love for this man.

Kay read several passages from The Book of Marie, which he calls his most important work.  Marie Fitzpatrick, valedictorian of her graduating class, stands before the school to ridicule the education students have received and to warn them a storm is coming, a storm of change. The story explores the struggle of white Southerners, their efforts to overcome the traditions and prejudices of a past—and, for the characters, present—steeped in racism and violence.

Throughout the week, students laughed with Kay, pressed him for details, sought his advice.  This last day each session begins and ends with a line of students asking him to sign their books, sharing a private moment.

The last session ends.  The committee is tired.  Terry Kay is tired.  We are all glad the week is over.  But we don’t want him to go.

As we leave the Humanities Building, the sun is bright, and leaves dance to a light breeze. Another member of the planning committee Allison Fetters, her husband, and Terry Kay are slightly ahead of me on the sidewalk, and Terry Kay says, “It’s a good day to die,” and I know he isn’t thinking so much of dying as of endings.

“A better day to live,” I say, and, after a pause, “Dying’s overrated.  We all come round to it eventually.  I’ve known for some time I’m closer to my death than my birth.”

He turns briefly, startled, then, after a few more steps, says, “I think of dying a lot these days,” and I know he has seen the shadow of the white dog.

We reach the parking lot, and I turn toward my car, Allison wishing me a relaxing weekend, and I, her. Terry Kay turns, hand raised to me. “Goodbye, my friend.”

And my cup is full.

 

 

Terry Kay is Chattanooga State’s first visiting writer in the Humanities and Fine Arts Division’s Writers@Work series. The Writers@Work committee members are Erica Lux (Chair), Joel Henderson, Allison Fetters, De’Lara Stephens, and Bill Stifler. Visit the Chattanooga State Writers@Work Facebook page. For more information on Terry Kay, visit his website.

 

Science fiction movies have a bad reputation. I am a science fiction fan, but I have been embarrassed by some of the movies that have been made (and continue to be made). These movies portray science fiction as juvenile and clichéd, filled with cheap horror or thrills. Some is, and I confess a secret vice in enjoying the occasional bit of science fiction fluff. But I have also advised people not to watch the Syfy Channel(one of my favorite channels) on Saturday nights, which seems a magnet for some of the worst of these films. Isaac Asimov often distinguished sf, which he considered serious science fiction, from scifi, the typical Hollywood fare.

Ask someone to name more serious science fiction movies, however, and they will name many of these: Blade Runner, Confessions d’un Barjo, Impostor, Inception, Minority Report, Next, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Screamers, Total Recall, or perhaps the new movie, The Adjustment Bureau.

What else do these movies have in common? Each is based on a work by sf writer Philip K. Dick. Dick’s view of the world was dark but thoughtful. Those movies which remain faithful to their sources owe some of their intellectual depth to him. To read more about Philip K. Dick, visit his official website at http://www.philipkdick.com/.

For those interested in serious science fiction, there are other writers to consider. I grew up reading Isaac Asimov (Bicentennial Man; I, Robot), Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey), Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein (the 50’s movie Destination: Moon, The Puppet Masters, Starship Troopers), Frank Herbert (Dune), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Lathe of Heaven),Murray Leinster, Alan Nourse, Robert Silverberg, Clifford Simak, Kate Wilhelm, and many others. Admittedly, there are times when the writing lacks sophistication. And that’s not to say these writers don’t also add entertainment value. I think, for instance, that Asimov, Heinlein, and Silverberg have all argued that their primary goal was to tell a good story. But most were also committed to good science or thoughtful social commentary. Not all will appeal to every taste. However, the best works will reward the serious reader.

On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the most intimate of human relationships. One of the enduring symbols of love in our culture is the wedding band, a circlet of metal, without beginning or end, that represents love as eternal, neverending. For some, however, Valentine’s Day opens old wounds. I once knew a woman who suffered from deep depression every Valentine’s Day. She had lost her husband years before, and always after, Valentine’s Day reminded her of that loss.

On the night before his sister’s wedding, Scottish minister George Matheson was also reminded of love lost. He had been engaged to be married, but his fiance, unable to cope with the blindness that had afflicted Matheson from his youth, broke off the engagement and left him heartbroken. For years, he had lived with his sister, who took care of him, helping him with his studies, meeting his daily needs. Now she was leaving him to be married, and despite his joy for her, he could not help but feel sorry for himself (Asiado).

That night, all the old pain, all the old sense of loss and abandonment came back to him. But in the midst of his depression, Matheson remembered that God loved him with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3).  In a few moments, he penned the words to this, now famous, hymn (Asiado):

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be. (“O Love”)

Works Cited

Asiado, Tel. “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Suite101.com. 14 Mar. 2007. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.
“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” RUF Hymnbook Online Hymn Resource. Reformed University Fellowship. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.

Bill Stifler with Tim Dills, Denis Kiely, and Bill Teem

Fall semester 2009 saw Chattanooga State involved in a building project that has extended beyond the expected completion date. As a consequence, faculty and staff found themselves shuttling across Amnicola Highway from the old Sears service center parking lot. Despite the obvious inconvenience, over time a sense of camaraderie developed as we spent more time with colleagues we seldom saw in our normal routines. One of my favorite TV shows is the ABC show Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Drew Carey. The following is a parody of one of their musical routines in honor of our recent campus “adventure.”

 

Songs of the Parking Lot

Ryan: We’re here today to present this compilation album Songs of the Parking Lot . This 16 long play vinyl set contains great songs like the Creedence Clearwater Revival hit “Whining on the River” (“Rollin’ on the River”)

 

Whining, whining, whining on the river
Whining, whining, whining on the river . . .

 

Cullen: And that’s not all. This collection features every musical genre. Take this old folk song “Cross the Amnicola” (“Oh, Shenandoah”)

 

Oh Parking Lot, I long to see you
Away, cross Amnicola
Oh, Parking Lot, I long to see you
Away, I’m Bound Away
Cross the Amnicola

It’s been five long months since last I saw you
Oh Faculty Parking Lot
It’s been so long, oh how I’ve missed you
Away, I’m bound away
Cross Amnicola

 

Cullen: That brings tears to my eyes.

 

Ryan: Well, then you’re going to love this old song, too, “Home to the Lot” (“Home on the Range”)

 

Oh, give me a lot where no bulldozers roam
And the staff and the faculty park . . . “

 

and this classic folk song “Poor Bus Riding Teacher” (“Poor Wayfaring Stranger”)

 

I am a poor bus riding teacher
I have a hard row I must hoe
But there’s no parking for this creature
On that campus to which I go

 

I’m going there
To give an exam
So turn off your cell phone
I’m going over Amnicola
I’m only going over home

 

I know dirt piles
Will gather round me
I know the ride will be cramped and hot
But the asphalt they are a-pouring
Where one day will be a parking lot

 

Well I’m going there
To share some knowledge
Once I get through this construction zone
I’m going over Amnicola
I’m only going over home.

 

The fall semester will soon be over
It will disappear without a trace
Can’t believe I paid for a decal
And didn’t get a parking space

 

I’m going there
To meet with my Dean
Tell him I’m going to roam
I’m leaving this sweet Amnicola
I’m only going over home.

 

Ryan: Cullen, what would you pay for a once-in-a-lifetime collection like this?

 

Cullen: I’d pay a million dollars . . . ok . . . probably not that much.

 

Ryan: Boy, are you in luck. This 16 vinyl set can be yours for the low, low price of $500, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that every cent of that money will go into hauling off the mountains of bad dirt, the old broken pieces of pavement, and the worn out tires from the vans and shuttle bus.

 

Cullen: Speaking of bad dirt, you don’t want to miss that Lynrd Skynrd hit “Bad Dirt Blues” or this blues number “That Old Blacktop Magic” (“That Old Black Magic”)

 

That Old Blacktop magic’s got me in its spell
That Old Blacktop magic that I loved so well
I’d drive in slowly and I’d find my place
I’d park all day and then I’d leave my space . . .

 

Cullen: And if you charge it to your credit card in the next ten minutes, we will also throw in this special bonus album, Christmas Songs of the Shuttle Bus with such perennial favorites as

 

I’ll Have a Blue Permit by Christmas
We Three Shuttle Bus Drivers
I’ll Be Parking by Christmas
O Parking Lot, O Parking Lot
Grandma Got Run Over by the Shuttle

 

Ryan: And that’s not all. With your prepaid order, you will also get this genuine free blue parking permit. “If you walked into any store and asked for an album like this, they would say you were crazy” [Billy Mays pitchline]. And don’t overlook the great rock hits on this album like “Imagine” (“Imagine” by John Lennon)

 

Imagine there’s no changes…
It’s easy if you try
A parking lot out front
Out back more, I could cry
Imagine all the students
Parking in their lot
You may say we’re dreamers
But we’re not just singing this tune
I hope someday we’ll park here again
But I wouldn’t count on it soon.

 

Or this hit by the Monkees, “Last Van to Sears” (“Last Train to Clarksville” by the Monkees)

 

Take the last van to Sears
And I’ll meet you at the bus cone
You have to be there by four thirty
Cause the bus driver’s going home
Don’t be slow, oh no, no, no
Oh no, no, no

 

Cullen: Ryan, you know I love Sheena Easton.

 

Ryan: Oh, yes, she is a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice.

 

Cullen: Well, do you know my favorite Sheena Easton song?

 

Ryan: No, what is it?

 

Cullen: It’s “My Teacher Takes the Morning Van” (“My Baby Takes the Morning Train”)

 

My teacher takes the morning van
He works from nine till five and then
He takes another van again
To find me waitin’ for him

 

Ryan: Cullen, that was beautiful, but I have to say, I like a little sauce in a woman’s voice, and no one is sweeter than Tammy Wynette singing “Stand By Your Van.” (“Stand By Your Man”)

 

Sometimes it’s hard to be a Chatt Stater
Trying real hard not to be a hater
You’ll have bad times
And you’ll have good times
They’ll be things you don’t understand
But you love it so you’ll forgive it
Even though you can’t understand
And if you love it
Oh be proud of it
Cause after all it’s just a van

 

Stand by your van
Give it two cheeks to rest on
And something warm to come to
When days are cold and lonely
Stand by your van
And tell the world you love it
Keep giving all that you can
Stand by your van

 

Stand by your van
And show the world you love it
Keep giving all that you can
Stand by your van

 

Cullen: Well, you know, I grew up in Canada, but my favorite state in the U.S. is Tennessee, and I love their state song, “Parking Lot, Tennessee” (“Rocky Top, Tennessee”)

 

Wish I was in that parking lot
Down off Amnicola Lane
Ain’t no asphalt on that parking lot
Ain’t it a big ole pain
Once we could park in that parking lot
Half faculty the other half staff
Wide as a Ford, long as a Cadillac
We still dream about that

 

Parking lot, you’ll always be
Home sweet home to me
Good ole parking lot
Parking lot Tennessee, parking lot Tennessee

 

Once some dozers tore up parking lot
And left a big hole to fill
Dozers still sit in that parking lot
Wonder if they always will.
Cars can’t park at all on parking lot
Dirt’s too soggy by far
That’s why all the folks at Chatt State
Go to Sears to park their cars

 

Parking lot, you’ll always be
Home sweet home to me
Good ole parking lot
Parking lot Tennessee, parking lot Tennessee

 

We’ve had months of cramped up parking life
Trapped like chicks in a pen
We all know it’s a pity life
Wish it were simple again

 

Parking lot, you’ll always be
Home sweet home to me
Good ole parking lot
Parking lot Tennessee, parking lot Tennessee
Parking lot Tennessee, parking lot Tennesee
Parking lot Tennesseee eee eee eee

 

Ryan: Now I know, some of you are still saying $500 is a lot of money, but when you break it down, it comes out to a little more than $2 a song, and that practically amounts to the money you saved in gas and road wear by not driving onto the campus parking lot all semester.

 

Cullen: Speaking of which, you don’t want to miss this great Josh Turner country hit

“ Chatt State Bus” (“Long Black Train”)

 

There’s a Chatt State Shuttle,
Comin’ down the line,
Feedin’ off the teachers that are lost and cryin’,
Wheels of sin, only evil remains
Watch out brother for that Chatt State Bus

 

Look to the heavens
You can look to the skies
You won’t find redemption
Staring back into your eyes
There’s no protection and no
Peace the same, burnin’ your ticket for that
Chatt State Bus

 

Oh, there’s cryin’ at the school today
Cryin’ at the school
Hang on brother, don’t you feel no shame
Just forget your riding on
that Chatt State Bus

 

There’s some old driver on that Chatt State Bus,
Makin’ you wonder if the ride is worth the pain,
He’s just a hoping that your heart will say
Let me ride on that Chatt State Bus,

 

Oh, there’s cryin’ at the school today
Cryin’ at the school
Hang on sister, don’t you feel no shame
Just forget your riding on
that Chatt State Bus

 

(This here’s the musical interlude)

 

Well, I can see him comin’ from a mile away,
It looks so frightful
But I can’t get away
That bus is a terror, makin’ everybody stare
But its only destination is the Sears parking lot,

 

But, there’s victory at the school today,
Victory at the school
The pavin’s over and the lot is done
Oh, I won’t be riding on that Chatt State Bus

 

I said hang on tight, cause the pavin’s done
And don’t go ridin’ on that Chatt State Bus
Yeah, watch out sister for that Chatt State Bus
Tammy Swenson’s drivin’ that Chatt State Bus

 

Thanks to Tim Dills for the lyrics to “Poor Bus Riding Teacher,” “Imagine,” “Last Van to Sears,” “My Teacher Takes the Morning Van,” “Stand By Your Van,” and “Parking Lot, Tennessee.” Thanks to Denis Kiely for the suggestion of the Billy Mays pitchline, and to Bill Teem, who suggested several Christmas album titles. Thanks also to Drew Carey and the Whose Line cast for their inspiration.

 

P.S. To further our parking woes, a sinkhole has appeared in the faculty parking in front of the Industrial Tech building. We may actually become the College on the River if we get more rain.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

Wanting to say things,
I miss my father tonight.
–Simon J. Ortiz, “My Father’s Song“

Like the speaker in Simon J. Ortiz’s poem “My Father’s Song,” I miss my father’s voice. In recent years, the clearest indication of his declining health has been his long silences. A few weeks ago, I called him for his birthday, the only sound, his labored breathing and my fumbling attempts to fill the silence between us.

Years ago, after a long night driving home from college, arriving at 3 a.m., I would be met at the door by my father, who sat up talking to me until it was time for him to leave for work the following morning. I seldom said anything. He filled my silence with the sounds of his life, the things he had been working on around the house, his life at work, complaints about family members, stories about his homing pigeons, reminiscences about his past–the litany was never ending, and I was its helpless audience, tired from twelve to fourteen hours on the road, and wanting sleep. But I never said anything, and he never noticed, just sat at the kitchen table talking, drinking cup after cup of coffee, smoking one cigarette after another, filling me with his life.

Those first years of college and marriage, I didn’t have a phone, but once I did, calls home lasted hours, with brief breaks as my mom took the phone, before handing it back to dad. He told me about Sears repairmen coming to fix the then fifteen year old freezer, complaining about how they kept insisting he replace the antique chest freezer, only to have him show them how to replace the irreplaceable thermostat or fuss at them for damaging the seal. The freezer still sits in the utility room, fifty years old, hoary with frost, humming to itself.

Far too often his voice was filled with lament–at real and imagined wrongs–grumblings about supervisors, criticisms of his pigeon racing buddies, complaints about my brothers and sisters. Sometimes, that constant harangue turned angry and bitter, and the paranoia and mood swings his mental illness infected him with carried him along in a wave toward disaster. One year I stopped him.

“You’re doing it again,” I said. “You’re working yourself into a fever pitch. If you keep this up, you’ll be back in the hospital.”

–And he stopped, pulled himself back from the brink of insanity for the week I was home and a few weeks after before falling into the maelstrom again.

He refused to call them “mental breakdowns.” “I needed a vacation,” he’d say. “I just needed to get away from your-mother-your-sisters-your-brothers-the-pigeon-guys-work-the-farm, the list was endless, a riff of interwoven melodies of disappointment and self-righteous indignation.

The Sunday he returned home after his first mental breakdown, after he had taken his rifle to the hill above Windsor, where the gospel radio station’s tower pointed up toward the stars, and told the police he was protecting us from the aliens, on the Sunday after he came home from a two week stay in the mental ward of York Hospital, I came into the kitchen to hear him say to my mother across the room as she washed dishes, “I know now it wasn’t you. It was those damn kids.” And then he saw me, and all I could think was, “They let him out, and he is still crazy.”

But it wasn’t always like that. Most of his stories were about his work, first as a machine operator and then as inspector at Allis Chalmers and then Precision Engineering, where he worked until he retired. He worked on turbines for nuclear power plants and submarines, and his stories were full of his pride in his work, his pride in a job done right, even when everyone else was willing to settle for second best in the service of expediency.

Other times, he spent long hours talking about his racing pigeons, which of his birds won which race, and who he beat, and by how much, tracing the pedigree of the winners through his breeding stock named for the men who had founded the breeding lines–Sion, Bastian, Gruder-Moss, and others whose names I have forgotten. He talked about eye sign, and what made a good homer, and what he was feeding them. He described blue bars and red checks, silvers and chocolates, tail feathers and flight feathers, famous flyers like Federal Girl, who got her name because she always flew over the Federal Bank building when coming home from a race. Several years ago, I realized that his wealth of stories and information about homing pigeons would soon be lost, and I tried to encourage him to talk about the birds while I took notes, but paranoia set in. “No one’s getting my secrets,” he said. “I’m taking them to the grave.”

For years, the week after Thanksgiving, my dad took a week of vacation from work for the first week of buck season. In those early years coming home, he talked about shots made and missed, fourteen point bucks with perfect racks and button bucks. Later, when he no longer hunted, he talked about feeding the deer corn, walking up to them, and talking to them, soothing. “Come on, three-legger,” he’d say to one doe, whose fourth leg had been damaged by a hunter. “Come on, girl. You know me.”

My dad charmed animals, a deer whisperer, dog whisperer, bird whisperer, long before anyone else. For a time, he raised hunting dogs, going small game hunting each fall. Evenings he’d sit on his back porch talking to squirrels, cardinals, and chipmunks, to the gaggle of ducks he kept, who followed him around the yard, to the deer who munched his gift of corn, watching him with their dark brown eyes. If there’s a forest in heaven, he’s sitting in a battered chair near its edge, smoking, drinking coffee, talking in the gathering dusk.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

My dad passed away this morning about 8 a.m.  For those of you who never met him, and for those who did, here are a few stories about him.

1.  Accepting Charity 

My dad felt very strongly about accepting charity.  In his mind, it called in question his manhood and his ability to provide for his family.  It was near Christmas; I must have been about 12 years old, and my dad, my brothers and sisters, and I were sitting in the car along a street in York, PA, while my mom was in the store shopping. I was sitting directly behind my dad when a man came up to the car. It was obvious that he had been drinking although I seem to remember that he was not badly dressed. He kept trying to give my father a $20 dollar bill, but my dad refused. Finally, the man gestured toward all of us kids in the car, and looking directly at my dad, he said, “Please, take this money and buy your kids some Christmas presents. If you don’t, I’m just going to end up drinking it.” My dad took the money, thanked the man, and the man left.

The next day my dad kept talking about what had happened. My dad had always refused what he considered ‘charity’ from other people. But this time, in accepting charity from this stranger, it seemed to my dad that it wasn’t charity because my dad had taken the money to help the man keep from drinking. I remember sensing how important this event was to my father and how it made him look at things in a different way.

2.   Dad and Uncle Ben

My dad’s uncle Ben was only a couple of years older than he. Apparently Ben was very mischievous. Once he lured my dad into a field where my dad was attacked by a goat. Another time Uncle Ben told my dad that he had jumped off a local railroad bridge about 30 feet into the Muddy River (in Maryland), which is only a few feet deep. My dad, to prove he was as clever and brave, dove off the bridge into 4 or 5 feet of water.  Dad said he had to pull up sharply, but his chest still scraped the rocky bottom.  When he told Uncle Ben that he dove off the bridge, Ben laughed, and said he had jumped feet first and that he didn’t believe my dad. So dad dove in again, just to prove it.

Another time, dad was driving to Uncle Ben’s. The road twists along through woods along the Muddy River and has numerous blind spots. Dad was driving about 60 miles an hour along this road which was posted for 35. He rounded a particularly dangerous curve on the wrong side of the road. As he did, Uncle Ben passed him going the other way, also on the wrong side of the road. Dad slewed to a stop, turned around, and came racing back down the road to catch Ben. As he again rounded this dangerous curve on the wrong side, Ben passed him going back the way he had come, also on the wrong side. Again, dad found a place to stop and turned around. This time, however, he rounded that dangerous curve carefully, and on the right side of the road. Just past the curve, he found Ben waiting for him. Ben said he hadn’t wanted to try rounding that curve again.

3.  Tobacco Stems

I also have my own trickster story involving my dad. Dad raises homing pigeons, and my brother Joe was stuck with the task of carrying buckets of water up to the second floor of the barn to the breeding pens there and down in the yard to the loft where Dad kept his racing pigeons. My dad bought some tobacco stems for nest bowls. Tobacco is very itchy to handle. Dad came home and at lunch told me that I had a choice between carrying the tobacco stems from where he had left them in the barn down to the loft or letting Joe do that while I watered the birds. Physically, watering the birds was more demanding, but given how itchy the tobacco stems were, handling the tobacco stems was the worse job. My dad had orchestrated all this to teach me a lesson about hard work. Joe was certain I would leave him to move the tobacco stems, and he was not happy. Dad had placed the stems on a large sheet of plastic to protect them from moisture. I asked him if he wanted me to put the stems back on the plastic when I got them down to the loft. When he said yes, I said I’d move the tobacco stems–much to the surprise of both my dad and my brother.  In fact, dad was thrilled.  He had me where he wanted me.

After lunch, I went out to the barn. Lifting the edges of the large plastic sheet, I flipped all the tobacco stems to the center, then grabbed all four corners of the sheet of plastic and dragged it down to the loft, never handling the tobacco stems. In effect, I had outfoxed the fox. Dad was in two minds–unhappy his “lesson” had failed and impressed at my cleverness in evading his trap. Joe, on the other hand, felt cheated.

4.  Pork Brains 

I was a very picky eater as a child (Actually, I still am, although I have gotten somewhat better). One of the foods I particularly hated was liver. One year when I was in senior high, I was shopping with my mother and grandmother. My mother decided we were having liver for supper. Then my grandmother saw some pork brains on sale.

“I haven’t had pork brains in a long time,” she said. “But I can’t eat all those.”

My mother looked at me and said, “If you don’t want liver, you can eat pork brains.”

Well, I knew I didn’t like liver, so I decided to take a chance on the pork brains.  I mean, they couldn’t be worse?

That night at supper, my grandmother and I were eating pork brains while my mother and five siblings were eating liver. While I didn’t like the pork brains, they were better than liver. Then my father came in to join us for supper.

What’s this?” he said, pointing to the pork brains.

My mother said, “If you want some, just eat them.” My father looked at the rest of us. No one said anything.

I shoved a fork full of brains in my mouth. “Go ahead,” I said, trying hard not to smile.

He tried some. “Taste like smelts,” he said. Smelts are fried fish eggs, which my father loves. He helped himself to some more brains. “What are these?” he asked again.

“Just eat them. They’re good,” my grandmother said. Perhaps I should mention this was my maternal grandmother, his mother-in-law. She laughed. At the stove, I heard my mother snicker.

My father grabbed another generous helping. I watched with interest. If this continued, I wasn’t going to have to eat any more brains or liver. I smiled.

My father proceeded to wolf down brains. Soon all the brains were gone. “What were those?” he asked again.

Now that the brains were all gone, I looked my father square in the face. “Pork brains,” I said.

My father leapt from the table, sprang to the door, and ran into the front yard, retching while my mother and grandmother cackled.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

When I was growing up, the news was delivered by Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Back then, the news was serious business. News anchors sat quietly at their desks and, without fanfare, serious and sober, presented the news of the day. This was the world of adults, and it was a world where momentous things happened. These men were my tutors to the world beyond my everyday life and the small farm where I lived with my parents, my brothers and sisters.

I was in fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Evenings and weekends I watched the news with my parents. Listened as Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite narrated the events of those days, the assassination, the funeral, the transfer of power. Listened as my parents talked about this president that they had not voted for. This was my introduction into what it meant to be an American.

Late weekend afternoons I watched as Walter Cronkite narrated The Twentieth Century, a TV news program covering the significant events of the century. It was Walter Cronkite who taught me about World War II, the atrocities of war, and the sacrifices of soldiers so that we could live in a better world.

July 20, 1969, my mother’s birthday, my family sat in a dark living room late at night to watch Neil Armstrong in his bulky spacesuit take that last step from a flimsy spacecraft to the surface of the moon. Walter Cronkite was there with us, his voice choked with emotion, “The Eagle has landed.”

A few days after 9/11, Walter Cronkite appeared on David Letterman. He told how so many of the local German families were appalled when they entered the death camps like Auschwitz. Cronkite said he didn’t blame the German people for what happened in those camps. He blamed them for not knowing, and he warned all of us of the dangers of going too far in the coming days, the danger of overstepping ourselves, of hubris as we responded to the national tragedy facing us. We should have listened better.

Friday, July 17, 2009, Walter Cronkite passed on. His voice is silent now.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

The church today is terrified of doubt. Doubt has become the new unpardonable sin. As one conservative talk show host said recently, tears in his eyes, “It’s better to believe in something, even if it’s wrong.”

That is not faith. But we are so afraid of questions that we will deny any evidence placed before us before we will admit doubts. We are so afraid of doubt that we will stand firm long after it is clear we are wrong because it is better to be certain and wrong than admit uncertainty.

And yet, over and over in the lives of the saints in the Bible, we read of their moments of doubt. Read the lives of the great Christians of the past, and every one of them faced doubt and often more than once in their Christian lives. To doubt is to be human, to recognize human frailty and the limits of human knowledge and experience. Paul tells us that now “we see through a glass darkly,” now “we know in part” (KJV, I Corinthians 13.12). In this life, we will never know the answers to all the questions that face us, and it is only hubris, the worst kind of arrogance to suggest we can.

Faith is no more the absence of doubt than courage is the absence of fear. In Mark chapter 9, a man brought his son to the disciples, a child tormented by seizures, but they were unable to heal him. And when the man brought his son to Christ, the child fell into a fit, and his father said to Christ, “if you can do anything, please have compassion on my son.”

Christ looked at the man and said, “If you can believe, all things are possible to those who believe.”

And that father, torn by doubt, cried out, tears streaming down his face, “I believe, oh, help me believe” (KJV, Mark 9.17-27).

Jesus didn’t condemn him for his doubt. Jesus didn’t berate him. Jesus didn’t say, “I’m sorry. Your faith just isn’t strong enough.” Jesus healed his son. Jesus healed his son because, in the midst of doubt, the man believed. Hebrews 11: 1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV, Heb. 11.1). Faith is not dead certainty. Faith is not blind belief. Faith comes with humility and a contrite heart.

Hours before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples he would be taken and they would abandon him. When Peter heard Christ’s words, he said, “Oh. no, Jesus. Not me. All these may doubt, but not me. I will be faithful. I will be true.” And Jesus looked him in the eye and said, “Peter, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me thrice.”

And, Peter said, “I will die before I deny you” (KJV, Matthew 26. 31-35). Peter was so angry. How could Jesus doubt his faith? And moments later, when Judas came with the betrayer’s kiss, and the high priest’s servant stepped forward to take Jesus into custody, Peter leapt forward, swinging his blade, and if the servant hadn’t ducked, Peter would have taken off his head instead of his ear (KJV, John 18:10-11). And then, does Jesus reward him for his faith? No, Jesus turns to Peter and tells him to put down his sword, that those who live by the sword, die by the sword, then heals the servant’s wound before meekly going to his doom. And before the cock crowed morning, Peter, cursing and angry, had denied Christ (KJV, Luke 22.51-62).

And then, in his humiliation, then, his pride broken, then, his arrogance drowned in tears, heartbroken, then, Peter was open to faith. On Sunday morning, when Christ arose from the dead, and the women coming to bind his body found an angel waiting for them, the angel told them “tell his disciples and Peter that he will see them in Galilee just as he promised (KJV, Mark 16.1-7). Tradition says that some short time later, Christ spoke to Peter, privately, and we don’t know what was said, but Peter, his arrogance obliterated, found faith, and with faith, forgiveness.

The true response to doubt is not blind faith. The true response to doubt is humility and prayer, patience and fervent study, waiting on God, who in his own good time, will come to us.

God, grant us the humility to endure doubt
Teach us to pray, in faith believing,
and when all hope is gone,
help us turn to your word,
help us turn to you in prayer,
broken and humble,
to find faith.

© Bill Stifler, 2009