Sunday Wrapup 2/27/2011

Grace has finished teaching her half of the Sunday School year, and I'm slated to start my half next Sunday. We have only one chapter left in Job, and then we'll move on to I and II Peter. It's not what I voted for, but I am relieved that the Song of Solomon nomination did not get the majority of votes.

The mostly over-80 crowd in my SS class is a rather fragile bunch. Many of these people were active participants in SS in their earlier years, but they are content, for the most part, to sit now and listen. We do, of course, have a few people my age or younger to keep the discussions alive.

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Kathy T. reports that a local court case last week involving a homeschooling family was decided against the family. I don't know details, but would be sorry if this would set a precedent that would make it difficult for other families to homeschool.

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A new group of Conservative Anabaptist Service Program (CASP) volunteers was introduced in church today. They stay for six weeks at a time, and work on rehabilitating housing in Hutchinson, under the auspices of Interfaith Housing. They're living in Partridge, in the home formerly occupied by the Marvin Mast family. This is the second and last group for the year.

This group of 14 volunteers comes from PA, OH, AR, KS, NC, and VA. They're working on renovating a large house in Hutchinson that eventually will likely become the unit house for a permanent CASP facility.

Choice Books also brings volunteers into the community, and, of late, most of those people end up attending church at Cedar Crest. Those terms are of a longer duration, but involve fewer people at a time.

If CASP becomes a year-round effort here, we'd better get used to having longer-term "guests" at Center too. I think everyone would see that as a welcome development.

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We had another icy trip home after school on Thursday. The most dramatic result was a semi that jack-knifed in the middle of the overpass by the cemetery. Someone from CASP also reported seeing a car ahead of theirs on the way home from work doing three revolutions in the roadway.

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I've decided that politics and food have something in common. Individual opinions about both of them are usually of minimal interest to others, and not worth a lot of discourse.

When positive impressions are shared, good feelings can spread and make life a little more pleasant for everyone. But negative impressions are usually best kept to oneself. In any case, polite and humble language is a plus.

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We had a brief shower of small hail today, accompanied by thunder. Most of the nastier stuff happened south and east of us. We had dense fog into the afternoon, and it was damp and dreary all day--not typical weather here.

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Joel and Hilda went to Topeka today to participate in an MCC fellowship meal. This is a voluntary exchange between hosts and guests who are matched for a meal and, usually, attendance in the host's church. A financial donation from the guests benefits MCC, and is added to the total for the spring relief sale.

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I planted lots of tomatoes and peppers yesterday, and some eggplant--indoors. It was later than usual, and I'm not nearly done with all that needs to be planted, but I'm glad to have gotten started.

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Hiromi reported that he found a 3-ft. snake in the basement last week. This was just before I needed to go down there and do a lot of rooting around to find the planting supplies that we store down there. Rest assured that I peered about very carefully before putting my feet or hands anywhere.

When I asked him what he did with the snake, I found out that he grabbed it with gloved hands and carried it out, and then, right close to the house, he "hit it against the wood"--whatever that means, and LET IT GO!

"Why didn't you take it farther away?" I asked.

"Well, I decided it probably wouldn't come back inside since I punished it. And we do like if it kills mice around the house."

Oh my. He is much more confident about his understanding of snake logic than I am.

It's downright disconcerting that a snake in the basement keeps "happening."

Shane did not approve of Hiromi's lenient treatment of the snake. He's even more ruthless than I would tend to be. "Far away" is OK by me. "Dead" is better, as far as Shane is concerned. Joel and Grant would leave them alone if they were outside.

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The roads were icy again late on Friday night when we returned from Yoder where we had gone for the Mennonite Manor fundraiser supper of fried mush, liverwurst and sausage, and tomato or cream gravy, and syrup, with several other liverwurst toppings as options.

I don't claim to have any liverwurst expertise, and am sure that people like it fixed in many different ways. I think with the addition of cream, the liverwurst the other night would have tasted quite a lot like my Mom's used to. She cooked it together and it had a consistency similar to gravy.

I liked it so well, I came home and cooked mush the next morning. We had it with sausage for today's lunch. No liverwurst in the house.

The fundraiser grossed about $11,000.00, having served over 760 people. The money goes to the Continuing Care Fund, which helps offset the $800,000.00 the Manor "wrote off" last year for the expense of caring for people who have outlived their financial resources.

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County-wide zoning is being proposed again for Reno County. Most rural residents would find this an inconvenience, at best. Enactment would almost certainly create more hoops to jump through for choosing where to build residences, and locate businesses and agricultural installations. The justification, of course, is that our country needs orderly growth, and this is the way to make sure it happens.

Vernon Miller plans to meet tomorrow with Dan Deming to discuss his (and presumably our) concerns.

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Hiromi gets a charge out of catching the eye of sober-faced children who come through his WalMart checkout line with their parents. He smiles at them, and they usually are caught off guard and crack a smile in return.

He's pretty sure they're trying to figure him out. At least they can add "friendly" to their list of conclusions after they've soberly considered the matter.

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Shane and Hiromi are making headway on renovating the kitchen and bathroom at the Trail West house. I'm pleased to see things improving.

Hiromi is not always impressed with my ideas for how things could be further improved. They have to do with "luxuries" like heating and ventilation for the bathroom, cooling for the entire house, and more natural light in the kitchen. His reflexive response is to promptly and patiently explain to me why my ideas wouldn't work. But then he often ends up making them work after all.

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Hiromi thinks Mara, the old ewe, will soon have a lamb. I'm not so sure that she's still capable of producing young, and I'm not seeing incontrovertible evidence that a birth is imminent. But I keep wishing she would produce at least one more ewe lamb that we could raise as a replacement when Mara retires.

I worried briefly about her the other night when the temps were dropping, with a fine mist, and Hiromi had reported that she didn't come to eat when he fed the sheep. That was very untypical, and I was afraid she would give birth outside the straw-bedded hutch, since the ram was almost certain to take up residence inside the hutch.

No need to worry, as it turned out.

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We had a very welcome teacher's work day on Friday. Students came to school to take tests, as needed, and to have choir. The rest of the day was ours to concentrate on getting grading done and grades figured for the quarter.

At the grade school, they've had to take more days off because of funerals, etc. and they didn't have the day off.

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Judith turned 60 today. Two weeks from now, she and Perry will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.

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Grant comes home around midnight on Tuesday night. I think it's a bummer that I have to leave early the next morning for staff meeting at school and then leave early again in the evening for church. I'm looking for a way to at least get a meal together that evening.

A large box of his belongings that he had shipped from Washington arrived last week.