Marvin and More
We here in Kansas have many Marvins in our lives. Paired with Miller, there's Jay's Marvin, Roman's Marvin, Jerry's Marvin, and Ervin's Marvin (born here, but now living elsewhere). In our church we also have Marvins with the surname of Nisly, Yutzy, and Mast. Cedar Crest has someone with the last name of Eash. Last Wednesday evening in church, we heard about another Marvin in our life. Hands of Christ Ministries (HOCM) has helped this Marvin with cleaning up his yard, and moving some dead appliances off the property.
My ears perked up when I heard about this Marvin last Wed. evening. Hiromi used to work under him when they were both working for an ambulance manufacturer. Marvin L. had just moved from California, and was adjusting to life in Kansas when Hiromi learned to know him. He soon came to trust Marvin as a person of integrity and kindness. These qualities were in short supply in some of the other individuals Hiromi encountered in that workplace, and Marvin's character shone brightly in a sometimes-dark work environment.
Hiromi has not kept in close contact with his former boss, Marvin, but he knew that he was dealing with some health problems. As I recall, HOCM learned of Marvin's need through a referral from the "Trashy Yards" department of the city of Hutchinson. It's likely that he was simply overwhelmed with keeping things up, given the limitations he experienced.
My heart was warmed to know that this old friend was benefiting from the kindness of our own church brothers and sisters who support HOCM financially by paying the salary of Paul, the member who coordinates the ministry, and the individuals who provide labor and expertise to meet people's practical needs.
************************
The black cat who's taken up residence here delivered a lesson to Brandi today, judging from the yelp that interrupted Brandi's excited barking. They were still facing off when Grant rushed out to investigate.
I think having dogs and cats coexist peaceably is a good thing, and the foundation for mutual respect is more solid if cats find an alternative to fleeing when they encounter a dog. A cat who stands its ground is no fun to chase, after all.
This black cat wears a collar, which is unusual for stray cats. She's not tame enough to make it possible to get close enough to examine the collar for help with identifying her owners. She apparently has kittens hidden somewhere--a factor that no doubt adds to her nervousness about having a dog on the premises.
**********************
Shane and Dorcas and the others in their entourage traveled to IN yesterday from VA. Tomorrow they plan to drive to KS from there.
Shane reports that Dorcas' mother really enjoyed the time with her family at home, but she did find it tiring, and will probably welcome the quiet now that half of her children have left. She spent a lot of time during the day lying on the couch and napping intermittently, and usually went to bed early.
*********************
Greg and Trish B. buried their stillborn son, Michael Gregory, this morning, after a memorial service at Arlington at 9:00. They expected his birth about a month from now, and realized quite recently that there was no longer movement or a heartbeat. He was their second son.
Trish is a close friend of Dorcas'. They grew up in the same community, and have kept up their friendship since they both married Kansas men.
Greg and Trish's baby's death is the third baby death among people close to Shane and/orDorcas--all in a time period of a little over a month. With Dorcas' mother's very serious illness also a reality to deal with, life offers some significant challenges at the moment.
********************
Fresh produce at the market yesterday included the following: lettuce, spinach, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, chard, beets, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, green onions, new potatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, and greenhouse tomatoes. I didn't see asparagus, but I assume someone might have offered it for sale. The season for that is nearly over.
Rosalyn was back (with David) helping in Roman's stall. They are here from Washington on a visit. They've been married almost a year. Roman's produce lasted past 9:00 this time.
It was windy yesterday, and my vase of flowers blew over three times--once landing on the floor. It didn't break, and the first two times I simply added more water and set it in place again. I gave up late in the morning and tucked it safely away in the "bags" tub.
Our lettuce and chard suffered considerably from the hail we had last week, and we took only a small amount of chard for the customer who always asks for it, and several tubs of lettuce from Shane's garden, where a great surplus has grown while they were gone. They apparently had no hail in Abbyville.
Donald's family had an impressive array of beautiful vegetables and starter plants in their booth on Saturday. If their operation continues to grow as it has so far, Roman may have fewer pangs of guilt if he feels the necessity of scaling back his operation in recognition of his diminished work family work force. With seven children between three and eighteen, Donald and Donna's work force has formidable potential for the next number of years.
********************
"Bill" made Hiromi's day yesterday. He is a potter Hiromi met at the Spring Art Fair. Somehow he learned that he has a doctorate in pottery (I didn't even know that was possible.) and teaches on the college level. Yesterday when Bill and his wife came by our market booth, Hiromi whipped out the picture he carries of a tea bowl with the kind of glaze he idealizes. It appears on a bowl made by a Raku master in Japan in the 1600's. Bill told Hiromi exactly what he needs to do to get the same effect in his own pottery--all in a few minute's time.
Meanwhile, the potter's wife was picking out some of our plants to take home. When she was ready to pay for them, Hiromi promptly made an executive decision to give them as a gift. "You've saved me so much time," he said. He has many time consuming experiments fresh in his mind, and even patient Hiromi was tiring of the failures (although to hear him tell of it, this process was elevated to almost saintly proportions: Thomas Edison and the light bulb, you know . . . who measured success by the hundreds of things he discovered that didn't work.)
While Hiromi and Bill were visiting, Bill's wife told me, "The students in my art classes have used your colored peppers for their still life paintings." I didn't recognize her, but I remembered that someone told us several times that she was buying our peppers for that purpose. She glanced at the sign for Shane's pork, and told me that she recently read a book she knows I would like: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
"Oh, I've read it, and I did like it," I said. That, and Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.
"I read that too," she answered. "Wasn't it wonderful?"
Hiromi grinned to himself at one bit of "wisdom" apparently perpetuated in pottery departments in American universities. Bill informed him that Raku pottery is a twentieth-century American invention.
Raku is, in fact, a Japanese family name. Many in this family were famous tea ceremony masters. They made tea bowls to be used in the tea ceremony. Their glazing and firing techniques were passed down within the family and not made public.
In the last few decades, American potters have experimented with a glazing/firing method which is, in some ways reminiscent of Japanese Raku. This usually involves using metallic glazes and clay that is very resistant to breakage with sudden temperature changes. It's fired to about 1500 (?) degrees and then removed from the kiln while still red hot, and then either buried in sawdust or dry leaves in a non-flammable container. The container is covered to smother the resulting fire, to allow smoke to darken the crackle lines that form in the glaze. Or it may be plunged into water to create an unsmoked crackle effect. Hiromi and I did Raku glazing like this in a pottery class we both took soon after we got married.
Traditional Japanese Raku did not use metallic glazes or sudden temperature changes to initiate crackling. The effects were achieved partly with smoke, however.
Bill can be forgiven for thinking of Raku as a recent American invention, but he's only partly right.
********************
Tim Z . . r also came by our booth yesterday. Hiromi had met him at Wal-Mart when he checked out through his line. He was buying fresh sweet peppers and bemoaning the hefty price tag. Hiromi suggested that he visit the Farmer's Market and start buying locally grown vegetables as they become available during the season, or better yet, grow his own peppers, and dice and freeze them when they're plentiful during the summer.
So Tim followed through, and Hiromi introduced us to each other. Tim informed me that he grew up in the Kitchener/Waterloo area of Ontario. He lives in the Inman area now.
"When I met Hiromi, I wondered if he wasn't a Japanese Amish man," he told me. (I suppose his suspicions were confirmed without his having to ask--after he met me.) "You've got a good man there," he continued.
I had a feeling we could have gone further in playing the Mennonite game, if time and inclination had prompted that to happen. Hiromi had no idea, when he talked to him, that he had any Mennonite associations. Even "Kitchener/Waterloo" would have rung no bells with him, as they did for me. Tim was very cordial, and obviously quite knowledgeable about growing food.
*********************
Another pork vendor at market was selling sausage for $5.99/lb. That made Shane's sausage price look like a fire sale price. The other vendor was a very eager salesman, accosting passersby regularly with offers of a sample, and he sold a lot of sausage. Shane's sausage sales were flat, but other cuts were popular. Ham steaks especially sold well. I think the sausage sales will pick up too when people develop some sales resistance to the in-your-face sales approach, and think to compare prices.
One persistent inquirer will be glad to know that the smoke flavor in Shane's pork does not come from liquid meat smoke, but from the use of hickory wood chips in a smoke house. He doesn't like the artificial stuff, he told me.
*********************
Lowell told me last week that he thinks there will be a wheat crop of sorts this year, after all. The unusually cool weather this spring put fewer moisture demands on the wheat than hot, windy weather would have done, and, where there was little added moisture stress during sprouting and from double-cropping, the crop has done better than expected. This week's rain no doubt helped. There's a reason wheat is the most reliable crop in Kansas.
*********************
In bloom in the Illinois Ave. roadside ditch: Winecup (aka Purple Poppy Mallow), White Yarrow, Wild Four 0'Clock, Wild Salsify, clover, alfalfa, Daisy Fleabane. The Wild Barley is in its beautiful, ever-so-silky stage.
**********************
Harold N. has a diagnosis of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It's a tick-borne disease, and has occurred several times locally of late, according to health care professionals. He's home from the hospital, as of Friday, but is still quite weak.
**********************
After suffering intense pain, Uncle Fred had surgery this week for a perforated ulcer. His gall bladder was removed too. Yesterday he was still in ICU.
**********************
Ervin Miller is in the skilled nursing section of the hospital and expects to enter rehab soon.
**********************
Two family reunions are in progress here this weekend--the Melvin and Lydia Yoder family, and the William and Elizabeth Hershberger family.
**********************
Charity H. found the "state boards" a fairly grueling followup to having completed classes for RN training. She took the exam in Wichita last week.
**********************
Plans are in place for a new aspect of our association with the Zion church in Thomas, OK. Once a month one of our ministers has been traveling there to preach. A team of ministers also visits occasionally. The new venture will have lay brethren going once a month, in addition to what is already being done now. One lay brother from here will speak in the Sunday morning church service, and if two from here are present, another will likely lead the devotional. Lorne K. will speak there in two weeks. Those from the small OK congregation seem to welcome this development.
My ears perked up when I heard about this Marvin last Wed. evening. Hiromi used to work under him when they were both working for an ambulance manufacturer. Marvin L. had just moved from California, and was adjusting to life in Kansas when Hiromi learned to know him. He soon came to trust Marvin as a person of integrity and kindness. These qualities were in short supply in some of the other individuals Hiromi encountered in that workplace, and Marvin's character shone brightly in a sometimes-dark work environment.
Hiromi has not kept in close contact with his former boss, Marvin, but he knew that he was dealing with some health problems. As I recall, HOCM learned of Marvin's need through a referral from the "Trashy Yards" department of the city of Hutchinson. It's likely that he was simply overwhelmed with keeping things up, given the limitations he experienced.
My heart was warmed to know that this old friend was benefiting from the kindness of our own church brothers and sisters who support HOCM financially by paying the salary of Paul, the member who coordinates the ministry, and the individuals who provide labor and expertise to meet people's practical needs.
************************
The black cat who's taken up residence here delivered a lesson to Brandi today, judging from the yelp that interrupted Brandi's excited barking. They were still facing off when Grant rushed out to investigate.
I think having dogs and cats coexist peaceably is a good thing, and the foundation for mutual respect is more solid if cats find an alternative to fleeing when they encounter a dog. A cat who stands its ground is no fun to chase, after all.
This black cat wears a collar, which is unusual for stray cats. She's not tame enough to make it possible to get close enough to examine the collar for help with identifying her owners. She apparently has kittens hidden somewhere--a factor that no doubt adds to her nervousness about having a dog on the premises.
**********************
Shane and Dorcas and the others in their entourage traveled to IN yesterday from VA. Tomorrow they plan to drive to KS from there.
Shane reports that Dorcas' mother really enjoyed the time with her family at home, but she did find it tiring, and will probably welcome the quiet now that half of her children have left. She spent a lot of time during the day lying on the couch and napping intermittently, and usually went to bed early.
*********************
Greg and Trish B. buried their stillborn son, Michael Gregory, this morning, after a memorial service at Arlington at 9:00. They expected his birth about a month from now, and realized quite recently that there was no longer movement or a heartbeat. He was their second son.
Trish is a close friend of Dorcas'. They grew up in the same community, and have kept up their friendship since they both married Kansas men.
Greg and Trish's baby's death is the third baby death among people close to Shane and/orDorcas--all in a time period of a little over a month. With Dorcas' mother's very serious illness also a reality to deal with, life offers some significant challenges at the moment.
********************
Fresh produce at the market yesterday included the following: lettuce, spinach, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, chard, beets, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, green onions, new potatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, and greenhouse tomatoes. I didn't see asparagus, but I assume someone might have offered it for sale. The season for that is nearly over.
Rosalyn was back (with David) helping in Roman's stall. They are here from Washington on a visit. They've been married almost a year. Roman's produce lasted past 9:00 this time.
It was windy yesterday, and my vase of flowers blew over three times--once landing on the floor. It didn't break, and the first two times I simply added more water and set it in place again. I gave up late in the morning and tucked it safely away in the "bags" tub.
Our lettuce and chard suffered considerably from the hail we had last week, and we took only a small amount of chard for the customer who always asks for it, and several tubs of lettuce from Shane's garden, where a great surplus has grown while they were gone. They apparently had no hail in Abbyville.
Donald's family had an impressive array of beautiful vegetables and starter plants in their booth on Saturday. If their operation continues to grow as it has so far, Roman may have fewer pangs of guilt if he feels the necessity of scaling back his operation in recognition of his diminished work family work force. With seven children between three and eighteen, Donald and Donna's work force has formidable potential for the next number of years.
********************
"Bill" made Hiromi's day yesterday. He is a potter Hiromi met at the Spring Art Fair. Somehow he learned that he has a doctorate in pottery (I didn't even know that was possible.) and teaches on the college level. Yesterday when Bill and his wife came by our market booth, Hiromi whipped out the picture he carries of a tea bowl with the kind of glaze he idealizes. It appears on a bowl made by a Raku master in Japan in the 1600's. Bill told Hiromi exactly what he needs to do to get the same effect in his own pottery--all in a few minute's time.
Meanwhile, the potter's wife was picking out some of our plants to take home. When she was ready to pay for them, Hiromi promptly made an executive decision to give them as a gift. "You've saved me so much time," he said. He has many time consuming experiments fresh in his mind, and even patient Hiromi was tiring of the failures (although to hear him tell of it, this process was elevated to almost saintly proportions: Thomas Edison and the light bulb, you know . . . who measured success by the hundreds of things he discovered that didn't work.)
While Hiromi and Bill were visiting, Bill's wife told me, "The students in my art classes have used your colored peppers for their still life paintings." I didn't recognize her, but I remembered that someone told us several times that she was buying our peppers for that purpose. She glanced at the sign for Shane's pork, and told me that she recently read a book she knows I would like: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
"Oh, I've read it, and I did like it," I said. That, and Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.
"I read that too," she answered. "Wasn't it wonderful?"
Hiromi grinned to himself at one bit of "wisdom" apparently perpetuated in pottery departments in American universities. Bill informed him that Raku pottery is a twentieth-century American invention.
Raku is, in fact, a Japanese family name. Many in this family were famous tea ceremony masters. They made tea bowls to be used in the tea ceremony. Their glazing and firing techniques were passed down within the family and not made public.
In the last few decades, American potters have experimented with a glazing/firing method which is, in some ways reminiscent of Japanese Raku. This usually involves using metallic glazes and clay that is very resistant to breakage with sudden temperature changes. It's fired to about 1500 (?) degrees and then removed from the kiln while still red hot, and then either buried in sawdust or dry leaves in a non-flammable container. The container is covered to smother the resulting fire, to allow smoke to darken the crackle lines that form in the glaze. Or it may be plunged into water to create an unsmoked crackle effect. Hiromi and I did Raku glazing like this in a pottery class we both took soon after we got married.
Traditional Japanese Raku did not use metallic glazes or sudden temperature changes to initiate crackling. The effects were achieved partly with smoke, however.
Bill can be forgiven for thinking of Raku as a recent American invention, but he's only partly right.
********************
Tim Z . . r also came by our booth yesterday. Hiromi had met him at Wal-Mart when he checked out through his line. He was buying fresh sweet peppers and bemoaning the hefty price tag. Hiromi suggested that he visit the Farmer's Market and start buying locally grown vegetables as they become available during the season, or better yet, grow his own peppers, and dice and freeze them when they're plentiful during the summer.
So Tim followed through, and Hiromi introduced us to each other. Tim informed me that he grew up in the Kitchener/Waterloo area of Ontario. He lives in the Inman area now.
"When I met Hiromi, I wondered if he wasn't a Japanese Amish man," he told me. (I suppose his suspicions were confirmed without his having to ask--after he met me.) "You've got a good man there," he continued.
I had a feeling we could have gone further in playing the Mennonite game, if time and inclination had prompted that to happen. Hiromi had no idea, when he talked to him, that he had any Mennonite associations. Even "Kitchener/Waterloo" would have rung no bells with him, as they did for me. Tim was very cordial, and obviously quite knowledgeable about growing food.
*********************
Another pork vendor at market was selling sausage for $5.99/lb. That made Shane's sausage price look like a fire sale price. The other vendor was a very eager salesman, accosting passersby regularly with offers of a sample, and he sold a lot of sausage. Shane's sausage sales were flat, but other cuts were popular. Ham steaks especially sold well. I think the sausage sales will pick up too when people develop some sales resistance to the in-your-face sales approach, and think to compare prices.
One persistent inquirer will be glad to know that the smoke flavor in Shane's pork does not come from liquid meat smoke, but from the use of hickory wood chips in a smoke house. He doesn't like the artificial stuff, he told me.
*********************
Lowell told me last week that he thinks there will be a wheat crop of sorts this year, after all. The unusually cool weather this spring put fewer moisture demands on the wheat than hot, windy weather would have done, and, where there was little added moisture stress during sprouting and from double-cropping, the crop has done better than expected. This week's rain no doubt helped. There's a reason wheat is the most reliable crop in Kansas.
*********************
In bloom in the Illinois Ave. roadside ditch: Winecup (aka Purple Poppy Mallow), White Yarrow, Wild Four 0'Clock, Wild Salsify, clover, alfalfa, Daisy Fleabane. The Wild Barley is in its beautiful, ever-so-silky stage.
**********************
Harold N. has a diagnosis of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It's a tick-borne disease, and has occurred several times locally of late, according to health care professionals. He's home from the hospital, as of Friday, but is still quite weak.
**********************
After suffering intense pain, Uncle Fred had surgery this week for a perforated ulcer. His gall bladder was removed too. Yesterday he was still in ICU.
**********************
Ervin Miller is in the skilled nursing section of the hospital and expects to enter rehab soon.
**********************
Two family reunions are in progress here this weekend--the Melvin and Lydia Yoder family, and the William and Elizabeth Hershberger family.
**********************
Charity H. found the "state boards" a fairly grueling followup to having completed classes for RN training. She took the exam in Wichita last week.
**********************
Plans are in place for a new aspect of our association with the Zion church in Thomas, OK. Once a month one of our ministers has been traveling there to preach. A team of ministers also visits occasionally. The new venture will have lay brethren going once a month, in addition to what is already being done now. One lay brother from here will speak in the Sunday morning church service, and if two from here are present, another will likely lead the devotional. Lorne K. will speak there in two weeks. Those from the small OK congregation seem to welcome this development.
posted by Mrs. I at
3:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home