The Voice of Experience

In the past, I have advocated constructing a greenhouse-type structure if an indoor play space for school children must be built.  Today, in an expeditious email exchange with Paul and Dorcas Smucker from Oregon, I heard first hand how a similar structure works for them.  Paul is a Christian school principal.

Here's a record of the exchange:

First, my note to Dorcas, whose email address I already had:

Dorcas,

I once saw a "flood" picture taken inside a structure at your school.  It looked like a greenhouse, which I assume was being used as a gym.  I'd like some information about that structure and its use.  I'll try to make it as easy for you to respond as possible. I'm fine if someone else responds, as a result of your forwarding the email, for example.

Questions:

Can the structure be used for basketball?

Volleyball?

Size of the floor area (concrete, I assume)?

Type of overhead structure?  If this were a wood structure, we'd specify whether it was trusses or rafters, and if trusses, what shape?  That's what I'm interested in here.  If you know the name of the type, that's what I'd like.

Height at the tallest point?

Sidewalls?

Glazing material?

Provisions for heating and ventilation?

Cost of structure (perhaps minus the concrete)?

How satisfactory is this structure for school purposes?

Limitations?

Other comments?

I need some hard data, and didn't know of anyone else who has actually used a greenhouse as a gym.  We have many people who can tell us all about greenhouses (There are about 50 of them across the fence and across the road from the school building we just purchased.), but your input would provide a unique angle.

Thanks.

Miriam Iwashige

Dorcas' Response:

Miriam--
Gotta say, I don't wake up to these questions every morning!  But I don't mind at all.
I don't know that our "Play shelter" was ever seen as a greenhouse before but I see the similarities.
I'll tell you a bit of what I know and then I'll forward this on.
Back in the day, we went back and forth about a gym because with over 40 students and lots of rainy days we needed a place for them to play.  But a gym quickly involves restrooms, a sprinkler system, and much more.  And it quickly becomes a possible reception hall which necessitates a kitchen.
I don't remember where we got the idea for the current structure, but it's worked well.  It has a curved metal framework with a special canvas over it, so it looks like a huge covered wagon.
Yes, they can play basketball in it, or two volleyball games at once.
There are no restrooms, heating, A/C, drinking fountains, etc.  It's just a shelter.
But what it does, it does well.
And with that I will sign off and let Paul take over.
Dorcas

Next, Paul's response:

Miriam,

I will try to answer your questions.
The basic structure is metal curved trusses that are covered by heavy tarp material which is winched tightly over the trusses.  The entire roof and walls which is actually all part of a curved roof is the tarp material.  There are several different companies that sell a variety of sizes of these structures to farmers.  (Google "tarp buildings" to find out what is available) It is far cheaper to build than a standard building.  The size of ours is 66x100.  It has a full sized basketball court.  It is set up for a volleyball court going the same way as the basketball court and then you can change the nets and have two different volleyball courts side by side going the other way.

The floor is concrete and and the long sides have 3 ft high concrete walls which the metal trusses are attached to.  As I recall the building was in the $35,000 range and the excavation/preparation/concrete/doors/electrical were an additional $30,000.

The height at the tallest point is around 25 feet and the one we have is easily high enough for basketball and volleyball.

We put lighting in the structure, but do not use it during the day because enough light comes through the tarp.  It is not heated. There is no way to insulate it because the only barrier to the outside temperature is the tarp.  I don't know if you can get an insulated tarp.  In our climate we may decide to heat it some time, but we don't get nearly as cold as the midwest.

It has worked very well for us.  It works like an unheated gym, but was not nearly as expensive and gives a large area to play out of the rain.

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Dorcas also attached two pictures, which I will post as soon as I figure out how to do so.

My comment:

With a more translucent cover than the Oregon school has,  I'm confident that in Kansas solar heating would make this a comfortable place to play during the colder months of the school year, unless, of course, the day happened not to be one of the 65 out of every hundred sunny days that make up our average weather.  A heater like the one presently used in our shop building at school could warm up the space on the few cloudy days when it might be needed.  

Play Structure Interior

A number of weeks ago I promised to post pictures of the play structure in use in a Christian School in Oregon as soon as I figure out how to do it.  Tonight I figured out how to do one picture.  The other may follow soon, or not . . .  This picture is obviously taken in the interior of the structure.  Note the comparative size of the walk-in door in the lower right area of the end wall.  The volleyball net also provides perspective.  Two volleyball games can be played simultaneously.  In this 66 x 100 foot structure, natural lighting is all that's needed during the day, even in rainy Oregon.  At its highest point, it's 25 feet tall.  The finished structure cost about $65,000.00, and those who use it report that it works very well for their purposes.  See this earlier blog post for more details.

Guest Post--Comment on Previous Posts

The guest post here was written as a comment on the previous post titled confusingly "Comments on Previous Post."  The original post that triggered these comments was "Local Option Budget."

Guest Post:

I was surprised to read in the handout that "PCHS representatives favor using the current learning center (former auditorium) for the High School Learning Center", and "That other possible locations considered for the learning center are space restrictive or inconveniently located.".  That wasn't my impression from interactions with PCHS staff.  And now I hear you mention the same.  I feel confused by that.

I am highlighting one of your paragraphs, with the intent of endorsing it fully:  The "auditorium function seems to me to have very limited usefulness for the school.  It could actually result in some inconvenience for the school, given the likelihood that school personnel would likely become de facto custodians of the space, and that some non-school events would be planned during the school year."  You said it well.  No one on staff has a vision to become the de facto custodians.

I also agree with the other commenter who said it is fair to consider the merits of a large facility to host other events.  I too would plead to look at these things as two separate issues (and buildings -- in separate locations if it comes to that)!  I am increasingly uncomfortable with combining the two.  It seems to me that the first question to be answered is, “Where will the high school learning center be?”  If the high school ends up using the current "gym" as their learning center, we almost have to do (build) something for indoor play space.   If, however, we could accommodate the learning center in the way/location I thought was discussed previously and found acceptable to PCHS, then the old “gym” is available to renovate for indoor play.  That would significantly increase the indoor play space and I for one would be highly pleased with what that would offer.  There is a nice sized slab on the outside for basketball and volleyball.  Also, from what I understand, raising the ceiling in the old “gym” would accommodate some volleyball/basketball inside too, howbeit not in grandeur fashion.  I'm not convinced yet that there needs to be a gym built for school . . .

While some play space is necessary, I think we would all agree it is not THE primary purpose/goal in choosing to have our own school.  We certainly don't see ourselves as going the route of public schools who spend huge bucks to make play area/sports a priority.  So I end up calling the “play area need” a peripheral need.  And I don't understand  how spending so much for an aspect not of primary importance fits the Pilgrim Christian School stated mission.  It seems to me it could even (especially depending what we end up with) be counter-productive to the goal of shaping hearts and lives for the Kingdom.  At the same time I ponder the fact that how we as a community work together with each adding his portion to the pot of ideas and then submitting to each other in love may have an equal or greater impact than the final decision on building – elaborate, sufficient, two or one or none -- would have.  

One thing I questioned was the slight implication that we could continue to do (grade school) programs at the church.  The way the grade school operates, doing their programs at a location other than the school facility would be highly inconvenient.  BUT, I hurry to add, I fail to see  why we couldn't very easily continue doing programs as we do now -- two presentations in an auditorium accommodating 400 people would surely be very sufficient.  That's clearly more space than we have now.  And inviting people to watch the dress rehearsal (as we have done for years, and doubling it as counting for a program presentation) from my perspective is no problem.  Truly.

Betty Yoder

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At Betty's invitation, I am adding a comment on the last paragraph.  I acknowledge that the transportation of students is a far greater challenge for grade schoolers than high schoolers, because grade schoolers can't drive, and we don't have school buses.  So I can easily see why practicing for presentations in a different facility would be somewhat complicated for them.  Betty thought through more carefully than I did how having the old gym as the auditorium could work perfectly for grade school purposes.  I completely agree.  I'm guessing she would also agree that any auditorium location within easy walking distance for the students would not present any transporting-students complications.

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On Betty's information about the outdoor slab--I didn't remember this detail.  But of course  . . . !  That's all the basketball/volleyball space that Pleasantview Academy has ever had since the old gym was made into a learning center.  Ponder that:  a public school made do (for how many years?) with only an outdoor slab.  I wonder how that was possible.

One statement in the handout that seems unwarranted is this statement following an "if" clause about using the old gym as a learning center:  "we will need to use smaller rooms for indoor exercise or build a new auditorium that can double as an indoor play area."  Those two options are far from the only two options, and I'm disappointed that it was presented that way.  Indoor play area does not automatically mean the same thing as auditorium.  A bare bones $65,000 covered play structure would more than adequately meet the need for play space, but it would not be an auditorium.

On raising the ceiling in the gym to make some playing of basketball and volleyball possible--I remember hearing that too from someone who had toured the building, but the handout did not reflect that.  Yet, this statement appeared (about the ceiling in the old gym):  ". . . we believe the ceiling can be raised a number of feet for greater clearance (although not to its original 16' height because of the installation of heating and air conditioning ducts.)  I'm not sure what "a number of feet" means, but surely more than 2'. (I had not taken note of these height details in the handout earlier.) If the ceiling height could be 14 ft. everywhere and 16 ft. in the main part of the room, I would see that as being workable for basketball at least.  If the duct work is around the edges and in the corners--or if it could be rerouted to run there, the ball should never be flying high in those places anyway.

A crucial understanding in this "ceiling height" discussion is that lowering the ceiling to 10 ft. for Pleasantview Academy's learning center likely had far more to do with creating an efficient heating and cooling space, and creating a cozier learning environment than it had to do with being necessary because of the presence of duct work--although that entered in, to some degree at least.
 

Outside of Play Structure

I may be on a roll here.  Success twice in a row with posting pictures almost makes up for failure dozens of times in a row earlier.

This is obviously the outside of the play structure.  See the previous post for an interior view, and see this post from several weeks ago to hear what those who use it say about it.

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If a covered play area is what we want, I think we need look no further.

Location, Location, Location

In the real estate trade, the three most important factors in determining a home's value are encapsulated in the hackneyed phrase:  location, location, location.  After last night's meeting, I'm pondering whether that is true of a school's value as well.  We're still talking about building a school, and had a meeting to discuss possible locations.

The presenting committee did a good job of explaining the maps of the two tracts that are being considered as a site, and telling the back story of regulations and challenges affecting the use of those sites.  They also made an effort to "stuff" their biases--successfully, most of the time, in my estimation.  I especially appreciated the explanation of why the location discussion has been reopened.

Both sites are ten acres in size, and both are available either because of having been purchased with donated money--from Bud Helmuth's estate--or by outright donation of land.  Both are situated on the east side of north-south roads, roughly 2-3 miles apart.  Both are carved out of the NW corner of a larger tract.  One is on a dirt road 1/8 mile off US50/K61 and two adjacent railroads, and the other is on a paved road between US50 and K61 in a spot where they are separated by about a mile. At this site the railroads are 1/2 mile south.

One site is "flat as a pancake" and is in the NW corner of what is currently a wheat field, but still needs $37,000 of dirt work to be readied for a school site.  It has a one foot elevation variation within the site.  A residence is located to the north, and a huge complex of greenhouses partially wraps around the tract on the east. Across the road is a charter school in the Haven district--formerly Elreka School.  One feature of this site is the presence of an underground high-pressure gas line crossing the property.  This is the Dean Road or the Pleasantview site.

The other site has a "blue line" running across it, roughly at the center of a rectangular tract with a short end bordering the road.  By definition, a blue line is a waterway that is dry 99% of the time.  It's currently part of 80 acres of CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) land, which means that it was enrolled in a government land conservation program that paid farmers to take highly erodible land out of production by planting it to native grasses.  That site would need $87,000 worth of dirt work, according to one quote.  The site includes an eight foot elevation variation from the highest point to the lowest point.  A very small irregularly-shaped "patch" along one side is in the flood plain.  There are no regulatory barriers to installing a culvert across the blue line.  To the south is a set of farm buildings, but it is no longer a working farm.  To the north is a tilled field.  A public grade school in the Haven district is located one-half mile away, in the town of Partridge.  This is the Moyer or the Mast site.

I prayed for the meeting at various times during the day yesterday.  Some time during the day I recalled a picture I had seen during a time when flooding was threatening a Mennonite school in Oregon.  From the picture, I understood what this school must have done--erected a greenhouse-like structure to be used as a gym.  That idea struck fire with me as a possible option for us, if a gym is determined to be necessary.  

I get a fat catalog and many smaller catalogs every year from Grower's Supply.  Farm Tek carries many of the same products and the two business names are either actually under the same ownership or are closely associated in some other way.  In those catalogs I've seen a lot of creative uses for greenhouse-like structures.  Some are glazed with semi-rigid  materials and others with flexible material.  The semi-rigid glazing is more durable and more expensive.  The flexible plastic is assumed to need replacing after a certain number of years because of deterioration from ultraviolet rays. Sometimes the ends are closed in with wood or metal, to allow for more substantial framing for entry doors, ventilation fans, etc.

What do I know about greenhouses?

--My grandmother's funeral was inside a greenhouse, in December, in Iowa.  The only uncomfortable thing about that situation was the backless benches we sat on.

--I worked in a greenhouse business for several seasons.  It was always bright and comfortable there, even on cold, cloudy days.  In both of the above cases, the temperatures were routinely kept comfortable for plants, and thus were comfortable for people as well.

--We have a small freestanding 10 x 10 "plastic" greenhouse now, and earlier, at the Trail West place, we built a larger (12 x 30?) greenhouse as a lean-to on the front of a shed-roof structure.  The roof was made of Lexan, a semi-rigid material, and the sides were mostly made of recycled windows.  While we lived elsewhere the sides have fallen into disrepair, but the roof is still in reasonably good shape.

--In years past, I've spent a lot of time poring over a Stuppy catalog--a commercial greenhouse supplier out of Kansas City.  In short, I was very familiar at that time with what is available in the trade.  Purchasing one of their buildings was always too much money for us to spend, though.  The Grower's Supply and Farm Tek catalogs have offerings similar to Stuppy, but feature more diversity in materials and applications for the structures.

--A cutflower grower from Oklahoma loves her Atlas greenhouses, which she selected specifically because of their solid construction, and thus more ideal for withstanding the winds at her site.  She built the first greenhouse herself, with help from another greenhouse owner from Texas.  I heard her speak on the subject.

There's definitely a lot I don't know about greenhouses, but what I do know factors into my interest in pursuing this as a "gym" possibility.  Here are some of the reasons why I'm interested:

--Construction costs would be far less than a more traditional structure made of wood or metal.

--Construction could utilize volunteer labor.

--High clearance (for playing volleyball, etc.) can be obtained with far less structural strength and materials cost than is necessary for heavier construction.

--If the structure were not needed at some point in the future, it could be dismantled, moved elsewhere, and re-purposed.

--It would always be light and bright during the school day.

--On sunny days, the solar heat gain would make supplemental heating unnecessary.  Kansas typically has sunny winters.  I like how this would let us take full advantage of one of our geographic location's good features, at little or very reasonable cost. The school year also coincides very neatly with the time of year in which solar heat gain is most needed and appreciated.

--The gym's use would be self-limiting in that on the warmest days, it would be too hot to be inviting.  Those are the times when children should play outside anyway.  (I've been told that the grade school teachers are not proponents of building a gym because they want the default recess activity to be outside play.)

--Bringing in outside air is a given in a greenhouse because of the necessity for cooling, even on cold days, if it's sunny outside.  I like how much more fresh air this would provide for exercising students than merely walking down the hall to a space within a traditional building structure.

--I assume that a "greenhouse gym" would be constructed on a concrete pad.  If needed, the pad could be constructed in such a way that it would also accommodate a more traditional building in the future.  While I don't see floor heating as being very necessary for a greenhouse gym, the tubing needed for floor heat could be installed with an eye to the future.  The concrete mass serves as a huge heat sink during the day and keeps the temperature from dropping precipitously at night.

--Some gatherings could happen inside a greenhouse.  School programs in the evening might be a bit of a stretch, but smaller events during the day could quite easily be accommodated.

--A greenhouse gym could provide an indoor walking space for adults.  That would be true, of course, for any gym, but allowing free access to a structure outside the main school building would be less problematic than to do so in a gym enclosed within a classroom building.

--Playing noises would be more isolated in a structure not inside a classroom building.  

--It would avoid massive "overbuild," which is a concern I've heard repeatedly from people who are thoughtful about matters of stewardship and the real and "image" hazards of affluence.

--In either location, a greenhouse would fit with one of the principles that architects (at least the ones I celebrate) routinely consider:   fitting the building to the site.  Wind and sun issues would be similar in both places.  In the Pleasantview site, this structure would be exactly like many nearby structures.  In the Mast  location, its image as an agricultural endeavor would fit in with the purposes of all the land around it.

I'll write more later about thoughts triggered during the meeting.

Local Matter

Not everybody appreciates seeing local matters discussed where others can look in.  I figure that if we don't have anything to hide, it probably doesn't matter if others look in.  My hope always is that we can learn from others' experience and they can learn from ours.

I hardly know why I'm thinking about this again, because I certainly haven't been hearing much about it from others or talking to others about it recently, but thinking about it kept me from being able to sleep today when I tried to take a nap.  I do think about the matter briefly every time I go down my daily prayer list.

I don't know that Melvin H. N. wants any pity, but I keep thinking that he should not have to give up any farm land so that a gym/community building can be constructed adjacent to the old Elreka grounds.  Trying to sort out the reasons for that feeling of mine is what occupied  my thinking today.  Here's some of what I came up with.

1.  Melvin's farming year-round just might be as important as children's playing in a luxurious building several times a day during part of the school year.  I'm using the word luxurious as the opposite of minimalist or utilitarian.

2.  Basketball and volleyball might not be the only satisfactory ways to occupy children during playtime.  Most other indoor activities would not require a high ceiling, and an existing indoor space could be used for those.  The other high schools I am familiar with do not include playtime in their day as our high school does.  How has this taken on the status of an "inalienable right?"

3.  Anyone who is older than I and who grew up here went to school without a gym during at least some of their school years.  I think those people generally turned out pretty well, even with this great deprivation in their childhood.

4.  Approximately half of the children in Pilgrim's sponsoring churches regularly and happily have school without a gym--and perhaps without any playtime scheduled during school hours.  They get some of their exercise from working at home.

5.  For 35 years, Pilgrim High School has operated without a gym (unless you call the shop a gym), and Pilgrim Grade is in their second decade of having done so.  Again, it's hard to see this as having caused anything worse than occasional inconvenience.

6.  Children would play just as happily in a utilitarian space as in a "Cadillac" of a structure.  Every single educational benefit for recreation could just as easily be met in a utilitarian space as in a more costly structure.

7.  Making a gym a dual purpose space complicates everything, if its other purpose is a community building.  The likely result is an over-equipped gym, or an under-equipped community building, and it will be expensive to build and maintain if both functions are planned for.  If we need a gym, we need a just-right gym--not an over-equipped, over-priced one.  If a gym is used as a community building, we'll be right back to where we are now--having to juggle the school space and schedule with other community events.

8.  I'm in favor of throttling back sports-madness, not encouraging it.  Exactly how having a gym would affect this equation is not easy to quantify, but I think it's safe to say that the greater the variety of playtime activities, the less likelihood there is of fixating on any one of them and becoming overly preoccupied with it.  I read through Pilgrim's purpose statement recently and saw no mention of sports anywhere that I recall.  Certainly, preparing students for playing sports professionally is not part of the goal statement.  We may just be making a much bigger deal of providing for playing basketball and volleyball than is warranted.

9.    The old Elreka property has enough parking space now for school use, but not enough for parking big crowds--unless people do as they used to do, park along both sides of the road for special events.  As it is now, the size of the property is just-right for a school--and not much more.

10.  I'm in favor of minimizing expenses.

Here are some of the alternatives I see that would let Melvin keep his land.

1.  Use the existing "old gym" for a play space and provide for volleyball and basketball outside.

2.  Find space within the existing school property footprint for a minimalist gym--which I believe would meet the "just-right" criterion.  I don't understand what keeps us from at least investigating such an option.  Look here for several pictures and posts in a row that give more details, including the words of a very satisfied Christian school principal who has a number of years of experience with such a minimalist structure.*

3.  If a community building must be built, put it across the road (where we also own land) and build it right for that purpose  at a later time, and let approval and funds for it be established on its own merits rather than having it piggyback on school needs and perhaps even co-opt them.

4.  In general, solidly orient our practices according to Pilgrim priorities. 

If any alternatives to a "Cadillac" and purchasing land from Melvin are being considered, I have not heard about them.  I would be reassured if I did.

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*One factor that is different in their Oregon climate is that they have lots of cool, rainy weather during the school year, and we have more dry, sunny weather--some of it warm and some of it quite cold.  I'm not sure how much solar heat gain is possible in this structure because I don't know how translucent the covering is.  Paul S. did say they don't need lights during the day so I presume that there is light penetration and there would also be solar heating occurring--much more of that here than in Oregon because we have more sunshine.    With a concrete floor as a heat sink--absorbing heat during the day and releasing it at night, the temperature could likely stay fairly moderate on most days during the school year.  If it were too warm to play in the gym, playing outside instead would likely work well on those days.  Putting heat in the floor would be another option, but would also add to the expense.

Pharoahs and Cliff Dwellings

I hung out at my brother Lowell's family's house today where a crew of church people were working together to frame an addition to their house. Using this term seems like a misnomer since the addition dwarfs the original house.

Several boys near Joey's age accompanied their dad to the work day, occupying themselves with whatever 10-year-olds and younger boys find to do on days like this. I don't know who all gets the credit for this, but about halfway up one side of one of the huge dirt piles from the basement excavation, a village of miniature cliff dwellings emerged. They were charming little structures built into the face of the "mountain," laid up with little adobe bricks, and roofed with tiny slabs of wood covered with more dirt. Doors and windows created openings into the dark interior.

In their digging, they discovered a mud turtle, which they transported to a safer location. They returned from that relocation foray with mud up to their shoulders--a result of having tried to reach a crayfish whose "chimney" they spied.

Hannah told me later about "Pharoah," a figure cut out of a piece of scrap wood. Someone painted a face for Pharoah, and Joey buried him in a pyramid--in a secret chamber. Pharoah was discovered by archeologists many times and re-buried each time in a new pyramid. But poor Pharoah is lost now, apparently permanently interred under the fill dirt that raised the grade around the new structure.

Several days ago, our local newspaper carried news about a new kind of play area being built at the Dillon Nature Center. In this area, children will be able to play in dirt, sand, and water. Picture that. It's being carefully designed by someone hired from another state. I don't begrudge children being able to play in that place, but I'm glad that not every child has to go to such a park to play imaginatively.

When adults work at something worthwhile and allow children to work or play alongside them, many wonderful opportunities develop naturally, especially in an outdoor setting. I can't imagine a more charmed and blessed childhood than this kind of childhood.

Early Education and Second-Guessing

Here is an article on the benefits of delayed entry into formal school settings.  It's written to a British audience and recommends that formal schooling for children begin at about age seven instead of age four as is the current practice in England.  What it says about the benefits of play-based learning before then caught my eye.  The author of the article is David Whitehead, a Cambridge researcher from the Faculty of Education.

The author was part of a group that compiled research from the fields of anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and education to reach the conclusion Whitehead wrote about.  Research in the field of neuroscience has revealed that play-based learning increases the growth of synapses in the frontal cortex of the brain, the area "responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions."  (Increased synapse growth means brain growth.)

Research of another kind showed that by age 11, no difference existed between the reading ability of children who learned to read sooner rather than later (age 5 or 7).  The difference that was documented was that the early readers enjoyed reading less than the late learners of reading.  The early readers also showed less comprehension of what they read.

As I read the article I hoped it was as clear as it needed to be that the problem with early reading is not reading, per se.  It is early formal education that limits play opportunities.  The first commenter articulated the same sentiments in this comment:

Louisa Southey • 9 months ago

When you home educate you realise that formal learning and learning through play are irrelevant terms. Children learn continuously in a multitude of ways, sometimes as a result of games they play and sometimes with direct relavence to their everyday lives. Formal learning is done to control children in a classroom setting and has nothing to do with what is best for the child.

The findings in the above article fit nicely with one piece of Peter Gray's work that was the subject of several earlier posts.

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On a very different topic, several times recently when I have tried to say something about problems I see with Bill Gothard's "Chain of Command" teaching, I have been dissatisfied with how it sounded.  Saying it right is easier in writing than saying it verbally, but in both cases, I've been second-guessing what I've conveyed.

I wish now I had been able to think to say something like this:  The chain of command idea has elements that I see also in Scripture in teachings about leading and following or submitting.  When uncoupled, however, from an emphasis on obedience to God and accountability in every link of the chain, the teaching has potential for serious abuse.

The most obvious potential for abuse is the one that occurred within Gothard's organization:  People with power took unfair advantage of those under them.  In Gothard's case the problems included sexual abuse or promiscuity.

Another potential for abuse is more subtle:  Underlings do not resist when they should.  To their great regret, some of those young people who were abused by Gothard now see that their "submission" was wholly inappropriate.  At the time, though, they thought that if they resisted Gothard, they would be stepping out from under the protective umbrella which the chain of command provided. Other young people who resisted him were, in fact, often disciplined or sent away in disgrace.  The cost of resisting was high.

I believe that Gothard's teaching on "Chain of Command" strayed in some ways from the clear teaching of Scripture, but in the way he applied it in his personal life, he strayed much farther from Scripture.  In scenarios that are now widely known,  he kept his thumb firmly on those under him, but refused to answer to those over him.  In the early 80's, when his board learned of his wrong behavior and relieved him of his position in the organization, he simply reorganized under a new board who reinstated him.  

I appreciate that Scripture gives us a framework and structure for healthy, God-honoring relationships, and I believe following the directives in Scripture is important.  I'm still learning what that means for me personally.  I'm pretty sure, however, of several of the omitted truths in Bill Gothard's Chain of Command teachings:  Leaders must be held accountable by someone, and followers must do what is right, regardless of what their leaders do.  "I was just following orders" didn't exonerate those at the Nuremberg trials, and it doesn't exonerate twenty-first-century Christians.

 

Sunday Conversation Potpourri

Around 11:30 in church this morning I had an unsettling thought. Did anyone put that roaster full of baking potatoes in the oven.

I had scrubbed them individually and piled them into the blue enamel roaster, but the lid had fallen behind something on an upper shelf in the pantry and I couldn't reach it. Joel to the rescue. He obligingly retrieved the lid and put it on the roaster.

While he was doing this, Hiromi was busy figuring out the oven setting so it would come on at 10:30 and bake for two hours. I was putting the finishing touches on the sloppy joe mixture.

Hiromi saw how things were stacking up and decided to ride to church with Joel since he needed to be there to start up the sound system.

I finished the sloppy joe stuff and hurried off.

Our extended family had planned an after-church picnic at the Partridge Park in honor of my brother Marcus' birthday and in honor of Sanford and Martha from Costa Rica, parents of Judy, my sister-in-law.

I confided my fears about the potatoes to Hiromi on the way home and realized they were well founded the minute I stepped inside the door at home and saw the roaster on the counter. Three people worked on this potato project and the potatoes still didn't make it into the oven. Sigh. Two hours at 350 degrees for an empty oven. Another sigh. I hurried to put them on to boil while I did a few other things and reasoned that as soon as everything else was ready I'd take the kettle to my parents' place and let them finish cooking there while we got started with the rest of the meal at the nearby park.

When we got to Mom and Dad's house, Myron was there performing a salvage operation on a bowl full of diced cantaloupe. His young son had accidentally dropped the bowl and spilled the cantaloupe onto the mulch around the play structure in the park. Myron couldn't stand to see it all go to waste, so he carefully washed each piece individually and kept them in a bowl separate from the unspilled cantaloupe. He notified everyone about the cantaloupe's history and let people decide what risks they were willing to take. Most of it disappeared.

Back in Mom's kitchen, Myron suggested we finish the potatoes in the microwave. Good idea. Five minutes in the microwave, and we were off to the park, baked potatoes in hand.

As usual, the afternoon was full of good visiting, much of which I've already forgotten. We talked briefly at least about the dust bowl days, about the current earthquakes in the financial sector, about the presidential candidates, about the 600 bushels of apples Lowell got shipped in from Missouri last week, about the well-known atheist who now concludes that intelligent design is evident in the universe, about the attitudes toward education Hilda encountered when she taught school in Copeland among German-Russian-Mexican-American Mennonites, and about when life begins.

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Myron told the story of how they got the large decorative rock in their yard with "Miller" carved into it. Myron worked for years for "Pack," and his family claims Myron as one of their own. Pack's son-in-law works for a bank, and when the bank he works for foreclosed on a property, and bank personnel arrived to take possession, there was a "Miller" rock in the yard. "I'll just take that to Myron," he announced, and apparently no one objected. So he did.

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Lowell: Psst. Bryant, your epidermis is showing.

Bryant: What? Where?

Lowell: Right there between your collar and your hairline.

Bryant (Beginning to reach for the spot, and then grinning) : It's supposed to be showing.

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Sanford, in a prelude to the sermon he preached this morning, talked about roots. He was born in this community, and moved with his parents to Nowatta, Oklahoma when he was a year and a half old. (This afternoon we heard that Sanford's mother said of him that "he was the prettiest baby in either of the two church districts" in Kansas--something she probably would have been too modest to say out loud at the time.) He credits his mother's Kansas upbringing for insisting that her children make learning well in school a high priority.

Growing up, he often heard "Da Dawdy Mosht hoh-ut ksawt. . . . " (Grandpa Mast said . . . .) Dawdy Mosht is the Amish equivalent of Kansas' patron saint. His given name was Daniel E. Mast, and, because he did a lot of writing, as well as being a warm human being and a preacher who spoke in a memorable and engaging way, he was widely known, loved, and quoted. He was a pioneer in introducing Sunday School to the Amish in Kansas, and he is indeed a grandfather of many who live here--my great, great grandfather. He authored the book Salvation Full and Free.

Sanford also repeated a story his father often told about how he came to Kansas to live. His father, Ben, married a Kansas girl, and then moved to Oklahoma for several months right after the wedding to take care of an ailing parent. When they were ready to move to Kansas they set out with a covered wagon, pulled by a team of green (barely broke) mares. Public roadways traveled through farm and grazing land, and he had to stop periodically to open and close gates as he passed through. The weather turned bitterly cold, and his mares got sore feet and traveled very slowly. Ben coped as best he could by stowing his bride inside the snugged-tight covered wagon, and he himself walked, perhaps to lighten the load for the horses pulling the wagon. He got frostbite, but he kept on going and eventually arrived in this community.

I heard Ben tell much of this story in 1983 when our community celebrated its hundredth anniversary. I don't remember any dates I heard, but my guess is that Ben came to Kansas around 1920.

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One of the stories Joel and I pieced together scantily and told the others today was about an event in Washington (in 1936?) when Hugh Bennett, who had worked for the US Department of Agriculture doing soil surveys, made a presentation to Congress which he hoped would influence them to enact soil conservation measures. His alarm at what was happening on the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl days hardly registered on the consciousness of eastern politicians, and Bennett had become frustrated. On April 19, after having postponed his presentation for a few days, he finally had his opportunity to address Congress. Bennett had been in touch with weather stations to the west, and he was banking hard on an object lesson he hoped would coincide with his presentation. Aides kept him posted throughout his talk, and he dallied for about an hour, going into detail about the terraces advocated by Pliny of Rome, contour plowing practiced by Jefferson, and about his father's soil conservation measures in South Carolina, adding details about his own experience with working the soil. Then a bored senator who had been looking outside said, "It's getting dark outside." It was early afternoon in April, and it was getting dark outside. Just as Bennett had known it would, a duster that had gathered up its dirt load 2,000 miles away in the Midwest had arrived in Washington. The sun vanished and the air turned brown. Dirt rained on the Capitol. "This, gentlemen, is what I'm talking about," said Bennett. "There goes Oklahoma."

According to the the book The Worst Hard Time, "within a day Bennett had his money and a permanent agency to restore and sustain the health of the soil."

The Currency of Education--Part 2

In our school, opportunities to acquire information directly from interacting with nature are in short supply also. Walking across a gravel parking lot is about as “outdoorsy” as students normally get in school. Elsewhere, all across our land, children’s access to the natural environment has steadily eroded over recent decades. Richard Louv, who has extensively researched and written about this phenomenon observes that “a growing body of evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health.” For children who attend a classroom school, shutting them off from the natural environment during school hours constitutes isolating them from nature during most of their waking hours for most of their childhood years.
Beyond its health benefits, the natural environment presents unparalleled learning opportunities. To illustrate, children can learn about one-celled animals that populate pond water by having the live animals ordered from a biological supply business, placing them on the slide of a microscope and observing their structure and activity. Alternatively, if their school were located close to a creek or pond, students could collect the one-celled animals there and bring them inside to be examined under a microscope. Through the lens of the microscope, the one-celled animals would presumably look exactly the same from either source. However, if a student collected the animals directly out of a pond, many other kinds of observations could be made at the same time. The student might encounter basking turtles, startled frogs along the perimeter plopping into the water, tadpoles swimming along the edges, mosquito larvae whipping through the water, insects skating across the water’s surface, plants growing in the water and along the edge, insects hiding in the vegetation and birds flying overhead, changing weather conditions and cloud formations, and perhaps the tracks of wild animals pressed into the damp soil. If the pond water yielded no one-celled animals, learning why this might be so would prompt learning about the connectedness of various life forms and the consequences of natural processes or man-made alterations. In comparison to students collecting specimens, it seems lackluster and sterile to acquire the one-celled animals by merely signing the UPS man’s delivery confirmation form when the package from Carolina Biological Supply arrives.
When children play organized sports, competition (or at least comparison of competence) quickly becomes focused on physical prowess or athletic ability. Imagine how differently people’s skills would be assessed if the time together during break time at school were spent in nurturing a garden, for example. Or how creativity would thrive if unstructured play time could, at least occasionally, be spent in a pasture or woodland. Compare the different kinds and levels of sensory input on a basketball court or a woodland hideaway. “Cornell University environmental psychologists reported in 2003 that a room with a view of nature can help protect children against stress. . .” (Louv) Many have observed or experienced similar effects informally: a natural environment helps calm, comfort, and heal. This opportunity is especially significant for children who struggle with attention problems or those who carry weighty emotional baggage.
Ironically, the two sources of information I idealize having more access to at school, the internet and nature, are often depicted as being at odds with each other. People have correctly observed that the electronically-equipped child may also be a child suffering from “nature-deficit disorder.” Observation of where funds are focused in public education makes clear that the investment has been heavily weighted on the electronic side rather than the nature side. This, together with factors like urbanization, concerns for physical safety and liability issues, and increasing regulatory pressure to meet assessment standards, apparently drives some of these appropriations.
However, in our school situation, where some of these factors are less pressing, we still have an opportunity to chart a course that will enhance our educational offerings in a balanced way. To focus merely on what we want to keep out seems short-sighted, as does scrambling to embrace whatever the world parades before us. To idealize including only learning environments, materials, and tools that are man-made, to the exclusion of what God made, is unbalanced also. In the end, what matters is that we worship and serve God acceptably while we go about the business of teaching and learning. To accomplish this, each person involved needs a humble, teachable spirit. With that attitude, every learning opportunity, method, environment, and tool used in the acquisition of information, the currency of education, is considered a gift to be cherished for what it offers, and to be received with thanksgiving.

Sunday Wrapup 3/13/2011

Hiromi's last utterance before he went to bed just now was "The third nuclear reactor in Japan just blew up." He's been following the events in Japan, on NHK, I think. Apparently, not much is known yet about how bad it was. It may have happened with this one just as happened earlier. In that case, the structure (building) around the reactor blew up when a potent mixture of hydrogen and oxygen ignited, but the reactor itself (made of stainless steel six inches thick) was undamaged. The explosive situation developed because sea water had been used to cool the reactor, in the absence of the usual cooling mechanisms because of damage from the earthquake and tsunami.

When sea water is used, it's the last resort, since the reactor is forever rendered useless after that. The threat of a meltdown was serious enough to warrant this drastic action.

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I marvel at the concern of Americans over the loss of life in Japan, the destruction of cities, and the threat of radiation. Yet in WWII, Americans dropped bombs on two cities in Japan, resulting in the death of 200,000 people, destruction of two large cities--Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the release of radiation that caused illness and abnormalities for years to come.

These many years later, the peacetime use of atomic energy has again become a fearsome threat, piled on top of shocking natural catastrophe. And the whole world is concerned.

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When a tornado or ice storm goes through Kansas, loss of power is a common result. But our roads are still here and usually our power generating capacity is still intact. Restoring power is just a matter of crews getting out to reset poles and re-string lines. Not so in eastern Japan. The major coastal highway is gone in many areas, sunk permanently to a level that places it on the ocean side of the shoreline. Getting to many of these towns has been impossible so far. And their electric power plants are blowing up and threatening to poison everything in the vicinity.

If you think of how cold it can still get in Partridge, Kansas (We're getting snow this evening.), think of Sendai, Japan--near the earthquake epicenter. Both Partridge and Sendai are located very nearly at 38 degrees latitude, north. I hear that people there are cold and hungry, and in the dark. Many, many aftershocks--so many that officials have lost track--keep people too scared to stay inside all the time. At least one aftershock registered above six, and one this evening was at least four. This is no tropical nightmare. It's a wild winter in Japan.

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We have not heard from Jae, the exchange student who lived with us for ten months. His family lived much closer to the earthquake damaged area than most of Hiromi's family. We're not sure where he is based in his job as a journalist, and, of course, we're not sure what his role in reporting on the recent disaster might involve.

He's not very diligent in answering his Facebook messages, and right now, that's the only contact information we have for him. So we wait, and pray for him and his family in the meantime.

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We had night school on Friday evening from 6:00 pm till about 12:30 am. I may have been the only person there who came straight home from school in the afternoon and took a long nap. I showed up at school after things were underway, as I usually do--since I'm not a full-time teacher. People seemed fairly bright-eyed at that point, but even coffee, Mountain Dew, and energy drinks didn't sustain that condition indefinitely.

A lot of students had worked feverishly all week to earn "E" privilege status for the night school event. As a result, the learning center was fairly de-populated much of the evening. When students weren't in class, they trucked out to the shop to play basketball or watch others play.

Marvin had assembled the park benches the comp class donated to the school, so they were pressed into service in the shop on their "maiden voyage" day.

Friday was a spring-like day, and the windows were wide open during the first part of night school. But the wind shifted to the north during the night, and it got a lot colder.

Typing class came near the end of the day--an intentional scheduling maneuver to provide something a little more active than doing pace work. While they were working on designing Plain Talk covers, I overheard Nathan say, "OK, I'm getting tired. I spelled 'of' o-v-e." Nevertheless, he whipped out an on-the-fly original poem for the cover of the Plain Talk. It started out with "I'm getting tired . . . " When he showed it to me, he hastened to assure me that this isn't really what he would want on the cover.

I wondered yesterday how parents feel about our night school. I don't know that they've ever been asked, and I think they probably should have been. Any comments out there?

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I loved the Gathering for Gardeners, except that I got tired of sitting on those hard folding chairs. We moved so quickly from one lecture to the next that there was no time to get up and move around, let alone zip to the back for a cup of coffee or water and a cookie or two.

I often marvel that the same people who are really knowledgeable about specific gardening subjects have the good fortune to be good speakers too. Or maybe I wouldn't notice it if they weren't, since I find the subject captivating in any presentation.

Among other things, I learned that mole baits do no good since the only thing moles are used to eating are live soil dwellers. The only remedy for moles, besides dogs that dig them up and cause more damage in the process than the moles might do, are fairly grisly traps--one of them called the harpoon type--which gives you some idea of the dispatching mechanism. For pocket gophers, on the other hand, baits are often effective. We have either moles or gophers--moles, I think, but I had never considered the gopher possibility before yesterday. I'll have to examine their entrance or air-hole mounds more carefully to know for sure. The tunnels look much the same.

I found out why it's so hard to find David Austin roses in the trade. The rosarian who spoke yesterday said they're wonderful roses, but they stocked them faithfully for some time, and there was almost no demand for them. "We couldn't give them away," he said. And here I was drooling over their pictures in the Wayside catalog and deciding yet again that I couldn't justify spending the money, not dreaming that they might actually go away some time because no one was spending the money. Last year Stutzmans had some of them, and this year they have none--just when I'm finally ready to use gift money and other odd bits I've collected to buy some good landscape roses that also make great cut flowers.

I have almost no patience with tea roses--naked as they usually are from the knees on down, with terrible complexion problems (blackspot) if you don't spray them within an inch of their lives, with only one chafer-beetle-laden blossom on each stem. Then if you ever grow a perfect one, you bring it indoors, and it promptly blows itself totally open and then drops its petals. This is not a satisfactory scenario for a field-grown cutflower grower. I want bushes that look good in the landscape, resist diseases fairly reliably without sprays, don't shiver themselves into oblivion in the chill of winter, and look good in a vase on the table for at least four days. Some of the David Austin roses fill the bill as do some of the roses bred by Kordes, a German breeder. They don't have to have the classic tea rose shape, as long as they're full-petaled or graceful in some other way.

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Yesterday I met a farmer's market friend who referred in passing to her husband's having been laid off because he refused to falsify safety inspection records his boss told him to falsify. He had worked as an engineer with this company for more than 30 years.

Our Sunday School lesson today in I Peter 1 was apparently written to a group of Christian Jews who were dispersed in the area that is present-day Turkey, among people who did not share their faith, and did not take kindly to seeing them live out their faith. The raging persecution that was unleashed later had not yet arrived, but life was hard for Christians, and Peter was writing to help them understand the reasons for hope.

I thought of my friend's husband. Maybe his workplace experience put him in a situation much like those Christians in Peter's time--suffering for doing what was right--not because Christianity is outlawed, but because following Christ has always put people at odds with the ways of a world in conflict with the way of Christ. Nevertheless, we have reasons for hope, just as they did.

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Perry Lee and Judith celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary today with an open house. At 5:00 there was to be a time of singing out of the Coleman's song books, arranged for men's voices. We went early and didn't stay for the singing.

The old pictures cycling through on a screen provided a lot of interest. Perry Lee's prized black '57 Chevy appeared in some of the pictures.

Lyle and Maria and Owen and Wanda orchestrated the event.

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I sat beside Esther in church today. I could tell she was Asian and soon learned that she is Kim's sister--who is married to my former student, Esther. They grew up in Paraguay. She and her husband Arlen are here from PA visiting their son who is a student at Bethel College in North Newton, about 50 miles from here. He was with them today. I hope he feels welcome to come back.

With all the CASP guys still here, we had quite a diverse group at church this morning.

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Our dining room is partly turned into a potting shed, as is often the case this time of year. Hiromi transplanted some tomatoes while I was off to the Gathering for Gardeners yesterday, and I seeded another half dozen flats of ornamentals after I got home. We have peppers and eggplant ready to transplant also.

Hiromi also transplanted the Swiss Chard. We'll see if they survive the transplanting. They're not known to do well under those conditions, and I had planted them into individual cells because of that. My plan was to move them directly into the garden, disturbing their roots as little as possible. We obviously weren't quite on the same page in this matter.

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I'm still amazed with how well everything works on this second-best stove we got from LaVerne and Rebecca at a very special price, and I'm really enjoying cooking and baking again. I notice, however, that the burners are not as hot as they were on our old one. I think it's because it has sealed burners, and the grates must have higher clearances to accommodate the burner position. The increased space between the burner and the cooking pan allow more heat to escape and direct less of it toward the bottom of the cooking pan. I read about this phenomenon on the internet when I was trying to identify the characteristics of various stove options.

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I think I agree with the person who commented on daylight savings time by marveling that anyone would think that you could take a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it onto the bottom of the blanket and expect to end up with a longer blanket.

Just when I could begin to look forward to waking up to daylight, the morning schedule is plunged back into the Dark Ages. It's almost enough to make me reconsider my preference for early morning rising.

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My aunt Judy (Mrs. Perry) was in the hospital last week with lung problems. She is at home now, but still on oxygen, except when she puts it aside because it's too much bother. She is quite frail, and apparently has some dementia.

Lydia Yoder also had a very weak spell last week, but returned to normal after a day or so.

Conrad and Rebekka's toddler son David also was in the hospital with pneumonia.

A lot of people are sick with the flu, and the illness often sticks around a while. We've had one or more absences at school almost every day for the past few weeks.

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Achievement tests will be given this week at the high school. We're hoping for good attendance on those days. At the grade school, there were a number of absences on testing days, and the prospect of making up the testing looks fairly daunting.

The People

As Clarissa said last night, Mennonites play the "connections" game better than anyone else. I'm on for such a game.

The big surprise was on Wed. eve. in church after we got back when Henry Schrock exclaimed, "So Grant got married to Bob Prettyman's daughter!" He remembered Bob--something we had never thought to inquire about.
In Washington, where we knew very few people, we nevertheless discovered quite a few common friends and past experiences. They were present among the Pine Grove Mennonites, the Deer Park Mennonites, and the ex-Mennonites in the Clayton/Deer Park/Chewelah, WA area north of Spokane.

Sherilyn (Hertzler) Martin and I were in the same Writer's Workshop for a number of years. Her parents and sister go to Pine Grove. Sherilyn co-authored a book, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, with Sue Hooley. At Sherilyn's request I had critiqued the book, and I think I had at least one contribution to the text. I met Sue Hooley for the first time at Pine Grove. We also met Clayton Eveleth, who said he had been at Bible school in Hartville years ago with Daniel Nisly. Charlie Kessler told Hiromi that Henry Schrocks from our church sometimes stayed with them when they passed through on their way to western Washington where they used to drive to spend the winter with their daughter Mildred near Seattle. Jack Kessler told us he met Grant when he was in Washington last winter. Joe Miller's wife Freida (Mullet) used to be a member at Maranatha where I taught school for five years in Ohio. Frieda invited us home for dinner, but someone else beat her to it. Kudos to this church for their hospitality.

From Elizabeth Schrock from here we learned that Betsey (Mrs. Charlie) Kessler is a sister to Mary Sullivan, Ben's mother, who passed through here on their way west and home from Kentucky several years ago. I wrote a blog post about Ben here.

At the wedding we met Clarissa's former teacher Nelson Rudolph, who is a relative of the David Rudolph family from Greencastle, PA. I've known this family since I was in my early twenties. Nelson's wife was a Kessler.

Carolyn Schrock told me that Rose Nissley from here was her former teacher. Carolyn and Jeff's names were familiar because they were dear friends of Clarissa's family, and because of the tragedy in their family several years ago when all five of their children were instantly killed in an auto accident that also injured Jeff seriously enough to keep him from being able to attend his children's funeral.

Kathy Prettyman (Clarissa's mother) showed us the spot in the road where the accident happened. It was on a four-lane highway, and the driver of the other vehicle crossed the median from the northbound lane to hit the Schrock vehicle head on in the southbound lane. Jeff and Carolyn showed us their children's graves high on a hill near their church--five identical gravestones, each with a different name and birth date, but all with the same death date, in 2005, I believe. After a stop at the cemetery, they took us home for a delicious impromptu Sunday dinner. They also invited Tim and Joyce Eveleth, who added some offerings from their planned meal, and it was a perfectly delightful spread of food and time of fellowship.

Jeff and Carolyn have two preschool children, a son and daughter. This second family is as dear and bright as I'm sure their first family was. By all appearances, Jeff has recovered fully.

Among the Prettyman family friends, we met people whose last names were Larson, Markovic, Beckman, and Balhome. Many of these people had moved en masse from western Washington a number of years ago. They were mostly homeschoolers who were in search of a rural area in which to live, and they happened to choose the area where the Prettymans and a group of Mennonites also settled. For a time they were all together in first one Mennonite church, and then in another, but they eventually went their separate ways, and now are connected mostly by geography and shared memories. In some cases, there are still many shared values, but in others, the common values they once espoused must seem a very distant memory.

We really enjoyed learning to know Bob and Kathy's family. Besides Clarissa, there are four girls, and five boys. Clarissa is the fourth oldest, behind Garret, Austin, and Tara. Just younger than her are Colton, Angeleise, Jackson, Jed (Jedediah), Olie (Olivia), and Emma (Emmaline--long i). Emma just turned four and really misses her big sister, who moved very far away to Kansas. Garret, Austin, and Tara no longer live at home. Tara is married to Jon, and Garret plans to marry Marsela, who was born in Serbia. Austin and Colton attend college in the area. This is an intelligent, articulate, resourceful, and creative bunch.

Some time in the nineties, the Prettyman's bought a thickly wooded property and began to clear a driveway and building site. They used rough-cut lumber from the property to construct a no-frills house on a cement slab. The house is very comfortable, but is still being finished in stages. When they moved into it, it was a big improvement over living in a single-wide mobile home with seven children. Avoiding indebtedness is a high priority for them, and "making do" is preferable to living on a standard they can't afford. I admire them for this principled choice.

Kathy's dad was a contractor and designed the house, so it has good bones and forms an easy canvas for lots of creative ways to use the space. Instead of sleek, custom-made cabinets in the kitchen, they have a collection of cupboards and shelves and countertops and curtains like something you might see in a French Country kitchen. I'm sure that a lot of what they use everyday would qualify as antiques, but for them, it's just what they've found, fixed up, and made use of. It's a three bedroom house, with all the girls in one room and all the boys in another.

The slightly crowded sleeping conditions prompted the older boys to look for some creative alternatives. When Garret and Austin still lived at home, the family bought a garden-shed minibarn, and the boys finished it out as an office and bedroom. It's lined with very nicely done tongue and groove wood on the walls and peaked roof. The half that now serves as guest quarters has a hide-a-bed couch, refrigerator, microwave, and bottled water cooler/heater.

This is where Grant stayed when he was there last winter, and we stayed there over the time of the wedding. A really slick porta-potty was installed right next to the building. I didn't know they had special wedding models, but this one had a dispenser for papers to place on the toilet seat, a sink with running water (if you started it by stomping on the rubber bubble underneath it), paper towels, a mirror, a hand-sanitizer dispenser, and a solar light. The only improvement I could think of would be some kind of sound proofing. This must be a universal design flaw of porta-potties. No problem, of course, if they're placed in a clearing in the woods without other people around, as ours was.

Colton too has begun to build himself a "home" outside the family home. His is elevated, with the lower story mostly enclosed with timber. The ground floor serves as a shed for his bicycle and other outdoor gear. His "engineer brain" came in handy for designing and building this place. It's not finished out on the inside yet, and progress slowed considerably when he began to help regularly in the family business.

When Clarissa undertook building construction as an adolescent, it was for her rabbits. She took pity on them for having to live in such a small space, so she made a proper building for them by hauling small logs out of the woods and using them to build a shed. I saw pictures of the project while it was underway.

Elsewhere on the property, the men have constructed sheds and shops in a way that makes sense for the climate and the available resources. The workshop is a partial dugout. Another structure is constructed of poles from the woods, with huge tarps stretched over the framework to provide protection from the elements. With all the wind protection from the surrounding trees, this works better for them than it would for us.

Garret, who now works in landscape maintenance, provided the brains and the main force behind the landscaping that was done around the house. Rail fences and rock borders define the edges of the yard and flower beds, and Kathy has indulged her love of plants by filling them with things she loves or wants to experiment with. Pansies bloomed exuberantly--in August. An apple tree in the back yard hung full of large and beautiful green apples. The vegetable garden contains raised beds--the best way to make productive soil out of what is mostly decomposed granite underfoot. Deer and wild turkeys have done serious damage to the garden, and a fence is planned.

Amid all the busyness of getting ready for the wedding, and the necessity for Bob to get a lot of work done ahead of the wedding, we still had time for lots of good conversation with Bob and Kathy. On Sunday afternoon and evening, after the hullabaloo died down, we took a long drive with them, and ate dinner in a quiet place with no children around. Kathy and I sat in the back seat and talked a mile a minute. She and I are kindred spirits, with many shared interests. Clarissa had told me that her mother is quiet by nature, but I did not find her the slightest bit withdrawn. I think she often just doesn't need to talk a lot because Bob carries the ball in conversations when they're together.

We heard a lot about the part of their journey that involved Mennonites, although I'm sure there was a lot that was left unsaid. We're aware of some of the hurdles that non-ethnic Mennonites (or NABs, as Clarissa calls them--Non-Anabaptist Background) face, but conversation with them uncovered a layer of hurdles we had almost forgotten existed.

It's more clear to me than before that integration works best when there is considerable congregational autonomy, rather than strict adherence to uniform standards across many congregations. I also can see clearly that what Paul Y. told me a year ago makes sense. He said that in situations where Mennonites are called on to help form a congregation among non-ethnic Mennonites, he believes that Mennonites must "force" the locals to forge a structure that they can call their own, even when it would be far easier to hand them a package deal to help them get started. At the same time, he is aware of the importance of standing ready to assist, and help people move toward maturity in Christ.

Bob had a heart for reaching out to the people among whom he lived, and believed that plugging into an organized church structure would help facilitate such outreach. He also admired the hardworking, self-sufficient, and service lifestyle he saw among the Mennonites. He didn't anticipate some of the barriers that such a structure might introduce. Helping with community emergency services and medical care didn't work out, and supporting homeschoolers didn't either. The emphasis on group schooling, avoiding higher education and close working relationships with non-Christians were all "Mennonite" ideas that ran counter to his vision. He couldn't figure out either how to guide his children into vocations that were right for them, given the prohibitions he was taught. He couldn't understand why a black vehicle was better than a white one, remembering as he did, from his days running a car dealership, that black vehicles were "luxury" models, almost always worth at least $2,000 more than an identical white vehicle.

Although it was comforting to reflect on the fact that most of the barriers Bob's family encountered would not have been issues in our church, we are aware that people of diverse backgrounds always face challenges when they decide to share in brotherhood. Humility calls us to be alert to what may be present in our setting that makes integration difficult for people who join us.

It was especially good to feel oneness with Bob and Kathy in being able to pray for these children of ours who now share a common path into the future.

First Tidbits From LRC

Last week's two-day retreat with the Leadership Reno County (LRC) class was as stretching and interesting as I hoped it would be, and, at times, as awkward as I was afraid it would be.  I'm not sure how much I'm really supposed to share outside the group about what happens inside the group.  I do know that confidentiality is in order in relation to others in the group--not their identity though.  Otherwise they would not have backed each of us up to a plain door in the meeting room and come in close for a cell phone picture--with the explanation that this is for the paper.  Sigh. I'd rather fly under the radar on this venture.

Also, the organization I'm officially associated with for LRC purposes is Pilgrim Christian School--which is slightly awkward since I no longer am hired there.  Nevertheless, no other official entity made sense as fill-in information for some of the blanks on the application.  I do still serve on the curriculum committee as a volunteer, so it was not entirely a fabricated connection.  I did make clear that my main interest was really most closely tied to making life better for my neighbors in the rural area of Reno County where I live.  Being too tightly tethered to the education sector of community life would actually feel limiting to me rather than advantageous.

Essentially, the focus of this group is to develop an approach to problem solving that is skillful, inclusive, courageous, humble, and honest.  These are my words.  I can't tell you how reassuring it was to see these Biblical topics featured in the class content.  If the focus had been on "getting others to do what you want them to do,"  featuring tricky and manipulative (and disrespectful) schemes, this class would have held no appeal to me. I have no fondness for this perception of what leadership means.

What I really want to do here is just to be transparent about what I've been up to, with the freedom to share what I'm learning.  Knowing that all who read this have entered this blog space at their own initiative is reassuring to my vulnerable self, and I believe that readers do not usually come here to find something to use as ammunition against me.  Nevertheless, I'm cognizant of the fact that for an Amish Mennonite female to be enrolled in a leadership class and writing about it is not risk-free. 

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For me, probably the most helpful insight to come out of interacting with the material and the facilitators and other class members was clarity about two different approaches to problem solving: 1) technical and 2) adaptive. Individual cases often call for both approaches to come into play, but being able to sort out which approach is best for which piece of a challenge is useful.  This understanding was helpful to me both in making sense of some of my past frustrations and in finding a possible path forward in the challenges that I still face. 

It's probably revealing that, although the LRC class began less than a week ago, I have already made reference to this distinction twice in communicating with others--both of them in relation to Sunday School.  Once was during class when we were talking about people in the church who "slip through the cracks" and the other was when I was working with others to find a good solution to a logistics problem that had come up.  In both of these situations, I found it helpful to recognize early on that the challenges called for adaptive approaches rather than technical ones. 

Having talked about this matter recently and the fact that I am writing about it here is probably also related to how I best internalize information--by "teaching" it to others. 

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Technical challenges call for technical solutions.  Such challenges usually involve situations where everyone involved knows what is needed and a clear structure is in place for doing what is necessary.  Positional authority (which can be bestowed or acquired in various ways--by vote, appointment, manipulation, or strong-armed coercion, for example) is often incorporated into structures for dealing with technical challenges (i. e. solving the problems).  As I see it, this is as it should be, although some routes to positional authority certainly seem more commendable than others. 

The big problems occur when adaptive problems are addressed solely with technical approaches.  To quote a concept (from memory) that I heard in class:  Technical solutions may be involved in helpfully addressing adaptive challenges, but they are always insufficient.  In plain language, here's the rub:  When people with positional authority apply only technical solutions to adaptive problems, the results are not pretty.  Besides throwing sand in the gears (which limits smooth, orderly, forward motion), this way of "doing business" is predictive of fractured relationships, loss of commitment to a common purpose, and loss of peace.  In other words, the cost of this way of operating is very high. 

Let's use maintenance of a church building to illustrate how technical challenges can be helpfully addressed by technical solutions.  As an example, I'll use some details from what Grace (the wife of Lorne, our head trustee) told me on the day of the sewing last week--without a guarantee that all of them are completely factual.  As I recall, someone had noticed a problem in the plumbing system (a leak in one of bathrooms?) and had called Harold, who lives nearby and is often involved in matters related to the operation of the building.  Harold swiftly passed on the information he'd been given to Lorne, since he knew that Lorne was in the head trustee position, and dealing with matters like plumbing problems falls under Lorne's job description. 

I think Lorne must have called next on Joe, who was involved when the plumbing was originally installed for the new kitchen.  That was also when our church for the first time had a reverse osmosis (RO) system installed.  Joe went to work to address the problem, but had to turn off the RO system and could not restore its function by sewing day.  He (or someone, at least) filled several big thermos jugs with water from the RO so the sewing ladies would have this good water to drink.  I presume that he came back later to finish the repairs and restore the plumbing system to full function.  I also assume that Joe worked without pay and certainly without positional authority.  No additional church votes, elections, or appointments were needed throughout this process.  Because things got fixed by Sunday, I assume this process worked smoothly with no fractured relationships, no loss of commitment to a common purpose, and no loss of peace.   Everyone involved knew what was needed and who was in charge of seeing to getting it done, and most of the church people never even knew the problem had occurred.   Lorne's exercise of leadership through positional authority was exactly the right approach for this technical problem. 

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I'll refer to Plainview Church as an example of using an adaptive approach.  Construction is underway on a new church building.  I don't know many details of how the decision was made to do this, but I do know from Grant and Clare, who attend there, that a great deal of discussion preceded the decision, and that in the end, this seemed like the best path forward.  Ellis is the one in charge of the building process at Plainview.  Without his permission, I'm going to dissect his suitability for the role he has--strictly my personal viewpoint, of course--by overlaying my thinking with the adaptive leadership approach template.

His past experience as a public school principal is undoubtedly useful.  I've never heard anyone speak of him in critical terms for how he carried out this role.  He is 67 I believe.  I know that because he was my classmate in school and everyone knew who was older and who was younger than oneself.  He was older than I.  I am extrapolating partly from having known Ellis best before we both graduated from high school, and I can no longer recall how I formed some of these impressions, but I know him personally to be a man of principle and competence, with humility, personal discipline, initiative, and moderation in evidence.  He has a great sense of humor and he used to have a contrary streak.  These characteristics undoubtedly played into his being given positional authority in a church building project (with the exception of the contrariness perhaps), no matter whether it was acquired by appointment or vote--or volunteering, for that matter. 

I think it's useful also to think about what Ellis is not, especially in relation to his adult roles.  He is not a builder.  He is not a businessman.  He is not a first-born (he is fourth in a family of five boys).  He does not have a forceful manner.  He does not flaunt whatever wealth he has. 

More on what Ellis is.  He is a farmer and landowner.  He has coached grade school sports teams.  Recently he chaired a committee that planned the first ever reunion of those who attended Elreka at any time since its beginning in 1958.  I know for a fact that he was able to bring about agreement on at least one issue that another committee member initially objected to.  He grew up in this community and married Joye, who also grew up here.  Their parental families both were both supportive members at Plainview church, but they were dissimilar in some ways. 

I think I'm right that Ellis' father was "in the lot" five times when Plainview ordained a minister (this means simply that church members nominated him--and at least one other person--five times to serve on their ministerial team, but each time someone else actually was chosen by the drawing of lots). His father also served for many years as a school board member, some of them through some tumultuous processes.  I think Ellis' father's record is relevant because it reveals the family atmosphere in which he grew up--one where his father had a public record revealing trust by his peers.  Ellis was privileged to observe how such a person behaves.

My main takeaway from all this obsession over who Ellis is or is not is that personal integrity and the ability to work well with others are absolutely primary qualifications for addressing adaptive challenges like directing a million dollar building project using donated funds.  Yet, my observation suggests that building and business experience are often mistakenly thought to be primary qualifiers for positional authority holders in a big building project.  If a building project were only a technical challenge, then granting positional authority to people who are skilled in applying technical solutions would make sense.  But a building project is so much more.  It is, in fact, in all but its final stages,  mostly an adaptive challenge that calls for adaptive approaches.

I'm still learning about adaptive approaches, and don't have a concise way of describing what is involved.  Stakeholders is one useful term that I recall.  It's another way of referring to the people who are involved in a project or are affected by it.  Stakeholders will either benefit or suffer from outcomes.  They will see in the outcomes things that reflect or betray their values.  They will feel included in the decision-making process or excluded.  They will feel affirmed or degraded.  If stakeholders have serious misgivings, they will either remain silent (or fall silent) or they will speak up and risk being ostracized for it.  Stakeholders often struggle with knowing when/how to provide input, and it can be discouraging to hear both "it's too early to decide that" and then later "it's too late to change that." 

Working across factions is another useful term related to adaptive work.  It means that no one gets to isolate themselves inside an echo chamber.  People with a variety of viewpoints will be admitted into the chamber and treated with respect while they are there.  Outcomes will be better on many fronts when this happens. 

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Doing a blog post about LRC may be foolhardy because of how early we still are in the class cycle.  What this means is that I may well look back and see that what I've written here reflects a too-limited perspective.  For those kinds of inadequacies--and others, I ask for forbearance. 

Having some newly-acquired vocabulary is a real turn-on for me.  Something deep inside me responds with delight when previously dimly-sensed feelings and undefined dynamics finally stumble onto words that match them, and they can be dragged into the light of day--and examination of them can be purposeful and productive.     

Sunday Wrapup December 18, 2016

Seeing my nephew Bryant Miller's name in today's newspaper listing the Anderson Concerto winners for this year reminded me that I had planned to post a link to a recording of his prize-winning piano performance.  When someone in our extended family requested the link, Bryant's mother, sister-in-law Rhoda, wrote this note in addition:  The judge liked his "great aural image and artistic idea
for performing this work" whatever that all means.
To my surprise, the winners in the other three divisions were from families I know.  One was the son of my cousin Delmar Miller and his wife Suzanne.  Another was the son of college friends, Terry and Kristen Robson, and the third was the daughter of Stutzman Greenhouse's Jason French.  Each of these winners will play with the Hutchinson Symphony Orchestra in a February concert.

The two Miller boys are both homeschooled.

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In connection with the project of featuring Perry Miller in our composition class' community writing project, we've had several guests in class at various times during the past two weeks.  Perry, Gary, and Ellis Miller each took time to meet with us.

Despite getting a little smarter each year about how to pull off these big projects, it always proves to be a daunting challenge, with a lot of angst about setup, editing, arranging for printing, and making financial arrangements--all of that in addition to gathering information, compiling it, and using good writing skills and strategies to convey it.  It's never perfect, but to me it's always felt worthwhile afterward.

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We had a local low of 14.6 below zero this morning, as recorded at my brother Lowell's place.  That's colder than it's been in this area for a number of years.  Our household wasn't the only one that woke to frozen water pipes this morning.  Ours thawed just before time to leave for church--which is when we discovered that a leak had developed in one of the pipes in the utility room.  It was a good thing we discovered this before we left, and the water could be turned off.  Hiromi had on hand what he needed to fix it.

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We had some moments of concern for our neighbors last night when fire trucks passed by here on their way to a big structure fire there.  It turned out to be a shed rather than the house.  I'm sure it was still a big loss, but at least they still had a home on that frigid night.  I said a prayer for the fire fighters as well as our neighbors.  I'm sure that warming their toes in their own home would have been preferable to leaving home to stand around or work outside instead.

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This might sound a little strange, but this cold weather has helped me be grateful that both of my parents are safely home.  Dad would have  never considered staying home from church on a day like today.  Truthfully, he would likely have managed alright, given the fact that he could have entered his vehicle in the garage and exited right outside the church doors, but I was glad this morning to see that a few other elderly church members simply stayed home today.  I would have wanted the same for my parents.  There was some snow underfoot, and the brutal cold could have become problematic in a hurry if anything had gone awry en route between home and church.

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On Friday evening Hiromi and I both got home around 7:00, long after dark.  I got here several minutes before he did and planned to stop for the mail.  It was a miserably damp and windy night and I got a little disoriented and passed right by the mailbox before stopping.  Then I had a flash of recognition.  Wait.  That looked like the mailbox and the paper box on the ground.  I wheeled right on through the circle drive and headed back out to the road where my car lights illuminated the scene.  Both boxes were bent and lying on opposite sides of the driveway, and the posts were lying on the ground near where they had been standing.  The mail was scattered about, with one piece having stayed inside the open mailbox.

We don't think it was a prank or a malicious act, and we're leaning right now toward blaming either a passing monster vehicle or a ditch mower?????  Is that even possible--that the county was giving all the roadsides one more trim before winter?  I think anything except possibly a monster vehicle or a tractor would have been damaged by the encounter with a solidly set hedge post.

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This evening I finally decided that my cold/cough was probably not a big enough problem to keep me away from my two-week-old grandson any longer.  I went over to spend the evening holding the baby and loving on Wyatt, who is almost three.  The baby's mother had a chance to take a shower and deal with some laundry that needed to be folded and put away.  Grant had a terrible time getting home with the truck, having encountered icy roads first in Indiana and then again in Missouri.  Instead of having gotten home yesterday as planned, he hopes to arrive tomorrow.

The good part is that everyone at their house is feeling better, and Clare's sister Angeleise having left for home yesterday has not been disastrous for Clare and the little boys.

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Yesterday it was our turn to clean the church.  Last night we watched Shane's boys while they attended the Coldwell Banker's Christmas party.  Shane works as a realtor under their umbrella.  There's probably a better way to word that, but I don't know how.  My pile of school work has been untouched this weekend.

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Three more days till Christmas vacation!  I may not have a chance to come up for air till then.  That's why I'm concentrating on fortifying my spiritual and emotional reserves on this day of rest, fellowship, and worship.