Jotting Joan

Presentation is everything, especially when it comes to swaying public opinion. The irony is how quickly the descriptive words change to engender sympathy on television dramas.
On a recent “Harry’s Law” the lawyers argued that the beautiful, college-bound woman should not be punished for providing another student with access to a “just in case” birth control pill. The argument emphasized, “It does not cause an abortion, just an increase in hormones for women of child-bearing age.”
The lawyer pressed that “women of child-bearing age” (which includes those 12 or 13) should have access to the pill. Of course, she went further than the case and argued that the whole pharmaceutical drug licensing structure was wrong for limiting access to a pill that should be available over the countertop. The script writer had a point to make after all.
But take that phrase “all women of child-bearing age” … it implies that because these individuals are physically mature enough to have children, they are therefore women and should be able to make these decisions and have access to the medication.
But take those same women of child-bearing age, let them be on the lower end of the age spectrum, let them have sex, become pregnant and let them practice that other long advocated right to choose to bear the child, and they are referred to as children bearing children.
Given the second circumstances on the same show and the same actor-lawyer would be scripted to pull the heart strings for the unfortunate circumstances surrounding said child.
Terminology matters.
A biography written of life decades ago described a scene at a parsonage with a young couple asking to be married that afternoon. The pastor, who did not know them, questioned their age. He turned to his wife. She studied the woman and said, “she’s old enough.” He performed the ceremony only to be told later that the bride was not legally old enough to marry. Her family had plenty to say at first, but became very quiet as it became obvious she was a woman of child- bearing age. The young parents accepted responsibility for their actions and acted as a man and woman.
In 2002, Laci Peterson’s disappearance held the headlines for weeks and months partly because she was within six or seven weeks of delivery. Throughout the coverage the unborn child was referred to as her baby. Laci’s husband, Scott Peterson, was ultimately arrested, tried and convicted for killing both his wife and son. The unborn son was always referred to as a baby. Not a fetus, a baby.
Yet at the same time headlines and editorials pro and con on everything from early abortions to late term partial birth abortions repeatedly refer to other unborn sons and daughters as fetuses. “Fetus” is a legitimate scientific term, but when used in news stories and tv dramas it means, “hey, this isn’t a person, it’s a problem.”
The wording changes to accommodate the argument.
Thus the irony that because of Laci Peterson and her son, the United States Congress passed “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212)” which recognizes a “child in utero” as a legal victim, if he or she is injured or killed during the commission of any of more than 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines “child in utero” as “a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb,” as explained on Wikipedia.
Note, “any stage of development.”
When the terminology is “fetus” the unborn are reduced to an object to be removed; its life terminated and the terminator is given a check for services rendered.
But if that same fetus has his or her life terminated during a crime, he or she is a person and the terminator is liable to prosecution and imprisonment – without consideration of their stage of development.
We live in a time when society screams for the right of women to choose and plays on our sympathy for the burden of women so inconvenienced. Then we turn around and pluck those same heart strings in the case of crime and play on public sympathy for the precious unborn baby whom the mother never had a chance to meet.
A long time ago a great teacher said, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one,” Matthew 5:37 (NIV).
Something to remember: don’t measure your words depending on the circumstances. Either an unborn child is precious and worthy of protection or he isn’t. Either a 13- to 15-year-old is a woman and old enough to choose to have sexual encounters and deal with the potential ultimate results, including bearing and rearing that child, or she isn’t. Let’s quit playing games.

As parents we aim to do everything we can to keep our children safe from even a hint of danger; which is exactly why many parents of young children look at the playground slide their child wants to try and opt to slide down with the child – to keep them safe.
And ironically, that is the worst thing they can do.
According to an Associated Press story, a study at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., found that nearly 14 percent of pediatric leg fractures treated there over an 11-month period involved toddlers riding down the slide with a parent. After setting so many little bones, orthopedists say children are safer sliding on their own. That way, if a foot gets caught while the child is sliding alone, he can just stop moving or twist around until it comes free. But when the child is sitting in an adult’s lap, the force of the adult’s weight behind him can break his leg.
Dr. Edward Holt, orthopedic surgeon at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Md., said the best solution is to  put the child on the slide at the halfway point with the parent standing next to the slide.
It’s scary to let go – do it anyway.
And not just at the playground.
Introduce your child to many new experiences and skills early, while they still believe you really do know best. They need the practice.
The lack of hands-on activities hinders development of the brain, according to the latest edition of “Brain in the News” in its article “What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind.”
For decades, families, teachers and friends watched in astonishment as teens displayed reckless driving patterns, poor activity choices and overall lack of maturity. Then, highly technical studies of the brain concluded that while teens have the knowledge, they lack the judgment and self-control because their pre-frontal brain is not as developed as an adult’s brain.
Reading that sent a sigh of understanding across the land, “So that’s why they act that way. Their brains have to catch up with their bodies.” Many concluded we just needed to move the responsible activities such as driving to an older age.
It sounds like the perfect solution, but other studies, according to the article, conclude that the more hands-on real experiences children and teens receive, the better they develop control of themselves and the more insight they gain of situations. Or, referring back to the brain, the more development that occurs in the pre-frontal cortex.
In other words, experience is still the best teacher.
Today’s adolescents are not stupider than the teens of 200 years ago who served as apprentices. They simply have not been taught, encouraged or positioned to learn practical applications. Today’s teens spend more time learning more things about more subjects than did those apprentices – but there are different kinds of smart.
Too many of today’s teens lack the development of finely-honed, controlled, focused expertise in a particular skill. For instance, at 12, Benjamin Franklin began working for his brother, a printer. He helped set the print (read that he worked with machinery) and then hawked the papers on the street (walked the streets unprotected, unwatched and did business with total strangers). By the time he was 15, Franklin secretly wrote very popular articles under the name of a fictional widow, Silence Dogood. When his brother could not run the paper for an extended time, Franklin successfully ran it for him.
Experience shapes the brain. As the article concluded, “You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them. You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again.”
When children participated in adult activities as children, they had their childhood and adolescence to tune up the prefrontal brain (the control center) needed as an adult.
Here is the clincher: In the past, all that practice and learning was done “under expert adult supervision where the impact of the inevitable failures was blunted.” Then when the energy and motivation of puberty arrived, the child was ready to go after real rewards … with the skills and control necessary to do it effectively and reasonably safely.
For safer drivers, it is not so much putting off learning until an older age as it is keeping supervising adults in the car longer while the teen hones their skills.
For so many other skills, consider community-service programs such as AmeriCorps, Salvation Army, babysitting, Habitat for Humanity, Boys Scouts and don’t forget even very young children can help with household chores, meal preparations, shopping and yard work.
Experience is the best teacher. As parents we just need to step back enough to let the child feel the thrill of doing it themselves.

Just another day at my daughter’s home: Feed and change the baby, prepare meals, teach her pre-schoolers manners and love for each other as she sorted out yet another squabble over a toy or activity.
Finally, bedtime arrived. And just like any other day, the pre-schoolers reluctantly worked under their mom’s supervision to put away their own clothes and tidy their rooms before the ritual bedtime story.
That is, it was just another night until Eli, 5, discovered a black vest in his closet.
“What’s this?” he held it up and looked at his mom.
“A vest.”
“Is it a marrying vest?”
“I guess you could wear that to get married,” she mused.
He looked at his sister, Caroline, 3, who had finished tidying her room, and was waiting for the bedtime story, “Caroline, will you marry me?”
She nodded, but that was not enough for her brother, “No, I can’t marry you. You have to have a marrying hat on first,” decreed the engineer of imagination.
She ran to her room and returned wearing a pink stocking cap, her favorite hat.
“That is not a marrying hat,” he decreed.
She returned wearing a white blanket as her veil and a white soft blanket wrapped over her light pink nighty as a wedding dress.
Eli slid the black vest over his dinosaur pajamas. He studied his sister, thinking of the one wedding he had attended.
“You have to have a flower,” he decreed.
They found a silk Gerber daisy in Caroline’s stash of hair decor and with some help arranged it on another toy’s rod to make a floral bouquet for Caroline.
By then Daddy had come to watch.
“Dad, will you marry me?”
“Sure.”
But first, Eli had one more necessity for the wedding, “We need rings.”
His father looked around and found a couple of pedicure sponges. As he explained later, “It was just the closest thing I could find to the real ring.”
Eli pronounced the couple ready for the wedding.
With the wedding march solemnly hummed by their mother – also the wedding photographer – the couple approached their father.
“Will you, Eli, take Caroline to be your sister? Will you always promise to be her big brother, to love and protect her in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?”
Eli agreed.
Then Daddy turned to Caroline, “Will you, Caroline, promise to always be Eli’s sister in sickness and in health, to laugh at his jokes, for better or for worse, as long as you both shall live?”
She nodded.
“Then I pronounce you brother and sister.”
As their mom clicked away to record this memorable moment, they slid on their pedicure sponge rings and gave each other a kiss on the cheek, turned and placed a kiss on their dad’s cheek as well.
The wedding clothes came off and bedtime rituals continued … with one more lingering hint of the wedding when Eli ran to his secret stash of candy.
He returned and thrust a piece of gum at his sister, “Here, Caroline. Here is some gum. I told you I would love you,” he paused and looked at her seriously, “but, you have to be good.”
With the children tucked in for the night, the parents sat and marveled at the evening’s turn into the “land of let’s pretend.”
“Do you suppose we could do this every night?” asked the family referee and the night’s astonished father.
Probably not.
Sibling rivalry will continue the rest of their lives, but as the evening’s ceremony proved, even when it is just another day, the pre-schoolers will occasionally astound their parents with glimpses of the children’s love for each other.

Poverty, poverty everywhere, and not enough being done to help those suffering from it – or so say the politicians seeking our vote to enable them to provide more governmental intervention.
And yet the poor in the U.S. have so much more than the poor in third world countries. While poor children in America have access to dentists, doctors and medication under Medicaid, Medicare or ARKids, poor children in India and Brazil lack even basic medical tools such as wheelchairs. If they are fortunate, the disabled in those countries may benefit from a charitable organization such as Joni and Friends and its Wheels for the World program. J&F collects wheelchairs which are refurbished by prison inmates and then donated to developing nations and fitted to a needy disabled child or adult.
Any child born with a cleft palate in the United States or most European countries will have surgery within their first year – whether their family is poor, rich or in-between. Children in developing countries may never have the simple operation – unless they encounter visiting organizations such as Smile Train, which places the cost for the surgery at $250. By that time many have endured years of shame and physical discomfort from this common birth disorder.
According to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau, 13.2 percent of Americans live in relative poverty. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines poverty for a family of four as one with a yearly income of $22,350.
A tight budget, yes, and yet a budget that typically affords said family a refrigerator, an oven and stove, clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, a coffee maker, a microwave, a car, air conditioning, at least one color television, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player and a VCR. If there are children, especially boys, in the home, the family has an electronic game system, according to the 2005 U.S. Department of Energy, Residential Energy Expenditure Survey.

 
Yes, the USA has families who earn less than others, but with the availability of shelters and soup kitchens open across the nation, even the homeless in this country have access to better housing than the millions who live in mud huts with dirt floors and thatched roofs such as those found in Haiti, India and many countries in Africa. These families survive on less than $1.25 per day (or less then $500 per year) and they prepare their meals over an open pit. In Brazil, their children sort through the city’s rubbish for food, clothing and sellable items.
The next time you are asked to weigh in on the needs of the poor in America, consider the following points for measuring absolute poverty as written by David Gordon in his paper for the United Nations on “Indicators of Poverty & Hunger.” The paper defines absolute poverty as the absence of any two of the following eight basic needs:
• Food: Body Mass Index must be above 16.
• Safe drinking water: Water must not come solely from rivers and ponds, and must be available nearby (less than 15 minutes’ walk each way).
• Sanitation facilities: Toilets or latrines must be accessible in or near the home.
• Health: Treatment must be received for serious illnesses and pregnancy.
• Shelter: Homes must have fewer than four people living in each room. Floors must not be made of dirt, mud or clay.
• Education: Everyone must attend school or otherwise learn to read.
• Information: Everyone must have access to newspapers, radios, televisions, computers or telephones at home.
• Access to services: This item is undefined by Gordon, but normally is used to indicate the complete panoply of education, health, legal, social, and financial (credit) services.
Yes, there are poor in the US, but we need to stop and reconsider their real needs when the poorest of the poor is in this country looks so rich compared to so many around the world.

At 12 the son of Inez and Wendell Colson organized fundraisers at his school to buy a Jeep for the Army to use in World War II.
At 17, he worked as a volunteer to re-elect the governor of Massachusetts.
At 21,  with his bachelor’s degree in hand, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps.
At 28, having served as assistant secretary to the Navy, he earned his Juris Doctorate from George Washington University Law school.
At 30, he founded a law firm that quickly became known in Boston and Washington, D.C., especially after adding a former chair of the Securities Exchange Commission.
Then at 37, Charles Colson took the first step to activities that changed his life. He joined the Richard Nixon administration, becoming the president’s special counsel responsible for many projects.
At that time, Slate magazine writer David Plotz described Colson as “Richard Nixon’s hard man, the ‘evil genius’ of an evil administration.” Colson echoed the thought in his own writings, saying he was “valuable to the President … because I was willing … to be ruthless in getting things done.”
The Hatchet Man, as some called him, would walk over his own grandmother if necessary to get things done. Wikipedia reports that as a result of Colson’s actions the use of the term “has since become commonplace for anyone who is tasked with conducting distasteful, illegal or unfair ‘dirty work’ to protect the reputation or power of their employer.”
His activities reflected exactly that – until the tower of terror came tumbling down. Nixon’s secrets and Colson’s complicity, along with others, became public knowledge with headlines daily screaming new information about Watergate, “The White House Plumbers” and cover-ups.
Nixon resigned in shame; Colson pled guilty to obstruction of justice and was sent to jail.
In the midst of all the turmoil, the devastating headlines and revelations, a friend gave Colson the book “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. Colson read it, saw the error of his ways, repented and became a follower of Christ – a Christian.
When he made his new-found faith public, few newspapers saw anything other than just another public ploy for sympathy and an attempt to avoid prison.
At 44, the former Hatchet Man went to jail and, although he served less than a year, those months in jail so impacted Colson that it changed his focus from men in power to men in prison.
At 45, Colson founded Prison Fellowship as an outreach ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. In a sense he became the Hatchet Man for changes in our national prisons. Having personally seen the impact of our national warehousing approach to criminal justice, Colson promoted prisoner rehabilitation and prison reform.
In the decades since then, he saw the recidivism rate cut by almost two-thirds for prisoners who completed the faith-based program and he touched the lives of countless prisoners’ families.
At 52, Colson established Justice Fellowship, a Christian-based criminal justice reform group which reflected his changed views. Colson criticized the death penalty as being unequally applied; he opposed the incarceration of nonviolent, non-dangerous offenders, and advocated for restitution as a more redemptive approach for both perpetrator and victim.
Colson, never one to sit silently on the sidelines, wrote more than 30 books related to prison reform, as well as books about living as a member of the Body of Christ and books on government and God. He wrote columns for Christianity Today, and spoke across the nation on related topics including a speech titled “The Problem of Ethics,” where he argued that a society without a foundation of moral absolutes cannot long survive, which he delivered at Harvard Business School.
Saturday, April 21, at age 80, Colson died in the hospital “from complications resulting from a brain hemorrhage.”
From his controversial conversion to his speeches and books, Colson exhibited the change that Christ made in his life – a change that left a legacy in many fields which will long be felt.

My husband pointed at the blue glasses in the cupboard. “You choose every glass except that one,” he scolded.
I just looked at him and his fuss over glasses.
“That’s the one with the egg under it,” he explained.
I should have known. A couple of weeks ago he insisted on buying two bags of spring colored M&M’s, repackaging them into our stash of plastic eggs and hiding the eggs all around the house.
I have been finding chocolate-filled eggs every since – under my pillow, beside my toothbrush, in the tiny teapot my father gave me long ago, in the dresser drawers, tucked into stacks of fabric, and inside the bookends on the head of our bed.
Most folks think he is just another old-timer with lots of energy and ideas. I think he verges on entering his second childhood with the advantages of all the experience and knowledge of the grandfather.
That’s all very fine and well, but I had a grandson in mind when I bought that wooden kit to assemble that included a tiny machine to make it move. He looked at it longingly. “Who is this for?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe it could be done with a grandchild,” I said as I dashed about preparing to go to work.
He studied the box. He opened it and dumped out the parts.
The kit had never been opened, but it had been by the time I returned from work that day. He had opened, assembled, tested and found it wanting. “The machine is too small for the weight of the wood,” he announced.
A month ago it was the child’s electric car waiting for the trash man. I suggested we bring it home and see if it still worked or if he could get it working. I also insisted that he not put a lot of money into the repairs.
Like every other kid on the block, he did not listen. He calls it his Cadillac, this two-seater with a place for a working radio. He began making plans – big plans for that car.
He quickly analyzed that an incorrectly sized fuse had melted the wires on the accelerator. He ordered another and went shopping for paint.
“Wait until you get the part,” I reiterated.
“It will work. I know it will. I tested the circuits. They all work.”
I could not park my car in the garage that night. He had turned it into a paint shop for the Cadillac Escalade.
He gave the large plastic car a fresh coat of paint and waited for the part to arrive. It did not arrive before the grandchildren visited, but that did not keep him or his 20-month-old grandson from having a lot of fun with that car.
Grandpa and Daddy pushed tiny tot up and down the driveway in the car. The kid grinned with sheer joy. He was driving a car. When they parked it, he didn’t care …. he opened the door, climbed in and kept on exploring that car. He loved it as much as Grandpa.
Long after the little driver left, the part came. Maybe the Cadillac would work, but hubby found other problems to resolve. He bought another battery and charger.
It still did not go.
He drew schematics of the electrical circuit. He studied the wiring harness, the fuses, the accelerator and other linkage points. He talked with the neighbor, his building buddies, the guy at the repair shop, anyone who might or might not know something – including me.
With the accelerator in place and a careful sizing of fuses, he declared it running and went looking for a test driver. “You really can’t tell for sure if you don’t have a child driving it,” he explained.
The neighbor’s son showed that it went faster backward than forward. My husband switched some gears around and declared it ready for decals.
He ordered them Monday. While he waited on them, I showed him the Lego soccer set I had purchased at a yard sale.
“I wonder if all the parts are here?” I said. I left the box on the table and went to work on an adult project.
Happy as a child at Christmas time, he picked up the Lego soccer game, dumped out the plastic bags, opened the instructions and began building.
“It only has 10 men, and I think it’s missing a flag,” he said.
I walked over and looked at the box. “That’s all the men it shows on the front of the box.”
He sorted out the pieces and began assembling a green playing field.
Long before I finished my project he proudly called me over to demonstrate how it had all the parts and that it moved for playing the game. Then he took it all apart and put it back in the box until the next time.
He may be a kid at heart, but he does a pretty good job of picking up his toys and putting them away.

The crowd drooped as the day waned, but no one wanted to leave the gathering. The sun said it was time to eat. The sound of grumbling stomachs said it was time to eat.
But the thousands who had gathered quickly that day had no food. Oh, some had grabbed a hunk of bread as they dashed out of the house that morning and nibbled on it as they listened to the itinerant teacher, but that was hours ago.
No one had expected to be gone so long, but they had been and now as the sun began its downward descent, the support team for the man began urging him, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
The man had a better idea. “They do not need to go away. Give them something to eat.”
You can almost hear the shock wave ripple through his crew at the idea of a spontaneous picnic for thousands of folks in a time and place with no fast food services or corner grocery stores sank.
“It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” they protested.
Obviously, there was no way a spontaneous meal would happen on this day in this wilderness, at least not until one of the followers, Andrew, came up and said, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish.” He hesitated before musing, “but how far will they go among so many?”
Anyone watching would have thought “not far enough to bother with this crowd of 5,000. Might as well give the lunch back to the boy.”
But little is much in the hands of the man of God, so He took the gift, blessed it and began using it. He broke the bread and began handing out pieces to his helpers to share with the groups of 50 and 100 men seated all around them.
Everyone had plenty of fish sandwiches that day, including the boy who had given what he had to the Master.
Here’s the thing about trusting God with what you have – you don’t know what will happen if you let go and let Him have everything.
The man of God, Jesus, did not promise anything in return for the boy’s lunch. He didn’t even say “I will make sure you get the first serving.” However, with 12 baskets of leftovers, we know that no one, including the boy, fainted from hunger on their way home that day.
Looking back, ultimately whichever way the boy dealt with his lunch, he ate.
If he had not shared his food, but had eaten it exactly as his parents intended, he would have watched others go home hungry, wistfully wishing there were some way he could help.
Handing over the basket, he recognized, “there goes my food … I’ll just have to wait until I get home to eat.”
Only after he gave did he see the crowd fed and received back more than he could eat.
Why did the child hand over his lunch when he had no guarantee he would eat that day?
Maybe there were times that day when he had watched others quietly eat any food they had brought with them without offering to share with anyone.
Maybe as one of the crowd that day, the boy had seen Jesus heal others and had heard the lessons Jesus taught about giving and treating other people the way you want to be treated.
Whatever he experienced, this was one boy who dared to offer what little he had, all of it, to the Master.
Because he gave what he had, he was taken to meet Jesus personally. And then, as his little tummy rumbled in hunger, he watched Jesus take the bread and fish and begin breaking off pieces of his lunch until it fed not just one little boy, but 5,000 men.
The boy risked going hungry, and ended up being stuffed to the brim. He literally saw “give and it shall be given you, full measure pressed down and overflowing.”
Either way, the lad got supper. One way he knew he would have supper. The other way he chose to go hungry to feed someone else, only to have Jesus turn around and provide more than enough food for everyone there.
I think the same holds true for us.
We can hold tight to what we have, go off to the side and refuse to share. or we can take a risk, choose to go without and see what happens. Sometimes the results can be miraculous.

(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer for the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)

The spring fun began when tiny tots invaded the quiet of our old folks home for an extended weekend. Ready to run and roam after a long ride, they entered the house with energy enough for an egg hunt. My husband grabbed the bag of plastic eggs and began hiding them out in the open for the three pre-schoolers to find.
My son’s four-year-old daughter quickly began finding eggs under chairs and in shoes. My daughter’s almost three-year-old followed suit, tucking colorful eggs in her plastic bag. My son and his wife coached their 20-month-old son to find the egg laying beside the chair. He carefully bent over, picked it up and energetically announced his accomplishment with a big grin and a shout of glee.
After a couple of eggs, his interest quickly waned but the girls kept looking, spilling eggs as they wandered down the hall and around the kitchen and living room. Their grandfather picked up the fallen eggs and re-hid them when they turned their back to him. They never did find the egg openly “hidden” on the table lamp.
The oldest did find the package of egg dye on the counter and asked how to use it. I told her we needed to boil some eggs first. With some supervision, they quickly learned to dip and roll the eggs until the whole dozen had turned blue, red, green and yellow. Quite satisfied with the craft, they slid off the counter and headed to the toy cupboard.
“You have a lot of toys,” the pragmatic four-year-old observed.
“Yes, I do. I like to have people play with my toys,” I opened the door wide for them. Settling on the floor, the three emptied out the cupboard and played happily for a long time.
When we sat down to eat, the little feller grinned as his parents led a prayer of cheers for God’s gifts that included hands raised in praise. Throughout the meal he repeated the motion and cheers with a huge grin that said “I’m doing it right!”
When we ate out, his sister initiated a prayer song of praise and thanksgiving. No shyness of praying in public for her. We joined her in singing a thanksgiving prayer to God for food and family.
Their cousin, who joined them for the visit to our house, did not know that song, nor did she know “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” when I sang it as I pushed the porch swing for her. But, she heard enough to walk away singing, “Swing high, coming to carry me, swing high.”
On the way to town, the two girls entertained themselves choosing and singing a toddler song they both knew. Then the three-year-old began singing “The wheels on the bus go round and round.” She sang about fathers, mothers, babies, kids and many others on the bus. She refused to acknowledge our hints about bus drivers and wipers until two verses later it was her idea to sing that verse.
Throughout the visit, the cousins acted like sisters – including a couple of power struggles and then joining forces against little brother. They insisted that the shopping cart with an electronic scanner – which momma and I bought at a yard sale for him – belonged only to the girls. We encouraged them to share with little brother. He scanned food until we handed him his favorite electronically controlled car and told him it was the girl’s turn.
The pretty pink dress momma found at a yard sale caught both of the girls’ eyes. When I slipped the yellow dress with a fairy’s skirt of tulle on for a fitting, little cousin said, “actually, I like pink better.” Yes, but actually it was about four sizes too large for her and a size too large for her cousin. After a moment of sadness, she looked down at the yellow dress, twirled and danced like a fairy princess.
Story time abounded during their visit. Any seated adult heard, “Can I sit on your lap? Will you read me a book?” Mostly the adults weren’t so much asked as used when little people backed up to a seated adult and plopped into any available lap.
Sunday morning I dressed all three for church. They looked like Easter morning with the little guy in a light blue romper and the girls in pink and yellow. They stood still just barely long enough for pictures before my husband buckled them into car seats. Then at church, we paraded down the sidewalk for everyone to see our youngest grandchildren before their spring vacation ended and they left us to the quiet of our old folks home once again.

(One proud grandparent, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)

Hefting a case heavy with brown books stuffed with information, the salesman approached my parents for a conversation. He left with an order and returned later with the set of encyclopedias my parents had purchased. My sisters, brothers and I may have worn hand-me-down clothes, we may have had to share beds and eat simple meals at home, but we had our own set of encyclopedias. We opened the thick books reverently, breathing in their rich odor of a new book filled with information.
We depended on the encyclopedia for history, for exploring other countries, reading, biographies and science research. Living far out in the country, away from the hole-in-the wall libraries in nearby villages, the encyclopedia ensured we finished our homework. To keep us up-to-date, my mom bought the yearbooks with the new entries and an overview of the year’s news. The glossy pictures piqued our interest to read just one more entry whenever we pulled out a volume for research. I returned time and again to the acetate overlays of the human anatomy, fascinated with the colorful drawings of the body’s muscles, blood flow, nerves, internal organs and bones.
Moving from one side of the country to the other, we shed toys, clothes and household furnishings, but not the encyclopedia. Only after my youngest brother left did my mom pass the set along to my oldest brother for his children to use. After they left for college and marriage, the books moved to the attic.
Shortly after I married, we bought a set that a school had exchanged for a new set. Our youngest son, Nate, remembers the variations of each letter shown at the beginning of each book, flipping through the books, looking at the pictures and “one of my least favorite sayings growing up was why don’t you look it up.” And sometimes, my husband stacked several books to serve as a craft press.
When one of our children did not use capital letters – and nothing said or done phased him to change – I pulled out the volume on writing and mandated said child would copy a few paragraphs and capitalize the first letter of every single word in those paragraphs. After a couple weeks of writing, the problem resolved itself.
But mostly, I watched my children repeat a scene I knew well: Open encyclopedias spread around them as they wrote a paper for school … with breaks to read adjacent entries on other topics.
Before we moved to the South, my husband pulled out the A encyclopedia to read about the state. He still smiles when he relates that it said that people in Arkansas ate opossums.
A few years after we settled in El Dorado, a charming encyclopedia saleswoman came to our door. Her charm – and our son’s observation of the outdated entries in our ancient volumes – spurred us to buy a new set.
After our children married and moved away, visiting grandchildren kept the encyclopedias open. When we pulled out our sample set of rocks, the oldest grandson grabbed R for rocks. When my husband talked about taking the granddaughters to New Orleans, they pulled out the L and N volumes.
In the spring, new plants and other findings in nature meant reaching for the appropriate volume in the encyclopedia.
But the times are changing.
While my husband still reaches first for the encyclopedia and then goes to research on the computer, our oldest grandson, according to his father, “will spend time with his Nook looking at different Wikipedia articles for hours. Encyclopedias encourage this sort of free-form exploration and, with the introduction of hyperlinks, it becomes much more natural.”
And therein lies the rub for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Demand has waned for their $1,250 sets; the publishers recently announced that once the existing copies are sold, the 244-year-old institution will only exist in cyberspace. The company will offer information via the Internet and their DVD Britannica.
“I suppose Internet research is good and if you have a destination you can trust for the research, that is OK,” my son, Nate, wrote. He points out another advantage of an electronic encyclopedia: “At least fewer trees die for the sake of learning now: The couple ounces of coal for learning mostly come from trees that were already dead a long time ago.”
Then he adds, “but sometimes it sure is nice to get away from the LCD glow with a stack of nicely bound paper … when you don’t want to have to go sit at the computer, or you don’t have ready access to the full Internet,” he concluded.
He has a point. So for now, if the lights go out, we can pull out our encyclopedia, light a candle and see what it says folks in Arkansas eat when the lights go out.

(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)

The late Agatha Christie’s novels still sell because she carefully built the personalities and relationships of the characters as well as the stories – many have been made into movies. But lost in the modern interpretation of Christie’s books are her interwoven discussions of morals which contrast sharply with today’s blithe accepting sigh, “As long as they are happy.”
The long-term effect of personal decisions emerges as the theme clearly in her 1944 non-fiction book “Absent in the Spring,” one of six books that Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
The novel describes the history and personalities of one family via the reflections of the family matriarch during a week of unexpected isolation.
At one point she thinks back to the day she and her husband received a letter stating that their daughter, Averil, had been seen in the wood kissing a married, renowned scientist, a man 20 years her senior. The parents argued about what to do. The mother considered it a short-lived infatuation that would soon end.
The father disagreed. “No, our daughter feels deeply and loves deeply. He [the scientist] is human enough to wreck his own life – and to nullify his lifework. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” the mother wondered.
“It depends on our daughter. On how strong she is and how clear-sighted.”
The father negated his wife’s suggestion to isolate their adult daughter with any separation from the man because she “can only be influenced by factors that she respects.”
They confront their daughter. The mother’s approach emphasizes the obvious truths, “you are young and romantic. This is out of the question, you will regret it and bring sorrow on your parents.”
Averil listens, then wearily says to her mother, “Must we go on like this? … won’t you accept the plain truth, that nothing you can say or do will make the least difference? We care for each other. His wife is an invalid,” Averil says to justify her actions.
But this father knows his daughter and begins to expose the weakness in her justifications.
“Marriage is a contract. … entered into by two people of adult years in full possession of their faculties and with a full knowledge of what they are undertaking. It is a specification of partnership and each partner binds himself and herself specially to honor the terms of that contract – that is, to stand by each other in certain eventualities – in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse.”
He acknowledges that the words are only spoken at the wedding, but stipulates, “they are none the less a contract, just as any agreement entered into between two people in good faith is a contract. Because some of the obligations undertaken are not enforceable in a court of law, they are none the less binding on the persons who assumed them,” he says, asking Averil if she agrees.
“That may have been true, but it is different now. People are not married in the church and do not use the words of the church service,” she responds.
Weighing his words, the father says, “That may be so, but 18 years ago he did bind himself by using those words in a church  … uttered those words in good faith and meaning to carry them out.”
Averil shrugs off the whole concept.
Her father continues anyway, “Will you admit that, although not legally enforceable, he … did enter into such a contract with the woman who is his wife? He envisaged at that time, the possibilities of poverty, of sickness and directly specified them as not affecting the permanence of the bond.”
As the daughter’s face turns white, the father continues, “I want an admission from you that marriage is, apart from all sentimental feeling and thinking, an ordinary business contract. …. and [that he] proposes to break that contract with your connivance. … with no regard for the due rights and privileges of the other party to the contract?”
Averil brushes it all aside saying that the wife is only concerned about herself and her illness.
Her father presses the issue, “I don’t want sentiment from you, Averil. I want an admission of fact. … you have no knowledge at all of [her] thoughts and feelings. You are imagining them to suit yourself.”
“Very well, she has rights.”
Averil knows she would be happy to run off with her lover. Her father knows she would be happy, but he also knows that her happiness would be built on the back of a wife robbed of her husband’s pledge to be faithful even through sickness. He also further argues that the decision will ultimately affect the man’s work and may blame her for that.
Hardly the kind of reasoning found in today’s society. In this decade, a wife’s decline into dementia or any other chronic disease has even highly recognized religious and social leaders empathizing with the husband’s inconvenience. Many sympathetically excuse his inclination to leave the sick rather than encouraging him to be an honorable person and uphold his original commitment.
Being a man (or woman) of one’s word – even in the face of a difficult marriage is not exactly the pattern reflected in today’s constant chorus, “As long as they are happy,” but it is definitely something to consider.

(Joan Hershberger is a reporter for the El Dorado News-Times. She can be reached at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)