Changing Seasons

When we arrived here in western Pennsylvania after a year in New Mexico, we were kind of blinded by green. Everywhere we looked the world was green, very different from Albuquerque.

Lately, one by one the trees have been turning bright yellows, oranges, reds and golds, filling the scenery with blazing color - even the ground. Today we went out to Woodcock Lake and walked across the dam. The air was crisp and cool, making the warmth of the sun a welcome thing. There were a dozen or so people walking or jogging or scootering. And, yes, we even saw someone we know from church! Such is life in a small town.

Therein lies part two of the changing seasons. Rightly or wrongly, it has slowly dawned on me that, along with giving up show business as a breadwinning pursuit, along with the sudden realization that I have become a geezer, and along with trying to figure out what this geezer's next breadwinning pursuit might be in this wrecked economy, I also need to get over myself.

Many of the one or two of you who might still be reading these ramblings know me as a smart-ass with a penchant for leaping as far as necessary to drive home a smart-ass remark or a silly notion. That is who I am, it seems, and it is who I can no longer be. I can no longer be the minister's wife. I can no longer be "Damn it, Jim!" I can no longer be "old, beat up and tired" as my status. My position, under the microscope of the congregation we serve, in this small town where we cannot go anywhere without seeing someone we know (or who knows who we are) is that of the gracious, courteous and discreet minister's spouse, with a tightly reined in sense of humor.

Is it possible that I'll bite my tongue enough that it will turn bright yellow, orange and red, then fall to the ground?

Kitten?

Kittens are cute, there's no denying. Even Remus J. Lupin was a cute kitten once. Now he's a huge overweight cat.

For twenty four years we've had at least two cats, and sometimes as many as four. Even if they hated each other, they still kept each other company. I remember good ol' Peanut - he didn't get along with Harvie, Itty Bitty, Yang or Remus, but he loved our little blind girl. They curled up together whenever he came inside.

Lately we've been contemplating getting Remus a kitten, whether he wants one or not. We're thinking, if nothing else, a kitten will help the "Mozzarelly Belly" weight loss program. Nothing keeps a grown up cat on his toes like a kitten.

We know of a dozen or so people with kittens to give away, and they all know our little girl died recently. So far we've managed to stave them off. But it's just a matter of time. ReLu needs a kitten.

Frog Tape

We had a professional painter paint our living room and foyer. The living room is orange with a yellow ceiling, the foyer is red. The plan was to paint the inner faces of the archways purple, the fireplace brick purple, and four inches down around the top of the walls purple. He kept telling us about this great new stuff called Frog Tape, for masking off color changes such as the purple border he was planning. So he finished the orange, and tried to tape off the border.

The tape wouldn't stick! He talked to the Sherwin Williams people. They said that the paint needed to dry for three days. He came back yesterday and put some tape up on one part of the living room - the part where no furniture needs to move. About an hour after he left, the tape started falling down.

There is something about that deep base used for the orange - Frog Tape won't stick to it! so the living room walls are going to be orange all the way. Personally, I'm glad, but don't tell the design team I said so.

Lost And Found

In January of 2002 I voluntarily went to our therapist solo. I was in great distress, as you would have surmised if you knew me well and learned that I went to any form of doctor voluntarily.

A year earlier I had dusted off an old 1993 sermon entitled "Life And Death Tangled In The Interdependent Web," updated it with a couple of excellent books that had been published in the interim and renamed it "Leading The Way To Hope." In it I described our disastrous environmental situation, and ended up by describing how Unitarian Universalists were poised to be the leaders of the movement toward sustainability and responsible stewardship. At that moment I could see the tipping point ahead, where we would lead the world into a better tomorrow.

I already had a small local circuit that I toured: our Orlando UU congregation; the lay-led University UUs - a congregation birthed from the loins of the Orlando church; and the little lay-led Eustis congregation. If one of my offerings was well-received in Orlando, the others would hear of it and invite me to speak. Lay-led congregations are always hungry for speakers, even if we're just lowly carpenters (and who ever heard of a carpenter being a religious leader?!)

This particular sermon was so well liked, I was approached at District Annual Assembly by a representative of the Nature Coast congregation on the west coast of Florida. He had been asking around the other lay-led congregational representatives for suggestions of speakers. This sparked a germ of an idea in me. I had a District Directory that told me the names of all of the people in charge of lining up speakers in the district churches and fellowships. I printed up a flyer describing my sermon and mailed it out to every congregation in the Florida District, knowing that even churches with settled ministers had periodic lay services during the year and usually during the whole summer. Well... I got a pretty good response. Many had heard of me, and those who hadn't were directed to the many congregational leaders who had already experienced a Jim Emerson sermon.

During the spring and summer of 2001 I was out of town nearly every Sunday. I went to Lecanto, Ocala, Port Charlotte, Clearwater, Bradenton, and even Key West. Ocala asked me back for a date in early October, and Daytona signed me up for mid-November. I was on top of my strange little world, riding a wave of appreciation for my writing and my public speaking skills.

And then those damned four airplanes got hijacked into a huge high-profile big body count attack on the very same American wasteful value system I had been envisioning being phased out by peaceful example-led change from within. At that moment I watched my vision of a sustainable culture crash, explode, burn and die.

I was scheduled in Ocala to deliver a talk about humans and the blurring of the lines that we have drawn around ourselves separating us from the other animals. I tried to write that - really I did - but I couldn't pull my head out of my despair. So I wrote about what I really felt. What a mistake that was! Yes, I stayed for the "talk back" portion of the service, and felt as though the mood of my audience would have been more eloquently expressed by a barrel of hot tar and some feathers. Were these the same UUs I had recently invested with so much hope?

In November I mustered the gumption to go to Daytona and deliver "Leading The Way To Hope" as scheduled, but I did so with a very heavy heart. That is when I learned that I did not believe it any longer. My hope was gone.

Doctor Hughes listened to my tale of woe, and did what he could to help me dig out from my despair. He told me that EVERYONE had lost something on September 11th, 2001. I had lost my hope.

Life gradually got better for me, although I became more reclusive, and I was pretty introverted before. I withdrew from Unitarian Universalism just as Carmen was poised on the threshold of her quest for ministry. As we moved to Massachusetts and became immersed in the history of the UU movement, I gained a huge amount of respect for the things about it that I had admired years before, but now saw with mine own eyes. We visited dozens of churches that had been ongoing since the 1640s and directly involved in many upheavals in our culture.

At church this morning, Carmen's sermon was about the dynamics of cultural evolution, resistance to change and fiery determination to take it to where someone thinks it ought to be. Religious freedom and religious pluralism was the focus of the sermon, and the events leading up to recent anti-muslim sentiment were spelled out. Her point was that Unitarian Universalists were poised on the threshold of tipping the scales toward real religious pluralism, because this is what we are all about and have been for decades. I was forcefully reminded of the events leading up to the day my hope was lost.

Today, I think I found it again.

The Geezer of Meadville

On March 11th of this year I posted "The Conquering Geezer Returns," a slice of my new life as an official geezer (the tipping of the scales was the hearing aids.) On March 11th, on my way home from getting my aids tuned up, I had to wait an hour for the next bus to my neck of the desert (in Albuquerque.) I walked into Wendy's at 11:00am and found myself surrounded by geezers. So I turned up my hearing aids, adjusted my trifocals, hitched up my compression stocking and limped in on my orthotic arch supports.

Today I walked down to the Area Agency for Aging, where I was hoping to get some help finding a job. I was walking past the Wendy's at about 1:15 and realized I was hawngry! Well guess what - it was filled with geezers. I felt right at home.

After eating I went on down Park Street to the address of the AAA - in the Senior Center. I went inside and walked from one end of the building to the other. Nobody was home, even at the welcome desk. I guess they were all at Wendy's.

So I walked over to Market and Chestnut Streets to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Workforce Development office, hoping for some help there. I found a couple of geezers there. I think they were volunteers. Their "job" was to help people look for work on the Workforce Development website. It turned out that I knew more about that than they did. I did a little looking on their computers just to be polite, then walked on home. My computer is faster than theirs.

It was a nice walk, anyway.

Only Kitty

When Professor Remus John Lupin came into our lives, he was the youngest of four kitties. Big bad Peanut was outside most of the time, and when he came in he would take nothing from Remus. Yang avoided him as much as possible, and Yin wasn't much fun to hide from and pounce on, so R.J. Lupin slept a lot, ate the cheese Aunt Cyndie fed him and grew that famous Mozzarelly Belly we know and love.

In 2005 Peanut went to live with my parents at their mountain cabin in Georgia. In 2008 Yang died. As long as Yin was alive, ReLu had to be fed in a separate room and kept there until Yin was finished eating - otherwise Remus would eat her food then his. Yin was always underweight, so we kept a good supply of dry food in a bowl for her to munch between feedings - which kept Remus' mozzarelly belly in full bloom. Now that Yin is no longer with us, the perfesser is on a diet! He doesn't much like it either. He howls at me to put down dry food between meals, and I put down ten or twelve nuggets. He looks at me with a puzzled, contemptuous expression.

It's been over a week since Yin did any eating. I've been feeding Remus "where the white kitties eat" this whole time, but he still goes to his quarantine room door when I set out to feed him. Critter of habit.

Sometimes he howls for no apparent reason, and we have to wonder if he's grieving for Yin. After all, she was good for a pounce and roll every now and again, or a game of "under the door" or "the chair game." And they often shared the sunshine streaming in through the back doors in Albuquerque and here. I'm certain he misses her.

He has never been an only child before, taking the brunt of both of our affections. But he seems to be getting used to it.

The Heart Of A Lion! - A Eulogy

Yin died tonight at about 8:30. For several days she has done little but lie there breathing, with that heart of a lion pumping. She was in Carmen's lap when it finally stopped.


The vet told us when we rescued her and her brother that they were damaged goods and we shouldn't expect them to live longer than three or four years. Yang died two and a half years ago at nine years old, and Yin made it to eleven and a half. She was always an inspiration.


At four weeks old when they were dumped by a breeder, they would both fit in the palm of my hand. After they were nursed back to health, they were regular kittens, into everything, exploring everywhere. Yin had no pupils in her eyes so we knew she was blind, but she was determined to go wherever Yang went, climbing up on chairs, desks, sinks and dressers. She used to run down the hall, turn into the bedroom and leap onto the bed - until we moved the bed. After that she would never jump up on anything unless she could feel the top of it with her front paws. She would jump down off of anything, though, trusting that the floor would always be there. She landed in a waste basket or two, but mostly that procedure worked. For that reason, we were sure to always close the lid on the toilet - and were aghast when a visitor would leave it open.

She had a mental map in her head at all times and in all places we lived - she lived in five houses with us - and changed the map when the furniture moved. If she heard us talking about taking her to the vet, she could hide faster and more bafflingly than any other cat we've had.


When she was young we had a bent wood rocking chair. We're not sure how it got started, but she had a frequent game going where she climbed up into the chair, ran up the back so it rocked down and up and down and up, until it stopped, then she would run back down to the seat and back up the back to ride the ride again, sometimes eight or ten times before she moved on to some other entertainment.


In Orlando our back pool deck was completely fenced in, so one day we let Yin and Yang outside to explore and sniff and feel the sunshine. For about a half hour it was paradise. They circled the pool, smelled the bushes, swatted at lizards and rolled around in the sunshine. Then they came on back around, looking like they were ready to go inside. I got up to open the door, and my chair made a loud scraping noise. Yin bolted away from the sound - directly into the pool! Carmen jumped in after her, grabbed her and tried to hand her to me - a sopping wet furry buzz saw of claws! We were both bleeding from several wounds by the time we got her calmed down and dried off. The next time she went outside was in the walled-in pool-free back yard in Albuquerque.

She saw us through Simply Organized, Inc., Lesley University, Andover Newton Theological School, the Albuquerque internship and the beginning of the Meadville ministry. I guess her work was done. We shall sorely miss her.

Big Doins in Meadville!

In the past five years and five months I have lived in Orlando, greater Boston and Albuquerque before moving to Meadville. What I've noticed about Meadville is that things that would attract very small crowds in very big cities are per capita very big draws here. The first example is one we haven't seen yet, but we are assured that we must: there is a dam hereabouts where people feed the carp bread, and they have grown so big and so numerous that ducks walk across their backs. That's entertainment.

There are three theatrical entities in the city plus a few out in the hinterlands - we have been to shows put on by two of them already.

Thunder In the City, a motorcycle and classic car festival, was in the city the second weekend in August. The UU church put on a pancake breakfast that Saturday morning and nearly broke even.

The County Fair was last month, and every place we went people asked us if we had gone to the fair yet. (Don't tell anybody - we never did go.)

This week The Tall Ships are in Erie, and the chatter is all stories about times folks have gone up there to see them in years past, and/or plans to go see them this time.

This past Wednesday we were invited by a church member to the Crawford County Historical Society's presentation by a man who has done a lot of research into the history of the Medal of Honor with an emphasis on the two Meadville residents who were awarded the medal for their valor at Gettysburg in 1863. There were about seventy people there.

And today was my second session serving the homeless at The Soup Kitchen over at the Methodist Church across the street from the UU church. There were five of us from the UU church (the second Friday of each month is our day) four non-UU volunteers and after a while we were joined by about ten members of the Allegheny College Gators football team.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that in those places I used to live, this sort of thing is overshadowed by the sheer mass of events and activities available on a daily basis. Here in small town Pennsylvania, this is what there is to do, so many people do it. It's kind of refreshing, really.

I like it!

Wrong Again?

Those who've known me for a long time know that I am often wrong. Those who know cats know that they are expert in the field of making liars out of us. The freshest example that comes to mind is the food Yin just ate - a chunky bits in gravy kind of food that, until a few weeks ago (when Carmen bought some by mistake) I vehemently said that Yin will not eat. She eats it now.

The other possibility is that she overheard us talking about veterinarians, and decided she'd better snap out of her "declining" behavior. I've seen that before, too. She has been on enough vet visits to have figured out the drill.

Anyway, the bottom line is that she has perked up and is no longer acting as though the end is near. So - disregard the previous post.

Sad Times A-Coming

It appears that our little Miss Yinny Yin Yin is winding down. She hides in her little cave a lot, she hovers over her water dish for hours at a time, and most telling, she doesn't struggle when we pick her up.

As you'll recall from my early postings last fall, she and her litter-mate brother were dumped by a breeder at four weeks old, as soon as their eyes opened. Yang was a wall-eyed Siamese, and Yin has no pupils in her eyes - bad ju-ju for a breeder

Our vet told us not to expect either of them to live longer than four years. In fact, Yang died once on the operating table and was resuscitated when he was three months old. He died again two years ago at the ripe old age of nine. Yin is eleven and up until a couple of weeks ago, was still going strong. Now she's losing weight - and she was always underweight - and looking kind of ragged like her brother did before he died.

We are being intentional about giving her quality lap time these days, and doing everything we know to do to make her feel loved during her last days, weeks, months - whatever. It's hard to say good bye to one who has been such an inspiration to us - a blind little girl kitty with the heart of a lion! Our friend Colleen described Yin's legacy this way: she showed us that being scared is just the first step toward being brave.

Where Does The Time Go?

Almost three months ago I was looking down the barrel of the cannon that would shoot us to our new home here in Meadville, PA. Since then I've been taken off anti-coagulants (which means I'm back on ibuprofen,) we closed on our house, Carmen was ordained, we packed up all of our stuff for the movers, who came right on schedule on July 5th, drove four days with two cats, the movers arrived about six hours late (not bad, really, as movers go) on July 10th, and since then we've been alternately unpacking and remodeling our cute little house here.

I'm sitting in my office - you heard me right, MY office - I can shut the door and everything! Carmen's office, meditation space, artsy fartsy room and primary closet are upstairs in the former attic that was sold to us as a "Master Suite" because it was scheduled to have a bathroom. Someday it will have a bathroom. I promise. My other domain, besides the kitchen, is the basement, a wet and musty-smelling place that Carmen is happy to let me rule. Early in my reign I donned a hazmat suit, put bleach in my squirt tank, and hosed down the whole interior of my basement.

The yard is huge compared to anything we had in Boston or Albuquerque. We bought me a lawn mower and a battery powered weed whacker (I LOVE IT!) first thing. Today I bought a 24' extension ladder to fix a small leak around the vent pipe. I've hung three ceiling fans, two regular doors, three bifold doors, two accordion doors, one window air conditioner for the attic space, two sets of mini blinds and three sets of "regular" blinds, and walls, floor and ceiling in the new attic closet since we've been here. And painted. There's a lot more, but those are some highlights.

And the kitties? Well, the big french doors face south toward Pittsburgh, and the back yard is home to birds, bunnies, squirrels, dogs and about five neighborhood cats who use the former owner's horseshoe pits as outdoor litter boxes. Anyway, the kids can sit in the sun and watch the show (or listen to it, in one case) which can entertain them all day while chaos reigns around them. In addition, there are new rooms to explore, including a basement, new furniture to test-rest, and the magic fountain of food still flows twice a day.

What more could a kitty want?!

Close Encounters Of The Bird Kind

In my previous posting I mentioned my intention to go for long walks in an attempt to build stamina for my two 10-hour days next week (10-hour days kicked my ass even twenty years ago.) Yesterday I was fulfilling that promise. I walked the arroyo path to Ventura and was fixin' ta walk to Harper when the bike path caught my attention. For many months I've wondered if that bike path went all the way to Wyoming Avenue, but until yesterday I was either headed for Academy Road or was in too much of a crunch to risk a time-consuming adventure that might turn into a dead end. Yesterday I was walking for the sake of walking, so an adventure was just the ticket.

Well, it turns out that the path almost makes it to Wyoming - just a few parking lots in between. It actually ends at the Cherry Hills branch of the library. Anyway, it was a much more pleasant walk than Harper, where the dogs bark and sometimes even snap at me over the concrete block walls between their yards and the sidewalk, mere inches from my new hearing aids.

So I was walking along, trying to keep up a brisk pace, when a big ol' roadrunner came running up the path straight at me. I stopped. It stopped about thirty feet away and stared at me for about ten seconds, then it turned around and ran away. I guess I'm pretty scary looking. Good thing I'm not a coyote.

The Long Good Bye

My work on The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas is finished. At the end of this week I'll pick up my check for $500! Woo hoo!!!

Most of the landscaping in our yard is weeded for the big wing ding on June 5th, when the folks coming from out of town and the folks participating in the Ordination ceremony (some are both) will be here in this little house and back yard - all thirty-some of them. This project also entails getting the sliding glass door (we call it the screeching glass door) fixed. Oh well, Marilyn would have to get it fixed before she could sell the house anyway. The rollers are gonzo!

Tomorrow is my big day. At 1:30 is my appointment at the Coumadin Clinic. Ahn will poke my finger and get a reading of my anti-coagulant level. Then I'll have my first (and last?) appointment with the mythical Dr. Garcia, in whose name all of my prescriptions have been written (in Ahn's handwriting.) I'm hoping he takes me off the "rat poison" after six months, as was explained to me back in December.

Then I "race" home on the Albuquerque transit system to get ready for the Ministerial Spouses Dinner with William (Rev. Christine Robinson's husband) and Carlos (Rev. Angela Herrera's husband.) It doesn't sound like my cup of tea at all, but I figure I'll live through it and it will re-enforce my ministerial spouse identity - something that will come in handy for being a ministerial spouse that is active in the congregation in Meadville, PA.

Last Friday afternoon I filled out nine pages of paperwork for my former employer, F/X. They're coming to Albuquerque on June 2nd with a set for KRQE News. My buddy Keith suggested I talk to my buddy Brannen, the Production Manager and my Facebook Friend, about getting on the crew. Of course, the Ordination Department "suggested" I not work on June 4th, 5th or 6th. What with Union relations etc. this means I will be working the 2nd and 3rd only, approximately twenty hours. Hell, it took me almost that long to download, fill out and fax back my application package. You'll be happy to know that I sent along my letter of recommendation from their former general manager, now vice president, in my fourteen-page fax.

One thing that nags at me is that I may no longer have the stamina to work two ten-hour days. A year of NOT working, plus a blood clot have made it difficult to do a lot of anything. My plan is to do a lot of walking during these nine days. I've mentioned in the recent past that I feel as if my career in show business has come to an end. That's fine with me. I accidentally changed careers twenty two years ago to get into the Biz, now I can't wait to find out what the next accident will bring. Of course, being a minister's wife will be job one, but an income would be helpful as well. I don't believe that growing and selling chile peppers will do much in that department. I've already applied to the Meadville Home Depot, a cabinet shop, a portable horse stables rental place, a machine shop... As soon as I post this I'll be strolling over to The Meadville Tribune to see what's new there.

I returned to Facebook on Wednesday. All I did was log in, and everything was as I left it. First, I played the Scrabble move I had abandoned nineteen days earlier. Then I culled fourteen more people from my "Friends," bringing my total to an even twenty nine - including "Strange Women Lying About In Ponds Distributing Swords As A System Of Government," one of my favorite friends. Never posts anything.

Almost a month and a half left here in Abq, not enough time to start anything, and way too long to be saying good bye.

Abq Snafeaux

Two days in a row now I've missed my #2 bus connexion, arriving in time to actually see the number two bus a couple blocks north of Central (Historic Route 66) and fading fast into the distance. Yesterday it was the consequence that was the snafu, and today the missing of the conexion was the consequence of an earlier snafu. Stop me if I go on and on about really boring (to anyone but me) stuff.

Yesterday the #66 bus just had more stops than normal. It seemed as though somebody wanted to get on or off at every turquoise bus stop sign on Central. What started out as "plenty of time" to get to Eubank by 5:31 turned into a 5:34 arrival. Now there are times when the #2 runs late, but a glance at the empty bus stop showed that it had gone by. Further study revealed the back of a bus way up the street. The next one was scheduled for 6:00.

There is a small problem with the 6:00 bus. Unlike the 3:30, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 or 6:30, the 6:00 runs the midday schedule: instead of going Eubank to Academy to Ventura and past my development, this one goes Eubank to Layton, to Academy and back to Eubank - bypassing Ventura and letting me off about a mile from my house. The alternative: let it go by and wait for the 6:30. I opted for the walk. I like to walk.

So I'm on the 6:00 and Carmen calls. She's working until about 6:30. I tell her to look for me on Ventura and at least wave as she goes by. So we get to Eubank and Layton, and the driver keeps going on Eubank! Cool, I thought, he doesn't know about the rogue schedule. I'll just keep my baloney lips zipped and ride on down Ventura. So he gets to Academy and stops. He gets up, carrying his written route directions, and asks the two passengers if we know how he's supposed to go. We both want to go down Ventura, so that's what we tell him. He doesn't buy it so he gets on the communication device and phones home. They tell him he should have gone on Layton. "Oh well," he says to us, "I guess I'll just stay here until time to go back south on Eubank. There'll be another bus along shortly." I decided to walk.

That is how my one mile walk turned into a two mile walk. It was after 7:00 and I was almost home when Carmen called again. She was just now ready to leave work. No wonder I never saw her go by and wave.

Today, on the other hand, was a #66 glitch. We were cruising along, with plenty plenty plenty of time to make the 12:41. I was even thinking of walking up Eubank to "The Chile Addict" store to see what they had in books about growing green chiles (I don't believe they'll be as easy to come by in Pennsylvania) and maybe some seeds. There was a beautiful little 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair on the bus, and that could take some time to unload, but even so, plenty plenty plenty of time.

And then we got to downtown, to the Alvarado Transportation Center. There in the bus loading/unloading zone out front was an old beater of a car, "parked" about three feet out from the curb. In trying to maneuver to the #66 bus stop, our bus barely scraped a corner of this car. Some yelling occurred, and the Transit Police came out in force. After many minutes went by, we were told to exit the bus. We did. Another #66 would be along shortly. Suddenly, the old beatermobile drove away! So, after many minutes, we were told we could reboard the bus. We did so, but just before we pulled away, the car returned, more yelling ensued, and we were asked once again to exit the bus. This time a #66 pulled in behind, and we all boarded that one, including wheelchair girl and her family.

Of course, after all of that plus the unloading of the wheelchair along the way, we made it to Eubank at 12:43, just in time to see the back of the #2 bus fade into the distance. The next one was at 1:41.

The good news: I now have a great book about growing chile peppers and two packets of seeds!

Two More Months Of Stuff

Sundays won't be nearly as exhausting for Carmen as they have been since September. The third service, the "contemporary service" during which a band plays music from the sixties and seventies, and the sermon is dropped unceremoniously into the middle, has been discontinued for the duration of the summer. Instead of being finished at 2:00, church will be over at noon. She'll still be tired, especially since she was up late finishing her homily last night.

Soon her internship will officially be finished. From then until July 4th she will be the "Acting Associate Minister" before the newly hired Associate Minister is installed. I don't think this upgrade in her title will entail much extra work - she's already doing the job without the title. On the night of her last day of Albuquerque ministry, the whole country will be shooting off fireworks to celebrate her transition from student / associate minister to fully fledged minister to the congregation in Meadville, Pennsylvania!

Remember that I said that the plan changes often? Well, my previous posting described my journey to Meadville beginning directly after Ordination. That changed a day or two after I posted it. Now, Carmen and I are going together in the Rav4 directly after the moving company drives the truck away, probably following the same routine we followed with the kitties on the way here. The Gospel of Rand McNally includes a detailed description of this procedure, which involves listening to them whine in their carriers during the morning, and letting them join us up front after lunch and gas fill-up. Four days on the road will not be as stressful as sixteen - I hope.

Less than two months to go. Most of our stuff is still packed from the last move. I've packed up our "fancy" dishes already, as well as my new Beatles boxed set and the old "Avengers" VHS tapes given to me by a church staff member last week. Carmen's office needs to be packed up, but I ain't touchin' that! There are a few more kitchen items to pack when we get closer to July, but first we have the incursion of sixteen friends and family members who are coming for the Ordination June 6th. That's the next big hoo-ha. Then Carmen goes to General Assembly in Minneapolis later in June, and will have another week in Albuquerque after she returns.

Meanwhile, there's still a lot to do for Albuquerque Little Theatre's production of "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas" which will keep me busy busy busy until the end of this month. It opens May 28th. Y'all come!

A Momentous Decision

For weeks I've been thinking about it. Little by little I've been cutting back - I went from 57 to 43. All the hours I've spent reading stuff, looking at pictures and videos - and playing Scrabble! Holy Mackerel (it is Friday, after all.) Then there was all the discussion of information usage and privacy issues. And all the political stands and statements. I found I was more irritated than entertained. So this evening, April 30th, 2010 at 8:28pm MDT I deactivated my Facebook account.

It was a very good thing during the long siege scouring the internet job search wasteland, filling out online applications, doing assessment tests, emailing resumes and cover letters - and never hearing anything from anybody other than automated acknowledgements of receipt of said materiel. Facebook was a place I could go to hang out with friends. It was a great solace during those long days.

Now, however, I'm going to the theatre every day, leaving at 7:00am and returning home at around 6:00pm.There is some packing for the move that needs to happen. In about a month, people will begin to gather for that most momentous occasion, Carmen's Ordination (y'all come!) Moments after that's over, I'll be loading up the truck and driving my tools to Pennsylvania, where I already have more friends than I've made in New Mexico, looking for a job and finishing the house before the motherload arrives. As much as I'll miss my 43 Facebook friends, I won't have much time to dwell on it.

I think the big turning point came when I posted a picture of Snake Boy holding up his seven foot rattlesnake skin. I was expecting dozens of comments. There were three. Meanwhile, I was emailing it to my Facebook-free dad, and I decided to just go ahead and email it to the whole address book, many of whom are on FB. I got more comments from that mailing than from the FB crowd. "Hmmm," I said, "Why am I spending so much time there?" Ever since then I've been going back and forth between doing another friend purge, and simply purging my own damn self. Today I decided on the latter.

Peaceful Easy Feelin'

Carmen flew in right on time Monday. We hauled the really big suitcase and the new super giganto suitcase to the car, drove home and hauled them into the house. Carmen took a short nap, took a long post-11 hours in airports and airplanes shower, and we went to the church staff going away party for Ron, the Associate Minister here who might be going to the UU Church of Jacksonville, Florida. The party was at a small, dingy bowling alley on the east side.

The senior minister was there, and she was asking me about Meadville and the house we're buying. I gave her as complete an account as it is possible for me without writing it down. So the next day she said to Carmen that I seemed much more at ease than she's ever seen me. When confronted about this, I came to the conclusion that I am more at ease now that I know a) that we have a firm destination; b) where that destination is and c) approximately when we're going.

Of course the plan has changed several times this week, but the latest plan is that I will rent a small truck for the cats, my tools, my computer and some other stuff we don't trust the movers to move. I will leave in time to get to Meadville ten days after closing on the house, when the sellers are contracted to be out. I will assess the attic conversion project to ascertain what else is needed, buy stuff at Home Depot before returning the truck, and get to work. The goal will be to have the room ready for the honkin' heavy adjustable beds before the movers carry them off of the truck. As my old friend Mr. Charles Edward Channell would say, "It's gonna be close!"

The Life Of The Wife

Being the wife of Carmen M. Emerson is a good life. No matter what's going on, there's always something interesting and challenging to do. Of course, the latest and greatest challenge has been making public appearances with her, without embarrassing her. Colby Landers said it best. I told him we were going to Meadville to meet the whole congregation and to impress them favorably. "And she's taking you?!!!" he said.

They seemed to like me. For one thing, there's a large contingent of the congregation that is involved with the community theatre, and they are courting me big time. The Properties Team, that does repairs and maintenance for the church, has already signed me up. The choir is counting on another tenor. And of course, most importantly, I have a repertoire of "new" casseroles to introduce to their "6:59er" pot luck suppers.

Buying a house in Meadville - or anywhere else, for that matter, is a portion of pastry when the Rev. is a former real estate law firm receptionist turned secretary turned closing agent turned paralegal and office manager. She tells me what to pay, I pay it; she tells me to sign it, I sign it. Easy peasy Japaneasy. As a corollary, when we move into the house, she tells me what ceiling fan to install and where, I install it; she tells me what she wants in a built-in bookcase, I build it; she tells me what plants to plant and where, I plant them - you get the idea.

Now that the Meadville congregation has finally officially called her, now that we know that we're moving and where and when, it's all just a matter of getting the job done. Benny Van Buren sang it best: "Ain't nothin' to it but to do it." It's a good life.

Chestnut Street

Meadville, Pennsylvania was founded in 1766, after George Washington ran the French out of there. The UU Church of Meadville was established in 1825. Its new building, built in (I think) 1836, is on Chestnut street, right on "The Diamond," an oval-shaped town square. I guess about ten churches are clustered around The Diamond.

Up the road (and it's all uphill) is the house we have a contract on. Seven addresses listed in the church directory are on Chestnut, and we're not listed yet. The congregational meeting is this Sunday, the 18th, and they are voting on whether or not to call Rev. Carmen as their next settled minister. If things go as well for her the rest of the week, they'll call her for sure. Of course, we all know what a treasure she is. The only person who doesn't know is Carmen.

It's nice to be home, back in the cat juggling saddle again. And I now have a great new Rand McNally to write - tomorrow!

He's Dead, Jim!

We had a lovely Easter yesterday, beginning with the sunrise service at 6:45am. Carmen somehow - she doesn't remember how - got shanghaied into playing guitar during the service, and accompanying the singing of "Morning Has Broken," "Spirit of Life" and "This Little Light Of Mine" by the fifty-some congregants who came to watch the sun rise over the Sandia Mountains. Some yummy breakfast burritos were available for sale afterward, and then we set up for the two Family Services in the Social Hall. Moving tables and chairs around, that's what church is supposed to be all about.

All in all, there were six church services at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque yesterday, which I think is a lot considering that most of the attendees do not believe that the dead guy became undead. I guess going to church on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox to celebrate a holiday that is all about bunnies, eggs and flowers - but has nothing whatsoever to do with fertility - is a habit we can't break. Anyway, diluting the 700+ members of the Albuquerque church by six services made each one manageable, unlike the SRO crowds we used to get in Orlando.

So we were there from 6:15am until 2:00pm. Carmen co-officiated the family services while the grown-up services were going on in the sanctuary at 9:30 and 11:00. I attended one of each, family and grown-up. The "Contemporary Service" (during which the band plays music from 40 to 50 years ago) had all three ministers and the Director of Religious Education involved. I took a contemporary nap.

We got to come home and relax for a couple of hours after church and before going to the house of Kathy, the chair of Carmen's Intern Committee, for a very yummy dinner with her Brady Bunch family.

The next entertainment was setting the GPS to guide us home, and realizing she still thought "home" was in Watertown, Massachusetts! Good thing we didn't just blindly follow her directions or we'd be in Arkansas by now.