Family – Page 4 – Wanderings

Chaos at the Desk!

joe August 29, 2008 Family, General

This is a recurring theme. My desk, no matter how clean it may be seems to attract things – phones, CDs, books, mail. The list could go on and on, but just when I think I have “IT” clean (or a little cleaner), something pops up (often again) on the desk.

There’s no one to blame, it just seems to happen. While Karen was away at her speaker’s class, the desk was pretty much cleaned off – why I could see at least half the desktop. That in itself was no easy feat – after all, you have to find someplace to put the things you take off the desk. But then my hands started to bring things from other rooms in the house to or back to the desk. Now, there are two stacks of books (yes, I am working on the class I will be teaching). Then there is all that stuff from Linux World that still needs to be sorted through. BTW, Linux World is not were you will find Waldo. I managed to get in a couple days on the convention floor in San Francisco before we went to Mount Hermon.

Just have to start one item at a time – where does it belong, and take it there. And just in case there are multiple items for the same destination, why not save myself all that walking and make one trip. It’s funny, how a simple thing like a desktop can irritate you. I used to like that little sign – “A clean desk is a sign of someone with nothing to do.”

Would you believe, Yahoo and Google give you over two million references when you search for “a clean desk”. I know mine is not on the list! Oh well, time to take some of these things to the garage storage or the “blue bin”.

Mount Hermon Fix

joe August 19, 2008 Church, Faith, Family

Wow! What a week we had at Mount Hermon this year. Spent time at Family Camp where Bill Butterworth and Chip Ingram were the main speakers. You can "Yahoo" or "Google" the names.

Had a super time, even thought this was not the "Homeschoolers Family Camp", there were many of us present. This turned out to be the largest camp Mount Hermon had all summer. What thrills and excitement awaited us!

There were two new rope/climbing courses on the grounds. The Canopy Course lets you traverse the redwoods on zip lines high above the ground – like through the tops of the redwoods. the Canyon Course was kinda just that – zip lines across the canyon. Due to the rains during the winter, the previous rope course had been damaged, and so they rebuilt. We did not go on either this year, but people who did had words of praise for Mount Hermon.

In addition to the great food, fantastic music Jack Pearson and Jesse Butterworth, there were just a multitude of things to do and see. Time to sit and share – build friendships and discover people from your past.

It happened to me on "Train Day". There we were sitting at a table on the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz. This guy from the next table (white hair like me) came over and set with us and we started talking. He was from Sun City, AZ. I asked him if he happened to know someone (a retired pastor) who had moved there, and got a negative response (OK, so it was not someone like Billy Graham that everybody knows). We kept talking, and he said he grew up in San Francisco. After looking at his name (Gordon Bostrom), my brain put two and two together – asked some questions…turns out his dad had been Prayer Chairman for the first (1958) Billy Graham Crusade in San Francisco. I was heavily involved in a youth organization (Christian Endeavor) that was active in many Northern California churches.

What a connection…across all these miles and years. What an encouragement he was to me about things that had happened in my life. Needless to say, we exchanged email addresses, but Gordon said later "I'm a phone kind of guy, could I have your phone number so I can call you?"

I'm thankful for the week we spent – thankful for the ministry of Bill and Chip (check out their podcasts or talk to us) and ever grateful for Gordon's words.

Memory Jogger

joe July 25, 2008 Family

Woke to the sound of a ringing phone. It was not my usual cell phone ring early in the morning, but rather the house phone. To top it off, this was one of those “let’s sleep in” days, and no one has been calling early for the past two weeks. OK, so it was 9 a.m. – that’s sleeping in for me!

“It’s some woman calling about your uncle” was all she said. My mind tried to get a handle on who could be calling at this time of day asking about a man who has been dead for over five years (more like 22 years). (Now my mind is locked in to “am I really THAT old?”) Someone calling about my only real uncle – the World War II flying Ace (almost)? The one who shot down two enemy planes in one day?

Yup! That was who the call was about. An Oklahoma author, doing some research for a children’s book she is writing wanted any information I had about my uncle Dubois Elsberry. I was impressed that she already had the two books I was going to refer her to. Then my mind started to remember some pictures and other memorabilia that happen to exist in my storage shed.

With promises to dig out any details about his life I could remember, Mary Coleman-Woolslayer and I ended the call. Not before we had exchanged email addresses and good wishes.

As different bits of information have been recalled, Mary and I have communicated. Even to the point of discovering that she lived in a neighboring town when I was in school in Oklahoma.

Small worlds just collided. That close, and here some 60 years later we meet.

I am anxiously looking forward to this book about the Stearman Bi-plane and what part my uncle, an Oklahoman, played in it’s history.