Tuesday, July 31, 2018

50 Years--So Many Students, So Many Stories

I have been purging student records and photos and reports and lesson plans.  I do not know why I saved so much.  Maybe because it was painful to throw things away at the time.  It is still painful now.

I think of the 5th graders and the 6th graders at Seymour Christian School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I remember Kevin who wrote on his spelling paper, "I am dum."  I remember John who taught me to recognize Orion's Belt in the sky.  I remember Lynn who has become my Facebook friend and said she went back to school to become a teacher because I inspired her.

Then there was my year as an "assistant music mistress" teaching 15 little girls at St. Leonard's School in St. Andrews, Scotland to play the piano.  Four of them were named Fiona.  None of them played very well!  Especially the boarders, one of whom told me, "Daddy has millions of cattle in the Hebrides."

After a year as a secretary at Harvard, I spent three years tutoring in a program for the "perceptually handicapped" in Newton, Massachusetts where I learned a method for teaching reading that I used over and over again with dyslexic children and adults.  I will always credit Dr. Jesse Grimes for a method that he developed and many use today.

At this point it was my turn for an advanced degree--an MS in special education from North Carolina State University.  For the next several years children came one by one or two by two for tutoring in Raleigh, North Carolina --at a clinic office or later, in our own basement classroom.   This was teaching and learning at its best--focused on each child and his or her needs with recorded progress.  It was hard to recycle the reports that I once worked so hard on.

Next were the years of adult education here in South Bend--at Hope Rescue Mission and at Family Literacy which met at four different sites over the years.  When I look at the rosters, there are so many names I don't remember but others I think I will never forget!  Dale, my first successful GED student, showed up for the graduation ceremony all dressed in black with  gold chains.   And Eric, when I complimented him on his gentle spirit, told me that I should know that he had spent time in prison for murder.  Tiffany, Tequila, Noelia, Latisha, Shaina, Jennifer, Jackie, Dishona--so many mothers of little children-- had so many obstacles to overcome.  And occasionally a father, too--John, Gerald, Adell, Ralph, Dion.

Before retirement, I decided a transition to regular adult education classes would be good--fewer administrative responsibilities than I had at Family Literacy.  One day a young black man walked into class and told me he knew nothing about computers because he had spent the last 15 years in prison for a crime he had not committed.  I was skeptical.  But he was right.  The Northwestern Exoneration project helped to free Harold and three others.  He got his GED quite easily but transition to civilian life had its perils for him.  It probably has even more perils now that he has his very large settlement from the city of Chicago.

It's overwhelming to see these names again and see the photos and read the writing in the the monthly newsletters we published.  Where are they now? How about the Family Literacy children who are teenagers and young adults?

I don't want to return to teaching.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to serve others in that way.  But sometimes it seems sad that so many chapters in my life are over.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Jim and Jubilees

 Jim has finished  an  eight year project --a commentary on the book of Jubilees.  Last night we celebrated with beer and "handhelds" at the Heavenly Goat Brewery.

Jubilees has been a part of Jim's life for a long time.  His doctoral dissertation on Jubilees was published in 1977.  His mentor and PhD adviser Frank Cross asked  him to do this project in 1992  but he had other things he had to finish first.  He really started it in 2010 and ended the actual writing in November 2016.  Fortress Press couldn't budget for its size just then so the editing was delayed until February 2018.

The last few months have been ones of sometimes daily emails between Jim and his editors and a few graduate assistants. But now the 1350 pages are done!  The hope is to have the two volumes available for the Society of Biblical Literature convention in November.  The convention is in Denver and that is where the editors live so we are looking forward for a celebration dinner then.

It's time to recycle all those papers!  Papers for the next project are already piling up however--a biography of Robert Henry Charles--who published on Jubilees in the years at the turn of the 20th century.


Tuesday, July 17, 2018

A Mother and Her Son (and my thanks to Facebook!)

While going through ten more shoe boxes full of letters and cards, I found one from Ellen written in 1979 congratulating us on Laura's birth and giving an update on her life.  I don't know that we communicated since then.  Ellen's letter told of her remarriage and her work and her contemplating going back to get her undergraduate degree.

I looked Ellen up on Facebook and couldn't find her.  I googled her and her obituary came up as well as a tribute written by her son 10 years after her death.  She died in 2005 in a car accident that injured both her son and her husband.

We knew Ellen and her first husband when he and Jim had  Fulbright years in Scotland.  We traveled together in a little rented Morris Mini and celebrated holidays together.  We lived in the same Georgian town house--the garden apartment for us, the third floor for them.  We were very good friends that year. When our son was born, they made us a baby quilt that hangs on our wall.  I have treasured it for years.

I looked for her son on Facebook and found him.  I sent him a message but was not sure it would get through with FB privacy requirements.   He wrote me back immediately saying that he knew almost nothing about that part of his mom's life.  In fact he didn't even know that there was a first husband until five years after her death.  That in itself is amazing to me and I am glad I was not the one to inform him of that part of her life.

At his request, I photographed a photo I had of her in Jeff's baby book and sent him photos of the quilt.   It makes me very sad to realize that she is gone.  I picture her as this smiling young woman with long hair and short skirts--a woman of the early 70s.  I am glad she had children, finished her degree, and was buried from a church. I am thankful for social media that enabled me to get in touch with a young man who remembers his mother and was happy to hear from someone else who remembered her too.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Purging is Painfull!

Every day I fill the recyclable container with cards, letters, programs, church bulletins and all manner of stuff.  I fill the trash container with VHS tapes, cassette tapes, and odds and ends.  I brought five small bags of pots, frames, and other stuff to the Goodwill receptacle.

My goal in the last few days is to sort through the boxes of stuff we took when Jim's mom closed up her own apartment.  I have emailed Jim's siblings several times to ask what we should do with recipe boxes, old jewelry, sermon tapes and diaries over many years.  And then there are the volumes Jim's dad wrote of studies on books of Scripture or the Belgic Confession.

I am sad because these all were things Jim's mom thought were worth saving--letters of sympathy, poems written for their farewell events at various churches, her hand-written notes on Dad's catechism sermons over the years.  And now I am throwing them away.

But not everything!  I read with interest another account of Rev. Vander Kam's life. I read one of the sermons in the pictured notebook and it was as if I could hear him preach again.  And it was a powerful sermon!

 I was saddened however to read his 1992 letter of resignation from the Christian Reformed Church and his request to move his credentials to the True Reformed Church that he helped organize and felt was true to the historic faith   I know a precipitating factor was the ordination of women as church officers.  He never knew, I think, that I was one of the first female elders in our church.   I was dismayed to read his defense of the historicity of Genesis 1-11 stating that this issue was not even something anyone should appoint a committee to evaluate.

I was particularly touched by two personal letters asking him to accept a call to Doon, Iowa, a very small rural congregation that needed a pastor who could be a strong leader.  At the time he was nearing retirement and had been a pastor of a church in Florida for just 20 months, a situation that was difficult for him.   This was a good move for him personally and for the Doon church but it led to more divisiveness in the larger denomination when he helped to start a new seminary truer to the traditional beliefs.   He was able to fulfill a lifetime goal of being a professor and he was much appreciated in that setting.

What will I do with all my diaries and journals?  Who will want the paintings, the music books, the novels I have treasured?  What about my wedding dress and other items I have kept for sentimental value?  What about the dishes I inherited from my great-aunt or the silverplate that came from my mother? This is a process that is painful and time-consuming but will have to be done.  I'm glad I have the ability and the leisure time to do it thoughtfully. But it does bring on a certain melancholy of spirit.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Letter Writing is a Lost Art

"Letter writing they say..." was a clue in the crossword puzzle I was doing yesterday with the answer of "lost art."  I pondered that thought while going through many shoe boxes full of cards, letters, programs, etc. from many years ago--but not from recent years.  I saved emails for a while but now we don't even get those.  Texts are great but impermanent.

I threw out birthday party invitations, greeting cards with signatures but no messages, and thank you notes from people I couldn't even remember.  Why did I save all that stuff?  I continued to save longer letters from family and friends after looking at them briefly.  Some day those will have to  be pitched too but I envision a day when I am housebound or bedridden and will have lots of time to enjoy them again.

Were we ever this young?
It was a bittersweet exercise.  There were letters from friends who have passed away--some at fairly young ages.  There were letters from people who were  good friends at the time and now we rarely or never hear from them.   There are some friends who have resurfaced on Facebook and that is fun. There were precious hand-made notes and cards from the kids.

My goal throughout this year is to keep working on purging stuff in the house so we can consider packing up and moving without too much trauma!

Monday, July 2, 2018

To My Dear Children and Their Spouses