Time Travel

Posted on June 3, 2021 by Doc Arnett

This gallery contains 1 photo.

An old photograph, old memories, old emotions… can be the launch for fresh expressions of appreciation. Continue reading →

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Helping with the Hurry

Posted on May 18, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Headed over to the Doniphan County transfer station with a load of garage sale leftovers and some additional trash, I was driving a bit slower than usual. About twenty miles an hour slower as a matter of fact. Since I had most of the load covered with a tarp, I probably could have driven faster without losing much of the load.

But, I was sure I could not lose any of the load if I drove at forty-five. And… since the transfer station is less than three miles away, what’s the point of being in much of a hurry, right?

That sense of deliberate pace was apparently not contagious. Headed up a half-mile straightaway (the last passing opportunity for another three miles if you’re going east—and I was) I saw an older, larger pickup coming up behind me at a rate possibly exceeding the speed limit and definitely exceeding my leisurely rate.

I maintained my speed but pulled over and drove along the edge of the pavement, giving the other driver an easy open view of the road ahead and a fair amount of extra maneuvering room. As he closed the gap, I saw a west-bound tractor trailer rig rounding the curve ahead of us, maybe a quarter mile away.

Apparently, the driver of the pickup truck has a keen knack for tracking speed and distance on the go. Using part of our lane and part of the oncoming semi’s lane, he ripped on around me and swung back fully into our lane with about a half-second to spare.

As soon as he was back in our designated channel, he flashed his lights twice. I first thought he was thanking me for making space for him but then it occurred to me he might be thanking the big rig driver for a similar favor from the opposite direction.

Whatever the case was, I appreciated the gesture on his part. Nice to have at least a bit of acknowledgement when we have deliberately shown some small courtesy. It wasn’t anything big on my part, fer shure. I didn’t even have to slow down and it gave him a chance to pass in relative safety.

I think it’s probably a fairly frequent thing in this life that we can show consideration to others without any real inconvenience to ourselves. And that helps the rest of the world keep motoring along at their preferred rate of speed. Unless, of course, a U-joint breaks and their driveshaft drops out less than a mile up the road.

H. Arnett

5/18/2021

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The God Who Lives in the Praises of His People

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Doc Arnett

walks in the midst of our worship,

draws near to us when we draw near to him,

expresses his presence in our expressions of adoration,

makes himself know to those who search for him,

longs for the fellowship of humble spirits,

draws in the fresh fragrance of our prayers,

delights in the heartfelt words of singing,

senses the meekness of his truest seekers,

breathes his Spirit into those whose nearness

is found in the sincereness of brokenness.

He empowers the soul

that knows its own weakness,

has fallen face down in the shame of its own guilt,

has knelt in anguish and yet worshipped in the deepest grief,

that even from the depths of despair has honored

the God Who Is Always There,

The God Who Inhabits the Praises of His People.

H. Arnett

5/15/2021

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Worthy

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Worthy is the Lord of Heaven:

worthy of admiration,

worthy of belief,

worthy of consecration,

worthy of devotion,

worthy of exaltation,

worthy of fear,

worthy of glory,

worthy of honor,

worthy of integrity,

worthy of joy,

worthy of kingship,

worthy of love,

worthy of majesty,

worthy of nobility,

worthy of obedience,

worthy of praise,

worthy of quietness,

worthy of righteousness,

worthy of sacrifice,

worthy of trust,

worthy of understanding,

worthy of veneration,

worthy of worship,

worthy of yearning,

worthy of zeal.

Worthy is the Lord of Heaven!

H. Arnett

5/13/21

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Be Still and Know

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Doc Arnett

There’s something about the way

early morning sun

shines on green grass,

glistening the drops of dew

like millions of tiny mirrors

sparkling in the stillness

before the day’s duties of life

take over my thinking and doing.

I think I’ll stand right here

for just a moment,

looking at how a peaceful sun

slants through some of the spring leaves

of Crimson King and sugar maple

hanging down toward the lawn.

Ah, what a gentle, fine beginning

to the day the Lord has made.

I believe I’ll spend just a bit more time

studying the lines and shadows of the old spruce

stretching across the gravel drive

and leave the doing for later.

H. Arnett

5/5/2021

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Love Like Gentle Rain

Posted on May 4, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Three days of soft showers

soaked the surface of the earth,

stoking April’s glad green

into a lush sheen that promised pastures

knee high to Black Angus,

Polled Shorthorns, Charolais,

and whatever else grazes its way

across the rolling plains of the Flint Hills.

I love it when it comes this way,

the gentle days of slow-paced rain,

easing the soreness in seams of dirt,

soothing the aching hurt of surface soil,

rather than the outbursts of surging storm

that form the maddening torrents

that go rumbling and rushing,

swirling and scouring their way across the slopes,

turning slight draws into ditches,

ditches into gullies,

gullies into ravines,

clawing through the lean, fertile soil,

even digging through thin sod at times.

Thick, brown boils of water

etch the stone of upland streams,

tumbling toward their dark union

and mad dreams with mud bottom rivers

in the black nights that follow the storm.

I will take whatever rain we can get,

the needed sustenance of garden and grain,

and bless the Lord Who Gives and Who Takes Away.

But I love these days of gentle rain

and soft showers that fall for hours,

nourishing the promise of harvest and flowers.

H. Arnett

5/4/2021

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A Good Hike, Unruined

Posted on May 3, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Randa and I hiked in Bluff Woods (northeast Missouri) yesterday. There are some pretty steep slopes in them thar hills and we spent a while scouring them for morel mushrooms. Although the temperatures have been ideal, we have had less than half the usual rainfall for the month of April. Thunderstorms brought highly localized heavy rains but the terrain we traipsed over appeared to have missed out on those. Even when I scratched down through loosely packed leaves, the ground was dry. Not great conditions for an abundance of late season morels.

I remembered Mark Twain’s claim that “Golf is a good walk, ruined,” and wondered if he might feel the same about hunting morel mushrooms. However, in a similar way that one good shot turns a bad day of golf into a good day, finding a single six-inch tall morel takes away most of the sting of disappointment.

On the other hand, walking amidst the native hardwoods, seeing the white blossoms of Mayapples and the blue clusters of Sweet Williams, following the flitting of a white-and-blue swallowtail butterfly, hearing the twittering of unseen birds, and spotting the occasional snail easing its way across the ground cover is reason enough to hike the woods. Add in the beauty of an upland stream gently working its way across worn stones, and the feel of fresh air, and you’ve got plenty of reason to spend an hour or two reminding those leg muscles what they’re capable of.

There have been too many times when I’ve allowed my walks in this world to be ruined by my own imposed goals and contrived expectations. Some of the most interesting and stimulating conversations I’ve ever had were job interviews where the committees ended up selecting other candidates. We always have the option of valuing the experiences above our disappointment with the outcome.

And, by the way, coming out alive and in good shape, with good memories to boot, is a pretty good outcome.

H. Arnett

5/3/2021

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Career Changes

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Doc Arnett

I guess it’s been almost twenty-five years now since I started wearing glasses. Seems like there might have been a clue or two—having to hold the book a little farther away or leave the newspaper on the desk and read it while standing. Subtle little hints…

But I remember clearly the convincing event that led to my first pair of reading glasses. It was a sort of electro-mechanical thing: removing my son’s CD player from his car before he sold it.

Twisted around, halfway upside down, my rear end in the seat and my shoulders on the floorboard, I was removing the screws that held it mounted underneath the dash of his ’86 Chevy Celebrity. I kept knocking the back of my head against the floor. Why? Simple. I was trying to get my eyes far enough way from the screws so that I could get a focused image.

Apparently, it was going to take more than an old Johnny Nash song for me to see clearly again. Even after the rain was gone. When it came to having to cut a hole in the floorboard or get a pair of glasses, I opted for the glasses.

“Well,” I lamented to myself, “there goes my career stealing stereos… Can’t take the risk of dropping my glasses and thus leaving evidence at the crime scene!” Fortunately, I was able to fall back on my career at that time as a school principal.

Generally, recognizing the true nature of our limitations usually makes us more accepting of the necessary accommodations. Sometimes, I reckon its economics that makes us resist the spending the money that makes things better for us. Most often, I suspect, it’s more a matter of pride.

H. Arnett

4/30/2021

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Tough Plantings

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Tough Plantings

In consideration of location for a tiny garden, I considered hours of daily sunlight, availability of supplemental moisture via garden hose, lack of interference with horse activities and interactions, needs and preferences of our esteemed canine, and necessary traffic areas for guests, deliveries, and our own motor vehicle excursions, including the need of an area for parking and maneuvering the horse trailer.

Regrettably, availability of deep, fertile topsoil was one of the small sacrifices. The only such areas on our little estate here are either surrounded by trees on at least three sides or else right in the middle of prime lawn space.

And so it was that yesterday found me prepping the small area conveniently contained within the side circle drive we created for parking and reorienting the horse trailer. It’s actually quite perfect as a garden spot except for one small drawback: the whole area used to be a parking lot.

For several years this place was a bed and breakfast and is actually quite the setting for such a thing: ready access to main highway, lovely shade trees and accenting evergreens, two-and-a-half story house sitting right near the top of the hill.

Over the years, natural forces deposited a thin layer of soil over the three inches of well-packed gravel that formed the parking area for the convenience of overnight, retreat, and breakfast buffet guests. An assortment of grasses and weeds created a facade of green. But, underneath that facade, that densely packed layer of crushed limestone lay quiet and unrepentant, waiting for just such a day as yesterday.

The day before, Randa and I bought two dozen tomato and pepper plants at Fleek’s Nursery/Greenhouse, conveniently located next door to our place. We needed two dozen holes for planting them. At our place in Arkansas City, I’d just take a garden trowel and dig the holes in what seemed like a foot or more of good topsoil. Take about thirty minutes for the whole deal.

Yesterday’s project involved a heavy iron “spud bar” (a seven-foot forged steel rod with a long, flat, tapered end for busting rocks) and post hole digger. Use the post hole digger to clear off the thin layer of dirt, then use the spud bar to bust through and loosen up the layer of hard-packed gravel, then use the digger again to cut down a foot or more into the clay subsoil below. (Apparently, they’d cleared off all the topsoil in grading for the parking lot.)

Including rest breaks, it took about six hours to set out those two dozen plants. That included hauling over a mix of sand, soil and composted horse manure and shoveling a generous amount of that into each hole. I fertilized each plant carefully, watered generously and set in metal tomato cages around all of the tomato plants.

I’m not sure how this experiment is going to turn out. It might be a colossal failure, a grim daily reminder of the futility of defying natural circumstances. It has certainly been a lot more work than I’ve ever put into planting a garden before. I’m fairly sure it’s going to take more watering than customary, even if we have regular rains.

But I also know this: it’s not going to take very many home-grown tomatoes to convince me it was worth every effort. I think that’s why the ancient writers urged us that while we are laboring and enduring our way through the efforts and obstacles of this life, it is good to keep ourselves focused on the ultimate rewards.

H. Arnett

4/29/21

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Improving the Foundation

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Doc Arnett

Our fully enclosed back porch sits on a concrete slab that is surrounded on its two exterior sides by another concrete slab. We call that exterior slab a patio. Not because of its extrinsic beauty but calling it a patio seems more convenient than calling it “that big slab of flat concrete that surrounds or porch on its two exterior sides.”

There is a crack or seam buffering the two aforementioned concrete slabs. Since we’ve had issues with water seeping into the basement in the general vicinity, I thought filling that seam with special caulking might help reduce the frequency of this particular annoyance. So, I started cleaning the joints last weekend, figuring that might increase the likelihood of a successful bond between the concrete and the caulk.

With the pressure set at around one-hundred-and-ten psi, I used my air compressor to blast out the collected bits of leaves, stems, sticks, sand and grit that had accumulated. While doing that, I noticed some sagging pieces of yellow fiberglass insulation at the southwest corner where the patio joins the main part of the house. “Probably some insulation that has fallen down from behind the vinyl siding,” I figured.

I figured wrong.

As it turns out, there was a sizable wad of wet insulation that had been stuffed into a hole where there was supposed to be a foundation block. This house, which seems to be impressively sound and solid over one hundred years after it was built, is supported by what look to be ceramic construction blocks made of terra cotta tile. The hollow core blocks are about six inches wide, six inches tall, and twelve inches long. As long as they remain intact, which most of them appear to be, they are apparently quite strong.

When one gets broken, that quality seems to diminish considerably. In case you’re wondering, stuffing the cavity with fiberglass insulation is not a structurally viable option. I found that a small batch of concrete seems to be a considerably superior solution. Much better at supporting weight and keeping varmints and critters out. Even though it wasn’t easy getting it into the hole with only two inches of vertical access space between the bottom of the siding and the concrete apron.

Ease of repair shouldn’t be the controlling factor when it comes to addressing the deficiencies on which we are building our lives. Insulation is a wonderful invention saving us a lot of money on energy bills and keeping us comfortable during the thermal variations of our climate. But it is worse than worthless as a substitute for a foundation. It takes more than blocking out the cold to keep a house—or a life—on solid ground.

H. Arnett

4/28/21

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