Family Christmas

Sometime during my childhood, I had a dentist appointment on December 23. The friendly receptionist, thinking of Christmas excitement, asked me, "So, is anyone special coming to your house tomorrow night?"

"Yes!" I replied. "Mamaw and Papaw and Uncle Joe, and..."

She, of course, meant Santa. But I was thinking of my family's Christmas eve tradition. Though I lived nearer to my mother's side of the family, when I think of Christmas, I always think of the Byerleys' annual gathering.

I won't tell you just how many of those I've attended, but I can tell you that they still feel special. Last night, the Byerleys gathered at my house. There are 16 of us now -- we're a fairly small clan -- and 15 of us made it to dinner. The locale has shifted over the years, but the routine never does.

Everyone arrives bearing presents and covered dishes. Each cook brings his or her specialty and, beginning with my dad's generation, that includes the men.

Though he isn't quite up to it now, traditionally my dad brought barbecued beef and cherry cream cheese cake. My uncle bakes a ham and brings slaw or a dessert. One sister brings deviled eggs on any of her collection of deviled egg plates. Another sister brings her sweet potato casserole. My great-aunt brings her home-preserved green beans or creamed corn -- so good because they've been picked ripe, and fresh preserved. My mom was known for her special iced tea, my grandmother for her boiled custard. And as other family members grow up or "marry in," they become known for a special dish, too.

The kitchen bustles with activity until we all stop to ask the blessing. Then we eat. Any children struggle to wait patiently through that long and happy meal to the big event -- present time. When the adults can be dragged or cajoled into the living room, the children distribute the gifts. Camera flashes punctuate the stories, exclamations and laughter.

All too soon, it's over. Everyone takes home samples of favorite dishes for the next day. And we hope to be together again -- all of us -- the next year.

It isn't the tradition that's so special, I guess, but the people. And it's always my favorite family night of the year.

Ms. Wanza

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Wanza Sharp, died Jan. 27, 2008, at the age of 92. That she of all people should live to be 92 probably surprised very few who knew her. Ms. Wanza was perpetual energy and motion. She was active, enthusiastic and very involved with her students. She was born to be a teacher.

She was born into a family of educators, actually. At a place and time when even going to high school was luxury, Ms. Wanza's family produced teachers and school administrators who were well known and respected in Union County, Tennessee. One sister was a much-loved high school biology teacher. A brother became superintendent of schools. Her youngest brother went to Harvard and became a professor of at the University of Tennessee.

Ms. Wanza began teaching at Horace Maynard High School, but eventually settled into a fourth grade classroom at Maynardville Elementary. That's where I met her.

I'd had wonderful teachers before, but none quite like her. We were going to have fun, she said. If we finished our work, we'd do dictionary drills. We would compete to see who could find definitions the fastest, and that would be fun. We were going to have fun with math, of all things. We would learn long division and, when we did, we'd have so much fun we might just spend all day doing long division. She made us believe this might actually be true.

And it was. We worked long division problems in chalk on a green board for hours at a time. We did spend a couple days doing just math, which none of my other teachers had ever seemed all that enthusiastic about.

Ms. Wanza was enthusiasm itself. We would learn what we needed, even if it wasn't in the book. She got us workbooks on maps and graphs, something no other fourth graders in the area had. That material would be on our achievement tests, she said. It was. But the knowledge would be basic to the rest of our lives.

Ms. Wanza's natural ability to teach touched all of us, but especially a few kids in the classroom. These were the kids, especially a few boys, who seemed to fade into the classroom woodwork all the other years. They were quiet; they were badly behind; they wanted to be somewhere else -- probably just about anywhere other than school. Come high school, most of them disappeared.

But not in Ms. Wanza's class. With her, they had identities. She knew their grandpas, she said, and their cousins and their moms and dads. She tousled their hair when she walked by and gave them affectionate nicknames. In return she got grins, and wonder-of-wonders, some actual progress. For that one year, if no other, these kids actually seemed to like school, at least a little, and to feel at home there enough to learn.

Later, after she retired, Ms. Wanza came back to school as a substitute teacher. She seemed to know a little bit about every subject as she roamed from class to class at the high school. She seemed to be there at least half the time. And she was just as fun as ever. Ms. Wanza in class meant a good school day.

Now she's no longer with us. If they happen to need someone to teach long division in heaven, she'd be perfect for the job.

I've always thought that heaven would be a place to get answers to all the things you ever wanted to know -- and to find out what really matters. If that's the case, I hope Ms. Wanza gets to see how much her life's work mattered. I hope she gets to see all the lives she touched, and that her legacy lives on.

Just Gimme Some Soup! (I Ain't Givin' You No Soup.)

On the kids' TV show, iCarly, some young teens produce a popular web show. In one recent episode, Carly and her friend, Sam, perform a skit Sam wrote for class. It's about a prisoner who wanted some soup and the man who refused to give him any. The dialogue is simple:

"Just gimme some soup!" 

"I ain't givin' you no soup."

"Just gimme some soup!"

"I ain't givin' you no soup." 

Repeat several times.  That's the entire skit. 

This is funny to viewers, I guess, based partly on demographics. It's repetitive. It's contentious. It's dramatic. It's good kid humor. 

In real life, this kind of dialogue is not so funny. I know, because I recently engaged in a similar exchange with my son. Only ours went something like this: 

Me: "Just wear your coat." 

Son: "I ain't wearin' no coat." 

Me: "Just wear your coat."

Son: "I ain't wearin' no coat."

Son is finishing up with middle school, and is busy establishing his independence. That's what teenagers do. So I pick my battles and let him determine for himself whenever possible. Only sometimes that just isn't possible.

Case in point. Son was going to a football game. Gametime weather was set to be in the mid- 30s with gusty wind. Son wants to be cool in his football fan gear. He wants to be middle-school guy tough. Thus, our exchange. 

I told him if he wanted to go to the game, he had to wear the coat. No coat, no game. 

Turns out, it was pretty cold at the game. That coat wasn't such a bad idea, after all. Only the next time the situation arises, he definitely won't need a coat. 

I've always heard that, the older the child gets, the smarter the parent gets.  We have a ways to go just yet. 

Time Changes, But Not For Everyone

This Sunday we reset our clocks to Eastern Standard Time. We get back the hour we lost and gain a little sunlight in the morning. It's my favorite weekend of the year. The switch always causes me to think of my grandmother, who never had to "fall back." For her, time never changed. 

Granny also preferred "regular" time. She liked it so much, in fact, that she refused to take part in the annual switch.  Clocks at her house never reflected daylight saving time. 

"That old Democrat time," she'd say, with a shake of her head and a tone that implied the rest of us were foolish for going along with such nonsense. 

She refused to "spring forward," so all summer long, her clocks were "wrong." Actually, they were wrong the rest of the year, too. They were just a little more wrong in summer. 

The discrepancy came about sometime before I was even born. At some point in Granny's life, standard time in East Tennessee was officially adjusted by an hour. I've never learned the details, but other older people I knew agreed this was true. 

She never bought into that change, either. 

Fall through spring, Granny's clocks were an hour ahead of everyone else's. All summer long, they were two hours ahead. She got up to do the milking at 3 a.m. -- her time. She went to bed by 8 p.m. -- her time. 

Granny knew that real time was unchanging. And for all the years I knew her, so was she.

Writing Out Loud

These days, I make a lot of my living by speaking. I speak routinely to groups ranging from 20 to 200. In a year, I'll talk to smaller groups at least 150 times. I'll talk to groups of 100 to 200 people 50 times.

To people who have known me in any other capacity, this has got to seem pretty funny. I am a quiet person. I'm not, nor have I ever been, outgoing. I've suffered much more in life from omission than commission when it comes to talking.

Yet, the job God put before me involves speaking. And it's really not that bad. In this specific context, I kind of enjoy it -- most of the time, anyway.

How to make sense of this?

On a personal level, I have to figure that talking to a group must be something like writing. That's something I generally know how to do. Only now, I'm writing out loud.

On a larger level, I have to figure that God has a great sense of humor. He took lots of little details in my life and, without my realizing it, pointed me to exactly where I am right now.

This process is one I've heard described as like working a tapestry. From the back, it seems to be nothing but a tangled mass of colored thread in messy knots. From the front, those threads flow together to form a beautiful picture.

I think about this with my own children, and with my students. What work will God put before them? I have no idea. But in incremental steps along the way, he'll get them ready, if they follow the plan.

Only the plan isn't always obvious. Maybe that's a good thing for some of us. It's a good thing I couldn't see where my tapestry was going. I'd never have believed it.

A Sunny Field, A Few Friends, A Nice Day

My son's fall baseball team gathered one last time this afternoon to celebrate the end of the season. The boys' played a final game against an ad hoc team of dads -- and one mom. The boys pretty much trounced the parents. They ate cake and heard the obligatory coach's talk about highlights from the season.

It was a beautiful day at the ballpark. We had perfect weather, good food, nice folks -- all to celebrate a very worthwhile endeavor: teaching a few boys to play the all American game, along with a little sportsmanship, in a way that also allowed them to make friends and have some fun. 

Too many kids get burned out on organized sports long before they ever reach their teenage years. But not these boys. These boys are having fun. That's just the way it ought to be. 

Heroes and Whiners: How we handle a challenge says a lot about who we are...

In the past couple of weeks, a whole bunch of people I know -- and  few I just know of -- have dealt with some truly trying and awful circumstances.  They have amazed me with their strength and resiliance. 

Other people I know -- and some I just observe -- seem to want to turn every little downturn in their lives into drama. They want -- and feel they deserve -- to be rescued from every real or imagined consequence. 

The juxtapostion has left me feeling like a great big curmudgeon. I want to support the people who really need it. I want to tell the rest to just get over themselves. 

Since when are we a society of whiners? Why is it suddenly ok to be needy and self-absorbed? And why is it that those who have the most legitimate reasons to complain or ask for help are the ones who best manage to stand on their own two feet? 

As frightening as the shadows are right now, our world isn't nearly so dark as the Greatest Generation's. Yet we complain so much more. 

I've often thought that the "Greatest Generation," the people who came of age in the Great Depression and then lived -- if they were lucky -- through World War II, got an uncessarily raw deal. It seems really unfair that they had to deal with so much hardship, then so much tragedy. 

But I've begun to think maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe that generation HAD to be grounded in the hardships of Depression in order to be ready for the hardships of a world war. Maybe they had to learn to do without to be hardened, tempered enough, to save the world from an evil dictator. Maybe that's just the way it had to be. 

I hope we, as a people, don't have to go through another devastating period of hard times just so we can learn to be tough again. I hope we can learn from history so that we aren't destined to repeat it. 

And I hope, I really hope, that we can become a little less self-absorbed, a little more resolute in our dealings with our everyday life, so that when really tough times come -- as they inevitably do -- we'll be ready. 

Pinto beans and cornbread

The chill in the air tonight makes me hungry for my favorite winter comfort foods -- pinto beans and cornbread. Add sides of okra and fresh-sliced tomato and it just doesn't get much better. 

The only problem is the time it takes to make a really good pot of pinto beans. It's a half-day process at best. A whole day, including soak time, is better. I don't have that kind of time right now. Canned beans aren't good for anything except chili. A slow cooker can work, but it's just not the same. I like being home to tend the pot on a cold winter day. 

Better still would be my Granny's pinto beans and cornbread. She spent much of her life making beans on a wood-burning cook stove. Hers were perfect. And she had perfectly-seasoned cast iron skillets for making corn bread. That hot, crusty bread with her homemade butter was truly the best. I can't make it like she did. Of course, I don't use bacon grease or lard. You can't make really great cornbread with canola oil. 

You also can't make good, Appalachian style cornbread if you use too many ingredients. Simple is best. That means no egg, and certainly no sugar. Thrifty Appalachian women would never waste those precious ingredients on an everyday food like cornbread. 

Granny was one of those thrifty farm women. She served pinto beans and cornbread twice a day, every day -- even holidays -- her entire adult life. Those were staple foods.  Great food, but what you had on the table every day, no matter what. 

All my grandparents were East Tennessee farmers. They owned their land and grew almost everything they ate. They may not have had much in the way of cash money, but they always ate well. When you grow your own food, the only limit is a willingness to work hard. 

And time. It takes time to grow, preserve and cook the kind of food I grew up with.

But the first cool day I'm home, there'll be a pot of beans on my stove. You can count on it. 

Editing... everything.

I've been a writer pretty much all my life. I can be a reporter when that skill is needed, but I'm really a wordsmith at heart.

Writing may sound like a fun profession, maybe even a bit glamorous. In truth, for most of us, it is neither. This isn't a profession you take on because you CAN write. It's a profession you take on because you HAVE to write. You write because you just can't help yourself.

Reporters seem to have a need to dig out a story more than to tell it. Writers have to dig out a story, too, but the focus isn't the same. The difference seems to lie in a compulsive need to compose -- a fascination with how words fit together to translate thought and feeling.

Getting words to work and feel as they should can be incredibly difficult and frustrating. Yet that's what a writer feels compelled to do. The hardest work in crafting sentences is in the editing. You write, re-write, edit over and over again.

Any conscientious writer can look at words he/she edited a dozen times six months ago and still find lots of ways to improve. Much of the improvement comes in paring down -- simplifying. The most elegant writing is very simple. It's astonishing what you can cut away and still tell a story well.

I don't consider myself a truly good writer. There are plenty of writer's out there whose work I'd rather read. But being even an adequate writer is a lot of hard work.

Not that I'm complaining. To be allowed into a life, and to share in the telling of it, is a privilege. All storytellers know that.

Telling a story in an honest way can be a very emotional process. Doing so requires getting into the head and heart of a topic, of a situation, of another person. You have to truly feel the emotions, feel the impact yourself, in order to write about them accurately and in a way that translates.

A raw sensitivity, a heart for a story and the people in it, are characteristic. As good as those traits may be for storytelling, however, they're not so great for living out day-to-day life.

Honey Dot Comb: Excellent photos of a beekeeper

Honey Dot Comb: Excellent photos of a beekeeper

See Dr. Jim Stovall in action with his honey bees in fabulous pics by photographers from UT's SCOOP magazine.

Walnut Weather

It's walnut weather in Tennessee. On my morning walk I spotted several walnuts, still in hulls, beneath trees in my neighborhood.

Dark spots on the green hulls reminded me of elementary school, and of the boys who would come to class with dark-stained hands this time of year. They had been hulling walnuts. Those stains would stay around for several days -- you can't scrub them off -- but the boys never seemed to mind. Walnuts were easy money for country boys with time on their hands.

The hulls, of course, are designed to protect and nurture the walnut seed until it can get implanted in the ground. They aren't easy to remove.

It is possible to speed up the process, though. On quiet country lanes it wasn't at all unusual to encounter piles of fresh walnuts across the road. When you drove your car across them, the weight from the tires helped loosen the hulls. Hard-shell American walnuts are tough enough to take the pressure.



Every couple of days, kids would clear out the old ones and put new walnuts in the road. Then, they would finish the hulling process, put the hulled nuts into sacks and save them to take to market. That's where they got the stains. There is no good way to get the hulls off except to pull the pieces off with your fingers.

I don't know the going rate for a pound of fresh walnuts these days, but many a country kid financed his Christmas presents, or maybe a new knife or bike, by picking up those much-desired nuts. Walnut-stained hands, this time of year, were a sure sign of ingenuity.

Connie's Story

Today's blog is a guest column by Connie Cox Atkins, my dear friend from the time we were both six years old. She wants to share her story, so feel free to pass it along.

by Connie Atkins

As you may know I have been through a terrible illness. I was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma on my right kidney last July. I was treated with one of the meanest combinations of chemo that is used. They used more in me than my doctor said he had ever used on anyone. I had 6 rounds of it that included hospitalization for a week for each treatment. It was given continuously over a 4 day period. I would have to stay the extra days because I was usually too sick to go home. I would have the treatments every three weeks. The tumor on my kidney had destroyed all function and literally had taken over the spot where the kidney used to be. It had grown to approximately 30 pounds. They were able to shrink it to about 15 pounds.

After all the chemo treatments, surgery was done this past February.My surgery took about 6 hours. The surgeons would take turns holding the tumor while the other would carefully cut it away from my body. They had to be careful not to leave any cells for fear of it spreading. With their steady hands being guided by God, they were able to remove the entire thing. I was in intensive care for about nine days. (I do not remember this time.) My remaining kidney shut down. I was placed on dialysis. I am still on dialysis (we don't know how long I will have to do this), but luckily my health continues to improve.

Yesterday was a Glorious day. My kidney doctor took me off of ten pills a day that I was having to take (I still have to take some, but not nearly as many). Today my surgeon told me that they would schedule a removal of the dialysis port (they are using my arm now). All my numbers continue to improve. All because the Lord wants me here a little longer.

I don't know what my purpose is yet, but I am beginning to understand. My most important message to people is to PLEASE GO TO THE DOCTOR! You know your body. You know when something is wrong. I knew something was terribly wrong with me, but I was stubborn, or scared or just downright trifling. I was losing weight. I had no energy. The pain was awful. But I went on. People would ask, but I would make up some excuse. My older brother, Jimmy Cox, died from colon cancer. I guess I was convinced that I too would have the same fate. Then I waited. Then I thought I had waited too long. My dear sweet husband, Jeff Atkins (Bolow to some) is a patient man. He asked, begged, pleaded with me to go to the doctor. His last straw finally came. He was fed up. He told me that he was not going to sit by and watch me die when he knew I could get some help. Jeff, by the way, is also a colon cancer SURVIVER.

That night, Jeff told me that if I refused to go to the doctor to get help then he was going to have to ask me to leave because he would not be a part of me just shriveling up and dying. The look in his eye was one that I wasn't going to play with. I knew he meant business.

I finally agreed to go to the doctor. Like I said, I knew it was very bad. We made plans to go to the emergency room that same weekend. I worked at my job up until the day before I went into the hospital. How I worked I don't know. I was very, very sick. But, as they say, the rest is history.

Now, I'm not writing this for pity, or trying to make myself out to be a martyr. I just want people to know how important it is to go to the doctor when they need to. I could have saved myself a lot of grief. Maybe my other kidney would be working better if I had not had to have so much chemo. Maybe my family would not have had to go through all they did. I don't know. I just know how it did happen. It doesn't have to go this way for everyone. Maybe I'm not even through with it yet. The cancer could come back at any time, but I go to every doctor's appointment I have.

All my family and friends have been so supportive to me: Jeff, Mom, my brother David and his wife Connie, my dear friend Kristie, my two nieces, Julie and Courtney, and my little fishin' buddy Taylor (who never said a word when he saw me with no hair--and would let me talk when I needed to). My extended family has also been there. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would stay with me at the hospital when I was so weak I couldn't get up. They would hold the trash can for me when I was too sick to make it to the bathroom (now that's love).

A lot of prayers have been said for me at the local churches. I appreciate each and every one. They have been heard. Thank you all!

Here By the Owl

The owl is a time-honored emblem of knowledge and wisdom.
Being older than the rest of you, I am asked to advise you from time to time, as the need arises.
I hope my advice will always be based on true knowledge, and ripened with wisdom.

From the FFA opening ceremonies, in the official FFA handbook, circa 1978.

My dad was an FFA advisor. He taught agriculture at Horace Maynard High School beginning in the fall of 1955 until he became "just" an administrator about 1993. Much of the time, he was a teacher and administrator both. But in his capacity as ag teacher, he spoke the advisor's part of the opening ceremonies hundreds of times.

I heard him say the owl's part a few dozen times myself -- first, while trapped in his office after school listening to him and his "boys" practice for parliamentary procedure competition. The opening ceremonies were always a part of the contest requirements. Later, I was on his parliamentary procedure team myself, but that's another story.

In FFA meetings, each officer, including the advisor, is stationed at a bust of his official emblem. My dad's, of course, was an owl. He also had a stuffed, great-horned owl on the wall of his classroom. I never see an owl without thinking of my dad.

And that is fitting. He is, and has always been, a very wise man.

He had remarkable success with his high school program, especially considering the resources available to him. Not that he would have admitted that, ever. He would never take that credit.

He advised older "boys" too, because he worked with UT students doing their student-teaching in agricultural education. Several dozen University of Tennessee students passed through his program over the years on their way to teaching positions of their own. They would become owls, too.

He gave them good advice. "Start tough," he would tell them. "Let the students know you mean business from day one." That's important, because you can always ease up later. "But if you start off too easy, you can never go back the other way."

Part of Pop's success was a natural ability to size-up people, and a good, basic understanding of human nature.

When I was a high school freshman, it came to my attention that he was completely misjudging and mishandling one student in his class. I knew the guy. I'd gone all the way through school with him. He was bad news. And here my dad was treating him just like any ordinary student.

So, with all the wisdom of a young teen, I told my dad he was wrong.

Pop didn't seem too impressed with my advice. I wanted to know why.

He thought about that for a minute.

"Well, Lisa," he said. "It's like this. I know who that boy is. I know what he is. But he doesn't have to know that.

"You see, if I treat him like I know his reputation, why, he'll feel like he has to live up that reputation. If I treat him like everybody else, maybe he won't."

Did that actually work?, I asked.

Not always he admitted. But a surprising number of times, it did.

And wouldn't you know, the wise old owl was right. A whole bunch of boys who were trouble-makers in other classes never gave my dad much trouble at all.

I'll Take the Dirt Road...

My daughter got her drivers license a couple weeks ago. She spent months learning to park, back up, merge, watch for crazy drivers. Now she's can legally drive all by herself.

One nice byproduct of the whole process was the time we spent together as she practiced. She's truly one of my favorite people to hang out with. One day we were talking about what life was like when I learned to drive. That got me thinking on life experience -- especially the kind I have that my children likely never will.

I grew up on a dirt road. It was really a gravel road, but most of the rock would get ground into the roadbed or washed away long before the county would get around to adding more. Most of my friends lived on dirt roads, too.

This brings up driving issues my kids would never consider.

For instance, if you brake suddenly on a dirt road, and hit a patch of gravel, you scoot. Same thing when you're turning from a dirt road on to a paved one. You don't want to do that too quickly or you spin out.

Dirt roads are usually narrow. Until our road was paved, when I was 13, it wasn't even possible to drive past an oncoming car except in a few spots. If you met another car, someone had to pull over to the side and stop, and in some places even back up.

We lived about half way up a ridge. Overhanging trees made shady spots that kept snow and ice on the road for days. So my dad would put tire chains on the his Pontiac Tempest stationwagon, and off we'd go, careening down the ridge in a barely controlled skid. Deep ditches awaited if we ran off the road. Somehow, we never did.

In summer, the problem was dust -- and lack of air conditioning. It's common rural courtesy to slow down when you drive past someone's home on a dirt road. You don't want to be the showoff who stirs up the dust that settles all over them and their belongings.

Dust is a problem inside the car, too. What your own car creates pretty much stays behind you, but a passing car is another thing. When any passenger called out, "A car's coming!" everyone grabbed a window crank to get the windows rolled up, fast. Then, we'd sit sweltering in the heat until the dust died down enough to roll them down again.

Dust, window cranks, pulling over just to pass... Life on the dirt road is a lost experience for most of us now.

But the country group Sawyer Brown remembered it in 1992.

I'll take the dirt road. It's all I know. I've been walking it for years. It's gone where I need to go. It ain't easy. It ain't supposed to be. But I'll take my time. And life won't pass me by. It's right there to find... on the dirt road.

The Web Frontier

I attended a panel discussion on web journalism at the University of Tennessee Thursday. The panelists were young, ambitious, smart, inspiring and a little intimidating. They're staking a claim in the web frontier both personally and professionally.

They challenged me to do the same. Jump in, they said, even if you're not sure what you're doing. Passion shines through clearly in any format.

As a print-on-paper person, I've hesitated to throw my thoughts out into such a dynamic format. But as my friend Bob Stepno would tell me, all I've written on paper is likely to show up online sooner or later anyway -- good and bad.

As a confirmed and comfortable introvert, I'm cautious about opening myself up the greater world. But as I see in my friend and mentor, Paul Ashdown, being open and available can change lives for the good, and can have its own rewards.

As a journalist, I've hesitated to write anything original using the word "I." As my friend and mentor, Jim Stovall, would say, Journalists are modest. They don't call attention to themselves in their writing. But not all writing is reporting.

As a bona-fide perfectionist, I'm hesitant to start anything that might not be as perfect as I'd like. But as my husband, Jeff Gary, would say, Sometimes you just have to get started. There's a lot to be said for just getting something done.

So, like my pioneer ancestors before me, I plunge into a new frontier, trusting I can make my way in the wilderness.