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.