Gregg A. Granger

I just uploaded my first YouTube video. A friend of mine suggested I work on video productions, and while he was making this suggestion, I figured, why not have a YouTube snippet to promote my book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home.

So here it is:

Sure, the quality could be better, but that would take longer to load and play. I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, I ask you to help me share it.

Any suggestions are welcome as comments or email me at gregg@faithofholland.com

Thanks

For the past several years, I have had the opportunity to enjoy a close, one-on-one discussion with dad. I love my dad, and this discussion lasts in the neighborhood of 21 hours. Much of our time is filled with one of us sleeping while the other drives. Florida-bound. The sleep interrupts the conversation.

It seems that every subject we speak on has an uncanny ability to slither back into the narrow confines of a political discussion, one followed by a bit of laughter and us looking at each other wondering how we got back here. Dad and I are close, but political discussions do not foster a great sense of bonding, mostly because his opinions (or mine) are based on misinformation.

He watches Fox News, which easily identifies where his misinformation lies (are told). I get my own set of ‘fair and balanced’ from all sorts of unreliable sources and a few highly reliable sources on the internet; the trouble is that, with exception, I can’t easily discern that which is reliable from that which is not.

So there we were, driving along, feeding on the sandwiches that mom packed for us, and feeding each other healthy doses of strongly-held snippets of misinformation to bolster our opinions. Clearly, an outsider witnessing these convictions would find it quite comical.

And yet, we do enjoy rare moments of clarity when one of us hears something the other says and a gee, I never really understood it that way moment occurs.

Last year, on our way home from Florida, I experienced my gee-type moment. One issue both dad and I strongly agree on is that corporate bailouts for the failures and/or crimes of those corporations’ management is wrong. In rare moments like these, when we do agree, we must poke and prod a bit deeper to find something to dance a dialogue around. A quite natural area for us to land on the topic of the General Motors bailout was for dad to blame legacy costs and labor unions for GM’s failure, and for me to blame a management so inept they could kill a brand like Oldsmobile and a failed health-care industry that is largely responsible for those legacy costs.

“What part of Obama’s plans have helped your Carpenter’s pension fund?” Dad asked.

“Nothing that I’m aware of, why?” I responded. (I possess a Carpenter’s pension from a previous life.)

“That’s right, and while nearly every retirement account and pension fund in the United States has suffered, the UAW’s fund has been made whole through the bail-out.”

That was a slippery move, I thought. “Hmm,” I said, “that’s not right.” (By not allowing GM to go through the process of bankruptcy, and to negotiate solutions for their failure with creditors, including the pension fund, the bailout that gained momentum under the Bush administration, and was completed in the early days of the Obama administration, had preserved those legacy costs.)

I voted for Obama. I believed in hope and change, but by the time dad and I had this conversation, I had already given up on him. The hope and change promised was simply more of the same.

This year, while driving to Florida with dad, we again pounced upon several subjects of a political nature–so we blathered on and on with dad blaming the democrats for the nation’s ills, and with me agreeing about the democrats and including the republicans. I continued during our southbound journey to talk about the massive amount of corporate money funneled into Washington and voiced my opinion that the whole of our leadership had been purchased. Dad continued to remind me that that money was in response to union moneys pouring into Washington. I told dad that unions were corporations, so was the AARP, the NRA, and every other non-human entity peddling influence in this once great bastion of democracy. We were having a grand old time at it.

It wasn’t until we were settling into dad’s and mom’s condo in Florida that dad’s gee, I never really understood it that way moment occurred.

As we left Starbucks that first morning, I mentioned something forgettable about Super-PACs (Political Action Committees). Dad said he’d heard about Super-PACs, but didn’t understand what they were all about.

I then began to disseminate the misinformation as best I understood it about the Supreme Court, the Citizen’s United case and the idea that so long as a loosely defined ‘arms-length’ arrangement between the PAC’s management and the candidate’s, contributions could be made anonymously by any individual or corporation to impact the paid-for information flow in the democratic process we hold so dear in the United States.

With the three words dad uttered on hearing that, I knew his gee-type moment was occurring.

“That’s not right.”

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is now available in Kindle format !!!

Self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon.

I wrote previously about The Elusiveness of Culture and the obstacles travelers face in finding traditional culture. My basic premise in that post is that culture in a changing world is a fluid concept. I ended with the notion that a common thread is anchored in the faith of our fathers. While this may be true, a raging undercurrent from the new masters of cultural definition–global markets and the tourism industry–seeks to destroy even that thread.

Yod and I in Thailand shown for comparison of skin tones. (Photo, smart-phone camera with sweaty-lens filter)

While in Chiang Mai, Thailand, this past year, those places exposed while wearing my t-shirt, shorts, and thongs (the sandal-type–not the stringy-thingey intimate wear) began to develop a nice tan. One positive outcome of the smog trapped by the temperature inversion the mountains create is that it adds some degree of protection from the harmful rays of the sun–I never experienced that crispy sensation one get’s following too much exposure,  yet I was in the sun all day and every day.

There I was in Thailand thinking a tan on my face and arms would be a good thing–maybe if I could tan to the color of a Thai…

My fear was of losing the progress I had made so far–I popped into a convenience store for some skin moisturizer to help preserve my tan from peeling before my return flight to the United States.

I found a surprise packaged with skin creams in Thailand–they have whiteners in them! Something is seriously out of kilter when I believe the right color of skin is Thai, and Thais believe the right color is mine. I read the labels, expecting these products to be of local origin, but all of these products were from the same multinational companies found on American shelves–Nivea, Unilever, and P&G. These companies that taught me that having the skin color of a Thai was a good thing are here teaching Thais the virtues of whiteness. How can that be? Perhaps we should prepare ourselves for a great racial flip-flop.

In 2004, we visited the remote island of Saumlaki, Indonesia, where television was in its infancy. School children with whom we were building relationships exclaimed, “We never knew what we didn’t have!” Somewhere in fancy global trade agreements are clauses that give American television programming the same rights to airspace as local productions.

Yet, whatever threads of culture remain after the homogenizing effects of product marketing and television are wholly lost in some geographic areas. These areas are found where economies previously rooted in agriculture or production have been replaced, rebranded, and repackaged as tourism destinations. During our family’s travel on Faith, as we sailed into thirty-eight different countries, a common theme prevailed: in areas heavily reliant on tourism, culture takes the shape of the tourist.

When one of these babies shows up in your village, the culture changes!

Within one month of commencing our journey on Faith, while still in the Caribbean, we began to shun ports where cruise ships called, favoring anchorages several miles away from such ports. An identifiable difference in residents and those residents’ acceptance of us as visitors existed. Tourism had taught those in the cruise ship ports a new and only income source, and taught them that we were visiting for no other reason.

This phenomenon was witnessed not only in the Caribbean, but throughout our travels on Faith. The greater the degree of tourism as a portion of the economy, the less the ability to identify the uniqueness of character of the members of a culture.

The new picture of American ingenuity. (Courtesy: Back to the Future II)

Perhaps it simply must be so to survive for both hosts and travelers, especially travelers not accustomed to too great a degree of otherness; yet sadness accompanies cultural exploration in the face of tourism–sadness for the hosts chasing dreams of Western origin, and sadness for the travelers robbed of the opportunity for  genuine interaction.

While it is easy to identify such characteristics in the cultures of others, the same change is occurring at home. The selling of tourism in my home of Michigan shares a strong inverse correlation with the loss of productive work associated with the manufacture of, among other products, the great motorcars. More recently, as the selling of landscapes and museums and parks and beaches reaches saturation, the new and great phenomenon called Casino gambling is moving in to truly bolster the economy and replicate the values once achieved through manufacturing a thing of value.

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is now available in Kindle format !!!

Self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

 

 

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

Strictly Sail – Chicago

Gregg II and I visited Chicago this past weekend to check-out the offerings at Strictly Sail Chicago. We were here for fun. Gregg II has watched as his sisters, his mother, and I, have traveled the globe this past year, and he has not gone anywhere. Taking in the show allowed him and me to do something fun for and with him.

So here we were, traipsing around the sailboat show, and talking to just about anybody who’d listen. A highlight of the day was having our picture taken with Tricia, the 2011 Loop Rock Girl, in a conversation poorly disguised as us just visiting the booth set up by the The Loop 97.9 Radio Station. “By the way, you’re into promoting stuff, and I suck at self-promotion, so I want to give you a copy of my book if…” Once they heard our story of sailing around the world, and of Gregg II having been on the boat with us, all three of the young women at the booth agreed–either to help promote my book, or that I really do suck at self-promotion. I didn’t ask. (Tricia blogged about our visit here!)

We later ran through an equally pathetic round of self-promotion with Dave Fogel, who came to represent 94.7 WLS.

The boat show was great, but we tired of walking back and forth and by 3:30, we were checking into the hotel. Once there, Gregg II longed for a pair of shorts or something to wear in the swimming pool. Apparently, his mother had helped him pack for the weekend, and suggested that winter clothes were stylish for this time of year.

After he informed me of how cool it was just to be in a hotel, and that he didn’t want to go anywhere, I told him we should go for a walk. I asked if he knew what the Magnificent Mile was. He didn’t.

Greggii with a woman too tall for him

We went down to look at the pool and he drooled as he watched all the fun things that fun people were doing there. Then we walked to the Magnificent Mile. We stopped long enough for some photographs of Gregg II standing as tall as the right calf of a magnificent statue of Marilyn Monroe. Welcome to Chicago!

Then we explored some of the shoppes along this major trade route: Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, Niketown, and the Gap. We went into Nordstrom where he purchased a pair of shorts, and returned to the hotel for an afternoon of me reading my book on the pool’s beach while he batted a beach ball around with a couple of families from Sarnia, Ontario–also in Chicago for the Strictly Sail Show.

Then, we went to dinner.

A Change of Plans:

On Sunday morning, we planned on a repeat performance of yesterday’s fun, but while I was dressing and encouraging Gregg II to start doing the same, he kind-of rolled over to the port-side of the bed, and began to rise using one side of the hotel’s easy chair for support. Then he slumped to his knees on the floor supported by one arm on the bed and one arm on the easy chair.

Thoughts of maybe he’s still asleep, or maybe his leg fell asleep, or maybe there’s a good explanation for all of this rang through me as I tried to help him up. A good dose of what the hell? was coursing through my veins.

I sat him on the bed and he looked at me. I was scared when he smiled at me when I saw only the right side of his face smiling. Gregg II was waving his left arm around, saying he felt funny, and he couldn’t feel it and he was becoming increasing anxious. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked, as fear replaced the anxiety.

“I don’t know.”

I called hotel security to summon an ambulance, and the EMTs arrived at our room within five minutes to package Gregg for transport to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The trip took all of another five minutes.

Gregg II’s symptoms trumped all, and the waiting room was not on the agenda this morning. We were taken immediately to a room where two doctors and one nurse awaited. Gregg II needed an IV installed, and following his IV episodes over the past year during his appendicitis, this was probably the scariest part of the morning for him. Jeff, the nurse, was good at this, and proved it with success on his first attempt. A CT Scan was ordered and administered, and very early in our moments at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, our fears of any of the scariest of outcomes–a stroke–were allayed. Once that fear was removed, they arranged transport in another ambulance to take us to Children’s Memorial Hospital, where we were once again whisked into emergency care.

In the ambulance, I was in the front seat looking at a developing mayhem, Gregg II looked out the back window to see the results. On arrival at Children’s Memorial, we agreed that riding a speeding ambulance in full emergency mode through the busy streets of Chicago was a cool thing to do.

Wired with an electrode ponytail for the EEG

Once a stroke had been ruled out, the doctors began to suggest that a migraine could also have resulted in Gregg II’s symptoms. The doctors hemmed and hawed and Gregg II and I were escorted to a refrigerated room where an MRI was performed. The MRI indicated that a tiny vein on the surface of Gregg II’s brain had clotted. Gregg II was admitted to a room on the third floor, three west I believe, where neurology practiced their arts and sciences on young patients. I indicated my preference to take Gregg II to Helen Devos Childrens Hospital in Grand Rapids, but Dr. Epstein cautioned against it, suggesting instead the overnight observation remain here in the event of another occurrence.Throughout this process, we were kept well informed of what was going on. Apparently, it is quite rare for this tiny-vein thing to occur, and Gregg II was wired for an EEG to be performed overnight, with the results to be scanned in the morning by a team of neurologists.

Gregg II looking like a deer in the headlights during his 'video EEG'

On Monday morning, a barrage of young scientific minds came in teams of two or three to assess Gregg II’s neurological functions. Chicago Children’s Memorial Hospital is under the umbrella of the Northwestern University Medical system, and as such, is a teaching hospital. Gregg II’s condition must have thoroughly intrigued all these young wizards judging from the attention he was receiving.

A hematologist, Dr. Liam, was summoned early in the afternoon to address and assess the clotting that had occurred on that tiny vein. A round of blood work was ordered for this purpose.

Then, late in the afternoon of Gregg II’s second day in the care of Childrens Memorial, both Dr. Liam and Dr. Epstein paid us a visit. Dr. Liam referred Gregg II to a hematologist he had studied with or otherwise knew well, and Dr. Epstein referred Gregg II to a pediatric neurologist that had been trained at Childrens Memorial, both of whom practice now with Helen Devos Childrens Hospital.

The staff at Childrens Memorial Hospital is eager to move into their new building downtown when it is completed.

The outcome: Gregg II is a healthy thirteen-year-old boy in need of some follow-up work in Grand Rapids to continue to rule out possibilities. We have no reason to believe anything scary is on the horizon.

The whole purpose of this post is to thank every individual we encountered at both Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Children’s Memorial Hospital for their care and treatment of Gregg II these past couple of days. And here I am, writing a book about medical tourism in Thailand, and once again being shown how happy I am for the services available to my children here in the United States.

A world of gratitude is also in order for all of the people praying for Gregg II, for me, and for Gregg II’s doctors, nurses, and other professionals, while he was in the hospital. Thank you all…and above all, Thank you God for your presence and for surrounding us with such great talent and great family and friends!

An advertisement:

I alluded to the fact that Self-promotion is not something that comes naturally to me, but self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

 

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

Pigs not wanted on the world market.

I began writing about a positive development on the food front, but my enthusiasm was curtailed by the the following news. (As for the positive note, read on.) Apparently, somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of pigs in the US are raised on feed supplemented with the drug ractopamine hydrochloride. Minute traces have been found in meat deemed fit for human consumption. The drug is intended to hasten the pigs’ ability to produce lean meat but  has the annoying tendency to make the animals sick and quite often die–more than any other livestock drug.

Helena Bottemiller reports in the Food and Environment Reporting Network, ”Growing concern over sick animals in the nation’s food supply sparked a California law banning the sale and slaughter of livestock unable to walk, but that law was struck down by the Supreme Court Monday.” Federal law, according to the Court, takes precedence over a state’s desire to protect either consumers or animals.

Many countries, The European Union, China, and Taiwan, among them, have banned ractopamine, limiting US meat exports. This sounds eerily similar to many of these same countries’ leeriness of importing American harvested genetically modified crops.

The things we do to food (Wikipedia)

To protect American consumers from thinking about GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in our food, the FDA took the cue from the GMO industry–do not tell the consumer about it. A spokesperson for Asgrow, a subsidiary of Monsanto, said, “If you put a label on genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” We now live in an age where branding and product awareness are king, and seed manufacturers actually believe such product awareness is somehow akin to the universal symbol of poison or motorcycle gangs.

Europe has been accused by US trade officials of interfering with free trade by requiring labeling of GMO food there. In response, Europe contends that free trade can occur only if the consumer has the ability to make an informed choice. In our own household, such informed choice requires knowing what crops come from genetically modified seeds and avoiding ingredients derived from those crops (see list below or article here). In addition to corn, soy, and cottonseed one of the more recent additions is sugar beets; we have switched to cane sugar. A GMO seed has been introduced for sweet corn, which makes it even more important to know your grower.

The positive note is that consumer awareness and demand is having an impact on product offerings.

Consumer awareness and demand has already seen milk labels emerge that this or that product was produced from “cows not treated with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).” Yet, 17% of dairy cows in the US are still given rBGH. Reading the labels on milk and cheese is the only assurance of purchasing the 83% not so tainted and let the 17% go somewhere else. That somewhere else is probably in every nook and cranny the agriculture industry can tuck it–after all, that’s what the corn industry did. When American farmers bought into the idea of GMO corn, and when the export market for that product collapsed because of the ‘unfair practices’ of our trading partners, American corn producers went so far as to demand we burn their product in our fancy motorcars.

Pepsi throwback uses real sugar

To prove that I am not wholly anti corn syrup, we use it at least once, often twice a year. My wife makes a mean pecan pie. Oh, I know a lot of people like slathering it over melting butter on top of pancakes and waffles, but I grew up believing that maple flavored corn syrup is a poor imitation of maple syrup.

Consumer demand is now bringing change to sweeteners. Sufficient information is becoming available on corn syrup, especially high fructose corn syrup, (which sounds redundant to me), that consumers are limiting corn syrup’s presence in their shopping carts.

Walking through the aisles of a local, well, not really local, but regional supermarket the other day, tucked between mountains of Coke and Fanta and Pepsi and Schwepp’s and storebrand products, I spied it. On the label of the narrowest display a twelve-pack of cans can take, a classic Pepsi logo beckoned my attention. Pepsi Throwback–Made with Real Sugar.  What a concept! It also happens to be the first twelve-pack of any type of soda that has entered our house in the last five years.

No high fructose corn syrup!

Apparently the folks at Pepsi figured a consumer demand for ‘Not Corn Syrup’ exists. Some consumers, including me, were purchasing Coca-Cola imported from Mexico for precisely that reason–it is made with ‘Not Corn Syrup.’

Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are both modified water products–90% water. Yet consumer demand for ‘Not Corn Syrup’ leads us to purchase imported water products from Mexico. Yes, that’s right, good old “don’t drink the water” Mexico. It is incredible the lengths we go to provide their families with ‘Not Corn Syrup’.

Ketchup is another area where consumer demand is leading to product innovation. Both Heinz and Hunt’s have two choices–Heinz Ketchup, and Heinz Organic Ketchup, and Hunt’s Ketchup and Hunt’s No High Fructose Corn Syrup Ketchup. (For ingredients of popular Ketchups.)

I began reading ingredients of food in 2008. At that time, our family had just returned from spending 4 1/2 years abroad in 38 different countries. Food in the US tastes different, not only from cultural variations on cooking style, but in the raw materials. Certainly, a large degree of the variation is attributable to our fast-food mentality. For flavors to be uniform in thousands of outlets, a blandness must be bred into the ingredients–case in point, chickens. As American consumers, we’ve been trained to accept this inferiority.

Jams and jellies, breakfast cereals, sausages, things that looked like sausages, candies, salad dressings, and all manner of products were cast upon us of lesser quality than we experienced abroad and certainly of lesser goodness than I remember as a child.

No high fructose corn syrup

I grew up putting Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on ice cream and using the powdered stuff called Quick (now called Nesquik) to make chocolate milk. Sugar was a big thing back then too. Once I began reading ingredients in 2008, I knew that we had purchased our last bottle of Hershey’s syrup. My son and I were in the supermarket the other day, and next to the Hershey’s display was that of Nesquik. Prominently on the bottle of Nesquik Syrup are the words: “No High Fructose Corn Syrup.”

It is because of consumer demand that these products exist and are packaged in such fashion. The irony is labeling that points out the inferiority of an ingredient so prominent in all of their other products. These three examples–Pepsi Throwback, Hunt’s Ketchup, and Nesquik Syrup–are not brought to us from small, mom and pop-type, establishments–these are major multinational corporations. Their sole business purpose is to provide a profit to their shareholders. For Pepsico, ConAgra (which owns Hunt’s Ketchup), and Nestlé to package products based on consumer demand for ‘not corn syrup’ speaks volumes on the power consumers wield by voting with their shopping carts. So long as the FDA continues to be a rung on the ladder of a career in industrial food processing, the shopping cart is the only protection consumers have.

Consumers, keep up the good work.

Read below for the list of GMO crops.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

List of Genetically Modified Foods (Source: Richard William Posner)

Honey from bees collecting pollen from GMO crops (this has shut down exports of Canadian honey to Europe), sugar beets, soybeans,  corn,  sweet corn, canola and canola oil, some potatoes, papaya from Hawaii, some squash, cotton seed oil, meat and dairy products usually come from animals that have eaten GM feed, cooking oils, oleos and margarines used in restaurants and in processed foods in North America are made from soy, corn, canola, or cottonseed. About 22  percent of cows in the U.S. (other studies cite 17%) are injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). Vitamins – Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is often made from corn, vitamin E is usually made from soy. Vitamins A, B2, B6, and B12 may be derived from GMOs as well as vitamin D and vitamin K may have “carriers” derived from GM corn sources, such as starch, glucose, and maltodextrin.

My lovely bride has deserted me for the time being. She is accompanying our two lovely daughters as they wrap up a four-week stint in China; they are exploring something there that relates to their education.

Kuna the Cat, aka BD, aka Braindead

Only the three of us live here now–me, Gregg the younger, and Kuna the cat–unless we’re supposed to count the rodents skritching in the walls and ceilings in their attempts to escape the frigid Michigan winter. Gregg the younger and I have renamed the cat Braindead–BD for short.

Gregg II and I have only one commandment to follow in the girls’ absence–keep the living things living. It’s a take, I’m sure, on the whole Thou Shalt Not Kill thing. Gregg II and I failed on that commandment the day the girls boarded their flight and the only thing we learned was that squirrel hair does not enhance a wild game dinner. More recently, we failed again.

In addition to the three of us, there’re the fish. Two Chinese fighting fish condemned in separate bowls to look at each other and think macho thoughts of what they’d do to each other if either ever had the courage to leap out of its own bowl and into the other’s, and one bug-eyed goldfish in its own bowl of water and squishy fish food and decomposing fish poop. Every now and then when they look particularly lethargic, I change the water.

The girls never said anything about doing the laundry, or doing dishes, or supplementing our food intake with anything resembling nutrition; no, our only job was to not let the plants and animals in our house die–presumedly this applied to the fish.

The Dead Fish

So imagine the horror when I found the bug-eyed one staring at me through his only remaining eye–and that occurrence a full fifteen feet from where I last fed him. And so I thought, what series of events could have led to this? as I picked him up by the crispy-dried tail to dispose of him. Then I saw it–a glass bowl that used to be this fish’s home, shattered and dry on the windowsill next to the two cowardly Chinese fighting fish.

The Broken Fish Bowl

Now, that bug-eyed goldfish was about two inches long, and had travelled a full 90 times his body length without a pool or puddle in the path–a pool or puddle from which a breath of fresh water could have been taken, and which quite possibly, could have prolonged his suffering. How could such a thing as this have happened? What the heck? (Note on writing style: I could self sensor ‘heck’ and say ‘what the **ck?’ and let people think that I’m either a bit edgier than I actually am or that I’m Australian.)

Anyway, Gregg the younger and I found ourselves buried in a perfectly fine mystery since neither of us recall personally placing that fish 90 body lengths from his shattered bowl. Gregg the younger pointed out what looked like a gunshot hole on the fishbowl, but closer inspection revealed this to not be the case; what we were looking at was simply the point where the victim’s bowl made contact with the adjacent fish bowl–contact that caused the shattering to occur.

For now, we have the suspect under house-arrest for a few hours every day when he’s not outside killing others of his friends. Thought has been given to the idea of throwing him in lock-up in the attic, but we’re afraid the skritching would only rise to a crescendo and cause our peaceful bachelor-type surroundings to be lost. Such a time will come soon enough.

BD was unavailable for comment.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

An unmowed golf course in July? What was its name? Waverly, I think. Why would they let it go so?

Every time I return to Lansing, a flood of memories stirs. Childhood memories. Mostly pleasant, like childhood memories are meant to be.

Mt. Hope United Methodist Church

Sundays were for church and the church that mom and dad dragged us to every Sunday was Mount Hope Methodist. Somewhere along the line we became United Methodists, which even at my young age, sounded redundant. We were already Methodists uniting at the Methodist Church every Sunday. Apparently, there was something larger than my understanding going on, which is a good thing when you’re talking about church.

Talk about faith of our father’s, church for us was like a weekly family reunion; Grandpa and Grandma, dad and mom and us five kids, dad’s two brothers and their wives and each of their four children all attended Mt. Hope United Methodist Church. After church, if we behaved, which was never, or if mom didn’t yet have dinner started, which was often, we’d go out to eat. (Church links: contemporary and traditional.)

The restaurant, that clean, white building with the green shutters–Bill Knapps—provides a story of restaurant success and failure in the same sentence. Dad and mom would prance the five of us kids into the front door where we waited (never too long for waiting too long with five children is a test of nerves) for a table to be readied for us.

Bill Knapps restaurant logo

Most Bill Knapps buildings are gone now, though some have been made-over to operate under new names.

As restaurants go, that’s what happens when the marketing department matures with the clientele. Maybe they took their cue from GM: This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, a dramatic reinforcement that the Oldsmobile brand was targeted to not my generation (though had GM not managed to destroy the brand, I am finding myself growing into that generation.

1957 De Soto wagon, ours may not have been a '57, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't red.

It was my father’s Oldsmobile. Other than the De Soto that I have no right to remember on account of my young age, all I remember dad driving was Oldsmobiles. It was a measure of pride in Lansing and pride in the car and the company that helped build Lansing. Time was then that a new car could be afforded every year by some–dad included. With proper engineering by the auto manufacturers, ‘planned obsolescence’ they called it, the actual life of a car was not too much more than that. Dad drove our family around Lansing in less than one-year-old Oldsmobiles for most of my childhood.

Spare time in the springtime found me on my bicycle, fishing rod slung across the high handlebars, with a bucket dangling from the banana-seat and a worm-container stuffed in my jacket pocket. Colonial Plaza to Pleasant Grove to Mount Hope to Boston Boulevard to Moores River Drive, then across Logan Street to where a small patch of grass and trees was trapped on the east side of Logan Street, between Moores River Drive and the river.

Not my father's Oldsmobile, but he had one like it.

This patch of grass and trees was called a park. The river, The Grand River, eddied in front of the park and yielded a small number of bluegills large enough to clean and a massive quantity of little tiny ones. Beyond the eddies, the river ran, though not with any great force because of the dam—hydroelectric it was—just downstream. The product of the dam was used to power the factory and the city.

Over my bobber, beyond the eddies and the river, built above the concrete seawall stood Plant 1. On the wall of the building facing me from my fishing hole was a sign you could be proud of–Oldsmoble, home of the Rocket Engine V-8. Maybe I got the exact wording wrong, after all, it’s been nearly fifty years, and I can’t find an image of that building to confirm my memory.

Not the same sign, but it demonstrates the Rocket-Engine theme

Wow! Rocket Engine! Can you imagine that? That’s what my dad drove—an Oldsmobile—and to think they made that car right across the river from where I fished!

We lived in the city. My brother Gary and I were separated in age by thirteen months (we still are and he’s older) so we shared the friends acquired as much by our small pocket of geography as any other sense of relational pull. One common bond among friends is shared interests, and as we walked to Lewton Elementary School we’d talk about the Monkees (Gary’s and my favorite) and the Beatles (Jeff’s and Scott’s favorite) and the Rolling Stones whose edginess was beyond anything our years could yet comprehend. An interest in fishing wasn’t shared, and I found myself fishing alone as often as not, which was okay.

Click on the image for a look at Lansing's sledding hills. Photo used without permission, thanks Ariniko.

As winter settled in and the chore of riding bicycles overcame the pleasure, we focused our attentions on greater things. Winters were better then. More snow fell and stuck, the temperature froze the skating rinks solid, and we took advantage. Quentin Park was several blocks closer to our home than my fishing hole, and we could often get a ride from either ours or Jeff’s mom or dad. Scott’s mom and dad got a divorce which was something I certainly didn’t understand, and something that was spoken of in our house only in hushed voices leading me to further confusion.

Quentin Park hosted an outdoor ice rink on a flooded field. The only technology used to freeze the rink was the weather. The park was closed when demanded by nature. I doubt nature has allowed skating at Quentin Park for several years, but the park’s other great attraction for ambitious boys with too much time on their hands continues to be the sledding hill.

When nature or parents wanted us closer to home but still not underfoot, we congregated in one of our backyards to engage in other enterprises–most notably, using God’s abundant raw material–snow–in the production of missiles. Enemy combatants were deemed by us to be anything or anybody that wasn’t us. Cars were our favorite targets. We had a fenced-in backyard on a corner lot so that our offensive could be made from behind the cover of the fence. Occasionally, while we’d be so engaged in the backyard, mom would be meeting a neighbor from down the block at the front door. We provided mom with a lot of opportunity to meet our neighbors.

Looking east, at northbound MLK Blvd. and beyond where stood the Oldsmobile Plant. The river is to the right and runs past the Otto E. Eckert power station.

I recently drove into Lansing, past the gas-station-convenience-store built on a site that used to be Bill Knapps, and I remembered, and what I remembered brought anticipation. I wanted to once again look at my old fishing hole and at what was left of the once great production facility of fine motorcars–The Oldsmobile Plant. Logan Street is now Martin Luther King Boulevard, and divided into two one-way bridges. The landscape has changed to such an extent, what with the new bridge and all, that I couldn’t pinpoint the exact tree that competed with the bluegills for my baits.  Across the river near where I used to fish, in that spot once occupied by Oldsmobile, is a fenced-in field of concrete complimented with weeds sprouting new life in the cracks.

As for the Waverly Municipal Golf Course, there’s talk of re-purposing the property into a municipal cemetary.

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But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. John 8:6b-7 NIV

I have collected, in my fifty-five years, a fine history of stupid. By grace, this stupid fails to define me; by cunning or cleverness in concert with the lack of Youtube during the peak of my stupid era, I wasn’t caught. Let’s face it, whether sin or stupid or more often, a combination of both, we all have certain areas in each of our lives that we aren’t proud of.

Some of us get caught.

The purpose here is not to create a stupid competition, or to air my stupid as it relates to your stupid; rather, my purpose is more of an appeal to rid ourselves of the notion that when stupid is caught in the act, we must collectively mount our pedestals and thump-out our righteous indignation to bring the perpetrators of such stupid to justice. This week’s case in point: four marines and a Youtube video.

Leon Panetta described the act as ”utterly deplorable”; Hillary Clinton found herself in “utter dismay”. A stampede of U.S. officialdom loudly proclaimed that swift justice will prevail to restore honor to the United States Marine Corps. For what? Stupid? Further, does the whole United States Marine Corps truly lose honor when a few of its members get caught in stupid? I don’t think so.

Some thought my post last week dishonored those in the military and the armed services as a whole. A greater dishonor to the United States Marine Corps, who undoubtedly have the ability to govern acts of stupid committed in their ranks, was ‘uttered’ by Clinton and Panetta and other leaders engaged in perpetuating the wars I spoke about last week.

By all means must stupid be addressed with consequences, and just as I believe the whole of the United States Marine Corps is not dishonored by the acts of a few individual members, so too do I believe in their capacity to mete out these consequences without outside help.

My reaction on learning of the video was gee, that was stupid. It was not a reflection on the Marines, or on the Armed Services in general, or even a reflection on the five guys at the peak of their stupid-bearing age (if my own age of heightened stupid serves as an example). No, my reaction was more personal–but for the grace of God, it wasn’t me (getting caught).

Links for further understanding:

Explaining the Inexplicable, Nate Smith

US Marines: Watch where  you aim, Tarak Barkawi

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Greggii had a snow day. The girls were still in China. To celebrate, we went out to get ingredients for Hot and Sour Soup, and stir-fried pork with vegetables. Cooking Chinese is not a one-stop affair. Meijers had the pork and only a few of the other ingredients, Sieu Thi Kim Nhung Super Store had the rest of what was called for. If you happen to be in the neighborhood of Division and 44th St. S.E. in Grand Rapids this store is worth a visit, especially now as the Lunar New Year bears down on us.

We stop at the Sieu Thi Kim Nhung Super Store every couple of months or so to get certain things we have acquired a taste for, such as durian and Indo Mee noodles. We also restock on soy sauce there, as we believe that Chinese soybeans are not genetically modified to the extent they are here. And to me at least, Chinese brewed soy sauce has a better taste than the usual offering around here.

The shopping for dinner was an event in itself and Gregg II and I both enjoyed it. We returned home to spend the next two and a half hours preparing the meal. The actual cooking of a Chinese dinner is ten minutes or so of sheer madness with several expletives flying under my breath as I hold the directions in one hand and a stirring utensil in the other and bark orders to Gregg II between the expletives, while the products of the previous two hours and twenty minutes of chopping, cutting, shredding, dicing, peeling and praying are placed in the wok or soup pan at the specified minute. In the end, it was all worth it.

The meal was delicious. Hot and sour soup and pork with vegetables just the way I remember.

Hot and Sour Soup and Pork with Vegetables over rice from a friend's farm in Thailand

So Gregg II and I sat down to the table, said grace, decided to take the photo before eating, then ate the best dinner of our temporary bachelorhood yet.

Aah, this is how bachelors should live, and we ate and sat together to let it settle and all was good in the world. We wondered why we didn’t do this more often.

When we were finished, we rose, picked up a few dishes from the table and turned to face the kitchen. It was at that moment we learned why we didn’t do this more often.

And then the cleanup reminded us why.

The cleanup is now finished and all in all, Gregg II and I had a great snow day.

Thanks for reading, have a blessed day!

Gregg

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I joined my dad and mom and dad’s two brothers for lunch the other day. In the circle of subjects orbiting the table came the practice of honoring veterans. My uncles commented that some people believe that time honoring veterans is not time well spent. In pondering this, the subject of the sixties and of Vietnam weaved itself into the conversation, followed by suggestions of generational differences; hearing this, dad pointed to me and said, “There’s the generation, ask him.”

Wow, there I sat, a little boy at the grown-up table, and the grown-ups looked to me and asked, “So Gregg, what do you think?” Only this time, the little boy was fifty-five years old and hardly represents a generation.

Boy, was I scared. Sometimes I don’t know what I think about something until I think about it. I generally like to squeeze the juices out of ideas and allow them to age a bit. If these juices are aired before sufficient fermentation, an acidity renders them worthless–like vinegar. This is one of the greatest generational differences. These three men and my mother have this ability to take ideas, right and wrong, and fling them willy-nilly over the table and wait and watch as wrong ideas fall off the edge and right ideas sort of coagulate into a concensus. Maybe it’s the age of certification, or licensing, or promotions, diplomas, and other forms of high value placed on being right, but I have a dread of letting wrong ideas pass my lips.

Anyway, they were counting on me, so I did the best I could, managing only to address the generational differences, and suggested that indeed, growing up in the sixties created in me a distrust of leadership and mainstream media. I pointed out that even Walter Cronkite, that trusted icon of journalism, told us to no longer trust our leaders:

“We’ve been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.” (1968)

It was a grand answer that served magnificently to not address the main question they raised, the honoring of veterans at this or that church or social function. I admit that I am one who always stands to recognize our veterans whenever the request is made, but not without a degree of ambivalence. I never stopped to think about this ambivalence until asked by the grown-ups.

After thinking about it, I composed an email on the subject to answer their question. I’ve already said that I’m fifty-five years old, so add a generation’s years to my age and you have theirs. This is what I wrote:

My life has seen the United States of America engaged in armed conflicts on foreign soils. The enemy during my life has been abstractions: The Threat of Communism, Drugs, and Terror (these latter two being criminal acts arbitrarily redefined). To my knowledge, no defined outcome exists from which to determine the success of these operations. My only experience is my country perpetually engaged in undeclared wars with no end in sight.

While your lives witnessed the notion of being in the service as service to country, in the service for my generation, with exception,  is a stepping-stone to one’s future interests, not unlike other career-path options–diplomas, certifications, or apprenticeships. As an adult (the draft ended the year I turned eighteen), I have witnessed only volunteer armed forces focused not on what one can do to serve his or her country, but on what military service can do for the individual. Note the nature of the slogans used to recruit individuals to the various branches: the Army–Be All You Can Be, or Get an Edge on Life, the Navy–It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure, the Air Force–Aim High, and the Marines–Looking for a few good men, or The few, the proud. Our armed services no longer rely on community interest to attract individuals, but on those individuals’ self-interest.

In writing this, Jessica Lynch comes to mind. Remember Jessica? The first American POW to be successfully rescued since WW II? The first woman POW? This young woman debunked the Pentagon embellished, mainstream media reported stories of her GI Jane-type heroism. Very little of the story was true. She joined the Army because there were no jobs in West Virginia. She hoped the Army would lead to college where she wished to become a kindergarten teacher. While I might feel ambivalent about honoring her as a veteran, I will never feel that ambivalence toward honoring her for her honesty.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you.

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon.