email address: My Life in the Twentieth Century By A. Stanley Thompson The Move to Eugene Chapter 7 A View from Spencer Butte on a Foggy Morning, Looking Over Eugene & River Barbara and I came to realize that being with the younger people in our family was more important to us than being at Cabinhill Tree Farm. Our children and grandchildren lived in faraway places: Wisconsin, Oregon, and Alaska. They had less time to visit us in Virginia. We needed to lessen our travel distance to visit them. An important travel indicator could be calculated: number of people times time zones away from us. Alaska was five time zones away from Virginia, Oregon three, and Wisconsin one, making our indicator 5x4 + 3x3 + 1x1 = 30. By moving to Oregon we reduced the indicator to 2x4 + 0x3 + 2x1 = 13. (Please note that the State of Alaska has since then, by legislative action, reduced their number of time zones from Oregon to one. That reduced our travel indicator, with no work on our part, to 1x4 + 0x3 + 2x1 = 6, a marvelous free saving. When Steve and Mary moved four hundred miles farther away, to Fairbanks but still in the same time zone, our indicator remained unchanged at 6). Steve and Mary have since moved again, first to Copenhagen, then to Auckland, and now to State College, Pennsylvania, and there are now four more grandchildren and a new daughter-in-law, greatly complicating my calculation. So much for the scientific method. We had started looking for a house in Eugene, a process that went on for a couple of years. Then one day when we were in Kodiak visiting, Bobbie called from Eugene to say that she had found a house, new on the market, that she thought might interest us. Bobbie's welcoming call reassured Barbara's fear of being a mother-in-law too close. The house belonged to an elderly widow, Mrs. Richards. When we tried to see it, we were told she had decided not to sell it. Then we were allowed to see it after all. There were two bedrooms downstairs, and one upstairs, an old-fashioned, small, awkward kitchen, and no dining room. The one-car garage was overwhelmed by an old Plymouth automobile from the late 50's, surrounded by disorganized possessions. The yard was cluttered with an overgrown jungle of trees through which had grown a wild assortment of English ivy, English laurel, English holly, climbing roses, lilacs. Basic to all this were a magnificent large black walnut tree in front and two large Douglas-firs in back, an apple tree, and two fig trees. We decided it might suit us. We could add a dining room where there was presently a porch on the south-east corner of the house. A bedroom and bath might be fitted into a present unfinished attic, and a miserable space over the garage might be made useful. Part of the yard had a south exposure for Barbara's garden. Most important was that Madison Street is one block from Mike's and Bobbie's Monroe Street location, with a foot passage between the two streets. Because Bobbie was so welcoming, it was easy to imagine Megan as a regular visitor. We made an offer for the house. Because a son and daughter of Mrs. Richards were fighting over whether the house was really for sale, our negotiations were for a while uncertain. Then we got the property, and I came from Virginia on March 1, 1982, took possession, and painted the inside of the house. I paid a family with a truck to cart away load after load of the junk which Mrs. Richards had collected. SALE OF THE FARM The farm was sold to Ervin and June Kapos, from McLean, Virginia, to be used partly as a workplace and source of inspiration for Mrs. Kapos' creation of pottery. Our four-wheel-drive pick-up truck went with the farm. We gave many books, including all my technical books, to the Rappahannock County Library, for their annual book sale. We gave away and sold many possessions in preparation for packing and moving. RAPPAHANNOCK FRIENDS We made many friends in Rappahannock County whom I have missed since we left. I think particularly of the Birds and the Manks and the Youngs who were in Barbara's still continuing poetry-reading group. Then there were the indigenous neighbors, Roy Atkins, Kinsey Atkins, Charlie Hitt, and John Dodson. On an eastern trip from Oregon we visited Pearl Dodson, living alone in her house except when grandchildren come to stay with her. She says she misses John. She likes the bathroom her children built for John before he died. As to her, "the Lord has always taken care of me and he always will." I do not miss the copperheads and rattlesnakes, or the nests of yellow jackets onto which I came fairly often. THE MOVE We rented the largest U-Haul truck available. On its side was printed, "Maximum gross weight 18,500 pounds." On the return to the farm with the U-Haul, Barbara was accompanying me, driving our 1976 front-wheel-drive Saab which, with over 100,000 miles, had been sold to our young friend, Chris Bird. I heard her blowing the horn in the signal which meant I was to stop. The Saab had made some clunking noises as the universal joint in the left front wheel failed. It could be driven no further. We left it at the side of the road, and went home in the moving truck, stopping on the way to make arrangements with Mike Brown, of B & B Auto Service to pick up the Saab, repair it and turn it over to Chris. Rain started rght after we brought the U Haul home, and rain continued, with the earth becoming soaked and soft. For a period of three days, friends, the Birds, the Holschues, and the Youngs, helped us load the truck until it would hold no more, and the rest was given away, left, or discarded. The farm shop was left with partly filled fifty pound cartons of 20, 16, 12, 10, 8, and 6 penny nails, coated box nails and finishing nails of various sizes, and some tools. Finally the truck's cargo doors were closed. With Barbara watching from outside, I started driving slowly from the house, negotiating the sharp turns and steep slopes onto our drive. After the first turn was completed, I saw Barbara gesticulating frantically, but I couldn't tell what she wanted me to do. I stopped, which turned out to be the opposite of what she wished. She could see an immense boulder beside the truck tilting toward the swollen stream as the truck wheels sank into the soft roadway, the truck leaning ominously. As she motioned me forward, the road held enough to get us by. The trip across the Country passed without major difficulties, and one particular pleasure. We visited Bruce in Milwaulee, where we met Kathy for the first time. I loved her from the start. In South Dakota, at one of several required stops at weigh stations across the Country, Barbara asked the attendant, "How much do we weigh?" "Well, you weigh 20,500 pounds, and that's 2,000 pounds over your limit. The fine for that is $75.00." Then after a pause to let his answer sink in, he said with a smile, "but I'm guessing that you don't do this very often, so go ahead. Welcome to South Dakota." We spent inordinate amounts of time driving up hills at five to ten miles an hour, in low gear. The truck got a little less than six miles to a gallon of gasoline, so that we were spending about $30.00 on fuel for every 150 miles across the Country. Toward the end of the trip we were running short of money, so we slept in the truck rather than in motels. Fortunately we had some blankets left over from the packing, or we'd have been even colder than we were going through Wyoming. When we arrived at last in Eugene, Mike and Bobbie and Megan were away from home on a trip to the coast. We parked the truck in our new driveway, and as rapidly as we could, unloaded our possessions. We moved into our new house on Madison Street on June 1, 1982. When Mike and Bobbie and Megan returned, they made us feel warmly welcomed. Jonathan and Lynn Barbara and I visited three-and-one-half-year-old Lynn and nine-and-one-half year-old Jonathan at their new home in Kodiak, Alaska, over the 1982 Christmas holidays. Lynn loved to be read to. One day she approached me with a book in her hand, and asked, "Grandaddy, are you in the habit of reading to me?" I soon formed that habit. One book finished, she would take it away, and withour saying a word would show up, smiling, with another. She particularly liked hearing over and over the familiar ones. One old favorite was a book on counting, one part of which was a poem about ten little Indians, who became in successive verses nine, eight, etc., until there were none. Around it were arranged in random fashion the printed numbers, 1 to ten. Lynn said of this poem, "This is my favorite." She brought it back to be reread often, which accounted for its battered condition. Lynn liked to count. She counted to ten easily, with a liberal use of her fingers. Looking at the randomly scattered numbers printed on the page with the ten little Indians, she counted, asking me to point to each number symbol as she pronounced it. She quickly learned to identify them herself, except for ten which she wanted to call eleven. Then, quite suddenly, she could go to nineteen, but instead of twenty substituted a repetition of the teens, in random order. One day Lynn called out to ask, "How much is one and one?" I called out, "two." Immediately she developed a hypothesis for the whole system of addition. "One and one is two, two and two is three, three and three is four, four and four is five." The adults looked at each other and said nothing. We didn't want to spoil her triumph, and hoped that time would somehow straighten out her confusion in some gentle way. At lunch Lynn set out to demonstrate her new knowledge. Putting out her two index fingers on the table, she asked, "How much is one and one?, and smiling with satisfaction answered, "two." She looked at us, then proceeded to put out two fingers of each hand. "How much is two and two?" Then, using the little finger of her left hand, she counted the two fingers on her right hand, "one, two." Then, using the little finger on her right hand, she started counting the fingers on her left hand, "three," and slowed down in some consternation. Hesitantly, she counted, "four." Suddenly her face lighted up in great pleasure, "two and two is four." She followed, using the same procedure of counting on the fingers of her two hands, with the numbers up to five and five. At six and six she found she didn't have enough fingers. I loaned her two of mine, and she announced the result, "six and six is twelve. Then Steve asked her, "Lynn, can you do two and three?" which she did with obvious pleasure. Lynn had the wonderful satisfaction of discovering for herself a scientific procedure for addition of two numbers. By conducting a set of experiments, she had developed her original hypothesis into a working theory, recognized by herself, and by her adults, as valid. Megan The payoff from our move to Oregon started soon after the move. Megan was a delighted and delightful visitor at our house. At her third birthday she announced, "Soon I will be four." On special occasions Megan was my helper. "I hep you, Grandaddy." She steadied one end of pieces of firewood as I cut them. Then she helped me set the fire in the fireplace. While I was changing the electrical wiring in a circuit-breaker box, Megan sat on a stepladder next to me, handing me tools, asking "Why," and collecting the nickel-sized punchouts from electric boxes to take home to her mother. I explained to her about electrical wires and electrical shocks, and that preventing shocks is why the cover to the circuit-breaker box should be kept in place. When the job was done we went together to close the main circuit breaker so that the house would again have electricity. "Granddaddy, we should shut the door so no one will get a shock." Later, having a snack with all the items she ordered, including home-made bread with butter, two kinds of cheese, granola, milk, pears, all appropriate for a hard-working little girl after a job well done, Megan leaned against me from the high stool on which she was sitting. Rubbing her hand over my beard, so different from her own soft skin, "Granddaddy, I love you." "I love you too, little friend." "I your little friend." THE NEW HOUSE Over a period of time we made most of the changes to the house which we had contemplated. The porch became a dining room with glass walls facing the garden to the east and south. The attic space became a carpeted studio-guest room, and the space over the garage became my office. There was new wiring, new plumbing and a new roof. Barbara's garden came under control with mulched, raised beds and looked elegant. Trees were pruned, and shrubs and flowere planted. We had room for visiting friends and relatives. Jonathan and Lynn stayed with us for five weeks while Mary took a nurse's training course in Anchorage. Lynn and Megan were devoted playmates. Jonathan spent some of his time at a scout camp. Caitlin When my children were born, custom, hospital rules, and doctors conspired to keep fathers isolated from the birth process. I once commented to Bobbie that I had felt left out. She remarked that, if she decided to have another baby, she would invite me to be present. I felt privileged indeed to be allowed by Bobbie and Mike to be present when Caity was born at their home on July 12, 1983, a birthday I will never forget. Barbara and I attended their birthing clinic so that we would be familiar with the procedures. I waked Megan with difficulty from a sound sleep at the late night hour. She was suddenly wide awake to watch her father receive the new baby. We all were able to welcome Caity immediately on her arrival, an occasion always to be celebrated. Caity rapidly won us all over to her. Megan said of her when she was two and one half years old, "Caitlin is the most wonderful little sister in the whole world." I couldn't have expressed it better myself. Occasionally, at this stage, Caity became attached to me. I could tell that I was currently one of her favorites when I was the one invited to help her attend her bathroom needs and afterward to help her wash her hands. I felt honored to be chosen for so important and intimate a task. At other times, when I was not numbered among her favorites, she practically shouted, "No! Not you. Nini (her name for Barbara) do it." Because "granddaddy" was hard to say, it was reduced to "Gaddy." I felt inadequate when Caity became frustrated because, with my increasing hearing difficulties, I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me. It helped a little to remember that she didn't say the "s" at the beginning of a word, so that "shoe" became "hoo," though "yes" had a very clear "s" at the end. Caity came up to my office over the garage, looking like an irresistable confection in her pink tights and pink dress. She sat on my knees, interrupting my typing, and drawing pictures on any paper on my desk she could reach. "I make Cabbage Patch. This he belly button." Belly buttons were made with such force that she bent my pen out of shape. "You ha' typewitoo. My Poppy ha' typewitoo, too." "This you office. This my office, too." I assured her that it was indeed her office too. When we sat down to lunch around the new kitchen island, Caity asked to be included in a family ring of held hands. "Me hankfoo we all here." After lunch Caity helped Nini make bread in her own mixing bowl, wearing her own special apron. She worked diligently, up to her elbows in dough, occasionally eating a nibble of her concoction. She took special pleasure in applying cooking oil in liberal quantities to the baking pans, especially to four little ones for small loaves to take home to "my Mama and my Poppy and Meggy and me." As the bread was baking, she checked the oven periodically. For Megan also, helping Barbara make bread was a special occasion. Special occasions for Barbara and me were the times when Megan and Caity came to spend the night with us. In the morning one or both of them woke early and came into bed with us, bringing their toy animals. Megan's presence was important to Caity. Life was normal when Megan was with her, but something was lacking when her "Meggie" went away. SAN FRANCISCO In late March of 1985, Bruce called from Milwaukee, asking whether Barbara and I would help him and Sue Bauer, the wife of his business partner, operate their Booth No. 2241, at the Musconie Convention Center in San Francisco. They were to be part of the computer fair held there, demonstrating and seing the computer programs Bruce had developed for income tax planning and reporting. We accepted the invitation. On a walk around the city, we were struck by the contrasts in San Francisco, a more prosperous version of what we had seen in Cairo, but with the same division between the luxurious "haves" and the down-and-out "have-nots," the guests at the luxurious Top-of-the-Mark at one extreme, and the people sleeping on the sidewalks at the other. We set up our booth in the tremendous auditorium of the Convention Center, completely filled with booths of all sizes and degrees of complexity, representing companies ranging from IBM in size down to individuals. Great crowds of visitors paid their entry fees and browsed among the wares displayed. I came suddenly to a realization of the competitive nature of the computer business. At the time of the fair, some of the optimism concerning the capability for infinite expansion of computer sales appeared to have disappeared. Barbara and I had experienced some of this ourselves when we became aware that a number of the computer stores with which we had been familiar had gone out of business. Our booth did what seemed to us a good, brisk business, but the expenses of the trip and the booth absorbed any profit which might otherwise have occurred. After the fair closed, we drove Bruce to the airport and returned to our motel to finish packing. I realized as I passed the door of Bruce's now empty motel room a sudden empty feeling, like the one I remembered when he first went away to Amherst College. I found that I really enjoyed having him close enough to drop in and talk. I feel privileged to be a friend to my sons and their wives, and I enjoy working with them. When I feel uncertain about something in their lives, I am tempted to start acting like a parent, but that is a bad habit, and not one I wish to cultivate. I enjoyed being with Bruce and Sue, and being associated with their booth was great experienc and a pleasure. We also visited Barbara's nephew, Steven Morse, and his family in Oakland, and my former business partner, Al Weston, and his wife, Zora, in Alamo, and our friends, Dick and Anne Moulds, in Danville. We entertained ourselves looking at the drab but fabulously overpriced houses in the area in which we had once lived. I concluded that California, with its noise, traffic, smog, destruction of the environment, and outrageous expense of living, and its neglect of its underpriveleged citizens, had lost any attractiveness it might once have had as a place for us to live. CRESCENT LAKE On June 15, 1985, Barbara and I, and Michael and Bobbie, as partners, bought a cabin at Crescent Lake. This ended a two-year search for a family vacation place, including both mountain and seashore locations. The partnership was based on equal sharing of decisions, responsibilities, and enjoyment over a period of time in which financial investment would gradually pass from Barbara and me to Michael and Bobbie. Since that time the cabin has welcomed Barbara's and my children and grandchildren. Now that Mike and Bobbie completely own the cabin, and Barbara is no longer living, I still feel welcomed. As an extension of the family, Millie and her children and grandchildren are now welcomed there. Crescent Lake is in the Deschutes National Forest, off Highway 58 east of the crest of the Cascade Mountains, at about 5,000 feet altitude. The lake, about five miles long and almost 500 feet deep, is supposed to have been formed when lava flowed to form a dam. In winter a cross-country skiing trip of about a mile and a half is required from the snow park area to the cabin. The forest there forms a transition zone. On the west side of the lake are firs, western white pine, mountain hemlock, ponderosa pine, and relatively luxurious sub-story plants, pipsisewa, ceanothus, chinquapin, madrona. On the east side are predominantly dry lodge pole pine forests bare of understory growth, with the exception of one remarkable grove of large sugar pines, the farthest north extension of this species. The location invites cross-country skiing, mountain hiking, canoeing, fishing, and quiet contemplation of the forested lakeshore and mountains. ABOUT GOD When Megan was almost six years old, she and her friend, Tracy, also six, were spending a weekend with Barbara and me at the cabin. They had gone through games and various activities, and gave indications of incipient boredom, including arguments. Megan said to Tracy, " I don't believe in God, do you?" "Yes I do. My mother and father believe in God, and so do I." "My mother and father don't believe in God, and I don't believe in God." Then Megan appealed to me, "Granddaddy, you don't believe in God, do you?" I found myself in a situation which was more than I knew how to handle. How does one explain to a six-year-old granddaughter his opinion that the question she is propounding requires more than a one-word answer?" I said, "Megan, I think that before we can answer the question whether we believe in God. we first need to decide what the word, God, means to us." That seemed to stop the argument, but I felt that my response was strangely inadequate. A few months later I noticed that Megan was using her greatly expanded reading ability to read with great interest a book of Bible stories. I surmised that she was working on the problem of what she thought about God. I was reminded that when I was twelve years old, much more aged but not as wise as a modern six-year-old, I decided that I had been the victim of various myths, particularly Santa Claus and God. Then, as I became even older, on the way to eighty, I gradually realized that I could define God for myself in such a way that I needn't reject him/her/it. I felt free to reject the God of the Old Testament. He had been made in their own image by people who lived with blood and thunder, with terrible deeds visited indiscriminately on them or their enemies, either as individuals or as whole classes. I didn't need to accept and respect the idea of an all powerful, all loving, God who would create a man and a woman too weak to resist temptation, who would beget the rest of the human race including me and my ancestors and my children and grandchildren, and then condemn us all for the weakness he had himself created. Then he begat a son, Jesus, by Mary, one of those innocent human beings whom he had created and had under his care. Then to top off the whole act, he permitted that only begotten son to be horribly murdered to atone for the sins of the rest of his human creatures. I could accept instead the idea that I am in some subtly inexplicable way part of the World, and of the wonderful universe of which the World is in turn a part. I could hope that there was some efficatious force for the integration of the whole system, the basic intricacies of which I had no chance of understanding but could attempt, however inadequately, to appreciate. I could, if I wanted, call this unbelievably complex and interrelated system God, or to increase my chance of communicating something with other people, Nature, as a worthy substitute. KODIAK ISLAND After Steve completed his graduate work in Statistics at Oregon State University, in Corvalis, Steve and Mary moved to Kodiak Island. Kodiak is south of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska's largest island, roughly 100 miles by 40 miles. The climate is mild compared with inland Alaska. In winter the island has sleet and wind: what the natives call horizontal rain, but no permafrost. Residents describe Kodiak as the farthest north Hawaiian island. Fortunately the prevailing wind drives Alaska mosquitoes away from the Kodiak shore. The Kodiak airport runway is short, ending at a mountain. Often, when the weather is bad, flights to the Island are canceled, requiring an overnight (or longer) stay in Anchorage. The airport features a stuffed Kodiak bear, which towers above passing travelers. On Kodiak Steve worked for the Alaska Fish and Game Commission, making trips by ship to the various stormy fishing areas, using his statistical training to determine the permissible "take"of varieties of fish. Kodiak claims to have the World's second largest fishing fleet. I don't know who claims the largest. Tons of salmon is processed in the local canneries and shipped to distant markets. We walked along the wharves talking to fishermen unloading their tons of the bounties of the stormy seas, often from the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean. Occasionally a salmon would be thrown our way to take home for dinner, a treat because salmon is unavailable at the local market. Steve and Mary built their new house in Kodiak from Sitka spruce lumber, rough-sawn at a local sawmill, rather than the more usual imported finished wood from Seattle. Sitka spruce, the material of elegant piano sounding boards, is little appreciated locally. When one enters a house in Kodiak, one removes shoes to protect floors. In 1912 Mt. Katmai, on the mainland, blew its top, spreading a pervasive layer of gritty volcanic powder over a vast area, including Kodiak Island. I first met our new grandson, Daniel, right after he was born on December 2, 1983, at their new house. Everyone in the family marveled at our cheery, good-natured, small new relative. On a scenic trip with Steve and Mary along the only road into the countryside, we were shown eagles'nests and saw the great birds flying. We hiked up streams to locations where madly spawning salmon were so thick one had the impression the whole stream was alive. Parts of salmon, half eaten by Kodiak bears, were strewn everywhere. On another hike, on the mountainside above Kodiak, we ate salmon berries. Mary identified many low-growing forms of common trees, stunted by nature to accommodate the difficult growing conditions to which they were subjected. Russians spread Orthodox Christianity across the Aleutian Islands early in the eighteenth century. In 1774 Grigori Shelikof supposedly baptized 40 natives of Kodiak Island and organized the first permanent commercial settlement. Alexander Baranof was appointed manager of the new colony. Empress Catherine sent missionaries who baptized "all the inhabitants." There is now a small Russian Orthodox church and a school for training priests at Kodiak, under the leadership of Father Creda. Several times we visited the church, where we listened to Father Creda as he said prayers for "our fishermen at sea" and other local concerns, interspersed with chanted responses from the choir. The choir, being unaccompanied by any tempered scale instrument, gave the impression of perfect harmony. When the fishing fleet was at sea all the voices were of women. We. as visitors, were made to feel welcome both by Father Creda and his parishioners. FAIRBANKS In 1984 I flew to Kodiak to help Steve's family move by U-Haul truck from Kodiak to Fairbanks where Steve was to teach Statistics at the University of Alaska. The experience of the nine-hour ferry boat ride from Kodiak to Homer, on the mainland of Alaska, was enhanced by the views of otters playing or lounging in the ocean lying on their backs, pretending the water wasn't cold. One whale surfaced and some others spouted. We had planned to spend the night in a motel in Homer. There was only one rather disreputable looking room where we stopped, for $75, which was too small to hold all of us. We were told there was one across the street for $125 which would accommodate the rest of us. However we couldn't rouse anyone. The decision was made to head for a campsite which showed on the map. By the time we arrived it was close to midnight. We found ourselves on the bank of the Kenai River - quite impressive. Steve expeditiously pitched two waterproof tents in the dark and the rain - no mosquitoes because there had already been a frost. It was a real advantage to have a U-Haul truck to provide extra sleeping bags and U-Haul blankets for mattresses. In the morning we found that we had a beautiful, primitive campsite. Our whole trip from Homer to Fairbanks, on the good, two-lane, macadam, Parks Highway, occurred in continuous drizzle, so that there were no distant views. While Jon and Lynn rode in the truck with Steven, Mary and I shared driving the car and caring for Daniel. For part of the trip I had the opportunity to hold him, to feed him his bottle, and to become acquainted. We became good friends. Daniel was uniformly happy and good humored. Jonathan said, "We lucked out with Daniel." At one point in the drive up the Kenai Peninsula to Anchorage, we came to a blockade, with a sign that stated, "Road closed daily from 10:00 A. M to 2:00 P. M." We drove back a short distance and down to a small village, called Hope, on the Turnagain Arm, where Cook had thought to find his passage to the Atlantic. We could see Anchorage a short distance across the water, but a long distance around by road. We had a lunch of hamburgers, served by a very fat waitress who responded to Jonathan's question as to what soft drinks they had, "Just make up your mind what you want, Sonny, and save me a chore." In Anchorage, Alaska's big city, the whole family was pleased to shop for shoes at REI, the recreational equipment co-op, at prices much lower than those of the island economy of Kodiak, and with a wider choice of varieties. We enjoyed an elegant, un-Kodiak, meal at the Hilton Hotel. We heard about Alaska's "banana belt," the Matanuska Valley where tremendous cabbages are grown, but we didn't see it. We looked down steep slopes to the water, thinking we should come back sometime in good weather. At the entry to Denali National Park we found the Hotel and all campsites full. In the rain we could only imagine the great mass of Mt. McKinley somewhere to the west of us. We had lunch at the Lodge, and drove to a camp outside the Park, this time with swarming Alaska mosquitoes. My memory is of Steven, with a flashlight, making the rounds of the tents after everyone was settled, saving us from the fierce horde which had collected during the preparations for sleeping. I stayed with the family in Fairbanks for a few days, in their faculty apartment. The University of Alaska, with its fountain, sits atop a hill, looking very modern, with a fine view over the valley and the city of Fairbanks, a modern city complete with urban sprawl. Downtown is spread across the Chena River, which meanders through a flat valley with oxbows, sloughs, and many alternate channels. The valley, in winter, is colder than the hill, and often shrouded in "ice fog" and smog. Everywhere people expect to drive in winter, there are parking "hookups", where one can plug in his car, thereby increasing greatly the probability that it will ever start again. We saw an experimental herd of musk ox, an attempt to protect them from extinction. Their hair is so long beneath their bellies that it is difficult to see feet moving. We saw several flocks of migrating sand hill cranes and flocks of geese. We found a farmer's market, to the delight of Steve and Mary, where they could buy locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables, including cabbage, potatoes, and delicious wild cranberries which grow in profusion in the countryside. They bought honey from a farmer who every year imports new bees for the purpose, then kills them at the end of the season because he cannot keep them over winter. His season had just finished coincident with the first frost. Some of the woods around Fairbanks are quite beautiful, but without the tremendous Sitka spruce of Kodiak. On northern slopes a scruffy, short spruce looks as if it struggles for existence in the permafrost. On southern slopes however there is an appealing mixture of white birch, quaking aspen, elder and spruce, some of them ten to twelve inches in diameter, and quite tall, underlain with a carpet-like growth of horsetails. The faculty housing in this area looks park like. In answer to my question about Fairbanks temperatures, a resident answered, "The average temperature here isn't bad. The trouble is, we never get the average." Because of the cold I think I couldn't live in Fairbanks. By being so welcoming, first in Kodiak and then in Fairbanks, Steven and Mary gave us a rich experience of different places which we could not otherwise have had. I am grateful to them and to Jonathan, Lynn, Daniel, and Christopher, for sharing their lives with me. At the end of my stay we went to the airport for lunch, watching the rain outside our window. Fairbanks is a cold desert with ten inches or so of annual rainfall. When I flew out it was still raining. Suddenly the plane emerged from the clouds, and there at my elbow the great snow-covered massif of Mt. McKinley towered above its system of glaciers, with the whole Alaska Range for a backdrop. Below the plane I could see the highway up which we had come in the rain from Kodiak. The Alaska family visited us in Eugene over the Christmas holidays while Steve attended a meeting of the Biometric Society. Barbara and I had the pleasure of five grandchildren. Barbara and I visited Fairbanks for two weeks in the summer of 1985. During one week of the time we were there, Mike and Bobbie were also there with Megan and Caitlin. Daniel was a more grown-up version of his lively, cheerful self. But there was an exception. One evening all the grownups, including Jonathan, went to a movie, and I stayed with Lynn and Daniel. This was too much for Daniel who wanted to go to the movie. He wasn't about to accept either Lynn or me. Despite being excessively tired, he wouldn't go to sleep, and if he did doze off, he awoke immediately. Steve and Mary returned to an unhappy Daniel. Fortunately, by the next morning he had forgiven both Lynn and me. We all took a wonderful camping trip to Denali National Park, and Mt. McKinley, some of us by train and some in Steve's and Mary's car. Again, it rained most of the time. The train trip, on the Alaska Railroad in a domed sight-seeing car, was beautiful, following the Nenana River to the Park boundary, along spectacular cliffs. To prevent population damage to the fragile environment, driving into the park is prohibited. Buses for the purpose are provided, but these were scheduled full for the time we could be there. Steve found, and reserved, one wilderness campsite available at Mirror Lake, at the end of the road into the Park. The car could be driven in, using the camping pass. Then, with what seemed to me great generosity, Steve and Mary lent their car for Barbara, Mike, Jonathan and me to go into the campsite for the night. It continued to rain, but we could see snow-covered mountains in the distance. We conjectured which of these could be Mt. McKinley. Then, briefly, the clouds parted, and we had the breath-taking view of the unbelievable, towering, 20,300 foot mountain, way above the level at which we had been conjecturing its presence. On the way in and out of the Park, we saw caribou, Dali sheep, moose, and a grizzly bear. The next day Steve, Mary, and Bobbie drove partway into the Park, using the same camping pass, but did not see the Mountain. CHRISTOPHER The compilation which I wrote and gave to members of my family, entitled, "Episodes from my Life," contained a dedication to the members of my family, including Chrys, a grandchild who had not yet been born. Chrys was the name which I chose arbitrarily for the expected new member, with this explanation: We await a new member of the Fairbanks family in June, already conceived but to me an inconceivably complicated and wondrous new human being. I have given him/her, for the sake of reference, the temporary name, Chrys, for ëchrysalis,' which my dictionary says is ëanything still in the process of development.' I think of chrysalis also as implying beautiful, derived as it is from the Greek word for gold. This lucky baby will be welcomed into his/her own preformed world of five loving people, plus all of us, relatives and friends who wish Chrys well. Chrys will arrive at a busy time. Steve and Mary must move out of their university housing, and buy a house of their own. Toward the end of the pregnancy, Mary reported that Chrys had become extremely active, kicking and turning somersaults. Then on June 19, 1986, Chrys suddenly became quiet. Mary, with her nurse's training recognized that something was wrong. She and Steve rushed to the hospital where the birth was induced. Chrys weighed ten pounds and seven ounces. At birth he was in some trouble. He had a bluish color, a heart murmur, breathing difficulties. Apparently, sometime during the last day before his birth, the umbilical cord kinked during one of Chrys' more extreme acrobatic gyrations. This shut off his supply of vital nutrients for long enough (estimated to be less than twenty minutes) that extensive brain damage occurred, as indicated by a brain scan. Tests showed that heart valves which transfer the blood flow to the lungs at birth had not closed properly. He was subject to seizures. The optic nerve in one eye appeared damaged as a result of the brain injury. He was placed in an intensive care unit, in an atmosphere of oxygen and with tubes to supply nourishment. Blood samples were taken for tests, and then blood transfusions were given to make up the loss. At one time, considerable blood was lost when Chrys pulled out one of the tubes to which he was connected, and another transfusion was required to make up the loss. Eventually both Chrys' eyes were damaged by the atmosphere of oxygen in which he lived. The one redeeming feature was that Chrys seemed alert, following people with his eyes as they moved about him. Steven and Mary took turns spending time with Chrys in the hospital, being as close to him as they could, limited as they were by his apparatus. Then a new threat developed. Because of Chrys' low blood sugar count, the doctors proposed shipping the baby to a hospital in Seattle for an immediate operation to remove part of his pancreas. Steve and Mary had by this time done a considerable amount of reading about brain-injured children, from which they concluded that such an operation would eventually turn their baby into a diabetic, and, by depriving him of the company of his family for another prolonged stay in the hospital, would probably destroy any chance he had to have a life approaching a satisfactory level. Steve called the specialist in Seattle on whose word the recommendation for the pancreas operation was based. When Steve told the specialist the reported readings of blood sugar level in Chrys, the specialist agreed with Steve's opinion that the readings were near enough to normal that the operation might not be necessary. Steve and Mary decided they wanted their baby home with his family, and off medication as soon as possible. Mary spent a day in the hospital learning how to care for her baby, and took him home. After over a month of heroic medical treatment, he was no longer connected to emergency supply tubes, though it was still necessary to feed him through a tube in his nose, to which Chrys objected strenuously. Besides Steve and Mary, Chrys' immediate family consisted of thirteen year old Jonathan, seven year old Lynn, and two year old Daniel. Jonathan had read my dedication to Chrys. He liked the name I had assigned to his new brother, and proposed that it be adapted and adopted. Chrys was named Christopher. Barbara and I spent two weeks in Fairbanks, starting when Christopher was about a month and a half old. When we arrived, Christopher had just been relieved of his feeding tube. He had never experienced food through his mouth, and hadn't yet learned to drink from a bottle. Feeding him was a full-time job. He appeared not to associate hunger with the necessity to eat. His weight was below what was desired. He experienced sudden startles which terrified him. I thought he perhaps expected someone to jab another needle into him. When he slept he appeared to have bad dreams which woke him. The main indication in his favor appeared to be what I thought to be a determined interest in living. Gradually Christopher discovered how to drink from his bottle, finally with great gulps which one imagined could be heard hitting bottom. Then he smiled in response to the attention he received, especially from his brother, Jonathan. When addressed by any of us he responded with smiles and happy baby noises. Mary said he had now made the decision to be a happy baby. While we were visiting, Christopher had only one period of relapse to his period of sudden startles, and fear. He had been taken to the doctor's office for immunization shots, which he hated. Aside from this, he improved the entire two week period during which we saw him. Apparent damage to the optic nerve had now disappeared, as had the oxygen damage to his eyes. His immediate difficulties with blood circulation and breathing had come under control. There was uncertainty as to Christopher's future. Mary observed that Christopher, at almost four months, was behind where he should have been in some developments. His neck was too relaxed, and his left side was not as active as his right. Some of his muscles were too tight. At worst he might live for only a short time or live longer but with some aspects of his development limited to stages appropriate to a baby. At that time Christopher looked and acted pretty much like a normal baby, following people as they moved, and liking to be held and talked to. He even liked to have his diaper changed. Steven said he looked like an angel. His response to being talked to was to smile and laugh and to make engaging baby noises, resulting in a very satisfactory conversation. His look seemed full of love and trust, as if he were sure his World was good. Generally he seemed to be a happy, contented little character, complaining mostly at the times when he was hungry or when his diaper was wet. When he did complain, he seemed particularly to be soothed by Jonathan's treatment, which consisted of bouncing him while carrying him around the room at high speed. Superficially Christopher seemed, as Steven put it, to have what it took to be a baby. Because he had suffered substantial brain damage, unforeseen difficulties in his development beyond babyhood might occur in the future. His family hoped to be aware of these difficulties as they occured, so that they might give Christopher whatever help was needed, and their love whatever difficulties he developed. We all wanted to learn to appreciate him wherever he was, and to value whatever moments we might have with him. The reading I have done indicates that all of us are to some extent brain injured. Brain cells die from many causes, including aging. A temporary lack of blood circulation to the brain as happens when one almost drowns, but is then resuscitated, or any prolonged high fever, or a blow to the head can do it. Brain cells which have died are thought not to be regenerated. But it is apparently possible for undamaged cells to replicate and to move to new locations, to make new connections and to perform new functions. By this intricate and indirect process the destroyed cells can be replaced and their functions carried out. We all hoped, with Steven and Mary, that new connections would be made in Christopher's brain to replace the cells which have been destroyed. I wrote about Christopher at the time, because I felt the need to reach out, as best I could, to touch and to be aware of the members of my family in a time of crisis for all of us. I had waked up thinking I was having a bad dream about Christopher, and then I had to realize it was the truth and not a dream at all. Then I thought of Steve's and Mary's need to adjust to the uncertainties of Christopher's future, and of Christopher's need to adjust to his world, possibly with impaired potentials. If I had believed in a personal God who dealt out individual justice according to some preordained plan which I didn't understand, I'd have hated that God. As I become older I come closer to accepting the idea that the Universe works on some marvelous plan of which we can perceive only the most superficial aspects. It seems to me that in this plan all life is marginal, precarious, and subject to random accidents. Perhaps the marvel of it all is that most of us do as well as we do. I remember that when our Malcolm died at fifteen months of age I was overwhelmed by the feeling that some fate had reached out to snatch away what I most valued in the World. I think I've now come to the realization that it wasn't like that, that in the randomness of things many among us receive crippling blows which we accept as best we can. Christopher had a grievous blow. I could only hope that the results for him would be within his capacity to accept or to overcome. Reinhold Niebuhr said, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." On May 2, 1990, I wrote: In a little over a month Christopher will be four years old. A miracle has happened. Not only is he still alive, but to all appearances Christopher is a normal, robust, happy, loving little boy, and has been so certified by his pediatrician. Contrary to all expectations he has a normal sized head. When last I saw him in Copenhagen he loved to be snuggled and read to. Christopher's pediatrician says of him, "I would describe Christopher as normal in all areas which I am able to test at this age, specifically cognitive, fine motor and gross motor development all appear to be well within normal limits. ----------- I would anticipate that Christopher should have normal growth and development into the future." I believe that Christopher's present good mental and physical health is a monument to the intensive and loving care he has had from his mother and father and from his sister and two brothers, and to his own life-enhancing determination. From wherever it has come, Christopher has accomplished a terrific drive to live and to develop his full potential. The picture I carry in my mind is of the whole family in their Fairbanks living room dancing vigorously to recorded music. Mary or Steve carry a delighted Christopher who waves his arms in time to the music. Christopher has memorized and hums the familiar tunes before he has started trying to talk. Much time and attention have been lavished on him, including physical exercises, massages, music, being read to, weekly visits from professional caretakers from the state of Alaska. As I write now, Christopher is ten years old. He is a robust, cheerful, aggressive boy who happily attends school with his friends, where he writes stories for their amusement and his own. It is a pleasure to talk with him on the telephone about his current activities. BARBARA Barbara and I accepted an invitation to spend Christmas of 1986 with Steve and Mary in Fairbanks. During a routine physical examination before we departed, blood was found in Barbara's stool. We had an unusually warm spell in Fairbanks during which the temperature remained above minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit. I skied with Mary on a few inches of snow through a woods belonging to the University. Mary rescued me from freezing my hands by loaning me her warm gloves. We enjoyed seeing the sun circling around on the horizon. Steve woke us one night to witness a spectacular display of northern lights. On our midnight flight out of Fairbanks we saw a rainbow. On January 5, 1987, after our return from Alaska, I took Barbara to Sacred Heart General Hospital, in Eugene, for a colonoscopy, which indicated cancer of the colon. On January 7 part of her large intestine was removed. While Barbara was still under anesthesia, her surgeon told me that metastases had occured to the lymph nodes. He said she might have a year to live, the time and the quality of her living during that time depending partly on her own mental attitude and activities. When he asked me whether I had any questions, I told him I was too shocked to think of any. Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after - lightly because you realize you never paid anything for it, cherishing it because you know you won't come by such a bargain again. Also you have the feeling someone wore it berfore you and someone will after. from Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich I called Mike to give him the report, not too coherently. His response was, "Wait there. I'm coming to get you." When he arrived, Megan was in the back seat. Without saying a word, she reached between the seats to hold my hand during the trip to her house. Later Mike told me that she had said, "Grandaddy can cry if he feels like it. I will hug him." Barbara called Megan from the hospital to tell her she'd like some decorations for her room. Later I found Megan and Caity working in the middle of their kitchen floor, now turned into a factory, with scissors, paste, colored paper, ribbons, clothes hangers. After they had visited the hospital there were pictures on the walls and mobiles hanging from the TV set, waving in the breeze from the air conditioner. There wasn't a bare wall anywhere. Therapy After five days in the hospital Barbara returned home to recuperate from the operation. She was started on chemotherapy, the drug 5 FU. Barbara decided to establish in herself attitudes which might defeat the spread of the cancer. We read in the Register Guard a notice of a beginning support group at the hospital. When we arrived at the appointed evening time no one knew about it. We went with another prospective member to the room where it was scheduled. There was no notice on the locked door. When we came the next week the meeting had been moved, unannounced, to another room which we found, along with the leader and one other member. The week after that there was only the leader and us. We read about the Simonton Cancer Center, in Texas. Then we heard it had moved to Pacific Palisades, California, and we decided to go. On the way to the cancer center we camped among the coast redwoods along the Redwood Highway. Beginning April 12, we attended a two-week session there. Carl Simonton and his colleagues emphasized the importance of mental attitude toward cancer, first to create a trend toward remission, and second to emphasize that success in the program didn't necessarily mean living forever. Quality of life for whatever time might be available was also important. Mind and body are one, and the proper use of mind with body can heighten the quality of living and sometimes control the wild growth of cells. Barbara was determined to make it work. We extended the trip to La Jolla to visit friends, Heinz and Beth Poppendiek. Then on the return trip, to Barbara's and my pleasure, we camped among the giant trees in Sequoia National Park. In July, a CAT scan indicated that the cancer in the lymph nodes had not increased, but there were now metastases to both the lungs and liver. The chemotherapy with 5 FU was to be continued, but on a different time schedule. Barbara was experiencing pains in her chest cavity which appeared to be associated with the pleura. We wanted to believe that this was an infection, not the effect of cancer. By the time of the next CAT scan, Barbara was having considerable discomfort and a hard lump in the area below her rib cage. The CAT scan indicated that the cancer in the lungs and in the liver had continued to grow. We heard of the Livingston Medical Clinic, in San Diego, and telephoned for information. Dr. Virginia Livingston had been a research worker studying cancer treatment. She claimed to have identified the cause of cancer, a bacterium which she named "progenitor cryptocides," the precursor to a hidden killer. This bacterium, she said, exists in all of us, being necessary to the process of cell division. Under circumstances which represent a strain on the immune system of the body, the division of these cells may go out of control, cancer being the result. Her proposed remedy was to strengthen the immune system by various means. The main item in the program was an autogenous vaccine, cultured from one's own tissues. In addition, the patient was vaccinated with BCG, the tubercle bacillus, thought to be similar to cryptocides. Finally, these treatments were reinforced with a healthy diet and vitamins. The medical profession generally disapproves of any treatment, such as that offered by Simonton or Livingston, which departs from the "standard modalities," surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. These standard treatments apparently work for some types of cancer, but seemed to promise little for Barbara's case. Her oncologist, Dieter Morich, proposed only a more intensive application of the chemotherapy, which would probably make her sick. In answer to my direct question, he stated that he didn't think his new treatment would work, and he had no better alternative to offer. "My treatment is a dud." Barbara and I told the oncologist that we had decided to discontinue his treatment, going instead to the Livingston Medical Clinic, and asked him for his support in providing any necessary information and medical checks during their program. He promised that support. We started our two-week stay at the Clinic in late September, feeling hopeful. Our La Jolla friends, Heinz and Beth Poppendiek, loaned us a car for the time we were there. After our return from the Clinic, we were embarked on an intensive schedule of injections, which I administered; special foods, including vast quantities of carrot juice from the juicer we bought; distilled water from the distiller we bought; food supplements; and megadoses of vitamins. Barbara's troubles increased. Difficulties with swallowing food because of nausea made it impossible for her to maintain the schedule set for her. The pains in her abdomen from the growing tumor were becoming worse, so that she could now lie in only one position. An additional psychological burden came from the difficulty in getting service from the Livingston Clinic by telephone to San Diego. Everyone there appeared to be overworked, and hence unavailable if needed in an emergency. A message could be left with the reception desk to have one of the doctors call after clinic hours. The reception desk appeared to be unsympathetic, and one wondered whether the message sometimes didn't get through. Because of Clinic rules, drugs could not be ordered by telephone. When ordered by mail they were a long time coming. When I questioned the shipping department about a particularly frustrating delay, I was told that some of the medicines must be approved by the nurses and doctors, who weren't always available for the purpose. The shipping department also told us they were too busy with multitudinous other orders to give special attention to ours. We received sympathetic support from our local doctor, Olin Byerly, a member of our Quaker Meeting. He talked with us, prescribed a mild pain remedy, and even succeeded in communicating our needs to the doctors at the Clinic in San Diego. Barbara continued to become weaker. Because she could no longer climb the stairs, even with my help, we located her on a day bed in the "organ room" downstairs, near the bathroom, with access to the remote controled television set. She now needed my help to go to the bathroom. I brought her food and drink, and generally took care of her. Eight-year-old Megan came most days to read to her. One evening during this period I started having chills. Soon I went to bed under the electric blanket, wrapped in my down vest and down coat, but still shivering. The next day friends from our Quaker Meeting showed up, one after another from early in the morning until late at night, to care for both of us. I don't know how word got to them that we needed help. GOODBYE TO BARBARA On Christmas Eve, Barbara had her last fling. I helped her to dress in her best finery. We went in the car to Mike's and Bobbie's for a Christmas party attended also by Bobbie's father and stepmother, Howard and Evelyn Graham. Barbara lay on a couch in their living room, the center of attention while presents were opened, especially hers which had been made by Megan and Caitlin, and were opened for her by them. She obviously had a fulfilling Christmas. Then she had a nose bleed, which continued for some time and I took her home. Barbara had been working with a therapist on problems with her adjustment to what was happening to her. In December she had been persuaded to face the possibility that she might not recover from the spreading cancer. She was having increasing difficulty with eating, even liquid foods, and was eating very little. In her last days she drank less and less, and finally stopped drinking altogether. I looked at her and asked, "Do you know you're still pretty?' Her response was a smile, and the statement, "I love you.' The Hospice nurse who came to make her comfortable the evening of December 30 said that Barbara would not last the night. She described her condition as a semi coma in which she was no longer particularly uncomfortable. She could hear us talking but probably was no longer interested. Her body was cooling down as her body processes were slowing. Barbara's breathing sounded labored. As Mike and I sat with her, she stopped breathing. Barbara, my companion for fifty years, died at about 10:30 on December 30, 1987. Bobbie and Mike woke Megan and Caitlin, and brought them over for a final goodbye to their Nena. Then the funeral director came to take away her body for cremation. Megan said in a concerned voice, "I don't want them to hurt her.' Grandaddy, I like you and I love you. Don't die until you have to. Caity at age four Grandaddy, I wish you would never die, but I think you will probably die before I do. Megan at age eight Once having faced the reality of the end of my life in the not too distant future, my view has undergone a permanent change. I know something now of the finiteness of our time on earth. I can never be the same person I was before January 7. I have been through the valley of the shadow of death and I have emerged. I have received support and love from family and friends to where I am deeply moved. Life has become rich in ways I had not forseen. The Memorial Service On Sunday, January 3, 1988, a memorial service for Barbara was held at the Meeting House of the Eugene Society of Friends, at 2274 Onyx Street. About fifty relatives and friends and neighbors came. I read the following words which I had written. Barbara Thompson was born Barbara Stuart Nice, the third of five girls, in her maternal grandparent's summer home in the Pelham Hills, east of Amherst, Massachusetts, on August 9, 1915. She grew up mostly in Norman, Oklahoma, where her father, Blaine, taught physiology. Her mother, Margaret, became a well-known ornithologist. Later Barbara attended Ohio State University, where her father was then head of the physiology department and her mother was publishing articles and books in ornithology. Her older sisters were Constance and Marjorie, Eleanor and Janet being younger. Her beloved Eleanor died at ten years of age. Barbara's summers were often spent at the family summer home in Amherst. Sometime in 1933 Bill Morse, a cousin, brought an impoverished Amherst friend, named Stan Thompson, to visit. Barbara and the friend met at a local swimming hole, the "Fish Rod Factory.' After Barbara's year at Massachusetts State College, and a final year at Ohio State, they were married at her sister's apartment in New York. Their first son, Malcolm, died at fifteen months, a grief Barbara never quite assimilated. There are three grown sons, three daughters-in-law, and seven grandchildren. Bruce and Kathy have Laura; Michael and Bobbie have Megan and Caity; Steven and Mary have Jon, Lynn, Daniel, and Christopher. After raising a family, Barbara acquired a teaching credential, and taught in California and then in Istanbul, Turkey. Then she obtained a master's degree in Guidance and Counseling from Howard University, and acted as a counselor. She helped me rehabilitate a mountain farm and cabin in Virginia. She moved with me to Eugene in 1982 to be with our family here. Barbara's interests included growing things, trees, shrubs, tomatoes, carrots and children. She helped a young sister-in-law conquer a congenital speach impediment. She loved counseling. She was certified as a Master Gardener. She was an imaginative artist. In January 1987, Barbara had an operation for cancer. Over the succeeding months, despite her hopeful battle, it became apparent that the spreading cancer would take her life. She loved life and she wanted to live, but she accepted the final verdict. She said, "I'm going to lick this" and in her terms she did. Barbara died at home as she wanted, without strong pain killers, at ten thirty on December 30, 1987. The cancer destroyed her, but her triumphant spirit soared. Her last words to family and friends were "I'm happy' and "I love you.' Barbara was an original. We miss her. Our son, Michael, read: It has been almost one year since my mother learned that she had cancer. It has been a difficult year during which she fought an often painful battle against the disease that took her life this week. It has also been a year during which she climbed to the top of at least one mountain, celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary, gathered together all 13 children and grandchildren to celebrate her 72nd birthday, started innumerable young plants on new lives in gardens here or in the Cascades, and helped many of us, young and old, with our own projects. I feel this year has been a gift to us all, and I am thankful that we had it. Our son, Steven, said, "I realized early that my mother's love was unconditional. She was a very warm person.' Our eight-year-old granddaughter, Megan, rose to say, "Sometimes my grandmother was the only one who really understood me.' Several friends paid Barbara tribute, saying she had been a role model or had influenced their lives in some special way. Body And Spirit I have said that Barbara's spirit soared as her body failed. What is that etherial entity we call spirit? I think of mind and body as one, and inseparable, with the brain receiving messages from the external universe of which we are a part, sending calls for responsive action throughout the body's nervous system, always measuring the effect of the action taken and adjusting to it. A few hours before Barbara died she was lucid, responsive, and loving. Over the next few hours it was as if a light went out. How does a mixture of organic matter with oxygen, water, energy, and a small amount of diverse minerals briefly become life, and a precursor to death? By what mysterious processes did what Barbara ate and drank become Barbara? Aftermath Until Barbara died on December 30, 1987, much of my life was interwoven with hers. After my fifty years with Barbara, I miss her. I appreciate the legacy from her love,which is perhaps most fully expressed in her children and grandchildren, all of whom were affected by her life and by her death. Barbara's absence left holes in my life. I found myself thinking I needed to tell her about some trivial item which would interest her. I would see a piece of note paper on the kitchen counter and think she must have left it so I'd know where she was. In cleaning up a part of the house, I would run across something of hers, and have a sudden twinge of emptiness. I sat at her computer writing about her, and was sad. Barbara's death left tasks to be performed. She liked to acquire things and was reluctant to throw anything away. I found a note of hers saying that she'd rather leave a closet full of elegant clothes than of shabby ones, so she bought something elegant for herself. Fortunately for me, my family were around to help dispose of some of her possessions. Then there were boxes of notebooks filled with her writing. What should I do with those? I hated to throw them away without evaluating them, but there wasn't enough of my time and energy to do them justice. During the year she had cancer she wrote a journal in which she attempted to evaluate her situation, to analyze what went wrong which led to cancer, and to learn to accept where she was. Before Barbara knew she had cancer she started to write for herself and for her family a personal and family history. On April 22, 1986, we bought her a computer. From that period I found only six pages, two entitled, "My Life" and three entitled, "Washington Years.' Then on August 22, 1986, she wrote a short piece about a return from our cabin on which we stopped at Salt Creek Falls. Later I found a rough draft of an autobiography of over 200 pages, written in 1955. On February 18, 1987, a little over a month after her operation, she started typing a journal which extended to about fifty pages by the time she was no longer able to continue. I included that journal with her autobiography. I found scattered in various places scraps of paper on which Barbara had written poems. These I also typed and distributed to the family. Then I listed the house for sale, and it sold quickly. We had a garage sale. MEGAN Megan, then eight years old was anxious to help attach prices to the objects to be sold, and to be the cashier. She said, "I love money.' She had accumulated a lot of experience shopping for items of interest to her, and was aware that prices were important. I had great confidence in her ability. She got the job, and was dedicated, industrious, competent, and charming in carrying it out, consulting with her mother and the rest of us when she was unsure. I have been impressed with the Ida Patterson Family School (part of Eugene's 4-J school district), attended for their first five years by both Megan and Caity. I have found the school and its teachers a loving place of support and opportunity for the children. Because I am a member of my grandchildren's family, I have been privileged to be involved in a peripheral fashion with their early schooling. CAITLIN AND THE PLEASURES OF WALKING Caitlin became for me a symbol of what is important in life. She is fortunate to be in a family which loves her and supports her. For several years her parents and her sister, Megan, four years older than Caity, read to her. When she was six Caity told me, practically in tears, "Grandaddy, I can't even read.' When her mother was on jury duty I had the special privilege of accompanying Caity several mornings over the twelve block distance from her home to her second grade class. She often called me to suggest that we walk instead of riding. I loved that because I got to hold her hand for fifteen minutes on the way, and we talked. If we were in the car I couldn't hold her hand. She would be sitting in the back where the seat belts would fit her better, while I would be driving and too concerned with morning traffic to concentrate on her conversation. Automobiles were once thought to bring us closer together. Sharp observation shows that they have moved us farther apart. On this first day of school she particularly wanted to be early so she could find her desk and help her teachers, Julie and Lynn, arrange the room. "Grandaddy, I'm so excited.' "What are you excited about, Caity?' "School is starting. Do you know what I especially like about school?' "What do you like?' "I learn how to do things. I didn't know how to read and now I do. I love reading, and the more words I learn the easier it is and the more fun it is. My Momma tried to teach me to read and my Daddy tried to teach me, and you know who taught me?' "Who taught you to read, Sweetheart?' "Judy [her first grade teacher] did. Judy is a good teacher.' Caity liked to walk along the bicycle path to school rather than on the street. We got to see a blue heron fishing for delicacies in the dirty looking water of the ditched channel which used to be Amazon Creek. We counted several ducks swimming together, unperturbed by our presence above them. If we were in the car we would see traffic signals and other cars, not a blue heron or ducks. CAITLIN AND APPRECIATION OF LIFE AND DEATH In the summer of 1991 Caity had planted some pansies. She wrote the a poem for me on my 77th birthday expressing her feeling for the cycle of life and death in all living things. I have found Caity's reflections helpful in collecting my thoughts. It seems trite to note that without both birth and death we couldn't have the beauty and loving relationships of life. It's the Pansies' Birthday! Every one cheers, cause it's the pansies' birthday today, and everyone's here to celebrate, the smell of nature, the taste, the nature of nature, which everyone knows is growing, and growing, and dying, time for the cake it's Poppyseed! by Caitlin Thompson April 29, 1991 dying, CAITLIN AND MEGAN One day, a couple of months before her seventh birthday, I collected Caitlin from her Ida Patterson school. I arrived early to find her classroom empty. Soon she arrived with some twenty boisterous classmates, but looking unusually sober. She told me, "Grandaddy, I did not have a good day.' When I asked her why, she lifted her skirt to show a large bandage on her knee and blood on her shoes. She had slipped and scraped her knee on the gravel. "It still hurts.' Before she left she had a hug from her teacher, Judy, who reassured her, "You can tell your grandaddy about it.' To my question whether the rest of the day had also been bad, she responded, "No, just that. The rest was pretty good. Megan came to make me feel better.' On the way down the hall we came to a table covered with plants which the children had grown as part of the celebration of Earth Day, with plans to sell them for money to support a field trip. When Caitlin saw the plants she suddenly dashed away from me in the direction from which we had just come. I followed her for a way but soon lost her. She came back with the forgotten tray of plants she had raised, and with Judy's help placed them on the table with the others, except for one she saved to take home for her parents. Then we went together to pick up Caitlin's almost ten and a half year old sister, Megan, at her "Area Strings' class at the Jefferson school. Megan, with her three-quarter size violin, and her companions with violins, violas, and a cello, were still practicing so we sat and listened. When I told Gay, their teacher and conductor, how much improved her pupils sounded each time I heard them, she told me that was the nicest thing she'd heard all day. Gay's appreciative acceptance of my statement made me feel good. In response to Megan's hug and anxious inquiry, Caitlin said sadly, "It still hurts.' Because Mike and Bobbie were gone I stayed for a while at their house waiting for Mama's return. I overheard a conversation in which Caitlin said, "I love you, Megan. You're a wonderful sister the way you take care of me.' I thought of the love expressed by my sister, Edith, two years younger than I, who had been dead for almost thirty years. What happens to love in the adults of our strife-torn world? GLADYCE Not everything in my life went on a straight path. Some time after Barbara died, I attended a bereavement support group, organized by Sacred Heart Hospital. In that group was Gladyce whose husband had died. I was attracted to her in her sorrow. We became acquainted and were married on March 11, 1989. We needed more in common than our bereavement. As the legal papers say, there were "irreconcilable differences'. Gladyce hired a divorce attorney with a reputation for extending lawsuits indefinitely for his own financial gain, supposedly to help pay for his driving the only Rolls Royce in town. Another lawyer I knew as a neighbor said, "That man's a bastard; he'll cost you money.' The divorce attorney's first action was to obtain a court order freezing all my assets, most of which Barbara and I had put into The Thompson Family Trust. Under the stress of the circumstances, I went to pieces, becoming too disorganized to survive the ordeal of the divorce without major assistance. I had support from my sons and daughters-in-law. Kathy, based on information from her lists of lawyers warned me that this attorney was dangerous. She suggested calling a general law firm in Eugene, whose name she gave me, to ask what lawyer they'd hire for a divorce case. I did, and on the basis of their enthusiastic recommendation, hired Jack Billings. Mike came to my rescue. He helped me organize a campaign to handle the deluge of legal maneuvers, writing responses on my computer which could be used directly by Billings' secretaries, on their computers. The case finally settled quickly when the attempt to get a court order (in which I would have paid his legal fees and paid Gladyce $2,000 a month while the case was being settled ) was rejected by the judge. Gladyce soon tired of paying his fees herself, and agreed to terms of settlement very similar to what she could have had originally under our nuptial agreement. We were officially divorced on February 17, 1992. Michael remarked that my fifty years of experience living with one woman was probably insufficient basis for picking a second wife. MILLIE Barbara and I had attended Eugene Friends Meeting. So also did Mildred O'Donnell whose husband, Roger, was a violinmaker. Millie, a musician, played the viola in the Eugene Symphony and in the Oregon Mozart Players, and gave violin and viola lessons. Millie was a friend of Barbara. Roger had made about two hundred violins during his lifetime, and taught a succession of violin making students. He also repaired violins for the public schools and for music stores and individual customers. I bought a couple of his exchange violins for my grandchildren. Roger knew that I had made a violin when I was 16 years old, and that it needed repair. He remarked that both he and I had been making violins for sixty years, but that I hadn't made any lately. One day he suggested that he would make the repairs if I would play it. Millie said she would give me lessons to help me get back into practice. I was pleased to think of my violin back in shape and readily agreed. In answer to Roger's telephone message that the violin was finished I went to his house to collect it. He said, "I have it right here on the dining room table" and looking in the direction he went I saw my violin case. As Roger opened the case we both peered in at a miniature violin, complete with strings. Roger turned to me in amazement and said, "My God, it shrank.' Then he brought from his shop my violin, complete and playable. Roger said that, now that he had repaired my violin, I had to practice on it for four hours each morning before breakfast. On November 18, 1991, I attended Roger's 80th birthday party. When two boys brought in their violin bow needing repairs, Roger left his party for a time, sending the boys happily on their way with the repaired bow. On February 4, 1992, I was shocked to receive a call from one of his violin making students that Roger had died the evening before from a heart attack. At his memorial service at the Friends Meeting, I stated that I would miss conversations with him, and his unique sense of humor. Roger's death interrupted a long career, leaving several violins and violas almost finished, but essentially unsalable without some minor tasks of completion. I was bothered by the thought of all Roger's efforts wasted, and got Millie's permission to complete those tasks. I also helped Millie with repairs to her house to make it salable. Gradually I found myself more and more involved with her, and enjoying the involvement. Then an automobile accident put me in the hospital with a broken neck, and left me temporarily helpless in bed recovering. Millie proposed that I live in her house so that she could care for me. THE ACCIDENT My son, Michael, and his family now own the cabin at Crescent Lake which we all bought together, about 80 miles from Eugene, just off Route 58 east of the crest of the Cascades. Oak Ridge, on Route 58, is about half way from Eugene to Crescent Lake. Route 58, as well as providing access to Willamette Pass in the Cascades, also serves as a main trucking route to California. On July 21, 1992, Mike and I drove in his Audi sedan from Eugene to Crescent Lake, pulling a utility trailer carrying the kitchen range from Mike's and Bobbie's house. The range was to be installed in the cabin, replacing one already in place there. The range from the cabin, which had front mounted controls, was in turn to be brought back to Eugene for installation in a rental house on 16th Street owned by Mike and Bobbie. The rental house had been completely renovated and was about to be rented to a new tenant who was confined to a wheel chair. The front mounted controls on the range from the cabin would give the new tenant additional safety and ease of use compared with a range having rear controls. By early afternoon the next day. July 22, 1992, the exchange of ranges had been completed. The range from the cabin was lashed down in the trailer, along with some trash from the cabin for disposal. We started for Eugene. On what we expected to be a leisurely trip out of the mountains, Mike drove us past Odell Lake, through Willamette Pass, past Salt Creek Falls, and through the tunnel toward Oak Ridge. It had begun to rain and the road was wet. The traffic in our direction was relatively light. I was enjoying our conversation. Suddenly a new situation developed near milepost 43. A pickup truck pulling a large trailer veered out of the line of traffic climbing the mountain toward us. I found myself wishing I could send a message to the driver, "Take your foot off the brake and turn your wheels to stop the skid.' However the truck and trailer continued their course toward our interception as if in some slow motion movie of a past event. It was inevitable that the entire width of the road in front of us would be blocked. The two-lane road was bounded immediately on our right by a steeply rising earth bank and on our left, across the oncoming line of traffic, by a steep decline to Salt Creek. I placed my hands on the dash of the car and braced for the crash. We plowed into the truck simultaneously with the crash of the truck into the earth bank. Then there was a great silence. I found myself sitting in the car seat, my breath knocked out so that I could not move. For some time Mike and I sat where we were inside the broken Audi with its twisted steering wheel and steering column, listening to giant trucks shifting gears as they climbed the hill around and past us. We were still fastened by our seat belts, the seats were still fastened to their moorings, and the passenger compartment still appeared to be relatively intact around us. Were we still alive? Mike asked, "How are you doing, Dad?' Finding to my surprise that I could with difficulty begin to breathe I answered, "I think I'm making it. How about you?' Mike said, "I think I'm all right.' I thanked God that Megan and Caity, and Bobbie, would't be without a father and husband in the family. When I looked at Mike I saw blood running down his face, and asked, "Are your eyes all right?' "I think so.' Mike for a time left the car to assure that his expensive camera equipment was in good condition. I felt in no condition to leave my seat. In what seemed a very short time, but I've been told wasn't, a man appeared and asked me questions about how I was feeling. When I told him I was having tingling feelings in the fingers of my left hand, he responded, "That's a very good sign" and I thought, already a good sign that there was life in the fingers of at least one hand, "that there's serious trouble in your neck. Don't move your head.' I slouched down to try to keep my neck as straight as possible against the seat back, and realized that my feet were in the glove campartment. Soon two men appeared, and placed a short board in front of the car seat and fastened it behind my head and shoulders to brace my neck while they manouevered me into a position to fasten me onto a full-length board. "Don't move your head.' Then into the ambulance operated by the Oak Ridge Rescue Squad for the trip to Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene. Strangely, I do not remember being in great pain during the trip. I suppose my nervous system was in too great shock to acknowledge the broken spine, bruises, cracked ribs which would over a later period of time make their presence painfully evident. I was aware of the periodic instructions to the driver, here to use the siren and speed ahead, here to go quietly with the heavy traffic. The trip seemed a great distance. I felt in good hands with the Oak Ridge rescue crew. At the hospital a man who introduced himself as Dr. Stephen McGirr said that he was to operate on my spine in the morning and that he wanted my approval to be assisted by Dr. Kitchel. X-ray pictures showed that my spine had been broken at the sixth vertebra. The vertebra had split vertically into two parts each of which had fallen out of its position in the spine, one toward the front, the other toward the back. Dr. McGirr said he had never seen a spine with so much damage in a body with so few residuals. It was a miracle that I had not been made a quadriplegic, the miracle made possible only by the splitting and removal of the sixth vertebra, leaving space during the whiplash motion for the spinal cord to move without being badly pinched. Now it would be necessary to patch the spine together again. An assembly of bone, to be borrowed from my hip, and stainless steel wire would fill the space vacated by the sixth vertebra to fasten together the fifth and seventh vertebrae. Over a period of time a precess of healing would fuse the fifth and seventh vertebrae and the manufactured assembly into one rigid unit. To accomplish this required an incision into the spine from the back of my neck. After the operation I spent a week at the hospital, with a neck brace holding my head in position. During my stay I had a series of halucinogenic nightmares. At night my ordinarily pleasant sunlit hospital room changed into a dungeon with weird shadows and peopled by dangerous and sinister moving monsters. The ceiling light fixture became a dark hole. I seemed to be lying in a wet pit (wet from my own perspiration) and subject to great dangers. My eyes perceived moving patterns of lights in a kaleidoscope of color. The same nightmarish dreams repeated during succeeding periods of sleep. I would awaken to find myself frustrated and twisted into an uncomfortable position across the bottom of the bed, trying to separate reality from insanity. My life seemed completely out of my control, and subject to hostile forces. I called Mike to tell him I needed rescue from the hospital personnel who were abusing me. Mike came to consult with the doctor, who ascribed my halucinations to the use of morphine and changed to another pain killer. I remember one repeating dream. My daughter-in-law, Kathy, an attorney, was trying to help me organize my life. She showed me her filing system in which all aspects of her life were fitted beautifully into rectangular compartments. When I tried to do the same with my life I confronted an array of round, oval, and rectangular spaces. None of the objects of my life could be made to conform to the available spaces. During my week in the hospital a physical therapist helped me learn how to get out of bed, a slow and painful process, and how to walk. My muscles had turned to mush, and my head appeared to be immensely heavy in its position atop my body. After my stay at the hospital, I was moved into the Springfield house of my friend, music teacher, and now my fiance, Millie. I was wearing a neck brace to hold my head upright. At the end of the second week after the operation, Mike and Millie took me to an appointment at Dr. McGirr's office, where the nurse, Jude, told us I had made excellent progress and sent me home. But then - - - an x-ray showed that the spinal assembly of vertebrae with stainless steel wire and various types of bone fragment had come apart and was acting not as a rigid structure, but as a hinge, leaving the spinal cord unprotected and weaving about within the open space now available to it. A medical "new game plan' was needed fast. Fifteen pounds of traction was to be applied to my neck to straighten out the now hinged curve in my spine. I was placed in a metal bed with high sides. Dr. McGirr screwed the points of metal tongs into the skin at the sides of my head, above the ears, to support the fifteen pound weight by which traction was applied. Then the bed was slowly rotated both sides of the vertical, supposedly to keep me from getting bed sores from lying too long on my back. During the rotation I felt iron hooks grabbing at the tongs. At the end of each rotation, as the weight of my body shifted from side to side, my head flopped over to the tune of clanking metal - a monstrous device in which I was convinced I would succumb before morning arrived. I called a nurse, who in turn called another nurse who was supposed to be an expert on the operation of the bed. Adjustments were made, none of them successful, to make the rotation of the bed less uncomfortable. In great discomfort I demanded that the nurses turn off the bed rotation. They could not as that would violate doctor's orders. I told the nurses I wanted someone to come as soon as possible who had the authority to shut off the rotation. After a while during which the rotation was stopped, Dr. McGirr appeared, saying, "You're supposed to be asleep, and I would like to be.' On his orders the rotation was stopped. I slept part of the time. In the morning I felt a snap in my neck which Dr. McGirr later said was probably the spine settling into its proper straight position. During the following operation the doctor fastened the fronts of the fifth and seventh vertebrae together by a titanium plate with four screws. To do this required another incision into the region of the spine, this time from the front of my neck, moving the esophagus and windpipe out of the way. The day after the second operation I was allowed to go back to Millie's house to recuperate. A new complication arose. When I got up from the hospital bed the sheet was found to be flooded with blood from the incision in my hip from which bone had been taken for the spine graft during the first operation. The blood was contaminated with a staph infection. At Dr. McGirr's office the wound was opened up, cleaned and dressed. I was to be required until some undetermined future date to take a 500 mg capsule of the antibiotic, cephalexin, three times daily. Home Health nurses were to come to Millie's house twice a day, clean the wound, pack it with gauze, and dress it, so that it would heal from the inside, leaving no pockets in which infection would be harbored. On September 10, 1992, seven weeks and a day after the accident, I noted the following residual effects: I wear a plastic neck brace to support the broken spine. The irritation of the skin by the plastic causes small blisters which are somewhat mitigated by a gauze sleeve between the skin and the plastic. On Wednesday, September 16, an x-ray of the broken area will be taken. If the bone fusion of the fifth and seventh vertebrae has progressed I may be able to remove the brace. I am still taking an anti-biotic three times a day against the staphylococcic infection in the wound in my hip from which bone material for the spine graft was taken. The wound has beem cleansed twice a day by home health-care-nurses, repacked with gauze and dressed with bandages. It is still about two inches deep. There is still a bruise mark on my left hip from contact with the seat belt. The vision in my left eye has been blurred since the accident, as if I were seeing through a mist which moves, blocking out variable parts of the visible area. At first the mist assumed a kaleidoscope of colors. Now it appears a uniform grey. My left hand, which was badly bruised from contact with the automobile dash on which I supported part of my weight during the crash, still has an area of skin over the thumb and index finger in which the feeling is not normal. It seems almost like a burned area, over which pressure on my violin string, for instance, is painful. New pains, of which I have been previously unaware, continue to appear. I experienced pains in my left ribs, which a couple of weeks ago suddenly became unbearably sharp. At that point I learned that several ribs were cracked. The pain from cracked ribs has now almost disappeared. I now have a pain in the joint of my right shoulder which becomes acute when I lie in certain positions. I have just become aware that my right wrist has been strained so that it will not support my weight from a prone position. In the morning I am able to arise from bed and walk fairly comfortably. Later in the day getting into and out of bed becomes a painful process, and walking is tiresome. I have sharp lower back pains for which I do exercises within the limits set by the stiffness and pain in my weakened muscles. These lower back pains become worse as the day progresses. On April 11, 1993, Millie and I married ourselves in a Quaker ceremony at the Eugene Friends Meeting House. Now, in July 1996, the residuals from the accident of which I am aware are confined to my neck and left arm. I still have a tingling in the thumb and index finger of my left hand which seems to extend through a channel in my arm to my neck. Millie and I live in two connected apartments on the fourth floor of the thirteen-story Willamette Towers Condominium, a block from the Eugene Public Library and within walking distance of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts. Millie has resigned from her professional musical career, though she still gives a few lessons in our studio apartment. I have retired from a three-year stint as Secretary of our Condominium Association. We have traveled to New Zealand to visit Steve and Mary in Auckland, and to Great Britain with Bruce, Kathy, and Laura. Recently we visited Turkey for two weeks. We made a 9300 mile automobile trip around the United States visiting relatives and friends. Lately Millie has indicated that she'd like to consider buying a small house where we could have a garden. I feel fortunate to be alive, to be with Millie, and generally to be functioning satisfactorily at 82 years of age. RELIGION Ever since I was about twelve years old I have struggled with the idea of religion, starting with complete rejection. Most organized religions seek to disseminate and enforce compliance with the "truths' they hold. It seems to me good to search for truth, but dangerous to find it. The more important the discovered truth is to those who hold it, the more dangerous it's holders become, particularly if they have the power to force their truth onto others. Those who reject some part of their truth, however insignificant, become "infidels' against whom a "holy war' of extirpation is appropriate. When I was young I thought all religions were like that. I am a Quaker in the formal sense that I applied for membership in the Eugene Friends Meeting, and was accepted. For fifty years, I had been impressed with the sincerity and honesty of Quakers I knew as individual friends and corporate Friends - for instance, the American Friends Service Committee. This included Roy and Betty McCorkel, our next door neighbors and friends in Swarthmore, and Colin and Elaine Bell, our friends in Washington. One reason I am comfortable with Quakers comes from the feeling that they are tolerant of views of life which are different from their own, including mine. A silent Quaker meeting functions without a minister on the idea that one needs no intermediary to intercede for him with God. There is that of God in everyone, an "inner light' which must be sought out in silent, prayerful meditation. When one finds an important truth, he develops a "concern' for its application in his affairs. Quakers are cautioned that they do not live under divine protection against folly or danger, and should seek "clearance' of their concern from fellow Quakers. What do I do differently as a Quaker? "I am a Quaker' means to me that I attend a Friends meeting, but doesn't necessarily tell anyone about my beliefs on any given subject. The question, "as a Quaker, how do you manage your life?' suggests to me the question"as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?' I have trouble applying any label to my life which is expected to determine my future actions. I hope I act as I do, not primarily because I am a Quaker, or an engineer, but because I am Stan Thompson who has been formed by a complex of life experiences to which I must try to be true. Prayer Millie asked me to come with her to Quaker Studies on the subject of prayer. Prayer is a term which causes me difficulty. Dear Lord: Please keep Junior from being sick in the car from all the cookies he ate; and Please preserve Aunt Minnie from danger during her trip to the Safeway; and Please make the stock market rise so I can afford a new Cadillac. Please strike my enemy dead because I love you. weaskitallinjesusnameamen. The Turks (and other Middle Easterners) like to tell stories about Hoca (the "c' is pronounced like the "j' in "jam'), a religious teacher presented as a wise fool. The stories generally make some point about Turkish character. Some are about prayer. 1. Hoca is walking, driving his cow over a long distance, and has become exhausted. Stretching out his upturned hands in supplication, he beseeches, "Allah, Who art all powerful, give my cow wings so it can fly.' Just then a gull flies over, dropping its load of excrement into Hoca's hands. "Praises be to Allah, who in His infinite wisdom made cows so they couldn't fly.' 2. Hoca is employed as a "hamal" a man who makes his meager living carrying mammoth loads from place to place on a platform fastened to his shoulders (an American student called it a "people saddle'. I've seen a photo of a hamal carring a baby grand piano across the Galata Bridge, in Istanbul). Coming at the end of a long, wearying day to the final load he is expected to carry across the city, Hoca exclaims, "I've had it. I can't go on. Allah, come and get me.' Just then a booming voice enquires, "You called for me'? Hoca responded in some consternation, "Yes! Please help me get this load onto my shoulders.' 3. Hoca's wife washed his coat and hung it to dry overnight on a line in the garden. During the night Hoca was sleepless. Seeing an intruder in the darkened garden, he got his bow and shot an arrow into the figure. In the morning his investigation showed a hole completely through his coat, and his arrow on the ground farther along. His wife heard him shouting "Praises be to Allah. Praises be to Allah. - - - - -.' "What in the world are you doing?' "I'm thanking Allah that I was not in my coat when the arrow pierced it.' I feel I should be careful for what I pray; like the Hoca, I might receive it. I felt tired at the thought of spending time studying "prayer" but agreed for two reasons that I can recognize: (1) I like to share life in its various forms with Millie; (2) I am fond of and respect the friends (Friends) who would be there, and (3) perhaps I should find why the subject of prayer causes me to feel tired. Other terms which I don't like to use are God, Christian, Lord, liberal, conservative. I like to communicate as amicably as possible with other people. I know of no person to whom I could convey my meaning of these words without a lengthy discourse, requiring examples and considerable explanation. Mind and Matter I have wondered about the connection of mind and brain - the psycho and the somatic. How can eyes with their connections to the brain direct hands almost immediately to be in the right places to handle sudden danger? What happens really when someone dies? In a few moments the consciousness which was there goes out like a light. It does seem as if there is some river of consciousness on which we have for a while some tenuous hold. Does all the information already exist in the fertilized cell, too small even to be seen, to tell it how to divide over and over to form a complete human baby and then a fully-grown person in its various stages. Or is there some guiding universal consciousness throughout the environment which the splitting cells consult to learn where to go and what to do to form part of an eye or a brain for a person rather than for a bear or a snake. A Special Note on January 2, 1996: I have just been reminded how lucky I am. Yesterday, Millie and I had a party in our apartment for Mike, Bobbie, Megan, and Caity on Mike's 52nd birthday. We enjoy their love and companionship. This morning, walking past Megan's Eugene High School on my way to a dentist appointment, I thought of her in that large, busy place and silently wished her well. On my return trip there were several groups of students walking toward me on the sidewalk and I thought, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Megan?' I had a sudden burst of pleasure when I did see her and she saw me and burst from her group to greet me with a hug and a kiss. My accomplished, artistic, loving and lovable granddaughter. My treasure. PLEASURES OF FAMILY When I was young I wanted to make the benefits to be gained from technological "progress' my life's mission. In that process, my family life and my professional life were kept at a distance by the effect of the government "secret' stamp. I was not permitted to invite my family into my "secret' work place. The most important facets of my present life are interwoven with the lives of Millie, my sons and daughters-in-law, and especially with my grandchildren. I am pleased to have the good fortune of their special friendship. I sometimes tell friends that I have ceased to be a professional engineer, and am now a professional grandfather. My relationships are to family rather than to engineering projects. Bruce, Mike and Steve have shared with Barbara and me many times in lake or mountain cabins, camping trips across the United States, and living in Turkey. They helped us rebuild the cabin at Cabinhill Tree Farm, where time was also shared with Jonathan, Lynn and Megan. Steve and Mary have shared their lives with me on the trip I made with them when they moved from Kodiak Island to Fairbanks, and again on their sabbatical move from Fairbanks to Copenhagen. I had the opportunity twice to visit with them on their three-year stay in Auckland. Millie and I spent almost a month happily sharing a rented car with Bruce and Kathy and Laura in England, Scotland and Wales. My life in Eugene has involved me with Mike and Bobbie, and them with me and my problems and joys of living. I've been fortunate that Megan's and Caity's family-oriented Ida Patterson elementary school enabled me to share in some of their beginning educational experiences. Megan and Caitlin have become accomplished musicians, Megan on the violin and Caity on the piano. Megan said she'd like the violin I made, so I gave it to her. I gave Laura one of the violins made by Roger O'Donnell. Recently Laura called to let us listen over the phone to her rendition on the violin of "Gavotte"by French composer, Jean Baptiste Lully. It was a fine performance. Millie and I have played together, she on her viola made by Roger O'Donnell, and I on a Roger O'Donnell violin which I bought from Millie. We've even played for special audiences, sympathetic and committed to tolerance of my lack of finesse. Jonathan graduated from Reed College, joined the Peace Corps, and is in Jamaica building more adequate sanitary facilities. Next year he would like to study engineering as an extension of his experiences in Jamaica. Jonathan's sister, Lynn, is attending Pennsylvania State University. Next year Megan will be at Oberlin College. Life goes on. My Life in the Twentieth Century By A. Stanley Thompson Introduction Chapter 1 - A place in Time Chapter 2 - Education Chapter 3 - Engineering Chapter 4 - Where East Meets West Chapter 5 - Washington, DC Chapter 6 - Cabinhill Tree Farm Chapter 7 - Eugene Chapter 8 - Retrospective Also see Barbara Thompson's Some Selected Poems. © Spencer Creek Press, West By Northwest 2000-2002 All Rights Reserved unless otherwise noted. The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily the opinions of the publisher and/or sponsors. publisher@westbynorthwest.org webmaster@westbynorthwest.org West by Northwest Spencer Creek Press PO Box 51251 Eugene OR 97405 West By Northwest Voices of Peace, Volume V Dr. Andreas Toupadakis' Notebook W.H. Auden's poem September 1, 1939 Sam Smith of the Progressive Review writes Nobody Left But Us Robert Jenson explains why extraordinary Corporate Power Is the Enemy of Our Democracy DynCorp is Something to Watch Norman Solomon on New Media Heights For A Remarkable Pundit, Pentagon's Silver Lining May Be Bigger Than Cloud, and Six Months Later, The Basic Tool Is Language Patrick Morris, actor and director writing on the theatre's Hourglass Challenge Marvelous Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival World Choral Music Photographer and web designer Stephen Voss Stephanie Korschun's Insect Drawings, a class apart. That Photo Guy, Barbara S. Thompson's My Life chronicles a journey of courage by a real story teller, Chapter 3. Mary Zemke of Stop Cogentrix says "Standing tall - Opposition floods the proposed Grizzly Power Plant." Norman Maxwell writes to the Editor - a Summary of the Fire Road Preservation Struggle. Patricia Frank tackles Spring Cleaning the Closet. Lois Barton's Sunnyside of Spencer Butte finds the Heron Rookery. M.G. Hudson's Spencer Creek Journal remembers Laddie and the baby goats as the war on terrorism affects Spencer Creek Valley Ryan Ramon's Life on the 45th Parallel, Rain & Ramallah. WxNW.org Web-Wise Links DEN, from Defenders of Wildlife. Archive Early Spring 2002 Winter 2001-2002 Fall 2001 Late Summer 2001 Summer 2001 Late Spring 2001 Early Spring 2001 Winter 2000-01 Fall 2000 Late Summer 2000 Summer 2000 Spring 2000