Roger Barbee

By Roger Barbee

The 26-degree temperature and frozen bird baths announce this morning’s cold, the first hard chill of 2022. In fact, (“I think to myself, what a wonderful world”) that it is the first one of this winter season as I watch robins, cardinals, chickadees, and thrashers trying to create just a crack in the cruel ice of the birdbaths. All they accomplish, however, is a slide across the unfamiliar frozen circles or a sideways hopping along each edge. They quickly realize the futility involved here and adapt—and gracefully fly to other sources. Above all this life the almost harsh winter sunlight penetrates the scene, but it comes from a slightly more northernly track; proof of the lasting rotation which announces, if one is observant, winter season’s end began on December 21, at 21:48 UTC because that is when the winter solstice occurred in 2022.

Despite the occasional winter cold, I watch the sun rise each day to mark its position over the lake and note that each day’s light is a bit longer before sunset. In this way the gloom of raw, winter days is lessened and hope for warm, light filled days is sustained. For instance, as I type these words the next morning, one patch of the back garden is abruptly filled with red-winged blackbirds that gather at the non-frozen bird bath like members of a dunking sect. They drink, then hop to the turf under the feeder that hangs from the bare dogwood tree. Life, even on such a morning, swarms here and across the whole earth.

In 1967 Louis Armstrong recorded “What a Wonderful World”, the well-known song written and arranged by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele. I quote from it in the first paragraph because it is a fine reminder of what we are given in this “wonderful world.”

Once, when I was a young man struggling with my first heartache, my mother said to me, “Son, sometimes this ol’ world is hard.” She, the mother who reared six children alone, certainly knew how true her words were. But she also shared her love of trees and birds and flowers. One memory I hold close is of her standing at her kitchen window, looking out at her back yard that was full of maple trees that we had planted. Today, all these years later, my wife and I enjoy birds visiting a birdbath that adorned her yard beneath those maples. She found solace where she could and used it as one of her shields against the hardness that life sometimes showed.

Yes, the January cold has arrived. Ice. Snow. Short, dark days. All of it raw and real. But even these days hold the promise of better ones coming as marked by the winter solstice that happened a few days ago.  Look out, find the beauty in a cold morning, then share it with a friend.

By Roger Barbee

The baby-faced boy walked past me as I watched the wrestling on Mat 1. As he skirted between me and the action on Mat 1, his headgear with his school’s logo slipped from his hand. An older teammate strode to him.

I was attending a fourteen-team wrestling tournament in Alumni Hall of a Maryland independent school last Saturday. It was the first competition for the new season of 2023-24 and the Hall was packed with wrestlers of all sizes and ages and both sexes, coaches, parents, trainers, host school staff, four mats, officials, and me– all in Alumni Hall.

Folkstyle wrestling in high school has changed since I practiced it over fifty years ago. Yet it is the same. While we never had a tournament with fourteen teams, while we never wore headgear, while we never had wrestling shoes, we did have matches of three two-minute periods, and each wrestler tried to defeat the opposition.

Some fans of sports enjoy comparing today’s athletes with those of the past, but that seems to me like comparing an orange with an apple. They have some likenesses but are two different fruits. I wrestled in the 1960’s much like those boys and girls did in the Hall, but in my opinion any other comparison is fruitless. The wrestlers today, even the average ones, know and can execute and counter so many more moves than those of us who wore tennis shoes for matches and practiced on canvas mats. But there is still one similarity.

While the skill of those boys and girls on Saturday was not that good, their desire and determination was outstanding. Yes, there were wrestling moves that were not executed correctly and countermoves that were, well, just wrong. There were glaring errors in the correct starting positions, and the officials had to “coach” a wrestler more than once. However, those students were on the mats and trying. To paraphrase President Roosevelt from his The Man in the Ring speech, no one outside the ring has a right to criticize he who is in the ring.

As I kept watching, I thought of some great American wrestlers and wondered if Dan Gable or John Smith or Kyle Snyder or so many other great wrestlers ever competed in a tournament like this one. Of course they did because everybody starts somewhere and that is usually by just trying, by being present, and by going on to become better, maybe not great, but just better. To be, as Ohio State’s Coach Tom Ryan says, “Authentic.”

And this: When the older teammate strode to the baby-faced boy who had dropped his  headgear, he showed him how to fasten the headgear chin strap through the lowered shoulder strap of his wrestling singlet to allow it to dangle next to his hip. When the younger boy had done it correctly, the more experienced boy patted him on the shoulder and said, “Now you’re a wrestler.”

A wrestler, indeed.

By Roger Barbee

My wife Mary Ann and I drove to Raleigh on Sunday and picked up Nick at his foster home. Because our return ride was close to three hours long, Mary Ann sat with him in the back seat of our van. By the time we parked in our driveway, I knew that a bond had formed between my wife and Nick, the two-year-old beagle with a taste of dachshund, we think.

Much has happened in Nick’s life since October 09, 2021, when he was “seized as a stray” in Reidsville, NC. Taken to the local animal shelter, he was later rescued by Triangle Beagle Rescue. Under its care, he received his first medical evaluation and soon was administered the required medical procedures, such as the rabies shot, before being placed with Melanie and Art, his foster parents. Life began to look better for the eighteen-pound stray who had been seized.

In the two full days of sharing our home with Nick, we have re-discovered what life is like when lived with an energetic youngster. His black, brown, and white form is seldom still;  he is mostly obedient, but just a package of curiosity coupled with energy, like all young animals –even the human ones. He sees our four cats as novelties to be sniffed, but their view of him is as an intruder on their turf. We all work on that relationship. However, he has already proven to be a good guard dog and a foe of any squirrel that ventures into his yard. He has yet to figure out the flyers who visit the bird feeders, but his antics with them entertain us, and he enjoys a chew on any pine cone he finds.

Nick is our fourth hound. He comes after Nolan the black and tan hound and Mickey and Callie, the beagles, died. Those three shared life with us for fifteen years and cannot, like a broken plate, be replaced. What they gave us during those years is a treasure that Mary Ann and I hold close, but we are now building a new bond with a bundle of beagle.

After all, what good is a life not shared!

By Roger Barbee

The other day my wife Mary Ann and I were planning our Thanksgiving meal. She asked me some questions concerning what I wanted and also made statements about the meal-such as this year she would purchase the cranberry sauce instead of making it from scratch. It is our yearly discussion in which I mostly listen, but this year, for some reasons, it stirred a memory.

Life on the mill hill in a 1950’s North Carolina textile town was sparse. My mother worked on the second shift hemming washcloths in Plant 1, and in this way she provided for her six children. Our life, while not harsh, did not have extras. We had a clean, safe home that had enough furniture but not too much, and we had access to the small, independent store just a short walk through our back yard. It was there that we charged to our mother’s account a package of honey buns for breakfast along with a half-gallon of milk. Or some bologna and loaf bread for supper sandwiches. (I liked to fry my bologna and curl its edge.)

Working on the second shift meant that our mother was not at home from 3-11 PM. We lived close to Plant 1, so she could walk to her work, but she was not  present when we came home from school and not there to prepare an evening’s meal, which we called supper. So, each of us individually “made do” with what was in the rather bare Frigidaire. If nothing suitable was found, one of us would make a quick run to the small store behind our house. Loaf bread, milk, peanut butter, jelly, and other staples went a long way for us. However, sometimes our mother managed somehow to leave us a treat before she trod to the sewing machine in Plant 1.

Language of the mid-South textile towns was always interesting. Ours was a mixture of many cultures and we used terms and words that I now recognize as archaic and sometimes just wrong. Yes, we called the water hose a  “hose pipe” and the wool hats worn over the entire head in winter “toboggans”, and a tow truck was referred to as a “wrecker.”  But our language also carried a rhythm and lyrical history from our ancestors. For instance, a passel (late 14^th century) of land meant a small piece but a passel of folks meant a large crowd such as “We had a passel of folks at the reunion.” If someone was “tickled” that usually meant the speaker was pleased. So when our mother managed with her meager resources to prepare “a mess of beans” for our school-day supper it was a treat because “a mess of beans”, straight from Middle English,  meant an abundance of good food.

While we were at school on such a day, Mother would have washed, soaked, then placed on the electric stove to cook our “mess of beans”, which were usually pinto ones. She had a well-worn pot that in a past life had been a pressure cooker, but was now just a dull-colored, silver container with a wooden handle. By supper time, the beans in it were tender, warm, and nutritious for our hungry bodies. A bowl of them (I smothered mine with chopped, white onion) with a wedge of the cornbread from the oven and a jelly glass of cold milk was a special gift that our mother had prepared and left for us.

All of this happened over sixty years ago, but our Mother’s gift of pinto beans, cornbread, and milk is more than a memory. Like the poor widow and her two mites in Mark 12, our Mother gave us, her six children, all that she had. Unlike Mary Ann and me and our approaching Thanksgiving meal, our mother had little, but she gave us all she had.

And that is a blessing for which to give thanks.

By Roger Barbee

On most mornings I ride my stationary handcycle for thirty minutes. The bike is placed in a corner of our driveway and close to our residential road. The scene of the neighborhood is great, and I can see all the houses that friends have turned into homes. The view of golden poplars,  unmurdered crepe myrtles, and  maple trees full in their multiple shades of red is one that I have learned to expect and appreciate. All of this as a precursor of the looming cold front blew softly through the tall pines, telling of the change to come. Yet, for me, this lovely scene is not the most interesting or important part of my morning rides.

In 1883 Life on the Mississippi was published and available by subscription. The book is part fiction but mostly memoir by Mark Twain. It is, to a degree, a biography of that great river and the people who live on it or near it. I have come to see our little road as a river. Not one like the mighty Mississippi, but a river that each morning offers new experiences and exposures: To people moving up and down our little road much like the steamboats of Mark Twain. And like a person on the Mississippi River in the mid-19^th century, I have come to enjoy the approach of each steamboat, but in my case it is not a large paddle-wheeler, but a cyclist, walker, jogger, or neighbor driving to work or on an early morning errand. The drivers pass swiftly with a mere wave or horn honk from their shell. The cyclist pass as well, but some can be heard as they shout “Morning!” But it’s the walkers or joggers who offer the  most because they move slower and are more prone to be enticed to slow or even stop for a chat. Over the years of riding near the road, I have enjoyed these opportunities to talk with travelers on our residential road. Some of them are well-known neighbors who often stop to share news of their lives; some are vacationers who talk of their pleasant visit to Lake Norman; and some are the regulars who I often see and who sometimes stop and visit for a while. No matter: Each is an opportunity to connect with another human being; Each is an opportunity to hear of events in a life separate from mine; Each is an opportunity to learn; Each is an opportunity.

I am reading Revelations on the River (Healing a Nation, Healing Ourselves) by Matthew Dowd. In his chapter titled Fears and Trauma he writes, “The greatest impediment to true, full love-…are our fears and trauma that we have accumulated throughout our life. It is these fears and trauma, whether profoundly real or perceived, that create scars and, as a consequence, walls within us that can prevent our hearts, minds, and souls from unifying in such a way that allows us to go outward from a place of love.”

Now, I do not profess to being a great healer or writer or Matthew Dowd. Yet, I do think that by merely acknowledging a person passing along on our little road, I make a type of connection and by that validate their humanity. Besides, I enjoy getting to know them, the name of their dog, their family plans for Thanksgiving, all of it matters and if we all do enough of “hailing the steamboat” to come ashore then we just may remove some of the walls that divide us.

By Roger Barbee

Although I went to Saint Stephen’s School for Boys in 1976 to teach English and coach wrestling,  I also became a student of several veteran educators in the school, but especially Jim Osuna.

A teacher, the dean of discipline, and coach of cross country and track, Jim Osuna taught young men by demanding that each of them arrive on time, be fully prepared, and perform at their best. He coached in an all-boys’ school where other sports were revered, but he developed IAC champions in cross country and track and field. He modernized the old asphalt track and founded the Draper Invitational Track Meet that had as its stellar race the steeplechase, an unusual event for high schools.  In those days if you came to a track practice you may have seen him driving his red Karma Gia down the track straightaway with a runner frantically holding onto the T-bar that he had fashioned to its rear bumper. In this way he trained the runner to “stretch his legs”  and realize that he could take three steps between those imposing high hurdles.

Jim built confidence in his runners. At an IAC track and field championship held at Bullis School in the late 1970’s I was shocked to see our star two-mile runner,. Greg, to immediately break away from his main competitors from Georgetown Prep in the championship race. Running to Jim, I told him our runner needed to be slowed, but he just said, “It’s okay, we know what we are doing.” Unknown to me, Jim had convinced Greg that he was so well-trained and disciplined that he could sprint out early and break contact with the two runners from Prep. He did and before anyone could react, he was too far ahead to be caught. That two-mile championship was an early example for me of  Jim’s skill at training a boy’s body and mind.

When I asked Jim why the classrooms in the upper school had slate blackboards on three of their  walls, he told me how he and other teachers used them for a week’s lesson. His three boards were covered with information for a week. Those boards, with their different colored chalk lessons, were the precursor of copy machines, and every student of his quickly learned the discipline demanded for the classes’ required notebook. In his required exactness for the history notebook, Jim taught his students the discipline needed for scholarship showing them that they could succeed.

Walking around Jim’s classroom, you would have seen many objects concerned with his world history class. In his youth he had travelled the Nile River Valley on a red Harley Davidson motorcycle and had many examples of ancient civilizations displayed. One object was a stone with Sanskrit carved into it. That is fitting because not only was it a history lesson for his students, but it was also a language that may give us our word mentor. While the Ancient Greek in the Odyssey gives us the trusted adviser of young Telemachus, Mentor, the Sanskrit gives us “man-tar” which means “one who thinks.”

For various reasons,  many of us went to Saint Stephens School for Boys. I went as a teacher and coach, but because of my encounter with Jim Osuna, I gained a mentor, “one who thinks”, and an educator to whom I am indebted to and grateful for.

By Roger Barbee

Standing on my work bench is a short section of a limb cut from a cherry tree. Since the horseshoes were last hung on it by Big PaPa, the limb has grown over the horseshoes, capturing them in a capsule of a time that is now only a memory.

At one time, not  too long ago, parents would take their children to a grandparent’s house for a “get together.” Grown siblings and adults talked with each other, sharing news and gossip while cousins played in the yard and house. Heaps of food were placed on the kitchen table and in less time than it took to prepare the food, the empty pots, pans, and plates needed washing. In some families the adults then scattered about the house or if the weather was good they went out to sit under a canopy of deep shade. Children ran about, adults talked still, or some napped.

But some grandparents, like Craig’s Big PaPa, had built a horseshoe pit, and after the meal the matches between family members was on. The pitching was competitive, but fun. While winners and losers were tallied, it was the doing that counted most.  After day’s light ended the pitching and everyone was talked out,  each family gathered itself to return home and Big PaPa gathered the iron horseshoes and hung them on the cherry limb until the next pitching. But too soon Big PaPa, like King David, went the “way of all the earth” and eventually died. In due time his family members chose from his estate, and some wanted furniture, some gun(s), or other items. Craig chose nothing but went out and sawed the horseshoe limb from the tree and took it home. That was Big PaPa’s gift to him.

Craig told me about it a few weeks ago, and I persuaded him to trust me with it. I stripped the bark, cut one end to square it, and wire brushed the rusty horseshoes, After hand sanding the wood of the limb I applied two coats of lacquer and it is ready for two more and then will be mounted on a natural cedar board. (The red cedar resembles a clay pit). Next week Craig will come to get his Big PaPa’s memory gift.

Families have scattered across the land and even if some live close together few travel on a weekend afternoon to share time. Soccer games, football contest, dance recitals, and other overly scheduled youth activities fill the time that was once reserved for large gatherings of families where plentiful homecooked food, naps, cousin play, and horseshoes with Big PaPa was shared. That is the way of modern families, but nothing learned in a youth activity can rival what a grandchild can learn pitching “shoes” with Big PaPa.

By Roger Barbee

The 1989 movie Field of Dreams tells the story of a farmer who one night hears the whisper, “If you build it he will come” while walking in his cornfield.

For the past three days, I have been reminded of that movie.

My wife Mary Ann and I enjoy birds, but for the past month since returning to the Valley, we have been busy with opening boxes, positioning furniture, and other requirements of a move. However, one of our sons visited this past week, and since we were feeding him well, we decided to use his younger muscles. We got him to spread mulch and place our honest-to-goodness squirrel-proof bird feeder next to the back patio. After all was done Matthew filled the bird feeder with sunflower seed and left the next morning.

Patience is a desirable trait, and I like to think that I possess it; however, as the first day closed with no bird visiting the feeder, I began to question its placement–was it too exposed since birds, like all things, seek security. Would it be better placed nearer the trees in our back garden? As day two came and closed, I threatened to move it closer to some bird cover. However, Mary Ann, full of patience, cautioned me, “Just wait.” During the evening of day three we sat in our morning room watching the last of a hot day fade. As the shadows climbed Massanutten Mountain, I grumbled about the lack of birds on the feeder. My grousing attitude even began to grate on Mary Ann’s patience, and she told me to stop complaining.

While sitting that evening in the Morning Room we chatted about our accomplishments in our new home and shared plans for its future. Then one of us saw it—a male house finch settled on the curve of the shepherd’s hook holding the feeder. We watched it, eagerly wanting it to go to the feeder and eat its seeds. We whispered as if believing our voices would frighten it away. Then a blue jay sailed by the feeder, alighting on the ground beneath it. Perhaps it, too, thought the house finch would eat from the feeder, scattering seeds to the ground.  Instantly the house finch bolted to the far maple tree. An expletive flew from me, and as usual it improved nothing, only showing my lack of vocabulary. We then waited as darkness descended before accepting that the house finch would not return.

Over coffee the next morning we talked, but I held everything in anticipation—would the finch return, perhaps bringing other birds. Then it was atop the shepherd’s hook before making its way to the seeds. In a short time, other finches enjoyed the feast, and soon a variety of birds joined as well.

 A small bird reminded me to remember the message of the movie, or of St. Paul, or of Terry Tempest Williams, or of Mary Ann—impatience and weak faith will cloud any experience.

By Roger Barbee

One of my high school wrestling teammates followed his father into the carpentry trade. Jimmy has told me how, over the years of his craft, he has occasionally worked in a house that his father built. Now, his father was a builder from older days which means that he did almost every part involved in building a house: He poured the footing, laid the brick, hung the sheetrock, ran the electricity lines, and more. While he did order the cabinets from Brown’s Cabinet Shop, he installed them with his crew or himself. It was a time different from today which brings me to a short piece of 1×6 inch, tongue and grooved, pine flooring about a foot long. It is one of many pieces my friend Mike salvaged from an old home; he sells it as well as other salvaged lumber to customers like me. A small pile of such old flooring sits on a shelf in my shop, some painted pink, some yellow, some white, but all ready to be remade into small, wooden object showing the old, color shades so liked by folks. The underside is rough, but the top is  sanded flooring and ready to be cut in the shape I want after I trim off the groove and the tongue. I end up with a board just less than six inches wide and a foot long.

My neighbor Ken told me yesterday that his SUV was in the garage because its front camera was not functioning. We discussed that and all the marvels of modern-day convenience and how we, two baby boomers, have witnessed and benefited from so much innovation. For instance, I type these words on a lap-top computer, and I can backspace anytime to change wording. The typewriter I learned on in high school had no such convenience. We endlessly practiced in order to be efficient in correct words per minute. Now? Mistakes are easily removed by a button or, instead of a rough draft full of pencil or ink corrections, phrases, lines, words, and more are removed, sent to someplace.

There was a time in elementary schools when a boy would ask permission to empty the  pencil sharpener.(Our first experience in civic duty).  It was a guise that did not fool any teach.er, but it was a chance for a restless boy to walk around a bit, maybe even to be allowed outside in order to dump the small container of graphite and wood shavings. These manual necessities of a by-gone era can now be found in flea shops for upwards of $5, nothing but relics replaced by plastic pencils that disperse sharpened lead by the push of a button.

Our world has evolved so much in everyday amenities that we now use the noun/adjective/verb “multitasking” to convey how busy and productive (and important?) we are as we take advantage of innovations “to do more.” Since its birth in 1966, the word has become a supposed indicator of abilities and skills. It is even used in job descriptions: “The successful candidate must be a multitasker.” That may be true, but I have my suspicions of the body’s ability to perform meaningful levels of work at the same time. For instance, we all have listened to a dental hygienist chatting away as she cleans our teeth. However, I see that not multitasking, just a way to share the process of dental hygiene. Although we may try, and even say that we do, we do not, in my opinion, have the ability to do more than one meaningful task at a time. But we have tried and tried and tired so much to be like the early computers in 1966 that we now believe we are multitaskers, like those computers of 1966.

A 14^th century word that is seldom used today is craftsman. Or craftswoman. Or artisan. Or craftsperson. Whatever form of the noun used it describes someone skilled in a particular craft. It is a word that we seldom use today to describe someone’s skill because, I suggest, we are in one big rush to get things done.  Instead of concentrating on doing a task as well as possible, we flit about, content with many instead of meaningful.

The salvaged, painted flooring in my shop is a statement to someone’s craft because each has been hand-sawed at a precise forty-five-degree angle in order to be securely fastened to the next, and the joint would not slip or rise, but would last until someone like Mike came along to save it from chippers. I doubt the carpenter who hand-sawed those exact angles was also involved in other tasks involved in the building of the house, and he likely was a firm believer in the proverb recorded by John Heywood in 1546, “Haste makes waste.”

I, as much as anyone, enjoy convenience. But convenience is not always the best path to follow. Doing an important task requires concentration. If not, then why do it?

By Roger Barbee

A few days ago I  asked my friend Mike to “Google” God Bless the USA Bible and read an article about the forthcoming Bible. After he did, we discussed this new edition of the Bible. He said, “I  don’t see anything wrong with it, Roger.” Our conversation has caused me to think about the specialty bible by Hugh Kirkpatrick.  which can be pre-ordered for $49.99, and it will include a copy of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of God Bless the USA. as written and performed by Lee Greenwood.  release is scheduled to correspond with the twenty-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, and will use the King James Version.

This edition of the Bible is not the first to be issued in a specialty version or in a newer format or translation. Over the years Bibles have been printed that are designed for certain interest groups such as NASCAR fans or “easy to read” translations, or Bibles that have resources especially for women, men, or children. There are “journaling Bibles” that have additional margins for personal notes. There is even a Parallel Bible that has a column in the KJV translation beside a column in the NIV translation. I even have one titled The Other Bible, Ancient Alternative Scripture and have examined many editions marketed as specific studies, such as the Jimmy Swagart Study Bible.

Hugh Kirkpatrick and Lee Greenwood and all the others involved in this new venture are entitled to publish a new edition of the Bible. The folks who have already pre-ordered a copy are also free to do as they have. But I carry a caution when I read about a Bible that is aimed at any specialty group. Perhaps a Bible edited for a specific group, such as men, is of greater help than a pure NIV, KJV, or other edited ones and if one of these printed Bibles helps anyone be a better Christian, then that is good.

However! I wonder how the God Bless the USA Bible,  by itself, will help any purchaser be a better citizen or better Christian? Does a purchaser think that having a Bible with the Pledge of Allegiance between the same covers as Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians will make him or her better at either? Also, there is the danger of a confusion taking place between country and Christ.

This new version of the Bible by Kirkpatrick is less than he says because the intent preys on a certain political outlook. To print a Bible with documents for civil authority is  nothing but a ploy to get purchasers to think that they are now better patriots and citizens when in fact they may be less because of such arrogance.

But the best comment on editions of the Bible is the one made by Pastor G. Bowers one Sunday when he was preaching about the need for Christians to read, study, and follow the Written Word: “It makes no difference what translation you have if you don’t read it.”

Amen.