How I Spent the Summer with Tom Selleck

Well, not the whole summer.  At least not yet, anyway.

When I first retired, one of my principles of good living was that I would not watch television unless a program was on that I really wanted to see so that I didn't spend endless hours staring at the big light in the family room just because I had nothing better to do.  It's come to my attention that many hours of programming involving Tom Selleck are broadcast every week, and I really want to see all of them. 

This began early in the summer when COZI TV started a special on Thursday nights for a month that involved four straight hours of Magnum, P.I.  Hawaii is beautiful at that time of the year.  I definitely wanted to watch it.  After the special showing of Magnum, P.I. was finished, it continued every Thursday evening, and I also found that every evening at 8:00 p.m., the show was also aired on Encore television.  That made nine hours of Thomas Magnum available every week.

I take a (mostly) daily walk after lunch, and one day I looked for something to watch on television after my walk.  If I couldn't find something to watch, I was going to be forced to take a nap.  A scan through the channels at 2:00 p.m. found Thomas Magnum was indeed additionally available on COZI TV at that time.  Each day.  Add five more hours of Tom Selleck to my week.

 Although we've always been faithful viewers of Magnum, I've found several episodes that I don't remember ever seeing.  They were from 1985, and I realized that these were the episodes that aired when my daughter was born.  We only had one television at the time, and it was downstairs in the family room where I did not go for several weeks until I recovered from the C-section.  Not to mention that I had the distraction of a newborn that severely interfered with any personal interests during those weeks. 

While I had occasionally watched Blue Bloods on CBS on Friday nights, it wasn't a regular in my schedule.  Why not, I thought, catch a glimpse of Tom Selleck as a mature man?  So I started watching Blue Bloods on Friday nights.  It's a pretty good show.  Quite dramatic and intense, but it's good for that type of show.  "Please don't kill my family" sent a message for the police officer's children who were in trouble at the hands of bad people.

Early in the summer I ran across a Sunday afternoon of the Jesse Stone movies on the Hallmark Movie Channel.  They gave a glimpse into the dark side of Tom Selleck: conflicted, brooding, drunken, yet somehow morally upright, Jesse Stone.

Now, as if this wasn't enough, my husband started watching a movie on Saturday afternoon and proceeded to complete watching it with the rest of the family later that evening.  It was one of those movies, he said, that he always watches whenever he finds it on TV.  Quigley, Quigley, Quigley.  He couldn't stop talking about it, and he showed me how to find it on XFinity On Demand.  The movie?  Quigley Down Under.  So this afternoon when there was absolutely nothing else to do, I flipped over to On Demand and watched Mr. Quigley, played by Tom Selleck.  Yes.  It was a great movie.
 
I've become knowledgeable about everything Tom Selleck.  I can pick out the two Magnum episodes that feature his real-life wife.  I now know that Magnum's birthday is August 8 and his favorite cowboy is Roy Rogers.  I see in his work the recurring theme of "cowboy", even in Hawaii, and the attention paid to the Vietnam veteran and the problems they experienced after the war.  I can almost date the show based on his hair cut.  

I realize that my fascination with Tom Selleck can't go on forever.  It doesn't need to.  The summer is about half over and will soon fade to its end.  It certainly has been full of Tom Selleck, probably more because of the large body of work he's produced rather than my inability to pass up any movie or television show that features him.  Here's to good times, here's to summer,  laissez les bons temps rouler!  

Mercy There Is Great

Jesus releasing souls from Hell.

The first Christians knew nothing about Easter and would not have recognized the word we associate with the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. The use of the word "Easter" did not become commonplace until the mid-second century, and is found in scripture once.  In the King James Version translation in Acts 12:4, Dr. Luke writes that Herod planned to put Peter on trial after "Easter".  In Luke's Greek version of this scripture, though, he says the trial would be after Passover, actually, "pascha" in the Greek, derived from the Hebrew "pesach".  It makes sense to me that the Elizabethan translation would use the Anglicized "Easter" which most Christians of that time would understand and accept.

Biblical scholars vary in their theories about the origins of the word Easter.  The Venerable Bede writes in De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre. She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe.  Also named as a suspect is the Teutonic goddess of dawn (Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, derived from the word for spring), as well as the Chaldean goddess, Ishtar.  Since I'm not a Bible scholar and have no way of knowing which of these is correct, I'm going to move on.

I've often thought of what it was like for those closest to Jesus to see him brutalized and then crucified.  From the time he was arrested, fear and panic reigned among his disciples and family. Some disciples ran, hid from the authorities, some denied they even knew Jesus.  Some followed him all the way to the cross, where he was killed by the Romans as an example to any who dared to think of crossing them.   

When Mel Gibson produced the film , The Passion of the Christ, in 2004, I didn't go to see the film.  I did try to watch it when it was shown on television, but it was so graphic that I just couldn't watch the entire movie.  If I couldn't watch an actor portray the death of Christ, what must it have been like for Jesus' mother to watch this unfold before her eyes?  What was it like for John to watch Jesus drip blood from the thorns on his head, the whip marks on his back, and the nails that held him to the cross?  It was horror.  It was grief.  It was shock. 

After Jesus was taken from the cross and placed in a tomb, I feel quite certain that no one slept that night, the beginning of the Sabbath.  It's a rare person who has not experienced a death in his family.  The first few days pass in what most hope to be only an illusion, but as time passes, it is clear that the loss is reality.  Mary, Jesus' mother, must have felt that something so grisly and hideous as a crucifixion must have been a horrible nightmare.  But it was real.  It was as real as the plopping sound the blood of her son made as it fell in the dry dirt beneath the cross.

The Saturday after the crucifixion was spent with swollen, painful eyes.  No sleep after witnessing the monstrosity of a crucifixion, knowing that the mutilated body of your son, friend, teacher, brother lay in a stone tomb.  There was no hope on that Saturday, only weeping.  No one was able to eat in that hopeless grief.  The women made it through the day by gathering the items they would take to the tomb on Sunday morning to cleanse the body of Jesus.

Fear and terror obliterated the words that Jesus had spoken to his disciples; they did not remember his telling them about raising the temple up in three days.  All was lost.  Their only thoughts were about escaping the ghastly death Jesus had suffered the day before, so they hid in locked rooms with the windows shut even in the daytime heat, not daring to step outside the door.  Sobbing broke through the dark, stuffy silence. 

We've all been there after the wake, that time when the reality hits that your loved one is not coming back.  He didn't come laughing through the door, saying it was only a joke, looking for someone to make him a sandwich.  He didn't miss those lost shoes that you found behind the chair.  He didn't ask for his favorite dessert.  It didn't make any difference.  Your crying calms enough so that you begin to think about practical things, things like going to the tomb to clean the body and apply fragrant oils.  Since you haven't slept for three days, it's easy to be ready before sunrise to begin the walk out to the tomb. 

And then the unbelievable happened.  Mary saw Jesus standing in the garden.  The tomb had been opened.  There was an angel standing where the body should have been.  Some of the women started to cry again; they were speechless, but some were already on their way back to the room to tell the disciples what they had seen and heard.  Women were the first to preach the resurrection.

That weekend stretched the emotional cords of those who witnessed both the crucifixion and the resurrection.  And the reason for all of this?  Because God could not give any of us away to death and destruction.  He redeemed us with the blood that fell from the cross.  It doesn't matter what your sin is, "mercy there is great" because the blood of Jesus redeems every sin.

Mercy there was great
And grace was free,
Pardon there was multiplied to me,
There my burdened soul
Found liberty,
At Calvary.

The Burdette Family in Summers County

Genealogy can be an aggravation.  Sure, there are those outstanding moments when you find the name of an ancestor on a document in the court house, but most of the time is spent in searching dozens of sources to find nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  This can go on for years, as in the case of the Burdette family, which seems not to have bothered recording births and deaths as they occurred.

In recognition of the fact that I may never identify with confidence the father of Joseph Burdette, I'm going to write about what I have found in the last 15 years.

Some sources say that the surname "Burdette" is of Old French origins and entered Great Britain when the Normans conquered England in 1066.  The name is found in the Domesday Book of 1086 when Robert Burdet was recorded in Leicestershire.  There are so many interpretations of the meaning of the name that it's counterproductive to list all of them.  A coat of arms was granted to a Burdett family in Surrey. (http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Burdett)  As a later note, two men, Peter and John Bourdet, are found on a list of French Protestants who immigrated to England in 1687. 

Another theory is that the name arose in Wales.  In ancient Gaelic the rounded hill that served as a defensive structure  in a village was called a "bur", roughly translated as "bastion".  The war-chief in pre-Christian times utilized a special guard to insure his safety, and that guard was called a "dett".  See where this is going?  As occupations came to transfer from generation to generation, and surnames were required, this special guard became "Burdett".  (The Burdette Family of Virginia and West Virginia, Howard W. Burdett, 2001)

Howard Burdett cites Paul Burdett, Jr., who reasons that King Arthur was an actual person, whose father, Uther Pendragon, was the first Christian chief of the Welsh.  Uther chose his brother, Ambrose, as his first bur-dett, and from then on, the Christian bur-detts were all of the Pendragon family.  Paul Burdett bases his conclusions on translations of ancient Celtic sources plus the Chronicles of Nennius and Wace. Since about 480 A.D Burdett has been a clan name in the ancient Welsh language. 

The only way to determine which of these theories explains our family's origin is to begin here in America and trace the family back through the generations until we connect with either the Welsh or the French (Normans).  I have not been able to do this but hope that if my searches continue to hit dead ends, someone else's will be productive. 

Mary Catherine Burdette sits in the center in a dark dress.

My father, Austin David Ballengee, was born to Lonnie D. Ballengee and Mary Catherine Burdette Ballengee near Hix, WV, in Summers County on 25 June 1911.  My father knew little of his mother because she died of dropsy (accumulation of fluid, either from congestive heart failure or kidney failure) at the age of 32 on 9 March 1912.  She is reportedly buried at the Alderson Family Cemetery beside the Lively School on Keeney Mountain.  I suspect that her grave is not marked; she's listed in the Summers County Cemetery Book as Kate Ballengee.

My father was the only child born to Lonnie and Catherine. Apparently his name was constructed of the middle name of his father and Catharine's father's middle name (Austin David).  He had no memories of his mother.  He once had a card on which her name was stitched with a lock of her hair, but the card was destroyed in a house fire. After Catherine's death, he lived with the Cales family, where his half-sister, Grace Ballengee, also lived.  

Frank & Gladys Burdette, front center; Austin Ballengee, back row in plaid shirt 

Before she married Lonnie Ballengee, Catherine had three children, and the identity of the father remains a mystery.  A cousin of mine once said that she was told the father was a Kincaid, but that could be nothing more than genealogical gossip.The oldest of Catherine's children was Benjamin Frank Burdette, born 22 February 1901.  Nona Burdette was born in 1903, and Donna Burdette was born in 1906.  In the 1910 census of Summers County Catherine lives with her brother, Benjamin O. Burdette; her father, Lewis A. Burdette; and her three children, Benjamin Frank, Nona, and Donna.  They live in house number 123 on the census, and Lonnie Ballengee, widower, lived with his daughter in house number 118, the home of David Cales.

While little information has been found for Nona and Donna Burdette, Frank Burdette married  Gladys Spade (b. 22 May 1905 to L. E. and Verna Spade) on 24 October 1922 in Fayetteville, Fayette Co., WV.  Frank listed his parents as "Lon and Kate" on his marriage license.  Census information states that over the years Frank worked in a lumber yard, was an engineer on a steam railroad, and as a tipple man in a coal mine.  Frank and Gladys had 13 children:
1.  Clifford Palmer Burdette, b. 3 August 1923, d. 7 October 1948
2.  Alma Burdette, b. 1925
3.  Lucille H. Burdette, b. January 1928
4.  Katheryn Burdette, b. May 1929
5.  Ruby Lehues Burdette, b. 1934
6.  Jack Leo "Ross" Burdette, b. 9 December 1935, d. 3 April 1986
7.  Major L. Burdette, b. 30 July 1937, d. 17 October 1996
8.  Mona Gladys Burdette, b. 15 June 1939, d. 29 March 1987
9.  Robert L. Burdette, b. 16 April 1940, d. 14 April 1988
10.  Lucretia Burdette
11.  Linda S. Burdette
12.  Merril Burdette
13.  Maxine Burdette.  
Frank and Gladys, along with four of their children (Ross, Major, Mona, and Robert) are buried in Patton Cemetery at Meadow Bridge, WV.


Mary Catherine was born to Lewis Austin Burdette and Christiana Fink Burdette on 17 January 1880 at Ramp, WV, the 10th of 11 children.  Christiana, who died probably about January 1902, was born in January 1841 and was the daughter of  Joseph Fink and Jane Miller Fink.  The children of Lewis and Christiana are listed in the table below. 

Name	Birth	Death	Spouse
Unnamed child
Elizabeth J. Burdette	30 May 1864	15 January 1919	Henry N. Kincaid
Dicy Lluwellyn Burdette	About 1867		William H. Dequasie
William Newton Burdette	1 March 1867	29 July 1939	Martha F. Allen Emma Susan Grimmett
Malinda N. Burdette	1871
Lewis L. Burdette	About 1873	9 October 1892
Josephine Burdette (Josie)	6 July 1873	25 July 1925	Rufus C. Grimmett
Silvester Adran Burdette	24 September 1875	1908	Emma Susan Grimmett
Mary Catharine Burdette	17 January 1880	9 March 1912	Lonnie D. Ballengee
Benjamin O. Burdette	7 July 1882	26 July 1935

Lewis Austin  Burdette was born in April 1834, according to the 1900 Summers County census.  His parents were Joseph Burdette and Dica (Dicy) Burns Burdette, who had 11 children.  At the age of 22 years, Lewis married his first wife, Mary Jane Withrow, the daughter of Samuel Harrison Withrow and Sarah Kincaid Withrow, on 25 January 1856 in Greenbrier County.  Lewis and Mary Jane had five children, of whom two died as children.  A son, unnamed, died at about 1 month of age on 1 August 1856.  Two daughters, Margaret M. (b. 10 April 1857) and Sarah F. (b. 23 March 1858) are assumed to have survived to adulthood, but no other information has been found for them.  Another son, Samuel B., was born 1 February 1860 and died August 1861.  They had another son, unnamed, in August 1861, but no other information has been found for him.  None of the children of Lewis and Mary Jane appear on any subsequent censuses with him.  Mary Jane died sometime before or around 1863, because Lewis married Christiana Fink on 26 March 1863.  Christiana was born in January 1841 to Joseph Fink and Jane Miller Fink in Monroe County.

In 1870 Lewis and Christiana lived in Blue Sulphur in Greenbrier County, but their first son, William Newton, was born in  1867 in Mason County, WV, according to his birth record which states that the family was living along the Kanawha River.  In previous records Lewis listed his occupation as mechanic, so it may be that toward the end of the Civil War, he moved to Mason County where he could find work. No doubt the Civil War affected the move of the newly-married couple, no matter what the specific circumstances were.  By 1870 they had returned to Greenbrier/Summers Co.

In the memoir of Adena Kincaid Fleshman Lusher (http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/j/a/c/Becky-A-Jackson/FILE/0001page.html, 1984), she gives insight into the character of Lewis Burdette.  Adena was the daughter of Elizabeth Burdette and Henry Noel Kincaid.  Elizabeth died 15 January 1919 of tuberculosis, and in the 1920 Summers Co. census, Lewis was living with his daughter, Josie, and her husband Rufus Grimmett in the Upland District of Summers Co.  Adena writes,

Our Grandpa, his name was Lewis Burdette, came to spend Christmas with us and brought a bag of candy hearts for up kids.  They were about half the size of my hand.  When they were divided we all had one apiece.  The rest of the kids ate theirs but mine was so pretty, I kept it to look at.  One day I wanted to be extra good to Flossie, so we were playing with our dolls and mine was a rag doll Mom made for me but Flossie's dish doll had a wee mouth, so I told Flossie I would give her half my candy heart and we could eat it.  But when she tasted it she didn't want it as her throat was still sore.  So we poked it into her doll's mouth, tiny wee bits at a time until it was all gone.  Then we both cried because we had no more candy heart.

 Our Grandpa Burdette stayed with us a lot.  He had two other children living, Uncle Ben Burdette and Aunt Josie Grimmett.  So he just visited around between the three children and had no real home of his own.  He stayed mostly with us.  He was with us when Mom passed away and stayed with us for several months after Mom passed away.  I can't forget the day he left.  He went to Aunt Josie Grimmetts and I can see him now as he started out walking with his cane.  He was real old and soon after that, he died.  I never saw him after he left me that day. 

As the years passed, Adena's father found that some of his children wouldn't let him stay with them.  She compared what happened to him with how her father had treated her grandfather, Lewis Burdette:

  To explain what my dad did in 1919, then reaped in 1934 is; He asked my dear old grandfather Burdette, (after mom passed away) if he didn’t think Uncle Ben Burdette or Aunt Josie one had a better right to look after him (Grandpa) than my dad did, and I did not know at the time, but learned later that he had said this to Grandpa.  I know now that was why Grandpa left so suddenly that day long ago with tears in his eyes.  It still hurts me to this day when I think about it.

The exact date of Lewis' death is not known, but it is estimated to be about 1922.  Neither is his burial place known, but it's probably near Keeney Mountain.  

Joseph Burdette, the father of Lewis, was born in 1789 in Virginia, this date being calculated from census information.  He married Dicy Burns, the daughter of Thomas Burns (said by Oren Morton to have had a brewery in Union), on 7 October 1811 in Monroe County, VA/WV.  Dicy was born around 1788 in Virginia.  Neither death nor burial information has been found for either Joseph or Dicy.

Ten children have been documented for Joseph and Dicy:

The marriage bond of Joseph Burdette and Dicy Burns.

Christopher, b. 6 April 1812
George St. Clair, b. 1813
Isham, b. about 1817
Elizabeth, b. about 1819
Robert Burdette, b. about 1821
John, b. about 1823
Joseph, b. about 1824
Mary, b. about 1825
Sylvester, b. about 1829
Lewis Austin, b. about 1834.
Research by David Fridley says that Sylvester went to Kanawha County, and Christopher migrated to Indiana, along with perhaps others of the Burdettes. 


Monroe County school records for 1831-1842 found on Monroe County genweb list two of Joseph's children in 1836 and 1838:  Joseph Burdette at age 13 and 14, and Mary at age 11 and age 15.  Their teacher was Samuel Wiseman.

At this point the trail goes very cold.  Some researchers, in the absence of documented proof, say the most probable parents of Joseph Burdette are Giles Burdette, b. 1749 and Sarah Dunbar Burdette, b. 1753.  Giles died in 1829 in Monroe County, VA/WV.

In A History of Monroe County, West Virginia by Oren F. Morton (1916), the early Burdettes in Monroe County are outlined.  William Burdette, who died in 1836, came to Monroe County from Culpeper County and was a son of James Burdette.  Morton also mentions Giles Burdette who died before 1829 and married Sarah Dunbar.  He lists only one child, John (1794-1882), for Giles, but this history is not meant to be a genealogical study, and most assuredly Giles and Sarah had other children.  On the website www.hackerscreek.com, Don Norman says that Giles was the son of James Burdette and was born ca 1775.  If this is the case, it's doubtful that Giles is the father of Joseph who was born around 1789.  The more logical conclusion would be that Joseph and Giles were brothers, both the son of James.

In West Virginia and Its People, Vol. 3, Thomas Miller (1913), Miller says the James Burdette from Culpeper County died in Harrison County, WV, and had the following children:  Dorothy, married Alexander Davidson; Frederick; Stephen; James; and Joshua.

A problem arises in reconciling the differing birth dates of Giles Burdette:  if he were born in 1775 (Don Norman's records), he would not be the father of Joseph; if he were born in 1749, as reported in other research, he certainly could be the father of Joseph.  There may also be a Giles, Sr., and Giles, Jr.  It's possible that James, b. 1729, who had a son also named James, and James, Jr. was the father of Giles Burdette, who could then be the father of Joseph.

In Early Virginia Immigrants, 1623-1666, George C. Greer (1912), we find William Burdette arriving in Accomack County in 1639, and Chris Burdette arriving at the York River in 1649, which is around 100 years before James Burdette appears in the Culpeper records.   

This is a skein of yarn that appears to have no ends at all.  It's certainly a puzzle, but it would also appear quite certain that Joseph Burdette was related in some way to these early Burdettes.  The tricky part will be to prove exactly how he's related to them.
   

  

Owl in the Chimney? Who You Gonna Call?

Darin Handy and his new friend.

This was a once in a lifetime experience, or at least I hope so.

Yesterday evening after about a day of hearing scratching noises in the fireplace, I convinced Larry that we should explore the source of the noise.  If a mouse dies in the chimney, I explained, we would have to move out until the smell dissipated.  I was concerned.  The cat was concerned.  She kept staring up into the chimney, knowing that a heartbeat was trapped up there.

So how do you get a live animal out of your chimney?  We opened the damper, placed a large storage tub underneath, and kept an old sheet close by to throw over the tub after the animal fell into the tub.  That was a good plan, but the animal in the chimney was not cooperative.  After a while, we gave up, closed the damper and went to bed.

This morning I gave it a new start with the open damper and a tub underneath.  Waiting, waiting, waiting, didn't work.  I heard some scratching around, so I got down on my knees and looked up the chimney.  A white face stared back.  Oh, shoot!  A possum!  So I freaked out a little and got a flashlight that revealed a heart-shaped white face of an owl.  Now how the heck did that happen.

Larry and I looked at each other, what else to do?  While we waited for the owl to drop down into the tub, I called everyone in Smyth County who might be able to get an owl out of a chimney.  I first called a chimney sweep.  Removing trapped owls was not in his job description, he claimed.  He suggested animal control.  I had to leave a message with the sheriff's office (whose dispatcher, when I explained what had happened, said, "Awwwwww!") for animal control to call me back.  Then I called the vet's office who referred me to either the fire department or the Department of Wildlife and Inland Fisheries.

The Department of Wildlife and Inland Fisheries was extremely interested and asked many detailed questions about the appearance of the bird.  What you have here, little lady, he said, is a barn owl.  Which, as it turns out, is not so common to see around here.  He needed to talk to the biologists and would call me back.  Then animal control called me back.

It sounded as though animal control was laughing a little, when he told me that this was not his usual call.  You need to call a guy, he said, named Darin Handy.  Darin is a certified wildlife rehabilitation specialist.  So I called Darin, who was really excited about the whole deal.  He came by this afternoon and proceeded to think through how to pull a barn owl out of our chimney.

It turns out that the way to do it is to have some heavy duty gloves and wear long sleeves.  Then you put an umbrella up the chimney and open it up to keep the owl from trying to fly up the chimney.  Then you reach in with your gloved hand and ever-so-gently pull the bird down by holding its talons because the claws are the business end of an owl.

The owl looks a lot bigger OUTSIDE the chimney!

It was much more complicated than I ever dreamed.  Darin put a towel over the owl's head while he examined the bird and determined that he was not injured or dehydrated.  He then began to reason through what to do with the owl.  He called other rehab specialists.  We all thought the owl came from the old apple barn down by Chestnut Ridge Road, so Darin's first stop would be to see if there was a nest close by where the owl's parents would be, for the owl was not quite an adult.  If Darin couldn't locate the nest, he would take the owl back to his shelter until he felt it was ready to be released, maybe this evening as it begins to get dark.

Darin told us that barn owls do not drop down on their prey as screech owls do, but they fly low to the ground as though searching a grid.  They can also see animal urine on the ground as a fluorescent so they know where prey is located.  They are the only owls that can do this.  Barn owls also have a piercing screech (which was demonstrated in our family room).  Darin explained that this flushes out prey when the owl is on the hunt.

The owl gets an exam before Darin gets him ready to be released.

Darin operates All Are God's Creatures Sanctuary in Marion, Virginia, for exotic animal rescue and wildlife rescue.  He knows more about barn owls than anyone else I've ever met, I think.  He does secular programs about animals as well as having a Biblical creation ministry, and his website is www.allareGodscreatures.com.

I am glad that this is a once in a lifetime experience.  I just hate when company "drops in" on you. 

The Case of the Disappearing Jigsaw Puzzle

In the post-Christmas lull with snow and temperatures below zero, I've looked for activities to fill in the space between our doctor appointments.  It's great being retired, right?

I finished the book that Katie gave me on my Kindle for Christmas.  I finished the antique book about a French Huguenot in Virginia in 1686 that Larry got me for Christmas.  I piddled from day to day on the jigsaw puzzle that Santa brought me for Christmas.  Actually, Larry bought it for me at the Amish store in Wytheville.

Puzzle-solving is a disappearing art today.  It takes some time to put the pieces together, and there is nothing electronic about it.  Just your problem-solving mind, patience, nimble fingers, and a lot of time.

Jigsaw puzzles are a lot like life. The first thing you must do in puzzle-solving is to find the edge pieces and set the boundary for the picture.  So it is in life also.  God has helped us by setting boundaries that will not only bring us closer to Him but enhance the abundance of our lives.  Each piece of the puzzle must be inspected, sometimes turning the piece around to see if it fits in a way we had not anticipated.  Many references to the picture on the front of the box will help you  look for specific colors and patterns.  The picture on the box is the guide that helps you find patterns in the 1,000 pieces and fit it all together, just as the Bible is the guide that adds structure and guidance to our lives.  As the pieces fall into place, things begin to go more quickly.  It's easier to place 25 pieces of the picture than 1,000 pieces.  As we grow older, some things become clearer as we look back and see how the pieces maybe should have fit together instead of the way we forced parts of the picture together.

And as happens sometimes in life, pieces go missing.  Some questions seem unanswerable no matter how long you ponder them.  As you can see in the photos of the puzzle, one piece right in the middle of the picture is missing.  Throughout the working of the puzzle, I occasionally searched the entire dining room for a piece.  I found one piece still inside the box.  Many pieces were found on the floor under the table.  I picked one piece out of the vacuum cleaner.  It was not unusual to find either me or Larry on our hands and knees crawling around the dining room looking for a piece of the picture.  When I was about to admit that the piece was just not there, I found it somewhere, either on the floor or sitting right in front of me, just turned the opposite way of which it should go.

I gave up on that piece in the middle.  I admitted that it had been eaten by the dog or thrown out in the trash.  It just was not there.  The evening that I finished the puzzle and told Larry that a piece was missing, he came downstairs and thoroughly searched the floor, the chairs, the candy bowl on the table, under the china cabinet, everywhere.  I just couldn't give up, though.  Every once in a while, I went in the dining room and looked up, down, over, and under, looking for that missing piece.  No luck.

This morning I considered that the morning light reflected off the snow cast a brighter light in the dining room, and I did a quick look around the table.  No puzzle piece.  So after I vacuumed the family room, I took the vacuum-cleaner back to its cubby hole in the dining room.  As I turned to leave, I looked down by the table leg next to the window.  And you know what happened.  I yelled to Larry, who came immediately and knew instantly why I was so excited.  Yes, there was the missing piece to the puzzle. 

The completed puzzle with ALL of the pieces.

Now, Larry has thought for some time that we have a ghost in our house.  (I'll not go into the reasons right now; that's a much longer story.)  I do not believe this.  But he thinks that this ghost was having a little fun with us by hiding the puzzle piece.  He says there is no way that we could have missed seeing that puzzle piece because it was so obvious lying there beside the table leg.  I say that it was stuck under the chair leg, stuck in the cushion of the chair, or hidden under some of the mess on our dining table, stuck to the wheel of the vacuum cleaner and picked this morning to fall out on the floor.  I could tell by the look in his eyes that he will never believe my more reasonable explanation of how the piece got down there on the floor by the table leg.

So ends the tale of the struggle of the puzzle with so many missing pieces.  Just when you think all is hopeless, that there is no way to put it all together, pieces are dropped right in your lap by some means that you are at odds to explain.  There's a lot of winter left for us to ponder where all those pieces have been.

Milestones

Today marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death.  Like many people, the most remarkable thing about his life was his death. 

If only I had a nickel for each time someone is compelled to share where they were when they heard he had died.  They were in school, at work, walking to the student union, cleaning the house, driving in the car.  The point is that we were everywhere carrying on our lives when it happened.  There is no new story here.  Where you were at the time is no more sacred or memorable than where I was at the time.  Since a great portion of the American population is younger than 50 years, most of Americans have absolutely no memory of where they were when it happened because they were not alive at the time. 

Someone wrote, "Rest in peace, John Kennedy."  It's been 50 years.  If he is not in peace by now, he is relegated for eternity to chaos and pain.  His story is written; he cannot undo anything in his life or his death.  It is final.

As for me, I can barely remember when this happened.  My long-term memory has never been good.  My mother chastised me when she insisted that I should remember certain things from 30 years ago.  But I didn't.  I know I was in an 8th grade math class when the announcement came over the loud speaker.  I know that my teacher in that class was Mrs. Morton.  I don't remember how she reacted.  We were out of school until after the funeral, and I watched the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and the funeral procession for Kennedy on our small black and white television. I remember that the country stopped everything.  That's about it.

 It was 50 years ago.  In the case of any other people who have been dead for 50 years, we somehow find the will to move on, to carry on our lives, to give up the grieving.  We lay them to rest and then go home to have a bite of something to eat. 

It's perfectly acceptable to move on from this thing.  Perhaps it's our own national psyche that needs to rest in peace. 

A Testimony about . . .a Ham?

Some think it's silly to expect God to intervene in the minutiae of everyday life.  It's ridiculous, they explain, to pray for a parking spot in a crowded garage.  Why would God care whether the rain holds off so we can finish mowing the back yard?  And yet, God cares for us infinitely.

Let me tell you what happened this week.  This weekend my daughter and son-in-law are coming home and bringing our precious one-month-old grandson.  I have prepared all week for this event, compiling and re-compiling the menu for our Sunday dinner when other family will also be at our home.  The center piece of this menu will be a great ham, roasted and juicy straight from the oven for Sunday lunch.

Early in the week during a visit to Food City, our local grocery store, I shopped for that ham.  Looking over the few hams in the meat department, I experienced severe sticker shock.  Forty dollars for a ham? I thought  there had to be a cheaper ham somewhere in Smyth County.  So I loaded up on Tuesday and went to Marion, which is home to several grocery stores.  But I found the situation to be much the same at the Ingle's Grocery in Marion.  Never one to give up easily, I stopped in at the Food Lion, a store in which I never shop.

I believe Food Lion had even fewer hams than the other stores, and their hams were just as expensive, if not more so.  At this point I began to feel a little less optimistic.  What about Kielbasa for lunch?  Everybody likes Kielbasa, right?

There was one more store in Marion:  Food City.  But I'd already been to Food City in Chilhowie.  Would this one be any different; they have mostly the same items at both stores.

I reluctantly pulled into the Food City parking lot.  Sitting in the car, I prayed a short prayer:  "God, help me find a ham.  If I can't find a ham in this store, show me what I should fix for lunch on Sunday."  Nothing fancy, no thee's or thou's, nothing holy.  Just, "God, help me."

I walked directly to the ham section.  All Food City stores are mostly the same, so I knew exactly where the hams would be.  They had several.  The prices did not take my breath away, so I rolled the lumpy chunks around to see what I could find.  The biggest cheap ham was a little over $23.  Not horrible.  Not $40.  Oh, but the freshness date was May 15.  Tomorrow.  But it was vacuum-wrapped.  Surely it would still be good by Sunday.  A store employee stood nearby, so I boldly pointed out to him that the ham's freshness was slowly expiring.  Could he offer me a discount on the ham?

He hesitated as he mentally processed my question.  "Yeah," he said.  "I can discount it for you.  Sure, it will still be good for this weekend."  He took the ham back into the meat department and returned quickly.  The price of the ham was now 99 cents per pound; the total cost was a little over $11!  I was so excited about the answer to my prayer that I hugged the man.  He laughed as I thanked him!

I do not believe in coincidences.  I do believe in reaching out to a loving God and trusting in his care.  God used the man in the grocery store to bless me and to teach me about how much God loves me.  I'm quite sure that if there had not been a ham for me in Food City, God would have shown me another way to prepare Sunday's meal, even if it turned out to be Kielbasa and kraut.  God is good, all the time.