How Big Is Little Missouri River Country?

Posted on August 20, 2012 by jphilo

The Little Missouri winding through Teddy Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota.

On August 7 during Morning Edition, National Public Radio ran a story about Theodore Roosevelt and the Little Missouri River. The story titled Roosevelt’s Badlands Ranch Faces Potential Threat gave the history of TR’s connection to the North Dakota Badlands and the Little Missouri. But the bulk of the article was an expose about how the North Dakota oil boom is threatening the wide open spaces of TR’s historic Elkhorn Ranch.

My grasp on the details is shaky because when I first listened to the piece and during each subsequent reading of it, the same questions pop into my head. Can this really be the same Little Missouri that meandered through Harding County and past Camp Crook, the town where Hiram and I lived and worked for seven years after we graduated from college? How did I miss the historical connection?

The answer, of course, is that we were young and ignorant when we moved there. Plus, we lived in Harding County, South Dakota, about 150 miles south of TR’s ranch. And once Allen was born, our lives got…complicated. Even so, I can’t reconcile our South Dakota Little Missouri and the surrounding countryside with the concerns about TR’s North Dakota Little Missouri and the land around it.

Because Little Missouri country was wide open in TR’s day, it was wide open when we lived there from 1978-1985, and it’s still wide open today. If you’re wondering how wide open it is, consider this.

We drove 90 miles to the hospital the night our son was born.
The first 55 miles of the trip were gravel back then.
They’re still gravel today.
And it’s not too far from the Mcfarthest Spot.

If you need more convincing, here are a few pictures I took during trips to Harding County in 2007 and 2010.

IMG 4898 300x200 How Big Is Little Missouri River Country?

State Highway 20 west of Camp Crook, three miles from the Montana border. This is about a mile from the Little Missouri.

IMG 5065 300x200 How Big Is Little Missouri River Country?

Custer National Forest, about five miles from the Little Missouri. The view reaches well into Montana, about forty miles.

Near Little Missouri River 300x200 How Big Is Little Missouri River Country?

One of the horses on our friends’ ranch which is along the Little Missouri.

This country is big.
Wide open.
Huge.

No wonder I can’t wrap my head around the worries articulated in the NPR story. Not that they aren’t legitimate or newsworthy. They are. But there’s also a lot a land in them thar hills, and in my opinion, the story downplayed that fact to emphasize others.

There. I got that off my chest and feel much better. Except for one thing. Now I’m homesick for Harding County and all my friends there. I want to go to visit. But it’s a long way to drive.

About a thousand miles.
And the last fifty-five miles are still gravel.
On second thought, maybe I’ll wait to visit next summer.

Top Ten Reasons to Visit the Iowa State Fair

Posted on August 14, 2012 by jphilo

Hiram and I went to the Iowa State Fair Sunday. The weather was cool and the rain held off – a perfect day to celebrate our state’s agricultural history, people watch, and eat food we don’t touch the other 364 days of the year. If you haven’t been there yet, here are my top ten reasons the fair is worth visiting:

10. Eating something relatively healthy, like say a gyro and an apple slush, instead of totally decadent foods like deep fried mac and cheese or deep fried candy bars makes the average person feel like a health nut.

9. Visiting the livestock barns will conjure up good memories of parents or grandparents who lived on a farm. For me, it’s visiting the cattle barn and remembering Dad.

8. Fairgoers get to see Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin in the flesh.

7. For those of us who didn’t make it to the Olympics and see Queen Elizabeth, the fair’s another chance to glimpse royalty.

6. Those of us who have lived West River in South Dakota can pretend we’re back in cowboy and cowgirl country.

5. Non-mechanically inclined spouses can listen to their mechanically inclined spouses explain how contraptions like this one work…and come away still clueless.

4. You can watch a family member or friend’s face light up when totally engrossed in something he or she loves – say old-timey music or figuring out how some contraption works or watching a carpenter make furniture by hand – until you get bored.

3. Nothing says “happy” like watching kids dance to the music of a one man band. Get a load of his socks!

2. The State Fair’s the perfect place to analyze the latest in wool fashions.

1. Where else will you see the butter cow and the seven dwarves and Snow White and the Evil Stepmother and the Magic Mirror all in one dairy case?

Now it’s your turn. What are your top reasons for attending your State Fair?

Rowan Atkinson: The Funniest Birthday Present Ever!

Posted on July 30, 2012 by jphilo

Thanks to British comedian Rowan Atkinson and the Olympic Opening Ceremonies being scheduled the evening of my birthday, I received the funniest birthday present ever.

Hiram thought I was a little deluded to claim the ceremony as my personal birthday bash. But those of us with a summer birthdays, like me and Dorothy Hamill, spent our entire elementary careers celebrating birthdays with our classmates born from September through May, but never celebrated our own. So we’ve learned to grab glory where we can, and the opening ceremonies did the trick for me.

After James Bond and Queen Elizabeth entered via parachute, the extravaganza was pretty hard to follow…until the London Philharmonic began playing the theme from Chariots of Fire with Rowen Atkinson (known to many as Mr. Bean) keeping the beat on the keyboard. By the end of the skit, I was laughing so hard, my sides ached.

Rather than try to describe what happened, you can watch for yourself at dailypicksandflicks.com. But hurry! The Olympic committee already took down any clips posted on You Tube, so this one could be next. But until that happens, get ready to laugh at one of the best comic actors of all time.

Thank you, Rowan Atkinson, for the funniest birthday present ever!

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Posted on July 20, 2012 by jphilo

Yup, The Amazing Spiderman is making an appearance on this blog, even though superheros don’t get a lot of play along our gravel road. To be honest, the only reason Spiderman gets his due is because I was plumb out of stuff to write about.

I thought about writing an I-told-you-so post about how I predicted the drought of 2012 way back in January. But that seemed kind of evil, and I ditched the idea. My next thought was to gush about The Amazing Spiderman movie, which we went to with our daughter and son-in-law on Tuesday. The movie was good. Really, really good. But writing a review is hard work, and I wanted to keep the memory fun.

So I ditched that idea, too, and didn’t have a thing to write about until a Facebook friend of mine posted the above picture. It shows the window washers at Michael Hopkins’ Evelina Children’s Hospital in London.

I almost ditched that idea, too, since this blog is for fun stuff and DifferentDream.com is for kids with special needs stuff. But then I read the text accompanying the photo and decided it was fun enough for this blog:

Evelina Children’s Hospital was the first new children’s hospital to be built in London in more than a century. The hospital was designed with a goal of “making a hospital that didn’t feel like a hospital.” Accomplishing this required hospital designers and staff to create a patient experience that included touchpoints fostering a sense of inspiration and wonder – in addition to healing – for children throughout their stay.

Perhaps the most remarkable touch point of all comes from an unexpected source: the hospital window washers. As part of their contract, Evelina requires that hospital window washers dress up as superheroes while cleaning the hospital windows. Bedridden, sick children delight in seeing Superman, Spiderman and Batman dagling just beyond the glass. The window washers report the superhero visits to Evelina are the highlight of their week.

I thought maybe the window-washers-dressed-as-superheros was urban legend. But according to Hugh Pearman’s article first published in The Sunday Times, London, on November 27, 2005, the window washers are for real. The article, “Just What the Doctors Ordered” tells the story of the vision behind Evelina’s Children’s Hospital and mentions the superhero window washers.

I think the idea of window washers at a children’s hospital dressing like superheros is way cool. The perfect medicine for a nation full of hot and thirsty people worried about a drought they’re powerless to control.This story is just what the doctor ordered. Do you agree?

The Essence of the Matter

Posted on June 25, 2012 by jphilo

On Friday, an envelope in the mail contained an urgent message from Essence Magazine warning that our subscription HAS ONLY THREE ISSUES LEFT, so we need to RENEW OUR SUBSCRIPTION RIGHT NOW to avoid any interruption in delivery. Because, as the ad copy proclaimed, we don’t want to miss a SINGLE ISSUE of the country’s premiere black culture magazine.

Quite the sales pitch except for one thing.

We never subscribed to the magazine in the first place.

Every time a new issue appears in the mailbox, Hiram and I speculate about why we receive it.

Does the marketing department send complimentary subscriptions to randomly selected families to generate interest? If so, maybe they should do market research to find people in their target audience is in order.
Did a friend sign us up for a guest subscription as a joke? If so, it was a good one because Hiram and I kid about who gets to read it first right before we toss it into the recycling bin. Though if we’d received the Denzel Washington issue, I might have read it.
Did someone order it to expand and add color to our cultural horizons? In that case, we’d much prefer an all expense paid trip to Kenya. Or South Africa. Or Nigeria. Or Harlem.

Those questions will most likely remain unanswered, but one thing I do know. Even though it only costs $8.00 a year to subscribe and the e-version is free, we don’t plan to renew our subscription.

Which brings me to the essence of the matter.

If this company delivers magazines to people who don’t order it, charge only $8.00 a year for people who do order it, and the e-version is free, why are they still in business?

Anybody else out there receiving unordered magazines? If so, leave a comment about your mystery subscription.

Enjoy Author Cheri Cowell’s Blog Tour

Posted on June 8, 2012 by jphilo

Today, I’m delighted to introduce you to Cheri Cowell. She’s the author of several Bible studies, including her latest, Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament. As part of the blog tour celebrating the release of Parables, Cheri answered a few questions about her writing and her faith.

What passion drove you as you wrote your new book?

I LOVE the Word and I love storytelling and I want others to fall in love not only with the Word but also with the concept that they can become a living parable, a living story pointing others toward the Ultimate Living Parable––Jesus Christ.
What surprised or otherwise impacted you as you wrote your book?
There’s not a consensus on how many parables are in the Bible or even what defines a parable.

What do you hope readers will gain from your book(s)?

That the parables are not isolated stories only used for sermon illustrations, but when read together they give us a picture of how we are to live as kingdom people. Through the parables we learn how to become living parables in a world desperate to “see” God.

It has been said that Jesus spoke in parables to “confuse and confound” and you say you have a “key” to making these less confusing and confounding to modern-day readers. What is this key?

It wasn’t until I studied the parables as a whole that the whole message they convey became clear, so the key is a comprehensive look at the New Testament parables. This is what the study brings to the reader.

Storytelling is a big part of our culture. Everywhere you turn there is a new story; how can we use these parables to reach our neighbors and friends with their story-telling power?
For me, this is what studying the parables is all about. It is about shaping our lives after Jesus that when other “read our lives” they see Him. How we treat others, how we respond to sorrow and obstacles tells a story. When asked how and why we are able to be at peace, or turn the other cheek, we don’t need a canned presentation. We simply share our story of how God’s story has changed us.

The study concludes with a look at the Parable of all parables. Tell us about this because this is the heart of your study.

I remember the moment when in preparation for writing this study I received the revelation that Jesus not only taught parables, but He was a parable––a living parable. In fact, He was the Ultimate Living Parable who lived His life as an example of what a life shaped by the truths taught in the parables should look like. Likewise, you and I have been invited to live parable-shaped lives so we, too, might become a living parable in a world begging to see God.

What life experience, education, or training helped you become an author?

I am a writers’ conference fan, having attended and taught at more than 40 over the last ten years. I wouldn’t be where I am today as a writer without them. I also received a Masters in Theological Studies from Asbury Seminary, where I learned the Inductive Bible study method I used in writing the parables Bible study.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

My husband and I love to travel, to see nature and all the beautiful places God’s created for us to enjoy. National Parks are our favorite destinations. In June we will travel to Yellowstone.

Click on this link to order Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament. You can also enter a drawing for one of three gift baskets Cheri is giving away as part of her blog tour. Here’s what’s in the baskets:

Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament (workbook Bible study) by Cheri Cowell
Women of the Bible: Book One (workbook Bible study) by Barber, Rasnake, and Shepherd
Mocha on the Mount (Coffee Cup Bible study) by Sandra Glahn
Direction: Discernment for the Decisions of Your Life by Cheri Cowell
Direction Bible study workbook by Cheri Cowell
God: Knowing Him By His Names by Bill Bright
See For Yourself: Daily Devotionals (ebook DVD) by Cheri Cowell
Bible tabs
Bookmark
Bible highlighter
Hunter Green gift basket

Quite the motherlode, huh? To enter the give away, leave a comment below. Comments received by me and all the other blog facilitators will be passed on to Cheri who will chose the winners. The promotion runs from June 1 through July 6, so comment away!

Top Ten People I Was Thankful for on Memorial Day

Posted on May 29, 2012 by jphilo

With Camp Dorothy in full swing and Hiram laid up with a pinched sciatic nerve, there wasn’t time to attend any Memorial Day commemorations. Still, my thoughts strayed to friends and family members who served our country to protect the freedom I often take for granted. Here are the top ten reasons I was thankful on Memorial Day.

10. Mr. Criswell – The father of Katie, one of my best friends in high school, was a WWII vet. I’m thankful for his pride in and the honor his family has for his service to our country.

9. Great-great-grandpa Fred Hess – Fred served in the Union Army for the entire Civil War. I’m thankful for his letters home which his wife Tabitha saved.

8. Marvin Conrad – I’m thankful Uncle Marvin participated in the Minnesota Honor Flight to Washington DC a few months before his death in 2010.

7. Ronnie Fielder – This young man from our church the same year as our daughter, Anne. I’m thankful he’s safely home and going to school on the GI Bill.

6. Hugo (Burnell) Hagen – My great-uncle on Dad’s side regaled us with tales of his WWII service in Alaska. I’m thankful his unit held regular reunions in Las Vegas for decades so he could rave about what a showman Liberace was.

5. Ordel Rogen – Uncle Ordel farmed within 2 miles of his birthplace…except for the years he served in the army during WWII. I’m thankful he came home and married my mother’s sister Ruth.

4. Harold Walker – I’m thankful Hiram’s uncle continues to write and publish accounts of his years as a WWII fighter pilot in the Pacific theater. His story of seeing the Enola Gay take off before bombing of Hiroshima makes that terrible far off event seem close at hand.

3. Leo Hess – Uncle Leo tells amazing, horrendous stories of fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. I’m thankful he dodged enemy fire and caught up with his platoon, despite the shrapnel in his foot.

2. Jim Hoey – Uncle Jim served as a medic in the Korean War. During his years as a second father to my siblings and I, Dad’s faithful friend, a fix-it man for Mom, and my high school World History teacher, he rarely spoke of time overseas. I am so thankful for his service and his safe return as his presence enriched my life in innumerable ways.

1. David Philo – Hiram’s dad repaired radios in WWII planes. In the 1990s he took our family to the Dayton Airplane Museum to show our kids one of the planes whose radio he repaired – the plane assigned to Vice-President Harry Truman during WWII. I’m thankful he got to show his grandchildren a piece of his life history.

Who were you thankful for on Memorial Day? Leave a comment to honor the special soldiers in your life.

Won’t Let the Parade Pass Me By

Posted on May 14, 2012 by jphilo

NPR ran a story about an intriguing concept this morning. The host interviewed Taylor Jones, a 22-year-old who created the website www.dearphotograph.com. Here’s what Jones, in an article at www.npr.org says about how the website came about:

He came up with the idea last year while sitting at his parents’ kitchen table. While flipping though a family photo album, he stumbled across a picture of his younger brother, Landon. “It was his third birthday,” Jones says. “He had a Winnie the Pooh cake, and I was sitting in the same spot my mom was when she took the original photo.” Landon was also sitting in his same birthday seat. So, Jones held up the old picture — taking care to line up kitchen cupboards just so — and snapped a photo. He posted it on his blog, and the rest, he says, is history.

People can go to the website and submit their own photographs, all of which must begin with the words Dear Photograph.

Like I said, an intriguing concept. So intriguing, I started thinking about what picture I would like to rephotograph in the same setting as it was originally taken.

One from our South Dakota days? Too far away.
A wedding shot? Too unoriginal.
A Kodak Instamatic shot of the Badlands from the famous camping trip with my uncle and aunt? Not sure where that one is.
Something from my teaching days? No, they tore the school down.

Undecided, I opened iPhoto, and there was the scan of a newspaper clipping we found when cleaning out Mom’s house 3 years ago. The clipping records one of my earliest clear memories – the day my aunt took her two daughters, my brother, and me (I’m the one closest to the camera) to watch a parade in our home town. I don’t remember the parade as much as the newspaper photographer who shot the picture. I do remember how safe I felt with my aunt, how much help she said I was, what a big girl I’d become. Heady stuff for a middle child whose major talent at the time was tripping over her own feet.

The caption says 8,000 spectators watched the American Legion Parade that day in 1961. It also lists our names, ages, and the address of the corner where Aunt Donna found a quiet, shady spot (Central Avenue and Fourth Street SE) so we could watch the National Guard trucks rumble past.

Mom and I are going to visit Aunt Donna in a couple weeks. Maybe I’ll take the original clipping along, find that street corner, line up the clipping with the present day location, snap a picture, and submit it to www.dearphotograph.com. I know what to write beneath my submission.

Dear Photograph,

Fifty years has taught me it’s more fun to join the parade of life than to sit and watch it go by.

Jolene

On the Eighth Day, God Created an App for That

Posted on April 27, 2012 by jphilo

A long, long time ago God invented mothers because He knew kids needed someone to:

tuck them in bed at a decent hour so they could pay attention in school.
remind them to be nice to their friends.
shoo them outdoors to run around and get some exercise.
make sure they ate 3 balanced meals a day.
tell them to think a little while and see if they could figure out the answer for themselves.
limit screen time.
put them in the corner until they were done sassing and ready to treat people with respect.
teach them to deposit half their allowance in the piggy bank so they learned to save.
force them to drink water instead of pop because water is free.
regale them with pregnancy stories.
keep track of how often babies pee and poop and send older kids to sit on the toilet when they have stomach aches.
tell kids to go upstairs and read a book ’cause they’re driving their parents crazy.

But according to yesterday’s episode of On Point (an NPR show hosted by Tom Ashbrook) entitled “The Quantified Self,” computer apps now can do everything mothers used to do. The webpage about the show lists the following what-your-mother-used-to-do apps:

Sleep Cycle The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase. It aims to make you wake up more refreshed.
Facebook Timeline The social networking site now includes a timeline feature that puts your interactions with the site and your network of friends in chronological order.
Fitbit A machine that tracks your sleep and physical activity.
Meal Snap Take a photo of the food you eat and this app — amazingly — can figure out how many calories you’ve consumed.
Honestly Now helps you make decisions by getting you the answers you want to your burning questions.
What Pulse This app tracks your keyboard and mouse use.
Mood Scope This app records your daily mood, tracks it over time, and can be integrated with your friends — with the aim of improving your well-being.
Mint An online tool to track your financial transactions.
Waterlogged This app keeps track of how much water you’re drinking each day.
My Pregnancy Today Track your pregnancy with this app.
Baby Connect records information about your newborn: feeding (bottle, nursing, solid, pumping), diapers, sleep, mood, activities, milestones, health, medicines, vaccines, photos, and more.
Azumio This app measures and records your stress levels.

I am not making this up, According to Tom Ashbrook and his guests, almost everything mothers used to monitor can now be monitored and quantified by computer apps.

Why? Well, Tom Ashbrook didn’t say why (click here to listen to the show), but my guess is that grown up app creators prefer having a computer analyze their lifestyles and tell them to get enough sleep, eat right, and get off their butts and exercise than to have their mothers tell them the same things. Or point out the obvious: Companies aren’t interested in hiring people engrossed in digitized navel gazing. People obsessing over data about their sleep cycles, diets moods, bowel movements, water intake, and financial transactions don’t have a social life. So these app gurus are stuck in an endless, self-perpetuating cycle. They sit around creating apps about everything and anything except what they need to hear.

Stop navel gazing and think about somebody else for a change!

But God knew young adults need someone to tell them the truth now and then.
So he created an app for that.
And named her Mom.

Downton Abbey or Downton Arby’s?

Posted on April 13, 2012 by jphilo

Attention all Downton Abbey wannabes! You know who I mean.

The career woman ashamed to admit her childhood dream was to be a princess and live in a castle when she grew up.
The mom who saving up for mother-daughter Belle gowns from the Disney catalog.
The hunter who secretly wishes he could wear a scarlet coat and riding britches instead of a fluorescent orange vest when deer season opens.
The husband who dreams of a life where he can ditch his wife and spend the evening smoking cigars and drinking cognac with his posh buddies.

Yup, we’re the people who make the Masterpiece Theater creators eyes shine with ~~dollar~~ pound signs once we’re hooked on a show like Downton Abbey.

But it’s very, very important for us wannabes to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. Otherwise, we won’t have the emotional energy needed to remain suspended on the season two finale’s cliffhanger, worrying about what really matters. Things like:

Will Matthew and Mary really tie the knot?
Will Mr. Bates go to prison?
Will Thomas quit smoking?
Will the Dowager Countess of Grantham (aka: Maggie Smith) turn quickly and knock someone over with her hat?
Will the wardrobe mistress ever let Edith wear a pretty dress?

Those issues weighed heavily on me until a friend and fellow wannabe sent a link to a YouTube video. Those who take themselves and Downton Abbey too seriously should be prepared to be indignant. Everybody else, be prepared to laugh at this spoof entitled Downton Arby’s.

Down the Gravel Road www.jolenephilo.com

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