Dad And Dandelions

 

Dad And Dandelions

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of Dad's passing. Sometimes I tell my students stuff about my family I don't think they believe, seen through their 2062 eyes. This is one of them, from November 14, 2011

To listen to Tony Joe White sing Polk Salad Annie, please copy and paste the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCSsVvlj6YA

Each Monday through Friday, I eat lunch with our elementary teachers, which means with a bunch of lovely ladies. On Friday, Katy Shirley related a tragedy concerning a couple who tragically ate mushrooms from their backyard that had been added to soup. I mentioned my mother's family eating polk salad picked wild in rural Arkansas and to my surprise, none of them knew what I was talking about. I mentioned one of the greatest songs ever, Tony Joe White's Polk Salad Annie, posted at the top of the page; none of them had ever heard of it. I tried to describe the turnip-green like plant but to no avail. What was amazing to me was that all these women are from the south and I just assumed all southerners knew polk salad. I was mistaken.

When we were kids, I had amazing and a different kind of parents than I see with many of my students. Much of it has to do with life in a small town versus metropolitan living. Some has to do with my parents being raised through The Depression and growing up with a frugal outlook. With that in mind, we did not always eat what the other kids ate. My mom was a southerner so we dined on  grits and cornbread and black eyed peas. That's pretty mainstream even though not part of the cultural landscape of Nebraska. But Dad thought outside the box. He got the idea that if my mom's family could eat polk salad, we could eat dandelions. And so, he would pick and cook dandelions as if they were turnip greens. I don't recall if they made us eat any. My contention was that there were dogs in our neighborhood and we all know that dogs mark their territory and....................... You see where I'm coming from. But our father was in effect killing two birds with one stone- lawn maintenance AND supper.

You know, this really isn't an entry about polk salad or dandelions or even Tony Joe White and one of the greatest songs ever. It's about family. In classes this semester, I've told the students how my mom had no name for six months after birth and how my great grandparents were immigrants from Denmark. If they were listening, they've heard how I scared my brother, Dave, to death one night and that my maternal grandparents got married when my grandmother was only fifteen. They found out my second cousin, Caleb, made it to the final round of twenty-four on American Idol and that I was born in Brooklyn and Mom could see the Statue Of Liberty out of her hospital window. Every family has stories and legends and tales which tie them together or in the sad cases, tear them apart. The Bible tells us that our Father set the lonely people in families. Our families define our perspective on life and our outlook for both this life and the one to come. My dad turned into a good cook when Mom's Alzheimer's left her incapable of the simplest steps in the kitchen. Dandelions weren't his best dish but it's a reason why we loved him. He wasn't afraid to be different but more importantly, he wasn't afraid to show his love to his wife or kids or the Lord. And he always put food on the table, even if it sometimes came from the backyard.

Applicable quote of the day:
"The family.  We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."
Erma Bombeck

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren, And Your Nails

 

Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren, And Your Nails

In three months, I'm in Vietnam for the 10th time. This is about someone who made a huge impact in two different countries. It's from July 5, 2014.

Four days from right now, I'm in the air aboard a Singapore Airlines jet for my fourth trip to Can Tho, Vietnam. I'm about 2/3rds done with my checklist, a checklist that grows every day. This trip is requiring more preparation than my others as I'm going to be working with the English teachers in the church on their conversational skills. (They reach out to the community by offering free English classes to youngsters from age five through high school.) I'm not an ESL teacher so this is a stretch for me. Over the past two weeks, I've reached out to former students of mine from Asia, asking how they best learned English. Their answers have fascinated me as I've never had to learn a second language with my academic fate hanging in the balance. I've learned how much I have to learn.

In 1930, a little girl was born in Minnesota to first generation Americans. Her name was Nathalie Hedren but her dad called her Tippi. After high school, she did some acting and modeling but her career was going absolutely nowhere. But one fateful day in 1961, legendary director Alfred Hitchcock saw her in a diet drink commercial run on  NBC's The Today Show. Something caught Hitchcock's eye and he called Tippi in for a screen test which she assumed was for his weekly television show. It wasn't- he cast her in the lead role of his new suspense thriller movie, The Birds, a role he envisioned at first for Grace Kelly. If you know American film history, you know The Birds was a huge and even timeless hit, propelling the previously unknown Hedren into fame, stardom, and wealth. 

Besides talent and beauty, Hedren was also blessed with a heart for the less fortunate. She began visiting a Vietnamese refugee camp in 1975 in California, befriending the women whose lives and very existence had been uprooted by the fall of Saigon. They were in a tough place- they didn't want public assistance so she tried to come up with a business in which they could get involved. Tippi found the young ladies were fascinated by the elegance of her fingernails and had an idea. She began bringing in her own manicurist who started with a core group of twenty ladies, teaching them how to do nails. She also persuaded a local beauty school to continue teaching the refugee women. The fingernail service was a perfect fit- you did not need to be fluent in English, it did not require a huge investment of money to get started, and if you worked hard, you could succeed. The training completed, the twenty entered the American work force, and of course, the rest is history. By 2011, nail salons had grown to a value of $6 BILLION in the US and 40% of the businesses were owned by Vietnamese-Americans. No wonder that Tippi Hedren is called The Godmother of the Vietnamese Nail Industry. Not only that, I picked up this tidbit by watching a clip. In the mid 1970's, the average price of a manicure was $60, out of the reach of most America women. With inflation, what would that be now, maybe $150? But with the introduction of the Vietnamese salons into the market, manicures became affordable to the masses. And it all goes back to one person.

If I had time, I could preach a sermon about the applications of Tippi Hedren to the Kingdom of Heaven. Well, in all honesty, I already have, to our Chinese church several years ago. You know, the Parable of the Mustard Seed? How the smallest seed grew into the tree that you know what- BIRDS- came to rest in its branches? But the seed has to be planted, doesn't it? We sell ourselves short in the making a difference department. You remember what Paul said in Ephesians 3:20-21, don't you?
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen
I need to quote those verses everyday when I walk out the door each morning because by limiting myself, I'm limiting God. 

I spent this afternoon with two lovely young ladies, Kim Ngo and Thuy Nguyen, both former WCS students and both from Vietnam. In the opening paragraph, I mentioned working on conversational skills with English teachers in Can Tho and contacting former students, asking for help in mastering English. As a result, Thuy and Kim asked me to Houston's Chinatown for lunch (Malaysian food at the Banana Leaf which was excellent) and for dessert, shaved ice and fruit. (You may not believe this but I ate a huge bowl of sliced avocados with chocolate syrup on a bed of ice all by myself- AMAZING!) As we talked, I told them about what I was writing tonight, a story they had never heard. When I finished, Kim told me something I didn't know. Her brother-in-law, married to her older sister, owns several businesses in Wichita, Kansas. Guess what kind of businesses? Somewhere, Tippi Hedren is smiling.

Applicable quote of the day, # 1:
"When you love someone, you treat them well."

Tippi Hedren

Applicable quote of the day, # 2:
"I'm considered the patron saint of manicurists."
Tippi Hedren

Applicable quote of the day, # 3:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Wisdom Of Carlos Santana

 

The Wisdom Of Carlos Santana

Most of my students have no clue of who Carlos Santana is. This is from April 28, 2014.

I find myself watching less and less television which isn't so surprising with its lack of offerings and my lack of cable. Most of what I watch is coming from YouTube and documentaries of which there are thousands. During the past week or so, I've been watching the TIME-LIFE History Of Rock'N' Roll, a ten hour documentary of the music genre it's named after. Last night, I was fascinated by some of the statements made by some of the best known names of rock. Bruce Springsteen said the world is made up of those on the outside and those on the inside. He elaborated that most rock stars start out on the outside and find themselves on the inside and fear what he called subversion. Joni Mitchell lamented how her fame took away her ability to live the kind of quiet life of going wherever she felt like going as an unknown; how she had no desire to ever be a star and yet became one. Jerry Garcia spoke of fame by stating, "Nobody wants to being in the center of the spotlight; maybe in your work but not in your life." My favorite quotation of all the musicians came from renowned guitarist Carlos Santana who put celebrity into concise perspective with one sentence:
"It's more fulfilling to be a person than a personality."  
Amen.

I asked several kids today in class if they would like to be a personality, someone whose name everyone recognizes and each one I asked said they would. When I asked why, the answer was identical: money. We associate fame with fortune and celebrity with contentment in spite of the myriad examples of just the opposite being true. (Several of those interviewed for the documentary believed that Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were nothing like their on stage personas and that they had no family support system, contributing to their early deaths.) Public adulation, equated to endorsements and Twitter followers, is the yellow brick road to so many of our young people, even really good kids. I showed a clip in class last week from one of the movies entitled Jesus. In the scene, Jesus was entering Jericho, about to encounter Zacchaeus, and was almost crushed by the crowds. My students thought that kind of human obstacle course would get old quickly. I agree. It's telling that the Scriptures often record Jesus separating Himself to be alone and to pray. (My dad, a clinical psychologist as well as a minister of the Gospel was a firm believer in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and just as firm a believer that the Savior was an introvert!) This generation and the one before it have bought into the thesis that the world's adoration will produce the joy we so deeply crave. It won't and it cannot. That joy can only come from the things that won't go on my Master Card or appear on TMZ- family, friends, fellowship with the Lord. I think it would be so difficult to be a personality of substance instead of a person of substance. But there's no shortage of those of us willing to audition for the role. 

Applicable quote of the day, # 1:
“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”
Elvis Presley

Applicable quote of the day, # 2:
“A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”
Steve Martin

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Don't Call Us/ We'll Call You

 

Don't Call Us/ We'll Call You

Some people hate being called for jury duty, but praise the Lord, not everyone! This is from May 7, 2014.

It was our Mom's favorite Bible verse to quote to me:
"Many are called but few are chosen." I'm not sure why she quoted these words of Jesus, taken from Matthew 22:14, so often to me but it stuck. I thought about it again today as I was summoned for the fifth time to jury duty here in Houston. I would guess there were between fifty and sixty of us in the pool as we gathered in a Justice of the Peace courtroom for Precinct 7. But just as a pool needs water to make it a pool, so a jury needs a case to make it a jury. After waiting about twenty minutes past the appointed arrival time of 1:00 PM, the JP, a very nice lady, came out and explained why we would not be sitting in judgment today. At 8:30 this morning, the county had 146 cases lined up for hearing but 4 1/2 hours later, all had been settled and not one person charged with a crime had requested a jury trial so we were dismissed. They say the wheels of justice grind slowly- not today.

I wouldn't classify this two hour episode of my life a waste of time. I was especially blessed today with the assistance of my awesome teacher's aide, Megan Hill, as I prepared to be absent! It was test day in Bible 1 so two of my afternoon classes had to be covered by subs, Coach Okwuono and Coach Arguello, respectively. I was a little concerned about my 7th period ESL class as there are often definition questions but by all accounts, it went just fine! (Kind of hurts my feelings that they survived without me!) 

But there was another reason this experience in citizenship was worthwhile. As I walked into the government building, I arrived at the same time as an older gentleman. Neither of us were quite sure where to go but  we figured it out and walked up the stairs together a half hour early. We were immediately ushered into the assembly room and sat together and I found out a great deal about him. He, like me, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of the borough. He met his wife of forty years in Acapulco when his cousin asked this girl he met to  lunch and dragged Jay along where he met the girl's friend and they got married seven months later. They have two daughters, one a speech pathologist in L.A. and the other a neurosurgeon at Johns-Hopkins. He told me how the younger of his two girls had a mistake on her passport with the date of birth being the same as the date of issue, causing confusion in a European vacation. His wife had been a teacher in the public schools in Houston and had retired several years back. Jay had worked for the US Government in Customs before it was taken over by, I believe, Homeland Security after the 9-11 attacks. Now he volunteers as a shop teacher in a summer program in Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston. Jay told me he had been called eight times before for jury duty but never seated, which he thinks was at least partly based on his government position. After our dismissal, we walked out to the parking lot together and shook hands. We actually live fairly close to each other in Houston-terms but I doubt we will ever cross paths again. If you can get to know someone waiting for jury duty, then I feel I got to know Jay.....except I never caught his last name.

Still, Jay said something I think will stick with me because his perspective is so different from mine. As we talked about our histories with juries, he made a statement which I could never utter, at least at this stage of my life. Jay told me, "I wish I could get selected for the jury on a really long trial." He's retired, he finds the topic of legal cases fascinating, and I think he must be dealing with boredom. But for me, at this time of year, being selected for even a two day trial could prove disastrous. I have one more section to cover in Bible, finals to review for, grading decisions that can only be made by me, let alone the few days I have left with my basketball team whom I dearly love. Jay and I have the same amount of time but we don't have the same amount of time. I feel like I have about 120 kids depending on me every day and while substitutes are very much needed and sometimes life savers, I would almost panic to leave my year's work in the hands of someone who is not emotionally invested in what we have done. In that case, I doubt I could concentrate as I should to be the kind of juror our legal system requires to function fairly. As we all know, Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3 speaks of the different times of our existence. I cannot perceive being where Jay is right now in his life but I bet he understands exactly where I am. I remind myself that Paul taught that a believer's citizenship is in heaven. That's a blessing- no jury duty up there! Also, no $6 stipend for just showing up but we can't have everything!

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Here Come Those (Green) Tears Again

 

Here Come Those (Green) Tears Again

This has only happened once as told in my entry on April 11, 2018.
In recent months, I've developed some blurriness in my left eye. Everyone's eyesight declines some with aging, as least as far as I know. In 2002, I had LASIK surgery and my extreme nearsighted since very early childhood immediately became 20-20. No more glasses/no more contacts! It really was life changing! But since Christmas, I've noticed some defects in the middle of the field of vision with the aforementioned left eye including straight lines developing a bend. I'm no fool so I turned to the  Internet for  medical advice. My symptoms didn't fit the symptoms of glaucoma, which Mom had, or a detached retina, even though my retina suffered childhood damage. With the help of Jean Adams, our WCS financial wizard and knower of all things insurance related, I was able to get an appointment with an ophthalmologist nearby with a good reputation this past Saturday morning at 8:15. I was the first one to the doctor's office!

After wading through the paperwork and the pre-exam exam from a wonderful staff, I met the doctor. It was mostly good news. My right eye is 20-25 and my left is 20-60. He said my eyes work well together as my right eye is far sighted and my left is near sighted with my better eye doing most of the work. We talked about the retinal scarring I had and while it's there, he didn't think it's getting worse. The doctor advised a test which would give a more precise reading of the retina situation. It involved injecting dye into my veins (YIKES!) and then taking a series of pictures of each eye. I hate needles but I love my vision, so OK! It was amazing to look at the photographs within my eye. The doctor walked me through the computer enhancements and explained everything. He recommended that I come in for a checkup in six months just to get an update but for now, I'm good to go. I can live with that!

As the nurse was fixing to inject my vein with the dye, she gave me a warning although not a very scary one. She told me that it would temporarily turn my urine bright orange. I kind of took that with a grain of salt but sure enough, it was like Orange Crush! As the day wore on, the Orange Crush turned the color of antifreeze- I'm sure you get the picture. I wasn't sure how much dye entered my bloodstream but I was surprised how long it lasted. But then something very weird happened. I was driving down Fondren Avenue,  about two blocks from my apartment, when my left eye started watering. I looked in my rear-view mirror and there were green tears rolling down my cheek!! I'm sure it was simply the remainder of the dye leaving my body but for a couple of minutes, I felt like The Hulk! It didn't happen again. One of my students asked why I didn't take a picture and I told them I didn't have my camera with me. She asked, "Why didn't you use your phone?????" If you know me, that wasn't a logical question!

I'm not sure why I was tickled with the green tears. Maybe because it was just so different than anything I've never seen. Helps as well that there was no sadness involved, just the byproduct of having my eyes dilated six hours previously. Maybe it was just the relief of knowing I'm not going blind in the immediate future! From the beginning of time, tears have been tied into  human emotion but mine were not of that nature. The tears of Jesus were. He wept over Jerusalem and He wept upon the death of His friend, Lazarus. In Hebrews 5:7, we're told, 
"During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission."
Why did the Son of Man/Son of God shed tears? For Lazarus, for His people, and for you and me. He cried for me; that's so hard to grasp. My tears four days ago were essentially meaningless, an act of biological cleansing. Praise God His tears had the deepest meaning, the significance that I take for granted. I should cry tears of joy daily for the ones that wet His face for me. Those kind don't require an injection.

For my former FCS students:
Coach Hawley's four favorite songs about tears:
1. Lonely Teardrops- Jackie Wilson
2. Tears Of A Clown- Smokey Robinson And The Miracles
3. Tears On My Pillow- Little Anthony And The Imperials
4. 96 Tears- ? And The Mysterians

Applicable quote of the day:

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.     

Washington Irving

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

V Is For .............

 

V Is For .............

Google changed my life and my teaching. The following story, from April 10, 2007, explores the roots of my love!

What did we do before Google? When I wrote my book several years ago, I was not computer savvy. Besides writing out the text in ink on legal pads, I had to spend considerable time at the nearby public library looking up quotes and finding information. Not anymore! With a click of a mouse, the world is at my disposal...and everyone's disposal. To sell my book, I have a website, www.hawleybooks.com. There is a link in conjunction with my site that I check every morning. This site gives me the details and statistics of who is visiting and hopefully purchasing a copy of this undiscovered best seller. For example, it told me when I got out of bed that there were seventy-nine hits yesterday. It also breaks down the hours of the day which are the busiest and what pages are opened the most. I can compare this month to other months and find out where the interest is coming from. One section is the most intriguing to me; Search Keyphrases (Top 10). This listing details words typed into search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, which lead to people going to my website. Most are what you would expect: my name, the name of my book, the name of my school, Honduras (where I go on yearly mission trips), etc. The latest phrase which led to my website door, though, baffles me.Valium.The prescription drug, at first prescribed to treat epilepsy but more commonly recognized as a relaxation medication, apparently has something in common with my website. I can't fathom what it is. The word is not mentioned on the site or even in the book. There is scant passing mention in the book of drugs, period. But somehow, there is a connection between Valium and Steve Hawley. I may need some help here.

Too bad they didn't have Google back in Jesus' day. He accused the religious leaders of combing the word of God to find out about the Messiah but were blindly overlooking the truth:
"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me;" John 5:39 (NASB)
The revealed word of God was readily available to them. Maybe with a search engine, they could have focused their hunt more effectively. What were they associating the Messiah with? Certainly not what was right in front of their eyes. I got linked with Valium by the Internet, a most inaccurate connection in my drug-free book. Jesus was linked to sinners, a designation he happily accepted but which would lead men to search in another direction. Sinners and saviors don't go together. Neither do basketball coaches and Valium...... at least in this case.


Applicable quote of the day:
"Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant."
Mitchell Kapor

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

On Death And Disaster

 

On Death And Disaster

The news hasn't been good lately, has it? Maybe the unrelenting news cycles exaggerate the effect but it is unnerving to the kids in my classes. This is from May 6, 2007.

We had a record when I was a child, a collection of great moments in radio history. Mostly, it was classic programs but there was also a section on historic news broadcasts. I only remember one. Seventy years ago today, the Hindenburg, a state of the art German dirigible, exploded as it prepared to dock in New Jersey. Cameras were rolling as was the radio play-by-play of Herb Morrison. I still recall his horrified cry from the record; "It burst into flames!" Morrison kept broadcasting as the largest aircraft ever constructed was incinerated in a minute, ending the lives of thirty-six passengers and spectators. Morrison's haunting wail of, "Oh, the humanity!" could be a synopsis of the human condition. 

In recent weeks, there have been reminders that little has changed in the seven decades since the pride of the Nazi air fleet was destroyed. In March, the Bluffton College baseball team was decimated in a spring break bus accident while driving through Atlanta. Three weeks back saw the rampage on the campus at Virginia Tech. Two nights ago, a mammoth tornado obliterated the village of Greensburg, Kansas, killing nine and flattening 95% of the town. It makes you nervous just to turn the television or computer on. What next?

And yet, it isn't new. In Luke 13, Jesus was confronted by the news that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had savagely mixed the blood of some of Jesus' fellow Galileans with their animal sacrifices. Maybe those that brought it up were trying to dissuade the Messiah from going to Jerusalem where Pilate was ruling or perhaps they were trying to get Jesus to publicly bash the barbaric Roman. Jesus did neither. He made no political statement and he was not dissuaded from his ultimate fate which was linked to the main city of Israel. What he did was speak of the condition of men's souls.
"Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13:2,3)
Jesus then introduced the tragedy in Jerusalem where eighteen Israelites lost their lives when a tower at Siloam collapsed and fell on them. He repeated his you too will perish warning verbatim as he discussed what the crowd probably considered an Act Of God. His listeners were disturbed about attacks and calamities to the body while the Savior focused on the condition of the soul. The only solution was repentance. That hasn't changed. Horrific catastrophes have been unfolding since the clock began ticking. Good people and bad people have suffered alike in seemingly random assaults on God's favorite part of creation. The body dies; the only question is when. With no expiration date, the soul is in it for the long haul. We need to have ours ready. There is no guarantee of tomorrow. The next disaster is right around the corner.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Only after disaster can we be resurrected."
Chuck Palahniuk

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1