Lessons From The Whippoorwill

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Photo by Judd Patterson.

We had a gift waiting for us six months after we built our home. I’m so glad I discovered it serendipitously.  To have known about the magnetic call of our back yard whippoorwill before the bird revealed itself would have been less magical and made the first time we heard the sound expected.  The way our whippoorwill revealed itself, however, was to become the difference in an evening chorus of tree frogs and lingering day songs from the birds who were almost done for the evening.

When the human brains register a “difference,” the first notion is to test the new feedback out.  “Did you hear that?” I asked Mick as we worked in the last hint of light, raking up twigs in our back yard?

“What? No, I didn’t hear anything,” he replied.

I heard it again, ever so slightly more pronounced.  “THAT,” I said.  “That sound.  It’s a bird call I’ve not heard before.”

When rakes stop scratching and attention is completely directed toward the collection of incoming sounds, then the world changes.  Here is exactly the sound we heard together after pausing that evening:

And, we are blessed to hear it every Spring around this time.  All told, I’ve enjoyed eight years on our back porch listening to the call of the whippoorwill end the day.  He comes into auditory range when it reaches the bottom of our hill around the creek.  The beautiful sound grows more pronounced as the bird gradually moves along the treeline up the hill, passes across our back yard, and then continues on its path until it is out of range for our ears as it crests the top of the hill.

The process, in some ways, is like a one-hour long doppler effect.  Barely there, and heard at different wavelengths than when in immediate proximity, then changing again as it goes away.  The sound is beautiful, but the bird is by and large elusive.  It stops singing if you approach the area where it rests.  After all, WE are not the mate it is looking for.

But when she responds, and they mate somewhere outside the range of our eyes or ears, the result is one or two eggs that will eventually hatch into more birds with hauntingly beautiful voices.  The sound is so powerful that some Native American lore states that when people die, the whippoorwill catches the soul as it leaves their body.  Continue reading Lessons From The Whippoorwill

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My Soccer Mom Journey: Defeat Doesn’t Preclude Victory

I have a confession.

It bothers me that my daughter isn’t a stellar soccer player.

Further, it bothers me that it bothers me that my daughter isn’t a stellar soccer player.

I’ll give you a minute to process those two statements.

When I delivered a beautiful baby girl almost eight years ago, I had a vision for what I wanted for her life. I prayed for health, happiness, and spiritual wisdom (hers and ours). I definitely didn’t have any strong desire for my daughter to play http___www.bigleaguekickball.com_category_press_ soma buy cheap sports. Why? Because I didn’t play sports. In fact, I have no hand-eye coordination (or foot-eye coordination, for that matter) and early on I found my sweet spot in more creative endeavors and never looked back.

My husband, on the other hand, played every sport under the sun. To him, there was no doubt our little girl would be a natural athlete. Of course, the decision about what activities she wanted to pursue wasn’t up to us, so we waited for her to develop her own interests. Now, she really enjoys dance, has played one season of basketball, and excels in school. We are so very proud of her accomplishments.

And then there’s soccer.

Frankly, soccer stresses me out. The first year she played would have been comical if her teammates weren’t already so skilled. I expected to watch five-year-olds twirling on the soccer field, but instead I spent the entire year watching intense games while pretending her lackadaisical approach didn’t bother me. But it did. She stood around, played with her hair, approached the ball only when the Mars and Jupiter aligned, and looked forward to the post-game snacks far more than the actual games. I was relieved when the season came to an end and I asked her if she wanted to keep playing. I expected her to acknowledge that soccer might not be “her thing” and I secretly hoped she would want to move on to something else.

She wanted to keep playing. She loved soccer.

My daughter, Bailey, squinting into the sun after a game

The second year was a little better and she started to play with a sense of purpose. She made her first goal and I may or may not have shed a tear. The upward trajectory was short-lived, however, and she began to regress. My husband and I were frustrated and threw around phrases about “not applying yourself” and others we heard from our parents and vowed never to utter to our own children. At the end of the season, I asked her if she wanted to keep playing. Again, I secretly hoped she would ask to try something else instead.

And again she wanted to keep playing. She loved soccer.

So here we are nearing the end of her third full year of soccer. Most people say, “it’s only a game” but it’s also very difficult to watch your child struggle at said game. I hate watching her try so hard and still completely miss the ball or never get the ball at all. I hate listening to the exasperation in her coach’s voice when he addresses her during the games. I hate listening to the exasperation in my own voice, and that of my husband’s, when we call out to her from the sidelines. And I hate not knowing how I’m supposed to handle the post-game talk. If I don’t address her performance at all, I feel like I’m doing her a disservice. If I come down hard on her, I’m not adhering to the philosophy that youth sports are supposed to be fun.

Continue reading My Soccer Mom Journey: Defeat Doesn’t Preclude Victory

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On the Horizon: Searching for Interns

I’ve worked with many interns over the years and most of them have been good students and willing to learn whatever we put in front of them. An internship is designed to help students get real world experience. It definitely gives them an advantage over someone who hasn’t been able to get that experience especially when applying for jobs which in this economy are at a premium.

I know when we hire someone, we are always looking for whatever experience they have to help us know what kind of an employee they will be. Can they get the job done? Do they know what they are doing? At least with an internship, you know they’ve been exposed to the realities of the job and more than likely do have at least some experience in doing the job.

But what about someone who is intellectually or developmentally disabled? Who hires them? Who gives them that real world experience so they can have a job and be able to be independent just like the rest of us? In this week’s video blog, I’ll introduce you to a couple of young men who despite their disabilities, are learning through internships about real life work experience and discovering the satisfaction of a job well done.
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My Little Victory Garden: Brilliant Ideas Gone Bad

This past week has been strange for me.  This past Monday was my last day at Oklahoma State University.  And, although I’ve only worked there eight years, I also attended grad school there for my master’s degree, and again for my doctoral degree.  I’ve spent more time at OSU, therefore, than in any one of the homes Mick and I have owned.  And so leaving there was a bittersweet event.

My garden, however, was a constant in my life and very therapeutic for me during this time.  I returned to it every day and the growth of the plants, the production of new vegetables and the continued needs it required of me was familiar among the change…and that is a good, good thing.

I’m so grateful for the jumbled mass of English peas that are now providing sweet and tender early morsels for our salads.  I pick them and then put them in my pockets to carry back to the kitchen, but sometimes they don’t make it to the house.  Rather, they leap into my mouth, as if possessed by an uncanny lifeforce and are eaten raw, whole and rapidly.

This week has also been about “fails,” however.  I made a little video of my garden to give you a tour, and now cannot figure out how to get the video file from my Android phone to my new Macbook Air.  Fail score = +1.  I purchased some beautiful Stilwell strawberries last week from the Urban Agrarian and made strawberry-balsamic-black pepper preserves.  The taste is delightful, but the pectin level was too low, or I didn’t cook them down enough.  Either way, I have a batch of delicious tasting, runny preserves on my hands.  Fail score = +1/2.

And, I had to thin all my cabbage plants so I got this GREAT idea to make stuffed cabbage rolls with the big green leaves.  What I didn’t realize is that cabbage outer leaves are much tougher than the main portions of cabbage heads, so although I cooked them for 45 minutes, they were still tough when I pulled them out of the oven.  Fail score = +2 (for all the time and work I put into them).  Total fails this week?  At least +3.5 points worth.  Where do I get the point values?  From thin air, just like I get some of my great cooking ideas…and some of my really, really bad cooking ideas.

These brilliant ideas gone good OR bad usually start with these three questions:

1. What does my garden have to offer this week?

2. What do I have in my freezer that needs to be used?

3. What does the local farmer’s market have in season to help the situation?

The total sum of these answers always gets me my ideas for weekly food to feed my family.  But not always are those ideas as brilliant as they seem in my head when they are born.

Therefore, this post is dedicated to all the garden fails of the world.  I’m going to show you what I loved about my cabbage roll dish, and what I simply couldn’t endorse.  Here we go: Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Brilliant Ideas Gone Bad

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My Addiction – Pride

buying soma Don’t run with scissors. Play nice. Don’t throw rocks. Eat your vegetables.  Don’t talk back! Sin was simple back in kindergarten, and so was expiation of that sin. Break a rule, you get a whoopin’. Very simple.

By my teenage years we added Don’t Do Drugs. Of course back then, in the Sixties, only the hippies and un-American types did drugs . . .or so I was told.

http___www.bigleaguekickball.com_about_ Soma no prescription next day delivery Becoming a “Church People”

I ran across many kinds of church people as I grew older. Many had an enhanced list of things that were bad — and things that were also bad.  This was not ALL church people, but a lot of church people.  I remember when I first learned that http___www.bigleaguekickball.com_about_ Soma fedex shipping, Soma shipped c.o.d. dancing was a no-no and that things as playing cards, gambling, movies, rock music, and beer greatly displeased God. This was all very disconcerting because at age 18 I liked all that stuff – a lot!

After graduating from college I was swooped up by the grace and mercy of God. I decided that I needed to become one of those church people. In the process, I started to try to differentiate between church offenses, cultural taboos, morals, preferences, bad habits, social gaffs, and what God actually views as SIN. It can get confusing.

I read my Bible daily. I studied the Scriptures and prayed for insight. Mostly, I devoured the words of Jesus Christ. The beauty of God’s love and the antidote for sin was simple. A theme emerges in Scripture, Christ died for our sins, and arose from the dead for that we might have life – FREEDOM.

Meanwhile I sat in Sunday School classes, listened to sermons and at first grew my own long list of what I call church people sins. Continue reading My Addiction – Pride

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Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.