From May 28, 2007
Memorial Day

A day for remembrance of those who have gone.  Behind us, the long chain of our ancestors stretches, link by link, into the fog of forgetfulness.  It goes from me to my parents, to their parents, and to their parents.  There my memory chain fades away.  At the age of four, I knew my great-great-grandmother and loved her tiny person, a true “granny” with gray hair in a bun, and print dresses and aprons and round lace Peter Pan collars.  For good or for ill - mostly good - I was so fortunate, I knew them all.

And now the chain goes forward from me to my children, to my grandchildren, to my great-grandchildren, into the future, which are also in the mists, which I know not  Six generations in my chain, from about 1860 to 2007, roughly 150 years so far, maybe 170, if I live out my life goal.  

The chain is there in catenary curves from one to another, as long as our memories hold the links .. “The depth of the future is a function of the depths of the past.”  [REF: Margaret Mead, 2/5/65]

“Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.  ‘Be still,’ they say.  ‘Watch and listen.  You are the result of the love of thousands.’”

[REF:  “The Mankind Project”]

From March 6, 2007
The Egg Man

[REF: from “True Success” by Tom Norris, p. 243]

“When I was at Yale, …. I was introduced to a very elderly man … Bob Calhoun.  [It would be easy] to misjudge this old gentleman.  When he retired from his post as an internationally renowned professor of Historical Theology at Yale, he began to raise chickens and became the egg man for some of his former colleagues.  Once a week he would bring eggs to their houses, often just open the door, let himself in, deposit the eggs in the refrigerator, and leave without a word.

One day, a well-known Yale theologian was entertaining one of the most famous intellectuals famous Europe, … Rudolf Bultman.  The two men were at the kitchen table arguing vigorously over a point of interpretation concerning a Greek text.  Old Mr. Calhoun, dressed in farmer’s overalls, opened the back door, padded across the kitchen floor with nod, and quietly put his basket of eggs in the refrigerator.  He walked across the room, and hesitated a moment before going out the door.  At a pause in the lively argument, he quoted from memory the disputed passage in Greek, gave his own brief interpretation, and walked out the door.

The great professor Bultman looked stunned.  He turned to his host and said, ‘Public education in America must be amazing!’”