Gleaning Facebook: Three Shares Today

 

Gleaning Facebook: Hillary Clinton on Captain Humayun Khan

I save this here to remind myself of how much I admire Secretary Clinton, and why I proudly support her historic campaign for President.

 

Gleaning Facebook: Trinity Expands Its Campus

 This is a great day for our congregation as we close on our new facilities.

It is tempered with a bit of sadness that one of Rome's great historic churches, Fifth Avenue Baptist, has had to downsize as newer congregations in the suburbs have absorbed the younger folks whose families once worshiped there.

But these facilities will give Trinity much increased space for our education programs, our youth program, and other ministries, as well as much improved parking. If you would like to be a part of a growing dynamic Christian community, I hope you will come to visit Trinity.

During this Holy Week worship with us

• Today, Maundy Thursday at 6:30 pm

Living Last Supper - 5:00-6:30

• Tomorrow, Good Friday at 6:30 pm

Living Last Supper - 5:00-6:30

• Sunday, ecumenical Sunrise service on the Town Green at 7:15 am

Easter celebration at 8:30 am, 9:45 am, 11 am, and 11:11 am

Comments:

Rita Lawler

What is the plan?

Terrell Shaw As I understand it: Trinity will use much of the education bldg immediately and the parking and out buildings. 5th Ave will continue to use the sanctuary and pastor/secretary office space for a while till they have found new space.

Rita Lawler so good that churches can work together to help each other financially and in other ways. Will beautiful sanctuary at 5th also eventually be used by Trinity?

Terrell Shaw We will continue to use our present sanctuary for most services, but we will use the sanctuary on 5th Avenue as well after that congregation moves.

George Barton I was organist there for a while after I got out of the Army, good people.

Gleaning Facebook: Big Fibbers Planning

 Our storytelling guild will meet next Monday to debrief from the 2016 festival and begin to plan future festivals. Please give your two-cents worth!

• who should be our headliner for 2017? 2018? 2019?

Bill Harley, Adam Booth, Ed Stivender, Carmen Deedy, Donald Davis, Kim Weitkamp, Bil Lepp, Andy Irwin, Barbara McBride Smith, ??????

• should we try to expand to multiple major tellers?

• what sponsors could we attract?

• what groups could we ally with?

• how can we expand our children's program?

• could we televise or broadcast the contests?

• should we institute auditions now that we have a large pool of tellers?

• should we adopt a more complete festival schedule with local/regional olios added?

What do you think we should talk about?

Gleaning Facebook: It's My Birthday!

Vivian Davis surprised me on my birthday with LOTS of cupcakes...

...We shared them with two kindergarten classes and still had a bunch left over. Thanks, Vivian!

Gleaning Facebook: Big Fibbers

From Tony Pope:

At Big Fibbers finale. I like this one the best!

 

Howard Smith

Are you at some Republican rally.... just guessing by the signs

Terrell

Maybe we could sell our posters to the Trump campaign?

Howard

And, invite one of his spokespeople to participate in the professional category next year.

Gleaning Facebook: For our sisters, mothers, wives, daughters...

I have loved a mother, five sisters, a wife, two daughters, many nieces and aunts, two grandmothers and hundreds of female students and friends. Shame on anyone who supports this shallow, immoral, unethical, dishonest, racist, sexist, fascist demagogue for President of our nation.

I loathe Ted Cruz's, Marco Rubio's, Mitt Romney's, John Kasich's politics, but I understand and respect friends who support those guys anyway. But I can not respect the views of a person who knows who Donald Trump is and still supports him. That has NOTHING to do with politics. Trump is unqualified by character to be elected to any office. It is not that his politics are loathsome, but that his character is loathsome.

If you are a Republican voter in Ohio, please vote for Kasich.

If you are a Republican voter in Florida, please vote for Rubio.

If you are a Republican voter in another state, please vote for anybody but Trump.

As for my Democratic friends, please vote. We can proudly support either of our candidates. Hillary Clinton is my choice, but Bernie's a good guy too.

Gleaning Facebook: %$#^%$ Bradford Pears

 The invasive Bradford pears are everywhere. I use those at Arrowhead to teach about seed dispersal throwing a few jabs at the ^%#^% invasives. I remember during the Blizzard of '93 a great many of the Bradford (or Callary) Pear trees were split apart by the weight of the snow. And they are smelly.

This is the time of year when I am reminded that callery pears (Pyrus calleryana) are an invasive plant in the southeastern US. For most of the year the pears are not noticeable from a distance and my memory slips. Come spring, however, their stinky white blooms open up earlier than almost any native tree (red maples have them beat), revealing every nook and cranny that they have managed to occupy. (Click the picture to read the story.)

Gleaning Facebook: Putting a Little Money Where My Mouth Is

 I just made another very small donation toward a victory for Hillary Clinton. She is an outstanding American, a brilliant mind, a strong and kind heart, an experienced diplomat, an accomplished executive, and a proven progressive. I believe she will be an outstanding president.

And I am far from alone. More Americans have voted for Hillary than any other candidate of either party so far in the primaries and caucuses of 2016.

CeCe Baker She's wonderful.

Larry Madden I morn for you my friend...

Terrell Shaw I think my party represents morning in America. I am in a very happy place Larry. I have in my party two candidates who are admirable, principled, well-versed in the issues, brilliant, and whom I can support unreservedly for their economic policies, diplomatic policies, education policies, human rights policies, and environmental policies.
If there is mourning appropriate, it is for a formerly great Republican party imploding with its two candidates a fascist and a right-wing extremist/obstructionist.

Gleaning Facebook: Big Fibbers Poster 2016

This is the slightly updated version. A couple of typos have been changed and some unnecessary stuff removed, so share this one. The Workshop on Saturday will last two & a half hours from 9 AM till 11:30 AM. I had the time wrong on the last version. I'm not gonna make Andy be there at 8 AM after a very long Friday!

If you haven't heard Andy, let me tell you: You're in for some hilarity!

Lanette Adams Greene

He is so hilarious! I have heard him many times, and he never fails to tickle me. Not a second of down time when he is on stage.

Terrell Shaw
You are right about that Lanette!

Gleaning Facebook: Another Angle on Trinity UMC

The view outside of Rev. Joe Palmer's window this morning...what a beautiful day we have had today! Our sanctuary (and steeple) was built in 1886.

 

Gleaning Facebook: Opening Night

 Y'all come!

Courtney will amaze you with her pre-teen poise and humor. And then Tracy's winning tale from a year ago will bewilder you before tying everything up quite neatly. I hope you'll enjoy our trek together through a blizzard during my brief part of the program. And Andy will have us all rolling in the aisles on Opening Night.

Warren Buffett on Hillary Clinton

"In Secretary Clinton, we have a woman...with an incredible devotion to making sure that the people who want to work find that America works for them. And that in a nutshell is why I'm delighted that she is going to be the next President of the United States." —Warren Buffett

Gleaning Facebook: My Stars at the County Office

Once a month I visit the Floyd County Schools office in Riverside to hand in my time-sheet. I always see one of my former students right there on the door (I’m not sure which is Anna and which is Claire, though.) ....
------------
Adair Alis
I can't believe they are old enough to graduate
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.... But today when I went by this week there was Dylan on the wall — a self-portrait. Your son is pretty doggone impressive, Melissa McLaughlin.

 

Gleaning Facebook: King Snake Vs. Copperhead

 This Copperhead picked the wrong fellow to mess with. This black King Snake is immune to pit-viper venom. After squeezing the life out of Coppy he's swallowing him whole. Yum. Look at those Hershey's Kisses along the side of the Copperhead.

As I ask my schoolkids: please don't be mean to an animal just because he happens to have been born a snake. He can't help being a snake.

Sherrill Corntassel Wise words. Wish more people would take that same approach.

Larry Madden Over the many years and exposure to many, many snakes I have never purposefully killed a snake. They have always generously shared their living room with me as I rudely stumbled through. Just one of the many wild animals that make up our wonderful natural world!

A Job I Love

         It was not a stellar beginning. I never intended to be a teacher.

Mumps had put me in the college clinic the last two weeks of my senior year. I was quarantined and took my final exams in bed, completing my bachelor degree with majors in history and English and absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do the following year. 

One afternoon a good friend showed up at the door to the clinic with an application to the Peace Corps, which I had requested, but also a Teacher Corps application. I had never heard of the Teacher Corps. This federal program offered a master’s degree in education, he said, in exchange for spending two years teaching, taking classes at Marshall University, and doing community service in the hills of West Virginia. It sounded like a hoot to me, and a good way to spend my time while I searched for a vocation. So I filled out the application and sent it in. I wonder if I have ever licked a more consequential postage stamp in my life.

So a few weeks later I drove my brand new Opel Kadette to Huntington, West Virginia as a freshly minted National Teacher Corps Intern. After a summer of graduate classes and NTC training and orientation, I was placed in a small school on the banks of the Kanawha River where the mines had played out and the residents were mostly poor. I found myself drawn to the most desperate children: "Mike" whose closest brother had just been killed in an accident. "Leon" whose academic struggles required some after-school tutoring. His Mom would serve me supper in exchange for an hour of tutoring. "Paul" who lived in a one-room unpainted shack with a yard full of stove wood and rusting cars, and a magnificent fifty mile million-dollar view across the mountains. And tough "Jake", who turned out to have the same uncertainties and needs as the little guys, and he became a real leader in the boy’s club I organized in the community.  That was after I broke my resolution not to use corporal punishment and used the "Black Dragon" paddle on Jake's backside.

The second year the Teacher Corps expanded to a more remote site and I volunteered to join that group. Soon I was team teaching in a mountain school with only 56 children. My primary responsibilities were those six sixth-graders, but I also taught social studies to almost a dozen fifth-graders, and handled the physical education for the whole school. The cows grazing just outside the classroom windows could be a distraction. At lunch I could eat in the school cafeteria or I could take a dirt trail from the playground to the general store down the hill and buy a wedge hoop cheese and some crackers. When it rained hard the creeks were too deep at the fords for the bus to run and only half the students could make it to school. Once again I did some tutoring, this time for a homebound little girl who was battling leukemia.

I discovered over the course of those two years that I love working with children, had a talent for teaching, and that it was indeed a good way to pass the time until I could find my true calling. 

So when a principal, Judson Frost, called me up to offer a job in Rome, Georgia, I jumped at the chance and arrived at McHenry Elementary with a new degree, a new apartment, a new bride, and two-thirds of a classroom filled with 25 students depending almost entirely on Terrell Shaw for their fifth grade education. The other third of the classroom had been partitioned off for the reading teacher, who must have been frequently frustrated by the  interruptions from my noisy classroom by the total lack of sound insulation. Nor was there any other kind of insulation: we sweltered in August and, even though there was ice on the windows in January, because ours was first on the steam heat system, and to warm the last classroom ours had to continue to swelter.

When Pepperell Junior High took our assistant principal and our seventh and eighth grades, Mr. Frost called me into the office and offered me the post of assistant. I was surprised. I said I'd never considered getting into administration and asked what the job would entail."Well," he replied, "you receive a supplement of $400 for the year." That sounded good to me. Then he got to the nitty gritty. "You'll need to watch the late bus every day." Not a great duty. "And if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could lead the prayer at PTO meetings." Well, I'm a Methodist preacher's kid. I could handle that. And $400 is $400. I accepted.
          I soon learned that Judson had neglected to tell me a few things:
• that every time the principal leaves the campus a child breaks a bone, or a parent gets upset with a teacher, or some unprecedented matter of discipline erupts.
• that the principal often leaves campus for meetings.
• that the principal takes a one week leave of absence each spring.
• and, most neglectfully, that he would die suddenly during the fourth year.

I spent six years teaching at McHenry, four of those as the teaching assistant principal. Add one year teaching sixth grade at Pepperell and eleven years roaming from school to school as a teacher of the gifted, and I had nineteen years in a profession that was not yet my calling. I liked teaching. At McHenry I had led a county wide study of teachers’ suggestions for improving the system. I was chosen as the school's Teacher of the Year. As a gifted teacher I had helped plan Sea Day at Floyd College, Quiz Bowl at Berry College, study trips to Savannah, Anniston, Huntsville, the World’s Fair, and Washington D.C. As a teacher of the gifted I was one of the first in our county to use computers regularly. 

With a background in writing and new-found skills with computers, I decided to try my hand at desktop publishing. My wife and I founded a local interest magazine and soon decided that we needed to give it full time, so I finally left teaching after nineteen years for my “real” calling. I spent eleven years with my struggling business, enjoying parts of it, but finally realizing that I missed the daily contact with children, hearing their laughs at the antics of the Foolish Frog (part of my storytelling repertoire), seeing pre-teen eyes light up at smelling a crushed wild ginger leaf, hearing the wows when I hold up a Lion’s Paw shell at the climactic moment in Robb White’s wonderful book, watching parents’ cameras flash at the end-of-year honors program.

So in 1999, at the age of 53, I made a profound decision. I decided my calling is to teach. I was fortunate to be hired to teach fourth grade at Armuchee Elementary. What a grand fourteen years I had knowing I was where I wanted to be. At 60 I had so many projects going that were I able to retire right away, I wouldn’t. I wanted to see them through. I enjoyed teaching. But in 2013, after agonizing indecision, I took the plunge and retired. And at my retirement party I was approached about the part-time job that has become my dream retirement occupation -- storyteller/naturalist at Arrowhead Environmental Education Center.

Whatever success I have had comes from my sincere love of students, my enthusiastic approach to living and learning, and probably a little from the incorrigible show-out in me.

As a teacher, every August a crisp new agenda book awaited 180 new entries. A couple of dozen freshly scrubbed nine-year-olds passed by the eight-by-ten glossies of their predecessor stars hanging on the wall outside our classroom. Bright-eyed, ready for a new start, these were my new stars. I loved them already. I relished the opportunity to tell them the stories of our wonderful country and help them explore the wonders of our beautiful world. And I was determined to be true to them, to be the outstanding teacher I aspired to be. I was determined to help them discover the star within themselves and to help them make it shine. I was truly blessed for more than a total of three decades to have a job that I loved.
In the third year of this new chapter I pinch myself occasionally. Am I dreaming? I haven't graded a set of papers in three years. I have no bus duty or cafeteria duty. No parent conferences. No standardized tests. They pay me, not much but they pay me, to lead young children through gorgeous woods and fields and by wetlands and lakes and streams and tell the stories of our glorious Ridge and Valley flora and fauna. I'm a lucky man.