Gleaning Facebook: Special Music

 Our choir at Trinity Methodist will perform special music this morning, Palm Sunday, at all three services: 8:30, 9:45, and 11. Y'all come.

Gleaning Facebook: Big Fibbers 2013

Come and listen to fibs, whoppers, tall tales and plain out lies as people compete for the title of the Biggest Fibber at the 4th year of The Big Fibbers' Contest! Fun for all! If you ARE a fibber go to the FB page: The Big Fibbers' Contest and read the rules and send us a completed registration form. Deadline to sign up to fib is March 25th, 2013. No charge for fibbers, $5.00 for everyone else! For information email sevenhillstellers@gmail.com

 

PTSW: Beautiful Depths

I was struck yesterday, while listening to an NPR interview with a musician, by her declaration of love for sad songs. I can relate. I also count some sad songs among my favorites. And some sad poems. I thought of this one:

When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be 

When I have fears that I may cease to be
   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
   Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
   That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. 

- John Keats 

Now, I don't doubt that John Keats was feeling a bit down when he set out to write these lines. And given his premature death - only 25! - the poem voices a very legitimate concern. But I have to believe that by the time he reached the depths of that nothingness in the last line he was greatly buoyed by a swelling, even joyful, somethingness we'll call pride of accomplishment. Surely he felt happiness at having written so beautifully his despair.

Gleaning Facebook: Big Fibbers

From Debby Brown's Facebook:

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! It is time for the 4th annual BIG FIBBERS CONTEST!!! Here is a picture from last year..fibbers Joe McKenzie (left) listens as Terrell Shaw (center) thanks the audience for voting him the Biggest Fibber in Floyd County for 2012 after he was crowned with the giant whopper hat. Also pictured is Barbara Reeves and Donald Nix. All the whoppers were so entertaining they all could have won! This year we hope to have even more lies, tall tales, fibs and whoppers. The contest will be at the Rome Civic Center on April 1st (April Fool's Day, yall!) This year we will have judges to decide the winner, but we still want everyone to come out and hear these fantastic tales! You do not need to be a storyteller to tell your tale.. you just have to have a tale to tell! I will be putting more info up on a Big Fibbers FB page soon, so watch for it. All rules and information will be on that page, but if you would like to sign up, do let me know either on here or private message me. WE NEED YOU! There will be many lies but also much fun and shenanigans for all!

photo from Rome News Tribune

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Put Monday, April 1 (April Fools Day) on your calendar! Debbie Brown is organizing the Fourth Annual Big Fibbers Contest. I'll be there to defend my title as

Prime Prevaricator that I won at the 2012 event. Come with your wildest tale to challenge me, or just come listen to the tales. It's fun! Watch for more details...

A Ballad for My Mother

We celebrated my mother's 90th birthday with a party at our church a couple of weeks ago. After each of her seven children had participated in a program to honor her, she thanked everyone and led us in singing this song that she wrote about her own mother. So this week I'd like to share her song as our Poem to Start the Week. I think it's a good song. I would like to record it one of these days. A Ballad for My Motherwritten by Ruth Baird Shaw in 1983  to honor her mother, Ieula Ann Dick Baird. Author's Note: My mother lived to be nearly 89 years old and she had a philosophy of life as a Christian, not to worry about things that "could not be helped" and to take each day as a new beginning. . .  Verse 1 My mother grew old. . . had lines etched in her face    Worked hard all her life. . . with uncommon grace    She lived by the Bible. . . And I'd visit awhile    She taught me her secret. . . of life with a smile She said. .  .   Chorus      Today is the first day    Of the rest of your life.    Don't borrow trouble    With yesterday's strife.    Take time. . . smell the flowers    That's what makes life worth while    Then pick up each new day    And love and a smile!  Verse 2  Widowed while young. . . Mama worked in the mill    Washed on a scrub-board. . . Brought wood up a hill    She sang as she labored. . . to stay out of debt    And taught me this lesson. . . I'll never forget (Chorus)  Verse 3 One day I said, Mama,. . . Your life has been hard    You've buried two babies. . . Out in the church yard    You've known all the heartache of struggling for bread,    She smiled through her tears and these words she said: (Chorus)  Verse 4 Her old fashioned tea cakes. . . We ate the last crumb    Her old fashioned flowers. . . She had a green thumb.    She lived by the Bible. . . each day and each mile    She taught me her secret. . . of life with a smile!        (Chorus)

The Rev. Mr. Young Allen Bailey

Preacher Bailey

I suppose it may have been on my Dad’s first Sunday as pastor at Watkin’s Memorial Methodist Church in Ellijay Georgia that I met Preacher Bailey. You don’t forget meeting the Rev. Mr. Young Allen (Y.A.) Bailey for many reasons but most obviously because of his strange speech. 

I can perfectly mimic his speech  -- for short sentences. That’s about it. He spoke on inhalation rather than exhalation of air. It was a disorder he had developed long before, while serving that church in the forties, and I understood it had caused his early retirement. 

A short jolly man in his fifties, Preacher Bailey was married to a lovely and kind woman, Mary, a teacher, I think. They had lost a teenage son to appendicitis in the forties. Their home, if I remember correctly, was toward the end of a street that ran parallel with Dalton St. Just toward town from the Logan Funeral Home.

Preacher Bailey became a great friend of my father’s. I remember on one occasion driving with Daddy, Preacher Bailey, Al Bruce, and, I think, James Sanders?, to Kentucky for a pastors’ conference. I was a teen at the time and was appalled to have to share a hotel room in Somerset KY with a cacophony of snores emanating from four Methodist preachers.

Occasionally, Rev. Bailey would preach for my Dad at Watkins Memorial. His strange speech somehow enhanced his ability to maintain my attention.

As a member of the congregation he often, according to my memory anyway, would “rest his eyes” while listening to the sermon. I always suspected his brain was resting as well.

I believe I accompanied my Dad to a hospital in Atlanta when Rev. Bailey was sick in the late sixties after we had moved to Rome. 

I don’t know what brought this gentle and kind man to my mind last night, but being me, I typed his name into a search engine - Young Allen Bailey - and up popped his very familiar face, 45 years after his death. 

Do you have memories of Rev. Bailey or Mrs. Bailey you’d share in the comments?

PTSW: Sentimental Moment

Perhaps this poem by Brooklyn's Robert Herson will help my daughters understand me better. I know you are grown, but I also see those shining two- and ten- and sixteen-year-old eyes shining from your faces.

Sentimental Moment 

or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road

Don't fill up on bread  

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be

receding a bit, says

Did you really just say that to me?

What he doesn't know

is that when we're walking

together, when we get

to the curb

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand   

- by Robert Hershon

Gleaning Facebook: Heartbreak Again

How often will our hearts be broken at Downton Abbey?

Jennifer Kellogg
Twice this year, at least.

Carol Shaw Johnston
The actor that plays Matthew only signed up for 3 seasons - and this was the end of his three seasons.

Terrell Shaw
So the remaining daughters of Lord Grantham are both single again, as is Tom Branson, and now Rose is added to the mix... many available romantic plot-lines.

Jennifer Kellogg
And there's that odd storyline about Peter, the real heir of Downton ... or an impostor.

Barbara J. Gale
Disappointed...I liked Matthew...and Mary wasn't whining so much once they got together...

Laurie Craw
NO! But then I didn't like his choice of Mary to marry. Too shallow and scheming and selfish. Let this be a lesson.

Kendra L Harris
I am VERY disappointed with the folks at Downton tonight... I think Matthew's death was untimely, unkind and very poorly done. I knew something was "supposed to happen" but to let it happen in the last few seconds and have him die like he did...to let him die at all.. I just am disgusted. I cannot believe they first let Sybil die in the way that they did, and then for them to leave her sister basically in the same situation (sort of, as far as single new parent).. it's just ridiculous. Badly done, Downton.. Badly done.

Oh and for those who have not yet seen it, sorry for the spoiler. I am just upset.. 

George Barton
It's a soap, nobody would watch it if everyone stayed happy.

Terrell Shaw
I looks like the writers had to get rid of Matthew -- the actor was moving on. And in real life death is no respecter of position, class, honor, accomplishment, merit, or dramatic timing. Given the discussion this event has inspired on Facebook, the writers arranged this death about as well as possible for dramatic effect. Most of us can think of final conversations we would gladly rewrite to match, in loving eloquence and resolution, Matthew's last words with Mary. We all would envy a final curtain with so few unresolved conflicts.
And yes, George, I have often said that DA is just a high-class soap. And what about all of us - adamant American republicans - cheering for a bunch of British aristocrats. Isn't it amazing how involved we can become with fictional characters. I'm still grieving for Sybil.

Gleaning Facebook: Last Performance!

 Last chance to see "Hairspray" -- Sunday February 17, 2:30. at the Desoto Theater.

Tonight's performance was the best yet. Lillian was in full voice for the first time, she says. I thought she was great last weekend, but I knew she was struggling with hoarseness. I thought she was full voice Friday night. But tonight there was even more life and force to her performance than ever. That goes for the whole cast. They fed off a very big and lively audience... if it wasn't a sell-out it was close. Maybelle! Wow! Linc, Edna, Seaweed! Even Velma, who has a terrible cold, worked around it to give her usual wonderfully nasty performance. A great ensemble effort!

They'll pull out all the stops for the final show tomorrow afternoon. Y'all come!!

Bravo Hairspray cast.... one of the best community musical performances I've seen.

From James Willis...

Last weekend for an absolutely fantabulous show: Hairspray. The show rocks and the band is one of the tightest I have ever seen at RLT!

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Angela Flannigan McRee Loved it the second time, too! First class show!

Mary Nisbet Asbury Vocals were amazing!!!!

Marsha Yancey Atkins
Loved Friday night's performance,everyone was so good! 

Gleaning Facebook: Chuck Roszel

Much love to my sister Beth Shaw as she deals with the sudden loss of her husband Chuck. Chuck was a dentist, anesthesiologist, veteran of the Vietnam War, and a strongly principled person. He loved his wife and was a loving stepdad to my niece and nephew. Just Saturday he gave a beautiful tribute to my mother at her 90th Birthday party. And just this morning he was working at his dental clinic.

Several hours in an ICU waiting room remind one of the value of close family. I am so thankful for my siblings, my mom, my nieces and nephews, and my wonderful wife. 

Don Henderson
Condolences to your family.

Wanda Mulkey Dagraedt
So sorry for you loss.

Tracy S Lawler
Sending our deepest condolences to your families, Terrell.

Diane Johnson
SO SORRY FOR UR LOSS , PRAYING FOR UR FAMILIES !

Priscilla Flores
May he Rest in Peace. Bless your hearts.

Brian Barcomb
Condolences to your family

Ruth Baird Shaw
Thank you Terry for all your help and concern and for the beautifully written tribute.

Michael J. Sarver
I am very sorry to hear of your sisters loss. My condolences to Beth, her children, you and your family.

Cindy Hullender Bachman
So sorry for your loss.

Becky Majors Asbury
So sorry for your loss.

Mandy Wallace
We'll keep your family in our thoughts.

Andrew Ozzy Osborn
Sorry for your family's loss.

John Countryman
Sorry for your trouble, Terrell.

Monica Sheppard
So sorry for your loss, Terrell.

Mary Nisbet Asbury
:(((

Barbara J. Gale
So very sorry to hear about this. Keeping all of your family in our prayers.

Laurie Cook-Critchlow
So sorry for your loss

Morgan Abrams
So sorry to hear this. I'll be keeping you all in my prayers!

Tersi Bendiburg
Oh, how very sad, Terrell. You are all in my prayers.

Ruth Pinson
I'm so sorry. Praying for your family.

Linda Floyd Blackwell
Praying for your family.

Angie Shaw Bryant
I am so sorry to hear about your families loss. Please let Beth know that I am praying for her.

Robin Holt
Praying.

Rose McDonald Darby
So sorry, Terrell. We are praying for the family.

Freddie Ashley
Prayers and love to you and your family, Mr. Shaw.

Jessica Weaver-Stoll
So sorry for your family's loss. Thanks for sharing.

Margaret Oren
So sorry to hear this. My love to Beth.

Patricia McCluskey Mann
PRAYING!

Chris Haley Fisher
So sorry for your loss...please tell Lillian also that I will pray for your family

Laurie Craw
Only had the privilege of meeting him, not knowing him. Please give Beth and all your family our love.

Nena Dake
May God bless you all during this time.

Lynne Crothers Williams
Such an enormous loss for your sister and for your family. Prayers for everyone who loved Chuck.

Martin Penland Teem
So very sorry. Love to Beth.

Christie Hufstedler Boyd
I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of Chuck. He had struggled so long to get this far. I know Beth struggled along with him and got him so far. I'll hold you all in my prayers.

Natalie A. A. Thiele
i'm sorry for your family's loss.

Shauna Van Dweezledorf
Oh Beth, I'm so sorry.

Mary Rose Ortwein
So sorry for your loss.

Marsha Yancey Atkins
I'm sorry to hear of your loss.You're in my prayers.

Susan Cherones
(((((((Beth and all who loved Chuck))))))

Rita Lawler
Sorry for your family's loss

Anita Stewart
What a shock - only three days ago and he was speaking about your beautiful mother. We are praying for your family's loss.

Kathy Cannon Rogers
praying for the entire Shaw family

Jane Cox Slickman
How sad for you all - we'll keep your family in our prayers!

Holly Farr
So sorry for her loss and your families'.

Michael J. Burton
As Carolyn often said,"there are no guarantees." still it is a shocker.

Sandy Doughty
Terrell Shaw; So very sorry for Beth and your family's shocking loss.

Bitsy Burton
Terry I am so sorry to hear of your family's loss. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Suzan Redmon
I'm so sorry. You are all in my prayers.

Gleaning Facebook: More from Mother's 90th

From Brannon's Facebook a picture from my Mother's 90th Birthday celebration:

Brannon: "I have about 6 versions of this picture and in none of them are we all looking at the same camera."
Ruth Baird Shaw (responding to a comment that is no longer attached) Terri..Yes! Lillian's performance in the play was great...would be a credit to any prefessional actress!

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From Jessica Shaw's Facebook:

Christie Hufstedler Boyd
Seven beautiful and handsome children but Ruth is still the most beautiful of them all!

Patricia McCluskey Mann
AMEN!

Eurilla Davis Hyatt
A beautiful 90 year old! How fortunate you are.

Mother with David's branch of the family

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Roger Mask
When you preach at Inman Church a few years ago there was a man name Rogers there that was kin to us I forgotten how.Is this Philp Rogers some of his kin.L.O.L.

Nancy Bishop
Haley you look awesome. Love you and your family.

Mother with her seven children and their spouses
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Regina Williamson
Happy 90th! You look wonderful.

Ruth Baird Shaw
Thank you Regina. Great to hear from you!

PTSW: Questions at Night

Louis Untermeyer's questions are from his Golden Treasury of Poetry which was a bedside mainstay when my daughters were small. We would sometimes make operettas of the poems in this book which Aunt Wilma had given Sheila, their mother, when more than thrity years before.

Questions at Night

WhyIs the sky?
What starts the thunder overhead?Who makes the crashing noise?Are the angels falling out of bed?Are they breaking all their toys?
Why does the sun go down so soon?Why do the night-clouds crawlHungrily up to the new-laid moonAnd swallow it, shell and all?
If there's a Bear among the stars,As all the people say,Won't he jump over those Pasture-barsAnd drink up the Milky Way?
Does every star that happens to fallTurn into a fire-fly?Can't it ever get back to Heaven at all?And whyIs the sky? 

by Louis Untermeyer

I've had a few questions at night myself over the years. It is interesting to me to think that I was dealing with such basic and terrifying questions as I did at five or six, but I know they happened to me while lying in the back window of our early fifties Chevy, on a starry, starry night, and a cold one, on the long trip between Georgia and Kentucky. Here is a prose poem I wrote about that experience.

Beyond Stars

A Prose Poem

Before seatbelts, infant carseats, and airbags, when I could sometimes drive in my Daddy's lap or ride with the security of his wing my only restraint, Mama and my sisters crowded with us into the long black 'fifty Chevy the one with the wide shelf under a sloping back window for the long drive to Kentucky.
We sang, laughed, argued and slept for three hundred winding miles through the mountains to the bluegrass.
As the sun set on our winter drive, the mountains bled red ice where the road cut the steep slopes. Then the dark wrapped our speeding little world up tight and we slept: the baby in Mama's arms; the toddler in the crook of Daddy's wing; my two older sisters on opposite sides of the big back seat, legs meshed in the middle; my next younger sister curled in a blanket with her arms folded across the warm hump in the floor; and my full length wedged into a private half-chysalis in the back window; young cheek pressed against the waking cold glass.
I didn't look up until I could arrange myself comfortably, a wadded jacket pillow under my head. I closed my eyes; turned them toward the black sky; let them adjust to dark; then peeked into the universe of stars.
A quarter inch of safety glass shielded me from a billion distant hellfires in the wide sky. I refused to avoid the terrible sight. I determined to think beyond the farthest, tiniest light. Then beyond that as far again, and again and beyond that, and beyond that. To the mind of God. And beyond that.
As my head inflated with the terrible expansion of thought I tore my tiny face from the window to the silhouette of my parents against the headlighted pavement rolling toward us and pulled my family around me like a blanket against a private winter.
Later, home in the top bunk, I waked, terrified by a dream of the Milky Way racing toward me like lighted pavement in the dark. I stumbled to my father's lap. He put down the book and held me and I slept.
Who will hold me now?

by Terrell Shaw

Gleaning Facebook: Hairspray Again

With Lillian (Tracy) after the show

Jim Powell
Nice!

Howard Smith
awesome

Larisa Featherstone
Incredible show Lillian!!

Lillian comes out for her bow.

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From Nancy Johal Singh's Facebook:

Just saw the musical Hairspray at the DeSoto tonight, it was a great show, thanks Terrell Shaw for inviting us to see it...for all my friends in Rome, if you like music, dancing, humor, and want to see some talented performers I highly recommend seeing this show... Terrell Shaw you must be a very proud dad, your daughter did an amazing job as the lead, your girl can sing and dance her heart out...absolutely loved it!!!

Gleaning Facebook: Garrison Keillor on Methodists

Gleaned from a friend's Facebook this bit by Garrison Keillor about us Methodists:

We make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their lack of speed, and also for their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese.

But nobody sings like them. If you were to ask an audience in New York City a relatively Methodist-less place, to sing along on the chorus of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," they will look daggers at you as if you had asked them to strip to their underwear. But if you do this among Methodists, they'd smile and row that boat ashore and up on the beach! And down the road!

Many Methodists are bred from childhood to sing in four-part harmony, a talent that comes from sitting on the lap of someone singing alto or tenor or bass and hearing the harmonic intervals by putting your little head against that person's rib cage.

It's natural for Methodists to sing in harmony. We are too modest to be soloists, too worldly to sing in unison. When you're singing in the key of C and you slide into the A7th and D7th chords, all two hundred of you, it’s an emotionally fulfilling moment. By our joining in harmony, we somehow promise that we will not forsake each other.

I do believe this: People, these Methodists, who love to sing in four-part harmony are the sort of people you can call up when you're in deep distress.

•If you're dying, they will comfort you.

•If you are lonely, they'll talk to you.

•And if you are hungry, they'll give you tuna salad.

•Methodists believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.

•Methodists like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn or a hymn with more than four stanzas.

•Methodists believe their pastors will visit them in the hospital, even if they don't notify them that they are there.

•Methodists usually follow the official liturgy and will feel it is their way of suffering for their sins.

•Methodists believe in miracles and even expect miracles, especially during their stewardship visitation programs or when passing the plate.

•Methodists think that the Bible forbids them from crossing the aisle while passing the peace.

•Methodists drink coffee as if it were the Third Sacrament.

•Methodists feel guilty for not staying to clean up after their own wedding reception in the Fellowship Hall.

•Methodists are willing to pay up to one dollar for a meal at the church.

•Methodists still serve Jell-O in the proper liturgical color of the season and think that peas in a tuna casserole add too much color.

•Methodists believe that it is OK to poke fun at themselves and never take themselves too seriously.

And finally, you know you are a Methodist when: it's 100 degrees, with 90% humidity, and you still have coffee after the service. You hear something funny during the sermon and smile as loudly as you can. Donuts are a line item in the church budget, just like coffee. When you watch a Star Wars movie and they say, "May the Force be with you,” and you respond, "And also with you."

And lastly, it takes ten minutes to say good-bye! Most Sunday's much longer

Copied from David Bevel Jones FB status.