Chickens

-->

Chickens. 

Chickens. That may seem a strange topic for a blog, but I relish it. Chickens have been and continue to be an important part of my life. Yet what really brought this topic to my mind was a recent surprise. Jane and were having dinner (steak) at a friend’s home. At the back yard of her suburban home I spied a chicken, “Oh yes, “she said, “that is Rosie my wonderful friend.” Subsequent conversation revealed that Rosie was a friend, someone to be looked after, taken into the house at night, prepared for bed and made comfortable so it could have a good night’s sleep. That was a new way of looking at a chicken.

I grew up with lots of chickens outside that rural teacherage in Walburg Texas. We raised chickens to provide us with the eggs we ate some 365 days a year. It was the chickens that my mother fried for us accompanied by mashed potatoes and cream gravy that delighted my soul and sustained my body through years of the Great Depression. Mother would go out, grab a chicken, cut its head off with a small hatchet, pluck its feathers, cut it up, cover it with flour and then deep-fry it in lard. My dream of heaven is that God uses that recipe for dinner in heaven.

Chickens also meant a lot of work, much of it messy. As winter came to an end I was assigned the task of cleaning out the little shed where we had stored the wood for the fire that kept us warm when a “norther” blew in. Then dad would go somewhere and bring back 100 or so tiny day-old newly hatched baby chickens. They needed to be kept secure from coyotes and hawks, fed daily and assured enough water. When they were old enough they joined the rest of their family in the big chicken house next to the barn. There they laid their eggs, served as a source of entre for many meals, sometimes hatched their ancestors and always made a mess. It was a part of my assignment from as early as I can remember to scoop up that mess and keep the place reasonably clean. This took on immense proportions when as an 11 year old I helped Aunt Elizabeth Sieck who ran a commercial chicken business. I scraped more chicken dirt that I even want to recall. 

In Hong Kong we ate lots of chicken. Sometimes our Chinese cook would go to market and buy a live one and prepare it. Raw as well as cooked chickens were always hung outside the shops in the market. Every 10 course Chinese feast had at least one chicken course. Our son David went to the market, bought a young live chicken and placed it up on the flat roof of our apartment with the dream that it would be the beginning of his booming business. Unfortunately the heat of Hong Kong had eaten that chicken before the week was out.

Now raising and selling chickens is a major worldwide immense business with fast food chains finding new ways to serve parts of chicken in all kinds of variations. Chicken parts are distributed internationally, and chicken raising has become a focal point of disagreement not only among gourmet cooks but also among environmentalists, vegetarians and animal rights groups.

In the midst of all this Rosie found a friend who secured her safely in bed, that is until tragically one night she slipped out and became a late night dinner for a neighborhood coyote.

--> -->

Reflection No. 70: New York Part II

 The 8 years Jane and I spent in New York were full, full, full!! It all started when Jane became architect, electrician, carpenter and computer guru as we set up offices in the basement of our home. She put up wall paneling, rewired the whole basement, laid new carpeting-and then set up a new computer system. To this day we recall how in those early days of 1984 she explored computer options and even installed a very special Bernoulli Box to store all of our data. Then she took over as LSA office manager and editor of the LSA Newsletter. In between she fielded telephone calls from upset parents of kids in Lutheran schools as we had an agreement with the NY State Education Dept. that any complaints they received would automatically be referred to the LSA office. There Jane responded with powerful active listening skills and empathic understanding.

Our five kids were going through their own transitions gaining new partners, children and occupations. Liz got married in New York while John did the same in Taiwan. Grandchildren were welcomed in Chicago and Michigan.

We (I more than Jane) loved the city of New York and tried to take it all in. It was always great to see the Christmas lights in Times Square. Worship and prayer was very meaningful at St. Patrick Cathedral and The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Half-price tickets lured us to the Broadway productions. Yankee Stadium, Shea Field and Madison Square Garden were all places for special sporting events. Museums and art galleries of all kinds, and restaurants with every conceivable food options were right there. This was prior to the 9-11 tragedy so we always took our guests for cocktails at the top of the World Trade Center and we even hosted a very special luncheon for Lutheran principals there.

We left New York to explore he world. Either just I or the two of us went to Pakistan, Canada, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Maui and Kauai, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. Unfortunately Jane had to endure three days of incredible anxiety when our sons and I got caught up in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China and were unable to communicate. So she had no idea where we were or even if we had survived.

As I reflect upon our years together in New York I do so with great satisfaction and gratitude. They were years of special bonding between Jane and me. It was a time to meet, work with, support and be supported by a great variety of good people and to celebrate exceptional experiences. It was also while I was in New York that I turned 65 and decided it was time to retire.

Reflection No.69 New York Schools Association and Urban Center

 Parent Effectiveness gained such a wide acceptance that a national writer even called it a “national movement”. But it is hard to maintain such a phenomena. My staff and I struggled to maintain and grow the movement and were not succeeding. In spite of our significant efforts and generous use of funds for consultants and specialized staff slowly the number of participants and dollars began to decline. The growth in foreign participants was significant, but unfortunately that did not generate income at the same rate as in the USA. I felt a deep sense of responsibility to the staff and became increasingly frustrated at my failure to grow the program. Maybe it was time for someone else to try his or her hand.

At that time I received an unexpected invitation from Dr. Les Bayer and Dr. Richard Engebrecht from New York. They both urged me to get back into a leadership position within the Lutheran school system of the world. They came up with an offer that was both scary and challenging. They urged me to come and be the part-time Director of the The Lutheran Schools Association of New York and the Director of Projects for the newly formed Center for Urban Education Ministries. There was one major catch: neither of the two organizations really had any money. The LSA had some $15,000.00 in its bank account and the CUEM depended upon regularly writing grants and the continued financial support of a visionary couple: Charles and Mary Gundelach. So they made me an offer. Come to New York. We can guarantee you $25,000.00 a year -but you will be free to use half of your time to do your own thing of consulting, speaking or whatever you need to do to get enough money to make it. With the incredible support of an ever-faithful Jane, I accepted.

  

Our 8 years in New York were wonderful. The challenges of running some 50 Lutheran schools in the metropolitan New York community were formidable. Parents had high and varied expectations. The student bodies and staff were extremely multi-cultural. (Queens Lutheran School had some 16 different native languages spoken by their students). The principals were challenged beyond what most people could imagine. So my major focus was simply on supporting those principals. We organized and maintained mutual support groups. We arranged for events that built morale and acknowledged the significant contributions they were making to church and society. We chose to be available 24 hours a day to address needs. We kept busy traveling to Albany to keep strong and supportive relationships with the State education department and the State Superintendent of Public Schools We made sure that Catholics, Lutheran, Christian and Jewish leaders supported one another.

The Center for Urban Education took the learnings from New York and shared them across the country. We addressed a new major change in local Lutheran school leadership with the emergence of female administrators where for decades the principal had always been a male. We helped Lutheran schools across the country change their funding model from dependence upon local congregation support to being self-supporting through tuition and ever on-going local development and even government support. We helped teachers learn to adjust to multi-cultural classrooms with students coming from all of the world religions or from non-religious families. It was all very challenging and exciting. We gathered the top principals of urban Lutheran schools nationwide in special convocations for mutual support, affirmation and inspiration

 We raised money through grants from Thrivent, the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, individual donors, golf tourneys, fund-raising dinners etc. etc. I was able to find alternative sources for my personal income. I became a staff associate for Wheat Ridge Ministries (now We Raise); I spoke at events across the country, did consulting and training g events for a variety of agencies around the world and served as a part-time staff assistant to Bishop Lazarus of the ELCA Metro New York Synod.

Housing in New York was even more expensive than in California. We were first assisted by Dr. Ralph Schulz president of Concordia New York who made faculty housing available. Then an incredible, if sad, coincidence enabled us to purchase a nice home A young man who been in my youth group at Glendale Cal in the 1950’s had accepted a position at Concordia New York. Then tragically he and his wife were killed when their private plane crashed. Their home became available and the family sold it to us at a most generous cost.  My wife Jane and our kids refurbished the house basement and turned it into the office for LSA and provided it rent-free to LSA for all those 8 years.

I loved New York and I was thrilled to be part of an education ministry which endeavored to make life better for those living in the major urban concentrations in the USA-especially those in underserved community where the challenges and the can do attitude of the multi-ethnic families is a constant source of my admiration and respect.

Reflections on a Long and Blessed Life No.68 Parent Effectiveness Training II

 Working for PET involved moving our family from St. Louis to the San Diego CA area, specifically to Encinitas. Our first arrival there as a family had a moment of anxiety and then a roar of laughter. I had gone to California and purchased a house without Jane or the kids ever seeing it. When our family arrived there just ahead of the moving van I was excited to proudly show off our new home, So I was stunned  with the initial reaction. We pulled into the driveway. .They family all got out of the car. Then in unison they groaned “Oh, No, Dad, Not This !” I was devastated for just 5 seconds. Then they all burst out in laughter. They had conspired (under Jane’s direction) to play this trick on me. The house was great. We found schools for the kids, a church for all of us, new doctors and the beach. After awhile Jane began working at the Effectiveness Training offices (not reporting to me ). She assisted with the operations of Instructor training which took place all across the USA. Then she became assistant to Linda Adams for Effectiveness Training for Women. Of major impact in those years (the late 1970-s early 80’s) was the introduction of computers into the workplace. Our offices acquired computers and then with zero training handed them over to office staff (including Jane) to figure out how use them (for security reasons the  instructional manuals were stored off site in a locked box at the bank! Jane learned computer skills very well. She consistently improved upon and expanded her expertise, eventually setting up all kinds of systems and today in our retirement community is considered our floor computer guru.

Dave  had a dramatic job shift in Chicago. For a few years he left working with street kids to become an exec for a company which ran exclusive stores selling high quality furs to women. Soon he was flying corporate jets to places from Las Vegas to New York. Peg and Tim continued at Valparaiso University with an interesting stop-over on their way home for Christmas. They traveled by Greyhound bus. They had a stop in Salt Lake where they discovered that close to the bus station the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was about to have a concert. They changed their tickets, went to the concert and came home to San Diego a bit late but had a great experience. Liz did very well in school, greatly enjoyed Moonlight Beach, was student body president and had lots of great times in the vast bonus room on the second floor of our home. She went to college at Claremont McKenna College. John was pretty bored with school, but got into duplicating famous paintings on the walls of bedrooms both at home and for others, developed an interest in Mandarin Chinese, applied for university at only one place U of California Berkeley and got accepted.

We adopted an exchange student for a year from Venezuela: Eliana Odreman  That was a good experience for all of us. Tragically she is now in Venezuela struggling with all the unrest and chaos of that country and we feel powerless to assist her.

We enjoyed our years in Encinitas. The California climate and multiple activity options were very satisfying. When we left after 8 years we, even then, had the feeling that some day we would like to return there for a satisfying retirement. But first to New York and my next series of blogs.