Places to do things Part II

PLACES TO WORK

I guess everyone’s ideas about places to work are shaped by early experiences. Thus I imaged a small parochial school as the ideal place to work. After all, that is what my father did and I idolized everything about him. But there were other places that stirred my imagination. My uncle and aunt ran the general store and it seemed very attractive to me to be behind a counter, preferably next to the chewing gum and candy. The local bank was owned by my uncle and it seemed quite sophisticated and easy to be a banker, but that attraction was tempered by the threat of bank robberies. It was the 1930’s and to this day I believe that Bonnie and Clyde checked out that bank. I quickly ruled out imitating my cousin who ran the garage because I knew nothing about fixing cars. And the welding, plow sharpening and horse shoeing that was done at the blacksmith shop by still another uncle came close to frightening me.

During the summer we picked cotton, responding to my father’s urging “In the field by sun-up!” I knew I didn’t want to do that. It was too hot and my hands moved way too slowly. I suffered the embarrassment of even my sister being able to pick more pounds of cotton in a day than I. It wasn’t much better at my Aunt Elizabeth’s chicken farm where my main task was scraping and carting off chicken droppings.

It was good that another set of cousins ran a country store and butcher shop. Restocking shelves was quite easy. Milking the cows allowed a lot of time for quiet reflection. De-worming wounds in the skin of sheep helped create empathy for all four-footed living things; even though every Thursday found me assisting in the butchering of many of them.

Later I got promoted to being a waiter after being the guy who peeled bucket after bucket of potatoes and carrots at Wukash Brother Cafe just off the campus of the University of Texas. That brought me close to fame as I stayed at the same rooming house as Bobby Layne who later became a famous Detroit Lion quarterback

After graduation from college I had an incredible string of great places to work. St. Paul Lutheran School in Tracy, CA with less than 100 pupils but a great supportive bunch of parents. The opportunity to open a new school in Glendale, Calif. Then on to Hong Kong which took me to the most fascinating places in the world to work from squatter huts on hillsides to the Queen’s birthday celebration at the Governor’s mansion…always with the great kindness of supportive and competent Chinese colleagues. Then a year long USA tour giving a missionary slide lectures, but also taking time to witness and reflect on those 17 Lutheran schools for blacks in a completely segregated South. Later work just added places and opportunities for testimony, teaching, worshiping and work-shopping all over the world including places as divergent as Helsinki and Karachi. Still it hasn’t stopped. I just returned from a month of teaching opportunities in six cities in South China. And almost every Sunday morning gives me a wonderful platform for teaching; the Adult Class at Calvary Lutheran Church in Solana Beach, California.

As I today read the paper and listen to colleagues mourn their unemployment or even being stuck in a place of work offering little reward beyond take home pay I am forever grateful for all those varied and wonderful places to work which mark the important milestones in my life.

Places To Do Things (Part I)

I grew up in a small Lutheran congregation- owned teacherage (a teacherage is the home a congregation supplied for its parochial school teacher: just like it supplied a parsonage for its parson.) My home was a part of a several-acres complex which included a parish school, a parsonage, a teacherage, a cemetery, a couple of barns and two plots for vegetable gardens. It was located about a mile from the nearest town (Walburg, Texas) which advertised itself as having a “population of 87 friendly people and one old grouch”.

From my perspective this location provided everything I would ever need to live a happy and productive life, food for body and soul, good people, fun, a medical doctor who carried his little black bag as he visited those who needed him. Any food needed could be grown within walking distance of where it would be consumed, The church, its school, a country store and a saloon supplied all one needed for body and soul, sickness and health, fun and hope. All in all a great place to grow up. Yet I moved on from there to places never dreamed of even when I climbed that big tree in my back yard, stared into that vast Texas expanse of blue and pondered my future.

In the next several blogs I want to reflect on that place and the other places to which my life took me.

PLACES TO EAT As I was growing up eating was, of course, a necessity. But it was also more than that. It was family time, prayer time, teaching time, enjoyment time, family devotions time, social life time. My mouth waters at just the memory of my mother’s fried chicken prepared from roosters freshly slaughtered and fried in lard, mashed potatoes with country cream gravy, fresh corn on the cob, homemade bread, fresh peach cobbler. All of this washed down with sweet iced tea. Nero or Chinese emperors never ate better.

In the days of my youth there were other wonderful places to eat. Although I never ate in a restaurant until well into my teen years, special eating places included wedding bar-b-ques, Even during the depression there was a big feast in connection with any wedding. After the church ceremony we went to the farm home of the bride. There beer and bar-b-que and all the trimmings (especially home made noodles) awaited us, all in sequence. Beer was served by men adorned in white aprons, carrying pitchers and glasses. The bar-b-que, of course came from beef raised just for that wedding celebration and bar-b-qued in pits dug especially for the event. Occasionally the beef was supplemented by a hog or two and once in a great while even by mutton or goat meat; but goat was definitely a third choice. I don’t remember ever having chicken bar-b-que at a wedding as that was reserved for other special meals. The dining tables were long tables all arranged in a big tent made from farm tarpaulins erected especially for the wedding.

There was a definite sequence for seating and serving of guests. They were served in the following order: first the men and the wedding party, then the children and lastly the women. The reception would go on well into the night. As it got closer to midnight the chivary took place with the men banging on plowshares, oil drums, and any other metal that could be found on the farm. They were served their due portion of beer until it was time for “midnight lunch”. That was late at night and included sandwiches and cake. Somewhere in between all this the bride cut and served the wedding cake. No one went home hungry. (Maybe I was too young to notice, but I have no memory of anyone ever getting drunk at these events. Nor do I have any memory of any wine being served.)

The social life of the community centered around family events - baptisms, confirmations, birthdays, marriages, wedding anniversaries and funerals. Each had its prescribed food rituals. One thing was key: there must always be more than just enough. It was all home-made and certain residents became identified as the “best in their field". e.g. a family was famous for its bar-b-que, a woman for her angel food cake, another for her potato salad, another for bread and butter pickles, etc. Glorious!

Later years brought other and very different places at which to eat. I have moved to many wonderful places where having food was more than mere sustenance. Elegant places like Ghaddis in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong and Windows of the World in New York Twin Towers. Incredible ethnic food included samples from most of the eight major groups of Chinese, all over China, African chicken at the Pusada Inn in Macau, reindeer tartar in Helsinki, charusco in Porto Allegro Brazil, hearty beef borscht in Russia, marvelous hot, yellow mutton curry in Karachi and red curry vegetables in New Delhi, smorgasbords with touches that are just a little different whether in Denmark, Sweden or Norway, tapas in the street-side café’s of Barcelona, jaeger schnitzel in Bonn, and even tacos on the streets of Ensenada. What variety, sensations, subtle hints and mouth-opening flavors, each telling a bit about the place where it was being consumed, always inviting me to try just a little bit more. No wonder even heaven is described as the place where an endless feast will be available!

College Costs: Personal Reflections

This Labor Day, as a retired Lutheran Church education minister I am reminded of the many years in which this day marked the day before another school term began. As my mind focuses on college and college costs here is what creeps into my consciousness.

GRATITUDE. I was able to attend residential prep school, college and graduate school only because of the extraordinary kindness and assistance of many others, beginning with my two elder sisters. Both of them were (and are ) very bright. Both were valedictorians of their high school class. Both were offered college scholarships. Neither went to college. Instead they went to work as household maids. The money they earned helped their kid brother (that is I) go to school!

At one stage in my schooling I received a most unusual contribution toward its cost. In the rural Texas community in which I grew up there was the custom of passing round the bride’s shoe at the wedding reception. Guests placed coins or dollar bills into it. Often that was a nice gift for the bride. However, one of the brides announced, “Instead of me keeping this money, I am going to send it to Melvin Kieschnick to help pay for his education. He is planning to be a teaching minister in the church and I want to help him!”

When I was accepted for study in grad school I was broke. A cousin loaned me the $100.00 I needed to register. When I wrote my thesis it was my wife who many nights (often beginning at midnight because of her other responsibilities), sat down and typed out the manuscript with all its complicated footnotes! (Remember, this was before computers, before even “white-out” and no erasures were allowed.

Our five kids made it through college plus three masters and two doctorates because of their incredible commitment. Of course, they worked every summer and every vacation period while in school. They took out loans. Now they are all professionally and financially secure with all loans repaid and they are investing in their own children’s college education with the proviso that those kids also work both during the summer and while in school and once they start graduate school they are on their own financially.

My gratitude extends to all those who provide scholarships for others. I am thinking of a grandparent who is funding his child’s college costs. Another friend is doing the same for his godchild. Still others set up scholarship funds simply for those who need it.

EMPATHY. Concurrently I think of kids and their parents who are really struggling to pay for college costs. I think of those who work and study and forget sleep and everything except bare necessities to pay tuition. I recall a very poor black mother in Detroit who told me she scrubbed white people’s floors so that her son could attend a Lutheran school. Another mother did the same for her son in Mississippi. That son earned his doctorate and is now helping Christian urban schools. I recall a mother who raised a few chickens next to her hillside squatter hut in Hong Kong so that he children could come to our special school for poor kids. One of those children is now a successful lawyer in New York!

PUZZLEMENT. As I reflect on the above I am puzzled by stories I hear. I hear of the high school and even college aged kids who do not work either over the summer or during the school term. They feel their college education is the sole responsibility of their parents. I am puzzled by students unwilling to take the risk of getting a college loan because they do not choose to be burdened by having to repay it; so they demand all school fees from their parents, often while they (the students) claim their inalienable right to have their own car both in high school and college.

But now I fear like I am beginning to sound like a grumpy old man and I did not get schooling to learn that. So I end saluting all the diligent students of the world and all those who make their education possible.

China: A Personal Perspective – Children

I have recently returned from a month long visit to southern China where I introduced Parent Effectiveness Training to several thousand parents. So, of course, I am especially interested in the current situation as it affects children.

A great time to be a child in China.
In many ways this is a wonderful time to be a child in China. With the one-child policy now in effect for some 35 years, almost every child is a wanted child. Even the pro-male baby bias is diminishing. It is true that the latest data still shows almost 120 baby boy births registered for every 100 girl births. It is illegal for medical personnel to reveal the gender of an in utero fetus, so abortions of females have lessened. Also, personal conversations as well as newspaper reports indicate a growing equal acceptance of boy or girl babies and several young couples told me they hoped their child would be a girl.

Children are often so valued that there is a danger of permissiveness as the child is treated as a “little emperor” or “empress”. And since grandparents will have only one grandchild, that grandchild is often the focus of extra attention, love and gifts.

While tragically there are still too many pockets of poverty, hunger and high infant mortality rates, over all trends for these matters are positive.

It was interesting to me that the matter of children participating in household chores is not an issue. “Children don’t do chores. Children study. Any parent who expects the child to participate in household care is irresponsible.” I was told this more than once.

As I watched children go to kindergarten, be on the street, or enjoy food, they seemed to be quite content.

An anxious time to be a child in China. But not everything is ideal. There is tremendous pressure on the child to be perfect, to get into the best school, especially for boys to bring honor to the family name.

Virtually all kindergartens and primary schools now have police guards at school entrances. This is in response to at least 7 attacks this year in which raging “maniacs” have attacked and killed children even as they sat in their classrooms. While the resulting number of deaths is well under 100, the news of this terrorism on children naturally has caused great anxiety for teachers, parents, and children.

There is also obvious anxiety in many youth in their late teens and early twenties. Many, especially from poor rural areas, have flocked t o the city. There they produce all those “made in China” goods. They live in cramped dormitories, work very long hours with minimum days off and send almost all their earnings home to poor parents. It takes its toll. While I was in Shen Zhen the 11th suicide of the year for this group was reported. Anxiety spreads through all of these youths and their families back home.

The national government in Beijing recently called a conference on a new parent-child issue. Surveys indicate that among the most financially successful private entrepreneurs 90% stated they hoped their child would continue their business. Yet when the children were polled, 95% said they did not want to eventually take over their parents’ enterprises.

A time for shaping the future of the world. Each morning I watched kindergartners happily enter their kindergarten. One morning they gathered outside for a moving and very patriotic national flag raising ceremony. As I watched, it hit me again: The 19th century was the century when Great Britain ruled the world. The 20th century saw the USA as the number one world power. The 21st century will be the century of China dominance. I can only hope and pray that those Chinese kindergarteners raising that flag today, who will be the leaders of the world tomorrow, will lead all of us into ways of peace, prosperity and mutual respect and into a world in which all children can live fulfilling lives.

China: A Personal Word on Chinese Food

Of course, Chinese food is the most commonly eaten food on the planet. With its billions of people, multiple ethnic strains, varied geography, vast gap in resources and its long history, the food in China is varied beyond imagination. It has been my good fortune recently to once again spend a month in China and grab a teeny sample of its wonderfully varied cuisines.

Because of my schedule and commitments it was around midnight when I had finally finished my third dinner of that day. The next question from my host was, “Now for breakfast do you want rice noodles or flour noodles?” I made a quick decision, rice noodles. So early the next morning she was in the hotel lobby ready to take me to breakfast. We parked on a side street. I looked for the restaurant. Then I realized that I was standing in it. The restaurant was one of those sidewalk, small shop affairs where the meal is cooked on a simple, single gas burner on the curb. Guests sit on small three legged “milk-stools” and enjoy the fare. I was even asked what kind of meat I wanted with those noodles and saw the cook mix in the half teaspoon of chopped pork. It was all delicious.

In Kun Ming we went in the opposite direction. The walk-way to the very upscale restaurant was through a beautifully long curved tree lined path. At intervals along the way sat beautifully red-robed instrumentalists. Each played marvelously on traditional Chinese stringed instruments, a perfect prelude to really fine dining. It was similar to other 12- course dinners I’ve been served on special occasions. Two things were new, however. The first is that one of the early dishes was a massive platter of exquisitely prepared and presented sushi, something new for me in China. The other was that while, of course, tea, beer and soft drinks were available, this time the options included a steady supply of wonderfully aged French wine supplemented by what other guests brought with them. Several had selected their own special brand of that fiery Chinese drink called mao tie. Toasts were drunk from each variety. Food, fun, friends (old and new) made for a not to be soon forgotten evening

While on the island city of XiaMen across from Taiwan I was taken to “the best sea food restaurant in the city.” I was told that once again 12 dishes were being ordered. Each one came from the sea. Each one was going to be a delicacy that I was guaranteed to never have eaten previously. And so creatures of many sizes, shapes and flavors from the sea supplemented by fungi and other plants made for a wonderful “lunch”. When one of the dishes was served I took a healthy mouthful with my chopsticks and enjoyed it. I noticed a bit of almost imperceptible snickering at my enjoyment of the dish. Then I was told, “There is a Chinese saying attached to this particular dish. The English version is ‘If man eats this dish, woman watch out. If woman eats this dish, man watch out. If man and woman eat this dish, bed watch out!” I got it. This was an aphrodisiac. I enjoyed the food.

In the large and modern city of ShenZhen one can find to almost anything to eat that one might desire. Most of the world food chains MacDonald’s, Starbucks, Papa Johns. KFC. etc .etc.) are all there. A new one simply called Fridays was the site for several good meals. My very sophisticated host enjoyed some very simple delicacies. I especially noted her relishing chicken feet and duck tongue. I preferred the duck tongue to the chicken feet.

Great enjoyment, made both more somber, even more appreciated as I recalled that when I lived in Hong Kong 50 years ago my Chinese colleagues were trying to figure out how to just get a bit of rice across the border to their relatives where millions of Chinese were starving because of Mao TseDung’s horrendous “Great Leap Forward.” And now China is indeed leaping forward and many (including me) get to enjoy more of that marvelous Chinese food!

China: A Very Personal View (I)

China with its thousands of years of history, billions of people and vast spaces of geography defies any simple descriptions or important insights. So while I enjoy traveling there or studying its history and being with its people, my comments must (of course) be very personal, incredibly partial, and severely biased. So having just returned from spending a month there here are a few snippets.

The Chinese: wonderfully hospitable; Once again I was the object of great unreserved hospitality. My hosts made every effort to care for me. They wanted me to have the best accommodations, most appropriate food, highest places of honor at feasts, safety on the streets and the appropriate respect for my role of teacher. When they learned I was 82 years of age and still conducting workshops they expressed a reaction almost of awe. But then they learned something else about me which raised me even higher in their estimation. They learned that the most famous movie director in China, John Woo, was a student of mine in elementary and high school. That trumped age and any other experience or set of skills I might have carried with me.

The Chinese: Ambivalence about children. Of course, Chinese. like parents everywhere, love their children. The child is the focus of love, attention, favors, and the very best education possible. I learned that only in a very few homes is a child expected to do chores, for that may distract from the child’s most important role, namely, that of being a diligent student - twenty-four-seven; year round. In their zeal to have their one and only child be all that s/he can possibly be Chinese (like parents in most parts of the world) tend to swing between severe authoritarianism (this child must do exactly as I teach it and be rewarded or punished to achieve that) or the child is king or queen, so the parent is extremely permissive and “what this wonderful and only child wants, this wonderful and only child gets!” On the other hand, in a much-needed effort to control population growth the one child per family law is still being enforced. Tragically, especially female fetuses continue to be aborted and some children with birth defects continue to be abandoned.

The Chinese: Driven by capitalism. The government may still be socialist but private entrepreneurs drive the economy. When I traveled along the coast at Xiamen, just across from Taiwan, I noticed a building which looked strikingly like the new Goldman Sacks Building on Wall Street, it suddenly hit me: in the month that I traveled only in southern China Government was convening a forum in Beijing to discuss this matter.

Chinese: Atheistic and spiritual. The Chinese “constitution” continues to declare atheism as the official position of the country. And there is plenty of evidence of a secularism in which spiritual values are dismissed as irrelevant. Concurrently there are deep undertones of spiritual yearnings and pursuits. The same organization that is promoting Parent Effectiveness is very successful in offering seminars and workshop on “Your Spiritual Being”, “Meditation” and “Higher Consciousness”. The story of Christianity in modern China is almost beyond belief. There are now many more professing Christians in China than at any time in history. Both the three-self churches (self-propagating, self-governing and self supporting) which number more than 15,000 and the more than 30,000 unauthorized house churches are growing at an unprecedented rate and estimates of the number of Christians in China run from 50 million to 100 million.

Of course, I barely stuck one toe into that vast ocean called China. I will say a little more about one other toe in those waters in my next blog.

I Love New York (II)

There is a buzz of activity and life and hope in New York that comes from places other than its streets, avenues and parks. These sounds of life, energy, frustration and hope come from classrooms and specifically also from the hundreds of classrooms of the Lutheran schools of New York. I had to return to hear them again. I attended the Annual Dinner meeting of The Lutheran Schools Association of Metro New York. There I was with hundreds of those teachers and administrators who bring learning and opportunity and hope to those kids. The energy in the room was palpable. Laugher, and hugs, and conversations mingled with hugs and drinks and congratulations. It is a sad and yet profound truth that there are many areas in New York City where it is flat-out impossible to get any kind of a decent education in the public schools of that community. The system is broken. Parents who seek the alternative of a non-public (often faith-based school) will work three jobs including scrubbing floors to get their kids into one of those schools and pay the necessary tuition. There they meet teachers who care, who work at salaries way below their counter-parts in the public system. The teachers reach out to communicate with parents who in the case of one school in Queens spoke 19 different primary languages. They serve with commitment and faith and sometimes with disillusionment. One of the great things about the dinner I was attending was that it brought encouragement and recognition to teachers from all segments of that cosmopolitan community. So some came from affluent Long Island while others came from tough underserved impoverished sections of Brooklyn. But all were celebrating learning, hope, faith and possibility - and their energy and commitment to kids permeated the room and enveloped me.

The next afternoon I got to be a part of another little piece of New York, that of working the system! My long time friends and colleague Howard Capell, Esquire had always taken on Lutheran schools legal issues. He served us with extreme competence, with all his connections and with a passion for mission. I knew my evening with him would again be special. He had promised to pick me up at 6:00, but around 4:00 the cell phone rang. “I have just crossed the TriBorough Bridge. Get to the corner of 93rd and Second and I’ll pick you up in a few minutes”. Naturally, he was on the phone as I climbed into the car. ”See you in 20 minutes’, was the message to the next contact.” “Just come down to the street.” So some 20 minutes later the well dressed gentleman on the curb of Fifth Avenue in mid-town came to our car door to hand us well placed tickets for that night’s performance of La CageAux Folle. Howie has his police contact who got to the half-price ticket counter in Times Square the minute it opens. He finds out what’s available, puts on hold a couple tickets, notifies the next person in the process who picks up the tickets who gets them to the person who meets our car on Fifth Avenue and hands us the tickets as we roll along.

Next stop is Times Square. Howie identifies the officer patrolling the section. With a quick nod he directs us to a parking garage where an attendant is waiting, the car is parked, and we are back on the street in 90 seconds. The patrol officer had been the one who first investigated and then noted what was going on with that failed bomb attempt recently. He recounts those events to us in vivid and chilling detail. Howie, of course, knows him by name and tells him that he has already sent a generous donation to the Police Benevolent Society in honor for this particular public servant.

But we wanted to eat and had no pre-theater reservation. Howie took one look at the famous restaurant across the street, asked the officer about chances for table, without reservations. “It may take up to 5 minutes”, came the reply,” but come with me.” The Maître de was by-passed; the manager had a table for us and only 3 minutes had elapsed. The service, drinks and dinner were great. The show was even better. The car-parking fee was, of course complimentary and Howie and I continued on our post-theater evening.

That, too, is how the system works in New York and I am fortunate enough to have a friend who knows exactly how to use it!