Category Archives: Love

About passion

imagesTed Ligety is one of the best American skiers and an international skiing champion.  In 2006, he won an Olympic gold medal for the combined; 2014, he won another in the giant slalom.  In all, he’s accumulated twenty-three giant slalom world cup wins.   I think I know at least two reasons he’s so very good.

Ligety’s known for his all-out effort, taking the gates close and at an angles to the ground that defy the laws of physics.  As he cuts so close the the gate, he often drops his hand and drags his wrist on the snow around the turns.  November 22, he hit the gate with his left hand.  He’s had bones broken in the hand so often, he designed a glove to protect it.  Didn’t work this time.  He broke his wrist and tore many ligaments.  Four screws were inserted surgically into his hand.  He had to practice without ski poles because he couldn’t hold one in the left hand.  From that, he said, came a positive.  Skiing without a pole helped his balance.

A few weeks later, I watched an event at Birds of Prey.  Ligety had a slow first run–slow for him means he was only tenths of seconds behind the best time.  The announcers suggested that hand could be causing him not to be able to hold and move the ski poles as he usually did.  On the second run, he smoked everyone, even with the mangled hand, and won first place in that event.

How does he do it?  I said there were two reasons.  First, he must have an incredibly high pain threshold.  But I think the main reason is that skiing is what Ted LIgity does.  That’s his focus, his life, his passion.

Most of us don’t have that level of passion and commitment.  I have a friend who wrote a imagesnovel when she was hugely pregnant and had a broken wrist.   I don’t know if I would.  I don’t like pain.

I have no idea of what Ligity’s life is like but most of us have more balance than I assume he has.  As well as what we love to do–which could be being with family, working, cooking or skiing–one of those doesn’t dominate our lives in terms or time and thought and effort.

But I keep coming back to one question: what is important enough in my life that would lead me to hurl myself down a snow-coverd slope at an incredible speed while winding around posts stuck in the snow while facing constantly the threat of terrible falls and broken bones?  I can think of nothing but I admire the man for being so devoted to something so difficult.

I’d like to say I live my faith like this.  I’d die for my faith, but I’m not sure I’d live for it with so much depth and commitment and possible injury.

What is your passion?  Are you as devoted to it as Ligety?

Domestic violence

This was not the blog I’d planned to post today but it became obvious this morning that it’s one I have to post.

When the video of Ray Rice pulling the limp body of Janay Palmer, his fiancée–his unconscious fiancée and the mother of his only child–from an elevator first appeared, I was appalled at the lack of outrage.   His coach said Rice is a good guy, a man of character  who made a mistake, the mistake being that he punched his fiancée out and left her unconscious.    The NFL answered with a resounding lack of horror at the act or concern for the victim:  a two-game suspension.  No one asked, “What happened in that elevator?  Why did the man who professes to love and should protect this woman from harm–why did he have to pull her out of the elevator?  Why was she unconscious?   Had the football star knocked her out?”

Even more incomprehensible:   she was accused of a crime, obviously for having her face in the way of Ray Rice’s fist.  She apologized for her behavior during a press conference, again for blocking her fiancé’s fist with her face.

Then the tape of the blow appeared yesterday.  From comments on news programs, it’s been around for a while but never made public, never used in the court case against Mr. Rice.  It shows the now Mrs. Rice walking ahead of her fiancé into the elevator.  She looks at him and gives him a shove and her beloved punches her so hard, she immediately loses consciousness and falls to the floor, her head hitting the railing of the elevator as she fell.

Only then did people say, “Maybe knocking a woman out isn’t acceptable behavior for anyone, even if he makes the team and the city and the NFL rich.”  After seeing that tape, his teammates  who had supported Rice after seeing the tape of him with his unconscious fiancée finally admitted that perhaps this was serious, that perhaps they had supported a man who brutalized a woman, supported him because he was, after all, a good guy.  Finally, with the knowledge of what happened when a heavily muscled athlete assaulted his fiancée, actions anyone who saw him dragging from the elevator HAD to have known happened–then these men decided he hadn’t just made an error.  He’d committed a crime for which he’ll never be charged because the case was quickly tidied up and he entered a program which consisted of no jail time but counseling.

What does this say about the status of women in America?  Oh, yes, I know men are assaulted but the great majority of those assaulted are women beaten by males larger than they or more violent than they and–especially if those men are wealthy or important or talented or have connections–it’s okay.  It’s a private matter between the woman and her assailant.   And all to often, those who benefit from the talent or money or connections close rank, blame the woman, and say the abuser is a nice guy.

Sadly and amazingly, this abused woman, Janay Palmer Rice, sees no problem with her husband’s behavior but that’s a topic I won’t go into because there aren’t enough words to explain this.

What are your thoughts?

My Mom, the Rustler by Diane Perrine Coon

Guest blogging today is George’s favorite sister, Diane, a fabulous historian.  She’s writing about her mother, one of the finest people I’ve ever know.  Thanks for the memories, Diane.

Ollie

My mother was  the most law abiding person I ever met.  This trait went beyond any ethical positions in her beloved nursing career, it went beyond taking the AARP safe driving course every year between 55 and 90 when we took the keys to the car away because her peripheral vision was gone. And it reached beyond using both hand signals and flickers when making turns.

However, Mom was also the biggest rustler I ever met and I think I was the cause of all her lawlessness. One year after I’d moved to Petersons guidePennsylvania, I gave Mom Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Songbirds, and she had my brother build three bird feeders and squirrel guards plus the metal cages to hold suet for the winter birds. She enjoyed the Field Guide so much, I gave her Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Wildflowers the very next holiday. And therein lies trouble, trouble, trouble.

You see, Mom’s property sloped downward in the back toward the creek that flowed through the subdivision. She and Dad had purchased a double lot, about an acre and a half.  She fenced the entire lot so the dogs could run freely and safely. She enjoyed planting flowers and never met a tiny tree she didn’t love, right where it planted itself. So the property was abloom all spring, summer and fall. Although she had a tendency to plant the tall flowers in front of the small flowers so from the road, it was a little strange. But she looked at her birds at the feeders and her flowers from her windows in the house, so it made sense to her.

ollies yard

Back to Peterson and his wildflower guide. Mom’s property had a steep fall away from her garden area down to the creek and it was very shady with old trees – walnuts, oaks, maples, elms. Her decades of theft began on a trip to Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. On the way home, she made Daddy stop five times so she could take a trowel and dig up wildflowers along the trowelroad. She was very well prepared with plastic bags and wet paper towels. It wasn’t until five years later that I came to Kentucky in the Spring; prior years I’d always come at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Proudly Mom showed me the delicate trillium, the snowbells, the jack in the pulpit, the dog-toothed violets, Virginia bluebells, tiny flowering grasses, coral bells, lilies of the lily of the valleyvalley, wild strawberries, and dozens of other gentle splashes of color as the sunlight cascaded through the budding trees.

Oh my God, my Mom had become a wildflower thief. “Mom, this is against the law,” I said quite self-righteously (having just received my 10th point on my New Jersey drivers license for speeding across Princeton.) “No it’s not,” she insisted. “I’m reforesting.” “What?” I said with emphasis. “I’m taking the hillside back to its original Kentucky shade lands.” And then she put her hands on her hips and tilted her head like a sparrow…subject closed.

There in the midst of a subdivision where most of the people poisoned the creek with lawn care pesticides so their lawn could gleam like a golf course, where all the house plantings were carbon copies of each other, where they hung planters of cascading annuals to brighten the flowerbox2greenery, my Mom had recreated God’s natural woodland. So I decided, since I was the one who gave her Peterson’s Field Guide, I’d simply testify to her innate goodness if she was ever arrested for wildflower rustling.

The reason this all came to mind was this week when my daughter said she was starting to look for perennials for the shady part of her property. I almost sent her Peterson’s Guide to Eastern Wildflowers….No, No, No.

Image 2

* * *  I need to add to this.  When Ollie (my mother-in-law and Diane and George’s mother) visited us in Missouri in 1968, she did the same thing.  Wherever we took her and Grandpa, she had her trowel and box in the trunk.   She’d make George stop while she leaped out to dig up a plant she’d not seen before.  She wasn’t only reforesting the hillside to its original Kentucky shade lands,  she was also reforesting is back to Missouri shade lands.

Also, by the time she’d lived in that house for forty years, the double lot was covered with live Christmas trees she’d planted every spring.  They’d reached enormous heights .  Other trees filled in.  This meant the interior of the house was very dark and mowing the lawn was like going down a slalom slope, but she was happy and that, really, is what counts.

Image 3

 

 

An Old-fashioned Love Story

salvation army bandHow my grandparents met is a true love story.    In the early years of the twentieth century, my grandmother Jennie Dunn was a member of the Salvation Army.    One afternoon while she played in the band to bring sinners to the service, a gang of young toughs decided to harass them.  My grandfather John Myers was  part of that group, but when John saw Jennie,  his life that changed.  Love at first sight for both.  She left the Salvation Army to marry him.  He found faith and wrote religious pamphlets that were very popular in Wichita, KS.  They had seven children, one of whom was my father.   I’m named for my grandmother whose name was Jane.  Jennie was a popular nickname for Jane back then.

I only knew my grandmother when she was much older, nearly seventy.  Completely deaf at that time, she looked a great deal like Whistler’s mother in Arrangment in Black and Gray.   She sat straight and unsmiling and never said a word.  I knew her children adored her but I knew her not at all.old fashion love story

But she had experienced a love strong enough to steer her life in a different direction, to leave what she knew and begin life with a man so different from her.

How often we judge people on how we see them not who they are or who they were before we entered their lives.   How much we miss out on!

Do you know an unexpected  love story you’d like to share?  I’d love to read it.