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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Monday Dec 21, 2009
Monday Dec 21, 2009
My Favorite Christmas
One particular Christmas holds some of my best memories, not because of the presents I received, but because of the presents I gave. I wanted to give something to those who were needy in our neighborhood, so I collected some money from those in the area and ended up with a little over a hundred dollars.
When I visited with the single mother who seemed to need the most help, I asked what she would like us to use the money to buy. I’m not sure why I didn’t just give her the money, but I guess I wanted to do some of the shopping to make sure the donations went for presents instead of rent.
She humbly requested a turkey or a ham. She told me her son wanted moon boots. I also noticed they didn’t have a tree. I don’t remember much else, except for how I felt when a couple of us from the neighborhood delivered the stuff.
I used my own money to buy a Christmas tree, and the hundred dollars went a lot further than I imagined it would. I know I spent a lot more than this on my own family that same year, but I can’t remember anything our family received.
If she was embarrassed by our assumption she needed help, she never showed it. She was not too proud to refuse our offer, and I wondered how magnanimous I would feel delivering these few items later.
What a different feeling I had when we finally came back. I have never felt so humbled, so grateful for all I had, and so thankful I had an opportunity to help someone else.
This was a woman who had recently divorced and was living with her children in a basement apartment. It was cramped and dark, but you could tell this was a much better situation than the family had been in before. Apparently, the husband had been abusive, and it took all the courage this good woman could muster to leave him. They were a humble, happy and very poor family.
As I brought in a bag of flour and sugar, which she hadn’t asked us to bring, she began to cry. We gave her a turkey and the packages already wrapped for the children. It was such a small thing to do. Most of the neighbors had given five or ten dollars, and it wasn’t a great sacrifice for them.
But to see the happiness these few things brought to this family was incredibly satisfying. It was almost nothing, especially when contrasted with the bounty the rest of us would receive. It made me wish I had collected two hundred, or three hundred dollars.
But you could tell it wouldn’t have mattered if it had only been ten dollars. We had moved from our petty daily concerns, thought about someone outside of ourselves, and shared a little of the bounty we had been blessed with.
You would have thought we had delivered gold bars. We were thanked repeatedly, and embarrassed by the show of appreciation, had beat a hasty retreat. It was an incredible, satisfying, momentous occasion in my life. I had spent was a few dollars and some of my time collecting from others, done a little shopping, and delivered our paltry offerings.
But to be humbled by this act of service was the greatest gift I have ever received. I was able to get outside myself for a brief moment, and consider that someone else might benefit from a few simple acts of kindness.
English author and artists John Ruskin said this about humility:
“The first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power. … [But really] great men … have a curious … feeling that … greatness is not in them, but through them. … And they see something Divine … in every other man …, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.”
It wasn’t me, the neighbors, the donations, the flour, the sugar, the turkey or the Christmas tree. It was the ability I was given, for just a moment, to see the divine in someone else, that other person who is just as important as I am, but who is receiving not from me, but through me.
There are few times in life when we are able to get outside ourselves and stop considering our petty problems and complaints. It is in these moments we are most alive and vibrant. They don’t happen every day, but they do happen often enough to remind us there are others on this planet. These moments occur when we stop the introspection, and begin to notice all of the wonderful people who are on this journey with us.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
This is the complete episode from November 29th.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
This is the episode from November 15th.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
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Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Running for Rolls
I went to an ancient high school, so old that it had four stories. When I was going to the old Jordan High School, the school district was building what was supposed to be the new high school. But then tremendous growth happened and both schools remained open. It was eventually torn down and a new Jordan High School was built, but it just isn’t the same. I’ve been to the new school and even sit at this moment wearing a hoody I bought there, but I still miss the old school. I guess it’s the same with any old building.
One of my favorite memories was when lunch was served. The bell would ring and a mad dash would begin to the lunchroom, which was formerly the basketball court. With four stories, that meant you had to hustle if you wanted to get some of the delicious, fresh rolls they served every day. I remember dashing down four sets of stairs as fast as my little legs could carry me. It probably wasn’t very safe, and in today’s risk management society, I’m surprised more people didn’t break their legs back then. Maybe we were just more coordinated.
As I sit wearing Jordan High School memorabilia proudly, I wonder what it was that made those rolls so good we would risk life and limb. One of my friends didn’t like the rolls, so each day he would throw his roll into the air for the rest of us to grab at. This means four or five people were fighting over the roll, and we would each end up with a smashed scrap. But we didn’t care. We were getting bonus bread, for free.
Once a school has reached a certain age, the additions begin. There were so many passages to the same place it really was easier to just take someone where they wanted to be. Telling them the directions would take twice as long. This is a building that lasted a hundred years, and besides having four floors and a basement, there were wings out to the side. There was a courtyard converted into some classrooms and a counseling center. We also had an ancient stage which I remember as especially small.
The best part of the school was the tradition my family had of attending there. Just before it was torn down, I was in a movie at the old school. I got to sit in the front office for several hours, and I wasn’t even in trouble. I used the time to thumb through several old yearbooks. I found myself, my dad and several of his siblings and took a picture with them all spread out on a desk.
Now that I teach high school, it’s hard to imagine I was as young as my students when I went to school. The guy who used to throw his roll in the air was prematurely bald, and so he looked like he was forty when he was a teenager. I saw him 30 years later and he still looked the same.
This is the same friend I tortured every year by making him squirt milk out his nose. All I had to do was wait until he was drinking his milk and deliver a well timed funny remark and out would come the milk. He had enough manners not to spit it out all over us; he would simply laugh it out his nose. I thought it was hilarious. He was cautious around me, trying to make sure he was drinking his milk at safe moments. But once every year, I was able to get him.
Then he started drinking pop. You may call it soda. I don’t know if you have ever snorted carbonation through your nose, it is not a pleasant experience. Milk is bad enough, and water hurts. But any carbonated drink passed through your nasal passages it excruciatingly painful. It hurts for quite a while.
For some reason, we feel ageless when we are in high school. I was talking to my father-in-law about this a while ago. Though in his eighties, he told me he still feels the same way he did when he was in high school. It’s such a defining time in the development of our personalities; it becomes our definition of ourselves.
I guess it can be good and bad. One of my students from a few years ago dropped by this week. When I asked him what he had been doing, he said he just got out of jail. He was a student who didn’t really like school, and probably felt he was being punished with an education. I wonder if my friend remembers the good old bad old times, and then is grateful not to be drinking anything at the moment.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
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Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Sunday Dec 06, 2009
Tracker Towing
Those who know me well know I love my Tracker. Not tractor. Tracker. It’s a jeep kind-of a all-terrain vehicle made by Geo, but really made by Suzuki. Think of the Suzuki Samurai, just made for Chevy. Chevy even puts its own brand on the Tracker now, but I got mine back in the bad old days when everyone was worried they would flip over. I’ve never had that problem, but then again, I’m not trying to flip my car on its roof.
A steal when I bought it 15 years ago, I have squeezed every penny out of what I was charged for this car. I like it so well I put another engine in last year, and now have 15,000 miles on the second engine. The odometer reads 220,000 miles, and I hope to see 400,000 but you never know. I have had many repairs done on this car, mostly from wearing out water pumps and other parts never designed to last more than 100,000 miles.
It was brand new when we bought it, but now it’s 15 year old. There’s a rust-spot on the back where a daughter backed into something and broke out the rear taillight. I replace it myself, which is another thing I really like about cars. I like fixing things myself if I can, but I am repairing less and less as the years go by. I have a loose belt right now, and I know it’s an easy adjustment to tighten one nut, but I have also banged my knuckles on nuts and bolts enough to know it may be worth the twenty dollars I’ll pay.
I was once young and stupid enough to think I was a great mechanic. Our Volkswagen broke down in Las Vegas. The quote for overhauling the engine was ridiculous. I could have towed the car back home and overhauled it myself for half the price. Which is exactly what we did. We rented a U-Haul and a tow bar, and pulled the car back to the house. Here’s a good hint for those prepared to do the same. If your steering wheel locks unless the key is in, remember to put the key in so the steering wheel can turn. I forgot, and since I made a “U” turn just before returning home, the steering wheel turned a couple of times – and locked. Now that the front tires were turned, I dragged the car for the next 500 miles. If you drive long enough with the wheels turned sideways, the tires heat up, the rubber begins to peel, and when you arrive you may notice the tires are very hot and the rubber actually rubs off like an eraser. I must have worn off 20 or 30 thousand miles of tread.
I bought a manual called “Volkswagen Repair for the Complete Idiot”. It was a great book, and I followed the directions on how to overhaul an engine, which included the instructions to lower the engine to the ground after removing the four bolts holding it. You place the engine on a piece of plywood, jack-up the car and drag the engine out. It only weighs a couple of hundred pounds, and the plywood makes it easy to move.
I did my best, but the car still wouldn’t start. I took it to the dealer, who spent 10 hours diagnosing some electrical problems. I am proud to say the car did run again, and we put at least another 20,000 miles on the rebuilt engine.
I use my Geo Tracker to haul my windsurfer to the beach, and sometimes I get to do some surprising things with this little vehicle my daughter calls my “Barbie Car”. It really does look like the car Ken might pick out for Barbie. But it does have some surprising get up and go.
When I drove up and saw the Ford truck stuck in the sand, I knew I could help, but you could tell the other drivers were dubious. I just pulled out the hook with the flat rope and hooked it around the truck. Moments later, they were unstuck and I had proved smaller is not necessarily inferior.
It happened again a couple of months later. The big truck was stuck, and up I drove with the little Barbie car and offered to pull them out. They looked at my all-terrain vehicle, and I could see the doubt in their eyes. But they were stuck, and really didn’t have any choice but to let me try. I assured them I had pulled another truck out of the sand, but they still looked doubtful. Seconds later, with the torque of the small wheel base, they were unstuck.
Insert your own joke about size here.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Saturday Dec 05, 2009
Saturday Dec 05, 2009
Spare Change
I have a different sense of humor. Sometimes it takes a while for people to understand just what I am saying, and realize I’m joking. Teaching high school means some students come to school not feeling their best. Either mom or dad or both work, and they can’t stay home. Sometimes their folks make them go to school even when they are sick. So I get to deal with some unhappy kids at times.
It’s not hard to see who is suffering. They are not their usual selves, and when I go up and ask them how they are feeling, they usually try to put on a smile and say they are okay. If they are really feeling sick, they sometimes admit it and say something like, “I don’t feel good.” To try to lighten up the moment, I will usually put my hand on their shoulder and tell them, “You feel all right to me.”
So it does take a minute for them to think about it; remember, they are feeling sick. So when they finally get it, I usually get a smile from them. They look at me and sometimes shake their heads; remember, Dad humor is really not funny, it’s mostly stupid. But it is stupid enough to make you laugh.
I sometimes take it a little far. I really should only use this kind of humor with people I know. But most of you know by now if you’ve been paying attention that I really don’t pay attention all that well. The first time I tried my smart-aleck Dad humor on a total stranger was in Washington, D.C. as my wife and I were walking on the street.
I really don’t like it when people on the street beg from me. I know there are programs and places available to everyone who is willing to try to get help.
So with my bad sense of humor and my general lack of common sense, the following scenario probably was unavoidable.
We were walking along and there were several people begging on the street. After saying no a few times, one guy we passed leaned out and pointed his cup at me. He said, “Spare change?”
My mind works pretty fast, and my wife often has to point out most people have a hard time keeping up sometimes. So when I looked at him and said, “No thanks, I have some.”
He looked at me with a kind of dumbfounded stare for a minute and processed what I had just said. We kept walking, and from behind me I heard him laugh a bit and say, “No, I want your change.” But we were already too far away, and I just sort of chuckled.
My wife was furious, and told me to “knock it off”. She was worried I might have made him angry, and didn’t want a confrontation. She’s usually right. I’m just not smart enough to keep my mouth shut sometimes. But when someone offers a great opening like that, my brain goes on automatic and my mouth starts talking without thinking first.
My daughter was in the car with us recently and we saw a guy begging at WalMart. She’s worked in homeless shelters and knows the programs available to the needy. She started rattling off the different things someone who really needed help could do, and started talking about how angry it made her when people begged. I asked her if she wanted me to roll down the window and let him know. Before she could answer I said I didn’t think that was the kind of help he was looking for.
One of my former students was an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch. She has a great story about people begging from when she was back in Washington, D.C. She and her husband are successful lawyers now and actually named a son after me. Back in D.C. she used to give some of her lunch money to this same beggar every day. Then one day she was at a hot dog stand, and there was this same guy paying for his lunch with a wad of bills she described as almost too big to hold in his hand.
She was indignant, and Regina was not one to hold her tongue. She was an award-winning debate and public speaker, so she spoke right up and demanded her money back.
He turned to her, probably recognized her and simply said, “I fooled you, didn’t I?” This story only confirmed what I had always thought. There must be some good money in begging if you don’t care about the hit your self-esteem takes.
Last spring I did it again, and I even had two witnesses.
Try it. Just remember.
“Spare change?”
“No thanks, got some.”
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Three Car Pile-up
I drive the speed limit. I didn’t always. I used to drive a Mazda RX-7. My mom sold it to me after she had driven it a few years. I talked my wife into buying it. She was dubious until we pulled up and she remembered what the car looked like. As we pulled into my mom’s driveway, my wife turned to me and said, “Can I have it?”
She drove the car for a while until she had cancer. She’s fine now, but after chemotherapy she decided the car smell like chemo, and we bought her a new car. I loved driving that sports car. It could take corners at just about any speed, which isn’t good for your driving point total. I don’t know how many tickets I got, but eventually I had enough points to endanger my driver’s license. I could get the points reduced in half by going to traffic school, and so I did.
Eventually the car wouldn’t pass inspections, so I sold it. I got older and started going the speed limit. It’s just not as fun unless you are in a sports car, so I rarely get tickets anymore. The contradiction to this statement happened when I decided to leave the slow lane on the freeway.
There is a place on the freeway where every day there seemed to be a slow down at a particular part of the road. All of the cars were going around a slight corner, and for some reason, no one was able to keep going the speed limit. So everyone slows to a crawl.
I decided to leave the safe, slow right lane where I am nearly always found these days. I went to the middle lane, and it was slowing down, too. So I moved to the fast lane, and I was still going way too fast. The cars in the fast lane were stopped. The car in front of me was stopped. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop.
I was right. I skidded a bit and hit the car in front of me going about 5 miles per hour. It was really more of a soft tap so I doubted there was even going to be a dent. But then I looked in the mirror. The guy behind me was not slowing down. He was going about 35 to 40 miles per hour, and he rammed my car hard enough to bounce me into the car in front of me again, and this time I hit the guy in front of me hard enough to knock his hat off.
So now I had been in a three car pile-up. We were the only three who had an accident. Everyone else was cautious enough to not hit someone else. So we checked out our damage and pulled off the side of the road. The police officer had us pull to the next exit to clear the freeway, and I was supposed to be teaching in about an hour. Here’s the problem. I got a ticket for hitting the guy in front of me. The guy behind me got a ticket for hitting me. So writing the tickets took longer than I thought it might. I had to call one of the students in my class and tell them to go home.
The guy in front of me had an old junker like me. He checked for damage on his car, and decided there really wasn’t a reason to file a claim. He was just glad he wasn’t carrying big pieces of metal in the back of his car like he usually did. My car also didn’t seem to be damaged at all, and I attribute that to the spare tire which hangs on the back of my Jeep type car. The guy behind me had hit right into the tire. I later saw that the tire and the door were moved a bit forward, and the door wouldn’t open any more but I usually don’t use that door anyway.
So the two of us in the front had little or no damage. Who I really felt sorry for was the guy who hit me. He was driving a fairly new pickup truck, and the tire on the back of my car had demolished his front end. The hood was bent up, the fender was crushed, and the headlights had fallen to the ground. There must have been thousands of dollars in damage. He had no one to blame but himself.
Of the three cars involved, he was driving the nicest. Of the three cars, he had the most damage. Is there a moral to this story?
It may be ‘drive a junker, and stay in the slow lane’.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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Audio link at bottom of post
The Night Before Christmas
by Clement Clark Moore
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Burned Rice Twice
I may be the world’s laziest cook. I do know how to make an omelet, and I even took a cooking class in high school called “Bachelor Survival”. The only think I remember cooking was chocolate mousse, and since no one in my group liked how it tasted, I ate five or six servings. I broke out in hives and had to stay home for a couple of days.
I am also cheap. I don’t like to spend a lot for breakfast or lunch. Since I eat lunch at school, I tried cooking potatoes for a while. It was just a plain potato cooked in a microwave, but after a while it got kind of boring.
About this time I realized I probably needed to start eating breakfast more regularly. So here’s the routine I find myself in nearly every day. I like to cook some oatmeal before school since it only takes a couple of minutes. I don’t really like milk, so I only put some maple syrup on it. Oatmeal is supposed to be good for lowering cholesterol and it also counts as roughage, so I’ve done two good things as the day begins.
Continuing in the single food category, I cook brown rice at school. Brown rice take a while for some reason, so this may be the extent of my culinary skills. Five minutes on high, forty-five on medium, and I have a very filling lunch which can be topped with a little salt or a little sugar. That’s right. Nothing else on the rice; no milk, no spices, no nothing.
The rice is another serving or two of roughage, and the argument I offer for rice everyday for lunch is: 3 billion people who eat rice for every meal can’t be too wrong. Here’s the really strange part of the breakfast and lunch scenario. I’ve gotten used to eating this every day, as in I’ve been eating oatmeal and rice everyday for three or four years now. I ought to do a commercial.
Some people make fun of the fact I eat the same thing every breakfast and lunch. But the good news about rice for lunch is it seems to keep me more awake in the afternoon, where I used to fade before I started the routine.
The only problem with being so regular is that the habit sometimes overtakes the logic of what goes into such a simple meal. The following problem happened not just once, but twice. I thought it happened again the other day, but someone else was responsible that time.
Here’s what happened.
Rice is simple. Shake in the hundreds of grains, fill up with water, maybe add some salt and start cooking. But remember, brown rice cooks for 50 minutes; forty-five minutes at medium after five minutes on high. The only time I really have problems with this simple recipe is when I get distracted. Usually, I am talking with someone else, or I have something else on my mind. So I’m trying to do two things at once, and since I don’t want to be rude, somewhere in the conversation I forget one of the steps. There really is no excuse, but at least twice I have tried to cook rice without any water.
If you have never been blessed to smell rice cooked without water for fifty minutes, I can give you a few details to help you understand the smell. Think about toast burned completely through, with some hints of coffee. I don’t think there was smoke, but everyone on that side of the building was sure there was a fire somewhere, but they just couldn’t figure out where.
It’s the worst inside the microwave. I’m just glad it didn’t start on fire. I could see the fire department pulling out my plastic bowl of smoking rice and trying to identify who was the idiot who decided to fry rice in the microwave.
Needless to say, the first time I burned the rice there was a general uproar about the fire which was burning somewhere in the building. Imagine my surprise when I opened the microwave and saw a pile of dark brown burned something. I wasn’t smart enough to keep quiet about it, so everyone made fun of the fact I couldn’t even cook plain rice.
They really enjoyed teasing me the second time I burned the rice. Now I am paranoid. Sometimes I go back and double-check to make sure the bowl has rice and water. A couple of weeks ago I smelled what I thought was burning rice and rushed to the microwave. I had remembered to add water, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Someone somewhere was burning toast. That’s okay.
As long as I didn’t get blamed for it.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
Tuesday Dec 01, 2009
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Click on Amazon button to order
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin