Whet and LyAnna Smith
------ And then they were one
It was to be an Engagement Dinner for LyAnna Johnson and Whet Smith - both my "adopted grandkids.". At the last minute Whet came to transport me. As he ran around the car, I saw his tuxedo, gasped and said "I'm under-dressed!" There had been no hint that the dinner was to be tuxedo-formal. "Nope," he said, "It's a wedding. We're getting married tonight, right now. No engagement dinner."
Bless them. They had great motives, and a lot of fun too, in having a "surprise wedding." Except for LyAnna's mom, the pastor, organist and photographer, no others knew until that day. No maid of honor or best man. Only about 30 of their closest family and friends. But it was a classic wedding, in the lovely little chapel beside our church. The bride was breath-taking in a long white strapless "mermaid" gown of white lace with a sprinkle of clear sequins. She carried a small bouquet of massed soft-yellow roses. Whet was tall and handsome. Anna, the young Downs-Syndrome girl they had been visiting weekly for two years, threw rose petals on the carpet in front of the bride. Anna's little brother Jordan carried the rings. The couple was so happy, making their vows as they stood in front of the stained glass window that blazed with sunlight. It was a small, intimate, elegant and sumptuous wedding.
Dinner was in an old one-room house, primitively built of local white limestone in the 1830's, when the City of Austin was young.* After the dinner, the couple left. When LyAnna threw her bouquet, she made sure our ecstatic 12-year-old Anna caught it. Then LyAnna and Whet drove off in a horse-drawn carriage as we tossed white rose petals after them. An indelibly memorable, authentically traditional wedding. Yet also - high tech!
The wedding has a website There are photos from their courtship and engagement, with photos yet to come of the wedding and honeymoon in France. There are parts of their story, and a page to leave our best wishes. Also a page where we can give a wedding gift by donating to their favorite charity - a great charity that helps poor people in other countries start their own micro-businesses.
Their "Surprise Wedding" worked for me. When I got home, I just sat around smiling, laughing and shaking my head. It was wonderful.
I wonder if it is going to start a trend?
_____
*The" Sunday House" at the Moonshine Grill in Austin
(Image from old.tifster.com)
It was forty years ago today that I went to prison. On March 22, 1969, while teaching economics at the University of Houston, I was arrested for armed robbery. It was 7 1/2 years before I hit the ground again.
Under the circumstances, imprisonment was the best thing that could have happened to me. I thank God for it to this day.
The usual odds would have meant that I wouldn't go to prison at all. The armed robbery was small, no one was hurt, no money was lost, and it was a first offense. Usually, in Houston, that would have gotten probation, or at most, 5 years, with parole probable after 1 year. But they gave me 35 years. At that time of real turmoil in the U.S. in the late 1960s, the real odds were that I would never get out.
But after about 2 years, I started telling people I was glad I went to prison - when I still thought I would never get out. Why? Because I entered prison an unbeliever, and became a Christian 2 years later in an isolation cell. That was worth everything, even prison.
(Why would a university teacher do an armed robbery in the 1960s anyhow? Chapters 1, 11, 12, and 13 at http://www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com/ will explain.)
So please - be happy with me on this anniversary. As glad as I am to be free, I wouldn't take anything for what prison gave me.
"Freedom" and Jeff
(Image from http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=486539)
At http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/freedom.asp. and http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art56137.asp.
Jeff Guidry writes, "Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places. She's my baby.
When Freedom came in to Sarvey Wildlife Center in Everett, Washington she could not stand.The Center is run by volunteers who like animals.
Both wings on the eagle were broken: her left wing in 4 places. She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the veternatians office.From then on, I was always around her. We placed her in a huge dog carrier with the top off that was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in.
I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes. We had to tube feed her for weeks.
This went on for 4-6 weeks, but she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldnt stand by herself in a week.
You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning. She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didnt want to go to the Center that day, because I couldnt bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her dog cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle.
She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove,and then to jesses,(these are thin leather strips) and we started doing education programs for schools in Western Washington. We wound up in the newspapers, radio(believe it or not) and Miracle Pets did a TV show about us.
In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair -the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer. I swear this happened time and time again.
Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. They did the tests; and I was to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone. Yahoo!
The first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the "big girl" out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadnt said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), She touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I dont know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.
On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power course through his body. I have so many stories like that.
I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom's.
Hope you enjoy this.
Jeff
Freedom is 3½ years old in the second photograph below. 
Remarkably, she molted when Jeff was going through his ordeal, 
then, after 8 months of chemo, Freedom sprouted her new feathers at the same time Jeff regrew his hair.
Freedom & Jeff share a bond that’s incredibly strong and undeniable. For Jeff to fall so deeply in love with Freedom from the moment she arrived; broken, riddled with lice and literally on death’s door - willing her to live, loving her, sitting with her, talking with her, giving her the courage to stand and live is nothing short of the kind of commitment most people will never know. But for Freedom to reciprocate in kind – even coming to Jeff in his dreams during what had to be the most challenging time of his life - is a premiere example of the kind of heart-tugging love that builds an indestructible bridge between our species and gives us a glimpse of what can be.
And if you can believe Freedom and Jeff’s story, showcasing their respective commitment and unyielding love, then it isn’t a giant leap to believing that all animals are capable of love, joy, bonding, disappointment, hope, grief, depression, happiness and yes, crossing that indestructible bridge to communicate with us.
CREDITS: Story reprinted with permission from Jeff Guidry.
PHOTOS: Freedom & Jeff (top photo) by Anne Chase Photography, Woodinville, WA
Freedom & Jeff 2000 & 2001 by Ceal Kight
(Image from inmagine.com)
After paroling from prison in Texas in 1976, I drove across America to California where I had paroled to my aunt and uncle. This is the final part of that story. (Parts 1-5 can be read below.)
The wide deserts I drove through stretched my eyes. Seeing a hundred miles or more into the distance, instead of a few hundred yards out of a window, did that.
Soon I was in the fruit orchards and vegetable fields of California. I was like a glutton, a visual gourmet, devouring one wonderful vista after another. But instead of becoming satiated, I was still ravenous. I was like a desert that had gone without rain for years, so that not even a cloudburst could leave it well-soaked.
When I topped the last rise of the coastal mountains, saw a wall of deep blue in front of me and realized it was the Pacific, I said “Uh!” and doubled over. It was like being hit in the stomach. I stopped the car and just looked. And looked. Would I never get enough?
In the tiny town at the bottom of the mountain, I found the nearest beach, rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and waded out into the water. It was icy compared to the warm waters off Galveston. How did those surfers out there manage?
Now I was getting close to my deadline, but still sticking to the longer, winding scenic road along the coast, driving up through San Luis Obispo. The grass was green, although it was winter. White clouds hung below the mountain tops, halfway down, instead of flying over them. It took my breath. By Monterrey it was getting late, so I turned inland, away from the coastal road, and came north on highway 101 through San Jose.
I called my Uncle Neal, and he came to meet me rather than risk my losing my way to their house in the dark. Pat came out to greet me. We walked into the light of the house. A new life was starting, a galaxy away from prison. What would it be like?
(For the rest of the story, see www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com.)
((mage from alonsodr.com)
A few days after leaving prison on parole, I laft Texas for California. (Part 5. See Parts 1-4 below.)
After as much time as I could take with my family, I set out for California. On the way, I planned to revisit some places I had thought, in prison, that I would never see again.
The first was the Big Bend National Park in West Texas. That night, camped in the basin at the top of the Chisos Mountains, I watched the rise of a full moon. The next morning, I could see more than 100 miles through the clear dry air, down the old Apache highway into Mexico, where the Apaches brought back horses and slaves from their raids every year. Stopping briefly at St. Helena Canyon, I watched the eagles soaring far overhead.
My plans included stopping at the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. But after thinking about being in a totally enclosed space with no daylight again, I just kept going to Arizona.
One night later, under the same full moon, I reached the Grand Canyon about 10:30 at night. I drove into a lookout area, right up to the edge of the canyon. In the bright moonlight, everything was clearly visible. Curled up in the front seat, I went to sleep looking down into Grand Canyon. Seeing the Canyon again had been my dream for years. How different from my cell it was!
Early the next morning, I was at the top of the Bright Angel Trail. It went down to the bottom of the Canyon. Maybe I could hike all the way down. From a phone booth at the head of the trail, I called Paula, my parole agent in Palo Alto. When she came on the line, I asked her if I could arrive a day late so that I could hike down to the bottom of the canyon.
“You’re calling from where?” she asked me twice. She paused, then laughed. “Well, this is a first!” she told me. “Look, I’d like to help you out, but you must get here on time. Sorry. Call me as soon as you get here.”
So I hiked down, passing mule trains on the way, to Indian Gardens at the halfway point, then back up again. Even halfway down the canyon, I could see eagles soaring far below, but still very high up from the bottom. It was heaven. How could I be here? How had it happened?
Pausing at some Indian ruins on the brim, I enjoyed the quiet and the dry, pine-scented clean air. The long history of the place helped get my small history into perspective.
One of the things that worried me at Goree, when I thought about leaving, was that I would be lonely. That when I saw something really gorgeous, as I was doing now, I would badly miss having someone to turn to and say, “Isn’t that beautiful?” Yet over and over I found myself saying silently, “Lord, isn’t that lovely? Lord, look at that!” I was not lonely.
(More at www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com, Chapter 20.)
This is just too good to keep to myself.
(Photo courtesy of Wiggles Dog Wigs)
This dog wig comes courtesy of Ruth Regina's Wiggles Dog Wigs, an online purveyor of pooch toupees, in case you would like to know.
Don't you just want to rush right out and buy one?? Well, you would definitely need to have the right kind of dog first, you know.
Regina spent nearly 50 years in movies and TV as a make-up artist and “wig master,” according to her website. Going back to the days of the Jackie Gleason Show, she’s worked on productions ranging from Scarface to Striptease.
She was responsible for make-up work on the set of the Miss Universe Pageant for 14 years, at national political conventions (both Democrat and Republican parties, she points out), and has worked on the faces of such big-time names as Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lopez, Judy Garland and Marisa Tomei.
Most recently, Regina has undertaken Wiggles, a new venture that designs and manufactures wigs for dogs. An 8th generation wig maker, she maintains a wig shop in Bay Harbour Islands, Florida.
(Hat Tip to Jeffrey Foxworthy)
(Image from 140.photobucket.com)
(On October 22, 1976, 32 years ago, I walked out of prison, free. This is Part 4, continued. See Parts 1-3 below.)
The last night before we left on parole, it was customary to leave our cell door unlocked. It made me very uneasy. I felt almost naked with it open. Was I ever institutionalized!
The next morning I put on the beige homemade looking pantsuit I had made hurriedly in the garment factory for going home. I had already said goodbye to everyone. The matrons looked with dismay at the one box of papers I had pruned everything down to. But they dug in and quickly approved taking it out. With only what I was wearing, a paper bag of underwear and shoes, the $200 cash that parolees get, a box of books and a box of research material, I was on my way.
An employee leaving from her night shift dropped me off at the required place, the bus station in Huntsville. My things were in the trunk of her car. At the station in another car, my son and Nancy Gehman were waiting. We hugged, shifted my few things into the trunk of Nancy’s car, and were off to Houston.
This was not happening. I could not grasp it. No matter how I tried to realize what had happened, it was not real to me. Actually, it would be about three weeks before there was a day without the lurking thought that someone would show up to take me back to Goree before nightfall.
They knew I loved Mexican food, so our first stop was at the finest Mexican restaurant in Houston. I did not know how to act. I was talking too much, smiling too much. Surely everyone was looking at how awkward I was. But no one was. How sweet they were to do this for me! The food was awesome.
Scott gave me the tour of his dorm room at the University of Houston. It was nice. They even had maid service.
In the guest room at Nancy’s, her teenage daughters, Tracey and Lisa, gave me some of their blue jeans and a blouse and a T-shirt. Someone found me a belt. Now I looked normal. I was to stay there a few days, until Nancy could put together a small party for my old friends. Then I would go on to Corpus Christi to spend a few days with my mother and sister. I had a total of three weeks before starting parole in California. Scott would join me in Corpus Christi a few days, then finish his semester at U.H. before joining me in California.
The next day, after everyone had gone to work and school and I was alone in the house, the doorbell rang. It was an old friend, a minister. He came in and hugged me. Then he started trying to kiss me. I ducked twice, so that he hit my cheek instead of my lips.
When I broke loose and got him at arm’s length, and was backing down the hall, he was following close, still puckered up. When I backed into the living room, I got the couch between him and me. We were circling the couch. He still had his arms out, saying, “You don’t understand! We’re free! We’re free!”
It was my first close encounter with someone who talked liberal theology while chasing me. I thought fast. “Can we pray?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. We sat on the couch at a nice distance from each other, held hands and prayed. It calmed him right down. We had a normal conversation and he left. I seemed to have forgotten quite a bit about the free world!
None of my radical associates were at the party Nancy gave me. But dear old friends from long before my radical days came. There was a friend from the faculty at U.H. who had taught me before I was a teacher, with his family. My son was there with some of his friends. Nancy’s son Scott and husband Harry were there, along with Lisa and Tracey. It was wonderful. I was trying to soak up everything, running out of space to put it. It was so much!
They drove us to Corpus Christi. My first glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico was through a driving rain. I was twisting my neck, missing conversation to see it.
My mother was smaller than I remembered. Her husband was sinking into senility and she was having a strenuous time trying to keep a normal life going for them both.
A friend of my sister, a dear lady named Robbie, had just been given a car to use on her job. She gave me her old car! It was incredibly generous of her. She and my sister fixed me up for the trip to California, searching around for an old sleeping bag and a frying pan and long-handled fork and spoon and such, for cooking over a campfire. I would stay in national parks at night, sleeping on the ground or in the car. It was much safer for a lone woman to do that in 1976 than now.
Applying for a driver’s license, I explained frankly about prison and not driving for over seven years. They were very kind. The driving test was all right. The man did suggest, however, that I drive closer to the middle of the lane, instead of way over by the curb.
(From Chapter 20 at www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com)
(image from geocities.com)
(On October 22, 1976, 32 years ago, I walked out of prison free. This is Part III continued. See Parts I and II below.)
During that spring...there were interviews before members of the parole board. Then there was waiting. Usually we got the answer in two or three months. That time came and went and still I had not heard. What was going on? I threw myself more and more into language studies and work on the dissertation, trying to distract myself from thinking about parole.
Four months passed into five, and then into six. It was October, and still no news came from the parole board.
Finally, a paper arrived. I had made parole! The decision of the Parole Board was made on my birthday, October 15. The date I would leave the prison was October 22. That would be seven years and seven months, to the day, from the day of my arrest on March 22, 1969. The timing made me think that the parole board must have a sense of humor.
There was no way I could comprehend it. I tried. But I was numb. One of my adoptive kids, Diki, took me by the hand and led me down to the dining hall for supper. In fact, my kids took care of me, taking my hand and leading me around, for the next three days or so. I literally could not grasp that it had happened.
In the dining room that first night, I did not announce to anyone that I had made parole. That was just not done. There were too many others whose parole had been denied. They did not need to hear someone going on and on about how they had made it. But word had gotten around, and women kept coming up and saying very quietly that they were happy for me.
Later that evening I panicked. I looked around my cell and realized that I was in danger of losing six years worth of hard work on my dissertation. There was too much material for the matrons to inspect and censor the morning I would leave the prison. It would take hours. They would not have that much time. When they realized that, they might not let me take any of the material out with me at all. Or I might have to pick and choose in just a few minutes what I could keep.
What was needed was to sort through it first, throw away everything I possibly could, and keep only the absolute essentials. Perhaps I could get it down to an amount of paper that they could handle. It would be a daunting task.
The first thing the next morning, I was in the office of Assistant Warden Linda Woodson. I explained my problem to her. I did not see how I could possibly get the necessary culling of my material done in the time left. Would it be all right if I stayed just one extra week? I thought that would be enough.
Her mouth was open and she had pushed her chair back from the desk. “What?” she asked. I explained again.
“You can’t make me believe you are serious about this!” she exclaimed. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to leave? What is this? What are you trying to do?” I tried again to explain. She responded, “Any normal person would go running out of here the first minute we let you!”
“Look,” I told her. “I’ve been locked up over seven years. One week one way or the other is nothing. I need the time. Please!” Now she began to glower at me. “You keep this up and I just might give you that week!” she snapped. “Oh, thank you!” I said gratefully. She stood. “Get out of here!” she ordered. I had to leave, without what I came for.
Now I was spending every free minute trying to cull my writing and research material down to the minimum. It took me every spare minute, right down to late the night before I left.
(From Chapter 20 of www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com.)
(Image from umbc.edu)
(Today, October 22, 2008, it has been exactly 32 years since I walked out of prison. This is Part II continued. See Part I below.)
Meantime, during my three-day weekends, I continued to work hard on my dissertation. It was about who owned the largest percentage of shares of stock in each major American corporation. It was unbelievably hard to get the information, not only for me, but also for other scholars. Corporations even ignored U.S. Senate subpoenas requesting this information.
Using a few studies, principally from Congressman Wright Patman’s banking committee, I was piecing together what data I could. Putting the data on 3X5 file cards I made by cutting up paper, I filled box after box with the data. There were many cardboard boxes of data, sources, and manuscript pages under my wooden bunk. It represented about six years of work.
In the summer of 1976, I learned that the world famine, whose prediction had helped drive me to such extremes, had failed to happen. What had happened instead was something no one could have predicted. Not only was there no famine, there was a surplus. Unexpectedly, there had been extra-good crop years for three years in a row, all over the world.
When I realized what had happened, I was standing in the long windowed hall going to the dining room. What impressed me then was realizing that God was active in the world. That there would be no world-wide famine unless he allowed it.
Standing there in the hall, I thought that what we humans do is so dangerous and destructive that if God did not intervene constantly, we humans surely would have killed ourselves off at least once every hundred years or so.
Going back to my cell I read again something I had written two years earlier. “Intellectually I will always see negatively because of faithfully recording the visible possibilities. They are negative. But the visible possibilities do not show the fact of intervention by God. Because he does intervene, things will never be as bad as they ought. I can be optimistic, and I can — and should — have faith.”
That day in 1976, I thought that maybe I also could have hope. I became more optimistic about the welfare of the world in general. I even allowed myself to hope a little about parole. With a sentence as long as mine, it would be unusual to make parole the first time up. But—perhaps.
(From Chapter 20 at www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com)
(Image from acc-tv.com)
On Wednesday, October 22, it will have been 32 years since I got out of prison. Why I resisted hope then:
Early in 1976 I began training myself to look out the shop windows again. It was wonderful that I had great peace in prison. I was very thankful that I did “easy time,” not hard time. But it was still hard not to be free. I longed to be with my family again. I longed to do more useful work. I longed not to have a locked door keeping me always in the same buildings, away from the world outside. And I was hungry to spend great hunks of time outdoors.
Warm weather was better because we got to go outdoors into the exercise yard every couple of weeks or so. But in cold weather there were months on end without going outdoors.
Just outside the shop windows, in back of the prison where a meadow sloped down from the pines on the hill, sometimes we would see deer feeding if we got to the shop early enough in the morning.
In cold weather, the green winter grass grew especially lush and thick just beneath the south shop windows. I could not look at it without thinking of how it would feel to touch the cool green blades. Not being able to do that was so painful that I trained myself not to look too long. So I acquired the defensive habit of looking out the shop windows only briefly, then turning my head away and thinking of something else.
This was not unusual. I knew one long-timer who had already served over 20 years time. She would not go outside into the yard when we had the chance. She said it hurt too much to come back in.
Now that habit was over five years old. It was hard to break. I started trying to remember, every time I turned my head away from the windows, to turn it back and look out again. I was trying to get ready. This year I would come up for parole for the first time, and I needed to re-learn to look toward the outside, not away from it.
Another thing I had learned in prison was not to get my hopes up. Positive thinking could be a trap in there. When hopes were disappointed, it was a lot further down to fall than on the outside. So I learned not to permit myself to hope I would get out.
Yet I was going to apply for parole in April. At the same time, I had to try as hard as I could to make parole, and yet, not hope too much that I would make it. It was going to be tricky.
Next time: Negative Reality Vs. Hope and Faith. From www.outoftheironfurnace.blogspot.com., Chapter 20.
(Image from weddingannouncer.com)
A quick post because I am involved in doing a wedding, with rehearsal today and ceremony tomorrow. As the pastor officiating, I am up in front , so if I cry it makes a distraction.
But I always do get weepy. And I've never been caught. Why?
At that moment when I look up the aisle and see the bride standing in the open door at the other end, I tear up. I don't know why. It just does something to me.
But nobody sees me, because they too are looking up the aisle at her. And they keep looking at her until she stops in front of me. By then I'm not tearing up any more. Only then does anybody look at me. So I always get away with crying at the wedding.
Today I received permission from World Magazine to post the following full article about myself, for which I thank them. The article appeared in their January 26, 2008 magazine. (I posted fragments of the article before.)
"Restless Retiree"
World Magazine, This Week, 'Signs and Wonders," January 26, 2008, Lifestyle/Technology: "Radical robber, Christian poverty-fighter Gerry Phelps is redeeming time" | Susan Olasky
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Retirement for Gerry Phelps means reading through her Bible for the 45th time. From her 15th-floor apartment in the RBJ Towers, a low-income senior citizen complex founded by Lyndon Baines Johnson in honor of his mother Rebekah, Phelps can read and enjoy a panoramic view of downtown Austin: capitol dome, corporate towers, the University of Texas campus.
The LBJ connection is a nice touch. Phelps despised him and Richard Nixon, and in 1969 went to prison for her role in the botched armed robbery of a liquor store meant to raise funds for a radical, anti-war newspaper. At the time she committed the crime, Phelps was a leftist, working on her Ph.D. and teaching economics at the University of Houston.
In prison she became a Christian. In 1976, after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, she gained parole to San Francisco. She attended there a Methodist seminary where fellow students shared her politics but didn't understand her prison-formed, Bible-based belief in Christ and His miracles.
"I knew I was called to minister to the poor," she says, so she founded and ran two homeless shelters, applying what she had learned in prison: Tough love works, handouts don't. When Phelps returned to Texas in 1992 to be closer to her grandson, she started a poverty-fighting charity along compassionate conservative principles.
Now that she's retired, life can be hard for a person who led an eventful life and has unfinished work. At age 76 besides Bible reading Phelps is trying to publish two books she has written, and working on two more. (Her practical book about helping poor people is on her website, gerrycharlottephelps.com.)
"My biggest struggle is trying to get to bed on time," Phelps says. Four stacks of books, nine and 10 volumes deep, sit on her coffee table as evidence of her current projects, continuations of her life interests in helping the poor and renewing the church. She sees poor people as canaries in the coal mine, evidence that we have a "poverty-producing, crime-producing culture" that can only be fixed by a revival of Christianity through evangelism and the discipling of new believers.
Newly diagnosed with macular degeneration, she uses a magnifier to see her computer screen. She winces as she gets up to fetch tea, yet says, "I have a lot of health for a person my age. . . . I've had such a good life. I'm content . . . I have friends and I have family." And yet she has a sense of things undone. "Each of us has our experiences. If you keep it all locked up in your head it's lost. If you want to share it, you have to write it. . . . It's not about being remembered, but having what you've learned be remembered beyond the walls of your mind."
Phelps is finding not enough time in her days for the work she has to do: "My time is too taken up with logistical work." She's a self-described "health nut" with a special diet, and that "takes a lot of preparation time. Cleaning and laundry . . . I don't mind doing any of that, but it doesn't leave me enough time to read and write, especially since I have some kind of time limit on me because of the eyes."
She's frustrated with her lack of success getting her books published beyond the web, "but I don't go around crying, except at prayer time. I might cry then. . . . I have a good, very frustrated life. You can quote me on that."
(Image from quinnipiac.edu)
Now you can hear my radio interview from Thursday, January 31, at link below. 25 minutes.
Link to http://www.pilgrimradio.com/MP3/HisPeopleGerryPhelps.mp3
(Here are some instructions for making an MP3 copy of this, but I couldn't make them work. If you can, please leave a comment talling me how. Please! I have Win XP and IE.6. Broadband..)
"With a broadband connection, it should only take a couple of minutes to save.
"1. The easiest way is to RIGHT-CLICK on the link and choose "Save Target As." A box will pop ip to let you choose where on your computer to save it. Click "Save." With a broadband connection; it should only take a couple of minutes to save.
"2. IF THAT METHOD DOESN'T WORK, open the Windows Media Player and follow these steps:
"A. Click on the "File" menu
"B. Select "Open URL"
"C. Copy the link above (highlight the link, then right-click and select "copy") and paste it into the "Open URL" box
"D. Click "OK"
"E. You should now start hearing the program
"F. To save it to your computer, click on the "File" menu again, and choose "Save Media As"
"G. A box will pop up for you to choose where on your computer you want it saved. Select the desired folder and click "Save."'
(Image from dailyencouragement.net)
Keith looked up and answered my question just now. He was putting some bottles of fresh goat milk into the cooler I left outside my door for him. "Kidding," of course, is what they call what they and the goats are busy doing, during the time of year when the does are giving birth to their baby kids.
Kidding time is a huge relief to the deprived customers of White Egret Farm, a premier organic goat dairy just outside Austin. They have had very little fresh goat milk to offer since December. None of their great organic goat milk cheeses either, thanks to greedy Christmas customers who cleaned out their supply.
Now, their creamy, incredibly delicious goat milk is literally "fresh," because the goats are "freshening" or kidding. The best milk of the year! Not to mention the best yogurt too. Ummm! I can't begin to describe how tasty it is. Wish you could have some!
(To answer what many of you may want to know, White Egret Farm not only delivers fresh goat milk products in Austin, they regularly ship them all over the country, from www.whiteegretfarm.com. So - don't say I never did anything for you!)
(Image from quinnipiac.edu)
Yesterday Pilgrim Radio interviewed me, enlarging on my interview in World magazine, here. Host Bill Feltner asked about my prison conversion, why my churches grew steadily and were prosperous, and how best to help the poor. If you want to listen, go to www.pilgrimradio.com, click on "Listen Now" and hear it being broadcast. The times it can be heard (CT) are 4:04 a.m., 2:04 p.m. and 11:04 p.m. About 25 minutes long.
(Image from bhsonline.org)
World Magazine, the Christian news-weekly, has just taken a big risk. They are running a short feature article about me there now, by Susan Olasky, at www.worldmag.com. It is "Restless Retiree," on the right as you scroll down the page. It begins, "Radical Robber, Christian Poverty-Fighter...," etc. Well, some of you already know all about that. But many of you might not.
Thanks, World and Susan. I just hope no one throws any bricks through your windows!
(You can read about a third of the article; the rest is limited to subscribers.)
Abilene High School, Abilene, Texas
(Image from rootsweb.com)
Truthfully, I don't remember much about Abilene High School. It was the 8th school I attended. .So they all sort of run together. Though I graduated from Abilene High, I was only there 2 years. It is pretty much a blur.
But something does stand out. A student there had a huge influence on me, and we didn't even know each other.
That day, we were in the auditorium. An assembly was about to start. The choir was about to sing. I was onstage with them. I must have been, because my view of what happened was from the stage, looking down at the students as they came in. But what got my attention was a senior leading his mother down the aisle and seating her in the middle of the very front row.
He couldn't do enough for her. He hovered. Was she comfortable? Would she prefer another seat? I couldn't hear, but from their motions, that was what they were discussing. He left, but came right back with some other concern. She seemed to be saying No, she was perfectly fine.
I knew who he was because he was in the choir too. Also a football player, and a "big man on campus." And he was unselfconsciously treating his mother with the utmost love and tenderness. For me, it was a stunning revelation. And a rebuke.
You see, I had been treating my own mother pretty shabbily. Why? I didn't really know. My parents were outstanding parents. I loved them and was obedient to them. But I was resentful too. So, without actually disobeying them, I was passive/aggressive with them. I had this sneaky way of goading my mother, without disobeying or talking badly to her. If I could goad her to the point that she became totally exasperated, I would get this little smile on my face.
My resentment was about always having to go to a new school, always starting over. New friends were hard to make. And just when I finally would get some, we would move again.. Four grade schools, two middle schools and two high schools. I blamed my parents. But it really wasn't their fault.
It was my dad's volunteering for the army the day after Pearl Harbor that led to most of the moves. I went to 3 schools that one achool year. When he came home, there were more moves as he got back into civilian life and made career changes.
That day in the auditorium, Bob Bailey was the student I was watching. He really made me think. It changed my mother's life. It changed mine. Yet Bob never had the slightest idea. How would he have known?
The fact is, we do influence other people, more often than we think. There is almost always someone watching. What we do can affect them in ways we may never know, sometimes important, even life-changing ways. My small story is surely not the only one that could be told. Our influence is out there, like it or not.. It matters.
Bob and Marcia, now you know.
Gerry
(Image from kennelclub-petinsurance.co.uk)
The funniest thing you ever saw! 2 minutes, here
(Hat Tip and thanks to Warren Yowell)
Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
