Posted tagged ‘library’

« Words from WW Blog home page

Signs That I’m Really, Really Old

November 22, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                               November 22, 2018

                    

People often say that I don’t look like I’m just six months away from being eligible for Medicare. That’s nice to hear. After all, not too many of us get up in the morning with the goal of looking OLDER than we are!

Recently, however, I’m encountered a few situations where I realize I AM OLD! The most recent experience happened this morning when I opened up the newspaper, stuffed like a turkey with Black Friday store advertisements. I sorted through most of them and came to the ad from Best Buy. 

This is the old part! You know you are old when you don’t know what half of the gadgets in the 16 page ad actually do. I recognized the washer and dryer, the frig, and a few of the vacuum cleaners, but other devices had me as clueless as I was in trigonometry class!

The good news in all of that is that if I don’t know what it is…I don’t yet know that I’m suppose to need it!

On to a different “old” subject”! About a week ago I bought new ear phones to listen to my Lawrence Welk music with. They are wireless- another term that mystifies me- and I opened up the instructions. THERE WERE NO WORDS! A sketched finger pointed to different buttons and tried to communicate the purpose of that button with the use of a picture. 

GIVE ME SOME WORDS TO READ! I’m guessing it was a sign of how our culture doesn’t like to read anymore. We now seem to be a society that likes to communicate by using a finger!

In the Walmart Black Friday ad there was a whole page devoted to video games that shoot ‘em up, blow ‘em up, and run ‘em over. One tiny picture at the bottom of the next page advertised three books for toddlers. That was as close to a library as Walmart got!

So I’m feeling old. We bought a new vehicle almost two years ago, but I don’t know how to use half the fancy stuff on itl…and it has a thick manual with WORDS! The steering wheel has abbreviations instead of the whole word. Give me the letters “MN” and I know the state it’s referring to is Minnesota. Put those letters on my steering wheel and I haven’t a clue!

I’m just really, really old! Lord, have mercy! I’m turning into my Kentucky grandfather, Papaw Helton! Before I know it I’ll be sipping buttermilk at supper and wearing suspenders that hold my pants up all the way to my nipples!

Categories: children, Community, Death, Grandchildren, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Too Quiet To Think

October 13, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                   October 13, 2018

                                         

   “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…”   (James 1:19, NIV)

Yesterday I substitute taught for a 7th Grade Language Arts teacher. The lesson plan for each class consisted of taking attendance and then taking the class to the school library (now called the LMC, which stands for Learning Media Center). The school librarian would then tell the students about a few new books the LMC has and they would spend the rest of the class period silently reading. 

Tough day! What did I do? Read some and did some rewriting on my book manuscript…plus, made sure the students were reading, not goofing around- a task that required considerable energy!

Libraries are not the same as they were…45 years ago. When I went to the Briggs Public Library in Ironton, Ohio you could hear a pin drop…and that pin better not drop again! It was quiet, studious, a fine place to locate one of the back wrenching volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and do research on such interesting subjects as the Hoover Dam, mollusks, and the North Pole. 

Libraries today are gathering places, social settings in the midst of books and magazines, and gaming rooms. A place in Colorado Springs where I do much of my book writing is called Library 21C. It’s a great place…as long as you have earbuds! A few weeks ago I was sitting in one of the seats at the long window counter on the lower level. A man three seats away was doing a job interview on his cell phone. Good Lord! The librarian at Briggs Public would have grabbed him by his ear lobe and marched him to the door.

Things are different! Silence is no longer golden! It’s been devalued!

One of the 7th Grade girls, who is energized by the social aspect of life, didn’t seem to be reading the book in front of her yesterday. 

I’d scan the room and when my radar caught sight of her she would suddenly look down at her book. Thirty minutes into the class’s silent reading and she was on page 2. I walked over to her and said, “Hey! Let’s get busy!”

“What?”

I glanced at her book. “You’re on page 2!”

“No, page 3!”

“Okay! Page 3 and we’ve been here so long you should have read the book and written a book report on it already!”

Her eyes opened wide. “We have to do a book report!”

“No, no, no! I was exaggerating, but if you had really been reading you’d be further along than page 3.”

“I can’t think!”

“Why?”

“It’s too quiet in here!”

“What?”

“It’s too quiet! I can’t concentrate when it’s too quiet!”

“Are you serious?”

She nodded, and I realized that we were realizing- Okay, maybe I was realizing!- one of our generational differences. I read while I’m sitting in the swing on our back deck, or in my study, or at bedtime…all places where quiet and peace can follow me. This young lady operates in a world of chatter, instant communication that could better be named instant distraction, and noise. 

Noise has replaced silence as the new golden. Silence is now an indication that something’s wrong. Silence also indicates that we’re listening, and in a noisy world we no longer listen very well. 

And so what do I do in the midst of a culture that now values loudness and multiple mouths speaking at the same time? What do I do? I put my earbuds in and listen to the rhythmic noise of music to block out the noise of the other voices. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it is my new silence.

Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

5 Stars for My Book From 3 People

September 5, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                     September 5, 2018

                           

Two weeks ago my cell phone rang around 8:00 in the evening. I was finishing up the rewrite on the sequel book to the first one…that I hadn’t planned on there being a sequel to!

I picked up my phone and saw that the call came from my oldest daughter, Kecia. So I answered, as I have a tendency to do, by speaking Spanish.

“Como esta usted?”

“Huh?” came the high-pitched voice on the other end of the line. It was my ten year old grandson calling on his mom’s phone. Jesse does not speak Spanish yet, at least the way I speak it!

“Is this Jesse?”

“Yes, Granddad!”

“Oh!” (pause) “What’s up, Jess?”

“Well, we just finished Red Hot: New Life in Fleming.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and we really liked it!”

“You did? That’s great!”

I had sent the book draft in an email attachment and each evening right before bedtime Kecia had read a chapter of the book to Jesse and my granddaughter, Reagan. They had read the last chapter that night.

If no publisher picks it up for publication I know at least three of the most important people in my life will have given it “five stars” in their evaluation. (Now they are reading the sequel at bedtime!)

Kecia told me that they had cried when a tragedy had occurred for one of the main families in the book. And she told me that they had enjoyed a certain chapter so much that they read it twice.

Both of the grandkids (Their 3 year old sister isn’t quite into the reading and listening stage yet, although she does get read to every night.) are avid and excellent readers, encouraged by their third grade teacher mom. Their reading level is far above the average for their peers. It’s a byproduct of the fact that they have ended their day with a reading time for as long as they can remember.

So now I wait to hear from the publisher who has the draft. I pitched it to the managing editor of a publisher back in May at the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference. He gave me his card and told me to send it to him. Since then we’ve exchanged a few emails and he’s told me it won’t be until around the end of October before they’ll make a decision.

Another publishing house of the “vanity publishing” type wants me to pursue it with them, but a good-sized payment is attached to their contract…that is, I pay them and sometime down the road…in a future life maybe!…I’ll break even! 

My two good friends, both with knowledge and experience in the print industry, continue to encourage me and tell me that it is an excellent book. They have edited both my original draft and then my rewrite…as well, as the sequel. They have been drawn into loving the characters and have come alongside me as plots have been shaped and considered. In certain times in the writing of the book(s) one of them has said something like “What if…?” or “Why did you take the scene in that direction?”

The publishing industry is tough competition these days. Companies are much more selective in what they are pursuing. In this time of 140 character tweets people don’t read like they used to. BUT people will still read a good story!

For now I have at least three people who’ve given me five stars. Actually, my two editing friends would join the three related to me, so I guess I’m at five people! 

Now I’ve started writing Book 3. It seems somewhat strange to write a third book in a series where even the first novel hasn’t been published yet…but I want to see how the story ends!

Categories: children, Christianity, coaching, Community, Freedom, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, love, Novels, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Relevancy of Libraries

August 28, 2017

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                           August 28, 2017

                                  

I remember the library in Ironton, Ohio. Its familiarity was due to the fact that it was right next door to the First Baptist Church of Ironton, the church that ordained me! That was about as close as I got to discovering the library back in those days. It was a place of books, shelves, and cranky librarians.

Sad as it is, I can not even remember where the library was located in my old high school. Yes, I realize that was forty-five years ago, but you would think I could recall its approximate location. It was not crucial, however, to the attainment of my 2.5 grade point average! Conversely, at the school where I substitute teach and coach now the LMC (Library Media Center) is the activity hub of the school.

In recent times I’ve actually discovered the INSIDE of the library that is about two miles from our house. It is wonderful! It’s a place of books, computers, DVD’s, magazines, lectures, displays, and…librarians who smile!

There is growing debate about the relevancy of the public library. Its naysayers promote the value of the internet as now being the ultimate source of knowledge, immediate access to information, and available anywhere. As is often the case their viewpoint is as one-sided as a political party position. There is merit in what they say, without a doubt, and yet there is also a naiveness bundled with it.

I’ll go to our public library tonight to spend a couple of hours in quiet and contemplation. I recently finished the first draft of a book I had been writing. Most of the book was written from a quiet area on the first floor of the library. Being surrounded by books and other people’s creativity prompted the igniting of words in my own mind.

Last Saturday I picked up a DVD from the library that we watched with our three grandkids that night.

Last week I gazed upon the display shelves of about a hundred different magazines. To see them side by side, and to read the titles of articles, was an intriguing experience.

Libraries are depositories of ideas, thoughts, and stories. They are my refuge from the noise of life. I am a lover of history, biographies, and mysteries. I’m currently reading a book about presidential campaigns by John Dickerson entitled Whistlestops; and a Greg Iles mystery Blood Memory. Before these books I read Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions, John Sanford’s Golden Prey, Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, and Glen Jeansonne’s Herbert Hoover: A Life. All of them I could have ordered from Amazon, but all of them I checked out from the public library.

The demise of the public library will come, not so much because of the internet, but because less people see the value in reading. We have been “Tweeterized” in our reading focus. Although reading is stressed and emphasized so much in school, adults seem to have evolved into 140 character beings. They have slumped into the non-commitment of being couch potatoes. Let’s pray that downward trend in reading  shifts back the other way because there is enough ignorance being shown in opinions right now even with the presence of libraries. To have them become a thing of the past will open the floodgates for people to say even more stupid things…and even more people to take the stupid things as being truth!

Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Nation, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Problem With A Pastor’s Library

December 28, 2015

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                 December 28, 2015

                                   

Retirement for a pastor means a lot of things…some good and some bad. One of the bad things is that I have to move everything out of my office at church and bring it home.

That’s where the problem starts!

My personal library is in excess of a thousand books. The bookshelves in my study at home were packed out…before I brought books from the office! Now the floor of my study is featuring towers. It looks like multiple games of “Book Jenga” are being played! How high can I build the tower, and now can I take out that copy of Church Dogmatics; Volume 1.1 located two-thirds of the way down the tower without toppling the whole thing? Challenges and problem-solving!

My wife Carol’s frequently asked question is not “Is this all you’ve got?” Flip to the opposite side of that question and you would be accurate.

“You aren’t going to keep all these books are you?”

“Ahhh…no,” I  say weakly and without conviction.

I feel like a pastor whose cat has just had a litter of kittens, and now I must find good homes for Pannenberg, Barth, and Kung. The problem is that there are very few people who are interested in Latourette’s two-volume A History of Christianity. It resembles a Saint Bernard in size and effort. I have even less potential homes for Torbet’s A History of The Baptists. there are an abundance of people who wonder about Baptists, but very few who are interested in them.

I accomplished a little bit of clearance Saturday night when I removed four books from one of the towers…and snuck them to the basement…just in case I need one of them.

The mindset of a book addict is like that. I may not have even dusted a book for three decades and yet I still think we might use it next week. That’s how my brain works.

So now my home study is being considered for an episode of Extreme Hoarders. As I stand by in obvious mental and emotional anguish Rudolf Bultmann’s Jesus Christ and Mythology is carted out. Leonard Sweet’s books are in the process of being carefully removed when I scream “Can’t you leave me at least one?”

Pathetic!

I am, however, getting better. I moved all of my Chicken Soup… books out last week. They are hiding behind the stack of jigsaw puzzle boxes in the basement…just in case I might need them!

Categories: Bible, Christianity, Humor, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment