A somber anniversary

By Jeff Orvis

It was a typically gray late fall day. For the only year of my first seven years in school, I was in a different building. But the novelty of climbing on a bus and traveling three or four miles to the top of the hill to the newer Pleasant View School had begun to wear off by that late November day and I suppose I had the same view as my classmates that a day off from classes for parent-teacher conferences, even if it was only a week until Thanksgiving, was a welcome change.

Dad was at work. Mom had a scheduled conference with my third grade teacher just after noon. Since we were too young to stay home alone and since the school allowed kids to hang out in the gym while their parents were in conference, my sister and I went along. It was a rare opportunity to have the gym virtually to ourselves – basketballs and indoor hoops! I vaguely remember that a radio was playing in the background and suddenly the music stopped and a newsman began talking.

It's been five decades since that day and memories sometimes are a big cloudy. But I remember that even then I felt it was my responsibility to tell Mom that the president had been shot in Dallas when she was finished with her conference. She may have already been told and I remember it was a quiet ride back to the house.

In those days, both Mom and Dad were big Kennedy supporters. Looking back and considering my mom's political leanings later in life, I don't know if she was a real fan or if she was simply attempting to keep harmony in the house as she was married to a lifelong Democrat. What I do remember is the rest of that day and for most of the next three days, she shed a lot of tears.

My folks were not politically active. They didn't volunteer at candidate headquarters or make phone calls on behalf of candidates. But they made sure we were exposed to the political process at an early age. My earliest memory was when we were living in Rock Island, IL early in 1960. We walked down to the corner along a busy street and watched as a motorcade carrying the future president passed by. I still think he smiled and waved at us. Later that summer, we drove from our house in the Quad-Cities to Monticello, IA, to hear a campaign speech by the future vice president (and later president) Lyndon Johnson. He was truly in his element, speaking in front of a grandstand on the grounds of a county fair.

So much has been written about the Kennedy years, especially in the days leading up to this fateful anniversary. President Kennedy still maintains an approval rating over 90 percent. We have heard that he may not have always been faithful in his marriage. We learned that he served in office despite a debilitating back ailment. But he overcame so much to lead this nation for such a short time. He came from a family of great wealth, but also one of great service. Despite that wealth, his parents never let him nor his brothers or sisters forget the responsibilities they had to help mankind. He was a war hero, scholar, member of Congress and author.

He broke the mold of what our parents and grandparents expected in their president. Most of those who came before him were old enough to be grandfathers. John Kennedy had two young children under the age of six. He was also a practicing Catholic, another fact that some tried to use against him.

As we remember the Kennedy legacy, it's often tough for me to remember that many of those who I may want to discuss this with weren't even born when he was president. But even if you were only six or seven years old at that time, the few seconds of terror branded our memory with something that stays with us today and will last forever.

Thanks and an apology to our military

By Jeff Orvis

Yesterday, many of us took at least a couple of minutes out of our day to thank and remember veterans and current members of our armed forces. Veterans Day has been around for many years. A lot of the time in the past, many of us probably simply viewed it as a day when the banks were closed and there was no mail delivery.

Most of us either served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard or had friends or relatives that had. But with only a few notable exceptions, the era since the end of the Vietnam War has been a time of peace and it became easier to forget that a very important function of our government has been to protect us and ensure that continued peace.

I came of age when we were eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. It's been a long time ago and I won't go into my views of our participation in that conflict. All I knew is I had no desire to join the armed forces. I'd heard horror stories of what was happening on the other side of the world and I knew I wanted no part of it. Besides, due to at least a couple of glaring health conditions, I was deemed not fit to duty.

This country was sharply divided on the issue of whether we should be fighting in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, a lot of the negative feelings at that time was misdirected toward the returning soldiers. Many of them faced what we have now come to know as post traumatic stress syndrome, as well as exposure to poison that our military spread on the foliage over there. But that didn't seem to matter to the idiot fringe of the protest movement, who turned their venom toward the common foot soldier instead of toward our government.

Fast forward thirty or forty years and the attitude of the majority of us is gratitude toward the veterans of the conflicts in the Middle East, as well as those still on active duty. We may not all agree that our participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the right thing, but we recognize that because we now have an all-volunteer military, they are serving in our stead.

So I can see why we should thank our military members. But I also think we owe them an apology as a nation. As I have commented in the past, the treatment that many of our military members receive from their government when they return is terrible. We may treat them as heroes when they step off the plane at the airport, then quickly forget where they've been and go about our lives. Meanwhile, many of them are struggling with wounds, visible and not-visible or simply struggling to return to a normal  life in a tough economy.

Even if you disagree with our government, most of us view members of our military as heroes. But they are often treated like second class citizens by a government that prides itself in enough red tape to decorate every Christmas tree in this country. By the time these men and women step into the combat zone or into their duties in a support role, they have received superior training. They are professionals. We should remember that. To put it in a sports term, we expect our military to perform like Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall, yet at times our government treats the returning troops like a bunch of sandlot players.

An NFL team owner would never dream of sending his players out on the field without the best pads and uniforms and without a team of trainers and doctors on the sidelines. In fact, the courts are finally starting to force the owners to also give retired players the care they deserve. If you don't intend to play the game with the best resources, whether it is football or the deadly game of war, then you shouldn't play.

You had to know that I couldn't write a piece like this without at least one political comment. But this might surprise you. Maybe it's time we not only make age and citizenship a requirement for the presidency, but also a condition that the candidate must be a military veteran. I realize we have had some former members of the military who have sat in the Oval Office that have disappointed us and some that have not served that have made some wise decisions. But maybe if the next president is a military veteran and the members of Congress who sit on the armed services and appropriations committees also must have served in the military, then our men and women who have served and will serve in the future will have a better chance at a quality life when they return.

So, thank you past and current members of the military. We promise to do a better job of holding our leaders accountable for the medical and financial recognition you so richly deserve.

Moving back home from home

By Jeff Orvis

In the days leading up to the big day, I kept telling friends and family that a week after the move, I would have the chance to sit back and sigh with relief. Well, here it is, almost two weeks later and I missed that target by almost a week.

Long story short, I have moved from Davenport back to Belle Plaine and so far, it has been a very wise decision.

About three years ago, I made the tough decision to leave here and move back to the Quad-Cities, where Mom generously agreed to clean out the spare bedroom for me. I did my best to clean out a two-story, three bedroom house, moving some belongings to a storage unit and loading up the van for the trip to Davenport. It was my intention to look for work there and eventually move into an apartment. After a couple of frustrating years of searching, I began to come to grips with advancing age and I scaled back my search.

Then August, 2012 came along and my focus shifted to being chief decision maker for Mom. I don't want to repeat that month ever again from the standpoint of watching as she suffered through three major surgeries and we ultimately made the agonizing decision to give her back to God. But even as I reflect on that tough month, I realize that He has had a hand in my life all along, especially since I left here in 2010. I had the chance to to reconnect with Mom for nearly two years. We didn't always agree - especially on politics and religion. But on the whole, I will cherish those times and some great memories.

Since her passing in September, 2012, I have been devoted to settling her estate. When I agreed to be the executor, I really had no inkling of what was involved. But thanks to family, good friends and a patient attorney, the estate is almost settled. We sold her condo and I knew I had to find a new place to live.

I have to admit that there were many hours of doubt that all this would fall into place. But I truly believe that if you "let go and let God," good things can happen. My sister was one of the true champions in my corner when I finally decided to set my goal to return to a small town in east central Iowa, where many of my friends still lived. Although she has spent the majority of her adult life living in places where a reliable automobile becomes your best friend, she listened when I talked about some of the amazing relationships I had established in this great small town.

So many things had to fall into place in just the right order to make this move happen. I made one trip back here to look at the apartment I eventually rented. Although I hadn't met my eventual landlords before, having spent more than 10 years here helped. I know several of their sons and despite the fact that my reputation preceded me, they agreed to make me their tenant.

Then came the move arrangements. I have a couple of good friends in Davenport, Eric and Lynn, who looked after Mom before I moved back to Davenport like she was their mom. They transferred that care to me after Mom was gone, so I guess I was lucky to inherit an unofficial brother and sister. They helped me pack up stuff and Eric and their son, Aaron, sacrificed a Saturday to drive the truck and unload.

It's difficult to explain to some folks who have not experienced life in a small town. But the first day I began running errands here, people called out to me on the street, in the stores and the bank. They remembered me, even though I had only visited once in three years. You don't get that kind of attention in a larger city.

I left a neighborhood where you could get a sub sandwich at five different shops, groceries at one of at least four places or a hamburger at nearly a dozen restaurants within a two-mile radius of the condo. But not once did anyone at any of those places know my name. I have told my sister that if she needs to contact me and I don't answer the phone, she can call any one of a half-dozen folks here in Belle Plaine and they will find me. Try that in Davenport, or any other large city, where it's way too easy to disappear.

People I meet ask what my future plans are. I am not really sure. For now, I plan on taking time for rest and reflection and more frequent blog entries. I want to stay involved in this community, through church, occasional visits to City Hall and downtown businesses and maybe an occasional visit to a city council or school board meeting. I have not severed ties with my old hometown. I still subscribe to the electronic edition of the Davenport newspaper and check in several times a week with Eric and Lynn. And in this era of social networking, friends and family are only a couple of keystrokes away.

Baseball and Walker

By Jeff Orvis

This time, I decided to fore go any real heavy thoughts to give some random comments on a couple of totally unrelated subjects.

The other night, Tampa and Baltimore played an extra inning baseball game. In fact, it lasted parts of two days, 18 innings and nearly seven hours. Why anyone would want to sit through an American League game for that long, either in person or watching TV, is a bit of a mystery. I would bet that most of the players' parents, wives and girlfriends were in bed before it was over.

Part of the problem, aside from the fact that apparently neither team brought their best bats on this night, was that the two managers must have thought that whenever their pitcher sneezed, they needed to come out of the game. The two teams used a record 21 pitchers! When you consider that each pitching change probably took between three and five minutes and there were 36 interruptions between half-innings, you begin to understand why this took so long.

We live in a world of specialization. There was a time when a pitching staff might have five or six starting pitchers and two or three relievers. Now we have left-handed starters, right-handed starters, right or left handers who are closers and normally don't pitch more than one inning a day, middle relievers who might be good for two or three innings and set-up men who pitch the seventh or eighth inning ahead of the closers.

This is also supposed to be the age when major league baseball players are in better shape than in the “old days.” Fifty years ago, a lot of the players sneaked a hot dog or two between innings or perhaps a trip down the tunnel toward the locker room for a cigarette. Some of the best players of the 1960s spent their off-hours in the bar. If you were an opposing hitter in that era, would you want to face Whitey Ford if he had a hangover?

And yet, some of the statistics for the old-timers are almost beyond belief for younger fans of today. For example, the 1963 Chicago Cubs (it's my blog so I can pick my favorite team for comparison) had one 22-game winner, four pitchers with at least 10 victories, three who pitched over 200 innings, two others with at least 130 innings pitched and two who appeared in at least 50 games.

At last check, with less than a week left in the regular season, we have had one 20-game winner this season. In the 1963 season, there were 10 pitchers in the big leagues with 20 or more wins. And just so I'm not using only former Cub pitchers in my comparison, consider Bob Gibson, who pitched for the Cardinals for 17 years, He won at least 20 games five times and averaged 15 complete games per season. He finished with a career earned run average of 2.91, including one memorable season when he finished with an earned run average of 1.12 with 28 complete games and a record of 22-9 at age 33.

The discussion can go on for hours between fans who think today's players are better than they were 40 or more years ago. I just wonder how good some of my heroes from the past could have been if they took better care of themselves like so many of today's players do and if they were paid enough so that they didn't have to worry about jobs in the off-season.

Now on a totally different topic, I've had some times in these recent months to become acquainted with some daytime TV. One of my favorite shows is Walker Texas Ranger. Every episode has at least one or two scenes where Walker and his aides kick the stuffing out of the bad guys. There's plenty of added sounds to indicate just how hard the bad guy is being hit. Yet for some reason, even if he is kicked in the head, he stands there for one or two more big blows. I don't know about you, but if somebody wearing cowboy boots kicked me full-on in the face, the jaw would be broken and teeth would be scattered on the floor.

Aside from the assumed durability of the bad guys, you never see Walker and his chief deputy stay around to fill out paperwork. In fact, mere moments after they drop a dozen of the thugs and the marked squad cars arrive, they're off to their next adventure.

Just imagine what some of the actor-stunt men would put on their job resumes. They could probably say they were Walker's punching bag in six different episodes. Quite a fete!

Law enforcement is generally far less exciting than portrayed on TV. Reports have to be filed, witnesses have to be interviewed, there are appearances in court. Most times when I'm watching Walker, I'm trying to count the number of bad guys he's felled and just how few minutes he spends without wearing his beloved hat!

Some heavy thoughts on Syria and our judicial system

By Jeff Orvis

Time to weigh in on a couple of heavy subjects. Thoughts of Syria in the past few days have for some reason led me to think about our own judicial system.

As I write this on Monday afternoon, we are just over 24 hours away from a major address to the nation by President Obama. According to reports from the White House, he supposedly will be explaining why our country should take punitive action against the Syrian government in the wake of reports that its leader ordered the deaths of hundreds or thousands of men, women and children through chemical agents.

For those of you who know me, this next statement may seem out of character. But as much as I admire and support our president, I'm just not sure he is taking the right path on this one. Since news of this atrocity first surfaced, our military has sent a lot of resources to the region. They used to call it “saber rattling.” I don't know what the proper term would be when the “sabers” are surface to air missiles.

From a purely fiscal standpoint, this doesn't seem to make sense. We are still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each week trying to untangle the mess we were handed by the misinformed last administration in Iraq. More resources are devoted to our war in Afghanistan. Surely just to float several ships in seas near Syria we are spending thousands of dollars a day in personnel costs, fuel, etc.

From a tactical standpoint, the president will have to do quite a selling job on the American people to convince us that even if we bombarded parts of Syria it would stop the killing by the Syrian government. It would be wonderful if we knew where the chemical weapon stockpiles were in that country and were able to neutralize them with some of those missiles. But it appears that any hit on those stockpiles would probably spread the poison, not destroy it.

There was a time when I suspect we alleviated the problem of ruthless dictators through covert assassination, either by American personnel or by agencies of some of our allies. Our leaders would report, “problem solved” and if someone asked, “how did you do that?” you would hear the equivalent of “you don't want to know,” or “it's classified.” Besides, it has been reported that the Syrian leader has a brother who is even more evil than his brother. So you would probably have to carry out more than one assassination to eliminate the problem.

It seems like we've had problems that originated in the Middle East, even long before Sept. 11, 2001. Quite naturally, when we hear of unrest in that area, the first thought might be if we had the means, we should just level the whole area, turn it into the world's largest parking lot and start over. And that leads us to the moral question.

While it might be easy to blame an entire race of people for terrorist activities around the world, all you have to do is look into the faces of some of the children of Syria, innocent, fun-loving and wide-eyed...until they are felled by poison from their government. For that reason, the president is correct when he says we can't just stand by and watch this continue. But if we can't cut off the head of the perpetrator and if we can't neutralize the poison, we should at least devote considerable resources on the short term to relief for the millions of refugees who are fleeing the country.

Some of our armed forces could facilitate the orderly and safe evacuation of those who are attempting to get away from the tyrant. Some of our warships could be used to block any further shipments of weapons to Syria. But I don't see any way any punitive missile strikes will be the answer.

Some people who oppose the president on this matter say we can no longer be the policeman of the world. That led to thoughts of recent developments in a well-known criminal case.

Ariel Castro, convicted of kidnapping, rape and many other charges involving three girls in Cleveland had begun serving a life sentence. But just weeks after the sentencing hearing Castro committed suicide. With this final act, he either did a favor for his victims, who will no longer have to live with the knowledge that he is no longer on this earth. Or some may view it as the ultimate final insult as he cheated those who demanded justice and wanted to see him put away for the rest of his life.

At least the tax payers of Ohio won't have to pay the $30,000 or more each year to house this beast.

I am not in favor of the death penalty. Since science has progressed to the point where DNA testing can either confirm the guilt or innocence of an accused person, I wonder how many people who professed that they didn't commit a crime all the way to the chair, chamber or needle were killed by mistake.

I will admit that before more Christian thoughts can wipe away my initial reaction, when I hear about a case of a child molester, I think he should be sentenced to prison and placed in a cell with some big guy who has a small son or daughter on the outside. Those thoughts stem from reports of inhumane conditions in some of our prisons in this country.

Put hundreds of men or women together in cramped quarters with little or no promise of release and it's a recipe for violence. It has been for thousands of years. But that's a whole other story for another time.

My hope is that President Obama can offer some clarity to a definitely complicated issue in Syria and my prayer is there is some way the killing of innocent citizens in that country can come to a quick end.

Of coping and the word search puzzles

By Jeff Orvis

I'm starting to enjoy word search puzzles again.

Big deal, you might say. I would ordinarily agree, but as we come up on the one-year mark since Mom died, I was trying to come up with a way to describe how I've tried to cope this past year. The word search puzzle books were my main companion during that fateful month of August, 2012, as I sat by Mom's bedside as she recovered from emergency abdominal surgery, keeping watch as she slept trying to recover.

In the early part of the month, we had reasons to be optimistic. We had complete faith in her surgeon and the entire medical team at the hospital was compassionate and very professional. Many folks who have experienced illness and surgery, especially when the patient has observed her 80^th birthday, might have thoughts about what life will be like without that loved one. But with her first-rate medical and spiritual teams, we had every reason to expect her to return home quickly.

Ultimately, that was not to be. A series of complications led to two more surgeries later in the month and finally her body signalled it had had enough.

Every day, spend five minutes with the TV and you can see all sorts of drama where actors depict dying moments. I've never personally watched someone die before. While nobody really likes the experience, I would like to think that if I'm ever put in that situation again, I'll have a better idea of how to react. It took more than 59 years for me to experience a death in person. Recently, I have been reminded that Mom watched both of her husbands die. In fact, Dad passed 32 years ago this month. My step-dad Ernie died at home late one night several years later.

My sister has chronicled her thoughts during Mom's final hours in her wonderfully-written blog.

http://meldow2012.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/mamas-final-journey-september-4-2012-by-melissa-dow/

The only thing I remember of those last minutes was when Mom, who had been heavily sedated for several days, suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me. It was not a look of alarm, but rather a look of assurance that she knew full well that this was just the beginning of her ultimate wonderful journey.

As we left the hospital that night, little did I know that a new journey was just beginning for me. I had agreed to be the executor of Mom's estate. I had no inkling of what I was agreeing to. I have never owned a home, nor have I had any financial investments. But I knew that being the executor was often a duty of the oldest child and Mom had complete confidence that I would be able to figure it out.

This journey is continuing as we try to sell Mom's condo and settle the estate. One thing I think I did right was enlist the help of a select number of friends and relatives to help with this process. As a journalist, I've learned that the only dumb question is the question not asked. So my thanks to those members of my team for answering some dumb questions this past year!

You might think that after spending hours working on something as simple as word search puzzles, I would never want to see one again. But in sorting through the mountain of paper her in the house, I came across a few books that hadn't been completely filled in. Strangely enough, those boxes of jumbled letters, where the object is to find a list of up to 40 words is once again a comfort. You can lose yourself mentally in those pages for a few minutes at a time, but can still use some compartments of your brain to ponder other things.

Perhaps in some small way, the puzzle books are a reminder that the days of puzzles and uncertainty and suffering are finally over for Mom and our other loved ones who have passed on. If you believe in God and salvation, you have a better idea of what they mean when they say that the departed have gone on to their reward, where they will finally learn all the answers.

My 'Ode to the Hummingbird'

By Jeff Orvis

Sometimes when my mind gets all jumbled with thoughts of an uncertain future, of the trials and tribulations you can see on almost any TV news channel or on dozens of other channels that feature what they call “reality TV,” it's often a good thing to stroll out onto the porch and ponder true reality.

Besides the occasional car or truck that drives by, there are often countless minutes of uninterrupted peace and quiet out there. I should say that the quiet is sometimes broken by the sounds of any number of birds of various species that seem to like our little corner of the world.

When I first moved here, Mom had a bird feeder for the general population and a smaller clear plastic globe for the hummingbirds. This spring, once the grass had started to turn green, I quit filling the bird feeder. It had been a popular gathering spot for noisy sparrows and other birds and I figured they could fend for themselves naturally, at least until fall arrives. But something told me I should maintain the hummingbird feeder all year long. And I'm glad I did.

I had never seen a hummingbird until I moved back here. There were some weeks when we might only see them once or twice. But this spring and summer, they apparently like my concoction of colored sugar water and are frequent visitors.

As I've been watching them, I came to realize that there's a lot to admire about the simple hummingbird. You might remember that a popular singing group of the '70s paid tribute to these little creatures. The memory of Seals and Crofts sometimes invades my mind when I'm sitting out there: “Oh hummingbird, mankind is waiting for you to come flying along.”

There are apparently several different species of hummingbirds and I don't pretend to know which one we have in our neighborhood. What I do know is they are some of the smallest birds in nature. It has been said that they are the only bird that can fly backward and they sure are fast! One article said they could fly up to 34 mph. They can also hover before darting away.

Using my sometimes strange writer's imagination, I like to think that they can communicate with us. There have been times when the feeder is getting low and I look out and there's a hummingbird hovering at about eye level and I swear he is looking at me, trying to tell me to fill the darn feeder!

Despite their speed and mobility, you would think that because of their size, they would have a short life span and might fall prey to some other wildlife. But some data indicates they may have a lifespan of five to 10 years. Although I have no way to identify them when they visit, there's one that is about two-thirds the size of a gold finch. Mom used to call him a “bully bird” because he would seem to think the feeder was his exclusive property and would chase away another smaller bird that tried to feed.

This season, I've noticed that he often has to stage air wars against honey bees that also seem to like the feeder. But he seems to have the ability to win out in the end, chasing away the insects and lingering around the feeder for several minutes at a time.

One of the things I'm looking forward to when I get to Heaven is getting answers to several questions on nature. I'm sure I'll be surprised at some of them. One of the questions I have is how, despite their incredibly small size, are hummingbirds able to migrate from Iowa to Mexico and beyond each fall and return to the same place in the spring. The hassle of commercial flight is something I'm glad I don't have to experience very often. Yet these little critters do it every year, without having to deal with the TSA or flight delays.

It's a tough life living in nature. But sometimes, when I realize that hummingbirds don't care about the trials of A-Rod, war, terrorism, the economy, politics or even reality TV, they lead a pretty charmed life.

Just keep that darned feeder filled!