Good Therapy

Claire Nathan went to physical therapy for her ankle. When she returned home, Randall asked her how it went.

"Oh, it was a good session. I got two new recipes."

Bats In the Belfry Eat Free

Last night was the big community Easter concert. It alternates from year to year between St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and St. John the Catholic Baptist Church, since they have the largest seating capacities. This year was the Catholics' turn.

All the ministers sat in the chancel, between the massed choirs and "Bobby Shafto and his Holy Week Combo." Pastor Patty is still worrked about her appearance, since someone sent her, anonymously, information about beautytipsforministers.com, so she made sure she was sitting between Leader Lola of The Three Round Church and Sister Shubert of The Church of the Enduring Supper, known locally as The Holy Rolls Church. One is especially comely and one is remarkably not so. Thus Pastor Patty figured nobody would even notice her.

Nobody noticed anybody else at all when, early in the service, they were singing "Come, sinners to the gospel feast, let every soul be Jesus' guest, ye need not one be left behind..." and leaving not one behind, the Somali palm insects attacked, apparently summoned by the piccolo in Bobby Shafto's combo, which sounded to them like The Whistler at The Methodist.

On Palm Sunday, the Somali insects had been slumbering in the cut-rate palms the children were waving at The Methodist until they heard The Whistler doing accompaniment for "Ode to Joy." When The Whistler changed his tune to "I'll fly away," they did so. They had only flown across town, however, and taken up residence in the walls of St. John the Baptist. Now they were really hungry, and "Come sinners, to the gospel feast" had an effect Charles Wesley had never intended.

There was screaming and whacking and even calls for God to damn the piratical Somali palm insects. But then, the sound of The Whistler was heard in the land. Still, no one knows the identity of The Whistler, but Detective Abel Cain said this morning that he had one clue: The Whistler is an Isaac Watts fan, for he began on "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening powers..."

That was when the bats came out of the belfry.

The Catholics have pretended for so long that they don't have bats in their belfry that everyone had forgotten about them, creating an identity crisis for the bats themselves, who apparently thought they were holy doves, because they dove down into the sanctuary, with their quickening powers, and enjoyed a Holy Week feast like they'd never had before.

Today there is a new sign in front of The Whistle & Thistle: "Blue plate special, $7.95. Bats in the belfry eat free."

EMPTY PLACES & FULL MEMORIES

Randall Nathan likes to take his walks on campuses when the students are gone, and on playgrounds when the children are not there. He likes students and children, but when those spaces are empty, there is room for memories.

Passover Peeps

Rabbi Cindy and Claire Nathan collided at the junction of the Passover and Easter aisles of The Friendly Skunk IGA. Rabbi Itzak is on an extended leave from Congregation Loch Loman to treat his persimmon phobia. Rabbi Cindy teaches at the Hebrew school in Capital City, and she's filling in for Rabbi Itzak for Passover, and she is dreading this evening.

Congregation Loch Loman will eschew family seders for a communal seder for the whole community. That means a lot of basketball-besotted Christians will be there. She is sure that when little Benjamin Greenberg asks, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" someone will answer back, "Because Butler is in the Final Four."

So she was quite pleased to collide with Claire Nathan. Retired Home Ec teacher Claire is widely known to be the leading Christian theologian in Periwinkle County. Rabbi Cindy asked Claire what to do to keep the Christians quiet.

"Tell the Catholics to sing," Claire asked. "That'll shut them up."

"What about the Protestants?" asked Rabbi Cindy.

"Give them peeps and tell them that the Halakhah requires that guests keep their mouths full of peeps during the service."

So Rabbi Cindy and Claire Nathan both filled their carts with peeps, for different celebrations, Claire intending hers for use in the scrambled eggs for the Easter sunrise breakfast, and went to the checkout aisle together.

"Do you prefer to serve peeps fresh or stale?" the cashier asked.

In the parking lot, putting her peeps into the trunk of her Desoto, Rabbi Cindy muttered, "Easter celebrations are really strange."

[If you wonder why Rabbi Cindy drives a Desoto, read the post for March 18, Running a Business Like a Business. And a woman of the author's acquaintance was actually asked the "fresh or stale" peeps question by a cashier this week.]

PALM SUNDAY & CHAOS THEORY

P. Irish Smith, Distinguished Professor of Physics at Cratchit State U, was at the Palm Sunday service this morning. Prof. Smith never goes to church on special occasions, because there is too much chaos. His Physics specialty is Chaos Theory, and he is afraid that his observation of ecclesiastical chaos will prejudice his observation of physical chaos. So he goes to church only in what the prayer books and lectionary calendars call "ordinary time," when there is just the ordinary chaos of sopranos cracking on the high notes and children during the kids sermon insisting that the name of Jesus' father was Bob.

For this Palm Sunday, though, Pastor Patty has requested his help in identifying "The Whistler."

For a month of Sundays, or maybe two months, someone has been accompanying every Prelude and Postlude, every anthem and solo, every hymn and offertory, with whistling. It comes from the back corner of the church, known as "The Ahem Corner" because of the sounds of old men clearing their throats back there. No newcomers have been observed in The Ahem Corner, so The Whistler has to be one of its regular denizens of single men, single by choice or by accident or by choir. When questioned, though, each Ahemer claims to know nothing about the whistling, and they are believable, because they are all either hard of hearing or so unobservant that they don't realize they are wearing unmatched sox.

It's not bad whistling. Some people think it is a nice addition. However, the organists and the choir directors and Jamie "Perfect Pitch" Bunning have all threatened to quit and/or leave if it doesn't stop. Pastor Patty isn't sure what she'll do to get The Whistler stopped, once he's identified, but she knows she has to do something.

In addition to Chaos theory, Prof. Smith is an expert in the physics of baseball and bird calls, so he was sitting in the second row on the diagonal from the Ahem Corner, the spot he had determined would be best to calculate the angle of the sound of whistling, when the UFOs struck. During the Prelude.

Moira Choi, the SS Supt, had lined the children up at the back of the sanctuary and started each one off precisely 3.5 seconds after the previous one, each one waving a palm frond. The spacing was to be sure that the last palmists would be starting down the center aisle at the precise time the lead wavers had come back up the side aisles. Thus the congregation would be surounded on all sides by waving palms. It had the added advantage that Walter Weter was far enough behind Courtney Peters that he was unable to poke her behind with his palm.

That was when The Whistler began to accompany Winton Luqton, the organist, on the preludic "Ode to Joy," which he had selected to impress Joy Schlingerheimer, who is otherwise unimpressed by Winton. They are both opera fans, but with Winton it is Grand, and with Joy it is Grand Ol'.

Apparently the whistling sound was a signal to the millions, some say billions, of winged creatures that had been slumbering in the cut-rate palms Moira had ordered from Somalia. It would have been a perfect occasion for Prof. Smith to study chaos, except that he was as busy as everyone else in futile flailing at the invaders. Abraham Lincoln would have loved it, for he was famous for saying, "I like to see a preacher who looks like he's fighting bees." On this occasion, it wasn't only the preacher.

Just when it looked like the Somalian insects were winning, The Whistler changed his tune. No one had ever heard The Whistler on his own before. Previously he had only accompanied. Now, though, the new and naked sound could be heard throughout the church. Most folks knew the words to the tune. "I'll fly away, O glory, I'll fly away, in the morning..." And hearing their marching, or flying, orders, that's what the palm pirates did.

Pastor Patty spent the rest of the service thinking she didn't need to identify The Whistler and get him to stop. She just has to get him to whistle a tune that will work on The Kitchen Nazis.

She's Coming Home

Two weeks ago, as Claire Nathan was picking out persimmons in the produce section of the Gray Squirrl [sic] IGA, Ken Grantham told her that his wife had left him that morning.

Ken spends most of his time in the produce section. He doesn't work there, but he doesn't like coffee or beer or books, so there are no other public places he can hang out.

For two weeks, he's been getting invitations to supper from people who feel sorry for him because his wife left him. She just went to visit her sister in Amarillo for a couple of weeks, but Ken doesn't like to cook or eat in restaurants by himself.

Now she's coming home. He's preparing by moving the furniture an inch so that the leg holes will show in the carpet and thus make it look like he vacuumed.

Spring Sports

The folks in Periwinkle County have been so busy with the NCAA basketball tourney they've not had time for much else. However, Ransall Nathan and Johnny Kendy were playing soccer in Johnny's yard, and as Johnny explained it later, "The window got broken while Grandpa and I were playing soccer."

The Running of the Saps

The persimmon sap has started to flow in Periwinkle County, which means the wild bores have returned.

They go up to Capital City for the winter, following the scent of the fertilizer runoffs to know which streams to use. They hibernate underneath the state house until the persimmon sap begins to run. Then they know it is time to return to the woods along The Topaz River in the south valleys of PC, near the town of Plumpona.

The closer they get, the harder they run.

The persimmon developers, of course, want the sap themselves, and when the word comes that the sap is running, they know the bores will not be far off. They themselves begin to run through the valleys where no truck or ATV can go, trying to get to the sap first. Jed Bozos is chief among them, for he is sure that all he needs to complete his clothes Grindel is a persimmon sap coating to hold the ions in place. [1]

Then it is time for the emergency first-responders, for each year there are collisions of bores and developers and college students on spring break. Be careful not to buy extra virgin persimmon pulp, for it has been created when bores and persimmons and developers and students crash together.

[1] For more on Jed Bozos and his Grindles, read the posts of 1-6 & 1-14.

Root Beer & Tea Abuse

Spring has come on little bird feet to Periwinkle County, so the A&W has opened a month early.

Ansel and Wilma go to Sarasota for the winter and come back to boil footlongs and pour frosty drafts for their rollerblading carhops to deliver to the cars and 16s [4x4s] at their squacky order boxes only in the summer. They were getting a bit tired of the high sun of FL, though, and were just as happy to be back early

One year they tried staying open through the winter, putting the carhops on snow boards, but that convinced them only of the need for universal health care, since they ended up with a lot of orthopedic bills for the hops, and body shop bills for the 16s they crashed into.

Betsy and Johnny Kendy had a day off school last weeek, for an in-service harangue of the teachers by Marcella "Sharpie" Sharp, a TV evangelist turned motivational speaker, so Claire and Randall Nathan took their grandchildren to the A&W for lunch. It is one of Claire's least-favorite places, but she will do anything the grandchildren want to do.

It's not so much that Claire dislikes the A&W. It's the root beer that bothers her.

She traces it to a pony cart incident when she was a little girl. A neighbor man had a pony cart in which he would load up the neighborhood kids and take them for a ride, ending at the Dog 'n Suds, which later under new ownership became the Frank 'n Stein. One hot night, he ordered a frosty root beer for the pony, too. The sight of root beer running thrugh the wild-eyed pony's yellow teeth and down its hairy chin still haunts Claire's night mares.

She is convinced that the tea party people were abused as children, quite possibly by being forced to watch ponies drink tea.

Social Action & Social Justice

Since Pastor Patty was so worried this morning at worship about how she looked, she wore two pulpit gowns and three stoles to be sure she was adequately covered. This prompted Claire Nathan to tell her husband, Randall, to take Patty's husband and children to Hot Dog Heaven for lunch while she took Patty to Buddy Mutts to cheer her up. She couldn't take the whole bunch because each diner must be accompanied by a dog at Buddy Mutts, and Claire had access only to Franklin and Eleanor, Jake and Jenny Newland's potbellied pigs. The brothers Jim, who run Buddy Mutts, think that Franklin and Eleanor are deformed poodles.

Woodrow "Wooly" Mather, Chief Apostle of The Harvest Time Praise Center and Pumpkin Stand, who claims to be a direct descendant of Cotton Mather, famous as a prosecutor in the Salem Witch Trials, was eating at Buddy Mutts, with his pit bull, Bubba. In Bubba's case, Muddy Butts was the more appropriate name for the eatery. Also Bubba was quite sure that Franklin and Eleanor were not fellow canines, and put up quite a fuss about it, but that's a different story.

"I assume nobody was at your church this morning," Apostle Wooly said to Pastor Patty, "since The Methodist is one of those social justice churches, and Glen Beck told everybody to leave any church that used phrases like 'social justice' or 'economic justice,' because those are Nazi and Commie churches."

"We had a remnant," said Pastor Patty. Attendance was actually better than usual, but she likes being part of a remnant.

"They must not have gotten the word," said Apostle Wooly. "Next Sunday you'll be empty, and Forsythia Lutheran and St. John the Baptist Catholic, too. They'll all be out at our place."

"Probably so," said Pastor Patty, "but I don't see how we could be both Nazis and Communists, since their philosophies are completely opposed to each other, and Hitler sent Communists to the death camps just like Jews."

"Ah, yes, that myth of the Holocaust," said Apostle Wooly, "and that myth that Nazis and Commies are different. They're both enemies of the greatest military nation the world has ever known, and that is what makes them the same, they both hate the freedom we so graciously insist that they embrace, and why they must be... well, they must be tea partied."

"The well have no need of a physician," said Pastor Patty.

"You won't get anywhere quoting Mau to me," said the Apostle.

"But yours is a social action church, Apostle Wooly," Claire Nathan said sweetly.

"Yes, indeed, social and economic ACTION, but not JUSTICE. That's the difference, and it is what makes Brother Beck the true prophet of our times, even more so than Brother Rush. He said to leave the social JUSTICE churches, not the social ACTION churches. He knows that it's incumbent upon all true Christians to take ACTION against homosexuals and taxes and gun control and abortion and Moslems and school textbooks and women preachers and evolution and health care reform and presidents without birth certificates and immigrants and science. We must have ACTION, but justice? Never! I expect to see you at our church next Sunday, too, or are you going to admit that you are not true Christians?"

"Oh, we'll be there," said Claire Nathan, very sweetly.

When she got home, she said to her husband, Randall: "I'm going to need a bunch of cardboard, and markers, and those sticks you use to hold up signs. I'm going to a different church next Sunday."

The Curse of Ordained Beauty

Pastor Patty has a problem. She needs to look pretty, but not prettier than any of the other women in her church. She needs to look fashionable, but not like she spends any money or time on clothes. She needs to look attractive, but not attractive enough that any of the men of the church will be attracted to her. She needs to look sexy, but not... well, forget that. She should NOT look sexy, except to her husband, who should be there only to help care for the children they get through adoption.

She thought she was doing the right thing, walking carefully the tight rope of the middle way, looking good enough that nobody would be embarrassed if they introduced a Presbyterian or Catholic friend to her, but not so good they would be afraid to introduce a husband or boyfriend or lesbian to her. Secretly, though, late at night, after the children were in bed and her husband had conked out in his narcolounger, she gently pried the remote control out of his fingers and switched from ESPN [known as the Eastern Seaboard Private Network in the summer because then it shows only Yankees and Red Sox games] to watch Clinton and Stacy on "What Not to Wear."

She has been sensitive about her looks ever since her last baby was born. It's not just that she gained some weight, but with three children, and a husband, and a church, and working on becoming a Fellow of The Academy of Parish Clergy, and writing books, she just doesn't have any time for hair and makeup and wardrobe.

Then someone emailed to her anonymously [anonymous@hooya.com] beautytipsforministers.com, [BTFMC]. She suspects that it was Denise DeLaum, who herself has been barred from every salon in Periwinkle County for criticizing the hair and makeup of all the other patrons, after their appointments, yet. She knows she should not even consider the opinions of someone like Denise, but to a minister, one tangential criticism equals a hundred whole-hearted words of praise. [Or even tangenital, which was the first spelling that came up, and gives whole new meaning to What Not to Wear.]

Her husband assured her that she did not need to look at BTFMC, which Pastor Patty appreciated. She knew, however, that he was smart enough to say that, regardless, so she dismissed his opinion. After all, he's just a husband.

Besides, why should a minister need beauty tips? Shouldn't a minister look like a minister, frumpy and harried? Only Unitarians and nuns are vain enough to worry about their looks.

So she consulted her old seminary friend, Harry Shurtz, who is an expert on church and beer web sites, who said she looked okay to him, and that BTFMC was an okay site, but Harry's main claim to fame is getting into a bar fight every St. Periwinkle's Day while trying to break up a fracas between the Jews for Jesus and Gentiles for Moses biker gangs, so she didn't pay much attention to him, either.

Finally she consulted an expert, Randall Nathan, who was a preacher for forty years, and famous for not needing beauty tips. Whether because he already looked too good, or because there was no hope, is still open for debate.

"Well, Patricia, the way I did it..."

"No, no, not you. I want to know how Claire did it. I know she was a minister's wife instead of a minister, but the rules are still the same: look fashionable without spending any time or money, be pretty but not prettier than anybody else, be attractive but don't attract anybody. But she flaunts all the rules. She's prettier than anybody else, but everybody thinks that's great. She's fashionable, but nobody thinks that's a bad thing. She attracts all the men, but they treat her like one of the guys instead of a drool object. She was the perfect minister's wife. If she had been a minister, she would have been the perfect woman minister. Sometimes I hate her, because she makes it all look so easy, and it's not..."

"Oh, Patricia, she was never the perfect minister's wife, because she was never a minister's wife. She never tried to fit a role. She was just herself. You don't need beauty tips. You just need to be yourself. Oh, and watch Stacy and Clinton..."

No Paths Without Trees

When it was just City Park, before the Council sold the naming rights, and it became ABHOR Park, Randall Nathan had all his walking paths, through the woods and around the playground and past the sledding hill, named for his favorite theologians.

Yesterday he had just walked the Paul Tillich pathway and had come to the John Dominic Crossan, to move on to the Marcus Borg trail when... there was no trail. Because there were no trees. It was acres of stumps. There wasn't even any underbrush.

He surmised that the clearing had been done to combat the dreaded persimmon fungus, but he did not know how to proceed. Without the Borg, how would he ever get to the Polkinghorn?

He was bereft and pleased at the same time. At least he could write a better class of thought in his moleskin notebook. [1] He took it out and penned: Without trees, there are no paths.

[1] March 2, 2010.

Beauty Tips for Ministers

Pastor Patty is upset. Somebody sent her, anonymously, this:

http://beautytipsforministers.com/

Running a Business Like a Business

It was 70 degrees and Sunnny yesterday, so Randall Nathan, who all winter has walked at The Fruitdale Mall or at The OMCA, took a walk yesterday for the first time in ABHOR Park. The park has been there for about 60 years, and he has walked there many times, but the Memphjus town council just last week sold the naming rights to the park to "Abestos Bargains and Harvestime Orthopedic Rectifiers."

Randall Nathan thinks that ABHOR Park is privitization run amok, or run abhorent. He dropped by "Greenberg Studebaker & Desoto Sales and Service" to chat about it with his old friend, Herschel Greenberg.

"There's this myth going around, almost considered biblical anymore," said Herschel, "that privitization is the answer to anything and everything. Everything should be run more like a business. I say, which business? Enron? General Motors? Citi Bank? You know what should be run more like a business? Business! Churches should be run more like church. Schools should be run more like school. Governments should be run more like government. Hospitals should be run more like hospital."

"You sound like Plato and his theory of Ideals," said Randall.

"I didn't know Mickey Mouse's dog was a philosopher, but if you say so," said Herschel. "You know what people want?"

"Everything for nothing?" guessed Randall.

"You've got it," said Herschel. "Everybody wants the benefits of church and school and government and health care, but nobody wants to pay for them. They think that somehow if we just privatize it, it will pay for itself. You know what happens when you privatize?"

"I think so," said Randall, "but tell me anyway."

"What happens is, you not only have to pay for the service, but you have to pay for the privateers to make a profit and get their billion dollar bonuses. Privitization costs twice as much. You know why I'm the only Studebaker and Desoto dealer left in the whole world?"

"No, I really don't know that," said Randall Nathan.

"It's not because I was smarter than the other dealers. There were lots smarter than me. They were more efficient, better managers, better salesmen. Except I was smarter in one way: I married Blackwell Blufield's daughter. When times got tough financially, Blackie put more of his millions into this business so he wouldn't have to admit to his friends at the country club that his daughter married a schmuck. Those guys who were smarter business-wise, they married for love, so when bad times came, they went out of business."

"That doesn't exactly explain the Desotos and Studebakers," said Randall.

"What explains them," said Herschel, "is, I decided to run my business the old-fashioned way, where you don't treat a customer like a dollar sign but like a friend. My friends loved Desotos and Studebakers. They didn't want to drive anything else. So I built up my inventory. I rented every garage in the state big enough for a Desoto or a Studebaker, so I'd always have them for my customers, so I could take care of my friends. That's the way you run a business more like a business. Unfortunately, they're all dead now."

"But you are still selling cars," said Randall.

"Oh, yeah, You know who buys them now? The children of Wall Street bankers and insurance company executives. They're too rich to work and they have more money than they know what to do with and they think old cars are a hoot. You know what a new Desoto or Studebaker sells for these days?"

"I'm afraid to ask," said Randall.

"That's right, if you have to ask, you can't afford it," said Herschel Greenberg. "I'm too big to fail."

St. Periwinkle's Day

Today is St. Periwinkle's Day. Perhaps only in Periwinkle County, but there it is celebrated with persimmon wine, so by the end of the day, nobody cares what the rest of the world thinks.

Celebrating St. Periwinkle and her contributions to the world does not diminish the celebration of St. Patrick and his day. Instead, the Periwinklians feel blessed to drink both green beer and brown wine.

There is some controversy about what centerpiece to use on one's table on St. Periwinkle's Day. Most people use paper mache' mockups of the tiny "Persimmon People." It is said that they come into the houses of people who refuse to celebrate St. Periwinkle's Day and stuff green and fuzzy food-like materials into the dark deep recesses of their refrigerators. This makes sense, since it was St. Periwinkle who originally went through the towns and villages rooting through refrigerators and throwing out broccoli and arugula and other green stuff that did not taste good. She is celebrated yet today with Pringles and Olestra and Moonpies.

Persimmon Spring

It was 65 degrees in Periwinkle County today. It was sunny. Redbud and dogwood and persimmon trees were showing buds. Young women and old men were wearing shorts.

The Brothers Jim were disconcerted, however, precisely because it was so beautiful. They wanted to be out planting aprisimmons, their new hybrid, but everybody in the county, or so it seemed, borrowed a dog so they could come to Buddy Mutts to eat, so they were stuck inside cooking Lentil Surprise.

The Jims thought they could clear the lunch crowd out fast by playing a DVD of "Glen Beck's Best Thoughts," but it was so short nobody noticed it was on. Instead Ben "Seymour" Bottoms showed up with his penny whistle, and Randall Nathan with his ukelele, and everyone stayed around to sing Irish songs, just in case anyone died before tomorrow.

Overhearing the Gospel at a Square Dance

Betty Furst was fiddling around and calling a square dance last night at the "No Blues Dance Hall & Orthopedic Clinic." Poor Judith Seidenstepper kept getting confused on the "alleman left." She couldn't figure out which way to turn or who would be her next partner. Betty stopped the "Whiskey for Breakfast" Irish tune three times to show Judith how to do it, to no avail. The other dancers were doing pretty well, so finally Betty said, "Just hold out your hand and someone will take it."

Pastor Patty was on the sidelines, listening to three-year-old Clara Wembley teach her a song that she had just made up, which mostly had to do with wanting a party featuring a skinny goat rather than a fat calf, since the fatted calf had figured prominently in the morning's sermon about "The Prodigal Son," so she didn't quite know the context for Betty's statement, but she told Randall Nathan later: "It was just like Kierkegaard in the cemetery. I overheard the Gospel."

Nobody in Heaven

Johnny Kendy stopped by his grandma's house after taking a cake his mother baked to Ray Cathcart. Ray's wife died last week.

"Mr. Cathcart was real sad. He said he and his wife had been married almost 60 years, and now he will never see her again, because he's saved and she wasn't. He'll go to heaven when he dies, but she'll have to go to hell, and he'll never see her again."

"Johnny," said Claire Nathan, "heaven is where you're always happy, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so, if you like harping and stuff."

"I'm not sure about the harping, but wherever there is love, there can be no hell. If you love somebody, and they go to hell, even if you're in heaven, you can't be happy. There won't be haters in heaven, only lovers. So if anybody is in hell, there can't be anybody in heaven."

The professional theologian, The Rev. Dr. Randall Nathan, says this is another of Claire's Home Ec Theologies. He's always known she is the best theologian in the family.

An Editor's Dream

Pastor Patty is having trouble concentrating on her sermon on The Prodigal Son for tomorrow. She is waiting to hear from Super-agent Phyllis Ethridge, to see if she will represent Pastor Patty's book, "The Preacher Wore Scarlet [But Only on Pentecost]."

Pastor Patty "tightened" the manuscript as much as she could. Her experience with editors is that they always want fewer words. She wrote a piece once for an independent Christian periodical, "The Lost Century." Three times editor James Floor sent it back, telling her to make it shorter. As a half-joke, half-complaint, she returned it to him with only one word.

Floor replied, "This is much better, but can you find a shorter word?"

Blog Corrections

I'm not sure why Blogspot put "Red and Yellow, Black and White" after "Fleece and The 7 Cities," or claims thus that it was posted on Friday, since I just posted it at 8:20 a.m. [CST] on Saturday. Anyway, the most recent post, as of Sat. nmorning, is "Red & Yellow, Black & White."

Also, "Fleece and the 7 Cities" should be "Fleece and the Sex Cities."

Now, we'll see where this publishes...

Fleece & The 7 Cities

Randall Nathan's friend, former basketball star, Latin scholar, and current Great Black Hunter, Moses "Moose" Jackson, lives in Iron Mountain, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just across the Menominee River from WI, 100 miles north of Green Bay. They talk basketball on the phone from time to time. Moose calls the Iron Mountain metropolitan area "The Sex Cities," since Iron Mountain, Kingsford, and Quinnisec on the MI side, and Spread Eagle, Aurora, and Niagara on the WI side, are contiguous, and possibly contagious. Of course, that is because "sex" in Latin is "six" in English.

"Say, Moose, did you see in the current SI about those 20,562 people at the basketball stadium in Cleveland all wearing Snuggles? The Guinness book says it was a record for 'largest gathering of people wearing fleece blankets.'"

"Hell, that's nothing," said Moose. "We've got more people than that in The Sex Cities, and we wear fleece blankets EVERY night."

Red & Yellow, Black & White...

[If you have not previously read the posts for March 9 & 12, now would be a good time to do so.]

[In the spring, a young man's fancy may turn to love, but an old man's fancy turns to baseball.]

Earl Weaver, curmudgeonly honorary manager for the Baltimore Orioles' Fantasy Camp and Orthopedic Clinic, got tired of "Waste 'Em Wally" Wagler hitting all the baseballs over the fence. So Earl sent a hurry-up order to World Leather Goods and Purveyors of Fine Stuff [WLGAPOFS]in Purveyor, SC, the official and only source of baseballs for The South Carolina Amateur Whites-Only Baseball League. [SCAWOBL]

Lucious Nixon, the CEO of both WLGAPOFS and SCAWOBL, was delighted. He had been stuck since Halloween with a lot of half-horse suits. When he had told his workers that the Halloween horse costumes were in honor of their state's governor, they had manufactured only the rear ends of the horse costumes. Forgetting that "You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse," which has been tried a great deal in SC without success, he told them to turn the rear ends into baseballs.

He had forgotten, if he ever knew, since he does not like to go down on the manufacturing floor, because he does not want to be caught in an immigration raid, since he was born in Kenya and doesn't have a birth certificate, that the back halves of the horse costumes were made of multi-colored leather, as befits Halloween. So when the new baseballs were delivered to the Orioles' fantasy camp, they came in many shades and colors, some even in stripes. This seemed to discombobulate [A word named for the dancing style of Disco Bob Ulate] the other fantasy campers and the regular Orioles, but it only made it easier for "Waste 'Em Wally" Wagler to read the rotation on the balls so that he could close his eyes and swing for the fences.

Pastor Randall Nathan has taught a little song to the other denizens of the shady section at Ed Smith Stadium. They all know the tune from another source.

Wally smacks the little baseballs,
All the little baseballs of the World [grace notes descant trailer, basses only, "LGAPOFS"],
Red and yellow, black and white,
Wally whacks 'em out of sight,
Wally wastes the little baseballs of the World [grace notes descant trailer, altos only, "LGAPOFS"].

In the spring a young man's fancy...

"In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He had not met 15-year-old Charley Bob Cobb, for whom spring is 13 months long. He falls in love with Ashley in the morning and by the time school is out he's head over heels about Heather. So it is, every day. Only the names change. Today it is Willow who has caught his fancy, primarily because she acts like he does not exist. Most of the girls in school act like he does not exist, but none does it with as much hauteur and elegance as Willow.

In the spring, an old woman's fancy turns to thoughts of remembrance. Jenny Newland stares out the window at the fading snow and thinks about the past, specifically yesterday morning. "Where in hell did I put the peanut butter?" she asks herself.

Then she notices that Jake is at the cupboard. "Get the peanut butter while you're in there, Jake," she says. Many moonpies later, Jake says, "I can't find it."

"You can't remember where you put anything," Jenny says. "You've got to look behind things. It's not going to have a flashing neon sign that blinks off and on saying PEANUT BUTTER! You'd better find that before I need it next."

Jake, of course, never uses peanut butter since he is allergic, but Jenny figures he won't remember that and so will keep on looking.

The Prodigal Son, Realtors, & Calfie

Pastor Patty was having a whapacino at the "Put Your Bean to the Grindstone Coffee House," trying to figure out how to preach on the Prodigal Son this Sunday, which is really the story of The Prodigal Father. It's a difficult preach, because everyone already knows the story and thinks they know what it means.

Real estate agent Vince Stengwel stopped by her table.

"Vince, in the story of the prodigal son, who do you identify with most, the father, the prodigal son, or the older brother?"

"Hades, Rev. Niebuhr, pardon my Hebrew, but I'm a real estate man. I'm the guy who rented the pig sty to him after he was already broke."

"Hmm," thought Pastor Patty, "there are more characters in that story than I really thought about before. What was it like from the pigs' POV, having to fight a foreign Jew boy for slop, knowing that he looked down on you as unclean even though he was right there in the swill with you? What about the servants who had to slay the fatted calf? Maybe some little servant girl thought that calf was her pet, fed it by hand, that's why it was so fat, even named it Calfie."

She brought that up to retired pastor Randall Niebuhr when he came in for a Hole-in-the-Wall grande'.

"Well, the story as Jesus told it is about his own people, the Jews, being the elder brother, and not wanting to let the Gentile prodigals into the family, since they associated with pigs and didn't do the hard work to keep all the purity laws."

"Right," said Pastor Patty. "Great exegesis. I think I'll start with Calfie, though, and we'll see where the sermon goes from there..."

Story Problems

Carlos Fowbush teaches math at Volvo River HS.

He is still steaming.

Last night he watched the CBS News because he thinks Katie Couric is cute. They ran a piece about a man who has a boat building business on the Ohio River. He hires kids who have dropped out and gotten into trouble with the law, and teaches them boat building. Carlos couldn't believe it. There were Mandy Manush and Xavier Brown and Bret Norris, his former students. He had wondered what happened to them.

"What is different and satisfying for you as you build these boats?" Katie asked.

"Well," said Mandy, "we're learning a lot of math, and that's fun." "Yeah," said Xavier, "we have to get the math just right or things don't go together right." "It's not like math class in school," added Bret. "Here we're actually applying what we learn to a real situation."

"You idiots," Carlos Fowbush yelled at the TV. "What do you think story problems are? They apply what you learn to a real situation! That's why we do story problems in math class. And you were the worst, always complaining about how you'd never need to know this stuff. You ingrates!"

"How wonderful," Katie beamed. "A real education with a real teacher, a boat builder."

For Carlos, it was a teachable moment. Katie Couric wasn't nearly as cute as he had thought she was.

Wally Gets a Nickname

[Continued from 3-8-10]

Pastor Randall Nathan, (Retard) was in the stands yesterday afternoon at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota. Wally Wagler had persuaded Rev. Nathan to accompany him to the Baltimore Orioles spring training fantasy camp, to pose as his father when he registered. They are the same age, which is well above the upper age limit of 55 for the camp.

The regiistration girl [about 40, but a "girl" to men the age of Wally and Randall] looked at Wally and his pink beard and hair and said to Randall, "He's really your son?" "Yes," replied Randall, "but he looks older because he's lived a really hard life. He's such a disappointment to his mother." The registration girl nodded sagely, as though she understood the life of a disappointed mother.

As a kid, Wally played first base, a natural position for a tall, slow guy. His hero was "Marvelous Marv" Throneberry, aka, "Dr. Strangeglove," who played, more or less, usually less, on the original Mets, the team of which manager Casey Stengle asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?" So it was his 1962 "Marvelous Marv" Louisville Slugger that Wally put on his shoulder and shuffled to the batter's box, to face Warden Lucky, the wild young lefthander from Kansas.

Rev. Nathan was in the front row, on the shady side of the stadium, looking for the prize in his Cracker Jack, when Wally dug into the batter's box. Warden Lucky had been showing off as he warmed up, buzzing his 105 mph fastball into the oversized mitt of catcher, "No Palm" Palmer.

Rev. Nathan wasn't worried about Wally getting hit by a pitch. Warden Lucky was under strick instructions to throw only his changeup, and on the outside corner. After all, the point of having him pitch in the fantasy camp was to work on his control. Randall Nathan, however, had not counted on Wally's chaw.

Many fantasy leaguers chew tobacco, to emulate their heroes. Wally, on the other hand, eschews tobacco. He felt out of place, however, without a chaw in his jaw as he went to the plate, so he popped in a big hunk of persimmon pulp. Then two unanticipated things happened. First, Warden Lucky forgot he was no longer warming up, and he threw the first pitch into the plate at 102.3 mph on the radar gun. That wasn't really a problem, because it was heading straight down the pipe, right over home plate. But just as Warden Lucky turned the ball loose, a persimmon seed got stuck in Wally's throat. He spat it out. It collided with the ball. A 102.3 mph fastball is no match for a persimmon seed. The ball veered hard left, right toward Wally's head.

After the crash, Wally just stood there. He had been too old and slow to duck, and when he heard the crack of the helmet, he thought it was the crack of the bat. He assumed he had swung and gotten lucky. So he just stood there, until the helmet fell off his pink-haired head in two pieces. He scanned the outfield, wondering where he had hit the ball. "Dude!" said "No Palm" Palmer, mightily impressed by Wally's ability to stand firm against Warden Lucky's fastball. "You da man!"

That inspired Wally Wagler. He had never been "da man" before. He leveled his Marvelous Marv Louisville Slugger over the plate and yelled, "Can't you throw any faster than that?"

Cal Ripken, Jr. was in the dugout. He began to yell, "No! No! No...," but Warden Lucky had already taken the challenge. He went into his full windup. He threw the ball. That was when Wally finally realized the former pitch had hit him, because that was when he really saw the ball. It was literally as big as a volleyball. The pitch that hit him had done something to his eyes.

That was when he remebered the lecture by Physics Prof P. Irish Smith. Wally and Randall belong to a life-long learning group for the elderly who are still smart enough to learn but not smart enough to look up stuff on the internet instead of paying tuition at the university. It's called GEE, for Great Exciting Expectations. The younger students call it GEEzers. P. Irish Smith had once lectured them on the mechanics of a pitched ball. Wally remembered exactly what he had said, about how you could tell where a ball would go by the way the seams rotated. Wally knew. He closed his eyes and swung his bat as hard as he could at the spot where he knew the ball would cross the plate. There was the crack of the bat, and then the outfielders were running hard, until they came to the fence.

"Can't you throw any faster than that?" yelled Wally.

For thirty minutes Warden Lucky, the wild young lefthander from Kansas, threw faster and faster. For thirty minutes, Wally Wagler read the rotation, closed his eyes, and swung. For thirty minutes, the outfielders just stood at the fence and watched as the balls flew over their heads.

"He's wasting all of our baseballs," grouched perennial hermudgeon Earl Weaver, fantasy camp manager, Hall of Famer, and former Orioles manager.

Thus the legend of "Waste 'Em Wally" Wagler was born.

Winter & Summer Sports

5th grader Johnny Kendy went sking at The Giant Salmon Ski Resort in the Tetons Bleu last week. It was a class trip. They almost didn't get the trip in. An early spring thaw has settled onto the blue mountains. Johnny's class was the last one The Giant Salmon took this season. It was the first time Johnny had skied, though, and he loved it. Now he wants to follow The Flying Persimmon, and snowboard, and compete in the halfpipe. His grandmother sighed. She loves to see him have a good time, but every autumn she is afraid he'll get hurt in football, and now she has to worry all winter, too. Of course, the end of snow means spring and summer sports, and she'll have to worry about him getting hit by a baseball.

Julie Wagler isn't worried about her husband, Wally, getting hit by a baseball, even though his spring fantasy baseball camp with the Baltimore Orioles starts today. Wally is way past the upper age limit for the camp, that being 55, but he still has a full head of hair, which his grand-daughter died pink, so he looks young enough, if 55 can be considered young enough for anything [Julie is a good bit younger than Wally herself], and she knows the camp is just other older guys throwing the ball around with retired Orioles, like Cal Ripken, Jr, so she's not worried. She doesn't know, though, that the Orioles have a few young guys they want to give some extra experience, and today Wally will face Warden Lucky, the wild young lefthander from Kansas. His father named him after the warden of the prison where he spent his own younger years, and he changed the family name to Lucky because he was lucky enough to get a warden who thought the best way to punish prisoners was to make them play baseball all day.

So, while Johnny Kendy's grandmother breathes a sigh of relief that the ski season is over, so there is a chance Johnny will have gotten interested in some less dangerous sport, like butterfly collecting, by next year, Julie Wagler roller skates peacefully at the Derbyshire Roller Rink and Orthopedic Clinic, not knowing that this afternoon, her husband and Warden Lucky will be staring each other down in a diamond shootout.

[To be continued]

Pastor Natalie's Big Contradiction

Pastor Patty is back in the pulpit of The Methodist this week, having finished her Romance novel, "The Preacher Wore Crimson," last Sunday morning while Pastor Natalie "filled the pulpit."

Pastor Natalie is a Presbyterian who is "between calls," so she is living with her parents in the town of Chronicle, 10 miles through the woods from Memphjus, the county seat of Periwinkle County. Pastor Natalie is not a tall woman, but what she lacks in height, she makes up for in breadth.

Forsythia Lutheran, out in the country between the electron mines and the persimmon bogs, has a young student from Discordia Seminary in Capitol City who comes down to preach for them on Sunday mornings. Last night, though, he had a date with a Japaenese Lutheran exchange student. To impress her, he took her to a sushi bar. This morning he woke up not sure whether he was in love or had food poisoning; the symptoms are very similar. Either way, he knew there was no way he could leave the bathroom for more than 20 minutes. He called Theodore and Norma Dillondorf, the unofficial but actual leaders of Forsythia, and told them they'd have to get along without him. Norma had overheard some women from The Methodist talking in the persimmon section of the Beaver IGA about Pastor Natalie being available on short notice, and so they called her.

Pastor Natalie has been working on a sermon she calls "Either Ore." In it she contrasts the Christian life as gold and the heathen life as fool's gold and challenges her hearers to make the choice, "either one ore the other." She is going to use it as her audition sermon the next time she gets an invitation to candidate at a Presbyterian church. So she was delighted to get the telephone call from the Dillendorfs. She could try out her candidating sermon on the Lutherans.

The first part went very well. She pointed out all the advantages of fool's gold--the highs from booze and dope, the thrill from gambling, the pleasures of a one-night stand. The Lutherans, unused to such a clear listing of the joys of sins, listened with rapt attention. Pastor Natalie became uneasy. Perhaps she was making fool's gold look too attractive. She decided it was time to segue. She stepped out from the pulpit. She leaned over and pointed to the other side of the chancel, and presumably to the other side of the sermon. She wanted to make sure everyone knew that she was switching to the other ore. She said, "But, and I have a really big but here..."

The Lutherans of Forsythia are sober people, not given to spontaneous outbursts of emotion, especially in worship. The ER was full of them that afternoon, suffering from constipation and gastic distress and lockjaw. Dr. Ryan was on duty. He said it looked like they had all held something in too long, like maybe laughter.

American Faces II: Ollie Speaks

[Continued from 3-5-10]

"What can we do for you, Ollie?" asked Edith.

Ollie pointed at Emily Postit. "I'll have what she's having," he said.

Edith was incredulous. "Earl Gray tea?"

"No, it's English. Earl Grey," growled Ollie, as he took a seat at Emily's table in the Episcopal Ladies corner. "Oh, my" said Emily.

"Enough with the jabber," said Ollie. "I came to watch the PBS special. No reception up in the Tetons Bleu."

So watch it they did. They agreed that Eva was stunning, Meryl remarkable, Stephen white, Malcom thoughtful, Yo-Yo enough to make his Ma-Ma proud.

"The most important thing, though," said Pastor Patty, "is how closely related we all are. Nobody can brag about having better lineage than anyone else, because we all have the same. That's the point of the Adam and Eve story, too. That's wonderful."

"No, that's terrible," roared Ollie Infree, jumping up so fast he sent the silver tea pot rolling toward the pool table. "We're TOO damn closely related. We haven't gone on long enough. We're still just a vine swing away from being monkeys. We need more evolution. We think we're so evolved and so smart, but we've barely started the process. We think because we've mastered DNA and TV and MSW and FV that we're at the end of the process. We're just cave men in polyester clothes, still fighting, still killing just for the hell of it, still as irrational as mankind has always been, begging your pardon m'am," he said, tipping his persimmon-stained beard toward Emily, "I mean to include womankind, too, as unevolved and polyestered, no mysogonist, I."

"Moi? In polyester?" gasped Emily Postit.

Ollie stalked to the door, but before he made his exit, he threw over his shoulder, "I'll check on you in 50 million years and see if you've gotten any smarter."

"That's not going to happen," said Edith. "You mean you don't think Ollie will live 50 million years?" asked her husband, Bobcat. "No, I don't think you'll be any smarter in 50 million years," said Edith.

Humiliation in the Halls

9th grader Bayleigh Battle came home after school in a tizzy.

"Mom, they're going to start random drug tests at school!"

This got her mother's attention. "Why is that a bad thing?" she asked. "Are you afraid of failing?"

"Of course not. It's worse than failing. Once you pee in the cup, you have to carry it down the hall to the office, right out where everyone can see. That's so embarrassing. I can't do that. What will people think? We've got to work something out so I don't have to do that."

"Don't you think that people already know that you pee?" her mother asked.

Bayleigh is still mad, especially because of that unnecessary reminder, and especially because her mother laughed, and especially because she said, "Just pull down your big girl panties and pee."

All The Axes Ground About Taxes

Claire Nathan was very proud of herself this morning. She got all the tax forms completed and was ready to mail them. She was afraid to mention this to Randall, though, for fear of setting him off.

There are many ads on TV these days for firms that will help you get out of paying the legitimate taxes you incurred but did not pay. When they come on, Randall shouts at the TV: "You morons, you think they're going to help you for free? Why don't you pay your taxes instead of paying some poopy-head to help you get out of paying them? Don't you know that SOMEBODY has to pay? Yeah, that's right, your neighbors have to pay more to make up for what you're getting out of. And do you think that so-called company you're paying to help you evade is going to pay taxes? Hell, no. They already know how to get out of it. Those people who own the Dodgers made $115 million last year, and they didn't pay one red cent in taxes. Or any other color, either. You think they're going to make up what you aren't paying? No, it's going to be the little people, just like Leona Helmsley said. Why aren't the tea party people saying anything about their big cat buddies who make billions and pay nothing? Don't make the money if you can't pay the honey. Don't make the dough if you can't pay the show. Don't grind your axe if you can't pay the tax. Just put on your big girl pants and pay up, you..."

Claire slipped quietly out of the house and off to the post office, hoping fervently that they were still in business.

American Faces: Ollie Appears

At the close of supper hour at The Whistle & Thistle Biker Bar & Episcopal Ladies Tea House, most of the denizens dawldled over tapioca pudding. This was especially true of Randall Nathan and his grandson, Johnny Kendy, known to other W&T diners as The Tapioca Twins, who were on their third helping. That was when Edith switched the TV from Jeopardy to PBS. This brought howls of protest from the darts players, who wanted to watch a retread of Friends, but Edith held up a wooden spoon for silence.

"We are going to watch American Faces, that special by Harvard Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates, Jr," she said, a dollop of gravy dripping off the spoon onto her apron, which featured a picture of a forlorn man waving at a disappearing caboose over the words, "Kiss Your Taste Buds Goodbye." "I love Yoyo Ma," she continued, "and he's one of the genealogies Prof. Gates has traced."

"I don't see how anybody would love yo mama," observed Orval "The Obfuscator" O'Malley, leader of The Hells Bells Biker Gang [TM]. He was wearing shiny new leathers, though, so he quickly retreated behind his moll, Molly, when Edith waved the greasy gravy-laden spoon at him.

"That's alright, Big O," said Emily Postit from one of the two white-tablecloth silver-candle tables in the Episcopal Ladies corner. "They also feature Eva Longoria, and I know you think she's beautiful, even though she's Hispanic."

The Obfuscator blushed. He had not anticipated Emily revealing something so intimate from one of their group therapy sessions, nor the revelation of her pet name for him, either.

But Emily was talking on, as she usually did in the group, too. "I personally want to view the lineage of Meryl Streep. I'm sure she's a proper Episcopal lady."

"What about Stephen Colbert? He's on there, and he's funny as a pay toilet in the didareta ward," said Bobcat Whistle, the eponymous owner of the place.

"And Malcolm Gladwell," said Cratchit State U sociology prof, Ben "Seymour" Bottoms. "His 'Blink" is a great book."

"Not nearly as good as 'Outliers,'" Claire Nathan said, but at the word "outliers," the door crashed open,and there stood Ollie Infree, the mountain man, his eyes wild, a long flintlock rifle in his hand, persimmon blood dripping off his long gray matted beard.

"Oh, my" said Emily Postit. "It must be time for Ollie's annual bath."

"No matter," said Pastor Patty. "When Ollie appears, you know it's going to take until tomorrow to finish the story."

Costermongering

Jake Newland pushed his walker, with the neat little wire tray, covered in cloth in the undertaker tartan, downtown and bought persimmons from the costermonger, as a treat for his potbellied pigs, Franklin and Eleanor. When he got home, Jenny asked where he hat gotten them. He told her.

She said, "You did not. There's no such thing as a costermonger. You went to the Porcupine IGA. You know you're not supposed to walk along that road. Costermonger, my foot!"

It reminded him of the joke about the Ooogoo bird, but he thought it best if he shared it only with Franklin and Eleanor. They thought it was hilarious, and also gave thanks to Buddha, the deity of all things potbellied, for the downtown costermonger. Of course, they had to look up costermonger in the dictionary to learn to just whom they were giving thanks.

Country Club Capers

Randall Nathan took his wife and daughter to lunch at The Persimmon Cove Country Club. He forgot that it was Wednesday, which is a de facto cackle day at Persimmon Cove. There were 39 women and Randall in the Cupid Room Restaurant. As quickly as he could, he dashed home to Farmville, where he is strictly a cash grain operator, with no hens. He did, however, send a persimmon tree to three-year-old Clara Wembley's illegal farm before he logged off.

Substitute Sunday

Sunday was substitute day at The Methodist.

Pastor Patty writes Romance novels in her spare time. They usually feature a young slave woman who hears God's call to preach and defies the slave-masters to preach freedom to her fellow slaves, or a young Muslim woman, who hears Allah's call to preach, and defies the Taliban to preach equality to her fellow Muslims, or a young immigrant woman, who hears God's call to preach, and defies the authorities to preach voting to her fellow immigrants, or... you get the picture. Pastor Patty is big on defying authorities.

Agents and publishers have a difficult time believing that romance and religion can go together, though, so Pastor Patty's heroines languish in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. Until Superagent Phyllis Ethridge was passing by Pastor Patty's little high table at The Mills of The Gods Coffee House, where she goes because she doesn't like the smell at her husband's coffee house, "Good To The Last Slop," in Winkleblue, and brushed against the stack of papers that comprise "The Preacher Wore Scarlet," and knocked them over, and with great embarrassment, picked them up off the floor, and being the sort of person who can't even pick up a newspaper off the floor without reading it, she became intrigued by The Rev. Rosa Barber, and... well, Pastor Patty had a manuscript deadline on Monday and had to write about a preacher on Sunday morning instead of being one.

Pastor Patty was going to call on The Rev. Dr. Randall Nathan, (Retard), to preach, but Cindy Lou Hoover had already lined up Claire, Randall's wife, to substitute for her in Kinderkirk, so she could go to a BeautiControl conference in Dallas for the weekend, and Randall wasn't about to pass up a chance to get points in the HOTY [Husband Of The Year] competition, or a chance to play with 2 and 3 year olds, just to preach to a bunch of adults who don't know the difference betweeen eschatology and scatology.

Prof. Ben "Seymour" Bottoms, who sometimes fills the pulpit, was also out of town, since it is spring break at Cratchit State U, "on a tour of the Confederacy," as his wife, Kate Bates, likes to put it, since Prof. Bottoms seeks out warmth in every season but summer.

So Pastor Patty, or The Rev. Dr. Patricia Niebuhr, as Randall Nathan calls her, had to call on Pastor Natalie, who is living with her parents in Chronicle while she is "between calls" with the Presbyterians. There is a reason Pastor Natalie is between calls.

The congregation was especially small at The Methodist Sunday. When Pastor Patty called Pastor Natalie on Tuesday to thank her for "filling the pulpit," which Pastor Natalie does exceptionally well, Pastor Natalie noted the paucity of parishoners in the pews and said, "You must not have told them I was coming." "No, I didn't," said Pastor Patty, "but they found out anyway."

Moleskin Notebooks

Retired Pastor Randall Nathan drove his 1956 Ford pickup out to the Good to the Last Slop Coffee Shop, located in a refurbished pig barn, in the hamlet of Winkleblue, at the confluence of the Lapis Lazuli and Cerullian Rivers. He knew he would have peace there. No one else goes there. They are afraid of the owner, a former CIA agent.

Over his Chester White, a white chocolate mocha, he pulled from his pocket the notebook his daughter gave him for Christmas. In it he keeps count of his points and rating in the HOTY [Hermudgeon Of The Year] competition.

For the first time he noticed that the notebook had a line on the "return to..." page for a monetary reward. Apparently he was supposed to fill in how much he would pay to get it back if he lost it. "That's ridiculous," he said. "It's only a notebook."

That's when the little piece of paper with the history of the individually hand-crafted moleskin notebooks fell into the Chester White. He pulled it out, and smoothed it out, and read the English page. The history was also given in German, French, Spanish, Latin, and Japanese.

According to the history page, this wasn't just another notebook. Apparently the little books are made from French moles specifically bred for the purpose of shedding their skins to provide the covers.

He immediately thought of the mole in the tunnel behind the other moles. The first moles kept smelling sorghum. Finally, the last mole said, "All I can smell is molasses." Randall wrote that into the notebook, so he would remember to tell it to Jake Newland. He was pretty sure Jake had told it to him, but he was also pretty sure Jake would not remember, and Jake obviously liked the story, or he wouldn't have told it in the first place, so he would enjoy hearing it again.

But Randall Nathan read on. The history page said that Picasso and Hemingway had used the special moleskin notebooks to jot down their ideas.

Pastor Nathan stuck the book back into his pocket.

"I've GOT to get a higher class of thoughts to write down," he said to the Chester White.

The Preaching Olympics

As Pastor Patty stood in the pulpit yesterday morning, she scanned the rows of winter faces for retired pastor Randall Nathan. He is hard to spot. He sits in a different place each Sunday so that those around him will think he is new and thus ignore him. She didn't really expect to see him, and she was right. She knew he would be home watching the Preaching Olympics, since he is a past medal winner. It is best not to ask about the color of the medal, though.

Randall Nathan never scored well in the mandatory exercises: gesturing; shouting loudly to cover up a weak point; comparing people and causes he disagreed with to Hitler; the subtle and thus deniable insult to other religions, known as the Halfgripe; vocal histrionics; theological obfuscation; feigning ignorance in order to show off esoteric and irrelevant knowledge; using illustrations that sound good but make the opposite point of the sermon; telling lame and irrelevant jokes; telling people they should be better but not telling them how; including "The Bible says" at least once each minute; general haranguing; choosing hymns with contradictory theologies for the same service; retelling biblical stories in ways that make them boring; claiming that politicians or issues you disagree with are non-Christian; [This is only for the Winter Preaching olympics. During the Summer Preaching Olympics, when clergy of Muslim countries compete, they are required to claim that politicians and issues with which they disagree ARE Christian.]

He did better in the voluntary exercises: speaking truth to power; quoting the Bible in context instead of using the "pick and point" method.

He got his highest scores in the Free Form, where he preached Christ as the central figure of Christianity insead of the Bible, and also spoke truth to power, as did his namesake, the prophet Nathan. Primarily, he told stories and made the judges figure out the meaning for themselves.

He also got his lowest scores in Free Form. A few judges loved his Free Form program; some, though, hated it.

Just before she started her sermon, Pastor Patty saw Pastor Nathan, [Retard], sneak into the cry room at the back of the sanctuary. She knew it was mostly just because he likes to be around babies, but she also felt honored. It's not often that a former Preaching Olympics medal winner chooses to listen to an amateur. "Maybe I'll be an Olympian some day myself," she thought, as she launched into her Free Form.