So, I am out and about the other afternoon and got a deep, spiritual craving for potato chips. But I have no actual cash or spare change, and decide it would be silly to use my debit card for such a small and selfish purpose. So I manned up and decided to tough out the afternoon without potato chips. Sort of. Because I also planned to stop at BiMart for a cheap wine purchase, and realized I could easily add a bag of chips on that purchase. So I get to BiMart and it happens to be Lucky Number Tuesday. In case you don't know about this, every Tuesday at BiMart you can see if your membership card number matches the selections of the week and maybe win something. The numbers are seven digits long, so the odds aren't good for winning any of the big prizes, like a power saw or a tent or a microwave or such. But there is a low tier prize level if you match the last digit of your card. So I walk in and check the number board, and behold the winning number is 2, which is the last number on my card. So I win! I win . . . potato chips! Such small things stand as proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

So, on this beautiful sunny, dry day I let my road bike out of the stable for a ride in the wine country. I had no other aim but to get out and move and metabolize some much needed vitamin D. I had, for the moment, given up on my small quest to hear a strange, disturbing, high-pitched sound that has puzzled residents of Forest Grove for a few days. The story of the unexplained racket has been picked up on national networks; theories as to the source of the sound abound, and no one has figured it out. Last night, after a meeting, I drove around the neighborhood where the sound has been heard; I let my windows down, shivered a bit in the cool shadows beneath a cloud shrouded moon, and . . . heard nothing. So I came home and forgot about it. Anyway, today, I'm about two miles into my bike ride, 3:30 in the afternoon, just getting warmed up, the sun low in the sky and causing me to squint like a mole . . . when a harsh, multi-high pitched sort of shriek drops on me from seemingly everywhere. The noise was absolutely awesome and genuinely disturbing. Now keep in mind I am whizzing along at nearly twenty miles an hour, which is enough to produce a doppler shift effect with a sound from a stationary source. Ordinarily. This noise continued for about three seconds, constant in tone. This is one of the strangest things I've come across. I can understand why folks are a bit freaked out. Someone will probably figure out what is causing the noise before too long. But I kind of hope not. It probably isn't someone harvesting immature mandrakes, even though I did hear the sound while cycling by a local nursery . . .

So, I was practicing what I call Goodwill Hunting a few days back, this time on the prowl for a pair of running shoes. I stopped in about every day for over a week to check the shoe aisle. Day passed to a week with no luck -- close on size, but not quite right, some the right size but bad brand for me or a little too tread worn. So eventually one afternoon I walk in, head straight for the shoes, and a staff lady walks up whistling and sets a perfect pair of Asics Gel Nimbus VIIs, a neutral support shoe of the type I wear, in hand's reach. They probably sat on the rack for about two strides worth of time before I picked them up, discovered them to have never been run in, and the perfect size 10.5. This happened on a Wednesday, so with my senior discount I got them for $17.99. At home, I did a search and found the shoes were the new model about ten years ago, and sold for $120.00 new. So I have kind of a like-new pair of vintage running shoes. I've taken them out and they are great, the shoe almost identical to a pair I did my first marathon training in. So anyway, I have this feeling the shoes were waiting in their box in someone's closet for a decade until they could get to me. So then I start wondering what the story is. Did someone buy two pairs, as was common advice back then -- either meaning to rotate them, or because the buyer knew the company would modify the shoe the next year and the new one would not fit as well? I have had that happen, then couldn't get what had been my perfect shoe. Or did a person make a New Year's resolution to run a marathon, and these were the shoes they never got to wear because will failed or they got too sick or got divorced or had a death in the family, or died themselves, and a partner or parent or child kept them all these years in memory until they realized the shoes had a chance for a life - and maybe I am running someone's race they never got to start? Whatever the back story is, the continuing tale will be told now by my footsteps. Perhaps I'll have some really interesting experiences to share as I get back to the roads and trails. I'll be watching with extra anticipation during this season of Lent.

My mom has been on my mind the last week, which included the anniversary of her death on January 4th. The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was a favorite birding place of my mother's, so I was thinking of that place and her love of birds and unspoiled places. Not long ago I read about how invasive common carp have infested the Malheur Reservoir, destroyed much of the wetland habitat favorable to migrating birds, and so reduced the seasonal populations drastically. The carp were apparently introduced into the waters with some benefit to people in mind. Now they have to go, but getting them gone is tricky. Can't just poison them without hurting a lot of other creatures. So the hope is that fisher people will take bait, rod and reel to them and hoist them out one at a time. Hardly anyone likes to eat carp in these parts, though, no matter the claim that they taste like cod. Once, on a fishing and birding outing with mom at Fern Ridge Reservoir in Eugene, she snagged a 12 pound beast on her little spinning rig. She took about 15 minutes to land it, with last second help from me hoisting it to the reedy pond bank. We took it home and cooked up some fillet of bottom feeder, and if that tasted like cod I'm a Beaver. Well since then some folks have made themselves invasive to the habitat. Kind of like carp, they are quiet bulky entities that can't seem to help being what they are. Their reasoning about the U.S. Constitution and Congress's role in land management is terrible, not based on history or fact; but their beliefs override any other view and so there will be no changing their minds. Unfortunately, what they are doesn't fit the context of American life any more than carp fit in the Malheur Reservoir. They probably won't go home if politely asked any more than a bull carp would. At the moment, there are only a few of them and they won't do much damage if let be. But if they reproduce, then we would have a problem. For starters, I recommend rising to the surface where there is light and a clear view of our Constitution. If there is no other positive to be had at the moment, my getting a prompt to read the document for myself was fantastic. It is really quite amazing. I think Captain Moroni and Co. must be reading it through magic glasses that only let them see what they already believe in and feed their minds on, which amounts to stuff on the bottom.

My particular interest in reading has to do with history and how little things affect big things. In my reading, which is another way I wander around, I came across some remarkable facts about alcohol, something a lot of us have an interest in, personally or historically. I am not only a beer lover but a Methodist pastor, by habit and church law a server of non-alcoholic communion wine invented by another Methodist back in the Temperance Movement days -- yes, his name was Welch. Anyway . . . During the Prohibition Era, a lot of people concocted alcoholic drinks using wood or methyl alcohol, since grain (ethyl) alcohol was not only illegal to drink but more expensive to make. In fact I remember how easy it is to make methyl, as we distilled it from wooden popsicle sticks in eighth grade chemistry — with the lesson in there somewhere about methyl being nasty and ethyl being nice. Leaving sensibilities aside for now, substituting methyl for ethyl to sell in speakeasies seemed like an even trade; until the pioneering forensic toxicologists of the time, trying to cope with mounting deaths from drinking, figured out why the first is a much deadlier poison than the latter. So, alcohols are all made up of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, molecules essential to life — since organic life is based on carbon, and hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water, also essential. Methyl and Ethyl alcohol are very similar chains of these molecules. But a slight difference in configuration changes how a human body metabolizes each. Ethyl alcohol is harmless in small amounts, as our bodies metabolize it leaving only a pretty harmless acid and water, easily purged. Methyl, on the other hand, leaves two horrible poisons behind — acetone (which is a poisonous solvent) and formaldehyde, best known as the mortician’s choice for embalming corpses. These poisons basically will either blind you or kill you, or both, and quickly. The difference is a little reorganization of small components. A little thing out of place makes the difference between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, and life and death. I’ve never been a detail person, really — but I’m thinking certain little things affect larger realities and are worth paying attention to.

We had to remove a large, very old Oregon white oak tree from the church property last week. The felling of the tree has evoked many feelings and thoughts for me and others. My friend Rhoda Markus wrote sublimely about a similar experience she had many years ago. Please welcome Rhoda as my guest blogger.

The piece of wood in my hand was beautiful - strong and smooth to touch, beautiful in its light golden color. My senses told me this thing of beauty was oak. It was. But, oh, there was so much more I did not know! Oregon White Oak is native to western Oregon and this is the only place in the world where it grows. Some of the large single oaks in pastures and around homestead sites are 500 years old - witnesses to Lewis and Clark. They stood there to welcome the first European explorers up the Columbia River. Holders of history, conveyors of beauty, needing to be cherished and widely used. These are the Oregon White Oak. What has man done in heedless and random harvesting? In forests the oak grew straight and slender, seeking the light. The early loggers felled it along with the fir, often hauling it off for firewood. Sometimes it was pushed aside into slash heaps. Today it is not replanted because it will not grow into usefulness rapidly enough. Firewood cutters and pulp seekers greedily use it up with none of its beauty preserved. Even a mill, dedicated to careful conservation, cuts ugly wedges to bury beneath the ground in support of man's technological advances. That is where the market is. Who can blame them. Privileged the few who walk upon the floor of variegated beauty or whose hands lovingly touch the satin smoothness of cabinetry. Blessed the eyes that see the continuity of life in these glorious and stalwart trees. Humble the heart that recognizes humankind's responsibility to the resources of the earth.

Balance - the tricky part of living. Needs for technological advancement, goods and services for increasing numbers of citizens of the world. Beauty and history and song for the heart and soul. Strength with roots as deep as the oak. Limitless heights to soar. Preservation. Technology. Balance.

So, today is a crisp, grey autumn day. I've watched the bright orange and yellow and brown leaves falling on the ground for several days. I need to move a bit, so it is a good time to heft the lawn rake and do some rearranging. I'm at it for a few minutes, uncovering some green ground and creating some nice fluffy rows of leaves. I listen to the sound the rake makes as it scrapes across the turf. I watch the heaps of color grow, stroke by stroke. I am at a happy place of thinking not a thing except the small effort of making each little dance step with the world. Down the block, a roundish lady, all in light blue, calls out to me as she passes by. I don't hear her exact words, but catch her drift. "More leaves are coming! Your work is only begun. But be happy! The day is beautiful, the moment sweet." She smiles, a beam of sunshine. I smile back. I continue to rake. Then, a bearded man, slim, pushing a child in a buggy, passes me, briskly. "I am so proud of you! Look at you, moving those leaves! Some people just wait for the wind to do the job! What a waste of an opportunity for exercise! But you have seized the moment!" He smiles and high steps away. No mockery, he really means it. So, two views of life. One pessimistic, another optimistic, reach the same conclusion. What is there in life, except the moment of it? How many moments are there in a day? How many opportunities are there for happiness, then, in a day? Such wealth!