Harris, Sam, Free Will (2012, New York: Recorded Books)1 disk, read by the author.

I usually pick up tomes on this subject and peruse them.  The basic script is short and sweet: there is no evidence from neural biology that there is nothing in the nervous system that hasn’t arisen there: the notion of free will is a meaningless superaddition to the electrochemistry of nerve conduction.  We cannot choose our path because the nervous system never presents a choice of paths.  The key evidence cited is a classic study in which a subject (college sophomore?) is told to press a button when a particular image is displayed.  Sure enough, they can do it, and quite ably.  But, marvel of marvels, the instruction to push the button comes after the button push by no less than 3 μs.  Thus, the reasoning goes, it could not possibly be the cause of the event, so free will is an illusion.  

So what?  It is just as easy to imagine that the 3μs pulse is not an instruction to push, so much as a query to determine that the pulse actually occurred. Such a sequence makes no evolutionary sense, because requiring that all actions be activated immediately by the CNS ineluctably slows the organism’s response and thus ensures its offensive/defensive capability is less than optimal, and hence likely to increase an individual's chance of dying early.  Why not allow a lower threshold which does not require full CNS verification and is therefore faster (although thus more susceptible to error).  I frequently have my own experience of something like this: namely, when I have my hearing tested.  If I hear a sound, I must press a button.  I am sure that I push the button more often than I hear sounds.  Being on a knife edge, it is easy to slip to the wrong side.  I am on a knife edge because of my conscious desire to comply with my instructions. 

And that is the best definition of free will.  My conscious desire to comply with the button push instruction is my intention to act. We form (for whatever reason) intentions: consciously accepted definitions for future actions.   Somehow this intention then resets the sensitivity of certain neural (central and peripheral) neurons, making us more likely to act as we “intended” when the occasion arises.  These actions then bend the future for us in ways which may or may not evolutionarily adaptive, but they may still be meaningful in achieving our personal goals.  Thus, I chose to go to Harvard because of my prior intention to spend my adulthood either as a Methodist minister or a chemistry prof, and this intention led me to a whole raft of subsequent actions, one being an application for undergraduate work at Harvard.  

The problem with arguments like Harris’s is that they embody the straw man fallacy. unless it is significant in all our neural choices, it is not free.  Again, we are generally not very good at doing this, so natural selection seems to eliminated the possibility. [As Norman Thomas once put it, “I am glad I do not have to make hepatic decisions for my liver.”]  It is our intentions that give us our sense of free will, much more than our immediate responses to novel situations. Not all choices are free of the neurochemical automata (reflexes?) with which nature has provided all mammals facing complex situations and capable of directed locomotion. 

As a theist, I can only add: “Thank God, and, God willing, I will use my intentionality wisely."

Cahalan, Susannah, Brain on Fire - My Month of Madness (Prince Frederick, MD: 2012), Read by the Author, 7 CDs.

(Spoiler Alert:I discovered late in the set of disks that I had a special interest in this book: it turns out that suffered from an autoimmune disease just as KK did and Annette does.)

The author was a reporter for the New York Post when the events the book describes happened in 2009. For the next few months she gathered all records she could find of the incident (hospial records, family notebooks, etc.) and then she describes in remarkable detail the episode described by the title.

It was an ordinary day when Susan Cahalan decided that her Hells’ Kitchen NY apartment was under attack by bedbugs, despite the fact that she had no identifiable bites and a licensed exterminator inspected her apartment and told her it was bedbug free.  Then there were the strange light patterns in Times Square as she was going to work.  Before long her behavior became so bizarre that her family checked her into New York University where she was placed on the epilepsy floor of the neurology unit and her long diagnostic ordeal. 

Her labs, remarkably, were clear of any usual causes of the seizures she was experiencing, except that her spinal tap showed abnormally high levels of white blood cells (immune system components) in the cerebrospinal fluid.  Extensive tests by the NY State Health Department Lab failed to find any of a large battery of bacterial or viral pathogens that may have produced mental symptoms.  For a few days her case was in limbo.  However, fate intervened to find a solution: her primary neurologist was replaced.

When he was taken off the case another neurologist, Dr. Nadjar, happened to consult on the case and he recalled a disorder recently described by a Dr. Dalmal.  Dalmal’s disorder appeared to be an autoimmune disease inside the brain.  It has since been designated as Anti-NMDA autoimmune disorder.  Since antibodies don’t normally cross the blood-brain barrier, it was considered controversial, so Dr. Nadjar said that a brain biopsy was required to confirm the diagnosis.  The family was in a turmoil, since removing a piece of the brain is a risky procedure, but the obvious distress of their daughter and the failure of conventional treatments to provide her any relief provided a justification for the risk.

The samples were sent to Dr Dalmal’s lab which confirmed that she was the 210th patient in the world to be confirmed with the disorder.  The treatment had a familiar sound, since it was a similar (but not identical) treatment administered to my daughter: primarily steroids and IgG infusions.  She recovered completely (but slowly), and then spent three years writing the story of her tribulations.

The writing is clear and she is a good storyteller.  She has recently brought out a book called The Great Pretender about the psychologist who in the early ‘70s brought the whole apparatus of psychiatry and mental hospitals into question. 

Austen, Jane, Mansfield Park (Old Saybrook, CT: 2008, Tantor Media), 12 CDs, read by Wanda McCaddon

This is, to my recollection, the  first Jane Austen novel I have ever read.   I may read another, but I am not dashing out to get the collection.   The pace is obviously suited to a more leisurely climate, and the manners of the English country gentry are not exactly my cup of tea, even if this were a work of nonfiction.

The writing is elegantly and sensitively done, to be sure (although how many undergraduates would know that the word “awful” is better translated to “awesome” today and thus understand Fannie’s comment on Edmund’s soon-to-be parish church.  This was only the most striking of the translations needed for the modern reader and, fortunately, is not essential to the plot.  

She generally keeps the (romantic) story line moving along well, although [spoiler alert] I had figured out well before midbook whom Fanny would marry, and the only question was how Austen would pull it off.  I was a little annoyed by the somewhat strained plot twist she pulls near the end to make it work.  So, as you can tell, I am not likely to work my way through the Austen bibliography.

In Memoriam Schubert Miles Ogden (March 2, 1928 – June 6, 2019)

In Memoriam

Schubert Miles Ogden (March 2, 1928 – June 6, 2019)

We all have several “fathers and mothers.”  Our biological (i.e., genetic parents) may or may not be the people who raised us.  I know this very well, having adopted and raised two very young children (ages 3 and 12 months at placement), and each  had been with excellent foster care parents for his whole life before placement. 

Schubert Ogden was my theological parent.  He was also a giant in his field, with his own Wikipedia page: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=schubert+ogden&go=Go&ns0=1).  He was also selected by Time Magazine as one of the outstanding theologians of the mid-twentieth century.  With the book based on his doctoral thesis, Christ Without Myth, he firmly established his place in the academic hierarchy, but he is best remembered as one of the founders of the American school of Process Theology.  

His work was devoted to taking the process philosophy writings on God by his teacher, Charles Hartshorne of the University of Chicago, and rigorously applying the two major criteria for correct Christian theology:
    a)    Is it faithful to the to the witness of the Apostolic Tradition, as transmitted through the Church, and
    b)    Is it formulated in a way that assists the church in forming new disciples.

But that alone does not explain why I will be making a 2300+ mile trip to the town of Rollinsville, Colorado this week.

Schubert Ogden was a great Churchman and an outstanding human being.

I met Schubert Ogden when I took his two-semester Systematic Theology course in 1965-1966 at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.  He co-taught the course with another excellent theologian, John Deschner, whose short career was terminated by his death a year later.  The course waste taught as a dialogue in which they used Gustave Aulen’s Systematic Theology as a base and then would argue with one another over Aulen’s and each other’s positions.  They would alternate who did the initial presentation of a topic and who did the rebuttal.   As I listened I discovered that I more often understood and agreed with Schubert’s position, but that there as also a depth there that I could not comprehend. 

Schubert was always kind to students, so I went by his office one day and stated a couple of issues I was having, and he spent an hour answering my questions and suggesting further readings.  Thus started a process which went on for two years until I graduated from Perkins and went on to get my Ph.D. at Caltech.  

Schubert was also a strong churchman, a faithful attendant at his North Dallas Methodist congregation and an active participant in the seminary worship.   I can only guess what his view of the current United Methodist kerfuffle over the Church’s position on homosexuality would be.

Schubert and I never lived close together during the intervening half century, but I kept in touch by snail mail and by occasional visits. One memorable visit comes to mind: When I finished my doctorate in chemistry, I drove the family household goods in a trailer from Pasadena, CA to White Plains, NY.  Along the way I spent some time with Schubert and his wife, Joyce (an accomplished artiist who predeceased him by several years) at their home in a Chicago suburb.  It seems that the faculty at the University of Chicago was so impressed with his scholarly philosophical work that they brought him in at the level of University Professor!  Our next meeting was in Dallas.  It was about four years later, after I had taken a position at Texas A&M University.  When I asked him why he had left Chicago, he paused a moment and then replied: He missed the high quality graduate students at Chicago very much, but he really believed he would make a larger impact by training young people for the ministry.

Thank you, Professor Ogden.  I have been trained by four Nobel Prize winning chemistry, but I have never had a conversation with so perceptive a thinker as you.  It is a privilege to list you among my intellectual fathers. 

Oklahoma National Champions

I am deviating from my usual topics to do a book review of a rcent Oklahoma history volume that I thought might be of interest.  I picked up a library book before my March trip to Ponca City which I only recently had time to read, and I decided I had to share it with you.     .  

If you are interested in Oklahoma history, women’s basketball, or small denominational colleges, visit your local library or bookstore, (or online seller) for a copy of Dust Bowl Girls by Lydia Reeder (Chapel Hill, NC:  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2017).

The storyline is based on an actual college (Oklahoma Presbyterian College in Durant, OK, now defunct) and its  basketball team which electrified the nation by becoming the AAU national women’s basketball champions in the 1930s.  

It is also about a remarkable group of young women who composed that team, who had come from that part of the state during the Dust Bowl/Great Depression time.

But it is mostly about the remarkable coach at that college who scoured the girls’ high school basketball teams in that part of the state to find the rare talented player who could be molded into a championship team and the college president and his wife who enabled these young women to get a college education (usually the first in the family) and enabled them to propel themselves into a fuller life.

It is good to be reminded be that such people exist.                     

You'll Never Learn Any Younger!

When I finally figured out this favorite saying of Mom, it really annoyed me.  Since I had just screwed up, I obviously hadn’t learned the lesson now, there was no way I was going to be younger, so I had best learn it now.  So, now was the time to take a deep breath and change my ways. 

I guess I need someone to keep telling me.  (I never suggested that to Karen Kay, although I am sure she would have adopted the saying.)  I am really bad (and KK knew it) at maintaining a calendar, so she took over that role.   I was delighted, since it involved no habit change on my part (but I did have to communicate calendrically important dates to her).

Since she is gone, though, I guess it is time to grow up and do it myself.   And, the tools are better now.  Anyone who knows me knows that my handwriting is atrocious, so paper calendars don’t work well when they simply result in a guessing game to figure out what I wrote in that little rectangle.  Computers can help, especially since I am keyboard-proficient.   But phones never worked well for me, since I am not a good thumb-typist. 

But the combination of a smartphone and voice recognition has suddenly made this learning more likely to happen.  Especially since I stumbled across the app Todoist.  I simply open it up and tell it something (like “Help with the Easter egg hunt at the church at 10 a.m. Saturday”) and it not only gets it right quickly (generally), but it will show it on the screen anytime I view the app and it will send me an SMS notification at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning!

An old dog really can learn new tricks, Mom, and thanks for the constant reminder.

In Honor of my father-in-law, Wilson O. Ball, who would have been 103 this month.


This time I am going to write not about my dad but about my father-in-law.

As most of you know, Karen Kay died on Nov. 20, 2018, leaving me a widower (strange archaic word) with a large house to clean out and the usual end-of-year activities (donations, finding tax records, getting out the annual Christmas letter) to perform.  Meanwhile, I want to take the time to put onto paper one of my favorite family stories. 

Karen Kay and I grew up on opposite sides of the state Oklahoma, both children of  small businessmen in smallish towns and cities.  It is that common background which enabled us to be married for 53 years and never have a single argument over money.

Karen Kay was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis while she was in college, after we were engaged but a year before the wedding.  During that summer I was in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, visiting at her parents' home.


While I was lolling around their house, Wilson called from the OTASCO store to ask me to ride along while he delivered a large console TV set to a rural home.  I agreed and he came by the house shortly thereafter with the TV already on the truck for our journey to the customer's home.  On the way there,  he revealed the true purpose of the call.


"Jack, I suppose you know that Karen has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis."  Yes, sir.  "Do you know what that means?"  I know she will be in constant discomfort and at some point will probably develop colon cancer. "It will also be hard on you and on any children you might have.  I just wanted you to know, that if the prospect is frightening or uncomfortable, we won't respect you less if you decide you shouldn't go on with the marriage."  Karen Kay and I have talked it over, and we have no plans to change our minds.  "But I also know it will be hard financially for you, and with your educational plans, you may find it hard to get the resources to take care of her.  Irene and I have talked it over and, although our resources are limited too, we will help you to whatever extent we are able."  Thank you, sir. And I knew he was right, he lived close to the financial edge even as my own father did.


That was the kind of man I was raised by:  You talk about the good and the bad of the situation, and you offer hope and acceptance.  I expect my own father would have had that kind of conversation with his future daughters-in-law if it had been necessary.   I am only sorry that my children didn't get to know their maternal grandfather better:  he was killed in an automobile accident shortly before turning 50 and while Karen Kay was carrying his third grandchild in her womb.  


Here's to Wilson Oscar Ball and the bright legacy he left. 

Living Like My Father

Probably one of the reasons I titled this blog as I did is that at some point in my life I discovered that I was re-living the main outlines of my father's life. 

If you have read my earlier posts you know that there were some obvious similarities between besides simply being white, American, and Methodist.  (Dad was of solid German stock, not Anglo-Saxon.  His forebears had emigrated from Germany in the early nineteenth century to Big Pond, Pennsylvania on the New York border.  They lived there until my great-grandfather moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, shortly after it became state capital upon statehood in 1907.  My grandparents met at the German speaking Methodist church a couple of blocks from my great-grandparents' home.)  Mother was the WASP -- her earliest ancestor arrived in Jamestown, VA, from England in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts.

When Dad and Mom started dating she was a fine physical specimen, but when they married she was damaged goods.  She had been playing basketball and fell and (unknowingly) broke her back.   The break was diagnosed properly after almost a year of pain and suffering she was hospitalized and it was basically rebroken to heal better:  she spent a Dallas summer in an un-air-conditioned hospital in a neck to groin plaster cast.  Ouch!

Despite her injury -- which would give her difficulty and pain for the rest of her life, Dad chose to marry her and he supported her and comforted her for decades despite her sufferings and the expense of her care.  (Example: for seven straight years she had a headache which was only resolved by a neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic.  For those seven years she had three boys in grade school and Dad was working six 10-hour days a week as a retail baker.  But meals were on the table -- we all came home for lunch -- the house was cleaned and our laundry was washed and ironed.) She set a high standard for pain tolerance, and he set a high standard for love and care.

When I met Karen Kay, she was in apparently fine health, but after we became engaged she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a disease which brought with it a high probability of colon cancer.  The summer following (and before our marriage) her father offered me two things:
1) If I wanted to call off the engagement, the family would understand and would not hold it against me.
2) If I wanted to go ahead with the marriage, they -- despite their limited resources, were willing to assist with the costs, even if it meant mortgaging their home and business.
As most of you know, we married anyway, and before our 16th anniversary she was diagnosed with Stage IV adenocarcinoma of the colon and had everything below her small intestine removed.  She was 38 at the time and our kids were in the 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade.  I was terrified (how could I raise them without her?!) but she fully recovered and for 37 years simply lived uncomplainingly with the difficulty of defecating into a plastic bag attached to her body. She too had a great deal of pain, suffering, and inconvenience

Both my father and I had made good choices, and neither one of us seemed to have felt any regret at the choice we made.

But the similarity doesn't end there.   Dad began working a shift in his father's wholesale bakery at about age 14.  He worked there until after he and Mom were married and they had had three boys.  Suddenly, at the end of WW II, his father decided to sell the bakery, leaving Dad without a livelihood.  We moved from Chickasha to Muskogee (Yes, I am an "Okie from Muskogee") where he worked at another wholesale bakery.  But shortly after that a loan from his younger brother enabled him to buy out the business of a Ponca City retail baker, and until all three of us were out of college, that Ponca was home to Mom and Dad.   But she always suffered from the high humidity of spring, summer, and fall there in the Great Plains, so after my younger brother finished at OSU, Dad sold the shop and they moved to Phoenix in 1967.

Just as Dad had to pick up and move and finally start his own business to care for his family, so did I.  After teaching at institutions in New York, Texas, and Indiana, the small institution in Indiana where I worked and taught went bankrupt.  Aa colleague and I founded the nonprofit Environmental Management Institute here in Indianapolis.  Tom moved on to other jobs, and despite many challenges, we became and remain one of the premiere asbestos and lead trainers in the Midwest.  Our doors have been open for 28 years and we have trained well over 40,000 clients.

All of this is simply a prelude to telling you that all good things must come to an end.  As many of you already know, Karen Kay finally gave up the struggle on November 20 of this year.   We had her service on December 15 (which she largely wrote) and I was humbled but not surprised by the many people from all over the country and all stages of her life appeared to pay her honor.  

Last summer she told me I had to give up my leadership of the Institute at the end of February, 2019, and tomorrow (December 21) my staff are having a retirement reception at the Institute from 2-4 p.m. (and I do not you to come). 

But the best news of all is that thanks to one hardworking member of my board, the Institute -- unlike the Tasty Bakery -- will continue.   The Indiana state community college System (IVTech) will incorporate the Institute into their operations.  My energetic co-Trainer and Training Manager Joan Ketterman will become a Faculty Member and lead the effort for IVTech, so they should have a good shot at getting it well-grounded.  

I leave you with one more thought.  Several years ago I suddenly realized that all that I have ever achieved I owe to bossy women.  I am basically lazy and extroverted, but they have insisted I will not be allowed to act that way around others.  You have now met three of them:  Mother,  Karen Kay, and Joan.  Maybe next time I will tell you about a fourth.

Reading, Part I

Today and tomorrow I am in Frankfort, Kentucky, teaching state environmental regulators about the OSHA requirements for folks in their jobs.  It is, as they say, “a dirty job but someone has to do it.” 

Such trips give me the freedom to do what I can seldom manage at home: to sit in a (hotel) room and write. For some time I have had the urge to write a few words about each book as I finish it, but since I get most of my books from the public library, that means STACKS of books sitting around and being rechecked online until I get round to writing them up.  Last night I wrote up an even dozen books that had been heaped up over the past couple of months. [Author’s disclosure: I don’t always “read” in the usual sense, as my wife constantly reminds me.  Eight of the items were CD audiobooks.  But without audiobooks to accompany my commutes, I would get little read.]

I have had a love of reading since the first grade in Jefferson Elementary School where Miss (Mrs?) Manney taught me the fascinating tales of the Tick-Tock Dwarf (the letter T as it’s called on Sesame Street) and his 25 companions.  But my love of books predates that time: I was read to at bedtime almost my whole preschool childhood.   When I was in high school I wrote an essay about my reading history for English class, and I told how my mother would read to me and my brothers each night.  However, when I showed the essay to Mom, she said it wasn’t true: Dad did the reading. 

Even at this advanced age my mind boggles: Dad worked 10-12 hours a day at the bakery six days a week, and he still had the time, energy, and desire to read to three squirming boys night after night? 

We never fully understand what motivates our parents.  A standing puzzle is that Mom had the college degree (U T Austin) and Dad had a single semester at O U Norman at the height of the depression only to realize that his job at his father’s wholesale bakery would provide a more secure future than that apparently in store for the MAs in Norman with who were driving taxis.  But while mom’s only serious intellectual activities were playing contract bridge and solving the hard puzzles in the crossword collections she bought at the supermarket, Dad was an almost unstoppable reader in the limited free time he had at home.  He always had three or four newspaper/magazine subscriptions and he regularly read Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

Most people thought of him as a baker, and he was a truly excellent one, but it was his livelihood, not his life.  When I asked him, probably while I was elbow deep in the scrub sink at the bake shop and looking for a more pleasurable task, whether he was going to teach me to bake, he replied unhesitatingly “Not unless there is no other job you would like to have.”  He took the life he was handed and crafted into a life he could find satisfaction in.   And by doing so I think he taught me to do the same.   And he helped me become a reader to provide a pathway.

At Christmas dinner my daughter asked each of us to tell about our favorite Christmas food.  When it came my turn I did not hesitate before replying “butterflake rolls straight from the oven at the Tasty Bakery.”

During my growing up years my dad ran the Tasty Bakery in Ponca City, a retail bakery that he operated from 1948 when we moved to Ponca from Muskogee until 1967 when he and Mom moved to Phoenix for her health.  Christmas Eve was the busiest day of the year, so after reaching junior high age or so we three boys were recruited as additional hands for the operation.  Nothing fancy, just the usual kind of step’n’fetch it kind of labor we were all familiar with.   By lunchtime (Dad had been at the shop since 4 a.m., so it was closer to 11 than to 12), he would send someone to the neighboring grocery store there on West Grand Avenue to get some butter and he would put a pan of butterflake rolls in the rotary oven to bake.  When they were done, we could hardly wait for them to cool before they were broken open, slathered in butter, and the pan was devoured by our family and the help.  

I know that my Dad was an exceptional baker, but I also strongly suspect that part of the sweetness of those rolls was that the biblical punishment of “getting thy bread by the sweat of thy face” gave the getting a special sweetness.  Meaningful work is sometimes hard to come by, but my father always understood that it was not the work but the family and friends that come with it that are what provide meaning to activities which to many would seem repetitive and pointless.   I have been blessed with decades of what many would consider a continual slog to go one more place and develop one more course to one more group of workers.   But I too have found both satisfaction and friendship in the doing.   My only regret is that it was not a labor I could share with my family. 

Karen Kay and I recently finished my oral reading of Arlo Crawford’s A Farm Dies Once a Year, detailing his summer visit as a young, dissatisfied adult back to the family farm in Pennsylvania where he grew up.  But he was not a farm kid of the kind I knew, whose families had lived on the land for generations.  His father and mother had, as young hippies, decided to go back to the land and grow vegetable.  That decision had not only provided for his family and given his children excellent college educations, but it had also enriched his neighbors and apprenticed scores of younger aspiring farmers.   It also taught Arlo and his sister the nature of meaningful work from an early age.   Yet Arlo, after that summer did not want to be a farmer.  But like me the experience freed him to pursue meaningful work of his own shaping.

I hope your choices have worked out as well for you, and I would love to hear your stories of growing up and of growing old. 

One Fine Summer Evening

The new year is approaching and I need to fulfill a promise.

At the Po-Hi reunion in October 2016, I promised my friend and former neighbor Marcene (McGrew) Nelson, that I would once again take up my laptop and post something to my blog. I had missed it at the time, but work and family obligations had largely prevented it.

In my defense, I actually wrote one at about this time in 2016, but my computer literally died (no kidding) as I saved the email, and when my computer techs got it running again, the file was nowhere to be found. (I ask you, how many places on my computer would you expect the word to appear, but a complete disk search wouldn’t make it appear.

So here goes (the letter, not the computer I hope).

This blog is basically reminesces of how the former generation has helped shape me. But in this case it is not my parents but Marcene’s mother who was a huge early influence.

Without airconditioning and television to distract us, summers were a time for playing with the other neighborhood children, often involving almost twenty kids in the games. Marcene and her brother Keith lived across Ash Street and three houses north of us, so they were regularly among the gang.

One year, when I think I was in early grade school, Marcene’s mother invited us kids (after it got too dark to play the usual games) to join her in her home for snacks and a story. After snacking, we sat around the living room and we listened to a chapter a night from a book of her choosing, and I must have been enchanted with those cowboy tales, because I still remember them.

Now being read to was not a strange experience. My father read us to sleep at night and some of the teachers at Jefferson Elementary would read aloud after lunch. The fact that we were fascinated by western stories, of course, was a natural crowd pleaser. Most of the ten-cent Saturday matinees at the Ponca Theater included a Cowboy movie serial each week, and the main feature of did so too.

But for someone else’s parent to invite the neighbors in was pure gift. Taking in tired (cranky?) children at that time of night – who should have probably been at home in their own bed by that time — was first of all a gift to our parents, since they could linger in the breeze of the porch a little longer, and secondly I am sure it was not an easy matter to hold the interest of a gaggle of elementary school age children. I never wondered about it then, but I have since wondered what kind of woman it takes to reach out in that way.


It is, of course, such individual acts which build the strong secure communities that we sometimes wonder whether our children will experience.

I would, of course, be delighted if some of you could share other stories or any recollections you might have of special story hour experiences. 

Never buy a car in its first model year.

When I was growing up in Ponca City, Oklahoma, American automakers were about the whole game and they brought out radical revisions of their cars about this time each year. Most of my male classmates could tell you the exact model year for any passing American car on the road. The automaker's wholesale embrace of "planned obsolescence" changed manufacturing engineering permanently, although the annual cycle dissipated somewhat after the first OPEC oil crisis hit. [As an MIT professor pointed out on national radio that year, the most important thing to understand that it takes more energy to manufacture a car than that car will use in its lifetime. Therefore, it never makes energy sense to scrap a car to get a better mileage.] Dad's point was that when they redesign the essential features of a car (ignition, drive train, etc., not simply the size of the tailfins), there are many things that can go wrong, and sometimes disastrously so. The Ford Pinto gas tank is a classic case to most of my generation, though it postdates my father's advise on the subject. For the second time in the current century I have decided to ignore my father's advice. So in April Karen Kay and I drove to Virginia to pick up my new plug-in Prius hybrid car. Like my 2001 Prius, as a first-adopter I had to order the car on the web and then wait for the car to be be built and delivered. And like that earlier Prius, Toyota's strategy clearly seems to be to have a small group of first year buyers discover what couldn't be found in earlier testing. Thus, this year they only allowed dealers in twelve states to get the cars; hence, the trip to Virginia. The 2001 Prius definitely had its problems. The NiMH batteries for the electric motor would suck energy from the lead-acid battery used for the accessories and gas engine, thus resulting in the need to get a jump for its (golf-cart sized) lead acid battery. And Karen Kay had to use the warranty coverage to get a computer replacement in the car on a trip to Austin, Texas. The original Prius is still with us, has over 125,000 miles on the odometer, and finally had to have the battery replaced ($4000+). But, with that and other maintenance, it is probably good for another 125,000 miles. The new one has behaved itself well to date. We are about 500 miles form home on a 2500-mile journey to Cape Cod. The 2001 Prius mileage averaged in the low forties, this one is holding steady at about 53 mpg (as a hybrid). I say "as a hybrid" because at home I plug it in at night and do most of my day's driving around town on electricity. My roundtrip commute is slightly more than the roughly 15 miles I can get in EV (electric vehicle) mode, but I average over 100 mpg in both July and August (when we made no long out-of-town trips). And, thanks to a special program by our local power company -- a big thank you to IPL -- it costs about a penny a mile for eV operation and I have a smart meter and a 220V charging station at no cost to me. In the long run, even hybrids are a stopgap. But pure electrics like the Leaf and the Tesla are real hard to deal with when there is ice on the windshield and too low a battery charge to be able to both melt the ice and drive the car home. If I lived in Southern California, one of our family cars might be electric, but even the most dismal climate change enthusiasts don't expect that kind of warming for Indiana in the 21st century. Dad's advice was almost always good, so I had to think long and hard before violating it. (Both of my brothers have standard Priuses bought after the car had been available a few years.) But Dad also taught us to do what we believe in, and the need for Americans to adopt more energy efficient ways of doing things is high on what I believe. And it probably doesn't hurt that -- thanks in good measure to my parents assistance and encouragement -- I have more disposable income than they had. "A foolish consistency," Emerson said, "is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Daddism #2:Carry it one hand under! Part 2

The story is told that on the first day of practice, John Wooden, legendary basketball coach at the University of California at Los Angeles, had all players take off their shoes and socks and put them on again while he and the coaching staff watched. If any player failed to put the sock heel on his own heel or to properly tighten and tie the laces, that player had to do once more.. And, it is said, he even had players drop off the team rather than conform to what they considered trivial and/or demeaning.
But Coach Wooden's point was simple: The Devil really is in the details.

Remembering to carry the tray one hand under is a detail, but one which can avert the disaster of a spilled or broken load, just as a poorly mounted sock can wear a blister or a poorly tied shoe can lead to a stumble at a critical moment.

I am not enamored of details. My handwriting is sufficient proof to those forced to live through it, and it has taken me years to learn what my father seemed to know from his gut. Now he also knew that it meant that he couldn't try to achieve as many things. Of course, when you work 60+ hours/week in the back of a bakery, it limits what other achievements you can expect. So he tried to do each of the tasks systematically and to learn and apply the basics well.

Almost every Sunday morning before church he would be doing his "book work," that is, bringing the accounts for home and the shop up to date, paying bills, and trying to keep things running. By doing it in those early morning hours when no one else was around, he could concentrate on the details and be sure of the accuracy of the outcome.

Life is always a compromise. And while I have not been as good as he was at paying attention to the details, my life benefits from those times when I pull back, ask what I really need to achieve, and then putting in the detailed work it takes to bring about a transformation.

There are many things I would like to learn and to do, but my father's example tells me that unless I can put in the ante of careful participation, I really need to think about whether playing that particular game is worth it.

Daddism #2:Carry it one hand under!

At church a couple of weeks ago my wife and I were preparing for the noon coffee hour.  Two women were setting up for a celebration in conjunction with the event and they had bought a full iced sheet cake.  (Boy, would Dad be surprised at how much those cost now!)

I cringed as I watched it carried the thirty feet from the kitchen to the serving table.  She had one hand under each end of the cake's cardboard tray and was walking across the room in confidence.


That was the context in which I recall Dad's saying:  "Put one hand under!"  The reason:  the cardboard can (and occasionally does) buckle, thereby destroying the cake.   In college I took a free course from the student in table waiting from the head of food service at the Boston Hilton, and we were also taught similar methods for securely transporting trays of food and of tableware between kitchen and table.

Every profession has its tricks of the trade.  Minor but important rules (how do the uses of a ball peen hammer differ from a roofer's hammer, and what makes a hammer right for a given job?) that make all the difference in productivity.

But so does life itself.

Relationships are more important and more difficult than carrying cakes, but unless you can find the special ways in each relationship that support it, you will find it will break and lose its value.

Of course, most of the rules we learn unconsciously growing up.  Dad was very introverted and Mom was the opposite.   Thus, we three sons had a suite of choices for how to interact and even how to modulate for context;  I feel sorry sometimes for children raised by one parent, because they do not have the same conflict/synergy of relational notions that come about with two parents.  I can barely imagine what it must be like to have other adult family members in the home as well!

Fortunately, though, Dad was an experimenter, too.  So I learned that the rules could change, be created, and even be destroyed.  [Am I the only one left who knows how to check multiplication problems by casting out nines?]

And, my all to frequent mistakes in life and work have given me plenty of opportunity to change,  create, and destroy rules of life and work.  I have learned that a screw-up should be rare, so it is always worth the time to figure out how to avoid it in the future.

So, while you are considering New Year's resolutions, here's a suggestion:  Create at least one new rule for life and work in the coming month (and feel free to tell me and others about it through the comments).

And don't forget to keep a supportive hand under all life's fragile things.

Daddism #1: If You Haven’t Got Time to Do It Right, When Do You Have Time to Do It Over? Part II

Dad used to leave the house early, usually before 5 a.m., to begin the morning baking.  He came home for lunch and took a nap, and then he went back to work until 6 p.m. when he locked up the shop for the night.  And the shop was open six days a week.  His staff was small (usually about three people with Mom pitching in on Saturdays).  Time was important to him because baked goods are best fresh. 

In all the hours I spent in the bake shop, I never saw Dad mess up a baking and have to toss it.  He was careful, he was regular, he ran a clean shop and he expected the same from others.  

Needless to say, it seemed oppressive to his growing boys.  High expectations can bring high frustrations.  Indeed, during his high school years my younger brother got expert at doing just enough to get by.

But it seems surprising that all three of us realized the message when we became adults.  As someone chronically short on time, Dad had effectively modeled that knowing and achieving the goal on the first attempt isn't   the only smart way to work: nothing else may work at all.  

But it is a remarkably hard objective to achieve.  Because it is often hard to know what is right.  Running my own business, I understand how hard it was for Dad to do it for twenty years, even as retail bakers were disappearing everywhere in America.  It is relatively easy to get the donuts right:  use the right ingredients, measure carefully (including the dough mix and the temperature of the fryer), and know when the donut is properlyy cooked.  But it is a whole lot harder to know how many donuts to make on this day and which donuts will sell.  Each evening Dad would end his day with the 10:20 p.m. WKY-TV weather report, knowing that rain, snow, or hot weather would cut the demand for baked goods.  Often Mom would have to wake him so he could watch before turning in for the evening.  But it was his fundamental daily planning tool. 

Dad was an introvert, so he deliberately decided to get more connected.  He joined the Rotary Club (his dad was a Kiwanian) and took the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking course to increase his skills.  A few years later he became President of the Oklahoma Retail Bakery Association, a position that led several years on to his being selected as bakery manager at Motorola Corporation.  Motorola?!!  Yes.  At that time Motorola had over 19,000 employees at five Phoenix area plants, and they ran a three-shift cafeteria and a two-shift bakery.  One year his staff turned out over 1200 pies for the annual Thanksgiving dinner. 

"Doing it right" he taught us is not just about doing the routine work correctly.  It is also about planning right and preparing for what is needed in the future.  If you have a 60-hour workweek, why else would you ever think of enrolling for a night class? 

Life is not something you get a do-over on.  If you can’t do it right the first time . . . ?

Daddism #1: If you haven’t got time to do it right, when do you have time to do it over? Part I

For some years from now I have thought about writing short reflections on my father’s life.  Much of what I can be proud of in my life, he and my mother taught me to be.  But my father was a man of sayings.  Many of them echo in my head to this day, and I have been writing them down, first on slips of paper and then in computer files, and I believe that the time has come to get started on putting them in order.  

This will not be a regular column, since I am still more than fully employed in family, church, and work activities.   But at the same time I hope that you will feel free to share your thoughts in the comments sections to amplify the effect of these recollections.  For they are but recollections, shaded by time, emotion, and the possible inaccuracy of my sources, and therefore begging for comment.

From time to time I will give such biographical details as are important to the story, but up front I should give some basic life details.  

Carl Adolphe Leonard was born September 3, 1913, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, the oldest (of four) children of Zadeth Dutcher Leonard and Carl VanEvery (sp?) Leonard.  Dad always went by Adolphe (or C.A. for formal documents) because his dad was “Carl.”   He was born and lived in the house built by his grandfather when the family moved to Oklahoma shortly after statehood in 1907.  They came from a “Pennsylvania Dutch” community in Big Pond, Pennsylvania, not far south of Erie, NY where the Leonards had settled in the early- to mid-nineteenth century.  The family spoke German, and Carl and Zadeth met in the German-speaking Methodist church only a couple of blocks south of my father’s first home.   The church is still there, although no one there speaks German anymore so far as I know.  My father never spoke German, so far as I know [I started teaching myself German in high school and he never offered to help] and I never heard his parents speak it either.  Many German-speaking Americans completely abandoned the language after the United States entered World War I in 1917. 

Years later my father sent us boys a couple of paragraphs about his life, and in it was one that is especially relevant to the intersection of world history and biography.  “Only one time during the Second World War did anyone asking why I didn’t change my name.  A competitor, Bill Hubbard, and I were in front of a grocery store [when he asked].  I asked him [why he hadn’t] changed [his name] during World War I when he was in France fighting Kaiser Bill?  That ended the conversation.  You make your own name and [besides] Hitler’s name was spelled Adolf, mine Adolphe.”


My grandfather was trained as a lawyer but he went to work as secretary to a prominent El Reno business man, moving the family there in about 1916.  (I thought for a long time that Dad had been born in El Reno.)  A few years later (anyone know when?) the family moved again, this time to Chickasha, Oklahoma.  Pop’s (my dad’s name for his father; we called him Papa) employer had bought three bankrupt Bake-Rite (?) wholesale bakeries, and he sent Pop to Chickasha to manage the bakery and turn it around.  Pop was so successful that he bought out his employer’s interest and managed it until about 1947, when he sold it and went into early retirement. [Pop was so bored with retirement that he started a second career and was so successful at it that when he died, at about age 75, he was on a visit to a customer.] 

Dad went to the work for Papa at about age 14, working as a bakery employee.   Dad learned the baking trade from the other men in the shop, and during high school he would go in at about 2 a.m., help with the baking, do early morning deliveries in a bakery step van, then go to high school.  After school he would do his homework, go to sleep for a few hours, and repeat the exercise.  On Saturdays he didn’t have school, but he still did his bakery route. 

When he graduated from high school in about 1930, Dad commuted one semester to the University of Oklahoma in Norman where he planned to major in food chemistry.  However, he said that he looked around and saw fellows with Masters degrees driving cabs and realized that he had a much better job than they did, so he gave up on his studies.   (Although he never quit reading and studying.)  A year or two later my mother, Emma Lee Godbey, came to Chickasha to attend the Oklahoma College for Women (now The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma).  They met at an Epworth League (Methodist) social and dated until she left to do her junior and senior year at the University of Texas in Austin.  She finished a degree in Sociology, and shortly thereafter they were married.  The lived in Chickasha in rented housing until they were able to design and built their own home just a couple of blocks from my grandparents’ home.  My first memory (at age two, just as WWII was ending) is of staring out the back screen porch door at a pen where my folks were fattening a turkey and a goose.  Later on a man came by to purchase them, and my brothers and I got war stamps for the purchase.  I found out years later that we ate the goose that year; my parents didn’t want to upset us because we (I in particular?) had become so attached to them. 

When Papa sold the bakery, Dad got on at a wholesale shop in Muskogee, Oklahoma [yes, I am an Okie from Muskogee], but three months later he was able to borrow the money from his brother Leroy to buy the equipment and goodwill in the Tasty Bakery in Ponca City.  I was born in 1943 at the Chickasha General Hospital  (as were my brothers in 1940 and 1944), and we moved to Ponca City.  In 1967, for reasons I will save for later, my parents moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where they lived until about 1997. (I need some help on dates here).  At that point Mom’s dementia and Dad’s health had declined to the point he realized that he needed to institutionalize her.   They moved to Guthrie where my brother Joe had helped him find an excellent care facility and she died February 17, 2001, at age 85 and he died August 30 of the same year at age 88 (actually 87, but that’s another story).