JohnCr8on’s Snapshots

Casey Kasem

flickr photo by stereo-240 pictures

There is much I enjoy about the iTunes era of music.

I like that I can take my entire music collection with me when I go for a bike ride.  I can find the music that matches my mood and workout pace whether I’m riding on the highways or my trainer.

I like that I can bypass poor playlists broadcast on the radio stations.  I find that I enjoy only about one in four songs when I am forced to listen to the radio.  That’s a pretty poor ratio and a good indication of why the iPod is popular.

I’m even warming up to the Genius feature on iTunes that creats playlists I would not think of on my own.  But I’m still an album guy.  I like to listen to a single artist for an hour or two at a time.

I like that you don’t have to haul around a big appliance to listen to music.  It’s much easier to keep an iPod charged than it is to keep a stock of D batteries or always have to find an outlet.

I like that it’s easy to let our kids listen to our favorite music.  We don’t have the worry of the past – that the kids might scratch our albums.  So, it’s easy to share music among the family.  Joni’s successfully nurtured a new generation of Beatles fans.

But, I do miss the social experience that listening to music used to be.

I was feeling nostalgic today for the old Sunday ritual of listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40.  I asked my daughter Emma what the number one song was these days.  She has no idea.  I asked her what the most popular songs are among her friends.  “We all listen to different stuff,” she said.

We listened to music together even when we were sitting in our bedrooms listening alone.  American Top 40 was a stable of everyone’s music week.  You could count on a conversation about the new number one song on Monday morning by the lockers in school.

We used to cheer for our favorite songs to move up the charts.  I can still remember Tim Yount going crazy with excitement when Kool and the Gang topped the charts with Celebration.  I couldn’t stand that song.  But, that was part of the fun – hoping that your favorite song would beat out the others.

The boombox was a school bus must on field trips and track meets.  The “dj” would try to play a mix of music that appealed to the most people (except country music fans).  Again, part of the fun was lobbying for your favorite songs to be played and heckling the choices of others.

Music was something that brought teenagers together – back in the day.

Today, I don’t see young people crowded around a turn table or a boom box sorting through albums negotiating which song to play next.  When I see kids traveling in groups, each has their own mp3 player.  Where there once was lobbying for songs to be played there is now silence a set of earphones dangling from each person’s ears.  Perhaps one or two pairs of kids are sharing earbuds.  But, for the most part, they listen to their own stuff.

The shared music experience today seems to be limited to a handful of kids playing Rock Band on Wii.

Music today is one more example of how we are able to tailor our experiences to our individual preferences without having to take into account what others may or may not enjoy.  There’s no conflict.  No reason to negotiate.  We can all do what we want to do.

There is a lot to be said for the individual play list.  It’s one less thing for kids to fight about in the back seat of the car when going on a long family road trip.  Parents worldwide have fewer occasions to say, “Don’t make me pull this car over.”

But, the individual music experience is one more thing that fragments people from one another.  It’s one more shared experience we can cross of the list of shared experiences.  A list that continues to grow.

I like my iPod.  I use it every day.  I have no plans to give it up.

But, today, I’m feeling nostalgic for the shared experience of wondering what will be the number one song this week.  I’m even feeling nostalgic for Casey’s corny sign-off, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”  Well, maybe not so nostalgic for that part.

So, to celebrate shared experiences of the past… A tip of my hat to my old friend Tim Yount.

This stinkin’ song’s going to be stuck in my head all day.

*     *     *

Photo credits:

boombox by stereo-240 pictures

Casey Casem from wikidpedia

Royal Rooters T-Shirt from 1970s

The Kansas City Royals were my first true love.  I fell in love in the summer of 1975.  The next year was the Royal’s break out season.  I can still name the everyday nine (DH not pitcher) from that team.  The late 70s and early 80s were a glorious time to be a Royals fan.

Nineteen Seventy Five was also about the time I began to read the newspaper.  Like a lot of 10 year-old boys, I only read the sports section.  That’s when I developed a habit that continues today.  The first thing I do when I open a paper during baseball season is turn to the page of box scores in the sports section and see how the Royals fared the previous night – even if I already know.  It’s not as fun as it used to be.

This season, the Royals are on pace to lose 100 games for the fifth time this decade.  Let me put this in perspective.  If they made the movie Major League, it would be about the Royals not the Cleveland Indians.  The Royals have become the new team “most likely to lose.”

If the Royals do lose 100 games this year they will arguably have had the worst decade of any franchise in the history of baseball.  The Royals will become the first non-expansion team to lose 100 games five times in one decade.  Only the expansion Mets of the 1960s has equaled this dubious feat.

There are only two other non-expansion franchises that have lost 100 games four times in a decade – the Boston Braves in the 1920s and the Philadelphia Phillies in the 20s, 30s, and 40s (man, tough to be a Phillies fan in those decades).  Even the lowly Philadelphia-Kansas City-Oakland Athletics with a major league high sixteen 100 loss seasons only managed to be this bad a maximum of three times in one decade.

Since 1960, only three other teams have lost 100 games three consecutive seasons as the Royals did earlier this decade:  The expansion Mets, the expansion Washington Senators (now Texas Rangers) in the 1960s, and the expansion Toronto Blue Jays in the 1970s.

I will always be a Royal Rooter (I was a charter member of the club).  But, I am wondering.  At what point does an organization lose its franchise rights to be a Major League Baseball team.  Or, at least, perhaps the ownership should be forced to sell.  The economics of baseball, as dismal as they are, are no longer sufficient to justify the Royals’ demise.

My heart breaks for the legacy of Ewing Kauffman.  I can’t imagine he would have tolerated the Royals becoming the worst franchise in the game.  It’s certainly not the way to celebrate a 40^th anniversary.

Ben Delatour Scout Ranch

Don Beamgard stepped up for Atwood Scout Troop 121 when we needed someone and when he didn’t need to.  It wasn’t the first time he stepped up for Atwood and it wouldn’t be the last.

I thought a lot about Mr. Beamgard this past week.  I went with my son Joe to Ben Delatour Scout Ranch (BDSR) near Red Feather Lakes, Colorado this past weekend.  The last time I was at BDSR I was a Boy Scout myself.  Silas Horton and I swam in the lake in the background of the picture for about 10 seconds before we decided it was too cold.  We agreed our best option was to fail the swim test and be banned from the lake for the rest of the week.

I stayed on top of the water this year canoeing with Joe and his good friend Jackson.  We took our swim tests before we left Longmont.  Thank goodness.  The water felt just as cold as I remember.

Back in 1979, Mr. Beamgard spent three nights with our scout troop at BDSR.  He was relieved by Jerry McKee (the high school basketball coach at the time) who also spent three nights as our chaperone.

The previous year, 1978, our scout troop went to the Dane Hansen Scout Reservation in Kansas.  We had a hard time finding an adult who could spend an entire week with us at camp.  Our dads were working and, in those days, moms didn’t stay with scouts at camp.

It was decided, somehow, that we could go to camp without adult supervision.  Hindsight 20-20 (or even 20-60) that decision wasn’t so terribly wise.  One of our troop mates was picked on by boys from another troop.  He got in a scrap and his nose was seriously broken causing several years of problems.

We had a hard time keeping track of time without an adult to help us out.  As young teenagers are prone to do, we got caught up in our own games rather than camp prescribed activities.  One afternoon we decided to use our campsite water buckets to hunt and capture ground squirrels.  It was a great game – except perhaps for the squirrels.

We forgot to show up for dinner that night where we were supposed to lead the camp in prayer.  A counselor came to find us.  We threw on our uniforms – sort of – and marched into dinner like Bill Murry’s squad showed up to graduation in the movie Stripes.  We tried to get the other campers to join us in the song, “Be Present at Our Table Lord,” but no one did.  By the second verse, Paul Hayden put everyone out of their misery when he called out, “That’s all the words we know, sit down and eat.”

The Camp Hansen organizers discouraged Troop 121 from coming back the next year.  That was okay with us.  The chiggers made us miserable.  But we did want to camp the next summer.

Everyone must have agreed we would only be allowed to go to camp again if an adult went with us to supervise.  The next summer, camp was up in the air until almost the last moment when, finally, Mr. Beamgard (who was an Eagle Scout) and Mr. McKee agreed to serve for half a week each.  Neither man had a son in our troop.  They stepped up out of kindness.

I don’t remember a lot about my week at BDSR except for the frigid mountain lake and Mr. Beamgard’s stories.  He was a World War II Vet serving in the infantry.  He sat at the picnic table of our campsite and kept us at rapt attention telling us how he earned his Purple Hearts.  He told us stories about running down hills in Europe and diving into his fox hole thinking he’d escaped harm until his uniform pants began to turn dark red with blood.  These are the types of stories young teen agers love not fully comprehending how real the stories are.

As a boy, I heard many stories about Mr. Beamgard.  He was not only an influential community leader but he loved to have fun – and poke fun.

My dad arrived in Atwood and learned that Mr. Beamgard was an avid ping pong player.  Dad enjoyed ping pong too and challenged Mr. Beamgard to a game.  The story goes that Mr. Beamgard said he could win wearing over boots and a rain jacket.  Dad said, “I’ll take that bet.”

The match was staged in the basement of the Methodist Church.  Apparently, the score was not even close.  Dad retired from competitive ping pong after a humiliating defeat.  Dad’s only prize was a story that he told every time we ate at a Methodist Church potluck.

Mr. Beamgard was a proud Democrat.  He also was a supporter of our hometown politician Mike Hayden.  For Mr. Beamgard, hometown would always trump political affiliation.  But, he faced a dilemma like other Atwood Democrats when Mike ran for governor in a crowded Republican party.  Should he switch parties to help Mike reach the general election?

Mr. Beamgard never considered the option.  He was a Democrat and would never put R next to his name.  But, he did promise to recruit at least 10 Republicans around the state to vote for Mike in the primary.  He challenged other Democrats to do the same.

Mr. Beamgard served as Atwood’s Postmaster for many years.  If I was out and about early enough, I would stop and watch Mr. Beamgard raise the flag outside the post office.  He did it with all the formality we were taught in scouts.

There used to be a joke that Mr. Beamgard kept up with community news by sneaking peeks at people’s post cards.  We received a post card from an Atwood neighbor who was away on a long vacation.  At the bottom of the card was a postscript written in small letters: “Don, please give our regards to June.”

Don did more for Atwood than a young boy can even begin to appreciate.  He and his wife June were the energy behind the Beamgard Learning Center, a regional school located in Atwood for severely handicapped children.  They both sang in the church choir and were leaders in the congregation.

And, like most Beamgard men, Don served a term or two as Atwood mayor.  Dad, also a former mayor, rode on a parade float for those who had previously held the office.  He was the only non-Beamgard on board.   In an effort to fit in, he wrote on his name tag, “Bob Beamgard.”

Don Beamgard was a civic man.  He gave countless hours of service to Atwood, to his church, civic clubs as well as to his state and country.  He was indeed a member of the greatest generation.

Like many folks who are active in community life he ruffled a few feathers.  That’s what happens when you’re passionate and want to get things done.  I appreciate now more than ever people who are willing to stay involved in community life year after year after year.

I will remember Mr. Beamgard for the many roles he played in our community.  And, I will also remember him as the person who saved our trip to scout camp in the summer of ’79. 

Television Test Pattern

We all know television was very different forty years ago compared to today.  Our parents told us stories of listening to radio broadcasts of The Lone Ranger or the Shadow.  We now tell our children tales of the time when television was limited to three channels, began with test patterns in the morning and concluded the broadcast day with a rendition of the National Anthem.

Sunday night was my favorite night of television when I was very young.  Normal family rules did not apply.  We are allowed to eat in the living room rather than at the kitchen table and, most importantly, watch T.V. while we ate.

We set up T.V. “trays” in the living room.  Our trays were small wooden tables that stacked on top of each other.  These tables were gifts from my grandfather Creighton who broke one slamming his fist down when K.U. was called for too many men on the field in the 1969 Orange Bowl, blowing sure victory against Penn State.

Not only were we allowed to eat in the living room, but Sunday night meant a special meal – one my mom didn’t have to cook.  We often had Swanson T.V. Dinners.  My favorite was the Salisbury Steak.  I also was partial to the Turkey and German Style Dinners.  I’d be scared to try any of these today.

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom came on first.  Marlin Perkins narrated the show sitting at the desk under the Mutual of Omaha logo.  As a child, I assumed he was sitting in Omaha, Nebraska.  I had no concept at the time that the show was sponsored by an insurance company.

Jim Fowler, Perkins’ assistant, became a legendary figure over the years as baby boomers wrote and produced countless television parodies of his heroics – “Jim will now enter the brush and wrestle the lion.”  He was the Crocodile Hunter before there was a Crocodile Hunter.

I had a collection of savannah and jungle animal figurines (made of plastic of course) that I brought out of storage every Sunday night.  I enacted lion hunts of zebras on the fireplace hearth as I watched the natural drama unfold on the screen.

The Wonderful World of Disney was the evening’s main event.  Each Sunday, we were treated to classics such as The Parent Trap, Herbie the Lovebug, and That Darn Cat.  Dean Jones and Hayley Mills were the stars, not Lindsay Lohan.  My favorites starred Kurt Russell as Dexter Riley with the gang at Medfield College – The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him Now You Don’t, and The Strongest Man in the World.

Television is not the event it once was.  Children don’t wait weeks in anticipation of the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz.  Families don’t plan their weeks around a special T.V. night.  Thursday nights is not Must See T.V.  Media no longer reports on the new lineup of shows for the kick-off of the television season – shows seem to premier at random times throughout the year.  Disney has its own channel.  And, there’s nothing that special about setting up the T.V. trays in the living room.

I don’t miss these things for my kids.  They weren’t such a special thing in my life that I wax nostalgically for their return.  But, as a young boy, Sunday night was exciting.

I am curious, forty years from now, what my children will tell their children about family rituals that have come and gone.  What are we doing today that will be unimaginably out of date in just a decade or two?

Only time will tell. 

I’ve been knocked out a few times.

We built an obstacle course in our backyard that included jumping over a railing on our back porch.  My foot got caught on the railing which flipped me upside down.  The next thing I remember is a nun at the hospital emergency room preparing me for stitches.

Alec was chasing me around the “loop” in our house – the halls, living room and dining room made a wonderful oval track.  I was going too fast in stocking feet to make the corner through the living room and crashed head first into the coffee table.  A butterfly sufficed to close the wound that time.

The knockout blow that garnered the most attention didn’t involve a blow to the head.

Summer time meant water balloons.  Water balloons meant water balloon fights.  The Curriers, Haydens, Younts, Creightons, Doug Keirns, Jeff Lewis and others were known to engage in battle.  The teams were always unclear, shifting more than in the novel 1984.

Our preferred battle field was the downtown business district.  It was a perfect place for a simple reason: access to ammunition.  Back in the day, there were working drinking fountains on many of the business district street corners – in front of the Masonic Temple, the banks and William Bros. Dept. Store.  Summertime drinkers would be sure to notice the rainbow of rings wrapped around the base of the faucets – remnants of balloons filled too full that exploded on the fountains.

We would chase each other down allies and hide behind tree boxes looking for the opportunity to drench an opponent; always hoping not to be the one to cause collateral damage – accidentally getting a grown-up wet.

I rounded the corner of Williams Bros. Dept. Store fully armed only to find myself confront by a wall of three older boys.  Unable to scramble back the other way, I was buried in a barrage of balloons including one not quite full and reluctant to burst.  It caught me directly in the stomach pushing all wind from my lungs.  Then, my world turned black.

I came to with a half dozen pairs of eyes staring down at me, the group nervously checking to see whether any adults were approaching amid whispers of, “Is he okay?”   As I sat up there was a collective sigh of relief.  My comrades immediately dispersed.

Game On!

Atwood Golf Course Fairway #2

There was water flowing in the creek beds then, always a steady stream.

We paused on the banks debating whether to take off our shoes.  It was far easier to feel the creek bottom surface with bare feet.  The risk of slicing a toe on broken glass was real.  The prospect of more bounty typically prevailed.

Shoes and socks safely stored beneath the rickety wooden bridge, we slipped into the waste deep water to begin our search for treasure.  Optimism always ran high as mud began to ooze through our toes. Anticipation and excitement took hold the moment we felt a hard curved surface touch on the sole of our foot.  We’d reach down, sift through the mud and pull up our prize – would it be worth keeping?

Creek (pronounced crick) balls from the Atwood Golf Course were our treasure.  The golfer’s misfortunes were our opportunity for riches.  Once washed up and displayed on a tee box we could collect 10 or 25 cents per ball – 50 cents if you found a jewel like a brand new Titlest – from golfers in need of supplies.

Creek ball hunting was one of my primary sources of income in grade school supplementing what I earned mowing lawns.  These were completely discretionary dollars.  My parents did not make me report what I earned on my trips to the golf course so dollars were not diverted to a savings account.  Anything I made on the course turned into baseball cards, comic books or a Chocolate 400 at Currier Drug before I went home.

Lots of kids spent time on the golf course at one time or another to try to find creek balls.  My main partner-competitor was Tim Yount.  We went together for companionship and we would take turns checking for golfers (so we wouldn’t get hit by an errant drive).  But that’s as far as our cooperation went.  It was a brutal competition in the creek each of us wanting to find the most and best golf balls.  We lived by a simple rule that governed our marketplace: Finders-keepers, losers-weepers.

We typically made our rounds east to west starting at the creek on hole number two, moving to three and finishing up on number seven of the nine hole course.  We spent most of our time in the open water of each stream but if creek balls were scarce we’d venture into the weeded areas.

With weeds came the possible of greater reward but also more risk.  We’d always spend five or ten minutes picking leaches off our legs and from between our toes after exiting the water.  I can still feel the sting and trickle of blood that followed.

We often wore blue jeans if we planned in advance to search the weeds.  We’d convinced ourselves long pants deterred leaches, but I don’t know if that’s true.  I often found leaches in the shower a few hours later at home.  There was a downside to the jeans.  Crawdads would dart up our pants.  If Tim or I started shrieking and dancing for no apparent reason, the other knew what had happened.

Wednesdays, Ladies’ Day, was the best day to do business.  The Ladies were always encouraging, supportive and kind.  If we could find Maxine Finley or Hilda Eaton on the course, we knew we were guaranteed at least one dollar in sales, each.

Thursdays, Men’s Day, we tried to remain unseen.  On Thursdays, the men weren’t so generous, often chasing us off the course.  On other days, they were fine.  I suppose the Thursday “competitions” led to shorter nerves.

A few golfers, seeing one of their own lost balls in our collection, would demand to have it back free of charge.  They didn’t understand our rule of finders-keepers.

We would return a ball if we were in the creek when the ball went into the water.  It seemed like good course etiquette.  It also helped to facilitate our sales.  But, if we found the ball when golfers were nowhere in sight, we considered it our own.

On those days when few creek balls or customers could be found, our hunt would be suspended for water fights, throwing mud balls or golfing by hand – throwing the golf balls we found from hole to hole.

The Atwood Golf Course was a great workplace.  I can’t imagine one better for kids.

The drop in water table, so I’m told, is the main culprit for the dry creek beds today.  I’d like to see the water come back except, of course, the first week in August.  Paul Hayden and I often play out of the creeks during the Atwood Jamboree.  It’s a more pleasant experience when we are able to keep our shoes dry.

*     *     *

Photograph from the Atwood Country Club website.

*     *     *

I couldn’t help but think of this SNL skit when writing this post.

School has been out for two plus weeks in our school district.  Listening to kids shout and dogs bark outside my office window the past few days I was reminded of a piece I wrote for the Longmont Times-Call in June 2005.

*     *     *

Each summer, we parents must figure out what our kids will do during “school hours.”  There are many factors to consider:  moms’ and dads’ work schedules, children’s interests, opportunities for new experiences, and a chance for kids to just be kids.

Another factor to consider is how we parents can promote democratic skills.

My children will do many of the typical summer activities – attend camps and they will come to Atwood to take swimming lessons.  I also am hopeful that we find ways for our kids to have unsupervised play – especially our oldest.

Unsupervised play with other children is an environment in which we begin to learn the most basic, and perhaps most essential, democratic skills:  agreeing to rules that are fair for everyone, living up to these rules often on the honor system, working out conflicts, and not going home when we’re mad at each other.  In short, how to govern ourselves.

I learned these types of skills playing baseball on vacant lots in Atwood.  I enjoyed playing K-18 baseball but my favorite memories are of “unorganized” ball.  Several of us formed a three-on-three league – no parents, coaches or umpires.  Our “home fields” were behind the Christian Church, the southeast corner of the court house block and the corner of 8^th and Highway 36.

We had many rules to work out.  For instance, what to do when the ball gets stuck in the bush behind the pitcher’s mound at the court house or how many bases does the runner get if the ball rolls across the highway when a car is coming?  One player would catch for the other team and call balls and strikes.  The catcher had plenty of incentive to favor his own side but that seldom happened.  We would argue, yell and sometimes wrestle as a way to sort out our disputes.  Still, we found ways to work things out so the game could continue.

Unsupervised play is certainly not without risk.  I don’t remember anyone taking their ball and going home in a huff.  I do recall helping a friend to Dr. Henneberger’s with a badly dislocated finger.  And, there were tears shed when one of us was hit with a ball or skinned a knee sliding into base.  But amidst the injury, heartache and fun we learned to govern ourselves.

My children are growing up in a great town (Longmont, Colorado) but it’s much different than Atwood.  The streets are busy.  The chance of encountering a stranger is real.  We don’t feel as comfortable letting our children roam freely as I did in Atwood.

It does feel more difficult in Longmont to let children go without adult supervision.  The highly scheduled lives we all lead these days makes it more difficult for children to have time they control for themselves.  But despite these challenges the need for unsupervised play is no less important than it was when I was young.

It is essential that our children learn to negotiate, to enforce rules and to figure how to get along with others when there is controversy.  It is important that they learn to make group decisions without aid from an adult.  Creating the space to nourish these skills in our children – and quite frankly among us adults, including members of Congress – helps prepare them to be responsible participants in democratic public life.

Indeed, if we can’t count on each other to agree to fair rules and stay in the game even when we disagree – even when we get hurt feelings – then our foundation for public life is shaky.

How ‘bout we all play some ball.

How do we make our dreams come true?  I contemplated that question recently when I was asked to give a high school commencement address.

One of the first people I thought of was Mr. Bray.  He was the custodian at our high school.  His son Jeff was in my class, Jerry was a year older and Mark was in Alec’s class.  They had several older siblings who I didn’t know well.  Mrs. Bray sold Paul and I our number 18 jersey’s, which we promptly converted with paint to number 19 so we could play Johnny U, at Williams Bros. Department Store.

I also thought of a book I’m reading with my daughter Emma, Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor.  The story is about Juan and Lupe Villasenor who fled revolutionary Mexico to California about a century ago.  Juan’s and Lupe’s respective families faced many hardships before finding peace and prosperity in the United States.

I will forever remember one scene in the book.  Juan and his family are camped outside of Ciudad Juarez hoping to cross the border into the United States.  They have nothing.  They must pick corn from manure to stave off starvation.  One night, after a terrible sandstorm, Juan’s mother, Dona Margarita, is all but blind.  A sister already is.  The family wants to give up.

Dona Margarita calls a family meeting.  This is a woman who has lost several children to war.  She is nearly blind.  Her grandchildren are crying with hunger.  They have no home.  No money.

With all these hardships, Dona Margarita says to her family, “We must open our hearts so that we can see the possibilities in our predicament.  If we do not look for the possibilities, we have nothing.”  She went on to tell her children that they must pray to God for the strength to make miracles happen.

That is a central theme in this book.  God makes miracles happen, if we’re willing to do the work.

Mr. Bray exemplified this idea.  He dreamed of a grand home for his large family.  That’s hard to come by on the modest income of a high school custodian.  Most of us might not move beyond the stage of dreaming thinking to ourselves, “It can’t be done.”  I can imagine Mr. Bray thinking, “I will not be deterred.”

From the time I was about five or six, I have memories of Mr. Bray at different places around town – in the evenings, on weekends and all through the summer.  We would be out riding our bikes or playing basketball and we’d see Mr. Bray hard at work tearing down abandon homes and buildings.

He carefully took the buildings apart and saved the lumber, doors and window frames.  When his work was done, he left clean lots removing eyes sores from the community.  His work was a service in and of itself.

I didn’t really understand what Mr. Bray was doing at the time.  I thought it odd how carefully he stacked and stored the lumber.  Most demolition projects I’d seen were more violent.  The materials headed for the dump.  From the vantage point of a child, Mr. Bray’s efforts seemed like a big waste of time.  But, by the time we were in high school the Bray’s had one of the biggest houses in town.

Now, when I think of what it takes to make dreams come true, I think of Mr. Bray.  Dona Margarita, the wise mother in Rain of Gold, had it right.  Miracles are possible if we’re willing to do the work.

Mr. Bray is a testament to that.