tag:localhost,2009:/feedCatapult Magazine2015-11-07T10:20:48Ztag:localhost,2009:Post/7532014-07-29T17:58:02ZThe clarity of a dumpster<p>It was like a giant’s junk drawer, the large metal bin that was delivered to my father’s house last week, ready to be filled with a thousand cast-off knick-knacks. Really, it was more like a coffin. Dumpsters as coffins often arrive shortly after their real counterparts have been lowered and hermetically sealed into concrete vaults, after funerary rites that too often hermetically seal in grief. This one, though, was for the death of a dream.</p>
<p>“Everyone should have to fill a dumpster,” my brother remarked, “That would be the opening line I would use.” I had told him that I was thinking about writing an article on wasted capital. And, indeed, everyone should, and preferably at an early age. “Conditioned aversion,” I think, is the technical term for it.</p>
<p>First, though, dumpster-filler-hopefuls should be made aware that no one gets to fill a dumpster for free. No Siree, you get to pay for that privilege. Our week of dumping rights, proscribed by some 20 cubic yards, a two ton weight limit, and a ban on appliances and tires (though, oddly, not on toxic materials) set us back $350, which, from the time-is-money perspective, was really quite a bargain. I could not help thinking, though, of all the ironies we packed into that dumpster along with our trash. And pack it we did. At $350 a pop, the empty-pockets-of-space-are-money perspective also begs to be heard.</p>
<p>And the ironies we packed away were as rich as some of the items we were putting into the dumpster. I shudder to contemplate what percentage of our garbage would have been salvaged and redeemed in any number of developing countries. I am confident, though, that the percentage would begin with a nine. And, yet we threw away with liberality and abandon because it was a necessity for us, for our family to get unstuck. And, so, we performed the privileged calculus, often sadly but determinedly, of crunching the numbers of projected use of an item versus storage space versus ties to the head and pocketbook and heart.</p>
<p>The intimate details of why our family needed a dumpster are neither for public consumption nor are highly relevant, but the reader should know that my father is no wastrel and that his dreams for the house he built as our family’s homestead had love and care and a desire to provide a place of belonging at their heart. As do our desires as sons to have him be freed from the weight of that dream, to exchange it instead for the realness of a life lived, at first close to, then within the home of one of my brothers, in the midst of growing children and laughter and life.</p>
<p>My family’s existential dumpster crisis, however, is a relevant substrate for a consideration of just how we use our resources as believers, of how we use our capital. The Sermon on the Mount, which John Stott insists is a primer for Christian counter cultural living, has some very pointed words on this score:</p>
<blockquote>Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)</blockquote>
<p>There are, of course, a thousand ways to blunt a scriptural passage, and it seems that verses advocating or describing financial austerity are prime candidates for such treatment in the church. Yet, even if blunted by a thousand qualifications these verses still cudgel us with their simplicity.</p>
<p><strong>What not to do:</strong> Do not store treasures on earth.</p>
<p><strong>Why not?</strong> Moths and rust destroy; thieves steal.</p>
<p><strong>What to do:</strong> Do store treasures in heaven.</p>
<p><strong>Why?</strong> Moths and rust don’t destroy; no thieves.Perhaps not surprisingly, James, the brother of the Lord Jesus, echoes the exact same imagery of the transience of riches in his warning to rich oppressors: “Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days (James 5:2-3).” And even Paul, whose letters sometimes seem to me to foster a more settled, less activist, though no less radical, tenor to the faith, writes this to Timothy:</p>
<blockquote>But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (I Timothy 6:6-10)</blockquote>
<p>The New Testament is pretty clear, then, about where our treasure should lie and about the source of true contentment. The application of these truths gets somewhat murkier, though. Perhaps this is only because I want it to, because I want to blunt these passages, because I want to be able to hold on to earthly treasure. But also, perhaps, for some legitimate reasons, stemming from considering areas the Scriptures do not directly cover.</p>
<p>In the West particularly, the list of things to which we feel entitled, that we believe are staples of life, is enormous; health care, insurance, education funds, retirement funds, an entertainment/vacation budget, just to name a few. Can such things fall somewhere under the rubric of “food and clothing?” I think I can make a case that they may, though I wonder where I would begin in making a case for the last item. And in addition to these rather prosaic “necessities,” excepting the entertainment/vacation budget line item, what about spending money on things of beauty and art to celebrate God’s good creation and to enrich our lives?</p>
<p>Granting the rather large assumption that these are, indeed, necessities, the next question becomes, “How much?” How much is permissible? How much is acceptable? How much is necessary? How much is beneficial? Even the way we ask these questions is important. The way we ask, I think, begins to illumine our hearts.</p>
<p>The most intriguing discussion of these questions I have read is not in a Christian tome, but rather is by Nick Hornby, a novelist who covers themes of individualism, community, and belonging that Christians should be addressing. In <em>How to be Good</em>, the novel’s protagonist, Kate, and her misanthropic husband, David, are on the verge of divorce when he suddenly has a conversion of sorts, becomes a much nicer human being, and wants to give away all their worldly goods of which they have duplicates or an excess. Both his niceness and his extreme philanthropy become a challenge for Kate. Ultimately, David’s zeal fizzles and he returns to earth and Kate brings the family back into line with more normal levels of middle class charity. She also arrives at a balance of just what is involved for her to be good, which includes purchasing things which enrich her soul:</p>
<blockquote>Maybe I can’t live a rich and beautiful life, but there are rich and beautiful things for sale all around me, even on the Holloway Road, and they are not an extravagance because if I buy some of them then I think I might be able to get by, and if I don’t then I think I might go under. I need a Discman and some CDs and half a dozen novels urgently, total cost maybe three hundred pounds — and I could shave even that pitiful amount down. I could go to the library, and I could borrow the CDs — but I need the Discman — I want to be able to block out every last trace of the world I inhabit, even if it is just for half an hour a day. And yes, yes: just think how many cataract operations or bags of rice could be bought for three hundred pounds. And just think how long it would take a twelve-year old Asian girl to earn that in her sweatshop. Can I be a good person and spend that much money on overpriced consumer goods? I don?t know. But I do know this: I’d be no good without them.</blockquote>
<p>Of course, on one level, the items Kate considers in her calculus are very superficial, and Christians have a very different answer of “how to be good.” Yet, her wrestling is of a type in which far too few Christians engage, I fear, even at this superficial level. We should be engaged in far deeper levels of examination of our perceived need for things. Even more tellingly, completely ignoring our birthright, we too so often look to superficialities for our contentment. Instead of examining how the Spirit of God is ensconcing that God shaped hole in my spirit, instead of asking how He is infusing and stretching my spirit, sometimes I completely miss that He is even there and try to fill space and time with trivialities, which too often require the use of my debit card.</p>
<p>And that, my friends, relentlessly leads us back to the dumpster inside which this piece began. In dribs and drabs or in a wholesale dumping, all our worldly goods will end up there. Some will have been well used, some not. Some will have been necessities, many not. However, for each piece that goes into our respective dumpsters, we will have made, inadvertently or consciously, decisions about how to use our capital; for each piece that tumbles in, some of our capital — financial, temporal, emotional — will have been expended. And, in a sort of parallel to the law of the conservation of mass and energy, our choices to purchase, say, the mass of a Specialized bicycle or the energy of a U2 concert, mean that those bits of mass and energy are spoken for. They cannot at once remain as they are and, say, purchase the mass of a cow for an indigent farmer through the Heifer Project or underwrite the energy of a dinnertime discussion at L’Abri. A dumpster affords the clarity of seeing some of these choices in retrospect. The trick is to become more cognizant of them as we live our life going forward.</p>
<p>The issue of economics, societal or personal, and Christianity is huge and complex. I do not have the knowledge to begin to discuss free markets versus socialism and which aligns better with Christianity. I am in a perpetual struggle to not judge believers who are wealthy, some of whom who have a crystal clear understanding of these issues, live lives of blessed frugality, and immensely bless the church, a combination of traits which I am convinced must require a spiritual gifting every bit as real as the gifting of teaching or tongues. I am still sorting out for myself the issues of just how much I need to tide me over till we get a new earth. And that is about all I have on this issue just now, an urging to live life more thoughtfully vis a vis our capital, which even if you are a “poor college student,” is staggering compared to the rest of the world. As to the daily decisions of how to do this, sometimes they may seem as confusing and muddled as so much garbage in a dumpster.</p>
<p>Just east of St. Louis, two earthen mounds abut Interstate 70. On the South, Cahokia Mounds rises, the last remnant of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization. On the North, a monument to our own civilization perpetually grows, long since eclipsing its ancient cousin. Blazing methane vents dot its mass, like tiki torches illuminating some pagan mountain. And it is there that truck after truck after truck, brings drywall and carpet and Doris Day records and exotic Pakistani rugs and paint cans and textbooks to further raise up the high places.</p>
<div class="note">Neil E. Das is a reference librarian at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois. In the coming weeks, he hopes to get on his Specialized Sequoia Expert to burn off some of the excess calories of last winter. He has given U2 some $200 of his capital for two soul expanding concerts.</div>Neil E. Dastag:localhost,2009:Post/11062009-01-31T04:45:29ZThe tasty tomato<p>
<p>I wish everyone could have the incredibly satisfying experience of eating a luscious, sun-warmed, juicy tomato that they grew from a seed. I envision the proliferation of backyard gardens in this country, the epitome of local-grown, as when you walk out your kitchen door and harvest your dinner—greens, beans, herbs and best of all, tomatoes! </p>
</p>
<p>
<p>Many people believe that the best tomatoes are heirloom tomatoes, which have been handed down from generation to generation, and which can be grown true-to-type just by saving seeds each year. We should treasure the ability to save seeds and plant them; many people are concerned that growing our own seeds might become illegal in various countries. </p>
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<p>Modern seed company giants are working toward control of worldwide seed production. Hybrid seeds and genetically modified seeds are only available by purchase; they do not produce true offspring, even if they produce viable seeds. By forcing farmers to purchase seeds each year, the companies ensure ongoing profits for themselves.</p>
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<p>However, the home gardener can circumvent this commercial pressure by saving seeds from his or her favorite plants and planting them year after year, selecting for the best traits.</p>
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<p>The variations in size, shape, color and flavor between different heirloom tomatoes are fantastic, ranging from a red tomato the size of a pencil eraser (spoon tomato which grows in great clusters on delicate foliage) to a 1 1/2 pound green, pink and yellow behemoth called Aunt Ruby's German Green, with the characteristic sweet spicy taste of tomatoes that are green when ripe. Have you ever tasted a Green Zebra? This ripe-when-green tomato tastes best when the background turns to a greenish-gold color. It has had a fancy vegetarian restaurant in Chicago named after it.</p>
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<p>At the farmer’s market in Goshen, Indiana where my family sells many varieties of heirloom tomatoes, customers try samples and say, "Wow—that tastes like the tomatoes my grandmother used to raise!" And indeed, the flavors are the real reason to grow heirloom tomatoes—endless variations on a wonderful theme. Flavors will vary from season to season, and even within a season on the same plant, as weather and rainfall change. Even today, when many people only know the tomato as the pasty, low-flavor supermarket fruit available all year and developed for shipping and a long shelf life, the genetically modified "Flavr-Savr" tomato (which had a gene from a flounder inserted to confer hardiness in very cold weather) was soon abandoned due to tastelessness.</p>
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<p>It takes very little earth to grow a few tomato plants; they do prefer full sun and rich soil (add some compost when transplanting). If you mulch heavily with straw or rotted leaves, you will reduce weeding, conserve water and lessen diseases spread by dirt splashing on the plant when it rains. And your harvest is easily preserved by freezing, canning or drying.</p>
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<p>Happy heirloom planning with your 2008 seed catalogs!</p>
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<p><strong>Resources</strong></p>
</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: Popbeans, Purple Peas, and other Innovations from the Backyard Garden </em>by Carol Deepe</li>
<li><em>100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden </em>by Carolyn Male</li>
<li><a href="http://www.seedsavers.org/" target="_blank">Seed Savers Exchange</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/" target="_blank"><em>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life</em></a> by Barbara Kingsolver</li>
</ul>Kate Lindtag:localhost,2009:Post/106732010-11-04T23:28:35Z2010-11-11T11:25:27ZScott<p>I use to think about dying a lot when I was little. My quest for the answer to life after death began around eleven or twelve when my grandpa, my dad’s dad, died of cancer. I didn’t have one of those “you’re the best popo” kind of relationships with him, and neither did my dad. It was at the end of my grandfather’s life that his kin stepped back into the scene to comfort him in his last year. For all of my life, and a few decades of my dad’s life Grandpa Kachel was invisible. So when he died, the empty space he failed to fill in my life began haunting me. </p>
<p>The legacy my grandpa left behind was twofold, a medal and an unspoken question that consumed my early thinking: where do you go when you die, and why? He was the first man I knew who crossed this threshold into the next, which made me desire to ask his ghost what it took to get to Heaven. At that time, death was not part of my thinking and before his short entrance into my life it never crossed my mind that I had a grandpa, so the two became one. </p>
<p>The only information I have about him in life is that he fought in World War II. I don’t know where he fought or how long he was over there, wherever “over there” was, but I do know he received a Purple Heart. I once held it in my hands, marveling at the deep purple surrounding George Washington’s head. Chills came over me as I realized that he was a proud warrior who was wounded for his country. And yet he would also leave behind the legacy of a cold, distant, masculine figure as the start to my family.</p>
<p>We inherit a lot from our fathers. My dad and I both received Scott as our middle names, linking us symbolically to this mortal man. It has become a brand on my life, this perspective that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try. I once read that Scott means “wanderer” and how fitting as that is what the three of us are — the lone warrior, the truck driver and now the writer, within a family that has always chosen distance rather than togetherness.</p>
<p>At end of my childhood, I found my answer to the question that began with my grandpa’s death, and although it may not have been his answer, Christ tied it all together for me. They say you gain a spiritual family when you become a Christian, which may be true, but blood is always thicker than water. So I am left to wonder as I wander: will my legacy be an end to this lonely cycle? Will the contents of my life be laid down to express to all my children and all those who come after, “It is finished, no more bloodshed, no more hate, no more hopelessness, it is finished?”</p>Andrew Kacheltag:localhost,2009:Post/136342014-07-25T01:14:18Z2014-07-25T01:14:18ZTreasures in my tin<p>Dents mar the round tin, chipped enamel images of cookies and bonbons reminders of what once filled it, promising sweets for some sweet woman longing for affection. Maybe it was my mother. I don’t know that part of the story. No bonbons or cookies fill this old tin now, just a few bits of jewelry, a broken gold watch — my mother’s, and I can see it now on her slender wrist, when she dressed up for church, but she’s been gone now these 40 years. I squint and read the word <em>Bulova</em> there under the glass, and wonder if a watchmaker could repair it before practicality sets in, and I know I would be afraid of wearing it, of damaging it, so why bother?</p>
<p>I see a lone earring, made of a cowry shell now looking like half of a brown eye glued onto tarnished gold posts. My father sent it to my mother during the war when he was in the Philippines. My brother has the two carved knives Daddy brought home, but like this earring, the knives rest in a drawer, saved reminders of our father’s military service, reminders that even an ocean and a war away from us, we were in his thoughts. And I wonder at the impulse that drove him to war, to protect his family by risking his life.</p>
<p>I pick out the oval drop earring, a cross in gold embossed into the shiny black plastic, the pair a gift from my father-in-law back when I first got married, its mate long gone, as is my father-in-law. I feel that same surprised tenderness I felt that Christmas when I opened up this gift, knowing that he had picked it out and ordered it himself, this quiet man who never shopped.</p>
<p>There are two tiny blue felt booties, pieces cut to mirror laced up boots, passed to me from my mother-in-law and worn by my husband six decades ago. It’s a wonder moths have not devoured these wool felt treasures, precious to me, but meaning nothing to my children. And I wonder if I might give them to a great-grandchild; I wonder if even one of my grandchildren has a sentimental streak, wide enough to treasure her grandfather’s booties, wide enough to remember we were all babies at one time, and we all have stories to tell.</p>
<p>Finally, I finger the beads of the pale blue necklace bought when I was in college and still in style when my oldest was born. I remember dressing up for church, wearing these beads every Sunday. Then one Sunday my first born threw up over my shoulder and onto the necklace and still, decades later the sight of this necklace brings back that memory. Jim was in the Army and we lived hours away from our family, and I learned parenting out of books and watched the chest of my tiny baby when she slept to make sure she was still alive — no e-mail or Facebook then, and in that first apartment, we did not even have a phone, but we did survive, hardy stock in those days.</p>
<p>There’s a tiny sand dollar in the tin. We visited my father in Florida after my mother died, and in his loneliness, he fashioned tchotchkes for snow birds to take home with them, bolo ties with sharks’ teeth and silly ducks made of glued together shells. Even now, I feel the loneliness, the hollow places my mother used to fill.</p>
<p>This little tin is a history of sorts, one I read and understand, but I fear those who come behind me one day will wonder why on earth I kept these worthless bits. And I remember that this tin holds my story, and those who hold it one day will probably have their own dented tin or shoebox on a shelf in their cupboard somewhere as well. It really doesn’t matter what they do with my tin. But I will keep it, and on another day of deep housecleaning, I will pull it out, and sift through the treasures and marvel at God’s good care of us all.</p>Carol Brennan Kingtag:localhost,2009:Post/136352014-07-25T01:15:18Z2014-07-25T01:15:18ZBroken, yet priceless<p><em>“Would you like the bedroom furniture that used to belong to your grandma?” </em>the question was posed to me over the phone. Time stopped as my mind slipped back more than 20 years into the past — back to a little girl who loved visiting her grandparents’ home out in the country, holding sleepovers in her grandmother’s room where a couple of chairs were always pushed against the bed to keep the girl from rolling off in the night, the huge dresser where the young girl stood in front of the mirror dusting powder onto her face as her grandma sat laughing nearby, the tall chest of drawers with that special bottom drawer crammed full of every picture, poem and card the little girl and her brother had created for their grandparents.</p>
<p><em>“Do I want it?”</em> I repeated into the phone, my mind pulled back to the present. My aunt and uncle — who had housed the furniture after my grandparents’ passing — were remodeling their home and looking for a new location for the bedroom suit. <em>“Do I <strong>want</strong> it?”</em> my voice rose. <em>“OF <span class="caps">COURSE</span> I want it!”</em></p>
<p>The furniture was very large and heavy. My dad and uncles planned a time they could unload the bedroom suit at my house on a day I was busy at work. When the day arrived, I continuously watched the sky from the open window at my job, willing the rainclouds out of the forecast; but the heavy downpour sank my spirits as I knew the beloved furniture couldn’t be hauled in the back of a truck in such weather. I sighed, knowing my dad and uncles would need to choose another time to deliver the furniture to my house.</p>
<p>Several nights later, I unlocked my front door on a cold, dreary night in that in-between season of late winter but almost spring, and walked into my quiet living room after an evening rehearsing music at church. Turning towards my bedroom, I switched on the light — and immediately stopped.</p>
<p>There, directly in front of me, was my grandma’s furniture. <em>Mama Grace</em>’s furniture. Right before me was the bed I had slept in so many times on those overnight visits, the long dresser with its tall mirror — where my grandma always deemed me pretty no matter what I looked like — and the matching chest of spacious drawers. Over 20 years had passed, yet the details of the cherished heirlooms had remained impressed in my memory, as vividly as they stood before me now. In the hush of the house, I made no sound as I stood letting the tender recollections wash over me. Smiling, laughing memories of a carefree girl with her loving grandparents flooded my heart. Sadder, heart-breaking memories of grandparents eventually bedridden because of the ugliness of cancer pushed their way forward from the dark corners of my mind. Yet the beautiful antiques now filling my small, hardwood-floor bedroom felt like a tiny resurrection — a gift and reminder that a portion of my life so treasured yet long-gone was being returned to me.</p>
<p>I walked to the corner of the dresser and saw what I remembered on its surface — scuffed enamel where a small part of the furniture had been damaged through years of use, still there, just as it was when I was a little girl playing in the powders and perfumes that sat on its surface.</p>
<p>A few people have since suggested that I repair that imperfection. With matching varnish and a brush, I could touch up that worn area on the dresser and give it a shiny, nearly new veneer.</p>
<p>But I haven’t.</p>
<p>The heirloom is still priceless to me with all its imperfections and blemishes — just as we are priceless to our Creator, with all our defects and inadequacies. Life will bruise us; our best efforts and attempts at goodness will still leave stains and scars. Any façade of perfection we portray will be merely an illusion. A lifetime of striving will still not bring us to a point of “arrival” — at least not in this life.</p>
<p>So day by day, as I make my bed, dust the furniture which belonged to my grandma, arrange my jewelry boxes setting on its surface, store cards and letters in that sentimental bottom drawer of the tall bureau, I leave the scars of the heirloom visible. Its imperfections tell a story of how brokenness doesn’t diminish incomparable worth.</p>
<p>And neither does ours.</p>Misty Butlertag:localhost,2009:Post/136362014-07-25T01:17:03Z2014-07-25T01:17:03ZSharing the abundance<blockquote>
<p>A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away…</p>
<p><strong>Ecclesiastes 3:6</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems to me, we have the getting and the keeping down pat. We have real problems when it comes to casting it away. My husband and I have been working at the casting away aspect of this verse for a while now.</p>
<p>Too much “stuff” and too many “treasures” have moved with our family…too many times. Before the last move we looked very carefully at each item. It evolved into a trip down memory lane, as stories were shared about the items, where they had come from and who had them originally. Then decisions needed to be made — to keep it, to give to charity, to gift it to someone or just to put it in the garbage. </p>
<p>My parents always said not to hold things too close or too tightly. They said, “It is the memory of that treasure that warms the heart.” Keeping their words in mind, we began gifting and sharing with others in a new way. For example, each of my parents’ nieces and nephews received a beautiful, hand-painted dinner plate. The note, enclosed with each plate and addressed to each recipient, read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a strange gift. It is second hand. It was well-used. Yet, it is not worn out. The more it is put to use, the more value it will have. Sharing foods with friends and family feeds the body…but more importantly it nourishes the soul. This is a plate that was part of my parents’ set of china. You may remember it being at your place at family gatherings. Mother and dad entertained family and friends constantly, with great feasts and very simple, intimate meals. In a way, the plate served to bring those they cared for to their table, to their home and to their hearts. Their theme for any meal was, “If there’s any at all, there is enough to share” (Elizabeth Mullendore). I have included a little plate hanger, too. I thought you might find just the right spot to hang it. May it remind you that there is always enough food at your table for family and a friend or two. </p>
<p>Blessings,<br /> Vi & Chuck</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We have found great pleasure in sharing with friends and family in this unique way. The phone calls and notes from the recipients have warmed our hearts and lifted our spirits. This is something we continue to do as we work at letting go of our “stuff and treasures.” </p>
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<p>Give as freely as you have received. </p>
<p><strong>Matthew 10:8</strong></p>
</blockquote>Viola Ruelke Gommertag:localhost,2009:Post/136372014-07-25T01:17:50Z2014-07-25T01:17:50ZSalvaged goods<p>When my mother was six, in the summer of 1947, her home burned down. Her mother was in the barn, and the four kids were in the house. After the four-year-old noticed fire licking out of the wood-stove pipe in the kitchen, my mother and her older sister got the kids out of the house and then ran a mile to the neighbor’s — he didn’t have a phone, either, but he had a car and could drive to a phone.</p>
<p>The fire department doused the flames, but the house was a total loss.</p>
<p>Their neighbors followed the truck, gathering to commiserate. Once the ruins cooled, the kids took turns dashing into the house to see what they could salvage, tossing the spoils on the grass. My mother was very proud of one thing she managed to save: my grandmother’s ratty house shoes.</p>
<p>Everyone burst into laughter, leaving her mortified and confused.</p>
<p>After all, she’d seen her mother sigh in relief as she removed her barn boots and put her slippers on. She’d noticed how her mother would have a cup of coffee and sit for a moment after putting them on. They were important. But important enough to be celebrated for surviving the fire? Did they reach that kind of heirloom status?</p>
<p>None of what I consider heirlooms from my grandparents came from the pre-1947 house. They’re from the barn or the shop where Grandpa fixed electronics: crocks and tins used for utterly mundane purposes.</p>
<p>The generation that originally owned the stuff is not always a good judge of what subsequent generations will consider precious, like when I admired my grandma’s red glass vase collection and she handed one to me. But I also treasure something my grandpa thought of as garbage: two rusty horseshoes from the pre-tractor days. When I asked whether I could take them, he laughed the same “you’re crazy” laugh he gave when I told him how much bags of purslane (a weed that plagued his fields) were selling for in New York City.</p>
<p>I’m a big city girl, but I love my rural roots. The horseshoes, the red vase, my great-grandmother’s crock, and a blue and white egg-collecting tin remind me that, only one generation before me, my mother worked the fields with her 12 siblings and used a two-holer outhouse (with Sears catalogue for wiping) for the first seven years of her life.</p>
<p>They remind me of summer afternoons spent with my grandma and my aunts in the farm kitchen, pitting sour cherries with bobby pins, of tipping squeaky piles of snow peas, of my gentle grandma and her squinty-eyed smile, of my mischievous grandpa and his giant ears and hands.</p>
<p>Will my children find those same items as rich? Will they find them as beautiful as I do? If so, I’ll do what my mother did, and dole them out while I’m still alive. If not, I’ll be dead when they decide what to keep, and past caring. I did take two horseshoes from the farm because I have two kids, but if they decide to pitch them when I’m gone, that’s fine.</p>
<p>They don’t need to keep anything for my sake: heirlooms are for the living.</p>
<p>This came home to me at my Oma’s funeral. I wore her 1954 coming-to-Canada suit jacket. When she was alive, she would have <em>loved</em> that I wore it, but as I stood over her body and touched her hand, about to tell her, I stopped. She looked so at peace — beyond the cares of this world, even the pleasant ones. It turns out that I didn’t wear the suit for her; I wore it for me. <em>I</em> loved it.</p>
<p>This can set the living free from the burden of the previous generations’ stuff. You don’t keep the stuff for them, you keep it for yourself, because you find it meaningful or beautiful or useful.</p>
<p>Even with that awareness, I keep thinking about those slippers. My grandma was embarrassed because everyone saw her beat-up house shoes, but maybe she was also secretly glad for their familiar feel when they had to live for a year in the workshop. In this case, the heirloom isn’t the item: it’s the story.</p>Natalie A. Harttag:localhost,2009:Post/136382014-07-25T01:18:48Z2014-07-25T01:18:48ZCrazy Quilt<p>Gathered from an old trunk<br />Negligent in design<br />Few quilting stitches, tiny and even<br />No fibers of cotton<br />No log cabins. No geese flying<br />No stars pieced<br />Contrary angles<br />Puzzle pieces mixed up<br />A kaleidoscope of color<br />Silk, wool, velvet<br />Threads of gold<br />A timeless treasure </p>
<p>A story told</p>Sarah Lynn Phillipstag:localhost,2009:Post/136392014-07-25T01:21:13Z2014-07-25T01:21:13ZA neverending story<p>When Karla dropped off a classic red wagon for the rummage sale, we were delighted: it would be a perfect vehicle for hauling goods around the massive historic elementary school we’ve inherited, for better or worse, as the headquarters for our community development work in Three Rivers, Michigan. It was put into service immediately, with a bucket of water, rags and homemade glass cleaner for the cleaning crew moving down the hallway. Also joining the permanent collection at the <a href="http://www.hussproject.com/">Huss Project</a>: a red birdcage (future chandelier?), a crock pot, seven matching purple vases, a campfire popcorn popper and a set of 30-ish dishes. </p>
<p>I wonder sometimes if this space is, in part, just an excuse to keep lots of cool stuff — old desks and interesting books and fabric scraps and an antique cash drawer and an old-school overhead projector. Our own basement at home can attest to our packrat tendencies (I’m sure we’ll re-use that dismantled oak staircase…someday). But by far, the most significant artifact we have is the school itself: a 27,000 square-foot building on four acres of land that holds not just our trashy treasure, but decades of individual and collective memories.</p>
<p>Throughout this issue of <em>catapult</em>, thoughtful writers wonder about what will happen in the future to the stuff that they find so meaningful now. Will anyone see its value or will it end up in a dumpster alongside rotten food and construction debris and <span class="caps">VHS</span> tapes? The apocalyptic scenario is less likely if the object in question continues to be part of a story, if that plate or that brooch or that book continues to exist in relationship with the five senses of a living generation.</p>
<p>And that is an immediate task for us as we deepen our understanding of the fact that sentimentality is not enough to sustain the structure that has come into our stewardship. Would that we could patch a roof with nostalgia or upgrade an ancient heating system with fuzzy memories of kindergarten — in that case, we’d be golden. In the absence of such magic, a new story needs to be born within the shell of the old if this place is to retain its value.</p>
<p>And so we throw parties with 600 of our closest friends, like we did last weekend for Huss Future Fest 2014. We commission commemorative poems and paint murals and grow potatoes. We host campfires and potlucks and service groups and an extended family of pigeons in the old boiler. We raise blueberries and hops and worms and garden sheds. We grow vegetables and friendships and imagination. We tend and keep, plant and harvest, celebrate and lament, all the while wondering, as the mortar erodes and the seals rot, whether history is on our side. </p>
<p>Someday, we’ll tell the new kids about Ms. Karla’s wagon or why that random room is referred to as “Kate’s Office.” We’ll regale them with tales of the winter of 2014 when members of that original community spent many of their waking hours on the roof shoveling off feet of snow and stringing pantyhose full of rock salt down the drains. We’ll explain why so many consecutive years of photos show the word IT painted on the brick façade. In the meantime, we’ll prune the plums and save columbine seeds, patiently pursuing the regeneration not just of the building, but of the land, and trusting that in the healing of these spaces, we will discover our own healing and catch a glimpse of a life that is beyond time.</p>Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma