|
Word
Worth Volume II, 2002, Issues are available by clicking on the name of
the month below.
Adobe Reader is needed to access them. A free copy is available
here: |
|
Editorials |
Arts |
Columns |
| Season
of the Evergreen
Marion Helz |
December |
Bah Humbug!
Susan Johnson
|
Whenever
I think of December, I think of darkness: short days with violet colored
nights. 
Always there is the evergreen and the lights. The darkness and the glow
bring back memories of those with whom this time was once celebrated,
those for whom one’s simple existence was cause for them to celebrate— |
Father
Heart
The Conclusion
by Banwell Goddard
|
Our
family is small but through marriage has become rich in detail. Five
religions, four generations, smokers and non-smokers, carnivores and
vegetarians, and a couple of other opposing variations turn Christmas
into a nightmare of sensitivities. Navigating this maze of sore spots
when we could be having fun seems like a waste of time. |
|
...A Double Edged
Sword
Marien Helz
|
November |
Suddenly, It's
Clear
Susan Johnson
|
|
It
is acceptance of variation, the tolerance of differences, that has
elevated us to a position of extraordinary world influence. When,
however, we embrace the intolerant, we step to the brink of cultural
suicide, .... When we tolerate the intolerable, we allow our own culture
to be as desecrated as clear water is by an oil spill. |
Chapter 8
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
Two
generations of Americans were taught a cruel but remedial lesson in the
importance of personal responsibility on the 11th of September. For
several thousand people, it came too late. For the rest of us, whether
we are lucky enough to live, or if we must die similarly unnecessary
deaths, will depend on whether or not we paid attention this time. |
| Learning
The Right Lessons
Marien Helz |
October |
Fall
Colors
Susan Johnson |
... Over the country, the
guard is asleep at the gate, the watch is absent from the tower.
Our first lesson needs to be more respect for and
adherence to regulatory procedures. This is currently absent from the
simplest to the most serious areas of our daily lives. |
Chapter 7
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
The scientific basis for the beauty of ... fall
foliage has two elements--both caused by the tilt of the earth's axis to
the plane of its orbit. The earth's orbit is 23.5 degrees off of
perpendicular. Without this slant, we would have only one season because
the rays of the sun would always strike our latitude at the same angle
as the earth made its way around the sun. ...
Thanks to
the tilt, we have four glorious seasons and nature uses light and color
to define each of them. |
| The
Censorship Conundrum
Marien Helz |
September |
Organic
Gardening
Susan Johnson |
For
good reason, censorship is politically incorrect and
mentioning it favorably is social anathema. Our founding forebears had
borne the brunt of the harmful effects of censorship and set deep
protections in the foundation of the county to withstand its assaults.
In the recently departed century, we saw how deadly the effects of
censorship can be with the dictatorships in Russia, Italy, Germany, and
Japan most notably. As a result, "everyone" is against
censorship.... Unfortunately, it’s a far more
tricky issue than that. |
Chapter 6
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
BITTER IRONY
In 1939, Paul Muller, a Swiss chemist, identified DDT
(dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane) as an effective pesticide.
He later won the Nobel Prize for his innovations with the chemical.
Twenty-three years later, in 1962, Rachel Carson, an American marine
biologist, published Silent Spring identifying DDT as a deadly
residual chemical and carcinogen. She died of breast cancer at the age
of 56, conceivably caused, as many breast cancers are, by pesticides. |
|
Pro
Life and Choice
Marien Helz |
August |
Field
Of Dreams
Susan Johnson |
|
I have
long felt that if one asked someone what their view on the abortion
issue was, and they could answer in less than five minutes, they hadn’t
thought deeply enough about the subject to be taken seriously. This
seems more true now than ever. |
Chapter 5
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
Flying
carpets were just one of the literary wonders that French
scholar Antoine Galland discovered when he began his translation of The
One Thousand and One Nights from Arabic in the early 1700's. ...
carpets ... exquisite artwork had fascinated ancient rulers in the
centuries before Christ, prompting kings and pharaohs to take their
treasured weavings with them to the tomb. |
|
Independence
Values
Marien
Helz
|
July |
The
Sixth Extinction
Susan Johnson |
It was the strongly held values of Americans before they were Americans
that engendered the day we now honor as Independence Day. A strong sense
of values seems to be an American characteristic, yet the antithetical
nature of our wide beliefs threatens to engender confrontation rather
than creative conflict.
As our country slowly and painfully emerged from the
isolationist mind set of the first part of the 20th century,
it was crucial for the populace to learn about cultural relativity. As
separate as we had been from other... |
Chapter 4
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
Spiral aloe (Aloe polyphylla) is not extinct. Not yet, anyway. It
grows naturally in only one small South African country named Lesotho,
where it is the national flower. Considered by many to be among the most
unusual plants in the world, it is protected by international treaties
and endangered plant trade agreements.
Despite these laws, death stalks the spirals on
two fronts. Their unusual habitat is rapidly disappearing, primarily due
to erosion... |
| Moving
East of the Dawn
Marien Helz |
June |
Buffalo
in Bloom
Susan Johnson |
 The
new old Traditional Neighborhood Developments are a
response to the housing developments which are a reaction to the many
constructions in the 1950's which were immortalized in the song which
mocked, Little boxes on the hillside...they're all made out of ticky
tacky, and they all look just the same. After the World War
II, there were many young couples who needed inexpensive housing, so
developments sprung up with labyrinthine roads ... |
Chapter 3
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
"Where you tend a rose my love, a
thistle cannot grow." The beauty of this quotation from Frances
Hodgson Burnett's book, The Secret Garden, lies in the
cadence of its syllables and also in the truth that it holds not only
for gardeners and their flowers but for the cultivation of the hearts
and minds of everyone.
|
| Parents
As Friends
Marien Helz |
May |
Wedding
Flowers
Susan Johnson |
|
When
children become teenagers, their safety depends upon their parents’
having established parental authority. Those who have that authority are
able to tell their children that they cannot have friends over when the
parents are away overnight; they can tell them that they cannot drive
the car without permission and be reasonably sure that they won’t. At
the same time, they maintain their authority by checking occasionally to
see that their instructions are followed. |
Chapter 2
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard
|
Flowers are as indispensable to
a wedding as the ring, but while rings haven't changed much over the
years, the selections of nuptial nosegays have come to reflect the very
individual personalities of the young women choosing them.
|
| Everyday
Linguistics
Marien Helz |
April |
Great
Lakes Racing
Susan Johnson
|
|
...After
doing that, she stated that she could in fact send me a letter verifying
that the statement about late payments had been sent to me erogenously.
This generated a full twenty second pause in the conversation as I tried
to imagine what such a thing might entail. |
Father Heart
by Banwell Goddard |
Southwest
winds heat the August night, sending 
whitecaps to pound Lake Erie’s coastline. Warm air filling her sails, Kintama
flies down a moonlit runway, ten tons of sleekness slicing through
swells with an effortless hiss. Built for elegance as much as speed, the
44-foot cruiser-racer needs only fingertips on her helm to do her
skipper’s bidding. |
| The
Peter Pan Generation
Marien Helz |
March |
Thyme
for the Millennium
Susan Johnson |
A
number of people in the rising generation exhibit what I
will call the Peter Pan Syndrome. This seems to be characterized not so
much by an unwillingness to take on adult responsibilities as it is by a
complete inability to imagine themselves in adult roles and situations.
The unsettling thing about this phenomenon is that the affected
individuals seem to be among the brightest and the best of their
generation. |
Photography
by
David Clark
|
Parsley,
sage, rosemary and thyme formed the chorus for an Old English
canticle called
"Scarborough Fair". Borrowed by Simon and Garfunkel for the
soundtrack in "The Graduate", this folk ballad and its herbal
references were imprinted on the memories of a generation of moviegoers. |
| Driven
to Distraction
Susan Johnson |
February |
A
Valentine for my Mother |
|
Bathing
is about the only thing we don't do in our cars these days. And we'd
probably do that if there were faucets. So driven are we to get the most
out of every minute of the day that time spent in the car is rarely
confined to steering any more. These days, lots of motorists eat, drink,
read, telephone, shave, even change clothes while they're driving. |
Photography
by A W Helz
|
  "I
would have married her the next morning," he said to me. As
it was, they were married a month and a half later, and were together
for the rest of their lives.
|
| Hale
Chatfield, Poet
M.H.Perry |
January |
Havasupai
Susan Johnson |
[March
26, 1936 - November 23, 2000]
A
great poet, like any great artist, must reveal what is extraordinary in
the ordinary and what is ordinary in the extraordinary. There is the 
adage, There is nothing new under the sun. The artist must make
it new. When we first saw the world, we saw it with wonder—like
the toddler looking into the sky on a night of the full moon and
exclaiming, "Look, the moon is all together!" or the eight
month old infant looking at a dazzling Christmas tree and pointing while
excitedly cooing. Artists must bring that sense of discovery, or
rediscovery, to the vision that they each present. They must do so with
excellence in their craft, their medium. Hale Chatfield was able to
renew the vision in words that were finely and remarkably crafted.... |
Poetry
of
Hale Chatfield |
On
one side of the trailhead are hikers arriving in Jeeps, Expeditions, and
Land 
Rovers, unloading backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, water bottles and
cameras. On the other side are grizzled Havasupai rustlers and guides
strapping dusty canvas sacks filled with mail and parcels onto
packhorses and mules. It’s an intersection where those who wish to
appear to live and travel in the wilderness meet those who actually
do.... |
| Election
2000
Marien Helz |
Introductory |
Natural
Born Killers
Susan Johnson |
Election
2000 has vividly demonstrated that
there are serious problems with our election system and that the
Electoral College is, at best, a scapegoat. The real problem lies with
inconsistency and inaccuracy.
It is appalling that one candidate can be ahead by
10,000 votes, then behind... |
Season's Poem and Photograph |
Thorns
and thistles were not part of the original landscaping plan for the
Garden of
Eden. Only nice plants were to be put there, plants that were
"pleasant to the sight and good for food" according to Gen.
ii, 9 in the Bible.
Unfortunately, as we've read, the young couple moving into the
development (a.k.a. Adam and Eve) provoked the landscape designer, who
didn't like being played for a fool. As punishment, the finished
planting sustained a few unpleasant revisions |
