Monthly Archives: January 2009

One summer day

What I think I remember is standing in the coffee shack, or maybe next to it, waiting for a customer to come out in the lumber yard waving a yard ticket. Or maybe I was waiting on somebody. Wherever I was standing was someplace out of sight of the bay in the back of the building where the loading dock was for paint and hardware. The paint and hardware was kept on the second floor, so you had to drive the pallets of paint or hardware into the bay, and then raise them up to the second floor loading dock, which could be a little tricky at times.

I definitely remember when Scooter started yelling. Screaming is more like it. Everyone within earshot heard it, and knew instantly that something had gone wrong. I was around the corner fast enough to see Scooter hopping on one foot, while the other foot dangled, hanging by the Achille’s tendon, the white end of the bone showing. The forklift was slowly rolling backwards behind him. Scooter had gotten his foot stuck in the forklift somehow, and it had ripped his foot off. There wasn’t much blood.

Jack Crane got to Scooter first, and made him lie down. Someone else ran inside and called the ambulance. The little yellow Clark forklift was still slowly running backwards so I ran over and turned it off, put on the parking brake, and lowered the blades.

A few of us gathered around Scooter. Jack was holding his head. “How bad is it?” said Scooter. “Am I going to lose my foot?” Scooter was just eighteen that summer. Jack told him it was going to be O.K. I looked at the foot hanging there, and wasn’t so sure; but I wasn’t going to say anything like that out loud. In between saying it hurt, Scooter said he was lifting a pallet of paint up to the loading dock, when some of the cans started to shift, so he stood on the tire of the forklift, but he hadn’t put on the parking brake, so it started to roll back, and had caught his foot. He was crying, and kept saying it hurt, and you could tell he was wondering inside, would his foot be all right?

The ambulance came really quickly, and they took Scooter away. After they were gone, we talked what had happened. I could see it in my head, see just how it must have happened. When those five-gallon cans of paint started to shift, he should have stepped gently on the brake and come to a stop while slowly lowering the blades, because when a forklift starts rocking if you lower the blades you can often stop the rocking. And then keep lowering them slowly: if a few cans of paint fell, well then they would fall, but the less distance they had to fall the less likely they would break open. But Scooter had a tendency to act quickly, before he thought everything through. He quickly got up out of the driver’s seat to try to brace the cans, and to reach them he stepped farther than he meant to and stepped on the tire of the forklift. But he hadn’t put on the parking brake, and the forklift started rolling back, and his foot got caught between the fender and the tire, and — God almighty, what a horrific image that was.

I was the first one who had to use the little yellow Clark forklift after the accident, and I didn’t much like doing it. We talked over what had happened again and again, convincing ourselves that we wouldn’t have done what Scooter had done. The more we talked about it, the less vivid was that image in our minds, Scooter’s foot being pulled — even today, my mind backs away from that thought. We kept talking about it, and even though no one said so, we all knew that there but for the grace of God went each one of us.

They managed to reattach Scooter’s foot. He was in the hospital for quite a few weeks. Of course we took up a collection right away, and Art went out and bought Scooter a Sony Walkman, so he could listen to music while he lay in his hospital bed. I remember going in to Emerson Hospital with a bunch of the guys from the yard to give it to him. He gave one of his big goofy grins when he saw what it was.

This happened twenty-five or thirty years ago. I can’t remember if he came back to work that summer, but he was pretty much completely recovered by the time came for him to go back to college. Scooter came back to work the next summer, and then he moved away. I stayed in town, working at the lumber yard, and since Scooter’s father was a carpenter I’d see him around, and every once in a while I’d ask how Scooter was doing; he was always doing fine. Finally I moved away.

About five years ago, I went back to town for the big annual parade, and who should I run in to but Scooter, standing there watching the parade and looking about the same as he had twenty years before. I was in a rush to meet my dad somewhere, so I couldn’t stop to talk; all we did was say, Hi, hey good to see you! Then we said, Take care, good to see you! — and as we did I thought about his foot but didn’t say anything.

Every now and then, that accident comes back into my mind. I happened to think about it this afternoon, for no good reason, while I was out taking a walk. When that happens, then for just an instant I relive that day: summer day, blue sky, sun shining down, Scooter yelling, the ambulance, then standing around talking about it and getting back to work and finishing out the day just like every other day at work, until finally you punch out and go home.

Jesus and Socrates and UU kids

I got asked to serve as the guest editor for the summer number of uu & me, the four-page insert for children that’s in each issue of UU World, the Unitarian Universalist denominational magazine. I talked the editorial board into devoting this issue to Jesus.

Jesus is a big topic, and we knew we couldn’t cover the topic comprehensively in four kid-friendly pages (and we knew that there will be future numbers of uu & me in which to cover other aspects of Jesus). So we decided to do a general introduction to Jesus, and then focus on the parables. The parables, we felt, are among the core teachings of Jesus on which we Unitarian Universalists tend to place most importance, and the parables present wonderful little moral dilemmas that can get kids thinking about Jesus’s teachings.

Jane Rzepka, the minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, is on the editorial board of uu & me. Like me, she was raised as a Unitarian Universalist, and that meant we both learned a lot about Jesus and Socrates in Sunday school. During the course of today’s editorial meetings, we both kept drawing parallels between Jesus and Socrates. For me, the parables of Jesus sound a lot like dialogues of Socrates: they raise more questions than they answer, they are ambiguous, and when you get done reading them you feel as though you’ve learned how to see the world in a new way. Which makes it hard to teach Unitarian Universalist kids about Jesus’s parables: it’s tempting to tell kids what the parables are supposed to mean, but to do so is to bypass the whole purpose of the parables.

Today’s meeting has got me thinking about the parables in a new light. Now I want to go back and re-read them all, and think about how I might present others of Jesus’s parables to school-age children.

A Universalist responsive reading

The Eternal Law of Right

It may be asked, Why do so many people still believe in an angry God?

The answer is, that some people believe what they are taught, and neither dare nor care to question its correctness.

Others believe God is literally angry. A criminal, it is said, fancies he hears the footfall of the pursuer in every unexpected sound.

Our feelings are projected upon everything around us. On this principle, to the wicked, God must seem to be angry.

We reject their fear-inspired notions, and are compelled to believe the testimony of the best thinkers and clearest seers.

We should shape our conduct, not to please or displease the immovable Calm, but to conform the eternal law of right; because in keeping this law “there is great reward.”

Adapted from Through the Shadows (Universalist Publishing House, 1885, p. 45) by Rev. Isaac Case Knowlton, minister of First Universalist Church of New Bedford.

Two UUs at the Lincoln Memorial

Some trivia for you: As I was reading “The Caucus Blog” report on the Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, I realized that two Unitarian Universalists played a key role. (1) Unitarian Universalist singer-songwriter Pete Seeger sang all of Woody Guthrie’s verses to “This Land Is Your Land.” (2) Unitarian sculptor Daniel Chester French created the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln that kept a watchful eye on the proceedings.

Unfortunately, it took 44 years

In 1964, a BBC interviewer asked Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if he thought there would be a “Negro president” in forty years. Here’s a partial transcript of King’s reply:

“Well, let me say first, to make it perfectly clear, that there are Negroes who are presently qualified to be president of the United States; and many who are qualified in terms of integrity, in terms of vision, in terms of leadership ability. But we do know there are certain problems and prejudices and mores in our society which would make it difficult now. However, I am very optimistic about the future. Frankly, I have seen certain changes in the United States over the last two years that surprise me…. So on the basis of this, I think we may be able to get a Negro president in less than forty years….”

It took longer than forty years, of course. But King could hardly have foreseen the overwhelming re-segregation of the United States, and the carefully concealed increase in systemic racism, during the Reagan and Bush years. Link to the BBC video clip.

The future of paper-based books

I finally got around to reading the July, 2008, issue of the Independent Book Publisher’s Association newsletter (Carol is a member of IBPA), and read about the Espresso Book Machine, which “starts with a PDF and 15 minutes later produces a finished bound book.” You can buy one from On Demand Books to put into your bookstore or print shop — for about $50K, which is so expensive you’re unlikely to see one in your home town next week.

But I’ll bet the price is going to come down quickly, and I’ll bet that there’s going to be an ongoing demand for paper-based books for quite some time. So here are four possible scenarios: (1) Libraries will start installing one of these next to the copy machines, allowing library patrons to produce paper-based copies of books in the public domain. (2) Bookstores will install these, and they’ll get especially heavy use at author signings, so you can get your favorite author to sign his or her out-of-print books. (3) Colleges and universities will install these, allowing their professors to assign out-of-print books to students, and allowing easier publication of dissertations. (4) A few big megachurches will install these machines, allowing them to print out the latest inspirational tome by their senior pastor, as well as the church cookbook.

So — those of you who are writers, readers, librarians, professors, and ministers — do you think there is a bright future for printing on-demand bound books on-site?