Memoirs
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. Kilgore Trout -Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions, Ch 1.
Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him. -Georg Christoph LichtenbergTouring with Ted
I just read today that my old Army buddy Ted Withycombe died last November in 2017. Ted and I had not kept in touch after our Army service, so it was a spur-of-the-moment Internet search that found his obituary. It brought back some old memories of my friendship with Ted, particularly the bicycle trips in Europe we made together. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Christmas 1958 - Steve, Tom, and Grandpa Wiebe. Family.
So Long, Steve
My brother Steve, Stephen Alton Wiebe, died recently of heart failure; he was 66 years old. Steve's wife, family and friends were around him at the end of his life, a life whose last years were painful and difficult. Steve, my older brother, is no longer suffering. I will miss him.
Family.
At play with Uncle Ron
Ron Wiebe, my Uncle Ron, my Dad's youngest brother, died recently. I will miss him. He was a good man, a man of heart, a man who lived his life with passion, and shared his joie de vivre with everyone around him.
Oregon Scribbler.
Memories of Shelby Ferguson
My sister-in-law, Shelby Ferguson, died recently while walking in her garden. Shelby was my wife Cindy's older sister, and I have known her for more than half of my life.
I married into the Ferguson clan, who made me a part of their family, and indeed, at home. Shelby was kind and gracious and loving to me, and made me feel welcome, and when I think of Shelby I will always remember that. Love you, Shelby.
Book review, Title Flora of the Pacific Northwest, Author C. Hitchcock, A. Cronquist, Rating 4.0,
Flora of the Pacific Northwest
C. Hitchcock, A. Cronquist
Book review
Of ovules and ovaries
Flora of the Pacific Northwest is an excellent dichotomous key of indigenous regional flora. It served as one of my texts for a college class in Systematic Botany, which I feared would be deathly dull, and so proved the lectures, but the laboratory unexpectedly turned out to be a rewarding journey exploring the world without and the world within.
Oregon Scribbler.
Milestones of our courtship
While doing some spring cleaning, Cindy came across some discrete milestones of our courtship, perhaps a short and selective history of Cindy’s path to my heart, assisted by her pal Snoopy.
La main gauche est maladroit
I came across this provocative double-entendre comic from the great Bizarro Comics. As a left-hander, I laughed my head off.
Oregon Scribbler.
Celia’s Lullaby
My mother, Celia Wiebe, has loved music for as long as I can remember. She often played music on the record player when we were growing up, mostly classical, and encouraged her children from their earliest ages to listen and to participate. She also sang around the house, and with her children; sometimes she sang solos or duets with my father in church. Her soprano voice sounded wonderful to me when she sang.Paris before the age of parkour
Memories of my first trip to Paris as a young soldier, with several friends, wherein we fall in love with the City of Lights, and inadvertently almost invent parkour.
Oregon Scribbler.
Home brewing: Yeast is your friend
After many years on home brew hiatus, my son Jon and I have begun brewing beer together, now that he has finished his arduous post-grad studies and has time for something other than work. We have managed to brew two batches of beer so far, and a third is nearly finished conditioning. We have made all of the mistakes one can make starting out, but thankfully all of the beers are drinkable.Would you let your child play football?
Growing up, football and basketball were my favorite sports. I played plenty of tackle and touch football, on teams and with friends and family. Yet later as parents, when our boys played high school sports, my wife and I did not allow them to play tackle football: We felt that with the amount and severity of injuries in football, the risk was too high. Given the recent revelations of long-term injuries in football, the question can be asked anew: Would we have let our children play football today, or more urgently, would we want our grandchildren to play football today?
Family.
Glenn Jaeger, in Memoriam
Glenn Jaeger passed away recently. Glenn's father Nick married my grandmother Edna Wiebe after my grandfather died. Getting to know Glenn and Carol was one of the blessings of that union for me. We moved into the neighboring school district just before my senior year in high school, and Glenn and Carol took me in that last year to allow me to finish high school where I had started. They treated me so kindly, much more kindly than an obnoxious teenager might expect.Das echte Lied der Alpenkräuter
When I was growing up, my father taught us a little ditty from his Mennonite boyhood:
Dar war ein Mann in Tode Loch,Und kein er sahe Mann,Und im dem letzen Stunden,Stunden,Hat er das Alpenkreuter gefunden.It was a charming little tune. Eventually, my curiosity was aroused regarding its meaning, so ...
Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 7 from Bly – last day
Day 7 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which every adventure must come to an end. We finish our journey, starting from Klamath Falls and arriving back where we started in Bly.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 6 from Klamath Falls
Day 6 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which we ride from Ashand to Klamath Falls, starting with a 12 mile climb up Dead Indian Memorial Highway. Tim was back in the saddle, and we enjoyed a leisurely ride.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 5 from Ashland
Day 5 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. Rest day! Some riders took the optional climb up Mt. Ashland, but we did not. I took advantage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and saw a great play, All the Way, then met my friends for a relaxing dinner by the creek.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 4 from Ashland
Day 4 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which I ride from Prospect to Ashland, sans Tim, who injured his achilles, and took a day off. A beautiful day in the forests, with an exhilarating 13 mile descent into Ashland.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 3 from Crater Lake!
Day 3 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which we ride from Fort Klamath to Prospect, beginning with long and arduous climbing to the rim of Mount Mazama, where we rode around Crater Lake in glorious weather, the Cascade mountains surrounding us. The finish was a 20-plus mile fast descent!Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 2 from Fort Klamath
Day 2 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which we ride from Silver Lake to Fort Klamath, starting again in near-freezing temperatures, wandering through the Klamath Marshes in full glorious view of the Cascade mountains.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal Day 1 from Silver Lake
Day 1 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which we ride from Bly to Silver Lake, starting in near-freezing temperatures, and warming while riding through scrub forests and rolling hills.Cycle Oregon 2012 journal: Day 0 from Bly
At last! Day 0 of the Cycle Oregon 2012. Riding with old friends in Southern Oregon. In which we rendezvous and prepare for the week.
Attrib: Ruth Moreau, Family.
Doctor Dad . . . Irreplaceable
My Dad, Tony Wiebe, retired as a family physician nearly twelve years ago, in 2000. He was my personal physician for most of his practice, as well as my family.During the course of his forty two years of practice, he had always taken care of family members, immediate and extended, with the greatest generosity. Dad was always available for family, 24 x 7, and family members were never charged for his services. He would get up at any time of the night and go to someone's house or meet them at his clinic when he received a call for help, whether from within his household or via the telephone.
Oregon Scribbler.
The joy of making music
Growing up, we often sang together as a family while on long trips in the car, my parents taking the lead, giving their children the gift of singing freely. My mother loved music, particularly classical music, and she was determined that all of her children would get a sound musical education.Oregon loves New York: memories of 9/11
My wife Cindy and I awoke early on September 11, 2001 in Portland, Oregon. As I was preparing for work, she called me to the television, which had the smoking image of the first of the burning World Trade towers. We both stared in disbelief, and watched numbly as that terrible day unfolded, as the second tower was struck, as people began to jump from the buildings, after which one building and then the other crashed to the ground, so rapidly as to seem completely unreal. We watched as the Pentagon was struck, and followed the tense and fragmentary reporting as planes were grounded, fighter planes were scrambled, and frantic searches were being conducted to account for all of the airplanes in the air, culminating in the crash of flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field. We wondered what could possibly motivate someone to cause such horrific damage, to deliberately destroy so many innocent lives.Here’s the Thing about equal rights
Herein lies a tale of history misunderstood, and then of history revived. It begins in Heidelberg, Germany in 1975. I was then a young soldier in the US Army, and with a fellow soldier, my friend Ted Withycombe, had taken a day trip to visit the storied university town of Heidelberg. While strolling along the Philosopher's Way, where students and professors had trod for hundreds of years, we chanced upon an unmanaged but well-trodden path that went up the hill towards the Heiligenberg, which other people were clambering up. There was no sign that described that path, nor could it be found on our map.
Chess tournament etiquette: Performance art?
Several chess writers have mentioned a German 'book' entitled Instructions to Spectators at Chess Tournaments, which was comprised of three hundred blank pages followed by the phrase "Shut Up!"
This piece of performance art (the performer is the reader of the book) brought to mind an experience my son Jon and I shared years ago at a chess tournament. Jon had an early interest in chess, and starting in the fourth grade, played in multiple chess tournaments, the only member of the Wiebe family to compete in chess, even if only for a few years. I took him to his last tournament, and joined the ranks of fussy parents watching their children anxiously from the sidelines. In his second game, after perhaps ten moves, I noticed that Jon had just placed his opponent in a discovered check situation. I was excited for him, because discovered check can be a lethal tactic . . .
Carole King’s Tapestry, still in my heart
Few who came of age in the 1970's are unfamiliar with the singer Carole King, and more specifically, her album Tapestry. It struck an immediate and widespread chord, so to speak, for many including myself; over the years, I have listened to it often, and it has never lost its appeal for me.
You can’t go home again . . . to Husterhöh Kaserne
Thomas Wolfe's famous suggestion, "You can't go home again" covers a large amount of territory; your home is not the only thing to which you cannot return to with any but perfect verisimilitude. Recently I became curious about my old neighborhood in Pirmasens, Germany, where I was stationed as a soldier in the U.S. Army during the mid-70's. Through the magic of Google Earth and the Internet, I explored the place I once lived, now thirty five years hence.
Memories of Ann Williams
I was sad to hear that Ann Williams died, and I extend my sympathies to her family. Ann Williams was my English teacher at Jackson High School during my Junior year. Miss Williams, as we knew her, was an involved and caring teacher. Her love of literature was apparent in her teaching. As a class, for example, she had us do a full reading of Macbeth, with assigned parts, which gave us all, the great majority of us with no dramatic experience, a serious exposure to the beauty of his language, a personal glimpse into the difficulties of "playing" a part, and for my part, contributed to a life-long appreciation of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare done well.
Family.
Philosophy and wine, or modern critical theory for the (inebriated) million
In which, my brother Craig provides me with an introduction to deconstruction, by way of formalism, structuralism, and semiotics, while sharing several bottles of good wine. Derrida never made more sense.Louise Watson – In Memoriam
Louise Watson passed away last week; I attended her memorial service yesterday, and the sanctuary was filled to overflowing; Louise was involved with many throughout the community.
Watson family.
Attrib: W. Burt Ferguson, Family.
Burt Ferguson Remembered: passions
My father-in-law Burt died recently, and before he died, we, Cindy, Scot and I, had some conversations with him about his passions. Cindy and Scot sat up through the night during Burt's last days, and reminisced about their Dad's many pastimes and loves. Aside from words and reading, Burt had many other passions. When he became interested in a pastime, he became “obsessed” with it. His greatest sporting passions were probably tennis, chess, and bicycling.
Oregon Scribbler.
Burt Ferguson Remembered: words, words, words
My father-in-law Burt died recently, and before he died, Burt and I spent many hours talking about language, history and philosophy, his great passions. Burt spent more time reading than any other of his pastimes. He was a serious reader, meaning both that he read carefully, and that he read very little fiction or humor, but focused on more sober subjects. One of the most powerful and recurring memories that his children have of him is Burt sitting in his den, reading and taking notes. This habit continued into his last days; Burt spent much of his retirement hours in his den engrossed in reading about his favorite subjects.Burt Ferguson Remembered: WWII
My father-in-law Burt died recently, and before he died, we, Cindy, Scot and I, had some conversations with him about his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Taken prior to Operation Anvil, per Burt.. Attrib: W. Burt Ferguson, Family.
Attrib: W. Burt Ferguson, Family.
Burt Ferguson Remembered: early life
My father-in-law Burt died recently, and before he died, we, Cindy, Scot and I, had some conversations with him about his early life. William Burton Ferguson was born on January 12, 1925, in Portland, Oregon. His father and mother, Mel and Stella Wood Ferguson . . .
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