Monthly Archives: February 2023

WINGSPREAD Ezine for February, 2023


“Spreading your wings in a perplexing world”
February 2023                                                            James P. Hurd

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Contents

  • Blessed Unbeliever release
  • Writer’s Corner
  • New story
  • This month’s puzzler
  • Wingspread Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

BLESSED UNBELIEVER is published!

In Blessed Unbeliever, Sean McIntosh has good reason to doubt his fundamentalist faith— he’s just lost his girlfriend and his life dream of aviation. But when he turns to unbelief, he finds it harder than he ever imagined—especially at Torrey Bible Institute! So he commits a secret act of blasphemy to convince himself he is an atheist. It’s a long journey back to his girlfriend, his life dream, and his faith. (Wipf and Stock, January 2023.)

Order:  https://wipfandstock.com/9781666756951/blessed-unbeliever/

Or, click HERE to view on Amazon.com  (Amazon also has an electronic Kindle version.)

Writers’ Corner

Word of the Month: ENDORSEMENT: A few sentences recommending a book—often found on the back cover.

Tip of the month: Normally, you do not use a comma if you’re joining two sentences:

Wrong: Bill went downtown, and Sally went to the country.

Correct: Bill went downtown and Sally went to the country.

Author of the month: IGNATIUS. A first century Christian bishop who, while on the way to Rome to die a martyr’s death, wrote a letter to Bishop Polycarp in which he speaks of the invisible God become visible. An early proclamation of the Christ.

Book of the month: CELTIC DAILY PRAYER. (Books I and II.) Northumbria Community. A marvelous book of scriptures and daily readings, including writings by Celtic Christians.

Immortal lines in movies. Eric contributed: “It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does?” (one policeman to another in Blade Runner)

Yes, but why are you here?

New story: Chiapas Air Ambulance

https://jimhurd.com/2023/02/01/chiapas-air-ambulance/

We’re circling over Corralito, a remote airstrip in Chiapas State, Mexico. I check for animals on the strip and wonder if the injured Tzeltal Indian man is still alive. The tiny strip lies tucked in below a cornfield on a terraced hillside, so I need to approach around a low hill. At the last minute the airstrip appears in my windshield. We bank, line up with the strip and soon feel the long grass under our wheels as we taxi the red and white Cessna 180 over to where Mario lies inert on a stretcher with his tumid stomach bulging below his pulled-up shirt.

Antonio, his brother, stands by mute while another man talks to me in Spanish. “Capitán, Mario was feeding stalks into the trapiche sugar cane press when the horse’s bar turned and squeezed him against the press.” As we lay the injured man in the airplane, I think, he’s young; he has a good chance of pulling through. . . .  To read more, click above.

(Leave a comment on the website and share with others: https://jimhurd.com . Thanks.)

This month’s puzzler:

Drake, the head detective, has three candidates who’ve applied for an assistant detective job, so he decides to test them with a little quiz. “Look guys, there’s a crime that needs to be solved and there’s a clue in one of the public libraries in Bakersfield. The clue is stuck inside a book, between pages 165 and 166. The book was written by two famous brothers about cars.”

Two of the guys jump up and bolt out the door. The third guy just sits there. Drake says, “You got the job.” Why did he get the job? What did he know that the other two guys didn’t know?  Hint: an author might be more likely to get this puzzler. (Answer next month.)

Last month’s puzzler: Recall that Mrs. Simmons, the suburban housewife, was very fond of her mother-in-law. One morning after breakfast, she went shopping and then stopped as she often did, to have a mid-morning cup of coffee with the older woman. When Mrs. Simmons returned home, the first thing she saw was the grizzly remains of her husband . . .

Instead of calling a doctor or the police, she calmly went about her domestic chores. Why?

Answer: Walking in her door, Mrs. Simmons viewed the vase containing her husband’s cremains.

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Wisdom

 Creative new words:   

Reintarnation (n.): coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Sarchasm (n.): the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

Osteopornosis (n.): a degenerate disease

Decafhalon (n.): getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Beelzebug (n.): satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three a.m. and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor (n.): the color you turn when you discover only half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

Cashtration (n.): the act of buying a house that renders the subject financially impotent.

Intaxication (n.): euphoria at getting a tax refund, then realizing it was always your money anyway.

Karmageddon (n.): It’s like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes, right? And then, like, the earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

I mean, you’ve got to be kidding.

Nine Important Facts to Remember as We Grow Older

#9. Death is the number one killer in the world.

#8. Life is sexually transmitted.

#7. Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

#6. Men have two motivations: hunger and sex, and they can’t tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.

#5. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

#4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.

#3. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

#2. In the 60s, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

#1. Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

Chiapas Air Ambulance

A repeat of a story blogged four years ago.

(Please share this story with others and “rate” it, below.)

We’re circling over Corralito, a remote airstrip in Chiapas State, Mexico. I check for animals on the strip and wonder if the injured Tzeltal Indian man is still alive. The tiny strip lies tucked in below a terraced cornfield on a hillside, so I need to approach around a low hill. At the last minute the airstrip appears in my windshield. We bank, line up with the strip and soon we feel the long grass under our wheels as we taxi the red and white Cessna 180 over to where Mario lies inert on a stretcher with his tumid stomach bulging below his pulled-up shirt.

Antonio, his brother, stands by mute while another man talks to me in Spanish. “Capitán, Mario was feeding stalks into the trapiche sugar cane press when the horse’s bar turned and squeezed him against the press.” As we lay the injured man in the airplane, I think, he’s young; he has a good chance of pulling through.

We depart Corralito for our home base. San Cristobal sits on the Pan American highway at an altitude of 7,200 feet, landlocked in the bottom of a vast basin with high mountains surrounding. Last night a squally norther blew across the region and its soggy remains still stick fast to the mountains. I test the entrails of the storm, probing one cloud-clogged pass after another. Finally I see a bit of light where the Comitán highway snakes between two hills. We high-jump the pass and then drop down into San Cristobal bowl. We can see the ground, but a solid wall of clouds plugs the path ahead! I bank steeply in the cramped head of the valley to reverse course, pulling on flaps to decrease our turning radius. We cut it so close it seems the wing seems buried halfway into the mountainside. Even using the best angle of climb we barely make it back through the narrow pass. I almost decide to divert to Tuxtla down in the valley, but at the last minute we slide through a hole along the rim and drop down into the huge San Cristobal bowl.

After landing in the late afternoon light, Chuck, the chief pilot, helps me load Mario into our old Chevy van to drive him to the small hospital for X-rays. The doctor tells us, “His interior organs are damaged. He needs to go to Tuxtla.”

We can’t fly at night; we must take him down the mountain in the van. So again we load him in and soon we’re on our way down the winding road. I think, Antonio must feel helpless in the hands of strangers who are struggling to save his brother’s life. I sit in the back next to the patient, feeling his heaving chest and listening to his hoarse, shallow breathing.

Then white foam bubbles out of his mouth—his lungs must be filling with fluid! I tell Chuck to drive faster. Then his breathing stops.

Antonio asks me in broken Spanish, “Will we get there in time?”

“We’ll try our best.”

Then I realize he’s gone. Antonio begs us to continue on to Tuxtla, but Chuck tells him, “There’s nothing we can do; it’s too late. We’ll have to go back to San Cristobal. If there’s still a little bit of life in him when we arrive, we’ll see the doctor again.”

We head back into town and rouse the doctor in the middle of the night to ask for a death certificate. He gives it to us, but we can’t quickly get the additional permit to transport the body back to Corralito so we’ll have to do it secretly. We drive into our darkened hangar and carefully lay the man onto the floor of the plane. His forlorn brother works to arrange the limp limbs before rigor mortis sets in. I get back to my hostel late, vomit, and then lie sleepless all night. It’s the first time I’ve seen a man die.

 

The next day at first light, Chuck takes off to fly the body back to Corralito. Antonio, dejected, sits in the copilot seat. I walk outside the hangar feeling the morning chill, my eyes following the plane as it climbs out over the valley—a tiny red dot silhouetted against the green mountains. I know something of grace in my life; I now pray grace for the dear, waiting family who must plan for a funeral. I trust that our work can continue here and that our flight service can help lighten the load for many of these Chiapanecos.

Click HERE to view Blessed Unbeliever on Amazon.com