Category Archives: seasons

WINGSPREAD Ezine for May, 2025


Spreading wings in a perplexing world
May, 2025                                                    James P. Hurd

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Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever 
  • This month’s story
  • This month’s puzzler
  • WINGSPREAD Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

**Alert: WINGSPREAD has a new email address: hurdjames1941@gmail.com. The old usfamily address is dead; do not use.

Writer’s Corner

Writer’s tip: Separate a list of items by commas (e.g., “… pliers, wrenches, hammers, and nails). The last comma is known as an “Oxford” comma. (I, however, avoid, flee from, resist and omit this last comma because I think it is unnecessary.) If a list has an item that itself includes a comma, use semicolons to separate instead of commas. E.g., “. . . pieces of plaster; rusty nails; old, discarded wooden studs; and glassless, paintless window frames.”

Word of the month: EPONYMOUS. Do we really need this word? Or is it just used by nerdy people showing off? It means “named after someone or something.” E.g., “Henry Ford and his famous, eponymous car company.”

Reminds me of William Faulkner’s friendly jab at Ernest Hemingway, “He never uses a word that sends a man to a dictionary.” Probably true of Hemingway. I will occasionally employ a little-used word because it really nails what I wish to express (e.g., disingenuous, effluvium, sclerotic). Not too often, though. Sometimes I’ll use an obsolescent word (saturnine, sartorial). Each word is a world of meaning, a priceless tool in the writer’s toolkit. In your own writing, wield words well.

Task for you: Invent a new word (people do this all the time). For instance, turn a noun into an adjective or a verb, etc. Send me your examples (along with definitions) and I’ll put them in the next Wingspread.

Magazine of the month: CHRISTIANITY TODAY. While you could label this magazine evangelical, I find it covers a broad range of Protestant and Catholic issues and also issues in other world religions, fully engaging the social, political and cultural milieu in which all religion is embedded.

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

I confess I sometimes more enjoy talking to atheists than Christians. My atheist friends seem honest about their doubts. Although my own doubts have been answered, they have not been quenched. Since I am a doubter, I find much in common with atheists. I believe we are all on a spiritual quest and I wish to know the quest of each person I meet. Blessed Unbeliever (below) is the story of one such quest. Much is autobiographical (I won’t tell you which parts!). But the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Sean McIntosh left his Fundamentalist childhood and walked the road toward becoming an atheist—while attending Torrey Bible Institute! Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out very well. Blessed Unbeliever (paper or Kindle version) can be found at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon https://a.co/d/9su5F3o or wherever good books are sold.

Story: “The Snow Sermon” (first used several years ago)

“Barbara, the snow’s late this year.”

She looks up from her piecrust work. “Yes, it’s only five days ’til Thanksgiving.”

But today, the wind chills. I gaze out the window at the fine flakes falling here in Minnesota, hundreds of miles away from my California childhood. This harbinger snow warns, “Nothing is forever.”

Our first snow is inevitable but still a surprise. We turned the clocks back just two weeks ago (“spring ahead; fall back”), but today, less than a month from winter solstice, the sun appears tardily over the far end of Pleasure Creek pond, rising in its low southern arc, only to set early.

We are the shrouded ones, billeted in carpentered cocoons. Mine is a bookish breed. At home, my fingers rest on computer keys, pretending that the seasons never change. At work, I inhabit an indoor world smelling of classroom chalk, students to-ing and fro-ing in the halls, my days seasoned with specialty coffee and good conversation. . . .

To read more, click here:  https://tinyurl.com/57t9p6n2


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This month’s puzzler (thanks to “Car Talk”)

No fair doing an internet search but if you do, don’t reveal the answer if you find it.

Long before airplanes were invented, some engineers were contemplating building a suspension bridge across the gorge of Niagara Falls. There’s a big gorge there. A gorge is a canyon with a river at the bottom, basically. 

So they were thinking of building this bridge, but there was no way to get the cables from one side to the other, because there was no boat that could fight that current in the raging water below. They didn’t have powered boats back then. This was in the days of steam, and wind for power. When sailors were made of steel and ships were made of wood.

Anyway, they figured out they had to get the cables across somehow. And the builders staged a contest open to the public to solve their problem. The contest was won by a young kid, a boy. Shortly after the contest was completed, they were able to run the cables from one side of the gorge to the other.

The puzzler question is very simple.

How did they do it?

(Answer will appear in next month’s WINGSPREAD newsletter.)

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

So what movie prominently featured a Ferrari and a Renault?

I’m guessing that the people who tried to Google this one were pretty disappointed. Because this was a trick question!

The Ferrari and Renault in question here are not cars, but character names. There full names were Signor Ferrari and Captain Louis Renault. 

And these are characters from the very famous movie, Casablanca. 

Now, don’t be mad about the trickery here. We never once said that the Ferrari and the Renault were cars . . . .

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Wisdom

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

  • Autocorrect has become my worst enema.
  • Exquisite insult: “He’s a bubble off plumb.”
  • “When I fed the poor they called me a saint. When I asked why they were poor, they called me a Communist.” —Bishop Dom Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil
  • “They’re like grits in the South, whether you want them or not they show up!”
  • A kleptomaniac is somebody who helps himself because he cannot help himself.
  • A Freudian slip is where you say one thing but mean a mother.
  • Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
  • Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
  • I intend to live forever… So far, so good.
  • If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
  • Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
  • What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
  • My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
  • Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
  • If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
  • A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
  • Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
  • The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
  • To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  • The problem with the gene pool is that there’s no lifeguard.
  • The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up. 
  • The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
  • Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film. 
  • If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
  • If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

The Snow Sermon

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith “A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God:
see all, nor be afraid!”

—Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra”[1]

“Barbara, the snow’s late this year.”

She looks up from her piecrust work. “Yes, it’s only five days ’til Thanksgiving.”

But today, the wind chills. I gaze out the window at the fine flakes falling here in Minnesota, hundreds of miles away from my California childhood. This harbinger snow warns, “Nothing is forever.”

Our first snow is inevitable but still a surprise. We turned the clocks back just two weeks ago (“spring ahead; fall back”), but today, less than a month from winter solstice, the sun appears tardily over the far end of Pleasure Creek pond, rising in its low southern arc only to set early.

We are the shrouded ones, billeted in carpentered cocoons. Mine is a bookish breed. At home, my fingers rest on computer keys, pretending that the seasons never change. At work, I inhabit an indoor world smelling of classroom chalk, students to-ing and fro-ing in the halls, my days seasoned with specialty coffee and good conversation.

The seasons never changed in the California of my childhood with its palms, eucalyptus, magnolia and orange trees. But today, here in Minnesota, the sun hangs low on the horizon and the spruce branches slowly whiten.

Last summer here, at 45o north latitude, the sun slanted up out of the pond and across our sunroom window bringing slow-motion dawns and leisurely dusks. Now the luminous light of late afternoon dims rapidly, along with my mood.

I didn’t notice winter’s warning—the browning tips of the redtop grass, the drooping prairie flowers. I reluctantly relinquish the long, languid days of summer, but I want to hang on to fall forever—her wild rains and winds, her stratospheric flocks of geese, and her small, furry creatures that scuttle across our narrow strip of pond-side prairie. Last week, the colder winds encouraged the topmost elm leaves to redden, turn brown, then relax their grip, falling to the grass in a burnt-red and yellow oval downwind of the tree, offering their last sweet smell of decay. These days are precious as we all face the south sun.

But fall is fading. I step out the door onto virgin snow that overwhelms the green cut grass. No animal tracks blemish the pristine whiteness—my footprints are the first.

The crystalline flakes arrive mute, indiscriminate, taking their time to land, more comfortable on the skin than fall’s stinging raindrops. I pull my coat around my chin. I need a hat and gloves. Our marigolds glow deep maroon in the lambent light. Their tendrils still climb the iron shepherd’s crook, but with looser grip. The hostas along the house shot out long exuberant spears, but they droop now, their enthusiasm spent. In the garden, the broccoli survives first frost, then fades. The bottoms of the tomato stalks change from green to yellow. Even the deer shun the dying plants.

I lie down spread-eagle on the lawn and stare up into the falling flakes. A light wind blows the snow slantwise through the maple’s witch-finger branches. I cannot feel it as it whitens my hair and clothes, but I taste it and smell its freshness. The snow stifles all sound except the distant cry of geese. I’m glad to be alive today¾to see, to taste, to experience heaven’s bright herald of winter.

Pleasure Creek pond lies still, somehow sensing the season’s shift, anticipates the icy patina that will soon cloud her face. The geese swim carelessly, agnostic about their future, congregating with cocked heads, assaying the season. Snow sifts down into the bordering, browning prairie grass, gilding the tiny husk of each shriveled prairie flower. Milkweed pods burst open and spew their filaments.

The seasons teach me the cycle.

Hopeful spring says, “Start, take heart, scatter abroad, be reckless and wild.”

Ebullient summer says, “Work, sweat, thrive; strive while you’re alive.”

Savory fall says, “Gather, rejoice, revel in the harvest.”

But winter’s annunciatory flakes say, “Get ready! Check the snow shovels. Drain the garden hoses. Secure the patio furniture. The weather is changing. Treasure what you have. Embrace your now.”

Almost for the first time, I realize that the seasons mirror my own life. I have a new appreciation of Woody Allen’s words—”I don’t want to achieve immortality by my work; I want to achieve immortality by not dying.”

My branches are still sturdy, but they feel more the winter’s winds. Some of my life-leaves have fallen. More and more, conversations drift to health matters and health vocabulary—mitral valve, atrial fibrillation, gout, LDL, neuropathy.

The snow carries a severe mercy and an unexpected grace—”I make all things new. I erase the dirt of your past. I shroud sorrows and heal wounds. I redeem. Savor me. I’ll blanket you with bitter white, but I’m preparing you for glorious spring. Trust what you cannot see. Weeping lasts for a time, but joy comes in the morning.”

Can I be thankful for winter’s snows? There’s a light at eventide that illumines winter’s day, that shines deeper, more faithfully. As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, “And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs . . .”

Winter enforces a pause—”Cease, withdraw, listen, read, pray. You can hear God better in your quiet.” I must let winter do its silent work. The first snowfall helps me focus, makes me grateful for what I have. Like an unexpected illness, it sharpens my joys, spurs me to value life more, helps me to see how precious is life.

I’m so thankful now, in the early winter of my life. I wish to pay attention, to read the seasons, to prepare well for my later years and beyond. Before I return to my fireside, I say, “First snow, I welcome you. Teach me well the wisdom of winter.”

[1] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173031 Accessed 1/3/14.