Highways in context

Among many other things, my dad taught me to think about geographies and topographies.  Roads would often make him think of other roads, and areas of the country would be like, or not-so-like, other areas.  Features such as hills and winding roads and skylines would take on personalities of their own.

Where we currently make our temporary dwelling, Rt. 19 is the main road.  It’s one of 2-3 roads of consequence in our entire county, actually.  Rt. 19 reminds me a little of a few Delaware roads, such as Frazer Rd., near the MD line, or sections of old Limestone Rd. (near the old Lowe’s, that later became a church-house, or maybe that little section no one travels near the PA line).  Our Rt. 19 may be even more like Rt. 71, between Lum’s Pond and Red Lion “proper” (is there a Red Lion “proper”?).

Rt. 19 is a nice road, really.  It stretches the entire length of our sizable county, from the Pennsylvania border, south of Wellsville, then running alongside the Genesee River, all the way to Fillmore.  There, it forks:  19 heads northwest, then north again to Pike, and 19A meanders northeast to Portageville, which is the southern gateway to Letchworth State Park, containing a remarkable gorge, just into Wyoming County.

Rt. 19 is traveled by quite a few 18-wheelers and all the rest of us who go anywhere from time to time.  Being beside a river, it’s relatively flat, and has a goodly number of curves.

At face value, Rt. 19 is a standard, two-lane highway.  There’s nothing really remarkable about its size, shape, or construction.  But it defines and supplies a lot about Allegany County, and adjacent areas.  It is a reputable, dependable marker, and we depend on it.

I’m grateful that the highway maintenance crews take care of Rt. 19 as they do.  But they, like all of us, need to be a little more aware of context.  You see, when autumn was expiring, the crews came out to do their pre-winter work, fixing some of the little potholes, presuming to protect the road from the coming winter damage (snow, ice, salt, blades).  

In their zeal to do an extra-good job, they did something new this year:  instead of simply digging out loose macadam and patching holes one by one, they put new asphalt down over long stretches, parallel to the solid white line on the right.  Seems like a good idea, right?  Looks pretty nice, all considering, and provides for a bit smoother ride if you set your wheels to the right.

But they forgot something about our local context.  This might have been fine in the dryness of Colorado or Arizona, but here, we get lots of moisture, and we do depend on this road.  The seam is at just the wrong spot — it’s just where the right tire rolls, for moderate- or small-sized cars.

Hey, guys!  Remember, we have a lot of rain and snow here, and the water and slush will build up on the seam where the new asphalt meets the old.  I’ve already almost hydroplaned a time or two.  You’ve actually created a hazard with the way you fixed the road.

Durn.  Welp. . . .  This winter, people just gotta be extra careful.  I guess we can get out there in April & do something about this after the snow melts.

Wonder what happens when we forget our contexts at our jobs, in our churches, and in Bible study.  We try to fix things, but some damage lasts a while, no matter what we do.

Broken systems (3) – a conclusion

(continued)

Our “town,” Hume, has its maintenance shed between the hamlets (townlets) of Fillmore and Hume.  Every morning when there’s new snow on the ground—which is often from November through March!—from the maintenance shed emerges this overgrown golf cart-snowplow (with a snowblower attachment).  It makes its way around “town,” clearing the embarrassingly cracked, broken sidewalks nicely but leaving driveways more blocked than they had been.  Taking our neighbor’s cue, we now call this thing, with its driver, “Cart-man.”  Invariably, after one has cleared the snow from his driveway so he can leave for work, he goes back in to get his briefcase or lunch . . . that is the time that Cart-man cometh. (Insert Jaws music here.)  The machine clears the sidewalks again, leaving ridges of driveway-blocking snow that must to be re-shoveled so you can get your car out.

I have long wondered who decided that Cart-man constitutes a bona fide service to our community.  The way I have it figured, about 10% of our population actually walks the sidewalks on blustery, snowy days, whereas 80-90% of us drive cars and need our driveways.  Cart-man is hindering life for more of us than he’s helping.  Not to mention that in this part of the country, if you’re walking the sidewalks, you probably have boots, right?  Walking on a snowy sidewalk isn’t all that problematic if you have boots.

I wish the “town” would cease & desist with Cart-man’s job (and maybe the Cart, too!).  This manpower could be better put to use helping to plow or shovel old ladies’ driveways in the winter and actually fixing the sidewalks in the summer.  Another broken system, I think.

Writing all of this gives me minimal catharsis.  It’s written with entertainment in mind first, but then with a view toward asking, again, as I asked after discussing Chase’s broken system, what about the church?

What systems are broken in Christendom?

What are we doing in our church operations and processes that doesn’t make sense?

What legacy systems remain in place merely because no one has paused to reconsider for a decade, or a century?

I’ll put one legacy system forward:  the second church assembly on Sundays.  This practice has been a tradition in some denominations for years, but what sense does it make to ask everyone to come Sunday morning, then go home, then trek back again Sunday night?  Why not just capitalize on the one assembly—whether morning or night, it matters not to me?  Extend it, deepen it, broaden it . . . but don’t have two of the same thing on the same day, separated by six hours.   That’s a broken system, people.

Lest anyone think I don’t care for church assemblies, think again.  An important part of my Christian identity is wrapped up in Christian gatherings.  I do want to make the ones we have count, and I’d rather see us have three or more such opportunities on different days throughout the week than to have two of them on the same day.  But as with most systems, each specific context requires consideration and examination.  What works in our neck of the woods may not be best in yours.

What church systems need fixing, in your estimation?

Broken systems (2) – a plethora

Late last month I provided a brief historical travelogue that pointed up a once-broken fraud protection mechanism at Chase Bank (click here if you happen to be interested).  I tend to notice such “systems” that just aren’t working and need to be fixed.  This annoying fixing-upping trait gets me in trouble sometimes.  I most often simply swallow the inclination, leaving broken things unattended to.  People don’t like to be told they’re working in a broken system.  Some individuals can be quite invested, too, having been cogs in the wheels that built the system in the first place.  Even if they don’t personally care too much about the founding concepts and inner workings, it can still be annoying to hear “That’s stupid.  It just doesn’t work.”

Case in point:  after three years, I finally took solid initiative to try to fix a broken system involving communication between our Admissions/Visit Office (for prospective students) on the one hand, and our School of Music Administrative Assistant and faculty on the other.  I’m happy to report that all, including my boss, seem to have received my initiative well, but that doesn’t mean we have a working system yet.

In other broken system news. . . .

The six-month-old Savin copier/printer/scanner/fax machine in our office is pretty highly evolved, but the nature of the “improvements” since the last model result in no particular gains in our work life.  This kind of thing happens when back-office people design features and functionalities they think are cool, but that no one who actually uses the thing has been requesting.  We now have so many new, non-used features that the touch pad doesn’t have room for them all, so you have to work hard to isolate and touch a single spot on the screen.

Moreover, my fingers must be too cold, or too warm, or too reverse-magnetized, or something:  I can’t seem to make the touch pad respond.  I kid you not—I spent more than a solid minute last weekend trying different finger angles, different fingers, etc., just to get one lousy hotspot to respond. Another issue on this particular machine is the door you open to clear paper jams always makes you feel like you’re breaking something to close it again—the flimsy plastic parts are begging to break so we’ll have to get them fixed.  The Bypass tray is quite prone to jams, I might add.  And it’s a slow machine, to boot–much slower than machines I used 8 or 10 years ago.

While this Savin machine is sort of broken itself, I’m more interested in the human systems behind the scenes.  Some Savin design team, in my opinion, represents a broken human system, because it built something that doesn’t work well, and/or wasn’t needed.  (I’ll refrain from commenting on the system at our institution that saw fit to rid us of a functional, albeit three-year-old machine, in order to inflict on us this new-and-“improved” model, but this latter human system may be the real culprit—paying for, and dispensing, unnecessary items, no matter what contracts and maintenance schedules and “sweet deals” might have been involved in the “upgrade.”)

Onward and upward.  (Not really upward, actually.  Despite our budget constraints, our institution appears to be run a lot better than our state.)  New York has a particular penchant for thinking its way is the only way, or at least for an aggrandized view of itself.  One instance of this is the ubiquitous “State Speed Limit” signs; in other states, there has been no perceived need to proclaim that it’s a “State [this or that]”; elsewhere, we see speed limit signs with no explicit reference to the state authority.  New York, though, somehow needs to assert its statehood and authority.

New York also calls its county subdivisions “towns,” which strikes a newcomer rather oddly.  Most folks in my experience say “I have to go in to town” in order to mean they need to go to the population center where all the businesses are. “Town” is where the courthouse is, or where Main Street intersects with Market Street, or something along those lines.

In New York, though, “town” is no center at all–which still confuses us after 3.5 years in this state.  We’ll see signs, for instance, that welcome us to the town of Hume, although Hume is also a tiny hamlet that’s farther away than the “town” of Fillmore.  What we have actually entered when we see the welcome sign is a larger area that in my opinion should be called a “township” or something else, but not a “town.”  Sometimes there are “towns” that don’t have any population centers or intersections bearing the name of the town at all.

For New York, then, there is an assumed system of political subdivision that uses vague/misleading terminology.  A town here is really more of a sub-county.  In Delaware, this “town” would be called a “hundred,”[1] and in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, it would be a “township.”  Googling “’new york’ township” gives precious few results that use the term “township,” and these are more than a century old, but I still suspect that “town” is but a shortened form of “township.”  This “system” of naming geopolitical areas is a mite confusing to newcomers and travelers.

More tomorrow . . .

---

[1] A hundred was comprised of ten tithings, each of which held ten freeholder families. The hundreds of Delaware originally served as judicial or legislative districts, but they now remain only as a basis for property tax assessment.

Dubbings—a different sort of “Monday Music”

We live in the town(ship) of Hume.  Hume residents have been dubbed “Humans.”

More specifically, we live in the hamlet (not a village, not a city, not a town) of Fillmore.  Fillmore residents have been dubbed “Fillmorons.”

All this reminds me that we’re all sorry excuses for humanity.  We are stupid and helpless, like sheep gone astray.  We are unrighteous on our own.  Isaiah 64:6:  “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (NASB).

Throwing pop psychology to the wind, I’ll suggest that it’s often good to realize how unworthy we are.  And I wish the editors of some modern hymnals had never seen fit to change the word from “worm” to one” in this reflective, old-favorite stanza:

Alas! and did my Savior bleed? And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?

I’m inspired by the last stanza even more:

But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe;
Here, Lord, I give myself away, ‘Tis all that I can do.

And this sentiment sends me into even richer, more historic lyrics, in the second stanza of “O Sacred Head,” which I’ve quoted here before:

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend,
For this, Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

May we ever connect our Messiah’s atoning death to our living, endeavoring to give everything back to Him.

Thoughts on mowing the lawn

First, some seemingly random thoughts.

Some people don’t like mowing lawns.  I tend to like it, although I don’t always feel I have the time.

I learned to mow from watching my dad.  I appreciate this, since not all boys have the opportunity.  I grew up thinking it was cool and manly to mow the lawn.  This may be some sort of elaborate ploy on the part of older males to pass along mowing duties to their progeny.  I believe I feel that desire arising within me even now, but for now, I’m quite content to mow the lawn myself.

I do think we Americans can be silly, spending many $ on fertilizer and then having to mow more because the grass is growing more quickly.  I don’t want to be a slave to my lawn, but I do like it to look nice.

Some folks around me in Allegany County are probably poorer than I am, but they take care of their lawns even better than I do.  I perceive a level of pride taken in the well-kept lawns on the country roads near us, even when the house is badly in need of repair and the truck is 30 years old.

Some people have tractors and don’t need them, it seems.  I thought I’d do fine without one here, but mowing 1.25 acres on a 90-degree, 98%-humidity day in my first summer here cured me of that little stupidity.  I bought a small, used tractor that has served well.  This is much, much smaller than the Ford Model-A beast I used to mow the grass around my church building when I was home from college one summer.  Had to tow that thing up the hill on a chain and roll it down to “kick-start” it.  Unsafe, but a fun enterprise.  Good memories.

My first boss (when I was a teenager) was the subject of some civil action that cited him for not mowing his lawn.  His neighbors were upset with him.

Some do prefer not to mow at all.  We have friends who enjoy their wild prairie grasses and smile at me for caring as much as I do about my grass.  I suppose I could let half of our yard go uncut.  But something about that bothers me.  Maybe it’s the fear of making neighbors upset.  Nah.  My neighbors are nice.  I just like to mow.

Now, here are a dozen blessings—blessings experienced as a result of mowing!

1. The sweet smell of cut grass
2. Adjustable-height decks on lawn mowers
3. The pleasure of exercising skill while mowing
4. The sight of straight, mown rows—maybe you’ve never thought about it, but they can be beautiful
5. The capacity to multitask—thinking and praying while mowing
6. The freedom to choose whether to push-mow or tractor-mow
7. Wheels on the tractor’s mowing deck—helping to keep the deck at a proper height and keeps mishaps such as throwing of rocks and mowing of sticks to a minimum
8. Being able to use my neighbor’s John Deere when I mow his lawn AND my own
9. Mowing down the grass around a bunch of groundhogs’ hideouts—with no pangs of conscience
10. Having the time in the summer months to spend 8-10 hours a week mowing
11. The tremendously satisfying feeling of having finished mowing the lawn just before a nice, steady rain
12. The sight of a field of green and a sky of blue.  (My Grandmother Ritchie once validated wearing a green shirt with blue jeans by saying, “Of course green goes with blue.  God knew that.  Just look at the grass and the sky.”)

I’ve never paid anyone else to mow my lawn.  As long as I can, I think I’ll mow my own grass.  Something about this just agrees with me.  I do think I’ll pass this love along along to Jedd, maybe sharing the duties when he’s old enough.  He’s ridden with me on the tractor only for 30” (gotta protect his little ears), but I love waving to him and seeing him wave at me when I’m mowing….

A boy thing--Jedd in May