Crash me outside

Soon it will be wheeled in for repairs

Seeing as my post about jumping was ignored on all seven continents, how 'bout let's try one about falling.

As in, my TG fell off his bike on Tuesday evening.

It was bad.

The pictures of him that I took to show the kids are so gruesome, I cannot share them with you.

You may get the picture when I tell you that, coming into the kitchen to start dinner, I discovered him standing at the sink, running the water, bloodied and battered pretty much from head to toe.

Especially head. Because he'd landed on it.

I fell off my bike, he said.

Then he turned around and went outside by the pool, leaving a trail of huge blood drops.

I was cleaning those up when I realized he was just standing out there, so I joined him.

What happened? I said.

I don't remember, he said.

I looked at the damage to his face and told him that for sure he would require stitches.

We'd better get you to the urgent care, I said.

TG ignored me and walked back into the kitchen, and from there, out into the garage.

I don't remember where it happened, he said.

It will come back to you, I said. Get in the car.

Is my bike here? he said, then walked around to the other side of the garage where he had parked it, confirming that it was.

It was ugly

I don't remember falling, he said. I don't remember anything.

Eventually he did remember a lot of things, both that night while we cooled our heels at urgent care for three-plus hours, and the next day.

Turns out that he had been coming up to a cross street which he would normally just cycle right on through, when a car approached from his left.

He slowed to accommodate the car's passing, and believes that he steered slightly to the left to go around the back of the moving car.

After that, it's a blank.

We went back to the scene on Wednesday, after taking him to see our doctor.

We loitered in the quiet street while pine cones plopped to the pavement from a towering loblolly standing sentinel.

If only that tree could talk.

There were no clues, no remnants of the carnage that had occurred twenty-two hours previously.

TG, after suffering the fall, promptly scraped himself off the street, put his hat back on his head, picked up his bike, got on, and pedaled home.

Only, he doesn't actually recall doing any of that.

I remember getting up, wondering what in the world I had done, he said. And then I remember pulling into the garage on my bike.

The thought of that scenario terrified me, so I pushed it out of my mind. So much could have gone wrong on that mile-long ride home.

Later -- much later -- at the urgent care, a chatty doctor put ten stitches in the area of TG's left eye.

The patient underwent a CT scan and submitted to various X-rays.

Nothing was broken, but a severely arthritic left shoulder was revealed. TG's bad shoulder. it was the one he'd landed on.

After an equally chatty nurse, plump and highly fragranced (I could smell her perfume even after we got home), had cleaned up TG's scrapes and lightly bandaged them, we were free to go.

We spoke of nothing else for several hours

Lexington Medical Center Urgent Care had been closed for two hours when a male nurse pushed TG to our car in a wheelchair.

I know which one is yours, he said. The Raven was the only vehicle in the parking lot.

Five minutes to home.

Audrey had come over earlier and fixed the supper that I was about to start making when the whole thing went down. Chicken stir-fry. Bird and Birds Eye.

We were grateful, because TG was ravenous and, before even getting out of his bloody clothes and taking a shower, he sat down to eat.

Afterward, he bathed gingerly and we re-dressed his wounds.

He stayed up super late so that he'd be super tired. Believe it or not, he said he slept pretty well that night.

I persuaded him to take it easy on Wednesday, and to let me take him to our doctor.

On Thursday, he was back at work. A fellow contractor and friend helped him in the morning; Audrey finished her cleaning job early and came to help him in the afternoon.

I picked up Dagny from school and, after a stop at Hobby Lobby for a spot of fall-decor shopping, took her to her mother as everyone was contemplating quittin' time.

TG was working steadily and said he'd been pleasantly surprised at how well he felt all day.

I will repeat what the doctor marveled at when, having read the CT scan results and found that TG had not broken his cheekbone (it looked as though he had) ... right here is a big, strong man.

Indeed he is. He will be seventy in January. He still works full time.

Keeps him out of trouble all of the time and off the golf course much of the time (although there are breakthrough golf outings often enough).

But not off his bike, which was a gift from his children and which he faithfully rides -- sans helmet and no, he has not changed his mind about that -- six days a week.

On the route that TG takes as he rides, he knows various folks to wave to.

The pine tree and its needles saw everything

Occasionally he stops and talks to someone, for one reason or another. Just being neighborly.

One gentleman on the course is frequently outside and when he is, always waves to TG.

On a recent day, he held up a large hand-lettered sign as TG barreled past. The sign read:

ONE

The next time TG passed his house, the man lifted a different sign:

TWO

On the third lap? You guessed it:

THREE

TG gave him a big thumbs-up.

When TG relayed this story to me, it was during the Olympics and I thought the man had been judging TG's style, speed, and technical prowess as he rode past. But no.

Turns out, you can just count on some people. And TG is one of them.

That's how he rolls. 

And that is all for now except, just because I think you deserve it after the trauma of this story, here is a picture of baby Rhett.

Stay healthy, Papaw ... someday you may need to teach me how to ride a bike 

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But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

II Corinthians 4:9-10

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Happy Friday :: Happy Weekend

An empty vessel

It doesn't look like much on a rainy day ... or any kind of day

Two years ago, on our trip to New England, TG and I spent a day at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

I don't think I've ever told you about that unusual experience, and soon perhaps I will, but today I want to tell you about something we saw after our day at historic Green-Wood.

As in, we were en route from Brooklyn to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where we would spend the next several nights.

Our drive took us through the Bronx, where I wanted to stop by what had once been a home of Edgar Allan Poe.

(You may or may not recall that, earlier in 2019, we visited Poe's grave and another of his homes, in Baltimore. My interest level runs high.)

But first we had to travel the entire western edge of Manhattan, along the Hudson.

It was a thoroughly rainy, foggy day, and it had been that way for the entire day.

In fact, part of my fascinating as-yet-untold story of our visit to Green-Wood involves the inclemency of the weather and how it affected the coming true of that long-held dream of mine.

At any rate, we had traveled all day the day before, and this was the first real day of our trip, and it had rained all day, and we had been out in it all day, and we were eager to reach Dobbs Ferry (a scant twenty miles to the north) and have some supper and go to bed.

It was basically rush hour, but only on a benign Tuesday. In New York, though, that's like all the Fridays in most other cities, rolled into one.

I was looking out of the car window when I saw, disappearing above us into the fog, the One World Trade Center.

Although One World Trade is the tallest building in the United States (as well as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere), I could see no more than twenty stories up.

It was the fog.

We continued northward towards the Bronx and, some minutes later, I again looked to my right and was transfixed by an oddly shaped structure.

I exclaimed and pointed it out to TG, who I'm sure glanced over at the strange thing. But then we were past it and it was only later that I determined to find out what the thing had been. Or rather, what it was.

I knew it had not been part of the landscape the last time we'd visited New York City, which was eight years earlier, in 2011. I would have noticed.

Turns out it was -- and is -- something called, simply, Vessel.

Vessel is owned by, and is the centerpiece of, Hudson Yards (sort of a city within a city), and is described on the web site as a focal point where people can enjoy new perspectives of the city and one another from different heights, angles and vantage points.

Except, I hope you don't want to actually do that. Because for the second time in its short life, Vessel is closed to the public.

Indefinitely, this time.

Why? you may be asking. 

Because jumpers.

One World Trade doing a disappearing act

I mean no disrespect, and no, I do not refer to those dresses we wore as children, over a top of some type.

When I say jumpers, I mean those who jump. To their deaths. From high places.

I know; it is a depressing and morbid subject. I myself am afraid of heights (although not pathologically so; I have been to the Empire State Building and Sears Tower observatories, plus the tippy-top of the Louisiana State House, and I did not faint).

(I may go up but as a rule I do not look down. And thank you but no see-through ledges or tilt experiences for me.)

Back to Vessel.

Beset with criticisms and controversies, Vessel (basically sixteen stories of interconnecting staircases that go nowhere), which has been compared to a honeycomb and a rib cage, was not open long before trouble began in earnest.

Vessel opened to the public on March 15, 2019. After a honeymoon period of less than a year, the first jumper accomplished his goal on February 1, 2020. The second jumper checked out on December 22, 2020. The third jumped on January 11, 2021.

After that, Vessel closed while its creator, owners, and promoters tried to come up with a solution. They even hired a suicide expert (?????) who suggested installing net barriers, or high glass.

But ultimately they did nothing except reopen, on May 30, 2021. As a condition, however, it was decreed that, if you wanted to visit Vessel, you had to do so as part of a group of at least two.

In other words, you couldn't get in if you were all by your onesie.

(Because common sense dictates that someone determined to jump from Vessel could not possibly manage to separate himself or herself from the person they came in with, long enough to jump.)

Another new rule was, after the first hour that Vessel was open each day -- during which hour, admission was free -- you had to pay ten dollars (unless you were age five or under) to get in.

(Because common sense will tell you that no one intending to jump to their death will do so before eleven o'clock in the morning. And they won't pay for the privilege at any hour of the day.)

So like New York! Get them in their pocketbooks! What's in your wallet that we can get out of it? If you intend to jump, you have to bring a friend and it will set you back a sawbuck apiece!

That plan worked -- if you can call it that -- for exactly two months, or until July 29, 2021, on which date a teenaged boy, accompanied by his parents and sister, jumped.

Can you imagine? My heart hurts for all involved.

But it points up the sheer lunacy of thinking that we -- that anyone -- can control anyone else. People! People are going to do what they are going to do.

Besides. Try to conjure up in your mind the number of places there are in New York City, from which a person could jump, if that is what they had decided they were going to do.

Windows. Balconies. Rooftops. Basically so many, the number cannot be calculated. 

Chad and Erica a/k/a Cherica went to San Francisco last fall. One of the more exciting things they did was traverse the Golden Gate Bridge by car.

If you have time and are so inclined, read this long but riveting article about Golden Gate Bridge jumpers from the unique perspective of one of the bridge's many full-time painters.

Since it opened in 1937, one month before my mother was born, seventeen hundred people have jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge.

(Probably many more, actually, since nighttime jumpers are not necessarily seen and recorded.)

Yes; there are things in place to inhibit jumping. Some even work, in some cases. But still, they come. And they jump.

It happened in Queens

Meanwhile, just last Friday, a 46-year-old Brooklyn resident described as a "liquor company CEO" did a backflip off a fifth-story deck of Citi Field in Queens, New York, landing on concrete.

It happened during a Dead & Company (a band consisting of former Grateful Dead members) concert. 

(The pirate will do you a solid and refrain from commenting on that last bit.)

I do believe liquor was involved in more ways than the deceased's professional title.

Proving once again that if you play stupid games, you are likely to win stupid prizes.

A concert goer who saw the whole thing from one level up remarked: I wish I didn't see it happen. It kinda killed the mood.

A driver working outside the stadium saw the victim "flip" and hit the ground. He described the man as way too drunk. You could smell it.

A security guard who was also present had this to say: The people are inebriated, and people are intoxicated.

Indeed. And no one made them take the first drink, or the last one, or any in between.

Here is my take on the whole thing. I am responsible for my own health. I am not responsible for yours.

If you need my help in some area of your life and I am able to provide it, I will. Just ask.

But I am not going to be able to make your health decisions for you, and I would not presume to do such an intrusive thing.

In return I ask that, as long as I am conscious and in my right mind, no one presume to make mine for me.

In fact, if someone tries it, I may suggest that they go jump in the lake.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Monday

Farewell, Brother Johnny

Baby Rhett :: A work of art

He loved little babies.

I speak of Johnny Gardner, my bother in Christ and fellow church member, who went to Heaven on July 21st.

He was my friend, and a friend to the unborn.

Indeed, he was known in South Carolina as the Voice of the Unborn.

I'll never forget the first time I saw Johnny Gardner.

It was late June of 2002, and we had just moved to Columbia. We were driving around downtown when we spotted the architectural wonder that is our State House.

As we drove past, we noticed an older gentleman (he was only in his fifties then, but somehow he seemed older) on the corner, holding a large red STOP ABORTION NOW sign.

Sitting beside him was a baby's umbrella stroller, stuffed with dolls. Occasionally the man would pace, and push the stroller. Sometimes he held one of the dolls.

It was sweltering outside, but there Johnny Gardner stood, letting his moderation be known unto all men.

He loved babies and opposed the killing of them in the womb. He felt that God had tasked him with doing something about it.

Most would describe him as a poor man; many would say he was eccentric. He was certainly different.

But if you have already dismissed Johnny Gardner as a nut case, you've made a mistake.

Because in addition to picketing in front of the State House, Johnny Gardner labored tirelessly to impress upon the South Carolina Legislature the wisdom of passing bills designed to protect the unborn.

He lived long enough to see the Heartbeat Bill passed just this year.

(Democrat lawmakers rose en masse and walked out of the chamber in protest of the law that would prohibit abortion as soon as cardiac activity can be detected with an ultrasound.)

(The next day, the legal battle began to block enforcement of the law in South Carolina.)

Johnny Gardner organized an annual event each January inside the State House, on the doorstep of the Governor's office, with special speakers and media coverage, to draw attention to this important issue.

He steadfastly ignored the vitriol that was often aimed in his direction by proponents of abortion.

A few weeks ago, just days before a recurrence of cancer swiftly consigned Brother Johnny to his deathbed, Chad and Erica were talking with him and his wife, Miss Kathy, in the lobby at church.

The Gardners had given as-yet-unborn Baby Rhett a blue minky blanket spangled with white stars, and were inquiring as to whether the new parents had liked it.

Brother Johnny told them that he couldn't wait to meet Baby Rhett.

I just love babies. I love little babies, he said.

Heaven knows, now he's hanging out with tens of millions of those who were denied the chance to be born, whose cause he championed for decades.

He did not get a chance to meet Baby Rhett, who was born two days after Brother Johnny's homegoing.

TG and Dagny attended Brother Johnny's funeral at our church, while Audrey and I sat in Erica's hospital room, taking turns holding Baby Rhett.

His absence is felt. Miss Kathy, his widow, told me yesterday: I miss him. I assured her that we all do.

During our services at church, Brother Johnny could be seen in an attitude of obvious heartfelt worship of his Lord and Savior.

Some select few were made uncomfortable by his raised hands and peals of laughter and, occasionally, a hearty Amen.

Not me. I loved it. It made my heart glad to see Brother Johnny in his place beside his wife, enjoying every part of the service.

In a day rife with breathtaking, heartbreaking deceit and depravity, it was a privilege to know a man so humble, so compassionate, and so righteous.

May God raise up more like him.

Meanwhile, Rest in Peace, Brother Johnny. You have earned it.

And that is all for now.

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Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Matthew 5:8

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