Mainly photos of Dad

 In no particular order, please enjoy these pictures of my dad Carl W. Bogue, et al.

Funeral service Oct 15 at Redeemer PCA in Hudson, Ohio  

Obituary

Political Tuesdays: November 4, 1992

It will always be one of the great honors of my life that I was present on the South Lawn of the White House the day after Election Day, when George H.W. Bush arrived home and addressed his supporters. C-SPAN archives carry the video still. 

I was 25, newly married, and had never been to the White House before that day. But senior staff at National Right to Life, all of whom had handshake photos of themselves with Reagan or Bush, generously donated their tickets to junior staff the day before the election. They must have known the polls were not promising, and they wanted to give us the chance to witness presidential history as they had. Our election night party in the office was bleak. I was still clinging to a bit of immature magical thinking. We had worked hard enough, surely. And then there was a fax that came in sometime in the afternoon with internal polling from the campaign projecting a defeat. After that, things became somber and deathlike for the rest of the evening.

Still, the next morning dawned, and I dressed in my cute blue checked dress that I had bought before my wedding, braided my hair and set off with my friends and co-workers. Our group was perhaps isolated from other WH staffers and major campaign donors who were present there; we felt that we had worked our little hearts out, but Bush's own staff had let him down. I remember comments from those months... staffers shopping their resumes and not focusing on the election; campaign director sleeping with the enemy, no real loyalty to the President. And the American electorate has always been fickle, and the press has always been hostile to Republicans, but something changed in that election cycle. We knew we were in for 4-8 years of a really difficult time, and most of us were teary-eyed for much of the time we were there. But White House events must go on. We were handed flags to wave by staffers; it was a gray day but not bad weather for November, as I recall. I was running on adrenaline and nerves, which always makes me feel especially socially awkward. It was a pretty large crowd. 

The Bushes got off Marine One, and the crowd cheered wildly. Most of us were toward the back of the crowd; I don't think we're in the video,  but I can't be sure without better eyes and a bigger screen. It must have been a bitterly difficult day for the President, and I'm sure he was emotional, but his speech was short, upbeat, and focused on others. He could have talked about the big accomplishments of his administration; the coalition he built for the Gulf War; the fall of the Communist regime, but he didn't. He simply praised his supporters for their hard work, encouraged them to support the Clintons, and expressed confidence that "we" had served America well... "And maybe history will record it that way." That short, offhand sign-off has stayed with me all these years. 

Yes, I do think history will record your nobility of character and your lasting positive influence on America. Thank you for your life of service, George H.W Bush. RIP. 

Physics

Physics

February 2, 2004

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed,

But in an isolated system

Will be conserved in perfect balance,

Interplaying with its attendant energy,

According to the laws of nature and of nature’s God.

And in a universe of mysteries,

The greatest and rarest mystery of all,

That in a small quantity of collected atoms

From time to time

Matter and energy exist in equipoise,

The one supporting the other;

A hybrid

For a time, or a lifetime, or less

But at a great cost,

For there is no isolated system in this or any other universe.

The only matter that matters will

Inevitably

Be separated from its indwelling energy

And the energy departs

We do not know where

All that is left behind is matter,

And matter is the only thing that will mark the passing of energy --

A spark, a puff of wind, a moving shadow perhaps

The things we choose to mark its passing,

Bare matter themselves,

Wood, metal, stone,

A folded sweater, a dusty book,

Or random energy,

A dream, a memory,

Faulty firing of synapses

A sound, the soft click of a lid as it closes on a life

A flicker at the edge of thought

A strain of music—

All these things will last longer than the matter

That has been severed and cannot return to us,

Until we shall go to it.

_____________________

(I'm reblogging this poem today, 2 years after I wrote it. I had forgotten about it until I found a file titled "physics" in my creative writing folder and wondered what in the world my least favorite subject was doing there. After opening it I remembered. It's probably more metaphysics than physics, but it encapsulates some of the things I was pondering when my mother died, and on the anniversary of her death every year. Or whenever I wear her sweater or hold one of her books, things made of organic matter themselves but much more enduring than the human body. From what I can remember, writing this poem was painful, so I made it fast. Reading it again after two years brings back those hospice days vividly, but it is odd how the composition of the poem itself feels so distant to me, as if another person had written it.)

Randomday

Randomday rolls around again.  The day the blog eats leftovers and doesn't complain.

Actually, I haven't been feeding the blog terribly often lately, so it's probably going to sue me for neglect pretty soon.

Just as last Saturday was beautiful, today is soggy and rainy.  The daffodils are looking waterlogged, and every so often I see a camelia fall from the tree with a kind of squishy thud.  The plum tree that I photographed a few days ago (above) has lost most of its petals now.  Time will tell whether we have a huge harvest again this year.  When we look back at pictures of when we bought the house in 1999, it's amazing how much larger that tree is.

I vacuumed up about 15 spiders from the corners of the ceiling in the living room today.  I also think I may have fixed the rumbling noise the vacuum has been making ever since we had to replace the band... it seems the plastic cover was not latched on properly so when I needed to fish a marble out of the brush assembly I was able to replace it the way it was supposed to be, and that must have been the source of the vibration.  Or maybe it's still making the sound and I am just wishful thinking that it is better because I need to feel appreciated.  This is also quite possible,

Quarta has been at a Minecraft... what? not seminar or symposium... maybe a class?  a geek-out session? ... at the library with other like-minded geeks in her age range today.  She came back very excited because she won her "creative" division.  Tertia has been bored.  Peter and some friends are having a gaming session.  Steve has been baking pies today, in observance of the Pi day of the century.  I'm not complaining.  We plan to take the girls out to see the Hobbit movie this evening.

Peter is training for a triathlon.  He joined the local LA Fitness this week and has been practicing his swimming.  I think our grocery bills are going to go way up, at the same time I am worrying about him losing too much weight.  Interesting how that works.

I received word today that the nurse who cared for me when I was a baby in the Netherlands has died.  Zuster de Vries, (Geertje I learned was her first name), must have been something like the Dutch version of "Call the Midwife," assigned to check on the ex-pat American couple and their puny newborn.  My mom told me that only foreigners and women with problem pregnancies delivered in the hospital in Holland at that time.  I was told I didn't gain weight fast enough to please Zuster de Vries, my mother worried a lot about it, ("nervous wreck" may have been her exact words) and still she became a good friend and steady correspondent with the family.  She never spoke much English so her annual Christmas greeting kept my parents accountable to use their Dutch at least a little.  She was unmarried and cared for her father, who lived to be more than 100, and she herself was born in 1920, so I guess she lived to a good age as well.  She always asked about me and sent a souvenir towel with the Groote Kerk in Dordrecht on it when she heard I was married.  I always thought it was a special thing to have been born in the Netherlands, and part of what made it special, maybe even a little romantic (like a fairy tale) was to have had a kind nurse who cared for me when I was a baby and still asked about me.  I am sad that I was never able to meet her when I would have appreciated it, and show her that I did indeed gain that weight she was concerned about.

Randomday: What Secundus did on Spring Break

While most of us were relaxing on Spring Break, Secundus went with a group of Cedar Tree students to Mexico and built a house for a deserving family.  He's on the right with crossed arms in this photo of the dedication ceremony.

What a fine group of young people.

Secundus and friends, looking cool. 

As has always been the case, most shots of Secundus are action shots.  He worked hard.  The little toddler we used to call "El Nino" in the sense of "he's a force of nature" is now all grown up.  He tells me the little kids in Mexico said he was "muy, muy guapo."

After the walls went up, he worked with the floor team.  He dug drainage ditches under the house, he made trips to the riverbed for more sand.

They took a hike at sunset on their final day.  A great experience for all of them.  His words to me after we met him at the airport: "We take so much for granted."
This week, of course, it was back to school and other activities, like the Spring Social.  I took him shopping for clothes to suit his style, and chased after him to take this picture (it was an action shot for me, that's why it's blurry, I was breathless after running up the stairs):

He's probably one of the few who can look good in a hot pink tie.
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More random things:

At Bible study last night, Nancy and I were talking about her work with special ed. kids, helping them tap out syllables for long words like "amphibian" and "carbonation."  Tertia overheard us and demonstrated the technique on the kitchen table; six taps for six syllables, but over the background noise we couldn't make out any English words, so we asked her to repeat it twice more before I finally deciphered: "Expecto patronum!"  She's been reading Harry Potter.

Happy 83rd birthday today to Grandma!  Your cake is cooling as I type this.

National Latin Exam scores are in!  Steve is going to help me fix the bulky excel file and teach me how to use it to crunch the numbers.  I think it would take less time to figure out averages manually, but he tells me this will be easier.  Hoping to make a big deal about it next Friday at Grandparents' Day.

Daniel received a great grade on his English paper and raves from the professor: "Excellent defense of a significant thesis."  I'll stop before I embarrass him too much.  He's going into production week of Seussical for Children's Theater.  He's a Who.

My former co-worker, David Kuo, has passed away after a long battle with brain cancer.  He accomplished a lot in his short life; check out his obituary in the NY Times.  Although I disagreed with him in his critiques of the Bush administration's treatment of evangelicals (comparing it to the blatant ridicule of evangelicals led by President Obama himself and prevalent everywhere now, the Bush administration seems like an idyllic golden age), he was a gentlemanly fighter.  My heart goes out to his wife and four children.

Even more sobering is the media blackout of the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell.  Utterly barbaric the crimes he committed; and beyond comprehension is the refusal of our news media to cover his trial.  I'll have more to say on this next week, but if you haven't seen the coverage, these links might give you some food for thought.  Kirsten Powers  Mollie Hemingway  Late to the party and trying to cover herself  At least World Magazine has been on this from the beginning.

Tribute

My Father-in-Law, Theodore Woolsey Chapman, was born in 1926 in Hokkaido, Japan, the 4th of 6 children of Presbyterian missionaries.  Everyone always describes him as "sweet," "gentle," and "loving."  Hard to beat that, really.  He was unfailingly polite: he never forgot to say "thank you" or to pray for blessings on his loved ones.  He would take care of little details that no one else thought about, and when he became too old to do those little things he certainly appreciated when someone would do them for him.  We suspect, knowing him, that his last words and thoughts were directed at the paramedics who attended him in the ambulance, thanking them and just enjoying the ride.

He had bad eyesight as a child and made at least one ocean voyage back to America for eye surgery.  In the process, he developed a life-long love of ships, which would lead to a career as a naval architect, working as a civilian for the U.S. Navy.  World War II obviously interfered with missions work in Japan, so the whole family was stateside for awhile and his father did chaplain work at a Japanese internment camp.

He married somewhat later in life, when some of his family had probably given up on him as destined to be a bachelor, to my mother-in-law, Theodora.  Theodore and Theodora ... Ted and Teddy.  They raised three children, first in Bremerton, WA and then in Rockville, MD.  Last summer when we celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary (a little early), all 11 grandchildren showed up too.

The actual 50th wedding anniversary, and his 85th birthday, came right after Christmas.  We're really glad we took him to Benihana's for his birthday.  He enjoyed it.

Families should enjoy times together, because time is always too short.

Where Football Meets Classical Education

Joe Paterno was the football coach at Penn State since before I was born, and for about 4 times as long as I've been a Latin teacher (which is a pretty hefty chunk of my life, now).  Yet his name was only vaguely familiar to me, since I am a football agnostic, until his essay, "Joe Knows Latin," was featured in the Spring 2008 edition of the Memoria Press newsletter.  Unfortunately they've changed the archiving of that article so it is more difficult to obtain the full text.  But it's well worth the read... inspiring, even, for those of us teachers who face constant questions about the worthiness of our arcane subject matter.  You can read more extensive excerpts of the article here, but I'll be trying to find a link to the full article to share if I can.  It was after reading this article, partly, that I tried to become more careful about looking up the teachers who had influenced me and thanking them.  Because we never know when a great teacher may be taken from us, or for that matter, when old age and a shifting zeitgeist may render him a pariah.  (46 years followed by a quick trip through the tabloids to the ash-heap of history... how do we begin to process that?  Well, worse things happened to Cicero.)

I guess football is quite similar to ancient warfare, really.  Horrifying battle helmets, grotesque war paint, screaming throngs watching from the city walls, obscure mystical rituals before and after each play; and of course, the lively oral tradition of retelling the game afterwards for those who didn't see it.  Some heroes do indeed seem to be specially favored by the gods; and JoePa, as he was known, surely had a friend in Minerva, the grey-eyed goddess of strategy and warfare.  In an age when imperialism is frowned upon, capturing yardage and taking possession of the ball are more socially acceptable outlets for young testosterone than capturing hostages and taking possession of Gallic towns.  So I'll just pose the question and you can think about it: is studying Latin and Caesar's conquests good preparation for ... football?