Why I Need An Island

I will never be geographically close to everyone nearest and dearest to me. It is impossible. Now, don't bring alternate universes or the afterlife into this conversation - I mean it sincerely and literally: I can't settle in any place on this earth and be within driving distance of all the people I want to be able to drop everything and go make dinner for, shake sense into, or embrace.

I first realized this several years ago. At this very moment, my favorite people are scattered throughout the Midwest, across the Deep South, the West Coast, the East Coast, across multiple oceans, in cities big and small, places far and wide. Not only can I never settle somewhere and be near all of them - but also, it seems that most years, I can't even visit as many of these far-flung family and friends as I would like.

So I have decided: I need an island.

I am not selfish. I know everyone has their own lives, and we can't just all be vacationing together, all the time. I also assume there are probably others out there who need the island I am about to describe, so I am willing to time-share this magical place. But I need it at least once a week, every year, so everyone I want to see can gather together for our annual week-long island vacation.

Island Week will be an oasis in time and space. In this oasis, we can sip our drinks with and beneath umbrellas. We can spend time catching up, relaxing, soaking up the sun and basking in each other's stories.

Preferably, this island will have its own time zone, one that makes days longer, so that no matter how late you sleep in, there is still plenty of day to experience when you wake, and the nights are long enough that you can both stay up until three a.m. discussing big ideas with the phenomenal people around you, and still manage to also get a good night's sleep.

The food on the island will be EXCELLENT; there will be music; there will be naps; and of course, there will be nightly play performances.

There will be no cell phones on the island (note: I did not say no cell RECEPTION - I already have that little piece of paradise's real estate, called My Apartment in Belhaven - I said NO CELL PHONES, because when all of my favorite people are in one place, who on earth will we need to call?).

And ... everyone will be healthy on the island. Even those struggling now with physical, mental and emotional challenges in their current everyday lives, will be granted reprieve for Island Week.

So. I need this island.

Is that too much to ask?

The Pain in Pain Stays Mainly in the Pain

We hurt.

When someone hurts us, we hurt; when someone hurts someone we love, we hurt; and when we know that we caused hurt to someone else, more often than not, we too feel a deep sense of hurt.
This is part of being a human. It is inescapable, and it is how we learn. It sounds so cliche to say, without bad days we would not be so grateful for the good ones; without loneliness, we would not appreciate love; without pain, we could not identify peace. It feels trite to try to explain this, particularly out loud, to another person, who is battling that darkness. But being cliche, or trite, or even completely Pollyanna-glad-game, does not render a statement false.

Trouble is, when lost in the whirlwind of pain, sometimes it seems that all you can see is all there is. One's senses all heighten - yet all you taste, smell, see, hear, and touch is the misery. But all-encompassing as it may feel, that misery is not the only reality; it is a temporary paralysis, a difficult moment in time, a confinement that may feel like a prison term -- but it is not a life sentence.

So remember, Pandora: when all the hateful and hurtful demons have fled the box, still there, clinging to the bottom... don't overlook the stubborn, clandestine, but ever-eternally-springing light of hope.

Father's Day

I am one of those people blessed not only with an excellent father of my own, but also with many other excellent dads sprinkled around my world. A dear friend of mine who is a father recently got called in for some serious dad-duty, and in order to provide some entertainment for him and his kids, I sent something special his way. See, my family is really into this little game called "euchre"... my dad's a master, my grandfather and godfather are practically psychotic for it, my whole family comes together around the cards at every holiday, reunion and picnic... so I created a little How to Play sheet. (Full disclosure: parts of these instructions are patchworked in from a few rules-sites, with my own commentary inserted... hopefully no one sues me.)

Now, in honor my amazing dad, all the lovely dads in my family, my excellent-father friend, and every other amazing patriarch out there, here are the Official Bethweek Rules of Euchre.

Euchre!

(Pronounced YOO-KER. Note: all “notes” in parentheses are from Beth)

Euchre is popular

across a wide area of Canada, and in the USA, especially in the North-East and Midwest, and also in the United States Navy. It is played in parts of Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and other places throughout the world. (It is VERY, VERY POPULAR with Beth’s family, and they have lots of silly extra rules/traditions which will be noted in parentheses.)

Players and Object

Euchre is a plain-trick game for four players in fixed partnerships, partners sitting opposite. (This means: four people. Two teams. Don’t sit next to your partner. Why do the games-instructions-writers need to make everything SO COMPLICATED?!?! Beth’s family rule: you must refer to your partner as “Partner” throughout the game. It builds team spirit.)

For each hand, 5 cards are dealt to each player. Object is to win at least three of the five tricks in a given hand - with an extra bonus for winning all five. (When a team wins all five tricks in a hand, Beth’s Family Tradition dictates that it’s okay to gloatingly yell “THAT’S FIVE, BABY!!!! WAY TO GO, PARTNER!!!!!!!”)

Rank of Cards

A pack of 24 cards is used consisting of A K Q J 10 9 in each of the four suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. The trump suit has 7 cards ranking from highest to lowest as follows:

Right Bower (the Jack of the trump suit)
Left Bower (the other Jack of the same color as the trump suit… ie if hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds is the second highest card for that hand)
Ace
King
Queen
Ten
Nine

The other suits have 6 or 5 cards ranking as normal: A K Q (J) 10 9. The word Bower comes from the German Bauer, which means farmer or peasant and is also a word for Jack. (Huh. I did not know that until I downloaded these instructions. I guess you learn something new every day!)

The Deal

The first dealer is selected at random. The turn to deal then rotates clockwise throughout the game. Five cards are dealt to each player in two rounds. The dealer deals clockwise, giving each player a packet of two or three cards in any order - any player who was dealt two in the first round gets three in the second and vice versa. (Why 2 then 3? Dunno. Discuss.) The dealer then turns the next card face up. This up-card is used as a basis for selecting trump suit. The remaining cards are left face-down and are not used. (This is called “the kitty.” Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…)

Making trump

This process determines the trump suit and which team are the makers - that is the team which undertakes to win three tricks. First each player in turn, beginning with the player to the dealer's left, has the option of accepting up-card's suit as the trump suit or passing. Specifically:

• The player to dealer's left may either pass or say "I order it up" (No, no, no. Say “Pick it UP!” Or “Let’s try that one, Partner!” Or “I’m feeling lucky.”)
• If the first player passes, the dealer's partner may either pass or order it up as trump suit.
• If the first two players pass, the player to dealer's right may either pass or "order up"
• If all three other players pass, the dealer may either take up the up-card, saying "I take it up", or pass by saying "over" and turning the up-card face-down.

If either of the dealer's opponents order it up or if dealer decides to take it up, the suit of the up-card becomes trump; the dealer adds the up-card to her hand and discards a card face-down.

If all four players pass, the up-card is turned face-down, and there is a second round in which players have the option to make any suit trump, other than the suit of the up-card. Again the player to dealer's left speaks first and may either pass again or name a suit. If the first player passes the second may name a suit or pass, and so on. If all four players pass a second time the cards are thrown in and the next player deals.

(Sheesh. They make it sound like choosing a trump suit for a hand takes forever. It actually takes under 30 seconds. Unless you’re playing with really indecisive people, like my **RELATIVE'S NAME DELETED TO AVOID BEING KICKED OUT OF THE WILL.**)

Going Alone

When ordering up a trump suit, a player may announce that they are playing alone. The partner of a lone player puts her cards face-down and takes no part in the play. (This is called “a loner.” When you can do this, you are awesome.)

The Play

If all four players are in the game, the play begins with the player to the dealer's left leading to the first trick. If one player is playing alone, the person to that player's left leads first. If two players are playing alone, the defender leads.

Any card may be led, and each player in clockwise order must follow suit by playing a card of the same suit as the card led if possible. A player who cannot follow suit may play any card. (But don’t throw away a good one like an Ace or King! That would be shooting yourself in the foot!!!!)

Remember that, for purposes of following suit, Left Bower is considered to belong to the trump suit and not to any other suit. The trick is won by whoever played the highest card of the suit led, unless a trump was played in which case the highest trump wins. The winner of each trick leads to the next one.

Scoring

If all four players are playing then the scores are as follows:

• If the makers win 3 or 4 tricks they score one point.
• If the makers win all 5 tricks they score two points.
• If the makers take fewer than three tricks they are said to be euchred, and the defenders score two points. (If this happens, the team that stole the hand gets to yell “EUCHRE!” and do an obnoxious dance. But if it’s too obnoxious, karma will later bite you in the butt. All these traditions, Beth’s family holds dear.)

If a member of the makers' team is playing alone and wins all 5 tricks, the team scores 4 points instead of 2 - otherwise the scores are as above. If a member of the defenders' team is playing alone and succeeds in winning at least 3 tricks, thereby euchring the makers, the defenders score 4 points instead of 2 - otherwise the scores are as above. The game is normally played to 10 points - that is, the team who first reach 10 or more points over several deals win the game. It is usual for each team to keep score using a spare 4 and 6 from the pack (as these cards are not used in the game). The cards are arranged on the table so that the number of pips showing shows the team's current score. (Later, I will teach you all the stupid songs we sing about various suits, such as “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”, etc. Have fun!)

Bottle Tree: A Fairy Tale

A bottle tree.

If you have lived in the South, you have seen them; they are not built for the North, and are found there only rarely. Too delicate. They cannot flourish where cold shatters. The climate there is not right - they are a Southern species.

Colored-glass containers, not recycled, trashed, nor broken, but instead placed carefully on wire branches, becoming a part of something new. Bottle trees are striking, but not beautiful; awkward and unnatural, but somehow arresting.

What lives in a bottle tree?

What secrets might these containers contain?

Who emptied them?

What stories now fill them?

On top of multiple other projects, I keep thinking of a legend, a story that will fall from these glass and metal branches... Bottle Tree: A Fairy Tale.

BethWEEK

As was recently teasingly pointed out to me, this blog has become more Bethmonth than Bethweek. Well, I'm going to see if I can't do something about that.

I actually do have "saved to draft" posts from the past few weeks that I just never finished or published. This is a frequent writer's ailment of mine - a combination of procrastination and self-criticism that sometimes leads me to pause and shelve something that's not-quite-polished rather than just put it out there. And while that's fine for bigger writing projects (to a point), the whole purpose of this blog was supposed to be that it would force me to write weekly, come up with some commentary to post on a regular basis. It would require me to write no matter how blocked I was, how busy, how convinced that I'm a terrible writer who will never be able to finish the current project.

The good news is, I've been writing. A lot. Not here at Bethweek, obviously - but I've been a writing machine elsewhere. So maybe I don't need this blog. But before euthanizing Bethweek, I'm going to make one more attempt to utilize this self-imposed writing commitment. Not monthly, but weekly. I'll momentarily post the last few weeks' posts, which should retroactively show up as links, with their original composition date, making it look as though I was a solid blog-poster for the month of May. If only it were so easy to retroactively smoothe over time itself, and not just a web chart of the time...

(... of course, sometimes I think we do wind up glossing over the past, and making it look less messy than it really was. A topic for a future post, perhaps? See - there's always something to write about. So whether it's mundane or fantastic, global or personal, I'm going to make the attempt to put some weekly words up here.)

Consistent posting - otherwise, the blog gets it.