2006 was a good year for me and mine, in many ways.

To all of my family near and far, to my ecclesia here and worldwide, to all of my friends new and old, close or distant:

Happy
New Year!

Hoping 2007 will be even better, for all of us...

Years ago I said that I would write a bit more about my friend Simon Brand. Even people who have been reading [tw] for that long probably don't remember anything about it, but I know some will.

In fact, an old fan of Simon and his music recently found those words and called me on it. He's trying to put more of the story together, and hoped I'd finally say a little more.

I don't have time to write the whole story: this was a friendship with a very deep, very (VERY) troubled (tormented!) and intense person. Still, I can at least provide some hints in the form of a list of "highlights," which perhaps I can return to later to add more detail.

• His arrival in Vermont

• Woodworking

• Carving

  This is a "self-therapeutic" statue that Simon carved out of a piece of firewood. It really does say a lot about his state of mind. (Note the fist, and the face.)

   

  It sits on a shelf in my office. Although the years have dulled the edges of Simon's suicide, and then Dave's and (especially) Shane's deaths eclipsed it, this angry figure glaring at me from my wall has always been able to bring the memories back for a few minutes.

  If you click on the first picture, you'll see that (in the larger version) there are three items under the carving:

  • At the back is a really bad picture of Simon taken on the trip to Florida. Darren and I agreed that although it's a bad picture, it's also a very "real" picture. Unfortunately, I can't find it at the moment, or I'd post that, too.
  • In the middle is an airmail envelope. It's a letter from Simon's wife, and it contains a cassette. He was terrified of it, and refused to open it: he was pretty sure it was his kid(s?) being prompted by "Mommy" to tell Daddy how much they missed him. (Simon and his wife were having serious problems, and were already divorced.) Again, when he left he told me to keep it... he even told me to listen to it, though I never have. The envelope remains unopened.
  • At the front is a letter he sent from England after he went home. This was shortly after Nirvana's Kurt Cobain died (which broke another piece of Simon's heart): the letter is written in the language of Bevis and Butthead, and talks about Cobain's death (along with lots of other stuff).

• The guitar

  Simon came to the U.S. with his "favorite guitar." When he left, he told me to keep it (in the meantime, he'd spent some time trying to teach me to play it). His only instructions were to "only use steel guitar strings for an electric guitar." (The guitar is not electric.)

  The boy could play, but of course anybody who knows Simon already knows that. A professional Jazz musician in the area would sometimes come to the house to visit with Trevor and Jenny Tebbs (the family with which we were living). The first time he came over while Simon was there was amazing: everyone in the house was musical (with myself at the bottom of the scale), but those two quickly fell into music-speak. That is, the mouths closed, the guitars came out, and they jammed for over an hour. Simon played circles around the other guy (who was quite good), but what I remember best was the way these two just fell into the music, and took the rest of us in with them.

The guitar is still here. :-)

• Tae Kwan Do

• Chess

• Pool (Billiards)

• Driving to Florida in a Blizzard, with Darren

• Humor (Ping Pong!)

• His family

• Return to England

• The letter

• Suicide

That's not a complete list. Perhaps more will come to me if/when I write more.

Darren and Angi Drake have been in Nepal for over a month, adopting little Rina and Ravi, brother and sister orphans that they heard about "through the grapevine" over a year ago.

They knew this was going to be a difficult path to take, but they really believed this was the path for them.

While in Nepal, the country went a little nutso... even more than usual. Huge protests and unrest, bad enough that the king imposed a curfew on the capital city of Kathmandu that started at 11:00 am! There was some rioting, some fighting between the people and the government forces. (Keep in mind that Nepal has an active Maoist insurgency, trying to overthrow the king.)

Early this week, they had the kids out on the hotel grounds when they all got watery eyes and burning throats. The letter from Angi says that Darren said, "Oh my word," and then they grabbed the kids and ran back inside. Apparently it was tear gas, drifting over from a conflict at a local engineering school.

With pressure from the US government, the king lifted the curfew for Thursday and the US embassy agreed to open long enough (with a skeleton crew) to process the three emergency (adoption) visa applications that were pending. One of them was for Ravi, their new little boy (they already had Rina's).

They got the visa, and some strong advice: get out as soon as you possibly can. Find the next plane leaving the country with four seats on it, and fill them. Apparently the embassy is worried that things are about to get a lot worse with an upcoming speech by the king on the Nepali New Year (Friday?).

Long story short: they're coming home. I've been so stressed (nay, scared) about this that I don't have words to express it, nor my relief at Angi's last letter. They just need to get through another day: they're leaving Saturday morning.

(Darren and I have had our ups and downs, but he's been one of my closest friends since I was twelve. I'm very proud of him right now.)

This weekend our ecclesia hosted a "study weekend", sort of a mini-bible-school.

Friday Night

It started Friday evening with a class for the teens, which included about 15 visitors from other New England ecclesias. The adults just did some Bible reading and discussion. Afterwards, there were refreshments (more like a small meal), and a birthday cake for Jed (who turned 30 a second time, since we missed it last year).

Saturday

Saturday morning there were two more classes, followed by lunch, with a third class in the early afternoon. Then we all went our separate ways for a few hours before meeting back at the hall for pizza (except Corinne, who had to attend a "bank-uet" for work). After pizza we did the readings, again.

Uh, hold it right there a sec. Usually, when we read together, we do it round-robin style, everybody reading five verses apiece. This time, three of us were asked if we'd each read a chapter. Our yearly reading schedule listed Nehemiah 7 as our first reading for the day, which I read from the podium.

I've read from the podium at least a hundred times, no big deal. I've presided and exhorted at least fifty times (each). I'm quite comfortable up there.

Nehemiah 7, though! This is not a chapter that's meant to be read out loud for an audience. In fact, I can't think of a less reader-friendly chapter in the entire Bible. Two-thirds of the way through I had a strong flashback to my childhood: I was standing on the stage at the Boston ecclesia, struggling mightily to recite some memory verses, wishing I could sit down and praying for it to end.

When I was finally done -- with only a couple of minor flubs, to my great surprise -- I let out a big sigh of relief before leaving the podium. Most everyone smiled or laughed, and Ken Willis said, "Seth! You're my hero!"

After the readings we watched a slideshow of Darren and Angi Drake's trip to Nepal. They're adopting two Nepalese children (siblings, a boy and a girl), and just returned from their first visit. The kids are adorable: the girl is a "girlie girl," the boy is a "little stinker" but has an infectious laugh (they had some movies with sound in the slideshow), the roads and driving are totally insane, and most of the Nepalese are poor to a degree we rarely see in the U.S.

Sunday

Sunday after meeting and Sunday School we had Yet Another Meal. By this point I was honestly tired of eating. Me. Tired of food. Can you believe it? Corinne went home early, she was too tired to stick around and was sleeping by the time I got home.

Thanksgiving: Feeding the Hungry

You'd think that she could use this week to recover... but of course this is Thanksgiving week. This year, instead of feeding the Norwich police like last year, she's feeding the homeless and hungry at the Westerly Warm Shelter... so she has to prepare meals this week for sixty to eighty people.

She's not actually cooking it all, but she is doing most of it. One or two of the turkeys are being 'farmed out' to others in the ecclesia who were willing to help, and some of the ladies at the bank are providing pies. Corinne's doing most everything else... and on top of all that, we're serving both lunch and dinner!

If there's anything left of her at the end of the day, I'll take her home, put her to bed, and hope she doesn't wake up again until Saturday morning.

Sunday afternoon, Corinne took a nice, long nap, and I went over to Gary & Ellyn's for a cookout with "whoever wants to show up with some food." (I brought a half-dozen jalapeño hamburgers, and some tortellini salad, all made by Corinne.)

A bunch of us sacked out in the living room in front of the Red Sox game while we waited for the food to cook. Thankfully, that didn't take long: watching regular season baseball on the tube is painfully boring.

After we ate, Darren challenged me to a game of chess at the table by the pool. I haven't played in a couple of years, but the only person I may have played against more often than Darren was Simon. (Simon and I played many games per day for a couple of months, Darren and I have been playing since we were teens.)

I started off well, capturing some of his key pieces and a number of pawns. He made a strong comeback, and had me on the ropes for awhile, even predicting (numerous times!) that I'd be in checkmate within two or four moves. We were frequently interrupted by people asking incredulously if we were "still playing the same game!?" My patient and completely fallacious response was that Darren takes a really long time to move. :-D Actually, in the old days I would take so long to move that he would either play another game with someone else (concurrently), or read a book!

In spite of his bold predictions, I staged my own strong comeback and nearly had the game sewn up... until I made a completely stupid move that resulted in instant checkmate. I should have used Darren's magical "undo" feature to make my bad move go away (ahem!), but instead I just conceded defeat.

After the game, Jed joined us for some frisbee in the front yard for about 45 minutes. Then we had supper, followed by more frisbee with three of the young'uns (Tommy, Tamar, and Autumn) doing very good imitations of Monkeys in the Middle. The festivities didn't end until it was almost too dark to see the frisbee about to hit you between the eyes.

All that throwing and chasing of the frisbee resulted in some really stiff, sore muscles. Monday morning, my right pec was on fire, and my right ankle hurt enough to make me wince just going down stairs. :-) It was worth it.

(Added an hour later: I'm so forgetful! One of the reasons I posted this was because Darren-the-lefty told me this morning (in an email) that his left arm was so sore he had to drive with his right.)

It's too bad we only have one vehicle. I didn't find out until later that Corinne wanted to go to the picnic after her nap, but didn't want to ask me to come get her. (There's another one, same place, next weekend...)