"Things you plan in life usually turn out to be meaningless, things you accumulate without knowing it become your real treasure."
— Thomas Adcock, "Thrown-Away Child"
The week before last, I was gifted with a warmly rewarding evening I didn’t even have on my calendar.
I was texting with the head of the Cub Scout pack my Moose Lodge sponsors — the Cub Scout pack both my boys went through, the pack where I was cubmaster for three years.
The pack will not continue in 2023 — with the COVID lockdowns we were not able to get on campus to recruit at the schools we draw from, and with the sexual abuse lawsuits against the national BSA organization, those parents we could reach were understandably hesitant.
So after 60 pears, Pack 640 will be no more. Hundreds of kids came through the pack over the decades — that adds up to hundreds of Pinewood Derby cars built by hand, thousands of nights spent camping under the stars, probably tens of thousands of badges, belt loops and arrowheads earned.
These are all life-enriching experiences that kids in our little corner won’t be as likely to have moving forward, as the nearest packs will be a couple of schools over.
So that was weighing on me — because I’ve seen first-hand how the Scouting program can positively impact kids when delivered the right way.
As we were wrapping up our text exchange, Shelley asked if was going to attend the Eagle Court of Honor that night for Brayden — one of our former Cubs.
I hadn’t heard about the event, and texted back that I didn’t want to crash — and then she replied, “Well, his mom wants you to come; she had lost your phone number.”
This was about three hours before the event started.
I got home from work, changed back into my old cubmaster uniform, and headed over to the church where the event was to be held.
Shelley’s husband, who had replaced me as cubmaster, was there. So were Brayden’s three scoutmasters, his Eagle advisor, and other volunteers who had been involved in his Scouting career.
At the table with all his Scouting memorabilia, Brayden had the Pinewood Derby cars he’d built in our pack, all his handbooks, and his Whittling Chip — signed by my wife — allowing him to carry a pocket knife to Scouting events at age 8.
When a kid comes into Cubs, we don’t know where the adventure will take them. Most kids who join Scouting stay an average of three years (similar to the numbers for youth sports, music, dance, etc.). Very few will go on to earn the Eagle rank — or the comparable ranks in Sea Scouts, Girl Scouts or Venturing. There are a lot of badges to earn, hiking miles and camping nights (or sailing days) to accumulate, leadership roles to fulfill, and a significant community project to organize and supervise.
But for those who earn their Eagle — or Quartermaster, Gold, or Summit awards — you know they’ve learned some important lessons. Perseverance. Sacrifice. Leadership.
Brayden achieved all those.
Raising the next generation is the single most important thing we do in this life — but doing so only rarely happens in the kind of well-planned-out lesson we idealize.
During all those hectic pack meetings and campouts, where I was running around trying to keep everything on track, Brayden was quietly (or not so quietly, knowing Brayden!) absorbing what the other leaders were instilling.
Many times, simply being present in our children’s lives, and providing them opportunities to explore different options for their own futures, yields rewards we never even knew we were planting.
In the Sept. 18 Lost in Cyberspace, I recalled going up in a restored World War II heavy bomber, a B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed Texas Raiders.
Tragically, Texas Raiders crashed during an airshow in Dallas this past Saturday when a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided with it. All aboard both planes were lost.
For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, World War II seemed like it had just ended. TV show and movies about that war proliferated, and the men and women who sought it were still in their prime. Many of us in the postwar generation idolized those who had fought; thus the interest in seeing vintage planes flying at airshows.
There aren’t many airplanes from that war still flying today — they surely weren’t designed or intended to be flying seven decades later. The dedication and skill involved in keeping these touchstones going is remarkable — but the loss of those dedicated volunteers reminds us anew that aviation was born and remains a risky occupation. Even when the flying is done for educational purposes.
As I wrote in last week’s Lost in Cyberspace, jazz singer / pianist / composer / educator Jeannie Cheatham had requested I introduce her at her induction to the San Diego Music Hall of Fame on Veteran’s Day.
Well, I woke up 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning unable to breathe due to a violent cough I couldn’t shake. Pulled on a pair of jeans and drove myself to the E.R. — after a nose swab and a chest x-ray, the doctor met with me and gave the verdict: Flu. And not a mild, 24-hour bug, either. This year’s variant generally lasts 5-7 days.
And so I was unable to join her for a much-deserved honor in her adopted hometown.
I was there in spirit, and by all accounts the San Diego Music Hall of Fame ceremony was a wonderful celebration of a city’s musical heritage.
If anyone deserves to be celebrated for her contributions to this city’s cultural heritage, it’s Jeannie.
“Season of Blood”
By Jeri Westerson
“The Deepest Grave”
By Jeri Westerson
After a bit of a break, I picked up two more entries in Jeri Westerson’s series of Crispin Guest mysteries.
Westerson herself describes the Guest books as “medieval noir” — set as they are in 14th Century London.
Guest is entirely fictional, as are the cases he takes as “The Tracker” — but the historical events happening the background are all drawn from real life.
The premise of Guest is that he was a rich nobleman, a knight who chose badly during a family feud when King Edward the Third died. Vouched for by his adopted brother, Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), Guest escapes execution — but is stripped of his title and lands, and must now earn his keep to stay alive.
Prohibited from carrying a weapon, Guest finds himself solving some minor crimes in London that the royal sheriffs could not — and also finds that people of means are willing to pay a modest fee for these services.
Westerson does her research into what life in medieval London was like — the food the working class ate, the clothes they wore, they jobs they held. This series does the best job of simply immersing modern readers into medieval England of any other series I’ve encountered outside Brian Jaques’ Redwall fantasy series.
But where Jacques’ books are a cross between “Watership Down” and “The Hobbitt” (the characters are all anthropomorphized woodland creatures with grand, epic adventures), Westerson is more Philip Marlowe set in an age before cigarettes and electricity.
I am intentionally reading them in order, and “Season of Blood” is the 10th in the series (there are 15 in total, as Westerson has wrapped up the series to move on to new projects). The story opens with Crispin realizing he is being followed as he walks home. When he confronts his stalker, he learns that she, too, is a refugee from the royal court, and she wants to hire him. But before he can learn the particulars, a knock on his door brings a dying monk into his living quarters — and his new client has disappeared.
As always, Westerson ties everything up — not always in a neat, Disneyesque happily ever after ending, but a logical, satisfying conclusion.
“The Deepest Grave” is the 11th book in the series — and the only really macabre one so far. A priest from a small parish on the outskirts of London reports that the recently buried in his graveyard and coming back to life, and dragging their coffins out into the fields at night.
A former love interest plays a role in a secondary case he is working — but is it really a second case?
As always, Crispin’s apprentice tracker, Jack Tucker, continues to grow into a young man — starting a family of his own while still serving as an indispensable resource for Crispin.
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