If true, this is hard case
A former Kenai Peninsula veteran was indicated last week for committing fraud instead of sending “Boxes to Heroes,” the name of his project. Francis Roach is accused of soliciting donations for boxes of goodies to be sent to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of going to the post office, he reportedly went to the bank and deposited it all for himself. From the $140,000 collected, Roach allegedly made his house payments, bought his groceries. If it all bears out as true and Roach is convicted of this crime, this will stand as one of the sadder stories of the year. A veteran ought to have been the last one to commit a fraud like this.

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it – if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same redbreasts that we used to call “God’s birds” because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
These words were written more than 150 years ago by George Eliot in the “Mill on the Floss.” Is she expressing a sentiment people in our edge of the millennium can easily relate to? I think so. Those thoughts in spring when the familiar comes back, when the birds return and we long to greet them like returning friends and family.
Eliot was talking about a feeling from childhood in the well-practiced ritual of connection between the natural world and the self, how being and observing bonds us to landscapes. Later in the fall, as it all comes undone, as the leaves fall down and the light lessens and cold drives the birds south, a connection is still there in a matching grief. But now is the time of jubilation for the youthful days of the season, one we might notice more ardently after a record-breaking winter of snow trials and tribulations.
How useful the Victorian authors are for reminding us of the drama in simply greeting our seasons. Eliot was a poet and comedic writer on a scale as grand as anything Charles Dickens wrote, that other melodramatic Victorian. I found “Mill on the Floss” at the Homer Public Library’s book sale and thought I ought to buy it, much in the same spirit as one feels while standing in the oatmeal aisle at the grocery store, pondering the better merits of its nutrition over the guilty possibilities of bacon and eggs. In one of my college lit courses, I had read it and remembered only vague things about it, probably because I had to rush and stumbled on archaic words I couldn’t understand. Now was my chance to do right by the thing, in buying it and attempting it again.
It turns out the book is no less enjoyable than bacon and eggs, and highly nutritious to boot. Eliot has me laughing about poor Maggie and feeling her horror, all by turns. Then, I look up from its pages and notice what a different world I live in, yet somehow not so. How universal certain experiences stand in place while time turns around them. How seasons are remembrances. How landscapes rest tantamount to love of dear people who have inhabited our lives. How for all the changes wrought by technology and a complicated no-longer innocent age, there is still a field, a sea shore, a bird, a flower to inspire peace.
And for whatever complaints we might heap up in a towering stack – the corruption of an economic system, the brutality of our wars, the sorry plight of many peoples, Eliot can outdo some of those. Maggie’s biggest problem was that she was born a girl. She was smarter than her brother, Tom, but for him, the world was spread out like a red carpet, or least it seemed so. For her, there would be no education outside of the few books she could grab ahold of, but a rigid life of conforming to fashions and lady-like actions, to be meek for her so-called superiors – men. Poverty and horror awaited a back-sliding woman if she failed in allowing the superior beings to protect her.
Not too different from what the Grand Old Party wants for American girls, but hey, in Eliot’s day, those men had the say. We have today, a time when, at least in this country, women can make their own decisions.
Thanks to her writings, I am reminded of my own many precious privileges. I am reminded of my archive of springs when the landscape remembers itself to me and I was but a piece of it. I then feel such gratitude for the manner in which the season rides in like an eraser, replacing winter’s cold memory with a new scene, an ancient, clean-scented thing like a sheet fresh from the clothesline. Then, I can utter to myself: Oh, spring. So glad you made it back.

Sue Lewis is a marvel. At 100 years of age, she still gets up every morning and puts on her red lipstick. She finds a pair of earrings and puts them on. In her wheelchair she “walks” herself down to the cafeteria and gets herself a cup of coffee, and she pulls up to her table. At the table she is joined by her friends, Lois, who is 94 and Nadine, 95. They talk about anything from the day’s news to the goings on around the Homer Senior Center.
“Use or you lose it,” she has said many times. At first, it was in reference to walking, when I met her as a spry 93 year old a few years ago.
“You have to use your legs, or lose your ability to use them. You have to keep your mind active,” she said.
She was using a cane back then, and lived as far from the lunchroom as a person could in the Friendship Terrace complex – at the far end of the second floor. She liked it there because it meant she was going to get her walking in, one way or another. Every now and then, she would consent to letting me hold her arm or her hand.
Later, she took to the wheelchair. Now, she lives closer to the lunchroom. “No, don’t push me,” she said. “This is how I get my ‘walking’ in.” Using a banister that lines the hallway to her room, she scoots along.
Sue generally has interesting books in her living room. They might be mystery or romance or a nonfiction work because her interest is broad. “Books are good friends,” she says. Two of the night stands she and her husband built 40 or more years ago – replica’s of period pieces.
The daily newspaper is there, too. Nadine has a subscription and when she is finished reading it, she brings it down for Sue. A lifetime of thrift continued on.
On Monday, the day of her 100th birthday, she hadn’t wanted a big fuss. That didn’t stop others from wanting to make a big deal out of her: a bright big cake, balloons and fan fare. On Friday, she had told me she doesn’t think turning 100 is “anything special.” I had called to tell her I would be to visit on Saturday afternoon. “I’ll look forward to that,” she said, warmth in her voice.
I like to think about Sue. She was born March 19, 1912 near the little town of Clear Water, Wash. to farming parents who had immigrated. She spoke German until after World War I, when prejudice against that country rose. Her dad bought one of the first Model T Fords, but in her youth walking was the primary mode of transportation. They raised their own food. “I can’t remember getting food from the grocery store,” she said. In 1930, she graduated from Sedro Woolley High at the top of her class, and with her scholarship went to Washington State University in Pullman. She figured home economics to be a good bet for job security during the Great Depression.
“Every penny counted during the Depression,” she said. “I found out what was wanted, because even with a college education many couldn’t get jobs, unless there was a demand for it,” she said.
Teaching home economics would be in demand.
“Back then, you had to learn how to cook and sew,” she said. “If you wanted anything canned, you had to can it yourself. It was vital to sew and cook in order to live.”
Of the 12 Stroebel children, 11 graduated from college.
“That was due to my mother,” Sue said. “Her philosophy was that any material possession can be taken away from you, but what you had in your head couldn’t.”
Each of the older siblings, after graduating, helped the next in line attend. Sue was helped by an older sister, and in turn, helped younger sister Lizzie go to college.
Through the years, Sue married, had a son, taught school, worked for the Red Cross and then retired. Her health has been good to her, she said. “I am just lucky that way, I guess.”
Her attitude toward life is practical, but optimistic. Perhaps that is the secret to her longevity. Sue says she gets the blues every now and then, but she works her way out of it. “You have to control your thoughts. It’s work, but you have to,” she says.
Sue has been asked the secret to longevity so many times, she doesn’t know how to answer. Yet, I think if I could spell it out from observation, I would say her secret to a long life is her “self.” She’s amazing in her fiercely guarded independence, her sense of self discipline and her continued interest in the events and people around her. Sue takes each day as it comes, rain, snow or shine. She is loved and she loves back.
Happy, happy 100th birthday, Sue. It is a pleasure and an honor to know you.