Peace, Grace, and Jazz!

{Another in a series about “room.” Forty days=forty rooms. Maybe.}

By pure luck, this elderly writer has medical consults three days in a row. That got me thinking about doctors’ offices and examination rooms. Of course, while we probably spend more time in waiting rooms than in the actual presence of the physician in the examination room, that smaller and more private room is far more interesting to write about.

For one thing, it’s scarier. That’s why our blood pressure goes up as we wait for the grand entrance of the one in charge. The white coat syndrome? It’s real. I found this on the website of the Cleveland Clinic, so it has to be accurate: If you have white coat hypertension, you may feel nervous when you get to your healthcare provider’s office. This nervous feeling may get worse when you go into the exam room and get a blood pressure measurement. Routine check up, blood draw, test results? No matter. And little reason for the nurse to take your blood pressure at that point. It won’t be accurate.

You’ve already been waiting for a time in what I call the “sick room” with all those other people seeking medical attention. Now, you’ve been called into your own little space for “vitals” and some preliminary questioning before the actual physician enters. Am I safe at home? What meds are you taking? (Good grief! I took fifteen minutes to write it all down on the clipboard before I came in here. Don’t you people share?) All that is kind of like the opening act at a concert that leads to the main event. Except no lasers and smoke machines. The nurse exits, and you wait. Maybe there’s time to check your Facebook or email. Or, you just check out the room itself.

Yesterday I noticed two simple chairs, a short stool with wheels, a computer, some pictures relating to the doc’s specialty (so he/she can point out where your problem lies), a counter with various routine medical supplies, a receptacle for disposing of truly dangerous stuff like used gloves and syringes, and the examination table, covered in that roll of paper you assume (hope!) they change between patients. And the sink. On the wall over that table is a sign warning that children shouldn’t be left alone on the table. Oh, that never occurred to me, but it did to the lawyers.

In another such room I will occupy this week, there will be helpful models of anatomical bits, one “normal” and one or two signalling problems. You’ve probably seen illustrative posters of muscles and arteries and body parts on those four walls surrounding you as you wait for the doctor. Better to check email. Sometimes you’ll see diplomas and certificates, as if to prove the person treating you is qualified to do so. Except one time the diploma belonged to long-retired doc who didn’t bother taking it home.

Much of my time in these rooms is focused on check-ups. Just tracking how I’m doing with BP, skin, PSA levels, the shoulder issue. Once those physicians have finished their exams and answered the questions I remembered to ask, my blood pressure goes down, I follow the arrows to the exit, maybe make another appointment for the magic six month window, and head for the car.

I’m treating this lightly, I know. But sometimes once the main event arrives, the news is far from routine. That one visit to the examination room leads to another and another and maybe to the hospital eventually. I once got a troubling result from a routine blood test, and my doctor (my “PCP”) referred me to an oncologist for further testing. Frightening. A couple of weeks later, after a further test, Joan and I nervously moved from the waiting room to the exam room. The specialist entered. He wore a sport coat. He explained that if there had been a serious “issue,” he’d have come in dressed in a physician’s white coat. “But I have good news! All’s well.” Turns out that the initial blood test was an anomaly; there was some problem with the blood draw, maybe something with the test tube? Anyway, the doc sent us away and said he didn’t want to see us again. The car was full of sighs of relief and prayers of gratitude on the way home.

We’ve certainly spent lots of time in those small rooms, especially as we’ve aged. And we are blessed to have received better than average care, as well as insurance that has kept us both healthy and solvent. Not everyone has access to the good care we receive. All of us, dear reader, have to keep that in mind, and do what we can to make healthcare available and affordable to everyone.

Everyone.

{If you are late to the series I’m writing during Lent 2024; I’ll fill you in on the theme this year: “room.”}

Yesterday, I wrote about a seminary professor’s office, a room I found unusually dark for such space. Today, a different kind of dark room, the kind where photos come through chemicals and rinses and special papers…and darkness. This one was in the TUB. The Titan Union Building, Westminster College, Pa. I spent many hours in that room, alone, in the dark.

Of course it wasn’t totally dark; there was a red light that illuminated one’s work space without ruining the processing of black and white film. The college newspaper and yearbook photographers not only documented campus events with school cameras or their own, but deveoped the film and printed the photos on site. That was especially helpful for the weekly “Holcad” newspaper. Film processing by mail would have delayed publication for a week or more in our small campus town. But working in that small basement space, we could take pictures at a Wednesday afternoon event and the photos would appear in the Friday paper. I know this sounds so primitive to generations used to the instant digital photography that even phones can accomplish, but back then (the early 1960s) the smelly, dark, and often dank space filled with film cannisters, trays, chemicals, an enlarger, and strings holding drying prints was both a necessity and a creative outlet.

I got my first camera for Christmas one year. I might have been 11 or 12. I graduated from one simple camera to others more sophisticated, but always very affordable for a kid with an after school job. By college time, I had a 35mm rangefinder camera, a Taron Unique. See? Not exactly a Nikon or Hasselblad. When I was signing up for extracurricular activities, I volunteered to take pictures for the “Holcad” and also for the yearbook, the “Argo.”

The darkroom was just off the Holcad office space and an upperclassman (we used male terminology back then) showed me the ropes. Well, the darkroom equipment. I had had some limited experience developing film back home, but the school darkroom was a revelation! We could print on different papers, blow up photos for detail, creatively crop our images, and then, the best part…the work would be published for all to see. And to ignore, for the most part. Most readers took the illustrations for granted, though on rare occasions someone might tell us, “Hey! Great shot of the game last week!”

My pictures appeared in all four yearbooks of my college career, as well as in countless weekly campus papers. I had a title: “Photo Editor.” Now, decades later, those of us who survive (!) may look at those photos with fondness, finding memories unlocked and re-lived: our college years, the games, the social events, academics, classmates.

In my junior year, I was named co-editor of the Argo. Senior Peggy Baird and I were responsible for the annual record of campus life, with Peggy doing print content and me providing photo illustrations. It was a proud moment. And very short-lived. I was in the process of flunking out. And leaving Peggy holding the bag. I mean, the book.

My studies suffered due to my poor stewardship of time. I was doing radio on the college station in addition to the hours spent shooting photos and developing and printing film. I’ve said that my desk, books, and classnotes were all in “upstairs” rooms and the radio station and darkroom were in the basements of college buildings. The twain didn’t meet. My studies hit bottom. During my first two years of college, I went on academic probation twice. And in my junior year, strike three came.

I certainly questioned my call to ministry when I had to leave my studies. Without my academic deferment, I was nearly drafted into the Army during the Viet Nam conflict, but escaped that situation, barely. I flunked again, this time my physical. Joan and I had been dating, and that semester away from school put a hold on our developing romance. I had begun a Greek class in my junior year, in preparation for seminary, so the prof kindly sent me assignments to do at home. That didn’t work. What worked was a temporary job my Dad got me at IBM for the months away from school. I didn’t see my future there, and was determined to mend my ways if given another chance.

I always share this predicament with youth groups. Yes, kids, I flunked out of college. I’m way past being embarrassed by it. It happened. It was a turning point in my life, and after a semester out of school, I was re-admitted and stayed clear of the darkroom. I may have done some more radio, but limited my extracurriculars to that one activity. The Argo got published without me, and the Holcad had other camera-toting students. And I studied. I’d love to say that I became a successful scholar that last semester. No. Just my average self. Missing that semester meant not graduating with Joan and my class. But after two courses in summer school, the college mailed me a diploma. (I took the equivalent of two semesters of German in those twelve weeks, plus an audio-visual course. Guess which came in handy later?)

Next would come three years of seminary. There was a darkroom there too. Someplace. I never asked where it was. Didn’t want to know.

And here I am.

{Lent 2024 brings the opportunity to write. I could write every day I suppose. I have lots to say and if you read these entries, you know I can be verbose, use too many parenthetical interruptions, and love commas. Nonetheless (or all the more), [told ya] I am writing on the broad topic of “room.”}

In the weeks before leaving college and driving 399 miles to Union Seminary in Richmond, I found in the school bookstore a volume entitled The Kingdom of God. I noticed that the author John Bright was a professor at Union and I’d be sitting in his classroom before long. When I enrolled in my three-year course of study at seminary, I found that Bright had also authored THE resource for Old Testament studies anywhere: A History of Israel.

Sure enough, I was his student. OK, it was more like, I was a student among others in his classroom for two courses. (“His student” implies a special relationship. Far from it.) John Bright was a sturdy man, a challenging lecturer with a deep, gravel-pit voice. When I took his course in the Prophet Jeremiah, using another of his remarkable books The Anchor Bible Commentary on Jeremiah as the text, Bright became the voice of the prophet. When Bright’s throaty vocal chords intoned Jeremiah’s words, we sat up and listened…and took some notes. If I were to hear the literal voice of God someday, I’d mistake it for Bright’s.

If you think the room I write of today is that second floor lecture room in the seminary’s Watts Hall, you’d be mistaken. I write of a room more mysterious, just down the corridor. Before we enter it, I have to confess that I was a terrible student of the Old Testament, or as it is referred to these days, “the Hebrew Scriptures.” I was weak in that Biblical material in college studies, and downright anemic in seminary course work. Maybe there were just too many books in the OT. Too many details. Too many kings, prophets, and years. I took the minimum required courses in that field. The introductory survey course was inescapable, and every student had to take Hebrew in a short January term. As a third year student, having to have one more course in OT, I signed up for Bright’s “Jeremiah.” I loved Dr. Bright’s lectures, tolerated the readings, and flunked more tests than I passed.

Given the struggles I faced in Bright’s classes, in the hallway one day I asked to speak with the professor about my awful grades. He gave me an appointment, and I knocked on his office door. And I was invited into that room. I felt I was entering something akin to the Holy of Holies, behind the curtain through which mortals do not enter. The door opened, and there stood Dr. John Bright in the doorway of a darkened, cigarette smoke-filled study. That unsettling classroom lecture voice spoke surpringly gently. More startling was what the man said. “Come on in, Jeff.”

“Jeff!” Until that very moment, I had been “Mr. Kellam.” Almost all our seminary relationships were quite formal. We were all “Mr.” or “Miss” or, in a rare instance back then, “Mrs.” And calling a professor by his or her first name would be like calling your Nana “Helen,” or your mother “Bev.” It just wasn’t done! But Bright had invited me into that Watts Hall room of his calling me by my first name. And more quietly than I had heard him speak in two years of seminary life. “Jeff.”

I don’t recall much of the detail of what the room looked like, what the furniture was, or how the light beamed from window to floor. It was dark in there. That I remember. And the book shelves, and the various papers and files askew on desk and floor. I think we must have settled into heavy, comfortable chairs. I explained my difficulties in grasping the content of readings and lectures. Bright was very pastoral in his attitude toward one of his worst students. He was grateful I had sought his help, and would be happy to work with me on any further assignments. If I had had shaky knees upon entering his sacred space, I left…comforted. Relieved. Jeremiah 26:48 says, “As for you, have no fear, my servant Jacob. [or, Jeff!], says the Lord, for I am with you.” The previous verse had said, “Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease…” Jeff, too.

Well, not quite ease, but some less fear as that semester rolled on. My visit to Bright’s office did soothe my soul more than a little. And I passed, barely.

I hasten to add a note of victory here, and that I owe to John Bright as well. As seminary came to a close after three years, those of us who were headed toward ordination as ministers in the Presbyterian Church were required to take (and pass) standard exams in various fields of study, including an exegetical exam of a Biblical passage in either Greek or Hebrew. Now, my Greek was OK, but my Hebrew was, as you might expect, really weak. However, one of the passages we were to choose from in this “open book” written exam (either one in Greek or one in Hebrew) was a passage that John Bright had previously dealt with in class! And I still had my notes. So, I used that classwork to write the exam. (Yes, totally legally and ethically!)

Unlike some of my classmates, even ones with far better academic records than mine, I passed all my ordination exams on the first try. And received a letter of surprise from my home presbytery which was to ordain me. [A paraphrase: needless to say, Jeffrey, you have given us some concern throughout your academic career…but we are so pleased you have passed these exams!]

Though I long ago sold my Hebrew Bible, John Bright’s textbooks still sit on my shelf within reach. But the main thing is, I can still imagine that darkened room and a voice that called me “Jeff.”

Being gentle works!

{Another in the exciting, sometimes explosive series of revelations about “rooms.” But seriously, folks, I’m writing each day during Lent, and exploring some 40 rooms.}

When I was a kid, my Mom’s parents lived just two blocks away from our Liberty Ave. home in Endicott. As a very small child, before my three sisters had been born and when my younger brothers were toddlers, my grandparents would have me over for a day’s visit now and then. It provided Mom a little respite…a little. They were fun days for me there on Loder Avenue. I had some tin soldiers (yes, tin…not plastic) to play with, and cool streamlined 1940s toy cars. Grandma, who had been an elementary school teacher, would read to me, play the piano, teach me songs, and make baked bean sandwiches for lunch. In that kitchen, the radio was playing “Ma Perkins” or Don McNeill’s “Breakfast Club.” Another memory flash: raw clams to swallow whole.

And speaking of the kitchen there, it was the first time I encountered a “nook.” My grandparents had their morning meal in a small alcove off the kitchen, a “breakfast nook” they called it. (When their house went on the market a couple of years ago, Joan and I took the tour and that was one of the things I looked for. But an expansion had replaced the nook with an actual room. Another part of my childhood lost.)

A nook is defined as a small, secluded spot, or alcove. The word’s derivation is unknown, except that it has something to do with “four-cornered.” It’s not quite the “cubby hole” I remember from our earlier childhood home. That was like a boxed-in space in our bedroom, maybe three feet off the floor, probably meant to be for linen storage. But I could crawl into it and listen to my crystal set (my cigar-boxed first radio!) and feel very secure. Safe. Secluded. Away.

Recently as Lent began, Joan knew I was typing and said, “You should write about your nook.” Yes, I have a nook. I’m in it right now. When the house was designed, the builder intended a space just inside the front door to be a roomy entrance way. Then he added some book shelves. I liked that idea. But then the specs changed and he reverted to just a larger coat closet. Wait! Please put the shelves back, I begged. Well, requested. And he did.

When we moved in, we discovered there was space enough for my computer desk, lots of books, my audio gear, Godzilla (the way-out-of-proportion house plant), and me. Soon, we called it my nook. Small, secluded, away from the main living area, far from Joan’s quilt room and from the kitchen where snacks might beckon if I were closer. This is not an escape, you understand, but a space for creativity, writing (occasional sermons still, and blogs), communications (email, Facebook), and audio/video adventures. I record my weekly jazz show in my nook, edit vacation videos (yes, dear Joan, I’m way behind on the Ireland trip), and record the “Spirit of Jazz” podcast with Bill Carter. Next major nook-project: producing three short videos for the local Council of Churches.

Being just inside the front door, I can’t exactly hide here. But it is my space. Joan has her quilt room, and I my nook. In a small home, we are blessed with lots of space in common, but some room of our own too, dwelling places where we both create good things from messes, making the best of retirement. At home.

I hope you too have (or can make) some personal space, for leisure, productivity, or just being. Can you make room?

As early as my elementary school years, I was a movie fan. Dad and Mom took the family often, and also dropped us off at the local movie houses for “kiddie matinees” which featured westerns, comedies, and cartoons. Sometimes, the “adult” movies weren’t quite appropriate for us little kids. I still remember the scene from “The Naked Jungle” where “army ants” covered the bad guy’s body and chewed him up. But there were also the “Francis the Talking Mule” series, “Ma and Pa Kettle,” and good old Abbott and Costello. [I keep wanting to call them “films,” just to vary the nouns; but “films” really sounds too sophisticated for those B- (or C-?) screen gems.]

There I was in maybe 3rd grade reading the movie ads in the daily newspaper. It was a big deal to me when the Vestal Theatre added stereophonic sound. And when the square screens became “our giant panoramic screen!” “Shane” was an early entry in that category. In 1955 CinemaScope had arrived at the theater right around the corner from our Liberty Ave. house! Dad and I took the three minute walk to the State to see “The Robe.” When we got home later, Mom asked how it was, and Dad replied, “The curtain kept opening and opening,” so wide was that screen. Forty feet wide, and curved! And surround 6-track magnetic stereophonic sound. The theaters at that time were threatened by television, so came up with wide screens, 3-D, and stereo to combat the emerging presence of free movies on small TV screens.

So, the room I write about today is the movie auditorium, where stories played out on the big screen as we sat in the dark eating Good and Plenty licorice. And I have to specify that I mean our local, neighborhood theaters, not the massive, gaudy movie palaces of the big cities. No, I mean places like the Elvin, just down West Main Street from the State. The Elvin wasn’t much to look at, inside or out. The auditorium exterior looked like a huge add-on shed. The interior had little design beyond two-tone brown walls and maybe 800 seats. But in the dark, it served its purpose. The Elvin had lots of Saturday matinee fare, including those “cartoon carnivals” with fifteen (or more!) Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons, plus a Gene Autry western, and maybe a Three Stooges comedy thrown in. (I still wonder why “sepia” was the chosen “color” for the old westerns.)

The owner Mrs. Ammerman took our tickets after we’d bought our popcorn and Jujyfruits. “Can I work here someday?” I’d ask. She promised that when I was older, she’d think about it.

So if the Elvin was our Saturday escape, the State gave us a little more to think about on Sundays. Sure, it too had the occasional kids’ matinee, but I remember it more for the Sunday afternoons there, and more adult fare, like “Marty,” “Demetrius and the Gladiators” (the sequel to “The Robe”), “Friendly Persuasion,” even “War and Peace.” The State had a 600 seat auditorium, lovely art deco design, and oddly, the candy/popcorn counter was inside the auditorium. (That meant you could get a refill on popcorn without missing the movie.) Over the front entrance was a glittery sign that boasted “One of the Nation’s Outstanding Theaters for CinemaScope.” Another sign on the side of the building claimed it was a “Theater of Distinction.”

Those neighborhood movie houses were my weekend retreats. I often had siblings in tow, giving my parents some respite. But I also went alone, to the Elvin one afternoon and to the State the next. I wasn’t much into the movie stars, more the stories. The dramas (“From Here to Eternity”), musicals (Silk Stockings” even had a song about stereophonic sound!), comedies (Martin and Lewis), and sci-fi (“Forbidden Planet”) — all took me away from the neighborhood bullying I got from classmates Bucky and Mervin for being an Icabod Crane look-alike (thanks to the Disney portrayal), from minor family drama and school struggles…none of it traumatic, just the typical yearning for something outside one’s imagined or real travails of adolescence. During the Depression, those huge movie palaces were designed to help people escape to Moorish gardens, Italian villages, and other dreamscapes that freed 3000 fellow prisoners of near or utter poverty.

But in small towns, we had the State, the Elvin, the Vestal.

The Elvin was eventually torn down to make way for a bank. The State was rebranded simply “The Cinema” before meeting the wrecking ball and being replaced by a chain drug store.

I’m sorry for the decline of those neighborhood cinemas. Walking to the movies, affordable tickets and cheap popcorn, finding the place full of friends and neighbors, knowing the manager, seeing films change every weekend. Where I live now, there is still one neighborhood independent movie house, founded as a vaudeville venue maybe a century ago, now still showing first-run movies. The main auditorium is largely unchanged, but the projection is digital and the sound surrounds. Years ago, the guy who owns/operates it added two smaller rooms so he could expand the offerings. You don’t know if you’ll see your chosen film on the big screen with stereo sound until the evening’s tickerts are sold. The movie with the most tickets goes into the original auditorium, and the other films go into the smaller screening rooms. I have to admit, sometimes I just stay home and watch movies with better sound in my living room. I feel a little guilty.

Has this been an exercise in nostalgia? Probably. But do we not still need room to escape now and then? Maybe Lent itself is a kind of escape. Maybe Jesus’ forty day wilderness journey was an escape, and one that paid off brilliantly. Maybe the Spirit will give us that push, if now, maybe then.

{Lent 2024 arrived and I determined to write about rooms for forty days. Why not?}

I have written previously in this Peace, Grace, and Jazz blog of my annual monastery retreats in the early years of my ministry. Each summer, the Guestmaster at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA would welcome me and five other guests for a Monday through Friday spiritual sojourn in the Trappist guesthouse near the banks of the Shenandoah River. Fr. Stephen was a bear of a man, with gentle voice, warm sense of humor, and lots of stories about his Cistercian (Benedictine) vocation. I was usually the only “Protestant” in the house, but Stephen continually stressed the historic hospitality that followers of the Benedictine Order offered.

The guesthouse back then had been a re-purposed tenant farmhouse about a half mile away from the main abbey buildings, yet still within the gated confines of the cloister. Each guest had a small bedroom on the second floor, generally furnished with just a cot-like bed, a simple desk, a modest bureau, and maybe a closet. We were free to set our own schedules, that is, there was no requirement that we participate in the daily monastic routines or offices. Breakfast was on our own, but lunch and dinner were served in the guesthouse dining room at a certain time. I recall that lunch was fairly simple, and that dinner was prepared in the main monastery kitchen. Even though the monks were vegetarian, guests often had meat for the main meal.

One of the few rules of the house was that we guests were to clean up after each meal. The guestmaster was our welcomer, guide, and spiritual director, not our kitchen servant. You might be wondering about the Trappist vow of silence and how that impacted the fellowship around the table. Father Stephen had no problem conversing with us during the day, if there was a need or desire on our part. While we guests were requested to observe silence during our stay (to avoid intrusion on the silent retreat of fellow guests), meal time was intentionally a time to share, and Stephen’s presence with us at table guided conversation and story-telling. After the meal, we bussed the table, and gathered in the kitchen to wash and dry dishes and put them away.

Now, there was a dishwasher in the kitchen, but Stephen said it was off-limits. He insisted that our communal time around the kitchen sink did more to build community than quiet living room conversations or chomping on roast beef in the dining room. Whose turn to wash and whose to dry? The daily ritual of “doing the dishes” was a sign of servanthood as well as fellowship. We served one another not only by passing the plates (family style) around the dining room table, but by washing one another’s plates and flatware and mugs and glasses, so the next day we could start fresh, meal-wise.

It was so simple. It took less than twenty minutes. We continued meal-time conversations, got to know one another better, and grew into a family of sorts by the end of our week-long stay.

About the time I was enjoying those monastery retreats, someone made a movie called “The Jesus Roast.” It was a comedic take on Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. I know that sounds sacreligious, and at first viewing it did seem odd to hear Jesus’ closest friends “roasting” him, that is, jesting with him about their three years together. But then, that’s what true friends do sometimes: they are painfully honest, they cover their uncertainties with humor, and even at a memorial gathering, people laugh to shield or treat their sorrow. So, Jesus’ friends said the kind of things most of us would hold in. There was comedy at the table. And when the last supper was over, the Jesus whom we know to have been a foot-washer as his friends first arrived, took a towel, cleared the table , and washed the dishes. His disciples watched in discomfort.

Cleaning up after one another may not have been one of the Commandments or subject of the sermon on the mount, but doesn’t it flow from those teachings? And isn’t it a good practice for Lent?

{Lent 2024…and my Lenten discipline is to write each day (which, I hasten to add, I don’t usually do; who has time?). I chose the theme of “room.” And on we go…}

Writing of “room” or its plural, it seems natural that a classroom would pop up in the mix. But which one? I could count dozens from kindergarten through seminary, and beyond into my teaching years. But no classroom had a teacher with a more colorful name than the one where Mrs. Sagendorf held forth.

It was fifth grade. And a new school for me in a new neighborhood. I had spent my first school years in a nearby village, but with the move across the Susquehanna to Endicott, I walked three blocks to the George Washington School. When it had been called the Loder Avenue School, my mother had gone there. And her mother had taught first (or second?) grade there. But for me, it was all new. Maybe you’ve experienced that feeling too. A strange (to you) building, full of kids you’d never seen before, and teachers whose reputations you had no way of knowing.

Mrs. Sagendorf must have seemed 80 years old to this 11 year-old kid. I recall her as fairly short, with gray frizzy hair out of control. In fact, her complexion may have been a bit gray too. A stern, sharp-featured face that was nonetheless capable of a gentle smile. And it turns out, a compassionate soul.

First day. You know, some memories remain fresh even 68 years later! Oddly, I recall my very first day in Mrs. Sagendorf’s class. We played a game where a few students stood in front of the class and we had to make a guess that asked, “Was it you, [name]?” The detail of the actual game is cloudy, but this is firm in my memory banks: I asked, “Was it you, Cyril?” And some students chuckled.

“I’m not Cyril; I’m Don,” the boy replied, smiling. Oh oh. My face was red. My first public 5th grade goof. Mrs. Sagendorf was so kind to quickly move from my momentary embarrassment a good-natured reminder that being the new boy in class it would take some time to learn all those new names. Now, that wasn’t a traumatic episode in my fifth grade life. It was just a plain old episode. But that I recall it so clearly…well, it must have meant something to be so firmly imprinted as a permanent memory. Don would become one of my best friends in that school. And two students who were very understanding that day remain in my circle of friends even now! Jill Clark and Jackie Greene.

(Jackie just told me that Mrs. Sagendorf’s students bought her a small bird from a local pet store for her birthday. A lot of affection there.)

Mrs. Sagendorf was quite a comfort the day I bit through my lower lip doing somersaults in gym class. Never anything close to an athlete, I was awkward even doing the most basic sporty stuff like tumbling. In the gym, Coach Conwicke had us fifth graders somersaulting on thick rubber mats, and as I landed, my teeth intercepted my lips. I bled. And I hurt. And the coach sent me back to our empty classroom for some first aid. I was trying so hard to not cry. Mrs. Sagendorf showed such concern, offered comfort, and assured me it was OK to shed some tears before the other kids came back to the room. She delivered me to the infirmary.

Many of my classmates stayed together through ninth grade, and merged with students from the other junior high school in the village as we entered tenth grade and high school. Lots of classrooms in between and after, but Mrs. Sagendorf’s room was one best remembered. I regret that it never occurred to me to thank her for her kindness. You know, one school year leads to another, one class yields to the next, and teachers are sometimes just taken for granted. We move on leaving them behind. Maybe this remembrance will atone. Anyone you need to thank– while you can?

Oh, and with gratitude to Mrs. Sagendorf, it was under her tutelage that I was first published. See the clipping from the Lode Star yearbook. I wrote that with many prompts from my teacher. But look! I’m still reading and writing real good, smiling as I type.

{Lent 2024…I write each day as a Lenten discipline, and have chosen the word “room” to consider for these forty days. Yesterday, I wrote of having my “own room” in our big Liberty Avenue house. But there was a lot of traffic through there. So I moved. There’s my bed in the old space. Note sisters 1 & 3, brother 2, dog 3, shortwave radio, and an alarm clock. And inexplicably, an accordian. See why I had to move?}

I guess it was about the time I hit adolescence that my Dad thought I should have a more private room. The one I had called mine before that was a major thoroughfare in the Kellam household. To get to the cellar, my brothers’ room, Mom’s various work rooms, and one of the three bathrooms in the house, one had to pass through my bedroom. So that I could have more privacy to deal with acne and geometry, Dad’s solution involved that aforementioned bathroom. He’d convert it into a small bedroom for the eldest Kellam kid. Me.

So the plumbing was sealed off, sink and toilet removed, along with the ancient claw-foot bathtub that sat (or did it stand?) near the window. The floor was repaired, walls papered (with a boy’s sports theme), and a small bed went on the tub’s claw-foot-print. Dad built a desk onto one wall, my study carrel. The desk was probably to encourage me to do homework someplace other than in the front of the TV in the living room.

Looking back, that small room was about the size of a jail cell. Not that I’ve ever been confined to one. But it was pretty confining in there. Still, I was glad to have a room with a door, and some space for school books and the all-important radios. The family faced some sacrifice though. One less bathroom in a 13 room house. By the time we moved to a new home, there were eight of us using two very small bathrooms. (I guess we were lucky to have that much; when the house was built some 120 years earlier, the Mersereaus had an outhouse. The number of seats in there is lost to history.)

I don’t recall whose grand idea this was, but maybe it was mine. Dad’s modest collection of LPs (records) found its way into many-sleeved albums, with the record jackets of no importance to the music-listeners in the family. So, my room was decorated with cast-off LP artworks. The photo here hardly does the room justice. My bathroom/bedroom/cell looked like Woody’s Record Shop, our favorite music store up on The Ave. I see Sinatra was prominent in overlooking my algebra homework.

If I’m to draw any significance from this “reflection,” I suppose it would be how lucky (blessed would be the better word) I was to have a space of my own. Of course, many or most do not. I picture immigrant teens the age I was when I slept in either bedroom I’ve mentioned here. They are on the street. Or, kids who have grown up in poverty in the U.S. — they may share space with their whole family. In our prayers each day, Joan and I often give thanks for not only the meal we are about to enjoy, but the for the “many blessings we have overlooked today.” And how often we overlook our own comfortable space.

{During Lent 2024, I am writing reflections focusing on the word “room,” and wondering if I can come up with forty views of “room,” “roominess” and even “roomlessness.” We’ll see, huh?}

The home my parents loved the most was that 13 room historic house on South Liberty Avenue, Endicott, NY. And because my most formative years (5th grade through early college) were lived there, I have a footlocker of memories associated with that space. Let me describe my first bedroom.

Well, obviously not my first bedroom, but the first room I had to myself. Kind of. The Liberty Ave. house had been home to three families when Mom and Dad bought it. The Kellams occupied the front rooms, while temporarily playing landlord to tenants who had occupied two small apartments in the rear of the house. Eventually, the renters left, and the still-growing Kellam family spread out into the whole home. And I got my own room. The Kellam girls had upstairs bedrooms (sharing space as I recall), and my two brothers (only 14 months apart in age) shared the very back room of the first floor. Being the oldest of the sibs, I got my own space. Remember that “kind of” up there? Here’s why I wrote that:

The room was mid-house, first floor. And to get to one of the bathrooms, the brothers’ rooms, the laundry room, Mom’s sewing room, and the cellar door…everyone had to go through my room. There was also a door to the side porch. In other words, I had a large room/hallway combination. No privacy, except once everyone went to bed. It was hardly “my own room,” but it had room for my modest bed (a day bed?), some cupboard storage for comic books and “Popular Science” magazines, and a table for the Heathkit shortwave radio Dad built for me.

I also had an AM radio and remember listening to WENE as I went to sleep each night, maybe using primitive (by today’s standards) headphones. Now that I think about it, also relegated to my room was one of those huge console radios, easily four feet high, with a fifteen-inch speaker, and a radio dial that promised AM stations from halfway across the USA. It may not have worked by that time, though earlier it had been my source for “Big Jon and Sparkey,” “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon,” and “Straight Arrow,” the latter being about the only radio “western” that featured a positive image of an “Indian.”

The giant Philco (?), the tiny Channel Master transister radio, and the shortwave carried me beyond my less-than-private room to the wide world. It wouldn’t be much of a leap to link those days in my youth to my radio vocations.

By the way, that shortwave radio put me in good stead with my high school history teacher Mr. Ellis. I happened upon Radio Moscow one night, and I recognized it as a propaganda tool, but my curiosity led me back to it several times. I wrote a report based on my listening to Russian radio for our Current Events course, and Mr. Ellis seemed impressed. Not always, but that time.

As I aged (smiling here), I guess Dad decided a) Jeff needed more privacy, or b) there’d be room for a pool table — so I got a new room. A bathroom. More on that tomorrow!

{I write each day in Lent 2024 on the general topic of “room.” That leaves lots of room for wandering, doesn’t it?}

I wrote yesterday of my study at a suburban Richmond, Va. area church. I don’t mind naming it: Bon Air Presbyterian Church. I loved that church and its people. The church building had room for worship, study, offices, library, classrooms, music rehearsals, and four rooms for a large weekday community kindergarten. Plus, beyond the bulding was a Scout Lodge.

Some distance back on the lot was a large shed-like structure (was it metal? cinderblock?) which was home to the church’s scout troops. I was there decades ago, so forgive me if I can’t recall how many scouts participated at that time. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Brownies and Cubs? But in addition, the church used the space for part of its youth ministry. The senior high Sunday School was there in the morning, and later that Sabbath day, the youth groups met there. To be clear, it wasn’t fancy. Not much to look at inside or out. But there was a huge fireplace for heat in the mild southern winters, and some rough carpeting to accommodate the kids who preferred the floor to the rusty folding chairs.

I can’t speak to the Scouting uses of the building, except to assume that merit badges galore were earned there, camping trips planned, and ceremonies attended. No doubt, s’mores were a staple around the firepit out front. What I do recall clearly is the church’s youth ministry: dedicated youth leaders and teachers who helped shape the spiritual lives of countless teens in that large, primitive room. This was back when youth participation was perhaps at its height, so we had lots of adult volunteers who were committed to planning curriculum and creative (we hoped) teaching activities. Apart from Sunday School, the late afternoon youth groups had a more varied diet of nurturing programs that involved building fellowship, enjoying recreation and games, singing together, and planning service projects, such as visiting a downtown shelter for people with no room to call home.

I think the Scout Lodge is gone now. It was probably worn out, having served its purpose for many years. The church later built a large gymnasium hoping to attract youth who have found other things to do with their busy lives. I don’t want to admit that “those were the good old days,” but I am truly grateful for the presence of kids who grew in spirit at the back of the church property, including my children! And I give thanks for the welcoming adult volunteers who mentored them in that room.

Funny how a room can be recalled more for its function than its design. Kind of like church itself.