Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Feb 10, 2007

Today’s Announcements

We welcome Pamela Garlick, as writer # 406 for Storytime tapestry.  Pamela is a prolific writer and you may be reading her a lot.  However her first submission comes with a prayer request for her father.  Please email her and welcome her to our Storytime family and prayer for her beloved dad.

Happy Birthday Nancy Dewitt: dewittnancy@sbcglobal.net

Because of the computer problems with Zinester I am going to postpone the Valentine Contest until Feb 12^th.

 Just an update on me. I still haven’t found a job, seems like nobody wants a almost 52 year old woman. My electricity is just about to be cut off; I haven’t been able to pay it since October.  I heat by electricity and I have been freezing here because I cannot afford to put the heating too high even in the -30 degree temps in Montreal.

On a good note if any of you want to help with donations, so I can keep running the newsletter, I now have a paypal account.  Donations can be made through them at: winterose@videotron.ca  All donations are appreciated even if it is only 5.00.   All will be put toward a 600.00 heating/electricity bill; without electricity I cannot run the newsletter.

Thank you everyone you are all my friends and I appreciate you more than you will ever know.

Please note that Storytime Tapestry is a free newsletter to members and there will never be a cost for the newsletter.  Donations are purely voluntary and no member should ever feel guilty for not making a donation at this time.

Today’s Stories

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I just wanted to drop a note -- at least I intend it to only be a note.  My mother just called, and my father is in the hospital again.  I didn't see if you ran my story yet, but I'd certainly be thankful if you haven't and when you do, if you would ask for prayers for him.  This has been a long road, and only God knows how much longer.  Mom seems to think he's going to rebound once again.  I hope she is right.  However, lately he doesn't seem to have the spark he once had.  The desire to go on.  He's okay with the Lord and knows where he will be spending eternity.  I think maybe, he's reaching the point where he wants to be there.

I must continue to pray for God's will, not my will.  And the willingness to accept that will.

Thank you for your prayers and your friendship.

Pam

TRIBUTE AND FUNNY STORY ABOUT MY DAD

Pamela Garlick

I feel the deep need to write something funny about my dad, today. You see, his health has not been good for many years; however, just yesterday my Mother admitted his latest illness is the worst she has ever seen him. I feel if one doesn't laugh sometimes, though they may feel like crying, they will simply fall apart and be no good to anyone.

So, before I start my day, trying to work, I wanted to write something funny to purge all the sadness and negativity I am feeling. After all, it's a win-win for my dad. He's a man of faith, and he has not one doubt in his mind about where he is going.

This tale is about one of his trips to the doctor, as told to me by my mother who was witness to the visit.

My dad sat on the examination table, filled with the positive attitude that helped him survive many physical problems. On this day, he wanted to tell the doctor one of the life changes he hoped to make in the way of improving his condition.

"Doctor, I've decided to become a wegetarian," Dad said. No, that was not his imitation of Elmer Fudd, rather his Pennsylvania Dutch accent coming through.

"Excuse me, what was that?" the doctor asked, obviously not from around our neck of the woods for very long, or he'd have understood what was perfectly clear to the rest of us.

"I said, I think I'm going to become a wegetarian," Dad repeated.

"I don't understand," the puzzled doctor said again.

"I said, I think I'm going to become a wegetarian," Dad repeated for the third time. "You know, someone who eats only wegetables. I think it will be healthier."

"Oh, a vegetarian." The light finally shined above the doctor's head. "I see, well, that certainly won't hurt you."

"Good, then I'll be a wegetarian."

- - - --

While my dad is not a total wegetarian, nor vegetarian either, he has limited his meat intake for the past ten years or more. My mom keeps him on a very strict diet, and he only cheats when she isn't around, which isn't that often since they are both retired.

I believe it is due to her diligence that my father is still with us. He had his first by-pass surgery nearly 30 years ago. In 1994 he retired, hoping to enjoy that time visiting the mountains of Pottery County Pennsylvania, known as God's Country, as often as he could. Unfortunately, he was having a minor pain in his chest, so he went for a check up, and after seeing several doctors, it was found that the arteries to his heart had once again become blocked.

Since then he's had two more by-pass surgeries for several blocked arteries, angioplasty, a pace maker and a defibrillator implanted following a heart attack.

He's had prostrate cancer, where the treatment was so drastic he has suffered with bowel and rectal problems ever since.

He's had a bleeding ulcer which probably is due to the large amount of medications he's on.

He has asthma and emphysema, and is currently on oxygen.

While in his beloved mountains once, he passed out and his defibrillator went off.  He didn’t even know what happened until he was driving home and realized his head was bleeding from where he must have hit it when he fell. Due to that he went a couple of years without driving, which was miserable for him.  Mom diligently took him everywhere he needed, and wanted to go.

He's fallen several times, once even ending up in the hospital because the cut he'd sustained in his knee from the fall had become infected. When he was finally discharged he had to return to the hospital daily for six weeks for intervenes antibiotics.

He was rushed to emergency room more than once with pneumonia. One of those times he was hospitalized for a lengthy time, during which he was given a medication that caused an allergic reaction. He hallucinated and went totally bonkers. Needless to say it is duly noted that he never be given that drug again.

He has a bad heart valve, but the doctors say he is not strong enough to survive surgery to repair it. He has having difficulty breathing, but they have had to rule out some treatments due to his weakened condition.

Currently he has had such stomach upset and severe pain.  He is ill most of the time. He can't eat, except for a very little. He can't walk more than a very short distance without becoming winded and exhausted. He is tired all the time and has been sleeping most of the time.

He's currently undergoing more tests to find out what is wrong with him. As I write he's at the hospital where they are doing some of those tests.

This man who once wanted to become a wegetarian has been through so very much. Yet, he tries to greet everyone with a smile, feeling it is his responsibility as a Christian to show them the same grace and love Jesus himself would show them.

I am not half the person my father is, but wish I could be. I don't know if I have the compassion and strength my mother has, being there beside him, making him follow his doctor's and her orders.

All I know is that I am proud I have both their genes, and hope that some of them are showing in the way I live my life.  Because, as far as I’m concerned, they are two parents to be very proud of.

Pamela Garlick

K_P_Garlick@msn.com

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   JUST ME

By David Wainland

“You may talk of gin and beer,
when you’re quartered safe out here,
and you’re sent to penny fights in
alder-shot-it...

Gunga Din, a poem written by Rudyard Kipling and read to me by my father, Martin, one out of every ten nights from approximately 1945 until 1950. It was then, at the age of ten, that I decided I was too old to be read bedtime stories.

Dad, a tough New Yorker and graduate of the depression, scorned children’s books and instead filled my child’s mind with the poetry that he so loved. I went to sleep to the words of Longfellow, Browning, Kipling and even Poe. Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman raced through my mind as I played in the streets and I sang "The Road to Mandalay" with gusto. By sixteen, I was wooing my girlfriends whispering, “How do I love thee, let me count the ways.”

If ever I could turn a corner and look back on the greatest influence in my life, I would make it those minutes before sleep that I shared with my father.

At about the same time dad started reading to me he also discovered that I had a knack for drawing and all my coloring books disappeared.

“If you want to color,” he would say, “Then draw something and color inside your own lines." I did and ultimately passed this exercise on to my daughter when I discovered the same talent. In 1952, he started my art lessons by turning me over to a loft artist and avowed Bohemian whose surname was Devine. His first name has since evaporated from my mind.

All this is remains a mystery to me, because my father, a middle child of eight and son of a man who died before he was fourteen, never graduated high school. Instead, lying about his age, he enlisted in the army at sixteen to help ease my grandmother’s financial burden.

Dad died at seventy-six never explaining his love for literature, nor how and when he developed it.

I wrote my first poem and entered my first art contest at fourteen. At sixty-six I am still writing, drawing and quoting Gunga Din, but now I recite the poems for my grandchildren, attempting to pass on my father’s legacy in the hope, it will inspire them as it did for me

David Wainland

david@davidwainland.com

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Poetry Corner

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A FREE SPIRIT

by Mariane Holbrook

Let me be a free spirit.

Let me lower restraining bars and scale forbidden walls
And wend my own way happily through the stifling maze.
Give me freedom from constraints from those
Who seek to bind, restrict and correct me.

Let me run happily unattended through daisy fields
And wade barefoot in clear, cool streams,
Climb aged and barren apple trees
And hang upside-down from their sagging branches
With no thought of bruises, scars, or reprimands.

Let me remove "No" and "You can't" and "Never"
From my hearing vocabulary.
Unplug my clock and discard my calendar.
Let me rise expectantly with each new unplanned day,
Unfettered by appointments or regimens.
Let me try the unproved, let me attempt the unobtainable.
Let me fail without fear or succeed without conceit.

Let me drink water from a pail and wash in a blue basin.
Let me sit near a wood stove to warm my near-frozen feet.
Serve me cocoa from a chipped mug.
Let me eat raw cookie dough and
Crack hickory nuts on a black flat iron
'Til my bruised thumb screams for relief.

Let me crawl beneath flannel sheets
And hand-tied, patterned quilts In that low-ceilinged country loft
Which overlooked verdant meadows and distant hills.
And in the nearing twilight,
Let me hear only the muted sounds
Of crickets, toads and tree frogs
Strumming together nature's perfect symphony.

Let me be eight years old again.

Mariane Holbrook

mariane777@bellsouth.nThe Marvels of Adoptive Technology, by Cynthia Groopman, is a wonderful story. Sadly, there are many other people in the world who could benefit from the same technology but the cost keeps them from being able to use it.

Many of us don't understand all of the ways a blind person can "see" to do the things we do with sight every day.

Thanks for always getting the best articles out here to us!

Dianna Doles Petry

et

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Readers Feedback

Storytime Tapestry Angels

Angels on earth, they exist they are out there.  Angels come in all ages, shapes and sizes, civil status, and religion.  Their nature is love and their purpose is giving to the less fortunate of this world.  Storytime Tapestry angels are no exception.  These angels are loyal members who have contributed to the upkeep of Storytime Tapestry newsletter so that Storytime Tapestry can continue come to your email box 350 days of the year.

Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime Tapestry up and running.

Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu