An emotional church men's retreat

I just returned from a men's church retreat at the extraordinarily beautiful Summit Lake Camp in Emmitsburg, Maryland with ten other men from my church, Epworth United Methodist Church.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that was said and experienced at the retreat.  This will be a report in progress.  There can be no doubt that it was a highly emotional, powerful experience for a group of men who previously knew each other casually.

First, there is the matter of the setting at Summit Lake Camp.  We stayed in a unique facility called "Marguerite" that was perfect for small groups.  We were able to have rooms together, but also have our meetings together and recreational time together.  The camp features a lake with paddleboats, ducks, and geese.  There was a large campfire pit where we made s'mores.  Also, there was a large dining hall where our group and other Christian students from five local universities were fed.  The camp has several other cabins and large meeting facilities.

Our assistant pastor, Rev. Bill Jones, had built his three-day program around an independent film called "Courageous" which follows the lives of four police officers in Albany, Georgia who meet life's challenges in various ways.  It culminates in the men taking a "Resolution" together to follow Christ and be the best husbands, fathers, and friends they possibly can be be.  We will be taking the same pledge in church on November 16 as an act of solidarity together.  Our wives and our children will be invited to join us in the ceremony.

Part of our discussion was the nature of men's friendships.  I told the story of Dr. Geoffrey Greif's book,  Buddy System, which examined male friendships. Dr. Greif is a professor in the University of Maryland School of Social Work and explains that men have "shoulder to shoulder" relationships whereas women have "face to face" relationships.  Men are good at working side by side on projects or watching sporting events side by side, but women are able to relate to each other "face to face" and are much more able to express themselves emotionally. He writes that men have must, trust, just,and rust friends. A must friend is the best friend a man absolutely must call with earthshaking news. A trust friend is liked and trusted but not necessarily held as close as a must friend. Just friends are casual acquaintances, while rust friends have a long history together and can drift in and out of each other's lives, essentially picking up where they last left off.

Rev. Jones had asked a series of men from our group to give presentations and they were all excellent.  Sometimes, they were very emotional as the men told their stories of growing up and what they had experienced.  Since returning, I also wrote on our Facebook web site about the difficulty of older men (Baby Boomers) being able to open up because of the experiences they had when they were growing up and the stoic nature of their fathers who were the products of the Depression and World War Two.

While I was deeply moved by the things I heard this weekend and will greatly value my insights into my "brothers", there is still a large part of me that is distrustful of things that are too emotional.  I have yearned for greater spiritualism.  But I find myself studying spiritualism and not fully embracing it. The lessons of "Star Trek" find myself still siding with Spock and his Vulcan reasoning and not Captain Kirk and his hot-blooded human emotions.  I still have a way to go.

My 68th Birthday

Today, October 12, is my birthday and it has been exactly one month since I wrote my last blog entry. It seems like a good time to do an update.

Tomorrow marks five weeks since I had my full knee replacement on my left knee.  The surgery went well, but the return home was difficult as I had problems with my pain medication.  Eventually, those problems got resolved and these days I am just taking Tylenol for the pain and using ice packs three times a day for 30 minutes each.  My sister Pegg lent me a recliner chair and it has been perfect for using the ice treatments. Thanks, Pegg!

I am resuming many of my traditional activities, but I don’t have the stamina that I once had.  For example, I will use the log splitter for 45 minutes and then I’m exhausted and have to come inside.  I’ve been trimming back some apple trees in our back yard and, similarly, I find I can work for 45 minutes and then I need to take a break.

The other thing that has changed is my sleep patterns.  I just can’t find a way to make the knee comfortable at night and allow myself to go to sleep.  I end up taking cat naps instead.  This morning, as an example, I was awake all night and then when it was time to go to church, I laid down on our bed for a brief nap and several hours later I awoke and realized that I had missed church entirely.

I am in my second week at the Hereford Physical Therapy Center and I have discovered several friends are there also including my neighbor’s granddaughter who is training to become a physical therapist.  They have a bunch of folks who push you to the limit, but they are very nice about it.  I go three times a week for an hour and we have seen substantial progress in the two weeks that I have been attending.

Meantime, there is the matter of the missed 50^th Catonsville High School reunion.  I really wanted to go but it took two months to get on the surgeon’s schedule and I needed the surgery.  None the less, several of my classmates did things to help me “experience” the reunion in various ways.  The biggest event was a dinner organized by my friend Paulette Geisenkotter Hammond in which she invited several other classmates who also missed the reunion.  And then there was the concluding meeting of our reunion committee which Rick Webb organized at a Hunt Valley eatery for my convenience.

These are memories that I will cherish forever.

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My left knee replacement

I normally try to illustrate my blog with pictures.  I'll skip that this time and just use words.

On Monday, September 8, 2014, I entered the University of Maryland St. Joseph's Hospital at 1:30 p.m. to have my left knee replaced.  The surgery was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. but actually occurred closer to :4:30 p.m. and was performed by Dr. Scott Tarantino.  He already was pretty special in my mind because he remembered everything I said from my first appointment until my second appointment two months later without looking at his notes.

I had injured my knee, ironically, while using the treadmill at the Maryland Athletic Club.  My knee was sadly deteriorated and the meniscus, in the middle of the knee, was in really bad shape.

Everything about my treatment at St. Joseph's Hospital went well...especially my experience in the operating room.  A long time ago, I had spent several summers as an operating room technician (scrub nurse who hands instruments to the doctor), so I knew what to expect.  I just don't remember any of it.  I went into the OR, sat the table sideways, and that's the last thing I remember before being awakened by two angels in the recovery room. It was amazing.

About 45 minutes or an hour later, I was transported to the 6th floor recovery wing and arrived at Room 608B.  That was about 8 p.m. or so.  I can't remember all of the names of the nurses and the techs who cared for me, but I remember the high level of care that I got from all of them and how many of them attended community colleges to get their degrees.  It was virtually all of them...Harford Community College, Carroll Community College, Baltimore County Community College, and so forth.  They must have been doing something right at those community college levels.

And then there was the matter of the pain. Oh, boy, was it painful but the staff did their best to keep me comfortable and I was very grateful.  One of their tricks was to run cold water over the knee to keep down the swelling and the sensitivity to pain.  They had a little pump that ran the cold water over the knee in a series of pipes in a pad. Very effective.

Two days later, after I had proven to the satisfaction of the physical therapists that I knew how to get in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, and various other tasks,  I was discharged on Wednesday morning at 11 a.m.  I was very happy to go.

UPDATE: the return home did not go well at first.  I was taking a narcotic for pain relief and it was making me nauseous and loopy.  I stopped doing my physical therapy. I was a mess.  Finally, my home nurse (Doug) and my physical therapist (Bob) both recognized that I needed to switch to a different pain killer and things have improved greatly.  I missed my 50th reunion, but at least I know that I am on the road to recovery.

50th Catonsville High School reunion

In just a few weeks, on September 12 through September 14, my Catonsville High School class will be having its 50th reunion. There is something really special about the 50th reunion.

Our reunion committee, chaired by Rick Webb and our class president Richards Steinboch, has had eight meetings over the last eight months to prepare for event.  The planning started when Rick discovered that Catonsville would have a home football game Friday night (against Dulaney) on September 12 and that got the ball rolling.  Where could we have a "before and after" reception, we asked?  After much serious research, we settled on Matthews 1600 on Frederick Road.  It was the first of many decisions that turned out very well.

Friday is also the day we traditionally held a little golf tournament and this year, the ladies are fielding more golfers than the men!  Thank you, Barbara Sheetz Kight, for making that happen.  The main event will be a Saturday night dinner at the Rolling Road Golf Course and Barbara is a member.  But I got a little bit ahead of myself.

One of our traditions is a tour of the high school provided by the Honor Society.  Paulette Geisenkotter Hammond organizes these tours and they are always terrific...and sometimes a little embarrassing for the high school students as we tell them that this is what they are going to look like in 50 years.  It's all in good fun and we get to see our classrooms again and the library and gymnasium.  All have been kept in good condition and its a pleasure to visit.

Saturday evening is the main event, the reunion dinner at the Rolling Road Golf Club from 6 p.m. until 11 p.m.  We will have hors d'oeuvres from 6 until 7 p.m. and then a lavish buffet with two carving stations the rest of the evening.  A professional DJ is providing quiet music during the first three hours, but after our president, Richard Steinbock, has his remarks at 9 p.m.,  we will crank up the volume for the dancing.  A professional photographer has been hired to take pictures of each individual when they arrive and then lots of pictures when the reunion really gets underway. The cost of this is $100 per classmate and $75 for their guest and that's why it has worked out so well that we have multiple events at various locations and that classmates can attend many of these events for free.

The weekend will conclude with a farewell brunch at Dmitri's International Grille, also in Catonsville.  Our president, called "Steiny", is a professional graphics artist and he has put together an awesome book for the reunion that includes high school pictures and updated information about our classmates. There is a memorial section for the nearly 60 classmates who have passed away from our class of approximately 530 students.  Too many have been lost.

My role in the reunion has been as a communicator;  setting up the e-mail and US postal mail systems to be in contact with our classmates.  There are so many classmates that I have gotten to know through the reunion activity that I didn't know before.  It's been demanding, but very rewarding.

And finally there is an ironic note to all of this.  I have needed to have my left knee replaced for a long time and incidents over the last three months have caused the surgery to become imminent.  So, I'm having the surgery on Monday, just six days before the reunion dinner.  I've been warned about the pain, but I wouldn't miss the dinner.  It just means no dancing by me.

Epworth UMC Mission Trip and Baltimore County Christian Work Camp

July has been devoted to two week-long endeavors that were very much alike.

The first project involved a couple dozen members of Epworth United Methodist Church traveling to Cherokee, North Carolina in the western mountains to the Cherokee Indian Reservation to do various types of mission work including painting, cleaning, and building a deck.  We stayed at the Cherokee United Methodist Church in the heart of the reservation.

While it may not be obvious why it was necessary to do mission work, in light of the huge casino in downtown Cherokee, there are many families which do not meet the criteria for membership in the tribe and these are the families that, in the words of the pastor, "fall through the cracks". These were the families that the church identified for us to help.

My project was the construction of the 10 foot by 20 foot deck.  I found a design for the deck online and originally we were told that it would be 10 foot by 10 foot, but when we arrived the plans changed.  There was also intended to be a roof over the deck because the homeowner has contracted cancer and needed to be protected from the sun.  Another mission team, to come after us, will be building the roof.

Our mission team was inter-generational which means it was the responsibility of the older members of the team to teach our youth how to operate the power tools and how to construct the deck.  This was one of the joys for me.  These youngsters had so much energy and enthusiasm that I loved being around them.  And, yes, they constantly reminded me to "Drink water, Mr. Ed!"  It was very hot and dehydration was always a concern.

The mission trip was also an opportunity for cultural awareness and we learned a lot about the Cherokee Indian tribe...specifically the "Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation."  One of our featured speakers was this tribal elder who also gave us a lesson on how to use a blowgun.  He had dinner with us at the church hall and afterwards everyone gathered around to hear him tell stories about the early days of lacrosse and hunting for small animals with blowguns.  Later in the week, we attended a pageant telling the Cherokee history and a Pow-Wow that included fireworks and dancing.

A week after we returned, our church participated in the Baltimore
County Christian Work Camp.  Unlike the mission trip which involved going to a far away place to help people, this was an opportunity to make a difference right here in our backyard.  Because our church is particularly adept at building ramps, we were selected for three ramp projects.  Other churches, however, do other things such as painting, cleaning, plumbing, etc.

Our first ramp was a relatively small project which we got done in a day. The homeowner had suffered a fall...was in the hospital...and needed a ramp constructed so he could get around.  This project was in Woodlawn and despite some surprisingly large rocks, it went very smoothly.  I came back the second day to make some final adjustments on the sidewalk in front of the house (added sand and a couple pavers) but basically it was all done.

The next project involved part of our team working with a handful of people from another church and the effort went very smoothly.  They were delightful to work with and, again, our youth...now highly trained...were a big asset to the project.  There is no replacement for youthful energy.  This project was in Middle River.

The final project, however, was very complicated and took three and a half days to build. This was a ramp that included two "switchbacks" (sharp turns) to construct in the limited space we were given.  The good news is that we got it done and it turned out really well.

One other aspect about the Baltimore County Christian Work Camp that is very important to mention.  We began each day at the Hunts Memorial United Methodist Church in Ruxton and we ended each day at another church.  These meals (and the lunches) were provided by the church volunteers and we can't thank them enough for the difference they made in our lives.

Grand Canyon and Sedona vacation

It's been awhile since I posted anything and I need to catch up!  Barb and I have had an extraordinarily busy couple of months and we have much to report.  First, I'm going to write about our vacation in Arizona in which we took a train to the Grand Canyon south rim and later visited Sedona (red rocks) and Phoenix.  It is important to note that our niece (http://thedestinationdesigner.com/) Mackenzie Melfa had a major role in booking the trip and finding out about Sedona which was a wonderful surprise for us.

This tale actually begins a year ago when we took AMTRAK across the country to visit our son Robert in Portland.  One of the couples we met on the train, Tom and Carol Lee, told us about this wonderful train from Williams, Arizona to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  They wrote the information on an AMTRAK table napkin and we kept it in a folder until several months later when we decided we wanted to go.  We still have that napkin.

We booked an early morning Southwest Airlines flight to Phoenix on Sunday, June 8.  That's Barb in the airport shortly after we arrived. We picked up our rental car and started driving four and a half hours to Williams, Arizona to the Grand Canyon Railroad Hotel.  It was the biggest thing in town; a source of many jobs.  This hotel is the former Sante Fe Railroad hotel built circa 1908 and it is said that as many as five U.S. presidents have taken the train to the Grand Canyon.  It certainly is the most fun way to travel.

Prior to our 9:30am Monday morning departure, we and hundreds of others were treated to a cowboy show just outside the hotel and adjacent to the train.  There were the usual bad guys and "the Marshall" who had to keep order.  This would be a recurring theme throughout our trip on the train and on the return trip when the bad guys would rob the train and the Marshall would have to come to our rescue.  We suspect the actors trade the roles to keep it fresh. It was a lot of fun.

Arriving at the Grand Canyon, we were greeted by several tour buses which were part of our package (including very good meals) and we were immediately taken to the rim of the Grand Canyon.  I'm sure you've heard this before: it's impossible to describe the enormity of it all. It's huge.  We were at 7,000 feet on our side of the rim and it rises another 1,000 feet on the other side of the rim.  We elected to spend a night in the Maswik Lodge at the canyon rim so we could catch that late evening and early morning light.  My sister told me that was a "must".

My sister was right. The color is dramatically different in the evening and in the morning. (That's the crack of dawn in the picture to the right).  You really begin to see the various trails leading down to the bottom of the canyon and the astonishing number of people who are trying to make their way down.  One thing you must remember:  take a lot of water. Everywhere we went, there were reminders to re-hydrate yourself.  The national park provides many sources of water, but they don't sell the water bottles.  You must bring your own.  Now, on to Sedona....

This was the view outside of our hotel balcony in Sedona, known for its fabulous red rocks and mountains.  In some ways, Sedona is more "approachable" than the Grand Canyon which simply overwhelms you because it is so big.  You can't take it all in.  But Sedona (named for one of its earliest inhabitants) sweeps you off your feet with its beauty and history.  We stayed there two nights, but it easily could have been a week.  We took the famous "Pink Jeep" tour to the Indian ruins and saw artifacts from the era 1,000 AD to 1,200 AD.

These are the remnants of Indian housing built adjacent to a stream which was their source of water.  These houses were built with stones and mud against a mountain wall.  Pink Jeep offers many tours and this was just one of them, but we were so glad that we picked this tour.  You can still see the drawings on the walls on the back side of their housing.  The sun was a frequent subject of their paintings so we suspect it had a role in their religion.  As mysteriously as the Indians appeared, they disappeared 200 years later.  Possibly the water dried up.

Our final stop was in Phoenix which some have described as "low rise and 40 miles across".  We found very few high rise buildings and the town seemed to empty out on Friday night, so this seemed to be accurate.  That left us free to roam the light rail from end to end on Saturday and visit the historic Heard Museum (picture left) which is dedicated to preserving southwest U.S. culture and artifacts.  When we visited, they also were featuring a "Lego" exhibit; hence the statues in front of the building.


In short, we loved our Arizona adventure.

Mothers Day, a wedding, and videotaping

We had a very good visit this Mothers Day to my mom at Symphony Manor, the nursing home and memory care facility in Roland Park where she lives.  They had a singer performing "Frank Sinatra style" music and a big reception, including finger sandwiches and raisin biscuits, in their lobby.  Our son, Matt, kindly joined Barb and me and I can't thank both of them enough for conversing with my Mom and patiently going through the usual set of pictures that I brought along to show her what is happening in the rest of the world including pictures of our wonderful chickens on the farm.  Afterwards, Matt made sure that Barb was taken to her favorite restaurant, Johnnie's in Roland Park.  We had a fine meal.

The month of May has been an astonishingly busy month for my videotaping business through Barb's TV news recordings.  I've been working for the University System of Maryland,  State Sen. Jim Rosapepe, Mosaic Community Services, and I'm especially grateful for the opportunity to videotape another wedding. This time, it was a gift from my sister Pegg to Phoebe Marie Brown and Adam Joseph Minacapelli who were married at Trinity Episcopal Church in Towson, same as Pegg and Larry. Phoebe and Adam are a beautiful young couple and the church is very impressive.

The videotaping job for State Sen. Rosapepe has a particularly sweet place in my heart.  It introduced me to the College Park Academy, an experiment in learnng with the University of Maryland College Park. The concept is called a "hybrid" in online learning and it boils down to every student getting a laptop when they arrive at the school and not having to carry any school books.  All of their lessons and textbooks are online. The school has teachers who mentor the students, but the students can proceed at their own pace.  They interact together, a point made clear by Chancellor William Kirwan who was interviewed for the project.  The students, he said, pick up so many skills that they will need in the work place including working together on group projects and using work stations (see photo above).  The computers track everything including the students' progress in learning and the data accumulated by the work stations give scientists an insight into what lessons are working and which are not. Quite impressive.

Of course, all of this busyness means something had to suffer and this year it was work on the garden.  We get the potatoes planted and the asparagus is doing great in only its second year, but the other cold weather plants such as onions and radishes didn't get planted this year. What did get done is a doubling of the size of our chicken run!  Our four hens are much happier now that they have more space to run around. Our neighbor, Art Wannlund, reports that they have a new favorite food: grass.  He scooped up a lot of it after the first cutting of the lawn and the "girls" couldn't be happier.

It is hard to believe that we are just one month away from our first trip to the Grand Canyon!

Easter 2014...best ever

Easter 2014 has been very special!

It began with our Bible study class at the beginning of Lent.  One of the things Rev. Patricia Watson does particularly well is have Bible studies that are instructive, challenging, and interesting.  Among the takeaways from this Bible study, based on the book A World Worth Saving: Lenten Spiritual Practices for Action by George Hovaness Donigian, was the concept that we didn't need to deny ourselves sometime to remember Lent, but rather we would add something by caring and not being apathetic.  Moreover, we learned that Lent, in the early church was actually a time of preparation for joining the church.

Moving forward to Holy Week.

The men of Epworth United Methodist Church were asked to perform Da Vinci's "Last Supper" for the Maundy Thursday service and each of us disciples had a speaking part. I was at the left end and played the role of Nathaniel, also known as Bartholemew (a fisherman), and it caused me to learn a lot about Nathaniel and some of the other disciplines that I had not know before. Memorization is a very big problem for me, but as I got to know the role better, the words came easier and we had teleprompters to help us along.

Good Friday was Mom's turn to perform.  We held a first-time joint service with other United Methodists from Timonium UMC and Mays Chapel UMC.  The Epworth UMC choir, under the direction of Peter Morey, was asked to perform.  It wasn't lost on me that the three pastors of the churches were all women and good friends.  I was very impressed.  They had written speaking parts for Barabbas (played by Rev. Bill Jones), Peter, and Mary.  Again, very moving service.

Moving forward to early this morning, the youth from Epworth UMC did the Easter Sonrise service at historic Jessops Methodist Church in Sparks.  This is a retired church with a large graveyard that is maintained by a foundation and its a beautiful place to hold a 6:30 a.m. service.  The youth created what they called a "human video" to tell the story that God is all around us if only we look...at work, at play...and not just at church. The service ended by singing "Morning has Broken".

We returned to church at 9 a.m. for the annual Epworth Easter Egg Hunt.  This is a wonderful tradition for the children.  The older kids "hide" the plastic eggs all over the church grounds. This picture shows only the younger kids who were confined to the playground area.  Part of the treat of the Easter Egg Hunt is to open the eggs and find out if there is a candy or toy inside.  Some of the eggs are empty, but many of the eggs have cool things that were donated by adults in the church.

By 10:30 a.m., the sanctuary was packed for the Easter service and the church was packed...225 people.  Peter Morey had enlisted musicians from Peabody Conservatory and together with the Epworth hand bell choir and the Chancel choir, the service was filled with awesome music. We even sang Handel's Hallelujah chorus!  Pastor Watson's sermon culminated the weeks of Lent as she moved us forward to seek Christ's resurrection as not only hope for our future, but opportunities for us.

As if the day couldn't get any better, it did!  Our son Matthew and his girlfriend, Mary Louise, joined us for an Easter dinner. Barb dipped into her culinary playbook and, again, prepared a rack of lamb.  It was awesome and it was something she had done for Gourmet Dinner in Washington, DC at least 30 years ago.  It was accompanied by small potatoes, asparagus with bread crumbs, and a fresh strawberry pie.  Matt and Mary Louise brought the wine and I was in heaven.

And then, late today, we got a wonderful e-mail from our son Robert in Portland, Oregon where he is a United Methodist Church music director: "I just got back from our Easter service, which was the formal rebranding of Pioneer as "Crossbridge at Pioneer." Christy and the church plant team did a presentation of all the new things they're doing, all the community events where they've represented the church and so on. And the musicians for the non-traditional afternoon service came to demo one of the pieces they'll be doing today, and the keyboardist and I did some piano/organ duets, which was a lot of fun for me. I took this photo because I was kind of amazed to see so many people in the sanctuary on a Sunday morning."

Best Easter ever!

Firewood

My memories of February and early March, 2014 are of shoveling snow and cutting firewood.

As a result of the ice storm on February 5, two very large oak trees came down within 15 feet of our house.

That was not the plan.  There was a dead 90 ft. oak tree that I was trying to cut down in a controlled manner.  However, the ice storm occurred before I could finish cutting all of the way through the tree and it fell in such a way that it also knocked down another large oak tree and a medium size maple tree.  What a mess!

We rely on firewood as a major source of heat for our house.  A few years ago, Barb and I had a $4000 propane gas bill and resolved that we would use the wood burning stove in our living room to be the major source of heat for our house.  We closed off several rooms and the system has worked very well.  But to rely on firewood for your heating supply requires spending the summer splitting wood...lots of it. It's really been a "win-win" for me because I get lots of exercise and I generated lots of firewood.

(Picture: these are the same two oak trees a month later.)

I was surprised when I started getting inquiries about providing firewood to several of our neighbors who live in the region.  Firewood was in short supply as a result of the cold, long winter and several people needed additional supplies. That's when my effort to cut up the two fallen oak trees really kicked into high gear.  Among the tools that I am using is my father's 40-year-old (or more) Stihl chain saw and my 27-ton gas powered log splitter.  I also own two 14 inch Stihl chain saws and a lot of other firewood paraphernalia.  I'm equipped.

Traditionally, firewood from oak trees should be allowed to sit for an entire season to dry out.  That wasn't an option this year, so I have been trying to "mix and match" firewood for my customers so they would have some seasoned, drier wood...or even pine...to get the new wetter oak firewood started.  Once you have a really hot fire, even "green" oak firewood will burn very well. The other thing that has worked out well is that oak trees have lots branches coming off of them.  Knots at joints burn exceptionally well.

We are just about at the end of our firewood this winter and I look forward to splitting more firewood for next winter.  All of the firewood that was on the parking pad in this picture (picture on left) is already gone.  It was split and taken to one of our best customers.  Barb and I are just down to the final rack

Spring can't come soon enough!

Trials of Hex

My family hasn't many touches with fame but one incident in late 1928 will live in infamy.  It involved the murder of Nelson Rehmeyer from my grandmother's side of the family and it led to the so-called "Hex Trials" that were intended to put an end to the pow-wow or hex culture in York County, Pennsylvania. I am currently reading J. Ron McGinnis' book about the trials and I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a movie. This is the way the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the story on December 1, 1928:

"A pow-wow man and two boys today unfolded the story of a cruel and barbaric murder of a farmer Tuesday night as they tried to get a lock of his hair to banish the malignant devils of witchcraft.  They told their weird story completely, in its sordid and horrifying detail, to District Attorney Herrmann; told it as they would an ordinary neighborhood happening, calmly and coldly and obviously without fear or terror, without a scintilla of pity or a trace of remorse.
      John Curry, 14, stood placidly before the District Attorney and recited the gruesome tragedy in the farmhouse of Nelson D. Rehmeyer, 60, in North Hopewell township, 19 miles from here, and of the brutal murder of the elderly farmer.  He had no scruples against naming his two associates, John Blymire, 32, of York, a reputed witch doctor and "pow-wow" man, and Wilbert Grandwill Hess, 18, who lives on a farm with his parents south of York.
     It was late Thursday when Rehmeyer's beaten, bound, and burned body was found in his home.  A braying, unfed mule gave the sparsely settled township its first inkling of the brutal killing and subsequent discovery of the body.  A few threads were tied together by detectives---threads of a belief in witchcraft that has been handed down from generation to generation since pioneer days, and of the mythical hokus-pokus of the "pow-wow" men and women and their impish powers of subtle wonder.

    Curry was the first one arrested and he included Blymire--the "pow-wow" man who had received a $10 retainer from the Hess's family to lift the yoke of trouble he was having with his neighbors with his physic charms, provided they got a lock of Rehmeyer's hair.
    Blymire blamed Rehmeyer for bewitching the Hess family for causing sudden disappearances of the chickens in Hess's hen houses, and for sundry and diverse things that contributed to neighborly discord.

(photo shows three suspects at the top and Rehmeyer below)

"One of the perplexing angles of the fiendish murder, as District Attorney Herrmann views it, is the sudden departure from their purposeful plan after they got access to Rehmeyer's home.
Instead of contenting themselves with a lock of the farmer's hair after they beat him unconscious with clubs and a chair, all of them confessed to wielding their weapons like barbarians until they were sure he was dead, and to make certain by strangling him with a stout rope, and then ransacked his pockets and house for money.
   Hess was unmoved by the recitation of the part he took in the cold-blooded crime.  If there was anything to disturb him it was a questioning bud in the back of this head that Blymire "gyped" him in dividing the money they stole from Rehmeyer's dead body and in the house.

More pictures of Rehmeyer Hollow today and the home of Nelson Rehmeyer and the other members of the family can be viewed under the Rehmeyer section of our family website at www.fishel.us.

Deep Freeze

Each year, Barb and I go to our timeshare at Canaan Valley, West Virginia in early January.  It provides a wonderful change of scenery and a welcome respite from the busy Christmas season.  It's a time for calm and relaxation.  This year, however, has been a little different because it got cold.  Really cold.

The thermometer in our car read "minus seven" degrees at 11:30 am on Tuesday, January 7.  I was lucky the engine caught quickly and started because the battery didn't have much juice left in it because of the cold weather.  I let the car engine run for several minutes to warm up before moving.  This question is often asked: "How does it feel when it gets that cold?"  To me there isn't much difference between "minus seven" degrees and zero degrees.  It just feels cold.

Among the victims of the bitterly cold weather are the wildlife.  I found these two geese at the pond outside of "Big Johns Restaurant" in the heart of Canaan Valley.  It's a landmark and the porch of the restaurant is adjacent to a pond that is populated with lots of hungry fish and a few birds.  These geese were keeping a small hole open at the pond and you will notice how they have their heads turned back and inward to shield against the strong wind.  Normally, Canaan Valley is populated with lots of deer, ground hogs, and bear, but none of them were to be seen today.
Too cold.

The other creatures that were missing in this cold weather were people. Last night, when the recorded temperatures in nearby Davis, West Virginia dropped to "minus 15 degrees", the Canaan Valley State Park closed their ski lifts.  There was only one car left at the facility. Probably a maintenance person to keep an eye on the lodge.  And the town of Davis was empty at Noon today when I drove through.

Yesterday, we visited Blackwater Falls. This is what we found: