Joe L. Wheeler's Blog, page 8

BLOG #29, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

BARELY BEGUN AT SEVENTY – Part Two

July 16, 2014

Most Americans still act as though they inwardly believe they are living under the old template: productive vibrant goal-driven life ends at age 65. Most likely they don’t articulate this in mere words–indeed, they don’t have to: their actions confirm that they are living under the old template.

Some years ago, during a period when I directed an Adult Degree Program in Texas, I realized that there was little correlation between teaching college students and teaching adult students. Since our program included an incredibly wide age-span (students in their twenties all the way to students in their eighties), I was forced to reinvent my inner concept of what teaching was all about. Heretofore I had to relate only to students in their late teens and early twenties. Now, I had students who were older than I was! Those years forced me to deal with the aging process for the very first time in my life, for I was no longer concentrating on a small slice of life but rather all of life. My life has never been the same since.

One study really jolted me. It revealed that the average American tends to die within seven years after retirement. The only exceptions being those who, in effect, never retire at all, but merely shift gears, set new goals, new trajectories, and follow new dreams. Or, in the words of a dear friend of mine, Dr. Phil Burgess: “When your career comes to an end–Reboot!” if you fail to institute such a transition, a command goes out from the Commander in Chief of your inner armed forces (your white blood cells); in essence it reads: Demobilize your defending armies! There are no more dreams or goals left to protect! And you die.

There is no such thing as retirement in Scripture. But rather, it is clear that God expects us to live vigorous, creative, caring, helping, growing, becoming lives as long as we draw breath. We deviate from such divine expectations at our own peril.

Several years ago, I shared the results of another related study with you: The body essentially reinvents itself every hundred days. In other words: At the end of every hundred days–at any age!–, I am either measurably stronger or measurably weaker than I was a hundred days earlier. The difference? Daily exercise (vigorous exercise). Up until the time that study reached me, I had been steadily deteriorating physically due to a predominately sedentary lifestyle. Oh I knew full well I ought to exercise–I just kept postponing doing anything about it. But on that day, around fifteen years ago, when I fully assimilated the significance of that study, I made a vow to God that, starting that very day, I’d vigorously exercise every day! No exceptions. Reason being: I knew myself so well I was absolutely certain that if I missed but one day–I’d miss another . . . and another . . . , and all would be lost. Thus if it’s midnight and I haven’t yet exercised, I’ll not go to bed until I have. Result: When I had my last major operation, the hospitalist said, “You have the cardiovascular system of a much younger man! You’d be amazed at how many patients your age do not; in such cases, we don’t dare operate on them.”

My wife and I love to travel. And on cruise ships we can’t help but notice the difference between those who are physically fit and those who are not. Those who are not (sadly, the majority), are obese. They line up by elevators rather than take the stairs; they don’t take day-trips that involve much walking; they graze continuously; they avoid the walking/running tracks on the ship, they loll around for long stretches of most days by the pool, or on the top deck. They are ferried around, even on the ship, in wheelchairs. They, too, are just waiting to die. And everyone who sees them senses it won’t be long.

But it’s all so needless! It’s all so self-determining. I see the difference in every alumni weekend we attend. Former classmates who today can barely walk across the street without help. Who look at you vacantly when you ask them what they’re doing with their lives.

And it gets worse. Just look around you in the local supermarket or mall, as children, teens, and young adults who ought to be in the prime of their lives are already old. Remember the first part of that question?

“A life may be over at sixteen, or barely begun at seventy.”

Untold thousands of young lives today are over–not because they were killed by someone or were involved in accidents–but because they have ceased to grow or become, and have given up on vigorous daily exercise and healthful diets.

So what would it mean to be “barely begun” at seventy years of age? Tune in next week for the conclusion to this series. Its subtitle is “How to Never Get Old.”

BLOG #28, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

BARELY BEGUN AT SEVENTY – Part One

July 9, 2014

It was a glorious spring morning in California’s verdant Napa Valley. And the alumni were coming home from all across the nation to their alma mater, Pacific Union College, judged by the likes of Newsweek and U.S. News to feature the most beautiful college campus in America.

I was privileged to be one of six alumni to be honored that weekend. But for us it was a two-way street: we were expected to give as well as take. Each of us was given around eight minutes to share with the audience the most significant distilled wisdom life had brought us. If you don’t think that would be a tough challenge, just put yourself in our places: how would you have responded to such an assignment?

For me, the question had profound implications, convicted as I am that all true wisdom comes from God. And since I’ve tweeted nuggets of wisdom every day now for almost three years, I had a lot of distilled wisdom to access. But the core of my response to this assignment was a no-brainer: There was for me only one possible quote that would satisfy. Especially, given the makeup of this particular audience. This is it:

A life may be over at sixteen

or barely begun at

seventy;

it is the aim

that determines its completeness.

That well-over-a-hundred-year-old-quotation came to me just when I needed it most: during the countdown decade leading up to the biblical “threescore and ten” that symbolizes a lifetime. At least that used to be true. In America, prior to the twentieth century, the norm was only forty-five years. Today, we’re back to the biblical seventy. I discovered that seminal quotation in a very old issue of that great magazine for young people: The Youth’s Instructor.

I needed it because as each of us approaches this time-period in life, one’s seventieth birthday can be almost terrifying: You mean my life is almost over? I don’t have any more time left? Will it be all downhill for me now? Will I be living on borrowed time? Is my productive lifetime over? Will it all be just a waiting game–waiting to die? All these questions swirled around in my head.

Also part of this ferment was a long-time metaphor for the perceived terminus of one’s productive lifetime: the proverbial Gold Watch. When or if one lived to be 65 years of age, one’s employer presented you with a gold watch. From that day forward, you were no longer a worker bee. You were now officially old. But not to worry: the benevolent government would now take care of you in the short time-frame you had left. Blessed be Social Security.

You see, when Social Security was born during the traumatic FDR era, no one expected Americans to live much longer than 65: many would die before they reached 65. This is why it seemed such a safe life raft for our government to offer its citizens. No one then even dreamed that more and more Americans would be living into their seventies, eighties, nineties, and, gasp! hundreds! Prime reason why the Social Security program is today threatening the fiscal stability of our nation.

The mind-set back then was this: You have exceeded expectations: You have reached 65. This gold watch means you’re done. We’re putting you out to pasture. We expect no more work out of you. Rock away on your front porch until you have the good sense to die. Always remember that Social Security is short-term: we can’t afford to pay you for living much longer. Most certainly we don’t expect you to live past seventy! Goodness! Do you think you’re immortal!

This was the mind-set of my grandparents’ generation.

But the problem today is this: We have never developed a template for vibrant productive living beyond the Gold Watch.

I see this reality at every alumni weekend I attend. Classmates who have given up on productive living now that they’ve entered the Gold Watch period. They don’t admit this in words, but they most certainly articulate it in their actions! They’ve traded their heretofore active lifestyle for a meaningless sedentary one. They’ve given up on goals. You ask them what they’re doing these days, and they sigh, “Not much…. Watch TV, putter around, play a few holes of golf, babysit the grandkids–you know: the usual.”

You can tell they’re telling you the truth because physically and mentally they are rapidly falling apart.

Each of them is indeed just waiting to die!

Next week, July 16, we shall continue on this topic: BARELY BEGUN AT SEVENTY.

Copyright© 2014

BLOG #26, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB #31

ZANE GREY’S THE VANISHING AMERICAN

June 25, 2014

Since my 32nd Keynote address at the Zane Grey’s West Society convention in Durango, Colorado on June 17 was titled, The Vanishing American: The Story Behind the Story,” I decided to make that book June’s Book of the Month.

Zane Grey (1872-1939), the author who almost single-handedly created the perception that once upon a time there was a romantic West (kind of a frontier Camelot), wrote some 89 books (most novels but a number were non-fiction fishing books); approximately 109 movies were made from his books (more than those of any other author); and in the process, he became the highest paid and most widely read author of the first half of the twentieth century.

During that time period, best-selling novelists like Grey also ruled over the magazine serialization world. Since his name on a cover dramatically increased sales for that issue, magazine editors paid Grey princely sums in order to edge out other competing magazine editors. Thus the top writers of the age usually received triple market exposure: magazine serialization first, book publishing second, and movie treatment third. That pattern continued until the terrible Depression of the 1930s all but brought the economy to a standstill.

All his life, Grey had been obsessed with the three-century-long confrontations between settlers and Indians. Sadly, the Indian was so technologically behind he was foredoomed to be pushed back and back into wastelands nobody wanted. Being 1/32nd Indian, many of Grey’s book dust jackets bore this banner heading: THE BLOOD OF INDIAN CHIEFS FLOWS IN HIS VEINS.

Finally, in 1922, Grey became convinced that the time had finally arrived for him to write a fictional blockbuster based on the plight of the Native Americans–specifically, the Navajos living in Monument Valley. Nophaie, a Navajo, is patterned after the real-life Jim Thorpe, who was half Indian. According to a poll conducted by ABC Sports, Thorpe was voted as the Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century.

In Grey’s story, Marian, an affluent socialite from the East, falls in love with this Navajo sports hero; and when Nophaie returns to his people, she follows him–resulting in major complications: chief of which was the issue of miscegenation., Back then, it was acceptable for a Caucasian back in Colonial times to marry a Native American, but it was definitely not true during the 1920′s. Thus Grey was forced to deal with this explosive issue in the novel that hit America like a bombshell: first in its five-month-long Ladies’ Home Journal magazine serializations, second in the book (published by Harpers) two years later, and third in the Paramount blockbuster movie (said to be the first to be filmed in technicolor).

So much flak resulted that Grey eventually ended up with three alternative endings: one in which the hero dies of exhaustion, one in which he dies of the Influenza Pandemic (of 1918-1919) complications, and one in which he lives to consummate his relationship with Marian. That Influenza Pandemic is said to have killed more people than World War I (estimated toll of the Pandemic: 20,000,000 to 40,000,000 fatalities).

Today there is so much interracial marriage and cohabitation that such a plot would be pretty much a non-issue, but not so then. Thus, if you wish to see for yourself how society reacted to such a thing in the 1920′s, buy a copy of the book and read it.

If at all possible, get both endings:

The Harpers 1925 First Edition in which Nophaie dies of exhaustion/influenza complications [most complete reprints use the First Edition text].

The “Revised Edition” (Pocket Book paperback of 1982) in which Nophaie lives.

Those of you who wish to secure a copy of my hour-long Keynote Address on the subject of The Vanishing American can write Sheryle Hodap (Secretary/Treasurer of the Zane Grey’s West Society) at 15 Deer Oaks Drive, Pleasanton, CA 94588 with a check for $35 for a year’s membership in the Society. That way you will get all the Society’s magazines over the next year (including the one that will carry the complete Keynote Address. Besides, you’ll learn a lot about this fascinating author! Make the check out to the Zane Grey’s West Society. We have raised Society dues only once in 32 years! We’ve done it all by serving pro-bono. There isn’t one person in the Society who is paid.

Enjoy!

BLOG #25, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

TRAIN – THE NEW WAY TO TRAVEL (Part Four)

June 18, 2014

Now we come to the end of our study on Amtrak trains and I’ve saved the most unexpected aspect until last: the impact of trains on young people. Not only that, but how I related to them.

Let me begin with the lovely young coed from Mesa State, the one who was so taken with the far-ranging conversation around our breakfast table. Permit me to begin with her appearance. Since her eyes still retained that magical childlike sense of wonder about the world around her, I‘m all but certain she’d been home-schooled. We saw no tatoos, no jewelry hanging from lips, cheeks, or nose. Clearly, she was highly intelligent and most curious about our worlds. Later on, I chatted with her for a while in the Observation Car. Some time later, as I walked past her coach seat, she moved over and asked if I’d be willing to talk with her for a while. She was full of questions about life, what it was all about, how she was to avoid the moral and ethical land-mines laying in wait for her at every turn. I told her about my 2014 Christmas in My Heart story, “The Tides of Life,” the love story of an artist just a little older (at the beginning of the story) than she. But her questions ranged so much wider than art that I introduced her to the 2013 Christmas story, “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” in which I distill the most significant life-related wisdom God has entrusted to me during my lifetime. Also how I was able to incorporate that wisdom into what I called “The Nightingale Assignment,” a six-week period during which I challenged each student to come up with goals they could live with, and strive toward. Sometime during the discussion, she brought up the subject of birthdays, shyly admitting, “My birthday was ten days ago.” That was all I needed. Telling her I’d be right back, I moved forward to my seat, rummaged around in my briefcase for a book, took it back to her, and then showed that it was Christmas in My Heart 22, which contained that goal-setting story; then backdated it to her birth-date, and inscribed it to her. She then told me that a certain soldier had been moving in on her and she didn’t know how she could hold him off. She was so overcome by my taking so much time to talk to her, listen to her, and offer counsel, that she broke down in tears, convulsively hugging me. One of the last things she said to me was, “Oh, how much I wish I could have been one of your students!” I told her I’d always be there for her, no further away than a letter, email, or phone call. She got off the train at Grand Junction. But I’m hoping our time together and the stories in the book will make a real difference in her life.

Our reason for making the trip was to attend a 55th alumni weekend at my undergraduate alma mater, Pacific Union College in the verdant Napa Valley. While there, as one of their honorees, I was asked to speak about the impact of my own principal mentor, Dr. Walter Utt, who I’d worked for three years. I told those assembled of the incredible impact that one man had on my life, how he’d remained in touch with me–until his untimely death [he was a hemophiliac] in his early fifties from an AIDS-contaminated blood transfusion out of San Francisco. I noted that after that never-to-be-forgotten remembering service (after I returned home), in gratitude to Dr. Utt’s impact on my life, I made a vow to God to make mentoring the #1 priority of the rest of my life.

Well, two days later, we boarded the eastbound Amtrak in Sacramento. We were soon climbing the newly snow-capped Sierras [a snow storm had just made a significant deposit of moisture in the higher Sierra Nevada Mountains]. In order to revel in the beauty more, I found my way forward to the Observation Car, and took a seat just inside the door. Turns out I’d joined a large group of college students and young singles. They were curious about me and I about them. For some unknown reason, I was impressed to ask a coed this question, “So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” In seconds, her face was radiant–and the entire group was galvanized by the question and her answers. Afterwards, I asked another student the same question, and another, and another. By this time, older people in the car had figured out that they were missing out on something really interesting–so they moved into our group. The students were soon asking me questions. Learning I was a full-time author, and had been for many years a college professor of English, they pumped me for all I was worth. During the course of the next couple of hours I’d referenced the mantras for making a success of life in “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” Incredibly, that half of the Observation Car became my class, and they proclaimed me to be their teacher. I passed out all the business cards I had left. Turned out to be one of the most fascinating and far-reaching discussions on life I’ve ever had.. Finally, I told them I’d better see how my wife was and left them; I didn’t see them for some hours afterwards, and they then reproachfully asked me why I’d deserted them.

It was late afternoon, when at one of our Nevada stops, many of us disembarked in order to get some fresh air. Several of those students were turning the air blue with cigarette smoke–so thick were the fumes that I couldn’t stand getting too close to them. But even so, the coed I’d spoken to first in the Observation Car turned to me, and in an earnest voice said, “Dr. Wheeler, do you know why I’m on this train?” I’m on because I wanted to get some answers about what life is all about. ”

I assumed I’d later be able to find her and follow up on her open invitation for me to talk with her personally. But unfortunately, she got off at the next stop. I’ve been troubled ever since . . . and prayed that, if it be His will, that God would have her reconnect with me.

So what does all this mean? I submit that there was something about Amtrak travel that caused all those students to buy tickets on The California Zephyr for reasons perhaps unknown even to themselves. But clearly they were seeking answers. Even more, they were seeking people who really cared about them, their goals, their dreams.

I suspect that they aren’t finding those answers in the hedonistic society we’re part of today. For universities have all but abandoned God, country, and values worth living by. People who attempt to live by a spiritual code are ridiculed and discounted. Thus these young people who clung to me like a life raft had clearly found in me something they weren’t finding anywhere else.

I will never be the same person I was ten days before. Nor, I am guessing, will those young people who spontaneously annointed me as their “professor.” And who got off the train with at least a few of their life-related questions dealt with or answered.

SPECIAL NOTE: All illustrations in this series taken from Amtrak Timetable and Vacations.

BLOG #24, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

TRAINS – THE NEW WAY TO TRAVEL (Part Three)

June 11, 2014

During that long night, the train would stop at Helper, Provo, and Salt Lake City, Utah. At Salt Lake City, many got off, and many got on. But since the overhead lights were left at dim, we were only partly aware of the stops. Then came Elko and Winemucca, Nevada; but again we were little aware of the stops. Not until Reno, did we thoroughly awaken. By breakfast time, we were climbing the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Never before had we seen so little snow in the Sierras in mid-April. It was late afternoon when the train drew into the Old Sacramento train station. Here we disembarked, rented a car, and drove up the San Joaquin Valley to Red Bluff, where my sister and brother-in-law live.

IMAX ON WHEELS

A week later, we boarded the east-bound California Zephyr in Sacramento. Right on time. By now we’d become one with the rhythm of the train and life inside it.

Europeans and world travelers are fascinated by America’s vast open spaces, the grandeur of the West; for there’s nothing to match it anywhere in the world. They don’t show that fascination in planes–but they certainly do in trains. On trains you see people from all over the world who are entranced by the majesty of the American landscape. To them, rolling through the West in an Amtrak car is like looking through IMAX lenses at some of the world’s most iconic scenery slowly rolling by. Just as interesting: to see Americans discover for the very first time their own heritage outside their windows.

Everywhere we’d been, during that intervening week, people had asked us what it was like to travel on a train. We couldn’t have attracted much more attention if we’d announced we’d be on the next space flight. Because we live in a “ho-hum” and “whatever” time, almost never do people get energized or excited about anything any more. Planes certainly don’t excite any more; indeed, the normal response to hearing we’re taking a plane somewhere is either complete boredom or commiseration. Not even cruise ship travel excites any more. But rather, “sure hope you don’t get sick!” or “Where you going this time?” Hardly anyone travels by bus anymore. And car travel is–just car travel. This is why it’s so amazing to see so many people light up and gush when told we’re traveling by train. “Oh, be sure and tell me what it’s like when you get back!” or “You lucky guy! Can I tag along?”

Life has, in truth, come full circle: what’s old has become new, and what’s new has become old. Retro is in. Roughing it is in. Five-star hotels are passé. Children and young people are searching for experiences that are fresh, new, and not cookie cutter. This is why trains are in and planes are out.

Interestingly enough, the same phenomenon is true on trains. All you hear around you are variations on “Thank God we’re traveling by train!” “Isn’t plane travel awful!” “Isn’t it great to be free to get up, walk around, talk to people, play games, eat whatever or whenever we want, relax or sleep, with no timetable to worry about!”

Really, it’s one big mutual admiration society! Hardly a soul wants to be anywhere else but on a train. And they love the Observation Car. The interaction with people of all ages, the running down to the snack area below whenever they want a bite to eat, the opportunity to play board games, to laugh, to reminisce, to joke–but more than anything else: to talk with people and find out what makes them tick.

Then there’s the Dining Car (right next to the Observation Car). We actually looked forward to the three full meals a day they offer there. The food was surprisingly good. And the vegetarian options were most palatable. But really, you’d have to experience it yourself to fully appreciate the full difference. Had we been traveling by auto, it would have taken us two and a half days (including two nights at a motel), the stress of driving long hours, finding acceptable eating options on the road, gas costs alone would have totaled over $500 for the round trip–not counting repair problems or road hazards. Meals would have cost us at least as much, per meal, as on board Amtrak.

But oh the difference! To get on the train and be able to fully relax. No driving pressures. No hauling in and out suitcases each night. No missing much of the scenery because of driving demands. Just sit back, relax, and watch America slowly pass by. Tired of sitting? Wander down to the Snack Car, the Observation Car, the Dining Car. Get acquainted with your fellow passengers.

Occasionally, one of the train personnel would get on the mike and tell us about the history of sites we were passing by. Later on, I discovered that someone has written and published three books detailing every significant history-related spot in the entire transcontinental train route from the Atlantic to the Pacific! I saw all three in one of the train station gift shops.

There’s also not a little of “Now that we’re here, let’s close the door! We don’t want too many people to discover how wonderful train travel is, because they might then wreck it for the rest of us.”

The one sad negative for the host of wanabee train travelers is that trains service all too few locales across the country. Radically different than it used to be when trains connected virtually every hamlet in America. Europe is much more fortunate than we are in this respect.

Next week, I’ll be bringing to a conclusion my paean to train travel.”

BLOG #23, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

TRAIN – THE NEW WAY TO TRAVEL (Part Two)

June 4, 2014

Please refresh your memory by glancing back at Part One of this tribute to trains, on May 21.

Now, let’s get back to the pluses and minuses of Amtrak travel. A huge plus has to be the seats. In recent years in air flight, the so-called “friendly skies” have become anything but. In order to cram more and more people into these flying cattle cars, seat-size continues to shrink. Width too. Worst of all, knee room. Once a plane is in motion, and the person in front of you reclines the seat, you are lucky if you have an inch or two space between your knees and the seat in front of you. And width-wise, if your seatmate is large (which is more than likely given our national obesity epidemic), you are forced to scrunch and contort your body in order to fit in the remaining space. Needless to say, the combination of the two, bad enough on short flights, can be a recipe for hell on longer ones.

Not so, Amtrak seats: they are wide with plenty of leg room: thus you are free to really stretch out.

As for the nights, that extra space really helps. One serendipity in transcontinental train travel is that when you leave major urban hubs such as Denver or Salt Lake City, enough passengers will have disembarked to enable you to stretch out across two seats. No one tells you that you can, but rarely will anyone stop you from doing so. Of course, if a large number of passengers boarded somewhere in the middle of the night and space became a premium, you’d probably be informed that you would have to surrender one of the two seats.

I’ll do one thing differently next time, however: I’ll take an extra blanket and a pillow. They do turn the lights way down low, which makes it easier to sleep. Sleeper cars, of course, are better. Complete with bedding, bunk beds, toilet, sink, shower, and porter service. But unless you are traveling clear across the country (taking three days), one night in a coach seat is not bad at all. That’s confirmed by the people who, in spite of being awakened by car attendants, sleep through the stops anyhow. But they are the exception, not the norm.

DAY ONE

Since we were late pulling out of Denver, we missed breakfast in the dining car. Consequently, we cobbled together enough items from the Snack Car to get us through. For hours we climbed, along rivers, streams, and canyons, through multitudinous tunnels. But none longer than Moffatt Tunnel (the second longest rail tunnel in the United States). The giant bore was the realization of the dream of David H. Moffatt, a Denver banker, who began in 1902 to construct a railroad west through the towering Rockies. It soon became clear that deep winter snows would bring travel to a halt unless a six-mile-long tunnel could be drilled through the heart of James Peak. Finally, in 1922, the Moffatt Tunnel commission was appointed, and bonds were issued to finance the work. Originally, it was assumed that since the mountain had a granite core, $6,720,000 ought to be enough to complete the project. Once inside the mountain, however, engineers discovered they’d also have to dig through muddy shale, every foot of which would have to be timbered. Result: the price-tag tripled! Even with the tunnel, the elevation is 9,094 feet. To passengers today, it seems to take almost forever to get through it.

Coming out finally, there below was Winter Park Ski Area, one of Colorado’s largest. Passengers had front-row seats as they watched hundreds of descending skiers, and more coming from the far distance. It would be a winter wonderland for some time to come.

No one wanted to surrender a seat in the Observation Car during the gradual descent through Gore Canyon, following the Colorado River; at Dotsero Junction, where the Eagle River joins the Colorado, the train turns west again, and soon, sheer walls towering over a thousand feet above Glenwood Canyon, almost stops conversation in its tracks. Easily one of the greatest scenic sights in America. In the middle of it, Connie and I were called into the Dining car. What a view! Our entranced table-mates were retirees from West Virginia; a lovely college freshman attending Mesa State in Grand Junction completed our fivesome. Daughter of a professional artist, she was majoring in art herself. So fascinated was she by our travel-related conversations that her eyes widened in wonder as we took her with us all around the world. I shall return to her before I complete this Amtrak series.

By the way, the highway through Glenwood Canyon took close to twenty years to construct, disrupting traffic for an entire generation.

Late in the afternoon, we stopped briefly in Grand Junction, the state’s fruit-growing heartland. Its Palisade peaches are known nationwide. Also more and more vineyards are being planted here.

Night fell, as we rolled through the Utah mountains. Then came a delicious vegetarian repast in the dining car. Since we’d left home at 5:00 a.m., we were very tired and decided to call it a day at 9:50 p.m. Because we’d gain an hour when we entered the Pacific Time Zone, it meant it was 8:50 p.m., making for a very long night. For even with two seats for each of us to stretch out in, it most certainly was a long ways from our king size bed at home. Our dreams were haunted by the sound of the horn at every railroad crossing and road intersection. Surprisingly, it didn’t keep us awake but rather filled the interstices of our dreams.

BLOG #22, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

DR. JOE’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB

LAURENCE BERGREEN’S OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

May 28, 014

Recently, while we were visiting my sister Marjorie and her husband, Elmer Raymond in Red Bluff, California, Elmer asked if I’d yet read Bergreen’s landmark biography of Ferdinand Magellan. I had not so he loaned his copy to me. All the way back to Colorado, on Amtrak, I continued reading it. By the end, I knew it had to be my next Book of the Month selection.

The book is a biography, true; but much more than just a biography, it is the story of one of the greatest and most daring adventures in the history of this planet. If you’ve ever wished to cut your teeth on a book guaranteed to stretch your mind, this would be it.

Thirty years that doubled the size of the known world! It boggles the mind just to imagine such a thing. It is true that supposedly Scandinavian mariners had reached Labrador in 986 and 1000, but few people were aware of it. Many considered such a voyage to merely be a myth.

It was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks that dramatically shifted the western world’s attention in a totally different direction. For now, the Turks controlled the land and sea routes to the East. There was then no consensus that the world was a sphere. The great land mass of Europe and Asia constituted, with Mediterranean Africa, the known world. But then, note what happened! Two nations: Portugal and Spain were to dominate the doubling of the known world in just a few short years, at the then fastest sea-speed known to man, sail-driven caravels and galleons.

Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator inaugurated the commercial revolution that was to transform the map of the globe. Spain came late to the game. Not until 1479, with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella did Spain even become a state. Even then, it took their conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in 1492 to enable Isabella to send Christopher Columbus on his voyage, seeking a sea route to the Indies. Columbus landed on Watling Island in the Bahamas on October 12 of 1492; he discovered Cuba on October 18; on December 25, his flagship, the Santa Maria was sunk in Haitian waters [it has been in the news during the last couple of weeks–apparently its wreckage has finally been found]! During his four voyages to what he mistakenly assumed to be part of the Indies, Columbus also discovered Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Dominica, the Orinoco River, Honduras, and Panama. Had he only known it, when he was on the Panamanian east coast, he was only 40 miles from discovering the Pacific Ocean, the vastest ocean on earth, that Christmas of 1502. He died in 1506, still not knowing just what it was he had discovered.

In 1513, Nuñez de Balboa discovered a new ocean, which he called the “South Sea” (the Pacific).

In 1497, King Manuel of Portugal, jealous of the honors and wealth that Columbus was bringing to Spain, commissioned Vasco de Gama to find a sea route to India (at that time no one had any idea just how huge Africa was). Mariners for centuries had been too terrified of the unknown to venture south of Africa’s big hump. Forced by storms to take a circuitous route, the 28-year-old captain took 137 days, voyaging some 5,000 miles, to reach the Cape of Good Hope. It would take him 178 more days, and 4,500 more miles to reach Calicut on the Malabar Coast, where he anchored on May 20, 1498. Finally, the Portugese had found a route to India to replace the land routes through Arabia and Persia.

Proud of having finally reached the real India while the Spanish navigators were still stumbling around the Caribbean, Portugal hadn’t given a thought to the world west of them. But in 1500, Portugese navigator Pedro Cabral, driven far off the coast of Africa by a terrific storm, found himself on the coast of Brazil. Two years later, Amerigo Vespucci arrived at the conclusion that South America was actually a continent–not part of India.

Enter Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521). In 1495, he entered the service of Manuel “the Fortunate,” King of Portugal. He spent his early years sailing under Portugese captains such as de Almeida, in the islands of the Indies. The object of their search was the legendary Spice Islands (the Moluccas), which they finally reached in 1511. In 1513, he was wounded in Morocco. Afterwards, having fallen out of favor with King Manuel, Magellan renounced his Portugese citizenship and offered his services to Charles V” of Spain. He announced his desire to seek out a western route to the Spice Islands by sailing around South America, hopefully discovering a strait through which his ships could traverse. On August 10, 1519, Magellan left Seville with a fleet of five vessels. Little did he know what lay ahead! Of those five ships, only one of them would return after circumnavigating the globe, for the first time in human history.

Magellan himself would be killed, after unbelievable hardships, complete with mutinies, desertions, loss of ships, and epidemics of scurvy that decimated his mariners. In those days, no one knew what caused scurvy or how to cure it. As fate would have it, he’d be killed in the Moluccas, the Spice Islands he’d already explored back in 1511. He’d also escaped being murdered by the express directive of the King of Portugal who was willing to kill the explorer rather than have him complete the first circumnavigation of the globe. Even after Magellan’s death, the Portugese did the utmost within their power to keep any of Magellan’s mariners from making it back to Spain alive. On September 8, 1522, three and a half years after leaving Seville, only eighteen of the original 280 mariners arrived back in Spain, more dead than alive, in a crippled ship that barely made it into port. They had traveled over 60,000 miles (the equivalent of over two and a half times around the world!).

Fortunately for Magellan’s memory, aboard that one battered little ship was Antonio Pigatetta, the indefatigable chronicler of the expedition; it would be his incredibly detailed chronicles of the epic voyage, published in Venice twenty years later, that would set the record straight, for Charles V cared only for the vast treasure in spices that came home with the eighteen survivors–didn’t even give a passing thought to Magellan’s giving his life on behalf of him and his realm.

By making it into the harbor, by that act, Spain displaced Portugal as the world’s premier maritime power, Magellan proved that the world was a sphere and much much larger than anyone had ever dreamed of, that it was possible to circumnavigate the entire globe, and that the known world had in that moment – doubled.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Magellan’s name has never received its due recognition in general history. It ranks with those of Columbus, Marco Polo, and Henry the Navigator. The circumnavigation of the globe is as great an event as the discovery of America. Magellan achieved what Columbus planned–the linking of west Europe with Asia by direct transit over the western ocean.”

* * * * *

With all this as a preamble, you ought to be ready to pounce on a copy of the book, sit down, and get ready for one of the greatest reads of your lifetime.

Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen (New York: William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2003). It has now been published in trade paper; in fact it is already in its 13th trade paper printing.

BLOG #21, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

TRAIN – THE NEW WAY TO TRAVEL (Part One)

May 21, 2014

Yes, trains, long considered antiquated and a quaint holdover from the past, have quietly and unobtrusively in recent years become the “in” thing with thousands of travelers. Hadn’t realized it until Connie and I boarded The California Zephyr at Denver’s rapidly changing Union Station on April 20. Actually, “rapidly changing” is a major understatement, for it is a stunning transformation. Even though the construction is still going on, it is the talk of the plains: A new upscale hotel is going in, buses from all over the region have been rerouted so they disgorge and pick up passengers in a large state of the art underground terminal directly below the train waiting room. Same for light rail. As a result, already over a billion dollars of new construction is changing the city skyline of what locals call “LO-DO” [lower downtown].

The initial news that Sunday morning was not good: the train would be two and a half hours late. We later discovered that a big fire had broken out near the tracks in the vicinity of Omaha. But not to worry, the train would make up a lot of the time later on. And it did: an hour and a half of it before we reached Sacramento. But the delay didn’t appear to bother anyone very much. Just accepted it as another example of what regulars label “AMTRAK time,” the result of freight train corporations owning the tracks, and consequently having priority over passenger trains. But, in reality, as everyone knows all too well, air travelers face jammed skies and weather-based delays and cancellations virtually every day, not counting mechanical problems—so, delay-wise, it can be a Hobson’s choice.

ALL ABOARD!

Since it had been some years since we had last traveled by train, we wondered what it would be like in the Year of our Lord 2014. It was enough that finally here around the bend, the long silver city on steel wheels backed into the still-under-construction station. We were surprised to see how excited we were–it had been a long time since we’d experienced anything but dread and distaste over the prospect of boarding yet another flying cattle-car. So this was different. How different we didn’t yet realize.

We quickly discovered that, as through-travelers to California, we were assigned a through-car. Not so for shorter-distance travelers who had to settle for potluck car-wise. But not to worry: they could later change seats if they so desired.

Downstairs (adjacent to the restrooms) were storage facilities for large suitcases. No charge for them such as is true with most airlines today. The smaller case we could stow in the overhead above our seat upstairs. After picking just the right seats for the anticipated view, and then positioning our smaller suitcase or bag overhead, with a giant sigh of relief we took our seats and watched the scurrying around, including the boarding of the last passengers and train attendants–and the journey began.

Unlike air travel, where only the person sitting next to a window can see out, here everyone can see. Furthermore, passenger jets fly so high today that rarely can even those sitting next to the windows see what is passing below; whereas in trains, the continually unrolling of the travel scroll reveals a world that’s only feet away–and not 40,000 feet away such as in airplanes.

After a while, an attendant came through, checked to see if we were through-passengers, then wrote our destination down on a card and attached it to the overhead rack. Later on, we learned the reason for that: late at night, unless aroused by an attendant, some people sleep through their destinations. One young woman in our car, who was supposed to get off in Elko, Nevada, dropped off to sleep after being awakened, and didn’t get off until Reno; there she had to wait for the next eastbound train the following day.

After we had been checked in, we were free to wander. What a difference from air travel where, most of the time, you remain strapped to your seat, and only get up for potty breaks. Even then, in the forward compartment, no one is allowed to wait in line. No such restrictions on the train. The most popular place to be is the observation car, for there you can look up as well as out. In our case, since passengers see two of the most beautiful mountain ranges in America (The Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas), in consecutive days, almost everyone jockeys for a seat in the observation car during those stretches. Especially was this true when traversing Colorado’s iconic Glenwood Canyon.

The snack car too was almost always in use by someone. And then there was the Dining Car, where three meals a day are served. Reservations are easy to secure. Only when your number is called do you enter the Dining Car. Then you are seated. Unless you specifically ask to be seated alone, generally you join others already seated. We always prefer to thus get acquainted with our fellow travelers, for that’s what makes train travel so fascinating. Reminded me of the long-ago days when air-dining was such a pleasure; today, you’re lucky if you get pretzels, peanuts, or crackers. On the train, it is a leisurely affair–no one hurries you. Though you don’t dine on fine china, at least you have clean white tablecloths, and can order from a surprisingly large array of options. Even for vegetarians such as us. And the food was certainly good, and those who served us most gracious and interesting to talk to. And it was clear that they–and all the other train attendants we chatted with–loved their job. Many had worked for AMTRAK for much of their entire careers!

So what a different world! No reason to be struck with deep-vein thrombosis that happens on long air flights, because everyone is free to wander. Children love it, for it’s like the entire train is just one long fascinating moving playground. In fact, a good friend of ours, who when he heard we were traveling by train to California, asked what we thought of train travel. After listening to my answers, he booked The California Zephyr west to Emeryville [San Francisco], and the coastal AMTRAK south. He and his family of four got off at Santa Barbara and drove up to President Reagan’s mountain hideaway; then drove on to Disneyland, after which they headed home by the same route. Later I asked him what he thought of train travel. He had booked a family sleeper [though AMTRAK travel is generally cheaper than air travel, sleeper compartments cost considerably more – sort of like traveling business class by air]. He said his kids loved train travel! In fact he said, they’d asked if they might always travel by train from here on!

But our journey had just begun. Part two of “Trains – The New Way to Travel” will resume on Wednesday, June 4; as next week we’ll break for Dr. Joe’s Book of the Month Club June book selection. By the way, there’s always lots of time to read on trains.

I have so much more to share with you about why so many people – including young people (college age and young adults) – are gravitating to train travel today. See you June 4.

BLOG #20, SERIES #5

    WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

    ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A DAD

    May 14, 2014

    NEWS RELEASE

     Joe L. Wheeler, Ph.D., author/editor/compiler of 86 books, has a new book out: Only God Can Make a Dad (eChristian/Mission Books, 2014). Actually, this book was published before A Mother’s Face Is Her Child’s First Heaven, but we reversed the order to get the book out before Mother’s Day.

Included in this collection are twelve timeless stories of fatherhood that ought to stand the test of time. If you are looking for the perfect Father’s Day gift for someone, this might just be it.

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In its 142 pages, the following are included:

Introduction: “Why Only God Can Make a Dad” –Joseph Leininger Wheeler

“Tenderly and Forever,” –Author Unknown

“The Bridge of Ice” –Mitchell V. Charnley

“As a Grain of Mustard Seed” –Hattie H. Carpenter

“Father” –Stella Parker Peterson

“The Best Policy” –Christine Whiting Parmenter

“The Return” –Margaret E. Sangster, Jr.

“There Is a Way Which Seemeth Right” –Gwendolyn Lampshire Hayden

“The Church with an Overshot-Wheel” –Author Unknown

“Jim’s Experiment” –Beth Bradford Gilchrist

“In Quest of beauty” –Maud Mary Brown

“Roddy’s Second Nature” –T. Morris Longstreth

“Life in the Fast Lane” –Joseph Leininger Wheeler

    INTRODUCTION

    WHY ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A DAD   

    Joseph Leininger Wheeler

      Fatherhood is a mighty tough profession—one none of us get any training for.  Just as is true for motherhood, each newly-minted father stumbles blindly into it without a learning manual or introduction book.

There is no greater epiphany than that first glimpse of God’s greatest miracle in our lives: that first baby, flesh of our flesh, conceived in love by a man and woman united by God in holy matrimony.  It is no hyperbole to maintain that no male ever really experiences selfless love until he looks for the first time into the eyes of his helpless child.  Even marriage can be approached selfishly.  But not fatherhood—for the baby is so helpless that, without parents or parental surrogates, it will die in only days.

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is the wholesale depreciation of marriage by a secular society.  Marriage—who needs it?  Men and women everywhere (close to half of all Americans) merely move in with each other—without commitment, without swearing, before God, family, and witnesses, that each will be there for the other as long as life lasts.  These solemn marital vows represent the very foundational structure of a child’s life; when they do not exist, the child’s heart is broken by that absence.

The media tells us not to worry: the child will do fine without a mother and a father.  One will do as well as two.  Not true!  It cannot possibly be the same.  And let me tell you why.

For a number of years, I directed an Adult Degree Program.  During those years, and in a similar program in another state, I sat at the head of long tables with 20 to 30 adults (from those in their twenties to those in their eighties).  Crucial to the success of the awarding of experiential college credit for knowledge and skills gained outside the formal classroom is the autobiography.  Only when each Adult Degree student writes such a summation of his/her life story, chronologically, do all the little things each has accomplished in life come to mind, and hence contribute to a case for specific course credit.

But something else happens when life stories are written.  I ought to know, for over the years I’ve listened to five hundred to a thousand, each lasting an average of one to two hours (some longer, a very few shorter).  Without exception (that I can remember), whenever the reader approached a section dealing with abandonment (by father, mother, spouse), the voice would slow, become ragged, break—many’s the time the reader was literally incapable of going on, so overcome with emotion and tears I’d have to declare a recess before the life story could be completed.  Some were incapable of going on even after that.  The only explanation to this that makes sense to me is that such cases of perceived abandonment leave life-long wounds in the psyche, wounds that never completely heal.  All it takes—months, years, or decades later—is to revisit them and the wound bleeds as copiously as though the act had just happened!

Why am I sharing this now?  Because, without the daily sustaining power of a divine God in our lives, marriage is extremely difficult to sustain and preserve.  Without God to turn to when trials, tribulations, disasters, deaths, incapacitating, etc., come to us, we crumble.

On a deeper level, without a God who can serve as a catalyst for values to internalize, character traits do not put down roots.  We see the results of life without God in every courtroom in America: if an individual witness does not believe in God, how can s/he swear to “tell the truth, so help me God”?  The epidemic of cheating sweeping the nation is the result of our children growing up without any concept of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong.

This is why “Only God Can Make a Dad.”  A “father” can happen on a biological level in a procreational sense, but a “Dad” implies something far deeper, far dearer.  That truth came home to me—vividly—some years ago when my book, Heart to Heart Stories for Dads (Focus on the Family/Tyndale House, 1997) came out.  When I inscribed them, “As we perceive our earthly father, thus we perceive God,” it scared people.  So much so that I finally had to quit using that inscription.  After much prayer, I stumbled on “Only God Can Make a Dad,” and voila!  Smiling acceptance.  Reason being that each book-purchaser perceives fatherhood as very different from being a “Dad.”  To be a “Dad,” is to be a work-in-progress, to be in a fluid process of internalizing character traits that mirror the ultimate template of divine fatherhood but are qualified by our sinful tendencies and all too frequent mistakes and lapses of good judgment.  But when such mistakes are made by a God-fearing father, and the father confesses his mistakes to his children, and assures them that, with God’s help, he’ll do his best not to repeat them, the tenderness and empathy that results creates such a bond that eventually such a father, with God’s day-to-day assistance and blessing, has the potential to be worthy of being called “Dad.”

ABOUT THESE STORIES

     Most of these stories (nine of the twelve) I’ve never anthologized before.  The three that I brought back I did so because I felt this collection needed them in order to make God-given fatherhood three-dimensional and possible in our daily lives.  Many many fatherhood stories were rejected because they lacked the power I sought.  In fact, I have scanned through thousands of stories in our archives and recent book purchases seeking out those few—so few they are rare—I consider pure gold.  Also-rans are being returned to the archives, as not quite good enough.

What I sought were stories that emphasized God-like character traits; that portrayed fathers earnestly seeking to become “Dads”; fathers as fallible but seeking to profit by their mistakes; fathers evolving from authority figures into friends; fathers being willing to make great sacrifices so that the child can grow into his/her full potential; fathers who become not only worthy of respect but—far more significantly—worthy of love.

This collection includes some of the greatest family writers of the last hundred years., Writers such as Chriwstine Whiting Parmenter, Margaret E. Sangster, Jr., Gwendolyn Lampshire Hayden, Beth Bradford Gilchrist, and T. Morris Longstreth.

ORDERING INFORMATION

Binding: Trade Paper

Pages: 142

Price: $12.98

Packing and Mailing: $4.50

Personally signed or inscribed by Joe Wheeler, if requested, at no extra cost.

Mail your request to: Dr. Joe L. Wheeler, P.O. Box 1246, Conifer, CO 80433.

Or Phone: 303-838-2333

Or send an email: [email protected]

BLOG #19, SERIES #5

WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE

A MOTHER’S FACE IS HER CHILD’S FIRST HEAVEN

May 7, 2014

NEWS RELEASE

Joe L. Wheeler, Ph.D., author/editor/compiler of 85 books, has a new book out: A Mother’s Face Is Her Child’s First Heaven (eChristian/Mission Books, 2014).

Included in this collection are twelve timeless stories of motherhood that bid well to stand the test of time. If you are looking for the perfect Mother’s Day gift for someone, this might just be it.

In its 120 pages, the following are included:

Introduction: “Our First Heaven” –Joseph Leininger Wheeler

“The Masterpiece,” –Joseph DeFord Terrill

“Yellow on White” –Hattie H. Carpenter

“The Littlest Orphan and the Christ Baby” –Margaret E. Sangster, Jr.

“The Greatest Victory in the World” –Helen Adair

“Vacation–for Mother!” –Beth Bradford Gilchrist

“Finger Bowls and Accomplishments” –Katherine M. Harbaugh

“Bobby Unwelcome” –Annie Hamilton Donnell

“Polly Ann” –Harriet H. Clark

“Wanted–A Real Mother” –Author Unknown

“An Old Mother” –Jessie Frank Stallings

“Red Roses” –John Scott Douglas

“Lucky Girl” –Temple Bailey

INTRODUCTION

OUR FIRST HEAVEN

Joseph Leininger Wheeler

Each of us spends nine months inside our mothers, flesh of her flesh, an integral part of her—hence our incredibly strong bond with our mothers.

But after that, at our mother’s breast, hers is the face we see every time we nurse, every time we are held. Thus it is that that face becomes our first heaven. Quite simply the dearest face on earth to us. Those mothers who nurse longer than a year—as many do—only deepen that bond. Yet even those mothers who feed by bottle almost invariably hold the baby in essentially the same position, thus her face is also the focal center of her child’s world.

It is because of all this that Mother’s Day is such a deeply sentimental day for the American people. Especially is this true for mothers who retain that closeness all during the child’s growing-up years.

Second only to the nursing-related bond is the one created by mothers who every day and/or evening of the child’s early years read to the child on her lap, or later on, side-by-side, with her arm around the child as she is reading to them. Or listening to the child read to her. Growing up listening to the sound of her voice, that voice ends up becoming part of the adult child’s psyche.

One of the tragedies of our time has to do with mothers who fail to realize how short a time they have before their child bridges to someone else or something else than her. If she is invariably too busy to spend time with her child, farming out son or daughter to babysitters, daycare, or electronic imagery, the end-result is to erode the initial babyhood bonds. For the television set can steal her child away just as surely as a person could. This is a key reason why wise parents who desire to create life-long bonds with their children today, strongly limit electronic exposure and substitute the interactive daily story hour and parental (both parents) activities both inside the house and outside. All too soon the electronic tentacles created by our society will woo our children away from us—but we can delay that separation by our willingness to spend time with our children while they are young.

For our children do not spell love L-O-V-E—, but rather they spell it T-I-M-E.

ABOUT THIS COLLECTION

This is a new collection of motherhood stories. In fact, eleven of the twelve are new; only Margaret Sangster’s “The Littlest Orphan” is brought forward from earlier collections—mainly because it is quintessentially the greatest mother’s face story every written!

Even so, I feel you’ll fall in love with the others as well. In almost all cases, the mother’s face plays a key role in the story. Most of them I have retrieved from that time period I call “The Golden Age of Judeo Christian Stories in America” (1880s through the 1950s). During this period, print ruled supreme, thus our greatest writers wrote for the family, for the children, for the teens. Then, directly after World War I, television came in and began displacing print—and not coincidentally parents as well. The Norman Rockwell years were the era’s swan song.

By the 1960s, stories, novels, and films turned darker; and since so many family magazines died, authors turned to whoever else might hire their services.

Contemporary Authors labels me an archeologist of the old-timey stories, maintaining that I’m almost obsessive about trying to save as many of this period’s great family stories as I possibly can before they crumble out of existence. Since I have spent a lifetime doing so (building on the legacy of my storytelling elocutionist mother, Barbara Leininger Wheeler), I have collected vast holdings of stories that so richly deserve to live on. Back then, authors and editors cherished the values our nation was built on: honesty, kindness, helpfulness, empathy, industriousness, patriotism, spirituality, respect for elders, clean living, avoidance of substance-abuse, friendship, tenderness, constancy, marriage for life, selfless service for others, sacrifice, sportsmanship, homemaking, parenting, thankfulness—and so much more.

Now, think about it: How long do you have to search today (in print or in electronic media) to find stories internalizing such values? Their absence adds up to a national tragedy. But by assisting us to preserve these stories by using them yourselves and giving copies away, you can help us preserve these values for tomorrow’s families.

This collection includes some of the greatest family writers of the last hundred years. The “great ones,” I call them: authors such as Temple Bailey,\; Margaret E. Sangster, Jr.; Beth Bradford Gilchrist; Annie Hamilton Donnell; John Scott Douglas; and Josephine DeFord Terrill.

ORDERING INFORMATION

Binding: Trade Paper

Pages: 200

Price: $12.98

Packing and Mailing: $4.50

Personally signed or inscribed by Joe Wheeler, if requested, at no extra cost.

Mail your request to: Dr. Joe L. Wheeler, P.O. Box 1246, Conifer, CO 80433.

Or Phone: 303-838-2333

Or send an email: [email protected]