A Chronicle of the Fair of Ginny

(or at least a modest couple of tales)



(If you don't like long borring blogs, and pointless stories of very small children, we'd highly recoment that you skip this blog and try a story by Mr. Edgar Allen Poe - he won't tell about the Elkhart fair, but he will make you bald with fear and keep you wide awake.)

Yes, best beloved (to steel a phrase from Jims), you shall now here the tale of our stay in the land of Goshen. This was not the locale near Egypt where the Jews met a 400 year captivity, but I refer to the metropolitan Goshen Indiana (reportedly home of 29,000 residents, but you'll have to ask a local) where aformentioned Jims and I spent the weekend visiting Ginny's clan, the Landows.

My first lasting memory of this visit? Well, though we did see them at church, give and get many hugs from the Elkhart congregation, and had a nice ride to their home past the burnt truck, I must say that my most solid first impression was the one of Mush Casserole (no pun intended). Ah yes, a casserole! At once I knew that we were at home in this place where macaroni goes into a dish, but is never seen again. We sat down to lunch with Mrs. Landow, her mom, Ginny, and David (her bro) and began to partake of this marvelous mixture of pasta, tomatoes, peppers, and chicken. I do hope that Mrs. Landow never sees this and takes offense, but the reason this was so much fun was that it was in the midst of a lull in conversation and someone said:
"Is there cheese in this dish?"
The cook pauses, thinks and replies, "No, I'm sure that I didn't put any cheese in there, but if you want cheese you can certainly imagine that's what it is!"

What a laugh! Imagination food is the best kind, and Mush Casserole (and finds of other "secret ingredients") furnished the rest of the lunch's giggles and quips.

The Landow's house itself, oh best beloved, is settled in trees and hills. These were, no offence indended to Central Indiana, a sight for very sore eyes. There was even a creek and a river at the bottom of the hill just like there was in Shiloh, but these I'll have to see ::cough cough:: next time I'm up. Most of our time, however, was spent at the fair, and the Elkhart county fair is the largest county fair in Indiana, and third largest County Fair in the US! Ain't that somthin'?

Ginny herself had been showing animals and projects at the county fair for 10 years, and was on the fair board after that (if my chronology's correct) so she knew her way around and walked with the greatest efficiency. Many times as we headed off for our next site, she took the lead and soon her authoritative cowboy hat could be seen yards ahead of us. But then she would stop and wait, as any good tour guide would, turning to us with a look of "Poor short little people, they'd probably wander around the maze of donut stands, or get eaten by a display cucumber if it weren't for me!" Then I would mournfully remind her that some of us were more vertically impaired than others, and our strange little band would continue.


I already told you about the harness racing, which was a most enjoyable time, but perhaps my favorite part of the fair was the night ride we took on the ferris wheel. I had only been to a fair one other time a few weeks ago, and then it was only for a few hours, we didn't go on any rides, or see any animals, so I hardly thought it counted. Now when Ginny had asked me up, my one request was that we ride on a ferris wheel, because I'd never had that experience under my belt. Now that we had been around for a few hours I was seized with the desire to sit down on any ride that would fling me into the air. Our party stopped (by now it was Ginny, Jims and I, and a chap that goes to the Elkhart church named Christopher) and powwowed a moment. Heads were nodding, Yes, we could go on one ride tonight. Ginny called up here sister Becky and we scooped up ride tikets.

Now here it must be added, that Christopher very gallantly offered to treat for the whole ride, and when he went toget the tickets he was charitably repayed for his generosity by getting ripped off of $15. The ticket lady never gave him his change. ?!?!?! Can they do that? We gals were wrothfully contemplating fetching
fair security, when Christopher quietly pointed out that the lady was contemplating the same thing for us. A reluctant retreat was sounded, and we arrived at our ride a bit crestfallen and seethy.

But let me ask you, best beloved, would you advise one who had always been afeared of hights to find her way to the highest point in the fair? Nay, I wouldn't either, but that's exactly what I did. We were all settled in our little... our little coop and began our upward journey when gasp I realized that I had absolutely nothing below me. Did I bemoan my foolishness? Did I ask myself WHY I had come to this very tall place? No, my whole attention was wrapped in attaching myself securely to the middle pole so that I did not dash my silly self out on the earth many miles below. A fictitious danger? Nay, I saw with my own blue eyes that every time we came to the ouside of the circle I, the poor cabbage, was sitting in the heavens with only night air to break my fall!

This story (as truly told as any legume might have done it) does have a happy ending, best beloved. I received a few confused laughs from my party of protectors, and found that if I kept my back to the great frame of the wheel, the ride was downright fun. At last I was even able to scoot back a bit and pretend that I was on a veranda that was lifting me up and down over the fair.

But so much for grandious goals of grownup guts, I'd better stick to bumper cars...

Pickle juice

We’re baaaack!!!

For those who didn’t know that Amy and I had departed for the weekend to Elkhart for the greatest fair ever - we did. Well, it was at least the best fair I’ve ever been too anywho. Is any of this making sence? We drove up to worship with the Elkhart RPers on Sunday, heard Mr. York preach a very cool sermon that we missed when we were going on to Covfamikoi. Then we spent the rest of Sunday, all of Monday, and Tuesday morning with Ginny of Ginnys and saw the Elkhart county fair. Woot! Weela!! Huzzah!!!

Now as I have an unaccountable desire to dive into a tub of cold water, I shall be brief and leave you with some education points, things I’ve been having on my mind the past three days.

The most important things to remember about a county fair:
1) If you find SPF lip balm floating around in your purse, actually use it the next day…
2) A chicken by any other name will smell
3) You can go to the Rabbit Club booth, buy a salad and cheep subs and… fried rabbit Ewww!
4 ) Only kiss a duck in extreme private
5) Harness racing is really cool. You have these horses hitched to small single-man buggiesthinggies and they trot as fast as they can around the ring. If they break into a gallop they are disqualified, but it was actually riveting, these were beautiful expensive animals and they were all real competitors.
6) If you are a certain Cabbage (or pea?) watching harness racing, every horse you chose to cheer for will end up in 5th or 6th
7) Wear close toed shoes – “The horses have been here!”
8) Carving bunnies should be left to Michelangelo, not lumber jacks with chain saws
9) Every expensive teaspoon of beverage you can buy is worth it


P.S. I was intending to post my one picture from the fair on this blog, but I shall have to ask the certain person's permission if her hat-ed head and sweater-ed shoulders can appear on the interweb. :P

Tales of the Crimson Motorbus - Part One

Disclaimer: Though the characters in this story have been maintained so that the readers cannot help but know who they are, we fear that the events have been woefully distorted due to the unbalanced imagination of the blogger...

Swoosh. The red getaway van courses onto the interstate leaving Indianapolis, bound for Kentucky. Who are those outlaws inside the stealthy 15 passenger ride? A tall man, commandingly whiskered, unravels the coded maps. Beside him the lovely pilot, custodian of the ice box and the educational tapes. In the chamber behind them is a valiant crew of travelers: El Giusante - ever wondering weather she should study her map or liberate more calizonies from the cooler; L'italiano - a cool damsel changing between portly Victor Hugo and British pop opera; The Mushroom - a youth of many skills: guitar skills, lawn skills, Uru skills; and the newest Indiana Jones - tall, dark, and handsome, intriguingly whiskered as well. To complete the crew is Nameless Jamie - a pirate of many skills as well, exemplified in the ability to sleep under any amount of noise and baggage. Whither, oh ye braves, shall again such a crew assemble into such a van?!

Many bumps and bathroom breaks later the ride is complete, and the travelers disembark. What is it that they have come so far to see? The beautiful fields and horses of Kentucky? No, they came to see a baby spray spit bubbles over a camera, to hear Christ proclaimed in worship, to watch high school guys tell a skit in dance, to throw their hearts into singing the poetry of God. They came for the summer family conference of the RPCNA. They came for Covfamikoi.

Thump. The sound of heavy travel bags hitting the lobby floor. As the voyagers adjust from the midday brightness, they see in Glide-Crawford Hall an average dorm house lobby. Red carpet and dark wood pillars, tranquil counselors behind registration tables, the very bricks that had seen 80 years of residents, all conspire to assure them that RPers would not be lost in the bluegrass, registration was under control.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Grunt. Thump. Thump… Another sound, that of El Giusante ascending too her room. Little did she know that six days of practice would lend wings to her puny legs. The college-age girls had the privilege of rooming the third floor, and in a place with few elevators this meant 25 fine cardio workouts a day. She finds her room, plunks down the bag, and thumps off to find her way, wondering what the week has in store.

On the Road Again...

Hullo all. It seems that my leaving is the most constant source of posts – that shall be an interesting point of research some time...

Today’s matter, however, is to announce that I’ll be going to a church related conference in Kentucky tomorrow, and shall hence be unassailable by the wiles of the internet world until Friday. My loverly family (all five of them) shall be accompanying me on this journey, as well as a russet colored chap who happens to be our pastor’s son. The aprox. 6 hr ride shall be completed by the presence of Alexandre Dumas in the form of The Man in the Iron Mask. This conference may be a golden opportunity to get to know the presbytery better, so pray that God put His blessing on us. Tra la to you all, dahhlings.

Light for them that sit in Darkness

A week already gone by?! See the post by Ludvig, my esteemed colleague to find out what really happened this week. What I give you now is a book report that I wrote this afternoon for Church book reports tomorrow. The book is very keenly recommended, one of my favs.

Book Report: Light for Them that Sit in Darkness

This book that I'm sharing is John Bunyan's Light for Them that Sit in Darkness. It's author is famous for Pilgrim's Progress, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and many other masterpieces of Christian literature. God brought this book into my life during a time of real struggle - I took one look at the title and thought "This one's for me".

This book was written in I674, three years after Bunyan's release from prison where he had been kept for 12 years. The subtitle is (and you'll have to pardon my reading, some of his sentences are pretty long): "A discourse to show how Jesus Christ undertook to accomplish by Himself the eternal redemption of sinners". In the Editor's forward, they said that Bunyan was concerned with some grave errors of his day. There were those who believed that the Bible was of no importance and a person's own inner light was the essential guide for salvation. Bunyan published his book to show that the light of the Word would reveal the truth about Christ, the only means of salvation. And so all throughout his book, it is just riddled with scripture references (on one page I counted 11) worked right into Bunyan's sentences.

"Alas!" said Bunyan in his preface, "How ordinary a thing is it for professors to fall from the knowledge they have had of the glorious gospel of the blessed God, and to be turned unto fables, seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils..." He was convinced that the cause of this trouble was that people did not have or retain knowledge of Christ's Person, or did not know "the reason of His coming, doing, and suffering".

And so expounding this theme, Bunyan starts at the beginning with the promises about Christ and how perfectly he fulfilled them. Taking a verse from Acts 8:13, he asks "What is this Jesus?" or in modern speech "Who is he?" "What was it for him to be of the seed of David?" And what about his being that seed according to the promise? etc.

Next he has two "observations" (there are no chapters in this book, they're in big brackets called "Observation First" and "Observation Second" but it's just wonderful stuff!). Just the title of the first one is "That in all ages, God gave His people a promise and so ground for a believing remembrance that He would one day send them a Savior". He expounds that a while, then moves to the second observation. Then he has another big clause about how Christ addressed himself to the work of redemption by "taking on our flesh", and "being made under the law". And on it goes.

It's a very earnest book. It is, as I said before, reasoned and hugely supported by the Scriptures, and it is a very faithful and refreshing dealing about our Lord.