What a day. Little girl was prepared because she woke up with curls while I had just come from a dream of whispering guinea pigs, murmuring epithets like I love you and it is what it is. I opened the sliding door to let the dogs out and the new one ran into the screen door and broke it, causing me to have a sit down and a heart to heart about seeing what isn’t there.
      It was a warm, sunny spring day and the neighbor across the street was tending to her garden. Jasmeen has a nice garden while we have lousy grass and dirt. My yard was ripped up by the plumber who broke the water main while fixing another pipe. My wife’s flowers were like lost puppies in the flood. I told the neighbor our plan to forego the lawn and just plant flowers. Jasmeen said she was pleased and agreed with my wife,  that the three evergreen treelings covering my porch would have to go, though I preferred the shade.
      I took that under consideration and walked to the village office to listen to the tapes of the meeting the night before. Because this is America, I was granted my request, with smiles and friendliness, and proceeded to the court room to dig out a story.
      Instead of falling asleep, like the clerk had warned, I discovered the public hearing regarding the College District proposal. Neighbors in that area had some concerns about what the college was going to be allowed to do in this new ‘district.’ Like I always say about my house, the neighbors have to look at it; and sometimes they can see what isn’t there.
    Face Book is a social peep show, clingy and creepy and cloying. So I joined. It feels like posting on my website in the nude. Without knowing what I was doing, I somehow got myself 16 friends. That means 16 people that I know were on that site at the same time I stumbled upon it. For those of you who don’t know how this goes, now I can watch as those 16 people chat to their friends. Suddenly some of their friends want to be friends with me. I find myself online chatting with people I haven’t spoken to in decades and they don’t even know if I’m naked or not.
      After school, little girl wants to know if I could still see her curls. Then,  could she go out to the porch to see what the ups man brought; she doesn’t say U-P-S, she says ups. It was my book. The ups man had delivered my book, my proof copy. I tore open the bubble-wrapped envelope like Crusoe on a fish. There it was - five and a quarter by eight and a half - inside a glossy paperback cover - 275 pages, my baby, my seed, my anti-cyber, guts and all. 
      I could say I blew my top, shouted with glee, spun circles in the air and almost peed my pants, but in actuality I merely placed it down amid other periodicals and continued work on my next upcoming volume of verse and worse.
      I got gas and picked up the wife at work, brought her home to pick up big girl for ballet, dropped wife at chiropractor, delivered the ballerina, shopped for dinner and got wife from chiropractor. The phone rang; it was another neighbor. Mackenzie wanted to know if we wanted her brother to pull out our three evergreens with his truck. She must’ve been chatting with Jasmeen. Before my wife finished nodding her head, the trees were gone. Thank you Tim and thank you neighbors; I’ve had teeth that took longer to yank.
      Now we have lousy grass, dirt and more dirt. The three small trees were dragged to the curb and the sidewalk had to be swept. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, but it’s the neighbors who really have to look at it.
      Mariano gave up back to back homers for the first time in his career and before I could fully wonder how to get rid of the shrubbish, a village worker came and scooped it away.
      Now the sun shines brightly on our front porch for the entire world to see. It’s not that I’m typing naked or anything, but there’s still time for me to bury my book in one of those holes from where the shade used to spring.  There I am, kneeling in the dirt above the hole whispering I love you and it is what it is, trying to see what isn’t there, with my first book in my hands.

Dress is casual  

Tickets available at the firehouse during the month of April

T-W-TH 6-8 pm and Sat. 9- noon

 A few friends, and my older daughter, bless her heart, are all the time telling me I should go to church, a Christian one, of course. No matter, I tell them; been there, done that, from Sunday school all the way to – and including – being dunked at the ripe old age of 12 by a preacher man into a tub of water in front of a congregation of Disciples of Christ, I think they called themselves.
   It was a life-view-changing experience, but not, I think, in the way it was intended.
   They tell me, too, I’ll find Jesus in church. They mean the Jesus of the Bible, I guess. But I figure I’ve already found the more-or-less real one in the Joshua of Talmudic times. As for a church: which one? Of

all the way too many denominations, sects, cults, splinter groups and spinoffs, which one is telling the truth…or anything approaching it?
   Friends and daughter say they want to meet me in heaven, but as far as I know, it’s not there where it’s supposed to be. All of science’s space probes and space telescopes have sent back fascinating photographs, but so far none of pearly gates.
   During a recent visit with daughter in North Carolina, she did manage to get me as far as just inside the front door, to the bookstore and coffee bar, of her church, called a chapel, looks like a large schoolroom, had enough of those.
   A young man came forward to greet me…called himself an associate pastor, sounded like an “associate” in a retail store: “What color are you looking for…?” Actually, questions about what I believed. As is my custom, I answered with questions of my own: “If your god created the earth and man and woman, who created him?”
   End of conversation.
   That’s what happens when I ask churchly folk what seem to me to be reasonable questions. They don’t answer or won’t answer, or maybe they don’t have an answer. They don’t or won’t ask questions, either. My daughter doesn’t want my 15-year-old grandson to ask questions, but I did manage to slip him a reading list (see below).
   From here on, it’s up to him, mother or no mother.
   No wonder we read that church attendance and membership are falling, along with revenue from collection plates. What does it mean that churches are having to close doors, sell property, auction off stained-glass windows? Out-of-work preachers having to go on TV? Who is deserting the ship? Grownups of the Me Generation?
   And here Tom Wolfe said the Me Decade was “the third great religious wave in American history.”
   The first two “Great Awakenings” were big here in New York state. Look it up.
   Or is today’s younger generation, despite churches trying to woo them with Rock the River concerts, hip-hop artists (?), youth communicators and Christian rock bands (all at a Billy Graham “crusade” at a U.S. Army post!)? Could it be our schools are teaching them to ask questions, think for themselves, to tell the difference of fact from fable?
   Women, too. Are they finally becoming fed up with being told through scripture they must be subservient to men?
   Maybe they – we – will find some answers in issues of the Madison County Courier to come. We can ask young Mr. T. Scott Burgess questions? He’s the Youth and Young Adult Leader at Hope Christian Fellowship in Canastota…says he’s “preparing to preach…in the near future, is writing a column here.” He calls it “A Fresh Perspective,” says “(W)e all need a fresh perspective to look at ourselves and our world differently…We need to see things not as they appear to be (or) as we feel they are.”
   Does he put religion and the Bible in that world? I hope so.
   He does say “from God’s perspective.” Good, if he means to read his Bible carefully where he’ll see how that perspective – and God’s character – changed from Genesis on into the Common Era. A help in reading can be had from Jack Miles’s “God, a Biography,” and Karen Armstrong’s “A History of God” and “The Bible, a Biography.”
   Mr. Burgess may find it helpful, too, before he begins his preaching to reach (Episcopal Bishop) John Shelby Spong’s “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” as well as most anything by Bart D. Ehrman, including “Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why,” and “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Questions.”
   These writers declare themselves to be believers, but they do have fresh perspectives.
   We’ll look forward to your columns, Mr. Burgess. And I hope we can meet someday…and have a conversation.

 Donald W. Krueger of Cazenovia is a retired professor and active contrarian. Readers can email him at madnews@m3pmedia.com.

                                Municipal Building - 90 Albany St. - 7 p.m.