Making Myself Valuable to Others

Randy Pausch and wife Jai
Dylan, Logan and Chloe
in 2007

On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has the book he wrote based on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy will continue to inspire us all, for generations to come.

In April he had a book published (The Last Lecture) which contained material from his last lecture as well as a lot of other family information. He wrote (with the help of a Wall Street journalist) the book for his 3 young children. It has been a #1 best seller non-fiction since it came out April 2008. 

His teaching methods were certainly different and kids loved his classes in computer science and media. I really enjoying seeing some of the works of his students displayed in the Last Lecture presentation.


He was such an inspiritational speaker and had so much to say in the short time he had left on this earth after he learned of his terminal illness. He didn't want people feeling sorry for him. One thing he said really struck a cord with me: "Be good at something. It makes you valuable."


I sat at my desk with my pen and paper trying to think if I was valuable to anyone and what I was "good at". At first my mind was blank and then I started remembering. I am good at sewing and learned that skill at an early age. I recently taught our 12-year-old how to sew. Our grandchildren have called on me to make various costumes for plays, halloween, etc. I always come through, having once made a Queen Elizabeth costume complete with ruff at the neck for a book report Liz was giving at school, and sending it to Texas overnight. She won first place of course! At least I am valuable to our 5 granddaughters. They think I can do most anything and don't mind asking. Even when one wanted to be a pack of chewing gum for halloween. I have enjoyed teaching each of them to sew.


Another sewing project involved using some old light green draperies to make a Statue of Liberty costume for my friend to wear as part of a "save the Lady" program she and I did for the DAR when they were restoring the statue. My friend wore the costume at a travel convention later and her husband went as Uncle Sam. They won first place which was a trip to Bermuda. And she brought me back a beautiful cutwork tablecloth, napkins and place mats. I created an orange jacket for our son to wear to school, with an orange decorated necktie and white pants for school spirit day when he was in high school. I really think this helped him to win the title: Mr. School Spirit (Paris, TX).


When Jim and I moved to the farm after he retired in 1996, we bought a computer and taught ourselves how to use it. Very frustrating at first but we accomplished what we wanted to know and now each have a computer. Our friends call on us when they want to know how to do something; Jim more than me. We are always willing to share what we know and to do things for others. I guess this makes us valuable because most people our age are computer illiterate - and they don't know what they're missing.


I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I am always willing to share things I know and use the skills I have, to help others.  I revisit my priorities often and make changes when I need to.


Another point he discussed was to always look for the good in other people. Sometimes that is very difficult when there's so much bad! Several years ago I started doing this and have made some really good friends who are people that nobody else understands. I always try to look for their good points. It's funny that they are usually outspoken, critical people and I can overlook those traits and find the good points. Some of these have remained best friends over the years and we keep in contact. Once you win over these people, they are friends forever because they can trust you.


Randy Pausch was an admirable man. I watched as he talked about his students and how he tried to motivate them to learn. They in turn really admired him. He really cared about them.


His life reminds me of a plaque I have in our kitchen (my motto) -- 

Stairway to the Stars!

Recently our son Ron and his wife Cindy moved to a new house on top of a mesa (flat hill) in southwest Austin, TX. They had been looking for more yard space for a long time, away from all the traffic in NW Austin where they have lived for over 20 years. Both girls are in college now and they don't have to live near schools, swimming pools, movies, etc. that the girls liked. So I guess they felt it was time to do what they wanted to do for a change.

Now to the point. They sent us pictures of their beautiful new home and I really admire the spiral staircase going to the second floor, which is a huge loft or media room. I don't know if I'll ever make it all the way up there as I have a fear of heights and swoon when I go to the 4th step on our small ladder. I get dizzy when I look down from above. They might have to install an elevator just for me!! When we were much younger, I wanted spiral staircases in a couple of houses we lived in; one to go to the basement and another to get to the attic. But we never did install them. I guess we probably moved before we ever got around to adding the spiral stairs.

Coffee House stairway

Then there's the new iron staircase that a local artisan made for the Just Folk Coffeehouse on the square in Elba. The treads haven't been put on the steps yet so I couldn't test it out today when we were there for a luncheon. Also the floor at the top of the stairs hasn't been installed yet either. So I just stood there and looked at this beautiful piece of art.

We have had stairs in many of our homes but they were always just straight, never curved or spiral. When we moved from Florence, SC to Albany, GA and traded our 2-story house for a ranch style home with windows that went almost from the ceiling to the ground, I had trouble sleeping near the ground. We always slept upstairs and it was quieter there.

I'm waiting for the first opportunity to go to Austin and  try out these "stairways to the stars" someday soon. I wonder if I can make it all the way up, and if once I'm upstairs, will I be afraid to come back down? I'll guess I'll just have to wait and see!

New Life left in our old Frig

We bought an old model refrigerator a few years ago to keep in our storage building to use for overflow from the kitchen frig. It has served us well and we always have food stored there. One day last week Jim opened the door to go into the building, and heard a whining noise that was getting louder and louder. He realized it was the frig and unplugged it. We took the food out and left the refrigerator unplugged while we searched for another one.


Yesterday Jim saw one on the local internet "Sell or Swap" and called to check on it. The seller said it was in good condition and he told her he would like to have it. She posted some pictures for him to see. Today he hitched up the trailer and he and my brother Perry took off to neighboring Florala to check it out. He was so disappointed when he got there and saw the dirty refrigerator sitting on the back porch of the mobile home. It was unplugged and he told the young man he wanted to plug it in to see if it works. And it wouldn't come on. So..... Jim came home without the refrigerator.


My brother suggested Jim remove the panel inside the freezer and check out the fan to see if maybe it needed replacing. Jim is not a mechanic and a project like this is so foreign to him. But he managed to locate and remove the small plastic fan that was making the noise. A little WD-40 and cleaning and he put the fan back in and guess what! It's running again and cooling. And then someone told him to rub vaseline along the rubber seal on the door and that would make it close tighter. It's been several hours now and the good old trusty frig is still cooling and the fan is quiet. And it hasn't cost a dime to repair it. Maybe we're lucky that the one he was going to buy didn't work after all. Saved us lots of $$$.


Everybody needs a second refrigerator if they live in the south. To keep canned drinks, extra milk, fruit and vegetables that need to stay cool, and many other things that won't fit in the kitchen frig. We can even put watermelons on the big bottom shelf.


Hurrah for my "mechanical" husband - maybe this will be a new career for him. He has been ordering replacement parts online and repairing other things around the house. He prints out manuals to help him with his repairing. We used to discard things that stopped working and buy new ones. Now he is spending time trying to repair things and it's so rewarding to gets things "fixed up" and working again.

I still haven't figured out how to put a hanger on the top of my little Pinochio "jumping jack" that I keep hanging in the kitchen window. You pull a string and he flaps his legs and arms. I really would like to have a string hanging from the top of his hat instead of having the hook around his neck! Maybe Gorilla glue will work?

Preservation Day

Figs

Does making fruit preserves make one a "preservationist"? A friend gave me some figs (he even removed the stems after picking them) and that's the part that takes so long. I cooked them the way my daddy used to cook them. He would layer the figs with sugar and let them sit overnight. The next morning the juice from the figs will have melted the sugar and the figs could be cooked to make thick preserves. I brought them to a boil and lowered the heat and they cooked for several hours. I put them in pint jars and sealed them. I can't wait to open a jar in the morning and try them out with some toast and butter. I'll save some for my sisters.

While the preserves were cooking, I strained the juice from the concord grapes which I had heated and crushed with a potato masher. I had 25 cups of juice (5 cups in each of 5 freezer bags). Later in the year I can take a bag from the freezer and make 4 or 5 pints of delicious grape jelly, the low sugar kind.

This was not a big deal doing all of this "preservation" and I feel so proud of the work I did.

Now for preservation of a different kind. Recently I nominated a building downtown for a Revitalization Award by the Ala. Preservation Trust, part of the Ala. Historical Commission.

The building once housed the Claire Theater in the 1950s on the north side of the town square. After the theater closed, several retail stores were located in the building until 1990 when the town was flooded. It was then boarded up and never cleaned out.

A couple of years ago, an individual bought the old building and through a grant, a group started working to clean out the building and remodel the interior to use as a coffee house. Many, many volunteers have worked for almost two years to get the coffee house ready for use. The application accompanied by many photos of various steps of the restoration was completed in 2 days and sent express overnight to reach the preservation group by the deadline.

Monday I had a telephone call from the selection committee that selected this building as the state winner for the Rehabilitation Award for 2008. The person who called asked if I would notify the persons submitting the application since I had nominated them. She said she knew that I had been working to restore the old home of former Alabama Governor Jim Folsom, and that I was a great "preservationist". I thanked her and hung up so I could call Charlotte to let her know Just Folk Coffee House had been named the state winner. They were all so excited. Now they will go to Fairhope in October to receive the award. I suggested that since they will only have 2 complimentary luncheon tickets, that they take all the folks who worked on the building to the luncheon (I would be in that group) and we would all pay for our luncheon meals. That way everybody who was a part of this project could be honored.

I started looking around our little town and immediately I found some other buildings that are being rehabilitated and I can nominate one each year. One very interesting one is a town house inside a large bank on a corner of the square. I haven't been inside but I hear it is beautiful. They retained the look of the old building on the outside.

Another good example of using an old building is the new coffee roasting business that will be located inside the old Church of Christ. Work on this building has stopped until the owners earn some more money to complete the roasting part of the business. After the flood of 1990, an old warehouse was turned into 3 nice apartments one block off the square. They stay filled with short-term and long-term guests. Lately couples have been living there after selling their homes and building new homes.

I probably have enough entries for the next 10 years!

I now have a new title, "Preservationist".

Elba AARP Monthly Dinner Meeting

Allene Lee, Jeanette and Jim DeShepper,
Bob and Syble Hahn - 2008 Officers

Last night was our monthly AARP covered dish dinner and meeting in Elba at the Senior Center on the town square. Jim and I have been members of this group since 1996 when we moved to Alabama. We joined to get acquainted with people our age and I can say we have met a lot of nice people over the years. When we joined, many were older and they have since gone on to meet their Maker. We were only 62 and probably the youngest members at that time. Now, at age 74, we are among some of the older group.

Over the years Jim and I have both served as President and held most of the other offices. I have prepared the yearbook for the past several years since nobody else knows how to use the computer well enough to do this. 

Party at Nursing Home

When James turned 50, we told him he could join AARP and go to the meetings with us. At first he resisted, but now he enjoys going and seeing everybody. It's difficult to find a sitter in the evenings to stay with James. Our meetings only last for one hour (6-7 pm). He gets home in time to watch his baseball games.

Over the years we have accomplished a lot of group projects. Every May we have a bingo party at the Elba Nursing Home with refreshments and nice prizes.
At least once a year, we invite our local state representative and senator to come give us an update. Pictured here: Rep. Terry Spicer, with Program Chairman Jean Moore on the left and President Jim Gilmer on the right.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, we go all out and have turkey and dressing for Thanksgiving and a big baked ham for Christmas. Many of the members live alone and we want to have a good holiday meal. We enjoy a lot of good homemade dishes. Always a lot of good desserts and in the summer, a bounty of fresh vegetables. It's the best kept secret in Elba! Then following the meal, we have short programs; sometimes informative, and other times just fun stuff. In August we always go out to eat as a group.

We have both participated in AARP sponsored programs including teaching the Driving Classes and working for 8 years as AARP Tax Aide Volunteers, preparing income taxes.

And of course we have our AARP member cards that we use to get discounts at hotels and other places. We also enjoy the montly magazines and newspapers we get from AARP.

Where else can you belong to such a fun organization for $2 (dues) a year?

The End of a L-O-N-G day!

James and his Bama Jam shirt

Some days just work out to be longer than others and today was one of those. It was time for James' quarterly check up with the kidney Doctor. Last week he had his lab work done at Elba Hospital lab and all the reports (3 pages) were at the Dr's office this morning. We're all very apprehensive the day of his check up. He has been in renal failure for several years now and this is nothing new. It's just that we are concerned that we will go to the Dr. and he will say that he has to start on dialysis, 3 days a week, 4 hr sessions. He is almost at that stage, and has been for about 4 years.


We got up early, got dressed and had a good breakfast before leaving for Dothan to see the Dr. at 10:15 a.m. James wanted to wear his new BamaJam shirt today. The Dr. was pleased with James' lab test results and actually dropped one of his medications, Zocor, which he was taking for high colesterol, which was down to 100. James was so pleased with his good report, that upon leaving Dothan he asked if I would call his staff at the workshop and tell them the good news.


It takes about 1-1/2 hours to get to the Dr.'s office. We had a list of things to do while in Dothan and in Enterprise on the way home. We don't take unnecessary trips anymore. One of our stops in Enterprise was to get posts, cement, etc to replace posts holding up a section of our wooden fence that fell in yesterday's bad storm. Then a stop at the curb market to get a bag of shelled pink-eyed purple hull peas they had reserved for me ($24). We'll have some for dinner tomorrow night, along with some hot, crusty corn bread. Jim bought some homemade chocolate ice cream while there. It was 2 pm and we hadn't had lunch yet.We arrived home, put away our groceries and other purchases, and then had a quick lunch so we could go back to Enterprise at 4 pm!


Jim had a board meeting of his Pea River Historical and Genealogical Society at 4:30 pm. James and I shopped at WalMart while he was there and at 5:30 we picked Jim up after his meeting. He took me to Enterprise College and dropped me off for an hour so I could speak to a child development class, talking about how it is to be the parent of a mentally handicapped child. They asked lots and lots of questions. They were amazed that James was in the first special education class in Atlanta, GA (DeKalb County), in the 1960's.


While I was at the college, Jim took James to eat at his favorite restaurant, Burger King.We arrived back home around 7 p.m. and James said, as we turned into our drive, "Oh, Boy. It's good to be home again. I can't wait to get in my favorite chair, relax and watch a ball game on TV." I don't think he has gotten out of his chair in the past hour.


And then, I started to think of the things I didn't accomplish that need to be done. They'll just have to wait until tomorrow. Taking care of the tree that blew over (came out of the ground) at the playground, finding a speaker for the AARP dinner when the scheduled speaker could not be there, pick our Concord grapes to make jelly and wine (they are very ripe), and lots of other things waiting to be done.


I just think I'll just go into my Scarlett mode and "think about all that tomorrow". Besides I have a good movie to watch tonight.

What to do when the lights go off

For several days now we have had afternoon thunderstorms with rain and lightning. The rain we need but not the "fireworks". A storm came up real fast this afternoon, while Jim was trying to finish cutting the grass. He had to stop yesterday when it stormed. Again he had to stop before he was able to finish.

TV sitting on top of car

We had a terrible storm with high winds and heavy rain. Trees were uprooted over the area and lots of limbs fell. Our electricity was off for about 3 hours. While waiting for the power to be back on, we looked for things to do that didn't require electricity. We were most anxious to learn about storms in our area and wanted to know if they were gone, etc. We were unable to hear any weather news on the battery radio. I remembered that our little b&w kitchen TV had a power cord to connect to the car battery. We went outside and hooked the TV up to the cigarette lighter and voila! instant TV. We tuned in Channel 12 in Montgomery for local news at 5 pm and guess what. There was a golf game going on and no weather news until the game was over.

Jim and James watching TV outdoors

We must have caused some stares by motorists passing by when we sat on the front porch in rocking chairs, looking at TV on top of our car in the carport, while we were without electricity. We heard all about things taking place in Montgomery today but there was little news about our really bad thunderstorm. We did learn that there would be more rain throughout the day. And every day next week except Tuesday.

We watched as our neighbors trees blew over in their yards and big limbs fell. Part of our wooden fence fell when one of the posts broke off at the ground level. All afternoon you could hear chain saws buzzing in the neighborhood.

One good thing about the rains, we haven't had to water the flowers or lawn in a long time. The grass was never greener. Keeps Jim busy on his riding lawn mower. Today he was 2/3 finished and by the time it dries up from all the rain today, he'll have to start all over again.