column – Page 32 – Roadkill Crossing

Checking the roads and the scenery

By Bruce Stambaugh

When I moved to Holmes County, Ohio more than four decades ago, one of my initial purchases was a county road map. I wanted to learn my way around the ridges, valleys and hamlets of the area.

I drove both the highways and back roads in order to get to know the topography and citizenry of this place. Geography buff that I am, landscape variations between the glaciated and the unglaciated portions of the county greatly intrigued me.

I marveled equally at the steep wooded hills that defined the broad Killbuck Valley, and the rolling farmlands and rivulets in the county’s northern section. The common elements of picturesque scenery and practical people reoccurred despite the demographic differences.

All these years later I still drive the roads, still learn, still enjoy my bucolic and human encounters. I think about that often, especially when I inspect the roads for which I am responsible as a township trustee.

My main objective is to ensure safe road conditions, and check for potential problems like plugged culverts, leaning trees and slippery roads. I do those duties, but the pastoral vistas and the genial people I encounter along the way can easily distract me. I don’t mind in the least. The diversity of the countryside and characters in my township are truly remarkable.

My regular route takes me up hill and down vale, through densely wooded ravines with sharply slanting walls that rise abruptly on both sides. In several places road and stream are pinched with just enough room to navigate side-by-side.

In minutes, I can motor from forested valley to high, rolling fertile fields that surround coffin red bank barns and white farmhouses. Various shapes and sizes of purposeful farm buildings cluster around the intentionally unadorned agrarian castles.

It was inevitable that over the years the views would be altered. With the population regularly expanding and the land not, cottage businesses and manufacturing buildings sprouted up out of necessity. Many are Amish run and involve some aspect of the lumber industry. Other shops create products specifically for the benefit of the Amish lifestyle, like buggy shops and farriers.

The commerce is nice. The views and residents are better.

Near one of my favorite hilltops, the land falls away gradually, cascading toward the Killbuck lowlands. It is a sacred place for me, and yet it is at this precise spot where a new Amish country murder mystery novel is set. When I read about the book’s release, I wondered if the writer had ever met the good folks on the homestead he had impugned.

Last winter, during a fierce snowstorm, a semi-tractor trailer truck got stuck on the slippery incline in front of this very farmstead. The kind farmer cranked up his bulldozer, puttered out the long lane in blinding snow and pushed the teamster and his rig over the hill and on his way.

When it comes to beauty, seasons are really insignificant as I traverse my lovely township. Refreshing summer breezes flap wash lines loaded with pastel clothing. Gaggles of youth skate and play on frozen ponds. A Golden Eagle roosts on a chubby fence post. Leafy rainbows of the mixed hardwoods compete with those in post-storm skies.

Then, too, rounds from paintball guns plaster stop signs, runaway streams wash away road banks, and citizens rankle at impassible roads. Fear not. Repairs can be made, relationships mended.

Peace is restored to my Camelot, at least until my next dreamy drive.

Keeping goals practical for 2012

By Bruce Stambaugh

It’s New Year’s resolution time, a media driven folly I deplore. Consequently, I don’t participate in the declaratory hyperbole of over-hype that usually dissolves faster than an ice cube in a frying pan.

Last year, I offered up a friendly alternative to the impractical practice of setting New Year’s resolutions. I posted a personal, grandiose bucket list that I wanted to accomplish in my life. A good friend thought the text too self-centered and exclusive.

I quickly realized my friend was right on. Knowing that resolutions again would be on the mainstream media’s New Year’s menu, I desired something more productive with which to counter publicly and apply personally.

During my seemingly yearlong recovery last year, I had lots of opportunity for meditation and gratitude. At some point, I began including in my morning devotions a simple three part prompt that seemed all too obvious.

Whether I began or ended with the trilogy, I came away with a refreshing daily approach. The self-imposed, practical advice was both a reminder and a method of living that turned my bucket list on its head.

My little daily pep talk is about as simple and modest as I am. I desire to be nice, to be kind and to behave each day.

Given the fact that I will qualify for Medicare later this year, one would think I had that palpable trio already mastered. My friend, along with other contributions from my beloved wife, told me otherwise. I am human after all, and a man to boot.

Think of it as an offshoot of Kermit the Frog. Instead of “it’s not easy being green,” I submit that it’s not easy being nice, at least not all of the time. Nor is it always attainable to be kind, a close cousin to “nice.”

I don’t mean to be kind of nice either. I mean be nice. Be kind, and the end result will be that one will behave. Seems pretty logical to me.

I’ll give you that there isn’t much difference between being nice and being kind. I guess I see being nice as easy as holding a door open for someone. Being kind, on the other hand, is a compassionate extension of that precept.

Being kind equates with being generous. The way I see it, anyone can be nice. It takes extra effort to be kind. Kindness involves time, perseverance, patience, observation and action. I can be nice and hold a door for the next person through. I can be kind and anticipate that the person pushing their mother in a wheelchair will need to have the door held for them.

Putting nice and kind into play in my life forces me to look beyond my own immediate needs, and to watch for spontaneous opportunities to assist others, even in small ways. Other times, being nice and being kind come through planned events where I can make a difference in a positive manner.

By choosing positive, I am ensuring I am behaving. If I am behaving, I am being nice and hopefully kind, too. One begets the other with productive, positive consequences for all involved.

Be nice. Be kind. Behave. Those are constructive objectives I can live by everyday of the New Year. If I don’t, I’m sure my friend or my wife will remind me. I just hope they’ll be nice about it.

The craziness continued in 2011

By Bruce Stambaugh

This year proved just as crazy as any other. Nose for news person that I am, I kept track of some of the zanier happenings of 2011 that for whatever reasons didn’t quite make the headlines.

Some of the stories involved weather. Others were human driven. Here is just a sampling of the year’s mayhem.

January
1 – By early morning, more than 4,000 red-winged blackbirds fell dead out of the sky over the Beebe, Arkansas.
12 – Florida was the only one of the 50 states without measurable snow on the ground.
28 – A woman in Kent, England returned a dog she had adopted from the local rescue kennel because it clashed with her curtains.

February
21 – Justine Siegal threw batting practice for the Cleveland Indians in Spring Training, becoming the first woman to do so for a Major League baseball team.
23 – Mother Jones magazine reported that since 1979 most income groups in America have barely grown richer, while the income of the top 1 percent has nearly quadrupled.
27 – Frank Buckles, the sole remaining U.S. World War I veteran, died at age 110 at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia.

March
13 – Police in Ashland, Ohio ticketed the driver of an Amish buggy for drag racing another buggy on the way to church.
13 – The massive 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan was so powerful it moved the country’s northern most islands up to 13 feet east.
25 – A report on global health reported that worldwide 4.6 billion people had cell phones while 4.3 billion people had access to a toilet.

April
9 – Rick Baird of Charlotte, North Carolina mad a perfect score in the second round of the Virginia State Putt-Putt tournament by acing all 18 holes in Richmond, Virginia.
11 – Scientists in England determined that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day in the 20th century.
24 – MensHealth magazine reported that the average American consumes 125 pounds of sugar annually.

May
17 – Watermelons in China were exploding in the field because farmers there apparently added growth chemicals too late in the seasons.
21 – U.S. Census figures showed that the Hispanic population had surpassed the Amish population in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
26 – The Police Executive Research Forum listed Flint, Michigan as the most dangerous city in the United States.

June
4 – Bobby Bradley, nine, became the youngest trained pilot to fly a hot air balloon solo when he launched at Albuquerque, New Mexico and landed a half hour later.
17 – A deer fawn apparently dropped by an eagle onto a high voltage line caused a power outage in East Missoula, Montana.
20 – Maria Gomes Valentim, purported to the world’s oldest person, died in Sao Paulo, Brazil just two weeks shy of her 115th birthday.

July
26 – Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest for bad writing with a 26-word opening sentence.
26 – A 200-year-old bottle of French wine sold for $120,000, setting a new Guinness World Record for the most valuable bottle of white wine ever sold.
28 – The U.S. Census showed that rural population totaled just 16 percent of the national population, the lowest rate in history.

August
2 – In trying to get to the Mercury Insurance Open in Carlsbad, California, pro tennis player Bojana Jovanovski flew from Washington, D.C. to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
13 – Real Madrid, a pro soccer team, signed a seven-year old boy from Argentina, to play soccer.
18 – The small Pacific resort island of Aitutaki, part of the Cook Islands, had its first bank robbery, with the thieves making off with $166,000.

September
9 – The Highway Loss Data Institute reported that the number one stolen car in the U.S. was the Cadillac Escalade, while the least stolen was the Mini Cooper Clubman.
24 – A total of 18,000 people attended the annual RoadKill Cook-off and Autumn Harvest Festival held in Marlinton, West Virginia.
30 – Brianna Amat, a senior at Pinckney Community High School in Michigan, was crowned homecoming queen at half time of the football game, and awhile later kicked the winning field goal as a member of the football team.

October
16 – Fauja Singh, 100, completed the Toronto Marathon, becoming the oldest person on record to finish a run of 23.6 miles.
23 – In the first ever-democratic election in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, voter turnout was 90 percent.
28 – A 60-year old New Mexico woman went straight to jail after allegedly stabbing her boyfriend over a game of Monopoly.

November
1 – Inside Insurance Magazine rated West Virginia as the state were drivers are most likely to hit a deer.
30 – An 80-year old Chicago man donated an old wool suite to Goodwill, only to remember too late that he had hid his life savings of $13,000 in one of the pockets.

December
4 – A chain-reaction crash on an expressway in Japan resulted in 14 luxury automobiles, including eight Ferraris, three Mercedes-Benzes and a Lamborghini, being destroyed or heavily damaged.
7 – Pantone Inc. announced that Tangerine Tango would be the 2012 color of the year.

Let’s hope 2012 is a better year for you, me, and for all who grace God’s good earth, even if we have to wear some shade of orange.

Christmas is the evergreen holiday

By Bruce Stambaugh

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a Christmas tree.

I realize an evergreen wasn’t part of the original Nativity setting. Nevertheless, having a decorated tree is a must for our family Christmas.

By tree, I mean a real, live evergreen. Nothing less will do. An artificial tree is beyond the pale of consideration.

We are fortunate to live where we have easy access to purchasing trees right from a tree farm. In fact, we most often select and cut our own.

Fortunately, my good wife has an equal inherent affection for acquiring, decorating and displaying Christmas trees. Each of our families took special efforts to secure just the right tree. Our fathers were instrumental in establishing that tradition.

My father often piled his five children into the car on a holiday expedition to choose the perfect tree. Perhaps Dad thought if we helped select the tree and drag it back to the car, the fussing about the tree’s quality was greatly diminished if a bare spot or crooked trunk were discovered once we got it up.

The tree had to be proportionate to the space it would occupy, which was usually in the living room. It also had to be either fresh cut or a balled tree that could be planted after the holidays had concluded.

My wife and I repeated the holiday tree trek tradition with our own children. No tree was chosen without consensus. Certain anticipation, exuberance and satisfaction filled the collective process.

Since our home’s property is already sufficiently populated with evergreens and deciduous trees, we generally cut our tree. That’s what my wife and I did again this year.

On a sunny Saturday morning earlier this month, we meandered along the scenic drive across rolling hills and through pastoral valleys south into the next county. At the Christmas tree farm, high on an open, breezy ridge, where Native Americans once hunted and traversed through old growth forests, our search didn’t take long. We found the Frazier fir we wanted within minutes.

Neva held the beauty while I made quick order of the trunk with my trusty tree saw. Green person that I am, the tree gets recycled as temporary bird shelter near the feeders once the holidays are concluded.

It’s a joy to inhale the marvelous fragrance of the conifer as we set it up in front of the living room windows. The vibrant needles, deep green on top, blue green beneath, are supple and showy. The pleasing symmetry and the piney smell are additional benefits to having a live tree.

Decorating the tree is also family tradition for both my wife and I, though the process varies from year to year. We tend to trim the evergreen modestly, out of reverence for its natural beauty. No garland or tinsel can be found on our tree.

The strings of mini-white lights, symbolizing the stars in that Bethlehem night sky, are first to grace the tree. Colorful ornaments of various sizes and shapes are aesthetically hung, dangling on the tender branches. An unassuming cloth angel, older than our marriage and gifted to my wife by a student, traditionally tops the tree.

It is only fitting that we have a live Christmas tree. Like the timeless Yuletide story itself, the evergreen adds a vernal blessing to an already blessed season.

Gift giving doesn’t have to be expensive

By Bruce Stambaugh

In the blink of an eye, Thanksgiving has come and gone. So too have Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Christmas and New Year’s Day soon will be upon us.

It’s not like the holidays are magically appearing. To be sure, we already have been overexposed to a much too commercialized Christmas through every form of media. The Christmas creep, as some call it, began in early fall.

Indeed, Christmastime is the gift-giving season. But it appears that buying and spending on everything from Chia pets to Cadillacs is the way to celebrate, if we simply gauge the season by the advertisers.

Christmas is so much more than that. It is the time of thinking of others, and remembering them by giving gifts. That is the universally portrayed holiday procedure. The gift, however, doesn’t have to be opulent or pricy, just appropriate for the person.

I enjoyed an article our daughter shared that poked fun at the extremism of holiday shopping. Entitled “The Best 5 Toys Ever,” the humorous story listed the season’s best toys for children. Instead of the latest electronic game or fancy dollhouse, the author suggested sticks, boxes, string, cardboard tubes and dirt as the top presents for children. Each point was illustrated with a picture of a child having fun with these simple items. To drive home the silliness, a positive and negative remark about each “toy” followed the analysis, just like a review of a real toy.

The sarcastic thrust was that our society often over thinks and certainly over indulges when it comes to giving presents for Christmas. We are lead to believe they come in the form of pretty packages, make noise and create virtual fun.

Sometimes the most practical item is the most appropriate gift, and hardly costs a thing, other than an investment of time. Take balloons for example.

Our two-year old granddaughter loves balloons. Nana reported that on her last visit to Virginia, Maren’s favorite playtime was spent batting a balloon back and forth. Is there volleyball in her future?

I’m not suggesting you buy nothing for your loved ones this Christmastime. Rather, I’m simply saying that you may not have to break the bank to please them.

The finest gift at Christmas doesn’t have to be the most expensive. It might just be the gift of time. In our hustle, bustle work-a-day world, it’s easy to follow the crowd to the big box store specials. For whatever reason, our society seems to find it unfashionable to spend a little time with one another, just reminiscing, remembering, playing games, and enjoying one another’s company.

Perhaps my reticence toward expensive gift giving is personally tainted by my life’s station. As grandparents, my wife and I are looking to divest ourselves of some of the earthly possessions we once thought precious. We don’t need to add to our already cluttered household hoard.

This Christmas, we will be wrapping our unpretentious presents using boxes and tubes and string. Those necessary items won’t be the gifts themselves. We will try to ignore the barrage of electronic and print suggestions on how to spend our money, and simply embrace our company while we can.

Christmas is just around the corner. I hope you get the opportunity to celebrate its true meaning with those you love. I know the time I spend with my family and friends will be the greatest gift I receive, sticks and string included.

Reflecting on an unhealthy year

By Bruce Stambaugh

This hasn’t been the healthiest year of my life. It began in January with bronchitis that turned into pneumonia and has ended with recuperation from a second surgery.

In between, of course, came the confirmation of prostate cancer. I had to endure uncomfortable tests to determine both its presence and infiltration into my body. Fortunately, the cancer was caught early, and removed without major complications.

Helping hands by Bruce Stambaugh — My good wife braved the cold winter elements to fill the bird feeders while I was sick.

I chose the robotic or da Vinci surgery to get rid of the cancer as opposed to the regular radical surgery. The da Vinci was proven to be less intrusive, cause less pain, have less blood loss, be more exact in saving the bundle of nerves that control men’s precious plumbing, and have a quicker recovery.

I was more than glad I went that route. Of course, like anyone else facing surgery, especially surgery for cancer, I ran the full gamut of emotions that ranged from anger to fear to doubt to denial. Still, I wanted that cancer out of my body. My good doctor expertly did just that.

After the surgery, I knew I had to behave and follow the instructions religiously. With the aid of my wonderful wife, I did my best to get my life as close to being back to normal as possible.

My recovery was progressing along nicely until I had an unexpected sidetrack, which led to my second surgery. Repairing a hernia certainly isn’t life threatening, but it did set me back considerably in my initial rehabilitation from my May surgery.

Kids and balloons by Bruce Stambaugh — My grandchildren did their best to keep me smiling.

The second surgery was also successful, and once again my recovery has gone well. I still have some lifting limitations that I tried unsuccessfully to get the doctor to extend for six years.

All that being said, I tried to keep my focus on others. Clearly, many, many people in this socially connected world of ours have had or do have it much worse off than me. The last thing I wanted was to feel sorry for myself. But I did. I’m a man. What would you expect?

Mom's birthday by Bruce Stambaugh — My mother celebrated her 90th birthday in June.

My wife made sure my self-pity didn’t last long. Thankful to be alive and alert, I worked around my physical limitations as best I could by trying to focus on the circumstances of others. There are lots of hurting people out there who have it much worse than me. Friends, relatives and even friends of friends are going through unthinkable miseries.

But think of them I must. To be down and out, sick or disabled through some accident or illness is bad enough. To be that way during the approaching holidays makes it all the harder. I try to visit and pray and do whatever I can to help. They did that for me. It’s the least I can do for them.

Three survivors by Bruce Stambaugh — Three prostate cancer survivors, Kim Kellogg, Randy Murray and me.

I greatly appreciated the kindnesses shown to me. I feel obliged to return the favor wherever and whenever I can.

Chances to help unexpectedly present themselves. The key to being helpful is recognizing when those opportunities arise, and responding accordingly.

Being a survivor, I hope I never forget that that’s exactly what I need to do. Respond where and when I can, even if it’s just listening and holding a hand. Having company in times of personal distress is a mighty gift that needs no unwrapping.

This has been an unhealthy year for me. But I’m here. I made it, grateful to be alive and determined to help those in need, even if it is nothing more than offering a smile.

Hunting deer and finding memories

By Bruce Stambaugh

Deer season is at hand. It couldn’t come soon enough for avid deer slayers. Thousands around the state will be out in force trying their best to cull the herds of white-tails that roam all across Ohio.

I won’t be one of them. I’m not against hunting, mind you. I would just rather shoot deer with my camera instead of a gun. Besides, my family and I have bagged our share of Bambies the expensive way, with our vehicles.

As a young boy, I went hunting often with my outdoor sportsman father. Squirrel hunting was my favorite. I especially enjoyed a rolling farm far from our suburban home.

I loved the slow, quiet walk among the pastured hardwoods. An amenable creek, really the headwaters of a major river in eastern Ohio, meandered through the giant beeches, oaks, maples, walnuts and wild cherries.

Holsteins grazed the natural grasses that grew beneath the impressive stand of tall trees. It made for easy walking and great visibility. My father and I could be distantly separated and still stay in eyesight of one another.

I shot rabbits and pheasants, too. But those were found more in open, overgrown fields, thickets and fencerows than in the woods. It was among the graceful trees where I felt most comfortable. Even in a gentle breeze, their creaking limbs spoke to me. I could dream and hunt simultaneously.

Dad never invited me along to deer hunt. He probably sensed my romanticizing or lollygagging while on the prowl. Lord knows there’s no room for either when driving for deer. Dad was too antsy to occupy a deer stand.

I always said that the deer were safe as long as Dad was after them. In all the years he hunted, I think he only ever shot two, and one was a fluke. Dad told that story like a Dickens novel.

He was in southeast Ohio where the hills are high and the valleys steep, and the landscape was thickly populated with mixed, second growth hardwoods. Occasional meadows broke the tree monopoly.

Young buck by Bruce Stambaugh — A young buck in the woods.

Dad had been tracking a deer for a while and finally spotted a big buck across the valley, loping up the opposite hillside. Dad took aim with his trusty 20-gauge and fired just as the buck leaped over a fence.

Dad said he saw the deer drop. He hustled down the hill, crossed a small stream and lumbered up the other slope. When he reached the fencerow at the spot where he had shot, Dad leaned over the vine-infested barrier and got a shock. There was a dead deer all right; only it was a doe, not the buck.

Of course Dad took a lot of ribbing from his hunting buddies. But he always insisted that he had shot at a buck. All he could figure was that the doe was lying out of view beyond the fence. His slug must have missed the buck and hit the doe.

Dad loved to tell the “I shot at a buck and hit a doe” story time and again. I had no reason to doubt his word whatsoever. I saw the joy that it brought him as he laughed through the details that never changed.

I don’t have to go hunting to enjoy deer season. I’m satisfied to recall my father’s true tall tale. It makes me as happy as if I had shot a 12-point buck myself. Or was it a doe in disguise?

Thanking the people who matter

By Bruce Stambaugh

The school superintendent called him his million-dollar man. To illustrate his point, the school leader even had mock million dollar bills printed with the person’s face front and center.

The scenario played out at the beginning of this school year in the school district where I had grown up. Along with hundreds of others, I had been invited to attend the opening rally as a guest. As people entered the stadium where the ceremonies were held, each person was handed the play money.

During the 90-minute ceremony, the superintendent recognized many people in the district for their outstanding efforts. He also announced that the district had achieved the top academic awards in the state.

The summit, however, was this one man who had worked so tirelessly to reduce costs for the financially strapped district. The superintendent had calculated that this one individual had saved the district a million dollars through cost saving changes, including the installation of energy saving light bulbs. That’s what earned him the extra special notoriety.

I was duly impressed and honored to have witnessed this celebrative opening to another school year. Though I had not been a part of the district for years, I felt connected and inspired by what had transpired.

The proceedings were a reminder to me to thank those who have made a difference in my life. Of course, I realized I wouldn’t have to have play money printed up to do so. A simple word of thanks, a personalized note card, a hardy hug, would send the proper and immediate message.

Believe me, I have much for which to be thankful this year. This hasn’t exactly been the healthiest year of my life, and yet, here I am at Thanksgiving, alive and well, and forever grateful.

A good place to start would be with my wife, who has been by my side through thick and thin. She has gone far beyond the second mile for me.

I have nothing but praise for the good doctor who removed the cancer from my body. My recovery continues. Overall, I feel great, and best of all I am cancer free.

At the same time, I can tick off person after person that I either know personally or have heard of who have not had the same results. Their illnesses or injuries remind me to be humble in my elation yet determined in my prayers for them and their families.

Still, as the thoughtful and expressive superintendent modeled, we must not hold back in our praise of others when they accomplish great things for themselves or for the good of the community. It truly is better to give than receive.

As we approach this national holiday of thanks with its abundance of savory food and gathered family, I plan on thanking people who have made a difference in my life. I’ll tell them how much they have meant to me and how appreciative I am for their contribution to my life.

How about you? Who have been the million dollar people in your lives?

As part of celebrating this Thanksgiving, consider offering a few words of thanks to those who have helped you along your life’s path. You don’t have to print up hundreds of fake million dollar bills to show your appreciation. But you can if you want.

Greg Miller is a nice guy

By Bruce Stambaugh

Greg Miller is a nice guy. Anyone who even remotely knows Greg would easily agree with that statement.

Though raised just a mile south of where my wife and I have lived for 32 years near Berlin, Ohio, I really never got to know him until recently. Greg had long grown up and started his own adult life before we moved here. His mother continues to live in the same house, and still meticulously adorns her property annually with a wide assortment of lovely flowers.

Others have known Greg much longer and better than I have. But just from the few conversations that I have had with him, I can attest that Greg is the kind of guy everyone would welcome as a friend.

I had heard of Greg well before I got to know him. He was one of three birders about whom Mark Obmascik wrote his 2004 book “The Big Year.” When Hollywood turned the book into a big screen movie of the same name, Greg was ecstatic, and rightly so. Not everyone has a book written or a movie made about a life accomplishment.

By his own description, Greg is a computer programming geek by trade and an avid and expert birder by desire. Greg transformed that hobby into nearly an obsession when he spent much of 1998 doing a Big Year. A Big Year is when a birder observes or hears as many North American bird species as possible.

That year Greg surpassed the coveted 700 mark, as did two other men. The story of the extreme efforts of those three birders inspired both the book and the recently released movie.

Greg gave a touching keynote address at the Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, Ohio in mid-September. He spoke to an audience of nearly 1,000 for an hour using no notes, speaking directly from his heart. Greg had the crowd spellbound relating his personal, touching story.

I was greatly moved when early in his talk Greg cited the influence of his kind parents, especially his father, in generating his interest in birding. Greg said he couldn’t remember seeing his first bird or getting his first pair of binoculars. Birding was simply a part of his heritage, thanks to the quiet, patient guidance of his late father, who himself was a man of integrity.

Kevin Cook and Greg Miller by Bruce Stambaugh — Kevin Cook and Greg Miller at the Midwest Birding Symposium held at Lakeside, Ohio in September.

Greg told the crowd how his father taught him to see the bird, and then lift his binoculars to his eyes to observe the bird’s details and to verify the species. Years later, Greg showed movie star Jack Black, who played Greg in the movie, the same birding technique.

Greg served as the birding consultant for the movie. He spent three weeks on-site with the crew. Greg couldn’t get over that the cast and crew were as enamored with him as he was in awe of them.

Greg is not perfect. He would be the first to tell you that. Greg has encountered and endured some of life’s pitfalls, like the rest of us humans. Now, however, he is basking in the glow of notoriety, racing to speaking engagements all across the country as if he were chasing after the rarest of birds.

Good for him. Through it all, Greg has remained Greg. He has not lost the sense of whom he is nor how he got to be where he is. That alone speaks volumes of just how nice a guy Greg Miller really is.

Julie Zickefoose by Bruce Stambaugh — Author and illustrator Julie Zickefoose greeted some of her admirers at the Midwest Birding Symposium at Lakeside, Ohio in September.

What’s in a name? Does it really matter?

By Bruce Stambaugh

I recently had a very nice conversation with a six-year-old girl named Sophie. I told her that I liked her name. In response, she just beamed an ear-to-ear smile and blinked her brilliant blue eyes.

I didn’t tell Sophie this, but she reminded me of another Sophie I knew when I was in elementary school. That Sophie and I were in the same grade and often in the same class.

I remember her in part because of her name, which was rather unusual in the 1950s. Plus, when compared to the rest of the hoard of heads in the overflowing classroom, Sophie’s last name was even more foreign than her first.

Just years removed from World War II and in the midst of the Cold War, families with eastern European last names were often looked at askance. That didn’t make it right. It’s just the way it was. As I recall, Sophie was even picked on by other kids, despite her pleasant personality and her charming looks.

I never liked that she got taunted. But I don’t remember ever standing up for her either. I admired Sophie for being so impervious to the mocking and bullying. I seemed only able to empathize with her, stymied by my own juvenile sense of inferiority.

I got teased a lot in school, too. Out of the hundreds of students in our elementary school, I think I was the only Bruce. It didn’t help that I was small and younger than most kids in the class. I remember the hurt feelings more than exactly what was said. I couldn’t imagine how Sophie felt. Yet she kept that furtive smile and carefree attitude.

I silently blamed my parents for my troubles since they had stuck me with the cursed name. I don’t think they liked me. I theorized that since they already had a son, they were hoping for a girl next. Back then, parents had to wait until the actual birth to know the sex of their child.

Mom and Dad by bruce Stambaugh — My mother, Marian, and late father, Richard H. Stambaugh

I figured when another boy popped out, my parents were so disappointed that they named me Bruce. Coupled with my last name, callous students also poked fun at my initials. I had to wonder what were my parents thinking.

My predicament grew worse. A couple of years later, my parents got their girl and I became the forgotten middle child. To complete the Stambaugh brood, Mom bore both another boy and girl.

As you might imagine, the derisive name-calling worsened among the squirrelly junior high school kids and the insensitive high school jocks. When I finally began to both accept my name and get over my silly self-pity, I realized what my classmate Sophie had known all along. Bruce, like Sophie, was just a name, and a decent one at that.

I long ago got over my folks tagging me with the name Bruce. I’m just plain stuck with the initials. Given my orneriness, I probably have earned them anyway.

Davis by Bruce Stambaugh — Be your own person.

I enjoyed my recent chat with young Sophie; glad for the memories she evoked. From what I could tell, Sophie had already learned an important lesson that would take her far in life.

Like the Sophie in my elementary school, this sociable first grader instinctively seemed to know that it’s not what’s in a person’s name that is important. It is what’s in the person that really counts.