LITTLE ROCK — Like many of you, Laurie and I both could think of a dozen places we’d rather be than caroling for geriatric patients at Fayetteville’s care home, better known as City Hospital.
By the time our group of 12 gathered around the piano, however, the reason for our choice had become obvious. Looking into the dining room filled with wheelchairs and so many elderly widows, all I could visualize were those who not that long ago could have been most of us.
As we warbled through seven Christmas favorites, many in the room began smiling, even faintly singing along. What each of those folks must have been remembering in those few minutes. Most likely their memories were of families and holidays past.
With our road show ended, we broke from the group to speak with each one, to hold their hands for a moment, to look into their eyes and wish them a Merry Christmas. Some ladies were wearing pajamas while others had been able to don colorful dresses.
Most of these gentle folks with weary eyes craved human touch so desperately that they didn’t want to release my hand when I clasped theirs.
After about 40 minutes, our little singing band of brothers and sisters was walking through the parking lot peering into a starry night, heading for a pizza parlor to share our feelings. We all agreed that we probably had gotten more out of our brief Christmas visit than the patients.
I encourage other church groups and those who care to invest an hour of your lives one evening to do something similar. Once you are in the room with such sweet-spirited people, I’m predicting, you’ll feel equally enriched for turning good intentions into action.
Paying forward
LeAnn Lawson Turner, whose husband Sam was my first physician in Fayetteville, recently stopped tohelp a woman whose Christmas tree had tumbled off the top of her SUV. LeAnn just lent a hand because it was the right thing to do.
Last week, my wife decided to “pay it forward” by purchasing the orders in front and behind her in the drive-through line at a fast-food restaurant.
Actions such as these bring to mind a profound truism in this brief lifetime we share. It’s only those actions we take on behalf of others that endure. Everything we do for ourselves is buried with our bodies. It seems an especially relevant point worth pondering in the Christmas season.
Radioactive
What is it about Democratic “public-servant” legislators in D.C. that keeps them from recognizing just how radioactively toxic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Barney Frank have become in the eyes of many Americans?
Yet a majority of Democratic representatives and senators continue to associate with and willingly back these sorts of extremist legislators and their pet health care and capand-tax bills, two of the worst, most disastrous in history.
They even arrogantly strain their own rules and protocols to ram this unwanted legislation into law. You can bet your last piece of stocking candy that there’s lots and lots of money and behind-the scene power plans involved here.
Hog nightmare
This year for John Pelphrey and his basketball team has been like a “Nightmare on Razorback Street.”
The numerous departures andsuspensions alone have left the team chronically shorthanded (with between two and eight players-as best I recall anyway). Now the coach and players Courtney Fortson, Jeff Peterson and Rotnei Clark have appeared together in a photo display in the latest issue of a glossy magazine, Celebrate, wearing goods from various stores that advertise in the publication.
The NCAA frowns on that sort of thing among its member schools, so the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville rightly self-reported to the NCAA this possible secondary rulesviolation and awaits its determination.
Meanwhile, Mari Taylor, who publishes the magazine,called this latest PR disaster an “innocent and minor mistake.” She added that no one was paid and advertising was not the intention.
Well, OK, if that’s her explanation. But I wouldn’t call it an innocent or minor mistake, particularly when the UA-Fayetteville athletic department and its coaches understand that using student athletes in any act of promotion is out of bounds in NCAA World.
The last thing poor Pelphrey needed at this point in a struggling season with a depleted roster was yet another needless distraction. I’m prone to say that any time you recall an entire edition of your magazine because a university asks you to do so, then the situation is anything but minor.
I’m also prone to say that the time these players spent celebrating an ego-gratifying photo shoot would have been better spent in the gym shooting lots and lots of free throws.
I’m still trying to figure out how this mess ever happened.
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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 12/22/2009