Page A2 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Sunday, September 16, 2007

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EDITORIAL PAGE

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

 

Tributes to the birthday girl

     Unaccustomed as we are to receiving letters to the editor, the Crusader has been quite overwhelmed in recent weeks by the volume of mail commenting on the 75th birthday of a former JDA resident who left the street over thirty years ago. Below is but a sampling of the tributes to Barbara Bueker Stewart that have flooded into the Crusader offices:

 

      “Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its Mother.”
                                      –Middle Eastern proverb

     It may be a cliché that you never really understand your parents until
you become one, but I have come to realize that it is true. Those adolescent
years of bemoaning my mother being “overprotective” are put into
perspective, not only by my own children’s antics, but certainly by the era
in which our parents were forced to raise us.  The Bueker kids came of age
in the 1970s, and you couldn’t choose a worse decade in which to
confidently and safely guide children to maturity.  From the perspective of
growing up in the 1940s, it must have seemed that the whole world had lost
its collective mind. How Mother ever survived those years with her sanity is
miraculous, especially considering the various stunts pulled by the Bueker
siblings and their friends.   Now I understand fully that worried, mother
hen peering over the living room shutters to check on her chicks.  With all
the late nights, strange friends and crazy behavior of the 70s, it was
Mother who never slept until everyone was home “in one piece.”  Why?
Because our safety was more important to her than her own rest.  Mothers put
their children first, and our mother has got to be the queen of this
unquestioning devotion.  She has never been anything but proud, supportive
and encouraging, even under extremely challenging circumstances.  A mother’s
love definitely “endureth all.”  I am so grateful to have been the recipient
of her love and guidance; a heartfelt thank you, Mother, for seeing all of
us little beetles as gazelles. – Barbie Bueker Formichella

 

     Of all the wonderful gifts that Mother has bestowed upon me throughout the years, I think I am most grateful for her top secret recipe for Kraft spaghetti dinner. I have carefully guarded this classified formula for many years and plan to take it with me to the grave. Thanks again Mom for all that tangy, cheesy goodness that I have enjoyed for so many delicious decades. Happy birthday. Love, John. – John Bueker

 

 

     Miss Barbara is an artist, a kindred spirit, a gentle soul, and one of the people who helped me see the light during my own darkest hour.
     In my sphere of thinking, it matters very much that she was born -- not just because she bore such a lovely family, or because she once lived on Joan de Arc (the center of the known universe). To me, Miss Barbara came to this world to demonstrate compassion and personal bravery. 
     If there is one single quality responsible for allowing this woman to thrive, these seventy-five years, I believe it is the possession of an expansive spirit that refuses to be hardened by social conventions and neurotic self-concepts. Miss Barbara has danced her way across the universe, and she is dancing still.
     Long live Miss Barbara -- my hero. – Kevin Hall

 

 

     Dear Barb,

     The editor of the Crusader and his staff have decided to make a big deal out of your birthday, so naturally they wanted a testimonial from a Joan De Arc neighbor.  As I recall, birthdays were sometimes celebrated with a blender drink at Helen Mitchell’s house.  I guess that was because she had a blender. Once as I recall, husbands Carl and Red took us out to dinner, but I cannot remember where we went; however it was a lovely evening out and about. But now to concentrate on this birthday, many happy returns from your old friend down the street. 

Happy Birthday. – Love, Konnie Kay (Russell) 

 

The Crusader welcomes your letters at jdacrusader@aol.com

        

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Chuck’s Corner
News From Around the Block and Around the World ©
by C.H.Bueker III
 

 A mother’s empathy conquers all

 

     Okay, so today is my mom’s 75th birthday.  I was going to write a funny column about what the world was like back in ’32, with dinosaurs and cavemen and what not, but I realized that I’m not all that far behind her, age-wise, and that I probably shouldn’t go off throwing any stones.  So instead I’ll tell the story of an early memory I have of her, a classic tale of envy and anguish, conflict and redemption, justice and gratuitous product placement.  It was December of ’61 and I was all of five and a half years old.

     I somehow became aware of the cruel reality (through taunting sisters, perhaps?  D’ya think??) that my mother Barbara was planning to attend a showing of Walt Disney’s Babes in Toyland with the local Brownies troop, in effect taking Sue and Barbie to this fabulous (and undoubtedly heavily advertised on television) cinematic extravaganza without me. My brother John, incidentally, was also uninvited, although I don’t remember concerning myself as much about that. Now, my mom doesn’t have an unfair bone in her body, and her predicament would be obvious to anyone of only slightly greater maturity, but to the five and a half brain cells rattling around in my five and a half year old head (undoubtedly five and a half feet above the ground), this was the most intolerable injustice the world had yet known. Something akin to, say, the current presidential administration.

     Clearly, it was never my destiny to attend this two star dud, and my mom wisely left me home that evening. She had more important things to attend to, between herding Brownies through the winter streets and trying to appreciate Annette Funicello’s performance.  Good luck with that. I remained behind and exhausted myself in extended tantrum, the solitary item in my parental manipulation tool kit, until well after the fortunate parties had departed for the theater.

     In the morning when I next saw Mom, she met me with a big smile on her face and a brown paper bag in her hands.  She pulled some things out of the bag and surprised me with not one but two Babes in Toyland Golden Books. My shattered existence was once again made whole.  Hey, everybody knows that the book is always better than the movie (even if in this case that isn’t saying too much)! More importantly, however, she showed me that she understood my overblown kindergartener’s anguish after all, and went out of her way to let me know. Empathy is one of the many great qualities that Barbara has infused into generation after generation of this family, a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

     And so I wish for my mommy, she who taught each of us everything there is to know about compassion and fair play, a very happy 75th birthday.  I know she’ll have many more happy birthdays to come, because she deserves ‘em.

 

 

Letter from the editor

By J. Bueker

 

3219: House full o’ books

     Mother ensured that our home on Joan De Arc was filled with love, safety, whimsy, and a true sense of belonging. It’s a sad fact of life that when you are actually experiencing those formative years, you can never fully appreciate how good you really have it. A kid simply assumes that all kids are having more or less the same sort of childhood, and that all is as it should be. You take everything completely for granted, and fail to conceive that it can ever end. Alas.

    But Barbara also made certain that the house at 3219 was replete with another kind of entity for which none of us can ever be sufficiently grateful.

    There were books. Lots of books. Many, many books, the number of which rose consistently through the years and never abated. This was the single most important provision that Mom ever made for her kids.

     There is little doubt in my mind that we were the only family in Surrey Heights with complete sets of the Encyclopedia Americana, The Book of Popular Science and the Book of Knowledge. How many times did we consult these volumes over the years when writing reports for Sahuaro School or Moon Valley High class assignments, settling factual disputes over the dinner table, or simply satisfying one’s curiosity?

     Early on at Sahuaro, I became infatuated with the “How and Why Wonder Book” series, a wonderful collection of educational books for children published by Grosset & Dunlap that still hold up quite well to this day. There were fifty or sixty books in the series, and Mother allowed me to purchase them all, one at a time, with my fifty cent allowance every payday for several years in the mid-'60s. These books were very entertaining, extremely informative, and genuinely challenging to the young mind. What a terrific advantage this conferred to my developing cognitive facilities.

     Then there were the Time-Life book series. Mother placed the orders and we received one book at a time in the mail, eventually assembling the complete science and art book collections. By the time I entered high school, I had a solid background in both art history and physical science. My brother Charles, the future engineer, read and absorbed the science books even more thoroughly than I. By the time we faced Mr. Taggart in Moon Valley High science class, we knew our stuff.

     There are many more examples that could be cited. The SBS paperback books we were allowed to purchase at school every month, the books we brought home from the thrift stores, the books we were encouraged to borrow from the Westown bookmobile and school libraries. There was Mother’s collection of Reader’s Digest condensed books, and the complete set of Shakespeare’s works that she kept in her secretary. In effect, we had access to just about any book we cared to read. What a tremendous privilege.

     Books are far more than a mere source of enlightenment. A book is a dear friend who is always available to share its gifts, bring comfort, nurture the soul, and expand the spirit. A book is a gateway to another mind and thus another avenue through which we may consider existence and pursue meaning.

     Thank you Mother for sharing your love of books with your children, and making possible all that followed in its wake.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________JDA

 

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