Chris Loehmer Kincaid's Blog, page 64

Bonding at Bond Falls – blog post #7 from the family vacation

Pretty much anyone who has gone waterfalling in Michigan’s UP, or just plain gone out to do anything in the great outdoors of the UP, or even you couch potatoes who have been dragged out of the house by your spouses so you could see a waterfalls up close – each of you has probably been to Bond Falls, near Paulding Michigan. Maybe you’ve been to the Paulding Light even, but that is a whole different story.

So there we were, my kids, my grandpuppies and me, visiting our second waterfalls area of the day on that rainy Monday of our family vacation the end of September.

I don’t like Bond Falls. There, I’ve said it. For reasons such as this. 

 And that there are always too many people there and I want to explore unhindered.

So we went off the beaten path, following the sketchy path up to the dam and back down the other side.

It is a beautiful area and I should be thankful that it was as wet out as it was as that probably kept some of the people away. People who always stay on the safe side of the fence with their umbrellas and expensive cameras and designer dogs.
And I really shouldn’t complain about any day which I spend with my kids. 

And the grandkids. 

 

Giving Thanks for Health

 Lord, you are my strength and fortress, my refuge in the day of trouble! (Jeremiah 16:19, New Living Translation)  

When you look at the above verse, and the one below, you may remember that my word for the year is “Strength”. Who knew, back on January 1, how much we would all need strength this year? 

 He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. (Isaiah 40:29, New Living Translation)

Well, of course, God knew. Why He didn’t stop this pandemic before it even got going would be something else that only He knows.  

 And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—this is indeed a gift from God. (Ecclesiastes 5:19, New Living Translation)

So, this month, in honor of Thanksgiving, I’ve been sharing with you what I am thankful for. This week, I am thankful for the strength of spirit and body which God has given me. I’m thankful that, overall, I am in good health. Yes, I have my share of aches and pains, and they seem to be multiplying with each passing day, but I can still keep up with pretty much anybody else my age (and sometimes even younger one). 

Thank You, God, for my health and for a strong body and sharp mind (we’ll talk, God, another time about how that body and mind do slip sometimes, but I’m still thankful for where I am at my age). Thank You. Amen.  

I’m also thankful that my immune system has held the coronavirus at bay. 

Nearly Black Friday

     Next Friday is “Black Friday” and Christmas is in five weeks. It’s certainly been a different sort of year. I’m sure Christmas shopping will be different as well. Over the last few years, you have maybe joined the ranks of consumers doing much of their shopping via Amazon or other websites. This year? I’m sure it will be even more.

Or are you planning to support the local economy by attending the craft shows which are still going on this year? That’s certainly okay, just don’t forget your masks and hand sanitizer.

As for me, I won’t be selling any of my books out in public this year. Instead, I’ll make you a deal.

From now until the end of the year, I’m offering each of my books at a discounted price, with free shipping anywhere in the continental US. Feel free to buy them on Amazon as well, except that I only have control over the price of the ones I self-published there (“The Truth Beyond the River” and the ebook “To Find Justice”).

I may be naiive, or I just plain love books that much, but I think books still make wonderful gifts. And if nothing else, they can be a gift to yourself.

Email me your shopping list and I’ll get your books mailed out to where ever you want them to go.

Price List:

The Truth Beyond the River - $12.99 now $10

Where the Sky Meets the Sand - $15.99 now $10

A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven - $14.95 now $10

The Christmas Story in 40 Days - $11.99 now $8

The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days - $11.99 now $8

Free Shipping through the end of the year.

My latest novel, “The Truth Beyond the River” – Ayoung reporter looking for her big break. A Vietnam vet fighting a new war. Two aging monks trying to keep the peace. Will they find the truth beyond the river?

Lieutenant Tommy Lightfoot has returned home from the Vietnam War a changed man. He and his fellow Native American warriors begin a new war – claiming a piece of property which they feel was wrongfully taken from their ancestors.

On that land along a river sits an abandoned monastery, watched over by Cecil, an elderly monk.

When the editor of a big city newspaper hears of the takeover, he sends his newest reporter to cover it. Teresa has only been chosen because of her looks – a black braid and a Spanish-American heritage. Before she even arrives at the monastery, she fears she is in over her head.

When she meets Tommy and Cecil, she wonders if she will ever be able to uncover the truth or if it will float down the river, beyond the grasp of them all.

 My first novel, “Where the Sky Meets the Sand” – An American businesswoman with a secret past. An African boy without a home. Two missionaries with more than one mission to accomplish. Will all their wishes come true where the sky meets the sand on the African plain?

“Where the Sky Meets the Sand” tells the story of Jenny Neumeyer and Ole, the homeless boy she befriends while she and her husband are on vacation in Kenya. This encounter leads her to confront a secret she has kept buried for 14 years. As she comes to terms with her past, two missionaries to Africa discover Ole and are determined to lead him home. Along the way, they realize that the boy is not the only one who is lost. 

My other books –

“A Time for Every PurposeUnder Heaven – One Woman’s Trip to Africa” – the memoir of my first trip to Kenya with a missionary group from Appleton, Wisconsin, in 2006. I spent much of those two weeks wondering why God had sent me there. This is the story of that trip and how it changed my life forever.

“The Christmas Story in40 Days” – a short book with 40 days of devotions describing the events leading up to the birth of Christ.

“The Early Life of Jesusin 40 Days” – a devotional which describes the life of Jesus from the time he is born until just before He begins His ministry.  

        (And even if you don't buy them through Amazon.com, reviews on Amazon are always appreciated.)

Kakabika Falls – blog post #6 from the family vacation

     Yes, I am still working my way through our short family vacation to northern Wisconsin this past fall. This is the second part of our third full day there. Good thing I don’t take full week-long vacations with my kids; I’d never get around to sharing all the pictures. 

Monday morning, wet and dreary, after our first few stops around Montreal and Hurley, we crossed the border into Michigan and headed 39 miles east on US Hwy 2 to Cty Rd 527, which turns into 2 Mile Road and then Sleepy Hollow Road before hitting Hwy 45 at Paulding. But, only about half a mile in on Rd 527, we stopped at the Kakabika Falls parking lot on the left.

We started hiking the somewhat random trail along the Cisco Branch of the Ontonagon River, passed several smaller falls and rapids and just plain prettiness. The main falls is only somewhat over 500 feet downstream from the parking lot. But, as my total 132 pictures attest, every step was worth it. 

When I post pictures like this on my blog, I try to keep them under twelve per post. Sometimes, though, it is impossible to stop. Such an awesome place to explore. 

Someone had said at the start of our vacation, that there hadn’t been much rain up north over the last two months. Well, I guess we hadn't had much down home either, after the wettest July on record. We were worried that the rivers and streams would be low, but I guess all the rain we had the first night we were there got the water levels up.

I still can’t believe that I’ve never been to this area before. 

Buddy can't believe it either. 


 

Giving Thanks for Family

    Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. (Psalm 127:3, New Living Translation)

 During this pandemic, probably not many families have been getting together as much as they used to (which is good for preventing the spread of coronavirus, but not so good for any of our emotional well-being). I’ve been blessed to stay in touch with my kids, and we had a nice time together last weekend.

    Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. (Proverbs 22:6, New Living Translation)

 
I can’t take any credit for how my son and daughter turned out, but I am certainly proud of them. All the work they have both done in Africa would bring tears of joy to any momma’s eyes. They are both amazing and I thank God every day that He gifted them to me.

   “Through bitter tears, And wounded years, those ties Of blood were strong. And when lightin' strikes the family, Have faith, believe.” (written by the band Journey)

No, our lives together have not been perfect, not ideal. I struggled a lot with the decision I had made to divorce their father, and I prayed a lot before marrying their step-father. Speaking of which, I thank God that He sent that wonderful man into my life, giving me a second chance at marriage.

   So I bow in prayer before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. (Ephesians 3:14-15, New Century Version)

I truly am blessed to have a caring family, surrounding me with their love.

LORD , God, my Heavenly Father, thank You for the great gift of my family. And for the knowledge that I will rejoin the rest of my family in heaven one day. Amen.

Covert Covid Chronicles, Part “it’s been too long to remember”

Yes, it has been a very long time since I’ve written a blog post about how the coronavirus pandemic is going. I’ve certainly mentioned it here and there over the past months, because we cannot escape that it is a part of life right now. We also can’t escape, here in north-central Wisconsin, that it has hit us and hit us hard.

I have so many stories that I’ve written in my personal journal of the pandemic – 38,342 words since March 22. But so many of those stories are too personal and would break HIPPA laws if I shared them, or at least would teeter into that abyss of privacy violations. Or break the confidences of friends, patients, and co-workers, people I most especially cherish during these crazy times.

But I need to stop there. I seem to be starting to ramble. It’s late Thursday night as I’m writing this; I really need to get to bed. But sometimes, most of the time, a person has to write when their thoughts and feelings are most ragged.

Clearly, I’m losing my mind.

Oh, not to fret, I’ll be okay. As you should already know, I work at the small clinic in my hometown. We have eight family practice providers and until, COVID descended, a regular mix of specialties. Their presence has been somewhat hit or miss over the last eight months.

As you can imagine, working in family practice, in the only medical center in a small town, during a pandemic, is a little bit stressful. Our town’s hospital, in the same building, has around twelve inpatient beds, I think, and up until recent weeks, has had nights when only a few patients could be found sleeping there. Our emergency room is equally small, but I would seek care there, instead of a big city hospital, for any medical crisis. Our staffs are the best at what they do, but our numbers are small. And possibly getting smaller, as wards in the larger cities have begun calling out for help with staffing, as the pandemic continues to rage.

The numbers of COVID cases in the state keep going up. Sure, a lot of these people are not sick with it worse than they would be with a cold or a minor flu bug. But others, of any age, are ending up in the ICU, and later, the morgue. Our little hospital, which does not have the equipment to support those folks, is reaching out far and wide to find facilities to take them and treat them. It’s bad enough when your loved one is in isolation in the hospital and you can’t visit them because of a pandemic. But now they are being air-lifted up to two hundred miles away. How can you possibly be there to support them when they need you the most?

First time I tested someone for COVID.
Got dressed for this again this week. 

In our clinic, we are testing, on average, over twenty patients a day. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s how many patients some of our providers used to see in a day, patients being seen for physicals and pre-ops and post-ops and med checks and broken bones and warts and every other malady known to man. Now, many of our patients are being “seen” via the phone or video chat, to keep them from possible exposure in the clinic. And to keep us from being exposed if they do have the corona. Yet, more and more people with possible COVID make their way through our doors and into exam rooms, rooms which then need to get locked down for deep cleaning before anybody else can use them. Our cleaning people are being run ragged.

We've hired a temporary staff member just to do COVID swabbing. You wouldn't have seen that on a resume a year ago. "My most recent job was as a swabber."  

And me? I feel like Karen Silkwood. Remember the movie where she tried exposing worker safety violations at the plutonium processing plant she works at? Where if workers are found to be radioactive, they scrub them down in the shower? I feel like I should go through one of those showers when I leave work at the end of the day. I have an active, and somewhat warped, imagination. If I was so concerned, I could get my nose swabbed periodically. But I rather be dramatic.

It's time I close this out and get to bed, so I can get up early and post this on my blog for the world to read. I suppose I should close with the lecture – the part where I stress the importance of the three golden rules – masks, hand-washing, social distancing. But you’ve heard that all before. You know what to do and what not to do, and I know a lot of people out there think they are above those rules. They don’t care about their loved ones, their family, friends, co-workers, or general public, and apparently, they don’t care about the medical community, which might not be available to them when they fall ill or get in a car wreck driving home from a bar where they were sharing all their COVID germs.

Yup, it’s definitely time to end this ramble. Have a good weekend, stay safe, stay healthy. Chris 

When we run out of human heroes to work here, I guess does will work here instead.
(Picture taken by a co-worker after work one night last month)
 

A Spattering of Area History – blog post #5 from the family vacation

   Way back on Monday, September 28, Day 3 of our fall family vacation in northern Wisconsin dawned cloudy and dreary. Temperatures throughout the day ranged from the mid-50s to low-60s with showers off and on and only the rarest glimpses of sun. We weren’t to be discouraged, though; there were so many wilderness sites to see!

First stop, that damp morning was Plummer Mine, which is halfway between Iron Belt and Pence. There is so much mining history in the area. I wish I could keep track of it all and share it with you, but I will leave the research up to you. I rather share pictures

    I’m never quite sure what all these ruins were at one time. Yes, there is a sign with a map of the site, but I can never put it in perspective.

  And with all the brush and trees, it’s hard to see the remains of what were once huge buildings.   Way in the back, up the hill, in the ruins of the smelting operation, there are several tall walls, with passages in between. Somehow, the dogs got down in there. 
Buddy and Bleu were able to find their way out, jumping up into a hole and escaping. Poor gimpy Wes, however, couldn’t figure it out and couldn’t jump up anywhere anyway. Nick was preparing to scale one of the walls into the abyss, when Val crawled in the way the dogs had come out and gathered Wes up and tossed him back out the hole. I’m not sure at which point in that operation I shot this picture. That hand is kind of creepy, no? 
Next, we drove around the Rose Wreath building in Montreal, which had originally been the machine shop for the Montreal Mine Company. Behind that, down a road with clear “no trespassing” signs, we drove past the remains of another old brick building. I’m not sure what it had been, but surely it had been another building of the MMC. 

  Between those two buildings, Nick told us there had been a grand place known in its day as the Hamilton Club. It had been built as a recreational center for area miners and their families, and had included a hardwood stage, pool tables, bowling lanes, a barbershop, and a soda fountain. It was built in 1918 and reportedly had burned down in 1968. Nick reported though, that when he had worked in nearby Hurley in the summer of 2010, that the building had still been there, probably as a burned-out shell. When he returned the following year, it was gone completely, torn down as an eyesore, no doubt, which is surely a shame.

I’m going to end this one here, as our next stop was at the first of the three waterfalls we visited that day. Each one garnered over fifty pictures, so I can’t rush through them.

  I will tell you that the day continued to be wet, which didn’t deter these three.

  Or these two.

Giving Thanks for Where I Live

House in 1990
  And a month ago

    For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. (Psalm 32:7, New Living Translation)

  Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91:1, New Living Translation)

  A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. (Proverbs 24:3,  New Living Translation)

   The first time I saw my house, the one where I have been living for thirty years now, I instantly fell in love. Mostly, that very first day, it was the large yard which charmed me. Once I saw the inside of the house some of my excitement turned to anxiety. It was a little rough around the edges, and it only had two bedrooms. A good cleaning and a few gallons of paint made it feel like home, and nine years later, we were able to add on, giving us not only a third bedroom but a second full bathroom. Not to mention a massive family room.

 Beyond these four walls and my four acres of paradise, my little hometown is a safe, friendly place to live. We don’t have a Wal-mart, a Best Buy or an Olive Garden, and our Dairy Queen closes for the winter, but we have a dozen non-chain restaurants which offer great food and a welcoming atmosphere. For long-term residents, any time you go out in public, you hear the theme song from Cheers in your head. “Where everybody knows your name.”

 You’re safe to walk our streets at night (except of course in the dead of winter when you could suffer frost bite). And if your car breaks down and your cellphone is dead (or more likely you don’t have reception coz that is pretty common around here), someone will come along and offer you assistance. We are surrounded by lakes, woods and wildlife.

 I complain a lot about my hometown (aka Hicksville, USA), but, as already mentioned, we are safe here and if we just stay off the internet and turn off the news, we can be at peace.

  Lord, God, thank You for allowing me to live in a place where I feel safe, where all my needs are met, where I can spend time outside relishing in the gifts of this earth. Amen    

And Two More Waterfalls, Kind of – blog post #4 from the family vacation

I promise this is the last post about our second day of the family vacation in northern Wisconsin this fall. We just covered so much ground that day that it was hard to cram it in to one post.

It was getting late in the day, but we were determined to make just three more stops.

The first one wasn’t an actual waterfalls, but instead was called a dells. I picture Wisconsin Dells, or a much smaller place called the Eau Claire Dells which is just east of Wausau, Wisconsin and quite scenic. But this dells, the Tyler Fork Dells, was scenic in its own way.

Flowing water will never stop being fascinating to me.

Then there is whatever this thing called the Ice Spike Lady is.

I wish the entire sign had maintained its integrity. I haven’t had a chance to research it on-line.

Next we stopped at Upson Lake.

We had seen it from atop Corrigan’s Outlook and had to see it up close. The color was amazing.

Last for the day was Upson Falls.

A beautiful ending to a beautiful day. Hard to believe that was just over a month ago. 

 

Giving Thanks for Caring Co-workers

  Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as you are doing. (Thessalonians 5:11, New International Version)

It’s hard to believe that we have made it this far. Here it is, already November 1. I keep thinking – we got this, the year 2020 won’t be with us much longer, than things will get better, right? Well, you may have heard this from me already, but I said that same thing at the end of last year, because, if you recall 2019 was pretty crummy for me. I couldn’t wait for the new year and a fresh start. Look where that got any of us.

But we have to believe that things will get better. And we have to realize that things are not really that bad, we have to remember all the things we have to be thankful for. Thus begins my November 2020 series of blog posts sharing what I am thankful for this year.

My list for 2020 has to begin with my amazing co-workers. When the rest of the world was shutting down, when the masses were working from home, when no one was having any in-person contact with anyone except for the family members they lived with, I was blessed beyond measure to spend my working days with the best group of people ever.

As an “essential worker” (another one of those terms like “social distancing” which we never heard until this year), I continued going to work at the medical clinic nearly every day. Initially, we each had an extra day off a week, with our providers working from home via phone and computer, all to cut down on contact. As the country began to come to terms with what to do in a pandemic, we all went back into the clinic full-time.

With our masks on, we read each other’s thoughts by the look in our eyes, a look which usually said, “yes, we have your back.” We were able to share our fears, we voiced our concerns and displayed our emotions. We laughed, a lot. Because we needed to. And most importantly, we were able to feel that undeniable and vital lifeline of human life. Another human being living through the same thing as me.  

Oh, Lord, God, how I thank you for giving me with this group of supportive people to work with. You have blessed me way more than I deserve. Amen.     

   For God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how you have shown your love to him by caring for others. (Hebrews 6:10, New Living Translation)