What is the Plural of "Moses"?

Recently I was preaching at a church and the subject of the sermon was the story of the crossing of the Red Sea from Exodus chapter 14.  This portion of Exodus details how that Moses, after he had led approximately two million people out of Egypt and into the wilderness, suddenly found himself between a rock and a hard place.  With his back up against the wall (actually, his back was up against the water) and with Pharaoh (a bald Yul Brynner for those who have seen the old movie “The Ten Commandments”) bearing down on this rag-tag band of suddenly-freed slaves, Moses, in the face of almost certain camping trip failure, uttered forcefully in verse 13, “Do not fear, take your stand!”

So in trying to wax eloquent, I stated with great emphasis to the congregation how that today in our culture we need more leaders who won’t flinch in the face of the onslaught of opposition. 

“What we need today,” I eloquently waxed, “Is more Moseses!” 

I paused for affect.  (Actually I paused because I saw the confusion on the face of the gathered saints, so I tried that line again.)

 “What we need today,” I said with even greater zeal, “Are more Moseses!”

Their look of confusion continued, so, with sweat trickling down my brow I began looking off into space in a rather saintly pose, all the while in my spirit formulating an unspoken prayer request to The God Who Knows What More Than One Of A Person, Place Or Thing Is Called…

“O Thou That dwellest in the heavens, Who Art enthroned above all languages and grammatical constructions and feeble pastoral attempts at eloquent waxing, PLEEEEAAAAAASSSSE answerest Thou me like really fast and deliverest Thou me from this embarrassing self-made predicament.  WHAT on earth (or if it’s in Heaven then sendest it downst to me) is the plural of Moses???  

                       

                        Are more Moseses?

                        Is more Moseses?

                        More than one Mosum?

                        More Mosii??

                        A bunch of Mooses

                        A gaggle of Moseses?

                        A murder of Crows?

Answerest Thou me in fire with the correct grammatical construction and driest Thou up this river of sweat filling the trench around the altar!”

Divine insight suddenly began to flood my northern Minnesota spirit!

Well ok…actually my wife mouthed the correct grammatical enuncification to me as she rolled her eyes.  (Over the years I have learned how to interpret her mouthings with great agility because on a number of occasions she has caught me in mid-sermon and mouthed, “Y  o  u      h  a  v  e      y  o  u  r      s  w  e  a  t  e  r      o  n      b  a  c  k  w  a  r  d  s  !  !  !).  

With an astonishing sense of relief I was finally able to wax eloquently about the need for unyielding courage and granite like determination in the face of embarrassingly incorrect grammatical constructions.

“What we need today………………are more brothers of Aaron!”

The End J

“He Who sits in the heavens…laughs” (Psalm 2:4)

Gutter Blaster Part Deux – The Revenge of the Fallen

As I wrote in my first scientific review back in 2008, the “Gutter Blaster” is simply a 3 foot length of aluminum tubing that has a very, very small nozzle at one end and a hose attachment at the other.  It is curved at the nozzle end so that you can reach “up” and blast away “down” into the gutter and remove unwanted debris such as leaves, pine needles, baby ducklings and baby alligators.  And the tiny jet-action nozzle is easily turnable so you can direct the high speed jet spray to the left, or to the right, or away from you (preferable) or directly toward your face (not preferable).

It probably weighs no more than 12 ounces and when I originally bought it the cost was $3.00.

Now lest you think you can’t get much entertainment these days for three one dollar bills…well, I have news for you!

Once it is hooked up to a hose, for those 300 pennies you get a laser beam-like jet spray of water (a weapon of grass destruction) that can toss you and your arm into your neighbor’s yard so quick you will hardly have time to scream JUMPING BANANA LIZARDS BATMAN DID YOU SEE THAT!!!  

Especially if you are like me and don't follow the directions.  My son-in-law reminds me from time to time that directions are (to quote Gus), "Just another man's opinion."

The Gutter Blaster’s original instructions contained this warning (and I am not making this up): under the section called “SAFETY AND MAINTENANCE,” it read:  “DO NOT POINT THE NOZZLE TOWARD ANY LIVING CREATURE!” 

I can see why.  I wonder if the Army knows about this thing.  They’ve got lasers that can fry walleyes from 20,000 miles up in space, but do they know about this?

(Just a note: I read on the internet that the reason the Russians never beat us to the moon is that the first stage of their moon rocket was powered by 5,213 military grade gutter blasters.  And when the rocket began to lift off, all the teenagers in Moscow flushed the toilets AT THE SAME TIME which caused the water pressure to drop precipitously and the rocket simply dropped out of the sky.)

The directions also explicitly state (and again…I am not making this up), “YOU CAN USE YOUR GUTTER BLASTER TO WATER YOUR HANGING PLANTS.”  Are you kidding me? I can see it now – weekend warriors all across the fruited plains dutifully watering their wives' stunningly beautiful hanging plants; and turning them into…salad!

The only thing I remember about “Gutter Blaster 2008” is that the first time I used it I turned it on full blast (as in all at once) and it wasn’t pretty.

After retrieving my arm from the neighbor’s yard to the west and the gutter blaster from the neighbor’s yard to the east…well that’s when I read the directions.

The directions clearly stated (and I am not making this up either), “DON’T TURN THE WATER LINE ON TO FULL PRESSURE THE FIRST TIME YOU USE YOUR GUTTER BLASTER!”  I blame my son-in-law for causing me such horror and pain.

So during my vacation this year (and with seven more years of wisdom under my belt), I forgot everything I had learned (and the pain I had experienced) and did almost the same thing. 

I held it with one arm...over my head…while holding onto the ladder two stories up…and I turned it on full blast (as in all at once).

What follows is a compilation of eye witness accounts from the actual police blotter, “Mr. Vander Ark was found in a heap 369 feet from his house   His new gutters were GONE!  Other than an innocent looking piece of aluminum tubing on the end of his hose, no other source could be found to cause such a mystifying accident.  One neighbor stated in utter amazement, “I saw the neighbor, you know, the bald guy with the white beard who looks a lot like Papa Smurf only not as blue…well he like turned on the hose and WHOOSH!  I mean I have never seen anyone fly up so fast and so high in all my life!  In just seconds he was a crumpled heap on the lawn on the OTHER SIDE OF 8^TH STREET!”  Another neighbor stated in sworn testimony, “I am positive that his beard was NOT white before he turned on the hose but that upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere his beard caught fire and THAT’S how his beard turned white! “   Another eyewitness account claimed, “When I saw him turn that thing on I RAN FOR COVER!  Especially when it began to rain little ducklings and alligators!”

So to all of my fellow home beautifiers and weekend renovation warriors -- be careful out there!  Something that only costs about $3.00 at your local home improvement store can provide hours of fun and fascination! Especially if you don’t read the instructions. :>)

Dan Vander Ark 2016

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Grocery Store Checkout Stress

Unless it’s an emergency, my wife doesn’t let me help buy the groceries.  Its not that I don’t know how to drive the grocery cart or that I throw too many nutritious items like poptarts into the cart…it’s simply that she can’t handle me not handling the checkout stress.

I am pretty calm under just about every circumstance.

Is there an asteroid hurtling toward earth?  No big deal…just grab your camera! It should make for some really great photojournalistic opportunities (but leave the tripod).

Is the economy about to crash?  That’s ok…we’ve stored up a decade’s worth of peanut butter and lutefisk (which has a shelf life of several centuries).

Is the car heading down the slushy highway backwards?  No worries!  You can see where you’ve been just moments earlier!  (This really did happen to us).

Is there a tsunami heading toward Duluth?  Don’t panic!  Just drive UP to the mall area and check out the latest gear at Best Buy or Gander Mountain for awhile. 

But ask me to bag the groceries at the supermarket checkout?  Immediately my heart starts to race, my pupils dilate, my breathing gets more rapid, my palms get sweaty and the room starts to spin around.

I can pack a 24 foot U-Haul moving truck ok, but when it comes to filling a bag with groceries and making sure you don’t put the Tide on top of the eggs…well that’s where for some reason all my training as a hunter-gatherer falls apart.

And I turn into a quivering pool of Jell-O.

Like one of the times when we got to the checkout.  I could tell that my wife was concerned as I inched toward the end of the checkout and I heard the clerk whisper to my wife, “Is he ok?  He looks like one of those purple Minions.  And why is he breathing into the all those paper bags??? Isn’t he supposed to be filling them up with stuff?” 

I started the bagging process (all the while marveling at the calm demeanor of the 4 year old in the next lane filling 6 bags simultaneously).  As I carefully started filling the first bag I couldn’t figure out why an avalanche of groceries was coming my way and why wasn’t the conveyor stopping and why is the clerk doing this to me and doesn’t she know she might push me over the edge AND WILL SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING FAST AND CUT THE POWER TO THE BUILDING!!!

It was then that my wife motioned that I shouldn’t be leaning against the rubber bumper at the end of the lane cuz that’s the switch and that’s why the 12 pack of coke was smashing up against the marshmallows. 

Oh…

There wasn’t a reverse switch to send the groceries back up the lane to the clerk so I put my superior intellect into high gear and just started grabbing anything that looked halfway frozen or cold and I shoved that into one bag, I grabbed anything made out of steel and put that in another bag, I then filtered out anything that would fall into the soft and squishy category and put that in another bag.  I then put all of the non-food items (like beets and peas) into another bag and finally, anything resembling meat into another one. 

My plan failed when I realized that a bag full of soft stuff doesn’t weigh the same as a bag full of steel stuff.  I bagged it that way because I remembered one of my high school teachers saying that a pound of feathers weighs the same as pound of rocks so I couldn’t see what was wrong with my bagging process.  To alleviate bag rippage, I quickly put some of the steel stuff on top of the soft stuff – I don’t see the big deal on this as a loaf of bread 1 inch high has exactly the same nutritional value as a loaf 6 inches high.  And as a bonus, you can get more loaves in the bread box. Although lunch guests might wonder why their sandwich is the size of a matchbook.

To finish the bagging process I put the 23 boxes of poptarts into the last four bags. 

With our checkout line of crabby grocery shoppers snaking all the way back to the meat department (if looks could kill!), I finally finished jamming all the bags into the cart in one last frenzied outburst of unruffled tranquility. 

I pushed the cart out the door to the car and transferred the $3,047.19 worth of Super Duper Grocery Store items (of which $2963.14 was for the hamburger) into our vehicle.

My wife got into the passenger side, grabbed my Bible and said, “Place your hand on the Bible and repeat after me…

            I (your name goes here)

            I Your Name Goes Here

            Will never

            Will never

            Help me

            Help me… (Help me or help you?)

            With the groceries

            With the groceries

            Ever again in the history of the world

            Ever again in the…what was the last part?

            Unless

            Unless

            I am dead

            I am dead (wait…who’s dead in this scene…me or you?)

The End :>)

The Adventures of Danny and the Strange Case of the Haunted Dishes

It was unusually warm for a mid December Saturday as I guided my ship into the cold waters of the St. Louis River off the Boy Scout Landing in Duluth.  Two fishing poles (one rigged for panfish and one for marlin), and two cameras (both rigged for picture taking) accompanied me on my voyage.  I paddled the Vanderyak, a 12 foot piece of plastic in the form of a sit-on-top kayak, lazily down-river to the old Oliver Bridge.   It is indeed rare when you can find open water in December away from the Big Lake they call “Gitche Gumee Bear.”

It was around noon when I began my journey, and I couldn’t shake the odd scene from my mind that I had seen only minutes ago.

Just prior to my launch and about 100 feet from the boat ramp I had spotted what seemed to be a lost treasure of several china cups and saucers just off shore in about 3 inches of water.  It was an odd sight indeed.

Could it be the remnants of some ancient ship wreck?

Did they come from the Titanic? 

Or did a bunch of burly Finnish fishing guys from Duluth decide to have tea and crumpets as they waited on a catfish strike and just threw everything into the water when their wives showed up?

I am not sure.  Nevertheless it was such an odd sight that I decided to investigate further after returning with a large catch of bluegills and marlin.

I fished for awhile by the old bridge but then realized that, irrespective of the warm weather conditions, it was December and any marlin or bluegill with a half of a fish brain would have long ago headed out to the Atlantic via Lake Superior and the St. Larry Seaway (with just a smidgeon of a left turn by Niagara).

So I paddled back to the landing. 

When I was within about one half mile from my destination the eagle that I had been chasing earlier with my camera suddenly swooped down out of the overcast sky and landed on the bow of my craft.  Which is toward the front.

And looked at me with his eagle eye.

“Danny!!!” said the eagle in a stern voice with a Boston accent, “Do not go near the dishes!”  And then he flew away.

“That’s odd,” I said to myself.  “Why would an eagle from northern Minnesota speak with a Boston accent?”

Continuing on to the landing, I ignored the wisdom of the old eagle and decided to investigate up close and personal those mysterious dishes.

What I saw astounded me!  The dishes, which just a couple hours prior were semi-submersed in ice-cold December water, were no longer covered with water!

My first thought was, “Where did all that water go?”  I mentioned this to my son-in-law a week later and he said something that to him made a lot of sense.  “There’s a dam on that river, right?”  I just stared emptily at him as I tried to decipher his line of reasoning.

One thing I did know for certain -- the mysterious disappearance of the water had to somehow be connected to the mysterious appearance of those dishes.

In fact, the water had gone down so much that, as I eased my ship toward the archeological site, my small craft became lodged in the sea bed. Eventually the Coast Guard sent a fleet of Fisher Price tugboats to assist me in my plight and I was able to free the Vanderyak. 

I went back to the landing, loaded my kayak onto the truck and commenced to investigate the now-on-dry-land dishes.  There were several cups and saucers with markings that they had been handcrafted in England and a place called “Avon.”  I carefully loaded the fragile cargo onto the truck and then I called my wife with the news that “nope I didn’t catch anything but I had a wonderful time” (which is my never-changing voicemail message on my cell phone). 

But then I told her about the dishes.  She seemed mesmerized as I related the scene to her and the fact of the disappearing water and that I had found some sort of ancient unburied treasure in the form of cups and saucers.   Maybe it was the money pit from the famed Oak Island Treasure. (Check out The History Channel [channel 63] at 7PM Central Time every Tuesday!)

After I got home my wife examined the dishes and was astonished.  (Ok, maybe “astonished” is a little bit too dramatic; but she was definitely “stonished!”)

The next day I put the muddy, dirty dishes in a small box and placed them next to the desk in the basement family room.

The following Friday, December 18^th, my wife and I drove to Phillips, Wisconsin for the family’s Christmas get-together.  We had a wonderful time!

When we arrived home that Sunday evening, what my wife witnessed as she opened the basement/family room door startled her.    I was still unpacking the car when she rushed out to the garage and uttered dramatically, “MAYBE THOSE DISHES REALLY ARE HAUNTED!”  

As she gesticulated wildly and nonsensically about a horse being in the middle of the floor and how did it get there and is it connected to the dishes and should we call Horses-R-Us or the Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard, I on the other hand reacted with a totally calm Sherlock-Holmes-like demeanor when I opened the door.

“YOWZZZERRRSSSS!!!!WHATONEARTHISGOINGONINTHEBASEMENT!!!!” 

Somehow, the Victorian era reproduction horse/toy was in the MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR LOOKING AT US.  And that horse hasn’t moved off from the shelf it was on for years!  (The proof is in the dust!)

And to make this story even more dramatic and mysterious and scary, for that horse to get from the shelf to the middle of the floor it would have had to have fallen off the antique book it rests on, hit two cameras on top of the computer tower, avoided an assortment of desk paraphernalia like three-ring binders and a hole punch and speakers and a broken Hershey bar and dried out donut, avoided lots of stuff on top of the filing cabinet; then on its way off the desk missed two camera bags and a computer bag and rolled out into the middle of the floor unbroken and upright.  All the while positioned to look directly at us when we opened the door!

After the hair on the back of my neck went back to its normal position, I surveyed the scene again and alleviated all of my wife’s fears with this simple bit of wisdom, “Hey the Vikings won!  Who cares if the basement’s haunted?”

(Note: the events stated above are ALL TRUE except for these – I didn’t go fishing for marlin, I didn’t have a beak to nose conversation with an eagle, the Coast Guard never did send any tubgoats, and there WASN'T ANY DUST on that old book!)