Category Pam Bergman Crawford

Pam Crawford joined the Joy of Writing Club as it was finishing The Deadly Water Hazard book. She became one of the editors and is responsible for the title. Her entry won the book-naming contest in the community newspaper.
Pam is a retired attorney from North Dakota. In 2019 she and her husband they decided to spend winters in Mesa, Arizona where they settled into a condominium at the Fountain of the Sun. Ready to explore creative activities in retirement, Pam took up classical guitar, quilting, carried on with scrapbooking, and found this bright, interesting, and eclectic writing club.
Pam proceeded to write, capturing life experiences which she often shares with the writing club.
She wrote and published a children’s book in 2021 “Leia’s Adventure: Ring of Change” and it is available on amazon at: https://amzn.to/3OjgDUI

Ringing of the Bell

Pam Crawford

By Pam Cawford

Excited, Poetry Happy Bell Logic Fascinating Dancing Heart Sweater Tree Ludicrous Thunder Depressing Nature Taxes

Ringing of bells has historically served as a means of communication. Church bells brought parishioners to Sunday services, other special events, or announced the hours of the day. It also sounded warnings such as invaders or fires. Salvation Army volunteers continue to ring bells at Christmas as they collect donations. My mother vigorously rang a bell announcing dinner and we all headed to the kitchen. Bells are found in literature, including the poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The Liberty Bell stands for this country’s independence.

Another fascinating bell ringing takes place at the end of cancer treatment, marking the end of chemotherapy or other treatment modalities. It began in 1996 at MD Anderson where Irve Le Moyne, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, was receiving treatment for cancer. He told his doctor he planned to follow a Navy tradition of ringing a bell to signify when the job was done. He did so, and in addition to leaving the bell, he left the following poetry:

“Ringing Out”

Ring this bell
Three times well
Its toll to clearly say,
My treatments done
This course is run
And I am on my way!

It became a tradition in many cancer treatment centers. However, the practice has been criticized by some who say it reminds other patients of how far they have to go, which could be depressing to them. Katherine O’Brien, a patient advocate with the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network wrote on LinkedIn “it’s insensitive to have a dance party” in front of them.

While there may be some logic in the criticisms, many have not found it discouraging but rather found courage and hope with each gong, knowing someone like them reached the end of treatment.

In three weeks, I will be ringing the bell, hopefully as loud as thunder. To me it means much more than the excitement of being cancer free, it symbolizes an 18-month battle, the nature of which was the hardest fight I have ever fought and taxed me as no other. It turned my life upside down and launched me into a twilight zone, ludicrous as that may sound. It shattered my inner core, challenged my beliefs and strength, and broke my heart into many pieces. But, my Icelandic “Viking” heritage kicked in, with the help of my boys, and I stayed rooted like a tree, not always able to stand tall, but bent with the wind of complications, too many to mention here.

And so, I will ring the bell, cloaked in a pink sweater. I will not be doing any happy dancing because I can hardly walk and will ring it with my left hand because I cannot reach that high with my right.

For whom does the bell toll? For not only me, but for everyone in that room.; patients, medical staff and me. Another poem expresses those thoughts in a much better way than I can.

I ring this bell for myself and every other
cancer patient that has, or is, or will walk the
journey that a cancer diagnosis brings.

I ring this bell for my caregivers, family, friends,
and perfect strangers who have given time, talents,
prayer and encouragement on my behalf.

I ring this bell for each employee that works within     
these walls … thank you for the compassionate
care you choose to give each day.

My praise and thanksgiving is for each of you
and to God, the giver of your life and mine.
I ring this bell, I ring this bell, I ring this bell for you!

A Deck of Playing Cards with Attitude

Pam Crawford

My brothers, sisters in law, nephews, and I gathered one Saturday night for a rousing evening of playing games.

One game required several decks of cards, so we opened new packs and threw them in the mix and the game began.

We had neglected to remove an information card from each deck and simply tossed them aside and kept playing.

At the end of one round, I read the card. I re-read it. I read it aloud. It contained the following script:

Thanks very much for playing car brand playing cards, these cards are made of worldly best paper which is imported from German and it deal specially with exquisite procedure. We believe that you will feel the special softness, flatness, and folder-proof when you playing it. Its feel and quality is obviously larruping.

Everyone stared, then looked incredulously at me, and then started laughing.

We speculated as to which country produced the cards. Couldn’t the manufacturer find someone who could speak and write the English language? We think we figured out the overall message but had differing ideas on some of the phrases. Of course, that is a lawyer’s delight-to argue differing meanings of the same written word. And three of us are attorneys, so we spent far more time on this than necessary.

For instance, what on earth is “worldly best paper?”

A dictionary defines “worldly” as relating to, or devoted to this world and its pursuits rather than to religion or spiritual affairs or possessing or displaying significant experience and knowledge about life and the world.

Could it have meant “made of the world’s best paper?” Or is the paper a material thing of the earth and not a spiritual thing? How can paper be capable of either? I guess it could be from the earth if the paper is made of the wood from trees, which have their roots in the earth. Was the writer using personification? Based on the poor grammar throughout the card, I think not.

And that worldly best paper is imported from German. Does it mean imported from Germany? Or imported from a German paper manufacturer? That does not necessarily mean the paper was produced in Germany. Or is the producer/manufacturer of the worldly best paper named German?

That worldly best paper, imported from German, it deal especially with exquisite procedure. What is it? Is it the German manufacturer who produces the cards with exquisite procedure? Could it mean imported from Germany? Or is “it” the way cards are dealt in play, that is, does the manufacturer deal cards with exquisite procedure?

Which led us to wonder what exactly is an exquisite procedure? The dictionary defines exquisite as “of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence, as a face, a flower, coloring, music, or poetry; extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate; or intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain, of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship.” We examined the cards, and all agreed the cards looked like any other cards, we could not ascertain any exceptional differences.

We decided at this point another round of adult beverages would be in order.

We tried to picture an exquisite procedure on many levels, such as a surgical procedure, written procedures for employees to follow, directions for filing court documents, computer manuals, electrical engineer’s schematic circuit designs, recipes, and on and on. We failed to identify any procedure as “exquisite.”

Next, we tackled the phrase We believe that you will feel the special softness, flatness, and folder-proof when you playing it.

What is “folder-proof?” There are fire-proof folders, water-proof folders, accordion folders, manilla folders but we could not find anything remotely to folder-proof. Are the cards designed to not being able to be placed in a folder? We thought it refers to the fact that the cards are sturdy and do not fold easily. Conducting our own quality testing, we felt the cards to see if we felt any special softness, flatness, and folder-proof qualities. OK, now we were really getting a kick out of how do you feel whether or not a card is folder-proof? So, we bent one. It bent like any other card. But we also ran our fingers over the cards with many oohs and aahs as we noted the special softness.

We almost reached hysteria as we read the final sentence- Its feel and quality is obviously larruping. Seriously? Skipping the obvious subject and verb error, we concentrated on the word larruping. We had to look it up in a dictionary. It means very or exceedingly. As we examined the cards, we all agreed that it was obvious the cards were larruping, even to the most casual observer. How could we not find otherwise?

We continued to play that evening, occasionally pausing to comment on the special softness of the cards. Who would have thought a deck of cards would provide such larruping entertainment? Plus, we all learned a new word.

While we had different opinions on the meaning of several phrases, we all agreed the manufacturer should have quit after Thanks very much for playing car brand playing cards.

Snowbirds

Pam Crawford

By Pam Crawford

Having arrived in North Dakota mid-March, we immediately started looking for a warm place to live. Being creatures of habit, we migrated to the same neighborhood we settled on in the past few years. We scoped out the area while perched atop of a huge silver maple tree in front of what we considered a quiet house except for a very tall young man who would come and go occasionally.

Deciding this was the spot, we proceeded to build our nest in the crook of a drainpipe on the edge of the backyard patio. It was covered with roof overhang-the perfect spot. I laid my eggs and sat on them day and night.

Life was good until there was quite the racket coming from the house. Lights came on, windows flew open, doors slammed, people were moving about, and then we heard a baby crying. The owners had returned early from Arizona, mumbling something about COVID and an adoption.

We were getting nervous, thinking our position would be compromised. To my pleasant surprise, they left us alone. Occasionally I caught glimpses of them watching us with binoculars at the patio door. They came into the back yard, which made me extremely apprehensive, but we seemed to be accepted, even though we were trespassing.

Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the tiny grandson when they carried him to the window to check on us. Maybe that is the reason they did not shoo us away because we had in common the responsibility of feeding and caring for babies.

Soon one of the eggs hatched and the people grew even more attentive. They tip-toed around us, watching me feed the baby. Then came the day when my baby bird could fly and off we went, never to return to the nest.

One day on our daily sweep through the yard I heard the woman ask the man what birds do all day, wondered why we never returned to the nest, and what it was like to not have a home base. She was concerned about our baby and if he had survived.

A few days later, as we flew by an open window, we heard the woman playing her guitar. We landed on the fence outside the window and listened, swaying with the music. She stopped and looked out at us. I flapped a wing and we left. I think she knew it was us and was relieved to know we were doing well.