You Have Stolen My Heart

Dear Jack,

Happy 7 week birthday! It's hard to believe you've only been in our lives for 7 weeks; we can't imagine our lives before you now - except for the fact that we did get a lot more sleep!

We are so privileged and blessed to be your parents. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what God was thinking entrusting you to us. But, we're so honored to have that responsibility, even though it feels overwhelming at times. We want so badly for you to grow up and be a terrific citizen of the world, to further God's kingdom with the gifts and talents he's given to you. We promise to help you, with God's help, identify those gifts and talents so you can live life with balance and purpose. There will only be one Jack Emerson Strine; and we truly want you to achieve all that God has for you.

All that to say, we will fail you along the way. A LOT. We're human, just like you, full of flaws and imperfections. We will often get it wrong. We may always get it wrong. But, I can honestly say that we will love you unconditionally, and I pray that you will always feel that our home is place you can rest.

We have so many dreams for you (Daddy's main dream is to be your caddie someday!), but those are for another blog post. We just want you to know that we love you so much.

You have stolen our hearts.

Love,
Your Mom

And then after a year...

So, it seems our blog has been dormant for a year.  Wow is that bad.  No apologies.  Life, as they say, got in the way.

Anyhow, with the imminent arrival of our child (let's hope sooner rather than later), I figure we'd better get this thing running again as we'll need a place to post photos of the newest Strine and a place to tell all the adorable stories about her or him.

Noticing that our last post, courtesy of my wonderful wife, was about the Addebury Half-Marathon, I thought I'd inform everyone, a month later, that this year I was in England and did run the race.  1:50:28... not that I'm counting or anything.  Great race, great day.  Anyhow... here I am in full stride.

 

As my favorite blogger on Runners' World says, waddle on.

The Adderbury Half Marathon

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Whilst Casey was away this summer, paying someone so he could dig up dirt, I had the opportunity to go stay with Mr & Mrs S in Adderbury for a weekend. The Adderbury Running Club was to host its first marathon to coincide with their village's annual Party in the Park. It was to be an exciting weekend, and I didn't want to miss it.

Mr S and I left work on Thursday evening and drove out to their village. We had a meeting with the 2 other ARC masterminds - T & J - at their local pub, named The Bell. I found out that I was given the title of 'Race Coordinator' which meant I was to help organize things....and so much more, it turned out.

Day before the race day: Mr S went happily off to work, and I stayed behind 'working from the Adderbury office,' putting together spreadsheet after spreadsheet of information. There was to be 5 races in all: half marathon, 10K, half marathon walk, kids fun run, and the circle walk. We had over 150 people register for them, which for a first time, had exceeded everyone's expectations.

Half way through the day, J came over to Mr S' house to let me know he would be setting out the mile markers for the half marathon. Mr S & I were to put out the markers for the 10K. (Before I go any further, I must reflect that to say these races were cross country is to make an understatement. You were running through fields, jumping over fences, and in some cases, wide streams due to recent flooding.) Around 4p, Mr S came home, and we loaded up our mile markers, stakes, etc. jumped on our bikes, and headed out to mark the course. I figured, 2 hours tops, right? We were on bikes, and how long does it take to ride a 10k?

I literally had no idea what I was about to get myself into.

Even in July, the weather was relatively cool. Before we left, Mrs S loaned me a jacket, and later on, I was extremely thankful that she did. The first mile marker wasn't so bad - we had mainly stayed on roads, and then veered off down a path through a gate. At the end of the path, I swung the gate open and I was standing in a field. It was the picturesque English countryside. Horses galloped, cows grazed, geese and ducks flew overhead; I thought, "What a lucky girl I am to be able to experience this." I looked at Mr S and asked him where we were headed - he politely pointed to the other side of the field.

We rode our bikes and came to a fence with a gate that was clearly locked. My brain started to turn.

"Umm...do you have a key for this gate?" I politely asked Mr S.

"No, you have to jump over," was his reply. "The farmers keep them locked, but we have permission to run the race through the fields."

I watched his pick up his bike and throw it over the fence. WOW. Guess that means I'll have to do that as well! Of course, I'm not as strong as Mr S, so I only get one tire over. He does the rest.

At this point, as much as I'm enjoying the beautiful countryside, I am beginning to feel:
a) out of shape
b) a complete weakling for not being able to pick up a bike and throw it over a fence
c) we were going to be out here A LOT longer than 2 hours

As I'm giving myself the 'suck it up' speech in my head, I looked off in the distance and saw dark clouds. We had been experiencing rain off/on all day, but the sun had been out when we left the house. I silently pray - Lord, no rain! It's been raining for days! I'm out here laying mile markers down, riding a bike (that's not made for cross country) across a field! I'm in jeans! Please please please don't let it rain!!

And then the Heavens opened. And it rained.

If it weren't for Mrs S' jacket and a hat that I had grabbed before we left, I would have been absolutely soaked. And everyone knows what happens when jeans get wet - they seem to grow 3 feet and just hang from you. Awesome.

We laid the third mile marker out and came to a locked gate. Mr S' blackberry buzzed, and he decided to take the call. In his defense, he did need to speak to the other person on the other end of the line, but the call went on and on and on - I was watching the water drip off the bill of my hat.

We probably only stood there for 5 minutes, but when he finally hung up, I looked at him and said, "Right. Unless it's God (or Mrs S) calling you next time, you don't answer your phone. Deal?"

And off we went - more fields, more bike tossing, more mud.

We came to one of the last fields we would go through, and Mr S started hammering in the stake for the marker. A herd of cows on the other side of the field started sauntering towards us. Normally, I'm not afraid of cows, or other big animals, but I must admit the closer these cows got the more frightened I became. They were curious animals; they wanted to see what we were hammering in the ground. I'm sure they were hungry, and maybe they planned to eat the neon green sign as soon as we left. I just did not want them to eat us! They got closer and closer until they were a mere 10 feet from us. I looked at Mr S, and said, "Yeah...I want to leave now." He looked at me and pointed across the field and said, "Yep! It's time to go!" A very large bull was heading over to the herd. (Funny thing I noted - American cows would not have bothered you, but it was interesting to me that the English cows were very curious. I found it to be quite opposite of our cultures.)

He jumped on his bike and raced away, and I tried to keep up. It suddenly occurred to me that I was a moving target - as my jacket was bright red!! GREAT.

Over the next 3 hours, we kept up our fence jumping, bike tossing and stream crossing. Luckily, in the English summer, the sun doesn't set until almost 11pm, so after the rain let up, we had some light to guide us back to the house. We arrived back around 9:30pm, where a sweet Mrs S had made a lovely dinner for us!

I must say, it was by far one of my most favorite days in England. Even though I wasn't running a race, it was fun to do something physically demanding and be part of a race community.

Race day was equally as fun! There was loads to learn from running this event the first time, and I think the Adderbury Running Club did a great job the first year. The winner of the half marathon ran it in a hour and a half, which isn't a bad time; but, unfortunately for him and a few others behind them, one of the farmers did not put a bridge down, and it forced them to run an additional 3.5 miles. So, the winner actually ran 16 MILES. He and the others were great sports about it, which was good.

I ended up running the kids portion with all the children. Given how badly injured my knee was at that point, I couldn't keep up with the little ones, so I ran behind them with Mr & Mrs S, eldest daughter, Isobel. She and I will have great memories from that day for a long time. Well, maybe just me. :)

Party in the park followed the race, with plenty to eat, drink and people watch. They had several bands play, which was great as well!

I went home Sunday night absolutely exhausted, but oh my! What a fun weekend. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thanks to Mr & Mrs S for hosting me all weekend for the festivities. It was really so much fun! I would do it all again in a second.

Cheers!
Mandy

Confessions of A Diet Coke Addict

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I can't stop.

I love Diet Coke. The taste, the smell, the wonderful sound the can makes when opened - a slight hiss, then a pop! Oh, it's music to my ears! I think I can live without the bubbly stuff, but can I? Really?

But tell me, what constitutes being an addict? How many times can you fall off the wagon, and get back on before you realize there may be a problem? I can walk through the soda aisle of our local grocery store without purchasing a 6 pack, but sadly, I can barely walk past the refrigerated section of the grocery store without hearing the Diet Coke section call my name - Drink me! I'm only £.42! I guess when the cans start speaking to you, that's when there may be a problem.

After two bouts of kidney stones, doctor after doctor telling me to lay off the caffeine, I've finally decided maybe it's time to heed the warnings. Obviously my body doesn't like the stuff (especially since I do know there are numerous stones lurking in my right kidney), so why drink it? I've managed to go off it before, for months......but, I like it. I like it. I like it!

However, I am committed to my health, so I am going to make a pledge on our blog: I will not drink diet coke for 2 months. I know I can do it.

You are allowed to check up on me.

Please!

Mandy

John Wesley Walter, February 10, 1947-September 11, 2008

My sweet Uncle John.

Casey and I have been grieving the last month over John's unexpected death, and I suspect we'll grieve for a long time. We were very close to my Uncle - as we are to my Aunt Jan, and cousins Alex, Christian and Lily. One blog about John's life will never do him justice; he was 'just John' to us - as my dad so poignantly stated at the memorial service. He was an amazing man who loved his life, his family, his profession, and people in general.

We just recently returned from a trip to Martha's Vineyard, where 225 people gathered to remember him. It was held on the beach, under a white tent, followed by his favorite meal: fried chicken, potato salad, sweet tea, and pie. People from every part of his short life stood up and honored him by telling stories of funny things he said and did, times he showed his love to people, his very bad driving (he undoubtedly was the WORST driver in history), and his love of bad food, bad diners. It was healing to be back with our family to hug, cry and share the wonderful memories of him.

My Aunt Jan, who is also a writer, penned his obituary. I truly hope it gives you a glimpse into the 61 years God gave him on earth.

John Walter, a well known editor and journalist both on and off Martha’s Vineyard, died Thursday, Sept. 11, at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, MA, from complications of surgery. He was 61.

Mr. Walter had lived on the Vineyard for six years and was the owner, with his wife, Jan Pogue, of the custom book publishing company, Vineyard Stories. Together they have produced nearly a dozen books and assisted in the production of several more, on subjects ranging from art to history, from ornithology to cooking. Prior to starting that venture in 2005, he had been editor and publisher of the Vineyard Gazette, managing editor and executive editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and one of the founding editors of the first national newspaper, USA Today.

For Mr. Walter, words were a tangible commodity. He published his first newspaper for his family at age six. He attended the Medill Journalism School at Northwestern University, where he became the editor of The Daily Northwestern, widely considered one of the best college newspapers in the country. After college, he began a long career of outstanding journalism at newspapers around the country. His career path took him from newspapers as disparate as the Pacific Daily News in Guam – where he learned to love pie served up by two local ladies of the night who refused to sell whole pies because their regular customers might then have to go without a slice – to the now defunct Baltimore News-American, where he fell in love with his wife when they climbed over a construction fence to spy on the then new, now famous, Harborplace shopping and eating waterfront mall.

A Challenging Career

His career was filled with challenges, serious issues, and lots of humor. One of his many tests of his journalistic skills in Atlanta was gearing up the Journal Constitution’s staff for sports coverage as the city hosted the 1996 Olympics. "We're going to be the hometown newspaper for the Games," he told The New York Times in 1992, as those preparations began, adding: “We're going to have to widen the beats. We'll have to develop expertise in water polo, for example."
Under his leadership the Journal Constitution won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1993 for a series of stories about organisms and their resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. The newspaper also undertook ground-breaking investigations into the dynamics of poverty in Georgia, at one point going to court to force the state division of child services to open its records. The newspaper’s final report featured a compelling graphic: a pile of 844 children's shoes, one for each of the neglected and abused children who had died after coming to the state’s attention between 1993 and 1998.

The project grew to become a six-month series of 19 stories which, in the words of the Columbia Journalism Review, “revealed a horrifying tableau of the children's battered lives and exposed the state's indifference to its mandate to protect them.” Mr. Walter told CJR that the challenge in this series was not just in the reporting, but also in the presentation: "We wanted tears in readers' eyes,” he said, “but we didn't want them to stop short and say `that is not for me,' and turn the page.”
Through the years he had worked with an amazing array of innovative editors and journalists and helped launch the careers of hundreds more. Young journalists whom he mentored now teach the craft as college professors and lead or work on newspapers from coast to coast. His abiding belief in serious journalism as a public duty, and the sanctity of that work, led him to eschew voting in national and local elections while he was active as a newspaper editor because he wanted to be completely non-partisan in his editorial judgments.

He served as a Pulitzer Prize juror in 1999-2000 and spoke around the world on where he hoped modern journalism would move.

Said Mary Anne Dolan, former editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, “I feel I have lost one of the very, very few who truly understand the era of journalism and how hard some of us fought to prevent its end.” Richard Curtis, managing editor of design at USA Today and another founding editor of the paper, said, “He was one of the most dynamic editors. He was infused with energy. He was dedicated to the paper, and his family as well.”

Family and Community

Mr. Walter had an enduring fascination not only with newspapers and their history, but with American history and culture generally – which he eagerly shared with his children. His youngest son, Christian, then six, and he listened each morning on the way to school to a tape of Stephen Ambrose’s book “Undaunted Courage,” the saga of the explorers Lewis and Clark.
A summer later, in response to what had grown to be an obsession with that story by his son, Mr. Walter organized a family odyssey, following the route of the explorers into the American West. He packed the car with his wife, three children and young niece, Nancy – who announced she just hated anything to do with history – and filled them each day with the words of the adventure as recorded in Lewis’ diary. (He read these diaries while his wife did the driving; anyone who rode with Mr. Walter knew his attention was more focused on the conversation than the road, leading to terrifying trips.) More recently, he undertook an extended summer road trip with Christian, taking in baseball games at major league ballparks across the country.

Back home on Martha’s Vineyard, he took on the challenge of following in the footsteps of Arthur Railton as editor of The Dukes County Intelligencer, quarterly journal of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. In the winter of 2006-7, he assisted with production of a special edition, The Arthur Railton Reader, which presented a broad sample of work by the retiring editor. In the subsequent seven editions he presented stories on a vast array of subjects, from the Civil Rights activism of Vineyard women to the history of the Rice Playhouse to the culture of Island lobster fishing.

On the day before his death he submitted a detailed story budget and rough texts for Volume 50, No. 2, the November edition of the Intelligencer. In a note accompanying that material, he described it as “a tentative version of the issue, just in case I don’t feel like working at all when I get back.”

Mr. Walter was active in the Island community, as a parishioner and member of committees at the Federated Church in Edgartown, and as an Edgartown representative to the Martha’s Vineyard Cultural Council.

He had met his wife, also a journalist, pretty much in the middle of his life, and thought about courting her for seven years before he got around to asking for a date. Their marriage of more than two decades produced their three children – Alexander Pogue, who lives in Boston; Lily Walter, who lives in northern California; and Christian Pogue Walter, a senior at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

For all of his many avid interests, Mr. Walter’s wife and children were the constant center of his busy and happy life. Upon his death, one of his sons summed up his father’s impact on the world by saying, “Daddy was the kindest man I’ve ever known. I sure was lucky.” As he was being wheeled into surgery last week, Mr. Walter told his wife, “I love you, and I love our family.” They were the last words his wife heard from him, but a sentiment that he expressed constantly and one that is seared into his family’s hearts.

His death followed surgery for a rare disorder of facial nerves called trigeminal neuralgia that had caused him episodes of severe pain. He told few people about the extent of that pain, choosing instead to greet each day with the words, “Today is going to be a good day.”

He leaves his immediate family, his sister, Rosemary Giesser and her two children, Nancy and Rosemary Giesser, all of N. Olmstead, Ohio; his step-mother, Betty Walter, of Broadview Heights, Ohio; his brother-in-law and sister- in-law, Michael and Vicky Pogue of Lynchburg, Va., and their children, Amanda Strine, and her husband, Casey, of Oxford, England; and Mitchell Pogue and his wife, Melissa, also of Lynchburg. Mr. Walter was lucky enough to have provided a home for Amanda and Mitchell during short periods of his life. He also leaves hundreds of dear friends, including two Vineyard buddies, Nis Kildegaard and Joe Pitt. Joe was with him at his death, and Nis was in his heart, always.

Gifts in John Walter’s memory may be made to a fund established in his name at the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank, Box 1069, Edgartown, MA 02539; the gifts will be used to support enrichment opportunities for creative arts students (including the journalism department) at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

A joyful memorial service, followed by lunch, will be held for him at 1 p.m. on Oct. 4 under a tent at the Wasque Swimming Beach on Chappy. The public is welcome; transportation will be provided from the On Time dock to Wasque.

It will be a good day.



You will be and already are missed, John. We love you and always will. We are eternally thankful we were part of your life.

Mandy and Casey


PS - For those of you who would like to read some great stories about 'Just John' - go to www.vineyardstories.com and click on Memories of John.