| ||||||||||
 
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details 
  
Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... 
|
Rev. Joey N. Welsh. February 4, 2007. A farewell ANOTHER ANGLE: the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor By The Rev. Joey N. Welsh E-mail: joey_n_welsh@hotmail.com SO LONG, FAREWELL, AUF WIEDERSEHEN, GOODBYE My title comes from a lyric by Oscar Hammerstein, II written for The Sound of Music. That musical came to the screen in another era. I remember getting dressed up to go see it at downtown Louisville's lush and ornate Rialto Theatre, where we were led to our seats by a uniformed usher bearing a flashlight. Many of the longer movies back then typically featured an intermission and tunes from a film's score as things were gearing up to begin again after the break. Shortly before the intermission of The Sound of Music the von Trapp children sang "So Long, Farewell" to a house full of partygoers, a musical number that was a showcase for the child actors. It was a big movie for a big screen; most people who see it first on television these days don't know what they have missed. Quoting from the song provides me a good introduction to the topic for this column, my last as Joey N. Welsh. I have written Another Angle for The Hart County News-Herald for the last two years. Today is my time to bid adieu and say thanks to a number of people. This is my last column. Most of the time when people in the Old Testament say a formal farewell, they are ready to die. Joshua spoke this kind of farewell in Joshua 23-24, and his speech was magnificent. In 2 Kings 2 Elijah had a formal goodbye with Elisha before the fiery chariot bore Elijah away and Elisha took on the role of prophet. My goodbye today is not of the Old Testament variety. I hope to hang around for a while longer, I'll just not be a columnist. My goodbye is more like those of Paul at several junctures in Acts, when he said farewell to folks in one place in order to go on to some new challenge. What I am going on to is a more normal rhythm of life. I started this column at the invitation of Sandra T. Wilson, editor of the newly established Sunday edition of the newspaper. The Sunday News-Herald began publication in November, 2004, and my column started in January, 2005. At that stage in my life I was spending a lot of time in the hospital (eight hospital stays, 13 surgeries), with a couple of month-long stints in a nursing home for "skilled care." It was a trying period for me as a pastor, but I was blessed to be serving a very loving, supportive and caring congregation, Mt. Holly United Methodist Church in Fairdale, KY. I was their pastor, but they did a lot of ministering to me. When not in the hospital I often was at home in the wheelchair, with a lot of extra time to spend in front of the word processor. Writing this column was very therapeutic; it helped me keep my sanity during a time when I needed the help of others to go anywhere and do anything. I still preached, but not by standing at the pulpit. Life went on, and it was good. I thank Sandra Wilson, and I thank the people of Mt. Holly for making that possible. Now that I am walking, driving and living more as I did before, the weekly deadline of this column is less delightful than it was once. Today is Sandra's last Sunday as editor; she already has begun work as director of the Hart County Tourist Commission. I thank her for her editorial oversight. I also thank her for deciphering my handwriting on those occasions when I was in the nursing home, away from a computer, and I mailed to her columns written in longhand on the backs of medical disclosure forms. Thanks to her I never missed having a column in print weekly. She has been sufficiently kind as an editor that I've had scant interest in starting over with a new person. I always have known that I was my own worst proofreader, and I also knew from time to time that I would be wise to call on the knowledge, expertise and memories of other people to make my columns better. Among those people who looked over drafts of my columns or supplied information and guidance were: Tom Chaney, Nancy Gall-Clayton, Kathi E. B. Ellis, Amos Houk, Vonnie Kolbenschlag, Natalie Lund, Ann Matera, Larry Pike, Mary Ross, Pat Shaw and Robert Stone. Any time I name names there is a danger that I have left some folks off of the list, but I'll take that risk. To all of these friends, listed or not, I give my thanks. Friends are a very good thing! (By the way, Pat Shaw, a member of Mt. Holly and a firecracker of a proofreader, is Pat Jameson Shaw from Bonnieville in Hart County. It is a small world, truly.) I also thank those people who have distributed my column to a wider audience, beyond the subscribers to the Sunday News-Herald. Robert Stone, my good friend from Lebanon, TN, reformats the text of each column and e-mails it to people around the country. Ed Waggener, publisher of the online Columbia Magazine, has reprinted the column for about a year for his readers; many of them are in Columbia and Adair County, but others are in more far-flung locations. I've never met Ed, but he has been very kind to me. I know that my column is written for a small circulation paper in south-central Kentucky, but including the online and hard copies that float around each week, I am confident in saying that my readership is way up in the dozens. Now, to the matter of my pseudonym: I have written this column under a pen name, Joey N. Welsh. I chose a pen name because I was pastor in Hart County at Horse Cave United Methodist Church from 1995 until 2003, when I began my ministry at Mt. Holly in Louisville Metro. It's bad pastoral form to hang around on one's previous turf, especially on a weekly basis, even if it is just in print. I chose to be anonymous, at least officially. The nom de plume I chose, Joey N. Welsh, is an anagram. If you rearrange the letters you can spell the name of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Coming up with the name was almost as much fun as writing the column. This name and the website associated with the name are both coming down. My name, my real name, is Robert J. Stout. I prefer to be called Rob. As I said with the title of today's column, it is time to say farewell and goodbye. The topic of "farewell" reminds me of two documents from American history. As you know, my columns often have referenced history, along with scripture, poetry and reminiscences. (All of those strands are a part of this final column.) Washington's Farewell Address to the American people at the end of his second term remains a model of articulate, practical advice and noble sentiment. Eisenhower's farewell speech in 1961, with its warnings of the "military-industrial complex" contains guidance that remains as current as on the day it was delivered. As a matter of fact, Eisenhower's address has brought to mind a piece of farewell poetry that retains its power over 60 years after its publication in The New Yorker. John Ciardi, one of my favorite poets, was a B-29 gunner on dozens of missions over Japan during World War II. He, and so many others, went off to war not knowing when -- or if -- they would return. Ciardi did return from his service in the Army Air Corps to a long life of writing, teaching and translating Dante. He wrote a brief poem on the occasion of putting aside his civilian clothes, trading them in for his uniform. His troubling text reminds me of our place in history now. As I reread these disturbing words, I think about other people in our own day, women and men who are being deployed to places whose dangers I cannot begin to imagine. I have been lucky; no one intensely close to me has gone off to war, but I fear that will change with the new "surge" of troops in Iraq. I read these words and I think of Jeremy at Ft. Bragg, NC (whose wife Tamara has seen duty already as an Air Force nurse in Afghanistan) and of Alex, recent college and ROTC grad, now doing further training at Ft. Benning, GA. I read these words and I wonder when their farewells will be. Compared to the farewells that are taking place daily amongst the families of the deployed, my goodbye is a small matter indeed. So, goodbye. Remember that the very word "goodbye," which apparently first came into English usage about 430 years ago, is derived from the hopeful phrase "God be with you." That's a good phrase and a fine thought, especially in times as fearful as ours or as frightful as John Ciardi's. The more things change, as the cliche goes, the more they stay the same. In this case, that is a very disquieting truth on which to end. Disquieting, yes, but also straightforward. My thanks to you all! -- Rob Stout Thanks, Rev. Stout. It has been such an honor to carry this column for the past year at ColumbiaMagazine.com. And, though we understand Rev. Stout's reasons, not being able to look to new essays is sad. For those who want to re-read his earlier columns on this site may do so by entering the pen name, "Rev. Joey N. Welsh," or, simply "Welsh" in the searchbox to find columns we've posted. -Ed Waggener This story was posted on 2007-02-04 09:51:33
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Commentary:
Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Jan. 28, 2007. Louisville writer Cass Irvin Rev. Joey N. Welsh, Jan. 21, 2006. Misdirected life an exciting ride Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Jan. 14, 2006 Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Jan. 7, 2007. The Bridge at Covington, KY Rev. Joey N. Welsh: Kentucky Poet Effie Waller Smith Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Dec. 24, 2006: Poets and Poetry The Rev. Joey N. Welsh. December 17, 2006: Thomas Merton Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Dec. 10, 2006. Emily Dickinson Rev. Joey N. Welsh, December 3, 2006: Christina Rossetti Rev. Joey N. Welsh: Nov. 26, 2006 - Fanny Kemble View even more articles in topic Commentary |
 
115 Jamestown St. Columbia, KY. 270-384-2496 
  
   
 Provided by the Adair Co Fiscal Court and the Adair Co. Emergency Mgt. Agency 
|
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
|
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
| ||||||||||
