Committing to Humility

More from Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me Chapter 8:

p. 144 Humility is the opposite of pride because it reflects a lack of self-preoccupation, a willingness to serve, an acknowledgement that we are limited in our ability to control other people and circumstances, and an understanding that we cannot demand favored treatment. . . . it means being proactive in seeking reasonable treatment but doing so with a spirit of decency. . .

People who truly embody humility are quietly confident and are not prone to irrational outbursts . . . (humility) grounds a person in the realization that life is not always fair, yet it can be manageable. . . Even as they lay down the wish to play God, they also choose not to allow another human to assume the position of a god over them."

He's just annoying

About a year or two before she died, my mother in law kept saying "He's just annoying. He's not really a bad man."

She said this over and over in spite of the fact that she had lived more than 50 years with a man who was annoying at the very least, and selfishly, inhumanly cruel at the worst. Her desire to be a charitable Christian, patient and long suffering, giving up her boundaries and selfhood to placate him, allowed him to become entrenched in his behaviors so completely that great changes took place when the inevitable drying up of his influence began a year after she died.

I say a year because technically, he was her estate Trustee, mistakenly so due to attorney error, although he did no other work than signing his name. The actual work of settling the estate (as MIL had meant it to be) fell to my husband, and to me. FIL got plenty of Narcissistic Supply by having us take him to the bank, and the attorney's office, and having him sign endless documents, tax statements and estate checks. When the year ended, the solicitous attention did too; it was then that he began to rage and shout and lash out, in a futile attempt to get the rest of us back into line with the status quo ante.

My MIL believed him to be ADD, which is possible. I have known and taught ADD and ADHD students and found them to be capable of humility. My niece, who took care of her grandmother in her last six weeks of life, labels him as obsessive, which is obvious. MIL thought his predictable blowups could be traced to a building of need for the adrenalin that comes from runaway anger, so it could serve as amphetamine-like Ritalin, paradoxically used to calm the hyperactive. It's always the backwards reaction with him. Perhaps that's what was happening, I can't say.

But it's amazing how many fewer blowups he's had since she's been gone and his grandiose ego is so rarely rewarded, once he learned the raging and shouting and lashing out resulted in his audience turning their backs on him and walking away. And not coming back. Leaving him all alone with himself for company.

The injury is complete and no one pays attention anymore. His wife is no longer around to compensate for him and make him look good. His daughters make sure he has food to eat and his clothes are clean, but conversation with such a man always has been futile. His expensive and useless inventions sit rusting and crumbling. He locked away his money in an annuity and can't fiddle with it anymore. His biggest claim to fame, teaching a Sunday class once a month, lasted only half a year, since the powers-in-charge realized belatedly that he wasn't much like his son--my husband--who is a superior counselor/teacher. FIL was eased out of the Sunday teaching position that he abandoned family Christmas togetherness and risked his life for, flying and driving at age 83 in blizzard conditions, to make it to church in time for a disorganized and stuttering performance. Other callings, tailored especially for the bare simplicity his capacity demands, were no longer lasting. The large and needy family that so appreciated his garden tomatoes and beans and corn suddenly moved away.

In self-pity, he pines for his dearly departed wife. He misses the way of life she provided for him, the papering over of family pathologies, the closed mouth about the giant borderline elephants in the room, the passing along of blame to those of us who were sane and uncomplaining. The Narcissistic Supply so evenly handed out, the filling her role of devoted wife by fudging the truth here and quietly edging the burden onto her son, my husband, there. When FIL is happy, everyone can have a little peace and quiet.

He was and is annoying, but more to the truth of it, he is and continues to be pathological. Only now he has to behave better, because nobody rewards the adult temper tantrums anymore.

Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me

I highly recommend Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me, by Dr. Les Carter. Solid examples and clear, common sense writing.

Some excerpts:

p. 4 People with a full narcissistic behavior pattern are so completely, even pathologically self-absorbed that they lack empathy, can be thin-skinned, and demonstrate very low levels of true awareness of themselves or others.

p. 5 A high percentage of the people who come to me for counseling reveal that their problems have been either instigated or greatly worsened by very selfish or manipulative people . . . By definition, narcissists have a very low ability to incorporate someone else's version of reality because they see themselves as the ultimate keepers of truth. They admit no wrong, or if they ever do admit wrong, it is only a matter of time before they convince themselves they are actually right.

p. 10 Narcissists are not genuine. . . They are more interested in posturing for favorable reactions than being known as authentic . . . They enter relationships looking for ways to coerce others to do their bidding.

p. 11 Underlying the manipulative behavior of narcissists is a belief that they are entitled to have others do whatever they want or need.

p. 13 The need to be special is so central to narcissists that they repeatedly lie to themselves about their own importance . . .

p. 18 As narcissists ignore truth and invent their own alternative realities, they are not free but imprisoned by their own falsehoods. Over time, it becomes a prison they cannot escape.

p. 19 Narcissism represents personal immaturity at its worst.

p. 59 When you persistently tolerate others' rude or intrusive behaviors, you are saying that you do not believe that you possess enough dignity to stand up for your needs or convictions.

p. 77 Passive-aggressive narcissists find a perverse delight when they know they have generated strong responses of anger in others. As they witness how others fume or rage in response to their stubbornness, they indulge the thought, "This proves how you are inferior to me, and that means I control you."

p. 89 Narcissists define pain differently from the way the average person does. To them, pain means they are not getting their way. . . for narcissists who feel anger or pain at entirely reasonable demands or decisions, their response can be understood as an adult version of a toddler's temper tantrum.

p. 91 Narcissists anchor on the question, "What are you going to do to make my day go better?"

p. 94 . . . Holding them accountable to the consequences of their actions is one of the few ways to convey the message that you intend to be taken seriously. . . Because narcissists like being in tight control, they are likely to protest greatly when someone applies consequences. They will likely express outrage, but usually that rage is a cover for panic. . . They are so enamored of their own special status that they are convinced that others' lives would be much better if they would give them control. This explains why they can be persuasive, stubborn, and bossy.

Water Supply

I promised to tell this story, although it is a recent one and out of place in this somewhat sequential narrative. It was the capstone of my relationship with a man who claims to be someone he is not, and brought down his wrath on me that he had reserved, until then, for my husband.

He never did understand my attachment to my husband. After my mother in law died, for two years, we had FIL over for Sunday dinner. He always ate a lot. For me, someone who avoids cooking, and my husband, who prefers to graze and then take a nap, it was an extra effort. FIL needed someone to talk to, so after the meal, which he ate with relish, my husband would disappear into his basement TV room and leave me to be the audience FIL sought.

I listened to his ramblings, usually lasting at least an hour, sometimes two or more, about his genius inventions, the books he had recently read on how we should improve ourselves, his financial status (he would go to the bank weekly just to ask the financial adviser what he should do with his money, to which the financial adviser said, "Let me sell you an annuity. . . ")

Plus he would not only make excuses for the Twins' bad behavior, but harangue my husband's actions, and I refused to listen to it. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't sit still for it. My nephew told him that I loved my husband, whom I consider to be my eternal companion, and I didn't want to listen to constant criticism. In FIL's mind, constant criticism is a sign you want to help somebody. After all, he'd used it for years on his wife.

For several years, FIL kept a garden on the rented pasture of the little house next door to our house. He had a garden spot at his own house, but it was too shaded by trees and he had shifted his pipes and soaker hoses and fences to a plot we did not own. After MIL's death we built the new calf pen by his house, and the trees were removed, leaving a large open area for him to return to his original garden. But he did not return to it except for a patch of tomatoes.

Let me add that the pasture garden was positioned over where a septic drainfield ought to have been. Since there was no drainfield for the little house next door, there was human waste floating along the bottom of this garden. He built a little bridge over it, but it was unmistakable that this should not be near produce that would be eaten by humans. He parked the pickup with half of the back sticking into the road, creating a driving hazard. He also drove back and forth in front of my house probably three to five times a day to work on this garden, at a mile a trip, making it a matter of 25 or more miles a week he spent driving back and forth, inspecting my yard for the errant misuse of water along the way.

Since his pasture-garden shared a 2" water pipe meant for my large yard of flowers and vegetables and trees and lawn (my husband installed the pipe from the irrigation ditch 30 years previously, and they had added not only a bib for the neighbor's sprinkler system and pasture sprinklers as well as FIL's garden) I had such little water pressure anymore that I couldn't run my sprinkler system and had to drag hoses with screwed-on sprinklers to keep my yard from dying.

One year my husband and I were overseas, and our youngest son and his wife were staying at our house during 105 degree weather. I asked my daughter in law to water my garden, and she had two sprinklers running. When FIL saw this, he stopped in our yard, ran into MY house, and in front of their young visitors, he reamed my son & daughter in law for using TWO sprinklers at once, because his garden didn't have enough water. An example of the shabby treatment he gave to those who dared cross him.

I was incensed when I learned of this, but I did not do anything at the time, believing FIL when he said he was going to move his garden back to his house. But in the spring he could be seen in the carry-all passing back and forth in front of our house with loads of manure for his pasture garden. He was expanding the garden to accommodate the neighbors living in the little house, who wanted a garden of their own as well.

I confronted him one day on it, telling him that he could not have my water anymore and he needed to tell the neighbors they couldn't have my water, either. He needed to move his garden and he would have all the water he needed.

He refused of course, on the principle that everything he saw was his and for me to even suggest he had been less than righteous about it was an intolerable sin on my part. Still, he tried to give me one more chance: he approached me one day while I was mowing the lawn, and told me he would just use the water at night.

Since water volume is usually higher at night in the ditches, he was making a grab for more than half of my water. I told him he was not entitled to half of my water, and that he needed to move his garden.

Besides, knowing him, this offer was a downright falsehood, since I knew he would not keep it. He would continue to use all the water he wanted, which meant keeping it going full volume every night and day, as he had in the past.

From then on it was war.

This man refused to come to my house anymore on Sundays for lunch. I can't say it broke my heart, since he was not pleasant company. We invited him later to resume coming but he refused, saying he could not talk to me anymore. He told all of his children how awful I was and how unfair and how my mean intentions and refusal to let him have all the water he wanted was going to ruin his garden. He threatened my husband with not watering the pasture anymore (not that he had done it regularly anyway). He now included me in his condemnations of his son, saying that we were both going to end up in hell because of our un-Christian conduct.

I had been demoted. I was shunned. He no longer came to visit me at odd times when my husband was working. I was no longer his financial adviser. I was a bug to be squashed, my eternal salvation of deep and abiding concern to him, meaning that I was now the subject of constant criticism as well.

Initially I started digging around where the feeder pipe was supposed to be, hoping to shut it off, but I gave that up and just let him use whatever water he wanted. I made do with what water there was as I had done before. He was greedy and entitled as usual, and whenever the volume of water decreased (usually by his own mistaken actions) he would complain loudly to my husband how unfair we were to poor innocent tomato gardener. It was a demonstration of narcissism up close, a clinical case.

Eventually his complaints, falling on the deaf ears of the sane sisters, became a determination to move his entire garden to the spot next to his house, which was a far superior place to garden, since he was able to divert manure water onto it. Eventually the story would change that he'd always wanted it that way and never really argued about water, but that I was ungracious anyway. We never asked him back to Sunday lunch, knowing he would use it for some other reason to deprive us of his divine company.

Early the next year, the absentee owner of the little house next door died, and his heirs promptly sold the property out from under the renters, but not before they put in a septic drainfield. They warned my FIL to move his pipes and fence and soaker hoses, and he had to do it in a hurry. The field is clean now, there is no human waste, there is no scrambled, weedy, overwatered garden. I love my neighbors, they plan to trench a pipe from the irrigation ditch and allow me all the water in the 2" pipe without having to share it with anyone.

And I can run my sprinklers.

My husband's mother

My MIL was not a tall woman, and when I met her she was twice the weight she should have been. She was a brilliant, observant, tender hearted person who had suffered more in her life than anyone ever knew.

She grew up in one of the country's big cities, with a mother who was widowed when she was two years old. Her mother, with ambition before her time, wanted more than to be a secretary at minimum pay, and became a medical researcher for a doctor's office. She never remarried. She traveled the world extensively. She sent her young daughter to stay with her parents in a rural town each summer.

When my MIL was nine years old, a teacher wrote a note to her mother that she was evasive and not very smart. She may have been evasive in self defense, but the teacher missed something major. MIL graduated from high school when she was 16, and from U.C. Berkeley in chemistryf when she was 19. Along the way, she spent a year in a sanatorium after being diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was ten or 11 years old. There are signs that she was most likely abused somewhere along the way.

When she was 19, she met her husband, a Marine paratrooper come home from the war. They had a whirlwind courtship, and she was swept off her feet. He can be charming. They married and he went to college to get an agriculture degree. They began a life that set the standard for the next 30 years: one step ahead of subsistence living. She had two children while he was at college, an older sister and my husband, and then they drove toward what they thought would be a better life farming. They didn't get to the coast like they planned; they stopped somewhere along the way, found the soil was good, that there was water, and land for purchase.

With $3,000 borrowed from her grandparents, they bought their first 40 acres and a basement house. It was a long hard grind from there on. They had a small derelict dairy and could not support themselves with it. FIL and MIL both worked off farm to make ends meet. Her ownership of the checkbook began here; it meant the bills were paid and nothing unnecessary dared show up on an invoice.

She never did get along all that well with her determined and independent minded mother. While it was a relief for her to be married and away, it was a struggle all her married life to keep from depression. After what I have learned, I can understand it. In her papers after her death were copies of a number of articles on dealing with depression. She fought overweight, and finally gave up; it was only in the last year of her life that the cancer that killed her brought her down to her pre-marriage size, and her extra weight probably gave her more time.

Her children remember her differently. It surprised me to discover that the sister most like her mother in many respects got along better with the father. This sister learned at an early age how to handle him by standing up for herself firmly and kindly, and by living a life otherwise above reproach (making him look good). It was a shock when this sister eventually divorced her own husband, who cannot be observed without the label of narcissist being applied as well. It may be that she learned her lessons too well, and attracted a man who tried to live an inauthentic life as a straight husband and father and then finally gave up on it. At least he can be considered more honest than his former FIL.

The other sisters remember their mother as being aloof, overwhelmed, resisting society, lacking in warmth and self-respect, with some quirks and oddities that were amplified by her isolation and poverty. She had no one to turn to but herself, and she kept her own counsel for many years. My husband remembers her as being ineffectual in controlling her children, but someone you could converse with in a way his father could not. In her brilliance, she must have been very lonely with a husband like that. It was only in the later years of her life that she realized she actually was valued by the rural community at large, gained the friendship and admiration of her children, and was beloved of the youngest sister, whom she loved in a way she had earlier been unable to express.

When she brought her mother home to die, after several years of caring for her, MIL inherited a great deal of money. After many years of poverty it took her years to come to terms with spending it. She didn't go crazy and waste it, but in fact lost track of some of it, which we found later in executing her trust. She began to contribute to her grandchildrens' college and missionary funds, and other causes, mostly educational and religious, that were beneficial to those who received them. Very few people ever knew how much money she had.

But her husband did. She purposely kept from him the value of the farm property they held together, so he imagined that only she had money. He tried to wheedle money and property out of her, but the damage was done; their relationship was irrevocably changed. He knew she was no longer dependent on him. She bought a car (which he made fun of until she died and then claimed as his, although he never drove it) and spent many weeks and weekends visiting her grown daughters. She drove to church without him and let him be as late as he wished; he started arriving early for the first time in his life.

After executing her mother's estate, she arranged for her money to be put in a trust. While the farm partnership provided FIL with a retirement beyond his wildest dreams, she kept her mother's money from him so completely that he never saw any of it, although he tried to circumvent the terms of the trust and then complained that he had been hoodwinked and someone had forged his signature on the documents.

I videotaped her in a question-answer session a year before she died. The sisters told me she would only have answered those questions for me, an in-law. What was interesting, was that as she brought up experiences and memories, she completely left out the narrative of how she met her husband and the kind of marriage they had together. Romance with the man I love is central to my life, but not everyone is so lucky. I had to bring her back to this narrative, so she could fill the story in. For her there was no romance, but a recital of facts: a part of her difficult life.

When she died, the last thing she told her husband was a very interesting choice of words: "I love you, and I forgive you." I doubt he knew what that meant, and he has never tried to live up to it.

She got what she wanted, at the last.

The 10th Commandment

"Narcissists feel that, unless they are better than anyone else, they are worse than everybody in the whole world." - Joanna Ashmun

I didn't realize the depths of desperate envy and covetousness running like a dark undercurrent in my husband's family for many years. This was because I did not experience it in my own, and I did not recognize it, except to feel sorrow and grief from the stunted family relationships and the failure of maturity that I could not understand or explain.

Dante's definition of envy and covetousness is "love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs." In our case,the envy began fairly soon, since my husband from the moment we moved back to the farm, was successful materially and given the reputation and respect that his father and brother craved and rarely received.

It explained why FIL loved to dress down my husband for perceived slights and disobediences in front of strangers. It explained why he encouraged and exploited the envy of Brother and Sister Twin for the rest of the family, why he reveled in hearing them recount unforgiven childhood slights magnified into adult competition of the worst kind. It came close to giving me understanding that FIL's own relationship with his own parents and siblings was less than ideal, so the failure of his own children to live harmoniously would not be a reproach.

It also explained the weird sense of ownership and gratification FIL got from the bestowal of certain coveted church callings on my husband. It actually made life temporarily better for everyone, since the reflected glory he got from his high value son now fed him narcissistic supply that protected MIL and my children and me from the worst of it for over a decade, until the calling came to an end an another assignment given that was not so visible or valued.

Then the dressing downs resumed, and the glee at bad news of any kind. Still, he can't compete; he knows I and others are disappointed that he is so little like my husband, his son; and the desperation and fear and green violence just under the surface waiting and hoping to be catalyzed into destructive action erupts now and again to demonstrate the truth of that.

Contrary and contradictory

"The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. . . They will contradict FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they'll say you're lying, making stuff up, or are crazy." http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html

The first time I became aware of the depths of FIL's contrary nature was when I began to fear for the safety and health of my MIL, and I went down to talk some sense into him. I brought a quote from one of our spiritual leaders who said treating your wife with love and concern is the most important thing you will do in your life, and that I worried about his eternal salvation because of the way he was treating his wife. He didn't believe that, he became outraged, he outright denied he had ever mistreated anyone, and not only that, I was mistreating him and needed to repent for thinking such cruel things about him.

I was young and perhaps foolish, but I was taken aback. It was like talking into a tornado. I began to wonder about his sanity. I felt someone needed to call him on his bad behavior. I genuinely feared for my mother in law. She had had a series of accidents including a possibly fatal car accident, a broken arm tripping over a rug, and another car wreck. Following each of these accidents her husband treated her kindly, for awhile.

No one else dared call him on what he did. My MIL told me he "perceives" things differently than other people. I told her with a young person's confidence that what was real and true ought to stand on its own.

I've thought about that conversation since, and although it's true we filter our lives through our experiences, I've come to realize that some people's self-promoting perceptions often come at the expense of those living in the real, true world. MIL fed her husband's fantasy in order to protect her and other family members from his wrath. This has resulted in distorted relationships and entrenched his perception of himself as someone he was not.

The youngest sister overheard my aborted conversation with her father, and told me that I was the only one who could talk to him that way.

For some reason he wanted my good opinion of him, and he behaved well around me until an incident came up which I will comment on some other time. As I mentioned earlier, my ability to intimidate him came from my background and education. I had sufficient intuition to avoid getting myself into any sort of dependence on him, any request or favor, although he still tries to press "gifts" on me such as produce from his garden, tomato plants he raised from seed, skinned rabbits, skinned chickens, skinned turkeys, shopping trips in place of Christmas presents, in order to elicit a supply of thanks or to get me in his debt. At this point in my life I will accept nothing from him if I can help it.

I have had conversations with my FIL which are bizarre and ventured into the realms of the absurd. You could get whiplash trying to make sense of the verbal exchange, (it couldn't be considered a conversation,) especially when he feels threatened or belittled and is trying to reassert his favorable image of himself.

It was only when our nephew came to work with us and comment on his grandfather's lack of truthfulness that my husband began to realize that his father wasn't just contrary and contradictory by nature, he was deliberately and manipulatively mendacious. It isn't a conclusion one wants to reach, and one which his family resisted for too many years. My nephew used to look up to his grandfather, and now he avoids him.

The Biggest Mistake

We had not been farming ten years when my father in law got a hip replacement. He was otherwise healthy and the bone grew back properly, so he was eventually able to work again. But when you are over 60 years old it is never the same kind of physical work, even if you do stay out all day and come home dirty.

The year before, the year during, and the year following his hip surgery, my FIL did little outside work of any kind. My children were barely big enough to push bales in front of the cows, and they did that, and fed the baby calves, too. I helped my husband with some of the other work. I am not big or strong, so I never was much help. But we did it all without Grandpa.

When he was feeling better, he finally reasserted himself, or at least believed he was in charge again, although it was evident to any outsider that he was not managing the farm but puttering with his hobbies. I believe in hobbies, but it doesn't mean you're participating in income-producing work that is supporting your family.

The year before he had his hip operation, FIL and MIL signed papers with the Brother Twin and his wife to put their trailer on two acres at the top of the hill, a very nice spot for a house. They couldn't own the two acres, not only because there was no public right of way, but because in our state you can't just build homes on farm land unless you're actively farming. For those ten years the labor of my husband and children paid the mortgage and the taxes on this property, the digging of the well, the pump, the electric lines up to the property edge, and laying the bridge over the ditch. FIL was laid up and did not contribute much financially. But we were not consulted in the signing of the 50-year lease. It went without saying that MIL and FIL would leave at least half the term of the lease with my husband and me to be landlords to. Maybe they thought they would never die.

Brother Twin had been asked by FIL to farm two years previously. He worked for six months. The youngest sister remembers it, how he wanted banker's hours and for no one to tell him what to do. Finally my husband told his father that he would no longer work under those circumstances. Brother Twin began working for someone else. All of the misfortunes that befell him and his family in the next twenty years were blamed on my husband.

After a dozen years they moved a nicer mobile home to the top of the hill, paid out of Brother Twin's wife's inheritance (since Brother Twin quit working for two years when he got his own inheritance) and as the children eventually left home, they came back again to live as unmarried adults with their own fatherless children. My in laws would not let the married children and their families live there, but the other grown children and moved in even as their mother, now educated and employed, moved out. Brother Twin simply refused to function as a leader in his home.

After more than twenty years of unsightly and unsanitary waste, misery, legal problems and unhappiness at the top of the hill, my mother in law admitted that signing the lease was her biggest mistake. But they did not make him live up to it.

What I didn't understand was that for all the bluster and braggadocio, the rebellion and resentment of the Brother Twin was a cover for a need for safety under the shadow of his father and his older brother. Fear still keeps him, now a grandfather, from wanting to have a life of his own and to lead his children into independence.

When MIL passed away, and the ownership of the property came to my husband and me, we asked Brother Twin to abide by the terms of the lease, which resulted in accusations of our lack of Christian charity.

There are some standards that must be upheld, or you are in the hole digging. Because this has been allowed to continue for 25 years, does not mean it should continue for another 25. The sane sisters are in agreement, and the lease is terminated, to the dismay and bitterness we expected, but still in the hope that some day they will realize they have been set free from too many decades of living in slums of spirit of their own creation.

Rube Goldberg Part II

(Continued from previous post)

I told him I really didn't want him blowing himself up with a lightning machine, so he promised to make it small to begin with. I told him he could get into trouble with Homeland Security for trying to manufacture toxic gases, but he said it would be safe under water. I pulled dozens of examples of similar inventions off the internet, demonstrating the prohibitive cost of energy and the knotty problem of pressure in the production of nitrogen fertilizer, but all he did was get giddy with narcissistic supply that I should care so much about his idea. I told him he needed to keep records and charts, but his attempt to draw a simple diagram resulted in confusion and was abandoned.

All the books he borrowed from the library were thirty or forty years old, and he wouldn't believe that engines nowadays are so well designed and tuned that nitrous gases were vastly diminished. He tested his prototype and bragged that the litmus strip turned the right color in the water. It could have been from anything, and the change was infinitesimal. Then he found out how much it would cost to put up a new power pole to provide enough energy to make the litmus strip darker, and he hasn't worked on it since.

The discussion about A.I. was circular and pointless. I remember what a mess the herd was when I first showed up, and how many breeds he had mixed together, how baggy the udders were and the splayed hooves made it hard for them to walk. How milk production went up substantially after my husband began his own A.I. program and got rid of the Jerseys and Brown Swiss and yes, Simmentals. The neighborhood joke was that it was a Rainbow Dairy, with all the different breeds mixed together. Someone even painted the mailbox with a rainbow and the Rainbow Dairy title.

You couldn't convince him of that, though. As my husband always says, Don't waste your breath. So when my husband and I were on a long-awaited trip half way around the world, and I was checking FIL's bank account on someone's personal computer, I found a check for $11,000 waiting to be cleared on insufficient funds. Yes, he bought overpriced Jerseys while we were away, and yes, I transferred money to cover it. The Jerseys are almost all sold off now, since several of them never calved. My nephew, who can do embryo transplants, refuses to get involved.

The milking machine was supposed to be based on the human hand instead of on suction, as dairy milkers are today. So I found dozens more similar patented inventions from one hundred years ago. The problem was, that the pressure from a rolling milker, if not calibrated properly, could tear the teat from a cow's udder, and no dairyman was willing to have these machines tested on their herds. Since this invention was third on his list, and he abandoned the other two due to lack of interest on the part of everyone he knows, he hasn't yet attempted to resurrect this one.

He also invented a teat dip that decreased the somatic cell count and mastitis in our herd--or was it that my nephew had taken over milking and kept the barn and animals spotlessly clean? He won't admit to that possibility, and he wants to patent his teat dip, but he didn't keep any records.

He has spent years and years and tens of thousands of dollars not only on these inventions, but on others such as the labor-intensive manure system (most of the labor spent unplugging pipes), feeders, a novel barn design (the barn collapsed after 30 years, the most inconvenient building I've ever been in), feeding programs with acidophilus and that magic elixir, iodine, etc. etc.

He may have occasionally come up with good ideas, although it's hard to tell since I have seen him take credit for things he strenuously objected to, to begin with. One example was working on installing generators on the local dam when he was on the board of directors, but like I say, it's hard to tell if it really was his idea. In later years he convinced on of his sons-in-law to take him to visit the Indian tribes at the headwaters of our watershed and tried to sell them on the same idea, as only the obsessive can do. The Indian tribes did not respond to his idea, regrettably.

His most useful development was an open pollinated variety of tomato he planted year after year and which locally bears his name, although gardener reviews of heritage tomato varieties noted the following: "Flavor was not overwhelming. Could have just been a bad year but I never grew it again." "Planted about 3 plants and got quite a few from them til the heat and stink bugs set in. I didn't note anything special about them except that the 'big red' notation didnt fit the tomato." Reviews are from several years ago, and the seed is difficult to find, if at all.

In all cases, the reason he did these things was for the good of humanity, for posterity, for the entire community and the larger world. From his perspective, one of the great tragedies of his life, no doubt, is that no one recognizes or responds to his sacrifice for all our sakes.

Rube Goldberg redux

". . . (It) doesn't matter what the work is, if he's doing it, by definition it's more important than anything you could possibly do." - Joanna Ashmun

As I mentioned before, my father in law once told me he was a genius. He really believed it, even though he would sometimes refer to his "Rube Goldberg contraptions" in a fit of false modesty. He had the expectation that if he wanted you to share in his work and triumph, you would be happy and willing to spend hours every day making sure his contraptions somehow made it out of vision into reality under his divine guidance.

When my husband realized how much of his time was being used up this way, he stopped letting it happen. My nephew, too, realized that all that talk never led anywhere, and stopped listening.

So FIL went elsewhere to get feedback--to engineers who told him it wouldn't work (which made him more determined), and engineers who told him it was an "interesting idea" in order to end the conversation, which gave him great hope; to machine shops in town, where he spent thousands of dollars having ancient engines "customized;" to friends he invited to participate in his great triumph, who now don't come around anymore; to college faculty members who must not have rewarded him with sufficient encouragement, since he didn't go back after the first visit.

I've mentioned already the manure communitor and the two embryo transplant Herefords, but that's just a partial list of his grandiosity coming to fruition.

After MIL died and FIL realized he had money, he asked me (captive audience at the time) to "advise" him on how he should spend it. He had three things in mind: (1) a "lightning machine" to trap nitrous oxides from engine exhaust as a fertilizer for his garden and pastures; (2) a perfect milking cow in one generation of embryo transplants, since artificial insemination really hadn't done anything to improve the Holstein breed, and (3) an alternate type of milking machine modeled on the human hand.

(Continued in next post)