Recently rediscovered in my cache of things inherited from my maternal grandparents is this simple series of paper-covered wood blocks. Depicting the forehead, eyes and ears, nose and mouth, and neck and upper chest, this vintage toy’s four interchangeable blocks can be arranged into dozens of kooky faces for pure entertainment and inspirational imagination.
It was a toy Grandma kept at her house for when my brother and I visited. She kept it in a small pasteboard box that originally contained an Airguide DIXON desk thermometer-hygrometer, which was undoubtedly my Pappy’s, and which is also undoubtedly lost to time.
But time was the very gift this vintage toy afforded: in my childhood, an escape to creative imagination and fine motor development in our chubby little fingers; and to my grandma, a respite to catch her breath from our incessant activity. And today, a snatch of time travel: back to the simple, carefree days at Grandma’s house.
When we were little, my mom was often asked if Brian and his brother Timmie were twins. No, she’d reply, they’re 20 months apart.
You’d think, with that small a degree of separation, we would have been a lot alike. But, as it frequently happens in siblings, we were quite different in personality, talents and interests. He drove me nuts, and I know I exasperated him.
That’s not to say we didn’t get along, however, because we did. We played together every day, back on the farm (‘course, there weren’t any other playmates our age in sight!)
And we continued to commit acts together through our teens, like the time our parents were away vacationing, and we chopped down (with an axe) an old apple tree in the yard that our dad had casually mentioned that, someday, he’d get rid of. Our Grandma conspired with us to get a man she knew who had a chain saw to cut off the stump even with the ground. We lived on grape juice and sandwiches: I preferred peanut butter and jelly, but Brian made the same every day: mincemeat baloney, cheese and ketchup in white bread.
Our paths diverged more in high school when Brian first experienced hallucinations, and later heard voices, in what was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia.
As an adult, he battled those same demons, along with depression, anxiety, and unpredictable psychotic episodes in decades of discerning what was truly his reality.
He did take some college courses on writing, which he truly enjoyed, and was an ultimate fan of many old-time movies and science fiction TV shows. And he had a couple of menial jobs, but eventually he could no longer cope well enough to be productive in them.
Under the influence of an arm-length’s list of narcotics to control the nastiness, he often appeared “blank,” without much of a personality. And while there were many long periods of an acceptable status quo, the drugs never cured him, and it became more difficult to determine the cocktail’s exact right proportions to maintain that increasingly slim balance.
But through it all, his mild-mannered personality and good-humored wit would serve him and endear him to those who knew him.
Yet he had more to suffer. On the day of our mother’s 80th birthday party, Brian got lost on a route he knew so well. He drove about the streets of Bethlehem until he ran out of gas, and was able to pull off on a side street to park. Someone asked him if he was ok, and he said no. They called an ambulance for him. There was no room at Muhlenberg Hospital, where he usually went, so they took him to St. Luke’s instead. There, because they didn’t know him, they ran some tests his usual doctors probably wouldn’t have. They found a brain tumor.
Brian celebrated his 50th birthday with the first of three surgeries to counter the cancer’s terrible, inevitable advance.
Despite the harshness of his life, Brian remained a kind soul who complained only of physical pain, but never his lot in life. See My brother Brian: a victorious tragic life.
He remains my example in patient perseverance, and all-around good guy I wish was still with us. But that’s selfish of me; he’s now free of his lifelong afflictions and I’m glad for him. Today would have been his 65th birthday. I miss him, my friend, my only brother.
Here’s something that, if you read it in a book, or saw it in a movie, would be rejected as too unbelievable.
We now live some 200 miles from where my wife Carol grew up.
The other day she went into a local antique store and picked up this old book, thinking it looked familiar. When she opened the cover, she found her own signature from some 55+ years ago!
The intervening circumstances are a complete mystery! She bought the book for $1.60. Believe it or not!
The monstrous blizzard came to be called the Storm of the Century.
At my eastern Pennsylvania home, it was a unique opportunity for my young kids to experience a real blizzard! And they still remember how I made them go out with me in the storm to feel the cold and the wind and the ice sting our faces. And to develop character! I wanted to teach them what my older sister had taught me when we were kids: how to dig a hidey-hole for your head in a large snow drift, so that when the wind blew and the ice stung your cheeks, you could shelter in place. My sons were up for the brutal wind and cold; my daughter, not so much!
By definition, a blizzard consists of three simultaneous conditions: significant snow accumulation of .31 inch or greater per hour; sustained winds of at least 35 mph; and temperatures of 20F or less. A severe blizzard is when winds mount to a steady 45 mph or greater, visibility drops to near zero, and the temperature hovers at just 10F or lower. The consequences of such a storm produces fatalities. They include wind chill temperatures of -30F and lower; wind damage; burying snow drifts; hardship for wildlife; disruption of commerce and traffic; accidents and collapsing structures; interruption of energy distribution, communications and basic utilities; structure fires from constant heating; and shortages of food, medicine, shelter, and other vital provisions.
Here’s how I described the Blizzard to Remember in my book Discover Nature in the Weather (2001, Stackpole Books):
The blizzard of March 12-15, 1993 produced snow at least one foot deep from the Appalachian Mountains east to the Atlantic Ocean, in a continuous swath from Alabama to Nova Scotia. In some locations, several feet of snow fell in its passage, marked with killer tornadoes, straight-line wind gusts over 100 mph, record-low sea level pressures, and record cold temperatures. This memorable blizzard resulted in 270 fatalities and property damage estimated at nearly $1.6 billion.
The Blizzard of the Century’s aftermath in my backyard: my sons and their extra tall snowman; my book Discover Nature in the Weather.
I have a standing personal rule: Always Bring a Book!
Whenever I break it, I’m inevitably sorry.
Books are important to me: in them I find distilled wisdom, practical instruction, and engrossing entertainment. They customize my intellectual, psychological, and spiritual development; they build my technical and relational capabilities; they expand my leadership and service; they refresh my mind and spirit.
In 2022, my wife, son and I wrote a book about the challenges, lessons and adventures in raising our youngest son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which will be published this coming year.
I try to read widely. Not all my choices pertain directly to my job, or my personal interests. Invisible Women opened my eyes and mind to systemic male-based data bias. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Case in point for this year: The Personal Librarian, based on the true story of a black woman passing as a white woman in the employ of J.P. Morgan in the early 1900s.
The complete list follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:
Work-related:CEO Excellence; Critical Thinking; Extreme Ownership Biography: Frederick Douglass; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth History: The First Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill George Washington Iconic/Classic:Travels with Charley in Search of America Fiction:Where the Crawdads Sing; West With Giraffes; The Personal Librarian Science:Humble Pi; Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds Societal:Invisible Women; Untrustworthy Thriller:Boar Island Humor:The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach Spiritual: The Hole in Our Gospel by personal friends:Super Powers and Secrets; Crushed and Marred; Stand; People Connectors
Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull
Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World, Matt Parker
Super Powers and Secrets: A Year of Holidays, H. Kaeppel
Crushed and Marred: A Year of Milestones, H. Kaepple
Stand: A Year of Firsts, H. Kaeppel
The Itty Bitty Book of Nonprofit Fundraising, Jayme Dingler
The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected, Nik Ripken
Golden Girl, Elin Hilderbrand
Flashback, Nevada Barr
Trees & Forests of America, Tim Palmer
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight
Sold on a Monday, Kristina McMorris
The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P. Feynman
The Gift of Asperger’s: One Family’s Persevering Adventure of Hope, Humor, Insight and Inspiration, Tim Herd, Carol Herd, and Philip Herd
A Time for Mercy, John Grisham
Historic Acadia National Park: The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures, Catherine Schmidt
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World, Ian Wright
Girl Behind the Red Rope, Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, W. Bernard Carlson
The Escape Artist, Brad Melzner
People Connectors: Elevating Communication for Educators, Terry Sumerlin
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzner and Josh Mensch
We Seven, by the Astronauts Themselves, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, Slayton
What Happened to the Bennetts, Lisa Scottoline
The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, Professor Peter Schickele
Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions, James Ryan
High Country, Nevada Barr
Hard Truth, Nevada Barr
Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Volker Ullrich
Endangered Species, Nevada Barr
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Everything, Col. Chris Hadfield
Blind Descent, Nevada Barr
Immanuel’s Veins, Ted Dekker
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get it Published, Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez
The Lost Key, Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison
Burn, Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
The Whole Town’s Talking, Fannie Flagg
Acadia National Park, Bob Thayer
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders From the Rest, Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
Burn, Nevada Barr
The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard
Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, Temple Grandin
Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like and Inventor, Temple Grandin
The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg
Boar Island, Nevada Barr
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life, Richard Paul and Linda Elder
The Rope, Nevada Barr
A Man Called Ova, Fredrik Backman
The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, Bonnie Kristian
Send: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus, Heather Holleman and Ashley Holleman
West With Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge
Dr. Rick Will See You Now: A Guide to Unbecoming Your Parents, Dr. Rick
Travels With Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
remembering the day the photographer came to town in 1903
It appears my great-grandpa Edwin Henry Herd (1869-1949) is still in the public eye!
In October this year, I was honored to speak for Anniversary Sunday at the church in which I grew up, and which was a Herd haven since Edwin served as its Lay Leader. In fact, several of my ancestors have their names memorialized in the stained glass windows! (Shown: William and Elizabeth Herd, Edwin’s parents, who had been born in the 1830s in Devon, England.)
I spoke on Our Spiritual Heritage, and was able to weave in some of the old family stories and photos associated with the history of Chapman Quarries United Methodist Church.
One of them is this portrait of the Chapman Slate Co. work crew, dated October 16, 1903, which includes Edwin, just above center, wearing a round hat with the number 22 written on his chest. Just to the above left is his 11-year-old son Hambly, one of my great uncles. (Young boys often worked the quarries in those days as “hollibobbers” to swab the slate with a stick wrapped in burlap to keep it wet so it could split easier, and to rework poorer quality slate into smaller pieces to gain experience.)
After church that day, we went out to eat at the Town & Country Restaurant in nearby Bath Borough, and found we were seated underneath a framed picture of that exact same image!
And now the other day, as I was catching up on some periodical reading at work, I discovered this page in the Pennsylvania Borough News magazine on little Chapman Borough, featuring yet again that same image from the day the photographer came to town!
another heartwarming episode of “Life as I Remember it Ought to Have Been”
Today is another day of cancelled school while the populace waits for its hopeful interrupting snowfall. In anticipation, the streets have already been sprayed with snow-melting solution, the public works guys are counting overtime hours, and it’s a great excuse for a surprise holiday.
Remote workers: you got nothing.
But back in MY day, an accumulating snow, much less a forecast of it, was no reason for changing the day’s plans.
(Disclaimer: my bachelor’s degree is in forecast meteorology; and this is no bash against my brother and sister prognosticators!)
But as I was saying, back in MY day, things were different.
I have a vivid memory from a particular wintry day back in the early 60s, when Good Ol’ Bus 4 ambled up our unnamed road to our farm in rural Moore Township, Pennsylvania. Cold. Windy. Snow covering the yard, feeding troughs, fields, road and everything. Me, bundled in my red coat with the hood up and tied tight round my face with a threaded shoestring, wearing tall, black rubber boots, each with a half-dozen railroad-track latches, and clutching my metal Donald Duck lunchbox with matching thermos inside, I stood dutifully next to our mailbox held aloft by a red, white and blue painted plank figure of Uncle Sam.
The bus arrived just as expected, I giant-stepped into the maw of the yellow beast, and it trundled its load of captive minors toward another day’s sentence in jail (which today might be called “The Learning Facility.”)
But in just another two hundred feet or so, the bus lodged itself in a blustering snowdrift that had dammed the roadway between our barns. “Schlegel,” the bus driver, gave it the old college try to plow his way through, but today the game appeared to be already decided with the low score of Stubborn Snowdrift: 1, Good Ol’ Bus 4: 0.
I quickly and opportunistically offered to hop off and go back to the house and tell my parents. But Schlegel wouldn’t have it. With an order to his charges to “Stay on the bus!” he abandoned us to trudge back to the house. Inside, my parents allowed him to use the party-line telephone to call the school (what were they thinking!?) and let them know we were stuck in the snowbank between a pair of barns isolated in the backcountry wintry wastes.
Eventually, Schlegel returned and resumed his seat at the front of the bus, and closed the bifold door. And there we all sat in the damp cold on the hard bench seats. And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And then, in the distance, appeared an growing yellow smudge amid the swirling snow: Rescue!
Another bus crawled toward us from the other side of the world, turned itself around, backed up to “Our Drift,” and invitingly opened its door to the frigid wilderness.
With Schlegel stomping a path through the monstrous frozen whitecap, each of us snow-hopped across to Mean Ol’ Bus 6, retook our seats, and resumed the long, cold trek to No Excuses Consolidated Elementary School.
I couldn’t possibly tell you what I learned that day in class, but the memory of that singular adventure is a permanent fixture of what happened back in MY day!
Note: I sure wish that my dad had hustled outside with his Argus and taken a Kodachrome of that stuck school bus, but he stayed inside while all us kiddos built character. Instead, I offer these photos from another winter’s day when the Township’s bulldozer eventually got us plowed out—after we had run out of food, and my dad had skied into town to fetch some groceries.
While assigned to the U.S. Army’s 189th Supply Depot near Mannheim, Germany in 1946, my dad, Joe Herd, sat for his caricature at age 19. At the time, he was a Tech Corporal driving truck transferring GIs, Officers, and German POWs to their assignments.
He explained to me that the artist had been drawing all the other fellows with a beer in their hands. But Dad told him he didn’t want that, since he didn’t drink. The artist surprised him with this interpretation.
Contrast that with my portrait at age 21 in 1977, while I was nearing the end of a two-year tour with a singing troupe. At the time I was enjoying the glitz of Las Vegas, NV. We appeared in several venues there, and opened for keynote speaker Robert Redford at the National Recreation and Park Association Congress.
Perhaps no two other images can as readily illustrate the difference between our generations. The earlier fought the critical fight in World War II so the next could enjoy unprecedented freedoms, prosperities and opportunities.
And I’ll never forget it. Always remember and be grateful!
For our 44th wedding anniversary, I escorted my lovely date to a reception honoring another milestone celebration: the 50th Anniversary of Penn State’s Campus Weather Service, in which I served as Thursday night forecaster while a senior meteorology student.
Our 44th wedding anniversary portrait.
We visited the sixth floor of the Walker Building, which houses the meteorology department. The wall where dozens of newly-generated paper weather charts had been tacked up every hour, and the separate enclosed room that housed the noisy teletype and facsimile machines have vanished. (No surprise there!) As befits the world-renown university program, the Joel N. Myers Weather Center (named for its famous student and the founder of Accuweather) is now equipped with all the state-of-the-art-and-science tech. (I was fortunate in the 70s that Joel was still teaching for my first forecasting course—and to attend his self-professed “famous tornado lecture.”)
A historical pic of my Meteo Dept. Head, Professor Blackadar, demonstrating the cool tech of the facsimile machine; old weather geeks from the Class of ’78; and a hand-plotted weather map.
In the days before satellite imagery, 24-hour video feeds, and endless data streaming, we received the raw stats through a monstrous teletype machine, plotted each weather station’s data in a mix of symbols and numbers on a map, and then drew in isobars, areas of precipitation and frontal boundaries. Once plotted, analyzed, and interpreted, we’d hand-write a forecast for the subscribing radio stations, pick up the phone and call it in.
Here I am warning about the exploding fireball about to hit Beaver Stadium in the green screen studio. (Actually, it’s the fierceness of the stadium lighting!)
Today’s students have the opportunity to polish their forecasting skills along with live broadcasting techniques in a cooperative venture with Weather World on PCN cable TV.
We enjoyed Penn State Creamery ice cream, a tour of the studios, and running into two of my classmates from 1978. I donated an autographed copy of Kaleidoscope Sky, my 2007 book on atmospheric optical phenomena—the fascinating varieties of rainbows, halos, auroras, mirages, etc.
Accuweather’s operating floor where meteorologists generate consensus forecasts; one of its several broadcast studios; and the control room.
We were also treated to a tour of nearby Accuweather’s World Headquarters (just down the street from my office in State College). While I took a different career route from my initial plan of synoptic forecasting, it was exciting to see the incredible progress of the science and technologies from my undergraduate days.
And, after you’ve been married for 44 years to such a sweet and understanding wife, and she gamely accompanies you in a night dedicated to one of your other loves, let’s just say that it’s good that there were also cookies and ice cream!
I present to you: Timmie and his outdoor playthings, some summers ago. Locked inside the fenced-in yard wasn’t my favorite, because I preferred to roam the surrounding farm fields and woods.
But inside that wire prison, my parents had provided me with all the backyard prosperity of the baby-boomer 1950s: a sandbox, swingset, and a tall sliding board that could cook your hiney, but which was made all the faster by sitting on a sheet of waxpaper.
Despite the attractions, I sought freedom in other ways. I once found expression by wearing just my birthday suit and hat in the sandbox (my other apparel I thoughtfully hung on the fence). And I was always up for a ride in the red wagon my Pappy built for me. Judging by the wash on the line in this snapshot, it was a Monday.
A year or two later I began coasting down the unfettered hill in our front yard with my little brother Brian, which inevitably spilled us onto the ground after a sharp curve at the bottom near the springhouse. And, along with our dog, Sparky, we took to the woods and fields, whose airy adventures have always beckoned me.
