When Brothers Are Separated

Tonight I had read a bedtime story to Gabe, Eli and Ezra and said prayers with them and was downstairs in my "office" studying Matthew 13. I can hear them talking up there from my "office" and caught wind of a conversation they were having with Claire. Then, inevitably, someone asked her for an apple so she headed downstairs. I asked her what was going on up there and it was something about Brenton not being someone's brother. So I headed up to investigate. As expected, Ezra was at the center of this conversation. I walked in and asked the boys what they were talking about. It turns out, Ezra doesn't think Brenton is his brother. I asked Ezra if this was true. He nodded. I asked why. "Because he doesn't come home," Ezra said. "So he's not my brother." I asked Gabe and Eli if they thought Brenton was their brother. They said he was. And is. Gabe tried to explain to Ezra that even if Brenton isn't here, he's still his brother just like Brenton is still my son even though he's not here. Ezra would have none of it.

"He's not my brother," he said. I believe he even gave a nice harrumph for effect. I asked him if he thought Taylor was his brother. Ezra nodded. Apparently Taylor hasn't been gone long enough -- he left in the middle of September and is coming home for 3 weeks on December 17 -- for Ezra not to consider unbrothering him. That's a good thing. I tried to explain to Ezra that Brenton is his brother regardless of where he is, but I might as well have been trying to explain the nuances of brush strokes in impressionist paintings. I tell you. When Ezra gets his mind set on something, he's hard to budge. Brenton is due to come home the day after Christmas and will spend about 10 days with us before he heads back to Corvallis. Hopefully he'll get some good bonding time in with Ezra and become Ezra's brother again. Ezra and I talked this over for a while but everything I was saying seemed to fall on deaf ears. Finally I asked him if he would go to the airport with us to pick up Brenton. He shook his head no. I asked Gabe and Eli if they would go to the airport with us to pick up Brenton. They seemed excited about it. So I asked Ezra again if he would go with us. "He has to," Gabe said. "Everyone is going." I wanted Ezra to answer the question, so I asked again. Slowly Ezra nodded. I told him that would make Brenton happy. Maybe Ezra is coming around. Maybe his two older brothers, the wise sages in that room, will be able to convince Ezra that Brenton is his brother. Maybe Ezra will just sleep it off and wake up talking about his brother Brenton. I think Ezra just misses Brenton and doesn't know how to handle it. Hey Ezra, it's okay. We all miss Brenton.

KLOVE's Mike Novak: Compensation Tops $500,000

About a month ago the omnipresent Christian radio station KLOVE wrapped up its fundraising drive. You probably heard it, too. Pleas went out for more funding and you had kids giving their allowances, businesses committing, single moms pledging, families pledging, the works. God bless 'em if that's how the Lord is leading them to spend their money. The radio in my Volvo doesn't work anymore, one of the effects I suspect of a vehicle with 323,000+ miles on it, so I don't listen to KLOVE as much as I have in the past. I do spend more time in the Volvo praying, which is a good thing. KLOVE is about our only option out here in Gloucester, Va., as far as Christian radio, so we listen to it in the van. I'm really not sure where I stand on KLOVE ... I appreciate the effort to bring Christian music to the masses on a platform that literally stretches across the country. But I hear the same songs over and over again and many times I'm looking for something fresher and seem to hear songs I heard 10 years ago again and again. As I said to Ethan a week or so ago while we were riding in the van, "Is no one making any decent Christian music anymore?" That being said, I decided to take a peek at KLOVE's books as I did about a year and a half ago on this blog. Let's just say being one of the bigwigs at KLOVE pays off handsomely.

As I mentioned, KLOVE stretches across the country and has radio stations and transmitters all over the place, so it's a big business from that standpoint with lots of employees. The parent organization of KLOVE, Educational Media Foundation, reported revenues last year of $88.2 million, according to forms filed with the IRS. Total payroll, including benefits and taxes, topped $25 million and net revenue was $16.7 million, according to the forms filed with the IRS.

I'm sure you've all heard the voice of KLOVE President Mike Novak, especially at pledge time, and last year (2009) his total compensation was $506,198, according to documents filed with the IRS. Think about that for a minute ... wow, that's a ton of money. It takes 12,655 people pledging $40 a month just to cover his compensation. Is he operating Christian radio stations or working on Wall Street? He received $343,792 in base compensation (that's $28,649 per month) and "bonus & incentive" compensation of $110,000 (A lot of us got bonuses on par with that last year, right?), other reportable compensation of $9,628, retirement & deferred compensation of $22,549 and "nontaxable benefits" of $20,229. The big question to me is what is acceptable for a guy of Novak's position and stature? Is $506,198 acceptable, considering there's no disclaimer come pledge time that 12,655 of you monthly pledgers are just paying for Mike? As the guy who runs what essentially is a national organization, is he deserving of that paycheck?

Here's a couple of head-scratchers from the IRS forms. Dick Jenkins, the former president who is no longer with KLOVE, received $300,000 in "other reportable" compensation and another $13,196 in nontaxable benefits. That's only 7,830 $40-per-month pledgers to pay for a guy no listed as the "former president." Speaking of guys no longer with the organization ... former radio personality and programming director Jon Rivers left KLOVE in early 2009 and earned $261,543 in "other reportable" compensation and $3,659 in retirement and other deferred compensation last year, for a total of $265,202. Rivers subsequently attributed his departure to an addiction to prescription painkillers and maybe there was a contract or something that KLOVE couldn't get out of. Who knows. All told, KLOVE listed 14 people earning a minimum of $114,000 or more last year on its IRS forms. Not bad for Christian non-profit work.

Don't be fooled. "Christian ministry" often seems to be simply big business operating as a "non-profit." Sure there's plenty of good hearts out there at KLOVE with a desire to serve Jesus Christ and play Christian music and the like. But when and where does "Christian ministry" blur the line between personal gain? I think whether you are a pastor at a church, a CEO of a Christian "non-profit" organization, a missionary, or in whatever capacity you believe the Lord is calling you and leading you and directing you, when it comes to money the question always boils down to whether or not the Lord gives you a peace about your paycheck. Is there any check at all on your heart? When you read the Bible every morning (hopefully you're reading the Bible ...) are you paying attention to what is being said about money? How do you justify these paychecks? The Apostle Paul had something to say about this: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." (1 Tim. 6:10 NKJV) Jesus, the ultimate authority, weighed in on this: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21 NKJV)

Thanksgiving & Black Friday

We're giving thanks that Thanksgiving went off without a relative hitch, with just a few mishaps in the kitchen that didn't really amount to anything. The croissants didn't quite pan out, so to speak, and our turkey pan leaked in the oven, causing a very minor disturbance in the oven that only added a hint of smoked turkey to the dinner. But the ladies on the cooking team -- Julie, Anna, Claire, Evie & MerriGrace -- did an outstanding job and we've unanimously concluded that we will invite them back next year to cook up another dinner. Most importantly, we are really stoked already about next year's Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey turned out scrumptious, nice and moist and the spuds, gravy, sweet potatoes, Jell-o dish and whatever else was put in front of us was downed in remarkably short order. To think there was still dessert! Apple pie, pumpkin pie, cheesecake ... wow. The little kids worked off dinner, as you can see, with some "horse races" upstairs. I think my belly would have dragged on the floor, otherwise I would have joined them. I took the photos instead.

Unlike most of the country apparently, the entire Sabo clan, plus Anna, skipped the Black Friday shoppingpalooza -- sleeping in until 7:30! -- where Americans exercised their right to act like knuckleheads and spend money that probably a lot of folks don't have on things they don't need. That's so American, eh? I'm really struggling with the whole Christmas spending season this year. We have plenty. Our kids have plenty. They have toys they don't play with, we've got enough TVs to start an alcohol-free sports bar (Hmmmm. What exactly do you call an alcohol-free sports bar?) and then I watched a video today. It's always good to have perspective.
The video is of Matt Megill, who we met during our 3-weeks of training at Serving In Mission this summer. He's a doctor who was on his way home for a respite from serving at a hospital in Galmi, Niger. Here's a link to some information on the "hospital." http://www.sim.org/index.php/project/84400

And here's the link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPo620kV_Ig

So the question for us, in light of this need in Niger, is what would God have us do financially this Christmas season?

A Tragedy Unfolds In Gloucester

As you can see from the above photos, it was river city in Gloucester tonight. Olivia was downright inconsolable. I managed to capture the raw emotion of the moment on film, so to speak, and I hope these images don't make you break out into tears. You see, here it is, on the eve of Thanksgiving with so much to be thankful for, and Olivia is sad. Really, really sad. I'm not sure what exactly made her so sad, whether it was Julie leaving with all the other girls to go to a movie or whether it was the prospect of staying at home with four brothers and Dad. Maybe a combination of the two, perhaps? I think it was mainly Julie leaving, because as soon as she caught wind that her mama was going somewhere without her, the pity party started in full.

What was fairly remarkable was that right after I snapped these photos I asked her if she'd like to see them. "Yeah!" she said, somewhat giddily, the tears and mournful expressions disappearing in what I would almost call `glee.' As soon as she was done viewing herself in such a pathetic, sad and sorrowful state, Olivia promptly resumed her former pathetic, sad and sorrowful state and started crying again. It's an amazing ability to be able to turn on and off the tears like that. Is it genetic? A learned trait? A product of the immediate environment? Further study should shed some light on it. And I don't know how to break this to my sweet Olivia, but there may be plenty more tears ahead. There's the tears for the dreaded "Bad Hair Day" and tears for the "These Jeans Make Me Look Fat" moment and, more immediately, tears for the "Ezra Isn't Sharing" frustrations and tears for the "I Don't Want To Ride In My Car Seat" fit and the "I Want To Sit In A Booster Seat" kerfuffle and even tears for the "I Don't Want My Diaper Changed" act up. Now the diaper thing always throws me. I always think, `Girl, do you smell yourself? I'm going to get fined by the DEQ for violating odor pollution standards!' The emotional roller coaster of a 2-year-old is almost too much sometimes. Throw in the emotions of 8 eight other siblings living at home and things can periodically get out of whack. Not that it makes me want to cry or anything.

Fall In Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Today I had to run into Williamsburg, Va., to Massey's Camera Shop to pick up a memory card for my newfangled digital camera. I've been looking to score a step up in the camera department from my point and shoot for some time, both for work and play and finally pulled the trigger on one ... only to order it online and when it arrived find out it doesn't come with a memory card. Which makes it hard to take photos that are a step up from my point and shoot. The folks at Massey's were excellent, and I highly recommend them for all your photography-related needs. If you're in Williamsburg. And need a camera. Or camera equipment, gear, paraphernalia, etc., etc. You get the idea. (Editor's note: You'd think Massey's Camera Shop was paying you for advertising. Author's reply: Now there's an idea! Shameless blogging name-dropping for dollars!)

So I walk out of the store and my Volvo (more name-dropping!) is parked down there and as soon as I hop in there I have to drive home -- albeit down the Colonial Parkway (www.nps.gov/colo/parkway.htm ... cha-ching!), which is particularly splendorous at the moment with the trees all ablaze in color, hardly any traffic -- and go to "work" writing a story about road construction in Gloucester (complete with photos!)...hmmmmm. Or I could take a walk into Colonial Williamsburg (www.history.org) proper on a 70-degree Fall day and, uh, you know, "test out my camera" to make sure it works properly with my new excellent memory card from Massey's Camera Shop. I'll give you one guess which route I took. Boy it was a beautiful day to walk around Williamsburg and "work" the kinks out of my new Sony (bet you knew that was coming, eh?) digital camera that I bought from B&H Photo Video Pro Audio "The Professional's Choice" (a credit on my account is forthcoming, I'm sure.) and had it shipped via UPS, where "We Love Logistics" (maybe they'll let us ship something free to Brenton and Taylor?).

As you see up there, I snapped some photos of the Colonial Williamsburg scenery, getting the bugs out of the camera. Everything went very well and I'm pleased to report my camera seems to respond just fine, despite the limitations of the shooter. This whole adventure raised a troubling ethical question, however. Tomorrow is Nov. 23, at least on my calendar. The temperature here is supposed to hit 75 degrees. Seriously! I mean, isn't it snowing in half the country? And it will be warm enough here to play in the sprinkler in the yard! Here's the dilemma. On what may be the last beautiful day of the year in our neck o' the woods, and considering I have no personal days or vacation days left, at what point is it unethical to "come down with a fever," or to have a "migraine," or to have "some sort of bug," that requires me to stay home from work? Well, technically I work at home so it makes it even doubly tougher not to work, even when sick. I'm not saying I would do something like that. No sireee. I'm just saying that I can see how the average American worker could be faced with the dilemma of being "sick" on a day when it would be so much finer to take the family on an outing and, uh, you know, work out the kinks in my camera and practice in a real-life situation so I would be ready to use it for work. Or something like that.

The `Family Plan' & Working At Home

Today I took our fourth child into the Verizon store to get a cell phone. Brenton has his own plan, Taylor and Ethan are on the plan with me already, so Claire is the third child to go on the "Family Plan." It's like 10 bucks for another line, unlimited texting and Claire babysits so much I think she's in my tax bracket -- minus the dependents -- so I think she can swing it. Generally in our household when the kids get of age and enjoy some income we try and have them pay their own way for things like phones, car insurance, Busch Gardens tickets ... basically things beyond the necessities in life. That's one reason why our kids generally start driving later than most other kids. We want them to save money they would spend on car insurance to salt away for college, or in Taylor's case the School of Ministry in Corvallis. Taylor didn't get his license until he was well past 18. I think Brenton was 19. Brenton paid for all his school himself. Praise God, eh? And here's another thing. There's nothing wrong in my mind with hauling kids around town, even though I might think it's a hassle plenty of times. I know that I'll miss the time spent with Ethan in the car driving him to or from a baseball game. I miss the times driving Taylor to or from work or wherever he's going. With our teens the alone moments in the car are precious, particularly with all the demands on us in this casa.

Speaking of demands, I hope my editors don't read this blog because sometimes work gets in the way of life. I fix about half the dinners around here and tonight I was on so I was rustling up some chili when an editor called wondering about this story I was supposed to file ... um, well, didn't I do that? Pause, and then came the answer: `No.' Really? So literally while I was spooning out beans into my pot of chili I learned that I needed to "clock back in" so to speak and write a little ditty about a dude who won a million bucks on a scratch lottery ticket. Piece of cake, right? Except that I figured I'd check out Facebook while I was "working" and noticed that Julie was online. Hmmmm. She had been doing school all day, I was "working" in between taking Claire cell phone shopping and cleaning out the grocery store (I still can't get over the Christmas tree that showed up in the store like the day after Halloween, but that's another story... and the kids are watching the Grinch on TV right now ... ) and here was a big chance to talk to her. "Hey babe," I typed. "You need something?" came the reply. Ahem, I thought, not exactly, "Hi my wonderful, doting husband! I was just thinking about you!" but it's a start. Then Taylor texted me from Oregon. Somehow between Facebooking my wife in the next room (Believe it or not our cyber conversation picked up and we decided to make it movie night! Yesssss!), Taylor texting me and Olivia sitting on my lap asking if her hair looked pretty ("So, so pretty Olivia. So pretty."), I managed to write something that somehow passed for written English with complete sentences, correct use of punctuation and lovely, stylistic presentations of present participles (Or something like that ... it sounded good when I just wrote that. I'll have to go back and read the story and see if there were indeed one or more lovely, stylistic presentations of present participles. But you get the idea. It will be a major upset if that little story doesn't win a Pulitzer.)

And now, as I'm blogging, comes music to my hears. I hear Julie telling the 20 little kids in our house to get ready for bed. OK, OK, it's only, uh (counting with my eyes closed using my fingers ... 6!) six little kids (Our 2 biggest kids are in Oregon and another 4 kids are at a Bible study.), but sometimes it feels like 20. You know what I mean? Soon, Lord willing, it will be quiet in our house, no one will be needing anything, no errands to run, no meals to fix, no diapers to change, my editors won't be calling wondering what happened to the story I was supposed to write ("Hey, I'm busy here, you know!" How do you think that would fly?), the house will be quiet and it will be oh so peaceful and pleasant and relaxing. Just me, my wife, a movie ...

The Chimichangas Are Hot? Really?

It is hard to put into words how remarkably lovely this Fall has been in Gloucester, Va., where as you know the county motto is the "Land of the Life Worth Living." It sure has been this Fall. We're still getting samples from the garden, as you can see, and no frost is in the forecast through Thanksgiving. That's a growing season, baby! The leaves have all turned, as is obvious from the photo above, and we still have a few flowers abloom, and I've got some gorgeous plump tomatoes that are green that I'm hoping to make the turn to ripeness before the inevitable frost hits. We made it through October without turning the heat on in the house ... I'm not sure if we ever made it through a summer in Bend, Ore., without turning the heat on at some point. I remember watching the fireworks show off of Pilot Butte on our roof in the comfort of a down parka, sipping hot chocolate and singing Christmas carols. Well, maybe the last part wasn't exactly true, but you get the idea. I remember fishing at a lake somewhere west of Bend up toward Mt. Bachelor with my man Chris Hamilton and getting snowed out ... on June 30. So spending an afternoon like today outside with 5 of my kids playing soccer in the back yard in shirtsleeves is absolutely remarkable.

Perhaps one of the downsides of this extended Indian Summer is that the garden is still producing. I say that tongue in cheek because some members of the Sabo household aren't sharing the same level of enthusiasm for the bounty, the fruits, the produce from our garden. The main culprit is that our "Fish" pepper plants are still producing. For the uninformed, the "Fish" pepper is a pre-1870s African-American heirloom, according to my packet from Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.org/). One of my homies in Corvallis, Sean Buckout, ordered me up a packet and God bless the man for thinking of his dear brother in Gloucester, hard on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The plants produce unique peppers that ripen from cream with green stripes to orange with brown stripes to all red. They were traditionally used in oyster and crab houses in the Chesapeake Bay, so they are like homegrown here! My batch of Fish peppers had a homecoming! But here's the thing. As you can see from the top photo, the pepper plants are still producing. These peppers are described as "medium hot, perfect for salsa." So naturally I think they go with anything. As has been noted previously on the pages of this blog, I like my Mexican food with a kick. Not everyone in the Sabo house is on the same palate as yours truly, however. But they don't cook dinner. Bwaahh-ha-ha.

I rustled up some chimichangas the other night and threw all the Fish peppers I had in the batch. Creamy with green stripes, orange, red, whatever, in they went all chopped up and ready to spice things up! If it looked like a pepper, smelled like a pepper and admitted under waterboarding torture it was a pepper it went in the pot. Alas, the "medium hot" label might be a little misleading, some in the Sabo household would say. Abram was chowing down and enjoying the quality and exceptional taste of his chimichanga when suddenly he paused midchew, got this little facial tic and his face reddened up. Next thing I know he was drinking water like he'd been in the desert with nothing to drink for a week. He wasn't the only one who had a run-in with a spicy bite of chimichanga. I played dumb. "The chimichangas are spicy? Really? Interesting. Must be the seasoning." (Wink, wink.) Everyone seems to have recovered alright, no hospitalization needed. And I'm still scrounging up a few Fish peppers.