Blog – Page 7 – Jeff Hampton, Writer

’Tis the season . . . for wasps to come in the house from the fireplace. It’s a bad time for them and for us. More specifically, it’s a bad time for me.

I have a fear of stinging insects dating back to when, as a toddler on my grandparents’ driveway, I stepped on a bee with my bare foot and it stung me between my toes. I was holding my grandmother’s hand, and when I screamed, she swatted at the dazed bee buzzing around her leg and took me inside. There, she pulled the tiny stinger out with tweezers and dabbed the puncture with some concoction that included vinegar. (I believe that also was the day I developed a lifelong gag reflex to the smell of vinegar.)

October 30, 2025

Still Lots to Learn

For Wilshire Baptist Church

A couple of weeks ago, Mark McKenzie and I continued an annual tradition of taking our saxophones to Wilshire’s Wednesday evening Pre-K choir class for a show-and-tell about music and instruments. It’s always fun but unpredictable because we don’t have a prepared script and we never know what the kids will say or do. We keep it loose and it always goes fine.

This year, after the show-and-tell that included four sizes of saxes, demonstrating the highest and lowest notes, letting the kids touch the keys, and explaining that the saxophone gets its funny name from Belgian musician and inventor Adolphe Sax, we played a few short duets. That included “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Old MacDonald” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We’ve played these tunes before and they’re pretty simple, so I didn’t spend any time rehearsing. That was a big mistake because it had been a year and I missed some notes and rhythms. Afterward, I was disappointed with myself for my lack of preparation.

October 23, 2025

Being the Church

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Sometimes going to church doesn’t really feel like going to church — certainly not in a worshiping and Bible study kind of way — and yet when it’s all over we find we had the opportunity to “be the church” in some small ways.

I knew when we arrived at Wilshire on Sunday it was going to be different from the norm. I helped LeAnn get her pre-K classroom ready as I usually do, but instead of going to the third floor to sit with Epiphany and learn more about the complicated history of the Christian religion and church from Mike Capps, I went to the narthex and waited for guests: Mark Rios, an actor and singer who collaborated with George Gagliardi prior to his death last November, another actor and a cinematographer.