Spring

Spring has sprung!

Days are noticeably longer and sunlight brighter.

Toads waking up, ducks making nests, everyone is up and at 'em.

Me too.

Short term

Feelings are not always a choice. I feel pain, or heat, or cold, or jealousy, or a million other things.

Sometimes I can put on a sweater, or take one off, but other times it isn't that simple.

Just knowing why I'm feeling the way I do can be a mystery. It's easy to blame one thing, but I am a complex creature. My mind could still be dealing with things I thought were long past, or it could be gearing up to protect me from something that might never happen.

Personally I have learned to find short term solutions to what seem to be long term problems and that really helps. I can deal with most things for a short amount of time and the time in between, when things are okay, tends to get longer and longer.

I keep hoping the problems are gone. They still tend to turn up somewhere along the line, but each time I become a little more adept at dealing with them.

Love

Death rides in many guises, on television, in movies, video games, books and in nature all around us.

The face of death is romanticized in unending cycles trying to explain this unexplainable thing.

It does not seem so frightening when watching the bright beauty of youth fade into the frail shades of age. That is always in the future, the distant future.

We watch others lose their loved ones, lose our pets and plants, our favorite belongings wear out and disappear, but . . .

There is no way to prepare for our first real loss when a parent or child goes before us into that great unknown.

Love is at a loss to understand how someone so warm and sweet and precious is no more.

Knowing the science of it cannot prepare us for the finality of it and so we create whatever we need to survive the loss until we go there ourselves.

In the meantime those memories, at first so painful, become cherished so that they can sustain us, because life does go on. It always has and it must.

There is always a new little generation to love and care for.

A walk in the world

I don't know what people thought about before the days of mass media, but because it gives them something to write about, we are now bombarded with self help stuff.

Even people who appear to be totally at peace with who they are usually turn out to have issues with some part of themselves.

I suspect it is a sign of general well being that allows us to focus on how many steps we take, or the perfect diet. These things are less important to people struggling to survive.

Today the clouds looked like cotton cartoon bunny tails in an azure sky so lovely it took my breath away . . . after I noticed it.

Before that I was thinking, "Don't walk too hard, you'll injure your feet." "I need to get in at least thirty five minutes this morning." "I wonder what time I should drink my beetroot juice in order to get the best blood pressure reading at my doctor appointment." "Did I put on enough sunblock for this time of day?" "Do I look dumpy in this outfit?"

It was a walk filled with doubt and concerns that built a wall between me and everything around me.

Then something clicked and I noticed that sky! In that moment I was happy. And that made me think.

To a doctor everything is about test results. To a dentist it's all about teeth. To a trainer it is about exercise. Everyone focuses on something, often what they do to make money. They want to be rich. They want to not be sued. They, they, they . . .

Just because they have valid reasons for what they feel is right, does not necessarily mean I have to focus my life on those things. What do I want?

That is the real question.

Morning has broken

Cat Stevens sings in my head as I walk around the lake.

It is such a glorious morning.

The ducks and the geese are shouting their praise in cacophonous joy . The tulip magnolia is bursting with blooms and the ornamental cherries are beginning to bud.

I am so grateful to be alive and moving this spring. Julian of Norwich and T.S. Eliot whisper, "…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"

I am in good company today.

Reflection

The river of life is deep.

Its surface but a reflection of the light.

Deep within us lies the rest

And yet, in the end, it is all one river.

My way

"I did it my way . . . " Words to a song sung by an American icon.

It is a romantic notion and making it exclusive seems to make it more so.

I like the idea that I am unique, that I can do things others don't even think of.

The truth is: all of us do it our way.

If I do it; it is my way.

However I do it, whether it is taking the lead, or falling in behind others, it becomes my way. It doesn't have to be extraordinary, but in a way it is.

Doing, or not doing, both make a difference. The broken cog changes things, sometimes as much, or more than all the perfect ones.

The real task is to understand what my way is and how it affects both me and my world. Then I have power.

One child

All the retribution in the world will not return the dead to the living, or missing body parts to injured people.

That doesn't negate the horrific sorrow or anger people feel when these things occur to themselves or their loved ones.

Vigilante responses only magnify the sorrow and create more victims.And more victims are the road to more maiming and killing.

No one wins in a violent, bigoted, greedy world.

This is true for almost every action in the world. Denying others the same rights I want will not make my world better in the long run.

As long as one child suffers or dies needlessly we will all pay the price.

And everyone is someone's child.

"One dark night in the middle of the day"

I am feeling particularly uninteresting lately.

I'm not sure why. No one else has said anything about it, but it is just a feeling.

My imagination seems to be hibernating. My conversation feels limited. My confidence is wavering.

Perhaps it is because I am comparing myself to younger, more active people, but if I am it is not consciously.

Perhaps it is spring fever, that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and both the sunshine and warmer air call you to come out and play, but when you get out there, you can't quite find what it is you want to do.

I think it's possible that it has been too long since I had an adventure.

A walk in the woods

Today my brother and I went to Ramsey Lake State Park.

I was not walking from last April to September and he has had two toes removed since October, so we were not the most likely candidates for this trip.

But . . . we were uniquely suited for each other.

Both of us wanted to go. Both of us love being out in the woods, summer, spring, winter or fall; and both of us like to eat torpedo sandwiches.

I packed up napkins, tablecloth, and plates, then stopped in Decatur on my way down to pick him up and got the sandwiches.

We ate, ambled around looking at the lake, the trees and the enormous hornet nest bigger than a bushel basket, then got in the car and drove through the country.

It was a step back in time when the roads were all dirt and gravel and one lane. The trees hung over the roads and the mud from recent floods left debris all over them. There were shaggy horses, log cabins, old farm houses and even a few haunted ones! We stopped to visit friends whose horse is expecting a new colt any day now, visited our family's grave sites in the cemetery and then I took him home.

It was a long day. I was gone eight and a half hours, but they were the best hours I've spent in a quite a while.

Homesick

Home.

Such a homely little word! It evokes pictures of a cottage in the woods, surrounded by pine trees whose pungent smell wafts through open windows on the damp air of the nearby lake. It rises out of the smells of pot roasts and French onion soup and cheese toast in the oven. It is "Bonanza" and "Lassie" and Arthur Godfrey on the radio.

It is cinnamon toast and cartoons on Saturday mornings, burning leaves in the Fall, a big bakery birthday cake covered in red roses and the smell of my father's books.

Sometimes I am so homesick, but home does not exist anymore.

Because home was my mother and my father, my brothers and sister and turkey on Thanksgiving. It was traditions that followed us from house to house, town to town and the glue that made it real is gone now.

Home is family and my own family is scattered like milkweed seeds in a field of burrs. Occasionally we come together, but not like in the movies. We are more like the old fairy tales but without enough bread crumbs to find our way home.

I keep trying to create home the way I knew it.

Regrets only

How often do we wait for the great moments or the sad moments to get together, to understand the fragility and beauty and incredible special-ness of living.

Weddings and funerals. They are so much alike in a child's mind that I still make those Freudian slips when I talk about them.

It is okay to celebrate people. In fact, I think if life is to be lived without regrets we need to celebrate people.

People are not causes, or events. They are not birthday cakes or steak dinners. They aren't ice cream or circuses, or trips to the beach.

A person is someone who has ideas, who laughs and cries. You can hug them and hold their hands, walk with them, or just sit next to them. Take the time to get to know them, who they really are, what makes them them.

Life really is so ephemeral that every moment you spend with a soul will come back to haunt you once their hour upon this stage is over. The simplest conversations, the words not spoken, the sound of their breath echoing off the walls at night become Hallmark moments and Christmas card pictures never sent.

Collect these treasures now when they seem so trivial. You will never regret it.

Tripled

Last September I was happy just to be walking. Without pain, without a walker and without a cane.

I bought some shoes that accommodated my orthotics and cushioned my foot and I had to wear them whenever my feet were on the floor. In the middle of the night, until I stepped into the shower and sat in the shower chair, if I was on my feet, I was in my shoes.

I had one pair of shoes!

About ten days ago I bought a pair of dress shoes for a wedding that is coming up. The idea of wearing tennis shoes with a good dress is awful. I had to go to a special shoe store and they ordered the shoes to fit my feet.

I have been trying to wear them a little every night in order to be sure I can wear them at the wedding, but tonight I had pretty much decided I'd have to go order a different pair until I noticed there was another layer of inner sole that could be removed. Now there is very little padding, but I think I have a pair of dress shoes!

And the icing on the cake was that the shoe clerk showed me how to take the insole from my Naot Sandals and replace it with my orthotics.

I have tripled the number of shoes I had!

Vacations

Spring break is coming up and shreds of old vacations begin to float ominously through my mind.

Our vacations were epic!

The children woke up on the road and went to sleep as we kept on driving. Carefully scheduled stops were never missed. We were on time and we didn't waste even a quarter, running through thunder storms in distant mountains while their father shouted out the information in the trail guides.

Vehicle maintenance always seemed to take place on the road. We left tools from Yellowstone to Disney World and the most common sighting of our driver (and father) was with his legs sticking out from under the Monstermobile. The children made friends with mechanic's children in various and sundry small towns across America.

Sixteen hour days at Disney World and following the manual to a T guaranteed we got our money's worth there. If a child threw up over breakfast or our shoes were soaked from touring in rainstorms? Well, that was just par for the course.

Roller coasters had nothing on the ride we took in the Monstermobile as it dragged its water logged fuel filter up mountain roads flanked by open range with antelopes leaping blithely past us before we careened down six percent grades on hairpin loops hoping our dual tires held out long enough to get home.

We met snakes in the playgrounds, alligators by the pool, and walking sticks the size of my hand in bed. We discovered a family of five can share a pay by the minute shower room in five minutes and you get the best darkness in out of the way camp grounds whose spaces back up to breath takingly deep gorges. Lighted bathrooms became my reading rooms.

By the end of our trip we had been known to spend hours counting the flies in hot little service stations, or watching oil derricks pump in Dole, Kansas before getting a little R & R in a Holiday Inn where I would leap up screaming in the middle of the night when the air conditioner kicked in because I thought we were going over the side of the mountain.

Then there were the post traumatic stress nightmares that followed once we got home. Those funny letters our friends roared over came at a price. I would dream we were crashing over a cliff in the Rockies, or being attacked by the grizzly bears whose scat we had learned to identify on fun little hikes with park rangers.

Some things are just more fun to write about, talk about, and reminisce over . . . actually doing them is highly over rated.

Looking back

Looking back at the years surrounding my lifetime, I wonder if these will be referred to as another Dark age?

These are the years where human kind has more skill than knowledge. We developed lead pipes and asbestos and thought they were miracles of sorts until it turned out they were killers.

We had the ability to produce products of every imaginable sort without realizing we were destroying our air and atmosphere and water.

We had medicine that appeared to stop diseases, but everything we had was really only something destructive. We could kill bacteria and germs and tissue and thought that if what was left survived we had come out ahead.

We made laws that said people were all equal no matter what sex or color or religion or whatever, but our culture couldn't support them.

Our politics were not based on good government and a humane society. They were fear based and hate driven and deceptive at nearly every level. It was as if we were children and thought if no one got caught, all was well.

Lip service praised ethics, but the people worshiped money.

We considered ourselves so modern, but we were so primitive and backwards.

Pay Attention!

Accidents happen.

Unfortunately they happen more often to some people than others.

People often attribute them to bad luck, or Fate, as if there is a mysterious something or other lying in wait for them that is not there for other, more lucky, people.

The monster comes from within! If there is a creature lurking nearby, it is the carelessness, or haste of the "unlucky" accident prone person. Most accidents can be prevented by proper planning and careful attention to what is going on.

We all need to know what our particular shortcomings are and plan around that. I know that I injure my feet and ankles very easily, so I try to walk consciously, always wear my orthotics and pay attention to where I am standing. You won't find me balancing on bathtubs or chairs. When I climb I use a step stool with a high handle for holding on to.

When my children were small I knew which ones to never take my eyes off of. I knew I had a responsibility to protect them until they were old enough to think on their own. Teaching my children to drive meant showing them that driving is more than pushing down on the pedals. You need to be driving ahead with your eyes and looking behind in the mirror. Defensive driving saves a lot of headaches.

For me it is worth the little bit of extra thought to avoid a lot of pain and suffering.

Life is good

There are days when I have nothing I have to do. Weeks when I only have housekeeping and volunteer work to do. But today is the exception.

Today I was supposed to go down and take my brother to lunch, but instead we are going to a surprise party for my nephew. This involves an hour's drive there and back as well as picking up my daughter who is going too.

The primary election is also today which means I had to go vote and I am driving my daughter to the polls on our way out of town.

It is my youngest son's birthday and I spent a considerable amount of time posting a collage of photos on social media because he doesn't want a birthday gift until he knows what he wants, or needs.

On top of these extra little tidbits, I have all my normal routines to wind up before I leave town. I usually walk late in the day, but I walked this morning. I made the bed, have clothes in the washer, dishes in the dishwasher, this thot to write, and then it's time to shower and get ready.

I swept up after the squirrel who does calisthenics on my bird feeder and makes a daily attempt, or three, to break into the seed jar. I have learned not to put it in plastic, because he chews through that. I also learned to wedge it under something so he can't pry the top off. I know not to leave any space for the squirrel to get behind it or he will push it out and take the top off. So . . . now I put it in a glass jar with a metal top and set it between the folding legs of a metal table and wedge that table next to a chair, so it cannot be tipped over. But I still have to sweep up because he climbs up my bird feeder pole and hangs from his toes to get the seeds.

These are the trivial trials and tribulations of today's everyday gramma.

You are important

Our culture has done a very foolish thing.

We have convinced ourselves and others that some people and some jobs are better than others.

We need people who do all sorts of jobs. Imagine the filth if garbage collectors disappeared, or people stopped sweeping floors, or cleaning bathrooms? Think of the beauty we would miss if folks quite cutting grass and planting flowers.

Believing that only the brain surgeons or money managers are truly important is a snobbish and misguided perception.

Imagine the things we would not have without everyone else. Almost every person in this world can do something and both they, and we, should understand how important that task is so they can be proud.

If you want someone to change your child's diaper, or your grandmothers; if you want someone to make your coffee, or salad; if you like coming into a clean office every day, or want your child's school up and functioning, you need the people who do these things.

They deserve a living wage, respect and an honored place in society.

In the best of all worlds, the finely tuned machine of our culture would encourage every single cog to be the best that it could. The brain surgeon needs a clean place to go home to, the peace of mind of knowing his family is well cared for, that he has transportation, places to obtain the products he needs, etc. The quality of  life depends on everyone.

Make sure everyone is well cared for and valued.

Beach Music

I just finished Pat Conroy's book, Beach Music.

Synchronicity is so often a part of my life and this time is no different. I read Prince of Tides and Beach Music in the last months of Conroy's life. He talks about his own death in the last few lines of the story and it feels right that I read it now, shortly after his funeral.

On the night that Bestest called to tell me Pat Conroy had passed away I was reading. It is a long book, close to 800 pages.

Wrapped up, almost swaddled, in a soft velour blanket and sitting snuggled up in my big recliner, I had lost myself in the words of a man who has touched me as no other writer I can remember has ever done.

Looking up I saw him standing in my door. Just inside the door. Not quite solid, but certainly not ghostly. I asked him why he would come to see me? I wondered why I wasn't afraid and really did wonder if my ego was creating this scene.

He quietly told me that he was with all the people who loved his books tonight.

I looked away and when I looked up again no one was there.

Of course I had probably dozed off, but it was a very comforting feeling.

Right now I don't think I want to read any more of his books for a while. I want to just savor these two. They have become a compendium of words that are more than a story.

Pat Conroy's books are a legacy for living . . . with passion and love and truth, in all its endless transformations.

First musings

Chauncey's first memory was of light.

That lamp, a tiny bulb mounted upon a very clever sphere that could rotate so the light faced in any direction you liked, sat in pink and white beauty high upon the dresser near her crib.

She cared neither that it was beautiful, nor mechanically intricate, nor even what size the bulb was.

Chauncey only cared that that light be left on, in whatever direction her mother should choose. And it was.

Her mother would leave the room and Chauncey's eyes would never leave that light. Had she been more than two she might have known it was her focal point, but she wasn't and she didn't.

She also didn't realize that this was the hour that would often define her life.

That moment when all the world leaves you and even the sun is gone. The beginning of darkness.

In those times she learned to persevere, to find a focal point and draw inward to the safety of an inner world where she must entertain herself.

She would never know if it was her nature to be somewhat of a loner, a person who needed a great deal of alone time, or if it was a habit taught early on by circumstance and need.

All in my mind

I am always amazed at how much my mind affects the quality of my life. I think that speaks to why we should be more honest and open, at least with those who are trustworthy.

I have spent most of the last thirty five years feeling obese and unworthy. I started out not even over weight, just above the weight my ex and I thought I should be. I thought everyone else was tons lighter than I was and never shared my weight with anyone. We all talked about weight, but it was with words like "I'm so heavy" or "I'm so fat." No one ever shared, "I am 175 pounds."

Even now people are afraid to use the actual pounds. They talk about "happy weight." It wasn't until my sister recently revealed how much she weighed most of her life that I realized I was actually thinner than she was for a good deal of my younger years. Yet, in my mind's eye, she looked perfect while I considered myself shameful.

Then my niece lost a lot of weight and was so proud that she announced on Facebook that she had hit 200 pounds! I was shocked. She looked great and I would have guessed that number to be much much lower.

That was the beginning of a new era for me. I started looking at old pictures and looking in the mirror. I am definitely heavy now, but I really looked fine back when. And now as the pounds have slowly slipped away I no longer feel hopeless because I am not shooting for 115 pounds at my height.

I am reaching for a lower blood pressure and easier walking. I would like to wear clothes off the regular racks and be able to trim my toenails with less huffing and puffing. These things are pretty much here, or close.

I've been here so many times, but in my mind it wasn't even close to acceptable. Maybe this new knowledge will help me stay healthier.

From here to eternity

Another night creeps on. I have weathered the day on about four hours of sleep in the hopes that I would not be here tonight.

Instead I would be sleeping soundly, dreaming the dreams that the book I am reading produces. My mind is the screen writer and it composes each scene in symbolic order, or it would if I could sleep.

I lay down for the obligatory hour, even dozed some then lay there listening to my mind's soliloquy, strutting and fretting that hour approaching the stage, but I never arrived. I finally got up, moved to my chair and began to read.

I am reading the story of my life as seen through the eyes of a man. It is the perfect example of I am you. As the author, he is really every character, because no one can write of another without standing in their shoes as honestly as possible. But this time is is also me. I find my life scattered among the history, traditions and terrible insecurities that accompany anyone growing up in the fifties and sixties.

Born and bred in the wake of WWII's graphic horror stories, I moved through the politics of my time into the peace movement and like many young people, throughout history, was caught between the ideal and the fact.

We still live in a world run by power. An unforgiving world that, until recently, spoke of liberty and freedom for all in spite of having no intention of allowing that to happen.

Life is layers and this book I am reading misses none of them.  Violence breeds violence, worse than anyone wants to talk about, but in this book it is presented from the point of view of all the people in all the layers and all those things no one wants to believe can happen are heard from the mouths of those who experienced them.

It is a round table discussion of who I am, who I was, and how I got from there to here and it is keeping me awake whether I want it to, or not.

In the deep dark hours of the morning

It is nearly 4 AM and I have been awake all night. My yawns were so wide that I thought they would split the seams of my lips but when I lay me down to sleep they deserted me. Left me tossing and turning as the words in my mind built to a crescendo, creating and recreating the past in an effusion of painful sensory experiences as real, or more so than the original.

Tonight I could not get past them, could not escape those tiny almost inconsequential things that hide deep in my mind waiting for the perfect moment to come out and torment me. Other nights I eventually slide deep into Morpheus's arms and relive them in 3D. They imprint so deeply on my pillow that when I put my head down the next night I discover they are still there waiting for me.

I've heard it takes two years to move past emotional trauma, but not for me. Even the slightest upsets seem carved in stone somewhere in the synapses that flutter through my brain. It seems unfair that I dream of doing the things that might have saved me so long ago, now when it is too late.

The contradictions of manners and feelings create grotesque situations and I play and replay them back -- even now. Now when I know they are the past. Now when I thought I had taken away their power. Now when I realize that ghosts do exist. They just don't walk the corridors of old houses, they float down the corridors of my mind.

I think I must not be unique, that others suffer from the same thoughts, but we do not talk about them, do not give them the dignity or indignity of coming out into the open. Until I find a writer who dares to break convention.

And all the keys that were safely hidden away pop up to unlock memories that give nostalgia a bad name. And those memories steal my love of so many things, turning them into alligators whose gnashing teeth tear at my soul when I want to pluck lotus blossoms from the depths.

Keep on going

We knew our children when.

When they were small and new.

When they were growing and changing.

When they were awful and wonderful.

So, it is really nice to be out in public with them and run into someone they know, or work with and have that person rave about who they are.

This weekend I went out with one of my children. One who had lots of challenges before I ever met her. One who has risen from the ashes several times in her life. One who makes me very proud.

Being willing to give your all, to keep on thinking, and not give up, are problem solving skills that should never be under estimated.

Work

Some people work to live. Others live to work.

There is a need for enough money to pay the bills, to provide food, clothing, housing, medical care and education for ourselves and our families. Beyond that some people have an ego to feed that requires much more money. These people work to live in as comfortable a way as they know how.

Others have a need to work that goes beyond providing these creature comforts. They find their work is a creative outlet, or a way to achieve and use power, or they find it to be an escape that releases them from social, familial and personal pressures of doing anything else. It always sounds valid and noble to "have to work."

Although some of these reasons seem more valid to me than others and some feel like a passive aggressive slap in the face, we should be able to live the way we want without apology as long as it does not hurt anyone else.

I just respect people more when they are forthright and honest.

Most of us know when we are being lied to, or put off even when we don't talk about it. So many problems arise because of unspoken, underlying truths that (for some reason) we pretend don't exist.

Allowing children to speak the truth, encouraging them to both see it and express it in tactful, clear ways might be one of the most important gifts we could give this world.

Imagine a world where people really are equal as long as they do no harm. I think it would redefine harm. Active, or passive, if your actions hurt other people then an intervention would follow and it wouldn't end until everyone felt satisfied.

Idealistic. This form of keeping order would be time consuming and difficult. Punishment would cease to exist in the way we know it. Instead tolerance would be the law and communities might be divided in different ways, including places for the physically dangerous.

It would not be a utopia because truth is the hardest taskmaster of all, but I think it might be more peaceful.

Pat Conroy has become one with his words

I didn't discover Pat Conroy until Bestest was asked to speak at his birthday celebration in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was hard hearing he had pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, but when Bestest called last night to tell me he had passed away it was like losing a favorite uncle, or brother, or someone very close to me.

When James Agee died David McDowell was able to finish A Death In The Family and publish it so that it received a Pulitzer Prize.  I don't think anyone can really do that for Pat Conroy.

His writing is so personal. There is enough continuity in his characters, that even though they are totally different people in completely different circumstances, the main character is the same. I feel like I know him and his beautiful self absorbed mother and alcoholic father. I find his ability to write about them so truthfully and poignantly a mystery. And I find his incredible love for them, in the midst of all the history and angst, a treasure. They are characters in his books who figure in in tiny ways that balance out everything else.

Pat Conroy's writing is irreverently honest. It is pithy and sweet and riveting in ways I cannot begin to describe.  I want to cringe and applaud and laugh all at the same time. I want to be like him, but I wouldn't have the courage.

His command of our language is immense. His grasp of our humanity is even more immense. He makes my family seem more normal and I wonder if he does this for everyone who reads his books. There is comfort in their strife because he makes it abundantly clear that all the rivers and marshes and fountains and oceans are really rivers of love uniting tragedies of the worst sort.

His novels fill me up with their sweetness. They give me nightmares with their reality. I only began reading him a few months ago, but I think he may be the best contemporary writer of our generation.

Memories

I just finished watching a show about Loretta Lynn on American Masters and now I'm filled to over flowing with memories of my fifteenth summer, the year I first heard her sing.

We moved back to my mother's home town just before my senior year. It was only thirty miles from the town I called home, but that is a million miles if you can't drive.

Too young to do much else I helped out in the kitchen of my grandma's nursing home and met Millie, a woman born in a log cabin who married a mountain man from Tennessee. Millie cooked and carried me back in time where I learned to cook without cookbooks and save the leftovers for her pigs.

Her son would come pick her up at the end of each day and I would beg to go home with her. Her home was a tiny ranch house on a farm she and Ira, her husband, had bought when they got married. A fire had burned down their home and the insurance only covered enough to build a shadow of the old house. It had a bathroom, but no plumbing. The bathroom was just for show. We used the outhouse way out back.

Millie's house was where I ate my first fried green tomatoes and home butchered venison. It was where I sat under an old oak tree late on hot summer afternoons and scrubbed spark plugs with a wire brush. Her son had heavy full leg braces on both legs and he used those spark plugs in his pick up truck where he'd built his own hand controls for the gas and brake pedals. I learned to drive a pick up that summer -- with those hand pedals.

I also helped pick the corn that year. Larry, her son, drove the old McCormick tractor across those bumpy fields. I balanced behind him, holding onto the seat and weighing down the picker so it would work. Then we drove it to the elevators before going home for supper and an evening of music.

Larry played his guitar (pronounced gee-tar). His dad told stories and danced in his denim overalls and high topped shoes, stomping till the windows rattled around us. Those nights were echoes of mountain evenings going back for ages.

When we ran out of stories and steam, Larry put a record  on his player so I could hear this country singer, Loretta Lynn and I fell in love with that voice. The first song I ever heard was "Two mules  pull this wagon."

Then it would be time for him to drive me home. It was my last real summer at "home." The next year I went off to college, but on July 20, 1969 I was back for a visit and driving that truck with the hand pedals across a bridge in a thunderstorm while Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The bridge washed out and we were stuck at a friend's farm house in the middle of nowhere watching that marvel on an old stat-icky television. 

Somehow that time is all woven in together when I hear Loretta Lynn sing, or see a space shuttle take off.  They marked the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adult adventures.

The Clash of the Titans

The top few percent of people in this country have most of the money.

Confident that this money could buy them the lawmakers, laws, taxes, or lack of, gun control, and anything else they wanted, they sat back in the good old boy's club and laughed.

Money is power and they knew they could buy and sell the rest of us (unless we happened to smarten up and band together.)

And then?

The unthinkable happened.

The old club is being trumped by another rich kid on the block. The reflection of their own actions is being projected without any censoring at all.

The financial Titans are lining up to take down one of their own.

As frightening as the idea that they might be able to really do this is -- let's pray they succeed.

A terrified voter's creed

I do not believe in money,
the greatest power,
maker of Wall Street and American bonds,
of all things cold and hard.
I believe in one election,
between Democrats and Republican,
born of the Fathers of the Declaration of Independence.
Good from Good, Bad from Bad
Old money from old money,
Inherited, not made, consubstantial with their ancestors;
through them all things are possible.
For their children and for their preservation.
They come down from their towers,
and by the Holy Money are incarnate of all they believe,
and become president.
For our sake this president becomes the one
who tells us who shall die and who shall prosper,
and who may run in the next election
in accordance with the president.
Who ascends into office
and is seated at the right hand of the Congress.
He will stand above us
to judge the rich and the poor
and his power will have no end.
I tremble in terror, of a dictator and authoritarian,
who takes from the poor and the masses,
who with the rich and the powerful is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through both sides of his mouth.
I believe in one country who teeters on the edge.
I have one vote for the savior of our country
I look forward to the resurrection of a country built on good will
and the life, liberty and freedom for all in the world to come. 


 

It's a grand old flag

I am watching the election returns and wondering if this is the beginning of the glory years or the end of life as we know it.

Is this the eve of the end of life as the United States has thought it should be?

Will we all have medical care, or will there no longer be any pretense that lives matter -- only money?

Will even bread lines start to look good?

People are doing the unthinkable. They are uniting under hate in an attempt to "get back" at what they hate without realizing they will be getting back at themselves. It's been done before.

"These are the times that try men's (and women's) souls," but not all people believe in souls.

Today we get rid of the aliens, tomorrow the Muslims, the next day me and finally it will be you.