Month: June 2018

Some days, some of the junk I read on Facebook makes me reluctant to associate myself with the species of Homo sapiens sapiens. The latin translation of Homo sapiens is “wise person” which makes me laugh. There are damn few of those around, and the ones who do seem to be somewhat wise get trolled and hated.

People get murdered and instead of uniting us as it has sometimes done in the past, it just seems to tear us further apart. The so called “media” pundits from both sides, and the politicians couldn’t agree on the rules for a game of checkers. It seems their only aim is to further divide us.

Everyone is an expert. Everyone’s stance is the right stance. Everyone has a solution. Fifty percent of everyone, disagress with the other fifty percent…so who is right?

I submit that neither of them are right. In my opinion 99.9% of all the “experts” in the fields of politics, religion, business, world affairs, and tiddly winks take their opinions on things straight out of their “agenda” playbook, which is mostly given to them by powerful organizations like the NRA, the Chamber of Commerce, the AMA, AARP, Americans for Prosperity, MoveOn.org., AIPAC, the AFL-CIO, NARAL, or the NAACP.

Perhaps they may be taking cues from the Koch brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Sheldon Adelson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Bill and Melinda Gates, John and Laura Arnold, Penny Pritzker, or Warren Buffet.

Or perhaps maybe it’s Franklin Graham, or Rick Warren. Howard and Roberta Ahmanson. David Barton, Douglas Coe, Charles Colson, Luis Cortez, James Dobson, Stuart Epperson, Michael Gerson, Ted Haggard, Billy Hybels, T.D. Jakes, Diane Knippers, Tim and Beverly Lahaye, Richard Land, Brian McLaren, Joyce Meyer, Richard John Neuhaus, Mark Knoll, J.J. Packer, Rick Santorum (yes…Rick Santorum) Paul Crouch, Joel Osteen, Archbishop Timothy Dolan…etc., etc., If you have never heard of some of these people, maybe you should.

I could go on…but I hope the point is obvious.

Then you have every Tom, Dick and Harry who can use a keyboard and who knows how to prepare memes, sending out bogus BS after bogus BS. Who do you believe? You try and source your information, but before you can get it researched good, things change. It’s like trying to shoot a dime out of the sky with a bb gun.

The reliability factor on what we see on social media is very low…very low. I’d almost rather read op-eds from people who I know have half way decent walking sense. At least you know its their opinion.

Acchh…I’ve droned on and on like some of the people I’m talking about. I’m going to go and read a book now. Before I go though, I’d just like to say, when it comes to people getting murdered, or tragically killed, I’m going to try and reserve my thoughts on those matters for those people who are suffering. I’m going to try and not politisize it, and point fingers. I have my opinons on who is responsible for what. You want to know what I think? Message me. I’ll tell you in no uncertain terms. But for now, I handle this latest attack on humanity the same way I have the previous umpteen ones, and the way I will handle the next one. I mourn. I don’t read the Bible much anymore, but I remember that Jesus said: “Blessed are they which mourn for they shall be comforted.” Short and to the point. No old Testament archaic stuff. Nothing from the Apostle Paul. Just the words of Jesus.

I have great admiration for that man.

Without a doubt, much of what we think we know if false. Even being as “smart” as we humans think we are we don’t even know everything about our own bodies! When we move out from there, into the world around us, and eventually into the Universe that surrounds us, our knowledge becomes exponentially less and less.

There are SO many theories on how the Universe started, where it’s headed and how it’s going to end. Some of them are theological in nature, and some are scientific. None of them are right, probably not even near right. I’m talking all the way from St. Stephen, to Stephen King, to Stephen Hawking here.

I shudder when I think about how little I know. I have to take most things I do every day on faith. I have faith when I plug in the coffee machine that it is going to make me a cup of coffee. If it didn’t, I don’t have the knowledge to tear it apart and remake it so that it would. If I put my key in the car, and turn the switch and it doesn’t start, most of the time I wouldn’t know what to do. When I had my heart attack, I couldn’t fix my arteries. Of course there are people who DO know how to fix these things, and it’s a good thing too! Otherwise, most of us would be in a heap of trouble.

But, even those people who are “technologically” smart, don’t have all the answers. Every few years or so, a new theory comes out about how the Universe began. Of course, all religions would acknowledge that it was ‘created’ if you will, by God. A thinking consciousness started the ball rolling and made us what we are today. Makes sense to us as humans, because WE are conscious thinking creatures. That’s what separates us from the rest of the creatures….at least so we “think” (I am not so sure sometimes, when my little dog plays me for a sucker that she is not “thinking” about what she is doing) I guess there is all different levels of thinking, and I am SURE that we are not in ANY way close to the “thinking” if that is what it is, of a consciousness so powerful it could create the Universe.

Now scientists also have a hard time trying to explain how something like the Universe started on it’s on. I read somewhere a few weeks back that they think all the “matter” that it took to get the Universe started, could be compressed down into a ball the size of a basketball, but that it would weigh some astronomically heavy weight. Some basketball! When this thing decided to explode and start the Universe, it continually spread from a central point and made us what we are today. The scientists can look at light coming in from outside our Galaxy that took billions of years to get here. That’s cool. When we look up in the sky at night, and see the stars, we are not really seeing what is happening at the moment we are looking, but what happened years and sometimes hundreds or thousands of years ago and is just now reaching us. For all we know, some of those stars could be, and probably are, gone. Mind boggling ain’t it?

Well, I just don’t believe that either group has ALL the right answers. I personally believe the Universe was created, and didn’t just happen, but I don’t even PRETEND to understand the type of intellect it would take to do it.

I know that we have had books and bibles, and documents from the beginning of the time that man learned how to write, with all the theories about how things happened. All of those came from the minds of man, and have been shaped by the mind of man down through the centuries. None of them are totally accurate. I don’t think that we know accurate.

Now, don’t go all funny on me, and think I am being sacrilegious. I’m not. I don’t go around telling people what to believe, OR that what they believe isn’t right. I don’t have the right to do that, and neither does anyone else. There are, however, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. who would disagree with me. All of those religions consider that they have been given the innate approval, by the being that created the Universe to tell everyone that their way of thinking is the only one that is correct. I happen to disagree with them. There may be some correctness in all of them. Being a type of Christian, I personally believe in that philosophy and some may think it is a conflict of teaching that I would state I don’t believe in telling OTHER people what to believe, but I don’t. Everyone has to decide for themselves, and I think on that particular point that the being that created us, God if you will, has been totally succinct. You choose for yourself whether to be good or bad, light or dark. This choice is yours no matter what your religion or philosophy.

It’s my personal opinion that we will all find out one day, of course. I think that God would be totally unfair to just leaving us hanging about the answer to things. Of course, I could be wrong about that too. We may go to Heaven, or we may lay unconscious of the passing of time until we come back around in the endless cycle of the Universes coming and going. We MAY know nothing, and that’s that. At least there would be peace in that, wouldn’t there? I highly doubt this to be the case, but….

I thought today about some of the things I believe, and about some of the things I have believed but have forsaken.

I thought about the idealism of youth and how easily it is lost in the shuffle of the “mission creep” of aging. (Oh how I love the invention of that phrase!) I thought about how aging itself affects the human psyche.. particularly my own.

My memory is becoming weird. On some things I’m razor sharp, on others I’m blunt as a brick. My mind is like a block of unsliced Swiss cheese, sitting where a good aged gouda should reside. Very holey at times, and unexpectedly dense.

So, my thinking process takes unusual paths. But it still functions.

I find I believe that happiness requires a personal commitment and cannot be handed to us by other individuals, or groups of people pushing any certain philosophy. I have waited practically all my life to have the secret of true happiness revealed to me, when all this time I have had it packed away inside.

I have been an irritant and a pest many times. I have alienated some, and confused many others. In my understanding about what passes for conformity I have become a non conformist. I’m sure I often baffle those closest to me with my actions. For that I am so sorry.

Tomorrow is a new day and I’m certain I will not be perfect. I will try harder to be happy though. Even though I hold very little in worldly goods or riches. Even though I fight daily battles with my body, and as I have stated, with my mind. Even though I realize I have fewer and fewer dawns coming. Even with the world in turmoil. Even with all these things…I am happy with the people with whom I share this journey, and these daily challenges. By having the people I am richer than a king, and by having the daily challenges I know I’m still alive and still necessary.

May the creator of all things be with you.

Ordinary days. There is something good to be said for ordinary days.

Quiet times. Still times. These are the times for meditation and thought. These are the times for spiritual renewal. You do not have to be in a large group of people. You don’t have to be in a large building.

These semi sleepy slow days are best. They restore my sanity and give me hope for the future. They help me to understand that the extraordinary things which take place that end up on the news every day affect a small percentage of the population. For the rest of us, there are these regular ordinary days.

I’m glad for them. I’d rather not have a day where I end up on the news.

What is it? Is it mathematics? The geometry of the universe which drives the boat. Or is it the spirit? Is it the mysterious will of one divine being which guides the rudder? I know the views. Believe me I know them well. So my questions are rhetorical, and require no answer, no conjecture.
I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer. I know many know or think they know and I’ll leave that to them. But I admit, I do not know. I know what I wish to be true, and I’ll continue to wish it, but I’ll not be specific about it.
I do know that the only thing which I control are the things I do and say….or do not do nor say.
If I had a chance to go back in time, it would be to correct the mistakes I made. To be kinder and gentler. To help more people when I had the chance. To give more than I gave. To dry more tears than I caused. To hold my tongue when I should have. To be a shoulder to lean on more often.
I know the things which are contentious in life. I read them on here all the time. I see them in person every day. Relationships. Between people and because of people. Attitudes. Bad and half good. Why and what for? For this little time which we have here together, is it worth it? Is it worth it to be right over the smallest of things?
I don’t think so. But everyone has to make decisions for themselves.
Go ahead, and Godspeed.

I love music…almost any kind. I love music played with a stringed instrument most of all. I think, even though I pluck a guitar a little, I love to hear a violin…played by someone who knows how to handle the instrument. I’ve heard recordings of Heifitz, and I’ve heard Charlie Daniels and I like them both. I think piano ranks 2nd. I often wish I had taken piano lessons….I admire good pianists.

I love light also. Light enables us to be able to take a photograph…a frozen moment of time if you will, and a photographer’s worth depends upon how well he can gauge and use the light to his advantage when catching the frozen moment. I love to capture those moments when I can.

I love the ocean too..the primal, primordial part of most human beings draw us to the ocean, with all its life and its vastness. I think it’s no coincidence that our bodies are almost the same proportion of liquid to solid as the oceans are to the land. I could watch the waves break for hours.

We each love different things about our lives. That’s what gives us our own unique perspective within our own personal universe where we reside. I don’t expect anyone else to like everything I like, or vice versa. I do think however, if we all could just take a moment and genuinely respect other people’s right to their own “likes” and not criticize because it’s not something on “our” list, the world would be a wonderful place.

Think about it next time before you start a sentence with “I hate those…….”

I remember when the “Doughboy” stood in the center of the “square” out in front of the “Big Friendly” Trion Department Store. I was always in awe of that statue. I remember reading the names on it over and over…some of them familiar names of families who lived in Trion.

The Department store itself was a wonder! There was no other place like it in the world. You could get anything, and I mean anything in that store. I loved going in there as a child. The toy aisle looked like it went on forever! There were Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, and Matchbox cars. There were cap pistols, and a rack next to them with a “bluejillion” packs of caps on it. There were porcelain dolls for the little girls. There were bicycles and stuffed animals. I can remember how wonderful this area looked when it was decorated for Christmas. Big, giant, bright Christmas balls. Rows of tinsel. Lots of the big old huge lights that screwed in and out of the sockets.

One of the most vivid memories of Christmas, was when I was four years old and I got the “Hopalong” Cassidy outfit and guns. I don’t think I took that outfit off for a week. I didn’t find out until years later that Dad had put that outfit and those guns on “layaway” almost 6 months before Christmas and had paid a little a week on them until he had them paid for. I don’t know what happened to them. My Mom was NOT a person to let something lay around in the house and take up useful space if it was not being used. I surmise that I probably wore them out using them the first year or so I had them, and they got tossed out in the move we made to Simmons Street. One of those guns go for about 120 dollars now on Ebay.

Mom got me even worse when I went off to college my freshman year. I had MY closet in my room filled with all of the Marvel comics that I had bought over the years. I had the first issues of a lot of them, plus the subsequent early issues. I had my old baseball cards which I had taken good care of, in a couple of shoeboxes. Mantle, Maris, Aaron. They were all there. We were not allowed to come home from school for the first month, if I remember correctly…it was one of the rules. The first time I came back home, I opened my closet and my stuff was gone! I know everybody says it, but in my case it was true….my Mom had thrown my comics and cards out. I cried then…but I cry harder now when I see how much some of those collectibles are worth.

Back to the Big Friendly though, there was a fabric department, a hardware store, a grocery store, a drugstore, a funeral parlor…? Yes, there was…a funeral parlor upstairs in the Big Friendly. The way the store was laid out, you could drive around the back and be at “ground” level. And so…the departed could go in and out the “back door” without creating an issue throughout the rest of the store.

Across the street from the Big Friendly you had the Post Office on the corner. Next to the Post office was the Barber shop.

We had one of the most modern and wonderful places called the “Y” The mill had first built a swimming pool sometime around 1934, and then built the “Y” up around it. It had an inside heated pool, a gym, a pool and ping pong room, a weight room, a theatre on one end, a snack bar….this place was WAY ahead of its time. In 1973, our class of 1968 had our five year reunion there….not long before they tore it down. I loved that place and often wished there had been some way to save it. It would have really been a historical landmark if it could have been saved.

If we wanted to, we were allowed to leave school for lunch back in those days. A lot of us opted to do so…lunchroom food being what it was. A lot of times we went up to a little place over near the mill which served burgers, fries, and dogs. I think Mr. Colbert owned the place. We thought the food was decent, and he also had a jukebox which was somehow filled with the most current songs. That was the first place I ever heard a Beatles song, the Rolling Stones, many of the iconic groups of those days first came to me over the jukebox in that dive.

We had to cross over a little bridge leading out to the burger joint. There was a creek which ran out from under the mill which flowed into the river at that point. It started into the mill as normal colored water…but being as there was a dye house at the mill back then, it would come OUT of the mill almost any color you could imagine. I used to like to guess what color the water was going to be every time I crossed over that bridge. I had no idea the colored “water” going into the river was polluting it.

The river is cleaned up now and it’s one of the cleanest in the State. There are kayakers going up and down it every day, and I believe that there are some great game fish in the river now.

As much as I long for those “bygone” days every now and then, I realize that memories are sometimes much sweeter than the actual living. So, I try to live everyday now hoping to give the people who are around me…especially the little ones, something sweet to remember.

I chose to continue to live in this tiny town when I suppose I had chances to live other places. I had a chance to move to Hendersonville, N.C. back in the mid-nineties but turned it down. I could probably sell out and move…but I probably won’t.

I figure the reason is that the spirit of the land in this little valley speaks to my soul. These hills and ravines in this part of the country have been inhabited for over twelve thousand years. Go visit Russell cave if you doubt me. This area has been Geologically stable, more or less, for millions of years. That’s why you can dig crinoid stems and trilobytes on the roadside at Taylor’s ridge. There is a lot of history stacked up in this small tri State area. I can feel it when I walk around here.

I have only one other place where I feel that spiritual connection, and that’s in Blue Ridge, Ga. I feel it more gently there now on the rare occasions when I go. The then of what I remember does not match the now of what is there. It’s becoming that way a tiny bit here in Trion, but not like in Blue Ridge…which seems to have become a playground for out of towners. I have people there I need to visit though.

Here still feels like home, and like my ancestors who were mostly Scotch and English farmers and hunters, home is the land you grew up on. I feel somehow tied to it, be that good or bad. The past of it speaks to my heart. I like going on vacations other places, but I like coming home. I don’t think I’ll get like my Grandpa, who would only reluctantly come out from “snake nation” but there is an attachment.

I have raised my children here, and now Grandchildren. And so there is a sense of continuity which is comforting. I heard one of my old neighbors wanted his ashes scattered from a plane over this little valley so that he would still be a part of it. I’m not going that far…yet

As we baby boomers age and die, we will likely be the last generation of human beings who would/could if we chose, put away our computers, our smart phones, and other advanced technology, and still be able to survive without the use of them.

If I chose to, and many times I wish I would, but if I made a concerted and extraneous effort, I could live the rest of my life without personally using advanced technology. That’s not to rule out the fact that it could still be used on me.

I might move to Alaska, build a cabin, and live out my life as a survivalist. It wouldn’t be pretty, probably not very long, but I could do it.

In the future, as technology and the biology of humanity continue to merge…humans will be so dependent on technology, that we would not be able to function, or simply die without it. Our phones may one day soon be so “smart” that they will be implanted in us, and will interface with us through our nervous and autonomous systems. (They will be a lot smaller, not larger as they are now)

Other aspects of technology will take over, or assist our biological systems, and we will become part human/ part computer. My son points out that we are already “Cyborgs” because machines now do much of our thinking for us.

So, I am glad I have lived in the age in which I have lived. I am happy to have been guided by my own human emotions, which have been in daily interaction with other humans like me. I am glad to be 66 years old, and not 6 or even 16. All of the coming changes, the new paradigm of which I have been speaking for so many years, may be seen as beneficial and needed for our race to survive. The coming super humans may be able to solve problems and differences which now plague us, and they may finally be able to be at peace with each other, and reach out to the mysteries of the Cosmos.

Yet, I’m glad I will have already taken my place in history.

I once climbed all the way to the top of Fort Mountain with my daughter on my back, with her singing “little bunny foo-foo” the entire way up and “bopping me on the head” every time the song called for it. Which is a lot. I made it up that steep and fairly long trail with some breath to spare. I would hate to say how long ago that’s been. Someone would probably have to carry me up now!

It’s a shame how most of us cannot stay at optimum operating conditions for our life span. I blame it on lack of options, and lack of willpower.

When I worked at Rome in the eighties, I had to leave home before there was time to fix a healthy breakfast, so I fell into the habit of eating those HUGE honey buns which Mrs Winners used to fix. I think they weighed 3 pounds and had about 3,000 calories. It was fast food for lunch, and sometimes for dinner. Who had the time to cook?

When Paula and I worked at Crown Crafts together for ten years we never had time to fix breakfast. We had to get to Calhoun by 7 am. So it was biscuits from the burger joint across the street which Mr Chow would conveniently bring over to the plant by the box full everyday like clockwork at 7:30 am. Then it was off to Arbys or some other fast food joint for lunch. Then, whatever we could tiredly scape up for supper for the kids. Our poor kids. Having parents who worked like we did…commuting two hours a day to 9 hour jobs. I feel so sorry for them. Kirsten helped us out a lot when she got older.

And so on it went….through my working career. I lived in Trion all my life practically, but always had to work out of town. I paid heavily for my choices in 1999, and again in 2014. Years of neglect, years of bad choices, years of stress and strain on the body.

I get out now once in a while and walk. I walk with the grandkids, and I do a little metal detecting every now and then for exercise ( believe me, you DON’T find the treasure they tell you you’re going to when you buy the detectors) I was piddling around over where they tore down the old Apartments…digging my umpteenth corroded Lincoln penny and sweating like a pig. I looked up and saw the Mayor and his wife drive by, peering out their window…so now my spider senses are tingling about even getting to do this much longer!

I slung my metal detector over my shoulder and started walking back to the truck. I had a bit of a headache, but back somewhere in the recesses of my brain I could hear a little voice singing: “little bunny foo foo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice, and bopping them on the head”

I think Father time, and NOT the good fairy, has turned me into a GOON!!