Month: October 2018

This is my last stopover, before I move along.

I just dropped in here for a few lovely years,

To see what was going on.

In the end, the stars and the Universe will be my final home.

I just dropped in here for a few lovely years, and

Soon I will be gone.

Gold and silver are dropping. They are dropping so that the super rich, who understand the monetary secrets of the world need to control more of it. It all reminds me of the upcoming yearly classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” There is much, much more to this movie than just the obvious. At one point Harry Bailey is talking about the panic which is hitting the banks….the depression era. He says: Can’t you understand what’s happening here? Don’t you see what’s happening? Potter isn’t selling. Potter’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicky and he’s not. That’s why. He’s pickin’ up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We’ve, we’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other.

But, that’s not happening is it? The media continues to divide us. The political parties keep on dividing us. They make us hate each other. Hate. We cannot stick together and have faith in each other while looking at each other through the haze and fog of hate which is being spread by the ultra-rich owned media. Our politicians are simply pawns of the power of the money behind them. Look at gold and silver, dropping. The rich and super rich will be buying while the rest of the world panics over the instability of a financial system built on “smoke and mirrors”

Today there are sick people who are having serious health problems, perhaps even having surgery. Think of them, and pray for them if you are a praying person.

There are people who are hungry, feed them if you can.

There are people who are burying loved ones, wish them peace.

There are people who are fighting wars, wish them understanding.

For those who hate, wish them love.

For those with who you disagree, try for resolution.

Because all of humanity are passengers on the same ship, and traveling in the same direction. If something happens on the ship, then we all go down together.

Humility is a virtue, and pride cometh before the fall.

It is ironic to me that Columbus has a federal holiday just the same as Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It’s actually worse than that really. We were taught in school how Columbus was a great explorer and hero. In actuality Columbus never thought the world was flat. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand never thought the world was flat. Columbus was after..wealth…fame, and a lucrative trade route. He stumbled onto a new continent and so.. he got the fame, and he got slaves on his subsequent trips to the Americas in in 1493 to 1496. He had his men cut the noses and ears off of the Lucayan Natives so that these natives, who had been so friendly with him on his first voyage would get the message that he meant business. He demanded their woman as sex slaves for his men, and because he had seen the natives wearing gold necklaces on his first trip…he demanded GOLD. The natives rebelled, and Columbus and his men went to battle with them, and slaughtered them. Many of the bodies of the Indians were fed to dogs…some still alive. Not getting the gold he wanted, he took 500 back to Spain as slaves…only 300 survived the trip. He came back on other trips to find that gold…but it eluded him, falling to subsequent Conquistadors to find it instead.

As a first grader we had a play about Columbus. One of my friends Terry Roberts played Columbus. I played one of the Indians. I’m glad I was on the right side.

Columbus doesn’t deserve a holiday. He deserves for History to be corrected and show him for the bad man he really was.

The band festival today made me a little nostalgic. I’m there watching my two granddaughters, who are 15 and 16 years old. I’m looking around at the people with band shirts on from my home town and I realize….I don’t know a lot of them! I remember the years when my own children were in the band and we went to these festivals. Wonderful fall tradition of cool mornings and warm afternoons, of trees with leaves turning red and gold in all different shades. Memories of the hamburgers grilling on the gas cookers, smoke filling the air. The great festivals we used to have at home, with all the camaraderie, and all the work! All day long stuck in a soda trailer selling cokes, and snacks to hungry band kids from all over Georgia. Wonderful wispy remembrances. I wonder where that time went? Now it’s the turn of other, younger parents to do the things that need to be done. I see a young man sitting in front of me, pony tailed and sun glasses pushed up on his cap full of life grinning at the band and the girls. He’s probably seventeen maybe. I wonder, how does it feel to be seventeen? I don’t remember. Actually, I don’t remember feeling any other way than I feel right now. Funny isn’t it? I know I’m not seventeen, but since age overtakes you a day at a time, a month, a year, you grow older and you feel as if nothing has changed. Yet you don’t remember seventeen. I see the changing of the season and the colors of the leaves and the crispness of the air and I still enjoy it so much. I just won’t enjoy it for as many more times as those young ones out there on the field today. I’ve reached my Autumn and though I still THINK I feel the same as I did back in 1967, I know I’m getting a little tired, and the body isn’t going to recover and make the comebacks like it used to. And really, I’m ok with that. I honestly am.

If whatever you do, or think, or feel does no harm to others then do not be ashamed. if your actions make you happy without harming another human being, then those actions are not wrong, no matter what anyone tells you.

You cannot be charged for a crime for what you think. Its only when you express a thought that hurts or harms another individual that makes you wrong.

The philosophy of living a decent life is not as complicated as we make it. For almost every question, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

My utmost respect to those who practice the

philosophy of love and non-violence as a way of life.

Where have all the flowers gone? I thought about the Peter, Paul and Mary version of this song the other day as I was playing another one of their hits “Puff the Magic Dragon” on my guitar where Eli and I could sing it together. Eli had learned the song at school this year, and I wanted to do it with him. It’s always been a “magic” song for me, because I learned the three finger “picking” method from it.

That was in 1967, and here I am almost 50 years later…and can still just pick up my guitar, and with a couple of minutes practice, it all comes back to me…..

All of those fall nights when I was 17, and had all the basic normal dreams that any seventeen year old might have. Senior year, and trying to figure out what great and important things the future held.

I knew nothing. I still know very little, compared to the overwhelming amount of sheer knowledge there is in the world to accumulate.

What I mainly do know, and have learned in those fifty years is that it’s much more important to sit down in your bedroom and play and sing “Puff” with your five year old grandson (and granddaughters….since I repeated it with Rue and Evie on Friday) then it is to worry about things over which you have little or no control.

It’s better to read them books, and tell them how much you love them.

What’s more important to you?

After Eli went home, after we had finished singing “Puff the Magic Dragon” I prayed that he and Rue and Evie will see more days of happiness in their lives than they can imagine. I wished that their generation can find the answers to the questions that really need to be asked. There are so, so many of those questions.

Then I sat down and started singing: “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing…..”

If you have never been in any particular situation, it’s hard to imagine how you would react.

Back in the early 70’s when my wife and I were living in Athens, Georgia I worked for a chain convenience store there on a part time basis. The store was located just across the street from the public housing area on Baxter Street, and we had a lot of African American customers. Some of them gave me a hard time, some were very friendly.

I worked mostly at night and on the weekends. I had never thought much about being held up at gun point…until it happened one night.

There was a friendly, young African American boy inside the store browsing the comic books. I had just pulled the register down…that is, if you are unfamiliar with the way those things work, pulling all of the big bills out of the cash register drawer and putting them in under the drawer. Then in just a heartbeat, a white guy with long hair and a hunting rifle walked calmly into the store. He pointed the rifle at me, and said “give me all the money in a bag, or I’m going to blow your brains out” He noticed the boy over at the comic rack and told him to get behind the counter with me. “I’m not going to say it again,” he said “all your money, or I’ll kill both of you”

I tried to notice details, but my heart was pounding in my chest. Here I was, a twenty year old guy with very little “worldly” training, no military training, and I had a gun right in my face, and the guy had his finger right on the trigger. I honestly never thought about pulling a heroic act. Maybe I could have knocked the gun away and jumped over the counter and beat the crap out of his skinny ass. Maybe…

I put all the money out of the register drawer into a paper bag and gave it to him. He never asked to look under the drawer where I had just put most of the big money. He told me and the young black guy to get down on the floor. Now….was this the time to jump on him? No. It was down on the floor for us.

Then he was out the door and gone. I picked up the phone and dialed the police. They were there in five minutes or less. I had a good description of the guy, the direction he had gone, his rifle…pretty much everything they might need to get him. The boy in the store with me gave them about the same information as I did, not quite as detailed since he had been very scared. He never came back in anymore to browse the comic books. They never caught the guy.

About six months later, I was in another one of the same companies stores a little further up the hill about the same time of the day. A very well built black man walked in the store with a pistol already out in his hand, and a bandana on his face. “I want to kill you, but I won’t if you give me all the money in the register” Again, the same pounding heart and sweating palms. The same paper bag. “Under the register too!” he said knowing that little trick. I pulled the register up and put that money into the bag. He was out the door and gone before I could blink. I hadn’t had any time whatsoever to think about heroics, or trying to stop the perpetrator. It was so quick. This one could have just as easily shot me and ran if he had wanted.

Again, I called the police and gave them a much less detailed description. I hadn’t been as scared as the first time, but there had been no time to BE scared. They never caught this guy either.

A couple of weeks later the store manager came in one evening and fired me for “not pulling the drinks up in the cooler” which I had done only about an hour before he came into the store. That last robbery had been too much for the company I guess. I think they suspected I had taken the money and made up the story about being robbed. The policy had checked me in both cases. They had checked my car too. There was nothing to find, because I was as honest then as I am now.

I went to work for Sears and Roebuck after that, selling shoes. I figured nobody would come in there with a gun and as far as I know, I was right.

I’ve never had guns pointed at my head since that early point in my life, but I remember it very well. I can still see the face of that first guy, etched in my memory. I could still pick him out of a line up.

I hope he and the other guy straightened up and got their lives together after nearly scaring me to death.

I don’t usually pay much attention to premonitions, or thoughts of that sort. Not usually. This past week, a week ago today, we were driving down to Gulf Shores. I’ve been here quite a bit over the years with my family. Not too bad of a drive and a pretty nice beach. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking back. I thought about it being nearly my sixty fifth birthday, and I started thinking about the first time I had ever gone to the beach almost exactly 50 years ago, when I was fifteen.

It was a trip to Panama City Beach. Back in the days of two lane roads and long, long hours to get there. I was unprepared for the awesome vastness and beauty of the ocean. I loved it immediately. We spent a lot of time during that vacation in the water, body surfing and swimming. We went deep sea fishing and I caught the largest fish on the boat and won the “dollar pot” for the day. A thirty three pound red grouper. I still have the photo of me somewhere holding up that fish. I won 46 dollars and for a fifteen year old boy, that was a bunch of money.

We went to the beach with our neighbors the Browns. Michael Brown was one of my best friends from childhood and we hung out a lot. We had a great time that year. Met some girls our age, listened to music, danced. Now….that entire family is gone. Mother, Father, sister and brother. Mom and Dad are gone too. I guess out of all of the people who went on that first trip to the beach with us only me, my brother and my first cousin Judy are the ones left living. Many, many years under the bridge, but oh how fast they have flown. But I remember that first glimpse of the beach and the beautiful snow white sand, and the deep blue ocean. I remember it so well.

But back to the premonition.

As we were driving and I was thinking off this first time I had gone to the beach I was struck by the feeling that this trip we were going on now would be my last trip. I don’t know why or where the thought came from. It was just something out of the blue and I tried for a couple of hours to shake it off. I finally did get it out of my head and had a great time this year, a wonderful time with my family. Not all of them were there, but a lot of us. We had a wonderful place to stay thanks to Ted’s talent in finding great places. My sons were great to me and their Mom.

Eli and I had fun, heck Eli had the most fun of anyone I believe. And it was Baby Evie’s first vacation ever. So special.

So I shook off the premonition, but it came back to dwell over me on the way home, and after we got here, like Charlie Brown’s little black rain cloud which follows him around every where.

I think perhaps it may just be because my 65th birthday is fast approaching. Maybe because I had just recently visited Mom and Dad and taken Rue and Eli over there. Perhaps just my realization of how quickly the years pass, and of my own mortality. Perhaps it was just all of these things combined with a few more little factors which I have been brooding on lately which caused these thoughts to single in on me. I hope that’s just it. Because I really do love these family vacations and the time with my loved ones. These memories are what life is comprised of, and no amount of money could replace them in our hearts. They are our life.

I’ll be really careful this coming year, because come next October I want to prove these feeling wrong and go motoring down the road again to the beautiful white sands and deep blue ocean. I have this year’s memories to tide me over until then.

“There will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050 unless more recycling takes place. That is what a new report from the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation warns. If the current trend continues, the report said, oceans will contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish in 2025.”

This is mainly due to the increase of wealth in China and India, and the fact that they are spending more money on better food.

It’s also due to stupid people. A couple of weeks ago when it was pouring down rain here in town, I was driving home and noticed the ditches were overflowing with water. When I passed by where the huge pipes were dug through to turn into people’s driveways, I saw they were totally clogged with trash. Plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper, white plastic bags marked “Walmart” or “Dollar General” All manner of things that should be recycled, but were thrown out the window or dumped into the ditches by people. Stupid people.

We worry about a variety of things. Politics fills the pages of this medium every day. We worry who is going to run what and be what, and do what. We should be worried for the world our grandchildren are going to inherit. Will they even have clean water to drink? Will there be enough food for them to eat? Will the air be pure enough to breathe?

Our country should be leading in this effort, but we’re not. We’re back peddling.