Month: April 2019

THE RESERVATION

by Larry Bowers

Children crying, smoke is rising,

Smell of whiskey in the air.

Relief check coming,

Widow thumbing,

Through her tickets for the fair.

Another day on the reservation,

Remnants of another nation,

American genocide,

That we don’t try to hide,

Is a scar on the face,

Of our creation.

Old dog growling, Coyote howling,

Pale moonlight shining down at night.

The once proud bands, Who roamed these land.

Now stuck in a terrible plight.

Another life on the reservation,

Constant pain and aggravation.

American genocide,

Slow death or suicide,

Is the only logical cure for the situation.

Today I wondered about the future. I heard them talking this morning on NPR about how the ocean will rise by about 2 meters ( six feet) by the year 2100. According to the scientists who were talking, that means that a storm worse than hurricane Sandy, with a storm surge 6 ft higher than it was in 2012. The storm surge that did so much damage in New Jersey and New York City was 13 feet. With the increased ocean level it would be 19 ft.

If one of these storms occur every three to four years, the damage caused by them would render repairs in New York city and surrounding areas untenable. You wouldn’t get everything repaired before another storm comes through and tears it up again. This means that many coastal cities along our East coast would be in big time hot water.

Now, I don’t know if the scientists are right, but I have a tendency to believe them. They have the facts and figures to back up their assumptions. I won’t be around in the year 2100, but I worry that our country won’t be prepared for what is going to take place.

I hope that my descendants will be able to figure out a way to slow things down, or a lot of the population of the United States is going to be living at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. That won’t be good.

Perhaps tonight if I get more than 4 hours sleep and don’t feel out of sorts all day, I will be more optimistic tomorrow. I hope so.

Ocean front property in West Virginia anyone?

While my Guitar Gently Weeps

While my Guitar Gently Weeps

— Read on thegraymaniac.com/2019/04/09/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps/

While my Guitar Gently Weeps….

The guitar and I go back a long way. I think I was 11 when Dad and I first went to the pawn shop in Rome and looked at guitars. I wanted a Bass (wanted to be in the band y’know) but I came away with a Kay scroll side acoustical guitar, with strings that were about ½ inch above the fret.

Now anybody who has ever played a guitar knows that the “action” of the strings, i.e. the closer they are to the frets and the neck of the guitar, the easier they are to press down and get a sound out of, and thus the easier the instrument is to play. ½ inch is a LONG way for a beginner, especially with metal strings. I found out after I had owned the guitar for several weeks that the strings could be adjusted down. By that time, I had permanent calluses on ALL the fingers on my left hand…which have never, never gone away. This is the way you can tell a real guitarist though. Let somebody pick up a guitar and plunk away on it for a half hour and then they start looking at the tops of their fingers like “damn that hurts” NEWBIE! Either that, or they would wienie out and go to a Spanish guitar with nylon strings and say “I want to be like Segovia” Well, if you want to be like Andres Segovia, you better plan on practicing 12 to 14 hours a day and have natural talent to begin with to boot. There are NOT many Segovia’s, or even Chet Atkins for that matter. Some people have it, and some people don’t. You can teach yourself, or be taught to play a guitar, but you can’t be taught to be a Segovia or an Atkins. That kind of talent has to be in the genes. But…in any case…as I was saying, the metal makes the man when it comes to guitars, and if you ain’t got the calluses, don’t whine!

I had three guitar lessons before my Dad figured out it was too much of a pain to take me all the way 6 miles down the road to Summerville, especially since I wasn’t much interested in learning how to finger pick “Red River Valley” or any other country tune from the 1940’s.

I finally ended up doing it the way I have done almost everything else in my life…I learned it on my own. I looked at a book and got the chords down pat and then just started practicing them over and over again. I watch other people who knew how to play do their thing, and picked up some things from them. Mostly I did my own thing though.

I don’t pick up any of my guitars as often as I should. I have three or four of them sitting around. (And yes, one of them is a Spanish guitar that my wife got me for a Wedding present! Thing about it is, I HAD the calluses before I got this guitar so when I play it, I don’t feel like a wienie) This past week when I was feeling like crap, I picked my guitar up off the bed and just sat down and started to play. For me, at least right now, it’s still comes easy. My brain sends those long ago learned and practiced chords and notes down through the nerve endings in my fingers and the music starts to come out of the guitar. It’s like a small miracle really. I can’t remember what I had for supper last night, but I can still play “Down Yonder” or “Wildwood Flower” like it was 1963! Over forty years and my brain still remembers! I think the day I pick up the guitar and I can’t remember the chords or the notes that I learned so long ago is going to be a VERY sad day. I really hope it never happens. There is such a bond between a player and their instrument, that if that bond is broken, it would be almost like a death of dear friend. Oh how much you would mourn that loss! I know the look in my Grandfather’s eyes back years ago when he would pick up that banjo that he had played for years and couldn’t quite get the music to come out the way it did before. It was a sad and confused look. A pitiful look. It wasn’t too long after that when Grandpa had to go to the nursing home because he really couldn’t remember anything anymore. Or anybody. I pray to the creator that I don’t go that route. One of the first songs I wrote when I took up songwriting was about Grandpa and his banjo. It’s called “Blue Ridge Mountain Symphony.” I have a good demo of the song, maybe one of these days I will get it on the site so folks can listen to it.

I really think that the fact that man decided to pick up some pieces of wood and put cat guts on it, or thump on a hollow log and call it music, was one of the things that eventually differentiated us from all the other creatures that our creator made. I can’t recall seeing any animal but a human pick up a musical instrument and play it. (ok…they train chimps to do it…but that’s different, they don’t give a hoot….or perhaps that’s an ooh..ooh…ooh…about what they are doing! Man is the only creature who has made a connection with things musical, and I think that is one of the only real connections we have with divinity. I really think God enjoys music. He digs dancing too…remember when David danced before God, and he was pleased? We sell God short sometimes I think, imagining that ALL he is, is this stern and terrible judge sitting behind a judges bench with a big gavel, ready to convict us of all our sins and send us straight to blazes.

Anyway, I digress. So the other day when I continued to play, I also started humming some familiar tunes to the chords. Peter, Paul and Mary were remembered of course, with “Jet Plane,” and “Puff the Magic Dragon” I covered Peter and Gordon with “I Go to Pieces” I stepped forward with “The Ones the Wolfs Brought Down” a song that Garth Brooks recorded which never made to the singles chart, but in my opinion certainly should have. I went through “Stepping Stone” which Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Monkees covered. I did “Friends in Low Places” because that’s just how I felt! Then I just sat there for half an hour more making up little runs and tunes from the Blues to Rock and Roll. I found a couple of riffs I really liked and just played them over and over, hoping I might remember them if I ever get near a recorder again, and want to put down something new. I really wish I had the time. I feel like I have cheated something or somebody sometimes because I haven’t been as “creative” as I should have been. When do you have time to be creative? Seems like back in the 80’s I had a hell of a lot more time to write and create and try to do things that might be some kind of “legacy” Now I’m not so sure about legacies anyway. Who’s really going to care? Is it something my children and grandchildren would REALLY want to sit down and take time to listen to, or will they get into the same rut as I seem to be in now, which leaves you with no time to do anything but work, eat and sleep and a few minutes on the weekend to catch up with your chores. I swear to goodness, I can never remember the days being so crammed full of stuff that the only time I pick my guitar up and play it is when I am at home sick, and my chest is feeling funny and I have these strange little twinges, and I need some solace from somewhere.

How I do go on about a piece of wood with some string pulled across it, don’t I? But yet, there IS something mystical in our relationship with our instruments, just like there is in our relationships with other people. I know for a fact, I pick up guitars at stores and flea markets and stuff and strum them and they seem like “strangers” to me. The sounds that come out are not as comforting as they are from my familiar instruments, especially my 40 year old Classical guitar my wife gave me as a wedding present. The sounds I get from her are like recordings from years past of all the things, people and places which have I have experienced while I have owned her. (yes the guitar is feminine!) Those memories which are stored there could not come from some “newcomer” It’s like your family. I know we meet and enjoy new friends…especially those with common memories of things that we have experienced, but no one has the connections that your family has to you. That’s why my family is so special to me.

Well…I guess I may go pick up the guitar and plunk on it a while. I hope I haven’t bored everyone to death with my ramblings. I’ll leave you with this from the late George Harrison:

look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love

I don’t know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you.

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning

While my guitar gently weeps

With every mistake we must surely be learning

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how you were diverted

You were perverted too

I don’t know how you were inverted

No one alerted you.

I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

Look at you all…

Still my guitar gently weeps

Although Facebook was originally billed as being a “social” network and a “way to reconnect with friends”, it was always meant as a data mining system for it’s advertisers. The only problem is that many of the recipients of our data have been using it for nefarious and underhanded purposes.

It would have been better to have set Facebook up as a subscription service, which closely guarded its subscriber’s information. Of course, that wouldn’t have been a formula which would have made Zuckerberg and company billionaires in so quick a time.

For the most part, those of us who have used Facebook for any number of years are now already compromised. The genie is already out of the bottle, Pandora’s box already opened.

It hasn’t only been Facebook either. Equifax is another, along with who knows how many companies whose credit card information has been compromised.

The best we can do now is to try and protect what we have left, if anything. I’m still not sure if to totally wipe Facebook would do much good. I’ve gone through and erased all app connections, and tightened privacy. I’d suggest everyone else do the same.

This brave new world of information sharing and social networking has made things more difficult and easier all at the same time. Only time will tell if we can keep the vampires out though. After all, we invited them right in.

Sitting here and watching the Masters golf tourney this Sunday afternoon, and thinking about how much my Dad used to like to watch this tournament. My Daddy was a sports fan, and golf was probably his favorite sport in which to participate.

He bought my first set of clubs for me when I was 13, an old set of second handed, left handed Kroydons. I got to where I loved that old set of clubs. It’s the only set of clubs I owned all the way through High School. No telling how many rounds of golf I got out of that 30 dollar set of clubs. I can’t count the good memories that came out of that old set of clubs. Great memories. I guess I probably played more rounds of golf with my Dad than with anybody else I know. Walked many a mile with those clubs slung over my shoulder at the golf course in Trion.

I can’t remember if I told him “thank you” for those old clubs, but he knew I was grateful. He couldn’t help but know, every time I hit a good shot, or made a putt…I could hear those “attaboys”

Tomorrow the “old man” would have been ninety, and even though it’s been almost eight years since he passed, I can still hear the echoes of those “attaboys” when I think about those rounds of golf we played.

My fear for our species is that we have come so far, so quickly, while taking so little caution to understand what we are becoming, that we no longer really know what we are. What do you think we are? Do you give yourself a label? What do you call yourself. There’s tons of adjectives out there in the English language. Which one do you use to describe yourself?

Sometimes we rely on our labels to identify our emotions for us. If we are religious, we’re supposed to be kind. If we’re an atheist and do not believe in any Gods, then that somehow makes us “less” as a person. If we are “liberal” if we are “conservative” what emotions are we supposed to carry? (No answer required, it’s a rhetorical question).

If we forget the basic emotions that make us human, or freely give them up, then we are lost. If we tie our emotions to a label, we are equally lost.

One of the biggest problems is that lying is an almost innate human trait…at least in our society. Kids learn to lie before they can learn to read or write. A lot of it is “our” fault. Our being the caregiver or raiser of any child. You are alone at the house with a three year old, and you walk into the kitchen and there’s spilled milk on the floor. “did you spill that milk’? you ask the 3 year old. In their mind they weigh out the options to your “yes or no” question. “No” they say. “well if you didn’t do it, who did”? you ask. “The dog” they say. Well…there’s a million to one chance that it could of been the dog, so…you let it go. The child just learned something. It’s sorta’ like: “have you been eating chalk”? “No…not me.” “Well….then why do you have it all around your mouth”?

Today is a day for change, and only WE can decide to make a change in ourselves. Nobody else is going to, or has the ability to change you unless you want it. Other people can affect you, but NOT change you. Nobody else has to know you have pledged yourself to change. They will know by your actions. We cannot remain the same and expect the world to get better!

Forget your label and just become a member of the human race. Live and let live. Don’t hate something or someone simply for who or what they are.

Start getting rid of politicians who do nothing but lie and foment hatred. Vote the out. Reject their rhetoric. Don’t let them decide who you are.

Banana Pudding Poke Cake

1 box yellow cake mix

2 sm. Boxes of banana pudding instant pudding

4 cups of milk

1 8oz tub of whipped topping thawed

2 bananas

20 vanilla wafers crushed

Prepare cake mix as directed on box for a 9×13 cake. Allow cake to cool for just a couple of minutes. Then, with a wooden spoon handle or some other similarly-sized object, begin poking holes in the cake.

You want the holes to be fairly big so the pudding has plenty of room to get down in the cake. Be sure

You poke right down to the bottom of the cake.

In a bowl whisk together instant pudding with 4 cups of milk. Stir until all lumps are gone. Let the pudding sit for just about 2 minutes, so it has just slightly begun to thicken but not fully set. It should still be easily pourable. Pour pudding over cake, taking care to get it into the holes as much as possible. Spread it all out and using the back of the spoon gently push pudding down into the holes.

Put it into the refrigerator to set and cool. Once the cake is completely cooled place sliced bananas on top of the pudding, then cover with whipped topping, last sprinkle on all your crushed wafers.

(I added the bananas to the recipe, you don’t have to use banana, I always have to do something to every recipe.)

“Make American Great Again” is a motto being used by a politician. But he’s not the only one who tries to intimate that previous times in the history of our country have been “greater” than now. My question is, when were those times?

I’ve read a lot of the history of this country. A lot of history that is hard to get, A lot of history books that are hard to get. A lot of different points of view. I minored in History in College (actually one of my two minors) I have had a more than passing interest in the history of our country. I can’t find a time in the history of America in which we were really “great” for every sector and factor of our country. For every race and creed. For every economic level of our country. So, I want to know, when they speak of making America “great again” what are they talking about?

Why not instead talk about making America great for everyone? Why not do it now? America is the best country in the world, even with all of it’s problems. Lets learn to work together for the good of every single person who is in this country regardless of what they believe. Let us solve the problems we have now, and not create more of them by building walls instead of bridges. We are better than this. We are better than what the politicians are telling us we are. How dare they insist that we are such bigots and haters!

Gravitate towards acceptance of everyone, the equality of everyone, the respect of everyone, the compassion towards everyone. Gravitate towards the opinion that everyone is entitled to HAVE an opinion, and even though it might be different than yours, don’t hate them for it. Negotiate, talk out problems in a calm and civil manner. No more of this bullshit yelling and calling people names and threatening to shoot them cause they are different from you.

I’m tired of it, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Bowers Family
— Read on korielizabethphotography.passgallery.com/-bowersfamily/gallery