Month: August 2023

Fall is coming.

The days of Summer are numbered. The only thing left in the garden is Okra and a few scraggly tomatoes growing up too high for the bugs to get. The humidity is so bad that when I took my camera from the inside to the outside yesterday, I had to wipe the fog off the lens for twenty minutes before I could take a picture. You can’t walk around the neighborhood without having to wring a quart of sweat out of your T-shirt when you get back. So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the humidity and the bugs.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2022? Usually the first frost is very close to my birthday…which is October 21, but I definitely would not mind a good hard, white hoar frost much sooner. I love them. I love the crisp, snapping, hot Apple cider, make a pot of chili days, which start out in the mornings with a white icy ground and ease up into the mid 60’s by afternoon, with a bright warming Autumn sun in the sky.

I love those days. The ones where you wear a sweatshirt but not a coat, and you see the kids out tossing around a football. The ones where the wind kicks up little whirlwinds of red, orange, brown and yellow leaves. The smell of somebody off somewhere in the distance burning a pile of those same dry leaves. The sunsets which are bright and clear with a few streaks of purple… oh how sweet and precious are those days. More valuable to me than piles of gold or diamonds. Especially when they are populated with my loved ones.

I want to be even more aware of the wonderful days of Fall this year. I want to notice how blazing Orange the pumpkins are at Halloween, and how wonderful my wife’s Thanksgiving dressing smells and tastes. And then I want to see the little one’s eyes light up at Christmas when they tear into their gifts. I want to hug my new grandchildren, and smell the fresh newness of their lives. I want to see things through their eyes. Especially the littlest of the group.

I never took the days of Autumn for granted. Even as a child I knew they were something special. The first poem I ever wrote was about the beauty of a special Fall day. The first song I played on my guitar and sang to was “Autumn Leaves” ” ….the falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…”

And so I hope for an early fall, an idyllic fall, a peaceful fall, a loving fall, a prosperous fall and a memorable fall. Not just for myself, but for all of us who need one right now so very badly. For those of us who have already seen more of them than we will ever see in the years ahead. Seventy two is looming for me in October……

A taste of simplicity, a smell of memory, a sight of loveliness, a sound of familiarity and the feel of hope…for the future of all mankind. An Autumn of change..and not just in the weather.

I wrote this on this day last year, before the pandemic and all of the recent Civil strife. I publish it again, as I find it may still pertain to the times we are in….as well as an addendum. Feel free to scroll by if you want.

The Chosen One

I walked out the back door this morning , looked at the sky with my eyes turned up and thought: “I am the chosen one”

I was chosen to live in the midst of the world’s beauty. But, I am responsible for helping to take care of it.

I was chosen to be the Father of my children and the grandfather to their children. But, I was and am responsible for helping to show them the right way to live. To be caring and empathetic. To be respectful and helpful.

I was chosen to help my neighbors, to love my neighbors. I have had to teach myself not to hate anyone, and it has been and will continue to be difficult. I choose to try and keep on trying, and to pray for forgiveness when I fail.

I was chosen to write about many things, and to record the world around me. I was chosen to share these things…right, wrong, black, white or in shades of gray. It is my calling. It is my obsession and many times it is my curse. It’s been a lifetime path.

I am king of nothing except hope. I am prince of nothing but despair. A harbinger of doom, but a prophet for survival.

I live my days and nights in constant thought about how to change evil to good. I despair sometimes at how great the battle is, and is becoming. Yet I know that it is not totally my responsibility because I am the savior of naught, not even my own fate.

Afterthought:

People are going to believe what they believe. I believe in what I think is right, and it’s vastly different than what many others believe. I don’t believe the path we are currently on will end well, but many do. Even though there’s a vast difference in our beliefs, most will still be here in the short term. I think that neither group can afford to simply write off the other. If that happens we will always be a divided and hostile country. I don’t have the “Golden arrow” answer. What I’m hoping for is that something or someone can prevail in a compromise which relieves some of the ill will from both sides. I respect most opinions, except the extreme and the conspiracy theorists, and hope we can all ride this spaceship we are on a few more years together and hope something paradigm changing happens.

Our most precious commodity, our gift, our one and only most important currency we humans have to spend, is our time. Our minutes are worth more than gold, and our days more than diamonds. All of the physical things we own amount to nothing if we have no time. They will sit until the dust covers them, and eventually will be reclaimed by nature. The time we are allowed here on Earth is all we will ever have. When we die and our time ends, our lives will eventually be as shadows in the memories of those who are left behind.

Our words and actions during our time here, are the only real manifestations of our physical existence here, and how those words and deeds affect other people is our only legacy. We need to think about that before we speak….think about it before we act. What do you want your legacy to be? One of hateful words and actions, or one of empathy and love?

1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.

‘THESE DREAMS GO ONE WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES”

(with apologies to “Heart”)

Our brains are extremely complex organisms, which are still largely unexplored in many areas. One area that intrigues me is the subconscious or unconscious thought process which takes place when we sleep. I guess most people call it “dreaming” There are dreams, and then there are DREAMS. I think they take many different forms and possibilities.

I surely wish I could remember everything I had ever dreamed. Sort of like having a little “hard drive” built in to my brain where I could push the “save” button every time I start to go to sleep. I also wish that I could dream some of the things I WANT to dream about. I wish we could dictate to our brains the “script” of what we want to start out with in our dreams, and let them go forward from there. One thing I really wish I could dream about is running.

I have been exercising quite a lot lately. I started about 5 weeks ago and I have worked my way up to 45 minutes on the treadmill at 3.1 mph and an elevation of 1.0 I know that’s not much for most people, but for someone who’s had two heart attacks, 4 bypasses and one stent….it ain’t bad. I still have to be careful and not let my heart rate get above a certain point, so there is one treadmill that I always use which has a really good heart monitor. So, I’m walking pretty quickly but not running.

I would just love to be able to run across the country, sort of like Forrest Gump did. Running on and on and seeing things that I have never seen before. Taking the time to appreciate things which I have never appreciated before. Chances are slim of me ever running again in real life. Not for very long anyway.

I have started sleeping better since I have been exercising, but I used to lay awake for hours previously.

My wife and I always listen to music at night, and a few weeks ago as I was trying very hard to sleep, I began to actually see the musical notes in my mind. I was listening to Enya I think, and on all of the notes I saw silver and gold patterns in my head. The chords were like sunbursts and moon glow. The voice of the singers, which was angelic in nature, flowed through my mind like a deep blue river, rushing towards the ocean. No, I was NOT on anything! This was dreaming, and it was the strangest and most wonderful dreaming I can remember in quite a long, long time. I wasn’t deep asleep; I was just sort of in a land somewhere far enough away from reality for things to be ecstatically good. I am not sure that I will ever get a repeat of the “unreal” concert. I didn’t want to “wake up” I finally snapped out of that vision…even though I could have stayed in it for a long, long time.

On a very rare occasion, I dream of times past and of people who are now gone from this life. You would think this might be a more common type of dream. But, for me at least, it is very uncommon. I think maybe you have more and more of the dreams like this as you get older, because more of the people you have loved and known in your life start to leave. I dream of my Grandmother occasionally, most of the time in the kitchen cooking! I can still smell the biscuits cooking, and in the back of my mind wish I had gotten her to teach me how to make them! My mind yearns for a trip back. For just one more day, as Mitch Albom has so sweetly expressed in one of his books. One more day to say things that should have said, but which I always thought I would have time to say.

I used to help my Grandma sometimes and it was during this period of interaction that I learned a great deal about here philosophy of life. A lot of hard work mainly, but a lot of love for life too. When she had here 100th birthday, I asked her if she had it to go over again what one thing would she do or not do. She told me simply “Worry less, because worry never did change nothing!” It still doesn’t Grandma, it still doesn’t! Since Grandma died…Dad and Mom have gone on also, and occasionally I still see them in my dreams.

It’s just a shame that we can’t step into these kinds of dreams anytime we want to, and visit with our loved ones who are no longer with us. It’s also a shame that we don’t realize that some of the loved ones who are still with us now, may soon be a memory. We should tell THEM the things we need to, before it’s too late, and we can only visit them every once in a while in our dreams.

I really haven’t had any BAD dreams recently. Nothing which I would call a nightmare, or anything even resembling a bad dream. My granddaughter who is now a High School Junior, used to have them. Occasionally when she was little and would spend the night, my wife and I would wake up with her standing next to the bed: “I had a bad dreams…” she would say sleepily as she climbed into the solace and comfort of our bed. “It will be OK” I mumbled. And, I knew it would. Most of the dreams we have, we never remember, and I was pretty sure she would not remember her bad dreams by the time she woke up in the morning.

Last night I was awake until 1 am in the morning, and I was wishing so badly I could sleep. I sneakily turned my Kindle fire onto Netflix and pulled up “Forrest Gump” and fast forwarded to the point where he was running out and back across America. By the time he said “Just like that, my running days were over…” I nodded off slowly and slept dreamlessly through the night.