Month: September 2025

I love the sunlight coming from the West. I’m not really totally sure of the reasons. It could be that the bedroom window in my parent’s house on 9th Street was facing the West. A lot of times as a kid, I’d come home from school and lay on my bed to do my homework. Sometimes I’d drift off to sleep, with the soft low light seeping in through that window, like some syrupy sleep potion. I’d dream sweet dreams about the future, about love, about accomplishments. Wonderful dreams, none of which I now can remember. Fall naps on school days. Winter naps on weekends. Summer was for fun, so there was no time for naps then.

Fall sunshine was my favorite. After all the leaves had fallen. I remember being able to look out that high window by standing up on my mattress. I loved to watch the cool winds of Autumn blow through the giant Magnolia tree that grew just outside, and watch those huge brown leaves tumble. I loved those solitary minutes that I was able to steal, as the Western sun light filtered in through that window.

At at our old house on Elm street, our living room had one window which faced West. I used to sit in my recliner many days, especially after 2011 and doze off in the evenings and daydream. In the Fall when the sunshine was “just right” it gave me a feeling of comfort and sometimes even euphoria to have the sweet sunshine lull me. I know, it sounds crazy…but it’s true. It could have been the lingering after effects of a long time on the heart-lung machine the year before. I like to think instead, it was something magical

It never happened to me while we lived in Mom and Dad’s old house on 7th street… from 2009 to 2011. The windows just weren’t in the right position. Something didn’t feel quite the same. I did take quite a few naps with baby Rue and baby Eli there though…..just like I’ve napped with Evie and Ellie in the ensuing years.

Since we moved from the old house to our place here in Ringgold, I haven’t had as many episodes of the “western light daydreaming” as I used to. We’ve certainly got plenty of light coming from the West though. We’ve got four big windows and a set of French doors! It could be light overload sometimes! Especially during the late Fall through early spring, when the leaves are off the trees.

It’s a gorgeous Western view from here though. Lookout Mountain looms just to the right as I walk out our door, and I’ve photographed many a wondrous sunset going down over the mountain. I’ve made pictures of yellow and orange full moons sinking into the eastern Alabama farmlands. I’ve marveled at the hue and color with which nature paints the heavens. What a privilege to be alive and be on this tiny planet on the edge of the Milky Way, in amongst billions of other solar systems. I don’t question why we are here, I just revel in it!

Just last weekend, I was sitting on the couch in our living room and it was late afternoon. It had been a tiring week, and as the light crept in through the closed shades, I slipped off briefly into that nether world between sleep and wakefulness, where the mind makes all things, present, past and future possible. I stayed there for only the briefest minute, but it was enough so that I knew I still could. I still could be in that precious space where time stands still.

I really hope for another decade or so here in this wondrous world. I hope if I get too old or infirm to let anybody know what I want or need, somebody will remember this and roll me over to the window in the West so I can see and feel the light shine in, and perhaps eventually find my way home.

Missing Pieces- a poem by Larry Bowers

Conservative Conservationist. No such thing?

Compassionate CEO. Luigi sings.

Underpaid Professional Athlete? Ha, ha ha!

Overpaid Teacher. La, La La.

Honest Politicians? They all died.

Current Space Missions, Russian Rides?

Starving humans, Gaza cries.

Secret Programs, Supernatural Pograms.

Global Warming, Yellowstone Warning.

Nutritious Fast Food, Mother Earth News.

Worship of Money, Bees and no Honey.

Drones with a Mission, Exploding weapons.

Religious pox, The Pope’s white Sox.

Patriarchal homicides, Handmaiden tale cries.

9 billion people sleeping, Mars rover slowly creeping.

All is said. Little is done. Solar Power from the sun.

Billionaires rule today, Billionaires rue the day.

The puzzle is on the table, but pieces are missing.

How can a person be two things at one time? Can a person be a dunce and a genius simultaneously?

How is it that a person who was considered so infallible that he was allowed to come in with unfettered power, gather all of our information, cut jobs Willy nilly through every department of government….including cutting an agency that has resulted in the deaths of thousands in Africa….was such a genius and doing such great and glorious things but is now on the outs?

Is it because he and some other people don’t agree on how to spend our money. Or more accurately, how much more debt to put our country into and how quickly to do it. Two trillion of debt over 10 years in order to cut taxes primarily for the rich and super rich…is my understanding. Cutting Medicaid via mandatory work /volunteer guidelines. Even MTG said she wouldn’t have voted for the BBB, if she’d read it closer and saw that it took away States rights to control AI for 10 years! I have to admit, this is the first time I agree with her, and wish she’d have read the entire bill before she voted yes, cause it wouldn’t have passed if she’d voted no.

Anyway Emusk called the BBB an abomination….which is a word they sometimes use for certain people, so he does not like it. He says we will never be doing anything in the future but paying interest.

That’s not good either for my little ones.

I’m no genius, I’m probably a dunce….but I just can’t make sense of it all.

I can’t understand either how come Harvard is catching so much flak? Columbia U. too.

Can’t understand why PBS and NPR are being defunded, or how come the National Weather Service has been degraded right before Hurricane Season (that the head of FEMA never heard of)

As a matter of fact, there’s plenty of other stuff to talk about that I ain’t got time to go into now.

Old Emusk paid out 270 million or so to help our current Admin (yesterday’s Wordle word btw) get elected. Probably made the difference. I guess he thinks he shoulda got more for his money. I think he should have just kept it and put it in Treasury bonds. That would have helped us more than giving it away to Superpacs. I swear that “Citizens United” thing old Scalia hung on us was a bad, bad decision.

Oh well, I’ve rambled on way too much on politics this morning. Bye bye for the day.

Warning: political post. Scroll by if you don’t want to read it.

I saw where the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor statistics because he didn’t agree with her numbers. He agree with them while they were in his favor though. He basically tries to slant and obfuscate everything that doesn’t paint him in a positive light. As Mary Chaplin Carpenter once said in her song “I Feel Lucky”: “The stars might lie, but the numbers never do”

I’d point out a rebuttal for his need to obfuscate. This morning three businesses in Tennessee closed, putting almost 1000 people out of jobs: Perdue Farms in Monterey, Monaghan Foods in Dickson and Prarie Farms in Gallatin. These come on the heels of several other plants closing in Tennessee earlier this year in the automotive industry. All this while Tennessee governor Bill Lee is spending millions unnecessarily calling out the Tennessee national guard to help ICE. He wouldn’t take federal money earlier this year to help feed hungry kids this summer though.

I personally thought that the immigration enforcement program was going to rid the country of convicted criminals, and I saw no problem with that, but arresting and deporting people who are working jobs and paying taxes? I saw a post from a contractor in Alabama who can’t build because he depended on immigrant workers to fill his work force.

I have to mention also, the ridiculous situation in Texas, where their governor Abbott is trying to gerrymander the state map to give Trump his request for more seats in Congress. He’s threatening to send the FBI out to arrest democratic legislators who have left the state. All this will do is force democratic states to reciprocate…..and there we will go, in a cycle of tit versus tat, none of which will benefit the American people.

I could go on, but I’ll save it for later.

8/18/24 9:27pm

As long as life seems to continue in a somewhat “normal” manner, then people will continue to believe things are normal.

Everyday, people still go to work, kids go to school and parishioners still attend churches. Banks are still open, the post office delivers mail, and our electricity and natural gas are still on. Gasoline is still coming out of pumps, the grocery stores still have food. The hospitals are still taking patients, and the drug stores are still filling prescriptions.
Police are still patrolling the streets, firemen responding to fires. Everything is still somewhat normal.

But…little signs are starting to creep in, that our current normal will soon be a thing of the past.

People’s attitudes are different. There’s more selfishness than selflessness. Education is on the wane. Almost every state is providing less funding for schools now than before 2008. Wage growth is stagnant. Even though unemployment is below 4%, wages are lower than before 2008. Why? Companies simply don’t….want…to give raises. There’s no longer a middle class, there’s workers and there’s owners.
Jobs are there, but you may have to work two.

Religion is on the decline. The percentage of money given by religious organizations to the needy is down about 50% since 1990.

Most telling is the almost eery 50/50 division of cultural and political attitudes. Most distressing is the “our side vs your side” mentality, with little to no room for discussion or compromise. The notion that people with different beliefs cannot even have a civil discussion is unbelievable. Yet, when I read comments on some posts, many days I see statements that go beyond anything I have seen in anger, threats of violence, dirty and profane language….vulgarity beyond belief. Things that you surely think would be taboo. Yet they are not.

So, things are not normal….even though they may seem that they are. I have no answers for how to steer the ship back towards a more even keel. I wish I did.

I have come close over the past decade or so to hating people. I will tell you up front, right here…that I do not hate anyone. It’s been very tasking to keep it out of my mind and my heart. It’s difficult. I very much dislike the actions, words, and philosophies of some people though. Especially, as I know you’re aware , towards political figures. Not just those you’d think either.

I’ve never, ever expressed any hatred towards any family member or friend. I never will. I love my family with all my heart. I love the friends I grew up with too, although some look in the other direction when I walk by, or turn and walk in the opposite direction. Some won’t speak. That’s ok, that’s their decision. If there is anyone who feels like I am holding something against them, all you have to do is pick up your phone and call me. In this day and age, we don’t do that enough anymore. We really should. A text is ok, but the sound of a voice is better.

I’ve said all of that to get to here. I was thinking yesterday about hate and a sentence in Senator Alan Simpson’s eulogy at the memorial service for George H.W. Bush came to my mind. He said: “George never hated anyone, because he knew that hatred corrupts the vessel in which it is carried”

I think we have leaders in our world who are filled with hatred…with rage probably too. Some would call it evil, but that’s a human judgement. That hatred they hold has corrupted their “vessel” to the point where it cannot hold any good. Any good that goes into that vessel becomes corrupted and mixed with the hatred. It is no longer good. Its spit back out with contempt.

Now, I know that some religions speak to forgiveness for sin if it is sincerely requested, but I don’t believe a person who has constantly harbored hate would ever even ask for any forgiveness…not sincerely anyway. I also don’t think some things can ever be forgiven, such as the taking of innocent life.
So, no good can come from the things these people do. Hate has corrupted them to the point of no return.

I wish every day that I knew which direction to go. I think of MLK sayings “I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” I believe love will win out in the end, and I use it when I can, but in the meantime I intend to continue to speak out against things I think are wrong. Harming innocent people, unrighteousness, lies, things which hurt elderly people, things which harm our planet, things which are wrong!

If I say or do things with which you don’t agree, then just know I do not do it in hatred. I don’t won’t to corrupt my vessel anymore.