Author: thegraymaniac

As I look at my watch to see what time it is, and then at the calendar on the wall to see the date I realize that there is nothing, nothing whatsoever that I can do about the 67 years and 11 months that have already passed by on these two instruments of measurement.

All I can do is pray that the time that is ahead which I have left is

spent being more helpful to others, more loving than I have been, more

giving than I think I should be, and most of all more appreciative of

all that I have been given, right down to the tiniest tick of that watch

that I have on my wrist……

Fireworks- From 2015

All the hate and the negativity we see and hear are like the swamp mud we have to crawl through to get to the sugary white sand at the ocean’s edge.

I lay here and think of ordinary things, like our two block walk to the festival last night with Eli and Rue. They both had on their sandals, and it was slow going …but…it was wonder time. I learned more about living life during that walk than I have in many single YEARS of my working career. What did I ever, ever do which was more important than those twenty minutes? I would conjecture….nothing. That was time which was more precious than gold. I find I have a lot of that lately….but never too much! I find far too often I appreciate it’s significance later instead of in the moment, much to my consternation.

And then I see people who are my contemporaries in this world, with whom I have had some issues during my life. I now feel that those differences meant very little, if anything at all in the larger scheme of things. I can shake their hands, or hug them and in all human honesty wish them well. I wish them good health and happiness. I can’t hold on to the past. Can you?

I find that my circle of priorities in caring, is beginning to grow smaller in its revolution. Things which used to seem SO important, now fall outside of my journey. And I know the orbit will continue to grow smaller and smaller still, as I age. More and more things will wane and become tinier in view, until one day I will retreat inside of myself.

My hope is that it will not be soon, but for all of us it will be too soon, no matter the date and time.

I watched those fireworks go off last night and I feel our lives are a parallel to them. We come into this world and light up the darkness, and interact with each other simultaneously like so many different rockets. We are different sounds and different colors and different levels of fury. We affect each other on so many different planes. But our time is short and we are soon just smoke and ash. What other’s will remember about us will be how pretty we were at our best and brightest.

What other’s will remember about us is if we cared, if we respected, if we loved, if we gave, if we listened, if we played, if we danced, if we sang, if we forgave, and if we looked with open eyed wonder at the priceless gifts surrounding us and said “thank you for this”

Thank you God for this. Thank you our creator for this. Thank our lucky stars for this.

As Peter Falk’s character “the Grandfather” told his grandson after he finished his reading of “The Princess Bride”, when the little boy asked if he would read it again he said: “As you wish”

Thank you for this. May all things be as you wish.

To Err is Human

“To err is human, to forgive is divine” so says poet Alexander Pope. Now this line from was a great big old huge poetical work of his that was LONG! There was another good one from this work too: “Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread” One more: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

Those three sayings have got to be in the top 100 of things people have said since 1701 (which is when Pope wrote them) they’ve pretty much become standards.

I’ve always thought that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Nowadays if you get on Facebook very often, you will see what I mean. As Forrest Gump said: “That’s about all I’ve got to say about that”

I know that I have “erred” pretty often in my life, and I have been forgiven. So somewhere out there are a lot of divine people running around. I’ve probably done a lot less forgiving than I should have. I’m trying to catch up, so give me time.

Finally, in this group of somewhat disparate quotes (all of these came from one LONG poem remember) is the one about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. I’m not sure about where exactly it is that an Angel would fear to tread. Angels have been described as being pretty courageous. Fools on the other hand are…well…foolish. Maybe it means that people should plan ahead and not take risks, lest they get themselves into a “pickle” Wait a minute…that’s another one. Dang.

My conclusion here is, that after reading only about one third of Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” for a college English lit class I once took, I am now glad that the internet age has ushered in the ability to Google the things I only once dreamed of being able to learn. I’ve learned a lot over the past 10 years or so. Actually probably a lot more than I learned in college. I read, and read, and read, and research…and sometimes I still cannot tell satire from reality. As a matter of fact, it is getting a hell of a lot harder to do so. I guess a little learning IS a dangerous thing after all.

A Philosophy to Live By…

You tell your children “I will always love you, there is nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you.” You tell them this before they know what you are saying, and you keep telling them this for as long as you can, so that no matter how old they get they cannot remember a time you have not told them.

If you do this the world will become a better place.

You then tell your family. “You are my family, and nothing you can ever do will keep me from loving you.” You tell them this because they are your family, and because it is true.

If you do this, the world will become a brighter place.

You tell your friends: “You are my friend and I love you, and nothing you could ever do will be so bad I cannot forgive it”

If you do this, the world will become more serene.

You tell your enemies that you care greatly for your children and your family. You tell them there is nothing you would not do to protect them,….nothing. You tell them that it is in their best interest to become friends.

If you do this the world is given a chance to draw breath and think.

I hope if we do this the world has a slim chance to heal wounds that have been open and bleeding for as long as there have been people.

I think, and I think…next month I will be 69. Seems young still, but unless I’m an exception to the rule…and my own genealogical roots, time is as they say, not quite on my side anymore.

Yet I believe I am a lucky human. I believe I was born and grew up in the greatest age ever in human history. I don’t have a bunch of statistics, or studies to back me up. Just a gut feeling, a bunch of wonderful memories and nagging nip of nostalgia that sometimes bites like a Bulldog. Certainly too, that nostalgia becomes more and more intense as the years go by.

The first scions of the electronic age, we baby boomers…the first TV generation. Say what you will…that one invention and its multiple non stop related spin offs have had more effect on us, and continue to do so, than anything imaginable when our parents undertook to win World War II.

The fundamental functions of the entire world have changed so dramatically in my short but long lifetime. I don’t know what lies ahead in the next 67 years. I see so many changes taking place in technology, in culture, and in the geology and climate of our world. I know things will be vastly different 67 years from now. I have some young grandchildren who I hope will still be walking this earth to see what is here, and I hope they are able to be agents for change for the better in this world.

I swear that I will hope and pray those years will bring more and better things to my children and their children.. I understand completely that every generation holds a certain fondness for their “time” I know though, even if I were offered with absolute certainty another 67 to go with what I already have, I would have to say no…just give me a few more…give me what I need to go along gently with the rest of the generation into which I was placed…that’ll be plenty for me, because I have dang sure enjoyed being a tiny cog in that juggernaut of change. I have relished this life and everything which goes with it, and I still do every single day, and I still will every single day that I draw a breath.

I love all of you people. Take care.

Little sneakers. I have laced up and tied on many, many a pair on my kids and grandchildren. I have heard them coming down the hallway in my house running as fast as they could go. I look around the corner with joy to see the beautiful faces of the tiny lives inside those sneakers. All different colors and kinds. “Papa, will you tie my shoe?” I tie them every time and tightly hug the child inside them. My Dad taught me to hold them and say: “I’ll put this arm around you, and then this arm around you and SQUEEZE!”

Those tiny little sneakers.

Yesterday I saw a photo of a pair of sneakers on a toddler, and it broke my heart. A photo I will never forget. The little toddler was laying dead on a beach in Turkey. Then his little body was in the arms of a soldier, his little sneakers hanging over his arms.

There are not enough words, nor room to write the words about this sorrow. The photos of beheadings are trivial next to this.

We may think…well this is a world away. Maybe, but the world is getting smaller every day, and this is humanity we are speaking about.

I don’t want to see these photos again, but I cannot look away. Something must be done. I have to do something no matter how small. I’m checking to see what I can do.

Those little sneakers will haunt me if I don’t.

Ordinary People

The people who get the accolades in death are those who are famous. This week there’s been a couple of those. Aretha Franklin was laid to rest in Detroit, amidst singing and celebration of her life. In a different setting, Senator John McCain was laid to rest at Annapolis in Maryland. Famous people both, a singer and a politician. Many people extolled their virtues, their relationships, and their accomplishments. In many cases this is rightfully done, this is righteously done. I think it was deserved in both these cases. These were indeed two good people. Not perfect, but good.

For all of those famous people who fight for the less famous, who dedicate themselves to helping those less fortunate then they are, it is deservedly done indeed. Let there be no doubt about it, that although working hard for things is a great quality of human beings, it does take fortune in these cases to be able to attain fame and riches. Sometimes it just boils down to being in the right….or wrong….place at the right time. Sometimes it’s just by grace.

I guess in some cases it could be called “infamy” instead of fame, and sometimes even those who are infamous get those accolades when they die. It’s certainly not deserved in those cases. Mostly, history makes up for it though, by telling a different tale.

Thus it always goes in our human culture, the rich and the famous…the kings and the popes, the leaders and the playwrights, are remembered with much ceremony, while those of us who are less rich and less famous go to our reward pretty much unceremoniously and sometimes even ingloriously. Sometimes too, even anonymously.

My Daddy was a Navy man too, like McCain. He served in World War II and Korea. He was on a destroyer at the end of World War II as a gunners mate. They were attacked by some of the last Japanese kamikaze planes, and took down a couple of them. Later on, Dad moved into the sweltering boiler room as a petty officer and served out the rest of WWII there.

They went on to sail into the China sea, and on down the Yellow river. Their destroyer saw action in the Korean War. He told me of poor people freezing to death on their rooftops, and of starving children begging for candy bars. He told me about man’s inhumanity to other men, and the lack of respect for life during that time.

He was on a ship which sailed into an area at Enewetak Atoll in 1948 and 1949, during which time the United States tested more than 43 nuclear bombs in that area….vaporizing the islet of Elugelab. My opinion is that my Dad, along with a lot of other service members at the time were exposed to a lot of radiation which affected them the rest of their lives. They didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was, and later on the government would deny it. My Dad never complained about anything to do with that, nor about any other thing which had to do with his service to his country. The only thing I ever heard him complain about was the food they served. Too many Navy beans.

He came home totally disillusioned with War in 1953, to his wife and his 3 year old son. He went to work in the cotton mill at Trion, and worked there most of the rest of his life…working his way up from a weaver and loom fixer, to the superintendent of the Weave shop.

When my Daddy died in 2010, at the age of 82…. he had a decent funeral with friends and family in attendance, and was buried with a Navy honor guard giving him a 21 gun salute. Seven guns times three volleys. Both holy numbers used one last time in the ceremony of his passing from this world. His eulogy are the words which remain in my mind about all of the things he had said and done. There was plenty of it there, because my Dad loved to talk. He hated spaces of time in which there was no conversation, and I’m afraid I inherited that from him.

My Mom died just a few months later in December of 2010 and her funeral was much smaller, with no guns to fire. It was close to Christmas, and I sang “Silent Night” at her ceremony. There were about 15 or 20 of us who went to the cemetery as she was buried. She deserved so much more because she was not an ordinary person….not to me. She deserved a 21 gun salute for just putting up with me all of my life, and most of hers. I regret she didn’t get it.

I remember a lot of the men, from my childhood who served in World War II and Korea, and not many of them talked a whole lot about it either. They just did their duty, came back home and made a life for themselves and their families. I remember their wonderful wives, who were the mothers of my friends and schoolmates. A lot of them made their lives by working in the Trion cotton mill in the little town by the same name in which I was born. That mill has been there since before the Civil war, and still stands and is operating til this day. Thousands of people have worked there, lived in the surrounding areas all their lives and died and are buried in the local cemeteries with just their names and the date of their birth and deaths etched into their stones to mark them being here on earth. A lot of them didn’t even have funerals, although many, many of them deserved eulogies beyond those of much more famous men of the world. They had done more good for humanity in some of the simple acts of kindness and contrition then most Kings and Queens had ever done, whether they were “kings of the political world” or “queens of soul”.

The majority of them were great people, hard workers and good family people. They read their bibles, took their kids to church and made gardens in their back yards, out of which their families partook of most of their food. They took their rifles and shotguns and hunted rabbit, squirrels and deer for meat, and took their cane poles and fishing rods to the rivers and lakes and brought home tons of bream, bass, carp, catfish and crappie. They took care of their families. Most of them loved their families. A very small percentage, perhaps, did not, but there are some reasons, if you will read on, you will find my own personal analysis.

One of the things that used to distress me when I was a child was the amount of mostly men of my Dad’s age and generation who, as my Mom would say, turned out to be drunkards. A lot of these men were men who had gone off to war. I used to look down on some of them…we had one guy who lived two doors down from us who stayed drunk most of the time. It wasn’t until later in my life that I found out he’d been on the front line in Germany fighting. I realized how small minded I had been, or at least how uninformed I was about the reasons for all that drinking. I think a lot of men who went to war over the centuries came back home and had to turn to drink in order to be able to stand the pain of what they had seen and done. It used to be called “shell shock” Nowadays they have another name for it: PTSD. Back then, and further back in history there wasn’t any such diagnosis.

Just drunkards and malcontents.

But even still, most of these men managed to take care of their families, although there were certainly some scars left on children and spouses. They were just ordinary people. I suppose some of them had funerals in funeral homes and such. Probably had family and a few friends and a preacher, like we did with my Mom. No memorials in the big cathedrals though, because there were no famous men among them, and no rich men….at least very few. These people also deserved words of sympathy and respect.

I wish I’d given all of the “ordinary” people more respect than I did. I wish I could go back and apologize for what many of them had to go through. Acts of tiny heroism which were never recognized, but which needed to be, and still needs to be.

All of the ordinary people living their ordinary lives who kept, and still keep, the wheels of society turning. Without them….these poor to lower middle class citizens of this country, there would not be, nor will their continue to be, a society left which can even afford to have a famous singer, or pay attention to a war hero turned politician.

But, as I say…that’s the way life happens isn’t it.

In this day and age the semi famous and infamous can have their 15 seconds of fame, due to television and social media, where in the past things had to be consigned to the history books, novels, newspapers and magazines.

Too many times in our day and age the need to be “famous” comes out as a compulsion to explode in a final frenzy of terrible and heinous acts. School shootings, mass murders, and other savage acts are done only in order to get attention. That seems to be sort of where we have arrived in this day and age.

I sincerely hope our future generations can see the worth in all people, no matter their station in life, and can learn to appreciate who they are and what they are, letting each of us live and let live….without impunity.

Doctor, doctor give me the news

I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you….

I understand that the practice of medicine has changed. Its changed greatly especially over the past 25 years. There is SO much specialization now. If you have a problem with your fingers…you can’t see a Dr. who specializes in shoulders. If you have a hip problem, like my wife has…you can’t see a Doctor who only sees people for knees. (we found that out this past week) There are so very few physicians who have “private practices” anymore. Most of them are “captives” of huge medical groups. They work for these groups just like a regular person works for a “boss” in the mill. The difference is the pay I suppose. Things change.

Back when I was a kid there were three Doctor’s practicing medicine in Trion. They all had offices at the old hospital. The one I went to was “Ol’ Doc Clemens” I remember him as a larger than life figure. A “big” man in the sense of size…more large in the middle than he was tall and big boned. He was a chain smoker and more than likely had a cigarette in his mouth when you walked in his office. The Doctor that was portrayed in the movie Forrest Gump was almost an exact double for Dr. Clemens as I remember him. A little gruff and grumpy at times, but he knew your name and was true to the title “General Practitioner” He treated anybody for anything. It would have to have been an extreme problem that would have sent you to a “specialist” in those days. They were few and far between, and if the Doctor sent you to one of them, your relatives might have been wise to start consulting the funeral home. Ol’ Doc Clemens didn’t believe too much in “specialists”

I went to him for everything from the mumps, to stitches, to infections, to severe colds, to severe knee problems.

I ruptured a ligament in my right knee when I was 14, swinging too hard at a baseball. Doc Clemens treated me for that. I ended up in the hospital for close to a week with my knee in traction. After that, it was a huge and heavy cast for 6 weeks. Doc Clemens recommended after I got my cast off, that I start walking to exercise it and that was when I started playing golf.

I remember we always loved to go by his house for Halloween every year. He didn’t give us kids that he knew a piece of candy. We got ice cream cones one year, candied apples another year. He lived there on the end of Sunset Lane by himself. I think his wife had passed away some years earlier…but I’m not sure. My memory is a little fuzzy in that area. All I know is that he was an unusual man. A very compassionate man.

The other two Doctors who were there in the 50’s were Dr. Little, and Dr. Hyden. They were both good men also. Dr. Hyden was the doctor who “birthed” me, and also the doctor who saved my brother’s life with an unusual blood transfusion treatment for a blood infection back when he was a little kid. Those Doctors were icons of the community. When the little hospital closed and these three Doctors stopped practicing, the old hospital sat there for quite a few years empty until Dr. Gary Smith had the front part renovated and he had his private practice there for many years. Dr. Smith was another Dr. who worked hard, for many long hours to benefit this community.

Now, I’m not commenting on what should be done about the state of medicine in this country today. I really am not writing this in order to get any political opinions about what should or should not happen to improve things. I just think back, and kind of long for the days when your Doctor knew your name, your family, and actually cared about getting you well more than he or she cared about how much money they were going to get for seeing you. They cared about all the parts of your body, and they knew what I know about the human body:

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,

The leg bone connected to the knee bone,

The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,

The thigh bone connected to the back bone,

The back bone connected to the neck bone,

The neck bone connected to the head bone,

Oh, hear the word of the Lord!

I think a lot about that old song by Cher, if I COULD turn back time, what would I do?

I think of the week of September 2nd……..September 4th, 1970

I remember sitting down in the edge of the grass, with my feet out on the chert rock lined road at the old Trion cemetery. I think somewhere there’s a picture….I don’t know where. There are so, so very few from that week.

Looking back now forty nine years later, I don’t see anything different that could have been done. I believe things happen as they happen, and even if human technology were to develop a time machine so that a person could go back in time, one has to wonder if tampering with what has already come and gone would even be remotely a good idea.

If you change one heartbeat, if you save one heartbeat….would it be in exchange for another?

When you come back from your time travel, all of your photo albums would have different scenes….different people would be in them. Unfamiliar scenes, unknown things!

Familiar and deep love might be gone… and be replaced by a different version of love.

So even with the sorrow which runs through this coming week every year now…

knowing what I know, and having what I have, I could not and would not go back and take a chance on rearranging history.

Things happen as they happen and there is a reason for everything. Randomness, or planned to the infinitesimal, it doesn’t make any difference, it’s in the books. It is in changeable.

Somewhere, out there in the Universe, or here in the Universe I believe her spirit waits for me. That’s enough to know, and to hold onto. At least on most days.

Some days you go with the old ways, sometimes with the new.

I am reminded today that I do not know the real truth of anything. We as humans believe what we believe based on the use of our senses, which are sadly lacking even compared to lesser species of the animal world. We take pride in our knowledge, which is derived from what we can perceive from our tiny dust speck of a planet in our tiny section of the Universe.

I of all people do not stand in any particular position of knowledge, as it relates to anything any other human wishes to comfort themselves in believing. For all I know, we may each have different outcomes awaiting us, based on what we sincerely believe is going to happen. I have to therefore caution any and all to not cast dispersion on the true beliefs of others, even if they are far different from your own. My Daddy used to say in his wisdom, “as long as it’s not hurtin’ nobody, let ’em believe what they want…” Thanks for that one Dad.