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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.

There isn’t any internal textual basis to believe that Paul is the next great prophet after Jesus who came to fix and extend what was missing in the Gospel message. The idea that Paul’s writings are the prophetic “Word of God” is a sham that only congeals around the council of Nicea choosing his writings as canon in order to establish the official state religion under Constantine. Paul’s failures as a recovering moralist were the doorway to provide the authoritarian structure that became the Christian religion in spite of Jesus’ warnings against it. The letter to the Romans is interesting only as a historical reference–it indicates what Paul as a learned man, interested in how to apply Jesus’ teachings to a broader community,. understood about the Gospel through the stories he heard from others. It is a commentary subject to his biases and cultural context. Jesus himself did not add any new rules and regulations but rather pointed to the relational intent of the Law–to love one another. So looking to Paul to add more rules only shows ignorance of the Gospel and promotes the idea that Paul’s teachings supplant Jesus’ in creating a new rule book for living.

I had a neighbor back in the 70’s in Athens, Georgia. He was a Marine sniper. He had photos taken of him with almost every kill he made (which were mostly non combat situations) while he was in Viet Nam. He also had photos of him posing with a white tiger he had killed, and several regular Bengal tigers. Also, several Elephants. He ranged from Vietnam into Thailand. He had no remorse about killing anyone, man, woman or child. Later on, in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I had a man working for me at the mattress factory in Rome who served as an officer in the Army in Vietnam. His photo album was even more horrific. It showed him and his company with huge piles of bodies of Vietcong (supposedly) men, women, children….they were all posing with the bodies and smiling. They were shown sitting on mounds of bodies eating their meals. He had photos of his men desecrating several bodies. These photos were souvenirs of his service. I know that every soldier who serves in war, who served in war was not like these two men, but in my experience many were. When I hear some veterans from that war speak of how they were treated when they returned to American…spit on? Cursed? I would like to defend them and tell them I appreciate their service. Then, I think back to the real photos that these two men showed me. If I came in contact with two men who did these types of things in my everyday life, how many more were out there who did these types of things…..or worse. It makes it hard for me to defend war of any kind when I consider the things these men did.

I have done so many things wrong in my life. I have made so many mistakes. I’ve had my share of luck though, and I’ve made some good choices.

Fifty years ago, I had the best luck of my life when as an 18 year old boy I got married to a young girl named Paula Kay Neurauter. We were kids. Two naive people who had met scarcely six months earlier in college and fell in love. Two people who needed each other…much more than we ever knew at the time. Two people who didn’t know what marriage really meant but who went boldly into it full speed ahead.

Two people who didn’t know that we’d be parents who knew very little about parenting, with kids who practically grew up with us.

Two people who didn’t know we’d be grandparents very early in life, that we’d be fellow employees at the same company for a decade.

Two people who are friends.

Two people who didn’t know fifty years would pass by like a blur  That time would relentlessly carry us past the wonderful, happy times, and the sad mournful times at the same speed.  Time which makes long days, and short years  From 18 to 68 in a hurry!

I want my wife to know there’s never been anyone for me but her.  Through all she’s had to put up with, through everything we’ve shared both good and bad, she’s always stood by me.

I was thinking back just the other day about 1969….

A lot of things happened that year. The country was still in turmoil from what was probably one of the most historic years in its History in 1968. MLK and Robert Kennedy had died from assassins bullets that year. The war in Vietnam continued to escalate….1969 was much the same.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono got married on May 31, and then a few weeks later recorded “Give Peace a Chance” Teddy Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island…and his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died.
Charles Manson and his gang went on their “Helter-Skelter” killing spree. Manson’s followers thought him to be Jesus Christ.
Nixon was sworn in as President of the Unites States back in January…and continued to carpet bomb the Vietnamese. The Berkely riots took place in California….and in November a quarter of a million people staged a peaceful protest of the war in Washington D.C.
There was that little concert in New York that grew and grew, and became an iconic symbol of a generation. I think they called it Woodstock.
Mankind landed on the moon, and Neal Armstrong became the first human to set foot there…quite an accomplishment.
It was quite a year for me personally too. I continued to attend West Georgia College and just before the holiday break for Christmas I met a girl.
We dated the rest of the year. Went to the student center and played a lot cards together. Went to see some movies. We rode around with our friends Don Hunter and Karen Seay in Don’s old Dodge. We walked, we talked…and we fell in love.
When Paula told me sometime that spring that her parents were going to move to California, we decided that Paula would stay here in Georgia with me….permanently.
My little Yankee girl became my wife on June 14 of that year and 50 years later…she’s still here, putting up with me! (which takes an enormous amount of patience) She’s become a Southerner now after all those years. We’ve had four children and a passle of grandchildren. We’ve lived through a lot of things. Good things and some bad things. Ups and downs. We were kid’s back then in 1969. We really probably had no business getting married. We sure didn’t know anything! We’ve learned a lot in the last 50 years. I hope we have many more in which to learn.
I love you Sweetie! Happy Anniversary tomorrow!

A friend posted wondering how we had gone from a society where you could go from being so trusting as to leave home without locking your doors, to having bars on your doors and windows. I commented that I thought it was partially due to the huge change in our technology -vs- our cultural inability to deal with these changes.

We have gone from simplicity to complexity so quickly, from the need for fewer possessions, to the want for many possessions so rapidly, that our society isn’t able to deal with it. And if you can’t earn it, or don’t have the money, then just steal what you need.

Our grandparents used to work in the fields from dawn til dusk, then eat supper, read the bible and go to bed at dark. They had just a few pieces of furniture, a few garments, and grew or raised their own food. They didn’t know they needed much else. Grandpa loved his radio…that is until he got a television.

We are now convinced that unless we have the latest and greatest gadgets, we are not being served. We are falling behind everyone else. Oh….the pressure to keep up. The money it takes to keep up. The anxiety which is felt trying to keep up. The need to fill every waking second with some type of action or activity. Just..as..I..am..now…doing.

As I said, I remember when a laptop was the place where your baby laid their head. Where do we go from here??

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 mosquitoes are so bad that they looked like a veritable cloud around my poor little dog when she went outside this evening. You can’t walk around town without slathering yourself in a ton of “off” So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the mosquitoes.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2014. 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.

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 hold my new granddaughter, and smell the fresh newness of her life.

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.

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.