Writing for Sanity's Sake

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

Banjo Man

Sometimes the most beautiful things in the world are never heard or seen by other humans. There are rare times, when you stumble across them accidentally and they are so fleeting and unique that they can never be replicated.

I have written many times about my Grandfather, and how as a child I used to sit on the porch of his old house and watch and listen as he played his banjo. It’s one of my best memories.

The other day, one day this week, I was walking my regular route through town. It takes me past one of the town’s unusual resident’s house. He’s a man a little older than me who lives up on the hill behind the ballpark. He’s different. I was rounding the curve in the hill when I heard it…the banjo playing. But it was not just ANY old banjo playing. This was the Flat and Scruggs kind of banjo playing. This was blue grass roots. This was great playing. This playing made the leaves swirl in little circles in the air, and the needles of the pines lean in closer to hear.

At first I thought it was a professional recording, but then realized it was coming from the little white house on the hill with the name “Earp” on the mailbox. It was somebody playing live. Probably…most probably it was V.W. Earp, that different little man who lives there alone. I stopped there and eavesdropped on this playing. I don’t know what song it was. It didn’t matter. It was heavenly. Complicated, fast. The type of playing you wish you could do if you were a pro. I moved on reluctantly after five minutes, finishing my walk. I shook my head in wonder at the savant like talent of this man.

I had seen some of the other things he had done in the past. My good trade day friend, one of the Webb twins, (I can’t remember if it was Ronald or Donald) showed me a design that V.W. had drawn. It was a complicated and quite logical drawing of how to stop the flooding on the Chattooga River. I guess V.W. had given this to him some time back. It looked like something that Leonardo da Vinci might have done. It was a crude, but at the same time a simple and brilliant plan. Of course, nobody took it seriously. I wonder if it would have worked.

I think the Webb boys have a weekly “shack picking and playing” session somewhere, (don’t know for sure…never been invited to come!) I hope V.W. shows up there sometimes. It would be a shame for nobody else to ever hear that gorgeous music. I wonder if he has many friends. I see him out and about his house with his little white dog following him and I throw up my hand and say “hey” I’ve run into him at the local grocery store and talked with him for a few minutes at a time. Conversations which are strange and disjointed, but at the same time very interesting.

I marvel at people like this. I knew Mr. Earp was an unusual man. I grew up around him and his brother and I knew his father, but I can’t begin to comprehend this person. This outlandish “character” who on the outside is so incomprehensible to “normal” people, but who on the inside is such a talent and has such a tremendous intellect. A person who because of his eccentricities has a problem finding outlets for his talents, which will fit nicely into our societal norms. If you act a little different no matter if you cannot help it, it’s hard for people to take you seriously sometimes. There’s no doubt about it. Nowadays in schools perhaps things would develop differently. Back in our day in school… There just weren’t things available.

I’m glad I know this man and I’m glad I took that five minutes to listen to his music. I will always remember it.

I held up my hands today and looked at the back of them. My skin is thinning and parchment like, with blue veins and smaller red arteries running just under the surface. Looks all the world to me, like some odd and bizarre road map, minus the numbers. I guess I could consider these old hands a road map of my life for sure.

They have been with me on the road, as I have traveled at the very least over half a million miles in a car over the past thirty years.

They have been with me holding first three children and then nine grandchildren since 1972. For the most part they were comforting, with a few detours for some parenting corrections.

I hope and expect they will continue to be my own “living record” of more things to come over the next few years. The good and the not so good, whatever life brings.

My confession, my sorrow……

For me, this coming of the electronic age has been somewhat of a downfall. It’s been my fault, because I let myself succumb to it. It started in the mid to late 90’s and has sucked so many precious hours, days, month and years away from me that when I look back on it, it saddens me so much.

I looked at one online game that I have played quite a bit over the past decade. It keeps up with your time played. It said I had played 883 hours. That’s a total of 36 days. Over a month. Of course that’s not consecutively staying on, but an aggregate of time periods of from half an hour to 5 or 6 hours. That’s bad enough, but it’s not even the online game which I have played the most. I’ve played Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Skyrim, Diablo, and a few others. I conservatively estimate, I’ve wasted up to 16 months or more of my life playing these games. I could have been reading. I could have been writing music, or working outside in the sunshine, golfing, fishing, anything. I was sucked into these games, just like I found myself sucked into social media. There’s also no telling how much time I have spent on Facebook and other forms of “not so social media”

I thought it was really great at first, but the last two or three years have been difficult. What started out as a connecting with old friends has become a mess. It’s become politics, it’s become partisan, it’s become fake, it’s become people taking advantage of other people. It’s become, for the most part, with the exception of being able to see the connections with my family through this medium, useless to me as something positive in which to participate. The information they glean from us is sold to unscrupulous people who take and use it for nefarious reasons. Period. If it were not for the relationship aspect on social media with my family, I’d get off in a heartbeat.

I’m hoping to go back to some of my pre mid 90’s habits of reading books, and relaxing more at night before trying to sleep. I have no doubt that using these electronic devices for all things all hours of the day and night have not been beneficial healthwise…at least for me. I wish I could change what has been, but I can’t. I can’t get all that time back that I have wasted.

When I was a young man, in my twenties and I thought of long term things which needed to be accomplished I always thought “Well, I have plenty of time to get that done…” Turns out, I didn’t. I didn’t take the time to do the things I needed to do to get some of those things done. I could sit here and regret it….and in a way I do. I’m sad about it in some ways. But…if wishes were horses…

We human beings have become captivated during my lifetime by technology. We have, in a sense, become captive by it. All of our lives have become structured around the computer driven world around us. Much of it was good, but now much of it brings danger and sorrow for us. Not a day goes by that you don’t hear of “hackings” of large companies, stealing the private information of people. Chances are if you have a credit card, or credit cards then you have been compromised. If you have been on Equifax, you have been compromised. We have probably been compromised in so many ways that we have no idea how bad it really is. It’s pandemic. It’s probably unstoppable at this point.

Another thing technology has brought us that we did not need is 24 hour “news” Ted Turner brought that to us even before the computer age with CNN, and things have gone down hill from there. Now there is channel after channel of 24 hour news “indoctrination” coming to us with a “slant” courtesy of whoever owns the stations, or whoever has influence over them. We are being constantly bombarded by propaganda to the point where we do not know right from wrong, or up from down. We are being manipulated by these 24 hour a day “talking heads” to the point where our world is much worse than the program Max Headroom ever imagined it to be.

Can we go back and fix any of this. No. Can we do things going forward to mitigate the damage which has been done to us? Perhaps. It won’t be me doing it though, because I’m 67 1/2 years old. It’ll take a lot longer than the years I have left to change humanity to a more enlightened state.

As for me, I’m going to do my utmost best to stop being a victim of my own obsessions. I’m really going to try. I’m going to fail some, but I’m damn sure going to try. How about any of you, my friends? Am I wrong? Am I crazy? Mayhaps I am.

To all of you, Godspeed, and God bless. Don’t expect a whole lot out of me….but I’ll be around with photos and such.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” This is our “season” If you wake up this morning and are still walking on the earth, then it’s your season. You can choose what to do with it. Will you gripe about something you can’t do anything about? Will you say something kind to someone you don’t know? Can we accomplish something worthwhile today, no matter how small it may seem? Can we be careful about what comes out of our mouth, and make sure we don’t “cut” somebody with words? Solomon was a wise man, and throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, he puzzles about the meaning of life and comes to some pretty sad conclusions about people. Let’s try and prove him wrong.