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Not Pioneering Stock

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

 

I am not pioneering stock.  My prayers were not answered.  My satellite went out at two and my power followed at five…in the AM.  It’s seven seventeen and it already seems like a lifetime.  Too much time stuck inside my head with nothing to distract me is the main problem.  At least the morning is brightening…a gray light, but at least I can see without a flashlight.

There is a beautiful winter scene outside my window…hemlocks and cedars laden with snow, their fronds drooping toward the ground.  There is an underlying silence, the sounds muffled by the snow…until a tree snaps under the extra weight of snow, sleet, and ice.  It sounds as if a war is being fought on the ridgeline above us.

It is eight oh two and the “Snowpocalypse” is upon us.  There is nothing to do but wait.  A cheery fire in the fireplace…cheery but not near warm enough.  A cast iron Dutch oven is heating water.  Cheese grits are on the menu…instant cheese grits.  Uck!  At least my coffee had perked before the power went off.

Stepping outside to bring in the wood I heard the winds on the ridges above us.  The sound of an old steam locomotive running at top speed…without the steam whistle of course.  Just a rapid chugga-chugga sound I associate with old movies I watched in my youth.  So far, we have been sheltered from the wind, but I see movement in the cypress cedar just beyond my backyard fence.

The snow, flakes once large and wet, have now changed over to sleet.  I can see my clothesline and it is covered with ice…much ice.  This does not bode well for trees or powerlines I would think.  My hothouse is without power and I worry about Linda’s plants…particularly her thirty-year-old scheffleras.  Worry…but there is not a damn thing I can do about it except feel her pain if they die.

Old poots like me are always talking about the good old days and how much better it was back then.  I wonder?  I surely wonder about the good old days the former tenants of my little piece of heaven had.  Three different sets of families left their imprints and memories before we began to add ours.  I wish their ghosts would speak to me.  I have many questions like, “How did you keep those fireplaces fed?”

Built in 1892, the old farmhouse had five fireplaces.  I am only trying to keep one burning and maybe later an old wood stove to cook on if necessary.  I can’t imagine…don’t want to imagine what it was like feeding four open fireplaces and the wood stove pumping smoke out smoke one end and heat from the other.

No, I’m not sure about those good old days especially as I look at the expanse of white between my house and the old privy.  A book comes to mind, “Ten Miles to the Outhouse,” by Willie Makeit and illustrated by Betty Don’t.  I think the cold is addling my brain…or the Jack and Coke.  Five o’clock in the PM and we still have no power, but we have seen power trucks on the move…and the power flickered once…dashed hopes in the blink of an eye.

I’ve also seen turkeys on the move.  A dozen or so all puffed up against the cold.  They look comical taking high steps trying to navigate the now five or so inches of hard packed sleet, freezing rain, and snow.  Thankfully the temperature is now hovering above freezing and it is now more snow than sleet.

The wind is still up.  Trees are popping all around.  Cannon reports in the distance.  Even if the power comes on soon there is no assurance that it will stay on, but I’ll take what I can get…damn!  A hemlock limb just hit the fence.

Light, heat, and water have returned.  At six PM the lights flickered and then held.  There was the welcome sound of air handlers kicking in and the feel of warm air.  Quick microwave something warm to eat.

This is not the worse “storm” we’ve ridden out.  Our first winter was in 1987-88 and in January we lay buried under eighteen inches…for those of you above the Mason-Dixon, that’s like you getting eighteen feet.  We were in complete shutdown mode for a week with only a VW Beetle and a Thunderbird to motivate with.  I swore I would never be without four-wheel drive again.  I think I’ve HAD to use it once since then.  An ice storm with a hurricane came through in ’93 but the four-wheel drive doesn’t work on ice.  I’ve used my four-wheel drive a lot but not because the weather dictated it.

No, I’m not pioneering stock.  There was once a time.  Now I have grown old and lazy…and hate the cold.  I think my next acquisition will be a generator.  Hopefully, I won’t need it any more than I have needed four-wheel drive.

“Bread and Milk?”

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

I am waiting out the approach of our first snowstorm of the winter…except it’s not winter yet!  I despise winter and for the second year in a row, winter is here early.  Mother Nature…what did I ever do to you?

Our local weather prognosticators have predicted anywhere from a dusting below us to an accumulation of twenty inches above us; possible rain, snow, sleet or freezing rain…all the previous possible or none of the previous Imma thinkin’ or hoping.  In the foothills of the Blue Ridge, we are bracing for six to eight inches…of something.  A “Snowpocalypse” by Southern standards.  I’m just going to sit here and wait until it is over and melted.  Just let the meteorologist tell me how much we got.  Since retiring from teaching, snow has offered no rewards for me.

The impending “Snowmageddon” has claimed its first victim…me.  I’m sitting not because snow is falling, it isn’t yet…wait was that a wet snowflake or a big, slow raindrop?  I’m sitting because I hyperextended my knee while cutting and splitting “emergency” wood in preparation for the attack by “Snowzilla.”  If the monster is successful with its evil-minded plan, I will at least have wood to burn should the power go out.  I’m okay, just feeling clumsy and stiff.  Thanks for askin’.

The injured knee was once called my good knee and I guess there is no particular advantage to having one good knee as opposed to having two bad ones…. I do have to flip a coin to decide which knee I should limp on and I’d just “ah soon” not to lose power by the way.  I don’t want to limp out and bring in wood to feed my fireplace.

I went grocery shopping yesterday morning before the slip with an eighteen-inch diameter log and screw up your knee event.  A stop by at Wally World is a normal activity for a Friday morning…right after my two-hour walk and coffee with a best friend, “Hawk.”

As I approached the bread area, I found bare shelves and the aisle deserted.  I expected to see customers locked in an epic battle over a loaf of French bread or such.  Maybe two ordinarily sane mothers pulling at each other’s hair, fighting for the last loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread.

The fresh Italian bread I usually buy, gone.  So was yesterday’s Italian bread and all other bread.  Same was true with the milk shelves…and eggs it seems…bare.  The milk and eggs were, to quote John Hiatt:

“Gone like a Nixon file

Gone like my landlord smile

Gone like the furniture

Gone like the rest of her”

There may be no French toast in my future.

I really don’t understand the rush for milk and bread.  I always wondered if there was a conspiracy between the weather services, bakers and the dairy industry.  Payoffs slipped under the table to just mention the possibility of snow.  If I were going to stockpile for the blizzard of the century it would include bourbon and barbeque…not bread and milk.

It is not just a “Southern Thang” I found out.  Those odd cultures above the Mason-Dixon line also rush out and sweep the bread and milk shelves clean.  Who knew?  It’s wasn’t even begun by Southerners…I believe they lie.

I am ready.  Bring your best Snow Monster.  Books to read if the satellite goes out.  Wood to burn if the power goes and batteries for the flashlights and lanterns.  Most importantly, Jack Daniels in the pantry and pulled pork barbeque in the fridge….  Okay, I did find a loaf of day-old French bread and a dozen extra-large eggs.  My bride boiled up a half-dozen but kept six for French toast.  Like a true country boy, I will survive.

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Lyrics from John Hiatt’s song “Gone”.

Snow image was liberated from https://marcusashley.com/artwork/elm-tree-blizzard

Crescent Moons, Puppy Dogs, and the Universe

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

My puppies have interrupted my sleep.  They are blind and if you are blind, I don’t guess you know it is three in the morning instead of three in the afternoon.  It is cold for early December and I don’t guess we got them out enough during the day…maybe we didn’t get me out enough during the day.

I let them out, not to go “wee-wee”, but to lay down in the backyard.  “Girls…it’s twenty-eight degrees.  What are you doing?  Geez…will I ever get back to sleep?”  No, not much.  There is an afternoon nap in my future.

My wife’s flowers are housed in a makeshift hothouse.  At five I decided to walk up and make sure the heat had them toasty.  It was a tropical fifty-five.  I may have to mortgage the farm to pay the winter electric bill.

As I turned to return to the warmth of my home, I looked up into the southern sky and saw a sliver of a crescent moon framed in the leafless branches of a walnut tree.  Low on the horizon, the outline of the dark side was clearly visible as was a shining Venus above it.  The air was clear and the sky cloudless.  A morning an astronomer might dream of. The scene took my breath away and I paused, despite the cold, to bask in the reflection of both the moon and my thoughts.

I struggle with my beliefs.  I do believe in an afterlife…” energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed.” Changed into what, I do not know, but I believe the law works for the universe and everyone in it.  I do my best to follow the teachings of Jesus, but…I struggle with the universe and our place in it.

Divine creation?  Big Bang?  A combination of both.  Are they one and the same?  And “God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.”

I struggle with the concept of God…or god.  Despite my struggles, my lack of faith, I talk to him often…I just wish he would talk back.  Just prattle a bit.  There doesn’t have to be an answer to my questions, just answer back.  “I’m here, I hear you.”

Looking through the clear crisp air at the heavenly scene it is hard not to believe in some type of divine plan.  How could something as beautiful as the scene I was viewing not be a part of a divine plan?  As if to add weight to my thoughts I noticed the pinkish glow of dawn approaching.  A most heavenly picture on display and I had been in the cold too long.

I returned to the warmth of my home and found my puppies asleep, Maddie on her back on the couch, Tilly chasing rabbits in her sleep beside her.  How could these two beautiful animals have been created by chance?  Again, God is silent, but I’m not concerned.

Bible verses my Grandmother recited come to mind.  “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork” and “Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”  And this morning, any morning, in the heavens too.

Further musings can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image came, interestingly, from The Tree of Knowledge Coven at https://treeofknowledgecoven.com/2013/08/12/my-love-affair-with-the-waxing-crescent-moon/

 

THE DAY I DIDN’T MEET GEORGE H. W. BUSH

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

 

I walked in the rain this morning thinking of George H.W. Bush’s death.  My earbuds provided a backdrop I was paying no attention to…until Bob Dylan’s nasal slur entered my ears…” The times they are ah changin’.”  My thought was, “The times they have ended.”

Men like President Bush are dying out and it seems there is no one willing to replace them.  Men who put character and the collective good above personal interest or gain.  A man who believed in compromise rather than partisanship.  Right or wrong.  A man whose legacy was only punctuated by his presidency, a presidency that did not define the man himself.  A man who honorably served his country for over seven decades.  Keyword, “honorably.”  I sure he had his failings but then so do I.

I know, he was a Texas oilman whose family is worth millions and who lived a life of privilege.  Somehow, he, like a certain peanut farmer, managed to rise above their privilege.  They both gave…or give back.  Bush Forty-One and Carter are the last…and maybe the best of their generation of politicians; those who believed service and honor were the most important legacies of man.  They are what politicians should aspire to be and unfortunately don’t.  Their greatest legacies may have occurred after their presidencies.

I almost met then Vice President Bush on a hot summer day as he campaigned in Greenville, South Carolina in the middle-late 1980s.  Almost but not quite.  It is a story I’ve told before but as I walked this morning, it brought a smile to my rain-streaked face and once again muted the music in my ears.

It was a bright late July or early August morning and I drove a tractor pulling gang reels to Sirrine Stadium.  In the Eighties, coaches didn’t have crews paid to keep up a field.  Coaching staffs were the crew.  This day I was my own crew, a crew of one.  Head Coach and Athletic Director or not, this was my day to cut.  Late July is prime grass growing season in upper South Carolina, requiring plenty of water and fertilizer…and cutting.  Lots of cutting as in three days a week.

Hot and humid, wavy heat thermals rose off the black asphalt into a cloudless, silver-blue sky and the milky yellow orb heating it.  As I drove our old tractor to the game field, I imagine my thoughts were on a young woman I was dating…one who became my bride for the past thirty-one years.  My thoughts certainly weren’t on the two men who stopped me at the entry gate.

I didn’t see them at first.  As I stepped off the tractor to unlock the gate, I dropped my keys.  As I stood, they seemed to materialize with the thermals radiating from the tarmac leading to the field.  Two fine specimens of American manhood.  Was I smelling melting asphalt or testosterone?

Despite the ninety plus temperatures and humidity, they dressed in dark suits, white shirts, dark ties, and dark wraparound sunglasses.  Shined black shoes reflected the sun back into my face.  Think Men in Black, except much better looking.

A blond man with a high and tight haircut played Tommy Lee Jones with a youthful and smooth complexion.  Long and lanky, I expected a Texas accent and got it.  His Will Smith counterpart was shorter but made up for it in wideness.  Both had muscles straining the fabric of their suits.  I wondered why they weren’t sweating in the oppressive sun.

“Uh…can I help you?” I stammered.

Tommy Lee didn’t smile but asked, “Who are you?”

“I asked first,” trying to assume a casual air while leaning against the rear tractor wheel.

Tommy Lee pulled his coat aside and displayed a gold and blue shield held in a pocket holder and a black holster on his hip.  Squinting in the glare I saw “US Secret Service” arched across the top and “Special Agent” arched across the bottom.  “Okay, you have my attention.”

“I’m the athletic director at Greenville High School and I’m here to cut the grass.”

“Not today.  This stadium is off limits.  Your principal was supposed to alert you.”  “Yeah, and my principal hates me and would like to see me shot.”

“May I ask why?”

Agent Tommy Lee glanced at Agent Will and simply shook his head.

It turns out Vice President Bush, a jogger, had scheduled a jog and my principal had failed to tell me.

During those days I was not a jogger and pretty much apolitical.  I had a football team to field, grass to cut and a pretty brunette to worry about.  With no more fields or teams to maintain, I became a jogger and more political, especially in the modern political climate.  The pretty brunette said, “I do” and we still are.  One era ends, another continues.

I don’t know if Forty-One actually jogged that hot day in July or not.  I like to think he did and that we traveled over the same ground, he jogging, me driving a tractor in circles, clipping the grass he ran over.  “I cut the grass George HW Bush ran on….”  Do I get a certificate?

I like to think that if there is an afterlife, and I believe there is, he has been reunited with the love of his life, his Barbara.  I’d like to think they are laughing together…maybe ridiculing the present forms of politicians while trying to look out us all from their “thousand points of light.”

Maybe, if I’m lucky enough, I’ll join him someday for a jog.  I wish I could have heard his Texas drawl in person.  Maybe I still can.   Maybe I’ll grow up to be just like him.  Rest in Peace George HW Bush.  I know you weren’t perfect but you were someone to be admired and emulated.  Other politicians…and humans, should take a lesson.

For more of Don Miller’s musings click on the following link,  https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM.

 

“They Paved Paradise….”

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I have been asked to speak to a historical group at the “active-adult retirement community” now located where my childhood home once stood.  The home of my youth, a brick veneered cottage located between two hills.  A small house but a house full of memories that spilled out along the river road that ran beside it and up the hillsides flanking it.  A homesite now covered by pavement, retirement homes and businesses.

I’m speaking about the history that I lived as a youth, the South in the Fifties and Sixties.  As I have prepared for my speaking engagement, my thoughts and dreams have drifted to those “thrilling days of yesteryear.  Hi-yo Silver, Away!”

My thoughts run through a gazillion emotions and memories.  They flow faster than I rode my red Schwinn Torpedo through the ruts cutting the old river road leading to the Catawba and my youthful adventures.

It has been fifty years since I left the home of my youth, but recently I find myself thinking more and more about people I grew up with, family and friends, and a place that no longer exists anywhere other than my mind.

Mental images of mixed forests of pines and hardwood cut by streams inhabited by crawdads, frogs, turtles, and salamanders.  Fields of tall corn, cotton bolls bursting white in the fall or thick hay and pastures.  I remember ponds loaded with bluegill and largemouth.  Mostly, I remember a dirt road that led to great adventures concocted by a youthful imagination.

I only spent eighteen years living there before leaving for college and a lifetime of work.  Over time, I became a visitor to my childhood home…until it was replaced by progress.

Yet…I remember those first eighteen years with much greater clarity than what I did yesterday.  No matter how I age, my thoughts wind back…back to the river road where I grew up.

I think of home and smile but find it depressing to return.  The cotton, corn, and hayfields of my youth have been replaced by Walmart, QT, Publix, countless other businesses and miles and miles of parking lots.  Joni Mitchell is singing in my head, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”  It was a paradise, I just wish I had realized it at the time.

Many of the lakes I fished have been filled in or have signs prohibiting the fun I had.  The forests I wandered have been cut down and the river road sparking my youthful imagination supplanted by the perceived modern headway in the form of homes built for the youthful, over fifty-five crowd.

There are some landmarks I recognize, but a library and a small strip mall now sit where a home full of memories once sat.  I do find solace that a library has replaced it.  Both my grandmother and father were voracious readers…as am I because of them.

I have now lived on my little piece of heaven for over thirty years and it reminds me of my youthful residence…except it is hillier.  It’s green in the spring and summer, cut with streams loaded with trout and nearby ponds and lakes are filled with panfish and bass.  Sounds like I need to go fishing.  There is wildlife galore and plenty of characters to study or ignore.

My old farmhouse is also filled with memories that flow out to the hillside it sits on…hopefully with more memories to come.  My adventures are no longer youthful…but I still have adventures…I just don’t run from them as fast.

It is easy to draw connections between my present home and my home from yesteryear.  I wonder?  My daughter will be my present age in thirty-three years.  I wonder what paradise will look like to her?

For more of Don Miller’s wanderings https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from Pinterest.

Winter…Sucks

/ cigarman501 / 18 Comments

 

It is still over a month away from the winter solstice… the darkness is oppressive.  Last night was thirteen hours, thirty-nine minutes and thirty seconds of rainy, cold darkness.  It seemed longer… I was awake for much of it.  I feel the darkness in my bones…in my soul.  Tonight, darkness will be a minute and a half longer than last.  I am already dreading it.

It’s not just the darkness, it is the angle of the sun, rising low in the southeastern sky and staying low, lower, lowest for the next…forever.  I never saw the sun yesterday and won’t see it today.  Wet, winter doldrums and it’s only the mid-way point in November.

The acronym SAD just doesn’t seem strong enough.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I don’t guess miserable fits…as an acronym.  “I have MISERABLE!”  Or WRETCHED…or DISMAL.  On top of my spurts of just plain depression.

I have inherited much from my Grandmother.  Love for growing tomatoes, reading, bird watching, and wildlife in general.  I also inherited her depression.  Gray days sitting, wishing, gazing out at the winter contemplating when the sun will return.  I remember her “blue.”  Wilting and turning brown like plants touched with a frost.  I also remember her blooming in the Spring.  Hope “springs” eternal.

I see people gaily dressed in ugly sweaters and hoodies.  Embracing pumpkin spice and reveling in falling leaves and bonfires.  Elves in red who can’t wait to get through Thanksgiving.

Give me the sun.  Give me the hot and humid weather with mosquitoes and thunderstorms, lightning bugs and hoot owls to chase the darkness away.  Give me the sun, long and high in the sky.

Daylight is finally upon me…its still raining so I can’t see the sun.  A gloomy day that I feel cutting deep.  I can’t seem to concentrate or sleep.  My wife may be in for a rough day.  I write, check social media, pick up a book and stare at pages without reading, walk around the fireplace and then do it all over again.  I have a book ending to complete…maybe in the spring…or the summer, when my mind is not so fragmented by the dark.

Don Miller’s author’s page can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Don Miller writing as Lena Christenson can be found at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07B6BDD1

The image is from https://harrisrichard.com/tag/winter-sucks/

True Believers?

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

True Believer?

true believer. noun. One who is deeply, sometimes fanatically devoted to a cause, organization, or person

(ecclesiastical) A strict follower of a religious doctrine.

(idiomatic) One who sticks to one’s dogma or beliefs irrespective of the facts

I wish I were a “true believer,” all smug and sure of my beliefs on politics and religion.  I’m not.  As I interact with those who are, I find myself questioning my own beliefs and other people’s motives.  They say I only need to read the Bible to find the answers.  According to Biblegateway.com, there are over two hundred different translations of the Christian Bible in over sixty languages…” Which translation is the true word?”

There has been a positive outcome to my self-imposed abasement, my metaphorical self-flagellation.  I’ve found I am continually trying to answer the question, “What do I really believe” and continue to question my God as I make my quest.  I also wonder if “questing” is a sin.  According to some of these same “true believers”…maybe.

I grew up in the Methodist Church.  A very structured, high liturgical Methodist Church in a then-rural area with very “give me that old time religion” religious values.  In a previous writing, I might have referred to the church of my youth as a very “tight-assed” church.  “Tight-assed” as in very conventional, very orthodox…just like me at the time.

I have become less so as I have grown older but still consider myself a ‘way too’ conventional person who’s a want-to-be flower child.  Do you know any flower children hiding in an inhibited and repressed body?  I just can’t seem to dance like no one is watching. No matter how much I wish to be the aging seventies hippy, I’m still…just…too…tight-assed.  Maybe if they legalize that there “marijahoochie….”  My Mother is rolling in her grave.

I left my tight-assed little rural church in 1968 and went on to attend a tight-assed Lutheran school of higher learning and received a liberal arts degree in history and education.  Again, a very conventional ‘I went to Vespers and Chapel kind of education’ and even considered becoming a man of the cloth until Greek and Latin got in the way.

For some reason, some “true believers” have deemed my education “totally useless” even a “waste of time”.  With my recently vilified “Liberal Arts” diploma, my equally liberal advanced degrees in secondary education, I taught and coached for forty-five years, warping the minds of our youth.

I taught in schools that are being denigrated by some of my political and Christian right friends as “hotbeds” of liberalism.  According to them, instead of teaching the three R’s we quote Marx and Lenin, create project-based lesson plans on the ‘Joys of Communism’ and begin every school day with a silent prayer to the Vodun Goddess Mahu.

I might have exaggerated a bit, but one exfriend deemed I had no worthwhile, “real” life experiences and did not understand “day to day” struggles of “real” men.  “As weak as preacher’s piss,” he said.  I’m guessing his educational experiences weren’t positive.  Another brought my vocabulary into question, “Simply showing off” because I used the term cognitive dissonance.   Well, bless your heart.

Reality: Teachers do none of the above, they do have day-to-day struggles and I’ve known few weak ones.  Teachers are forced to teach to a test they’ve never seen or been allowed to ask questions about and administered at the end of the year.  They have little time to devote to politics or religion, liberal or conservative.  Also, I talk like I talk.

Teachers do pray, silently just after cursing under their breath, every time there is a full moon. Teachers pray to Jehovah, Yahweh, “Sweet Baby Jesus wrapped in fleece” or the patron saint of educators, Saint John-Baptiste de la Salle.  Some pray to Allah, some may pray to Lakshmi, some may pray to any diety willing to take “little Johnny” from their classroom.

They pray to anyone listening for survival and until “true believers” walk in their shoes, they should be quiet and sit down.  Too strong?  Sorry…now be quiet and sit down.

I don’t like combining politics and religion…or teaching for that matter.  Tying “a” religion to politics is destructive to both, destructive to children who don’t believe as you do…and is against the Constitution, something “true believers” seem to forget unless it is the Second Amendment.

The recent political battle between Progressives and Populists has pulled the middle toward opposite poles and taken religion with it…or maybe religion began the tug of war.  It bears pointing out, neither side is being productive doing it.

Despite my heresy…or blasphemy, I talk to God daily, multiple times.  As I ponder what I am typing now, I continue to ask to be “refreshed” and shown the true light.  I get no answer and take his or her silence to mean, “You’re on the right track, Bubba.”

Most of my conversations with Him revolve around my beliefs.  I continue to search for the path and question why so many “true believers” seem to express so much hatred toward their fellow humans.  Their expressions seem to be so contrary to the Good News I’ve read in the Gospels of Jesus Christ.

Let’s be clear.  I’m not speaking of all “true believers”.  Just those who believe theirs is the only way, those who are so sure of themselves religiously or politically, those who believe there is only black and white.  Those whose beliefs are hurtful to those who have no sin other than to be different.  Those who cross the boundary between deeply believing to extreme fanaticism.

My problem, if it truly is a problem, is that I view life in shades of gray.  There is no black or white…and no one hundred percent certainty.  There is no ‘ALL’ or ‘EVERY’.  There is only uncertainty.

An Indian philosopher, Bara Dada, in a quote restructured and attributed falsely to Gandhi, said, “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.”  I don’t believe this is true of all, but I believe the number of “not like Christ” Christians are growing to the point that I self-identify as a “Christ Follower” and not with a specific religion.

Please don’t take my rant as being “holier than thou.”  I’m not.  Refer to the paragraph beginning “My problem….”  I just don’t understand why we are arguing our beliefs as if they were playing a rival football game…or a war.  “My god is better than yours?”  I should also point out; I have atheist friends and friends who practice non-Christian beliefs.  They seem to be more “Christ-like” and embracing than my many of my “Christian” friends.

I have just now realized my concerns are not about beliefs…it is about actions.  Your actions tell me all I need to know.  I believe words carry the same weight as actions.  My actions and words have weight.

It doesn’t matter what you call your God or god.  Be it Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, or Joe, do you rationalize your hate with your religion?  How do you rationalize it?  Maybe I’m not the one who needs to self-evaluate…but I will continue to do so.

For more gentle rantings https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Food For Thought: From the Musings of a Mad Southerner

The image is the Church of Uncertain sign near Uncertain, Texas 

Red, Gold, and Brown

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

 

I awoke troubled this Sunday morning…not unusual for any morning.  Nothing earth-shattering…maybe our biannual changing of the clocks or the impending trip to my polling station on Tuesday…or the possible outcomes I will find out about later in the night.  I just don’t know where we are headed.  The time may not be the only thing falling back with the season.

Still, I had a beautiful morning walk.  Well, it ended beautifully.  It began cool and crisp.  Fall is finally here…or early winter, it was thirty-nine as I set out.  There were trees with leaves of gold and red.  Leaves carpeted the narrow road I walked, silencing my footfalls but not my thoughts.

I was still troubled and tried to bury myself in the music coming from my earbuds until the earbuds died.  An irritating voice informed me of “low power.”  Need to recharge them more often…me or the earbuds?  There was nothing to drown out my thoughts, so I was forced to deal with them.

I worked on my latest book…in my head.  An action romance, I’m struggling with an ending…no I’m just struggling.  I worked on how my sterling hero could ride in and save the day.  I came up with a plot twist…maybe.  If I don’t go on and write it down  I’ll soon forget it.

Finally, I had nothing to do but look around at my surroundings.

Glancing down I did a hop, skip and a jump, scuttling sideways to avoid the snake.  “Little guy, what are you doing here?”, a corn snake, all red, gold and brown.  With our screwy weather, he hadn’t realized he should be hibernating and was attempting to raise his body temperature on the side of the tar and gravel road.

So cold!  I thought he was dead until I touched him with the toe of my shoe.  He moved…not much but he moved.  What to do?  If I leave him here, he is likely to get run over.  Oh goodness, I’m going to have to pick him up…I hate touching snakes even though I know they are not cold and slimy as I thought as a child…well, this one was pretty cold.

I saw a moss-covered flat rock and a patch of grass bathed in sunlight.  The brown blades of grass glowed gold, the mica in the rock flashed like diamonds.  Unfortunately, they were in different places.   The rock would soon be shaded as the sun rose.

“Stay here little guy, I’ll get you to a sunny spot.”  I needn’t have worried.  He was still too cold to move.  Picking up the rock I moved it to the sun and then carefully moved “Corny” to a perch on top of it before bidding him a fond adieu.

The lake was as calm, not a ripple.  Fog rose three or four feet before disappearing into the air.  Fish rolled in the shadows and the trees were reflected in the water.  There were more reds and golds and a single purple wildflower.  I paused to bask in the golden sunlight finally appearing from the southeast.  I don’t believe I could have summoned a nicer morning with a Vodun spell.

I had to get back home to clean up and dress for church but not before I checked on “Corny.”  He was gone, and I was glad…he must have taken my troubling thoughts with him.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image came from http://www.outdooralabama.com

Haunted Houses

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.”  -Nora Roberts, “Key of Knowledge”

An old farmhouse sitting on top of a hill.  Tall hemlock and walnut trees surround it.  The original front porch shone with a silvery gray color in the moonlight…from the silver paint applied by a wandering group of shysters who convinced the previous owners to let them paint the roof.  The silver paint had been washed off by the first winter rain, staining the original lapboard that clad the old farmhouse.  The shysters were long gone.  Moss covered chimneys in disrepair rose above the rust-stained, metal shingles.  If you need a site for a horror film, I have one for you.

This was the house we purchased thirty-five years ago…a house we fell in love with as soon as we saw it.  A house we renovated and brought into the twenty-first century.  I wish we had left it the way it was when we first saw it but sometimes my memories are softer than the here and now.

Spirits reside here.  Renovations have not chased them away.

Mike Franks, a character from the television program NCIS made the following observation, “With the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories of naked women.”

I always laugh when I hear him say that.  I think too, our spaces become haunted not only with the memories of naked people but any person who has been lost…people we don’t even know…people who lived their lives and died within these walls.

Four families have contributed memories I believe haunt this old farmhouse.  Except for a period in the Fifties, it has been occupied continuously since 1892…a lot of spirits I would guess.

Despite our renovations, this old farmhouse still creaks and moans.  If the wind is exactly right and the TV is low, late at night you can hear the spirits…whispers in the dark, a light footfall, a woman’s giggle…or just a scurrying mouse or a puppy moving in her sleep at the foot of the bed.  I choose the former.

Sometimes when I’m reading, as the witching hour approaches, I catch movement just outside the periphery of my vision…beyond the light cast by my reading lamp.  A shadow that doesn’t quite belong, a flash of light despite the darkness that surrounds me.  I don’t fear them, I welcome them.

We’ve spent thirty Halloweens inside of these walls…we’ve never had a trick or treater.  No little ghouls or goblins.  The house looks haunted in the darkness of night with moonlight filtering through the hemlocks.  It is their loss.  A not so wicked witch lives here.

I’m comfortable with my spirits.  The spirits residing here…and the ones I brought with me from a time gone by, from places that no longer exist anywhere other than my mind.  No vampires or werewolves, just spirits that lovingly caress a cheek or place a steadying hand lightly upon my shoulder.  Comfortable and loving spirits from a long past who visit me every day, not just Halloween.

For more of Don Miller’s ramblings https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from https://www.narcity.com/ca/on/ottawa/things-to-do-in-ott/a-giant-mansion-in-ottawa-is-being-transformed-into-a-creepy-haunted-house-this-october

Wake up?  I am Awake What About You?

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

I was told to wake up by a former student.  I hold no ill will toward him and am happy he gave me a topic and a reason to vent.

I realize I don’t know everything, but I am awake.  Sometimes I wish wasn’t, just caught in a bad nightmare or watching bad horror movies.

I was young, but I wasn’t asleep during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, used to stoke up war fever against Vietnam and communism.  I watched Cronkite describe the Tet Offensive and the destruction of any belief in victory. I cringed at the Mai Lai Massacre and its attempted cover-up.  I read the Pentagon Papers which uncovered the secrets of our clandestine involvement in Vietnam and its neighbors from Truman to Nixon.

I watched hollow-eyed veterans come home to a disrespect they didn’t deserve.  I saw the aftermath of the student massacres at Kent State and Orangeburg…something we the people didn’t deserve.  I viewed the Vietnam protests on my black and white TV.

The evening news showed protesters threatened with thirty caliber machine guns in Chicago and journalist Mike Wallace thrown to the floor for asking a question before being escorted out of the Democratic Convention.  Carnage raged outside the convention center as Daily’s minions used batons and tear gas to disperse protestors.

I experienced the Civil Rights era with government attempts to discredit Black leaders and the Black Panthers…something we still attempt to do today unless we need a good quote to make a point or someone to focus hatred upon.  1968 WAS a time when we really shouldn’t have believed our FBI.  No J. Edger Hoover probably wasn’t a crossdresser, but he was a paranoid racist at his best.

In real time, I watched people of color marginalized, beaten, bombed, and their buses set on fire.  Their votes suppressed by men who looked like me flying a flag from old time’s there not forgotten.  With reports from several states, how has that changed?

I lived through the assassinations of two Kennedys, a King and attempted assassinations on two Presidents.  I don’t believe Oswald or Jones did their evil alone but have no definitive proof, so I don’t spout off about it or embrace conspiracy theories.  I don’t believe in conspiracy theories about bombs being sent through the mail.

I witnessed, in black and white, the murder of a sovereign Asian countries’ president and a military coup but didn’t know we were complicit until well after the fact.  Complicit in attempted assassinations on Castro and the Bay of Pigs?  Yeah, those two and others.  Still, until the Seventies, I believed we wore the white hat in our gunfights at high noon and were better than assassinations, coups, and invasions.

Watergate and Contragate?  I witnessed the hearings that followed, a President riding off into the sunset and a Marine Colonel falling on his own sword so another President didn’t have to ride off to California.

Wake up?  Bullshit!

Gerald Ford told the nation their great nightmare was over.  Bill Clinton comforted the people of Oklahoma City and the nation after a mad bomber killed over a hundred and sixty.  George W. Bush left an elementary school reading to reassure a nation when planes crashed into skyscrapers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.  Yes, as we continue to point out, they were imperfect men, but they knew how to act in times of national distress.  They knew how to calm and unify.

Why do I need to wake up?  There is plenty of evil to go around, and I’ve lived through much of it, much of it created and covered up by our own government.  I don’t need to embrace loudmouths who make a living spouting conspiracy and pointing fingers at the other side.  Maybe we should wake up and realize they are nothing more than small-minded hatemongers attempting to make a buck.

When you share their hatred and conspiracies, you become a part of the problem.  Maybe you should wake up and realize when you share hate you become the problem that is undermining the nation and your friends and neighbors.  We need compromise, not a conspiracy.

More rants and musings at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image was liberated fromhttps://www.lifehack.org/648887/how-to-detect-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing