Hope

Hope Eternal

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett

Just a few days ago I was mired in depression. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, felt I was being assailed from all sides while trying to minister to my bride, Linda. There was a leak in the upstairs bathroom, home therapies and doctor’s appointments galore. And, AND…she wanted me to apply fingernail polish to her nails. Oh, the pressure. I was having a real pity party.

My wife had some issues, setbacks in her recovery from a stroke and chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. I was just a step away from despondency when “BAM!”, said by the John Madden voice in my head, hope reared its beautiful head. We are still on the defensive end of our field, but we are moving the ball forward.

Her stroke has caused changes in personality along with vision and balance issues. There is a slight weakness in her right side, but her balance issues are as much a vision issue as it is a weakness issue. I mean, with my steadying influence, she gets around okay…maybe too okay.

One personality trait, aside for her needing purple fingernail polish applied, that has not changed is her bull headedness. She is and always has been a type A personality. Linda is going to do what Linda wants to do when she wants to do it. She has always been the poster child for self-reliance.

She is not to get up and move around without assistance. Right? Wrong. How many times must I ask you not to get up without help? Bull-headed self-reliance.

“Now baby, I’m going to the bathroom. Stay where you are until I get back.”

She nods her head and smiles sweetly while saying, “I won’t move” but has rearranged the furniture before I can get back from a thirty second piss. The rearrangement is due to her falling onto the couch sending the puppies in two different directions. Thankfully, it was on the couch.

I sleep on the same couch next to the recliner she sleeps in. “Don’t you have a bed?” Why yes, we do and a bedroom that houses it. We have found it is too far from the bathroom. The bedroom with a close by bathroom is up fifteen steps which are not navigable currently. I sleep on the couch so I can assist should she need to get up…if she takes the time to wake me up.

Two nights ago, I awoke to find she had taken herself to the bathroom, cleaned up, changed her clothes and was standing in the kitchen making toast and jelly. Bad news, it was three in the morning, the witching hour. Good news, there were no new bruises because she hadn’t fallen. Remember, I said I was exhausted from lack of sleep and as good a reason as I can produce for not waking up on my own. The puppies were no help either. I must believe her guardian witch was looking out for her.

Part of me, the logical side, was mortified.  The hopeful side was celebrating.

I reminded myself, there was a time when I mentioned how bad the brakes were on her ’73 VW Bug. She commented, casually, “I don’t need them, I have a horn.” That is not a lie. “Damn the torpedoes, Linda is on her way.”

On a safer note, this morning as we returned from the bathroom, Linda stopped, bent from the waist, and without bending her knees, picked up a dime I had missed when sweeping the floor. I’d say her vision and balance have improved. My cleaning skills have not.

Life is full of mysteries and mine is full of little hopes to hang my hat on. Her vision has holes in it that will never improve, but she is learning to navigate around them. Her balance is better, and she is physically strong. The best is that she is hopeful, and her hope sustains me.

Don Miller writes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3vLExkIeP5kMTh-isZEUoByY0dey7OFK_G1WGQZF5QokB_dWBC5Wihzcc&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Check back, he will be releasing a new book, “Food for Thought”, soon.

Luck of the Draw

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“Shit storms are no fun to walk in with your mouth open.” ― Jean Oram, Champagne and Lemon Drops

Sometimes you draw two to an inside straight and hit, other times a royal flush is not good enough to win. It all comes down to the “luck of the draw.” Some would say “that’s life.”

I don’t agree. Poker isn’t life. Life isn’t choosing whether to take a card or standing pat. Sure, we sometimes must make choices but sometimes we walk through shit storms that are not caused by our choices. Sometimes, we draw a hand that goes bust. The luck of the draw. That’s life.

We’ve received what I would call a “gut punch” of a diagnosis. I’m not going to say who or what. Saying it would bring a wrath down upon me worse than the disease itself. Everyone who needs to know, knows and I’ll leave it at that. I’m writing about it simply to…I don’t know why I’m writing about it. To keep from losing my sanity?

During the light of day, I force reassurance, offering nothing that is not positive, sympathetic, or affirming. During the darkness of night, not so much. I’m left with my thoughts that turn into dreams that turn into nightmares. As you might guess, I’m writing this to the light of my computer screen far past the witching hour.

Even during the light of day intrusive thoughts worm their way into my head. I must stay busy. If I try to write or watch TV, I find my thoughts wandering and wondering about what life is to bring.

One of my thoughts is “What did she do to deserve this?” She checks all the right boxes. I’m the one that should be struggling with a diagnosis. All my checks are on the wrong side of the ledger, not hers. She doesn’t warrant this. She has rarely gambled in her life.

I remember my father as he dealt with my mother’s illness, ALS. She was a good woman who didn’t deserve her lot, either. Hours after the singing of the National Anthem ended the TV programing for the day, I would see him playing solitaire.

I don’t know how he did it. Working a shift in a cotton mill, doing everything he could for my mother when he got home…and still playing solitaire into the wee hours. I fear he is a better man than I. I hope I can stand in his shadow. I’m glad I had him as a role model.

I never believed my mother would die. I was a childish eighteen-year-old when she did. She was ill for years and yet right up until we received word of her passing, I believed she would continue to survive. I’m trying to maintain that hope now.

A quote by Jonathan Anthony Burkett, “In life we all go through trials and tribulations. So now tell me, will you pass, or will you make a mess?” God, please let me pass this test. Not for me but for her. Let me be who I need to be. Give me the strength not to “crap out.” Above all, let her recover.

Wednesday is a big day for her…for us. Sickness is a family affair. I’m sure the anxiety will continue to build. I wonder, which is worse? Knowing or not knowing. I won’t know until Wednesday.

I posted in a blog earlier this year expressing my belief that the quote “God will never give you more than you can handle” is a fallacy and does more harm than good. I hope my belief hasn’t come back to bite me. I hope I don’t have to find out if it is true or not.

Please keep us in your thoughts. Prayer would be nice as would good mojo or ju ju. Black magic…I’ll take it. I’ll take what you can give. Thanks.

Don writes about happier things at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Sittin’ and Smilin’, Thinkin’ ’bout That Dock on the Bay.

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

I ran across a version of Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay” at a time when I needed it the most. I didn’t realize I needed it but sometimes life gives you little gifts to smile about.

On a site, Playing for Change, musicians from all over the world came together to lend their voices and musical talents just to help my spirits rise and give me a chance to have a productive day even if it is just sittin’ and smilin’.

Roger Ridley and Grampa Elliott Playing For Change

This is my dark time of the year and not because it is still the predawn hours of the day. Depression and anxiety cloud my thoughts despite the clear morning, stars twinkling over my head. The days are lengthening but it will take time for the early morning sunlight to wash my depression away. I’m struggling for motivation to write, motivation to get out of my chair, and I can’t keep my train of thought on its tracks. My mind is like Ricochet Rabbit, bouncing from place to place without settling.

I am downright morose until I find joy in a simple song.  A song about sitting in the sunlight…an ode to sunlight. I can hear the Redding’s whistle in my head, and it makes me smile, whistling away my dark clouds. Music does that sometimes…most times.

Redding was dead by the time “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” hit number one. He recorded it just three days before a plane crash took his life on December 10, 1967. He was twenty-six and left behind a wife and four children. I remember lying in my twin bed, the transistor radio struggling to pick up late night WLS in distant Chicago when the news came through. Otis Redding killed in a plane crash along with four members of the group The Bar Kays. My own “day the music died.”

The song itself is melancholy but contains hope for me. “Sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes.” I can almost feel the sun on my face, the light shimmering across an emerald bay, a blue sky, and a sea breeze blowing in my face. Sea gulls mew and pirouette in my mind. Hopeful that I’ll get a chance to be “sittin’ when the evening comes” when the days of Summer lengthen. Sometimes there is productivity in “just wastin’ time.”

This 2011 version features Roger Ridley, a street singer and guitar player from Las Vegas, and New Orleans’ Street icon, Grampa Elliott Small. They are backed by musicians from across the world and I genuinely believe Otis Redding would be proud.

According to Wikipedia and the Playing for Change website, “Playing For Change (PFC) was founded in 2002 by Mark Johnson and Whitney Kroenke. Mark Johnson was walking in Santa Monica, California, when he heard the voice of Roger Ridley, who joined Redding in “Rock ‘n Roll Heaven” in 2005, singing “Stand by Me”; it was this experience that sent Playing For Change on its mission to connect the world through music.”

Travelling the world with a small film and recording team, producers Johnson and Enzo Buono developed a mobile recording studio (originally powered by golf cart batteries) for recording and filming musicians live outdoors, and progressively editing all the separate artists, blending all into one performance. Epic performances and epic editing.

I see the sun is out and calling me. Actually, a water leak is calling me, but it is outside, and a plumber is to join me after it warms up. It is bright but cold in the foothills of the Blue Ridge…but it is not a bad leak.

The sunlight is golden, and it is time for me to go out and bask in it, whistling as I go, a song looping in my head, a smile on my face. Thanks Otis, thanks Playing For Change.

The Original Version of (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding

Don Miller’s latest offering is “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes”, available for download or in paperback at https://www.amazon.com/Pig-Trails-Rabbit-Holes-Southerner/dp/B09GQSNYL2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FXC3AISNRIU7&keywords=pig+trails+and+rabbit+holes&qid=1640701551&s=books&sprefix=Pig+trails+an%2Cstripbooks%2C299&sr=1-1

“A Cup of Kindness, Yet”

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I find the song Auld Lang Syne to be haunting and a bit sad. While hopeful it makes me think of loss. It may just be my emotional instability rearing its head. The tune causes the same reaction I have with the abused pet commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing. 

To make sure I get a good dose of sorrow, there is an American Express commercial using the old Scottish ballad, sung by India Carney. Her voice and the arrangement were created to make people stop and reflect…and shed a tear.  It’s a commercial Don, wipe your face.

I’ve been fortunate.  I have lost no close friends or family members to Covid-19 in this terrible year that threatens to run on into the new year.  This is not to say I have been unscathed. I have lost folk I didn’t want to lose, both family and friends. I have lost former acquaintances, coaching and teaching peers, and have had family and friends who were sick but should recover. My bride has not been as lucky. We have lost count.

” We’ll take a cup of kindness yet” together, I hope soon.  If you can read this, we have reasons to be optimistic and hopeful for the coming year and yet the commercial is on again and I’m misty eyed.

I battle with myself; the fearful me who wants to live as long as possible even if it is in isolation and the defiant me who thinks “Damn the torpedoes”. There is a small part of me who still thinks he is bulletproof.  I check too many “bad” boxes on my health sheet, so I am most assuredly not bulletproof.  I should remain the fearful…the smart one. Still my daughter and grandbabies call to me…as does the BBQ and beer at Green River BBQ.

Christmas is a few days behind me and the New Years a few days ahead.  I am conflicted and a bit melancholy.  I long for the days of childlike wonder when my father and mother were responsible for my happiness.  I do not like being the responsible adult…the adult in charge, the adult responsible for my happiness.  I turned the Christmas Eve responsibilities over to my daughter but the mental vision of social distancing and face masks on seven- and four-year old’s is not the last vision I wish to have. 

I am old enough for my wants not to hurt me and will spend the New Year’s Eve with my bride attempting to stay awake for the New Year’s toast and kiss…I should set a twelve am alarm.  A fire in the fireplace and a Jack Daniels instead of champagne, I will toast the new year, kiss my bride, eat a sausage, and cheese ball, and then say a prayer for the coming year…before sleeping my way into it.

Auld Lang Syne began its life as a poem attributed mostly to Robert Burns and written in what has become such an obscure Scottish language that most English readers can’t comprehend it.  It is quite possible Burns was motivated by an earlier ballad written by James Watson.  The tune is an old Scottish song of unknown origin.  The standard version, what we sing after the “ball drops”, is much easier to understand.

The first verse goes

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should old acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne?

Chorus:

For auld lang syne, my dear,

for auld lang syne,

we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

While it does not specifically translate, Auld Lang Syne translates loosely to “for the sake of old times” and old times is where my mind goes.  My visions are of old friends or family gatherings, making a toast to those we have lost and those who remain.  A toast to the better times we hope will come. 

I visualize party goers on black and white film, the ladies dressed in shimmering gowns of unknown colors and the men in old high collar shirts, tuxedos, waistcoats, and narrow bow ties.  They hold champagne flutes and kiss as balloons fall before singing Auld Lang Syne. 

I am captured in an old Thirties or Forties movie from “the good old days” of the Great Depression or World War Two.  I don’t believe New Year’s Eve 2020 will be considered one of the good old days any more than the days of the Great Depression were, and I fear 2021 will simply be a redux of 2020.  Like those from “the good old days” there is hope.

Maybe we will be able to safely gather next year but whether we do or not, let us raise “a cup of kindness yet”, not just at twelve am on January 1st, but for all of 2021 and the time we have remaining.  We are in control of our kindness and it cost nothing.  Kindness is free but is worth its weight in gold.

I offer you the following toast credited to Alfred Lord Tennyson.  In a pandemic year with a contested elections and conspiracies theories on galore, it seems appropriate.

“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow.

 The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.” 

I repeat, “Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

Happy New Year my friends, Happy New Year.

India Carney from YouTube

One of your New Year’s resolutions should be to read more starting with “Long Ride to Paradise”, my latest release. Download to Kindle or purchase in paperback. As usual it is free with Kindle Unlimited.

If History Repeats…Another Spring Day in January

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If history repeats itself, we are in for our coldest days of winter yet…of course, this global climate change “thingy” might have erased any previous history.  Still, I have faith.  I predict our coldest days will occur on or around February the Third.

Why am I so sure?  Since the early Seventies, I have kept a close watch on the weather of late winter.  Spring sport’s practice, a misnomer in this part of the world, begins in the late winter.  For thirty-eight of the forty-five years that I coached, I coached baseball.  Usually, the coldest days of winter occurs around the start of baseball practice in South Carolina.  This year’s start date, February 3.  Sleet, freezing rain, snow, and winds are sure to follow.

Truth be known, the cold start of baseball practice is what finally convinced me to retire.

If history repeats itself, Mother Nature will be bi-polar in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and in the Piedmont of South Carolina until April…or maybe early May.  We will have days of teeth chattering bitter cold with howling winds.  We will have frigid rains bordering and sometimes crossing over to the freezing variety.  We will have sleet driven by icy winds or huge, wet snowflakes that are here today and gone tomorrow.

If history repeats itself there will be spring days as well.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde weather with lows in the twenties and highs in the fifties or sixties.  Days that defy the calendar of January, February, March, and early April.  Days when crocus, buttercups and Scotch Broom are confused and punch out of the winter ground and bloom.  Days when my Red Bud begins to show pink only to be nipped in the bud by Jack Frost and Old Man Winter a day or two later.

Yesterday was the day that proves the rule.  With daylight hours lengthening enough to recognize, I was greeted with deep blue, cloudless skies.  Redtail hawks caught the thermals in the brightest of sunshine, whistling to each other…sharing their joy with me.  A purple finch stopped by my feeder showing the spring color that gave him his name.  A day so bright I felt the pull to search seed catalogs and almanacs to see when I should plant.

Don’t get me wrong, the feeling passed.  Yesterday was a deceptive day.  All spring looking but… There was still a nip in the wind making the low fifties seem like low forties and with no nighttime cloud cover, the lows have dipped into the high twenties before thinking of rebounding into the mid-fifties.  It looks like spring even if it doesn’t quite feel like spring.

This crazy season in the foothills of the Blue Ridge seems a lot like life.  It’s the good times that make life livable and the bad times less so bad.  Days like yesterday and today make the winter more survivable until the rains come tomorrow.  According to Longfellow and The Ink Spots, “Into each life, a little rain must fall”…but the sunshine makes it survivable if not likable.

Here is a toast for more spring days in January…and February….

The 1944 song by the Ink Spots took its title from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day.   If you listened you might think you hear Ella Fitzgerald.  You did.  She had a voice like a springtime too.

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

Running Delight

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A simple joy?  I ran…I jogged…I shuffled my feet…slowly.  Call it what you want but “jogging” seven minutes out of fifty-six brought a river of “good” endorphins and a bit of hard breathing.  Little “feel good” opioid peptides that have raised my spirits at a time when my spirits have been quite low.

To think, I sooooo hated running…I still hate the actual act of running.

I flirted with exercise my entire adult life.  Flirted like the unsure introvert gazing wishfully at the beautiful homecoming queen from across the room.  I’d contemplate asking her to dance and then take a good look in the mirror as I straighten my tie.  Why would she be interested in dancing with me?

Similar to the pain of rejection, running was painful.  Aching muscles, being short of breath, the queasy stomach after strenuous exercise…and…left to my natural state, I’m basically lazy.

The mirror suggested, “You don’t look like a runner…you are too round, your legs are too short, your feet are too big.”  Compared to a thoroughbred horse, I was at best a mule, at worst a donkey…built for carrying burdens not speed.

A birthday gift from hell changed the way I looked at myself in the mirror.  I embarked on a running program six weeks after a birthday heart attack in 2006.  After the heart attack, I decided the homecoming queen could be damned.

Four stents overcame a life filled with Southern cooking, I completed cardiac rehab and embarked on a walking program.  An old school coach, I just didn’t feel the “no pain, no gain.”  I needed to hurt…and I did.  I needed to pay for those caloric indiscretions of my youth…and I did.  I used the “Couch to 5K”1 workout and found the pain to be manageable.  I also found there were unforeseen benefits.

My feet were still too big, my legs will always be too short, but I wasn’t as round…sixty-two pounds less round.  Those changes or lack thereof were foreseen.  It was the changes in my mind I didn’t foresee.

I have battled depression for over forty years and suddenly my broken kaleidoscope of a brain seemed to reset itself.  There were days I still battled but the din of battle had quieted.  The voices in my head whispered instead of yelling.

There were (are) still days when I didn’t want to get out of bed, but they were less numerous and harsh.  I had a reason to get out of bed…my early morning run.

Running for me was like the guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer.  It hurt like hell while I did it but, “It felt so good when I stopped.”

I wasn’t satisfied with 5Ks and continued to push through 10Ks and half-marathons.  I even wrote down a marathon on my bucket list and began to train.  For five or six days a week, I battled my body instead of my mind.  I was addicted.  I wasn’t fast and would win no races.  I might win in my age group if everyone in my age group had died.

My running wasn’t about competing with others it was about competing with myself.  My running was about finishing a workout or finishing a race.  I could put a 13.1 bumper sticker on my Jeep and look in a mirror and say, “I am a runner!”

And then I wasn’t.  On my last run before a half-marathon in 2015, a misstep opened a can of worms.  For two years I hobbled through workouts, tried to prepare to run only to reinjure myself until I decided I was being hardheaded and put my pain into a doctor’s hands. A torn meniscus was an issue…also the discovery of early-onset osteoarthritis.  “A knee replacement is in your future,” he said.  I wish I had never gone.  I wish I had never found out.

For two years I have walked or rode a bicycle and mentally bitched over every mile. Walking doesn’t do it for me.  Cycling doesn’t blot out the voices in my head no matter how much I crank up the volume.  Walking fails to reset my brain.

This winter season has been the worst.  The SAD and depression had laid me low until the New Year.  I decided to run…jog…shuffle my feet.  A different program, a thirty-second jog out of every two and a half minutes the first week, a minute out of three the second, the same next week.2  Twelve weeks to a 5K.  I feel like a baby taking his first steps, but I am hopeful.  Even my walking days have been…hopeful.

I am also going to be smart.  Three days a week only, on the grass, not the pavement, no back to back days no matter how many workouts are rained ut.  Good shoes and braces.

I scratched the marathon off my bucket list.  It will never happen.  I do hope to do a 5K even if it is a walk/run…jog…shuffle.  Anything to reset my mind.  Anything to keep the negative voices at bay.  Anything to repair the broken kaleidoscope.  Anything to get my mojo back.

1 Couch to 5K  http://www.c25k.com/

2 None to Run Plan https://www.nonetorun.com/

Don Miller writes on many subjects, fiction, and nonfiction.  His author’s page is https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Hope

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

My holiday wish is hope.

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”  ― Shel Silverstein

***

Humanity is capable of such good.  Humanity is capable of flight, capable of putting people on the moon and returning them home again.  We can be so amazing.

I hope we can find our amazing light and shine it throughout the Universe.

Music, art of all types, the application of human creative skill and imagination…mathmatics, science,..we’re problem solvers.

I hope we put our collective minds together, solving more world problems, making life better for all.

Amazing breakthroughs in medicine, evolution in technologies.  Testaments to what humans can do when they embrace a positive goal. 

It is my hope we come together and embrace each other and find a positive goal.

So many people in need.  In a world with so much plenty, so much wasted with so many hurting for necessities.  In a world with so much opulence and wealth, we have people starving or lacking for clean water.  This is despite the verse, “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”

I hope we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind to our table.

I have hope we will see the light and channel our amazing abilities toward ending those pestilences that plague us…regardless of who “us” is.

My fondest hope is the “goodwill toward men” we traditionally embrace during the holiday season will continue into and through the new year.

I hope all a Happy Holiday and a Merry Christmas.

I hope all a warm and prosperous New Year.

More than anything I hope for peace and healing to all.

“Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”  ― Shel Silverstein

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The featured image is from the charity, Hope for the Holidays Program, https://charity.lovetoknow.com/Hope_for_the_Holidays

The nativity scene is from Trinity Store https://www.trinitystores.com/artwork/light-world-nativity

Santa Clause and Reindeer are from Pinterest.

The Day Kennedy Died

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I was six months past my thirteenth birthday when I learned of President Kennedy’s assassination, and I admit I had the political awareness of a rock…a very dumb rock.  I knew Kennedy was big dodo but I’m really not sure I completely knew why until I became a history major five years later.  I still had the political awareness of a rock but at least I came to understand the political history of the past.

We were called back to homeroom from our eighth grade PE class.  We weren’t happy.  During those days PE was a welcomed break from the academic day.  When we arrived at Mrs. Biggerstaff’s room we could tell something was wrong just by the look on her face.

I’ve tried to remember the feelings.  Can’t quite conger up what they were.  My age and cynicism are interfering.  I remember how quiet the class grew, quite unusual for an eighth-grade class full of hormone-driven early teens.  Sounds seemed muted.  Even the bus ride home was quiet.  Quiet as “inside of a tomb” quiet.

The young Kennedy was a handsome man with a beautiful wife and family.  He spoke in that “funny Yankee” accent but for some reason made people want to listen.   I remember reading accounts of his bravery during World War Two and later attending the movie made about his exploits.  I remember feeling sorry for his wife, especially after seeing her in her blood-soaked dress as a solemn LBJ was sworn in.

Fridays were “go to town day” normally a family adventure.  Monroe, NC, was the destination only because there was a bank that stayed open longer than any in much closer Fort Mill.  Mom, Dad, Nannie, and little brother Stevie joined me inside our nearly brand new ’63 Galaxy 500.  I can remember how we sat, and I can remember the faces on the people we met as we drove the eighteen miles to town.

My grandmother, a staunch Protestant Republican who worried the Catholic Kennedy might steal the White House silverware couldn’t believe someone would assassinate him.  Catholic or Protestant it was just wrong.

Maybe I am merely projecting but everyone seemed to have a pained look on their faces…even on the main street of Monroe.  There was a kind of reverie to the day.  People moved as if in a trance.

I’m sure Kennedy’s legacy has grown over the years.  He attempted much and was thwarted, much of his New Frontier collapsed under the weight of Republicans and Southern Democrats.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not be implemented until after his death.  There was also the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Diem and the beginning escalation of the Vietnam War.

On the plus side, he championed Civil Rights, stood up to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, established the Peace Corps and challenged us to leave our earthly confines.  Some of his New Frontier proposals were implemented after his death.

There was a hope with Kennedy that we could be more, do more, that we could be a type of Camelot.  An idealism that we could make a difference.  Maybe that was what I was feeling…a simple loss of hope for a world that could be better…or maybe I’ve gotten old and cynical.

A very conservative acquaintance stated that Kennedy was the last great Democrat.  I countered with “and Eisenhower was the last great Republican.”  It was a somewhat argumentative conversation.  I don’t know.  Maybe it was my youthful idealism and propensity for chasing windmills…something I am happy to say I haven’t put aside.  I wish we had another Kennedy or Eisenhower…and the political parties who supported them.

Don Miller writes on various subjects, non-fiction, and fiction.  His author’s page is at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The featured image is a picture from the Chicago Tribune.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere….

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I see signs, not those signs.  I see and hear true believers espousing the nearness of the apocalypse; wars, and rumors of wars, national disasters, the anti-Christ, prayers for the rapture.  Those are not the signs of which I speak…mainly because doomsayers have been warning us since the book of Revelations was written, I guess.  The doomsaying is probably warranted but I have hope and believe humanity will come to its senses before we self-destruct.  Regardless, the Earth will continue to make its trips around the Sun whether we are around to enjoy the change in seasons or not.

No, not those signs but signs of changes none-the-less.  Here in the South, it is hotter than forty hells even in the foothills of the Blue Ridge.  Not the pressure cooker heat of the lower Southern states but plenty hot for me.  The heat will continue for the foreseeable future if the weather gurus are to be believed.

Image result for melting in South Carolina

Still, the signs of fall are upon me.  Years ago, I promised I would never protest the heat due to a particularly cold baseball season and my depression which intensifies as the days shorten.  This summer is taxing my promise, but I realized yesterday, the signs are everywhere.  The days are shortening, and dark days of winter will be too soon be upon me.

First, there will be Autumn, maybe a whole two hours of it…but there will be Autumn.

Many years ago, I noted the change when football practice and school began.  Since my retirement, I monitor the changes in more subtle ways.  The writing spiders spinning their webs, vees of geese flying south, a pair of wood ducks I haven’t seen since spring, bees and butterflies working the remaining blooms as if their very lives depend on it…or upcoming generations lives.  Damn the yellow jackets, the little bastards are working too.

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My wild birds have returned to the feeders from the mid-summer break as they fed their young juicy bugs and worms instead of my sunflower seeds.  New birds, small and quick, are flitting hither and yon.  There seems to be a bumper crop of gold and purple finches.  A new generation to enjoy our symbiotic relationship…my viewing enjoyment for their food.  Despite the cost of sunflower seed, it seems to be a fair trade.

Image result for yellow finch sunflowers

The turkeys are on the move too.  Hens followed by Jakes and Jennies and even smaller poults are passing through my backyard.  I didn’t see a Tom but there must be one somewhere…although I didn’t get much of a chance to see.  Despite Mr. Carlson thoughts on WKRP, “Turkeys can fly”…at least wild ones.

Image result for wild turkeys on the move

I stepped outside last night to partake of one last puff on my cigar…the one I have been nursing all day.  The air was filled with the smell of citronella from the torches I burn to keep the mosquitoes at bay.  I watched the smoke dissipate into the freshening breeze…a breeze that seemed different than the humidity filled breezes from earlier in the day.  There was a hint of fall in it, just an underlying current of cool.  The best sign of all despite my wish not to wish my life away.    Pumpkin pie and ripening persimmons are just around the corner.

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If interested, more of Don Miller’s wanderings can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image of geese at sunset is from https://blog.theclymb.com/tips/signs-autumn-northwest-enjoy/

All photographs were legally lifted from Pexels.com.

 

Skeeter Killin’ Season

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

 

Got my first one of the season! March 26, 2019.  A little after nine in the p.m.  Little bastard flew in front of my computer screen and I squished him flatter than a toad frog on a four-lane. I had to clean him off the screen, but the screen needed cleaning anyway and I got him before he got me.  Let the war begin.

I am eccentric for many reasons, one of which is, I welcome Skeeter Killin’ Season with a smile on my face.  I celebrate Skeeter Killin’ Season like Christmas.  I drink toasts with Myers dark rum and tonic while doing a happy dance in honor of Skeeter Killin’ Season despite living in a target rich environment.  Not as rich as our coastal regions but still, very rich.

I live in the foothills of South Carolina and for most of three seasons we have the little bastards along with gnats, no see ums but you feel em, deer flies, horse flies, chiggers, ticks, hornets, wasps and yellow jackets.  All bite, sting or fly up your nose and at their best are just annoying.  At their worst, they are damn painful.

Why then, am I doing a happy dance?  A better question might be, why do I try to dance?  My dance resembles Joe Cocker holding on to a live battery cable and gets worse as I continue to toast the season with my adult beverage.

Skeeter Killin’ Season coincides with the sun rising higher and higher in the sky and staying there for longer periods of the day. Yes, it coincides with rising temperatures and humidity.  I don’t care…happy dance, happy dance, happy dance!

Never will I gripe about the heat.  I have found over the years I tolerate heat and humidity much better than the short, gray days and the cold temperatures of winter.  If this country boy has Deep Woods OFF, he will survive…and an air conditioner he can escape to.

I can’t escape the short days of winter.  I can’t escape the cold seeping into my bones and the depression quashing my will to survive.  There will still be the occasional depressing day but the sun, high in the sky, will beckon and the melancholy will be as short-lived as a late afternoon thunderstorm.

It is the season of rebirth, blooming colors of white, yellow, gold, pink, orange and purple.  Green leaves, green grass, green mold, and green mucous discharges.

It is the season of planting and playing in the dirt while anxiously awaiting tomato sandwiches running in Duke’s Mayonnaise, garden fresh corn on the cob and fried okra.  It is the season for rising spirits despite the stinging insects, heat, humidity, and allergies.

I still must deal with the skeeters and have tried about everything except a Bug Zapper…homemade traps, bombs, and sprays, lanterns with the smell of citronella wafting through the evening air…mixing with an aroma of OFF.  All with limited success or to no avail.

When the bloodsuckers are thicker than a cold bowl of cheese grits,  I try to forget a winter drive along the coast when I battled both the low winter sun AND the little sucking bastards.  On a lonely highway through black water swamps and pine forests, I felt the call of nature and pulled off onto a double track dirt road leading through a turpentine camp to relieve myself.  Damn, little bastards tried to take off with my man part while my wife laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Further musings and a book or eight can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM