Daily Bread

[Williamsmith]

I grew up in a very religious society which claimed to make sense out of non sense usually with an eye toward faith and not critical thinking. From the start, I chaffed at the thought of not having a definitive answer.

My mother always had a little devotional booklet called "The Daily Bread" which one could read a short story daily with a religious connection to a positive approach to the day. I came to understand that it was her way of meditating and she was able to make sense of non sense usually while drinking a cup of coffee on the front porch or in winter in a nook by the piano in the dining room.

My father has been dead many years. My mother is now 84 years young and a twice cancer survivor and a survivor of abuse......her little booklet served her well.

These days, I most often go to the gym at 6:30 am and when I return I sit on the front porch or by my guitar in the sunroom and have a cup of coffee. I read. I contemplate. I meditate.

This morning, I had two incongruous thoughts. I remembered catching fireflies as a child in Mason jars with lids that had holes poked in them. Their light seemed inexplicable and fascinating. I often kept the jar until morning and just as inexplicable and fascinating....their light was gone.

[JaneV2.0]

That's a profound insight.
A lot of people have their light extinguished by their associates and surroundings--too often permanently.

[catherine]

You know that old saying "the pen is mightier than the sword." Well, the heart is mightier than the sword, too. Your dad had the sword, but your mom has the heart.

[ApatheticNoMore]

might be better to ask her about her childhood. Not that the secret is there, well it might be, but she may have had a happy childhood, it's not necessarily that she had a bad one or anything (and many women were maybe not raised to be independent back then, and that is why she stayed). But a deep part of our parents that we often never know is there in their childhood.

(Adolescence is sometimes where we got more hurt, yea and more difficult to talk about, while some people's adolescence was 100% bad, few peoples childhoods were 100% bad, most have some things they enjoyed as a kid).

[nswef]

williamsmith, I use Daily Bread now, I find it calming even as a non churched maybe even non Christian person, raised Presbyterian. I'm more fortunate than your mother, husband wise, and she is lucky to have you. I like Catherine's words that the heart is mightier than the sword.

[catherine]

I want to know why she stayed with him for over fifty years. But these questions would open up old wounds...so we talk about the weather, the old porch roof that needs fixing and the pesky skunks that dig up grubs in her yard. I release the fireflies from their jars and wonder in their short life what one night of freedom meant to them.

Another heart quote: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows not."

Relationships are a dance and we bring both our strengths and shortcomings into them. The symbiosis of both good and bad relationships is fascinating. There are so many wonderful women who have married total jerks, and the same can be said of wonderful men. One book you might read for insight is Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle. The father in the story is an alcoholic, so it may not completely mirror your mother's experience, but I read that book and at the end I asked the same questions you did: Why did she stay with him?? But we can all ask ourselves questions about decisions we made that defied reason. At least I can.

[razz]

Better the devil you know than one that you don't know is one explanation of why women who had limited resources opted to say in abusive situations.

Another might be that she felt a limited sense of worth from childhood as girls/women were perceived as "less than" in many cultural situations.

I have confidence in myself and my worth that are hard-fought.

The school counsellor suggested teaching or nursing for me as a career, nothing else related to actual ability;
I couldn't borrow any money from a bank without DH's signature despite the bank agreeing that I would be responsible for any debts that he incurred without my knowledge;
I couldn't get an apprentice position for a dental lab technician as "I was too attractive and would be getting married, having children to raise and wasting the training" ( I worked for 37 years BTW);
I was told that I couldn't get my tubes tied without DH's signature giving the surgeon permission in the 1970"s (DH and I had discussed as was our norm with everything and agreed on the decision. He went with me to the Ob/gyn prepared to fight for my right to choose but the ob/gyn husband and wife team had already chosen to over-ride that archaic patriarchal rule)
and on and on.

Your mother had even more barriers than I encountered, I am sure, and without a powerful support system from early childhood would not have had the confidence or the trust that her children would be safe if she left.

May I suggest that you continue to give her the greatest gift and simply love the strength and courage she had to endure a tough life. Confirm her value as she is now. The past is gone under the bridge long ago.

[pinkytoe]

I grew up without a dad around so always found it fascinating to watch my in-laws relationship. She was a lifetime homemaker and waited on him hand and foot for their 65+ years of marriage. It stopped just short of cutting his meat for him. By appearances, it seemed like she was OK with it but I always wondered how she really felt. When he died a year ago, it almost seemed as if a weight had been lifted from her. As far as I know, he was not physically abusive but I have to wonder how he "trained" her to be so compliant.

[Williamsmith]

As I said, I am a porch sitter. I came by this naturally. My mother is one and her father was one. Not surprisingly, I have an old black and white photo of my maternal great grand mother and father......sitting , where else ....on a porch. Today, it is hot, sunny and about 85 degrees. I sit half in the shade and half in the sun. The warmth of the sun makes my back feel better but clouds are creeping by and covering the sun off and on. A gentle breeze crosses my portico and makes it all the more pleasant.

I get the feeling non porch sitters don't understand porch sitters. Every once in awhile a neighbor will walk by and say something like, "What ya up to?" To which I usually reply, "Nothin!" They walk away with a screwed up look on their face. My grandfather was good at porch sitting. He liked to watch the traffic pass by. Anyone from the neighborhood knew he most likely would be on the front porch in his Amish rocker with his cane at his side and they would honk their horn. That would prompt a half wave, cane in hand. Just high enough to be seen over the bannister but not too high as to wear oneself out over the course of an afternoon or evening.

These same people who don't understand porch sitting, I think really view us as lazy. That kinda pisses me off. There is a lot of mental work being done and all at the expense of few calories. My grandfather never porch sat if there were things to be done. He was a bridge maker by trade and worked long hours. He always went to the porch right after dinner and then retired to the kitchen table for a beer or two before bed. When he retired, he worked in the garden all day and then relaxed on the porch. He definitely earned his seat on the porch.

I regret that porch sitting is a lost art. Used to be porch sitters in my childhood neighborhood would take turns visiting other porch sitters who would always have extra chairs on their porch for hosting. It is not coincidence that beverages were always offered. Most people are more forthcoming with rumors and gossip after a couple adult drinks.

I fought the urge to sit on the porch for awhile. But it's useless. If you have it in you, it's a gift that you ought not to ignore.

I got pretty excited a couple weeks ago. The community installed a new speed bump in front of my place. I couldn't hardly stay in my seat.

[sweetana3]

My mother in law is a great porch sitter. She sits and reads or sews and people just gravitate to her patio. Some even bring their own chairs since all hers are full. She spends every minute she can outside and is lucky to have a small cover and a large tree to give a little shade. (she hates her AC in the apartment but needs it when the humidity is so high.) Her patio is right by the front door and faces all the action on the street into the complex. She can see all the comings and goings and wave at everyone.

[KayLR]

On my way home each night for years, I drove past a country home inhabited by an older couple. I didn't know them or their names, but every night I could expect ---if the man was out in the yard which he often was-- he always waved, much in the way you describe the cane-waving. He waved to everyone who drove by. He's been gone for some years now, and I still miss him waving.

My husband is a porch-sitter, at least he was until we moved to our current house. Now he sits on the back deck. But while we were long-distance courting by phone, I would often interrupt his porch-sitting. One night we were talking and suddenly he said, "Oh, that woman should shut her curtains."

He really wasn't trying to peep. Mostly he just passed the time in his porch meditation.

[Teacher Terry]

Did your Mom have a way to support herself and her kids if she left your Dad? Also maybe she was afraid that he would kill her if he left and you kids. When I lived in the Midwest everyone sat outside at night on their front porch and talked to the neighbors while the kids played. It was really fun. Now I prefer to sit on my back deck so the dogs can be out with me and enjoy too.

[SteveinMN]

It's a shame that so much mass-market residential architecture and suburban land platting no longer honors the front porch and the people on them. I really think it makes a positive difference in how cohesive the neighborhood is -- that neighbors know each other and newcomers become at least somewhat assimilated.

We don't have a front porch on our mid-70s rambler, though I have seen a few similar houses in our neighborhood where people built vestigial decks where we have flower beds. Some people set up lawn chairs on their front yards. I cannot see any of that happening in our daughter's/SiL's McMansion subdivision. :(

[Williamsmith]

Did your Mom have a way to support herself and her kids if she left your Dad? Also maybe she was afraid that he would kill her if he left and you kids. When I lived in the Midwest everyone sat outside at night on their front porch and talked to the neighbors while the kids played. It was really fun. Now I prefer to sit on my back deck so the dogs can be out with me and enjoy too.

Terry, I'm going to be absolutely candid with you. I'm not sure what the limit of my exploration of this subject is. There is a feeling as a kid akin to entering a dark house in the night. You know that anxious time between when you enter and when you finally find the light switch. And I'm not convinced I'll like what I see when everything is revealed.

But to answer your question, No she did not have the wherewithal to support two boys.....neither financially nor emotionally. My dad was disliked by my grandfather. My mother told me many times that the day she married him, she was told by pap and grandma, "This is your bed you have made and you'll lay in it. Don't come back." She was a stay at home mom until we were old enough to fend for ourselves and then she went to night school to be a teachers aide. She took me to class with her and I slept in the car until she got done.

It didn't pay much but I think it made her feel like she made a difference. She taught reading to troubled and awkward kids. I remember she had balancing boards and such she carried around with her.

That's not popular psychology these days but it was just the way it was in my world. You were taught to make choices and claim your own victories; endure your own defeats.

There were signs. Things are coming back to me at strange times of the day and night. As I said...sense out of non sense. I never questioned it but we were always going on unplanned "vacations" to family I had never met. One time to New Jersey and another to Kentucky. We slept on couches. It was a joke. I'd ask, "Where am I going to sleep?" She'd say," They will hang you on a nail if we have to."

She once moved every stitch of furniture of my dads to the garage...including his bed. He stayed there for the longest time. I never really thought we weren't just like any other family.

And the religious thing. There are people who truly live their religion and gracious about it....and there are people who use it as a cover or smokescreen for their shortcomings or worse, nefarious activities. My dad continuously read the Bible from cover to cover. Maybe he was looking for an answer. I think it explains my cynicism to this day.

These are just bits and pieces. A bit here....a piece there.

[early morning]

Williamsmith, I too have bits and pieces of my mother's life, and they don't add up to anything near an entire picture. In our case, whatever happened to my mom was before her marriage - she and my father had a good relationship, and were always doing sweet things for each other, and we always felt loved and cared for. But mom was kind of cold - she did not hug us after we where small kids, and she would not hug adults, preferring not to touch them at all, and I never saw her hold Dad's hand or do anything more than peck him on the cheek in public. She despised facial hair and any sort of alcohol. I asked my dad once why he never sent her flowers (although he would buy her potted plants/flowers) and he looked at me like I had the plague and said - "Oh, I could NEVER do that to her!!" (WTF?) but I was a kid then, and just thought she would hate the money wasted or something. None of her siblings had these hangups....
Now I wonder more about it - it seems apparent something rather dire happened to her. Dad's been gone for 30 yrs, so I can't ask him, and I would never have brought it up with my mother - emotions weren't a discussion topic. Ever. So we have these bits and pieces, knowing they will never be more than that. I bring them out and look at them sometimes, and talk to my sister, but we've never been able to tease out any memories to add to them, and we probably never will. So I put them away again, and ruminate on more pleasant topics...

It sounds like your mother did the best she could in tough situation, and you seem like an admirable son who cares about her as well. She was able to raise a strong, capable son who didn't realize, perhaps, how rough it was when he was a child. I would say she did pretty darn well for you - based, only of course, on your writings here on the forum - (I surely don't claim to know anything "for real" about your situation!)

[JaneV2.0]

I'm not a hugger and I don't like cut flowers. I'm also not big on going on and on about "feelings." And I've never suffered any trauma, childhood or otherwise. So maybe she just had the normal complement of personal quirks?

[Tammy]

Maybe sending flowers equated to romance and that equated to suggesting sex - maybe she wasn't into it and hence your dad's reaction?

[Williamsmith]

I'm not a hugger and I don't like cut flowers. I'm also not big on going on and on about "feelings." And I've never suffered any trauma, childhood or otherwise. So maybe she just had the normal complement of personal quirks?

I understand this completely. There are some who truly have no need or use for mulling over feelings or past incidents looking for meaning. They seem truly suited for difficult work, able to compartmentalize events forever.

Ive never been that kind of person. My job was difficult and I was very efficient at performing it....Commendations to go with that but the reality was and still is.....my ability to compartmentalize lasted only until the necessary time required to complete the task expired. Then, as ghosts visit, so would my necessity to make sense of things.

I carried an extreme workload. I was known for being able to multitask - I was a reliable constant among sometimes shaky other times dangerous circumstances. The mistakes I made, the times I failed to offer closure for a victim....that's when a serious re examination would seem necessary.

So it is not a surprise to me that I would take my childhood out from the basement of my memory where boxes have been folded over and taped shut and labeled..."Caution! Explosives!"

As I related earlier, I go early to the gym every morning. At 6:30, I have an appointment with a stationary bike. About 15 minutes in I can enter a meditative state. The sweat is healing to me. I recall things. And I remember that my mother was actually beating me with a wooden paddle. I was old enough to take the paddle off my mom. That's when my dad stepped in and all hell broke loose. So in a way, I blame myself for it. I should have just took the beating.

[pinkytoe]

If I recall correctly, you are happily married. I've always hoped that is what the lucky ones learn from their awful childhoods - how not to repeat.

[JaneV2.0]

Maybe sending flowers equated to romance and that equated to suggesting sex - maybe she wasn't into it and hence your dad's reaction?

Among my old co-workers anyway, cut flowers were all about guilt and apology.

[Teacher Terry]

WS: it sounds like your Mom did the very best she could for her boys. I am so sorry she and you kids suffered so much. In that day and age it was very difficult for abused women to leave not having jobs, no shelters or support systems in place, etc. Your Mom sounds like a wonderful person. I am glad now that you are close and enjoying your time together. YOu also had a tough job. I think it is good that they let police retire after 20 years because that type of work takes a toll on your body and mental health. I read that the job is either extreme boredom but you have to be on your toes or all hell is breaking loose and that the adrenaline that rushes through your body also damages it.

[Sad Eyed Lady]

I don't know, I almost cringe saying this but have to ask. If you gently approached the subject, maybe after all these years your mom would actually welcome talking about it. As I said, I don't know, but if all this is inside her, you may be the only outlet and the only time she might be able to sort through this. You could feel her out.

[Williamsmith]

I don't know, I almost cringe saying this but have to ask. If you gently approached the subject, maybe after all these years your mom would actually welcome talking about it. As I said, I don't know, but if all this is inside her, you may be the only outlet and the only time she might be able to sort through this. You could feel her out.

I do believe that the past is somewhere I have every right to explore by myself but I don't have the right to drag anyone along with me from my past who hasn't agreed to Take the trip. I trust she has made her own peace with it. I will do the same.

[Tybee]

I do believe that the past is somewhere I have every right to explore by myself but I don't have the right to drag anyone along with me from my past who hasn't agreed to Take the trip. I trust she has made her own peace with it. I will do the same.
Very wise.

[razz]

WS's mother is a generation older than me with very different experiences than I had. Life has its challenges for each of us. It is our response to the challenges that is truly important, IMO.

I did a lot of mental house cleaning a couple of years ago in order to move forward with my life after DH's passing. It was my journey. I didn't announce it to anyone. It is done, in the past and I am not going back there. I live in the present, grateful for all the good in my life now.

His mother, like many others, may have completed a similar mental house cleaning at some point, is content now and safe. WS is very wise not to disturb that.

[Williamsmith]

I am enjoying a fine brew of hazelnut coffee on the porch this morning. I don't know what makes coffee better one day than the next. Today, I used my vintage Farberware 2-4 cup electric percolator made in Bronx, NY. That was before they closed the factory and outsourced to China because labor is......well slave labor. We do seem to take a closer look at the bottom line than the quality in this country. It is a faster brew than the glass Pyrex '50's era and way better than the Keurig monstrosity.

Anywho, I'm reading a new book by one of my favorite outdoor authors, John Gierach. He wrote such classics as "Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders" and "Sex, Death and Flyfishing". True, these aren't serious pros. If you want that you need to read his treatise called, "Even Brook Trout get the Blues" or "Standing in a River Waving a Stick."

I don't learn a lot about actual fly fishing from these books but I do remember not to leave my sense of humor at home when I venture out into the real world.

Fly fishing is a hobby now that once was a passion. Back in the day I was stationed in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. I learned to tie flies from a Trooper in my patrol unit. I bought a really nice Orvis rig from a high end shop, you know the kind that has platoons of Range Rovers in the parking lot. Because of a certain excellent trout stream and a certain President who like to fish the same excellent trout stream....I became very attached to this certain fly rod. Unfortunately, a certain Amish boy got it stuck in his hand one day while working at my house and left with it never to return again.

Thinking about those days fishing and the recent comments regarding transgenders being banned from the military........I know those two seem to be worlds apart.... I know also what a certain former President would say regarding this. He'd say that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Lord.

Im pretty sure it's the bottom line being looked at and not the quality.....again.

[nswef]

williamsmith, What an uplifting entry today. Thank you. I think I'll check out your author. I too can never figure out why coffee is excellent one day and not as excellent the next day. Thanks for the morning joy.

[iris lilies]

Flowers of any kind, cut or potted, are always welcome at my house (but for astromeria, the one flower I hate) Its just that I always have them myself but for the dead of winter, so there is no point in sending some unless they are very
interesting specimens.

WilliamSmith, your musings while on the porch, and about the porch, are nice!

i live in a city victorian neighborhood where there were no front porches on our houses. People "recreated" by walking to nearby public parks. Each house has an entry place to sort of pause before entering the house proper, but there are no places to sit. The period of prominence for our architecture was 1875 - 1890.

Porches were major features in other styles in other place during the same period. Here, I am thinking of those giant Queen Anne clapboard houses in the Midwest and smaller towns. There, porches must have been important for sitting around. Well, also they were important for shading the first floor.

Back to my city--starting about 1910 -1920, porches were built here. The houses were big, the porches smaller, but they existed. Then, starting about 1930 -1940 porches became a major part of a house, the mass of porch took up a bigger percentage, and little houses of 850 sq ft had big porches that spanned the entire front.

Somewhere in the 1950's sitting around outside became a private activity, and everyone moved to the back of the property. No more hanging out in the front toward the street. The Back Patio took the place of The Porch, and those big porches were no longer built.

in recent decades The Deck became an expanded back porch.

I am a purest and it creeps me out when people try to add porches, decks, etc to the wrong style of house. We have a set of twin houses in our neighborhood built in 1885. They are mirror images and sit across the street from each other. Someone with too much money back in the 1930's added a front porch to one of them to "modernize" it. Ugh, it is hideous, and because it was built in the Old World style it is huge, solid, and expensive to remove. Meanwhile, its beautiful twin sits naked-of-a-porch across the street, elegant and spare as the architect intended.

I see misguided people adding hideous porches to their 1960/ ranches and ow, that hurts my eyes. Haha.

well, that was a long screed, I dont expect anyone to read it. :) it least I didnt treat you to my opinion on decks.that aint pretty.

[Float On]

IL, I read it! Very interesting. I've stayed in the Shaw Neighborhood several times (residents invited artists to stay while exhibiting at their art fair or the Botanical garden art fair). A few had porches but not many. I never really thought about it. Son#2 and I recently spent a morning bird watching at Tower Grove Park and I tried to imagine the early version of "cruising" when that park was new and how everyone was out and about to see and be seen. Never thought about the no-porch style, were there covered side carriage entries? Have most of those been replaced by garages? Very interesting timeline you gave. I'm big on having a porch so everything I look at I think about where I'd put a porch (sorry).

[Teacher Terry]

When I lived in the Midwest and also upstate NY the homes built in the early 1900's always had porches. I loved them. We live in a 1950 ranch and the previous owner put on a small round porch and it actually looks very nice. I have a small bistro set on it and my DH likes to sit out there. I prefer to sit in the back. This neighborhood is one of the friendliest I have ever lived in. I know many of my neighbors from walking my dogs.

[iris lily]

Below are photos that show the trends of porches in my city.

Here, my neighborhood, no porches:

1829

Here, Tower Grove area houses built a generation later, small porches on big houses:

1830

Here, small house built a generation after the above in Tower Grove with massive porch

1831

Very few houses had carriage entries, those are usually on the side of houses built by wealthy people, and they were a transitional stage for both horses and automobiles.

Most people didnt keep a horse and carriage, they hired it when needed from the stable up the street.

We have a large number of "carriage stones" in my neighborhood that are left over from the days when peope took carriages and stepped out of the high carriage onto the stone, then onto the ground.

[Williamsmith]

Fascinating IL! I definitely grew up in the tiny house with the massive porch neighborhood. Our porch was concrete without any banisters but surrounded by barberry bushes.....the kind with the little thorns that are sharp as all get out. Somebody who didn't like people had to plant those bushes. My brother and I took turns throwing each other off the porch and into the thorny bushes in order to resolve our disagreements. Then out came the methiolate.....that stung like the all get out also.

[Teacher Terry]

Great pics IL! I enjoyed seeing them. The house I raised the kids in had 3 floors plus a basement. The kids would have all the neighbor kids over and because they would play on the 3rd floor you could not hear a lot in the living areas which was nice.

[Williamsmith]

I attribute my ranking today's coffee below yesterday's to the noise of the garbage truck making its rounds .....the growl of the engine, the hiss of the air brakes, the clamor of the hydraulic lift and the slamming lids of the trash bins all combine to make one truly annoying package. The only thing that more consistently stirs my inner meanness is an electric vacuum cleaner.

But now that the trash is gone.....and don't we take that wonderful occurrence for granted.....it's my responsibility to go out to the curb and retrieve not only my own bin but my neighbors also. It's an unwritten rule of ethics in my condo community. We have four units per building and each driveway services two units. If you are first out to the curb, you grab your neighbors also.

That is unless your neighbor has managed to piss you off. In that case, you don't have to tell him to his face, you can just leave the bin on the curb and he'll get the message. That's an example of the dichotomy of condo living. Most move into a community like this to enjoy some privacy but then they share the same building with three other families, some of whom you might not get along with. Not only that but you are tied financially by sharing maintenance costs and management decisions for spending. Ah the joy of condo living!

But most people fake it good enough. I always get a half enthusiastic wave from everyone as I walk or drive through the place and I return an equally half hearted flick of the fingers from the steering wheel or a nod of the head. Not enough to show too much interest lest I offend them and just enough not to get the snotty upturned nose.

Right now we have what some have described as a black bear problem. A large mama and four smaller bears....presumably her Cubs....have decided our welfare community of bird feeders and various scraps just the comfortable living arrangements a growing family needs. Some have taken to the cute things and started feeding them on purpose. While others aren't too happy about their $250 custom bird feeders being ripped to the ground and destroyed.

I don't like to talk politics with my neighbors. I just get in trouble. One made it clear that our failure to recycle was ruining the environment. Others took up the chorus. A little research followed which determined recycling would require an increase of 10% in HOA fees and an extra bin to tote and store in already small garages. I haven't heard any "save the environment speech" since then.

Another was going on about how evil the Mexican-American border "Wall" was proposed by our Businessman In Chief. I commented that it was ironic a person living in a "gated community" purportedly for security reasons might be against a wall. The sign the reads..."Private ..Residents Only" didn't seem to bother her.

Yeha, I best just sit it out on the porch and stay away from the Pot Luck dinners.

[Float On]

I'm enjoying your musings and observations Williamsmith.

I've got friends to the north of me who recently learned their trash company sold to another and the new company isn't honoring their paid in full accounts. 3 weeks of trash piling up in this heat is not making anyone up there happy. I believe they will think the sound of the rumble and clang of the trash truck is the sweetest sound on earth when this all gets straightened out.

[Teacher Terry]

When I lived in a condo we did not have recycling either. We also did not have garages. I kept a big plastic bin in the guest bedroom and when it would get full I would drive it to a recycling bin. Now that we are back in a house it is much easier.

[catherine]

I also enjoyed your "coffee talk." Interesting insights on condo living. I've always wondered if the advantages in terms of less maintenance and potentially less cost would make up for the disadvantage of less privacy.

I also really liked your retort to your neighbor about the wall. Touché!

[Williamsmith]

I like to change perspective often in order to try to understand more about people and my environment. Often that just requires listening, usually it's simply allowing your mind to probe areas you have already deemed settled but on occasion it involves physically changing your relative position. Yesterday I got to do the latter. Yesterday the birds and trees were beneath my feet and only the azure sky was above me. One cumulus cloud system loomed on the horizon as if a white cauliflower floret was hung in front of me. It was there I suppose to remind me that perfection is always threatened. Yesterday, I glided over the firmament in a colorful hot air balloon.

Describing the moment of ascension in a balloon is a challenge. To me if was as a child holding a piece of salt water taffy in my sun warmed hands by a beach. Pulling the taffy apart, it stretched as if not ever really wanting to separate but my pressure applied evenly finally willed it apart in two pieces but not without realizing it was meant to be together. The balloon slowly stretched into the sky, just above the trees. Where a moment ago I could only see a small grass softball field surrounded by trees....now an the entire Chautauqua Lake and River Basin was before me. To the North Lake Erie and to the south the border of the States of New York and Pennsylvania.

Something about a balloon in flight attracts children, dogs and the eyes of people who haven't looked up for a long time. A child stands barefoot and shirtless out on a country road waving and yelling,"Hey up there!" I return the wave and the "Hey, down there!"

We drift along at about 8 mph...the speed of the wind. We clip the tops of cherry, oak, maple and pines. We see the reflection of the half moon and our balloon in a mirrored pond. Passing a driving range, the golf balls look like dandruff. Everybody in our path waves. We know nobody and wave back.

For about an hour we drift thoughtlessly with the wind. The blast of the propane torch reminds us that the earth is constantly trying to putback in our rightful place. The sun is diving toward the horizon and it is time to pick a place to set down. The pilot points out a small looking overgrown hayfield as his likely target. I am skeptical. He skillfully approaches just over the last set of quaking aspen I see and carefully eases the balloon toward the ground. We alight like a butterfly with tender feet. On the ground again.

It is a lot of hard work packing the ballon and all its supportive equipment away so afterward a toast of champagne. My son in law catches the cork. An Irish toast is most appropriate. We are not done yet. A stop at the local ice cream stand for a celebratory cone. New friends.....and a new perspective.

[razz]

Sounds wonderful, WS.

[nswef]

What lovely writing and description to start my day. Thank you Williamsmith!

[Williamsmith]

What lovely writing and description to start my day. Thank you Williamsmith!

My writing is horribly rudimentary. I am often embarrassed by its plain speak. The only thing I insist on being is authentic. It is simply a stream of conscious thought without any attempt to be pretentious or flamboyant. I'm glad a few people can relate to it and consider it a great privilege to be able to share impressions with others. But if no one read it.....I would still think it worthwhile.

[SteveinMN]

A wonderful perspective on getting a new perspective...

[Teacher Terry]

WS: you would have to be crazy to be embarrassed by your writing:)) It is awesome!

[Williamsmith]

My only contribution to reversing climate change is a solar birdbath that sits on my patio. A certain song sparrow has adopted it has his combination water hole and afternoon spa. I keep the fountain running and full of water and in exchange he sings me a few tunes daily before he leaves.

Ninety percent of the community residents leave before the weather gets ugly. Another five percent vacate after the leaves turn in the fall. I stay. I don't have a place in the Villages in Florida, out in Vegas or Arizona or along the Outer Banks or Hilton Head. I'm okay with it because I don't have expensive tastes. I still put venison in the freezer just before Christmas. As a State Trooper I never made anywhere near three figures and when I first started I barely made two. There was no extra at the end of the month to save for a winter haven property.

Dont get me wrong. I'd like to own one of those $120,000 RV's like the neighbor or a BMW but I am perfectly happy with my little Toyota Tacoma. Still, I'll watch HGTV with the wife and dream about owning a bungalow on an island in the Caribbean.

Since I'm one of the only full time residents and since everybody knows what I used to do....I get to babysit some of the condos while their owners are gone. I make enough to pay for my golfing during the summer. One of the guys just came by driving one of those golf carts you commonly see in Florida. He stopped long enough to suggest to me that I ought to take up golf instead of sitting on my porch. I told him I played last night. He couldn't help it and asked, "How'd you do?" I told him I shot a 41. I guess that was better than he is used to shooting because he drove off without a word....pedal to the metal. I wanted to tell him that his golf cart looked about as stupid as a four wheeler with a plow would look in Florida.

Well, it's the first of the month and HOA fees are due. I've been asked not to write checks out anymore. They prefer electronic transfers. Time to walk to the mailboxes and drop #1599 in the slot. I can't help but stir the pot.

[Williamsmith]

Our little community sits smack dab on the downwind flight pattern of our small county airport. This is a fact that does not go unnoticed to the residents but for different reasons. Some think it is a small inconvenience of the noise pollution kind, others worry one of them might fall out of the sky and go kaboom in their living room, but at least one....me.....looks skyward and appreciates the miracle of flight.

I have always had infatuation with flying things. My parents used to take me to the county airport when I was a kid and we would watch the airplanes taking off and landing. That is what used to pass for entertainment before the internet and gaming. Once I went to the Pittsburgh International Airport and watched with awe at the large passenger airplanes coming and going.

My dad must have had the same feelings and passed them onto me. I have a black and white photo of him on Saipan during WW2. He is in his service attire, with his right foot up and resting on the bumper of a Jeep but the background is an Air Force bomber. Later after he returned home, married and had us kids, he would come home from the mill, have dinner and go into the basement where he worked on his balsa wood airplanes. It was amazing how intricate these models were and with nothing but wood, glue, dope and paper...he would create a WW1 bi plane.

That inspiration was planted like a seed. I had a high school friend who loved to built plastic fighter jet models. We fed each other's interest and both of us agreed we would go into the Air Force and fly. At sixteen my mother came to me and said she had saved $3000 for me to do something important with. I was knocked off my feet. That was a lot of money. I never have asked where she got it at.

I decided to take flying lessons. My dream was coming true. My friend could not afford it and I felt a tinge of guilt about that. The same county airport I used to watch airplanes take off and land was the venue for my lessons. On my 17 th birthday I climbed into a Piper single engine fixed wing with an FAA flight instructor and took my test for certification. I was as nervous as one could be without throwing up......but I did well.

My friend did join the Air Force and learned to fly. He was piloting a T-38 in a training formation when something went horribly wrong. Sadly, he lost his life. He was only in his mid twenties.

When I am flying these days I often think about my friend, model airplanes, my dad and that wad of cash my mom suddenly came up with. I think about how people make dreams take flight.

[nswef]

Wow, William Smith. Beautiful story.

[Williamsmith]

After running afoul of one of the members by insulting their sensitivities, I endeavor to stay out of discussions and promise myself to avoid political controversies if only for the simple reason that no one is pursuaded one way or the other anymore. But I thought maybe I could restrict myself to posting here and here only and since I started this thread, well maybe peace and tranquility will live here too. After all, this is simply a repository for my ill conceived thoughts on life's inequities and/or inquiries into the deep dark questions ....like, "Why do dogs lift their legs to pee long after their bladder is empty and what does this say about human nature that dog owners have to be shamed into cleaning up their own dogs crap from somebody else's yard?"

Not having any real transition into the next topic, I'll just jump right in. I am looking forward to this afternoons solar eclipse. Probably for a different reason than most. Sure, I realize this hasn't happened in a century and I appreciate the rarity of that but I have kind of rooted for the underdog all my life and the moon is most certainly a celestial underdog to the sun as far as the solar system is concerned.

As a kid, my first dog was obtained from a local farmer. My parents took me out to pick my puppy. As a natural underdog rooter....I took the runt. Not conincidentally, it was not a purebred. It was what we all refer to as a mutt. That dog , "Sparky" became my most important possession. He went everywhere with me, I fed him and cut his nails and brushed him when he would sit still. I don't recall trips to the vet because we could barely afford a trip to the dentist to remove a decayed tooth let alone a vet. He was an outside dog. He had a box that I kept stuffed with straw and in the winter a carpet tacked over the opening to keep it from being drafty. That was fifty years ago and Sparky has been dead almost as long ....he got run over by a car....I still have a Polaroid of him and me in my dresser drawer. Proof that an underdog is not often forgotten.

The saying goes dogs have their day and I believe when their day comes underdogs really have a great one. So today, when the moon totally eclipses the sun....I will think of all the underdogs I have known including myself that have had their "moment in the sun" so to speak or moment eclipsing the sun as the case may be. I'm not all hepped up about religious symbolism much anymore but I do think today's solar eclipse is to many a spiritual happening. That's a cool thing and just at the right time when things down here on the ground seem to be so decidedly unspiritual lately. For two minutes the country will focus on something celestial and root for the underdog.

[frugal-one]

You don't have to quit posting on the forums on my account. If you knew me, you would know I tell you what I think ... and then let it go. Carpe diem!

[Williamsmith]

In a certain neck of the woods and somewhat near some small to medium sized cities, chances are if you grew up in the late sixties and early seventies, you found yourself roaming around a pretty large neighborhood. You got on your Schwinn stick shift bike with the glittery banana seat and sissy bar and made your rounds trying to find a neighbor kid at home whose father wasn't sleeping after working the graveyard shift. If you made the mistake of ringing the doorbell or making the dog bark, well you didn't make it again.

On the wekend you would probably play baseball in the summertime, football in the fall and basketball in the late winter. You wouldn't come home until the streetlights came on and you would have kept hydrated from one or another of the neighbors garden hoses that they kindly kept attached to the outdoor spigot in a convenient spot.

As you got older you graduated from the bike to a Nova Super Sport that had more holes in it that your mother's colander. It wasn't much to look at until you got it into shape and installed an eight track tape player, a green pine scented thingy hanging from the mirror and some left over bright colored carpet on the dashboard. At that point if you could afford to put gasoline in the tank, you could get girls with big eyes to go out with you.

Eventually, you got a steady girlfriend and along about senior year started talking about what you were going to do when you graduated. By now your dreams of becoming a Major League Baseball player had been interrupted by an understanding that you couldn't throw as hard as you thought, hit as far and as often as you thought and ran slower than molten slag into the Ohio River.

During one session on the couch at the girlfriends house, you let it slip that you were going to college at the big state school in the middle of nowhere. She expressed her distrust of you being around other girls and you promised to be true. About a week after starting college, you broke that promise but didn't hold it against yourself. How could you know know there were so many attractive girls in one place? Your dad comes and picks you up every other weekend and brings you home so you can see your girlfriend and after a couple months of this ....the relationship falls apart. You suspect that when your parents went on the business trip shortly after the break up, that it was probably a celebration party.

You tough it out for a couple years at college actually attending class the majority of the time but that majority usually fell on the middle three days of the week. You couldn't concentrate Friday in anticipation of the weekend and on Monday you were too hungover and sluggish from experimentation. Eventually, like a Ponzi scheme, the whole thing falls apart and you admit you are on probation and have been asked to leave school. Mom and Dad don't seem happy anymore.

After coming home and reflecting on your failure and waste of money.....and after realizing you are going to have to find a job....you resolve to attend another college and get a degree. You have matured and there seems to be less enthusiasm for your presence around the homestead. Time to sink or swim.

You manage to get your act together and start getting good grades. Then you meet another girl with deep dark almond eyes. Only this time she seems actually interested in some of the same things and when she is not ....she is strangely tolerant of it. You are beginning to kick the "love" word around. In some strange way, you are enjoying the fantasy of settling down. You graduate college and are surprised to be still dating the same girl for four years. It is about now you realize you have no credible way of supporting a wife let alone a family. Your degree in Environmental Resource Management prepares you for a job in virtually no field. You start looking in the paper for Civil Service Exams.

Your first attempt is abject failure. Who could have predicted that the Fish and Game Commission test would be so hard. I mean, who knows the gestation period for White tailed Deer? You manage to pass a test for Air Traffic Control after President Reagan fired all the Air Traffic Controllers. It happens pretty suddenly and you find yourself in Oklahoma City during a sizzling hot summer. But before you left you romantically proposed to your girlfriend and she accepted. She is at home planning a wedding. You are collecting a check.

Continued.....

[leslieann]

Such a pleasure to read your musings, WS. I think I am going to have my morning coffee on my front porch tomorrow and see what might show up in my notebook.

[Williamsmith]

It's not the first check you've collected. There was the little gas station down the road that was your first job. It didn't pay even minimum wage and when the heroin junky from the next town over decided to relieve you of the wad of cash that represented the nightly proceeds......you learn what it feels like to be robbed. When the police ask you for a description, you can't remember much of his features since you were mostly paying attention to the finger that seemed to be way too close to pulling the trigger of the gun that was stuck in your face. You decide to move on.

Since your dad worked at a steel mill, your next job was as assistant to the mill wright in the blooming mill. He fixes everything that breaks down. Lots of dangerous machinery breaks down and often. You find yourself in precarious situations sometimes handing tools but mostly staying out of his way. You consider it successful at the end of the summer when neither of you are killed. He considers it a miracle.

In between some of this you stop at your grandparents house and work in the garden or sell vegetables out of the roadside stand. Grandpa never says a word to you. You just sort of know what to do or you do what you think is needed. Grandma always sends you away with Mason jars full of chili, canned tomatoes or left overs. Supper is good those nights......not Banquet TV dinners you are getting used to boiling on the stove for yourself because mom is going to night school.

There are more jobs, none of them fulfilling. One summer you make wooden style lake chairs with a friend. You don't make much but later he becomes your best man at your wedding and in the same month.....you at his.

All these jobs you have in mind while studying the art, science and craft of keeping airplanes separated. It has given you the courage to press on even as you realize that you don't have much talent for scribbling on little cards that stack up in a rack in front of you....each one representing a hundred or so human souls. It's a game that drains your energy and bores you instantly. Most of your instructors have suffered nervous breakdowns in the field, been divorced and have been sent to the academy to finish out their career. You don't think about that at age 24. You think about the paycheck, supporting a family and maybe some day...retiring.

By the the end of the six months, impossibly, you have survived the previous cuts. There is only the final exam left and you have to score 70 to be passed and sent to the field. They have already assigned you Washington DC but there is plenty of uncertainty. In the back of your mind you know a wedding is set to occur when you fly home, and it is yours. Everything is riding on this final exam. You do everything in your power to be prepared. The test is excruciatingly difficult but you have faith. It might be blind faith. The results come back in an envelope. As you open the envelope you know that your future will be determined by one simple number. Staring at the paper.....it seems to be a cruel joke. The number is 69.5%.

Continued...

[Float On]

Agh...what a cliffhanger!!!

[Williamsmith]

There's no way really to come to grips with what that number means without first wondering if you are able to withstand the embarrassment of the moment with your ego in tact and then humbling yourself before a bunch of people who genuinely feel sorry for you. That happens in the seconds after your eyes hit the paper. But it quickly fades into a numbness that makes the sympathy seem forced. You get the feeling people are avoiding you because you don't fit in with their celebratory atmosphere. Or is it that you want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Back at the apartment, you meet with three roommates you have been getting to know for six months. You pack and say your goodbyes. As you pick up your bags and turn and leave the rationalizing begins in your mind. You begin practicing the things to say to the people who were counting on you or wishing you the best. You will never see these people with whom you shared your life for the last half year again, won't remember what they looked like and will forget their names on the way to the airport. All you can think about is the future. However pitiful it might be.

Whoever first uttered the words, "Better to have tried and failed, than not to have tried at all.", you suspect never really experienced such a grand failure. The flight back home seems to defy the laws of relativity. In one respect it seems to take forever to get there....at the same time you feel like you are being sucked into a black hole of oncoming disaster.

The phone call with your fiancé was perhaps the hardest thing you had to force yourself to do ....ever. But she is gracious and says something you will hear often over the next 34 years of marriage, "If it was meant to be...it would be. There is a reason for everything." With those simple words you feel like you can go back. And start again. What ever that means is left to be seen.

You arrive home and have convinced yourself that the worst is over and time to get busy moving forward. Your finance seems onboard with that, as does your in laws to be. It's not so easy in your own house. There is a dark cloud hanging around and you sense disappointment and even anger from your parents. As soon as you get home the accusations start backed up by the questions. " Well, what are you going to do now!" And..."You and HER will not move in with us. You made your bed, you lay in it!" The atmosphere is toxic. Heated exchanges, emotional outbursts and physical threatening erupt. Your mind is on overload. At one point while you are on the phone with your fiancé, the phone gets ripped off the wall. It's hard to see good coming from this. But you are steadfast. The wedding date is set. The plans are made. There will be a wedding. And neither of you have a job or a place to stay.

Continued......

[Williamsmith]

Intermission....

My son, daughter in law and grand dog are without a suitable home to live in thanks to Hurricane Harvey. When they were picked up by a boat Monday night, the water was up to the electrical outlets on the first floor. Since then, we don't know what the conditions are. They were ferried to a National Guard "dump truck" climbed a ladder and sat inside. They left with only the soaking wet clothes on their backs and a dog carrier. The truck dropped them off at a shelter and DILs employer took them in his house for the night.

When your mind is numb with random thoughts, reflection is near impossible. The best thing you can do is keep as close to routine as possible but allow for your melancholy state of mind. I have found healing in the simplest of things. Today it is a quilt that sits in our bedroom on a rack. It is a quilt made by the hands of a 101 year old woman. My wife's great aunt. It was our wedding gift 34 years ago. Aunt Nan as we called her was in a nursing facility at the time she made it by hand. Her husband was a rather famous explorer of the early 20th century. The surgeon and medical doctor for the Admiral Peary North Pole Expedition.

The quilt is elegant if rather simplistic in design but the colors feed my soul. It has a robin egg border, diamond patterns of bright colors of yellow, purple, pink, green, blue and purple. There is a variance of design within the triangular shapes but a continuity only an artist could realize. Aunt Nans physical presence is long gone but her spirit is healing me this morning.

My my son called yesterday to tell me he was walking the dog with his wife. They were thankful for the dry land and suddenly the clouds parted and the sun shown. He called to tell me about that.....I know he will be okay.

[Williamsmith]

Youth is not impressed by the odds. In fact, it assumes to beat them. Perhaps it cannot see the risks. And so you show up at the church on the appointed day in a cheap suit with a best man who has unbeknownst to you filled the hubcaps of your car with gravel, tied loud cans to your bumper and written embarrassing cliches on your windows with soap.

The car is a Datsun B210, manual shift with a cracked heater core that ensures your feet freeze in the winter so you carry a credit card with you to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield to see the road. But today it is warm and after the ceremony you are headed to a state park in West Virginia for a honeymoon. After that, on to Pineville, West Virginia where your bride has an interview for a teaching position.

It is late and you don't make it to the state park. You stop in Morgantown, West Virginia and check into a hotel. Carrying your bags to the room, you slip in the key and throw open the door. There is something wrong. Why are two people sleeping in your bed.....my God they gave you a room that had already been occupied. This isn't starting very well.

Somehow you make the best of it and eventually arrive in Pineville. It is a mining town deep in the Appalachians and it is poor. Fewer than 1000 people live here and most are out of work. It is a stark and naked place with little greenery. The roads snake their way up and down mountains and have no guiderails. Coal tailings cascade from every hillside. The people have blank faces and you look in your new brides face and see astonishment. You think to yourself, "Can we live here? Can we even fit in?"

You wait in the car while she has her interview. When she comes out she tells you she got the job. There is a silence between you and her. You catch yourself and feebly say, "Great!" It isn't convincing. She has the name of a realtor and already they have made arrangements to see a house. You pull up at the address. Inside a kitchen with no cupboards. A pot belly coal stove for heat. You are starting to get tunnel vision and stomach cramps. There's no much to be seen. Out in the car there is another long silence and you notice a tear welling up in her eye.

You know what has to be done. You have to take the pressure off her but you know what the result will be. Returning yet again to your families having failed. Is it possible to recognize the wrong choice but still make it? You say to her something like, "This isn't feeling right is it? It's okay. We will make it and we don't have to start here." She shakes her head and cries out loud. It breaks your heart.

The very same day she accepts her first teaching position... she resigns from it and you drive her out of the shadows of those mountains never to return again. But now what.

continued.....

[iris lilies]

That is a Pretty old quilt with cheerful colors.. They have a great feel with that cotton soft and aged.

I over heard a conversation between random stranger in an airport recently. They were talking about air traffic control positions back in the day of Reagan and how those schools were designed to flunk the huge majority of people out.

You and were wife were probably job hunting during that period of 10% unemployment in the U.S. Thats when I was seeking my first professional job as well. I was too you g and stupid to k ow this was a problemt time. My dad told me "you WILL accept a job if offered" and that was uncharacteristically dictatorial of him. Fortunately, The job I wanted was the job that wanted me and I moved 1200 miles for it.

I am enjoying your journal.

[Williamsmith]

That is a Pretty old quilt with cheerful colors.. They have a great feel with that cotton soft and aged.

I over heard a conversation between random stranger in an airport recently. They were talking about air traffic control positions back in the day of Reagan and how those schools were designed to flunk the huge majority of people out.

You and were wife were probably job hunting during that period of 10% unemployment in the U.S. Thats when I was seeking my first professional job as well. I was too you g and stupid to k ow this was a problemt time. My dad told me "you WILL accept a job if offered" and that was uncharacteristically dictatorial of him. Fortunately, The job I wanted was the job that wanted me and I moved 1200 miles for it.

I am enjoying your journal.

Thank you for sharing that, IL.

[Williamsmith]

https://youtu.be/671AgW9xSiA

I became aware of Jerry Garcia (Lead guitarist of Grateful Dead) but not for his work with that band. I was immersed in the folk culture and bluegrass community. Jerry did an album called, "Old and In the Way". Jerry never worried about whether something would sell or if it was commercially successful. Many who influenced Jerry were mentors of mine in a musical way. People like David Grisman, Tony Rice, Mark O'Connor, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, The New Grass Revival. These are the threads of folk and mountain music that wound through Jerry's playing and his music. I can't think of a band so misunderstood, shunned and mislabeled as the "dead". But none of that ever mattered to them because they paid the bills with concerts and never tried to make records that appealed to the masses. They chose a path and walked it honestly without regret. I suppose among other things that is why I like this song.

Since the day I met my wife I have owned at least one guitar. During the first days of our marriage it was a Martin D-18. The music has been like a glue that holds the chair of my life together. The legs get wobbly sometimes and need reset.

[Float On]

I had a very vivid picture in my mind of the West Virginia area you were in. I spent the summer of '84 out there and it is remote! I was leading a group of inner city kids from DC on a backpacking trip and though I'd been over the trail several times before got myself turned around which is hard to do since I have a very good sense of direction. We ran across a sibling group in bare feet, undersized overalls and faded feedsack dresses, on their daily walk to get water in buckets. They were kind enough to point us back toward where they knew the trail was that "city folk use". I had a feeling we'd been caught in a time-warp and that we were in the '40's and would never find '84 again.

[Williamsmith]

Continued

Just the hum of the tires on the highway. That's all you hear. Your mind is going through scenarios. Your wife is dozing, worn out emotionally from the turmoil of decisions. There is a small matter of where to hang your hat until one of you gets a job. It's inconceivable that you are actually considering asking to move in temporarily with your new in laws. Their house is viciously small. It is a row house in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Your father in law is an electrician preparing for retirement. Your mother in law is a traditional German housewife, has never had a drivers license, and is a colon cancer survivor. The last thing you want to do is get in the way of their lives. There are just two bedrooms and one tiny bathroom. You can imagine how proud they will be to tell their friends about the new son in law who is jobless and homeless.

Eventually, the road runs out and you bring your wife home, back to where she began. That's the sum total of your glorious honeymoon. All you bring to the table is the clothes on your back and another mouth to feed. You begin in earnest to search the paper for a job. Both of you. On the weekends you help your father in law fashion a corner of the basement into a bathroom. You learn a lot about things you should already know. Plumbing, electricity, patience!

You take up running. Every morning you go out into the streets and you run. There is something therapeutic about it. The sweat seems to be a way to purge your life of thoughts that weigh you down. You can't understand how gracious your in laws have been. They seem to have a kind of light approach to life that you've never experienced. Your wife explains that it's because of the gratitude they have for her mother's recovery from cancer. And she tells you about her brothers open heart surgery when he was just ten. He was one of the first ever for a child his age. You experience a new level of thankfulness modeled by the family. It's not fake made up religious zealousness. There is consistency.

Your wife brings you the newspaper every day. One day there is a bulletin, the State Police are hiring and the first step is a civil service test. You apply to take the test even though you have never once in your life imagined a career in law enforcement. Most of your life has been spent avoiding the police. Sometimes for good reason. But it is a job. You also apply to the Air Force for Officer Candidate school. You figure that the pilots license you acquired as a teenager might help sway the decision in your favor.

In the meantime, your wife gets a job interview at a private endowment for severe and profound mentally handicapped people. They need a teacher. You happily drive her for the interview. She is dressed nicely. You think this could be something to celebrate. As you wait in the car in your jeans and ratty sweatshirt.....she comes out after just a few minutes. There's no way she got the job that quick is there? She comes to the car but doesn't get in. Rolling the window down, you hear her say, "They need houseparents! We can live here. There's one room in the back of each house and thats where we can stay. It pays $12,000!" "Well? They want to talk to you." I'm am thinking.....they are in wheelchairs, they can't speak, they have to be fed, they wear diapers and have to be changed, they have to be bathed.

Continued

[Williamsmith]

I had a very vivid picture in my mind of the West Virginia area you were in. I spent the summer of '84 out there and it is remote! I was leading a group of inner city kids from DC on a backpacking trip and though I'd been over the trail several times before got myself turned around which is hard to do since I have a very good sense of direction. We ran across a sibling group in bare feet, undersized overalls and faded feedsack dresses, on their daily walk to get water in buckets. They were kind enough to point us back toward where they knew the trail was that "city folk use". I had a feeling we'd been caught in a time-warp and that we were in the '40's and would never find '84 again.

Kids from D.C.? That had to be an experience!

[Float On]

Kids from D.C.? That had to be an experience!

Yes it was. The community center where they held summer day camps were daily shootings on the other side of the tall fence. We'd take a bus load of the 12-16 year olds to West Virginia for a 2 week adventure camp. We lived in army tents on platforms, taught nature classes, ropes courses, camping skills, cooking, trust building things, backpacking (my favorite - lead me to major in recreation in college and I lead backpacking trips to Colorado for youth groups for several years), hiking, rock climbing/rappelling, etc. It was a rainy summer and I know nightly we'd say "don't touch the drops of water on your tent roof" and nightly someone would touch the drops. Some kids spend every night in the bus! Many had never noticed the stars before or the sounds of night sitting on the side of a mountain overlooking the dark hills for miles. It was a pretty incredible program but I know for most of those kids once they aged out of the community center they ended up on the other side of that fence. I often wonder how many made it to 18 or 21. Did we make a difference?

[Williamsmith]

Did you make a difference? Are you kidding? How could you not?

[catherine]

Did you make a difference? Are you kidding? How could you not?

Honestly, when I read these kinds of posts I feel so happy to be a part of this discussion board. I know we argue on political matters sometimes, but Simple Living takes many shapes and forms. There are so many of us here, teachers, public servants, minimalists, gardeners, writers, artists, nurses..all bound by our commitment to eliminate the superfluous from our lives. I aspire to be like you all.

[Williamsmith]

Dignity. It is a word you have seldom considered in your short 23 years of life. Until now, it was a word that simply existed but was seldom needed. Now, you learn the true meaning of the need for a dignified life, you see what "normal" people wish to not see, what political entities have institutionalize, and how seemingly insignificant populations can be marginalized.....even prejudiced. You learn to expose your hardened heart to caring.

It is a rough transition for newlyweds. You and your wife share one room under the same roof with nine severely handicapped and profoundly retarded individuals. It is a simple footprint. A kitchen, a room with various devices meant for therapeutic purposes, a small living room with a television, three bedrooms with three beds in each, a bathroom with an elevated tub and a laundry just outside the door to your room.

You split the room in half with a large bookshelf. On one side your bed on the other a couch. You work a split shift. 6-8:30 am and then back 3-9pm. There are three shifts for pairs of assistants. The job is simple. You are responsible for the health, safety and care of nine people who cannot care for themselves. One of them can walk by himself. He constantly roams the house and bite s the back of his hand when anyone approaches him. All the rest are wheelchair bound except one. She is locked in the prison of infancy. An adult by age but only an infant in development. Her body is frozen stiff. She has no flexibility and must sit in a beanbag chair when she is out of her bed. She barely weighs 30 lbs.

The others are in various stages of development. Some can smile and cry. Some cannot. Some can feed themselves with assistance, some cannot. None can use the bathroom and require changing of diapers. It's an intensive challenging environment. Only one of the residents receives visitors. His mother comes on the weekend. He chews incessantly on his hands so he is fitted with splints that refuse to allow him to chew. He is frustrated by the splints and otherwise appears to be in another world.

To be an infant or child is a beautiful thing. To be frozen there for life ....what must that feel like. You resolve to maintain their dignity. It's what makes them human and it's the one thing that is always at risk for they have no way to advocate for themselves. It is a lesson that sticks with you long after you leave this place.

Continued

[Williamsmith]

As you go about your daily routine it is inevitable. At the ripe age of 23 you often get the question, "So what do you do?" You get to the point that you know some variance of the following will be said when you tell them...."Wow, I couldn't do that." You don't tell them that you said it to yourself before you committed to doing it. In fact, you're not all that certain that you are doing a very good job at it. Sometimes you catch yourself being frustrated with your inability to interact with them, fighting the feeling that all you are doing is keeping them alive and barely. And there are times when you become angry about having failed at Air Traffic control necessitating this compromise in your plans.

But within a year you get an appointment to the State Police Academy, your wife moves to a shift position and you make preparations for a 21 week para military training program. The program is modeled after the United States Marine Corp and is the oldest State Police Academy in the nation having been founded in 1905 as a response to violence in coal strikes. It has evolved over time but when you enter it still has remnants of the old school. There was a time when only single men could be Troopers. If you were engaged after being placed in the field, your station commander had to approve of the marriage. Women were not permitted to serve.

But at the time of your entrance, the department is under mandatory court ordered affirmative action. Minorities and women are highly recruited and given preference over all others. You can't help but feel a sense of pride that no preference has been given you and you have made it the hard way. You earned it. Once in however, you believe each man and woman must prove themselves worthy. You will be pleasantly surprised by some and sorely disappointed by others. You are only allowed to leave every other weekend and only if you are not being disciplined. Many find that difficult....some never get to leave.

It is the period before cell cell phones are popular. There is only one payphone. You make a call home once a week. Your class is small. Only 48 cadets from the entire pool of applicants. On your leave weekends you make the trip home with a classmate from your home county. It is a five hour drive. You get to know him rather well. What you don't know is that within a few years after graduation, he will be killed in the line of duty. It will not be the first friend to have his name etched in stone on the memorial wall and not the last.

A cadet does not get to wear the uniform until graduation. Until then it is gray dockers and a button up shirt without a patch or markings accept a nametag. On the first day you are addressed by the Major in charge of the Academy. You don't remember much of the blather but you do keep in mind that whatever personal ego you brought with you....it had to be surrendered at the door. He tells you, "You are a cadet. You are lower than whale shit! Do what you are told to do or you will be out on your ear."

Laying on your bunk on the first night, the thought crosses your mind...."I am going to have a rough go of it here."

[Williamsmith]

Twenty one weeks. That seems like a long time when every minute of every day is controlled by someone else. You are examined right down to the dust on the floor beneath your bunk. The bed has to be made a specific way. Your shoes shined to a mirror image. The floor of your room which you share with one other cadet must be stripped and waxed. There are unannounced inspections and the instructors seem to enjoy inventing "gigs" or offenses.

Perhaps a thread that unravels around a button hole, a crooked nametag or dust in the barrel of your stainless steel Ruger .357 Security-Six revolver. Everyday you march in formation to the range and every day you fire your revolver. That means every night the revolver must be cleaned of all powder burns, fouling and made to be squeaky clean. Just the hint of oil found on the gun will be cause for weekend leave to be revoked.

It shouldn't be a surprise. After the first day in the "tank". You are all tested to determine your ability to swim. One of your cadet mates is African American and from the inner city of Philadelphia. He stands on the edge of the tank with the rest of your class. The tank seems to be infinitely deep. Everyone is ordered into the tank and told to tread water. He is the only one who remains on the deck. The Corporal is extremely aggitated and orders him in nose to nose. He is so animated he is spitting on the face of the terrified cadet. But the cadet will not budge. He tells the Corporal that the only water he's every been in was from a fire hydrant. That only seems to anger the Corporal even more. The rest of the class is treading water and watching this unfold.

Suddenly, the Corporal wraps his arms around the cadet and flings him in the water. He disappears immediately to the bottom of the pool. The Corporal orders everyone else out on the deck. By the time the water is clear it has been a couple minutes but it feels like forever. You wonder if he will let the cadet from Philadelphia drown. It seems an impossibly long period of time but eventually the Corporal removes a long sheeps hook from the wall and thrusts it into the water down toward the dark form at the bottom. He pulls it up and the cadet bursts through the surface gasping for air. He is drug onto the deck heaving.

You later come to learn more about Arnold and are sympathetic to his fear of water and the rural woods. He learns to swim and he eventually graduates but is gone from the department within ten years under less than honorable circumstances.

You quickly determine that attention to detail seems to be the key to success. Again, the first lesson learned is in the pool. The second test is performing the breast stroke. The Corporal demonstrates. You are standing beside your roommate watching and notice that the Corporal is doing the stroke the wrong way. One by one each cadet gets into the water and performs the breast stroke flawlessly, except Arnold who is standing on the deck. His weekend leave has been revoked permanently until he can learn to swim. He will be having remedial swimming classes when everyone else has gone. But you lean over to your roommate and whisper, "Do it like the Corporal did it." When it is your turn, you do it wrong, just like the Corporal. So does your roommate.

When everyone is back on the deck, the Corporal announces that everyone's weekend leave is revoked except two. You and your roommate. Attention to detail. Lesson one.

You return to your room room to prepare for cleaning the stalls of the horses and notice one of the cadets has his belongings packed and sitting outside his room. When you find out why he was dismissed, it amazes you.

[Williamsmith]

The last thing you have any use for in this place is money. There are no vending machines and no place to spend it. You can't leave the facility unless of course you quit. And that happens occasionally when someone realizes they aren't cut out for this sort of thing or they can't mentally or physically bear it anymore. The longer training goes, the more connected you become with your cadetmates. So when one of them disappears without their goodbyes, it strikes you as mighty strange and in a brief span of time saddens you. That feeling doesn't last long because you are busy every minute of the day figuring out how you will continue.

So when more than half the training time has passed and someone leaves, it's a matter of great concern. In this instance, a cadet has chosen to take a five dollar bill from the dresser of his roommate. The act of theft is an automatic dismissal for committing a crime, however petty it may be. It is unbelievable that a person could go through all the steps to get this far and screw it up like that....but it is a lesson. Not everyone is what he/she appears to be. You store that bit of skepticism in the back of your brain and there it grows like a joe pie weed until once in the field you will not trust anyone until they have proven they diserve your trust. That might some day include...even your wife. And your grandma.

The horses are a throwback to a different time. Perhaps a more raw and dangerous time. The department has a mounted unit that it uses in crowd control, parades and rodeos. The horses are therefore, possessions of great value. A cadet is decidedly not of great value. So you learn early that when they dispatch your class to the barn several times a week, it means the supervisor will be watching you closely and making sure the stalls and horses are cleaned and groomed to perfection.

It is a stinking dirty job. And a dangerous one. The horses seem to know you are lower than whale shit too. They bite at you when you have your back turned and they kick you when you least expect it. For those cadets who have never been around a horse, it is very unsettling. You learn what a horses dock is and how to clean it. Basically, you wipe their ass.

Some horses have worse dispositions than others. You learn how to get the point across when the instructor isn't looking, that you aren't to be played with. The horse knows the game but he has a final ace in the hole. Later along the training schedule, you have to ride him. It behooves you to create a working relationship. One of your cadetmates with be kicked in the groin and terribly injured. Somehow he will make it through training and you respect him tremendously for roughing it out. Another will be thrown over a fence from his mount. He is your sparring partner in fight class and he is a semi pro boxer. You yourself will be injured but it will happen in the tank and somehow you will make it through the rest of the training. Immediately after graduation surgery will be required but you'll make it.

[Williamsmith]

Taking a time out from the story line. We've had a nice bit of Indian summer and it's relaxing to sit on the porch in the early morning again. My flowers and baskets haven't given up yet and my solar bird bath babbles reassuringly. A humming bird will zip by and occasionally perch in the ornamental cherry right next to my chair. Those little guys are amazing. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten them to feed nectar out of the hand? It's dangerous to keep a hummingbird feeder around here. Last garbage day a black bear went through the neighborhood like a tornado, upsetting cans and spreading garbage all over creation. One can here would be untouched, the next destroyed.

Anyway, I was thinking about the consumer culture and I think this whole screw up with Equifax is making my brian waves go in a definite direction. My oldest son is financially challenged so we've been brainstorming ways to reduce his monthly budget. He has moved into a trailer where the rent is half what an apartment is but he has to regulate what he spends on heating, cooling, water, sewage, trash removal, transportation and entertainment.

He is currently with Verizon for cellphone service and plans to move to consumer cellular to save money. Except when he moves he wants to buy a new iPhone on the payment plan and get rid of the iPhone that he has. But it still works! I can't understand this.

I mean, I can because it's the way our consumer culture markets its products. Apple is a champion at this. But the thing is, here is a guy who is a poster child for needing to live a minimalist life and reduce his consumer profile. He's got child support, rent and a car payment plus utilities and a need to establish a monthly retirement plan. But no, Apple, has dangled the carrot and it keeps him in the consumer circle.

When I bring this up to him, he says that he plans on working until he is dead. He sees no light at the end of the tunnel. It's like he believes whatever joy he can squeeze out of life now, he better take. So....he wants a new $700 iPhone and he can't afford to pay an attorney to negotiate a visitation order for his daughters relocation several states away.

I did talk him out of trading in his car which is worth less than the trade in value. At least, he saw the wisdom in running it until it can't be fixed anymore. I seriously believe this easy credit we've adopted has been really bad for the country.

With th that said, my state just passed a bill to borrow one billion dollars to finance expenditures for this years budget! Oh Boy!

[SteveinMN]

I mean, I can because it's the way our consumer culture markets its products. Apple is a champion at this. But the thing is, here is a guy who is a poster child for needing to live a minimalist life and reduce his consumer profile. He's got child support, rent and a car payment plus utilities and a need to establish a monthly retirement plan. But no, Apple, has dangled the carrot and it keeps him in the consumer circle.

When I bring this up to him, he says that he plans on working until he is dead. He sees no light at the end of the tunnel. It's like he believes whatever joy he can squeeze out of life now, he better take. So....he wants a new $700 iPhone and he can't afford to pay an attorney to negotiate a visitation order for his daughters relocation several states away.
All of the successful companies are masters of selling you what you didn't know you needed. Your son could be just as hung up on getting a new Samsung Galaxy S8 or the latest Sony PlayStation or leasing a car he can't afford. Apple indeed may be dangling the carrot, but your son is the one deciding that he'd rather go for the carrot than the turnip already on his plate.

Your son's take on his economic future is, sadly, not uncommon. The PCAs who take care of my brother are almost uniformly working poor, getting by even a little beyond paycheck-to-paycheck, and none of them will be improving their economic outlook in that job (a measly raise, maybe; a promotion, never). Every single PCA carries a recent-model smartphone (not the $50 prepaid Android kind, either, though, in fairness, the phone doubles as their home computer and having a computer is almost mandatory in America anymore, so spending more for the capability and the marker (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-people-waste-money-on-luxury-goods) it provides makes some sense). Almost all of them are as fashionable (fingernails, name-brand clothing) as the job will allow.

The deal is that, in such economic straits, you probably will never have enough money. You always will be at risk for losing your job for some odd reason or another. You always will be one major unexpected expense away from not making it. So, the thinking goes, if the money I have now will only get spent on some bill later, why not enjoy it now? You'll figure out how to pay the unexpected bill when it arrives. Maybe, if you're lucky, it never will. This is a very prevalent economic outlook. Then there's the "marker" thing -- if you don't look like you belong, you never will belong. And it does lead to a cadre of people who will be scrabbling for whatever jobs they can find for as long as they are capable of doing them, likely till death ends their sentence. It's not pleasant to think about.

[Williamsmith]

Continued..

Injury is an everyday part of training. Some came unprepared, some are the victim of bad luck or poor judgement and some seem like they are nursing phantom symptoms in order to get out of physical training. Undoubtedly, the running is brutal. It is every morning and it is sometimes in the dark. The pace is often too much for the same people over and over. You adopt the same strategy for all matters of training. Finish some where in the middle of the pack where you don't draw attention to yourself.

The same cadet finishes first in the run every day. He is a gifted runner and he also enjoys a cigarette, quite often sneaking a smoke just before running. The same cadet finishes last. He is a doughball and a constant complainer. Midway through training he will get a physical excuse from the run and will be held over into the next overlapping class due to his deficiencies. Eventually, he will be graduated and arrive in the field but you will despise him for his laziness and shirking his duties. One particular time he almost gets you killed. And fittingly, he makes rank.

But back at the academy you find yourself again in the tank. Everyone is required to repeatedly dive to the bottom and return to the surface. Apparently this is to desensitize you to the possibility of having to enter water for an attempt at lifesaving especially to a submerged vehicle. You've never been this deep before and you are a bit claustrophobic but to the bottom you go. During one dive, your ear seems to ache and as you get to the bottom a sharp pain in your left ear drum accompanied by a rush of water makes it a certainty that something disturbing has happened. You lose your sense of direction, equilibrium and float to the top where you crawl out on the deck, blood oozing from the left ear.

The academy nurse, an older man who seems a bit challenged medically peers into your bleeding ear and announces that it is clearly just a broken blood vessel. He stuffs cotton in it and tells you to report back to the tank. The only reason you don't have to go back in is that they don't want blood in the water. But for the next two nights you lay in excruciating pain and survive training and instruction during the day.

Finally, you report back to the nurse and tell him the pain is unbearable. He begrudgingly sends you to a nearby medical center which just happens to be one of the finest facilities in the state. A surgeon examines you and advises you have ruptured your tympanic membrane.....your eardrum is destroyed. If you can just tough out the final weeks of training and graduate, he will build you a new eardrum by harvesting a part of the muscle behind your ear and attaching it in the place where your original one was. He explains that he will do the surgery through the ear canal. This doesn't seem too bad but like many other plans, it doesn't work that way. He ends up cutting your ear and laying it open onto your face. The surgery is a success but recovery is slow.

[Williamsmith]

It may be possibly a little incongruous with the purpose of this thread but there does not seem to be any direction except for simply speaking what's on my mind. Sometimes the daily bread is old and moldy, sometimes it's fresh out of the oven.

Today, it has been a sad day following a sleepless night. A close friend, closer than a brother.....lost his son. He was shot and killed in a domestic disturbance. I thought I had a good grip on the frustration of the question, "why?" That little word .....I do hate it so.

Just trying to find a way to tell them to hold on.


https://youtu.be/NLlOeGeVih4

[nswef]

Dear Williamsmith, I am so sorry to hear of your friends horrific loss. No advice, just sympathy and wishes for peace.

[iris lilies]

This is shocking news, williamsmith. I am so sorry for you and your friend.

[ToomuchStuff]

My condolences.
No parent should have to bury their child.

[Tybee]

I am so sorry for your loss, Williamsmith.

[Zoe Girl]

Oh I am so sorry, I also have never had an answer to why. Sometimes the best we can do is be present with them.

[SteveinMN]

Wow! My condolences. Sometimes "why" is very far away indeed. I wish you peace as you remember this young man and attend to the grief his family (and you) are going through.

[Williamsmith]

Thank you for the expressions of sympathy.

[Williamsmith]

Continued...

Assignments are handed out for graduating cadets. Most intra and inter troop transfers have been completed and vacancies are filled out of the academy. Vacancies are mostly at the busiest stations closest to the urban areas as Troopers migrate to supposedly less challenging counties. There is a dedicated interstate patrol troop and a turnpike troop that spans the entire length of the state from east to west. Nobody from the academy is assigned either of these two troops because older troopers are transferring in and filling any vacancies. The county troops are tasked with all manner of criminal and traffic enforcement similar to a sheriffs department in many states. You wait to see where you will end up.

Prior to assignments being handed out you were asked to provide preferred destinations. Your top three were your home troop and two adjacent troops respectively. You expect to at least get an adjacent assignment that will leave you within 100 miles of your home. One by one, each cadet receives their assignment ...except you. Finally, you have to speak up as everyone is about to leave the room. The response confirms that you have been keeping a low profile. "Who the hell are you?"

It seems to befuddle the leadership. But after some calling around, your assignment arrives. Troop G......smack dab in the middle of the state over two hundred miles away from home. You look on the map. It's near the largest university in the state....the same one you attended but past that, there are more deer, bear and turkeys than there are people. It's going to be difficult to find a suitable rental. Your wife accompanies you on a scouting mission. You need to find a place to live and you need to meet the Sargeant in charge of your barracks.

Arriving in the area, you generally know the location but can't place where the barracks is. Heading up the mountain, you've been told it is up on top near the highway maintenance shed. You find it, but you are not sure what you are looking at. There is a sign announcing that it is the facility of interest but it is simply a small house. There are only two marked patrol cars and a tiny driveway. Walking in the front door, there is a trooper with his feet up on a desk, a bowl of soup and his clip on tie hanging off to the side. You introduce yourself and reach out your hand. He simply swivels in a squeaky chair and screams back toward what looks like a bedroom. "Sarge! The new boot is here!" "Send him in!" Comes the reply. The voice is decidedly feminine and when you enter the office....you learn that your new Commanding Officer is the first female Sargeant to ever command a station I. The history of your department which goes back 75 years.

[Williamsmith]

You also learn that a new facility has just been built by a contractor who will lease the building to the state. The new station is about a mile down the road and it's ready to be occupied. Your first assignment is to leave the uniform at home and show up ready to move everything out and into the new facility. It will take two days. When you finish the move and on your first day reporting to duty you stand in front of the building and have a picture taken in uniform. The background is the state seal.

Despite the elation of having graduated, been assigned, located housing and generally not been run off....the fact is you know nothing about police work. The training and education you get is just enough to get you in trouble. In trouble by thinking you are capable of something you most certainly aren't, in trouble by having no knowledge of local procedures, in trouble by not being familiar with area residents who largely support your agency but when push came to shove will side with any members of their family first. You also need to learn the pet peeves of each supervisor and how to stay on their good side. Especially, the Sargeant who makes out your schedule.

There is a break in period where you are considered a probabtionary Trooper. Your are assigned to ride with a more experienced "road dog" who is supposed to show you the ropes and teach you enough to stay out of trouble and stay alive. The area is so sparsely populated that there isn't even a midnight patrol except on weekends. A Trooper spends the night in the building answering the phone and deciding whether someone will need hauled out of bed to respond to an incident. That potential responder will have worked the 3-11 shift and taken the car home with him. He is usually also working the 7-3 shift the following morning. It doesn't take long for you to figure out that calling the "on call" Trooper is something that is not done without absolute necessity.

The coach/trainee system is designed to root out probationary troopers who just won't cut it. Most often it will be the lack of timely reporting that will tangle them up. The report system is still functioning under the carbon copy method of triplicate with each copy to be forwarded to a different location after completion. It is a burdensome holdover from years of military influence. Computers have not yet been incorporated. Your first coach is a stickler for completing paperwork immediately after it is a requirement. He is a strange recently divorced hermit who lives in a house deep up a holler tucked in the mountains. You learn that many of the current Troopers spent time in Vietnam and predictably, have their issues. But they meet the criteria laid out for law enforcement in rural America. They are capable of handling anything on their own. It might not be as per regulation on paper but they know how to quash an insurrection by simple will and brute force. And they know how to report what happened.....clear and concise. Not too much and not too little.

Your second coach is only on the job three years but you realize that he is both easy going and fully capable when challenged. He is able to talk his way out of difficulty and fight his way out of a bar. Mostly though, he is interested in the wildlife and learning the ins and outs of fly fishing. It will be an endeavor that will lead him to a chance encounter with the 39th President of the United States. He becomes an outdoorsman, photographer, writer and environmentalist of some prominence in the county. He kindles a friendship with you that lasts a lifetime.

Climbing in a patrol car for the first shift on your own and responsible for a large area, you can't help but feel intimidated. Will you be able to be fair and make good decisions. Can you develop a repoir with the locals? What awaits you? The only tools you have at your disposal is your marked patrol car, a radio that has two channels, a hand held repeater which doesn't work when you get more than a hundred yards from the car, a wooden night stick, handcuffs, and a .357 caliber Ruger revolver with a speed strip of six rounds. That means you have twelve total rounds with which to defend yourself should it come to that. Shotguns have to be signed out. Some do, some don't. Rifles are 30.06 caliber with open sights. They mostly remain in the armoury.

Your mind is constantly stirring up scenarios. You think of some of the worst ones. Shootings, fatal accidents, missing children......and the silence is broken by the crack of the radio. Central to Central 2. "Central 2. Go ahead." Central 2, we have an incident for you.

[Williamsmith]

This is a reaction you'd better get used to. In fact, it will become an addiction. Your pulse picks up pace. There is a little tightness in your back muscles and something called dopamine is created in your brain. You are preparing for fight or flight. As time goes on, you will barely be aware of the increased attention and tunnel vision it provides you. It will become second nature. But now, as a new boot, you prepare to be dispatched, and it can be for almost anything.

The radio barks in response, "Central 2 I got an incident for you. Theft. The complainant will be a Mrs. Anderson at RD 2 Box 236, Port Royal.....that's down in the valley. There will be a white Ford F-150 in the driveway and the house will be of red insulbrick". You respond, "10-4".

This is before the 911 system mapped out the county with easy to find addresses. This is where your coach/trainee sessions pay off. All the traveling around and paying attention helps you know where to look for the house. Many mailboxes have the box number written on them but not all. You also carry a map of the county with you with handwritten notes, local names for roads and appropriate zone assignments and district justice jurisdictions.

You find the house. Out near the end of the dirt drive is an old refrigerator next to a garage. You notice it but don't pay it much mind. A German shepherd lopes across the front yard toward your car. He looks friendly enough but still you put down the window first to see his reaction. Meantime, a woman comes out on the porch and says,"Don't worry, he won't bite." Dogs are famous for attacking people in uniform, that you know but as a kid you used to roam the neighborhood and pet all the dogs that were either running around or tied to a box. You figure the dog is trustworthy and get out of the car.

He circles around behind you as you introduce yourself to the woman who obviously must be Mrs. Anderson. She is unkempt but not dirty. She appears to live by herself and scrapes by, probably with social security ....she lives on what used to be a dairy farm. Now she keeps free range chickens. And hens in the coop behind barn.

She has a serious look look on her face and something troubling her greatly. You expect to hear something like her stash of cash has been taken from her house or maybe a car is missing. You are resolving to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of whatever is causing her this much grief. She starts explaining, "Young man, you see that refrigerator down by the road? Well, this has happened a few times and I just let it go. I was sitting on the porch here and a car pulls in. They go to the frig and open the door. I don't hear any clinking noise. Nothing! And then they leave. Well, this time I am ready. I got these here binoculars and as they pull out I got the first three numbers of the plate. "

You still havent gotten what the crime was. "Mrs. Anderson, what happened?" She looks at you sideways and asks..."Young man, are you going to get my money or not?"

"For what, Mrs. Anderson?"

"The thirty-five cents for the dozen eggs they took without putting any money in the coffee can!"

There is a part of you that just wants to reach in your pocket and hand her the thirty-five pennies. But the compassionate side wins out and you tell her you'll do your best to find the culprit.

Armed with a description of the vehicle and having checked that the coffee can was indeed empty...you drive south in the direction of the suspects vehicle. A few miles south is a crossroads with several houses and a few side streets. You drive around not expecting to find the car but needing to put something on the report to say you tried. But there it sits. The right color and the right first three numbers of the registration plate.

A woman meets you at the door door when you knock. She is shocked to see a State Trooper at her door and probably is expecting to be informed of the untimely death of a family member. There is no easy way to suggest to a person that they are a thief. Especially when the amount is less than the cost of a postage stamp. She is apologetic and immediate produces a quarter and a dime for restitution. You assure her it must have been a misunderstanding. She asks you to apologize for her to Mrs. Anderson.

On your way back to the scene of the crime, you can't help but think at least someone will have their faith restored in the justice system. You pull into the drive, hop out and drop the two coins into the coffee can. A voice booms from the porch, "I heard that!" It was a valiant attempt to not have to explain but you reluctantly return to the porch and apologize for the egg thief.

Retuning to station at at the end of the shift, you drop the assignment report into the shift supervisors Box along with a few Traffic citations. Feeling pretty good about your first day, you undress and go home. When you return the next day there is a discrepancy notice in your box from the crime unit supervisor. You can't believe what you are reading.

[catherine]

What a great story. I love the telling details in simple language. I'm thinking Dragnet meets Hemingway.

Really interesting window into your world and the world of law enforcement.

[Williamsmith]

What a great story. I love the telling details in simple language. I'm thinking Dragnet meets Hemingway.

Really interesting window into your world and the world of law enforcement.

I was thinking more on the lines of William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp....."Fun with Dick and Jane" meets "See Spot Run."

[Williamsmith]

This morning I go to attend a funeral for a friend who's son did not live quite three decades. It was a violent end to a turbulent life. One of my golfing buddies supposed that it was partly the parents fault for failure to impart the right morals and ethics. I put that supposition down pretty harshly. I think as parents we take way more credit for successes and way too much blame for the failures of our children.

I just read an article about the widow of a Trooper who was ambushed by a sniper while walking to his car from his station. The widow is suing the parents of the now convicted cop killer who is on death row by the way. According to the widow, the parents developed a great hatred for law enforcement and provided a fertile environment for violent actions toward police to the point that the ambush was a direct result of the "education" they gave their child.

I don't quite know what to make of the ability of some people to lay blame on the family of actors. I suppose if you can make that leap, you can keep jumping ditches until you get to blaming an entire race, population, avocation or culture.

I was the victim of crime numerous times. Twice I was just happy I came out alive. The anger, hatred and revenge never sat well with me for very long. I would rather symbolically wade into a cold clear trout stream in the mountains and let it wash downstream. That's the best way, I think. Let it go.

[Tybee]

The anger, hatred and revenge never sat well with me for very long. I would rather symbolically wade into a cold clear trout stream in the mountains and let it wash downstream. That's the best way, I think. Let it go.

I agree a hundred per cent. This is best in life in general, in my experience.

[Teacher Terry]

WS: I agree that parents don't have as much influence as you think. I raised 3 boys with very different outcomes.

[SteveinMN]

I don't quite know what to make of the ability of some people to lay blame on the family of actors. I suppose if you can make that leap, you can keep jumping ditches until you get to blaming an entire race, population, avocation or culture.
It is a widespread human tendency. Where do xenophobia and its ugly cousin bigotry come from other than an extrapolation of behavior expressed by a minority of a given group of people (race, population, avocation, or culture)?

[Williamsmith]

No, you can't believe that the Crime Unit Supervisor has put a correction notice in your box. He is requiring an initial crime report for this Mayberry RFD Andy Griffith incident. The ICR is a monstrously detailed report that is used for the reporting of felony crimes on down to simple harassment. It is ridiculous to document such a thing on more than a deli napkin, let alone a full blown investigative report with attachments and supplementals. You'll also have to re contact both the "victim" and the "suspect" because the new report requires detailed information you didn't obtain the first time around.

As a rookie, you aren't in much of a position to argue the point. You get cracking because any delay will expose you to falling behind as you are assigned more incidents. In fact, there was one waiting for you when you got to work. You learn that the padding of statistics is a game played by some supervisors in order to manipulate the compliment of manpower they are assigned by Headquarters.

Accidents are another matter. The accident report is due at the end of the shift. That requires you stay after your shift often to complete the reports. You don't get paid for those hours and you end up arriving home late.....far too often. Actually, the first accident you investigate on your own almost results in your not getting home at all.

It is a simple crash. A college student headed home for the weekend straightened out a curve on the major highway connecting the interstate with the college town. He travelled through a split rail fence and into the trunk of a large maple tree. It is beginning to snow on the mountain. The road is greasy on your arrival but the State Highway department isn't much concerned until they get a supervisor to assess the situation before calling out a plow driver to salt the road.

You get there before the volunteer fire department. The student is out of his car standing in the yard. You pull up and snap on your "gumball" style single red emergency light. It's the kind made popular in the movie Smokey and the Bandit. It has no where near the visibility modern light bars have but it is tradition. Unbeknownst to you there is a flatbed truck tractor combination approaching the curve out of sight. You step out of the patrol car and circle around the front beginning to hike up your heavy gun belt. It is now that you hear the trucks jake brake.

Turning toward the sound you see the trailer swing around sideways on the slippery road. The truck is sliding straight toward your patrol car and the trailer is headed directly at you. In the split second you have your mind calculates the best direction to run. It is counter intuitive. You have to run directly across the road toward the other side which happens to mean retracing your path around the front of the patrol car hoping the impact doesn't take you out also.

The sound of the impact is not much different than tossing a stick of dynamite into the trunk of your car or so you imagine. The slush on the highway is thrown up the back of your uniform by the trailer tires as you dash across the road. You dive headfirst into the ditch and then look behind you. The student is standing frozen in place. He hasn't budged an inch. The truck driver is still in his rig. There is not much left of your patrol car and on your way back across the road you pick up a shard from an amber lens cover and put it in your pocket.

That shard remains in your dresser drawer to this day along with other reminders. Reminders of lessons learned. This one was, never turn your back on Traffic. Another will be....never take your eyes off their hands. The reminder, an empty shell casing.

[Williamsmith]

Wake me up, when September ends.


https://youtu.be/NU9JoFKlaZ0

[Williamsmith]

You are starting to fit in as a trusted member of your station. You proved yourself in every situation encountered, backed up others and volunteered to take incidents for others who were temporarily over burdened. Conveniently enough, a retired officer runs a little beer joint just across the road from the station. It is a great place to tip a few after work and a place where the bonds of brotherhood are sealed.

It isn't a cliche, this brotherhood thing. It is real. Your families go out to dinner together, they take trips with each other, babysit for each other and your kids play together. It is the very definition of an extended family. When someone hurts, you all share in the pain. There are constant reminders that you live in a bubble. You are held to a higher standard and when you fail you are punished harshly. There is also a shielding of some that are near the end of a career. They used to carry the weight of the department but now young officers like you step in and take up the slack and give them a break.

Shift work is something that thankfully is in your DNA. Your father worked shifts at the mill. It was so common that you never considered people actually worked steady daylight jobs. So when you are routinely scheduled to work triple headers you don't complain. A triple header is a diabolical invention of supervisors designed to maximize availability of manpower with the fewest resources. You work a 3-11 shift and take a patrol car home with you. You pray you are not called out during the night. Sometimes you are. If not, you arrive back at the station at 7 suited up and ready to go until 3 in the afternoon. You go home and have dinner, maybe relax in a recliner or lay down for a couple hours and show up for midnight shift at 10:30 or 11 pm. You then work seven straight midnight shifts and get a long weekend off after that. They are known commonly as triple headaches. Much later in your career, your union successfully negotiates an end to that torture but by then you have managed to get into plainclothes detective work.

You take your turn working the communications desk. At this rural station incidents during the week are handled by call out of the previous shift's officers who have taken the car home. Calling one of them out is like poking a stick into a mountain lion den. They are all scheduled to return at 7am for a full shift. A middle of the night call out means a tired grumpy response at best. At worst, later you might get hauled out of bed for a domestic or accident that mysteriously cant be located. You get the hint. As a new officer you are acutely aware that good decision making and the ability to handle incidents over the phone are valued traits.

So the night your mother-in-law calls the station at 4:30 am and tells you your pregnant wife who is her daughter needs to get to the hospital, you respond that your shift ends at 6:30 and she needs to hang on. Five minutes later your wife calls and tells you if you don't get home she's going to have your first child at the house without a doctor or a midwife. You make the call and a replacement shows up bleary eyed but understanding. You rush home, pack the wife in the car and drive so fast she reminds you to slow down in between contractions. The hospital is a 30 minute drive. You get there in 15.

On arrival, nobody seems to be much concerned. They take both of you to the birthing room and a nurse casually steps in saying she'll do a quick preliminary exam and then summon the doctor who is also on call and not at the hospital. After a few seconds her face gets serious and she exclaims, "My god she's 10 centimeters dialated, call the doctor!" Twenty minutes after arrival, your first child is born. The doctor makes it in time to do the delivery.....just in time.

With a newborn and a stay at home wife, settled into a house in one of the most rural settings your state can offer, you are particularly satisfied. Your work is a challenge but the bonds of friendship have been strengthened. A tiny Methodist church at the crossroads of fifty members adopts your family and makes you feel like this is home. There are plenty of deer and bear and some turkey and best of all a babbling brook trout stream just a short walk from the back door. Winters are vicious but you enjoy the cold and the wilderness atmosphere. At the height of your reverence and love of this place, your wife asks, "Honey, I'd like to move where my parents and brother are. Can you put in for a transfer?"

[Williamsmith]

It is hard to say goodbye to friends and colleagues so soon after arriving. There had been a policy requiring three years in a troop before transfer but this has just been changed to one and a half. So you immediately qualify for a transfer. You reluctantly submit your letter requesting one to a different troop. What are you going to do, tell the wife that she'll have to stay? There is no future with a dissatisfied partner who came from the big city and is feeling lost in the wilderness. You might as well be signing the divorce papers.

The transfer comes through but not to the station requested. You get assigned the worst location in the troop. There is so much to do to prepare for moving that there is no time to find a house to purchase or rent. You can't believe it but the only option is to move into your in-laws house again. This time they have moved from the big city to a rural county midway between the two largest urban centers in the western part of the state. You spend two months commuting an hour while looking for a house.

Your level of experience is rising. You have investigated a few fatal accidents. You have gotten use to the smell of the medical examiners office and the gruesome coroners investigations. An autopsy is an experience that some have no stomach for. You find that although you never looked forward to one, the insight you gained into the inner workings of the human body is of great interest. You volunteer to attend to these matters and many take you up on it. It is a choice that paves the way for over a decade of successful criminal investigation and a reputation as a very competent and formidable opponent to defense attorneys.

Youth has a tendency to over estimate ones own talents. Looking back at your experiences in the prior troop you know you can handle things on your own but events are about to happen that will make you question your ability to absorb the grief and keep on being effective. As the transition seems to be going nicely, you can't imagine that soon you will arrive at the scene of an accidental or negligent shooting. Entering the house, going up the steps and turning into the bedroom you come face to face with the realization that your family will be one fewer than it was moments ago. You are seeing so someone will not have to. Your life will change forever. Before this, forever was just a word that described a long time. Now forever threatens to suffocate you.

[Williamsmith]

Everyone expects you to be the rock. At least, that is surely how you pretend to be. They all know what you do for a living. To be numb like this for so many days in a row is a terrible existence. You go through the motions of daily life after the funeral.

The funeral. It seems absurd. To bury such a young man and realize you are burying great potential. In your daily job you have watched as others go through this, you have arrived at the door late in the evening or early in the morning. Who will answer? Mother, brother, sister, lover. You have learned not to get wordy for fear of saying the wrong thing. I'm sorry, your loved one did not make it seems to work as well as any other.

The response is never the same. Sometimes they take it like you are telling a neighbor you will be away for awhile. Other times they collapse as though their skeleton has been instantly taken from them. Many times you remain to try to comfort them but mostly your staying just serves to open the wound further. They have too many questions you don't want to answer. Was it painful for them? You hate this question. You practice answering it convincingly without a trace of deceit. You look them straight in the eye and say that it was quick. They were gone in an instant. They shake their head. Neither of you knows the truth. Perhaps you return to them a piece of jewelry. You know that if they see you, days or weeks or even years from now out in the community, they will be brought back to this useless day and all the pain. You are simply a reminder of grief.

Grief. They must be going through hell. They ask you things they think they must know to settle it in their hearts. That God did not step in and save their young child, is something that will leave a hole in their faith or strike a better understanding of their reliance on God......who knows. But you try to provide the answers they seem to need. You provide them with a copy of the report which is intentionally brief and concise. It dutifully documents the details but it does not answer why a gun would be hanging on a wall for anyone to take down. Or why live shells would be stored within it. Or why the barrel was not pointing in another direction. Or why he was visiting in the first place. Why, why, why?

Thats a question that haunts you and will to eternity. You somehow find a way to blame yourself. Aren't you the professional in the family who handles guns daily? Don't you possess the skills and understanding that would have kept this terrible thing from happening? Why.....didn't you impart the knowledge? There were plenty of opportunities. Days in the field hunting pheasants. You just assumed I guess. Assumed he knew how to keep others from sweeping their barrels past them. Remembering back to when you were just a teen. Someone's had to teach you. Now amidst all this pain, you blame yourself. The blame turns to shame, a private misery that no one knows continues.....forever. Everyone is looking at you to be the rock. Outside, you look the part. Inside, you soak up the pain like a sponge but their will come a day when every death reminds you of the tremendous loss that goes with it. The sponge has only the ability to soak up so much pain before it is saturated. There are ways to ring it out but it seems to fill up so fast.

His grave marker and bench are supposed to provide a place to heal. You all visit and sit from time to time. All you do is silently apologize. There is no healing. They move away.

You get up most days and put on the uniform. You go out of the house ready to step in the gaps between reality and fantasy. Patch things up here, tear things down there. It is your job to enforce, serve, protect, issue warnings, take away freedoms, put yourself in harms way, change a tire, stick a pistol in a dark place, write up a ticket, say what happened under oath again and again and again. You are expected to fix in fifteen minutes what people have taken lifetimes to screw up. How do you go to the same place over and over and see the same drunken problem over and over without becoming separated and impatient?

When you stand in front of the locker and strip'off the uniform at the end of a shift, you feel freed. It is only your own problems you are responsible for. You unload your gun and lock it up. The uniform that was once such a joy to wear, feels like a cement block. It begins to rub you in very tender places.

[nswef]

Oh, Williamsmith. Just oh I'm sorry.

[Teacher Terry]

Much of what you write reminds me of when I was a social worker with court ordered clients, abused kids, etc. I only lasted 4 years. I started to cry every night driving home. Then it was back to college for me to get another grad degree so I could do something different.

[Williamsmith]

The October monarch butterfly migration is beginning. I keeping my hanging impatiens plants going as the nights get colder because the monarchs are feeding during the day as they pass my patio. I look at each individual and wish I could ask them....where did you come from? Or if they dred the long trip ahead of them to Mexico nearly 2000 miles away.

Such a fragile package and beautiful. Their flight is mesmerizing. It is a fantastic dance upon the air currents. I want to thank them for bringing me companionship and allowing me the satisfaction of providing nourishment for their journey. Early in spring when I fashioned the hanging arrangements from plastic, soil and seedlings....I was thinking of the joy the flowers bring me in their variable colors but now at the end of their lives they provide for the hobo monarch passing through my town.

A monarch flutters gracefully near attracted by the potential of the brilliant blooms of red, purple, white and pink. It circles in the wind and prepares to land. It hovers with two or three quick compressions of the oversized wings and then lights softly on a flower. I can get close but not too close. They are aware of danger and their fragile existence. It launches out into the open spaces and circles to a different plant.

I am not a monarch. I have a gas furnace and a fireplace to warm by. I have a big box store to fetch groceries. So I am no longer a hunter gatherer and I do not migrate to warmer climates other than for vacation. So these orange and black visitors are welcome. I will see their next generations as they fly by in later years.....here on my patio. There is the seed of a soul in a butterfly...of that I am sure.

[Williamsmith]

Another



https://youtu.be/PYD-DIggB2k

[nswef]

Magnificent, Williamsmith. An exquisite description as well.

[Williamsmith]

Much of what you write reminds me of when I was a social worker with court ordered clients, abused kids, etc. I only lasted 4 years. I started to cry every night driving home. Then it was back to college for me to get another grad degree so I could do something different.

I thank you for your four years. Social workers get all the frustrations of imperfection in the court system. Four years is a long time in that kind of work. A lot of those kids were sexually abused I’m sure. It speaks to your compassion that you carried their memory home with you. No doubt, you made a difference.

[Williamsmith]

Magnificent, Williamsmith. An exquisite description as well.

They are magnificent. I love to think of their freedom. They don’t worry about road closures, passengers, errands. They just float as they wish on the breeze. When I was a child learning new words it was an adventure for me. Each word had a distinct meaning that usually arose from their origin. When I first learned the word “ephemeral”......I immediately equated it to a butterfly. From the Greek “ephemeros” short lived or lasts but a day.

The most beautiful remembrances for me have been ephemeral. The nature of many good things is that they only exist briefly or can not be captured easily repetitively. It is the essence of improvisation. Monarchs embody so much of this for me.

I had a cousin who died at age fourteen. She was afflicted from birth with cystic fibrosis and lived a restricted life, always straining to breathe. I remember the details of my visits with her and she left her mark on me as if she had lived to 100.

Thank you for reading.

[Williamsmith]

Time, speed, distance and spatial relationships of objects. These are hardly topics that you would assume the average police officer would ponder. But ponder you do. In the never ending quest to answer the question of why, as well as all the other legal necessities of determining the elements of a crime, you launch into a mission to learn as much as you can about the variables of time, speed, distance and spatial relationships. You want to know how to reconstruct an accident or a crime in order to learn the causal relationship between conduct and result.

It is obvious that in the field of law enforcement it is the luck of the draw whether the responding officer is trained or has the knowledge to determine these things or even cares for that matter. You don’t want to be the guy who arrives at the scene unprepared and ignorant. The easiest way to achieve this is to study the field of accident reconstruction but your department relies on outside instructors for simple advance accident investigative theory let alone reconstruction. So you pay for it yourself and use accumulated leave to attend on your own time.

Mathematics is not your strong suit. In fact, you were a C student of physics and calculus in high school. In college, you were drummed out of engineering because of your thickness for math. This fact is always in the back of your mind. What if you learn just enough to become dangerous? Still, what you can wrap your brain around inspires you. You become the guy other officers come to with questions about their fatal accidents. You have a skid sled that determines coefficient of friction, a function which helps narrow the speed of a vehicle at the time of impact. You help officers learn that what they write in their reports can have lasting and unjust consequences for persons involved. It is a skill that pays off for you when providing depositions for Civil law suits and criminal court.

But you never ever classify yourself as a reconstructionist. You would probably be roasted on the witness stand by a qualified mathematician. So you never state emphatically this or that. When your department opens a position for full time reconstructionist, you test out perfectly. Being appointed to this position would avail you to department paid further training at nationally recognized academies. And after retirement provide a very solid income for consulting. Knowing none have tested better, you wait for the appointment.

Your station commander is not user friendly. You are not his buddy. He is old school. Get out on the road and don’t come back until your shift is over. He calls you into his office and closes the door. This is not the first specialty position you have been appointed to. For a few years now you have conducted inspections on commercial motor carriers. You know more about the trucking industry than most. That fact becomes important in the meeting. Your closest rival scored below you on the test and your commander knows that the Union would back you in an appeal. So he tells you that it is the other guys turn. The other guy is a pain in his ass and he’d like to move him out. If youwant to, you can decline the position and make the commander happy.

These are the kinds of decisions you’d like to take the time to mull over. Life changing ones. But the commander is adamant. He must know now. To push the issue is to take on the full weight of his wrath. Even though you would be under a new supervisor, word travels quickly and schedules can be manipulated to make a person’s life miserable. Later career choices can be closed off. You give in. And in this quick decision your path is altered for the remainder of your career and life experiences. You walk out of his office having chosen a fork in the road whose promise is unknown.

There is a chaos theory that defines a lot of what you think is just destiny or coincidence. It says, “when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” For visual thinkers like you with dull minds, the double pendulum rod is a lesson in consequences of minuscule sensitivity to condition. You will become a different kind of investigator. One looking into the mind of man but speed, distance and spatial relationship of objects will always be relative. It will always be true that what happens is the consequence of tiny decisions turned tragic. Every time you arrive at a scene, you will look at the glazed eyes of a recently deceased person and promise them to find out the truth about what happened. It is simply all that is left to do.

[Teacher Terry]

Did you ever get that job you wanted or did him forcing you not to take it end up being a permanent decision? That whole situation sucks.

[Zoe Girl]

That's a profound insight.
A lot of people have their light extinguished by their associates and surroundings--too often permanently.

I went back to the beginning of this thread to recall where we started and make sure I was on topic, although I really like reading everything. I noticed this.

I want to ask my psychiatrist at my appointment tomorrow about this. My mom is so busy, always busy, she runs circles around me. I heard from my aunt that she wore her shoes out as a kid walking around the neighborhood, talking to people, doing things, etc. She has a hard time sitting still, although she is surviving her knee surgery. More recently she has lost track of some things, at 74, and there are a few other things with her energy levels. I often wonder if my bipolar II is similar but a trauma or 2 kicked into the needing treatment zone. I think my grandfather had some of the tendency and he drank it, while starting a LOT of different projects, business, etc. Hypomanic gets things done!

[Williamsmith]

The other officer took the job and is making good money as a consultant to attorneys and insurance companies in retirement. I have no regrets. I transferred to a criminal investigative unit where I was involved in many challenging cases and in a few made the difference. My kids will tell you one of my principles is ,”Don’t look back.” I believe that the universe is full of mysteries. Every life dangles from threads of many choices. I can’t go there. It’s like asking, What if Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas? The answer for me is.....But he did!

[Zoe Girl]

” I believe that the universe is full of mysteries. Every life dangles from threads of many choices. I can’t go there. It’s like asking, What if Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas? The answer for me is.....But he did!

Stephen King wrote one of his chilling books about if Kennedy had not been killed, very interesting and scary.

[Williamsmith]

I am sort of undecided as to what the future of this thread is. It is a two headed beast. A narrative and a separate flow of simple thoughts. I didn’t purposely plan it this way. It just kind of evolved. There are many stories that can be added to the narrative but so many of them deal with real people's heartaches and losses. I don’t have permission to memorialize other people’s darkest days. So much of my life involved shared misery and shared joy. So I feel like I have to step gently around some and still tell a story. How I do this remains to be seen.

[Float On]

I don’t have permission to memorialize other people’s darkest days. So much of my life involved shared misery and shared joy. So I feel like I have to step gently around some and still tell a story.

Thank you for honoring their families and memories. People are so quick to share things that shouldn't be shared when they had so little to do with it.

I've enjoyed this thread and the sharing of your history. Whatever direction you take it...we'll read it.

[Williamsmith]

When the things people say started to bother you, you can’t pinpoint. Things like, “It must have been meant to be” or The Lord will never give you more than you can handle.” Or, “He’s in a better place, now.” Your work experiences show these as shallow rationalizations. Who can presume on another’s “better place” especially after they intentionally placed a rifle barrel in their mouth and pulled the trigger? Or took one too many pills and didn’t wake up. Or flipped a dog leash over the basement rafter and hung themselves.

You dont recognize any of the classic symptoms of stress. Young and committed to growing in your profession, you register for every bit of training the administration will allow you to attend. You build your resume and in your back pocket you think you have the wild card that will get you out of uniform and into plainclothes. It is smack dab in the middle of an eventful career but you have hit a wall. In a marathon they call it hitting the wall because you don’t see how you can continue but if you persevere you can be refreshed and finish the race.

Criminal investigation is a specialty position open to every member of your Troop. The Troop is a fiefdom. A Captain’s kingdom consisting of five or six separate stations. Testing is Troop wide and often positions open in stations an hour away in good weather....double in bad. However, each station commander may place a patrol member in plainclothes for a “temporary” position. This is the key to your plan. Your station commander owes you one. You made his life infinitely more tolerable by turning down a position so that he could move someone out of his station that was rubbing him the wrong way. It’s time for payback.

And so as happens, the criminal investigation unit at your station needs help. You apply by letter and get placed. It is a strange feeling not having to work in a marked patrol car, a uniform that commands attention and a gun belt that weighs ten pounds with all its gadgets. Strange in a really good way. You wear dress slacks or dockers, a button up shirt and tie, dress shoes and a blazer. You get an unmarked car with a radio in it. The only tools are a shoulder holster with a 45 caliber Glock handgun, a set of peerless handcuffs, your mind and your confidence.

And you get a desk. The desk is empty. It is a blank canvass onto which people’s darkest days will be spilled onto. It will be up to you to give them their due, seek justice and gently let them down by easing them out of their angst and back into life’s mainstream. The truth is the large majority of citizens have no contact with the police except for a minor traffic infraction here or there. They don’t know what to expect when tossed into the role of crime victim. And a small segment of citizens can’t tear themselves away from the police. They appear constantly in your reports.

As you sit in the old metal office chair that creaks every time you move because like people it has grown old and stiff with age.....you anticipate quite naively the work before you. And there is the phone. It sits there ....quiet for now but soon every time it rings your heart rate will raise a tick and your back imperceptibely tighten just a tad.

Some calls will be urgent. You’ll have to grab your coat and run out of the office, leap into your car and speed somewhere. There’s is a red light that plugs into your cigarette outlet. You don’t have any emergency lights built into the dash or grill. There is a wail and siren. Many times you don’t use them because it just confuses the public and seems like a bigger risk than just driving like a maniac. So you learn to go slow and get there safely.

Some calls become a drudgery. The same person checking on their case over and over. Their case was dead the moment it hit your desk. It might be frivolous, it might be legitimate but their isn’t one hope for resolution due to lack of evidence. You know how to be diplomatic and so you take their concerns in and dutifully try to follow up. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’ll have to close the case and let them down....push them back into the current of life. Some will understand, some will carry a grudge.

This is how it all starts. Thirteen years of work ahead of you and no way of knowing what a wild ride it will be. It’s like being at Disney World with a friend who likes to ride coasters. He wants to go on Space Mountain. You don’t like coasters but you don’t like appearing to be afraid so you get in line. What’s a roller coaster completely in the dark going to feel like? You are soon going to find out.

[ToomuchStuff]

The truth is the large majority of citizens have no contact with the police except for a minor traffic infraction here or there. They don’t know what to expect when tossed into the role of crime victim. And a small segment of citizens can’t tear themselves away from the police. They appear constantly in your reports.

The way I have heard it (and believe it to be too true), most people only deal with police on either a bad day (for them) or the worst day of their life.

[iris lilies]

The way I have heard it (and believe it to be too true), most people only deal with police on either a bad day (for them) or the worst day of their life.
Probably true, but fortunately for us here in the murder capital of the world, we often deal with police officers in a casual and friendly way. We are, of course the dominant culture, and they work for us, the middle class, "the citizens" as we are described in tv's The Wire.

[Williamsmith]

Dense fog slows your travel. It’s spring. There’s still patches of snow in the corn and bean fields that were prepared and fertilized prior to winter. You are returning from taking a burglary which turned out to be part of a rash of daytime heists. Money, guns, prescription drugs and oddly enough.....music cds are the serial burglars favorite items.

Its becoming clear he is not working alone. Interviews of neighbors, postmen, UPS Driver’s and a little bit of personal digging reveal he has a girlfriend who is driving for him. They are bold. One retired school teacher answered her doorbell and found a scruffy looking guy on her porch. He asks for directions to the Interstate. The teacher tries to help but not too much. He gives her the creeps. She points him the right direction and closes the door. She also makes sure he gets out of the driveway and down the road before she feels comfortable enough to go back to reading and her morning coffee.

Today, you don’t know who he is. You only know what he is. He is a dangerous and desperate criminal working your county. It’s just a matter of time before a confrontation turns violent. You hope you catch him before that happens but if you don’t .....you hope he comes out on the wrong end of the violence. You will eventually nab him and his girlfriend but not before an exhaustive investigation that covers the entire northwestern part of your state, numerous police departments, a gaggle of search warrants and a few lucky breaks. He has been in prison before for the same thing and this time he’ll go back for 20 years.

But that’s not what’s on your mind as you drive back to the station. It might be the fog, it might be the time of year, or it could be a certain coincidental birthday. You are thinking about a little child. Her first name appropriately is a weeping tree. Her middle name, a word for eternal flower. And the little plastic dolphin in your cup holder. It’s been there for several months. You haven’t paid much attention to it but it’s not been forgotten. These things seem to be calling you to stop and visit.

You are going to be travelling right past. It would only take a few minutes. Maybe talk to her. Tell her how sorry you are. Or just quietly keep her company. The dolphin seems to be staring at you with one eye. You pull up and park, staying on the asphalt. There is some snow still but little tiny flowers are forcing their way out of the ground. They are brave purple upstarts.

Now you are standing before her. The birthday.....the same as yours. The day she left.....five very short but precious years. In your hands...the dolphin. There are other things on the ledge. A penny, little dolls and a picture. You have seen the picture before. It was the one you used at the trial. She is bouncing on a trampoline. Her blonde hair has just passed the apex of her launch and is sticking straight out. She is on her way down and her mouth is open in excitement. It captures her as she enjoyed the tickle in her stomach. The jury couldn’t help but connect with her.

You place the dolphin on the ledge. You whisper “Happy Birthday”. Her mother had been holding the dolphin throughout the trial. At the end, she handed it to you and thanked you. This is where it has belonged but this is the first time you could bring yourself back. It is here now. You apologize that the person who hurt her, would only be locked up ten to twenty years. It hardly seems enough. You promise to come back on a sunny day, when the snow is gone and the trees are green.

You are back in your car now pulling away. Passing under the cemetery entrance sign you meet a car going the other direction. You recognize the driver. She recognizes you. You are sure she’ll notice the dolphin. The fog is being lifted by the sun.

The fairest bloom the mountain knows Is not an iris or a wild rose But the little flower of which I'll tell Known as the brave acony bell Just a simple flower so small and plain With a pearly hue and a little known name But the yellow birds sing when they see it bloom For they know that spring is coming soon Well it makes its home mid the rocks and the rills Where the snow lies deep on the windy hills And it tells the world "why should i wait This ice and snow is gonna melt away" And so I'll sing that yellow bird's song For the troubled times will soon be gone


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cufWYp4D28Y#

[Teacher Terry]

Only 10-20 years for killing a little girl. That is a crime. So sad.

[Williamsmith]

As a temporary in the criminal investigation unit you work at a desk that seems to be placed as an after thought. When you arrived for your first shift it was piled high with castoffs, coats, shoes, and reports. It faces the wall, while all the other unit members have desks that face toward each other. The most senior member commands an entire corner of the room, he has a window and a radio that he turns on the minute he arrives and doesn’t turn off until the end of his shift. He is gone much of the time but no one touches the radio even though it distracts and annoys plenty.

The supervisor gets around to giving you permission to clear off the desk but it requires you negotiate with the owners where they are willing to stash the unwanted stuff. You like a clean desk. It will be a challenge to keep it that way.

You have weighed the benefits and taken account of the job. In uniform, you are gawked at wherever you go. If you slip into your daughters dance recital, everyone notices. There is no way to do anything without feeling you are in a fishbowl. It gets to the point where you won’t make eye contact with anyone, especially at the gas pumps. In plainclothes, you get deiscovered but people soon go back to their activities with minimum distraction.

The schedule is the big attraction. No more midnight shifts. The last seven years in patrol, you worked steady midnights with a partner. It was so that you could attend your children’s activities and be with the family on a regular basis. You meet a different sort of people on the midnight shift. The nurses at the local hospital know you as do the bar tenders. The wrecker services and the fire departments and first responders recognize the way you walk in the dark, carry your flashlight and your mannerism. They understand that you want to be efficient and clear as soon as possible as much as they do. They respect the authority that comes with the uniform but when they get to know you they are relaxed enough to joke around and on a few occasions suggest a plan of attack that might save you lots of work and some embarrassment. You learn to appreciate them.

The previous temporary had some of the same things in mind but he didn’t last. The reporting system has a way of beating you down. For every hour you spend in the field its three at your desk documenting what you did. He withdraws from criminal investigation citing his hatred for the multitude of different forms for each incident. You suspect however, it’s not really the reports. He was assigned an incident where three small children lost their lives in a heartbreaking situation. When he discovered the toddler, he was clutching a favorite teddy bear. He goes back to uniform and never again shows interest in criminal investigation.

So you replace him. You don’t think about these things. It’s about freeing yourself from the bonds of that incessant screaming radio and the dispatchers. The pace is more measured here. You get an opportunity to attend training. No more prison riots or protests on the front line behind a heavy shield. No more first responder situations for domestic violence, suicidal subjects, missing persons, bank or grocery robberies. You work alone most often and carry a badge and identification. With one set of handcuffs and a .45 caliber Glock, and a pen and notebook......you are expected to handle anything that you are assigned.

Over time you gain the respect of the entire compliment at the station and many come to you for advice. A position troopwide opens for a permanent criminal investigator. You will have to submit a letter to the Troop Commander, get a recommendation from the Station Commander and fight it out with anyone else. You get the position but it means transferring to a station an hour away. And it means establishing the respect of a whole new bunch of people.

Leaving is difficult but it comes with the job. At your new station things are done a bit differently. It takes awhile to get used to. Everybody asks if you plan to stay or head back as soon as a position opens in your home station. You tell them you plan to go back. They aren’t surprised. One Trooper is particularly helpful in the transition, always positive and sacrificial of his time to a fault. He volunteers to take incidents for others. He grew up in this community.

Before the first year of your stint is out, he will have been shot dead responding to a call to check on the welfare of a woman. He volunteered because he had been there before for domestic abuse complaints. You usher at his funeral in full uniform. Police Officers from across the nation attend. It is an overcast and drizzling day. Something about that day stays with you. Is it the folded flag given to his widow? Or the campaign hat his son holds. Perhaps it’s the unified salute from a thousand officers as his hearse passes. Whatever, you resolve to come home every day so your family doesn’t have to go through this. It will be a promise that will give you the will to fight for your own life...sooner than you think.

[Williamsmith]

Only 10-20 years for killing a little girl. That is a crime. So sad.

Terry I have been trying to respond to your reaction and can only say...I felt the same way but the jury is instructed to go strictly by the law and the requirements for proof beyond a reasonable doubt on all elements of the crime irregardless of the affect their decision will have in sentencing. Homicide has several different grades depending on the circumstances and there were mitigating circumstances as far as the jury was concerned. Jury’s like to have an abundance of irrefutable and compelling evidence with which to make their decision easy......and most cases they don’t get that. I know this child touched the lives of many. Although she was tiny and here a short few years.....I think of her as a strong perfume. Only the tiniest of drops but a fragrance that lasts and can never be forgotten.

[Williamsmith]

Injury is a constant threat. When it happens of course everyone feels bad they couldn’t prevent it but silently in the lockeroom they breath deeply and are thankful it’s not them. A broken leg or a separated shoulder, a concussion...it can sideline you for long periods of time. That time is usually spent handling communications and emergency telephone calls. Many call the station direct instead of 911.

Serious injury threatens your career. Nobody wants to admit that they can’t perform the duties anymore and take a disability retirement. Some will fail to recognize it and try to return only to lose benefits and eventually be forced off the job. You feel sorry for the new guy barely off coach trainee who runs headon into a tractor trailer combination. His injuries are devastating but being young he believes he can return to be fully functional. Unfortunately the brain injury changes his temperament and he is too short of patience to deal with the public.

An officer shot several times in a drug raid recovers but is never able to psychologically handle stressful situations. You understand witnessing these things that your family relies on not only you coming home but your coming home in one piece. So you are constantly alert to potential danger. Do you over react sometimes? Maybe but it doesn’t seem like it at the time. From an outsiders point of view it all may look like overkill.

Its easy to get complacent. After all, most of the time you aren’t being directly threatened. So sometimes you forget that your mere presence at an incident is a threat to the freedom of others. They simply see you as a barrier they must get by to reach that freedom. Some are willing to passively resist, others will attack you verbally and suggest violence and a few are willing to take it to its natural conclusion....your elimination as a barrier.

It is not the calls that are obviously dangerous that are the worst threats. You can contrive strategies to deal with the violence you know is possible before you arrive. And you can be prepared. It is the surprise eruption of aggresssion like an ambush that tests your ability to react based on training and experience and not on rote planning.

So the day you are asked to go to a local used car dealer for a complaint about a possible fraudulent purchase, you grab a notebook and pen, drop working on one of the forty cases you have pending and head for the door. This will require a routine report and probably end in the suspect being several states away by now even if you manage to identify him.

You have a pretty good reputation for financial crimes and belong to a national network of investigators who assist each other with information without the complication of search warrants and subpoenas. You arrive and park on the side of the office. Your silver Ford Crown Vic is unobtrusive which business people like. Going inside you are met by a salesman. One other coworker is in a back office. You go through the schtick. The manager tells you that the the suspect was dropped off and quickly settled on a car. The suspect was told that some time would be needed to get the paperwork ready so he is asked to come back later. Checking his credit, it was learned that fraudulent purchases had been made for quite some time using this person’s name and identifiers. And so now, you sit before him expected to unravel the mess and advise him on what to do.

Just as you are about to leave, the suspect arrives. Not the best situation but you can make do. You tell the manager to stall him while you are in another room concocting a plan and listening to their conversation. It doesn’t take long for the suspect to get impatient. He begins to get aggressive so you step in the room and the manager steps out. When you identify yourself ....all hell breaks loose.

[Williamsmith]

The office is small. You never had time to call the station for backup. Your portable radio is in the car. If the suspect is not compliant, it’s going to get down and dirty and you are on your own. You are standing between him and the door. But there are two salesmen standing in the hallway and you expect them to be some support. Right now, all you have is a misdemeanor but still enough to make an on view arrest. The crime was committed in your presence. But you’d prefer to get him to the station and have a nice little friendly talk. Still when you identify yourself his response is silence and that thousand yard stare with the whites of his eyes surrounding open pupils. You check his hands and mentally make a plan.

In the past, a blitz attack while you are talking worked well. It’s your favorite tactic.....grabbing the suspect by the throat with your hand while stiff arming him to the ground. Taking someones air away gets their attention. The key is to end up on top and stay there by spreading your legs out to made a solid base all the while maintaining control and making sure a gun or knife doesn’t appear. Speaking of guns. You have brought one to the fight but it is not a good thing to pull it out of your shoulder holster as an arrest tactic. It ties up one hand and thus far he’s given you no reason to shoot him. You have a pair of handcuffs tucked in the small of your back...one cuff inside and one hanging out. That’s it. No pepper spray, no taser, not even an asp baton.

Suddenly, your choice is made for you. He lounges at you like a linebacker and tackles you to the floor. About now you expect the salesmen to push him off you or at least call for help. Both of them run out the back door leaving you alone to fight for your life. Prior to this for a split second you sized him up. He is older than you but more muscular. You are pretty sure your youth will be an asset. But you lost the benefit of surprise...he gained it and the outcome is in doubt. No matter what, you must maintain control of your handgun. This is a handicap because it requires keeping your left arm firm against your chest with the holster pinned between.

You and him alternate being on top and there isn’t much room to maneuver. He is punching you but not landing any good blows. He is reaching into you searching for your weapon. You can’t let him have it, you won’t. You finally roll on top and get a good grip on his windpipe with your left hand. You only now become aware that blood is streaming down your temple from a cut on the head. With your right hand you withdraw your Glock and place it squarely in the middle of his forehead. Adrenaline is coursing through your body. The muzzle and sight blade make an imprint on his skin. You tell him if he moves, you will place a bullet in his brain. He sees the wisdom of remaining still. You have both his arms pinned under your knees and somehow your cellphone has remained in your coat pocket. You let go of his neck long enough to get the phone out and call for backup.

It seems like an eternity. You staring at him, he at you waiting for help to arrive. Every once in awhile you repeat your threat. Finally, a uniform shows up and helps you get him handcuffed. There was so much that could have gone wrong but you have no time to think of that. The suspect has to be identified and arraigned. There’s going to be a mound a paperwork also.

You go home later after a brief stop at the emergency room. It turns out the identity theft victim is a relatively famous former running back for an NFL team who has been tortured by this suspect for years. The former football star is very thankful. Very thankful indeed.

[Float On]

I'm so glad you posted the follow up quickly! You really left us hanging in anticipation of what would happen. This. Wow. I don't think I breathed at all while reading that.

[Teacher Terry]

wow what a story. Kept me on the edge of my seat. I had a good friend that had been a cop in Stockton and was undercover for a few years with a motorcycle gang in Idaho. He also went on to do executive security and rescue work when needed. Like you he had fascinating stories to tell. He had been a marine in Vietnam and got a rare form of cancer from Agent Orange. I remember when traffic stops were not such a huge risk for police but that ship sailed a long time ago. I am really careful when stopped and keep both hands on the wheel so the officer does not have to worry about some crazy old woman shooting him:)) It is really a shame that our society has become so violent.

[Williamsmith]

I was reading the thread “Clearing Out Parents Home” started by saguaro. Because there are some near future issues I probably will face, the topic interested me. So it’s very early in the morning when I’m reading it and suddenly I become aware of the ticking of a “Baby Ben” wind shelf clock I purchased at an antique store for $5 just yesterday. These little clocks were made during the sixties, seventies and eighties. So far, the one I bought seems to be keeping time but I have to acknowledge that the reason I bought it.....was to hear it tick.

I live in a very quiet condo. Each building is four units but even though I have quality complaints about the construction....they did a nice job insulating. I hear nothing. It is dead silence. This is what I was looking for...in fact coveted. But sometimes the silence needs to have some rhythm. We are rhythmic beings. Our hearts keep time.

So the Baby Ben has found a place on my shelf. This brings me to the whole “stuff” issue. When I first retired and prepared to move from my four bedroom three bath ranch I went on a mission to get rid of stuff. I had plenty of it to rid myself of. There was all the workshop tools I wouldn’t have space for. All the clothes and junk in the attic as well as the shed out back with all my yard work, gardening and accumulated tools. The garage had unused discard stuff jammed in every corner along with the ATV and lawn tractor.

So I got rid of everything I wasn’t using or had value. EVERYTHING! I had the time, I had the motivation I had the strength and energy. I realize that some of my motivation was reflecting on the state of affairs my mothers house was in and not wanting that to be me in thirty years.

But this little ticking clock.....it has reminded me with every measure of time it ticks off.....that some things are like salt. It’s nice to have around, makes the quiet meaningful, jazzes up the blandness of everyday life. In the same way, I have been replacing my frying pans with vintage “Griswold” cast iron skillets. I detest Teflon pans especially from China. So there are four of them on my granite countertop waiting for permission from the wife to be tossed. My replacement skillets are works of art, when cared for and seasoned....outperform any spaceage non stick pan the world has to offer.

It is time I admit I am prejudice against anything made in China. Try to find a microwave made elsewhere? Or any kitchen gadget. A toaster? Forget it. So when I ran across a toaster from the sixties at a fall festival I began drooling. It was a thing of beauty. Such a heavy stainless design made in Michigan. Curvy and solid. But the braided wire scared me off. Now I sit here wondering...why I hadn’t bought her. She would have loved my countertop. I could have enjoyed tossing my cheap plastic and thin pot metal toaster in the trash.

The “BabyBen” seems to like my shelf. Tick..tick...tick....tick...tick.

[ToomuchStuff]

The toaster thing came up on this board, before. Both Dualit (made in UK) and Bugatti (non traditional, expensive toaster you could cook a steak in).

[Tybee]

I like the old metal Sunbeams. My mom used to keep extras in the basement for when they broke and just bring up a new one.

That is the kind of thing we look for at estate sales.

I also buy enamel ware cookware from the 70's--just found a CathrineHolm of Norway skillet yesterday at a garage sale--looks like this only brown:
https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.phR-eQKWo3va_GBzmZeQxgDYEg&pid=15.1

The internet calls it "iconic midcentury modern design." I call it a return to my happiest years, which is what I suspect many of us may be doing in the near future as we discard outdated things and suit up for the last part of ourlives. I am enjoying cooking with Quistgaard design, drinking from iitala glassware, and buying the things I could not afford when they were new.

I share your desire to return to a better time, when things we made to last, and made beautifully. And I also have a Baby Ben clock, for the reasons you mention!

[Williamsmith]

http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1978&stc=1
The toaster thing came up on this board, before. Both Dualit (made in UK) and Bugatti (non traditional, expensive toaster you could cook a steak in).

Thanks for the information. I looked both up ....prices from mid 200 to 1,000 dollars. If I can buy an entry level guitar for the price of a toaster.......it’s too expensive for me.

This is the toaster I met at the fall festival. She had the curves in all the right places, was not too heavy and not too thin. She looked like she would improve the appeal of any kitchen counter just by her mere presence. I mistaken said she was born in Michigan....looks like Minnesota. I will not soon forget her.

[Tybee]

Very nice toaster! There are some beautiful vintage toasters on ebay.
This gives you something fun to look for in your travels.

[Teacher Terry]

I just read a good book called Downsizing the Family Home and is recommended by AARP. I have been shedding stuff for a long time because I don't want to leave a mess behind for my kids. My DH on the other hand has a large shed, 1 car garage and his office full of junk. Ugh! so if I buy anything something like it has to go.

[Williamsmith]

There has never been one thought of visiting a counselor, although you’ve needed one on occasion. Sure, the job provides debriefing from critical incidents.......a prison riot, Flight 93, the ambush of a coworker. But you don’t trust the officers who were trained to screen for problems. You’ve heard that they have a tendency to share sensitive and personal information with people who don’t have a need to know card. You don’t go to a private counselor even though your health insurance would pay for most of it. That would be admitting weakness and exposing you to a career crisis. What if the good doctor really does think your are crazy?

And so, you handle your demons yourself. Sometimes adequately and sometimes not. There are times when you truly believe the answer will be at the bottom of the next bottle. And times, you wish you didn’t have to take a look. So when you walk into the office of the Assistant Pastor at your church, it is an act of extreme trust that you have been mulling over for a long time. You’ve driven to the church before with intentions of going in and veered off perhaps out of lack of courage or maybe you just aren’t ready to hear the truth.

This time, you ask if he’s in. The night before you found yourself rolled in a ball in the corner of your dining room doing a primal scream. You’ve started to sleep walk. Your wife found you outside with a hammer at two in the morning working on the new addition. Things have been intense at work. On the holiday, they took you out of plainsclothes and put you in uniform. The Department likes to say they “beefed” up patrols to discourage dangerous driving like DUI and speeding, tailgating and road rage. They just shift criminal investigators onto the road taking away valuable time for you to catch up on cases. This past holiday you chip in and go out and write warnings. No citations....that could get you Court time later.

Having put in your time, you go home. It’s early, about three or four in the morning and they haul you out of bed. You never did wake up in a good mood. You toss around your usual f-bombs while you try to get dressed in the dark. Someone has been murdered. It’s not your turn to be lead investigator, that’s good but you realize this is the beginning of possibly a long run without sleep. Sleep deprivation is just something that goes with the job. This case will have plenty of that but it will be the circumstances of the homicide that drives you to the Assistant Pastors Office.

You manage to make it to the scene with what tools you think you will need. The scene....it’s somebodys house. This is where someone made a life, raised a family and had reunions. It is now a scene. That someone was mid eighties, a great grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister and friend. She was an active senior who still drove her Buick LeSabre around the community shopping, attending church and vistiting friends. You go inside and start assisting. What you see, and the things you do are necessary but they don’t get forgotten, ever.

You are paired with another investigator and sent to a city. The suspect attempted to use the victims ATM card at a bank. You hope to get his photograph. You also hope to retrieve items that were stolen. These are the goals but it would take four days without sleep and a hotel room you only see to take showers in order to get them.

What has brought you to the Assistant Pastors Office is this. He is the former chaplain for the New York City Police Department. You feel comfortable with him. You ask, “Will you pray that a piece of evidence will be found that will close this case solidly?” He smiles. Of course. Together, you bow your head and earnestly plead with the Almighty to intercede and give guidance to your investigation. When it is over, you ask, “Pastor, will you keep me in your prayers?” He nods and hands you a token. A four leaf clover. He asks you to put it in your identification holder. He tells you to look at it and know someone is praying.

Thats as close to counseling as youve ever gotten but the result will make you a believer for the rest of your life.

[razz]

WS, I am aware of a little 8 year old boy who needs someone to give him a little 4-leaf clover to remind him that he is being loved. I will do that so thank you for the suggestion. It is amazing to me what people can endure and still function in a day-to-day life.

[Williamsmith]

Life without parole. You are torn. If anyone deserved the death penalty it is this beast. But a plea avoids the cost of a capital punishment case, endless appeals and the risk something could go wrong with the trial. It was all made possible by the hard work of a team of investigators.....and one single hair. You go see the Chaplain to thank him. Not so much that you make a direct correlation between his prayer and the discovery of this tiny piece of powerful evidence....maybe more just to let him know he made a difference in your life. You are sad to hear of his death not long after you last see him. Struck down by a quick moving cancer.

Years later in the box, among the other items you find the clover. It reminds you of what really matters. A little faith, a good family and a caring friend.

+++++++++

Its apple pie season:

http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1979&stc=1

[Williamsmith]

I am now officially a creature of habit. I like to keep things simple. Go to bed at relatively the same time every night, get up the same time. I eat breakfast before going to the gym. In fact, I have a morning ritual right down to the sequence I take my supplements. I am very “Monk like” as in the television detective from San Francisco.

Before I retired, I couldn’t relate to Monk or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Why did he have to have all the blinds at the same height and level with a bubble? Why did he like Tupperware so much? Why did he never have the top button on his shirt unbuttoned?

Before I retired, I never had any consistency in my life. It was one big struggle from morning to night. Like having too many whiffle balls coming at you at once to catch all of them. It didn’t make any sense to try to have organization.

Well, now it’s different. Now, my truck is meticulously washed, waxed, swept and dusted. All my guns are spotless. My slippers sit in the exact same spot every day. And any rattle I hear in the car gets addressed immediately.

I have an idea all this compulsion for order is unhealthy. It hasn’t gotten out of hand yet. I mean, I’m not rearranging the spice rack alphabetically or waxing my gutters. But I am concerned enough to take some precautionary action. I’m going to purposely leave a dirty fork and a bowl in the sink for a few hours and see how it goes. Hmm. Maybe I’ll start with just the fork.

[Williamsmith]

Some random thoughts on a Sunday morning:

When You were a kid Sunday’s we’re perfectly suited for reflection and quiet activities. Every Sunday morning you knew exactly how the day would unfold. A little cereal with milk, orange juice and a trip upstairs to get ready for church. The night before you had taken a tub bath. Not leisurely soaking, a quick in a out without enough time to even steam up the mirrors.

You dressed in the same Sunday outfit mom assigned you. Probably a tie. From about 8:30 am to 10:30 were Sunday School activities. Your Sunday school teacher was likely your public school teacher also. And then up to the main sanctuary for big church. You sat beside dad right on the end of the pew. You liked that spot because the fire and brimstone sermons sometimes got real personal. Sitting in the middle made you feel trapped....like you couldn’t get away from it in an emergency. What the emergency could be was never clear. Because you never could relate to the guy or gal in the pulpit yelling about how vial and evil you were, you daydreamed. What’s he so angry about anyway?

At noon both hands of the clock would be straight up and screaming for the preacher to release his God fearing people. But not until an extra few choruses of “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” and a deft alter call. Plenty of parishioners would stream down to the alter weeping and repenting. As a kid you thought about how nice it was you lived amongst all these humble and caring people. As an adult, you suspect they streamed down there more out of the need to hasten returning home for the roast in the oven and an afternoon of watching football. The evangelist could get stubborn if nobody showed up at the alter. A good congregation was pliable enough to take cues and hit the carpet on their knees at the precisely perfect time. Much like tipping a good waitress.

Youd have a nice lunch because dad was home on the weekends mostly. And then mom and dad would disappear upstairs and leave you with orders to stay quiet downstairs. It was time for their afternoon nap. You and your brother would invent ways to entertain yourselves but yet remain quiet enough not to wake up the folks. Going outside was usually the best alternative. You never really give it much thought about what was going on upstairs really. Well, napping of course.

Because attending church in the morning wasn’t enough to save your eternal soul, you get dressed again and head back at 6pm. You’d have a little church time for kids and then head back to the same pew for another sermon, songs and probably an alter call. The rare preacher who left you go without an alter call was especially praised. “Well done, Pastor. Great sermon.” Back home to begin another week of sinning. Don’t worry though, Wednesday night prayer meeting was place right in the middle of the week precisely to interfere with building up too much sin for next Sunday to filter out. Taking turns praying out loud was a lot like learning to sing with a big group. Timing was important.

You might think Im bemoaning my childhood existence a little. Not at all. All that repenting doesn’t seem to have hurt my out look on life. I have just enough cynicism to rightly define the truth of almost every matter. And the times I don’t, I have plenty of forgiveness.

[Williamsmith]

I grew up in what anyone would describe as the classic mid century middle class neighborhood. We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor were we poor by the same stretch. One of the benefits of a neighborhood like this was the fact that everybody was about equal in their “privilege” or lack thereof. It felt like you were a part of a large organism where outside the home felt almost no different than inside. It wasn’t unusual to be invited to sit down for dinner or to be tossed a popsicle on a hot summer afternoon by the mother of a friend you barely knew.

You wouldnt dream of stealing anything from anybody's backyard let alone from inside their house. Your father always reminded you how hard he had to work for every little item that made life easier. But if something like that did occur, you’d likely work it out between the offenders family and the put upon. The solution would include a personal apology some extra volunteer work and not being able to sit for a few days.

This was the everyday ebb and flow of the large middleclass society I grew up in. All except for the family that lived two doors down in a shack that showed no evidence of modern conveniences, old broken down cars and siblings who ran about the neighborhood in filthy clothing, running noses...sometimes clear...sometimes green, and a stench that would curl your toes. I never went inside that house, I never invited that kid to play and he never graced my mother’s dining room table with his aromatic presence.

The explanation was that both mom and dad were alcoholics and lazy. It became a sort of real life example on a daily basis of how not to live your life. I always felt bad for the kids but suspect some generous neighbors on occasion would drop off clothes on the porch, knock and run. I didn’t feel bad enough not to create little hurtful rhymes and recite them within earshot of the house though. For that, I am genuinely guilt ridden. Well, I feel bad about it.

Now it’s strange the way I got to thinking about this. You see, this weekend I took a road trip with the wife down through eastern Ohio , looped through the panhandle of West Virginia and ended up in a quaint farming town. You know, the kind with a roundabout, one gas station, a farmers market, a diner and three antique stores selling off the estates of the greatest generation. Well, there was also something that is very rare to find....a sole proprietary bakery.

A real bakery. With the sloping glass display cases shined crystal clear. Shelves and shelves of different pastries, donuts, breakfast rolls, maple glazed muffins, cookies, bread and chocolate variations of all. And a couple standing behind it all greeting you with a smile dressed in an apron covered in white flour, confectioners sugar or a combination of both.

It was the aroma when I first walked in that brought back memories of trips to the local bakery with mom. These were infrequent enough to make it a real event. Like I said, we weren’t rich. But we were well enough off that I was allowed to pick out a simple plain sugar cookie from the tray behind the shiny glass waterfall display case. Those cookies looked as big as a large pizza and were about eye height with me. Then watching the cookie go into a pristine bright white folded paper bag, my salivary glands already had me drooling.

And it was this rememberance that got me considering that the poor kids likely never experienced the aroma from inside the bakery let alone the explosion of sugar on their tongue. So several decades down the road, I suppose they can’t reminisce about the joys of childhood like I do. Or perhaps I’m just making a big deal of it and maybe they got the same pleasure remembering when they first got a Kleenex from the teacher in school and wiped their oozing nose.

—— ——.
Not so tall.
Sleeps in the kitchen
with his feet in the Hall.

wont take a bath
not even a scrub.
Afraid he’ll slip through
the hole in the tub.

[Williamsmith]

Another specialty position gets posted. It’s one you are intensely interested in. Nearing the end of your career, you’ve accomplished about everything any LEO would want to. You managed through the police academy with a high degree of competency in all categories. You survived a painful injury and surgery was successful enough to get you right into the field with minimal delay.

You narrowly missed being killed at the beginning of your fledgling career, your inexperience put you in a bad position, your luck got you out. You cut your teeth on patrol related incidents and first responder type crimes. You sacrificed your own finances to get advanced training and spent inordinate time away from the family. Somehow your marriage survived the first half of your career with shift work and plenty of missed children’s activities.

The last half of your career was spent in detective work and you’ve built an excellent reputation across all aspects of the criminal justice system. You survived being shot at, attacked with knives and hand to hand fighting. Through it all, luck and prior planning have been a theme. You’ve buried a few friends, who happened to be co workers. It’s time to plan the last chapter of a reasonably decent career.

The position is a newly created cold case homicide investigator. The task.....review all the unsolved homicides in the Troop and select the most promising ones for resolution. The improvement of DNA analysis has made cold case work an extremely interesting endeavor. Never before available testing of evidence that has been warehoused for many years has now become available. All that needs to be done is resubmission to the lab. This coupled with the review of reports has yielded good results. Smaller and smaller samples are being accepted. There is even talk of evidence from “touch” DNA. Microscopic skin cells left behind by the suspect on clothing has been used to solve cases.

You are being recruited to bring this program online. There is just one problem. You asked to work out of your home station. The Captain refuses. It’s his baby and it’s going to be based out of Troop Headquarters where he can keep tabs on it. Troop Headquarters is an hour more drive and effectively makes an eight hour day into a ten hour day.

At home, your oldest son is planning to be married.....to his pregnant girlfriend. Your daughter is finishing up college and your youngest son is traveling around to baseball showcases for college recruitment. It’s a busy time at home. You’ve recently been talking about spending more time with the family and everyone has been happy about that.

There is another guy interested also. He happens to be based out of Troop Headquarters. You are starting to recognize a familiar theme. Do you put yourself first....or your family?

[Teacher Terry]

WS: wow that is a tough one.

[Williamsmith]

It is a tough one. You are not simply a logic driven person. Emotion has been and will always be an intricate part of being. Common sense and gut instinct is valued over strict adherence to rules, regulations, odds and probability. You’ve made some risky decisions in your career and through perseverance or luck.....they have panned out. You’ve gone against common practices and butted heads with superiors. Sometimes it’s paid off and other times you’ve lived with your decisions.

You know it is pointless to discuss it with your wife. She will say, “It’s up to you. I can’t tell you what to do.” You have some time to think about it but another variable is revealed that you hadn’t thought about. Specialty positions typically come with a three year commitment. You plan on leaving in less than two years. You would have to break a promise. There’s nothing they could do about it. They know that and so do you. But the thought of going into something that you couldn’t finish adds confusion to your considerations. Is it that important, your integrity?

The thought of resurrecting a long cold unsolved homicide and seeing it to closure for the victim’s family is a strong motivator. You already have the highest profile cold case in the Troop on your assigned cases list. And you are making excellent progress. The case has been considered by the District Attorney. You are so close you can taste it. It really is the position youve worked so hard to earn.

The other investigator sits down in the chair at the side of your desk. You don’t know him that well but he has a reputation of being obstinent with supervision. You like that he stands his ground and won’t be pushed around. He’s very interested in the cold case position but he makes it clear up front that if you are submitting a letter of interest, he won’t. He respects your body of work, your reputation and your seniority. You understand that this is a sacrifice he doesn’t have to make. He already works at Troop Headquarters, knows the decision makers and could get the job over you.

He has the training and some of the experience necessary but most of all you can see he is extremely motivated and has a plan of attack. This guy could make things happen. He’s willing to put in extra hours beyond his regular shift work. Hours he won’t get approval for overtime pay. Once you get started on certain things, it’s hard to drop. In the back of your mind you know you are not willing to do that. You will want to get home. Some things are becoming clear. You are not what they call a “company man” anymore. And you won’t take anything home to work on. This guy is divorced already and married to his job.

Still it would be nice to have on your resume....for that after retirement consulting job.

You are at the scene of a double homicide. One in the garage. One in the house. It will eventually get cleared by arrest but not before some long hours, tedious reporting and endless interviews. You look in the mirror and fail to see the spark in your eye. The shoulders are a little more rounded, hair graying and the tie that used to be meticulously arranged is loosened. THe top button is undone. You leave the house with less conviction everyday. You come back and fall into your recliner, tumbler in hand with your favorite drink. As you relax, you feel it. Your heart stops, skips and then irregularly beats. It scares the hell out of you. You place your fingers on the side of your neck and feel it. You are not imagining this. Something is wrong.

[Teacher Terry]

Don't stop writing now you slacker I want to know what happens:)) Although I do know you are still alive.

[Williamsmith]

You keep placing your fingers on your carotid artery on your way to the emergency room. There it is. There is a strange feeling of tingling in your arms, a weird sense of panic, you don’t feel in control anymore. It’s not painful, just very disturbing like you expect to pass out at any time. It’s hard to keep your composure. Why do you keep checking your pulse? Your fingers have been on the neck of many who had no pulse. If that happens, it will be somebody else’s fingers on your neck.

When you arrive and report your problem to the receptionist, you get ushered right in to a bed. That’s strange, usually it is a process of registering, sitting in the waiting room in the queue. It doesn’t take long for an EKG to be hooked up and running .....paper is being spit out of its mouth. The problem hasn’t corrected itself, it’s not going to without a little help.
The doctor tells you your heart is arrthymic. Irregular in its beating. No kidding doc. He gives you something called a beta blocker and refers you to a cardiologist.

The cardiologist puts you through the paces on a treadmill, uses a sonogram type device to examine the heart and pronounces you fit but with arrhythmia caused by stress primarily and aggravated by too much caffeine and alcohol consumption.

Prior to this nothing could have separated you from coffee and bourbon. Now, it’s time to get this under control. And now that it’s under control.....it’s time to make a decision.

You still havent submitted the letter of interest in the cold case position. It’s there. Done. Right there on the screen and ready for printing. You stare at it. As per regulations, you have acknowledged in writing that it is a position requiring a three year commitment. You are dead set on retiring before that happens. You have transferred several times before. His time, you don’t want to go. Youve got the best supervisor. Well, hes more like a younger brother. You’ve been in a couple tight spots with him. He’s the kind of guy you would follow. A natural leader. The other members of the unit are your friends. It’s a closed circle. No one gets inside it. You all do things a little “not by the book”. Unconventional. But you produce results.

Your schedule is flexible. You pretty much write it yourself. By now, you know it just isn’t feeling right. You’ll take the mouse, hover it over the x in the left upper corner and click the letter into infinity. All that’s left to do is call the other investigator and tell him the position is his. He is gracious when he gets the call. When you hang up you picture him throwing his hands into the air and celebrating. You take your shoulder holster off and stuff the rig in your bottom drawer along with a stainless pair of peerless handcuffs and lock it. Then you drive fifteen minutes home and have dinner with your wife. It wasn’t meant to be...that’s what you tell yourself. It just wasn’t meant to be.

[Williamsmith]

Sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time.

You are following a car on the interstate. A deer runs out into traffic and a devestating impact occurs. Pieces of the car fly in all directions, the hood buckles, the front clip flies off. Inside the airbag is deployed. The deer rolls up over the top of the car and is deposited in the hammer lane. Somehow the driver manages to get the car on the berm. You pull in behind and quickly drag the carcass off the roadway so nobody swerves and hits you or the damaged vehicle. Checking out the driver you discover she’s pregnant. And ready to give birth.

Or you often keep an eye out for motorists who are disabled or parked on the berm. You usually stop to see if they need assistance. This time, it’s a flat tire. The driver is a little nervous but you file that away in the back of your mind and offer to change the tire for him. He becomes a little more nervous. Your instinct is telling you something more than a flat tire is going on. But what is it? As you stand at the back of his car and he stands at the front there is a pause in time while you think of an avenue of inquiry that would give you a clue as to what in the wide wide world of sports is agoin on here.

A ghostlike muffled groan is heard. Did that come from the trunk of the vehicle? You hear it again followed by a thumping sound. Unless you are nuts, it’s clear there is something alive in the trunk of the car. You pull out a Glock 37 in .45 caliber point it directly at his chest and tell the driver not to move. The Glock is intimidating enough to get his attention. You order him to lay face down on the ground, arms and legs spread, palms up. He complies. You order him to look away from you. He does. This accomplished you quickly approach him and holster your weapon, and place your knee in the middle of his back. You draw out a set of handcuffs and get him secured. Using the keys, you open the trunk. There you find taped and bound and gagged ....a very lucky girl.

Or you are a mentor to a new Trooper. This is a role you are assigned often. When you retire, many of them will attend your party and thank you for your insight and advice. But tonight you are simply on patrol and responding to calls. A part time township police officer has taken a report of a despondent man who took a rifle and left his house. Before driving away he told his wife he was going to kill himself. The township officer has found him but he’s alive and parked at a gas well threatening to shoot himself or anyone who approaches him. You happen to be less than a mile away.

Believe it or not, your first response is that this could cause you a lot of paperwork. Quickly, you shift into “what if” scenarios and possible responses. When you arrive, the partime officer makes it clear. You are now in control. He relinquishes this to you. This isn’t unusual. They are poorly paid, poorly trained and clearly in survival mode. It’s nighttime. So you train your take down lights on the subject. He can’t see beyond the lights so he also can’t discharge an accurate shot at you. It offers both a measure of safety and illuminates the area quite well.

He is standing at the drivers door with the rifle on the top of the car pointed away, finger on the trigger . It is a .30 .30 lever action but hard to say if it has a slide safety. Some do, some don’t. At this distance you can tell the hammer is cocked. A little negotiation only serves to aggravate him. He turns the rifle on himself. You know that on either side of the lane to the gas well, it is redbush. You devise a plan to circle around behind him and approach him from behind. Only with the rifle pointed at himself and cocked there is no room for error. He doesn’t see you dash into the brush because of the lighting. Your trainee keeps his attention talking a little bit. You make your way there, close enough now to tackle him.

While you are deciding what to do next, he takes the rifle down from the top of the car, points the barrel under his chin and slips his thumb onto the trigger. Without hesitation he pulls the trigger. You hear a metallic click. No report. There’s no time to figure out why. You tackle him. The rifle drops onto the ground. Later you determine that the hammer fell on his coat zipper and prevented the firing pin from hitting the live shell. It’s your lucky day, and his too.

[Teacher Terry]

Great stories WS! I am really enjoying them.

[Williamsmith]

Sometimes I walk alone. Perhaps along the south shore of a nearby lake, I walk alone. There is a nice asphalt bike path which rings the lake. It winds among maples, oaks, hickory and beechnut groves. Intermittent streams feed into the lake and slippery moss covered bridges provide a crossing. The air is cooler over these streams, the insects a little thicker and the rocky remains of stone fences separate the streams from the forest.

In the fall, like yesterday, I walk at dusk. I walk during the magic hour between the last rays of sunlight that disappear behind the highest trees and the impending darkness. The sun turns into an orange ball and colors the sky purple and yellow. The lake appears as glass and the trees begin to appear as sillouettes. The reflection of the opposite shore can still be seen on the water. Autumnal leaf colors are perfectly doubled. It is cool, and wet leaves have fallen onto the path covering it completely. As I walk, the leaves swish under my feet until I stop.

On the lake a loon. It is quiet. The silence is interrupted with a wail. It’s call echos among the trees. The smell of the leaves and the sound of the loon ....that is what I have come for. Some describe the call as mournful. I am comforted by it. Moments later an answer. Another wail but from a different location. One has found the other.

Night will be here soon. Throughout the night leaves will continue to fall. The loons will pass through announcing the end to each day with a sad goodbye song and winter will chase the color from the landscape. I trace my steps back toward the start of the trail, swishing leaves that emit an earthy smell, racing to beat the darkness but not walking alone.

[nswef]

WS That is evocative! Thank you!

[Williamsmith]

On your desk there is a stack of yellow folders. Each of them contains a report of an incident that demands your attention. Depending on the day, there could be 40-70 of them. With a forty hour workweek.....you do the math. While it’s important as a criminal investigator to have skills that include attention to detail, persistence, communicative ability to gain the trust of complete strangers, informant development and a thourough knowledge of proper police procedure and constitutional law.....your survival largely depends on your ability to manage your cases.

In that stack are everything from thefts to homicides. Actually, the homicides are on a shelf behind your desk in blue three ring binders. They are in various states of completion. One unsolved, two pending court and one that is labeled equivocal for now. Equivocal means, not really sure.

You are required to do somehting and submit a supplemental report on every case every ten days. Meanwhile, new cases are being dropped on your desk every day. The primary report is often done by a patrol officer. You look at the name and know immediately the quality of the report you are getting. There are a couple names which you know, if seen, will require you starting from scratch. Others will provide everything you need in a clear and concise manner. You go out of your way to thank those officers for not just going through the motions.

You take weekend duty about once a month. During that weekend you catch everything that comes along. That includes child molestation and sexual assaults. During the week, one investigator has volunteered to handle the unbelievable amount of these cases that happen on a regular basis. Without someone volunteering, the cases get passed out in rotation. This investigator works closely with the child welfare department and the district attorney’s office. You are happy he has volunteered but a little jealous of his steady daylight position with every weekend off. Weekend duty can be hazardous to your caseload and your sleep patterns.

Still, in all, you are thankful you have escaped the drudgery of patrol work with its rotating midnights shifts. And thankful that for the most part, you work alone. Being assigned a midnight shift with someone you don’t like or worse, don’t trust is torture. You recall riding with an officer who was uniformly disliked for his arrogance in the face of his incompetence. He chattered constantly and cackled annoyingly and he was physically unfit for the job. He was harassed about his obesity. Other officers often stuffed his mailbox with candy wrappers. But his most irredeemable trait was his cowardice under pressure.

One midnight shift while riding with him, you are sent to a man with a rifle. Details are sketchy as they often were. He drives like a maniac on back dirt roads that haven’t been graded in ages. The washboard effect threatens to throw the patrol car into a tree on every bend. You tell him to slow down but he’s so focused on getting there fast that you worry you might not get there at all. There is nothing left to do but hold on and hope his side of the car takes the impact.

Miraculously you arrive at the mobile home park you jokingly refer to as “Four Star Hotel Estates.” You know the location of the trailer because you’ve been here a few times before. In fact, the last time was when a ten year old found a loaded shotgun under the bed and accidentally shot his three year old step brother.

Your partner wheels directly into the parking space not fifteen feet from the front porch but he makes sure his side of the car is on the opposite side as the entrance door to the trailer. You are exposed without cover or concealment. He jumps out and seeks cover behind the drivers rear of the patrol car. If 5eres a man with a rifle here, and he wants to shoot someone.....you’re dead already. You step out of the car and walk directly up to the door. There’s no protection so you have your Glock in hand and tucked behind your back. This has saved you critical response time in the past.

Your intrepid partner has summoned the courage to walk up to the porch overhang with a shotgun directly behind you. Truth is now you are more threatened by this than a man with a gun. You knock and announce yourself several times. Any fire coming through the door is going to be devastating. You hear heavy footsteps on the thin floor of the mobile home. You try to position yourself where you have the ability to see immediately the person’s hands. The door flings open.

[Williamsmith]

It’s dark. You have a heavy five cell maglight to illuminate immediately in front of you. Otherwise no porch light. The fact that no dogs are barking simplifies things. It’s common for people to open the door and release their less than friendly dogs out first. You’ve learned to be close enough to the door to lean on it or place your foot against the bottom preventing this from happening. Then you tell the owner to secure their dog. Unfortunately youve destroyed two dogs that have attacked you in the past. This time no such problem. The maglight doubles as a blunt instrument with which to defend yourself. It’s in your left hand, gun in your right. You search to identify everything as quickly as possible.

The man who exits has a cigarette in his hand and is drunk. In the background you flash your light and can see into the living room. A television is on, beer cans are tossed haphazardly on the floor and their is a familiar stench. Everything seems about right. You holster your gun and begin sorting things out on the porch.

By his account, the man was outside with a rifle, a .22 caliber Marlin 25N bolt action small game firearm. A common possession. He produces it from just inside the door of the trailer. You ask to have the bolt opened. A live round jumps out of the breach, bounces across the porch and comes to rest in the corner. For the first time you see two empty casings in the same general vicinity. He tells you that he has been shooting at skunks from his porch. From this point on everything works out to be routine. Discharging a rifle in a crowded trailer court at night while intoxicated is about par for the course. The man gets a summons for disorderly conduct and you leave.

This is the way most interactions happen. Give or take some aggressive behavior, a tense stand-off with a belligerent drunk or a downright nasty criminal resisting arrest. You learn to apply the right amount of force to overcome the resistance you are faced with. But every minute of every hour of every day while on duty you carry a reminder in your holster that not all people will hesitate to use deadly force against you to keep you from doing your job. And when you or other officers are placed in the situation that forces you to apply deadly force, it is a lesson not ever forgotten. To take a life in the performance of your duty sets into motion a whirlwind of emotion and a replaying of events over and over. To have someone attempt to take your life forces you to examine your life and all that led up to the moment. Thankfully, routine defines most of your days and these types of challenges are few and far between.

You finish up the end of your shift. Mostly glad to have survived riding with a partner you’d rather have called in sick. You stay long enough to submit the paperwork required and before leaving....stuff a snickers bar wrapper in his mailbox.

[Teacher Terry]

WS: reading your stories reminded me of something that happened in 1980. WE lived on a short, dead end street with only 4 homes. It was dark and I was going somewhere while my DH was home with the kids. I pulled up to turn left which always took a while because the road was busy and I see a man all dressed up wearing a trench coat probably about 40-50 yo. He was talking to a girl about 12 and she was crying. It was winter. He was driving a small car. The more I look at the girls face who looks scared the more I become uneasy about the situation. So I back up and watch. At one point he keeps moving towards her and she is backing up. I was driving a big old truck. I back up some more and point it right at the guy. He comes over and flashes a badge, says he is a cop and said he saw the girl in distress and wanted to give her a ride home. I tell him to leave and I will give her a ride home. He says no and I say if you go near her I will run you over, call the cops myself and let them figure it out. He left and I gave the girl a ride home. In retrospect if he was a real cop I would imagine he would have called for back up to deal with me.

[Williamsmith]

WS: reading your stories reminded me of something that happened in 1980. WE lived on a short, dead end street with only 4 homes. It was dark and I was going somewhere while my DH was home with the kids. I pulled up to turn left which always took a while because the road was busy and I see a man all dressed up wearing a trench coat probably about 40-50 yo. He was talking to a girl about 12 and she was crying. It was winter. He was driving a small car. The more I look at the girls face who looks scared the more I become uneasy about the situation. So I back up and watch. At one point he keeps moving towards her and she is backing up. I was driving a big old truck. I back up some more and point it right at the guy. He comes over and flashes a badge, says he is a cop and said he saw the girl in distress and wanted to give her a ride home. I tell him to leave and I will give her a ride home. He says no and I say if you go near her I will run you over, call the cops myself and let them figure it out. He left and I gave the girl a ride home. In retrospect if he was a real cop I would imagine he would have called for back up to deal with me.

It’s an interesting story with lots of unanswered questions.

What was a 12 year old doing out on a dark night in winter along a busy road? And how did she get there? And why was she crying?

It is unusual to see a police officer driving a smaller car. Did he have photo identification that showed the proper jurisdiction?

Many police departments have a policy that prohibits transporting minors without a partner unless it is an emergency.

His response to your threat is not typical of a sworn officer. Unless he knew he was on thin ice to begin with and just figured it best to get out of there.

Did you ask the girl whta was going on and did she settle down once you got her in your truck?

And who did you deliver the girl to and what did they say?

Strange situation.....you don’t scare easy do you?

[Teacher Terry]

I am usually a chicken except for when it comes to kids. I took her home to her parents. She was fine when she got in my truck. As a SW I did not want to say anything to get the girl in trouble with her parents because experience had taught me that many kids had volatile home lives. It gets dark in WI early in the winter but it was about 7 pm. The town had a pop of 60k and my kids and their friends were free to walk to friends houses at that age at that time of night. I remember him wanting me to roll down my window and I only did enough to hear him but not enough for him to touch me. He had a badge and a photo ID but my adrenaline was running high and I wasn't trying to compare the pic to his. The car really bothered me because it was small and not very new. It did not feel right. This happened 37 years ago and I had totally forgotten about it until reading your stories.

[Williamsmith]

WARNING: This is not an uplifting meditation.

Only recently has Halloween become nothing to me. But in the past, it was very important for a couple of different reasons.

I dont know how such a strictly religious family , in a legal sense that is, came to embrace the celebration of Halloween? I say, legal sense, because in retrospect our “spirituality” was manifest in following pious rules and dos or donts. Many of these rules had no bearing on our love of fellow man or caring for the world at large. It had more to do with who enjoys eternal bliss in heaven and who burns in hell forever.

Even to a child it is clear that the Halloween celebration has something to do with evil spirits, mischief and pranks. But mostly, it had to do with candy. My mother would invest many hours developing costumes for my brother and I. We would roam the neighborhood at night to go door to door and bring back pillowcases of large candy bars. The small plastic orange pumpkin container of today would have been scoffed at. The tiny bite sized candy bars would have been worthy of a trick which most often was the soaking of Windows with a bar of ivory. Afterward we would pile into my dads car and visit all the relatives.......and get loads more candy bars.

My mother and dad would remain at home with their porch light on. Inside, a cache of candy bars to give out. Our front door was a combination of a heavy wooden door inside and a heavy aluminum screen door outside. A knock on the screen door had a familiar bang and clang to it. Each Halloweener was invited to step inside and an attempt to identify each neighbor followed. My dad particularly enjoyed guessing identities. This was sometimes difficult given the plastic masks held on the head by elastic.

One neighbor in particular refused to be home on Halloween night. The lights were always off. The soap always there on the windows in the morning. And we enjoyed walking acrossed his grass on that night. Something we could never do during the day. The pumpkins in the neighborhood would be smashed on the road.

When I became a father myself, I did the same thing. I dressed my kids up and went out collecting candy bars with them. We attended the Halloween parade. I did this every year without fail. In a box of photographs I pour through pictures of kids dressed up as Barney, a pencil, a fairy, Sam I Am with green eggs and ham. For several years, my midnight partners would bring their kids over and we would go out for trick or treat, while the moms stayed passing out candy and sipping hot chocolate. Those kids are now, tool and die makers, teachers, accountants, surgeons, nurses and entrepreneurs.

It was always a dicotomy between everything a child loved....dressing up for free candy and everything they feared....ghosts, gouls, and goblins. I never enjoyed horror movies or Halloween parties. And I never resolved my mixed feelings about the celebration.

During my career, a terrible kidnapping, rape and murder of a child occurred on Halloween night. It turned into a cold case that took more than a decade to resolve. I suppose that experience has formed my slanted feelings against the holiday. Perhaps, I might even loathe it. Although, the picture I got today of my grandchild dressed in a Disney outfit for trick or treat does warm my heart. Bottom two teeth missing in her Montana sized smile.

On trick or treat night, the wife and I went out for dinner and left the lights off. No one came for candy, and none of the windows were soaped. I suppose I’m disappointed equally about both of those things.

This is a link to the Cold Case Files documentary ....it is not uplifting by most standards but there was closure. Viewer discretion advised.

http://crimedocumentary.com/shauna-howe-little-girl-lost-2017/

[Williamsmith]

The thread started by CathyA on Walmart’s artificial Christmas tree display got me thinking......I didn’t want to trash up her posting...so :

*******

I have an ambivalent attitude toward Christmas trees. My childhood recollections are nostalgic. I get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about those times. I can see the real blue spruce my dad would cut down laying on top of his brown Rambler station wagon, tied down with a clothesline. I can vividly see the hack saw he used clutched in his gloved hand. I can smell the pitch of the pine feel it’s stickiness between my thumb and index finger and see the wasted wood chips. And I can feel the prickle of the needles when touched.

I know that my mother loved those strings of aluminum called icicles. She loved them a lot. I feel the weight of the giant sized blue, red, orange and green light bulbs draped over the limbs. Oh and the occasional clear one too. I can hear the hum of the Lionel train set circling the base, each time around a man in his milk car would crash through a door and throw little replicas of metal milk cans onto a dock. Yeah, I love me a good old fashioned real tree display, but I don’t have one in my place.

Somewhere in the late sixties my aunt bought and displayed an aluminum tree. It was a shiny monstrosity. She was pretty proud of it. That ruined Christmas for me. Soon afterward, dad had to have one of those plastic pvc type Christmas tress. It was going to save us money, save us time cleaning up needles, and he touted it as environmentally friendly. “Save the trees,”he declared. Funny, I never knew him to be much concerned with trees or anything in the outdoors for that matter before.

I hated the look, the feel and the smell of that tree. I vowed never to have an artificial tree in my house...if I ever had a house of my own. My first real tree was in my room at the fraternity in college. Okay, I admit, I didn’t buy it. I stole it. A buddy of mine and I drove out to a strip mine and browsed the aisles. Saw in hand, just like my dad, I cut down what I thought would be the perfect size for the corner of my room. We had a devil of a time squeezing that thing in the back seat of the car and a harder time getting it out.

When we finally forced it upstairs into the room, there was hardly space to maneuver around it. And it was two feet too high. We managed to get that thing stuffed in the corner and decorated it with beer cans......empty ones. My new girlfriend, now my wife, never said much about it but I imagine she was second guessing the relationship already.

When I did get my first house, a wife and a family....I had real trees. Used to get my trees from an old drunk down the road that inherited a Christmas tree farm. Every year the trees got bigger but there’s no way he could have gotten drunker. He did pass out coloring books and crayons to the kids though. All these real trees were lovingly placed in a stand in the living room. And I had all the hassle and mess that went with it. On New Years Day or soon thereafter, I hauled the trees out to the local lake and tossed them in for fish cover. I don’t know when it happened, but a switch went off. I no longer wanted to have real trees.

One year, we travelled to the local artificial tree outlet and I declared to the family, “We need to save the trees!” I bought a plastic pvc lead infused artificial horror show Chinese Christmas tree and erected it in my living room. I immediately hated it. But I never went back to the blue spruce. In fact, every year after and every subsequent purchase of a replacement tree....I bought a smaller rendition. Until finally, I told the wife, we just need one of these little skinny things.

The child in me still craves all the Christmas trappings I grew up with. I have saved a few relics from that era. An ornament or two, a train transformer, a baby Jesus that tops the tree, and a old rusted hack saw that has seen better days. The earlier commencement of Christmas strictly for economic reasons has dampened my enjoyment of the season. But I still like to pick up that old rusted hack saw in the garage come early December.

[Float On]

Oh Christmas Trees.
I grew up on a Christmas Tree farm. My first paid gig was helping with the trees: planting in spring, trimming sappy pokey bee-ridden in the heat of summer, selling in the cold of winter (back when Missouri was cold all November/December).
I felt I really betrayed my upbringing the first time I brought an artificial tree into my home (son is allergic). It was more of a betrayal when I realized my parents bought a fake a few years later.
Most of the small scale tree farms are gone...seriously it's too much work in the heat of summer.

[Williamsmith]

Oh Christmas Trees.
I grew up on a Christmas Tree farm. My first paid gig was helping with the trees: planting in spring, trimming sappy pokey bee-ridden in the heat of summer, selling in the cold of winter (back when Missouri was cold all November/December).
I felt I really betrayed my upbringing the first time I brought an artificial tree into my home (son is allergic). It was more of a betrayal when I realized my parents bought a fake a few years later.
Most of the small scale tree farms are gone...seriously it's too much work in the heat of summer.

My kids realize I have this affinity for American made products. What could have more provenance than a tree rooted in the ground before your very eyes? Yet, my guess is the box in my attic that stores that plastic THING....probably says, Made in China. So....I and others like me are responsible for the disappearance of the small scale tree farms you grew up on, and I am truly sorry that your homestead was replaced by a seasonal corner of WalMart. You have a treasure trove of memories. Sometimes I would like to ask my kids what memories they have. I think that would be interesting. You have to have laughed at some of the people stuffing those things in their cars and tieing them onto the roofs of VW rabbits.....

[Float On]

You have to have laughed at some of the people stuffing those things in their cars and tieing them onto the roofs of VW rabbits.....

You learned a lot of private details of a person's life when they bought a tree. Why someone wants to stand in 33 degree weather and tell you their whole life history like you are their best friend?
Trees look smaller in a field of trees than in the house. Yes the overbuying for size of car was often comical. They also thought they could just each hold an arm out the window and 'hold'er steady' (same 33 degree weather). We were 6 miles out of town then a mile down a country road.
People do not come prepared with rope. Thankfully we were well stocked.
We had to tell them they had to cut it themselves...and here is how you use a saw. Please return the saw. Mom bought every saw she came across at yard sales....some she thinks she bought the same saws people carried off.
People assumed they could cross the fence into the bull pen (though there were no trees across that fence).
People assumed they could sit their kids on my barrel racing horse and on my crazy thoroughbred or the companion pony (again...no trees in that field).
People assumed their kids could run wild or could walk into our house without knocking.
People assumed the ponds were frozen over and their kids could skate around.
People assumed they could bring their dogs to 'run in the country a bit'.
I'm sure a few people packed home critters they didn't intend to take home. Would of loved to see that.

A man in town who owned the largest business would have us deliver 'the biggest tree you've got 15' minimum'. He had a glass atrium on the backside of his house (mansion) with 25' ceiling. He'd have the tree set in the middle of the room and professionally decorated. He'd invite us ever year to come see it before his big company party. It was stunning and magical. It was worth it.

[Williamsmith]

You learned a lot of private details of a person's life when they bought a tree. Why someone wants to stand in 33 degree weather and tell you their whole life history like you are their best friend?
Trees look smaller in a field of trees than in the house. Yes the overbuying for size of car was often comical. They also thought they could just each hold an arm out the window and 'hold'er steady' (same 33 degree weather). We were 6 miles out of town then a mile down a country road.
People do not come prepared with rope. Thankfully we were well stocked.
We had to tell them they had to cut it themselves...and here is how you use a saw. Please return the saw. Mom bought every saw she came across at yard sales....some she thinks she bought the same saws people carried off.
People assumed they could cross the fence into the bull pen (though there were no trees across that fence).
People assumed they could sit their kids on my barrel racing horse and on my crazy thoroughbred or the companion pony (again...no trees in that field).
People assumed their kids could run wild or could walk into our house without knocking.
People assumed the ponds were frozen over and their kids could skate around.
People assumed they could bring their dogs to 'run in the country a bit'.
I'm sure a few people packed home critters they didn't intend to take home. Would of loved to see that.

A man in town who owned the largest business would have us deliver 'the biggest tree you've got 15' minimum'. He had a glass atrium on the backside of his house (mansion) with 25' ceiling. He'd have the tree set in the middle of the room and professionally decorated. He'd invite us ever year to come see it before his big company party. It was stunning and magical. It was worth it.

The quip about repurchasing her own saws.......made me actually laugh out loud! Thank you for that. Memories. They are wonderful.

[SteveinMN]

You have to have laughed at some of the people stuffing those things in their cars and tieing them onto the roofs of VW rabbits.....
One year I stuffed a five-foot real tree into the trunk of my VW Jetta. Only had to bend the tip a little; it recovered.

[Williamsmith]

One year I stuffed a five-foot real tree into the trunk of my VW Jetta. Only had to bend the tip a little; it recovered.

Vee Dubs are versatile. They even pass their own emissions tests. !Splat!

[Williamsmith]

“The first step on the road to recovery is to admit you have a problem.” Well, I admit I’ve got this problem. Yesterday, I finally found a suitable replacement for my Chinese Black and Decker toaster. It’s an awful hunk of black dull plastic that won’t take a shine and just ruins my enjoyment of my kitchen. Everything on the counter should have a purpose and should have some redeemable beauty about it. So last night, I banished it from my kitchen kingdom and replaced it with a Toastmaster, Cool Steel looker from I think the 90s. It doesn’t say, Made in China . It says Boonville, MO.

It’s beautiful right? And for $5.50.....a bargain. Oh, and it actually toasts!

[SteveinMN]

Everything that is on our counter had better earn its keep almost every day or it doesn't stay on the counter. And there's no crime in something that works well and looks good! Enjoy the -- umm -- "new" toaster, WS!

*shuffles off to Mapquest to locate Boonville, MO*

[Williamsmith]

I tore everything out of my pantry. Took all the shelving down to the bare walls. Mopped the floor and stared in. I banished the few spiders and cob webs. The once pristine wood work has scratches and dents and some paint wear. The walls are covered with black and brown streaks where pots, pans, boxes, racks, and baking supplies have rubbed up against them. I want it to look pristine again. They originally painted the walls a primer white dull finish. I want it to be ultra satin baked scone Behr, just like my kitchen. Today, it gets a makeover.

**********

You look through the one way glass into the interview/interrogation room. It’s a stark room. The carpet is dull gray, the woodwork a little lighter gray, the walls .....gray and the ceiling tile mercifully white. Three pieces of furniture adorn this room that could comfortably be outfitted with an entire living room set. There is a function metal table with an institutional Formica type top and four legs. It sits along the long wall, one side completely butting against the wall. It has nothing resting on its flat surface. There is a decent office chair that swivels, rocks back and forth and rolls. And then there is a simple metal four legged chair.

He sits in the simple chair and waits. You watch him as he waits. He has driven himself voluntarily to see you at your request. Guilty......he is not fidgety, impatient or distracted. A little nervous perhaps but apparently willing to wait as long as it takes. He doesn’t get up and walk around. This is a good sign.

You are sizing him up. Planning a strategy and drawing from all your training and experience. He is in his sixties, someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s uncle, someone’s brother. And he is a serial child rapist.

You know this because cause he has made a mistake. He has molested a five year old boy with the ability to articulate the difference between a truth and a lie, has enough vocabulary to vocalize the evil that has been perpetrated upon him and the courage to reveal it to strangers. Strangers who want to help. His mother is a family friend of the one who is waiting in the room, kept at a chill 64 degrees. She works two jobs and struggles to get baby sitters. She thought he was helping her out. In actuality, it was her that was helping him.

In the past he has probably gotten away with a plethora of crimes against children. He was fired from his last job for sexual harassment. His wife knows about his dirty little secrets but out of embarrassment fails to force him to seek help. Or perhaps she keeps hoping it will fix itself. Whatever the reason, she is hoping this will be his swan song.

You have sat in on the interviews with the victim and are convinced beyond all doubt of his guilt. You have gone to the spot in the woods and looked for physical evidence that would prevent the child from any more exposure to the justice system. But this monster is good at what he does. He commits his acts out where the elements will quickly deteriorate bodily fluids. There is no chance of finding corroborative evidence. He purchases his clothes at the goodwill, the clothes he will wear for the crime. Afterward, he burns the clothes in an outdoor fire ring behind the house. He plans carefully.

So you watch him knowing that the only way to make him stop is to get a confession. You commit to striking up a friendship with him as soon as you enter the room. You wine and dine him. You are going to take your time. You will not leave before he does. You will make sure he is aware that he is free to leave at anytime and not under arrest. This is a non custodial situation. Its up to you to prove that in court should he confess to you.

You go through some of the horrendous details of the crime. He doesn’t seem to be repulsed. He is a little absent as he replays the crime in his own mind. You help him rationalize his attraction to children and even “confess” some of your own improprieties with other relationships. You go get him coffee for the fourth time just waiting for him to ask to go to the bathroom. Just one more question. You tell him you want to get him help? The time feels right. It takes all you have to do it but it must be done. You roll close into him as his head is down and reach out with your left hand. You touch his knee and say his name followed by, “did you do these things?”

His head hangs but begins nodding up and down.....he takes a deep breath and exhales and whispers, “yeah, I did it.”

**********

When the pantry is done, none of the scratches and dents and chips will be visible. They will still be there but the latex will cover them up. It will be pleasant to the eye. With every stroke of satin paint, the healing will take place.

[Float On]

It says Boonville, MO.



My mom made Toastmaster toasters in Macon MO. when she was a young bride. And sliced bread came from Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, which sold their first slices on July 7, 1928.

[Williamsmith]

My mom made Toastmaster toasters in Macon MO. when she was a young bride. And sliced bread came from Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, which sold their first slices on July 7, 1928.

My new -old toastmaster has made itself comfortable on my counter. It is toasting like a champ. And it is easy on my eyes. I love the idea that somebody’s mother from Missouri probably had a hand in making it.

[Williamsmith]

This morning dawned frosty and cold. Usually I like to remain asleep throughout my hour and a half workout, I don’t like to really wake up until I get my coffee. It was so cold today I noticed the frost on the top of the automatic door opener going into the hospital. My gym is conveniently located on the ground floor of the orthopedic wing of the local hospital.

I reached out and touched the frost and then scraped the icy layer with my nail. It crunched. My eyes opened a little further. Afterward, I travelled the 100 or so miles to my mothers house. It’s funny how life circles back. She’s out in the yard raking leaves when I arrive. Says she wants to die on her feet. If it happens that way I was thinking a pile of leaves will probably cushion her fall.

She saves the coupons from all the papers for me. Somehow the mailman happened to deliver all the Arby’s coupons for the entire neighborhood to her. I can eat discounted roast beef sandwiches everyday for a month straight. We sit and talk , meanwhile I cut coupons. Today she needs to drop a check off at the local medic rescue office. She’s been paying these guys the equivalent value of a months water bill every year for forty two years and only used them once. I figure that to be about $1400. She sleeps good at night knowing when the time comes for an emergency ride, she won’t be telling them to go away because the bill will be too much.

So I stuff her in the passenger side of my Tacoma. She can still get in without a step stool. Every approaching twist in the road or turn, she gives me instructions like I’ve never driven these roads before. “I grew up here mom, I know where I’m going.” “Go down this alley here and across the bridge,”she replies. “Gotcha mom.”

We deliver the check. She leaves out a satisfied sigh when I stuff her back in the truck for the second time. Around the block toward lunch we go. “Turn right at the stop sign. It’s up on the corner there.” “Right, mom....I’ve been here several times before.”

Its just a little diner with a few tables. Out front there is a chalk board with the specials. None of them suits her. “Maybe we better go somewhere else?” She is probing to see if I’m disapointed. “No”, I say, “we will just order off the menu okay.” “Good” , she seems pleased, “I want the half hot roast beef sandwich anyway.”

Its the same every time time we go out. She orders a glass of water, I get coffee. She eats like she starved herself. We chitchat and I learn about the goings on with the family. Everything is framed by what will happen when she’s gone. It makes me a little uncomfortable thinking about that but she seems to be able to talk about it like a move to a new neighborhood.

After lunch we go straight for the nearby Brewsters. She always gets a cherry vanilla cone...this time I get pumpkin. We sit in the truck silently licking our ice cream. I remember as a child her taking me to her favorite ice cream stand. She used to get a banana split, I got a milkshake.

The sun is shining. She wants to go for a ride in the country. It’s 16 miles to the state line and a 40 cent per gallon discount on gasoline. So we head due west. “You better turn here! Otherwise we’ll end up in Timbuktu!” “Right mom....gotcha.”

On the ride home, I sneak a look over at her. I want to her live forever. But I know she can’t. Her head bobs up and down a little , she’s fighting falling asleep. At the next crossroads, I take the road to the left and she says nothing about it. Its no problem , of course, I know where I am going. It’s just that, I’m kinda used to her telling me where to turn.

[rosarugosa]

Your Mom sounds wonderful. I wish mine could live forever too. I guess we are lucky to have them while we do. Since my Mom's memory has been deteriorating, she says she is more afraid of living than of dying, but she does continue to live with enthusiasm, fortunately.

[Williamsmith]

He always wanted to be a country singer. He had a good voice and his sister appeared on the Wheeling Jamboree back almost a half century before this picture was taken. He stands on a street corner in front of the local supermarket. The name of the store is right behind his head. It’s some time in the mid eighties, the cars in the parking lot still have the hood ornaments common to that era.

He is proud. His attire? Black boots, dark blue jeans with the cuffs rolled, a red handkerchief dangling from the back pocket, a blue button up collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. No hat but a big smile. A strap holds a vintage Gibson guitar to his chest. He plays his favorite chord.....C major.

I look at the picture for hints about my father. We didn’t have many father/son talks. What I do know is he was celebrating the acceptance of a jingle he wrote for the supermarket chain. They were going to use it in an advertising campaign. And so, I guess it was the only success he ever scored on a lifelong dream.

I suppose that was enough. He never posed again for a cameo. I remember him as having very high ...highs and very low...lows. Kind of like Baby Face Nelson in the movie “O Brother, Where art thou?”

In the photo hes got his right leg locked straight and his left knee bent in acceptance. That’s kinda the way I remember him. He could be standoffish and he could be tender hearted. You Just didn’t know which one until you tried.

Yesterday was his birthday. He would have been 88 years young. He’s been gone a decade now but the guitar is still around....sitting there in the corner of my music room. The guitar is 58 years old. Yesterday, I drove past the Supermarket and noticed they were preparing to tear it down. Part of me wants to go back to that corner and get my picture taken with his guitar. I’m not sure why yet. Somehow I feel like if I stand there, just like he did....I might magically get to know him better. And It seems like it would be best if I said goodbye to the store for him. The picture is evidence that it was an important place. And I’m glad he has such a big smile. I like to remember him on one of his high....highs.

[nswef]

Take the picture WS!!! You will never regret it.

[Teacher Terry]

Take the picture and enjoy your Mom. Mine died 8 years ago at 89. I really miss her.

[SteveinMN]

Yes, take the picture. You can always decide later that you don't want it, but once the building is gone, the opportunity is as well.

My dad has been gone for more than 20 years now. My mom soldiers on, in decent health for 83 and her mind still sharp (but befuddled by modern things like how to use chipped credit cards at pay terminals and how admitted sexual predators can be elected to office). She has HGTV ideas with zero budget for a house she doesn't even own and some of the martyr complex that many of us recognize in our parents ("No, you kids do what you want for Thanksgiving. I know we're a burden...").

Yet I realize that some day in the not-too-distant future she won't be around to explain exactly how she wants to turn her 100-year-old bungalow into a showplace for things she doesn't do now to any degree (even though she could) or explain why the guy who sponsors the talk-radio finances show is exactly right about ... well, whatever he's talking about. And, yes, I'll miss our conversations, maybe more than any of her children.

Reminds me that I really should get some more current pictures of her than I have....

[Williamsmith]

Sunday mornings are great for just random thoughts. The weather has a rhythm to it and right now it has descended into frigid evenings and cold days. I think I’ll fly my Learjet to my second home in Arizona. Wait ...let me check my powerball ticket..........

Nope. Looks like I’ll be driving my Toyota to Flagstaff and checking into the Motel 6.

Randon thought number one: Is it okay to be fake if that’s truly what you are?

Randon thought number two: If you are not a true minimalist; is it okay to divorce your life partner?

Randon thought number three: Are most minimalists intolerant of others possessions?

I came to this conclusion the day I bought my fourth vintage cast iron skillet then went home and demanded my wife go through her sweaters to see if she could purge a few of them. She has enough to fill a Conestoga Wagon.

Randon thought number four: Is Youtube ripping off Youtubers? I mean, the ones who are providing the content are getting their uploads censored but yet Youtube is making buck off their creativity! Not just a little profit either. Is It time to break up Youtube?

I dont watch much television anymore. I pay $156/month, give or take a few pennies, for the privilege of having 200+ channels of useless programming that I don’t watch. Well, to be fair, that includes the internet connectivity. But still, I could do without the tv component completely and the four televisions that go with it and just watch streaming content. And when my family comes over, we don’t sit and stare at the tv anymore. No we have evolved. We now have little mini machines that allow individual distractions to get in the way of communication. So now, we don’t even talk about how stupid the commercials are.

Which leads me to random thought number five: Why visit someone at all, if you are going to take your smartphone with you?

If I were to get rid of the tv component, it would lead to random thought number six: Where can I find a weather proof trailer to live in while my wife initiates divorce proceedings....thus answering the question posed in random thought number two.

Random thought number six: Why do churches have family portrait directories? The only time I have used mine in the past is when somebody dies and the wife says, “You know them. Look in the directory.” Which usually leads to, “Oh yeah, I remember them.” Followed by, “How about a grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch honey?”

Random thought number seven: What am I going to wear for my family portrait at the church today? How about my Pink Floyd t-shirt? I want something they will remember me by.

Random thought number eight: The voters just passed the elimination of the school tax based on real estate value. I wonder what new taxes will be established to not only make up for that, but exceed it in order to punish the voters? It will be exciting to see this play out since everybody will literally have their own skin in the game. I did not vote for it. Better the devil you know.......

I like to find obscure people on Youtube. The fewer views the better. Which leads me to random thought number nine:

What possesses someone to upload a video account of going to their pharmacy to pick up a prescription?

But Ill end with random thought number ten: If you don’t dream in black and white......do you dream in blue?

Answered by this:


https://youtu.be/jljhB-LlF4E?list=PLQrb1ZVOLzgkUW2Li4hOOAmPNDkfMkltv

[iris lilies]

William, what is the deal with elimination of real estate taxes for schools in your neck of the woods?

[SteveinMN]

Randon thought number two: If you are not a true minimalist; is it okay to divorce your life partner?
If you are not a true minimalist, wouldn't you want to have around as many of everything as possible? Would that mean more than one life partner? ;)


Randon thought number three: Are most minimalists intolerant of others possessions?

I came to this conclusion the day I bought my fourth vintage cast iron skillet then went home and demanded my wife go through her sweaters to see if she could purge a few of them. She has enough to fill a Conestoga Wagon.
I find it interesting that humans see things that way. Maybe it's not all humans; maybe it's based in certain societal constructs. But a human can see having four vintage cast iron skillets as essential and a Conestoga wagon full of sweaters as non-essential. Not poking at you specifically, WS -- I see it in DW, who has placed baskets all over the house for the purposes of organizing clutter and still leaves out of the basket what she's taken out of the basket. I even see it in myself, who is pretty rigid about what deserves a place on (my) kitchen counters (it better be used most days of the week) but turns a fairly blind eye to all the cr@p on the desk in the front bedroom. Similarly, the term "wasteful government spending" seems to be "any spending that does not benefit me directly". I'm interested to see if tax reform ever will take on special cases like the deduction for railroad taxes paid by left-handed albino plumbers (Form 1040; Schedule XS, Line 76).


Which leads me to random thought number five: Why visit someone at all, if you are going to take your smartphone with you?
I think what you're really discussing is people's inability to keep it in their pants. :) Technology should exist to serve. My smartphone is many things. It helped me navigate to your house (assuming I did not already know the way), it let me send you a message teliing you I was on my way, and it verified that I'm arriving at the time I said I would. At that point, unless you ask me for someone's new address or I want to show you a picture I took, my phone does not need to be in front of my face until I check the time (I don't wear a watch anymore). IMHO the issue is not smartphones; it's manners.

[JaneV2.0]

I went back to the beginning of this thread to recall where we started and make sure I was on topic, although I really like reading everything. I noticed this.

I want to ask my psychiatrist at my appointment tomorrow about this. My mom is so busy, always busy, she runs circles around me. I heard from my aunt that she wore her shoes out as a kid walking around the neighborhood, talking to people, doing things, etc. She has a hard time sitting still, although she is surviving her knee surgery. More recently she has lost track of some things, at 74, and there are a few other things with her energy levels. I often wonder if my bipolar II is similar but a trauma or 2 kicked into the needing treatment zone. I think my grandfather had some of the tendency and he drank it, while starting a LOT of different projects, business, etc. Hypomanic gets things done!

My great-grandmother died young in the Cuckoo's Nest (literally) around the turn of the century. Depression and bi-polar disease have left their mark on the family. Maybe some day I'll find out what the story was.

[Williamsmith]

William, what is the deal with elimination of real estate taxes for schools in your neck of the woods?

IL...this is the best article I could find regarding this topic. It is short enough that it didn’t loose my attention...which is saying something, and it is concise. Notice how closing the door to one dragon, unlocks the doors to several others. The beast must be fed.

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/11/pa_voted_for_property_tax_reli.html

[iris lilies]

IL...this is the best article I could find regarding this topic. It is short enough that it didn’t loose my attention...which is saying something, and it is concise. Notice how closing the door to one dragon, unlocks the doors to several others. The beast must be fed.

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/11/pa_voted_for_property_tax_reli.html

I read this article so thank you. This vote did not remove real estate tax as I understand it, it paves the way for real estate tax to be eliminated. It will be interesting to see what transpires from this point.

[Williamsmith]

I’m going to punt today. If you love dogs. If you love a good dog story with a happy ending. If you love mountain vistas and real adventures......I think it will be worth your time to watch this upload from a YouTube channel I support. If you look at his portfolio, no doubt a lot of it will be out of your field of interest but I find it insightful that people cannot and should not be pidgeon holed. People can’t be labeled simply. They are complex creatures. Almost everyone I ever met had a certain part of them that amazed me.

I was made aware of this video from 2012 as a result of a new video he published regarding the sad passing of his own dog recently. The grief he and his wife are going through is real. I’ve been there. The black lab in the attached video is the dog that recently died. The Golden is still kicking.....but I’ll let the YouTuber tell the story.........



https://youtu.be/kgI4fIVTzE4

[Teacher Terry]

Losing a best friend is hard. I lost 2 of my dogs within the last 5 months. 2 of my remaining 3 dogs are elderly too.

[Williamsmith]

I’ve been studying Keith Richards guitar playing style. The Rolling Stones. First off, it’s difficult to find formats these days that don’t crunch all the musical parts into a digital delivery system .....which makes it hard to hear the universe of sounds in the originals. Vinyl records are far superior.

But, I have found one or two mentors on YouTube who seem to know the real essence of Richards. And it is oddly enough simplicity. There are typically six strings on most guitars. Some have twelve but Richards plays mostly with just five. In addition, he tunes his guitars to an open tuning. Most times open G. This is a tuning that is often used for slide guitar style. He decided the droning effect was desirable played with fingers and a pick.

But what it did was force him to explore making sounds with a limited palet. He uses a variety of techniques to create a lilting swinging style which creates depth to his playing. And he uses space....empty space instead of filling the music up with a wall of notes. He also plays ahead of and behind the mechanized beat.

So you say, what’s the deal? The deal is that those of us who are striving for simplicity are similar to Richards and his quest to discover the freedom created by simplicity in his music.

Simple living is not easy. Sounding like Keith Richards is definitely not easy. What’s common on YouTube are people posting covers of Rolling Stones songs. They sound nothing like Keith Richards, yet they seem guenuinely convinced they have mined the magic of Richards. Typically, the music doesn’t swing. To live simply takes hard work. Sometimes we think we’ve mastered ....only to discover how we are living an accumulative lifestyle after all.

Simple living allows you you to experience the real joy of freedom. It means to me that I choose to have space, rather than clutter. I choose an open and generous lifestyle. I try to minimize possessions that cause me to stress over my Security. Instead of things, I try to focus on people, thoughts and expanding my understanding. Possessing an inordinate amount of things, causes me to spend an inordinate amount of time dusting, cleaning, maintaining, storing, rearranging and worrying about them.

Not being bogged down by boatloads of stuff allows me allows me to travel through life lightly. I have more time for fun, laughter, communication and sharing. I can open my arms wide without worrying that something is going to be taken from me.

It never ceases to amaze me how I can tell myself that just picking up one more thing won’t adversely affect my life, instead I can talk myself into rationalizing that a new thing will make my life easier or make me more fulfilled. It’s usually not true. Not only does it burden me.....it burdens other people I interact with also. Other people have to concern themselves with honoring your things. I don’t find this is consistent with freedom.

Like Keith Richards, I want to explore simplicity. I don’t think I’ve scratched the surface. But I’m going to continue trying.

[Williamsmith]

Hypersensitivity. Sensory overload. Sensory defensiveness. Not ideas I’ve considered much, until people in my life began pointing out certain THINGS. I’ve always sought out sterile environments. Places where not a lot of people congregate. I just thought I was an introvert. Turns out, certain people in the medical community think I have a “treatable condition”.

Well, if I did have a condition, it would cause me to mistrust the medical community and I wouldn’t seek any assistance. But I don’t. Have a condition, that is. Oh, I definitely mistrust the medical community. There’s nothing wrong with me, of that I’m sure. I just can’t stand a few things, that’s all.

First and foremost, I can’t stand anything in the car to rattle. That is cause for pulling immediately off to the side of the road and fixing whatever is making the noise. I once traded in a perfectly fine Ford Explorer because the back window rattled. Come to think of it, I just traded in a Ford Escape with 23,000 miles because the rear shock absorbers we’re making a noise when I traversed the speed bumps in front of my condo. Like I said, I don’t have a problem...my cars do.

I don’t like noise. Dead silence is perfectly acceptable. If there must be noise, one sound at a time please. I recently took my wife to see Trans Siberia Orchestra. What was I thinking? Talk about sensory overload. Screaming heavy metal guitar, percussion to the max, fire, high resolution video, moving stages, lasers....oh god, the lasers. And the cherry on the top....everybody around me taking videos from their smartphones.

Action movies. The kind where the frame is changing every one to two seconds. My brain can never catch up.

So I was beginning to think I had control over this whatever it is and then my golf partner pointed out that I have to clear everything away from my ball before I can swing at it. He’s right. A leaf, dry grass, a bug....it all has to be cleaned up. Plus, I have to have the ball arranged a certain way before I tee off or putt. And I have a routine. Tell me all of this is normal.

I am beginning to think this move toward minimalism is an effort to reduce the variability in my life that causes stress. The more I’ve thought about it....the stranger a ranger I think I must be. Turtlenecks bug me, I prefer the smoothness of polyester to cotton, cigarette smoke gives me headaches just thinking about it, I had a very low wattage bulb in my nightstand until the wife insisted it get upgraded....now the brightness bugs me.

I read that some of these things could be related to head injury and ptsd and a host of other unflattering situations. Well, none of that applies. Although, the wife is currently chewing her gum a little loudly and the kitchen faucet is about ready to drip. Oh yeah, and the ice maker just dropped another cube.

[Teacher Terry]

Many people have sensory issues in quite different ways. I can't stand certain textures in food I eat. For instance I like the flavor of strawberries but can't eat them because of the texture. I can't wear clothing that is uncomfortable in any way. I wear it once and never again. I love Trans siberian orchestra and they quit coming to my town even though the hall was packed both times.

[Williamsmith]

Many people have sensory issues in quite different ways. I can't stand certain textures in food I eat. For instance I like the flavor of strawberries but can't eat them because of the texture. I can't wear clothing that is uncomfortable in any way. I wear it once and never again. I love Trans siberian orchestra and they quit coming to my town even though the hall was packed both times.

I enjoyed TSO the first time I saw them. Less so the second time. This last time, eh. I suspect I’m not unusual in that regard. Is it possible the sensory overload gets less impactful over time? Their opening performance reminded me of Jake and Elwood Blues Brothers introduction at the ballroom theatre. Crickets.......


https://youtu.be/IBROrytf7RU

[Williamsmith]

I’ve constructed a few posts lately that have hit the cutting room floor so to speak. Either because it had no real purpose or it revealed too much about myself or other real people. At times, I think about editing some previous thoughts but I resist this. I still think there is a sweet spot in every thought where it is not too much....and not too little. I try to hit it.

As a maturing teen I was emphatically against joining organizations. My parents must have thought I was too introverted because they would approach me with ideas like youth groups, Boy Scouts, junior achievement, And FFA. Many I outright rejected. I did attend a junior achievement project where we made coat hangers. I wasn’t interested at all in making coat hangers but the cute girl that kept coming also and the glances we made back and forth at each other made joining organizations seem like a good idea. Who knew, but she would turn out to be my first high school girl friend. She taught me a lot about French kissing, mutual groping, petting and teasing.....but nothing about relationships. I would have probably been better served joining an Audubon Society and studying the mating habits of cranes. The confusion it left me with stunted my academic growth and drove me to listening to syrupy love songs.

I have to admit that when I attended college at the largest university in the state, I was ill prepared for it. My sense of self and my developmental level left a lot to be desired. Reflecting back, even though those were tumultuous times....society had much more clearly defined rules. Sexual identity was easy for one to negotiate. There wasn’t much choice. Certainly not much freedom but there was clarity. Things were changing but they were doing so at a snails pace.

My long hair down to my shoulders strained the boundaries. The rules on Illicit drug use were being tested on campus but never was there a confusion of direction like there is today. Things were pretty clear. You were either doing right or doing wrong. Somehow the comfort of not wondering was preferred to the amorphous meanderings of the law these days. We were certainly also no different than today’s youth. We just knew we had to be more careful about our indiscretions. I think Facebook is a perfect example of how confused people are today. They post things that might get them in trouble. Back in my generation, we were stealthy with our sins. Today, they are foolish with them.

In 1976, Peter Frampton released a live album which exploded onto the charts. I had a close circle of friends those days who were academically ahead of most mill workers children. I latched onto them because I was challenged that way and wanted to escape the shiftwork of the steel production machine. We would congregate at one guys house and do our physics and calculus homework then retire to the basement. He had a single mother who liked to sit in the kitchen, drink wine and read sexy romance novels. We played ping pong (table tennis for the Ivy League folks) and blast vinyl records and sneak a bottle of wine out of his mother’s closet. Some of our favorites were the Allman Brothers Band, “Eat A Peach” and of course Beatles, and Chuck Berry. But Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do” hit the spot.

I didn’t get any better at calculus, physics or Latin (three years of it).....but I learned how to hide the fact that I was drinking, became a first rate champion at ping pong and developed a love of electric guitar music. This was my foundation heading into my freshman year of college. So could I really be blamed if after my first semester I was on academic probation and thought that a career in crop dusting would be feasible? Looking back......it’s nothing less than a miracle I survived. I guess the point is...no matter how directionless somebody is....they can still find their way.


https://youtu.be/0gjWcnJLIZ0

[Williamsmith]

I just read a report on a recently completed scientific study on the merits of drinking coffee. I must say I accepted the news rather happily when the report concluded that drinking as much as four cups of coffee Daily was found to be beneficial to ones health. I usually have two to three cups in the morning as a general rule while I’m contemplating the meaning of the universe and my role in it. But today, in honor of the news about coffee.....I drank four.

Yesterday my granddaughter came to visit. It was a two hug day. And the best part is Saturday, she’ll be back for a birthday celebration and I get to serve her ice cream cake. Another Guaranteed two hug day. That’s a four hug week. And since she left to live in another state, those are few and far between. I’ve been reconsidering my stance on hugs.

We didnt hug as a habit when we were kids. That was just getting up into each other’s space too much. We didn’t say we loved each other either, but that’s a matter for another day and it’s cups of coffee. I have to say my wife isn’t one of those huggy type people either. She will but she doesn’t initiate it. I would also say my initiation into the hugging on major proportions was a coworker who took a certain pride in hugging his male counterparts.

It was kinda uncomfortable at first but when you took into account that he was a large athletic person, friendly to everyone and a jokester......it all seemed right. I started getting used to it and well....tolerated it pretty well. Then, magically, I started hugging all my friends when I saw them. It starts out as a firm handshake but then when the feelings right, both of you pull each other closer. Often, the hands will revert to the warrior handshake and a hug will follow. Now back in the day, guys didn’t hug other guys. Period. No matter how close you were.

Today, a hug is almost expected. Now I do on occasion run into a fellow who is not with it. You pull toward them a little and they back away. Yeah, I get it. I used to be unenlightened too so it’s fine. But you do get a bit insulted. I mean, do I stink?

Some people say we use the hug too much. I have to disagree. At a recent funeral, one of my better friends was the grieving father. When I approached him as he stood in the receiving line, a tear came to his eyes and he reached right out to hug me. He told me I didn’t have to say a thing, that my mere presence meant the world to him. I said I’d just put my heart on top of his and try to share his pain. Which I did.

A four hug week.....that’s a nice start. I’m thinking a hug a day might be just as good as four cups of coffee.

[SteveinMN]

I think the hugs are even better than coffee.

[rosarugosa]

Yes, a big fan of hugs here too! This will warm your heart, my favorite video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gowi31zGyQA

[Williamsmith]

Yesterday was the first day of rifled deer season in my state. It is an official day off for many public schools and many businesses are working with short staffing. The economic ripple effect including spending, jobs, salaries, and taxes is 1.6 billion dollars. But this isn’t about hunting per se....this is about my stuff.

It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when I decided I had too much stuff. I had worked my way about a mile into a wood lot where a two man stand had been erected. I carried with me, a scoped rifle, a box of shells, a brand new pair of warm gloves (made in China with two seams that missed their stitching-quality control doesn’t matter when you ship your crap to people who can’t bitch), calf high insulated boots, special camo bib overalls, underarmour turtle neck, an old sweatshirt sporting my college Alma mater, a backpack, a bottle of water, two slim Jim’s, a cheese stick, nylon rope, a field dressing kit with a fixed blade knife, a penknife, a face mask, a hunter orange knit hat and a hunter orange ball cap, a two way radio, a camo water proof overcoat, an insulated cushioned seat and a cell phone.

I climbed into the stand with all this crap and sat down. By the time I got situated I realized I’d worked up quite a sweat and with the wiind blowing in my face, I was quite uncomfortable. I used to hunt from stands as high as thirty feet without a care but I’m not as agile as I used to be and something told me to get down. So I packed all this crap back down to earth. Then I set out looking for a nice tree to rest against. A half hour of toting all this around and six trees later, I still wasn’t satisfied.

I knew of another tree stand that was more protected and that I had used in the past and so I took off at a good pace, considering all the stuff that weighed me down. When I got there I hadnt cooled off any, but up the tree I went. Lugging my burdensome stuff. All this stomping around the woods must of scared up a few deer because I heard a shot from a short distance away. I thought, well I’m glad someone is benefitting from me being over prepared.

I sat and watched plenty of illegal deer walk around my stand. Nothing I could shoot. It’s just as well, adding a 150 lb carcass to all the equipment I was hulling would have probably put me on tilt.

I dont know how its gotten to this point. I guess it’s been near a half century of collecting hunting stuff. I could had brought my range finder, or a game camera or binoculars, a grunt call, antlers to rattle and maybe a little more to snack on. I could have chosen a different firearm....I’ve got plenty.

The truth is I could accomplish my goal of venison in the freezer with this list of equipment.....a hunting license, a rifle, a half dozen shells, a pair of boots, an orange vest and hat, and a field dressing knife. That’s it. Perhaps a rope.

As a struggling minimalist, I feel bogged down by all my stuff this time of year. Bombarded by ads for more stuff. Where does it end? With your kids having to decided it’s final disposition.

FedEx delivers late in the afternoon. I hope my new knife and shoulder holster arrive today.

[SteveinMN]

The truth is I could accomplish my goal of venison in the freezer with this list of equipment.....a hunting license, a rifle, a half dozen shells, a pair of boots, an orange vest and hat, and a field dressing knife. That’s it. Perhaps a rope.
I've gone fishing twice in my life. Between the cost of minimal gear (cheap used rod, fishing line, a couple of estate-sale Rapalas, license, and whatever I wore to sit in the boat) and my (lack of) success in catching more than a 1-1/2-pound northern, I figure I could have met my needs far more simply (and maybe more cheaply) by visiting our friendly local fish store and buying whichever fish I felt like eating. :~)

Nothing against the entertainment value of fishing or hunting while catching edibles (or catching and releasing non-edibles or hunting with a camera); if you enjoy the process, that's worth something. But true minimalists just carry some greenbacks to the store and the only other thing they have to take care of is the wrapping. lol


FedEx delivers late in the afternoon. I hope my new knife and shoulder holster arrive today.
Of course, this only counts if you get rid of the other burdensome items when the new gear arrives...

[iris lilies]

Yes, a big fan of hugs here too! This will warm your heart, my favorite video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gowi31zGyQA


Selective hugger here. Pets, yes. Humans, not so much. My friend’s grandson, age 5, has taken to sitting on my lap. I guess I am like a big soft comfy chair, that is what grandmas are good for. So
I like hugs and lap sitting from small kids, but I can only imagine big hulking me foisting unwanted hugging on this skinny little boy. Gotta wait for the kids to offer it.

[Williamsmith]

Selective hugger here. Pets, yes. Humans, not so much. My friend’s grandson, age 5, has taken to sitting on my lap. I guess I am like a big soft comfy chair, that is what grandmas are good for. So
I like hugs and lap sitting from small kids, but I can only imagine big hulking me foisting unwanted hugging on this skinny little boy. Gotta wait for the kids to offer it.

I am more than willing to revisit this men hugging men “advancement” in civil society. Yesterday morning I arrived at deer camp at around 6ish and greeted no less than seven other men and three of them pulled me in for a grand hugging. It bordered on a damn hug fest. A few gave me the fake hug thing, pulling me in to within a foot and backing away. I guess they aren’t fully on board either. And then one or two just gave me the hardy handshake. Life is really complicated at 6 am and I’m definitely not even awake yet.

But with all the sexual harassment allegations flying around between actors, actresses, politicians and selfy seekers......I’d just assume nobody put their hands on anybody else for let’s say a year and see how it goes. No kissing either. People have a right to their own personal space. I do...and I’d like to enforce it or permit it. I actually taught my granddaughter the “air hug.” It’s when you stand about three or four feet from each other, wrap your arms around yourself and swing from side to side in a mock bear hug, all the while smiling at each other. It kinda looks silly, but you don’t risk getting cupped in the buttocks by an old senile politician.

[Teacher Terry]

I don't want to hug strangers but hug my friends. Little Kids can hug me as much as they want. When I was a kid we had a cabin on a lake during the summer and I fished every day in the evening. I had a small boat and would get my pole, bait, life jacket and that was all I needed. I caught fish often and my Mom would cook them.

[Williamsmith]

A digital countdown clock sits prominently on your desk for all to see. As a minimalist, there’s practically nothing else there but a phone. The clock was gifted to you by a colleague who retired a month or so ago. His last day everyone squeezed into the kitchen at the end of shift for a slice of retirement cake and a few laughs. When everyone was gone, he was still standing there in the kitchen looking a little forelorn. It was obvious he wasn’t ready for this. You think to yourself, “He’s a Sergeant, hasn’t worked the road or investigations in years and simply makes the work schedule and manages the evidence room......why would he want to leave?”

You follow him back to his office. Boxes are stacked around. A few pictures have been taken down from the wall and lay on his desk. There’s the handshake with Trooper Charlie Hanger of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Charlie was famous for arresting Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber just an hour and a half after it occurred based on a simple traffic infraction. There’s the autographed portrait of Pittsburgh Steelers Linebacker Jack Lambert. And in the boxes, duplicate copies of everything the Sergeant has ever been a part of. He’s a hoarder.

You notice the countdown clock and he says he’d like to pass it on. You have him autograph it with a sharpie and plan on passing it on when you go. You find out later that he is hired by the County Sherrif as a Deputy and are not surprised. He just wasn’t ready to give up the badge.

You are. There’s no doubt about it. In fact, time is ticking by so slowly that everything seems out of tune and elongated. Work has become a tedious task. You struggle to make a difference. There is a steady stream of officers who come in to see you and ask for advice or perhaps a connection to someone who could help an investigation. Your caseload is being intentionally reduced. You plan on having things wrapped up so that you don’t have to attend court proceedings after your retirement. But each weekend you work, you pick up new cases and you are being called out.

Two weeks before your final day you get called to a double homicide. As you go about the scene another investigator approaches and makes a comment, “You don’t want to be here, do you?” You think, “It’s that obvious huh?” You try to get clinical about the scene, help identify evidence, brainstorm tactical investigative strategies....but it’s not working. A certain sadness has taken root. You are tapped out. There will be no interviews for you. Any statements you take now will definitely require testimony in court. You are blocked out of one of your strong suits. Reluctantly, you admit that your expertise will not be as valued as it used to be. So you resign to running errands, transporting evidence to the lab, reporting to the District Attorney any progress. And then you are slowly phased out. Time has ground by slowly but methodically. Finally, your cake is being cut up in the kitchen.

Everyone is genuinely sorry to see you go but at the same time so happy for you. They know that this retirement will mean a regeneration of life. They have seen the life slowly being sucked out of you, case by case. They look in the mirror and see their own trajectory. After the cake, the clock is reset, signed and handed over to the next in line. You travel to the quartermaster and process out. You hand over the badge you’ve carried for 25 years. It is worn on the surface but like losing an old friend , it kinda hurts to give it up. Your gun is taken but you have purchased it. It will be forwarded to a gun shop where the background check will be done and you can get it back. You stand for a retirement snapshot that will go on an identification card. It clearly states that you are no longer authorized to conduct investigations or make arrests but that you were honorably discharged. You smile as if you are being released from prison.

Back at the station you pack your last box in your personal vehicle. The desk is cleared for the next guy. Everyone is busy doing their job. All the goodbyes have been said. You are alone. The next time you come to the station you will come in the front door in the lobby in front of the bullet proof glass as Mr. not Trooper. It’s a strange feeling but it seems a cement block has been lifted off your back. You travel home and wonder what an anonymous life will be like.

[SteveinMN]

Everyone is genuinely sorry to see you go but at the same time so happy for you. They know that this retirement will mean a regeneration of life. They have seen the life slowly being sucked out of you, case by case. They look in the mirror and see their own trajectory. After the cake, the clock is reset, signed and handed over to the next in line. You travel to the quartermaster and process out. You hand over the badge you’ve carried for 25 years[...] You smile as if you are being released from prison.
I worked at a company that tended to hire "lifers": people who joined just after high school or college who never left. So I attended plenty of retirement parties in my day. Many of the attendees were other retirees. And you could tell who the retirees were even if you didn't know them by name. They were the ones who were smiling, thin, and had color in their faces (or sometimes a tan all over) -- even the ones who were pushed out before they wanted to go. You knew you were going to be one of the grim-looking, doughy cube dwellers until your time came. And we were "just" IT geeks, not charged with life-or-death situations or the grim aftermath of bad behavior.

[Williamsmith]

I live in rural America.....the heartland as they call it. The county I live in is just over a thousand square miles of mostly woods and farm land. The total population by census has only barely crested 90,000 once in its existence and now is plummeting toward 80,000. The largest city has a tawdry 13,000 residents. Median income is below $40,000 and some well below that. There are only a few wealthy people. Mostly doctors and lawyers and business owners willing to compete for a market share living amongst the poor as a trade off for the urban experience they eschew.

There are a lot of the poor. One of the redeeming qualities of the county in the past has been its low crime rate. But the heroin epidemic has been an equal opportunity plague across economic demographics. This week alone several overdose deaths have occurred. One a working class mother who got a batch of heroin thinking it was cocaine. Or so goes the rumor.

Another incident of homicide of a night cashier working alone closing up a nutrition center. An addict dispensed with his life by stabbing him with a knife multiple times about the head and neck. He got $250 for his trouble and was arrested less than 48 hours after the crime. Another addict stuck a pistol in the face of an elderly woman pushing her shopping cart from the budget grocery to her car. After taking her money and purse, the robber called her a “Dear” and thanked her. Burglary used to be the crime of choice for these types of needs....now it is brazen show of force.

So I stand in the back isle of a Dollar General browsing the shelf that displays bleach. On my waist is a loaded 9mm Glock 26 hidden discreetly under a sweatshirt.....just in case. I need the bleach to soak my hunting knife and clean off some butchering tools. It is hunting season and I have 250 lbs of venison to freeze for the coming year.

I find myself in the Dollar General more often than I care to admit. In fact, I can drive to no less than seven of them within 15 minutes. This one is just around the square. That’s what rural people call intersecting roads or blocks. Dollar Generals are popping up everywhere. The wife and I were marveling at the proliferation of them as we travelled about the region. Now it occurs to me that their existence is a sign of economic morass. Their target consumer wants to spend the least amount of money as possible and get only what they need immediately.

I pick up the smallest bottle of bleach offered and realize I have become a targeted customer of Dollar General. Sometimes I will stop for a half gallon of milk. Sometimes, it’s sandwich buns. On occasion, dog treats for the grand dogs. Recently, some inexpensive birthday and bereavement cards were found here. No Hallmark for this frugal rural dweller. And as I check out, I hover over the display of camo butane lighters. I don’t smoke but they are very nice for emergency kits in vehicles. I choose the hunter blazed orange to find easier if it is dropped.

I would prefer to shop the Costco’s of the world and get good value with the huge portions but the budget doesn’t seem to go as far as it used to. The county is talking about reassessment of property, the schools are receiving less state assistance and looking for more taxes from their district, the HOA fees went up 10%, the new Republican tax plan is a wild card, the kids seem to need financial propping up fairly often. I’m feeling a little more motivated for frugal living. The wife is getting to the point where work is a grind.

We are definitely falling into the Dollar General profile. More so every day. I used to drive past them and see the broken down rust buckets parked outside, the poorly dress customers limping in and dragging themselves out and think how difficult it must be to have to rely on such a store. Now as I check out, maybe I’m practicing to be more prudent with my money? Or maybe, financially I just am something I didn’t think I was.

The bleach was a good price and the Glock a cheap insurance policy. These days when I see the yellow sign with black block printing....”Dollar General”......I think, maybe I’ll swing in for one of those air fresheners I use in the laundry that are only a dollar. If I do, I’ll keep one eye on the door and one on the methadone clinic across the street.

[Teacher Terry]

Our local women's shelter needed toiletry items so I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch to donate. Otherwise I never set foot in one but my DH likes them. Where we live everything is growing. People are moving in and we have gotten more industries for people to work at. Many of them have been high tech and they are razing old buildings downtown and in their place putting condos, stores, restaurants, etc.

[Williamsmith]

Like many mornings in early December, my time of reflection occurred 18 feet in the air......in a metal ladder stand. The sun not yet cresting the horizon, a chill 25 degrees and a 10 mph cold wind in my face, I sat motionless waiting for my world to awaken. Although my stated purpose was to harvest a white tailed deer, I still hadn’t settled it in my own mind whether I would or wouldn’t given the chance. Moments of indecision regarding the life taking of a living thing seem to be more frequent the older I get. As a teen, the challenge seemed to override the raw savageness of the act. As an adult who has witnessed the death of most things living, the challenge seems irrelevant.

What I enjoy now is the sting in my face, the invisible strength of a gust of wind, the sway of a tree, the texture of bark, a crawling spider, the earthy smell of a bed of forest leaves, the crunching frosted firmament, an upside down brown creeper, a curious chickadee, and a wedge of mournful whistling swans headed for the wildlife refuge that borders my private woodlot.

I sit. I watch. My eyes water when the icy wind cuts past my brow and my nose sticks out too far from the rest of my face. A tree cracks as it bends back and forth and a fox squirrel searches desperately for something for his winter cache. He doesn’t notice me.

Across the picked bean field a deer abandons his hideout among the swamp and races toward my woodlot. He has an impressive set of antlers. Even from 200 yards away I can tell he is a shooter. But he doesn’t stop to look back at what alarmed him. He is experienced. He doesn’t stop until he disappears into the woods a hundred yards south of my stand. My gun never moved. I could have taken a running shot with my Remington .243 caliber Model 7. In my youth perhaps I would have. Today, it would have ruined my solitude. The wind bites into the back of my neck so I pull my hood up. I am cooling down from the walk in and the climb up the ladder.

A pileated woodpecker knocks on a snag searching for his morning breakfast. It is a constant circle of searching, finding and resting. Life is always in the balance. Today’s entertainers will mostly not be here next year. They will have succumbed to disease, starvation or predation. Those who make it will pass on their genetic fitness to the next generation. A doe cautiously steps out of the multi flora rose bushes near my stand. I am upwind of her so she can not smell me. Soon she will be broadside and an easy shot. She is nervous and pressured from the constant hunting of the last ten days. She moves toward a grassy bed. My gun doesn’t move.

The sun warms my back and the side of my face as the clouds part briefly. There is nowhere I’d rather be at this moment. I am blessed and fortunate to be here now. And this is all I want......to be here now. This feeling of euphoria will pass soon. When I breathe deeply, I want to capture the moment and put it in a jar. I want to open it later. But moments like these are special because they are rare. The doe moves on out of range. She looks back, I wave at her.....she flicks her tail and lopes out of sight.

A lake effect snow is building to the north. Time to find a fire, a cup of coffee and some company.

[SteveinMN]

There is nowhere I’d rather be at this moment. I am blessed and fortunate to be here now. And this is all I want......to be here now. This feeling of euphoria will pass soon. When I breathe deeply, I want to capture the moment and put it in a jar. I want to open it later. But moments like these are special because they are rare. I have tried over the years to be more mindful -- to live far more frequently, satisfied (or better), in the moment. But, WS, as you point out, those moments are special because they are not frequent. I haven't managed to address that paradox successfully...

[Williamsmith]

The mornings coffee is important. I’m not a conesoir of premium coffee blends. I can remember my parents drinking Maxwell House...”good to the last drop”. And we had some Sanka sitting around getting stale for several years. They never brewed coffee.....it was always instant.

Today’s blend is one of the cheapest I could find. A medium dark 100% Columbian Arabica bean my local grocery chain sells for $3.99/ 11 oz. can. My vintage Farberware stainless steel percolator puts the Keurig machine to shame with quality. After all it does say “super fast and automatic” on the side. I don’t see the point in spending more on top shelf brands but then again, I don’t drink them to know any better. I do know that after being outside in some sporting pursuit on a cold day or chopping wood in a snow cover lot in January.....any brand of coffee tastes premium.

What I use to drink coffee out of is probably as important as the coffee itself. My go to mug recently is a sea foam blue Fiesta ware made in West Virginia. A mug has to be simple, fit the hand and hold more than a cup of coffee. And somehow the mug imparts a flavor to the coffee. I can’t tell you how that happens any more than I can explain the magic of Christmas to a child but it seems to me about the same thing.

I recently purged my cupboard of mugs that I didn’t like. They fit my hand poorly, had a faded out picture of somebody from decades ago, advertised a company I didn’t really care about or worst of all....said “Made in China”. I just picture a bunch of lead leaching into my morning contemplative brew.

But this morning I felt adventurous. I opted for one of my pure white Pfalzgraff dinner coffee cups. It has a simple pattern to it that reminds me of melting candle wax and the handle is a joy to grip. But what I had in mind was the color contrast that the coffee created sitting patiently in my white mug waiting to be consumed. I believe it is certainly going to be good to the last drop.

The first real snow accumulation is scheduled to be 9-18 inches starting tonight. It got me to thinking I need to go get some water and stockpile it for an electrical outage. Which reminded me of how proud I was to be self sufficient in the past. I believe self sufficiency and simplicity are members of the same family. However, I was never as self sufficient as I dreamed. And nobody really is. We rely on so many others to provide opportunity to help ourselves. Partnering is something we do almost without thinking and attribute our good fortune to self sufficiency.

Sure I used to fell, cut, Hull and stack wood for the fireplace but that required a parcel of property often owned by someone else, a chainsaw someone else built, a truck Ford made, a stove made by someone else.....it goes on and on for every act of self sufficiency there seems to be a supporting partner. Even loners like Dick Proenneke of Alaska or the few families that live in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge rely on bush pilots to bring in supplies. Self sufficiency has always been semi-self sufficiency. It is only a matter of degrees.

Simplicity makes self sufficiency a more reasonable description of your lifestyle. It allows you to rely more on yourself than the other partner. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons we strive to have simpler lifestyles. Perhaps there is always a reason to have a way to continue on without community even though we are so connected. Is the will to survive driving our simplicity? Somehow our instincts know that unchecked consumption and accumulation weighs us down, slows us down and interferes with our very ability to survive. It may simply just decay our quality of living. Or it may cause us to be unhappy with life altogether because we see no satisfaction in all we gather and maintain.

It’s a pure white coffee mug type of day to match the pure white snow coming down. Time to set up the bird feeders. I think I hear some chickadees talking outside my window.

[nswef]

Beautiful William smith.

[Williamsmith]

Beautiful William smith.

Thank you. I learned something today, this is how you spell.....”connoisseur.” As you can tell, I don’t spellcheck much and I definitely don’t proofread. It pretty much is what it is.....sometimes better than others. It’s not meant to win any essay scholarships. My hope is somebody can be inspired to hover over their own reflections if but for just a moment.

[Lainey]

My hope is somebody can be inspired to hover over their own reflections if but for just a moment.

You've definitely done that.
And it's funny about the coffee cups - that is one of my few Christmas traditions. I swap out the regular plain white Corelle coffee cups with some big bright red mugs to use between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. Definitely adds to the enjoyment and the reflective moments.

[razz]

Have to haul out the Christmas mugs today. I had forgotten I had them.

You've definitely done that.
And it's funny about the coffee cups - that is one of my few Christmas traditions. I swap out the regular plain white Corelle coffee cups with some big bright red mugs to use between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. Definitely adds to the enjoyment and the reflective moments.

[Williamsmith]

There has been a flood of retirements and officers who have transferred out and that have left your station short handed. The transfers come about because officers are trying to work their way back nearer their home or they might be angling for a station that has less of a workload.

It’s not like the department had little prior warning but the cogs of the government wheels turn slowly and so replacements will trickle in if they come at all. It has something to do with a computer algorithm that decides how much manpower each station gets by how much paperwork is submitted on cases and incidents that get rated as requiring a larger investment of man hours. The supervisors are constantly reviewing paperwork and incident management files to see where points can be stacked up to advantage the algorithm in the hopes that eventually the station compliment will rise. This affects your ability to be efficient, bogs you down in repetitive reporting and generally pisses you off.

Today, this is in the back of your mind as you leave roll call, grab a key to a patrol car, lug all your equipment out and perform an inspection on the car. Your department doesn’t issue cars or asisign them one or two officers. You are in and out of different vehicles constantly. You get to know which ones are uncomfortable, perform sluggishly or have deficiencies that might compromise your safety. So it’s a good idea to arrive early for work and confiscate the keys to a good car. When you turn the key and see the gas gas gauge is less than half full, it’s a poor start to the day. Everybody expects the prior operator to top off their tanks before parking the vehicle but a few officers are notorious for terminating duty with an empty gas tank.

There are times when an incident is “waiting for you” when you get to work. If you have arrived early you are expected and morally obligated to expedite getting suited up and out the door. Over the course of a career this amounts to literally hundreds of hours of donated time that you aren’t being paid for. So you drive out of the parking lot and head for the nearest gas station hoping not to be dispatched to an incident before topping off.

Because of this manpower shortage the county has literally been divided in two and half of it has been assigned to you. You are responsible for 500 square miles of territory including all the highways and byways. What this means is that you have to handle anything that happens on your own with no backup for all intents and purposes. And you have to do it efficiently with as little interruption to availability as possible. When your counterpart is tied up on something, you are quite literally “it” for the entire county. If you do call for backup, it will take at least 30 minutes for a responder to get where you are and it could take longer. Basically, you are a one man show.

There are some part time police officers here and there but they don’t get paid enough to care all that much. Your radio doesn’t interface with them and you have little contact. The Sherriffs Department is simply an arm of the courts and they are not part of the law enforcement equation. So as you pull out of the gas station and your radio squawks the patrol number, there is more than a little annoyance in your voice when you answer back.

Apparently a domestic dispute has occurred in which a woman has been beaten by her boyfriend. It happened in her car as she was driving. An ambulance is being sent to the last known location of the car. The boyfriend is intoxicated and still on scene. The distance......25 miles. You silently curse the boyfriend.....Well, maybe you outright pound the dashboard and curse yourself. Had the boyfriend waited just a half mile more, he would have been in another county and someone else’s problem.

You race toward the scene reviewing the proper responses to domestic violence. Chances are great that you will have to take the boyfriend into custody if there is any evidence of an assault. Drunks are infamous for wanting to fight. Should it come to that, decisiveness will be an asset. But you’ll have to keep your eye on the victim. She just as well could attack you also.

You arrive on scene and view a paramedic rendering first aid to a woman. But the boyfriend is nowhere in sight. It’s not at all clear the condition of the girlfriend as you exit your patrol car. One of the first responders yells, “He just ran down the railroad tracks!” and points in a southerly direction. You make a decision that will set the tone for the entire pursuit. You grab a Remington 870 shotgun loaded with three rounds of buckshot followed by two rounds of rifled slugs. In the open woods and rural countryside it could give you an advantage but it’s weight will slow you down. Judging from the age of the victim you assume the boyfriend is not a spring chicken.

You try to radio in your active pursuit on a portable but because you are in an area with no coverage, nobody knows what you are doing except the ambulance personnel. As you reach the railroad tracks, you gaze East and see a man walking hurriedly away carrying a plastic grocery bag. You hustle to close the gap and get within earshot of him. When you have accomplished this you identify yourself and demand he stop. He turns and looks directly at you. As he does he reaches into the grocery bag which hangs decidedly heavy. With his hand in the bag he threatens, “Back off...or Ill do it!” He faints as if he is pulling something out of the bag and then stops.

Tactically, you are now at a disadvantage. You retreat to the cover of a tree and he resumes his trotting along the railroad tracks. You pursue again. This time you keep the edge of the woods a little handier. As expected, you demand he stop, he reaches in his bag and threatens again. If he pulls something that remotely resembles a gun out, you will be forced to shoot him with the shotgun. That will most certainly result in his death. Yet you don’t even know if the victim is going to the hospital or may have refused treatment by now.

The shotgun allows you to remain at a safer distance but you have already planned what his next move will be. If he is smart he will exit the railroad tracks and disappear into the thicket where your shotgun will be useless. He does just that.

Is this simply a drunken fool with a bag of groceries or a madman with a gun roaming around and a risk to others? It’s decision time.

[Williamsmith]

As he disappears into the brush you briefly consider an out of the box type solution. You could render the shotgun inoperable by simply disassembling it and separating the barrel from the rest of the mechanism. It would take but a minute and still give you time to pursue the suspect with your Glock 37, a special .45 caliber design. It is a very capable sidearm. You could navigate the multiflora rose, redbrush and dogwood thicket with it unholstered and possibly take him into custody. Or you could be ambushed and shot or shot at easily.

Leaving behind pieces of a dissembled shotgun gives you pause, even if you plug the barrel with mud by ramming it into the ground. Pursuing him without knowing the status of the victim has also been serving up second thoughts. Significant other type victims are well known for changing their minds about pursuing prosecution, reluctant for various reasons to show up in court and testify and frequently cause more paperwork than you can shake a stick at. It is against your personal pride to give up the chase but the final piece to the decision is the knowledge that nobody really has a clue where you are and what your own status is.

So reluctantly, you take one last look into the last spot where he vanished like an apparition and nod your head with a silent promise to see him on another day, this time with a warrant of arrest in hand and backup. As you make your way back to the scene you switch the safety back on and start to relax. Arriving back at the ambulance your instincts are found to be true. The woman has received treatment for what appears to be a broken nose and what looks like will be one hell of a swollen eye. But she refuses to be transported to the hospital. The paramedics hand her an acknowledgement that refusing treatment may result in complications, that they have advised her to go to the emergency room and ask her to sign a release. She does this and they leave satisfied.

Now you have a different problem. She is obviously intoxicated. Had she been driving when the incident occurred she would be a DUI but she denies this and states the boyfriend assualted her while he was driving. Even though the car is registered in her name. They were going home from the bar just a mile up the road. She can’t be allowed to drive and she can’t be permitted along the roadway as a public drunk. She knows nobody with a car that would be willing to come pick her up. The last thing you want to do is transport her home by yourself in your patrol car. Some prodding later you find out she has a girlfriend living nearby. Fortunately, she has a phone and actually answers it. The plan now is to take her to the girlfriends house and dump her off. “Dump” . That is what you are doing although you try to remain professional about it.

Trying to get the information necessary for a full report from an impaired person is frustrating. Realizing your case is going to be built on an alcoholics statement, and rests on her ability or willingness to present herself in court just makes you cringe. You’ve been through this a million times before. Today, she wants him crucified. Today, you do all the paperwork, reporting, drawing up the affidavit of probable cause, travel to a justice and swear out a warrant of arrest, track him down, get him in custody, transport him to a judge and have a preliminary hearing, set bail, transport him to the county jail, obtain a subpoena to serve on the victim and......receive a phone call from her telling you she has had a change of mind. Not only that, she went to the jail this morning and bailed him out.

At least you don’t have to transport him to the hearing. It’s pretty routine. Realizing you have a hostile witness who is also an uncooperative victim, everyone agrees to lessen the charge of simple assault to a summary harassment. She goes home happy until the next time he beats her. This time whoever gets to answer the call, she will tell them that there’s no use because nobody does anything to him anyway. It’s a vicious circle and you can’t help but feel you have been victimized too.

What was in that bag anyway? Nobody will ever know but the suspect did shoot himself with a handgun not too long after she finally did leave him. Sadly but predictably, you could care less.

[Williamsmith]

I have written at times about my childhood and specifically about my being raised in a rather conservative church. In fact, it was so much a part of my life that I could no more separate myself from it than you could take the salt from the ocean. Fasting has been and is a part of many religions and mine was and is no different. A fast is usually combined with meditation in a heartfelt attempt to seek clarity in ones life. Denying oneself food and relying on only water is an act not only of faith but of hope. Hope that the cloudiness of life’s worries might part if but for a second and the blue skies of illumination might allow enlightenment.

Often trials and troubles send you much sooner to meditation and fasting. It also reveals your pride and humbles your false sense of self sufficiency. Many times tragic events have us questioning the “whys” in life. It is during these periods, the child in me reflects back to a time of innocence. Back to a time when a simple hymn might settle a worrisome soul or give comfort to a grieving family. And so it comes to all to meet these periods with their own version of fasting and meditation expecting to be healed or renewed or dare I even say redeemed.

For me this is the song. You can read about its author and the tragic events that led to him writing the words many many years ago. His name is Horacio G Spafford and the title is , “It is Well”.

I wish you all a very reflective and meditative holiday.

· “It is in the quiet crucible of your personal private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born and God's greatest gifts are given in compensation for what you've been through.”~Wintley Phipps.


https://youtu.be/zY5o9mP22V0

[nswef]

Thank you Williamsmith.

[Williamsmith]

In another thread, there was a little back and forth between Catherine and I (what a big heart she must have) about climate change and more importantly the response humanity owes the environment. I acknowledged that currently I am a climate change agnostic ...meaning not that I don’t think the climate is changing nor that humans are impacting our environment but whether her or my or anybody’s attempts to mitigate these outcomes....really matter. I thought that given the seriousness of the situation it is probably flippant of me to disregard these concerns without actually attempting to research them.

And realizing that I come from a background steeped in environmental resource management, I turned back the clock by checking the twenty or so books I regularly keep as a struggling minimalist. Knowing that among them sat a very important essay by a man I learned to appreciate as a very young “environmentalist”. I reflected on the lessons my own uncle taught me as the Superintendent of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia and am a little embarrassed to acknowledge I have strayed from some of that awareness he encouraged me to focus on.

And so the book was taken down from the shelf and opened to the first page. Published in 1949, everyone with a tiny bit of conservation exposure will immediately recognize the author. The first paragraph I had read over and over countless times but for some reason this last time seemed more profound.......

”There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

There is no doubt that I fit in this category also. And then he continues amazingly appropriate for even today to say.....

”Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a parquet-flower is a right as inelianable as free speech.”

Setting the stage, he writes further......

”These wild things, I admit, had little human value until mechanization assured us of a good breakfast, and until science disclosed the drama of where they come from and how they live. The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not.”

Almost seventy years ago, Aldo Leopold exposed the issue in plain language. Perhaps there is still time for a “shift in values” as he called it. It’s worth the effort to see. Oh, and the book....”A Sand County Almanac and sketches here and there.”

[catherine]

And realizing that I come from a background steeped in environmental resource management, I turned back the clock by checking the twenty or so books I regularly keep as a struggling minimalist. Knowing that among them sat a very important essay by a man I learned to appreciate as a very young “environmentalist”. I reflected on the lessons my own uncle taught me as the Superintendent of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia and am a little embarrassed to acknowledge I have strayed from some of that awareness he encouraged me to focus on.

And so the book was taken down from the shelf and opened to the first page. Published in 1949, everyone with a tiny bit of conservation exposure will immediately recognize the author. The first paragraph I had read over and over countless times but for some reason this last time seemed more profound.......

”There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

There is no doubt that I fit in this category also.

I'll have to look up that book. There is a history of great writing in this century by those who love wild things.

Right now I'm reading my favorite "wild thing" author: Gene Logsdon. Specifically, I'm reading A Sanctuary of Trees which is just great. I think you would like it, Williamsmith. Put it on your list for Santa. You are probably familiar with other books he's written.

[Williamsmith]

I'll have to look up that book. There is a history of great writing in this century by those who love wild things.

Right now I'm reading my favorite "wild thing" author: Gene Logsdon. Specifically, I'm reading A Sanctuary of Trees which is just great. I think you would like it, Williamsmith. Put it on your list for Santa. You are probably familiar with other books he's written.

Ill tell you what, I’ll read your book but I’ll have to order it from Amazon, Santa creeps me out.

[Williamsmith]

I wonder how many times I have gotten in the way of someone trying to help me, simply out of sheer ignorance or lack of perspective or impatience or all three......

Aldo Leopold:

“My dog does not care where heat comes from, but he cares ardently that it come, and soon. Indeed he considers my ability to make it come as something magical, for when I rise in the cold black pre-Dawn and kneel shivering by the hearth making a fire, he pushes himself blandly between me and the kindling splits I have laid on the ashes, and I must touch a match to them by poking it between his legs. Such faith, I suppose, is the kind that moves mountains.”

For anyone who lived as I did in the countryside where oak wood was favored for heating ones home and for those same people who did so as I did in the 1970s during the “energy crisis”.....the smell of split oak is an aroma I will never forget. I will also never forget where heat really comes from. Heat comes from “work”, throwing an axe, pounding a steel mall into a round, stacking a cord of wood so that it will season..... not from a thermostat on the wall. As does food come from the garden and not from the grocery store.

I remember when natural gas would heat the home rather conveniently and then one day a wood stove showed up and with it a ritual of cutting, splitting, stacking, hauling and getting up early in the morning to stoke a fire in a shiver. I went away to college in the late 1970s and strangely missed the feeling of providing heat for the family. When I returned on breaks it was a wonderful thing to approach the house and see the evidence of a wood fire burning in the living room fireplace insert and walk inside and smell the combustion of oak. And I could sit and stare at the fire because the stove had a glass window on its door. We not only had a stove upstairs but one in the basement and it kept the wooden floor toasty. But only if you fed it and only if you had the wood to burn...and only if you worked for it.

I still have a fire to sit by in the winter. These days, natural gas provides an instant fire at the touch of a zapper next to my recliner. It’s no less warm but I have to imagine the aroma of oak and close my eyes to hear the crackling and popping of a real fire. I sometimes wish I had a dog to share the fireplace with. Sometimes.

[Williamsmith]

In the words of a very talented luthier who plys his craft in a small workshop in the mountains of western Virginia, “You make a guitar by taking a block of wood and you remove everything that doesn’t look like a guitar.” That explanation and the following perhaps together best explain my understanding of the quest for harmony in life:

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

I have lived out of a tiny suitcase for the past 10 days. There is nothing left that can be taken away, yet I am not in harmony with my surroundings. I am in a city where noise overwhelms me. Sirens, traffic, city sounds, a mad rush to get from point A to point B and let no one get between. I have scrawled down the calendar date of each day in two lines. As each day passes, I place an X through the date and count the remaining days. When half of the time has passed, I have a private celebration.

Even my attempts to help pass the time have only provided relief as an aspirin would a migraine headache. I make a side trip to a tourist location three hours away. I attend religious service with the family, I visit a zoo, I tour an NFL football field and a World Series venue, I go shopping at a mall. The crowds threaten to suffocate me.

At home snow buries the landscape under 60 inches of frozen precipitation. I long to be buried. And thawed out by the fire. In the morning I will board a plane and three hours later return to my comfort zone. The farther north I drive the more content I will grow until finally I will return and take up residence in my place like a child hugging its favorite blanket.

I do not travel well. That is a fact my family understands but still they pretend to forget. There is talk about another trip in the summer back here. A month was the mentioned timeline. I have given up being nice about it. I said I’d compromise, I’d come down for five days and fly back at the end of the month. Aloneness and loneliness are not the same to me. I believe there is still a bit more that can be removed.

[Williamsmith]

Winter has frozen us solid. The wind is constant in its complaining outside my window. The fireplace is an island of peace that is not threatened by any length of power outage. I occasionally shovel away the snow that builds up in front of the garage door and then scrape at the ice under it. I go next door and do the same for a neighbor who is hospitalized. The newspaper is frozen stiff in the morning. The ink even seems to be thankful to be brought inside and thawed.

The sun has gone south on vacation. It has followed the Canadians south on the nearby interstate. Once daily a snowplow grinds at the road and deposits the frozen ice and salt mixture along the berm. Even the plow creates beauty in this stark landscape, though I suspect the driver merely sees a chore and a paycheck. A chickadee thanks me as he hauls a sunflower seed to a frozen branch and consumes its heart. Every motion, every flight expends energy that must be replaced by food. How can one so small endure the single digit temperatures?

Like darkness is the absence of light; cold is the absence of warmth. My boots insulate my feet from the cold, my gloves keep my hands from frostbite. A walk outside reminds you of how naked and ephemeral you are. Without support only a few moments from eternity. The nearby arbor vitae probably provides a cardinal with shelter. Under the snow, a mouse has made a nest of grass. But you stand in the wind, defiant.

The snow crunches under your boot with every step. You look down keeping your tender eyes from the winds but you gaze up quickly scanning the path ahead. A bit of lip balm and a turn of the shoulder into the gusty frosting wind as you slide behind the protection of an oak. A squirrel has been out digging hidden treasures. He is nowhere to be seen but a leaf nest above gives a hint. Perhaps he looks down and considers you for a moment. Perhaps he is fast asleep.

You return being pushed home by the relentless howling breathe of old man winter. The ice crystals pass over your shoulder and your hand cups around your eyes. Crunch, crunch...crunch crunch.....crunch crunch. Light has been rationed. You are thankful snow is white.


https://youtu.be/piUDbCtgymw

[nswef]

This is exquisite Williamsmith. Thank you.

[Williamsmith]

This is exquisite Williamsmith. Thank you.

No.....thank you!

[catherine]

I think those of us in the North have a special opportunity to experience the cold mixed with the light of the snow. It's tough, but it's crisp and sure. You feel good when you can confront it. It goes away in the spring, but you always think, see you next year, you tough taskmaster! I could never live in a place without the four seasons.

I loved the YouTube as well, although most of the time I was wondering why you posted a YouTube on Annie Liebovitz, although I LOVE Annie Liebovitz. But I did ultimately wind up with Audrey Assad's song, which was lovely.

[Williamsmith]

I’ve always been in love with all things made of glass. I can trace it back to the presence of glass in my childhood. On the south facing wall of my parents craftsman house were two small stained glass windows. What they were doing there I don’t know. They certainly weren’t functional but they were inspirational to a child. They were simple designs of squares, rectangles, triangles and semi circles and they were my first exposure to simple art. I went back to visit that house some fifty years after my childhood and sadly the windows were gone. I would have loved to reclaim them.

In that same craftsman house the windows were single pane and had irregular swirls on occasion. They were wood and rotted by the condensation of repeated cold winters. Each window was raised by hooking your index finger under a metal flange designed perfectly for the human hand and placed at the bottom of the frame. Here were hidden lead ballasts in the side of the window frame that assisted you in lifting them. They would often not slide easily but rubbing a bar of ivory soap on the rails usually helped. When a storm hit, those windows rattled. During the winter, I liked to chip the ice that had formed off the inside with my nail. Sometimes I just wrote my name in the frost.

At school the milk came in glass pints with little cardboard tops with a tab to help remove it. Cold chocolate milk delivered in a glass is way better than any other method. I can still hear the tinkle and rattle of the empty pints in their metal carriers.

And there was the leather pouch with a drawstring containing my collection of cat eye marbles. Putting two or more in your hand and rubbing them together made a unique glass induced grinding sound. Shooting one into anther with your thumb produced a satisfying glass collision. Their patterns seemed infinite. Invariably a marble would find its way into my army navy store jean pocket and then into the wash. A marble makes a big racket in the dryer.

Of course, canning jars were unbiquitous in my family. But there was one special type that I found to be more art than function. It was the Atlas E-Z seal spring lid beauty. It had a glass bubble lid that was clamped with bailing wire. Perhaps that why fifty years later while browsing my favorite indoor flea market, I came across one.......or it came across me. I had been looking for the perfect container for my ground coffee. I think I found it. I think I also found a good place to develop my sourdough bread starter. Yeah, I got two.

Its not surprising that my living room has two semicircular windows, high up on the south facing wall. And that each one has variable colored suncatchers hungthere. I have a firefly, a hummingbird, two goldfinches, a sun, an Indian head (vintage) and a tulip.

My Atlas canning jar is forming well as a coffee container. The coffee tastes better somehow. It has imperfect bubbles in the glass if you look carefully. Just the way I want it.

[nswef]

williamsmith, You brightened my day evoking memories of glass! I too have suncatchers- blue for each room to protect from the "evil eye". My macaroni is kept in a glass canning jar with bale? bail? wire that I just could not get rid of years ago. Thank you for the reminders of beauty all around.

[Float On]

Since we were glassblowers our house and gardens are full of glass. I love looking outside right now and around the little pond in the front yard we have glass orbs on copper stakes at various levels. Each colored orb is wearing a hat of snow. So pretty!

[Williamsmith]

Some things are so prolific in our lives that you never think about them but they have profound meaning. Numbers, for instance. Say the word and look at it long enough and it even looks foreign and strange. But take numbers out of your life and well....you have no life. You’re saying, “Really, you are going to write about numbers?” Yep.

This thought came to me as I was driving to the gym this morning at 6am. My first run in with a number was the bathroom scale. That number had the power to depress me.....190.5. Then the thermometer outside...29? Not bad. On my way out the drive I stuck to the 15 mph speed zone and on my dash there were numbers all over. The gasoline was selling at 289.9 this morning. It annoys me they don’t just display 2.90.

I set my exercise bike at 11 and started pumping. Every day I do 35 minutes, 7.50 miles and expend 280 calories. I do crank up the resistance twice to 12 and 13. I don’t like to overdo anything so my leg presses go from 70 to 80 to 90 to 100. The hip and thigh machine....60.

By the time I leave it’s 7:20am. Back home I put exactly 2.5 cups of water in the coffee pot and 3 scoops of coffee. Thus far, on any normal day, I have not given 1 thought to numbers. But today for some reason it doesn’t escape me that they are not simply Hindu- Arabic numerals from AD 700......they are language ...communication.

My daughter is a bank auditor. She lives her life around numbers and it’s not a coincidence that she is the most frugal person I know. It’s obvious she thinks about numbers more than I do. Literally everything we do is defined by numbers. Checking out at Walmart....that bottom number was over 100 last time. Ordering on Amazon....my credit card number is memorized. The obituaries, wow....she died young? How much is in my retirement account? With all these numbers it’s not at all clear why I don’t count numbers jumping over the fence at night in my dreams.

THe powerball is 78 million, I baked my pumpkin pies at 425 for 15 minutes and then reduced the oven temperature to 350 for 45 minutes. It’s the 19th of January, 2018.

I remember as a child figuring out how old my parents would be when I was say, 60....65... And then thinking they probably won’t be around. I tried to imagine being able to hit a homerun 350 ft. Or drive the Mustang 95 mph.

Sometimes numbers are just plain torture. How many times had I seen this in the eyes of motorists? “I stopped you for going 85 mph. The speed limit is 65 on the Interstate.”

Wednesday I was looking at a spreadsheet that had all the pertinent numbers for the budget of the HOA while sitting at the meeting listening to the treasure drone on about the numbers. There was the snow removal, the reserve fund, the clubhouse utilities. Mercifully, my phone rang and I stepped out.

“Hello.... Yeah Sweetheart........stage 2...........what’s that mean?”

[Williamsmith]

It’s been awhile and frankly I wasn’t sure how long I’d take to make another post here. Cryptic as the last post was ....I’ll be direct today. My wife has had the time to notify everyone important that she has been diagnosed with melanoma. She is currently sporting a five inch incision where they excised cancerous skin cells.

I can’t tell you how I am processing this because I tend to compartmentalize and archive nasty bits of life I don’t want to deal with. So this simple post is an effort to acknowledge the existence of this threat to our charmed life and then move on. I understand that at its early stages this is usually quite curable. The thing is obviously......we don’t know just how early ......early is.

That out of the way, I intend to move on.

Coincidentally, today on my way out of the gym walking to my truck I noticed a playing card on the sidewalk. I hadn’t seen it going in but the condition it was in tells me it has been out in the weather for a while. I stared at it as I walked by. I kept walking but still thinking about that card. It bugged me so much I turned around, walked back and picked it up. It was the three of diamonds.

Now this isn’t anything unusual for me. As a kid I walked a lot and I walked with my head down scanning the immediate area. My best find was an empty pack of cigarettes with a twenty dollar bill tucked into the side between the inner liner and the plastic wrap. That was a lot of money for a kid.

I am always picking up pennies or small coins, some folding money every once in awhile and odds and ends of junk. It would not surprise me that if I lost my mind I might be one of those roaming derelicts that picks up random items off the highway and stashes them in plastic bags. Let’s hope I don’t lose my mind.

So I figured, this card has a meaning to some people who are into that....what’s it mean? Well it turns out the study of the meaning of playing cards is called cartomancy. The three of diamonds is a good card. It has to do with success and satisfaction, and interesting enough the “realization of a project.”

It portends the ability to solve practical problems and the potential to be rewarded. And this is the interesting part. It says that I will have a very positive outcome when collaborating with a relative. Well, I seized on that gem because I am planning a trip with my wife and I need the help of my nephew to make it a success.

Dont get me wrong here. I place little validity on coincidental occurrences and talismans such as playing cards. But then again.......it’s a good card!

[Float On]

Williamsmith, I'm sorry for your wife's diagnosis.

[Teacher Terry]

WS: I sure hope they caught it early. Both my Mom and Grandpa had every type of skin cancer imaginable including melanoma for 40 years each. They both lived to be very old. Needless to say I am very anal about checking my body and the dermatologist does a full body check once in a while. Your trip for your wife sounds wonderful:))

[nswef]

I too am hoping that this card is a sign. I believe in signs and dreams....so the 3 of diamonds and your research seem to be giving hope!

[catherine]

I was wondering about that cryptic last sentence in the previous post...

I'm so sorry you're going though this. I get the compartmentalizing thing. But you'll process what you need to when you need to. It's great that she's got it early and is already in treatment.

[SteveinMN]

Williamsmith, I, too, am sorry to hear that your wife has melanoma. It is eminently treatable so let's hope the timing and the cards are right.

[ToomuchStuff]

Well wishes on the wife front.
On the card, all my brain went to, was there was some kid on a bicycle, disappointed his bike, didn't sound like a motorcycle anymore and did you find the clothespin?
Showing my age.

[Williamsmith]

Well wishes on the wife front.
On the card, all my brain went to, was there was some kid on a bicycle, disappointed his bike, didn't sound like a motorcycle anymore and did you find the clothespin?
Showing my age.

I used to use baseball cards.

[Williamsmith]

I have always dreamed of owning a woodlot that was home to a pair of breeding great horned owls. As a hunter being in the woods before dusk and just after dawn, I have heard the territorial hoo hoo hoo. And I have seen them silently blazing a path through the woods deftly avoiding tree limbs.

My first close call with a great horned owl nearly stopped my young heart. As a college student I once lived in an old farmhouse at the outskirts of town where I snuck out into a farmers apple orchard to do some early morning archery hunting for deer. I was equipped with a second hand Golden Eagle compound bow, three razor tipped aluminum arrows, a buck pathfinder knife in a black leather sheath with a silver snap and a wild idea that with these possession I could harvest a mature whitetail deer buck.

I arose before light and bumped my way around the bedroom trying not to wake my drunken sleeping roommate. He would sometimes get so intoxicated that he would black out. He once urinated into the bottom drawer of my dresser which I had foolishly left pulled open. The house dog, a big heavy boned Labrador retriever usually slept in bed with me. She followed me around curiously. I can still hear her nails clicking on the old hardwood floor.

It was a crisp fall day as I stepped out into the dimmly lit dawn and made a hasty beeline for the woodlot. I had to walk about a quarter mile along a back country road before I could get into the corn field that protected the orchard. That walk was sort of nerve racking as I didn’t want anyone seeing me. I devised a plan to jump into the weeds and hide should a car come along.

None did. At last, my heart racing, I ducked into the golden rod after jumping a drainage ditch. Without a flashlight I had to rely on my dialated pupils and the faint shadows of the moonlight. It was about then I became aware that my heart wasn’t racing so much as a result of me hurrying to get into the woods, but in anticipation of what might happen. As I made my way toward the orchard the footing of the cornfield was uneven and my ankles were absorbing the twisting and turning of the soles of my hunting boots. The frosty crunch of the hedgerow, and every once in awhile I’d stumble over a fallen branch or rotting log that was camouflaged by the shadows.

I consciously kept my bow poised to react to an inadvertent mistep or fall which could seriously wound me if my broadheads jarred loose of their mooring in the carrier attached to the bow. This would be a tragic end to the hunt which I had lay dreaming about the night before. Well before hunting hours, half an hour before sunrise I slipped quietly into the orchard. The loudest sound being my beating heart and the slow stalk of toe down first and then heal. It seemed like forever getting to the tree I had scouted out.

My senses were nearly exploding, the smell of ripening apples on the ground, the unfamiliar calls of waking birds, the sunrise just beginning with an orange promise of a blue sky day. I stuck one arm through the opening between the bows string and it’s cammed levers and wedged it on my shoulder. And I climbed. I’d had placed a small length of two by six with the cutouts into the crook of two spreading branches about fifteen feet above the orchard floor. Once settled onto the plank I leaned satisfyingly back onto one of the splits of the main truck. Comfortable enough to remain motionless for a few hours.

I was sweating from the trip in so I unzipped my jacket and shook my sweatshirt forcing cool air against my heated chest. My heartbeat began to slow and I started to relax. The woods was beginning to awaken. It was not long until I began to feel unsettled. Their was someone or something nearby that I could feel but not see. With all the uncertainties behind me and the success of getting situated I couldn’t shake the feeling of company in the area. Was I being watched?

I turned my head slowly to the right and scanned the area at eye level and below. And then I turned left. I found myself looking face to face with a great horned owl perched ominously on the limb beside me no more than 12 inches from my head. His eyes penetrated mine and then he exploded off the branch and left me ducking away from his immense wingspan. I nearly fell from the tree in surprise. I don’t think my heart beat for a full minute. When I recovered, only then could I appreciate the wildness of the bird and how close I had been.

The rest of the morning was rather uneventful, thankfully. Anytime I hear the hoo, hooo, hoo of the great horned I think of our chance meeting and wonder if he was annoyed that I’d discovered his favorite perch or if somehow he too remembers and smiles.

I dont have the buck knife anymore, nor the bow and arrows of that morning. But I have the memory of an encounter of the great kind one glorious fall morning in Penns Woods.

[Float On]

What an incredible encounter, Williamsmith! I love owls! Have had several unique experiences.

Pulling up over a hill on our road to the farm and dad slowing the car as we approached the first small iron and wood bridge on a moon filled night. I was 5 and of course standing in the back leaning over the front seat (before seatbelt rules). A barn owl landed on the bridge rail, then a 2nd, then 5 more. The entire family. We sat in silence and watched them in the light of the headlights.

At 16 my first time driving to Wednesday night youth group on my own and driving through the country roads. I turned a sharp corner and something crashed into the grill of the truck. I got out to look (being very careful because there were mean dogs on that corner property). It was a barred owl carrying a shrew and it died. Of course I put it on the floorboard of the truck and the next day dad called the conservation agent. It's still on display at the conservation headquarters in Jefferson City.

DH and I were working in the studio early one morning and a screech owl landed on the tree limb at the big garage door. It was soon followed by 4 baby screech owls. They watched us a bit as we watched them before they took off on their flight lesson.

Barn owls are now endangered. My son was thrilled to finally add it to last year's count on Dec 31st.

[Williamsmith]

What an incredible encounter, Williamsmith! I love owls! Have had several unique experiences.

Pulling up over a hill on our road to the farm and dad slowing the car as we approached the first small iron and wood bridge on a moon filled night. I was 5 and of course standing in the back leaning over the front seat (before seatbelt rules). A barn owl landed on the bridge rail, then a 2nd, then 5 more. The entire family. We sat in silence and watched them in the light of the headlights.

At 16 my first time driving to Wednesday night youth group on my own and driving through the country roads. I turned a sharp corner and something crashed into the grill of the truck. I got out to look (being very careful because there were mean dogs on that corner property). It was a barred owl carrying a shrew and it died. Of course I put it on the floorboard of the truck and the next day dad called the conservation agent. It's still on display at the conservation headquarters in Jefferson City.

DH and I were working in the studio early one morning and a screech owl landed on the tree limb at the big garage door. It was soon followed by 4 baby screech owls. They watched us a bit as we watched them before they took off on their flight lesson.

Barn owls are now endangered. My son was thrilled to finally add it to last year's count on Dec 31st.

Wow, Float On, I can see where your love of nature comes from and sense maybe a yearning for reflective solitude on occasion. Those are great memories. I really appreciate you sharing them.

I’m sure you realize that these descriptions are mere outlines bereft of the detail of the true experience. Those details are there but I can’t tell you what sparks a remembrance for me and what protects the things that are lost permanently. I just know that when it comes out, it just flows.

At 16 I can tell you that I would have been saddened by the death of that owl.

Your childhood must have been an adventure. I enjoy you telling about it.

[Float On]

Your childhood must have been an adventure. I enjoy you telling about it.

I get that from my dad. I grew up begging for one more story of his childhood every Sunday afternoon. He grew up on large cattle and horse ranches of which his dad was a foreman. The stories felt like Gunsmoke, Green Acres, Bonanza, Big Valley, and Lone Ranger all rolled into one. His start in life was when the wagon team got spooked and took off with his mom in the buckboard, it went around a corner and she fell off into the ditch 8 mts pregnant with dad.

Definitely sad about that owl I hit. Thankfully that was my only driving kill. A mink my mom hit is also on display. Anytime I run across birds or owls that have been hit on roads I put them in my freezer and call the conservation agent. They do a lot of biology research on roadkill.

[Williamsmith]

My wife received good news today. For now, there is nothing further that needs to be done in the way of treatment. You don’t know what a tremendous burden this removes from her and me.......or probably you do. Perhaps the fact that every family is touched in one way or another by cancer is a benefit. Everyone is able to empathize without placing blame or requiring the person to suck it up.

I was out at a traffic accident once in a blizzard and subzero temperatures. The visibility was so poor secondary accidents were happening until we could shut down the interstate. This kind of weather was certainly not unusual but the conditions were such that you couldn’t even walk from one side of the roadway to the other without falling down on black ice. I always kept a full face belaclava and a knit fossil cap to wear to prevent frostbite just for these types of situations.

I set a box full of flares on the approach to the accident site and there were several crash trucks and ambulances scattered throughout the scene. However, I saw a car approaching what I thought was a closed interstate. As it got closer I realized it was an unmarked crown Victoria. It slid to a stop near where I was standing out. The window went down and a uniformed officer of the rank of Major signaled for me to cross over the highway to his car. I was pretty challenged to get there without falling down but I made it, thinking something really important must be happening.

I hadnt quite sidled up to the car yet when he started deriding me in no uncertain terms with expletives about the way I was dressed. He wanted to know where my campaign hat was and did I know that I was out of uniform. I recognized he was from department headquarters some 5-6 hours southeast and didn’t experience this kind of severe weather regularly if at all. He was a policy maker and responsible for the kind of foolishness that required a person stand out in weather without the proper gear and freeze his face, hands and toes too just so we could look “good.”

I also knew that he was not in my direct chain of command and that my Captain would fully back me after I told him what I was about to tell him. I said, “Major, I’d be glad to watch your car for you while you get out and show me how it’s done here.” His window went up and he barely had enough traction to get down the road. I was really hoping he’d end up in a ditch not too far from there.

His problem was he had no empathy. And no damn common sense.

[Float On]

My wife received good news today. .
Wonderful!!!

[SteveinMN]

Great news, Williamsmith! I'm guessing everyone is breathing easier tonight.

[nswef]

What great news! Now plan that NYC trip with a lighter heart.

[Williamsmith]

I’m sort of overwhelmed by the hotel options in Mid Manhattan. Plan on making a selection this weekend sometime. I’ve also decided to have an encore. My wife’s birthday is in September and Elton John is playing a venue within driving distance on his farewell tour. I’m taking her to that. Somehow, I feel an urgency to get busy living.

[nswef]

A scare will do that William smith and it's not a bad thing!

[Teacher Terry]

Have fun WS! But also remember both my Mom and Grandpa had melanoma and many other kinds of skin cancer for 40 years each and it never killed them. It really is only deadly if not found until stage 4 so odds are that your wife will be fine. They will watch her closely and they say to always check your back because that is the one place you can't see yourself. When my Dad was alive he checked my Mom's back and once he died the doctor had her come in once/year for him to do it. I saw Elton John once and he was fabulous.

[Williamsmith]

Have fun WS! But also remember both my Mom and Grandpa had melanoma and many other kinds of skin cancer for 40 years each and it never killed them. It really is only deadly if not found until stage 4 so odds are that your wife will be fine. They will watch her closely and they say to always check your back because that is the one place you can't see yourself. When my Dad was alive he checked my Mom's back and once he died the doctor had her come in once/year for him to do it. I saw Elton John once and he was fabulous.

Thank you everyone for well wishes. And thank you Terry for those special words of encouragement.

[Williamsmith]

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself : Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

—Hunter S. Thompson, age seventeen

Had my primary career not existed, I would have certainly opted for the shore. In fact, my life could be described as the former sandwiched between a youth of caution and a retirement of anonymity. In my youth I felt overshadowed by my living uncles who every single one had served in WWII and the Korean Conflict., one Army, one Navy and One Air Force. But I felt no inherited calling to defend and serve. I would be more at ease in the company of Ralph Nader and his Public Interest Research Group followed by a concert by the Doobie Brothers than attend a meeting of ROTC and take PT in the college common area.

But as things are want to change , so did my life. At some point I became addicted to the adrenaline of the “storm of life.” No drug could give me the high that driving 120 mph in pursuit of a fleeing felon could. Nothing could tighten the chest like walking into a situation with an armed person threatening suicide or hoping to have you do the favor for him. Could you capture the anticipation of responding to an armed bank robbery or watching someone with a bomb locked to his chest explode taking his life?

It is with these hair raising experiences shaken on the boredom of routine work that a person loses himself and when finally he stops wonders where he might find himself again. Is it in the glowing coals of the fireplace or the bottom of a tumbler? Is it in the hug of a seven year old or hot cup of coffee in the crepuscular predawn?

The answer is not either/or. The answer is both. I have stood out in the open during the storm and had lightning break down around me and light trees on fire. I have lounged comfortably beneath a shady maple as the breeze rustles among the leaves and the sunlight ducks in and out behind the clouds. I have lived and I have merely existed.

[Williamsmith]

I have always valued freedom more than anything else. That’s probably why, as a child and it continues today, I didnt like zoos. I hated seeing majestic animals caged. And even though I have killed for food, I have always felt sorrow immediately after taking that freedom. I always yearned for a life of freedom, and would daydream about living in a cabin in the woods. I was actually on a course to realize that fantasy when I met and married my wife. My life veered off in a different direction but I have always had that cabin in the back of my mind.

Perhaps the right word is dichotomy. There were and still is two different paths in the road. One claims complete freedom from the interests of others, the other requires most often putting others first. This is the sacrifice of sharing a life with a partner and the offspring resulting from that partnership. Friends can always be ignored without much if any consequence.

Work always compromises freedom. Receiving payment for specific actions sells a certain percentage of your freedom as a trade off against poverty. But it isn’t long until you are selling your freedom for a trivial possession or needless Vice. The self sufficiency movement is not a new thing, even though the tiny house people would like to think that. The mobile home was my first exposure to the tiny house movement. Only back then it was necessitated by poverty not instigated by novelty.

I suppose the original tiny house was actually the American Indians teepee. There are plenty of self sufficient youtubers today who wax eloquently while seated on a remote frozen lake fishing for crappie. They bemoan cramped city life and the rush of working for “the man.” While I envy them for a moment, I sometimes wonder why anyone who yearns that much for freedom and solitude, would fracture it all by introducing a camera and editing and internetting into the bliss of self sufficiency. I really wonder.

Theres also a bit of irony in a man like me contemplating the freedom and simplicity I missed out on. After all, I spent much of my life taking people’s freedom from them based on rules, regulations and codes canonized by society. Some of those people deserved it. In retrospect, some didn’t. Not because I went out of my way to trap them but because the rules as they were written necessarily trapped them.

Of all people, growing up I despised rules and considered them mostly as suggestions. Suggestions I often ignored. I didn’t like getting caught but it didn’t deter me from breaking them. In fact, rules simply got in the way of my ability to express my freedom. And so, there were times when the rules got bent, twisted and outright broken.....both as a child and as an adult. Because my morals and ethics were created by a system of religiousity, I expected to be punished by The Almighty for my infractions. Yet, with a fairly large sample observed over this life, I can deduce that breaking rules will not not often be punished let alone always or even sometimes.

And so as a member of a community, I obey rules in order to keep order. But I will admit to enjoying failing to stop (complete cessation of motion as the law demands) at a stop sign, nudging over the speed limit by more than a few miles per hour and hanging a squirrels tail on my rear view mirror. I won’t admit to my other less innocuous violations of law.

I suppose my quest for freedom fueled my yearning to live away from crowded streets and city life. It seems rules are needed more there than in the mountains of Idaho. Those in urban settings are used to restrictions that help things go smoothly. They given up their autonomy on a daily basis quite freely in exchange for the benefits of a communal life. I’m actually kind of glad a lot of people want to live gobsmacked together in on each big lump of humanity. It makes my dream of solitude seem achievable. That’s why I live in one of the least populated counties in my state.

We all make choices that result in consequences. Mine was a union of two people. I gave up my solidarity with freedom for the benefits of companionship. I don’t regret that but it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to ponder what life would have been....alone.

My dog as a child was often chained to an outside box. I loved going outside on the back porch where he could see me coming. As soon as he saw me, he started pulling at the chain and lifting his front paws up in anticipation of his freedom. I loved releasing the clip on his neck collar. He would run circles until he was exhausted.

Freedom is best enjoyed after a period of being restrained.

[Tammy]

I too loved setting those coon dogs free from their chains to play with them. Looking back it’s sad - we kept them on a chain the majority of their lives, except during the few months of hunting season.

[razz]

Thought about your sense of freedom, WS. As a new immigrant I was badly bullied at a small country school as a 10-11 year old girl by three 15-16 year old boys who wanted my to do their bidding. I refused and so got beaten up. I went home for more punishment for getting into a fight. I knew no one to run to for help so went out to the woods and prayed for help. The phrase "to thine own self be true" came to thought like a voice speaking. I felt complete peace and went to school the next day. The three came toward me and I truly felt that no matter what they or anyone did, I would be true to my sense of right. To my amazement, my classmates, aged 12 and under, gathered around me and informed the bullies that they could never touch me again. That was the end of it. We all played baseball thereafter. That developed my sense of imprisonment vs freedom that no one has ever taken away again. I try every thought and action to try to ensure it is right - sometimes I make poor choices but, more often, good ones as I look back at my life so feel I was and am free. Whatever the physical situation, it is not limiting but lack of freedom of thought is true imprisonment.

[Williamsmith]

I became aware of Lissa through Youtube. She’s a feisty West Virginian with a bone to pick! Lissa lives in a poor resource rich county in West Virginia. Did you catch that? “Poor” resource rich county. She has a little website called lissalucas.com.

Recently, she travelled to the West Virginia legislature to address a committee taking action on legislation that would benefit the gas and oil industry at the expense of the residents and property of Ritchie County. She was given one minute and forty five seconds. What she did was simply try to list the donors of money to the members of the committee voting on the bill. Of course, this embarrassed the committee members and highlighted the lobbying oligarchy that masquerades as government.

Lissa was unceremoniously cut off and dragged from the hearing room. The chairperson couldn’t even allow her 105 seconds to say her peace. I’ll provide a link to the video of this.

Lissa has a theory. Why is such a resource rich state like West Virginia so damn poor? It’s a question worth asking? Her answer has to do with a concept called the “Economics of Extraction Debt.” There are some unsavory characters involved in this story but in essence, those who live at ground zero....Ritchie County and West Virginia in general are saddled with the weight of covering the costs of externalities involved in extracting the valuable resource.

The companies and politicians that benefit enormously refuse to negate these social,environmental, and infrastructure costs because.....well it would cut into their profits. The politicians who are suppose to represent their constituents instead ply their trade for the big gas and oil companies because after all....that’s where their campaign contributions come from and that’s who invites them to big spreads to put the feed bag on and drink from the whiskey barrel.

The extraction debt as she calls it is actually causing West Virginians to be the habitual butt of jokes across the land even though they are one of the richest resource areas in the land. Education, health, infrastructure, environment, welfare, social ills, addictions, poverty, .......the list is long and West Virginia leads a lot of them.

I have spent a good deal of time in West Virginia. Part of my heart belongs there but I would not live there. Penns Woods is feeling the squeeze also. It turns out we have a rich resource of gas and oil yet to be extracted. I am wondering what our sacrifice might be?

Links:


https://youtu.be/fHl1rYpXWis


https://lissalucas.com/2016/10/26/the-economics-of-extraction-debt/

[catherine]

Cool article. I'll watch the video after a phone call I have in a few minutes.

This is exactly how Trump managed to hoodwink the people in these Sacrifice Zones--by promising them economic recovery in their local areas. But with his stripping away regulations at the expense of the people in those areas and favoring corporate interests, what are people in those zones going to really gain? And what will they lose?

[Williamsmith]

Just want to add that it might more sense if you know the bill Lissa was commenting on is a “forced pooling” or forced leasing bill that would allow oil and gas frackers to force uncooperative landowners into leasing if they were a part of a unit which the companies had acquired 75% of the landowners signatures.

And also, I am not being an apologist for the Orange One. But I have to point out that had Debbie Wasserman Schultz not fixed the democratic primary for the only candidate that could not beat Donald Trump......things most certainly would be astronomically different in a lot of ways. The hoodwinking part might have been that the jobs were going to be filled by Texans flown in from Houston and not real by God West Virginnys.

[SteveinMN]

Lissa has a theory. Why is such a resource rich state like West Virginia so damn poor? It’s a question worth asking? Her answer has to do with a concept called the “Economics of Extraction Debt.” There are some unsavory characters involved in this story but in essence, those who live at ground zero....Ritchie County and West Virginia in general are saddled with the weight of covering the costs of externalities involved in extracting the valuable resource.

The companies and politicians that benefit enormously refuse to negate these social,environmental, and infrastructure costs because.....well it would cut into their profits. The politicians who are suppose to represent their constituents instead ply their trade for the big gas and oil companies because after all....that’s where their campaign contributions come from and that’s who invites them to big spreads to put the feed bag on and drink from the whiskey barrel.
That concept is exactly why cheese costs more at the co-op -- the extraction debt of milk and production are not borne by the folks at ground zero.

[Williamsmith]

“Life is a dream. Death...an awakening.”
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

You are sitting with your oldest son at the Market House diner. Built in 1870 and run as a place for local farmers to sell produce and wares, it has operated continuously for almost a century and a half. A two story brick structure with a portico completely around the outside for vendors to display their vegetables.....it’s a taproot that refuses to be pulled out of the ground of history. Your father-in law used to ride a mule ten miles from a little farm into this place when he was a child. You keep looking at the pictures hung on the wall from that era expecting to see him there, city slicker hat tilted down over one eye, worn out shoes clinging to his toes.

But today you sit at a a small table, your son thumbs his smartphone chugging a root beer and you sip hot coffee from a white mug. It’s a tradition. He helps you with some errands, you buy him lunch, you both get to stay informed on any new details of life. You’ve ordered one of your favorite meals, a short stack of blueberry flapjacks with link sausageand real maple syrup milked from a stand of trees on the outskirts of town. He gets what he always gets. A bacon cheeseburger, onions, lettuce, tomato and fries. You’ve never been disappointed in the meal or the price tag. The waitress is efficient and timely.

You never can be ready for this sort of thing, it always comes from out of nowhere. Your son looks up from his phone, hesitates for a moment and ....then tells you your childhood hero is dead. It sort of takes your breath away but he passes the phone over and the headline confirms it. The font seems especially dark and bold.

Your mind immediately goes back to a small baseball field of your youth and a team of scraggly looking ten year olds coached by your father. One of those ten year olds is you, one is the son of your childhood hero. His dad plays Major League Baseball. That makes him a God of sorts. Your teammate is wearing an old first baseman’s mitt that is four times too big for his hand but he plays brilliantly with it. It belongs to his father. He also has his father’s ability to play.

One game the regular catcher fails to show up. You get volunteered to catch for the son of your childhood hero. No problem, this is going to be fun. The first warmup pitch is like nothing you’ve ever caught. He’s left handed and the pitch tails left to right. It also is passed your mask before you get your catchers glove up. The ball sticks in the fencing in the backstop. That’s all you remember about the way he pitched. But you never forget the way he hit.

You play on baseball teams with him up through high school. Every year it was the same. Line drives repeatedly sail over the fence. He gets drafted out of high school but goes to college. He is the best college player in the country one year, and wins an award to prove it. He plays Major League Baseball just like his dad, your childhood hero. And he manages Major League Baseball and wins two World Series Rings.

As a child you saved every baseball card he ever appeared on. Your youngest son now has them framed on his wall at home.

What makes a real hero to a boy? He's someone the boy wants to be like but not someone bigger than life itself. He’s honest, true, committed and maybe not so immortal after all. He returns to his hometown and works to make things better for new generations of kids simply wanting to be the best they can. He’s the kind of guy who would show up at your father’s funeral and tell you what a great person your old man was. He would apologize for his son that he could not be there. He might walk out on the mound of a World Series game and throw out the first pitch and the next day share a chili dog with you at the hometown hot dog shop.

You finish your last blueberry pancake sausage maple syrup combination and chase it with a swig of coffee. You leave a twenty dollar bill on the table with a tip. Your son says, “You ready?” and you reply, “ Yeah, .....I think so.”

[Williamsmith]

You've been in the criminal investigation unit for ten years. There’s not much you haven't seen. It’s been a big trade off. Even after all these years you can appreciate not having to wear the uniform, not carrying the weight of body armor and a gun belt that pulls your hips down like a ball and chain. How are you supposed to chase the bad guy with all this on?

Twice a year though, you have to get that uniform on and stand for inspection before a Major. If you’ve been working diligently in cases, you likely haven’t paid attention that you put on ten pounds since the last inspection. Standing in front of your locker, you pull out every pair of uniform pants and Discover that’s the waist is about two sizes too small. You place a call to the supply officer at Troop Headquarters and arrange for an upgrade. You start to think that you are getting too old for this even though you are barely 50 years of age.

There are some important cases that need work but it seems there is a constant requirement for you to do distractions. Twice a year firearms qualifications, legal updates, vehicle maintenance, the list goes on. Meanwhile, everyday new stuff happens. The corporal walks into the unit room with a stack of reports submitted by first responding Troopers. He tosses a report on each desk. Sometimes he has to make two rounds before they are all distributed. The real time killer is the background investigation for new cadets. It takes two weeks to rid yourself of that cement block.

And stuff keeps happening. It is a relentless barrage that refuses to stop for any reason. Doesn’t matter what your resources are, handle it the best you can. So your life becomes a triage unit for other people’s problems, and tortures. You will be second guessed by supervision, coworkers, victims, suspects and the legal profession all the way up the the Commonwealth Supreme Court.

You havent survived ten years of this without developing coping strategies. Some of them are better than others. The drinking is not one that helps in the long run but is wonderful for temporary relief. You become very detail oriented. It’s a matter of putting in the work so you don’t have to face the second guessing. Of course, sometimes you make quick decisions that commit you to one thing or another without a safety net. That’s just part of the job. But many times, you create your own destiny by either failing to be diligent or working like a mule. You prefer to work like a mule. It helps you sleep at night.

Eventually all this detail become obsessive. You go out of your way to nail down one last piece of evidence or the testimony of one last witness. A lot of it never gets used in court. But the sheer volume of evidence and the obvious diligence in reporting is notice by defense attorneys. They get their clients to plead before trials are even scheduled. It keeps you off the witness stand and clears out valuable time for working on still more cases.

Thats great. You avoid plenty of hassles related to due process but the closed cases just make room for new ones. You can’t help but think about the Lucille Ball routine in the chocolate candy factory. The conveyor belt speeds up until Lucy is eating the chocolate and stuffing it in her blouse in order to keep up.

All this in your own back yard but the world at large is having its own set of problems. Buildings falling from terrorist attacks, planes dropping from the sky, federal agencies in standoff’s, ......it’s a jungle out there.

You dont realize it but your skills in criminal investigation and doggedness has earned you a reputation. They are starting to call you Monk, after the television detective with obessessive compulsive disorder. Yep, it’s a jungle out there.


https://youtu.be/xBdF3E2NVI8

[Williamsmith]

There are incidents that happen while working that don’t cause you a stack of paperwork and aggravation. But not many. You are working the 3-11 shift and you are the only criminal investigator on duty in the county except for possibly one working for the city police department in the county seat. At the start of the shift you attend roll call.

Roll call is a meeting of all the officers and their supervisor where current information is passed out. Zones are assigned and their respective property checks. As a criminal investigator, you have no zones. For the most part, the county is your zone but adjacent stations often ask for assistance in order to beef up manpower for a particular mission. You might be asked to collect probable cause, assemble it in an affidavit and call out a district justice to issue a search or arrest warrant. You might be asked to interview a witness or victim and prepare a statement. You might be assigned an interrogation of a suspect.

The uniformed officers do the grunt work and are usually the muscle. Unless there is a serious incident like a barricaded gunman ....then a Special Emergency Response Team will assemble by driving 110 miles per hour from their residence to the incident command center where they will meticulously plan three strategies to deal with the problem. One will involve the termination of the suspect. The most favorable outcome is that the negotiator develops a repoir with the suspect and he surrenders peacefully. This all take a long time. Meanwhile, you wait or you obtain search warrants for them.

At the end of roll call you are the last to speak. You remind everyone of serial burglaries that are occurring, provide them with information relative active warrants of arrest or you say that you have no5hing for the good of the order. Usually, somebody says, “Be safe out there.”

There are few jobs you can think of where at the start of art of the day, you have no clue what is going to be required of you. In a way, it is exhilarating. For some it is an intoxicarion, they glory in it. For you, it is simply something you do to the best of your ability. It is mostly about helping people not being a super hero. Thats fortunate because your weaknesses are always just under the surface of that thin skin of authority. Not everyone appreciates your efforts.

So you grab your shoulder holster put in on like a shirt. The weight of a large caliber handgun rests in your armpit and the counter balance of two ten round magazines hangs under your other. There is one .45 caliber round in the chamber and ten more to follow in the magazine. You don’t ever consider what this really represents. It says, not everybody out there wants you to be safe. It says that you are willing to respond with deadly force if necessary. You have trained to shoot to stop the action. In reality it means placing two projectiles dead center in someone’s chest. It’s called double tap. And you train to respond this way.

You slap a set of handcuffs into the small of your back hanging on your pants belt. That’s pretty much it. No body armor, no taser, no backup gun, no expandable baton, no pepper spray. This is the way you like it. Light and uncomplicated. Yes, one more thing....a notebook, a flashlight and a pen.

Your self imposed mission today is to try to find someone you have a warrant for. Taking another uniformed officer with you would be intelligent. You don’t. Nobody ever accused you of being a extremely bright. You can’t afford to tie up a zone patrol just because you think you might find a wanted person. You wait until that probability is certain then you get one to back you up. Sometimes you stumble on the suspect and get lucky. You’ve probably gotten use to talking people into doing something they’d don’t want to. And you rely on that a little too much.

As you travel you monitor the calls to the patrols. You don’t have to volunteer for anything. But you hear a unit dispatched to a residence with a young girl at home alone and a prowler at her door. She’s got a gun for protection but the guy is trying to get in. You happen to be passing close by. You radio in and pick up the call. The average response time is 20 minutes. A lot can happen in twenty minutes. But this time it only takes a few. The dispatcher remains on the phone with the girl. She is frantic and says she has locked herself in the bathroom near the kitchen. The dispatcher can hear loud banging which seems to be the suspect kicking the door down. As you pull in you do so without lights or siren. It is better to be stealthy. You see a figure flee from the front door and disappear behind the house. You have never been here before and don’t know much about the area. As you leave your car, you know the cell phone in you pocket is the only way you can stay in contact with the dispatcher. You give chase and round the corner of the house out into the darkness.

[Williamsmith]

It’s been several weeks and I have been unable to complete the little story that resides above, though I thought I could and I have tried. The coffee pot percolates encouragement, it is powerless to bring this about. For now, I cannot let you go around that corner. What happened thereafter remains locked in a special room that provides its own safe space like the child who is hiding in the bathroom above. None of these stories are for entertainment per se.

I can tell you that the girl eventually was given the all clear notice by other officers and she gratefully invited them into her life that night. They found her gun, a .357 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, laying on the kitchen table loaded with .357 magnum hollow points with the trigger cocked and ready for action. She didn’t know how to uncock it or unload it but she could have pointed and shot it. And she would have had to had the suspect gotten in. How things could have happened differently had you arrived a minute later might drive you nuts if you dwelt on it. So you don’t.

***********

The little percolator falls silent. The coffee is especially good today. Coming out of the gym it is mostly dark, cold and icy but the sky has a sliver of the moon hanging just above the horizon and the blue of the atmosphere is waiting to reveal itself. There are airplane entrails crisscrossing the sky. Business persons rocketing from New York City and Boston toward Washington DC or Atlanta. This winter has been especially harsh with accumulations of snow just under 200 inches for the season. A large front end loader works to remove tons of snow from the hospital parking lot. Instead of a bucket it is equipped with a giant sized box that lifts dump truck sized mounds of snow onto 15 foot piles. The piles obscure whole buildings that are usually part of the landscape. As it backs up an annoying intermittent beeping can be heard.

As as I walk to the truck I hear two cardinals singing a duet. They are probably male and female and I stop to listen. The cardinal and it’s bright red plumage is a welcome addition to the stark winter landscape. When no other bird will sing....a cardinal will. If birds had police departments the cardinal would be an officer. With spring not far away but impossible to conceive of right now, I am thankful for the cardinal to remind me how life is never stagnant. I can’t see them but I can picture them sitting on a a maple branch with their feathers puffed out, their heads buried in the crease at the top of their breast and their bright red bill announcing that winter does not totally rule the day.

At backyard feeders across the frozen northeast, cardinals are spreading their therapy.

I found this New York Times article about the cardinal to be of interest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/nyregion/cardinals-bird-watching-nyc.html

[Williamsmith]

It has been 20 days since last I posted. I am conflicted to even do so today. Twenty days ago I embarked on an experiment with silence. Removing myself from the noise of the internet except to pay the bills, I have relied on the local newspaper for my information on daily life, my wife checks the emails and I restricted internet use to research on “silence, solitude and calm” for the most part. This is not a total act of cold turkey.

I only post in order to satisfy the imbalance I feel for having seemingly vanished without explanation but at the same time I did not want to break from my forum fast and start again. The first three days there was an urge to share thoughts and opinions. I will probably have to fight those off again.

I dont mean to seem to be making a big deal of this. It is certainly not a deal at all to anyone but me and I have foolishly made that mistake in the past. Truth is I don’t know if I will be returning later today or never again. And after this first experiment with silence, I can say reflectively that I currently don’t hold some of the so called “truths” I may have posted in the past 2,698 entries on this forum. I have found that quiet contemplation and the reduction of the “noise” of the internet has allowed me to tear down some poorly design ideologies and face a landscape of opportunity to be a seeker and not a proselytizer.

I am very fortunate to have an environment filled with relatively quiet spaces where I could exercise these investigations into the nature of silence and its relationship to humanness and the universe. For me, it will always carry an element of the Almighy simply based on my childhood exposure to silent prayer meetings. One way of describing God has been to place human characteristics of love, forgiveness, Father, Son and such but I have always since the first day as a child walking into the woods and sitting down aside a waterfall, understood God as silence.

I also don’t mean to espouse that anyone else needs to carrying the same convictions. I only say this is right for me at this time in this place. As a resident of Penns Woods it is not lost on me that my early seventeenth and certainly eighteenth century ancestors hailed from Gloucester County New Jersey, an area populated by Quakers. And so I have investigated the unique take Quakerism has on silence and it’s use in worship.

The internet is a loud noisy place not compatible with this type of adventure........a black hole of controversy and competing ideologies. It requires a great deal of self restraint to keep the negative aspects of the medium from overtaking the positive.

And so for now, I will leave you with these words to contemplate until we again exchange ideas.....

”Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.”

— William Penn

[nswef]

William Smith, So glad to hear all is well and that your experiment in silence is fulfilling. Are you journaling? I'll miss your writing if you choose to leave, but it makes sense to do what you need.

[Alan]

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

[KayLR]

Williamsmith---your words will stay with me all day, maybe longer. Good to hear from you, and I wish you peace.

[catherine]

Thanks for sharing that, Williamsmith. I can identify strongly. Silence is an oasis to me the older I get. I devoted a Lent to it (https://silententry.wordpress.com/category/lent/)a couple of years back.

Today
by Mary Oliver

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

Oliver, Mary. “Today.” A Thousand Mornings. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012. p.23. Print.

Godspeed on your interior journey, and know that you have friends here that will be looking forward to hearing from you from time to time.

[SteveinMN]

Thank you, Williamsmith. It is good that you are finding your own path. It is less than good, in my view, in that we cannot be along for the ride. But these discoveries are, IMHO, what the simple life is all about. I would be glad if our patths can cross again someday. If not, I wish you the best in life.