Of Will o' Wisps and Willow Trees

          Have you ever been on a road trip and you’ve only got the car radio to listen to? Enlightening. I prefer Bluegrass, Celtic, Classical, and once in a while I like to listen to the golden oldies from the 60s and 70s (I am of a certain age) But I just hate it when I can’t tune out ubiquitous right-wing and Christian radio which are practically the same thing these days. Seems like it’s static, Christian, static, right-wing, static, hip-hop, oh gross, static, more right wing etc. Gag, they’re everywhere and constant. Where are all the left-wing radio stations? Where’s the balance? Balance just doesn't seem to exist. Why not? I tend to think that some rich people or corporations are funding this vast right-wing propaganda machine, but I’m not sure. I do know that the oligarchs now own a large chunk of our media outlets and any remaining main-stream media not owned by oligarchs is too impotent to report objectively and not only that, but they ten...

  Sometimes you’ve got to rethink the narrative.  I mean, it’s easier to see someone else locked in a skewed narrative of their own life–not so easy when it’s your own.  One such narrative in mine is that my father could have spent more time with me growing up.  But in the years following his death, I’ve noticed that memories keep bubbling up from the River Phlegethon seeking forgiveness, or at least acknowledgement that, “this also happened” and “this was part of your life too.” Today what bubbled up was a memory of a trip my father took me on to Louisville, Kentucky to Churchill Downs.  It must have been in early summer.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for the Kentucky Derby, but we did go to the horse races.  I don’t remember anything about the trip down but I think we took one of his old Ford trucks–back when they were useful because they had beds that could literally hold an elephant. I had three stories from this memory.  I think they stuck, like...

St. Nicholas Day 2023 As you my friends may know, every year I make St. Nicholas Day Boxes and fill them with treats and sometimes toys (if they fit). I started doing this when my children were little, so I've got lots of different designs.  Some weren't all that great, but we have saved a lot of them.  I used to make each box separately for both of them, but went to printing them up so I could start giving them to family and friends. This year's box was Elizabeth just had to add Don Quixote. complicated and a lot more work.  I've had people request the designs before so I thought I'd put a link to the scan of the art so anyone can download it and do it, but for some reason my scanned PDF doesn't come out as solid for the color as when I print it directly from my printer.   I may solicit some help from my artistic daughter to see if I can get that corrected, but for now, here's the scan and the tutorial on YouTube. If you decide to print them off, cut, fold...

I ran across this poem buried in my Google Docs and I have no memory of writing it.  It's strange.  I found myself reading it as if someone else wrote it.  I know it's mine--I checked the edits.  I wrote it on September 8, 2019. ( I hope the man of 2019 doesn't mind the edits of the man of 2023 prepping it for this blog) I cannot tell who or what is the object of the speaker's apostrophe.  Who is the you? I don't know.  I have imbibed of the the waters of the Lethe while yet living--a sign of things to come if I follow my parents footsteps.  No matter.  Coming into existence eventually no longer depends on memories stored in the time-space brain which decays at death.  The poem, like me, is not worth remembering.  We are breaths--breaths of life.  We fill a body, we leave a body.  I have peace with that.   Compulsion Just what it is, I do not know, That draws me to you. A bright star?  But it is not your gravity....

I feel lucky.   I am 65,  live in an old house that needs a bit of TLC,  gratefully divorced,  and my children and their others are always about.   It is a busy place,  but I don’t mind the sweet noises.   I am not alone. Even though I love quite and solitude, I am grateful. It is good to not be alone at this time in my life Knowing how quickly the next 20 years will pass  Should I live that much longer in good health. I am at an age where so many people I have known and loved Are dead and gone. Death was made flesh and dwelt too close for delusions and denial. I can see that I am going to die in the not-so-distant future. It doesn’t bother me like it used to I’m more concerned for those I leave behind Knowing that I loved them deeply And it will rip, and tear their hearts so violently. I woke up the other day after dreams of death and dying— A general dream that I, my children, and all future generations die, are gone And I woke wondering what wa...

Emerson once said, "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" or something like that.  If you know the context of this passage, you know why he wasn't particularly liked by his academic colleagues.  In remembering the arrogant bastards I have known in my former ecclesiastical experience, I know, all too well, the critical arrows that are shot out of their mouths that say, "this is inconsistent with what you said earlier" delighting in the knight's fork of their polemics--to save the king you lose the queen and those are the systematic rules of the game--but in the end, they are out to win a game, I think, and to not find Truth if Truth, or God, or the Ultimate Macguffin if it exists at all.  In fact, they think they have the corner on the best view of the Truth there is, all neatly defined, systematized, and organized in the great card catalogue of scriptures, dead fathers, theologians, thousands of years of traditions, tomes, and councils.   The...