Give and Take

Two names topped the news this morning. After a long and celebrated career as a bluegrass musician–eight Grammys including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004–Doc  Watson was dead at 89.

On the other hand, Donald Trump dredged up the claim that President Obama was not a native citizen, but had been "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia", despite the fact that this urban legend, popular with Republicans, has been thoroughly discredited. 

There's a lesson here...

Doc Watson was an authentic musical pioneer. Despite his humble birth and blindness, he created a unique guitar style, shared his talent with others, and raised universal awareness for an obscure genre of genuine American music. He was rightly described as a national treasure.

Donald Trump is a real estate mogul and a buffoon. He is himself humorless but a boundless source of laughter for others. He has lots of money but little understanding of true value. Trump is simply a national joke.

Watson's life is a testimony to the human spirit, to how much can be made from so little when God gets it right. Trump doesn't have a life, but he is living proof that you don't have to be a genius to become rich.

The lesson: If you want to get your name in the news, either (1) give the world your very best or (2) with both hands, take all you can get and behave foolishly.

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Just so

Surveying the shoddy result of some task he'd given his ten-year old son, my father admonished, "Any job worth doing is worth doing well." Much of his fatherly advice was delivered by cliché. Sadly, I've come to understand that clichés are almost unerringly true reflections of the human condition.

Worth doing well came to me this morning as I was preparing grits for my breakfast. I'm particular about my grits. Even lowly grits are worth doing well. A correct proportion of water to grits, salt in the water, frequent stirring. All are important to achieve a pleasing result. Most important perhaps is the consistency for serving. It must be "just so", stiff enough to eat with a fork without being solidly congealed and–God forbid–lumpy!

Dad would have been proud of me this morning. He might even have said, "You see, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree."

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Flora, fauna, foliage, & fusion

Since returning to North Carolina from my life in the Arizona desert, I have been overwhelmed by greenness. Trees, bushes, vines, lawns, meadows. Green, green, green!




If there is a holy color for Earth's inhabitants, it is surely green. Some might argue that since water is essential for life, the holy color should be blue. However, water isn't really blue, it's colorless; the sky merely makes it seem blue.

In the final analysis, life is energy manifest. Water and other elements are essential ingredients, but without energy there can be no life. And from where comes our energy? All energy is fundamentally nuclear energy. Our main source is the nuclear reactor in the sky, the sun, which radiates light and heat. The heat provides a climate to support life, but it is light that is the key.

And plants are the medium through which light energy is stored and made useable by the Earth's fauna, including us. Oil, coal, firewood, vegetables, fruits, and meat–at root, all are the products of sunlight via photosynthesis.

          When you say your nightly prayer,
               Here's an item you doewanna miss.
          If for life you truly care
               Give thanks for photosynthesis.

                  Isn't green a lovely color?

Read: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight --Joseph Chilton Pearce

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Early May evening in Waxhaw

A cool, moonless night with fireflies–"lightening bugs" here in the Confederacy. Soon there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them in the meadow. Tonight, as best I can determine, there are just three. But they are a game trio, bright and diligent, playing out their flash dance against the distant silhouette of the trees. As one comes close the dog growls low and uncertainly as if he senses an intruder on our evening but cannot be sure.

I watch Venus fall ever so slowly from the sky. It occurs to me that Venus does not fall at all nor for that matter does the sun set. The sun and Venus are fixed in the firmament. It is the Earth that creates their motion as it spins upward against sun and star producing an apparent descent toward the horizon.

                 But who am I to bother about such trivia.

I sip my Amaretto, its almond fragrance amplified by the warmth my fingers press through the glass. I am content, free from the cares of the day, for the moment at peace with the world of politics. My cancer is sleeping. In the profoundly ironic dying words of The Godfather (in the book, not the movie), "Life is so beautiful."

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