Do you REALLY believe everyone lied, and cheated, and adulterated, and stole from the poor? Do you really believe that?

If so, how do you live?

Some did. Some of these were friends with the citizens. It was a frontier.
Not back on the East Coast.

I've read about that, but I don't relate.

Deja View All Over Again, with MORE This Time

I see a lot of continuity in many of the friends I know who have full, successful lives with friends, interests, passions, and hopefully some family. And that is an outside view.

My dogs, so attuned to us humans, seek and demand affection. They can demand because I don't make them beg. If I have been gone for hours, they seek me out. And until Brody gets his chin rub, Gracie her belly, until I play with them a little, they won't go away. I think they make me a better person. I think something living must be involved with us. Whether it is rocking NICU babies or nurturing a corn snake, we need to be aware of nature, caring, love. We do what we can do. And it works.

I wish my life were a river, flowing smoothly from one point to another.

Instead, it is more like a book with long chapters, short chapters, vivid and sedate chapters. The point of a chapter is that it covers a period of intense interest or focus, then comes to an end. The book continues because we have our whole lives to continue. If the book is well-written, the closed chapter blends into the whole and what comes next. But I won't shun someone's chapter that is brilliant in an otherwise mundane life. Adventure spills all over that.

Sometimes, we close chapters that really need it. Sometimes, they close because life intervened. Someone went away, chose an entirely different life, or even died. Sometimes life intervened and we became sick, rich, poor, broken-hearted or in ecstacy. Something major changed.

If we are at all reflective, we sometimes look at all these chapters and what our life--our book of life-- has become.

I find myself repeatedly starting over. Never, really, with the same things as before, but hopefully something I learned in the last chapter I want to focus on in this next period, or chapter.

Sometimes, I am at the beginning again. Sometimes, way up in my understanding and ability.

Recently I have spent some days in a barren landscape, interspersed with days rich and powerful. Both were needed to close this ending chapter.

I feel another one opening, full of expectation and laughter.

Time to start over again.

Boy, am I lucky!

Serendipity Comes Calling

A friend of a friend called Sunday and asked if I would like to take an aimless, back roads trip for the afternoon. I said yes. We know each other a little through a third friend we both trust in her taste of friends.

She picked me up and we headed sort of north, then sort of west, and apparently sort of south. We ended up at Runaway Bay, part of a major lake southwest of here. We got drinks, used the bathroom and went on. Every so often, we would hit little towns I never heard of --I think our favorite was Wizards Wells, and we made up stories.

At one point, we ended up in Montague, county seat of Montague County, but we couldn't find any signs to tell us the name of the county seat, and as close as it is to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, I didn't know.

It was a wonderful trip. This year, little rains have kept much of North Texas green when it normally would be sere. I only caught a glimpse of the animal out the window that was rectangular, tawny, sizable, with a mane like a horse and horns. If any of you have clues, please tell me.

We edged quickly into West Texas, with the mesquite, the bluffs and mesas, the rocky cliffs. Then north again, and east.

Saint Jo is a very neat old Texas town. We stopped at the former saloon, now a museum, and hit the antique/crafts store. She had hoped to buy me a slice of pie, but the restaurant was closed for annual vacation. We watched a seven-minute film. I told one of the docents I thought my mother taught there a year, and gave her last name. Her eyes sharpened.

"Were they from Tennessee?" she asked. "I have cousins by that name from Tennessee."

I affirmed my family came from Nashville on my mother's side, and we laughed. We may be related.

We went down the road to Muenster, to Fischer's grocery, which I've heard about for years. Bought some dill pickles and two snack packs of summer sausage slices and cheese. Spicy cheese. Hotter than I expected cheese. Took one package next door to my daughter-in-law. Don't know about her, but I've already finished mine.

I'll go back--I may need directions. When I think about it, we covered large parts of four roomy counties.

I hope we do something like this again, that I wasn't too boring. Because this was an afternoon vacation, best kind.

There are rules.1) Unplanned. 2)Destination undecided but back roads.3) Maybe not on a Sunday next time, because in small Texas towns, all the restaurants we saw were closed. After we got our summer sausage snack at Fischer's, neither of us was hungry. This will change.

Sam--her name is Sam--gave me treasure, maybe when we both needed it. You see, the friend who introduced us isn't here any longer.

I think she would approve the road trip. I'll try to study up a bit for the next one. We both love history. Good bourbon. Long vistas. Riding in a car to nowhere to see what we will see.

We'll see what else we share.

Our children, Our future

This won't be a long one.

We hear all the time about discrete personalities with increased electronics. We hear all the time that teens crave stimulation, electronics, don't have values.

We hear all the time the world is going into a handbasket, whatever that is. Archaic term still used.

Well.

I picked my almost 15-year-old from a day of band practice to spend just enough time to pick up her best friend for a lockin overnight at the church. I never had one of those, but I trust them.

I picked up her best friend, and I drove them. In a day of band camp, my granddaughter had learned a new game. She told her friend, "It's even better than Ducky Wucky."

And I smiled. Because I know Ducky Wucky. Been there when they played it. Innocent, silly, laugh-choking fun.

More Money? Bigger Better? My dad can buy all the booze and blow we want?

I think I am seeing some of the richest kids in the world.

They have parents, a home, food, medical care, good and caring teachers, real friendships, passions for art, music, literature, math and science. Even business. Many of them are self-aware.

Wow. Oh, yeah, a lot of them have some deep religious beliefs. I think that is part of the anchor.

I don't know where they are going, but I do know where they are.

And that is wonderful, in the fullness of that word.

Great Britain has a cinema project started years ago called "Up". They started with 14 seven-year-olds they interviewed. They took children from all classes of life. They have re-interviewed every seven years. The "kids" now are 58. Expectations regarding class and ability have been blown away.

I have seen it in my own life as well.

I don't know where these kids are going. I do know they have had a wonderful innocent time. We don't see, or believe that exists today, but it does.

I worry about the climate, the fights, the world.

But this one lockin kinda stills my soul and warms it.

We have kids. they are the future.

They aren't even half bad.

This week only two days began with sunshine. Clouds obscured the rest. Today it was rain with clouds. Not lot.

Anyway, I need to mow. Too wet.

Do these dribbles and drabbles obviate the need for rain? Only in a politician's dreams.























this

Rain is an indifferent host of joy, grief, or despair. For me, Joy.

I've never seen massive flooding and if I had, it might change my response.

I love rain. I love the sound, the smell, the sight of it. I love what it does in the Southwest, where I have always lived one foot from drought. Sometimes we have had abundance, which means we had the amount we needed. Occasionally a little over.

We have had flooding in poorly developed areas where greedy developers paid no attention to the topography. I've never seen flooding as I see on television in other places.

I wonder if those folks dread rain now. I suppose they must. Middle America farmers unable to get into their fields to plant their crops. Yes. They must hate the rain, at least, this year. Families in cities with pleasant riverbanks which overflowed and filled their houses. At best, they must have mixed feelings.

But without it, where would we be? We can't live without water. Or food. And both depend on the rain.

I have a friend in Georgia who envies me because after a sever drought, Georgia has too much. I have a friend who lives in New Mexico and envies me because the drought has gone on and on, and she yearns for the rain. Having grown up there, I can say that nothing, nothing at all, smells better than the desert greasewood after a long-awaited rain. Nothing.

I'm always reading, and I can't remember often where I read what. I remember reading that after the earth is not rained on for a period of time--weeks, months, even years--when the rain comes, as the rain is approaching, the oils in the earth mix with the water and produce an intoxicating smell.

How often have you sniffed and said,"Rain is coming!"

I haven't asked, but I suspect the perfume is greater when the earth has not been washed recently. When vegetation is actively growing from previous rains, the smell Is different. Pleasant, enjoyable. Somehow, when the earth really needs the rain, the smell is exotic, multi-layered, and to me, intoxicating.

I read the Harvard Classics as a child. My parents thought ever educated household should have them. One book was by Guy de Maupassant. I read, years later, he was one of the few writers who included all five senses in his writing. Most novelists include only one or two--or three--nowadays taste is certainly a part. This French writer included all five in his 19th Century writing.

I wonder if reading him, in his French countryside, did I absorb the notice of all the senses, or did I simply enjoy him for the senses I already loved? Surely the reading stimulated them? No, I think I responded as I already met the world and that is why I liked this writer. I say it so assuredly. But I recognized, even as a pre-adolescent, what he was writing about.

All my grass here in Texas is green. In late July. At least 3/4 is un-watered Bermuda. By this time, in North Texas, my lawn and the countryside should be the color of straw. The cattle, horses, sheep and goats don't worry about the dried foliage--they are used to it and it is healthy for them. But today, July 19, all is green.

After a popup rain last Thursday, the soaker over two days Sunday and Monday and another popup today, We Have Rain. Over a week, about 3 blessed inches.

I was trying to work in the house when I heard the rain thrumming and gave up to go on the screened porch with the dogs to enjoy the sound and more of a green smell, and the sound and...well, the dogs thought I was nuts. Humid, rain blowing in. warm. It still was glorious.

I watched and smelled and listened. Didn't think much.

It was the best part of my day.