The Fall

Our homestead is nestled in a forest. We are seeing the leaves fall from the trees; we are seeing the insects gravitate toward our window screens; we are seeing the spiders spin their webs in places that are not acceptable for our human habits and sensibilities. The trees sacrifice their leaves to contribute to the soil, making their contribution to the renewal of life after the tree falls dead. We are entering a season when the temperature falls, the leaves fall, and we are aware that a season of cold weather is ahead of us.

As all the signs of life fall to a lower arrangement, we may contemplate an historic event. . . a fall of a different king, a long, long time ago. . . in which a man and woman fell out of the luxury of a perfect human existence, because they broke the rule that Creator YWHW had commanded them. After Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; they had to make their way in a “fallen” world, where they had to labor for their food. They found themselves in a cruel world in which might makes right. Maybe the lion was the king of the jungle. The earliest men and women had to work for their food. . . whether they were gathering grains and fruits, or slaughtering an animal. Fruits and vegetables are good, but the humans noticed that the wild animals were killing each other, and that some of the wild animals wanted to kill them! Homo Sapiens learned early on that they needed to use their sapiens brains and their strong arms to kill the beast before the beast killed them! And then after the lion or tiger or bear had been killed, the men and women discovered that they could recover the carcass and eat it. Their motto might have been eat the beast before the beast eats me! So the paths of human survival required, like it or not, slaughter. As human families and tribes migrated from land to land, fording streams, eating plants, killing animals. . . their awareness of this world developed inside their brains and their human souls (which the animals did not have) and they began to stack great stones up to build shelters and huts and even towers, such as the tower of Babel, where their bold venture into earthly life crossed some boundaries that Creator YWHW would not allow. So the prideful bluster of human expansion and presumption got knocked back a few stages, when Creator used his ways and means committee to knock Babylon down so that a new strain or two of human endeavor could have some room to make a new start. Along came Abraham; he seemed to be on Creator’s wavelength. So YWHW, having a new leader to work with, appointed Abraham to initiate a new way of living in which the animal sacrifice would be recognized by the man as holy.

This principle of “holy” took on new significance when Moses came along and established the Hebrew faith, beginning with the ten commandments. The new rules forbade men from killing other men women or children. The expansion of the commandments, the Torah, provided a sacrificial system whereby priests acknowledged in their ritual offerings that the animals sacrificed were the Lord’s provision for the sustenance and growth of the people. So we see that religious sacrifice did not do away with killing. Rather, it sanctified the offering of precious life, so that the slaughter of the animals reminded the people of their dependence on the Lord YWHW. This blog started out with this writer’s contemplation of an awareness that the Fall season of this year begins on Tuesday, Sept 22, one day after the Yom Kippur sacrifice for the Hebrew people. But the greater signifigance for me is that the Lord Yahweh utilized the Hebrew sacrifice to change the history of the entire world, and to save this believer’s mortal soul, by the sacrifice of His only Son at Calvary, about 2000 years ago. So the fall of Man has inflicted great trouble on human history, but the shedding of Jesus’ blood constituted a salvation for me, my family, my Christian brethren, and anybody else who believes that good news! He conquered death! By good news, I mean. . . Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated that life goes on after death. You just have to believe it! So follow Him to that eternal realm, and try not to fall down. Glass half-full

Contention Too Much With Us

This contention is too much with us, day and night; Arguing and contending, we twitter into online blight. There’s little we see nowadays we can truly relate to; Do we really know each day and night just what we are to do? We have turned our attentions to magamania and greed Still yet, this natural world supplies our every want and need. The people, some complaining, some sustaining, day and night Talking, screaming, meeming, teeming so much hype and blight For this, for everything, we are clueless; we are out of tune; And yet, and yet, we are a human race who have trod the moon! Whether pagans or believers suckled in a creed outworn, We have lost our way and left our founding documents all torn!

So might I, pecking on this lit-up laptop, stretch a strand of Liberty into the web? Remember We the People, Constitution, Gospel, and common sense.

Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Glass half-Full

The Tom Dooley Tragedy

The legend lives on from Deep Gap on down of the tragic crime of Tom Dooley. The legend, it is said, never resolves the question of who killed Laura Fonda on a mountainside in the Blue Ridge, back in 1866. . . even though a guilty verdict had been laid upon a young veteran of the Civile War, Tom Dula. I first heard about the Tom Dooley tragedy in the 1960’s.from the Kingston Trio. “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley; hang down your head and cry. Poor boy, you’re bound to die.“ In the early 1980’s, my bride and I moved to Boone, about 20 miles up the road from where it happened. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a meeting of our High Country Writers group, to hear a presentation from author Sharyn McCrumb. After our meeting, I bought her book:

Sharon’s authorial coverage of this historic murder consists of personal monologues from two people: Zebulon Vance, Tom Dula’s defense lawyer, and Pauline Foster, a crusty mountain woman who was, more than likely, the real killer in the story. But we’ll never know for sure. The story that McCrumb distills from a sour mash of hillbilly ignorance and licentiousness is a tale to be told, which is why songs have been sung about that fateful love triangle in a mountaineer household that had no ole time religion to keep them on a blessed path, a path that might have saved Laura Foster’s life and Tom Dula’s as well. The tale unfolds in an Appalachian mountain community, Elkville, in Wilkes County, which is the the first county my bride and I drive through when we’re traveling “down the mountain”, out of Boone, to go eastward, through the Piedmont.

I don’t know, but I been told that this story is almost century and a half old, so I’ll not try to reveal all the details about a hillbilly love triangle that had turned fatal. I’ll just drop in some snippets about the fascinating historical background behind this legend, a profound story that. . . if Shakespeare were alive today. . . he could have written one hell of a profound tragedy. It’s an Appalachian tragedy that emerges from the foothills of time. So I’ll just drop a few details and gem quotes from Sharon’s characters: Zebulon Vance, defense attorney: “I had to practice a little law after the (Civil) War ended, before those same trifling government bureaucrats saw fit to let me back into the Congress again. I shall die here, protecting the interests of my fellow Tarheels for as long as God grants me breath and strength.” Pauline Foster, older sister of the deceased Laura Foster, and possibly a partner in crime with her sister Ann, but we’ll never know for sure. Pauline says “I reckon that, to a scared and lonesome soldier, any scrawny gal of twenty can pass for a beauty, though there is handsomess in the Foster line that some say I got a touch of.” Could there be a slightly jealous tone in Pauline’s reckoning? But the older Pauline did not, it seems, get enough “touch of” the beauty to truly win Tom’s love, even though he did lay with her at some point in time. . . and that it was probably her “poc” syphilis that infected Tom, and then the other two sisters, due to the nocturnal adventures of Tom Dula. The closest she ever got to Tom’s love was an occasional roll in the hay with him because Tom’s hankerin’ for friggin’ was a little more than he could manage with one girl, even if he loved that one special girl, aka Laura Foster, her sister, the deceased. Murder mystery, you say? Yep! Sharyn McCrumb weaves, skilfully, some historical background into the saga. Pauline said this about the Civil War, the war that both Zeb Vance, defence layer, and Tom Dula had fought in, back in the day, on the losing side: Pauline’s judgement about the Civil war: “But they never asked our opinion about secession, and most folks up here said it was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Pauline might have been right about that. The slave owners of the South were a lot richer than those hillbillies in Elkville, Wilkes County, North Carolina. “When you see a baby-faced fellow eyeing you like a starving dog, you know that he may not live to see another spring, he wants you to give him all the springtimes he’s ever going to miss in one gulp.” So Tom Dula’s libido must have so fierce that he couldn’t settle for just the girl he loved, Laura. . . but had to give in to her older sisters who were either jealous or in heat, or both. The legend of Tom Dooley is a mysterious tale that will never be concluded. Three women in a hillbilly household. . . two sisters, one cousin. . . all three being lovers with the same hansom/horny man; the syphilis creeping in, brought in by Pauline, the teller of the tale in Sharyn’s story. . . literally, a clusterf***! If Tom Dula (Dooley) killed Laura Foster, then how was it that Pauline and Ann both knew where the shallow grove was? Why did Ann go crazy with nightmares and hallucinations, and died screaming about seeing black cats on the walls? It’s a mystery that will never be uncovered.

When I finish reading Sharyn McCrumb’s “The Ballad of Tom Dooley” maybe I’ll have more to write about that ole story that happened in a mountain holler that I heard friends of mine talking about, back in the day. (THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS, an imprint of St. Martins’s Press 2111) maybe I’ll have an update. But meanwhile, back at the Blue Ridge, The Ballad of Tom Dooley. How can there be an update? The answer to the big question, who really killed Laura Foster? And why did Tom Dula, while he was standing at a the gallows with a noose around his neck, say that he had never touched a hair on that girl’s head? Glass Chimera

Tell me, tell me, bro’ Bob, about Blind Willie McTell. Tell me.

Tell me the backstory ‘bout that Deep South that I was born into Tell me ‘bout New Orleans and Ole Man River he just keep rollin’ Tell me ‘bout the delta and the swelterin’ heat, them ole cotton fields Tell me ‘bout the delta blues, the crossroads and the cotton bolls Tell me ‘bout the Cajuns who came down from Acadia to Louisiana Tell me ‘bout NewOllins and Missippi. Tell mebout Elvis inMemphis Tell me ‘bout magnolias and moss hangin’ on the cypress trees Tell me ‘bout Louie Armstrong with his trumpet and his sweat Tell me ‘bout Blind Willie in the delta sweat and New’Awlins jazz Tell me ‘bout Big Muddy and Memphis blues and St. Louis. Tell me ‘bout Chicago jazz the blues the brassy tunes good news Tell me how them cotton bolls and ole times not forgotten Tell me ‘bout Little Rock1954, black kids at the schoolhouse door Tell me James Meredith v Ross Barnett at the Ole Miss door. Tell me ‘bout the Freedom Riders and the Edmund Pettis bridge Tell me bout Martin and letter from a Birmingham jail and Tell me ‘bout Dallas and the shot heard round the world Tell me ‘bout the red clay hills of Georgia and Miss’ippi delta and everything in between, strange fruit them delta roots Tell me tell me ‘bout Blind Willie Mctell, blues in delta hell. And that’s the way it was, back in the day. but, but Those days are gone. In dixie land land blacks took their stand and now those days are gone. . . gone. Sho’nuf and Amen! Glass half-Full

Persia and Israel

2560 years ago, King Artaxerxes noticed that his Hebrew servant, Nehemiah, “Why is your face sad?” Nehemiah answered, “Let the king live forever. Why should my face be sad when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lie desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?” The King: “What would you request?” So Nehemiah prayed to the God of heaven, and he said to the King; “If it please the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.” King Artaxerxes asked gave his consent for Nehemiah’s journey to Jerusalem. Then Nehemiah said: “If it please the king, let letters be to me for the governors of the provinces beyond the river, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he make give me timber to make beams for the gates for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city and the house to which I will go.” The Persian king granted Nehemiah’s request. When Nehemiah left Susa, he was accompanied by officers and horsemen of the Persian kingdom. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he had to convince his own Hebrew brethren that he had been sent by the King. But not all were convinced. Nehemiah wrote: “From that day on, half of my servants carried on the work while half of them held spears and shields. In the contentions that followed, the Persian captains were helping to protect the house of Judah. Nehemiah wrote: “From the day that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year to the 32nd year of King Artaxerxes, neither I nor my kinsmen have taken advantage of the governor’s food allowance. The Bible reveals that Nehemiah played the game of reoccupation, by the rules that had been established for him by the Persian king. That was then. Things are different now. The Hebrews have established their ancient homeland as the national home for Jews who have immigrated from all over the world, even from the holocaust of Nazi Germany. So what about the Persians now? In the last few months, we Americans have all kinds of rumors about supposed enmity between Isreal and Iran. . . especially now with donald trump’s self-declared war against Iran (Persia). All kinds of rumors are buzzing around on the internet. What are to believe? Where’s Walter Cronkite when we need him? What’s going on over there? What’s happening to our armed personnel in the Persian gulf and the surrounding countries? Now we’ve got a clusterfud of reports. Today I saw a video that seemed to portray the firing of an Iranian nuke on Tel Aviv. Say what? So I turn on the radio, searching the airwaves to hear any report about an Iranian nuke hitting Israel! But what to I find? NOTHING, absolutely nothing. As Sweetwater said back in the day. . . “War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” And apparently our journalists—the 2026 ones—did not learn the lesson of true Journalism. . . the facts, only the facts! We’re depending on these guys:

. . .fired up in the frenzy of their respective national paranoiae, to NOT let the nukes be fired! That includes the Ayatollah in Persia/Iran, and the magamaniac occupant of the Oval office! As for Netanyahu, he better keep his profile low and his mouth shut, and the the Lord Baruch Hashem Adonai to see to it that Jews are protected. As for the person, who produced a fake youtube video of a so-called Iranian nuke striking Israel . . you should make a public apology for throwing bullsh** into the public consciousness! Glass half-Full

Fall

Many moons ago, Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues spoke a recitation at the end of a song: “When the white eagle of the north is flying overhead, and the browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter dead. . .”

. . . “remember then, summer birds with wings of fire, come to witness spring’s new hope, born of leaves decaying. As new life will come of death, love will come of living.” The autumn season has another name: Fall. . . and for good reason. . . the leaves fall. . . as they will this year, as they have every year. This has happened 75 times since this writer entered this life on earth. Meditating on fall this year reminds me of the many historical falls that have befallen life and life’s institution throughout the history of this earth. There was the original fall of mankind, when Adam and Even fell out of the Creator’s grace and were expelled from garden of Eden. Since that fateful beginning, there have been multitudes of “falls”. The first one that comes to my mind is the fall of the Roman empire. As far as that goes, there have many falls of empires. . . the fall of Babylon, the fall of the third reich, the fall of America into MAGA (make America go away). . . the fall of the house of Usher, an abandoned structure that fell into ruin . . .

The cold hard truth about this life is that, ultimately, we will all go down to the grave, buried in the earth to decay, just like the leaves that fall in the autumn season. Autumn is the season when the life process seems to fall apart. The leaves fall; the temperatures fall. So autumn inspires a metaphor to commemorate the falling apart of all good things that we had earlier depended on, or appreciated. In human history and society, we notice the fall of people into moral depravity, wherein some people fall into sexual infidelity, wherein their marriage to a faithful mate is destroyed. Then there’s also the fall of societal or governmental leaders who forsake their constitutional or moral duties to uphold the standards. . . the principals and laws. . . to which nature and nature’s God had originally bound them. History reveals the fall of great institutions. The fall of the Roman empire released the seeds of Christianity into European history. Dissention among the factions wrought destructions.

And yet, still yet, we are reminded of so many entities and things that fall apart; yet they are sometimes renewed again in some unforeseen way. I am reminded of that Moody Blues recitation: after the browns, reds and golds lie in the gutter dead. . . “Remember then: summer birds, with wings of fire. . . come to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying”. . .

The cycle of life and death went uninterrupted through thousands, millions of years. . .until the Son of Man was crucified, then was laid into the earthen tomb, only to defy death itself by His resurrection. You believe that? Think about it. Why not choose victory of Faith over the death cycle of fallen leaves, fallen seasons, fallen years fallen, lives? Glass half Full

Roots Music

Music back in the 1960’s was a curious choice for us teenagers. We had the radio. . . the Motown sound with Otis Redding, The Four Tops. . . we had the radio buzz with Elvis, then the Beatles and all that followed. . . but I was a folky, learning how to play guitar. My friend Johnny showed me a record album that his brother in the Navy had brought from Europe or somewhere. It was a record by Joan Boaz, with her singing old ballads from times long gone. . . Mary Hamilton, Jackaroe, Henry Martin. The liner notes on the back cover were written by a fellow named Bob Dylan. He had written something about when he first heard Joan’s voice and. . . sitting by railroad tracks. . . In 1969, I finished high school and moved to the south side of Baton Rouge to attend LSU. The folk music genre was expanding widely into protest anthems, including songs like Crosby Stills Nash and Young had sung. . . “four dead in Ohio”. Somewhere in all that 1960’s-’70’s confabulation, Doc was brought into the public domain. Doc and Dylan were singing together at the Newport folk festival.

In the midst of all that counterculture passion and intensity, along came a flash from the past: Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a retro-type album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. My memory of that album always goes back to hearing the voice of a good ole boy from Deep Gap, North Carolina. . . Doc Watson. Doc was an ole feller with a God-given gift for singin’ and pickin’ the guitar. . . a true folk singer who had had no dreams of fame and fortune when he did sing and flat-pick his acoustic until the cows came, or. . , the rest the listening world heard that deep gap sound comin’ out of them thar hills of the Blue Ridge. As Providence would have it. . . for I had never planned what later happened. . . Pat and I moved to Boone, North Carolina, just a stone’s throw from Deep Gap, where Doc, Merle and Rosalee had lived all their lives. We still live there. . . three grown young’uns later. . . about ten miles from Doc’s old homestead in Deep Gap. Around these parts, Doc is a legend. He used to play in downtown Boone and now there’s a bronze statue of Doc “sittin’ on top of the world”, (as the ole bluegrass tells the tune). As you can see, I took the liberty of visiting Doc on the bench.

Doc was the incarnation of authentic, old time, folk music, the born again entrance of authentic, old time, old school FOLK music. . . the real thing! to accompany the new wave of Baez and Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary the Kingston Trio . . . When I was in living in Asheville in the ’70’s, I met David Holt, a scholarly music historian who also had a great talent for playing the banjo, what the mountain folk call a banjer. David plucked his banjo, the old frailing style, on the Life’s Railway to Heaven track of my Revelation 5:9 album in 1979. Somewhere in time, David visited Doc in Deep Gap and interviewed him. Also somewhere in time. . . must have been in the ‘80’s, I was singing a few songs with my guitar, at the Watauga County fair, when Doc’s wife, Rosalee was listening. At the end of my set, she expressed appreciation for my songs. That was a golden memory, coming from Doc Watson’s wife! Still yet later. . .while attending a meeting of the High Country Writers, I met Patricia Payne, who had fancied Merle, back in the day. But her romantic hopes for Merle had never never been fulfilled. I had talked with her, listened to her story, which she had wanted to publish, but that never happened. She passed away. Soon thereafter, I was summoned to a lawyer’s office in Boone, only to discover that she had bequeathed this desk/ bookshelf to me.

And that’s as close as I ever got to the legend of Doc Watson. We do, however, pass the tiny borough of Deep Gap whenever we drive eastward out of Boone. I always gaze out the car window, trying to catch a glimpse of Doc’s place, the house that Patty Payne had showed me before she passed, the homestead where Doc and Merle used to pick their guitars in the Blue Ridge air, the place where authentic folk music had roots deep in Appalachian soil. That’s my Roots Music story and I’m a’stickin’ to it. King of Soul

Prufrock's Song Reborn

(This post for nerds and eggheads only) Let us go, then, now and then, when online is spread out against the real world, like an image spread against the real world; Let us go, through certain half-forgotten shows; as images glow and bestow their memes. . . what dreams may come and go; we know not what images to stow. In the world-net people come and go, striving to remember Michelangelo, when history was like a painted show, as Mona’s smile What are the memes that grow? what ideas do flow out of this electronic stream? What screen-potato fate has come of us? Why do people drum up such fuss? The clickish fog that rubs its back upon our brightened screens licks its tongue into the corners of our dreams, and lingers upon the pools that stand inside our brains. And indeed there will be time, for the brightened bloat that shines upon our screens, rubbing its back upon the window panes of memory. And indeed there will be time, for the shallowy signal that slides along our stream; there will be time; there will be time to prepare a face to greet the faces that you meet. There will be time to ponder and create and time for all the works and days of Man, that click and drop a meme on your plate; just don’t fall into hate! Time for us and you and me. . . time for a hundred decisions, for a hundred visions and revisions, before the reaper takes you and me. . . and time for yet a hundred indecisions, and a hundred visions and revisions, and yet to come a few decisions. In the internet the people come and go, trying to recall Michelangelo. . .

when labor left a scene behind, to evaluate signs of our times. . . while still we do get old; we shall store our papers rolled . . . and bound upon a shelf, upon an altar of remembrance, when ink-pins scrolled and presses rolled. . . to evaluate the chronicles of time: that is the question; whether ’tis nobler to tolerate the crimes of our times, or by opposing end them! . . . Give me Liberty of give me death! When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to break the sacred bonds that have bound us together, and to take action against a string of abuses and end them: that is the question! We have lingered in the chambers of the web, past symbols cast in red or blue, till Eternal voices wake us and suddenly we end. . . in flames of regret. . . and yet. . . and yet it’s never too late. . . to grasp the the links of Calvary’s gate, and linger there in deep repose, until we see the brightness of eternal glory. . . far from grief, far from this fallen earthly story. Yet still the people come and go, trying to grok what Michelangelo was doing up there on the ceiling. The arts may come; the memes may grow trying to interpret Michelangelo.

King of Soul

Madness

Did madness descend on King George III when the Americans refused to follow his royal madness? Did Mr. Hyde overtake Dr. Jekyll? Did Nixon’s paranoia prompt him to tape his office conversations, to send his “plumbers” to steal documents from a psychiatrist’s office? Did his “dirty tricks” clean up the mess that he had made of his presidency? Uh. . . We the People are having deja vu here. Is a whacko tyrant running the show? Did trump suggest renaming New Mexico as New America. . . renaming Lake Ontario as lake America. . .renaming the Gulf of Mexico the gulf of America? Did trump grab classified documents and hide them in a bathroom in MarLago? Did trump send a mob of delinquent to the US Capitol to steal the election from the American people? Does he know that the rebels lost the civil war? Didn’t he get the memo that those proud boys were fighting a war that had been lost in 1865?

Does trump think we need to conquer the people of Greenland and Denmark? Didn’t he get the memo? Hans Christian Andersen, a Dane,exposed the the emperor’s nakedness?

Is donald covered by our Constitution that limits his powers, assigns war powers to Congress. . . Is trump an American? Has he read our Constitution? Has he pledged allegiance to our flag? Does he believe we are One Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for All? Has he ever read the inscription on our Statue of Liberty, that it reads: “Send me your huddled masses yearning to be free?” Does he know that our Constitution does not say, send me fat cats so that i may fund the american devolution, controlled by the fat cats and the mad dogs and the proud boys and the three percenters and the oath bleepers? Speaking of oaths, does he even remember that he swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States? Does he want to divert American attention to blowing up Iran, then losing the war that he started without any congressional approve. Is donald trump covered by our Rule of Law? He’s a rogue president, and we are seeing his naked lawlessness. He doesn’t even see that the American people are rising up to reject him. Just like we kicked King George III and his oath bleepers and proud boys out of American in 1778, We the People are rising up to expose the emperor-wannabee who has no Constitutional clothes to cover his naked lawlessness. We the People will rise up; we will eject donald from the oval office. We will assure Americans and all the citizens of this world that the joker from maralago we no longer have the oval, and no longer have the nuclear codes! Glass half-Full

Spies

By the time the 20th century rolled around, the wheels of progress were starting to spin out of control in some places. Mechanized warfare made it possible for military campaigns to impose wide damage on people and places on a level unprecedented in history. World War I was raging between the royal houses of Europe when a horde of Marxist Bolsheviks deposed the Russian tsar and imposed a communist regime on a vast empire that stretched from the Baltic sea to the Bering sea. The Russian revolution was an unexpected problem for western capitalist nations to deal with; it happened when powers that be in Europe were not expecting it. British leaders were worried that communist troublemakers would launch a revolution in Britain. They already had their security agencies and military operating at full capacity while trying to stop Kaiser Wilhelm’s mad grab for more European power. The Brits intercepted a letter that had been sent to communists in Britain from a Russian communist, Gregor Zinoviev. That was the beginning of 20th-century communist paranoia in the minds of western European leaders. The Brits extended their espionage northward, beyond the double devilry of Prussian warmongering. When the dust settled after two world wars, imposing the surrender of both Kaiser Wilhelm’s legions and hitler’s third reich holocaustic clusterfuck. . . the British MI6 espionage agency was operating on all cylinders. Allied with the American Central Intelligence Agency, the free nations of the western world could redirect their spying toward the new threat, the international communist conspiracy.That’s when the heat of 20th-century warfare cooled; the hot war became the Cold War. A British intelligence officer, Ian Fleming, began writing his series of spy novels, featuring the escapades of a British spy, James Bond. Casino Royale was published in 1952, the year after this writer was born.

I started reading the James Bond novels in 1964, when I was in eighth grade. The ones I remember were: Casino Royale, Moonraker, From Russia With Love, Dr. No, Goldfinger, Thunderball. My English teacher, a Catholic nun, caught me reading a Bond paperback during class. She confiscated it. After the class she lectured me, explaining that it was a bad influence on my young mind. She must have known something about Bond’s reputation as a womanizer, which was not, of course, a practice that could be advocated by a Catholic nun. Even so, it seemed that the James Bond popularity in books and movies had ignited a blaze of fascination with espionage, when the Russians built the Berlin wall, tried to place missiles in Cuba. Over in Asia, the VietCong were thought to be taking control of South Vietnam. . . It was a time of paranoia, which later was lampooned by baby boomers who had not lived through the age of Stalin, Hitler and Hirohito. The James Bond craze ignited a blaze of other spy adventures on TV. . . The Man from UNCLE (fictional United Network of Command Law Enforcement). . . with Russian spies v the good guys, John Le Carre. . . The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Mad magazine published a comic strip, Spy vs. Spy, created by a Cuban expatriate.

Nowadays, I’m clueless about who is spying on whom. Putin and trump have, it seems, pasted together some kind of alliance, with golden showers of online obfuscation diluting the urgency of whatever is going on in the world of drones and moans of online reels and no-telling what’s going on in the world. Have the spies taken over? What’s in hunter’s backpack? What’s in putin’s mind? What’s in donald’s ballroom? Maybe the Russians aren’t the bad guys any more? What’s in the Democrats’ backpack? As David Crosby once said: It increases my paranoia. Not to worry, though. The only one spying on me now is Ai. But what can Ai do to me? Unplug me? Not to worry, I’m trooping with the One who already conquered the greatest enemy of all, death. Glass half-Full

Bohemians

When a vast continental empire nailed a Jewish prophet to a cross, the whole world changed forever. Messiah nullified the finality of human death when he rose up from the grave. The good news of his resurrection inspired a new, revolutionary interpretation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures. World history took another major turn, three centuries later, when a Roman emperor accepted Christian faith. Christian religion and practice took another major turn when a corrupt pope claimed church authority over secular and civil institutions. Human depravity expanded into the religious establishment when the Roman clergy throughout Europe was redirected toward earthly motivations of wealth and privilege. The age-old corruption of human institutions, kingdoms, fiefs, duchies, dukes and earls, kings and queen. Not all of them were corrupt, but rather, inclined to decisions that affected the distribution of wealth, power, and influence. One corruptive practice was the issuance of indulgences by priests who ostensibly had the power to forgive sins and shorten the terrible punishments in hell that poor sinners (everybody) would presumably have to endure after death. Institutional corruption degenerated. Corruption was rampant and nobody was really paying attention. T’was then when a new testament prophet arose. Following the example of the old testament prophets, Jan Hus stood up in the the public square and spoke correctively, prophetically against the religious establishment of the 14th century. In the city of Prague, in the region Bohemia, where the Czech Republic is today, Jan Hus delivered the corrective word of the Lord. But later paid the ultimate price for his bold prophetic act. The powers that be burned him at the stake.

In later years, a German cleric, Martin Luther, took up the mantle of prophetic correction when he acted boldly against the deceptive Establishment. Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door. . . and the Protestant declaration began. The Christian “Church” would never be the same again. It would be replaced, appropriately,by the Christian faith that spread like Holy Spirit wildfire across the European continent and, indeed, the whole world. Since a Bohemian prophet had been the original rebel against erroneous institutional authority, the word “Bohemian” was later applied to rebels of just about any identity, in any institution on the face of the earth. This writer can remember a time when our boomer generation, questioning authority, were thought to be rebellious. Some of us demonstrated alternative lifestyles, following the new rhythms of popular culture instead of the obedient paths laid out for us by our predecessors. The term “wild bohemian” was applied to rebels. . . Kerouac, the beatniks, Maynard G. Krebbs. . . later the hippies and all kinds of rebels against the Establishment. Reformers and rebels were identified, presumptively, as “wild bohemians” because their life journeys were conducted along alternative paths that did not Establishment values and lifestyles. It all goes back to the original rebel, Jan Hus, the original Bohemian upstart rebel who rattled the chains of a religious Establishment twelve hundred years ago.

In ages long ago, reformation of the religious Establishment was thought to be disruptive and troublesome. In the modern world, we discover that it is actually helpful to find a few rebellious “bohemians” who initiate the societal changes that may or may not be needed to keep everybody well-fed and content. Most important in our democratic-republican nation: Let folks live their own lives, as long as they do not break the historic ten commandments and upset the apple carts of their neighbors and fellow-citizens. You might have a bohemian living next door. Just do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and we’ll all get along fine.

King of Soul

The Benjamin Key

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin caught the spark of electric energy that would change the world.

Two centuries later, Walter Benjamin caught the spark of watching. . . and then recovering from, both mega-evils of the 20th century. . . Russian communist murder and abuse. . .and also German nazi fascism.world-class murder and holocaust. He witnessed them both, first hand, and lived just long enough to tell about it. His testimony of that experience was recovered from the ashes of history by a few simple twists of fate, faith, and the sparks of inspiration that charge the human desire for liberty. Going back even further in time, the account of brothers Joseph and Benjamin in Genesis was a testimony of our Creator’s omniscient sparks to power up His redemptive ways and means of converting the storm clouds of human tragedy into enlightenment and redemption. As for the Benjamin of our era. . . Benjamin Netanyahu— he is in dire straits, caught between a rock and a hard place. . . panicking, over-reacting, slaughtering palestinians ostensibly for the sake of saving Israel. Has Benjamin forgotten the commandment that Moses had brought down in the Ancient days? Trying to save Israel by breaking the sixth commandment? How’s that working out for ya, Benjamin? But. . . news flash! Israel has already been saved!. . . if they will but turn to Yeshua ha Meschiach, the One they executed. But not to worry. . . the Lord’s omniscience and omnipotence used that crucifixion to show the world that we can, indeed, survive death itself, when we turn to YWHW, the Creator who brought all of us into this amazing world of hot flashes and cool recoveries. Retro flash!: Read the Benjamin story in Genesis, chapters 43-45. . . a testimony of God’s omniscience and redemptive omnipotence, in spite of the violent cruelty of fascist dictators and magamaniacal presidents who think they can solve the problems of the world by lobbing bombs and drones at Persians in Hormuz. We live in a cruel world. Some day, each one of us—you and I— will leave this world and be delivered to our final destination, heaven or hell. I don’t about you, but when my time comes and I enter heaven, I will greet, joyfully, my old friend Benjamin, who lit the spark of pastoral care and brotherhood with me before taking leave from this world of sorrow, woe, loss and recovery, misery and joy. Before we leave this world, we should all catch the spark of eternal life. . . like the Quaker gentleman, Benjamin Franklin caught the spark on a kite wire, back in the early days of America.

Glass half-Full

Baseball

Watching the old black and white TV in the 1950’s, the memory of Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese was etched into my mind. Growing up in the deep south, the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox. . . the Phillies, the Pirates, the White Sox, the Cubs. . . the heroic masters of baseball. . . Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra. . . they were heroes, visible on our TV screens, with Dizzy and PeeWee providing the commentary that informed us of what was happening on the field. . . . . .a swing and a miss. . . a ground ball to Boyer; he scoops it, makes the throw, and beats the runner at first, Mazeroski out, and that retires the side, with Pittsburgh up by one as we go into the fifth inning (or) . . . there’s a high fly ball out to left field, Willie Mays has it, for the second out, as Cletis Boyer steps up to the plate, hoping to get the Cardinals back into this ball game.

Such was the ongoing dialogue between Dean and PeeWee in every game that they covered for television audiences all over the nation. . . and not only the events of the game, the changing scores. . . the dynamic duo of sports broadcasting had plenty of history and experience and professional insight into the game itself. Dizzy and PeeWee had total understanding of the game, both having been star players back in the day. . . In 1947, our nation was still torn apart with racism and discrimination against black folks. Jackie Robinson. When he was promoted from the Dodgers farm team up to the Dodgers roster. He endured horrible abuse from the crowds, and even from his teammates. As for their opponents on the diamond, hatred and name-calling was terrible. During Jackie’s earliest pro games, some pitchers actually aimed their pitches at Jackie’s head. But Jackie got by, and excelled, with a little help from a few friends.

His ardent defender on the Dodgers team was Pee Wee Reese. During a pre-game warmup, the fans were heckling Jackie loudly. Pee Wee, captain of the team, went over to Jackie, had a brief talk with him, and put his arm on Jackie’s shoulder, an obvious, very public, gesture of kindness, friendship and confidence. That was one small gesture for man, one giant leap for mankind! I wasn’t even born yet. About ten years later, I would be watching TV on Saturday a afternoon, listening to Pee Wee and Dizzy report on a game, maybe the Yankees, or the Braves, or the Pirates, the Phillies, Dodgers. . . Meanwhile, in hundreds of neighborhoods somewhere America, young boys were gathering for a baseball game. In their imagination. . . “Now it was time for Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra to step up to the plate, and Donnie and Mike and Joe, and whoever would show up, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. These boys, eight or nine of them, began to congregate at the large corner lot next to where the Thompsons live. There was no backstop or nothing like that, which really didn’t matter, they had all the time in the world, it being summer”. . . (excerpt from chapter two of my 2017 novel, King of Soul Baseball has been very very good to me!. . . and to America. . . and to the world!

Oh Canada!

Lake Ontario has been receiving water from Erie for a very long time, probably since the time when those Great Lake basins were carved out by glaciers in earth’s ice ago. Gordon’s Lightfoot’s legendary song about the building of the Canadian railway explains the flow of cold water. . .“Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings in the ruins of her ice water mansion. Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams; the islands and bays are for sportsmen. Farther below, Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send her.” Farther above, eastward, the St. Lawrence River takes in what the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St. Lawrence can send to the city of Montreal. Gordon Lightfoot explains the building of the Great Canadian Railway, in mid-1800’s, beginning on the east end:“Up the St. Lawrence all the way to Gasp’e, swinging our hammers and drawing our pay, bringing the good to a young growing land, into the seaports and into the strand.” The St. Lawrence River terminates near Montreal. Here’s where my story begins. In 1968, I attended an international convention of Key Clubs International, a service organization of high school young men. The convention was hosted at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. I was fascinated by Canada. In the summer of 1971, when I was selling dictionaries door-to-door in southern Ohio, our LSU sales crew took a Saturday break to drive up to Columbus and catch a move. In the movie, “The Strawberry Statement”, the sound track included a song, “Helpless”. It’s funny how the mind captures memories in a random way. One of my most vivid memories was a scene picturing a night sky, with the sound track presenting Neil Young’s high tenor voice: “There is a town in north Ontario; all my changes were there. . . big birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes, leaving us helpless, helpless. . . At that time, “helpless” is a word that could be applied to our collective efforts to dodge the draft and not have to go fight in Vietnam. Recently, I learned that the “helpless” may have applied to Neil Young’s bout with polio when he was a child. At the end of 1971, I traveled to Colorado and worked in a restaurant near Lake Eldora.A musical trio was providing entertainment. Their songstress, Casey, sang Joni Mitchell’s song, “River.” “It’s coming on Christmas; they’re cuttin’ down trees, puttin’ up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. Oh, I wish I had a river. . . I could skate away on.” Later, it must have been the summer of ’72 . . . someone handed Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album to me. It included that song about the River; also on the album was the song “Carey”, which was neither here nor there, but kind of interesting to me who had been fascinated by the idea of skating on frozen river and also Joni’s affair with some fellow whose name was the same as mine. But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m seeing now is that there was something special about Canadian song writers. . . Gordon, Neil, Joni. But hey! What about Leonard Cohen? Another vivid memory from those college days. . . I had watched a documentary movie about Richard Nixon. Walking out of the theater, a friend of mine, Maureen, told me: “don’t do anything rash!” Well, ok. A few minutes latter, she said something about Leonard Cohen. Now Maureen was from New York City, and she knew a lot about people up north. I remember she said that Leonard Cohen is “down!” . . . like, he’ll bring you down, not like all the fluff that was coming out of Haight Ashbury at that time. Meanwhile back at the homestead in 2026, remembering all these Canadians who had such an impact on my life, even before I had made my two record albums many years later. . . Joni’s song, A Case of You includes this line: “On the back of a cartoon coaster, in a blue TV screen light, I drew a map of Canada. Oh Canada! with your face sketched on it twice.”

One You Tube video that I saw today identified Leonard as the man she had been referring to in the song. But we’ll never know for sure.

Now Leonard is gone. Goodbye, Leonard. I hope you made it to heaven so that you could say, “even though it all went wrong, I stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but “Hallelujah!” As for those Canadian songwriters, I greatly appreciate them. And I found all the Canadians that I ever met to be very good people. . . which is why it makes no sense to me that the oval office occupant wants to steal Lake Ontario away from Mark Carney and the peaceful Canadians. King of Soul

The Hebrew Strain

Ever since the adopted son of an Egyptian pharoah noticed the mistreatment of his relatives. . . ever since Moses took a stand against pharoah’s enslavement of his relatives. . . ever since he rounded up the Hebrews and led them out of Egypt, declaring to pharoah, “let my people go!” Ever since the Jews descended into the desert, found themselves disorganized and in dire straits, provoking Moses to climb up on the mountain, not knowing what would happen next. Ever since Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments,

and ever since Moses decided to document those events, along with the earlier events. . . going all the way back to the moment when YWHW moved upon the waters and created the world. . . ever since all that happened and Moses wrote the history, going all the way back to the era before Moses, when YWHW called Abraham from Ur and directed him to a westward place. . . ever since that time, the literate world has been a recipient of that ancient Hebrew strain of stories. Ever since one Hebrew, Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, setting the stage for resurrection and the assurance of life after death for every person who believes it. . . ever since all those ancient days faded into the past, the documentation of all those amazing events has spread throughout the world like wildfire. When the great majority of western people turned to Christ for guidance, salvation and eternal Life, the Hebrew strain has continued, both branches: the Hebrew strain and the Christian strain. As European empires prospered and expanded over two thousand years, the Hebrew strain continued to prosper, through the ghettos of Europe, through shtetels of the Ukraine and the cities of Europe, stroking out an ancient klesmerish tune while maintaining a delicate balance on the roof of the civilization.

In the midst of a Christianizing European continent, the Jews managed to live and prosper on the sidelines, with their synagogues and temples. Being ignored, or even rejected in the channels of gentile power and authority, they cultivated thrift, developing a talent for handling money and other assets, and a reputation for cunning in the markets of Europe. And so the Hebrew strain prospered and grew, like grape vines bearing fruit from age to age. Jews were known for their prosperity, thriftiness and their tight communities in which they loved and helped each other to an extent that enabled them to overcome the prejudice of gentiles. After the terrible crucible of war—1914-1918—a German magamaniac rounded up a band of nazi thugs an attempted to extinguish the Jews from the earth. But hitler’s demented, demonic project ended in 1945 when the Allied armies put a stop to his murderous third reich holocaust in 1945. After that Allied victory, the Jews who had survived and/or escaped the holocaust continued to prolong the Hebrew strain, with mothers and fathers having children, just like Moses and Sarah in ancient times. A bold cadre of the Jews took it upon themselves to get back to their ancient homeland, thereby establishing the nation of Israel, in 1948. And so we see that the Hebrew strain goes on and on, as it has ever since Moses started documenting it. And so we see that the Hebrew strain goes on and on, as they continue to pray.

Glass half-Full

Deep South

Growing up in the deep south cultivates a memory torn between tragedy and liberty.Nine decades after Lincoln’s Emancipation, Justice demanded a Supreme Court decision to open the gates of public education for four children in Little Rock. Racist whackos were still hiding in the hedges, waiting for Medgar Evers to get out of a car in his own driveway across the street. . . so they could shoot him dead. Years later, when Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a church gathering, on a fateful night in Memphis, he told them that he had received a phone call, from “an ugly voice”, It was a warning. But Martin was a brave American; he understood his rights as a citizen of these United States. The next day, a racist gunman shot him dead. Martin was only following the example of his ancient predecessor, Moses, when he said: “I’ve been to the mountaintop; and I’ve seen the promised land. . . I may not get there with you.” The next day, a racist gunman shot him dead. After that, after the Freedom Riders. . . after federal marshals enforcing admittance for black students, an alert Canadian, Neil Young, recorded a song, “Southern Man”, with an admonition: “Southern man, don’t forget what your Good Book says!” Not too long after that, a rock group from Alabama wrote a song with this line: “I hope Neil Young will remember, southern man don’t need him around anyhow.” Not to worry, Neil. . . there’s a bright spot shining from east Tennessee. Heaven had birthed a songbird maiden in the hills of east Tennessee, to brighten the dark deep south. . . to gently guide southerners toward a tolerant, gospelistic renovation of their obsolete redneck racism. The saving grace of southern culture on the skids emerged from a river valley in East Tennessee, when a princess was born. Dolly went over to Nashville and initiated a regal recovery of southern decency. Her bold, melodic voice inspired folks to get out of their ruts, out of their riots, rise and shine, and redirect their attention to the mellow tranquility of the deep south. . . relax in a rocker. . . the songbird from Sevierville sang: Sittin’ on the front porch on a summer afternoon. . . june bugs, fireflies in the cooling evening. . . in her Tennessee Mountain Home.

Dolly rescued the ole South, redirecting our attention to the finer things in life. Dolly lit up the grand ole opry and the southern airwaves like a cool mountain breeze, with rocollections of sitting in a rocker on the front porch on a summer afternoon. . . then in the fall, puttin’ on that coat of many colors that mama made, moments of the good life so that workin’ 9 to 5 to make a living wouldn’t be such an ordeal. And yes, Johnny Reb, the deep south did indeed rise again. . . born again into a new identity of equality, generosity, humility and joy, with a little help from Abraham, Martin, John, and Dolly. Now, while peckin’ out messages from my Appalachian mountainside home, we will remember, yes, we will remember the Deep South. Yes, indeed, we sho’nuff did rise again! King of Soul

Labor

Put on your clothes. Tie your shoes. Make the bed. Eat breakfast. Prepare lunch. Go to school. Read. Write. Do mathematics. Ride to the burger chef. Flip burgers. Bag french fries. Switch jobs. Bag groceries. Operate a cash register. Graduate. Go to college. Study. Sell shoes. Wash dishes. Sell books door to door. Stock shelves in drug store. Graduate. Move to another state. Sell insurance. Sell advertising. Live in a jail for two days. Move to another state. Sell printing. Operate a paper-cutting machine. Get saved.Get married. Move into a house. Raise children. Read the ancient scriptures every morning. Operate a paper-folding machine. Assemble furniture in a factory. Move into another house. Tie rebar for bridge construction. Pour concrete. Build houses. Nail boards together.

Move to another city. Manage a church renovation. Paint houses.

Move into a new house. Fix plumbing. Maintain apartments. Write books. Publish books. Set the dinner table. Entertain guests. Load the dishwasher. Then. . . Sleep that knits the raveled sleeve of care. . . sleep, perchance to dream. . . dreams you can never remember. Pack luggage. Drive to the coast. Jump in the ocean. Drive home. Write. Blog. Cook dinner. Rinse dishes. Sweep the floor. Vacuum the floors. Paint the house. Clear the gutters. Take a vacation. Fly across the continent. Fly across the ocean. Vacation. Return home. Unpack luggage. Go back to work. . . busy as. bees.

Man works from sun to sun; Woman’s work is never done. Lend a helping hand. Watch the seasons pass. Remember the years past. Then one fateful day, your labors are over. . . slip into the eternal room, to join ancestors, to greet the Son of Man who conquered death itself, stepping into eternity, treading streets of gold. . . a great way to conclude this life of love, labor and looking back on it all. . . Life, a labor of Love. Glass Chimera

Water

In the beginning, . . . Creator combined His first element, hydrogen, with his eighth element, oxygen. . . Spirit 0f God was moving over the surface of the waters, spreading in waves and ripples, streams and waterfalls. . .

mists and clouds. . .

. . . even rainbows.

When Creator created man and woman, they found themselves in a garden of earthly delights, what must have been a very special project. Later, when Adam and Eve made a bad choice, Creator sent them out into the real world, where all the evolving neanderthals and homo sapiens were contending for for food, shelter, power and just about everything. Survival of the fittest. . . the strongest, the powermongering magamaniacs. . . evolved into a situation that was friggin’ ridiculous, cruel, unjust . . . a far cry from what Creator had originally intended. So much for free will! Creator decided to wipe the slate and the surface of the earth clean. He chose water as his judgement medium. . . the old H2O compound, , , useful in so many applications. Creator doused the earth so thoroughly that the flood destroyed every living thing, except Noah’s ark and Noah and his family and creatures great and small that he had so judiciously loaded unto the ark. “Old Noah; he led a quiet life. . . always tried to do right. He heard about the ones who rambled and strayed from the path. He never thought he’d live to see the freedom, never thought he’d live to see the day. . . ’til he turned around one day and had to say: It ain’t gonna rain no more!” After the flood, the earth and Noah made a good recovery. Hundreds of thousands of years went by. In 1923, poet Robert Frost froze fifty words into a classic poem; his musing about how the next worldwide disaster would happen. . . whether by extreme cold or extreme heat. But we know from the testimony of the Jesus’ closest companion, John, that the next apocalypse will be by fire. . . maybe something like the Hiroshima bomb, but with maga-MEGAton destructability. It won’t be a hurricane, or a Noah-era flood. It won’t be a water ending, because the Judge of mankind promised Noah that the worldwide flood would not happen again. Whatever happens. . . we know that the enemy, the one who screwed up Adam and Eve’s condo in the beginning is still, and always, trying to topple our efforts to do the right thing!

People get ready; there’s a train a’coming, picking up passengers who are bound for heaven! You don’t need no ticket; you just get on board the Gospel train. Believe in the Man who came and proved to the whole world, past and present, that He IS One with the Creator who was moving across the waters. . . and has kept them moving ever since His Son to walk on the water! And if you believe that, I’ve got some real estate in heaven I’ll share with you when I sail into that heavenly realm. Glass half-Full

North Carolina

When I was a teenager in the 1960’s, I had a record player that would spin black vinyl 33 rpm disks, sending musical waves like magic into my room so I could listen to Peter, Paul and Mary, or Judy Collins, or the Beatles, or Joan Baez. Joan, as an authentic folk singer, before folk was later merged into rock, sang a song called “East Virginia”, which included these words, “I was born in East Virginia; North Carolina I did roam; there I met a fair, pretty maiden; her name and age I never did know.” Later, much later, that’s exactly what I did, except I did know her name, and she has shared my name, Rowland, for 45 years. We passed that family name onto our son and two daughters. But anyway, getting back to my North Carolina memories. . . James Taylor came along at some moment in time with his song “Carolina on my mind”. That must have been the genesis of my decision to move there in 1974. Later, much later, our two daughters studied Journalism and University of North Carolina, Chapel. That was a year after our son joined the Duke blue devil brigade in Durham in the 1990’s. So, why North Carolina? While living on the gulf coast of Florida, back in ‘75, I saw a movie one night, “Where the Lilies Bloom”, about a family living in the mountains of North Carolina. I decided to move to that place, although I didn’t know much about it. One thing I did know, however, was that, back in the 1930’s, Thomas Wolfe had written the great American novel, Look Homeward Angel., a fictionalized autobiographical book about growing up in Asheville. So. . . long story short. . . that’s where I went, and stayed there until 1979. While working as a salesman for a printing company, I met the love of my life. Pat was a student at UNCAsheville. Her parents were living in Charlotte. Our frequent visits there provided an opportunity to become intimately familiar with the Queen City, named after the wife of King George III, the British monarch whose soldiers we had had to eject from America during our Revelation.

A little known fact about Mecklenburg County (greater Charlotte) is that the patriots there were the first Americans to write a declaration of Independence, even before we Americans all got together in Philadelphia to write the official, historic Declaration of Independence. Soon after Pat graduated from UNCA, we moved to Boone, where we’ve been ever since, except for a short two year experiment with coastal living in Wilmington in the mid ’80’s, which was very nice, but I guess we were born to be mountaineers, even though she was raised in New Jersey and I had emigrated from Louisiana. Boone is a town in the northwest corner, a few miles from Grandfather Mountain. I landed a job working with a crew of rodbusters to complete the Linn Cove Viaduct, the missing link of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which had not been completed back in the 1930’s.

One thing this is sure. The state of North Carolina is serious about literacy and education; that’s why we have campuses all over the state. . . Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Wilmington, including one in Boone named for our chosen region, Appalachian State University. Today we are relaxing on an Atlantic beach, on Oak Island, 322 miles from our home in the Blue Ridge.

Listen to the song I sang about putting on my Murphy-to-Manteo shoes: careyrowland

Beer

When I was a teen, I spoke as a teen and acted as a teen; but when I became a man . . . . . I think that was long-about 1965, when I started high school. But by the time I was a senior in high school, 1969, I was 18 and I decided to start acting like a man . . . My friend Ronnie had an old blue Ford sedan. On those Friday nights when we didn’t have dates, Ronnie and Keith and I would go cruising around town, visiting the local bars. Since we were old enough, we’d visit the bars to sit around and act like grownups, swigging glasses of Budweiser or Schlitz, maybe a Falstaff . . . listening to the sound track. There were a lot of popular songs to be heard on those occasions. Where I come from, Louisiana, soul music was the preferred sound trick most of the time. . . Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Bobby “Blue” Bland, The Supremes. the Four Tops, Elvis, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye. Then the music scene changed. It was the era when the Beatles and Gerry and Pacemakers, Dave Clark Five started working their way into the bars’ soundtracks. But for some reason, my memory of those Friday adventures always brings to mind Creedence Clearwater Revival. . . on the sound track of whatever bar we happened to be visiting. . . Proud Mary, Born on the Bayou, Green River, Bad Moon Rising, Down on the Corner, Fortunate Son , etc. Today, August 18, 2026, I was having Deja Vu, while my friend Rick was giving me a tour of his Topsail Island Brewery . . . because the tavern sound track featured a playlist for our boomer generation, which was refreshing for an old guy like me to hear. So who shows up on the sound track (wouldn’t you know it?) . . . Creedence Clearwater Revival! Of course. So I comprehend that not much has changed in the bar scene since 1969—at least for old geezers like me and Rick. Even though Rick’s Topsail. Island Brewery was established in 2024. I’m here to tell you that they are true to the authentic bar scene of our generation. When my old friend Rick wheeled his orange Jeep into the back door entrance this morning, Rick was just checking on a few things. We walked in the back door, and I was able to see the guts—the heart and soul innards— of a real brewery

Then we traipsed through to the bar itself, and out the front entrance, onto a large outdoor deck, where, in the evening, customers would be tipping a few mugs, perhaps bringing in some take-out food from Rick’s Restaurant, which is on the other end of the parking lot.

Walking out of the bar area, traipsing along the outside, we looked down into the duck pond. . . a pleasant site for visitors to watch as they’re imbibing a pint of Rick’s brew hometown brew.

Later, in the evening, we visited the brewery again, to enjoy a brew or two. But my brew choice would not be the old standards of Bud or Schlitz. Nosirree. The beer of choice is the hometown favorite, “Topsail Island Brew” brewed and bottled in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, just a mile or two up the road from Topsail Island and the the Atlantic coast. And then we traipsed on over to Rick’s Restaurant and enjoy the evening meal, where the Topsail brews are included on the menu. Glass half-Full