Still home

I was born in Western Kentucky
Just east of the twin rivers
But I did not stay very long
And north of the Ohio I did go
Running in the bright sunshine
Toward tall cornstalks
Sitting high up in a cherry tree
Till time to go home
Passing by my kinfolks towards Alabammy
Then on to Georgia where I now stay.
Oh, you travelling blues
And place is just a spot in which you find
Yourself from time to time
And I have felt the warm Gulf breezes
On the white sands of St. Pete
And listened to the soft jazz tunes
Playing in my brain
And I have watched the clouds blow
Off the Pacific shore
But nothing lies softer
On my memory than the green, green grass
And deep blue skies, white fleecy clouds
I remember in Summers in Kentucky.

Odd encounters

There was a story on the internet in which a lady was hiking on a trail in the mountains of Western North Carolina when she was stopped by Secret Service agents on the trail and asked if she would submit to a metal detector. Oddly, she agreed. In a matter of seconds she was talking with the president and his wife, who were also walking on the trail. That would have been an experience.

It reminds me of a time when I was with a group of W&L students in London, trying to find an underground station to get us to the Aldwych theater on time for a performance, when everything got real busy and there were cars and policemen all over the place. We stopped to ask two girls on the sidewalk what was going on and they informed us that the president of the college was visiting. We walked on past the hubbub only to turn around and see the Queen Mother exit from a Rolls Royce limo behind us. The girls were laughing. How were we to know that the Queen Mother was the president of the college?

Most of my encounters with celebrity have been in airports, although I have met a few fairly famous politicians in law offices and on the street.

Monday morning, blue skies and dogwood blossoms

Quandry: Is it better to be working with a large window showing me how beautiful it is outside so I can wish I was not working or would it be better to have no windows so that I could sit depressed in the artificially lit room and drone on like a worker bee?

It is beautiful outside and the dogwood tree outside my window is in full bloom. It is supposed to be pretty all week, until around Thursday when there is a chance of rain. We need some more rain this week and it would be nice if it would cool off a bit.

I spent most of Saturday outside in the yard and I think I drank about five gallons of water trying to hydrate myself. I ended up paying for it on Easter Sunday when I couldn't keep my throat clear for choir. I was pretty weak, vocally. It is not good to make a weak noise on Easter Sunday.

Cindy and I are alone with the dog and fish now, as Kate is in Dunwoody with mom while she starts her program with the Creative Circus. Whenever Kate trys to explain where she is going to study, I always moved to tell people that she is joining the circus and be a trapeze artist. She would probably make a better clown, but I don't think she would like being with the clowns. She has a scruple about clowns. I don't think she would make it as a clown.

Last night was quiet without Kate and the kitten playing soccer up in Kate's room. I think it will be quiet in a few minutes when I head home for lunch. I will still have to walk Tex, but he is pretty quiet once he gets all of his ablutions completed.

Good Friday, 2010

I rearranged my schedule today and met with my clients at 11:00, then headed home to see where Cindy was in trying to get ready to leave for Calloway Gardens for the afternoon. We missed the Good Friday service at 12:15, but we headed over to Pine Mountain and stopped at my favorite Georgia barbecue joint, Three Little Pigs, and ordered three barbecue sandwich platters with three large cups of sweet tea and two extra containers of barbecued beans, then headed over to the entrance into the gardens and ultimately wound our way around the roads through the gardens to the Azalea Bowl and the picnic tables for lunch al fresco.

The azaleas weren't very far along. Only the cherry trees were in full bloom. In the middle of the Sibley Center there were three magnificent cherry trees in full bloom and the bees, all different varieties were buzzing around the blossoms. I sat under the spread of the branches and watched the bees swarming around.

There were topiaries in the shape of bunnies and chicks and other indicia of the secular side of the Easter weekend. Kind of silly, in a way. Such a strange, silly way to celebrate the execution of a man who claimed to be the Son of God, then to throw our faith in the idea that he was raised from the dead. That is pretty heavy. More heavy than bunnies and chicks.

Callaway was pretty, even though it seemed that pollen was swarming around like smoke clouds. The day was very warm for April. The thermometer in the car read 83 at one point. But the barbecue lunch and the walk around the gardens were sweet.

At one point we walked down to a stone pavilion on one of the lakes and talking to a couple with two little dogs finishing their lunch along the lakeside. We had the remnants of the bun from Cindy's sandwich and Kate and Cindy and I threw the pieces at several mallards and numerous turtles who fought each other for the scraps. Soon, bream and bass were swimming beneath to catch some of the soggy crumbs. It was fun to watch all the wildlife, tame as they were, fighting for the crumbs.

It didn't last, but it was fun while we were there and Kate and Cindy enjoyed the dogs.

We have shared a meal of arugula salad with a lemon and oil dressing, then seared tuna and now I am going into the kitchen to cut slices of key lime pie. What a delightful end to the day.

You don't get points for attendance

The Maundy Thursday service was somewhat disappointing. Cindy and Kate got stuck in Dunwoody with a ton of traffic that forced them to wait until it was too late to wade through the traffic back home to Griffin. So, I went alone to church and the choir was ready for our performance both this evening and for Sunday morning, but when we entered the choir loft we found that the congregation that night was about twenty people, if that many. The service itself went well. I always appreciate the Maundy Thursday service. I think it is the most significant service of the year and definitely the least understood and appreciated service of the year. In some sense, you can't appreciate Easter without going through Maundy Thursday. It sets the table for what happens for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow is Good Friday and we will have a service at lunch time. It also is a meaningful time which is slightly attended. Oh well. You don't get points for attendance.

Looking for Jesus

Psalm 27

1The LORD is my light and my salvation;

whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the stronghold of my life;

of whom shall I be afraid?


2When evildoers assail me

to devour my flesh —

my adversaries and foes —

they shall stumble and fall.


3Though an army encamp against me,

my heart shall not fear;

though war rise up against me,

yet I will be confident.


4One thing I asked of the LORD,

that will I seek after:

to live in the house of the LORD

all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the LORD,

and to inquire in his temple.


I can see it. Walking into the temple, looking around, "inquiring" as it says.

"Hey, is Jesus around?"

It is not an easy thing, living in the house of the Lord. Easy in the way that we first enter in, but difficult to stay. To behold the beauty of the Lord and contemplate the wonders and beauty of the creation. To kneel in awe at the power and magnificence of the concept that God, the Father, created and ordains and sustains the entire universe, as it contracts and expands.

There is a spot on the road to the top of Mt. Leconte in the Smokies where the road slithers and coils upon itself like a copperhead and suddenly you come upon a spot on the side looking northward back toward Seveirville and you see the broad expanding valley leading northward toward I-40 and it gives you just a small glimpse of the expanse of just a little part of the world in which we live in.

Or you can drive up Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and look out over the Pacific Ocean and see all that rolling water, smashing like cymbals against the beach north of Los Angeles, heading toward Monterrey, and you can feel the broadness of that great, limitless ocean.

Or you can sit on a swingset in a yard in Northern Indianoplis and get the sensation as you look westward toward the horizon that the plains of Central Indiana expand out forever and that you couldn't see the end and you have to have a map of the United States to realize, conceptualize in your head that there is an end, but that it extends out over the Pacific Ocean to Asia, Japan and China and India and Pakistan and the Middle East and Africa and the innumerable sands of the Sahara and all the nations of Europe and the dark, deep Atlantic and back again. You can see the circle of the world, turning, turning, every day.

And you can feel that there is no end. At this time, you should consider that this is what we say was created by God and this is what we say is sustained and ordained by God. And we are so small. And the universe is so seemingly limitless and continous.

Imagine the astronauts looking back at the big blue ball, with the clouds and the land masses and the oceans, so blue. No wonder their thoughts turned back to Genesis. We should too.