An afternoon trip to Williamson

I drove down to Zebulon this morning and the sun was bright and the temperature was reasonable and I walked into the court and sat down with my opponent. Three and a half hours later, we walked out with a victory of sorts and a good feeling of tiredness. I drove back to Griffin and checked my mail and found a check, for a change, and so in one day had two promises of payment and a check, which is about as much as you can expect under the circumstances.

Tonight, Cindy and I met Chip and Robin for supper at a restaurant out in the country, west of Williamson, built into a hangar which houses some antique planes and cars and even an old International Harvester Farmall, which looked about the same vintage as my grandfather's two Farmalls, upon which dad used to ride us up and down the driveway.

The food was good and the atmosphere was nice and the company was cordial. We got to see some old planes take off and land. We got to talk about things and enjoy each other's company. At the end we walked through the small collection of planes and cars. It was fun.

Tonight, we got back home and we watched some television and now it is time for me to let the dog out to do his business. I will leash him and walk out into the dark carport and emerge out into the shadow of the trees above me. I will take a look up through the canopy to see the stars set in the firmament and feel the nightly breeze promissing the chill of Autumn.

It won't be long and we will make that trip up into the mountains to buy apples and caramel sauce and look for interesting pumpkins. Bags of boiled peanuts and cold German beer from some gasthaus in Helen. Walking around as the sun dips below the western mountains of North Georgia. Feeling the coolness. Glad to have a sweater or a jacket in the dying of the day.

We saw a Manx cat tonight. I hadn't seen one for a long time. This one was a pretty tabby, with the big tailless rump. I wanted to go out and pet him but we had other things to do besides petting cats.

It was nice to head out into the night and drive back through the country toward home. Even if Cindy lost her call to her mother because of a lack of signal. That was a small price to pay to be able to drive through the country on a cool early Autumn evening in Central Georgia.

Vent, Vent, Vent

Over and above the temperate temps today, we got to go to supper at church today and it was nice to see a lot of our friends and talk with them again. The spaghetti and sauce was nice and I enjoyed the sweet tea and brownies with ice cream. I had to leave with Cindy early and she got cramps in her feet until I could run her home and hand her a a jar of pickle juice. That finally got her on to her feet so I could run to Ingles and purchase some stuff for her for tomorrow.

Now, a time to vent. I realize that when I graduated from high school that I was not an appropriate candidate, probably, for most Ivy League schools. I didn't apply, even though my friend, Graham, Harvard Class of 79, thought I should apply. Heck, I think he thought that everyone should apply to Harvard.

But I didn't want to go to Harvard. I think most people thought I made an appropriate choice when I went to Washington and Lee. Fine institution, good academic reputation, tied into all that Southern history with George Washigton, Robert E. Lee, etc. Most of my friends and family thought it was the perfect place for me.

There is no perfect place for any student necessarily. And no institution has a fix on truth, even if Harvard has 'veritas' on their crest. That is about as pompous as the "Yay, Sewanee's Right" on the stadium at Sewanee. When I was a child, we had nine white male justices on the Supreme Court. Later, one African-American held a seat on the court. But the men who were there were from California, Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, Washington, etc. Despite the fact that they were all men, they were quite diverse in their upbringing and origins.

But now they all seem to be from the Ivy League and most of them are Catholic or Jewish. In our efforts to be more diverse, we have packed the court with Ivy Leaguers. I know those schools are fine colleges and universities, but they don't hold the only key to truth.

We need a real open market place of ideas to work our way out of this mess. Easy answers and slogans and simplified responses to issues won't make it. It is more complicated and the answers which will probably work will be have to be much more thoughtful and broad in scope and will require more compromise and working together.

Wins and losses, Summer and Fall

It started this morning like Fall had arrived, with a satisfying coolness and a thorough lack of humidity in the air. I was almost deluded enough so that when lunch arrived I scrambled for a cotton sweater which became a reminder that Fall arrives in a few weeks in Georgia, particularly Central Georgia.

Still, I took the dog out this evening and walked him out under the stars roaming across the skies and it was quite cool and delightful. In that kind of environment it is hard to stand there and watch the dog do his business, knowing that you have to get the dog back into his bed in a matter of seconds.

I was looking through dog rescues and showed Cindy several cute little Welsh Terriers and Wire Fox Terriers. She thought they were pretty cute, despite the fact that the information on the dogs usually stated that the dogs weren't good with other dogs. That is a problem with an old Lab-Bassett mix on a styrofoam mattress in the kitchen.

Tex seemed a little concerned about his two favorite humans looking at other dogs. Dogs have a lot of intuition from time to time. Cindy was convinced he come tell we were looking at other dogs. She gives him a bit more credit for cunning and intelligence sometimes, but dogs do seem to know a bit more than we expect from time to time.

The Braves lost tonight and the Phillies won, so there is a two game span between the two teams and the Braves are on the wrong side of the span. Professional baseball is not completely satisfying these days, particular when football is in full swing. Of course, professional football is equally unsatisfying, since the Falcons don't seem to show their talents from week to week and year to year. Oh well.

Relying on sports for a mood elevator is a dangerous thing. It provides a transitory up from time to time, but it is definitely transitory. It just seems to last until the next game and the next loss. There is always another game. That is good and bad. Another opportunity for a win or loss.

God, Science and other things

I am trying very hard to determine how to quantify my value. I am trying to take note of the things I have done which have some value to others. Today, I bought the component parts for a meal for the youth of our church this afternoon. I made a casserole and a salad and bought some ice cream sandwiches and iced tea. The kids didn't much like the casserole. They turned their nose up at the casserole and mostly ate the salad, which was substantially iceberg lettuce and carrots. I looked around and realized the church has reduced some of its membership from before, and it seems as if the ones who have abandoned us are some of my friends. That is sad.

In the face of all this, it is hard to keep your sense of value when everyone seems to be abandoning your place of significance. I have always held to the belief that despite my feelings of doubt, there would ultimately be victory. But when your friends abandon you and your place of significance, it shakes your foundations.

I am not about to change at this point, but it does bring these things into the open and, hopefully, makes you look hard at the underpinnings of your beliefs.

I am not going to Steven Hawking my life and cut everything loose because it is convenient. It is too easy for a smart guy, who built a significant curriculum vitae and clearly showed a substantial self-confidence, but isn't the end result of such self-confidence just the belief that one is perfect the way they are? After all, he is a physicist, educated at one of the highest levels of higher English education, living among the academia. Why would he need anything else?

Oh, that's right. I forgot. That will go unsaid. At any rate, he is not a theologian. He was not educated to determine for the rest of us whether or not there is a God or whether he is responsible for the universe. If it means anything, I don't think I will rely on an English physicist to provide me with theory on God, how he works or his limits.

Assuming a "Big Bang" for the creation of this universe, I don't really think it matters from a scientific standpoint if that the bang was started by God. I read something that said that some scientists were concerned when the Big Bang Theory were concerned that the theory implied a divine causation for the universe. No, it only matters to me, and others like me, who have faith that God created this universe, controls the universe, and will lead us to reconciliation with Him at some future date. That may not mean anything to Mr. Hawking, but that is ok. He doesn't mean that much to me.

Endeavors

We bought an electrical device for Cindy to download books and magazines off the internet to the device. Cindy is excited; however, we have not been successful in readying the device for downloading any books. So at this point, we have a piece of plastic machinery with circuitry within that is sitting on the couch right now, with all the attendant packaging and what-not around it. Of course, we can still buy books the old-fashioned way and filled our little house with books from stem to stern, from crawl-space to attic.

We have another device on the floor beneath the entertainment center which is supposed to provide entertainment, exercise and what not for the whole family. It has not since around January.

I am not a Luddite, I think. But sometimes I wonder if all this electrical wizardry we purchase is worth the money we pay for it. I can still read a book. I have many. I can still play my guitar, without electrical components. I can walk out of this house and walk around the block or drive out in the countryside and gain much more than I would glean from any of the electrical devices we own and store in our house.

I would like to climb a mountain. I would like to catch a fish in a cool stream in North Georgia. I would like to take my guitar out of its case and play some music, if only for myself. I would like to listen to some musicians perform live. I would like to watch a football game in person. These are much more healthy endeavors, I think, than any of the ones I first spoke about in this blog.

Odd closing

I have had several closings cancelled on me in the last couple of days and then I had two closings given to me, including one where the closing actually took place in Alabama so that I was required to be available so I sat at Cissie's house and enjoyed the evening and waited for the notary in Alabama to call me to begin the closing. As it turned out, Cindy and I were in Walmart and the phone rang and I introduced myself and the closing began. As I walked through Walmart I heard the closing occurring in Alabama. I followed Cindy as she shopped and I ended up paying for the stuff and then we headed home. I finally finished at home after driving us home and bringing the stuff inside and walking the dog. Who says I can't multi-task.

Tex and Tom in the Smokies

Today, after church and lunch, I decided to take Tex, the Wonderdog, on a ride up into the Smokey Mountains, so as Cindy and her parents and her sister and niece stayed at home, I packed Tex into the Ford Explorer and headed down the Pellissippi Parkway toward the Miracle Motor Mile and Maryville and the ultimate entrance into the Smokies which goes through the little town of Townsend, Tennessee. After driving down through Maryville and seeing a barbecue place built in the place of a gas station, I took a left down toward Townsend and the "quiet side" of the Smokies. After about an hour of driving we found our way into the entrance of the Smokies and then continued on to the entrance to Cades Cove. I haven't been to Cades Cove for quite a while and going into the Smokies on Labor Day Sunday is taking your life into your hands, but by the time I made it into the traffic jam which is your normal route into Cades Cove, I found myself in a rumba line (or bunny hop, if you prefer), heading into a quite beautiful part of the Smokies which was preserved about fifty years ago and is now one of the most used parts of the National Park system. This was quite evident to Tex and me as we headed down the one way road that goes through Cades Cove. I wasn't ready to stop the car and get off the rumba line to go see one of the surviving buildings on the route, so I continued in the line until I ran out of the desire to follow the line completely around the loop and took a short cut across the valley which is Cades Cove and picked up the loop on the other side of the valley. I did see a jeep parked on the side of the alternative road with Spalding County plates. Id didn't recognize the parties in the car, but I continued on and a nice person in a white pickup truck with an Arkansas Razorback license plate on the front. More later.