It's Quittin' Time, Again

My soul has been a bit sad lately, my heart a little achy.

Do I know why?

I think it’s because I’m human.

I also think it’s my smartphone…  (I’ve never typed that word before in my life.)

I’m not going to tell you why, you already know.  You’re very likely reading this on one.  That’s why I’m trying not to use long sentences or paragraphs, nobody wants that on a teeny-tiny-ass screen.  Dammit, that was long…

You already know how bombarded one can feel on social media. 

You already know the hollowness of comparing yourself to others in your circles.

You also know the emptiness that digital communication leaves in us, the ice between the ones and zeros.

You know the isolation of the so-called connectivity - head down, shoulders in – lost in absolutely nothing.

Listen, maybe I shouldn’t assume you feel the same as I do.  I’m sure many of you use your phone with great care and prudence.

You know what?  I can’t maintain this style.  I can’t continue on with these short sentences and I love long paragraphs and I like to juxtapose them to short ones.  It’s a balance game writers like to play, to visually move the reader’s eyes and encourage them to move along in the narrative, an impossible tactic on a three by five screen.

***

As all boys do, I watched my father a lot growing up.  He whistled and I learned to whistle.  He put his hands in his pockets, I still do.  He crossed his right leg over his left, so did I.  And, he smoked and so did I for over thirty years.

I don’t have many moving-picture-like memories, I tend more towards polaroids and panoramic landscapes, Dutch still-lifes and a nude or two.  One of the few I do have is a short scene of my dad getting up from his chair in my childhood home.  He is dressed in a suit, a charcoal one, as was the fashion in the late fifties and well into the sixties when this takes place.  He is slim and the suit fits him nicely, he has a muted maroon bowtie on and brown loafers and belt.

The light is morning like, I’d guess we are headed for church.  His chair has a footstool which he likes close when he puts his feet up.  My mother calls and he brings his knees up and gets his feet on his side of the stool and pushes it out so he can stand.  His hands go to his knees, I can still see his turquoise and gold ring, he makes the dad grunt and sort of rocks up still bent at the waist, he straightens up slowly.  I don’t think he sees me watching him even though I feel close, close enough to smell his Old Spice, black coffee and Camels.

As he gathers himself he absented-mindedly taps his hand on his left breast.  The hand, not satisfied, then reaches inside the coat, first into his shirt pocket, then the inside pocket of the jacket.  Now, both hands, in tandem, quickly shoot into the outside pockets of the jacket – they worked back then – and then into the front pockets of the slacks.  These jingle satisfactorily, but the dance goes on to the back pockets where they linger.  He looks silly, in fact, it all seems silly.

Dad looks perplexed, I am straight-up confused.

Finally, he looks down and over at me.  He smiles at me and cocks his head as he sees them out of the corner of his eye, a pack of Camel’s and a white book of matches.  His face is pleased, relieved.  He chuckles at himself, as men do, and winks at me as he put them in the inside pocket of his coat, pats them knowingly a couple of times, deftly buttons his coat with one hand and walks towards the kitchen.

End scene.

***

More than anything, what impressed my little eight- or nine-year-old self was his satisfaction at finding them and, to some extent, the matching anxiety at not having them.  Years and years later, I worked in a restaurant where, as a bartender, I wore a suit and tie every day.  I probably did that cigarette dance a dozen times a week.  I caught myself at it one time in the mirror behind the scotch and bourbon and saw my father, I gave myself the same wink he had given me that Sunday morning past.

Why, I wonder, am I bringing this up?  Because, I see this same dance these days, but now it’s for a phone.  Just last week at the grocery store I saw a lady do the extended version of it.  As she stood just outside her car, door still open, with growing anxiety she checked all her pockets and rifled somewhat madly through her purse, finally ducking back into the car and coming back up with that satisfied, relieved look, and… a phone clutched triumphantly in her hand.

I watched smokers for years as a bartender and waiter, back in the days of smoking sections and lounges.  I’ve watched, as, mid conversation a hand reaches for a pack and, with seemingly no concentration or effort a smoke was acquired and lit.  The same way I see folks so absentmindedly reach for their smartphones these days.  I’ve seen the agitation of a guy out of cigarettes concerned about when he’ll get another mirrored in the look of someone whose phone is out of power or, worse, not connected.  I’ve watched as one person at my bar lit a cigarette and the whole bar lighting up at the scent of the first just as I’ve seen one person check their phone and watched as those around them looked at theirs.

I read an article I can’t find right now that said something to the affect that in fifteen or twenty years we’ll all be wondering what the hell we were thinking giving iPhones and androids to children, just as we wonder now what society was thinking when we let – encouraged, really - young men and women begin smoking in their teens.

I know you may be thinking that this analogy is a little dire and, seeing it here in black and white, I’d tend to agree.  However, I know what addiction feels like, I know its ups and downs, its desire and relief.  I know the dopamine rush as well as the physical anticipation of that next hit.  I know how good the ritual of an addiction feels, how true and real the desire for a thing can be.  I know.

And, as God is my witness, my smartphone feeds that cycle today just as surely as those Marlboros did for all those years.

I don’t like it.  What’s weird is, truth be told, I liked smoking and damn near every cigarette was enjoyable, honest.

Not with my smartphone.  It mostly just pisses me off and disappoints me.  The news is so dire, so ugly mean and intense.  So much so that, for me, even a decent, happy story, a “feel-good” story I think they call them, can taste saccharine, treacly.  Facebook consistently disappoints me.  In the early years I really enjoyed it, but now so few friends even post anything, it seems a bit pointless.

There’s one more thing I’d like to say:  I am not on this earth to be advertised to…

Well, that’s not a very good sentence.  Listen, that smartphone is specifically designed and coded and programmed to advertise.  “Sponsored” posts on FB, ads in every video, Amazon notifications out of the blue.  Ads on the games we play, the blogs we read, the podcasts and vlogs.  I won’t go on. 

Damn, I completely forgot you were reading this on your phone.

I’ll let you go.

I’m gonna turn my Facebook off later tonight, Fat Tuesday.

I will set my phone down where the house phone used to be - it's a pretty spot - and turn up the ringer and hope for the best.   It'll be right here, on top of that wooden box, nestled under the shamrock which I noticed has two hidden blooms:

You see, I still need a communication device, I like texting and I need to get phone calls.  That’s the insidiousness of the whole thing, something you need, something useful, paired with this lame entertainment device that just wants to separate us from our money.  That’s fucked up.

(My apologies again to those using great care and prudence with their phones, and those few who still read things on their computer.)

I plan to keep writing here, but I won’t be able to promote them by posting on FB, so ya’ll won’t know it’s here.  Oh, well…

Keep in mind these are just my observations, my responses, my feelings.  One cannot qualify every statement and sentence with an “IMHO” or “for me” or “I can’t speak for you, but…” in a bit of writing, it becomes tedious.

I’ll probably return to FB after Easter, but, I hope to get rid of this phone for good.

It sorta burns my hand…

Peace.  

Look me up sometime if you think of me.

I’ll be here.

Unofficial Post Election Post

Hey, you're here.

Listen, I'm gonna drop character here for a sec.  The results of this election have stymied me, gobsmacked me, bewildered me, stunned me.  I feel, well, roughed up a bit.  I may have hit my head so hard with my own hand that I'm not sure who I am anymore.

Am I that boy who grew up in the country with grass-stained knees and yellow hair?  Surrounded by good country folks whose opinions about others were questionable?  Where there was a sameness as dull as milk but not nearly as refreshing?

Am I a teenage football player ogling cheerleaders and saying off-color things, bullshit things, things as untrue as the mustache I tried to sport?

Am I that same teenage boy playing Peter in a fall production of "The Diary of Ann Frank"?  Crying real tears as the despair hit me at the end of the second act that cold opening night?

Perhaps I'm that same boy, a senior now, standing in a field, leaning against a beat-to-hell, piss yellow VW Beatle, Rolling Rock in hand screaming "It's only teenage wasteland" to The Who and any Gods that might have been listening?

Am I a college freshman leading a posse of man-boys out into the cold Athens streets into bars and trouble and legend?  Or, wait, am I that same kid getting his mind blown by Sartre and Kafka, Ionesco, Williams and that Shakespeare guy?

Am I a lonesome waiter, a boozesome bartender, surrounded by a busyness I'd never known in a city I'd no business being in?  Am I taking in every face, every gesture; feeling every emotion, weeping through them; listening to every story, remembering every sorrow?

Am I a fresh start, different place, different faces, the same stories - the only stories, essentials.  Am I a thirty year lifer of tables and barstools, winekeys and tablecloths?

Am I suddenly a husband?

Am I improbably a father to twins, to boys?

Yes, yes I am.

But who am I right now, at this moment of confusion?

I'm all those dudes, and scores of others.  When emotion and memory entwine, tense is suspended.  I can taste that skunky Rolling Rock right now.  Every table I've ever waited on, every person I ever laid a bev-nap in front of, are right here.  A moment in a wedding, white and good.  Two babies laughing.  All in present tense.

But what of the real present.

Ah, that's the problem.  I've not had time to understand who I am this time.  

Should I spew my emotions out here?  Get on board the vitriol train which runs both ways these days?  It's tempting, but that yellow-haired boy doesn't understand why we have to be so mean.

Should I be more sympathetic to the locker room talk, try to understand the back room racism, be more understanding of the xenophobe because once - now, you see - I was like that?  No, because the teenage boy and the college would-be Lothario and the wily bartender will all tell you it is bullshit and we know it.

Should I be the Pollyanna I play so often on my blog?  You know, when I speak on love and honor and charity and capitalize them for affect?  When I look forward for and with the boys with faith in humanity, with dignity, with hope. Do I mean it?  The father looks back at me in the mirror and says "every damn word."

Should I put on my warrior hat, tarnished with years of disuse, and charge into the injustices so many tell me won't come, but will?  No, because the me typing these words in not up for the fight, although "Teenage Wasteland" boy says he is.

Should I run towards my gay friends, arms outreaching, only to have them run away as I scream, "No, don't run, it's a happy, hippy, philosopher's beard not a redneck beard!"?

Should I wear a safety pin on my sweatshirt and point myself out as a "helper"?  Will any one believe it?  Do we need blue and red stars on out foreheads like some dystopian Sneetches so we know who to trust?

Do I stop drinking Yuengling because the owner's a dick?  Is that the distribution team's fault, or the truck driver's, or the men and women who designed the logo, or the bartender that pulls the draft?

Does that place with the burgers I like so much not get my business anymore 'cause I heard the investors are Republicans?  What of the servers there, the mom with two daughters, the college girl at X?  What of their vote? 

What if the fireman thinks I'm a Liberal, will he let my house burn down?  Will the cop be leery of my old Ford truck.

Do I go back to church where most disagree with the choice I made?

What the actual fuck?!?

I'm scared, boys, because I am unsure of the path ahead.

But, this is the hard part to understand, all those others are.  They've defined me so well, shown me who I am so thoroughly that their collective soul, here, alive in me right now is sure of the path.

I can't imagine this makes much sense.

Boys, it's hard to be an adult.  Choices are never very clear and there is a lot, a lot, of improvisation and questioning along with every one we encounter.

You know what?  I was willing to give myself a place to rant here tonight.  I wanted to but my rant confused and contradicted me.  I've typed twice as much tonight as you see here.  But, I deleted it because it made me uncomfortable.  Some of it was hateful, some was violent, some was laced with more expletives than even I am comfortable with.  Most of it was a betrayal of myself, myselfs, all that I was and have come to be.

Peace.

In the middle of one of my more rantier moments here tonight, I lifted my steaming head and looked out into the backyard and saw this.

There is not a one of me that wouldn't stop to look at that.

 Yeah, maybe I'll just stick with the Pollyanna thing.

It's late, I've no time to really edit this, which it obviously needs, and the boys will be home from the Xavier basketball game they went to tonight.


Peace, we'll get back to our regular programming next week.

An Ashtray and A Bowl of Nuts

I complicated the title of my last piece on purpose.  As I faced the empty title line for this one nothing clever came to mind.

Titles are hard...

In that post I wrote:

"My dad would crack nuts and put the shells in his ashtray

 and when it was full he'd dump it into the fire and the cigarette butts would 

burn quickly but we'd stare and watch the shells initially smoke and then 

 flare up, the nut oil burning them bright and fast."

 My Mom found these and gave them to me:

There's a bonus table lighter that matches the ashtray there behind, but that all wouldn't fit in the title line.

These are the exact items I was speaking of, lifted from my memory.

From Marci's "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"Sorry, they were just preparing you for life ... it's what parents do'"

I'm pretty sure Nick said this to Zack.  If he knows this, maybe we're done...

Thanks for taking a look at this, I thought it was pretty cool that she found these, thanks Mom.

Are you still here?

Yeah, so am I...

Sometimes I have a little bit to say about more than one thing.  I have been known to throw them all together in a forced mashup like this or this.  Sometimes I just hang things on the end... uh, sorta like I am now.

The boys are working on keyboarding here at home and at school.  You know, typing.  It's sort of cute to see them lining their fingers up on a particular way - like they did on their forgotten recorders.  However, unlike the sadly discarded wind instruments, they really need to learn this skill.  Frankly, I never did.  I don't so much hunt-and-peck, but I sure as hell don't do it like I'm supposed to.  I wish I was better.  I should have paid more attention in my high school "Personal Typing" class but Jill was remarkably distracting.  Yes, thanks for asking, they were electric.  I used a manual through college though, it's funny, we all did.  It seems so impossible now.

Here is a picture of Nick working on a project for school:

That's pretty much how I look right now, precisely.

 Peace to you.  See ya 'round.

On The Complicatedness of Simplicitiness

I shake my head at the complexities of life sometimes.  I am not sure if I shake my head in defeat - in acquiescence - or whether I do so in disbelief, because a part of me still hopes that it's not really, complicated, that is...

That went well.

When I was a kid there were nutcrackers.  Everyone had them.  Not just the "toy soldier" variety, no, they came in "old man time" and "Father Christmas" varieties as well.  But they weren't for show, they were to crack nuts.  My mom had a nut bowl.  It was wood, like, log-shaped with bark on the outside.  In the center was a post and at the top of that was an acorn shaped thing that held the crackers themselves and the "nut picks," sharp, dental-like tools that you pulled out the meat from the nut with.

Yes, we cracked our own nuts and picked at them like archaeologists to get at them.  My mom put nuts in my stocking.  It filled the sock well and the sight of almonds and hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans and jumbo walnuts splashing out among the Hershey's kisses will live long in my memory.

My dad would crack nuts and put the shells in his ashtray and when it was full he'd dump it into the fire and the cigarette butts would burn quickly but we'd stare and watch the shells initially smoke and then flare up, the nut oil burning them bright and fast.  I would sometimes poke myself with a pick and even once, out of curiosity, pinched my middle fingernail so tightly it left a deep purple mark under the nail for most of a year.

I remember, when I was older, finding out that the nuts came in big mesh bags, burlap in those days.  The bowl would get refilled and remain around well after the Christmas stuff came down.  It's weird what memory serves us sometimes.

When Nick drew this the other night and I saw it, I said, "Is that a nutcracker, Nick?"

"What's a nutcracker, Dad?"


That same night, while I was talking to Nick - about cracking and eating nuts out of the shell - as he got ready for bed, Zack got a piece of paper and drew this.  It is colored pencil which, as a little advice here, does not scan well.  I walked in as he was topping the mountains in purple majesty (yes, I mentioned that now two posts in a row) and I asked him what he used to make the curves, like a lid or coin or what.

"I did them myself, Dad," he said, "You know, by free."

It took me a second but I realized he meant freehand.  Those are some good curves right there.  I can't draw a straight line, let alone a damned-near perfect curve.  But, honestly, all I was thinking was that a friend of mine from college had an elephant nutcracker that looked surprisingly like this.  The nut went in on top of his back and, through some wonder of mechanics, exited out the, uh, rear, cracked.  The elephant's trunk controlled the whole unseemly process.  She was a pretty odd girl.


So, what is so complicated?  Is it memory?  Then childhood wouldn't be complicated... but, it is.  Is it feelings and emotions?  No, love and all that isn't complicated really.

I don't guess I know why it all seems so hard sometimes.  I was thinking this though - it isn't, until we make it so.  I want to have life be easy and unfettered, not just for me, but for the boys as well, but to grow and learn and make memories and tell our stories, we must - to make all the connections, to see all the angles, to feel all the stings - we must complicate things, it is what we as humans are divined to do.


It's simple, really...


From Marci's ... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ...
 
Mom: "Hey, guys, can I tell you something real quick?"
 
N & Z: "No."
 
Mom: "Well, that was honest."


I'm stayin' out of this one...


It would seem that I wasted your time.  I mean I really didn't end up anywhere, did I?  Life is, at its core, simple, but, as Mr. Rogers said, it is simple and  deep.  Thanks for coming around again.

Your Title Here

Write your own ding-dang story.  I'd call it "Snow Day" or something like that...

Well done, you can really spin a good one.


From Marci's ".... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"There is bacon between my toes!"

(as result of barefoot omelette making)


Is there a better feeling?  I do draw the line at salami between the toes, although it is important to note that if you lick a piece of salami it will stick nicely to bare skin...


Thanks for coming around today and telling yourself my story.  I wasn't trying to be flip or anything, but I'd imagine this story is familiar to everyone.  Not because I assume the ubiquity of snow, I know a lot of folks don't get a snow day or more a year.  No, I guess I was thinking about the inevitability of some moments.  This day was written for us long ago by the hearts of children still remembered.  It is the simplest and most fundamental of stories.  It is also a story easy to forget:  Let's play!

On Whittling, Pickling and Blogging

I am going to break character for a bit today.  I don't usually talk about blogging and, to be honest, I recently promised myself I would just sort of ignore the fact that I am indeed a blogger.  Honestly, I consider myself more of a memoirist at best, an archivist at least.  That's all fine and good, but the fact remains that what I do here is called "blogging" and the site that hosts my stuff is called "Blogger."

But what is this thing we do?  I'd guess the answer to that is as varied as the number of folks that do it.  I've just done an exhaustive twenty minute search in an attempt to define the genre.  Not so easy.  Basically, this seems to be the consensus, a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.  Simple enough.  As a contrast, this is what I found on the Urban Dictionary site, Short for weblog.
A meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested in their stupid, pathetic life. Consists of such riveting entries as "homework sucks" and "I slept until noon today."   Well, I can't really say that is inaccurate.

As I looked around today at the various definitions and references to "blogs" I found, it wasn't until I got to Wikipedia that the term was linked to business and commercialism and consumerism.  Blogs were not conceived as commercial entities, I think that is important to note.  Personally, I made a vow when I started doing this that mine would remain ad-free.  In fact, in the last couple of years, I have taken to telling folks, if it comes up, that I write a "non-commercial" blog.  I do this because many of the people who might come here have become jaded and annoyed by the commercialization of the internet and they are - I think justifiably - hesitant to even look at blogs because so many are so blatantly commercial.

I read a lot of blogs, mostly parenting blogs, and am increasingly turned off by the number of ads and sponsored content I see, even pop-ups and self-loading videos, more each week it seems.  Often, I can't even figure out where the content begins and the ads end.  On the other hand, I read dozens of blogs with unobtrusive ads or none at all and, even as I admit that it is to them I return again and again, I cannot say which is better, that's not up to me.

If you want to know the truth, I am taking a risk talking about this.  It may ostracize me from a community that I very much enjoy.  However, for every one overtly commercial blog there are probably dozens of relatively ad-free and sponsorless folks just writing.  Writing about their lives, their kids, their hopes and fears, joys and failures and it is them I wish to recognize, them I want you to consider, they who merit the kind of attention that stems from the heart and not the pocketbook.


When I was a boy, the grandfather of a friend of mine whittled chess pieces out of oak branches which fell into my friends yard.  I can see him now, either on the front porch of my friend Don's home or, in winter, inside a garage next to the house which was heated with an old coal-fired furnace.  Honestly, they weren't exquisite, in fact they were rough and simple but the lines were elegant and what I remember most was his concentration and, well, joy in carving them.  He died when we were in high school and the porch seemed so empty and the garage so silent.

I lost touch with Don when I went to college and tried to shed my small town roots and soul.  In recent years though I have seen him around a few times and I mentioned the carved chess pieces.  He told me that a few years after his "Pap" passed he and one of his brothers were hanging a new electric engine hoist from the joists of that old garage.  Over in a corner, out of sight, were about thirty hand made wooden boxes each containing a chess set, nestled in straw, waiting.  Most had names in them, names of daughters and sons and grandchildren and friends.  He'd carved each set for someone, hidden them away, a quiet gift, a piece of him.  My old friend, Don, cherishes his.

My childhood friend JB's mother, Mrs. B, canned, jarred or pickled just about everything that grew in our rural corner of the Ohio valley.  She made applesauce and canned beets and green beans.  She jarred pears and apricots and jellied strawberries, plums and grapes.  She pickled every imaginable variety of cucumber, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, sometimes somehow both.  Tomatoes were sauced and stewed and put in Mason jars.  She also made an amber dandelion wine I've talked of before and Concord grape juice and bottled it all in small clip top bottles.

Year after year this amazing yield was placed on sturdy hand-made shelves, eight, maybe ten of them, which Mr. B had nestled in above the washer and dryer in a small room off their family room.  Each with a lip on the front so the jars could not be jostled off.  It is not the boiling pans of jellies and brine, not the pots and pots of sterilizing jars, not the hand grinder she used to mill the apples and grapes, not the acidic smell of stewing tomatoes or the tear-inducing piles of onions waiting to be pickled with ginger into an onion kraut or even the overbearing heat of it all that I remember best.  No, it is those larder laden shelves I recall so vividly, arranged so practically and beautifully on those hand-crafted shelves, a labor of love and commitment and joy.  God, they were a beautiful sight.

A hootenanny comes to mind.  It's a silly word, to be sure, but, when I was younger, it was what we called a group of guys and gals getting together, playing guitars and whatever was close by, singing and drinking into the late night.  We all frequently played together - this was in my college years and just after - but every now and again we'd have a party, call it a "hoot" and, well, it was.  But something else happened, something important.  We performed.  We nailed leads.  We remembered all the words.  We found evasive harmonies.  We looked each other in the eye, proud as we celebrated the songs and friends we loved.

Our collective songbook was mostly the folk and early rock we grew up on.  Songs I still play today, songs I bet all those guys still play today.  (Don't you guys... and gals?  It just occurred to me that maybe a dozen of those folks read this blog.  I told you it was something important.)  I sometimes wish they had been recorded, or at least chronicled in some way, a photo or a song list in a forgotten guitar case.  They weren't.  There are a few recordings of this or that, mixed and overdubbed on rudimentary cassette tape technology, embarrassingly crude and raw.  I don't really know where they are.  I wouldn't listen to them if I did.  But, sometimes as I belt out "This Land Is Your Land" I nearly weep at the beauty of those long ago singalongs.


I must, and do, have a point.  My friend Don's grandfather never considered making hand carved chess sets to sell them.  I knew the man and I am sure it never occurred to him.  In fact, only happenstance ever brought them to the hands for whom they were made.  Mrs. B would have never dreamed of putting up canned goods for profit.  She did it because she wanted a family fed, traditions followed and passed on, and a shelf of hope in her basement.  When my friends and I jammed out in a living-room or around a campfire back in the seventies and eighties we weren't doing it to be the next Pete or Joan or Woody or Bob, you know, for commercial success.  No, we were just making some beautiful music together.

When we make something, sing something, arrange something we made beautifully; when we make picket rail fences and fashion quilts from scraps and bake bread; when we write poems on scraps of paper and pen long love letters; when we create these things hoping not for the gold of reward but merely the quicksilver of memory, we are artists.

I have long loved folk art.  It is difficult to define and encompasses everything from the tangible paintings and sculptures and carvings of antiquity to the intangible traditions of the dying arts of craftsmen - the print-makers and the ironsmiths and mountain fiddlers and the cloistered poets.  It seems that every definition and explanation included the fact that that it was art by and for the people.  Music and dance and paintings and traditions that all bubble up from the very soul of us.  Art we are compelled to make and take in and art we intrinsically understand and essentially need.

I think blogging is a folk art.  Sure, there are times when it becomes a Fine Art, but the majority of those are from writers who choose the internet as their medium.  And yes, some blogs are designed and fashioned to be commercial exploits.  But, as I listen to fellow bloggers, I hear over and over again that their true and original reason for starting was because they wanted to create something for others, often their children as in my case, but for family and friends, lovers and like-minded souls as well.  Rarely, particularly for those who have been around a while, was a blog created initially and intentionally to make money.


Listen, truth is only a few people will have a look at this.  My reach is limited and my blog is an inconsequential blip in the wide world of blogs.  I respect and read a number of commercial blogs, I can hardly avoid it because a lot of great stories and wisdom are coming from them.  However, I do think that I get a lot more from a blogger who writes from his heart, about his heart, and through his heart than I do from one who is writing from his pocketbook, about things that clearly don't matter to him or her, and through a wall of ads and pop-ups.  Also, I think blogging is already on the decline.  I think in a decade or less it will be relegated to a "remember when" or a punchline on a late night talk-show.  Blogger, where I write, may someday start making me have ads, and I will no longer be able to afford a domain and a host, and I'll have to shut down.  But, it's all backed up, I could print it out tomorrow, place it on a shelf and hope that it finds its way.

So, you may be wondering why I have lined up these words today, words that may get me in trouble, words that may seem hurtful to some, words that may seem mean or discouraging.  Well, I want my fellow folk art bloggers to know that I am listening to them, that I admire them, that I cherish them as they will be cherished someday ... and, well, ultimately, that is my point:  Nick and Zack, I never even considered exploiting you in any way, nor did I.

***

Now, back to our originally scheduled programming.


Thanks for stopping by, I know for many it wasn't what you've come to expect around here.  I'll work on something else today as well.