Renovation

GK Chesterton

   Take a moment, get GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy down from your library or order it for $2.00 on Amazon. Get hold of it. Read the last (admittedly long) paragraph. We will talk about it later.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Sports, Sports, Sports

   These things I know about sports just now.

   The Polar Bears Soccer Team will sweep all before it. These are my 4/5 year old soccer players in Upward Soccer at my church. I was in Israel, getting increasingly frantic texts from my student pastor, who was left to assemble the league while I took the cure in the Holy Land. We were enrolling children so fast he had run out of names and coaches.

   Hence, I became coach of the Polar Bears Soccer Team. We are undefeated. We have been tied once but we have swept all opposition before us. My 4/5 year olds are not on the field to beat you. We are there to crush your spirit.

   The Texas Rangers MLB are the better team in their ALDS upcoming with the Tampa Bay Rays. Fearfully, it appears the Rays may be a team of destiny. A lesser team can win a shorter series and this one is a five game rather than a seven game series.

  Watch the second game of the series, Derrick Holland against James Shields. The Rangers have not solved Shields this year. If they beat him Game Two it is a good sign.

   My prediction? Rangers in five games.

   In the other AL series, Detroit Tigers against the Hated Yankees of New Yoarak, Justin Verlander will pitch twice for the Tigers in a five game series. Twice. He throws the ball 100 MPH and has four pitches he can throw for strikes. Four.

   Tigers in five games here.

   More importantly, the Polar Bears stay undefeated over the next weekend. Polar Bears, bet them.  Call your bookie now. The spread is 9, the over-under 6. Bet the spread and take the over. Polar Bears rule.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone. Do not actually bet the Polar Bears or anyone else. Also, quit wondering how a preacher knows so much about point spreads and over-under.

 

Witticisms. My friends tell me I am a Wit. My enemies say my friends are half-right.

   I have decided some people who seem to be in their own little world really just want some attention from yours.

                    -----Written from my little world, R. Davis

 

   Preachers here is a helpful little quip I made up years ago. It is about weddings, which we all get to do. You can use it. It will get you out of the reception early, so you can go write your sermon for the next morning.

   "Here is my philosophy of weddings.  It ain't a wedding until the preacher gets there. It ain't a party until he leaves. Good night." 

   Of course, you have to do the timing right. Good luck with that.

   The Atlanta Braves led the NL Wildcard race by 8 1/2 games on September 1. They lost the lead and their post-season chances in one of the great collapses of baseball history.

   Apparently, however, when the Braves collapsed, they landed on the Boston Red Sox.

 

   Don't start pressing buttons on your computer to find out what it does. It does stuff you cannot fix without a ten year old to help you. Ask me how I know.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Prednisone

Warning

Danger

   Since I cannot breath at all, I have been placed on a double daily dose of Prednisone. I got the usual warning about weight gain, hunger pangs and what I like to call the "Rambo Effect." This drug can cause anger flashes, mood changes and surliness.

   The mood changes are what happens in normal people. I was born surly. My mood changes tend to be more like cavalry charges with sabres drawn and bugles blaring. 

   I have to take these things for three weeks. It would be better if I went to live in a cave for those three weeks. 

   Well, it would not be good for the bears who live in the caves. They could get hurt.

 

   So, be warned. I will control it. I want to breath again. It just ain't fun.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

How I Start to Write

   Since some of my devoted readers have asked, here is the secret of how I start to write.

   First, I get a blank page. This may be actual paper in a journal, which I prefer, or a blank screen, as I started with here.

   I find a blank page. The writer in me is offended by the blankness of the page, or drawn to it, or perhaps I am just too cussed mean to let anything stay clean.

   Then, I get a pen. I like heavy pens, round ones, metal or wood bound, with very sharp points, ready to dispense in black ink. I do not use any colors other than black or blue. I much prefer black to blue. I will not use pink, red or green. This is a pristine page of possibilities, not a circus. There is nothing wrong with a circus but, usually, the end of a circus is a guy with a really big shovel in his hands and a bad look on his face. 

   Come to think of it, that describes the aftermath of some of my articles.

   Huh.

   Then, I take my heavy, black ink pen in hand. I make sure the point is exposed. This is important.

   I doodle in my head, but never on the page, until an idea comes along. I catch the thought on the pen-point. I quickly fasten the idea to the once clean page before it can get away.

   This is how I start to write. I hope it helps.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

We Are All Too Old for Something, Aren't We?

   My baby is too old to be a new born.

She is three weeks old today.

Then, we are too old to be infants,

just beyond a creeper,

not quite young enouogh for toddling.

We watch our lives unfold

too old for this

one day beyond that.

We cannot go behind the door

where we used to be welcome,

where someone once smiled broadly 

at our coming.

That door closes to us.

Are these steps we take?

Is the only always open door

the one Jesus met

when He offered to dine with us?

Then, what is death?

Let's see.

Absence is the death of passion.

Mockery kills empathy.

Ease murders responsibility

Corruption beggars authority of life.

The death of a thought is an unguarded moment.

What a Writer Does

  A politician in a democracy thinks his first task is to be elected. If he is elected, he can do other action items but he first must be elected. This is his prime purpose. He will talk long and hard about "practical politics," but this is mostly a facade covering his agenda.

   A peace officer wants to go home after her shift. A preacher heaves a big sigh on Sunday evening about eight.

   A writer feels good when the page is full and revised a half dozen times. On this page we may hold up our heroes for acclimation or our enemies for ridicule. We may immortalize a spot, mistakenly, as Breed's Hill was misplaced for Bunker Hill, or as the Greazy Grass was mistaken for Little Big Horn or San Juan Hill on the San Juan Heights takes precedence over Kettle Hill. You get the idea. We assign history to  a spot and that is the site where the plaque goes.

   No matter if the blood was fifty meters to the right flank. A writer puts his information on truth and a myth becomes a fact.

   "When the myth becomes larger than the truth," a fictional editor once intoned, "print the myth."

   William Wallace was either BraveHeart or a rogue knight, depending upon the media version you follow. Mel Gibson called Wallace Braveheart. Winston Churchill named him a rogue knight. History is left to decide, but, history, like the law, is often a donkey.

   We are trapped in this world wherein men fashion the truth after their own likeness and breathe it in the fetid stink of their own foul life. A writer  can point to this corrupted being but he does so at his own great peril. He, and he alone, decides how much truth he will tell, how well he tells it, and forecasts what he will do with the embers.

   So it is that we have sought to tell the truth some years here at aintsobad and its attendant sites. We will hope to do what a writer does, the pillory be cursed in the process.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

 

 

My Favorite Simon and Garfunkel Songs, In Order

   For new reasons(s) other than it is autumn and Friday. here are my favorite S and G songs, in order of my preference. What are yours?

 

1. April, Come She Will
2. The Sound of Silence
3. The Boxer
4. Bridge Over Troubled Water
5. Mrs. Robinson
6. Homeward Bound
7. I Am a Rock
8. El Condor Pasa

   Why do I love them so? These fellows produced music, real music, not hip-hop. Profound lyrics, mysterious rhythms, actual key changes upon occassion. Music, with variety and dignity.

   Yes, there are others. These are the ones I could hear over and over again.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Writing For Me

   My writing time is now much taken up with journal entries in books for my children and grandchildren. Jennifer has hers. Jeremy's is done. Jonathan has one about two-third finished and Jordan is about one-third. I have started one for Faith and Logann. That means I owe Grant and Layton and Abry. A few dozen pages a week is about what I get. By the time I get all of these done, there will undoubtedly be another grandchild or two or three.

   Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Abry Jo

Abry Jo

I spent two hours with her today.

She makes little noises,

things like,

"Aaaahhhh,"

and 

"Sniffle, sniffle, snub."

She stretches a bit

at only one week

of age.

She sits in my hands,

the heel of my left hand

on her backside,

the palm of my right hand 

under her neck and head and back.

I have really big hands.

She is only about twenty inches.

She likes for me to rock her in my hands

I thought, after Faith,

I could not love another baby like I loved her.

Then, there was Logann

and I knew my love had reached its limits,

until there was Grant, who I loved as much as the girls

and then Layton,

who made me love some more.

And now there is this little girl.

The universe slipped into another gear.

She is...

well...

one would say...

upon inspection...

simple perfection.