Friday, June 29, 2007

The Scribe indeed has readers!

Well two very nice people visited my blog and said kind things. So I am renewed and reinvigorated and ready to post more stuff. Herewith is an:

Impromptu Poem

Light has faded, the shadows stretch
across the leaf strewn yard
and across that hill yonder
the Blue Ridge rises,
giants of old,
their haze creating an impressionist
covering for the crags and the blue spruce
dressing them like brides of the morning.

And I turn to my screen
and try to tell you, dear friend,
that life resides in the dew of that moment
when the heart is open to the beauty
the world lavishes on us between acts of savage fury
and life is lived in the margins amid the folds of the mind
on an afternoon when sunlight washes
the leaves and the crows lumber
across the sky and you breathe
the precious air and cling tightly to
almighty hope.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Sound of a Tree Falling...

Well, I guess the question is answered. There IS nobody out there. It has been over a week since I asked that apparently rhetorical question and still no comments. I wonder how many blogs are on Blogger. Probably millions, 95% of which are read only by friends and family. Ces la vies or whatever the heck it is that those benighted Frenchies say.

I am wasting my time...or am I? If someone eventually reads this, then the time will not have been wasted. If no one reads this but I get something off my chest, the time will not have been wasted. Either way, I am a winner. Now, I feel much better!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Is ANYBODY out there?

Well it has been a few weeks now that this remarkable little web log has been up and running and guess what; there have been -0-, nada, zilch, bupkus comments!



Are you out there dear reader, somewhere on that vast information highway, trudging through blogs about dogs and blogs about nothing? Am I too old and quaint for your taste?



I know most of you are young and probably much too hip (do they still use that word?) for me.



Well here's some news...I saw Jimi Hendrix live in 1969. How about that? That ain't all...I have seen The Who, Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Grand Funk Railroad, Santana, Chicago, and many others live in the late sixties. Still think I'm not cool?



Oh well, I probably became not cool somewhere north of thirty years ago. My question still rings across the vastness of the world wide web like the squeak of a mouse across the Grand Canyon.



Is anybody out there?

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

General Musings

This is dangerous. I am writing this as I post or posting this as I write, unsure which is correct.

I worry for America. We seem to have lost not only our morality and conscience, but our cohesion as a people. Not to overplay it, but I remember an America of the fifties and early sixties where most of us danced to the same beat, or at least condescended to each other's beat.

I was just on an AOL blog about Obama's reckless statements about blacks and a "quiet riot." The talk was mostly hateful, to a large degree banal and of an ignorant bent.

The blacks were shouting (rhetorically speaking) at the whites and the whites were shouting at the blacks, dredging up all the old racial stereotypes. They were like children furiously screaming at each other on the playground, spittle flying, faces red. It was discouraging to say the least.

After all these years, we are still at the point where the slightest thing brings out the racist in many of us. I grew up in a racist environment, where blacks were viewed as third class citizens at best. I never attended school with a black person until I was in college (definitely dates me). And I must confess when I see certain behaviors my knee jerk reaction is to attribute it to race, then I always think of an example just as deplorable in my own race, and I seem to gain a level of perspective about it.

Somehow, someway, we have to get beyond all that. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, something I believe more whites than blacks believe in. However, whites have no exclusivity to responsible behavior and blacks are certainly not predominantly irresponsible. In any case, a little humility and some simple humanity will go a long way toward healing and reconciliation. Jesus Christ had it right. Too bad the vast majority of us pay no more than lip service to his teaching.