Saturday, December 07, 2002
TOO MUCH! TOO FAST!
Yesterday, within one radio news segment, sandwiched neatly between three commercials, I found we now have available, or, will have very soon, both a Self-tuning Piano and an Acoustic Refrigerator/Freezer.
I can't say how long I have waited for such a double wonder to happen!
Will this flow of fantastic inventiveness never cease?
We only recently found a new home for our spinet piano of some forty years enjoyable residence, and I am thinking of the number of times we had it tuned, with varied results. Never once did it have an opportunity to re-tune itself, which new pianos now do. Eighty-eight wonderful keys slighted!
I am told the new system works pretty much as does the present electronic tuner I use with my vintage acoustic guitar of some sixty-four years. I like it. It is very efficient and quite small, too. I feared the new piano tuner might be larger than the piano itself, but that has has been pretty well taken care of and we can expect self-tuning pianos to glut the keyboard market any day now. Set! Bing ! Forty-five seconds later: “Okay, boys, hit it from the top!” In a good many cases it might be wise to go with self-playing pianos, too.
Now, it's time to move along to the food preparation area of your home.
The Technicians have just finished installed your all new, snow-white, absolutely quiet acoustic refrigerator. The buzzing, antiquated box you've had all these years, has been loaded on a truck and will soon grace an eroding corner of the county landfill as yet another antiquated piece of electrical equipment which is now outclassed in every way. The new box is powered by noise.
Somebody just recently found out that sound can freeze things if you make it loud enough. It would seem that bit of information would have come to ear earlier with all the noises we make about us in these modern times, but it is a recent development, I've been told. I know for a fact that when someone kicks an electric guitar amp up a few notches, it sends a cold chill up and down my quaking spine. And, in spite of the fact that noise does all your cooling for you, you don't hear a thing. The “noise” energy is contained in small tubes, I understand ,and I wonder what happen if one of them springs a leak during the night. I have heard of “all Hell breaking loose” and I think that's what it might sound like with bit of purgatory tossed in. When you pick yourself up somewhere around Chicago, get your eardrums vulcanized or just patched up a bit, you might wonder how and when it all started.
That would be the waning days of the year 2002.
There is some concern, too, about the affect acoustic refrigeration might have on the market is general. Some see it as sound investment while others are rather cool about the whole thing.
A.L.M. December 6, 2002 [c512wds]
Friday, December 06, 2002
HORN OF PLENTY
We had a Fall-motif cornucopia on our Thanksgiving Day dinner table – the main one – this year. Two tables, because we are a large family and a growing one, too.
Our daughter, Elizabeth, had fashioned it out of dried leaves of many colors and changing hues, a sprig or two of “Dusty Miller”, I think it was, some holly berries with clumps of those sticky, pointed leaves, some dried flowers in brighter clusters and half a dozen, pencil-sized pussy willow sticks poking up in the air as if by chance. It was all most impressive.
Now, since I am the only octo-aged member of our family, it has become more or less accepted procedure that I be the one to ask The Lord's blessing upon our food. When I saw that centerpiece, I was inspired to do a bit of rehearsal considering what I might actually say when asked to do so. The piece was a paradox, It was dead ... used ...spent, and yet we were to realize that within it were the seeds which were the promise of tomorrow and renewed beauty and life. I drifted a bit and found myself wondering what I would say when the moment came to do so.
It did. The moment, that is. That voice which is to be obeyed said: “Quiet! Everyone! Quiet, please! It is time for the Blessing.” There was sudden hush, as if someone had turned a faucet off, and I glanced up for the nod which was my cue to begin. There was no nod. Instead, two of the youngest grandsons burst into a joyous song of Thanksgiving! It was the old “Friar Jacques” melody with suitable words, and I heard several adult “Amen's” of praise and appreciation when they had finished their song. I don't think anyone saw me dab the corner of my eyes with the over sized napkin waiting at my place at the table.
It is a great and rewarding moment when Age finds itself upstaged by Youth.
It can be a moment of attainment for older folks when we see the youngster taking upon themselves eagerly and enthusiasm whose routine which are suddenly ours no more. I had been through the same thing years before when I came from work on evening and my wife told me I could forget about fixing the electric iron I'd been promising to repair for months, because our not-quite-teen boy had fixed it for her.
We need to mark such occasions in our lives. After all, that's what we have been “bringing them up” to do, isn't it? There comes a time when what we have been doing logically falls to someone else. If they do so, and do it well, we know we have done a passable job.
A.L.M. December 5, 2002 [c475wds]
Thursday, December 05, 2002
1 : 9 ?
I find I am, quite sharply, led to question a statement I heard repeated several times this past week-end which insisted our national armed forces were not only first among all nations of the Earth, but that it would take the total power of the next nine nations to equal it!
I ask for the basic, known facts to back such an assertion.
This was not a chance remark, not uninformed street talk, not a bit of smart-alec chatter around the coffee machine and snacks, but a portion of a major address, obviously “researched”, planned or evolved to be delivered before a regional conference which was to be reported in the media.
I would begin, by asking who's figures were used.
I heard the statement in two ways:
At one moment, I was being told our defenses against more Terrorism of “September 11th” caliber were adequate and that we could be fairly certain of being able to meet any such attacks in the immediate future. Our armed forces were strong, but being improved steadily, for which we should all be thankful.
But, at other times, I was made to feel ashamed that we, as a sort of bully-of-the-block, had developed such a monstrous machine of militant power primarily so we could rule supreme over other nations less prone to such excesses. We were again told it would take the armed forces of the next nine nations, lumped together, to equal our war-making power. I found no list of who those nine nations might be, or any indication concerning how their actual, known military power was judged so accurately. How does one select the “next nine nations”? By population, by some economic factor, geographic placement and land mass, language, race, creed, color?
I'm sure persons charged with our national defense would like to know how such a lopsided ratio can be shown to exist. As was intimated, we could probably do away with much that we now deem essential as a base on which we might be able to build even greater protective powers.
Another point: how many of these “nine nations” are we expected to protect and fight for in any future conflict regardless of where they might be located? If we are to do what we can to sustain a form of government which we, and they, deem to be proper for free men and women, we must cooperate with and defend, if need be, those who have a like belief and trust and to do so with sufficient force and alacrity when, wherever and if, the need arises
Free speech is one of our most valuable treasures. Care should be taken to see that what is said so freely is also factual, fair and enunciated for the common good.
It appears that we must be aware of the fact that the very freedoms we prize so highly can be used against us by those who would do us harm, intentionally or unwittingly.
A.L.M. December 4, 2002 [c503wds]
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
THE BODKINS BOY'S BANJO
Every family has a host of stories waiting to be told.
An older lady came to me years ago with sheaf of handwritten family-type essays. Her daughter knew I had marketed a few such items in the past and asked that I discuss “writing” with her mother to encourage her to spend more time writing. I did so, and after typing them and editing some a bit, tried several publishers of such material but to no avail. She was pleased when we finally arranged for her stories to be published in her home town newspaper where she actually grew up, for which she was paid two dollars per story. Someday, someone will gather them from those pages and put them
in booklet form to sell to guests at the area's rather posh hotels as folklore.
One story stays with me, because it has to do with music, I suppose. She had a brother named Bud. Just “Bud”, too, and occasionally called “Buddy.” He liked country music.
The family had a cat, which is not unusual, but this was an exceptionally large, yellow cat. It stayed around the barn most of the time and the children knew of it's being better than the house-centered adults. One day the little girl missed seeing “Old Yellar” and , in time, wondering what had become of him she found her brother scraping yellow fur from a large pelt nailed to the back, sunny side of one of the numerous sheds on the place. Buddy Bodkin wanted a banjo and he had set about making himself one. His sister told me how he went about it.
He made two large hoops by wetting small branches,wrpped hem arund a keg He nailed them tight and when they had dried and he carved them thin until they looked like over-sized embroidery hoops such as those used to cross-stitch designs on pillow cases and tablecloths. One, you see, had to be slightly larger than the other, mind you, so when Bud wet them and the cat pelt again, actually soaked them for a while, he could then put the small circle down flat, lay the cat skin across it and then pound the larger ring over the smaller one and thus stretch the the skin to drum-like tautness. When it dried slowly, weighed down with bricks and stones to keep it level even to make it look a banjo drum had to be. Later, I'm told, he added a sturdy oak strip from the inside bottom edge and through the upper edge to a point well up into the neck almost to the fifth peg. That gave this five-stringer extra strength to keep it from bowing up from pressure of the tight strings.
I don't recall any mention of any “Old Yellar” cat gut strings, so I suppose he managed to buy a set of strings for it in time or, more than likely, he traded something for a used set from someone. Anyway, Bud Bodkin played that home-made banjo for the to his life. Self taught, and it took him no time at all to learn to play. He and his sister used to sing at family get-togethers, church doings, picnics and the like and he played dances all over the countryside with other musicians. By that time, his sister, who told me this and other stories, had married and moved away from the area.
Today, I know skilled artisans who actually fashion unique guitars, mandolins, fiddles, banjos and other such instruments, but they do it in a much grander fashion. Bud had little or nothing to work with but he had a desire to want to do such creative things. Yet, he made a life of enjoyment for himself and a multitude of people who heard Bud Bodkin's home-made banjo being picked so skillfully driven by impulses from the inmost heart and soul of a boy who came to be a man with self-sustained music as his lifeblood.
A.L.M. December 3, 2002 [c674wds]
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
December 3, 2002
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES
Many people seem to continue to think that becoming wealthy is done simply by going into some forlorn, rock strewn hill country and picking up solid nuggets of pure gold in shapes ranging from the size of peanuts to pineapples. That's the way it seems to work in the movies but the Hollywood versions and those that occur in actual happenings vary a great deal.
So it is in gathering other forms of wealth, too, it appears. Few investors chance upon a single stock, which, once purchased, becomes a money machine spewing out waves of dollars with all associated bells and whistles build-in. It too depends on thoughtful planning, investigation, and detailed analysis of both good and bad potentials. It is a slow, involved process. We are know that, but we still dream of sudden wealth coming our way; even try to make it happen now and then by lottery ticket purchases or risky stock ventures.
“Finding” gold is one thing, but processing it for use in the market is quite another matter entirely. Of course, there have been recorded instances where lucky individuals have come across gold in more or less a pristine state, either in flakes or veins of the precious metal, or more dramatically glistening lumps in the placer streams washed free of contaminants and ready to display. Most gold, and wealth, in general, demands more work once it is found
One common process has been to pulverize a quantity of soil or rock and then to treat the resulting powder with a chemical additive to bring out the precious metal. Many chemicals were tired after the specimen had been put through the stamp mill. It was known, at that time, that sulphuric acid applied to copper dust would bring out copper. After much testing mercury was used to leach out sixty per-cent of the gold contained in a specimen. Then, in 1879, a group of scientists in Scotland discovered that the use of cyanide instead which leached out ninety-seven per-cent of the gold. This process became standard procedure in the United States in 1895.
This, understandably, changed the entire gold industry. It made the re-processing of mountains of old slag piles profitable and there were, for a time, mountains of such slag available. At this time, many people bought stock in gold mines when “had been reopened” to become rich and some of such stock certificates are still sitting in desk drawers to this day – waiting.
By 1969, however, rising labor costs and the near exhaustion of deposits threatened conventional gold mining with extinction. At that time, the U.S. Bureau of Mines proposed using cyanide on large, open air piles of material. This method literally soaked the huge piles of debris with cyanide and gathered the resulting run-off down stream in ponds, where, when treated with carbon, it surrendered all of its gold content. This process made it possible to bring gold out of material where it was not visible to the eye, and the mountains of processed materials were re-done once more. It proved to be profitable as long as .08 of an ounce of gold could be found per ton.
The cyanide method has, of course, been assailed in recent years by environmentalists. Much of this came about because injudicious use of many such workings imperiled underground water sources, killed birds by the thousands, and created large fields of toxic waste containing copper, iron, mercury, zinc, cadmium, selenium and other such materials. They are now seen as the toxic clean-up sites of our new century.
Gold, gotten, you see; like wealth in other forms, is not always profitable. Eventually, someone has to pay for any excessive use or mis-use thereof. Holdings can corrupt entire families causing utter ruin downstream as the runoff seeps into the basic element of good living.
A.L.M. December 2, 2002 [c647wds]
Monday, December 02, 2002
NANYE-HI
She grew up to be known as Nancy Ward, but when she was born in 1738, as a member of the Wolf Clan, her Mother, Tame Doe, a pure-blooded Cherokee Indian, named her Nanye-hi. The proud mother was sister to the Cherokee Chief Attakullakulla.
The man who bore that name meaning “Little Carpenter” was widely admired as one of the wisest men of the nation and also a staunch friend of the English. Nanye-hi seems to have lived in he shadow of her powerful uncle and she came to favor the English over the French and the Indian tribes they came to control.
Nanye-hi married a young warrior name Kingfisher and, as was a custom of the tribe chose to accompany him on his campaigns in an extended decade-long war against the Creeks.
The series of campaigns culminated in the battle of Tawila in 1755. Kingfisher was killed in that battle, and when those about him saw him falls they mde ready to retreat. Nanye-hi rose up from behind a log where she had been concealed re-loading her husband's weapons, some insist, and she rallied the men around her so that they held fast and attacked with renewed fervor. The enemy was so confused by her sudden, active participation they gave way and she thus helped to bring about the Cherokee victory at that critical battle of the long war. Tribal leaders, in appreciation and acknowledgement of her bravery, bestowed upon her the title of "Ghigua" which designated her as “a Beloved Woman of the Cherokees.” That gave her a place on the Council of Women and a vote on the Council of Chefs. The Council of Women also had total responsibility for the treatment of all prisoners and could do with them as they liked, torture them, kill them, make them servants or, if they wish, adopt them into their own families.
Nanye-hi married a second time, and, as was acceptable among the Cherokees, she became the wife of a white trader from Ireland by way of South Carolina. He had taken up residence among the friendly tribe. Nanye-hi became Nancy Ward. Nancy had her second child, having one boy by Kingfisher known as Fivekiller. Nancy Wade named her second child - a girl - Catherine.
She took a strong position on the Council of Women and became widely respected as a worker for Peace. She participated in several treaty conferences and worked tirelessly attempting to bring about new undestanding between the Cherokees and white settlers. On at least two occcasions she sent warnings to whites that their settlements were to be raided by dissident troublemakers. She felt such surpise attacks might destroy what good relationships existed between the Cherokee people and the whites Nancy Ward was to face disappointment in much of her later lfie...both personal and with the affairs of her nation. She witnessed broken treaties and probably foresaw something akin to the Trail of Tears disaster which was to be inflicted on her people after her death. She saw her home village of Chota burned and she had to move further down to Ocoee River. She died in l822 and was buried near Benton, Tennessee.
To the last she continued to work to bring about peace. She remained true to her famed Uncle's ideals. One example of personal tragedy:. Her husband, Bryant had not told her he had a wife and daughter in Ireland, and when they turned up without warning Nancy's life changed abruptly. She divorced Bryant Wade by Cherokee law. To divorce a husband all a Cherokee wife had to do was to gather his belongings and place them outside their dwelling. She did so promptly. And yet, typical of her peaceful way, it is said she and the earlier Mrs. Wade remained friends and actually visited each other in the years that followed.
A fine example of peacefullness with principles held intact.
Nancy Ward. "Beloved woman.”
A.L.M. December 3, 2002 [c662wd]
Sunday, December 01, 2002
COMPASSION
Is genuine compassion to be found anywhere in this world today?
As I look about me I find the events now in progress bring about some sharp changes in attitudes concerning others. I examine my personal life and find I have less tolerance for view held and expressed by certain individuals and groups than I did in more settled times in my life. We are living in unusual times right now - all of us - not just the people of the United States – and usual attitudes become warped to meet urgent situations.
Obviously many of us feel differently about a great many things since September 11 of the past year. It is right that we should set out with a determination to bring about changes which would eliminate the evils we see in the acts of others which hurt us or our friends.
Compassion in whatever form it might manifest itself - benevolence, charity, clemency, commiseration, empathy, grace humaneness – still abound in much that we think and do, but we have to learn to look for such opportunities in different places.
Compassion might well be seen as not being a part of our war on Terrorism, for instance, but more of it is there than we might think. The agony of leadership in such times is a terrible burden to place upon one man and I think it wise that we tend to divide such responsibilities. In wartime some standards are, for the moment, set aside to assure they have a future.
Our thoughts turn, naturally, to religious and medical groups when we think of compassion. One views the recent development of more business-like, more efficient, forms of medical services with suspicion but I know of physicians who, regardless of the form of governing control under which they must work today, continue to show compassion and special consideration for those in their care. There are still doctors and nurses, as well as Technicians and pharmacists and others, who stand ready to “go the second mile” with their patients. I can testify to that in a very personal sense. I owe by very life today to a skilled surgeons, doctors, medical personnl of all levels and, yes, a helicopter crew all of whom did their job with special attention to my urgent need.
Compassion lives. It abides in the person of that surgeon and her capable team. The initial touch of her small hands, the soft encourage in her voice assured me I was in the presence of a compassionate, caring person. We see only small portions of the compassion expressed in so many personal ways by individuls. That is where compassion, commiseration and other such qualities are best nurtured and wherein the best grow. Within the composite view of groups and nations they will be less obvious. Charity may well be there, but it is subservient to demand of the present and preservation of the body politic. It, at its finest, is to be sought at the personal, individual level.
We can see only a small portion of the good that is being accomplished around the world. God's purpose, whatever it might be, is being worked out steadily and with unremitting zeal. Just because we cannot see it being done in terms we understand, does not mean it has been stopped.
A.L.M. November 30, 2002 [c558wds]
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