OWNERSHIP Does the physical acquisition and a condition of holding materials constitute wealth?
We use the term: “Losers, weepers; “finders keepers.” We speak of “gathering in the sheaves”,”bringing home the bacon”, and other such folksy-sounding maxims which suggest that “possession is”, indeed, about “nine-tenths” of ownership.
Certainly many people think that to be true. Some seem to think the world, indeed, owes them such a living and they purposely learn acquire possessions and call such items wealth. We all know persons we consider to be greedy in that they would assume, naturally, that every shoulder and berm on every highway provided road-kill items just for them. Some item are not worth keeping. There is a vast difference between “aroma” and “odor”, between ”smell” and “stink as any able-beaked buzzard could tell you.
Human collectors can become that sort of person. They show sure sign of doing so when they start to haunt yard sales, garage, patio, driveway and just sale-sales to buy all sort of items strewn along the leftover berm of some wreaked households. They agree that “all that glitters is not gold “contending it may be “silver”, instead. They buy anything and everything which can be fitted into their attic or basement ”Plunder Room”.
In recent months we have witnessed countless wildfires raging through thousands of acres of forests and grasslands. Many homes are lost in such senseless fire each year yet people still think of such forested areas as personal property. They claim ownership or vast panoramas of Nature's finest but do not accept the duties of proper care. The can prove ownership of vast areas by showing pieces of paper authentically inscribed signatures applied but they cannot tell you what the term “back to wilderness” mean today in regard to forrest fire presence. Such wealth can be lost in a few hours. Owning a forest and allowing it to go back into a wilderness state can prove to be a tragic loss. The prying winds, such as the Santa Anna, can sift and stir and dry the of mated leaves, twigs, branches, fallen trees and dying one – all of the accumulation a resplendent forest can build. Low growth must thrive as well, as pasture for small, then larger creatures. The combination is required, not just endless tree-after-tree-after-tree.
Possession is but a way station in life. Only in their proper use do they become wealth.
A.L.M. November 26, 2005 [c418wds]
CARNEY CAPERS You, perhaps, recall quite well the carnival capers attitudewhich loomed so large during the hectic days of the Iowa Primary caucus gathering. Then, New Hampshire came along as a kind of let-down for some. It was much tamer. Many seemed to feel relieved, I think, glad that the carnival aspects had been eliminated.
It was soothing to once again see politicians engaged in flipping hotcakes above a griddle or rearranging hot dogs and hamburgers on a smoky grill. Too many Americans seem to expect their candidates to be become in such active and to take part in local problems and concerns, but the average performance rating of most political aspirants is on the low side.
The semi-historical “laugh” given by Vermont's Governor was memorable moment of this phase. It was cry, to me rather than the laugh TV imitators have made seem to have been. It was ,in my opinion more a cry for help than a laugh of any kind. It was a call for assistance from a man on the edge of a threatening abyss. It was not like one of TV's so-called “reality” shows. It was not faked in its original form. The trapped man was speaking to the entire nation, not to just one faction or a narrow part of that in fact. It was the cumulative result of a series of judgments made by one man which showed us just how far that man could be pushed...either by himself or by others. The hysterically uttered series of numbers and days which followed it were even more hysterical in sound and this tone dragged him back to a saner level.
We should exercise special care in choosing our future leaders that we do not cause them to realize that there is very little one man can do to change our set ways of living.
Modify? Yes. Change? No.
A.L.M. November 19 , 2005 [c326wds]
THEM RICH FOLKS!Time was, and tain’t been too long ago either, when I was, I will admit, downright envious of all that rich people had and the way some of them flaunted their wealth in front of us. Goin’ wide-open honest, for the moment, I’d have to say it was more like being jealous. It was something more than just having an occasional pang of envy...deeper...and it could hit heavy when I witnessed a display of wealth.
Looking back a those pre-teen and teenager days I realize it only happened occasionally usually in early Spring and again in the first days of the first says of early Spring or just before the Fall arrived.
At two set times of the year a change took, place in the railroad town in which I grew up. We had seventeen trains per day at our two railroad stations which were on the north-south rail axis. In the Fall the wealthy owners of private railway cars passed through on their way to Florida; in the Spring they went north.They were fabulous creations and seemed they grew larger and more ornate as the years went by. It was the custom of wealthy people chug south for winter and eagerly back to the north in summer.
We boys had a favorite place for obsevation of said private train cars. In those days the Railway Express had four or five, twenty-foot carts on the ramp The woodenc deck on the carts was good four feet off the platform and the carts were used to drag up to fill the expanse of the rather higb,open doors of the express cars to unload or stow shipment aboard. Those carts were our special observation platforms well above obstructions putting our questing eyes more on a level. Our town of Radford, Va. had a complicated switching system at the eastern end of the extensive yards which made to necessary for many trains to be, liteally,”backed up” or pushed into the to allow other trains to use certain tracks. The delays worked to in our advantges in examining the visiting cars.We were often overcome by the elaborate designs. The owners had their name emblazoned on the sided of the cars and they were really museum pieces.
They are all gone today. I suppose they are actually in some museums. Or, more likely, stripped an discarded hulks in landfills everywhere...discarded toys.
A.L.M. November 22, 2005 [c443wds]
