I remember looking at my dad and thinking how strong he was. In the summers, he smelled like sweat, work, sawdust and paint.



So many years later in a geriatric chair and in his loneliness, I remembered him the same.

Near the end of his life, after several debilitating strokes, I had brought him home from the VA hospital for an afternoon. It was raining that day and the front yard was mushy. After our visit, I pushed him in his wheelchair across the yard and out to the car when one of the front wheels of the chair dove into the soggy ground. Down he went and I fell over and into the mud with him. For a moment, I thought he might have been injured and was worried. We paused there for a few seconds and said nothing.

We then we started to laugh in our wet muddy mess. I was so happy that he was able to enjoy something and I couldn't have loved him more at that moment. This was our best last day together.



This was the last painting he ever created. Even with all those unfinished strokes and odd colors that had changed him and his expressions substantially, he was still mountain strong to me.

When small, we are launched into a life where we may not be left with any obvious lands or grooves to depict just how we were guided. For all anyone knows, we may have randomly tumbled as cabbage butterflies might...



Pale green-white pair tumble and roll along lazy grasses -- together in a field.
Not boldly colorful or friend to the gardener
around in a field at the feet -- darting lovers as an intimate dance in a more precious summer.

We all have a story:

It is amazing how the pattern of a scent can be so complex and yet so precise.

I imagine holding my yellow oilskin rain slicker (somewhat like the Gorton's Fisherman's apparel) and remember its smell most of all. With that, I am in a steady warm downpour waiting for my sisters and dad to come home from school. The coat has a stoplight pattern safety theme print on the inside of the coat. Near the curb, I am stomping and humming to myself and I like the way it sounds as the rain patters on the detached beaked hood. I am wearing a pair of oversized black rubber boots - the kind with slotted steel buckles that jostle with a very characteristic metallic sound.

Now many raincoats are vinyl which really doesn't remind me of rainwear - rather I think of swimming pools, beach balls, and those guaranteed-flat-by-morning air-mattresses.

* * *

I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the run-away sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

"You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

~ From: "Leaves of Grass", Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

I just purchased the entire Ken Burns' Civil War series and watched the first episode today. It's been years since I first saw this series but, in my opinion, it is one of the finest produced documentaries ever made.

Sometimes my mind wanders and wonders - at how awful people can be, especially at how one human can treat another person. Sometimes, it happens during war - even though we do share the same flesh and spirit - we are able to torture, mame and kill - and even, at times, under the blessing of righteousness and justice. I know I am an inexorable part of this history but I still feel embarrassed by it.

In contrast, I think as many horrible acts that can be imagined, there are incidents and times born of better human character that make me feel proud. The writer Walt Whitman, didn't hold a rifle during the American Civil War but I think in his own way, he battled. Some folks might question his motivation - whether his political fervor or sexual interests bolstered him, but regardless of any such notions or declamations, he spent many precious hours with wounded soldiers from the war. Often he would read poetry or prose to them, share trifles such a tobacco or candy or simply spend time listening. He saw many men suffer greatly and saw many men die. But in my mind... I think he also loved greatly.



"In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, Co. K, Seventh Maine -- sick with dysentery and typhoid fever -- pretty critical, too -- I talk with him often -- he thinks he will die -- looks like it indeed. I write a letter for him home to East Livermore, Maine -- I let him talk to me a little, but not much, advise him to keep very quiet -- do most of the talking myself -- stay quite a while with him, as he holds to my hand -- talk to him in a cheering, but slow, low, and measured manner -- talk about his furlough, and going home as soon as he is able to travel."

* * *
A more than worthy excerpt:

Watch on YouTube

Most of the deaths I encountered in the ten years that I volunteered in the Sewickley Hospital emergency room in Pittsburgh were due to heart disease.

In one moment, a man my age was routinely taking out the garbage at home and in the next all there is for the family to see was the stub of an intubation tube in the mouth of a lifeless body.

If there is one thing I could say to folks, is to please do not wait until someone like me leads your grieving partner and family into a silent treatment room. It's really hard and really really sad. I promise. So please make yourself a promise -- to eat better food, and to start to make exercise and healthy living more of a regular part of your life.



* * *

The scent of cinders, slag and creosote -
balancing from rail to rail, signal flares and
the green glass of telephone pole insulators

* * *




I always dreamed of making a small rail riding car that would be powered by a lawnmower engine. It wouldn't have been elaborate -- simply a platform with a crude set of controls. Even today, I imagine how it would be made and more importantly, you beside me on the seat. When I see a railroad company pickup truck that has been retrofitted with rail wheels, I get excited. I guess my soul is dazzled by trains and you but I don't really understand much of the reasoning for it.

I may never make the rail riding car, but that's really not so important.

For all of our armchair quarterbacking and posturing, the greatest good may actually come from getting our hands dirty.

Mother Teresa made a significant impact to the entire world -- greater than most might ever imagine, but it wasn’t because she posted the coolest memes which suited her ideology or conversely finding ones that condemned another’s. Instead she founded the Missionaries of Charity which gave “wholehearted service to the poorest of the poor” Of course, one could argue against several of her individual principles, but endemically as humans we will always have differing philosophies and fortunately just as deserving of love.
So if you want to see change in the world, live your life as a demonstration of what is right in you. Someone may actually take note of it, be correspondingly inspired and find a desirable change in themselves because of it.

Help a neighbor shovel a walk, or take someone who can’t drive to the grocery store, mow someone’s grass, collect gifts for needy, tend to the sick, donate clothes, sponsor an AA meeting, edit a résumé, volunteer with kids or old folks, help someone sort out mathematics, their taxes or retirement planning, put in a light switch or an electrical outlet, or even teach someone to paint.

One of our greatest gifts is that we ALL have special talents to share and by investing a small amount of time doing these things each week, your personal rate of return, on any discounted basis, will be positive.

And you may get peed on by handling a toad, but you won’t get warts from it.

* * *


"Quand tu veux construire un bateau, ne commence pas par rassembler du bois, couper des planches et distribuer du travail, mais réveille au sein des hommes le désir de la mer grande et large."

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

with the Stick-Shaker rattling like a tin-can full of marbles:



It's okay to be afraid when scary things happen. Being brave is a whole different matter - it's like those moments when your heart flutters before and during a difficult climb. You keep the engine throttled-up because you know, in spite of your fear, an aerodynamic stall would be catastrophic

Since 1st class postage stamps are now 73 cents and postcard stamps are now 56 cents, it's a great deal if you buy a stamp from me. The hard part was finding those little cardboard sanitary folders (for your protection).

Who knew there could be so much feeling in such an incredibly soft spot - just behind and below each ear?
Anyone who reads this surely may place two fingers from each hand there, yet not even begin to imagine.