Shades of Johnny Horton

Greetings earthlings.  Are you keeping your stick on the ice? Are you walking on sunshine?  Feeling the Moonshine?  Hello lamppost.  Smell the roses.  Stop!  and smell the roses.  Third star on the right.   Sometimes I want to vent and rant because we people are so divided.  Why can't everyone just see things the way I do?  No matter what I do ..or don't do.....  I am hurting someone somewhere.   You can't be on the "right" side of everything.  That's what religion has tried to set up for thousands of years.  It don't work.   I think of myself as a "good guy".  I don't cheat on my taxes.   I don't cheat on my wife.  I believe in kindness and tolerance .. and the golden rule.  Yet in some cases I am a "bad guy".  Lloyd you don't believe in God?   Correct.   Ok Lloyd,  you don't believe in religion, but everybody believes in God!   No I don't.  But Lloyd do you believe in something bigger than yourself?   Yes.  Very much.   Let me think of an illustration :   Ok.  I pick guitar a bit.  Just a three chord strummer.  Always acoustic,  always steel six string.  I'm having trouble getting to my point.      You plug in a Fender Telecaster, tune it,  and hand it to me.  I'm gonna smile and feel the now,  and I'm gonna play an A chord.  Not up the neck.  Ballad style.  A second fret, one finger, master bar,  A.     I will play and sing one of two songs:  "From a Jack to a King"  or  "The Battle of New Orleans".           "In 1814 we took a little trip.  Along with Col. Jackson down the mighty Mississip.  We took a little bacon and we took a little beans and we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans."            The song is about Andrew Jackson and a battle that took place at New Orleans. Col. then General
Jackson had defeated the British and the war was already over for two weeks!  I still haven't made my point.  I've been singing the song for 59 years.  Jackson became the seventh president of the U.S.          When I was 11 years old I used to get Jackson-  "old hickory" confused with  Col. Francis Marion- "the swamp fox"   of the  earlier Revolutionary War.  Another song:  "Swamp fox,  swamp fox, tail on    his hat.  Nobody knows where the swamp fox at!  Swamp fox, swamp fox ridin' through the glen.  He runs away to fight again!"   A Disney series I think.  Still I can't get to the point.

Andrew Jackson later in his career when he was in fact President was responsible for the infamous and barbarically cruel relocation of the Cherokee Tribe from their legal homeland. A 1000 mile death march of men women and children.  4000 Native Americans died.   Growing up I never knew about this.  Sheltered life.  Or poor student.  Or both.  In 1973 with the Wounded Knee uprising and Indian affairs resolutions I became aware of what President Jackson had done in 1838.  And the last Indian Wars battle was in 1890.  Somehow I didn't connect it to "Old Hickory" where they ran thru the briars and they ran thru the brambles!  So now the protesters want to take down the statue in D.C. of  "Ole Hickory".   My hero from 11 years old until I was about 20 on the green pastures of the University of Maryland.  I'm sorry but my old hero Andrew Jackson is a bad guy.   And  many of our Founding Fathers owned slaves including Patrick Henry and George Washington.  In their case I will just say that for blacks those were bad times and to blacks they were bad men.   No men are perfect.  No political system is perfect for all.  Still have yet to make my point.  So for 400 years in North America,  Blacks and Native Americans have suffered severely at the hands of the whites. And it still goes on.  Ok here's my point and you've heard it before.   I love America from sea to shining sea.  I love the flag.  The Constitution.  Thine alabaster cities gleaming.  The lady of the harbor welcoming the tired and poor longing to be free.  The star spangled banner in Triumph Shall Wave.  O're the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.   America is not great.  Never has been! She's a noble experiment.  The Fathers knew that!  We all know that! That doesn't mean she can't be great!  She's only as rich as the poorest of the poor!  Only as free as an iron prison door!  Only as strong as our love for fellow man!  Only as tall as we stand!  Stand beside her and guide her!  Beauty that words cannot recall!  Her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom!  Glory shall rest on us all!  On us All!                       Thanks readers.. I love you..        LLITTY        :::::+:::::

Common Sense

greetings friends... hope you are well.    We've gone about 9 days here without rain... but it's raining now as we speak.  I want to talk about our country.  But it's hard because I've had to stop watching tv  due to stress.  Stress can raise blood glucose levels and make me sick.  But I don't have to read my BG meter to see that the news of the day,  or the "crisis de jour",  makes me sick.  To get rid of the feeling of the world falling apart,  I work on projects,  play a little guitar,  (actually my guitar is normal sized) maybe watch a Hallmark movie or read.  The media did show marchers saying "give me liberty or give me death"  and I told wife it was Thomas Paine that said that.  But I looked it up and it was Patrick Henry.  Both active Patriots in the American Revolution.  I read Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet from the era.  It was excellent.  The pamphlet was called "Common Sense" and I had read it in Jr. High.  Paine pushed back real hard on the Monarchy that was oppressing the colonists.  He talked about different forms of government.  And their various flaws.  Just like we all do today.  Paine  summed up all of my feelings about our country's problems with leadership, covid19, racial  strife,  economic inequality, and police brutality.  What I'm feeling is the same as many in our country.  He summed it up for me from 250 years ago.  In three words!   "I detest cruelty".                

In the course of my reading last night I wound up googling up the events and incidents that took place from 1770 to 1776 in the colonies.  There was the "stamp act".   There was the "Boston Massacre".   The Boston Tea Party,  etc.   But a year before the tea party there was the Gaspee incident  in Rhode Island.  A cool story about a sleek British Navy schooner that was chasing a patriot colonist vessel accused of defying revenue laws.  The British ship "Gaspee" ran aground on a sand bar in Narraganset Bay.  Some Patriots met and organized in a Tavern and before dawn when the tide would have set Gaspee free, 10 or 12 longboats went out and colonists boarded and  captured and burned Gaspee to the waterline.  This was about a year before the tea party.  As I read the story last night I noticed the date of the battle:  June 10th 1772.  Looked at the date on my computer screen.  June 10. !

                                                               LLITTY     :::::+:::::

Shenandoah

Hello readers.  May you be happy in the face of these troubled times.  While still being respectful of lives lost or ruined.  And still thankful to be kicking and sometimes smiling.  I decided not long ago that I am insane now.  I don't think I can accept any responsibility.  They say I'm not old.  That 70 is the new 60.  I am mentally and physically and emotionally worn out.  I'm not complaining.  Some part of me is happier than I have ever been before.  I'm plenty thankful every single day.  Usually I'm depressed when I wake up in the early morning.  I think of sad fears for the world.  Of hardships and potential troubles. As the day goes on it's likely I will get better.  I have a simple life and a wonderful wife and son...  so no excuse to be worried.  Might be that all of us should be worried!  Today I woke worrying about a stupid errand I needed to run.  A first world problem of no consequence.  I could not get back to sleep because I was obsessed with getting the errand over and done with.  I was insane.  So I got up tired in a bad mood.  I started getting ready to go into the outside world.  Wallet, keys,
shoes on, sunglasses,  mask! , etc.  Wife is talking to me about plants that have grown ,  a racoon that is hanging out sometimes,  some deer nearby, squirrels, butterflies, etc.  It is in fact a beautiful late spring day...couldn't be better.  I can't or don't see it.  I'm still thinking about my stupid errand.  Have to take back to Lowes a tree pot that wound up in a curbside order from two days ago.  Wife had not ordered the pot...it was filled with small things...plant food, spray cans etc. which were part of our order. So when I took that load home two days ago in my truck hauling a 200 lb. cabinet kit I just put the pot and it's contents into the truck.  Apparently I had "stolen" the tree pot!  Really?  Lowes doesn't know about this.  But wife and I do.  The irony is while I am trying to do the right thing somehow, they are looting stores and burning them all over our country.  So I get the pot into my little white car and wife makes me some coffee and I'm still dismal.  I take my coffee and my Atkins drink and one of my favorite CD's homemade by wife and start up north to Dover.  You may have read my post a month or so ago about Rt. 13.  So now I'm driving north having some coffee and I have to admit that the weather is nice and I so love my little car.  I've got Bobby Darin playing and I start seeing the scenery.  All the big fields to the east on my side of the road have beautiful stands of tiny corn plants that go literally for miles in straight rows.  Little old cottages from older days.  Little mom and pop  car lots with like 8 cars.  Some guy's purple mid sixties GTO.  Modern subdivisions with matching ranchers fill the landscape then disappear.  A huge JD dualie  with folded disk rig taking up the whole highway.  My mood is shifting and this is more like it.  Mid shores on the Delmarva.  Then one of my favorite songs comes on.  It's "Somewhere Tonite"  Paulette Carlson.  I'm bouncing in my seat and singing in the now.  When I get to Lowes I pull into the curbside pickup.  I see an employee.  A young fellow walking by.  I holler "Hey" and he comes over.  I jump out and put on my mask quick.  Pull the tree pot out of the trunk and give it to him and try to explain what happened.  He says you will have to talk to the service desk for a return.  I say I can't return what I never bought.  I said just put it back on the shelf and all will be well and I know you can't take a tip,  but please, and I held out a five and he took it.   Now back south on thirteen and the song "Shenandoah"  I'm smiling and singing and a first world problem is solved.  This post is about nothing.  But I feel good again.  I didn't think I ever would.         LLITTY            :::::+:::::

Chimes of Freedom...Ranting of an old Folkie

Readers...I love you,, miss you.   I've got a few old posts in this blog about songs I've fallen in love with.  And references to other songs that touch our lives.  With Covid19  here to stay for a while,  it seems to me that all things relate to the troubles we're having and are still to have.  The virus is the backdrop of our lives.  There is poetry by Bob Dylan written when he was a 20 year kid that I knew way back then but I was full of hormones and didn't see the imagery from a genius.  It's important for me to talk about the song "Chimes of Freedom" as it speaks to all of us in terms of our pandemic.        But I just have to set myself up personably by mentioning a more mainstream song by Dylan:  "Mr. Tambourine Man."  If you have ever heard that song or the "Chimes" song,  you heard the Byrds who had these songs on the charts.  Both songs are incredible lyrically and can stand alone as poems.  They were both written in 1964.  After "Blowin in the Wind"  by Dylan went on the charts by Peter Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio etal.   "Tambourine Man" was this long busy lyrical esoteric autobio ballad.  Really beautiful.  The Byrds did this bubbly melodic tuney cover.  It had guitar tricks and one chorus then one and only one verse,  then guitar tricks and a final chorus.  Maybe ran 3 minutes which is long for a single.   But Dylans poem of Tambourine had five verses spiced with so much metaphor  you realize every single line of it is metaphor,  and alliteration.  Dylan's howling bitter rendition maybe ran 6 or seven minutes and wasn't going to be on any Billboard 100 chart which was just being invented.  Before that: hits were on...remember the top 40?   In one of the verses Dylan describes himself as he tells the Tambourine man not to pay him any mind and if he hears "vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme,  to his tambourine in time ,  it'll just be him, a ragged clown behind, just chasing a shadow he's seeing down the ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming"      Dylan is a character in his own poem.   And in this other song "Chimes of Freedom"      Dylan again is a character.  Dylan shouts out to the underdogs with pain in his heart.  In the song, he narrates that this  character, and a friend  get caught in a huge thunderstorm.  They duck inside a doorway just in time and watch a spectacle.   My heart rediscovered this song as I was trying to pray and pray for so many people over these few months that seem like years..or minutes?  Dylan saw the "majestic bells of bolts" striking like chimes and the thunder was endless tolling of deep bells.   The bells were tolling for the warriors whose strength is not to fight.  And tolling for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight. And for each and every underdog soldier in the night.  And they gazed upon these Chimes of Freedom flashing.  They tolled for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail.  They tolled for broken hearted lovers with too personal a tale.  They tolled for each unharmful gentle soul misplaced inside a jail.  They tolled for the aching ones whose wounds can not be nursed.  They tolled for the countless misused, accused, abused, strung out ones and worse.  They tolled for every hung up person in the whole wide universe.  And they gazed upon the Chimes of  Freedom flashing.   I want to dedicate this post today, Memorial Day,  to the fallen soldiers as they lie in Arlington, and Flanders Fields,  and in hometown churchyards, and everywhere.  And I dedicate this post to the 100 thousand we have lost to the virus,  and to their families.  And I dedicate this post to all the front liners in hospitals,  clinics, testing labs, virus research labs,  Doctors, Nurses, graduating med students beginning their careers in a trial by fire,  essential employees at fast food, curb restaurant food,  Lowes,  Home Depot,  Tractor Supply,  The Press and journalists guarding our democracy,  the entertainers very young and old raising millions for equipment and other needs for front liners and the homeless.  And I dedicate this post to the Homeless and hungry and those nearing hunger.  I ask that this virus not be political.  We all survive together or we all fail together.  There is only this one human race on the planet.  We are all in the same sinking boat.  We all ride on a ship called earth.  If something happens bad due to abuse of the earth we all will suffer together.  We only have the one earth.  We don't have a spare race car.   People be nice and be kind and be your brothers keeper.  If you want to gather in groups in church be very careful.  Remember one of the most profound verses in the New Testament:  Jesus tells us NOT to be like the Hippocrates and worship where all can see how pious we are.  Jesus says in Matthew 6 v5...."go into your room,  close the door and pray to your father..he knows what you need before you ask him"   Then Christ says....          "This,then is how you pray":   Our Father who art in heaven...…..etc.   In this same verse he teaches the Lord's prayer!   If you want to stay safe sheltering at home,  it's not just OK.     Jesus recommends it!    This is the longest post ever.  Is this what eternity looks like?      LLITTU     :::::+:::::

Shed Some Light

Hey folks.  I hope you are all staying safe and healthy.  If you can't I am praying for you. Almost every morning I awake with troubles on my mind.  My fault.  My mind.  The troubles are outside of    me.  And should not be able to make me afraid or sad or anxious.  I'm workin' on that.  Now that the US "economy"  is "opening up"  I may be against the grain a bit.  My wife and I have been staying home.  Even before the pandemic I was staying at home mostly.  Just being asocial because I could.         "Hey Lloyd,  why do you have long hair?   "Because I can".    Hey Lloyd,  you own an airplane,     wouldn't you just like to take a nice ride in it?     "Not particularly".   " Hey Lloyd,   Aren't you dying to go to fly ins and car shows and auctions?"   "No.  I'm busy not dying."                                      Our state is still in a form of lock down stay home.  But Lowes has been open the whole time.  Home Depot too.  The fixer up sweat equity industry is thriving.   We have a little shed/stable in our back yard.  Also a 30X40 barn/shop.  In a 65mph gust a few weeks ago, half of the shingles blew off the little sheds roof with the tar paper still holding them together.  It's a little Amish built shed that had a warranty.  So my wife calls the dealership in Harrington who sold us the shed and sent pictures of the wind event.  The dealer called the Amish manufacture and two days later these 2 Amish guys from Lancaster, PA.  show up.  They have a compressor/ generator,  shingle bundles, a small dumpster,  air hammers, etc.  They were there 90 minutes with a perfect match on the shingles and loaded up the old shingles.  My wife gathered up all the cash we could muster and went out to send the guys off north.  She asked what we owed them,  they said nothing at all per warranty.  They smiled when she gave them a little roll of bills and said at least we'll get your dinner.  Maybe we should get the Amish folks in Lancaster to handle our federal supply chain for the pandemic!                                                                                                                                                                                         Talk to you soon.      LLITTY                                                        

April, Come she has

Hello readers.  I hope you are safe.  To all of you on the front lines:  thank you.  You are brave and kind. Literally risking your lives every exhausting day. I am praying for you all the time.  I can't seem to think about anything except the pandemic.    To prevent myself from melting down into panic and despair I have to turn my ever thinking mind off.  The way to do it is:  stop time,  be present in the moment.  The now.  Be your dog.  Some folks escape their tormenting mind with alcohol.  It works for a while.  Then you sober up and get sadder than before.  Same with other drugs.  Except for a few that can show you the Now, and once you can find the presence,  you won't need the drug anymore.  My wife and I,  like everyone else,  have nothing but free time sheltering at home.  That's why I can write here,  which I haven't done much of for four years.  The grass is growing here now.   I've got my JD zero turn out and pumped up.  I used to like mowing because it gave me time to think.  I would go back and forth on brain autopilot planning the future,  worrying.    Dwelling on the past,  trying to spin it.  Now when I mow I am "present" on the job.  With every pass,  every turn,  every height adjustment.  I am conscious of my inner body sitting on the machine.  I am conscious of the grass clippings.  The smell of the grass.  The smell of the neighbor's fertilizer,  my wife's voice calling the dogs.  I used to hustle as sunset approached because I wanted to finish up on "time".  This is an example of how the pandemic and my study of the "presence process" seem to converge in my life.  I love to mow.  I missed a lot of the mowing in my life because I wasn't "there". Flying is different.  For another post.  I noticed that some of the ballads I like to sing seem to refer to the Now.  I never noticed that.  Jim Croce had a cool line in a song called "Hey Tomorrow".  He said:  "Hey tomorrow...   I'm through wastin' what's left of me."   Dylan had a song I used to sing "Chimes of Freedom"  the Byrds smoothed it out and made it listenable,  a tad bubblegummy.  Just like they did with Dylan's  "Mr. Tambourine Man".  In the last phrases of Chimes of Freedom is the line:  "Starry eyed and laughing,  I recall when we were caught ….  could find no track of hours for they hang suspended.  We listened one last time and we watched with one last look...Spellbound and swallowed till the tolling ended."  The narrator is describing some kids in the Now.   My friends I love you.  Be safe.  It's 5:30.  I shall go mow a bit and watch the sunset.      LLITTY      :::::+:::::

Stream of Consciousness

A blog post from Lloyd after months of nada.  Here comes more nada. Who knows, maybe a tidbit of something coherent.  I feel lucky.  That's a weird thing to say considering we are just at the beginning, on Sunday March, 29, 2020, of this pandemic.  I feel thankful.  I am thankful for the dedication of our health professionals.  I am concerned, frightened and saddened about them as their PPE safety equipment is either in extremely short supply or non-existent.  There is a lot of tragedy to go around. There is a lot of heroic sacrifice and bravery too.  I'm grateful to be on the sideline and not in the arena.  But I have a question. Since I was already burned out over the last six years with some tough changes.  And I had worked on ways of forgetting the past and realizing I couldn't predict the future.  And sometimes I can successfully stop time and it's trappings and just "be".  Turning off one's mind is no easy task.  But I've had some good teachers, and it's not rocket science.  Takes practice.  OK here's my question.  In the face of the crisis,  when my only job is "shelter at home".  Should I feel guilty because I can unplug it all, and not just be free of despair,  but actually be happy in the moment. Two out of three mentors couldn't handle the question much better than I could.  I did get the answer from a Sioux Indian's book.  Written by Billy Mills.  A guy who won the 10,000 meter run in the Olympics in Japan in 1964.  Never been won by an American before,  and never won by an American since.  His story and his teachings made me cry.  After my cancer treatments I used to cry a lot.  Usually it was when I was talking about a friend or family member and describing their strength, wisdom and kindness.  But back about a year ago,  the crying slowed down and stopped.  Now with the pandemic it has come back again.  When I think of, or talk about the health professionals,  some who are friends and family.  I'm glad the crying is back.  I know it means I'm a bit mental,  but I don't care.   Readers.. I love you.  Please be safe.   Now I shall read a book about "showing up"  in one's own life! With my wife's cat.  She's a portal to the "Now".        LLITTY           :::::+:::::