Category Archives: Writing

Mid-Winter Cold Preparation: Free-Verse Thoughts

At nearly noon,
it felt like early morning.
Or perhaps late afternoon,
so dark and gloomy were the skies.

The wind and temperature
didn’t help much,
cutting through my jeans and sweatshirt
as if to say: “Your warmth serves no purpose here.”

Yet in spite of its mocking
I laughed, and sat down.
Cold? It’s above freezing
in late December, Northwest Georgia.

I’ve laid down and made snow angels
in sub-zero now-that-is-REALLY-cold cold.
I’ve sat on cross-country skis and eaten lunch at +1 degree
on a sun-swept Utah mountain peak.

THIS is not cold. It’s hardly even uncomfortable.
Yet I do not linger long in the woods this day.
Micro-garbage plastic, blown by the stiff breeze,
dances past my feet.

It reminds me: I must clean
and prepare,
and sanctify,
and make this property ready
for that time when warmth, love, and Light
shall banish and sweep away
all this grey cold
and darkness.

The Morning Before Peace

Our hand-cut cedar tree, decorated,
glows green, gold, and red
with lights, globes, and ribbons
(not, as some might say, toilet paper).



The early-morning sun shines,
gold and red,
through the gently-frosted kitchen window.
Its light matches the tree’s glow.

In this peaceful morning before,
cup of hot chocolate warming my hand,
I sit and listen to Crooners Christmas Classics.
No one is up yet. This is my time before chaos.

Yet tonight, Mr. Como reminds me, is Oh Holy Night.
When I think of Him, the Son and Light, I’m always at peace.

Outdoor Musings Like Thoreau: ConTEXTing Prose

December 17th 2024 3:30 p.m. Banks of the West Chickamauga, Spirit Tree Farms, NW Georgia
How much did Thoreau write? Did he take his pencil and paper out with him when he sat by the pond? Did he draw? Scratch a few notes and then expand them later on by the fireplace?

It had been my objective to keep a copious record ever since I came here in 2017 (or was it 18?) To take daily notes, to see what I’ve observed and write about them. But those objectives now seem to have floated past like the dead leaves swirling in the high-rising water of the creek after rain.

I can sit here and drone on and on, as I watched the currents bubbling and surging, as I hear the water splashing against the fallen tree downstream and wonder if negative ions are more powerful upstream or downstream? Or does it matter? I can look at the singular white sapling’s reflection in the creek, steady and constant as everything else flows by. I can wonder why this creek, now at least 15 ft deep and 50 ft wide, is called a creek when so many rivers out west are so much smaller?

I listen to the gurgle of my stomach and wonder what I ate that made me so gassy and bloated and if I have diarrhea, then why isn’t my condition diuretic?

I don’t realize how still it is here until a jet from an airport 20 miles away flies overhead on its way to Dallas or Birmingham or Orlando or Atlanta. But soon the roar of its engines fade and then I’m left to listen to the squawking of the woodpeckers and the chirping of the wrens and the cardinals.

A beer can catches my attention. Three-fourths submerged, it flows slower than the rest of the flotsam and jetsam and spins in Long slow circles as if captured in its own dance, its own rhythm. For a moment, I forget that it’s trash, and it becomes some sort of found art object. Then, as it fades downstream into the distance, I notice that it’s slowly sinking and soon will be out of sight not only to me, but to everybody else, until the next drought and covers it embedded on the creek bank somewhere farther down.

Outoor Writers Bathroom Breaks

I have to go to the bathroom. Did Thoreau or Longfellow or Whitman or Muir ever write about such problems or concerns? Or did they simply drop trou in the woods and let fly. I wonder if they ever worried about getting any on their pants, or were they so adept at positioning themselves that it always went where it should and never where it shouldn’t (or is that shitant?

I wish I could relieve myself, but the corn husks and corn cobs and oak leaves are all wet and brittle. S***. Literally. This is uncomfortable.

I make it about 50 yards. The red Harbor Freight bucket beckons, and although I discover too late it is perilously close to a wild blackberry stick, and its edges will probably put permanent creases in my buttocks and thighs, the cool plastic provides unexpected yet welcome relief.

Again the question comes up: What am I eating that is so stomach sickening? Or was it the drink I took out of the puddled rainwater when maybe a deer or raccoon or Beaver or possum had previously stuck their head? Or the chunk of rainwater ice I sucked on? Or was it the cheese? Certainly not… the salmon mousse. 

The other question arises: How long can I sit here with this hard plastic pressing into my flesh? And is it possible, because there was already 6 in of rainwater in the bottom of the bucket, to fill up the pail? It certainly feels like it could.

While I’m sitting here and doing something that rhymes with sitting, I look around at the pawpaw saplings that I have carefully placed six to eight feet apart in a row next to the shadows edge where, in three to five years they could be six to eight feet tall and producing wild pawpaw. Or will this just be another failed attempt of mine to force a man’s ideas nature instead of just letting it go? But I want more pawpaw, and more blueberries, and more beauty berries and more wildflowers. And when things to grow and flourish. I want to heal the land.

I think my neighbors are coming out to their hunting blind. I will soon see them if they are. 

Crap.

Family Tree Limerick

As we research, travel, and see

Our far-flung family pedigree,

It’s not just through random chances

That we get to add more branches

To our growing family tree.

AncestryFamilySearch

Why I Voted For Trump: Past Sins Versus Current Evil

In the immediate 2024 Election aftermath, many critics, liberals, and media members asked me (and over half the country) why I voted for Trump for President. The uproar — despite Trump’s overwhelming victory and the liberals resounding defeat — has not slowed down. In fact, it seems like the media and those who didn’t vote for Trump are doubling down.

Is Trump Evil? Am I then also evil?

Almost every day (when I choose to read or watch anything), I’ll see something from a relative, friend, or just the media badmouthing Trump and those who voted for Trump. The narrative usually runs something like: “Those who voted for Trump are either stupid, ignorant, or deliberately choosing to ignore what a terrible person he is, and how he’ll ruin the country.”

Fortunately (according to their narrative), they are the enlightened ones, those who didn’t vote for Trump, whose duty is now to protect and preserve this great Nation. This they will do by standing strongly and firmly against the Bad Orange Man (no matter what he does), by pointing out how hateful, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophonic, warmongering, and stupid he is. It further becomes their duty to convert all those who voted for Trump, that we may see the error of our ways (although years of campaigning against him has not been successful).

If we are not willing to change, to see the error of our ways, then we too must be hateful, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophonic, warmongering, and stupid.

It is in this post-election scenario that I wrote the following, as a response to a relative’s forwarding an anti-Trump post. I did not respond on social media, but I still feel it’s important to let my feelings and logic be known.

If Everything Against Him Is True, I Still Have Compelling Reasons Why I Voted For Trump

“All right. I have tried to listen to what some BYU graduate said about Trump being “a sexual predator and how dare he get into office and nobody cares that we put a sexual predator in the office”, with an open mind. I think if you listen to it [and other anti-Trump commentary] with an open mind too you will see perhaps some of the same problems that I see with it.

Although the presenter does make several very good points, (and I’m certainly willing to think about them), the post’s beginning assumption, which he continues to bang on like a drum throughout the video, is that people who voted for Trump voted to put a serial sexual predator into the White House.

I’m trying here to say okay maybe I’m responding cognitively (or whatever whatever he said) and all the reasons that he said that I would feel the way I felt. (But isn’t it interesting that by using that very argument, he gives people absolutely zero way to feel other than how he’s wants them to feel?) So I’m going to go on the assumption that I do not believe that Donald Trump is a serial sexual predator. I do not believe the proof is there that he is currently that.

I think the same argument could be made for Bill Clinton and in fact Is even more so for Bill Clinton, because evidence shows that he was doing that type of thing in the Oval Office. In contrast, the evidence for Trump doing that has been, what, decades ago? So, for the sake of argument, let’s say Trump was a serial sexual predator. Do people have to be judged by the worst thing they’ve done in their life, for their entire life? There is no changing? There is no repentance?

[Sidenote: When presented with this arguement, most folks will say “Well, Trump never repented. He never said he was sorry. So how are we to know what he did?” Uh, is that our job? We get to go around and look at others and say “You didn’t repent. Or, if you did, you didn’t repent and change in the right way. Therefore, according to me, you are still guilty, and still a bad person.” Do we have that right?

So right off the top I don’t agree with his argument. He makes an assumption (Trump IS a serial rapist), and then builds on what I feel is a flawed assumption. If he would stop pounding on that point, I think he might have a valid arguement.

How Safe Do Folks Who Voted For Trump (Or Didn’t) Feel Now?

The video presenter’s point about why people don’t feel safe with Trump is, I think, valid. Many people (my relatives included) don’t feel safe having a man in the White House who, they are convinced, is a serial rapist.

I’m also certain that there are a lot of people that don’t feel safe with Trump, and not because of Trump’s sexual proclivities. There are people who don’t feel safe because he hobnobs with the presidents of Russia and China and North Korea. There are people who don’t feel safe because he says fracking is okay and “drill baby drill”. There are people who don’t feel safe because of his border policies and because of his announced intent to deport people. There are people who don’t feel safe because of his economic policies. There are people who don’t feel safe because of his environmental stance. There are people who don’t feel safe because of his business dealings. There are people who don’t feel safe for a lot of reasons.

So why this particular moral or amoral stance and fear?

The video presenter then goes on to say that doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person because I voted from Trump, but “we need to do better.” In what way? I can say that I didn’t feel safe with Kamala or the Democrats for a dozen reasons. I didn’t feel safe and I don’t feel safe with many of the standards that the Democrats espouse. I don’t feel safe with the hypocrisy of having a president seduce an intern in the Oval Office and prey on her, and then coming back several years later and saying oh by the way this guy that you elected is a sexual predator even though what evidence there is is primarily hearsay from decades ago. So I think, as in all political discussions, we have to make choices between the lesser of two evils. My inability to feeling safe with Kamala Harris and the Democrats far outweighs my lack of safety with Donald Trump. And that is on every ground: Moral, economic, military, social, emotional, everything.

More importantly, while I recognize that people who have been abused or feel at risk would not feel safe with a sexual predator in the White House, I believe in the people he is surrounding himself with (let’s assume he is a sexual predator). They are going to protect my daughter and my granddaughters and my sons and grandsons from all the things that I’m worried about them experiencing far more than the Democrats have proven during their last several terms that they are.

What I’m Afraid Of And Why I Voted For Trump

What type of things do I worry about, you ask? I am frightened for my grandchildren being constantly bombarded with the being gay is good or that they can mutilate their bodies messages. I worry about my granddaughters having to listen to drag queens in public schools, exposing them at a young age to a life style I do not think is appropriate. I am fearful my children will have their parenting rights taken away from them, just because they don’t agree with society or the Teacher’s Union.

I worry about my daughters and granddaughters and sons and grandsons facing nuclear war. [Update: Many are worried Trump will start World War 3, nuclear war, and end us all. Reality: Biden/Harris just gave the Ukraine permission to use medium-range guided missles to strike Russian within her borders. Problem? The missles guidance depends on either the USA or NATO-enabled satellite systems. If Russia gave Cuba missles, then provided the satellite guidance to strike at Miami, Atlanta, Houston, and Disney World, we would consider that an act of war.]

Biden/Harris did that very thing last week, after they lost the election.

I worry about my children and grandchildren facing economic destruction. I worry and I’m scared for the potential downfall of our constitutional republic. I worry about a continuing open-border policy that allows criminals to freely come in, be housed on the taxpayers’ dollar, flown to a place where “they can be safe”, and then proceed to kill young women jogging. (This happened less than 10 miles away from where my niece and nephew are raising their children on the other side of Georgia.) I worry about the government putting so many restrictions on our property at Spirit Tree Farms that we can’t use to benefit Nature and the environment the way that we would like.

These and other factors that I’m afraid of far outweigh, sorry to say, the worry that YOU and others like you are going to be directly and adversely impacted by having Trump in the White House.

In a nutshell, the reason I voted for Trump is this: Even IF all the claims against him are true, the things I fear the most are the policies and practices of the Democrats. The potential results of his character flaws, even if they are as bad as the Democrats and the majority media claim, are nowhere near as bad as the potential, promised, and proven results that the Democrats have brought, are bringing, and would bring.

The people have spoken. We have four years to watch the results.