Dear Friends:
The Magnifying Glass
I sat in my office at home, entrapped by myriad means of communication begging use, and there lay a magnifying glass, another crutch in the pursuit of longevity. You can tell a lot about a person who has a magnifying glass.
Mine is a very nice one, a gift, high-powered enough to disc em the millions of tiny grids that comprise a computer screen - miniature worlds within a world. It enables the eye to look closely at a lot of things, like the tiny words in credit card disclosures that say Gotcha>." I even looked at parts of my skin - don't recommend that you do that - depression descended. Apart from decoration and as a practical aid in reading, a magnifying glass no longer holds the creative and adaptive uses made of it in childhood.
You remember those tiny plastic magnifying glasses that used to come in the boxes of Cracker Jacks, don't you? Small, low-powered plastic ones -- pretty harmless except in the hands of pre-adolescent boys. Not like the nice magnifying glass I now have, antler-handled, a sacrifice of great loss of some deer or elk; no, the small Cracker Jack magnifying glasses we had were perfect for use on sunny days ..... starting small leaf fires, burning holes in your friend's homework paper when he wasn't looking, burning holes in his good shirt also. When held to the neck of an unsuspecting friend, it'd bum a nice blister on the skin before you got smacked, but it produced a lot of laughs to those in on the joke. Once I even wrote my name by round bum marks on a paper. And No, it never occurred to us to use these incendiary devices as a chemistry experiment with gasoline. Harmless pranks by bored little boys. Oh, the longing for the return of such days!
But alas, magnifying glasses have become practical tools of enablement, all the fun of creative use now just a memory. My magnifying glass lies next to my Bible to offer assistance in reading some of the small print. It occurred to me that this Book has some magnifying-glass components as well, and among other things it is able to discern and to bum through a lot of exterior things too - things like pride and pretense, for example. I'm real careful when I use this Book!
Well, like I said, you can tell a lot about a person who has a magnifying glass.
Bud
1/20/2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Recycled Leopard
The Recycled Leopard
Dear Friends:
At the top of my office stairs, 20 steps up, there looking down on my arrival each day, is a recycled mass of materials sculptured in the form of a leopard hanging on the wall. Through cold blue marble eyes it watches my every move as I approach it, coming and going. It is the exquisite and fearful work of a friend, Calvin Walton, an "outside" artist from Stone Mountain, GA, who has a creative eye for making beautiful animal sculptures from the detritus and cast-offs of the world. Its tail is a piece of rope, its body a combination of cardboard and plywood, its legs bamboo stalks, its face fashioned from a molded and heated plastic milk carton and its whiskers wire strands. It is beautifully and brilliantly painted and stands on a hollowed-out branch of an oak tree, hanging silently on the wall surveying its domain of the stairwell.
Though inanimate, its presence always reminds me that when I enter the office I will be faced with challenges, fears, hidden snares, controversy and the multitude of trials and vicissitudes of life that occur to us daily. Now, I can remain downstairs in the comfort of the conference room and not have to be faced with all this, but what would life be without it all? No, I appreciate the daily warnings from my recycled leopard pal and am encouraged to enter the world again.
You know, most of the fears and worries we have in life are baseless, and much has its genesis in the recycled and cast-offs of our past. And most of the things we fear never happen, though they often appear to be fearful leopards at the top of our stairs. It occurs to me that a regular house-cleaning of this detritus would be helpful for us all.
So, I think I will take a lesson from Calvin Walton and see if I can sculpt something beautiful and useful from some of my own recycled parts, and it is my hope that you may wish to do likewise ... and I especially hope that all of your fears and worries, challenges and obstacles are nothing more today than a harmless and beautifully painted recycled leopard at the top of your stairs.
Bud
1/25/2007
Dear Friends:
At the top of my office stairs, 20 steps up, there looking down on my arrival each day, is a recycled mass of materials sculptured in the form of a leopard hanging on the wall. Through cold blue marble eyes it watches my every move as I approach it, coming and going. It is the exquisite and fearful work of a friend, Calvin Walton, an "outside" artist from Stone Mountain, GA, who has a creative eye for making beautiful animal sculptures from the detritus and cast-offs of the world. Its tail is a piece of rope, its body a combination of cardboard and plywood, its legs bamboo stalks, its face fashioned from a molded and heated plastic milk carton and its whiskers wire strands. It is beautifully and brilliantly painted and stands on a hollowed-out branch of an oak tree, hanging silently on the wall surveying its domain of the stairwell.
Though inanimate, its presence always reminds me that when I enter the office I will be faced with challenges, fears, hidden snares, controversy and the multitude of trials and vicissitudes of life that occur to us daily. Now, I can remain downstairs in the comfort of the conference room and not have to be faced with all this, but what would life be without it all? No, I appreciate the daily warnings from my recycled leopard pal and am encouraged to enter the world again.
You know, most of the fears and worries we have in life are baseless, and much has its genesis in the recycled and cast-offs of our past. And most of the things we fear never happen, though they often appear to be fearful leopards at the top of our stairs. It occurs to me that a regular house-cleaning of this detritus would be helpful for us all.
So, I think I will take a lesson from Calvin Walton and see if I can sculpt something beautiful and useful from some of my own recycled parts, and it is my hope that you may wish to do likewise ... and I especially hope that all of your fears and worries, challenges and obstacles are nothing more today than a harmless and beautifully painted recycled leopard at the top of your stairs.
Bud
1/25/2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Home Again
The walk on the beach took me
Home Again ...
Home: "A place where we live permanently (OAD)". Most have one; some don't, yet they seek one. Strange, this magnetic power of a home. Last Saturday was lovely, full of sunshine after days of fog ... a day to leave home and walk the shore. I did, and was refreshed. Funny how a beach walk relaxes the senses, expands the mind to perceive more than the eyes see. The tide had receded leaving behind trapped pools of itself among the rocks. It seemed to stand motionless, but ever so slightly it moved as though it were alive, seeking a means to reunite itself with home. Accelerating as it found its nadir, it allowed gravitational physics a part in the process of reuniting it to its source.
Small rivulets cascaded anxiously to the sea, and if the mind could imagine it, one might have been a giant, overlooking a Canyon Grande where a river cut through the years and miles of monolithic sandstone ... if only one could imagine such. I tried .. Some, though not all, of the water escaped its prison among the rocks, soon to be at home again with the Mother Sea. But some didn't make it on that trip. Mother Nature has no orphans ~~ evaporation and absorption was the way of escape for that homeless water left behind. Yet, all in one way or another got home, just some sooner than later. You see, water, like us, is not satisfied being separated from its home, and is always hastening homeward, one way or another. On Saturday afternoon, the water got home, and so did I ... and better for the experience.
Through the din and duty and details of life
When the day seems empty and filled with strife
The water and we have freedom to roam
But soon we're seeking to find our home.
And just like the water
Returns to the sea,
Our hearts are restless
Till reposed in Thee.
Home Again ...
Home: "A place where we live permanently (OAD)". Most have one; some don't, yet they seek one. Strange, this magnetic power of a home. Last Saturday was lovely, full of sunshine after days of fog ... a day to leave home and walk the shore. I did, and was refreshed. Funny how a beach walk relaxes the senses, expands the mind to perceive more than the eyes see. The tide had receded leaving behind trapped pools of itself among the rocks. It seemed to stand motionless, but ever so slightly it moved as though it were alive, seeking a means to reunite itself with home. Accelerating as it found its nadir, it allowed gravitational physics a part in the process of reuniting it to its source.
Small rivulets cascaded anxiously to the sea, and if the mind could imagine it, one might have been a giant, overlooking a Canyon Grande where a river cut through the years and miles of monolithic sandstone ... if only one could imagine such. I tried .. Some, though not all, of the water escaped its prison among the rocks, soon to be at home again with the Mother Sea. But some didn't make it on that trip. Mother Nature has no orphans ~~ evaporation and absorption was the way of escape for that homeless water left behind. Yet, all in one way or another got home, just some sooner than later. You see, water, like us, is not satisfied being separated from its home, and is always hastening homeward, one way or another. On Saturday afternoon, the water got home, and so did I ... and better for the experience.
Through the din and duty and details of life
When the day seems empty and filled with strife
The water and we have freedom to roam
But soon we're seeking to find our home.
And just like the water
Returns to the sea,
Our hearts are restless
Till reposed in Thee.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Creative Obituary
Creative Obituary
Friends:
Word has it that the survival rate on the island was high in spite of the Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations. Shortly, when Amex, M/C and Visa begin to arrive, you will realize just how good a time you really had…I can hardly wait.
As some of you heard, this 2007 I will be writing a creative obituary, seeing I am now getting long in the tooth….can’t leave such important matters to family or lawyers. The papers are so full of boring obits, and my oversized ego will not allow me to have such drivel written…not that I have any accolades to fill up more’n about 3 lines…. I can embellish and intend to do so. So, in the next few weeks I will be gathering creative information to use in this Final Statement. It all began at Harris-Teeter this week in the fruit department. I brought a “zested” orange into the office….”zested,” for the culinary non-cognoscenti, means that the skin was used for garnish, so the orange looked strange….Julie asked what it was, to which I replied that it was a new hybrid variety of orange from Columbia known as Skin-Head Orange (sometimes I feel guilty carrying on with the gullible). I think she finally caught on. But having an overactive sensitive nature, I felt sorry for the orange…it was ugly. So, I affirmed its life by eating it.
I have these feelings sometimes, and so do you. Imagine if you were a fruit in the store, so many friends and cousins, and people picked you up, handled you, discussed you, judged you fit or unfit, put you down and chose your neighbor for dinner. Being a fruit, imagine how you’d feel when you were vaingloriously tossed out into the dumpster to be compost somewhere because of your short shelf-life. I especially feel sorry for the poor banana….brown spots and the skin is soft, kinda like liver spots we’re getting these days on our skin; but inside the meat is soft and mushy, and full of sweet taste. When it gets to this state, its days are numbered, to be sure.
Where am I going from here? Well, I hope that by the end of my shelf-life, before I’m tossed into the memorial park dumpster, I will be like that banana and have something sweet and sensitive and good inside, irrespective of the condition of the outside. And I hope it will be so for you.
Why not start the New Year out right by coming and eating lunch with us…I guarantee that you will meet new friends and have a great lunch. The code is 2004, lunch begins at 11:30, and to my knowledge there will be no speaker except yourselves….
Happy New Year
Bud
January 4, 2007
Friends:
Word has it that the survival rate on the island was high in spite of the Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations. Shortly, when Amex, M/C and Visa begin to arrive, you will realize just how good a time you really had…I can hardly wait.
As some of you heard, this 2007 I will be writing a creative obituary, seeing I am now getting long in the tooth….can’t leave such important matters to family or lawyers. The papers are so full of boring obits, and my oversized ego will not allow me to have such drivel written…not that I have any accolades to fill up more’n about 3 lines…. I can embellish and intend to do so. So, in the next few weeks I will be gathering creative information to use in this Final Statement. It all began at Harris-Teeter this week in the fruit department. I brought a “zested” orange into the office….”zested,” for the culinary non-cognoscenti, means that the skin was used for garnish, so the orange looked strange….Julie asked what it was, to which I replied that it was a new hybrid variety of orange from Columbia known as Skin-Head Orange (sometimes I feel guilty carrying on with the gullible). I think she finally caught on. But having an overactive sensitive nature, I felt sorry for the orange…it was ugly. So, I affirmed its life by eating it.
I have these feelings sometimes, and so do you. Imagine if you were a fruit in the store, so many friends and cousins, and people picked you up, handled you, discussed you, judged you fit or unfit, put you down and chose your neighbor for dinner. Being a fruit, imagine how you’d feel when you were vaingloriously tossed out into the dumpster to be compost somewhere because of your short shelf-life. I especially feel sorry for the poor banana….brown spots and the skin is soft, kinda like liver spots we’re getting these days on our skin; but inside the meat is soft and mushy, and full of sweet taste. When it gets to this state, its days are numbered, to be sure.
Where am I going from here? Well, I hope that by the end of my shelf-life, before I’m tossed into the memorial park dumpster, I will be like that banana and have something sweet and sensitive and good inside, irrespective of the condition of the outside. And I hope it will be so for you.
Why not start the New Year out right by coming and eating lunch with us…I guarantee that you will meet new friends and have a great lunch. The code is 2004, lunch begins at 11:30, and to my knowledge there will be no speaker except yourselves….
Happy New Year
Bud
January 4, 2007
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