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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Yearn and Learn
While some matches are made for burning
Some matches are simply a yearning
If he wants the she
But she don’t want he
He may learn that yearning means spurning.
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
This is the complete episode of Abundance called "Learning" from November 28th.
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Sunday Dec 05, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
The Ransom of Red Chief
by O. Henry
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill Driscoll and myself -- when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.
We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?"
The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing over the wheel.
That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:
"Ha! Cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?
"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! That kid can kick hard."
Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive, himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.
Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this:
"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?"
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"
"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?"
"Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."
"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."
We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yalps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs -- they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing, bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.
I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.
"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.
"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it."
"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?"
"Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."
I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have home away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.
When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.
"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and the mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?
I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!"
After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.
"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run away, do you, Sam?"
"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed today. Tonight we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return."
Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.
I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know who my favorite Biblical character is?"
"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."
"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?"
I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.
"If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?"
"I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day."
"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."
I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.
"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood -- in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?"
"I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset."
Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."
So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:
Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight tonight at the same spot and in the same box as your reply -- as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger tonight at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.
If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.
If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:
"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone."
"Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?"
"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."
"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages."
"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"
"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going. Loosen up."
Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.
"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of voice.
"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"
The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side.
"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."
I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.
When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.
So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.
In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wobbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."
"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.
"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.
"But he's gone" -- continues Bill -- "gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse."
Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.
"Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?
"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"
"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."
Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him is soon as he felt a little better.
I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left -- and the money later on -- was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for anyone to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.
Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.
I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.
Very respectfully,
EBENEZER DORSET.
"Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent -- "
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.
"Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?"
"Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away."
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand.
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
"How long can you hold him?" asks Bill.
"I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can promise you ten minutes."
"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border."
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
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Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Circling Spheres
Now we are in the darkness,
Separated from the bright light,
But never far from remembering all we knew in that bright space.
As we circle in our own spheres,
We may seem to be apart,
But when my world bumps into yours
When our spheres seem to cross
And that brightness sparks the connection between us,
We remember for a moment, and then forget.
We were all once together until we decided to learn all
We could learn apart.
My sphere isn’t any different than yours
Except it is completely different
And someday, we will all join again together and share
All that we have learned by spinning in
Our separate spheres.
I remember you, and the peace we shared in that bright space.
I long to be there with you again,
But not until we have both learned all we were sent here to do,
All we were sent here to learn,
All we were sent here to share
Before we once again gather, and share that bright space
With everyone once again.
But while we are in this dark space,
Revolving around ourselves,
Seeming separate, but at once united
In our goal to use this time to learn, to grow and experience
The bitter and the sweet
The joyful and the sad
The height and the depth
We could not experience as one.
Watch me as I circle in my sphere inside the dark space.
I am watching you as you circle in your sphere inside the dark space.
When you and I contemplate all of us,
Who are circling in our spheres inside the dark space,
We understand that we are the bright space when we are all together,
And there is no darkness.
That is why I have that feeling I know you
Because I have always known you
And will always know you
We have always been together.
Even though our spheres seem separate
We are part of the whole, and the whole is part of us.
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Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Tuesday Nov 30, 2010
Bright Space
by Dane Allred
You and I
I don’t know when I became self-aware.
I mean in this body, at this time.
There was that self-awareness I had forgotten.
From when we were in that
Bright space together.
But here, and now, I don’t recall when I decided
I am me
And
You are you.
I watch the small children playing and see they know who they are.
They don’t answer to the names of the other children
And seem to know they are separate.
We all remember the time when the universe revolved around us,
When everything was designed to serve us,
To amuse us,
And ceased to exist when we went away to something else.
This fragment of memory of our time together in the
Bright space holds us in a spell
Telling us we are all connected
We are all the same
We have been together before,
But then the separateness denies that truth
And parts us into our own worlds.
I move about in mine,
Forgetting that you and I came here to experience all we could
So that we could be together again in that
Bright space
And share all that we had learned.
We move about from day to day as if there was no connection
Between all I do and all you do,
All that is done by everyone else everywhere else.
We forget all that has been done
Connects us to this very second
To this very thought at this very moment
And then we move on to the next moment to see what else we can learn.
It has taken me a while to see that
I am You
and
You are Me.
Circulating about in our own lives to create this shared meaning now
And to create the end result.
Some have endured hardship, affliction, and suffering
So we can all discover how deep these pains can be.
To share all we have learned,
To realize all we have in common.
To appreciate the experience of each and every one.
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Monday Nov 29, 2010
Monday Nov 29, 2010
Bright Space
by Dane Allred
Beginnings
You were there.
So was I.
Everyone and everything that ever was, is, or will be
Was there.
There was nothing else, no other place, and no other time except
That bright space where we all were.
All united in the peace of that bright space
Yet at once all individual.
We were content.
We were at rest in the never ending and
Never beginning
Bright space.
Every idea, every thought
To be thought was there.
There was no time because there was all time.
There was no rush because there was nowhere to go.
At peace, we rested in the blissful knowledge
Of all that was,
Of all that is,
Of all that ever will be.
But then that nagging doubt began.
What if there is something else?
Something not here now
That we could discover if we were not
Resting together in that bright space?
Something we could only discover if we
Became separate
And left the bright place
Of peace and content and rest.
Could there be more if I was not with you
And you were not with me?
What would such a something else be like?
What would make me want to leave you
And for you to leave me
That would be worth abandoning
All that we had ever known
All that we had ever been?
That was when the answer appeared.
Apart, we could be more.
Apart we would find things we could never find
If all of us remained in this peaceful, restful, contented
Bright space.
So we decided to leave.
We would have to become separate for a while
So we could experience all we couldn’t experience together.
We agreed to return and share all that we had learned
So that in our new bright space
We would have no more doubt about
What could be
What we could know
What we could become.
We promised we would remember all we would experience
When we were together again.
And then truly be at peace.
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Monday Nov 29, 2010
Monday Nov 29, 2010
Walking into Walls
Even if you have lived in the same place for decades, my advice is not to walk around in the dark. I had been lulled into a false sense of security. I have walked across our front room for more than 20 years, but usually it is daylight, or at night the lights are on. There are three different lights in the front room, including the ceiling light, two table lamps hooked up to another wall switch, and the front entry light. Every time I needed illumination, it was there. The sun or the lamp, dependable and always available, and this was my downfall.
When you cross a space confidently for years, day after day, night after night, you begin to believe no light is necessary. Take a certain number of steps to the hall, at a certain angle, and walk directly back to the bedroom or den, or even the bathroom. After five decades, I was secure in the knowledge of my stride, the speed and orientation necessary to make it into the hall every time. My pride welled up and puffed my chest, and made me believe there was no new thing to be learned in the front room. So who needs light?
If I hadn't hurt myself so many times in the past with such alarming frequency and impunity, I probably would have excused myself this one lapse. But I know better than to try adventuring in the dark. Never mind that I had been lying on the couch reading for half-an-hour, and rose up confidently to go to bed. No matter that as I weaved from the couch to the light switches on the wall, I was a little wobbly. Lying down on a bed and getting up fast can be deadly when you're this old anyway, especially if you consider the medications I take, one of which can cause fainting if you rise too fast. It's a good medication with a small side effect, and I am pretty dizzy most times anyway. Light-headedness is a small price to pay for better health.
But on this particular night, and for no particular reason, I concluded that my long years of trekking across this same front room meant I no longer needed light. I confidently switched off the hall light, the small table lamps, and without another thought, the ceiling light. After all, it was only a few steps across the carpet to the hall, where I could switch on the hall light if I wanted. I swaggered across the darkness, fully expecting to run the gauntlet of the hall without trouble to a peaceful night's sleep. But somewhere between the beginning of my journey and the other side of the room, in the six or seven steps across the carpet, I veered seriously to the left. I was walking at a good clip, nonchalantly anticipating my entry into the hallway, when what to my wandering feet should appear but the far wall of the room.
My forehead met the wall first. I must lead with my forehead when I walk, and I must have been walking 3 or 4 miles per hour. The wall was not moving at all.
If you have ever head butted someone, you will be familiar with the very next sensation I experienced. If you have never had the thrill of banging your head forcefully against the forehead of another person, try walking into a wall. It was so similar, for several seconds I believed I had head butted my wife in the middle of the hall, and proceeded to apologize profusely. The wall stood stoically and took it. When I didn't find my sweetheart's collapsed form on the floor, I realized I had fallen victim to my own hubris. I reached up and felt the blood running into my eyes from the cleft in my skin. A one-inch gash split my forehead wide open.
Turning on the hall light and walking directly to the bathroom, I patted the blood from my forehead for the next hour as the wound eventually sealed. I thought about going to get 5 or 6 stitches at the emergency room, but that would involve driving myself to the hospital with one hand or waking up the wife and asking her to take me, and then I wouldn't have a badge of honor to wear for my stupidity.
There is a nice thin scar running vertically just above my left eyebrow. Sometimes a visual reminder is better than a lecture. I'm sure I won't be walking across the front room in the dark for at least another decade or two. But with how slowly I learn, it may happen again next week. Just remember, lights are our friends. They can help you from head butting the wall.
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Thursday Nov 25, 2010
Thursday Nov 25, 2010
This is the entire episode of "Abundance" called "Kids" from Nov. 21st.
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Thursday Nov 25, 2010
Thursday Nov 25, 2010
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Thy Holy Face
by Dane Allred
As I draw near by word and prayer
To Thou my Lord so true,
I now behold Thy Holy Face
In all I see and do.
I marvel at thy mighty works
Near me on every side.
I now behold Thy Holy Face
In thy works far and wide.
Surrounded now on every side
By friends and family,
I now behold Thy Holy Face
In all those that I see.
In all the people of this world
In both those near and far,
I now behold Thy Holy Face;
Be Thou my guiding star.
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Wednesday Nov 24, 2010
Wednesday Nov 24, 2010
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The Night Before Thanksgiving
by Sarah Orne Jewett
I.
There was a sad heart in the low-storied, dark little house that stood humbly by the roadside under some tall elms. Small as her house was, old Mrs. Robb found it too large for herself alone; she only needed the kitchen and a tiny bedroom that led out of it, and there still remained the best room and a bedroom, with the low garret overhead.
There had been a time, after she was left alone, when Mrs. Robb could help those who were poorer than herself. She was strong enough not only to do a woman's work inside her house, but almost a man's work outside in her piece of garden ground. At last sickness and age had come hand in hand, those two relentless enemies of the poor, and together they had wasted her strength and substance. She had always been looked up to by her neighbors as being independent, but now she was left, lame-footed and lame-handed, with a debt to carry and her bare land, and the house ill-provisioned to stand the siege of time.
For a while she managed to get on, but at last it began to be whispered about that there was no use for any one so proud; it was easier for the whole town to care for her than for a few neighbors, and Mrs. Robb had better go to the poorhouse before winter, and be done with it. At this terrible suggestion her brave heart seemed to stand still. The people whom she cared for most happened to be poor, and she could no longer go into their households to make herself of use. The very elms overhead seemed to say, "Oh, no!" as they groaned in the late autumn winds, and there was something appealing even to the strange passer-by in the look of the little gray house, with Mrs. Robb's pale, worried face at the window.
II.
Some one has said that anniversaries are days to make other people happy in, but sometimes when they come they seem to be full of shadows, and the power of giving joy to others, that inalienable right which ought to lighten the saddest heart, the most indifferent sympathy, sometimes even this seems to be withdrawn.
So poor old Mary Ann Robb sat at her window on the afternoon before Thanksgiving and felt herself poor and sorrowful indeed. Across the frozen road she looked eastward over a great stretch of cold meadow land, brown and wind-swept and crossed by icy ditches. It seemed to her as if before this, in all the troubles that she had known and carried, there had always been some hope to hold: as if she had never looked poverty full in the face and seen its cold and pitiless look before. She looked anxiously down the road, with a horrible shrinking and dread at the thought of being asked, out of pity, to join in some Thanksgiving feast, but there was nobody coming with gifts in hand. Once she had been full of love for such days, whether at home or abroad, but something chilled her very heart now.
Her nearest neighbor had been foremost of those who wished her to go to the town farm, and he had said more than once that it was the only sensible thing. But John Mander was waiting impatiently to get her tiny farm into his own hands; he had advanced some money upon it in her extremity, and pretended that there was still a debt, after he cleared her wood lot to pay himself back. He would plough over the graves in the field corner and fell the great elms, and waited now like a spider for his poor prey. He often reproached her for being too generous to worthless people in the past and coming to be a charge to others now. Oh, if she could only die in her own house and not suffer the pain of homelessness and dependence!
It was just at sunset, and as she looked out hopelessly across the gray fields, there was a sudden gleam of light far away on the low hills beyond; the clouds opened in the west and let the sunshine through. One lovely gleam shot swift as an arrow and brightened a far cold hillside where it fell, and at the same moment a sudden gleam of hope brightened the winter landscape of her heart.
"There was Johnny Harris," said Mary Ann Robb softly. "He was a soldier's son, left an orphan and distressed. Old John Mander scolded, but I couldn't see the poor boy in want. I kept him that year after he got hurt, spite o' what anybody said, an' he helped me what little he could. He said I was the only mother he'd ever had. 'I 'm goin' out West, Mother Robb,' says he. 'I sha'n't come back till I get rich,' an' then he'd look at me an' laugh, so pleasant and boyish. He wa'n't one that liked to write. I don't think he was doin' very well when I heard,--there, it's most four years ago now. I always thought if he got sick or anything, I should have a good home for him to come to. There's poor Ezra Blake, the deaf one, too,--he won't have any place to welcome him."
The light faded out of doors, and again Mrs. Robb's troubles stood before her. Yet it was not so dark as it had been in her sad heart. She still sat by the window, hoping now, in spite of herself, instead of fearing; and a curious feeling of nearness and expectancy made her feel not so much light-hearted as light-headed.
"I feel just as if somethin' was goin' to happen," she said. "Poor Johnny Harris, perhaps he's thinkin' o' me, if he's alive."
It was dark now out of doors, and there were tiny clicks against the window. It was beginning to snow, and the great elms creaked in the rising wind overhead.
III.
A dead limb of one of the old trees had fallen that autumn, and, poor firewood as it might be, it was Mrs. Robb's own, and she had burnt it most thankfully. There was only a small armful left, but at least she could have the luxury of a fire. She had a feeling that it was her last night at home, and with strange recklessness began to fill the stove as she used to do in better days.
"It'll get me good an' warm," she said, still talking to herself, as lonely people do, "an' I'll go to bed early. It's comin' on to storm."
The snow clicked faster and faster against the window, and she sat alone thinking in the dark.
"There's lots of folks I love," she said once. "They'd be sorry I ain't got nobody to come, an' no supper the night afore Thanksgivin'. I 'm dreadful glad they don't know." And she drew a little nearer to the fire, and laid her head back drowsily in the old rocking-chair.
It seemed only a moment before there was a loud knocking, and somebody lifted the latch of the door. The fire shone bright through the front of the stove and made a little light in the room, but Mary Ann Robb waked up frightened and bewildered.
"Who's there?" she called, as she found her crutch and went to the door. She was only conscious of her one great fear. "They've come to take me to the poor-house!" she said, and burst into tears.
There was a tall man, not John Mander, who seemed to fill the narrow doorway.
"Come, let me in!" he said gayly. "It's a cold night. You didn't expect me, did you, Mother Robb?"
"Dear me, what is it?" she faltered, stepping back as he came in, and dropping her crutch. "Be I dreamin'? I was a-dreamin' about-- Oh, there! What was I a-sayin'? 'Tain't true! No! I've made some kind of a mistake."
Yes, and this was the man who kept the poorhouse, and she would go without complaint; they might have given her notice, but she must not fret.
"Sit down, sir," she said, turning toward him with touching patience. "You'll have to give me a little time. If I'd been notified I wouldn't have kept you waiting a minute this stormy night."
It was not the keeper of the poorhouse. The man by the door took one step forward and put his arm round her and kissed her.
"What are you talking about?" said John Harris. "You ain't goin' to make me feel like a stranger? I've come all the way from Dakota to spend Thanksgivin'. There's all sorts o' things out here in the wagon, an' a man to help get 'em in. Why, don't cry so, Mother Robb. I thought you'd have a great laugh, if I come and surprised you. Don't you remember I always said I should come?"
It was John Harris, indeed. The poor soul could say nothing. She felt now as if her heart was going to break with joy. He left her in the rocking-chair and came and went in his old boyish way, bringing in the store of gifts and provisions. It was better than any dream. He laughed and talked, and went out to send away the man to bring a wagonful of wood from John Mander's, and came in himself laden with pieces of the nearest fence to keep the fire going in the mean time. They must cook the beef-steak for supper right away; they must find the pound of tea among all the other bundles; they must get good fires started in both the cold bedrooms. Why, Mother Robb didn't seem to be ready for company from out West! The great, cheerful fellow hurried about the tiny house, and the little old woman limped after him, forgetting everything but hospitality. Had not she a house for John to come to? Were not her old chairs and tables in their places still? And he remembered everything, and kissed her as they stood before the fire, as if she were a girl.
He had found plenty of hard times, but luck had come at last. He had struck luck, and this was the end of a great year.
"No, I couldn't seem to write letters; no use to complain o' the worst, an' I wanted to tell you the best when I came;" and he told it while she cooked the supper. "No, I wa'n't goin' to write no foolish letters," John repeated. He was afraid he should cry himself when he found out how bad things had been; and they sat down to supper together, just as they used to do when he was a homeless orphan boy, whom nobody else wanted in winter weather while he was crippled and could not work. She could not be kinder now than she was then, but she looked so poor and old! He saw her taste her cup of tea and set it down again with a trembling hand and a look at him. "No, I wanted to come myself," he blustered, wiping his eyes and trying to laugh. "And you're going to have everything you need to make you comfortable long's you live, Mother Robb!"
She looked at him again and nodded, but she did not even try to speak. There was a good hot supper ready, and a happy guest had come; it was the night before Thanksgiving.
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