It had been a long day of interviewing and photographing. Supper had been a sandwich in a café. Too restless to be surrounded by the four walls of my motel room, I drove out of town into the rolling patchwork of fields and woodlands of southwestern Arkansas.

Some would unkindly say it’s the kind of land that’s only there to hold the rest of the world together. My response to that would be that if it weren’t for such places, the world would fall apart.

I turned onto a gravel road. By then, I was conscious of the pause that … Read the rest “Never Before and Never Again”

The week had been an intensive learning experience. We, the students, fourteen of us from different parts of the U.S., had been guided, challenged, and tutored by Steve Crouch, a true master of the camera.

Our goal had been to photograph the wonders of Big Bend National Park in Texas. From a highly varied landscape of cactus and sand to the Rio Grande River squeezing its way through towering rocks, we had looked closely many times only to decide we needed to scramble for an even better look. Then, and only after precisely adjusting the camera, were we ready to … Read the rest “The Wonderful Side of a Genuine Teacher”

During my daybreak walk, I heard a noise above me. Toward the top of a nearby utility pole was a big transformer plus the usual assortment of wires extending in all four directions.

Perched wing to wing on the wires near the pole was a bunch of blackbirds. I stopped to take a closer look. They must not have considered me a threat because none flew away. I did a rough count; about  seventy-five of them had gathered there to chatter among themselves.

“Hey, Blackie, how ya’ doin’ this morning?”

“Oh, hi Feathers. I don’t know. Too early to tell. … Read the rest “Sampling a Smaller World”

No, your mind isn’t playing a trick on you. Everything you are a part of or feel responsible for really is shifting with ever-increasing speed.

What once were clear and cleanly cut rights and wrongs, wants and needs, have faded into endless variations of gray. Whatever you once leaned against for balance or support, now wobbles with uncertainty. Doubt has fractured foundations on which you once placed hope and trust.

What concerns you most, however, is how all of this is changing you, not the superficial you that everyone sees and with which you feel obligated to be comfortable, but … Read the rest “The Bottom Line You’ve Never Thought About”

Logic has already programmed your inner self such that nobody purposely plans or chooses to fall off a ladder. Even a person thinking about doing themselves in isn’t that stupid. For them, it must be a clean job, like jumping off a cliff with nothing below but air.

Best you know from the get-go that gravity is the main force working against you. It works on everything, the reason Mother Earth is covered with so much stuff.

Gravity has two important points on anything airborne, where the object’s trip begins and where it ends. The heavier the object, the faster … Read the rest “How to Fall Off a Ladder”

Here are some everyday threesomes: Win, lose, or draw; faith, hope, and charity; snap, crackle, and pop; love, honor, and cherish. There are many more.

None, however, can top Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the threesome serving as a bright and lofty beacon for everyone.

Those unalienable rights first drafted in the Declaration of Independence serve as the anchor for all the words expressed in the United States Constitution. They speak of the deep thought and sound logic of those few great people who wrote that document with humble sincerity and fervent hope. In remarkable fashion, … Read the rest “A Threesome We Must Always Honor”

Throughout life, there are happenings, amusing to hilarious, sobering to serious. Although soon forgotten, they tend to return later in life, remembered and treated not in the context of long gone moments, but as parts of your enriched mortal existence.

Early in our long stint of boating we bought a sixteen-year old 36-foot trawler. It had a full bath aft and a half bath forward. One of the many needed repairs was the replacement of some plumbing in the aft bathroom. I didn’t have the expertise, so I hired a repair man who did.

While lying on his right side … Read the rest “Two Happenings, Two Adventures”

During many years of extensive travel I’ve had to match wits with a myriad of unfamiliar and unexpected situations. I’m about to share with you some of what I’ve learned, a thoroughly field-tested strategy that will likely prove to be much more useful than all those often fabricated and misleading reviews gushing forth from dozens of websites. And also consider this: What you discover is what it is at that moment, not days, weeks, or months ago.

Okay, here goes:

Within one minute, you’ll be able to anticipate the quality of food at a restaurant and how well you’ll be … Read the rest “One Minute Sleep, Eat, and Meet Test”

As with all fledgeling TV programs, Friends entered the entertainment arena with no guarantee of success. Its hook, however, caught fast and went deep. For ten years it was a “must watch” for many millions of viewers.

The simple plot reflected the lives, laughs, and loves of six young working men and women living in New York City, heartwarming and funny, flavored with overtones of uncertainty and immaturity.

In exceptional fashion, the six actors stayed together the entire time, each playing their roles so faithfully that when the series ended, separating was hard to do. It had been a program … Read the rest “Join Me in This Tribute to ‘Friends’”

All of us young kids agreed. To look at Jim, even being close to him, was scary.

He was tall, ruggedly built, and stout as an axe handle. His long face with a protruding nose was covered by skin roughened by many years of work on his farm.

What really got to us, though, were his eyes. Under heavy brows, they were dark and piercing. Not only that, his voice was coarse and unfriendly.

Unfortunately, I had to see him on occasion because I was the only kid carrying newspapers in a “town” only four blocks wide and five blocks … Read the rest “Things Aren’t Always What They Seem”