Pit Bulls and Chihuahuas

I read on Yahoo a day or two ago that some states have an official state pet! Most seemed to be dogs. No surprise perhaps although the cat lovers may object! Of course I skimmed down the  list but there was no New Mexico or Arizona listing.

Anyway, if I were to hazard a guess as to what my current home state would have for their official mascot pet, I would say either the Pit Bull or the Chihuahua. Most of the young couples seem to have a Pitty or two and most of the older folks seem to have a Chihuahua. Now on the surface you could not get much more different but then there are some similarities as well.

While they may be small, most Chihuahuas are very defensive or ever aggressive little critters and the 'ankle biter' term fits them very well. They seem to have no notion how little and fragile they really are and do not hesitate to go pick a fight with a buzz saw or a Rhino! Many Pit Bulls are aggressive or at least very defensive, too. I don't think it is really a breed trait but a lot of them are specifically bred and trained to be aggressive, both as a kind of guard dog and --deplorably!!--to be 'pitted' against other dogs in a fight ring. (Pun intended.) But in recent times the rescue people have been equally aggressive in trying to save many of these hapless animals and teaching the public that Pits can be good, loving, loyal and trustworthy dogs. And I know they can.

I have to admit to a bit of prejudice, though, and I just do not really like the way they look. However that is not to say I would never take one under any circumstances! I may well end up a Pit Bull owner some day for all I know. Chihuahuas less likely; they really are tooooo little! I would be afraid of stepping on one or hurting it in some other way because they are so very small. Little Rojo is small enough to be of come concern but at least he weighs sixteen or seventeen pounds and is fairly canny about staying clear of big feet. Chihuahuas can be maybe five to eight pounds!

As for my official personal 'state' dog--well, there would be three in a row: one Aussie, one Border Collie and one Blue Heeler!! Although I could also make room for a Husky or a Malamute (which BTW is the Alaska state dog, no surprise!) And I also have a huge weak spot for the good old Heinz 57 all-American mutt. Especially a maybe doxie-spaniel cross of a red hue...

And below are Belle, Ginger and Wiggles, the late and beloved Blue Heeler of my dear friend Julie Smithson. She now has Good Boy, also a Heeler and also blind.

Adventures on Wheels

This is a little long and I have added a few pix but it's the mini-essay I wrote at the Writer's Group on Friday. May evoke a few memories or chuckles from the younger ones here!

*** 

            Cars did not play a big role for me until I was a teenager. However, they've always been there and a way of getting from here to there and especially to various adventures. The first one I vaguely remember was the 1939 Ford coupe (two door passenger car for you youngsters!), black of course. It carried my parents, with toddler-aged me, from Kansas City, MO, then my father’s family home, to central Arizona in the early weeks of 1946. I really do not recall the trip as I was not quite three. It was a long journey but we arrived in Cottonwood, AZ perhaps in February or March. A few weeks later we landed in Jerome, the old mining camp on the hill above the Verde Valley.

            For another year or two the old Ford served us well but then in about 1948 it was traded for a much more exotic set of wheels!  Dad got a 1949 Willy’s Jeep Universal, one of the first sold for commercial use after the vehicle had been

created for the military during World War II. It, too, was black but also had a tan canvas top and kind of cab that zipped and snapped over a frame, almost a convertible of sorts. There were two bucket seats in front and a small bench seat in the back but it was usually out of the vehicle to make room for supplies, camp gear, luggage etc. That meant I sat between the buckets on a pillow or two straddling the gear shifts. Not the most comfy spot. No radio, no air, and not a lot of frills. There may have been a heater; I'm not sure.

            Thus I hated long trips of which we took quite a few. I was too short to see out and my seat was lumpy and hard.  Already I knew better than to whine but I suspect that is about the time I began to make up stories to entertain myself. I do recall I always got a terrible headache and cried quietly for many miles with my eyes squeezed closed.

            That car took us camping, out to southern California where Dad’s sisters had moved, and then out to Camp Wood, a tiny settlement miles out of Prescott where dad taught the one room school for the 1951-52 and 1952-53 school years. It even went up to the North Kaibab in the intervening summer where the folks ran a fire lookout tower for the Forest Service.

            Late in 1951, the family got an addition when my first brother was born. For that winter Mom stayed home in Jerome with the new baby and I did part of the time as well. Mom and Dad decided they needed a better vehicle to safely transport an infant and the little Jeep was traded. The new car was another Jeep but a pickup this time, and gray instead of black. It had a nice wide bench seat and definitely a heater. Wow. Still no radio or air but it was a big improvement for me. We kept it for several years and then acquired another, very similar, that was with us into the latter part of the 1950s. I’d have to check when we traded it off.

            Those two trucks took us on many adventures and pulled a trailer to take horses and mules to the end of the road from which we rode off here and there. They appeared in a number of illustrations for articles Dad wrote for outdoor adventure magazines. After the Jeeps there were two very similar white Ford pickups and the second one was the car I learned to drive with. However, the first car I ever drove was a dusty gray-green coupe --maybe a Chevy?--of about mid 1930s vintage that belonged to the brother of a girl friend of mine. He and I dated a few times and once he let me drive the car. Another wow. It was a long while before I finally got my license, a fact I resented greatly for a time.

            About this time a local doctor got one of the new sporty little Fords called a Thunderbird! It was white and had the round windows, one on each side  behind the doors. Now a teen, I suddenly got car conscious! I wanted one of those fast, fancy and sexy little cars in the worst way and dreamed I would paint it turquoise or lavender, my favorite colors.

            I was always a Ford girl but my loyalties wavered for a bit. A boy I got a crush on had a refurbished older Corvette, screaming red, that I coveted and then a 1957 Plymouth Fury, both ‘cool’ cars in a teen’s eyes. About the same time, Ford debuted the Ranchero pickup and I really wanted one of them. They are still neat in my estimate!

            Finally, still license-less and car-less, I went off to college. No longer able to drive a ranch truck on back roads, I did drive a few roommates’ cars to keep my hand in. Then it was time to move on and start adult life with a job. I needed to rent an Econoline type van to carry my stuff from Flagstaff after four years at NAU to Sierra Vista. To do that, I had to have a license. I used my friend and current roomie’s blue Maverick, aced the written test and squeaked by on the road test part. At  last, a bona fide legal driver!

            Shortly after I began my first formal job at Fort Huachuca, I realized I needed a car. I rented one in Sierra Vista and drove to Tucson. I believe it was Earnhart, but at any rate, a Ford dealership was my first stop. The young salesman saw me eyeing the Pinto in the show room and did not have a lot of trouble selling me one. The two available were a white and a lime green. I drove the white one home. He promised to handle the rental car for me and I guess he did as they never came after me! My own wheels and freedom at last! It was a wonderful heady feeling even though my princely new salary of $8.098 a year was taxed with renting an apartment, buying personal necessities and now a car payment and gasoline—well under $1.00 a gallon at that time but still not cheap if you drove a lot, which I did.

           I know Ralph Nadar said the Pinto was unsafe but mine never caused me any concern. It did eat starters though and unless you loosened the engine mounts and jacked the engine up a few inches you had to pull a five-inch object through a three-inch hole which was a painful challenge. But otherwise it was a great little car and well loved. I drove it for several years and put about 100,000 miles on it.

           Since then there have been many. In the fall of 1971 I married and acquired part ownership of an Opal Kadet and use of an old blue GMC (1957?) along with a spouse and three step children. A year or two later the paid-off Opal was traded for a green Chevy pickup of early 60s vintage and the old GMC went back to my father-in-law. About that time we moved to Colorado with the Chevy and my Pinto.

            In 1975 when my father-in-law died as an odd result of a minor accident, we acquired his little Datsun (now Nissan) pickup. That’s what my middle stepson learned to drive and flipped once, luckily without harm to himself or his buddy. They were not drunk or high but just took a gravel road corner a little too fast. When it was fixed we had it repainted from olive to blue. After we endured a blizzard for some eighteen hours in the Pinto we decided to trade the Chevy in on a Plymouth Trailduster SUV, which is a clone of the Dodge Ramcharger made for the Canadian market but also sold some in the USA. We got it in the spring of 1977 and that fall ended up moving to California. I passed the Pinto along to my brother’s then girlfriend who needed a car for herself and her two little kids. I've kicked myself ever since.

            We took the Datsun and the Trailduster to California and used them until we moved back to Arizona in 1983. Finally I needed a new car to get to work–back at Fort Huachuca again—and had in succession a white Ford Escort, a golden-tan Plymouth Reliant K-car, and finally a blue gray Buick Century after I had retired. My husband and I took some fun trips with it during the next few years. It was a nice car. By the way the Plymie was the first car with air conditioning that I ever owned!

            When the DH passed away in 2003, I soon sold the old Trailduster which had wiring issues and would sometimes spark or smoke in odd ways and scared me. The Datsun had been sold earlier. I soon decided I wanted a truck and got a good deal on a 2002 Mazda B3000 on which I assumed payments and soon paid off. Then, when my youngest brother died suddenly from an aneurysm in 2005, I got his little white Ford Focus wagon, a 2000 model. My other brother took the old 1969 white F-250 pickup which our dad had gotten from El Paso Gas in Farmington, NM in about 1971. It is a family heirloom now and will stay in the family until we are gone!

            At one point, about 2006, I even had a Thunderbird, a 1966 model which

was too new and too big but I could not resist. It had been partly restored with most of the mechanical work done but needed body and interior work. I finally realized I could not afford to have it done and sold it for what I had paid for it. I hardly drove it at all but at least it decorated my yard for awhile!

            I've loved the little red Mazda, especially since it is a clone of the Ford Ranger, and put about 60,000 miles on it with many good trips, even if I am not a fan of red cars. As a joke, because I was writing ‘steamy’ romance novels by that time, I named it “Red Hot Mama”—not me, but the truck, I hasten to add! As for the Focus, it became “the Pattie Wagon” when I lived for a few months in Hurley, NM on Pattie Ave. The names of all the others have faded but I still have and drive those two and probably they will be my last cars.

            As there have been a number of guys named Jim in my life, there have been a lot of white vehicles with the Ford logo on them. Coincidence or something else? Who knows!

Marking D-Day

Seventy years ago today the allies stormed the beach at Normandy and World War II began to stagger toward VE day. I was just over thirteen months old so I knew nothing about it personally. It did not become significant to me until some years later when I was taking American History in school.

At that time, wars were not my favorite part of studying history but I did see they form many mile markers in the course of world events. It's probably been so since an early cave-man clan got on the outs with another bunch and they beat each outer with the shinbones of mammoths and stabbed with sharpened sticks. Humanity is a contrary and contentious bunch. We've always fought but our weapons get increasingly long-range and deadly, weapons of mass destruction if you will. Yet civilians have always suffered as much or more than the combatants, at least in the war zones.

We are rapidly losing the veterans of that war for most of them are in their nineties now. The last of the Navajo code talkers passed away this last week and I've read of several other World War II vets' passing in recent days. Called the "last great generation," the folks of that era were very different. from us now True, vets were cheered and honored, at least to some extent, when they came home but they struggled, too. At that time we did not know about PTSD or traumatic brain injuries--and I am sure there were some in soldiers who were near bombs landing and other concussive violence. Many were also subjected to poison gasses--less than in WW I but there still were some used. There were horrible wounds, both physical and mental/emotional that marked many lives.

On the home front, almost everything was rationed, speed limits were set at thirty MPH to conserve fuel and long trips or vacations were not encouraged. Many women went to work in industry for the first time and the image of Rosie the Riveter came to be. And like they say, how can you get them back on the farm after they've seen Paree? There was no going back. Thousands of troops had seen the world or strange new parts of it at least for them and women were not about to go back and forego the freedoms and independence they had gained with their war-related jobs. So it is valid to focus on wars as major implements of social change and watershed points in the course of a nation's or even humanities journey.

Like the treaties that ended WW I set the stage for World War II, so those agreements left room for future conflicts right up to this day. Someone is always the 'winner' and those who are not feel they got the short end of the stick and eventually want to claim their own back. I'm reminded of that sixties era protest song: when will they every learn? It seems the answer is never, at least not until we become a great deal more spiritually advanced, which is sad.

Most of the worlds' main religions preach peace and brotherhood among all mankind but that seems to break down when we are dealing with those who are a different race, color, creed or agenda than we are. And that makes me sad. So, D-Day seventy years on and we still have not really learned or changed or progressed. Still, I appreciate the well-meant sacrifices of those who died that day and honor their memories just as I do the veterans of all our wars. If the leaders and politicians had to go out do the fighting, there might be fewer deaths and less mayhem. It is too easy to say, "Let's you and him fight."

Trains, planes, automobiles... and dogs

Whew, been a busy weekend so far. Actually started on Thursday. But the night before the plane part comes in. I booked my flights to and from Alaska! Yes, if you go thru these various 'cheap tickets' outfits it is kind of like roulette but I scored a fairly decent price, two one stop flights and only weird hours at Anchorage--but in the summer daylight is sooo long it won't be too hard. At least I am telling myself that!  I found it was a tiny bit cheaper to fly from El Paso instead of Albuquerque plus it is easier to get there being closer for someone to drive me and pick me up. Going north I make a very short hop from El Paso to Phoenix and then a very long one to Anchorage. Coming back, a long trip to LAX (Los Angeles) and then a moderate one to El Paso again. It feels more real now that I am committed for a sizable chunk of change there. Now on to transportation while there and an itinerary lined up.

Autos: I took the little Focus wagon to drive to Silver City--roughly 150 miles --since it gets better mileage than Red Hot Mama although I prefer to drive the latter. The wagon, which came to us from the kid brother who passed away in 2005, I christened "The Pattie Wagon" when I lived in Hurley, NM back in 2008-09 because I lived on Pattie Avenue! Just so you know if I use that name.

Anyway I left mid morning and tooled along highway 70 to Las Cruces and from there on I-10 over to Deming where I took highway 52 up into Grant County. And next, we do the train thing. I saw three east bound UP freights between Akela and Deming but as I got close to Hurley, I caught up with the Southwest Railroad local coming up from the UP mainline at Deming. It was a long train for a short line system--around 90 cars in a mix of tankers and ore cars and there were seven units (locomotives to non-rail-fans) dragging it up the grade. They were an interesting mixture with three of the blue SWRR units, one old gray SW diesel that must have been resurrected from the old Phelps Dodge rolling stock and three former Santa Fe locos still in the blue and gold 'warbonnet' style of the old ATSF but with new SWRR numbers added. Of course I took pictures to share with my brother and for my own collection.

 The first shot is at the end of a street in Hurley where I used to walk with Belle when I was living there and the secone one is a bit farther north toward Bayard at the south end of North Hurley.  It was a pretty day, BTW, with just enough clouds to decorate the blue sky.

Anyway once I got to Silver City I went right to my friend Constance's place and we dug into some packing, went out to dinner that evening and visited. Next morning, having called and set it up before I went to bed the previous evening, I drove out to Cliff to meet Joe Runyan. He's very much a dog person and came wheeling up on a mid-sized tractor--he sells hay from his small farm and was out working --with a pack of lean Pointers running along. We had a great chat about dogs, horses and mules and of course mushing and the Iditarod. He was very encouraging about my project and said he'd help all he can. He, too, is a writer and has ghost written the race tales for several of the well known male racers but I guess didn't choose or want to work with the ladies so that leaves an opening for me. Of course some of them have books out but many do not and that may be something I can pursue after the first project is done. That was the real purpose of my trip and I felt it went very well indeed!

So yesterday since the weather was a bit iffy with wind and thunderstorms forecast, I headed home fairly early. Of course my two little red dogs were very glad to see me.  The little guy, wee Rojito, had some teeth pulled Tuesday and was still not quite up to par though doing well and then there were thunderstorms Friday night that had all four dogs in the household very upset. Ginger has almost been "velcroed" to my knee since I got back! So there you have it, three modes of transportation and my favorite canines.Whether huskies, hunting dogs or herders, I love them all--and even wee red mutts! Here are my two kiddos in our room a few weeks ago.

Celtic Knots in the Circle of LIfe

Straight lines do not appear very often in nature. Even tree trunks which we think of as linear usually have some bends and twists. Life does not have many straight lines, either. I'm a person who looks for patterns and sees pictures in clouds, designs in a variety of things. The past few years I have really come to understand where my Celtic ancestors came by their inspiration for the elaborate knot work patterns of which they were so fond. That was one way to portray the path of our life and of those around us.


It has been said there are no coincidences. I might instead call them serendipity --those very odd happenstance kinds of things. It's in the way our route through life doubles back, crosses over and weaves or twines around to bring people to us and take them away, to make surprising things happen. More and more I see that taking place around me.

I know I have not mentioned Alaska and my big project-to-be for awhile. I will assure you it is still very much on my radar and although it is going to take longer and probably be more complicated than I first visualized, I am still determined to see it through. Right now I am reading Libby Riddles' account  --the first female winner back in 1985--of that race. Although there was more snow than the last few years, she encountered an incredible range of difficulties and mishaps! In fact, nearly half way through the race she had fallen back to fourteenth place, was dealing with sick dogs and wondering if she'd even make the finish line, never mind what place. Most of us end up dealing with just that kind of situation--oh, we aren't driving dogs a thousand miles across the wilderness but we have goals and projects to complete and each one is a struggle. At that point we can lie down and play dead or we can pull up our socks and keep giving it our best.But sometimes unexpected help comes from totally amazing sources....

Weekend before last I went over to Silver City to see my friend Constance who is getting ready to leave, seeking a climate and environment that will not confine her to the house with choking asthma. I did want to spend some time with her before she leaves. And it is her friend and former sister-in-law who lives in Wasilla and will probably be renting me a room when I get up there later this summer. Now serendipity kicks in!  There's a little newspaper/magazine put out over there called Desert Exposure. From a rcent issue, Constance pulled out an article about the colony of former Alaskans who now reside, at least part of the time, in Grant Country, New Mexico. The very first name there was Joe Runyan.

I began to read avidly. Joe was an Iditarod winner some years back and has covered the race for Cabellos sporting goods and posted several-a-day blog entries on the Iditarod Trail Committee website during the race as he follows along on a snow machine. He now has a farm/ranch out at Cliff, about .thirty miles north and west of Silver City. He still has dogs but they are now hunting dogs instead of huskies. I found his phone number but was shy about calling cold; we found his mail address and I have written him. But there is more!

As you may know I have had two articles this spring in a monthly magazine called Mules and More based.on my experiences and recollections of the time when I was training and selling mules with my dad. A chap named Max Harsha has a regular column in the same magazine and he too lives in Cliff, NM. I got his address off his website and wrote him, also. The other day my phone rang and it was him. He'd just received my letter and wanted to talk and said I'd be welcome to come over and chat almost any time. He had gotten into mules back in Missouri about the same time I began to work with them and then moved to New Mexico and began to hunt and use mules more. Now the serendipity part. I mentioned trying to get in touch with a former Alaskan about my book project. He knew who I meant at once and said he knew Joe Runyan well. They are almost neighbors and he took Joe on a quail hunt some years back and that was instrumental in Runyan locating there! Now isn't that a most amazing pattern of knots, twists and links!??

That is just one example. I run into them or they find me almost constantly. I hardly even get surprised anymore even when I am taken totally off guard by unexpected events and such. So the old Celts knew what they were portraying. It's the great pattern, the circle of life, as we are born, live, die and go back for rest, regroup and return. Along the way we find and lose friends, fall into mishaps and are rescued by help and events we had no idea were on the horizon. Hopefully we learn and grow until we come at last to the end --or maybe yet another beginning, for like the Highway Men sang--I'll be back again....

A Special Day Recalled

I'll keep this short but just want to comment on two things that make today special. First it is Mother's Day and my dear daughter--yes, she came to me as a 'rescue',  second hand and housebroke, but she is still my "baby girl' and will be even if she is looking at a serious birthday this fall. She posted an old photo on my Facebook page that she got out of a family album I passed to her a few years ago. Yes, I admit to tearing up! Thank you, Sweetie, for this!!

I think this was on my first wedding anniversary or our first anniversary as a family. And yes, I did make her

dress and I had one that matched it which was my 'hippie style' wedding dress. She wore the same outfit the afternoon her dad and I tied the knot. A neat thing was that Rev Allen, the minister who married us, asked the two younger kids still at home if they would accept me as their step mother. Had they not agreed, he would not have performed the ceremony and he told me so afterwards. That was nearly forty three years ago, or will be come September. Thank you Jennifer; I have never been sorry and I hope you haven't either.

Second this would have been my dad's one hundred and second birthday. We often celebrated mother's day and his birthday on the same time and as I got older I sometimes made a cake and fixed a meal for them both. I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family and a spoiled rotten little girl for awhile. Here is a shot of each of my parents with me as an infant, long years ago in Kansas City before I became a born again Arizona native. Dad and I had our conflicts and issues but I really  never doubted that he loved me and always meant well even though it was sometimes hard to see this at the time when I was young and had my own ideas about things. RIP Charles McCormack Morgan. Thank you for your part in making me the person I am today; without you it is not likely I would be a writer. And Mom, you taught me what being a mother should be; I may not have measured up but I did try. I miss you to this very day.

Growing Up on the Bridge

This is the essay I wrote in the writer's group meeting the afternoon of May 9, 2014. Make of it what you will!!  GMW 

Those of us who came into this life in the middle of the twentieth century were blessed—or condemned—to live on a bridge between “the old days” and today. In 1940 something or the early 1950s, we thought ourselves very modern and fortunate to live in the wonderful twentieth century.

As small kids we might not yet have had television in our homes, but we had a radio that brought us the magic of words, news, wonderful and varied music and drama from the vast world. We had electric lights and refrigerators and automobiles that were getting faster and more luxurious every year. And there was even air travel as well as trains and busses. What a life!

Then as we began to grow up, the days of TV sitcoms with the perfect family, parents who slept in twin beds, the picket fence, two-point-five kids and a spotty dog morphed into the turbulent 1960s. It was the time of hippies, protests, Vietnam, Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and acid rock. By now TV was everywhere, in color even, and our cars got faster and higher powered each year. Zero to sixty five in… And our music became louder, more strident and very much tied to electronics. We had crossed the first bridge in our coming of age.

Then more decades came and went, bringing more changes. We put satellites into orbit, a man on the moon, more and faster communications. The Berlin wall came down and Cosmopolitan magazine had nude male centerfolds! Cuss words became a feature in movies and song lyrics. We watched our kids begin to grow up, much more wild and rebellious than we ever were, of course. No one chanted, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie with the baby carriage,” any more. That order was often transposed. Some were shocked and others said, “high time.”

Finally we burst through into a new century, surviving Y2K only to be jolted hard by 9-11. There seems an odd irony in the fact those same three digits are also the near-universal code to seek help in an emergency. Just dial 9-1-1. That day it would not have helped much.

In a couple of decades we went from “computers” which filled a warehouse sized space to an equivalent amount of power and capability in the palm of our hands. We came through talking on cell phones and doing email to texting, tweeting and twerking—no, wait; that is some kind of a dance but I guess communicating in a way, too.

So here we are, aging “baby boomers” who have lived our lives on a bridge between “ancient history” and the future. Changes came in increasing numbers, sometimes in almost the blink of an eye. Change and progress—yes, progress requires change but I assert that all change is not progress—sweep past at a geometrically accelerating pace. Where do we go from here?

Do you sometimes feel you’ve been left behind in this mad dash? Maybe I am the only one but I suspect there are more of us. My maternal grandfather, who was born in the late 1800s and passed away in the late 1900s, had gone from horse and buggy to space ships, telegraph along the railroads to wireless phones. He coped as every generation must, but it seems each new group of us has to witness more change and faster change.

Perhaps I am almost ready to step off the bridge and let the rush go on without me. I am not sure how much more and new I can comprehend and adapt to. In my case, growing up in a rural part of the southwest US, I saw the tail end of the ‘old west’ in then elderly men who had been cowboys, gunfighters, mountain men, cavalry who fought Indians or like my late father–in-law commanded a troop of Buffalo Soldiers along the Mexican border during World War I. I only experienced their lives vicariously but it still seemed real and vital, not remote bookish history.

The only way to keep their stories was to write them down or use a big, cumbersome tape recorder so my recollections are not perfect. Even my own early days seem so distant now, veiled in shadowy almost-dream-like vagueness, back at the start of this bridge.

The years pass so quickly as we become mired in the daily trivia of living so that we lose so much, even while we are still here and semi-sane. It feels as if the cord of our rosary has broken and beads have slipped off and fallen away without our notice. You can’t go home again, they say. Anymore not even in memory. That tends to make me sad.

The next bridge or span will be perhaps the scariest or most marvelous yet. I am more curious than fearful and in many ways I am eager to talk again to those who have crossed ahead of me. Maybe their recollections will now be crystalline and perfect. Maybe mine will be too, once I join them. But then perhaps from that new viewpoint we will no longer feel the need or desire to look back.

Someone once said that heaven and hell might be no more than watching a ‘video’ of your life play out on a sort of screen where you must watch it, over and over…. There might be a kind of poetic justice in seeing your highs and lows, your good deeds and the harm you caused and perhaps the most cruel, having to realize how mediocre most of us really are. Already I am wishing I might have another chance to relive my three score and some, fix some of my worst boo-boos and undo some damage… But life has no rewind button, no go back arrow or delete key. It is what it is. Time only moves in one direction and we have no choice but to go along on a strange rolling walkway until it is time to step off this bridge….