Stories

Advice Not Taken

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I went out running the neighborhoods on a Saturday afternoon. Soon after I started I heard the sound of helicopters overhead and discovered they were spraying. 

It gives you a funny feeling to be running along and have a helicopter fly over you and spray you.  But I kept on running.  And after awhile I came upon the woman who was directing all this.

She had a balloon way up in the air on the end of a rope and was sitting in her car with a radio talking in the sky with the helicopters.  I noticed she had all her car windows rolled up, hot as it was. 

She saw me coming and got out of her car as if something important was up.  She met me in the road and I thought maybe she wanted directions to somewhere else in the neighborhood.  Since I run these streets all the time I could have helped her with that.

But instead of this she had advice.  She said “It’s not a good time to be out running, because we’re spraying.”  And I thought fast and said, “Well, it’s not a good time to be out spraying, because I’m running.”  And I suppose we each had a point.

Well, they kept right on spraying. And I kept right on running.  And I’m alive to write about it all these years later.  So I guess no harm was done to me, and certainly not to them. 

People who try to tell you what to do may have a balloon and seem official, but think twice before you mind them. When you need to run, just run.

Poetry

The Shopper

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Twelve eager rows of cars sat waiting while
an ooze of Christmas shoppers flowed across
their street beneath a signal giving right
of way but flashing now to hurry up.
She was behind them all and all behind

in general so it seemed to me who noticed
from the curb her death-like grip on tops
of bags that billowed out around her. And
like a sniper laid in wait frustration
watched until she got positioned in

the center of that busy place then let
the bottom of a bag break loose despite
her solid grip around its neck and someone’s
crockpot hit the street. She’d bought it
for the fact its liner came right out

and so it did and broke in shattered pieces
all across that space just as the light
above said go to cars who soon began
to honk because their go was now held up
by one poor shopper all alone in picking

up the bags her panic had turned loose
and all that glass. I watched her face change
through phases like the signal light above
embarrassed first and looking round as if
to make amends to honking cars who sought

a cop or someone anything to get her
out of there. Then pain appeared which dollars
wasted played some part I thought and changed
again and hung this time. A weary look I saw and
felt but soon away from there I then forgot.

Commentary History

Passing Knoxville

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When I was a boy growing up in a small Tennessee town, Knoxville was the biggest city in the world as far as I could prove. To go to Knoxville with my parents was a special occasion. Actually I think it was somewhat special for them as well as me. Later on, to go there by myself was a brave adventure. I can still remember my first solo ride on the White Star Line bus from Maryville to Knoxville. Our town had no hospital then, but Knoxville had many of them. Our town had one high school, but Knoxville had no telling how many. Our town had a small college where my father taught, but Knoxville had the University of Tennessee.

The treasures of Knoxville included the Army Navy surplus store off Gay Street, my favorite. Knoxville boasted the first trampoline I ever saw or used. And the Court House lawn is where we waited with our packs and gear for school buses to come and take us to Camp Pellissippi on nearby Norris Lake. Near Miller’s Department Store was the S&W Cafeteria where men in uniforms carried the tray to your table, imagine that. Nearby was the Sterchi Brothers Furniture Store which started in Knoxville and then expanded in the Southeast. On the north side of town was the Whittle Springs Hotel, named for the nearby mineral springs that were said to have healing properties. Beside the winding Tennessee River sprawled the university, where our high school band was invited to march and play at halftimes when small crowds were expected. No small crowds are ever expected there today.

Although we had two movie theatres in my town, those in Knoxville were larger and more special. The Tennessee Theatre was my favorite, but there was also the Riviera and the Bijou. I always thought the Bijou had an odd name. 

There were two newspapers in Knoxville: the Knoxville Journal and the Knoxville Sentinel. My parents took the Sentinel. The two main radio stations (it’s hard to imagine, I know, but there was no television then) were WBIR and WNOX. My family listened to WBIR. WNOX was famous for its “Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round.”  It also hosted the “Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour” which Dolly Parton sang on when she was 10 years old. Dolly grew up in nearby Sevierville.

Orton Caswell Walker, always known as Cas, was a colorful and influential Knoxville figure. He owned a supermarket chain which featured a “Dollar General” type approach to selling groceries. He catered to lower income and working class customers, in his stores and in his political career. He served on the Knoxville city council and tried hard to become mayor but never made it. He was a hard-spoken, attacking style of populist, and all who knew him were either “for” or “against.” Cas opposed every progressive idea that ever came up, such as putting fluoride in the drinking water which he said was a communist plot against our children. My mother always did her shopping at the local A&P store.

Knoxville was also a place of anonymity, which my home town was not. In our town you might be observed at any time by someone who knew you. They could also know your teachers and your brothers and your parents. Knoxville was a foreign place where no one knew your face or name. People did things in Knoxville they would not do at home. What things those were I leave for another time.

Tonight I am passing Knoxville along I-40 on my way to Chattanooga. It is now, not then. I am passing by and thinking back.

Most of Knoxville is unfamiliar now. The GPS would have to help me find my way around.

Commentary

It’s All Relative

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Comparison is the thief of joy

                — Theodore Roosevelt

 

It’s an animal trait, which human animals share, to make comparisons among ourselves. A canine animal, when meeting another, will size the other up. A human animal will do the same. A woman will size up other women with whom she might be compared, and a man will do the same—or a boy, or a girl. We learn this early, and we do it often.

Most of the time these comparisons are fleeting and virtually unconscious. A quick glance, a quick conclusion, and no more thought about it. But other times the game is serious, with high stakes riding on the outcome. Sometimes there are winners and losers, with consequences attached to both.

Normal human beings have a sense of self worth. We rate ourselves, constantly rate ourselves, and our ratings may rise high or fall low. They may also get stuck in a high-risen or low-fallen position. You likely can think of examples of famous people stuck in the high-risen view of themselves, or the low-risen as well.

These self-ratings come from within us, from our thoughts and feelings, our reactions to daily events. They may be driven by external influences, by what we hear from others as it relates to ourselves. One negative comment we hear may sometimes hang around all day and into the night. These may be driven by comparisons such as: “He’s smarter than me,” “I’m prettier than her,” “We’re better than them.” In a more tribal society, including human ones, there are a lot of “we’re better than them’s.”

One’s dependence on favorable comparisons is a slippery slope. Except is rare circumstances, all comparisons are relative. Most of us are better than some, and inferior to many others. 

In the 4.4 mile Great Chesapeake Bay Swim of 2016, I finished in 2 hours and 36 minutes. Now, the great majority of people who swim can’t swim across the Chesapeake Bay at all. I’m a better swimmer than most people, then, at least in terms of swimming four miles in open water. But the swimmer who won this race finished in 1 hour and 24 minutes. In one way of speaking, that puts my effort to shame. But much depends on the comparison. That winner was 20 years old, and I was more than three times his age. When compared with others in my own age group, I did quite well. All is relative.

I love photography, especially nature, wildlife, and landscape photography. When I post my pictures on Facebook, friends comment on how they love them, and say I’m a good photographer. But I mustn’t take that too seriously. I know and follow some really good photographers, and I’m very average compared to them. My friends may not be aware of this comparison, but I am. All is relative.

When I took the standard IQ test on entering college, my score was pretty high and it made me feel good. I do consider myself to be fairly smart, and I do meet people I think are not as smart as I am. But I’ve also met plenty of people, and heard of many others, that are much smarter. There are other people whose smartness is in a different league than mine. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Fareed Zakaria, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Barack Obama, Charlie Rose, David Remnick, many others. All is relative.

There are two approaches we can take to this relativity. On the one hand, we can try to keep ourselves in situations where we compare favorably, as many do. We can flaunt those easy comparisons to make ourselves feel good. We can avoid situations where we might be compared unfavorably, keeping in the spotlight and avoiding any shadows. Play to our fans and avoid any critics.

On the other hand, we can deliberately do the opposite. We can seek the company of people who are smarter than us, faster than us, better spoken and better looking, better dressed, whatever all the “betters” are. We can learn to be comfortable in situations where we look up to others, and use the comparisons to learn better ways, and to motivate ourselves toward improvement.

You see, it’s always better for me to swim with the faster swimmers, feel challenged and inadequate, and struggle to keep up, than to swim easy with slower swimmers and feel superior. If I can, I want to rub shoulders with some of those really smart people and watch them perform. 

I knew a really smart man once. He was a brilliant speaker and writer, read scholarly works in several languages, and in addition possessed great social and interpersonal skills. As a student of his, my admiration came close to worship. But the remarkable thing about this man was his humility and down-to-earth-ness. He believed there was something he could learn from every person he met, regardless of their station in life. He could meet a janitor or cab driver or hotel maid and find something of value this person could tell him. Whatever it was that you knew and he didn’t, he would find it out and learn from it. He was a great man, but there was a humility about him that meant he had no need to prove himself better than anyone he met. 

You might say this is easier if you’re at the top of the heap and have less to prove. You might say it’s harder if you’re at the bottom of the heap and have more to prove. The point is not to think in terms of proving anything, other than to yourself. The point is that all is relative anyway, and that the most meaningful competition is all within ourselves.

Poetry

On Seeing Where My Father’s Fingers Were Buried

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Here in this valley grown with weeds, that hill
above us looking down, I see a mill

and feel its creak and smell the fresh-ground flow
that cooking made so sweet. And here I know

that echoes of a father’s past crowd in.
The old man’s memory hears it now as then.

Run quick and fetch a doctor round the hill
and mend the sudden damage of that mill

that chopped with cane the fingers stuck into
it by this boy. My thoughts on looking flew

past all those years I stared at its misshape
and though but little of a hand’s escape

through surgery done by gathered lanterns low
to serve my Dad these many years till now.

He pointed with it then. He showed the spot
where he and brother George next day took what

was left, two fingers dead, and with some care
dug in the earth and placed them wondering there.

A curious grave we’d come to see.
We went away, and left it be.                 

David H. Briggs

Because he had lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand, my father always shook hands left-handed. The mill that took his fingers ground sugar cane to make sorghum molasses. It was powered by a walking mule but had to have cane fed into it by hand.  The boyhood home site where this incident occurred was near Brush Creek, North Carolina.  Brush Creek is located near Asheville and today claims a population of 500. My father left Brush Creek to cross the mountains and attend Maryville College in East Tennessee.  After earning his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, he returned to teach at Maryville College for most of his life. When we visited my father’s home site, nothing remained of the original buildings, but my father still claimed that he knew the location of his buried fingers “within ten feet.”

Commentary Humanity Stories

Meeting A Woman at the Pool

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I drove to the pool with maybe a few problems on my mind. Eighteen strokes to the lap, thirty-six laps to the mile, half an hour of hard exertion, counting down, counting down.

My left hand is getting better. It used to start the pull too soon. The timing now is even and the stoke is smooth. It has taken years of daily swimming to accomplish this.

But what a feeling! To glide to the wall that last lap and let the body go loose. Let it hang free while the breathing slows to normal. While the day begins to form again, and the arms pull me up. Feet go under and the legs lift, and I am now like people suppose they were meant to be instead of swimming in water like a frog or fish. Hands take off the goggles and rub the eyes.

I headed for the small pool in the corner where you sit in hot water that churns at you from all sides. Good for the circulation but don’t stay too long and don’t use if you have a bad heart, they say. And I found a woman there, a woman all alone.

She was a friendly woman. Smiling and saying hello and wanting to talk. Talk I do not remember not much of, as you will soon understand.

For what I kept from that day till now was the sight of her body. Her body I tried not to be caught looking at. But whenever her head turned, or I dared a glance, I did look. Over and over I looked, as if forced and powerless.

And what I saw more of, each time, was always what I knew from the first. That she was a dying woman here in this water. Of cancer that was somewhere, maybe everywhere. A body looking dead already. As if nothing were left between her bones and the covering skin. Nothing.

It made me look strangely at the parts of myself I could see along with her parts. Mine were no stuff for a magazine cover, yet what a contrast. As if I were rich and famous and beautiful now. A different class of person from her. It felt good and bad both. Proud at first, then guilty. Conspicuous even, as if I was the one who should hide myself from view, not her. The lesser person there, and not the better one.

And I remembered there those troubles I’d brought. They came at me with a vengeance, as she smiled her bright smile, and chatted about the water and how nice the day was. Then said goodbye, pulling up to leave. And was sadly beautiful as she made her way.

 

Nature Travel

Iceland Up and Down – Eighth in a Series

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This is, for now, the last of the Iceland drone photography. This is being posted in the midst of the U.S. Covid-19 crisis. Who knows when it will be possible to safely fly to Iceland or other countries again? As I ponder such thoughts, reviewing these views and experiences becomes even more satisfying. The following contains scenes titled “Peace in the Valley,” “Swan Family Roaming,” “Fall Colors with No Trees,” “Waves and Waterfall,” and “Color Around the Lakes.” View on the largest screen possible for the best experience.

Nature Travel

Iceland Up and Down – Seventh in a Series

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The exploration of beautiful Iceland continues with the following episodes: “Black Sand, White Waves,” “House at the End of the Road,” “Swans on a Remote Lake,” “The Town of Kopasker,” and “Hofn Iceland and its Surroundings.”

The town of Kopasker is memorable for the best fish cakes I ever put in my mouth. 

These videos were taken in very high resolution. They are best viewed on the largest screen you have available.

Enjoy!

Nature Travel

Iceland Up and Down – Sixth in a Series

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Continuing my Icelandic journey and its views from above, this installment includes videos titled “Black Rocks by the River,” “Around Lake Myvatn,” “Looking Across to Hornstrandir,” “The Town of Flateryn,” and “Eastern Icelandic Coast.”

Nature Travel

Iceland Up and Down – Fifth in a Series

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Continuing my drone photography of Iceland, this installment features episodes titled “Remote Lakes on a Windy Day,” “Iceland’s Westfjords Region,” “Dark, Remote Landscape in Iceland,” “Village by Lake Myvatn,” and “The Town of Eskifjordur and its Pool.” 

On the subject of swimming pools, every Icelandic child is required to learn to swim before graduating from school. Because of this, every village seems to have a pool. Most pools are outdoor pools with heated water. Most pool water is heated by mixing Iceland’s abundant geo-thermal heated water to obtain a comfortable temperature. Outdoor hot tubs are also very popular in connection with the swimming. During our recent two weeks in Iceland, we swam in six different pools, including  Eskifjordur.

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