YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street and I’ve been thinking of our town’s Jimmy Dale who died last week.
My mental picture is of him grinning and having the time of his life as master of ceremonies at the annual Rotary Club telethon fund-raiser for the Childrens’ Center. In those days, it was a telethon because it was shown over KJEP, the community’s ‘low power’ television station.
Jimmy was on the board of the directors of the Childrens’ Center. He truly loved the center’s clients. Knew them all by name and knew lots about them. He could praise their talents and could find something wonderful to say about each client as he or she came on camera at the telethon. In return, they love him.
It was obviously sincere affection both ways.
On the HCCC board is where he and my late wife Jane became friends. When she died he officiated her funeral. A Baptist minister burying a Catholic girl at a funeral in the Methodist Church (because they had graciously offered their larger sanctuary}.
Jimmy also served our community on the chamber of commerce board and on the city council; And as a businessman and as the city financial director.
Somehow in the last months of his life, burdened by numerous fearful physical afflictions, he could keep his sense of humor along with his hopes for continued service.
He was ‘interim’ pastor for several decades at the small Baptist church at Washington, and later moved his energies to First Baptist in Nashville. He was the only publicly liberal Baptist minister I’ve ever known.
Peace to his family and to his many friends, and thanks to the Almighty for putting such wonderful people among us.
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DITTO WHAT I SAID in the last three weeks about the astronauts and the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. I hope they have guardian angels.
And they’re still “up” there.
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A NUT SHOOTS the former President at a political rally? How scary! I always say it is far too easy for nuts to get guns.
I suspect that the resulting sympathy for Trump will have an even worse effect on the Biden campaign than the latter’s doddering, but even so — can our country not produce better candidates for the White House?
I am sorry that the shooter was killed. I would have liked for him to be interrogated by local Pennsylvania authorities, not the Feds. Let’s try to find out more why someone would go to such lengths to assassinate a candidate. Was it a ‘suicide by cop’ event?
If the Feds did the interview, the knowledge would be forever buried, making sure that conspiracy theories proliferate. Too late.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. Daughter Julie brought me a swell bluebird box she purchased at the Farmers’ Market in Nashville.
I got up off my lazy backside and — before the day got too hot — I removed the ‘old’ bluebird box and threw it and its questionable contents into the trash. We have long discussed whether the old bluebird box’s position on the west-facing wall of my patio was the cause of death for many batches of chicks.
Once the sun has crossed its zenith and until it ducks down behind my neighbor’s sweetgum tree late in the day it has had an unobstructed oven view of the old box.
So Saturday I picked out a spot on the fence which was never in the afternoon sun and I endeavored to attach the bluebird box at that site.
While I was trying to figure out how to operate the swell new battery-powered screwdriver I had purchased two weeks earlier, I stood with the backs of my legs brushing some nandina bushes.
This took me awhile, and I must have stood there so long that the unwanted vine which has taken over the nandinas tried to wrap around my leg.
Wait a minute, I shouted mentally, is that a vine or is it a dangerous serpent?
It is a testament to my self-control that I only dropped the wood screw once. I finally attached the bluebird box to that spot on the fence and I pray that I attached it good enough because I wasn’t willing to stand there with the serpent any longer.
Nothing bit the back of my leg, in case you’re wondering.
As of mid-week I have seen no bluebirds inspecting the new abode. It may be too late in the season.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening email: “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”
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WORD GAMES. Two towns not on your vacation bucket list: Sodom & Gomorrah.
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HE SAID: “Keep your face always toward the sunshine — and shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman, American poet and journalist
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SHE SAID: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Edith Wharton, American novelist and Pulitizer Prize winner
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
