I'm a retiree in his seventies. That may not be significant to many, since there is a bunch of us Baby Boomers around. However, in the year 2,000, when I received a diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma, I expected to be dead in three to five years.
Reading the newspaper or watching the news on television these days can be confusing. It causes one to think that we’ll never reach any agreement on what we should do to solve our nation’s most pressing problems. One of those problems is how to effectively address the issue of guns in America. I just read two brief reports in my Saturday morning newspaper that present the perfect example of what I’m talking about.
On the same page, there are two stories that point to the fact that the republic is confused. One story reports that the state of Tennessee has passed a law which will allow schoolteachers to carry guns. The governor, after signing the legislation, stated, “What’s important is that we give districts tools and the option to use a tool that will keep our children safe.” The law prevents parents and other teachers from knowing who will be armed. The principal of a particular school, along with relevant law enforcement agencies would have to agree to let teachers and staff carry weapons. The state would require a license for every Individual carrying a gun.
The other story comes from the state of Maine. There, the governor signed into law a set of gun safety laws. These laws expand background checks for the private sales of weapons and do the same for mental health crisis care. The governor said the following, “This law represents important, meaningful progress, without trampling on anybody’s rights, and it will better protect public safety by implementing reasonable reforms and by significantly expanding mental health resources.”
For anyone reading this and is not residing in the United States, let me say that ever issue surrounding guns has been politicized. I might also add that the governor of Tennessee is a Republican and the governor of Maine is a Democrat…enough said.
I’ve tried to resist the urge to express an opinion here because that wasn’t my purpose. I simply wanted to show the dichotomy that exists on one page of my newspaper around the issue of how to develop a safe environment as it relates to guns in America. I’m sure you have an opinion.
I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.
Source: The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, April 27, 2024
There has been an increase in conversations about mental health of late. I, for one, think it’s about time. I’m sure I don’t have to say before I go any further that I’m not a mental health expert. I simply want to share some observations, some thoughts about this issue. I’m reminded of the old joke about denial isn’t a river in Egypt. For years now, I’ve wondered why a person might be inclined to deny the reality that they are suffering from a mental illness. Yes, I know that there are certain social and cultural stigmas that exist in society that conditions some people to be tight lipped about mental illness. However, when our condition is beginning to effect ourselves and others in negative ways, don’t you think we should fess up?
I facilitate a chronic illness support group in my church. One of the things I emphasize to the group is that we should be honest about our condition. When someone asks you how you’re doing, assume that their query is an honest attempt to gauge your condition. If you’re not feeling at your best, tell them so, without being overwhelming. You shouldn’t make them feel as though they shouldn’t have asked. However, your response should give them an honest assessment, resulting in empathy. Oftentimes, our responses to these types of inquiries are not truthful, because society, and God forbid, the church tells us to not be truthful. If you’re a Bible-believing, filled with the holy spirit follower of Jesus Christ, you don’t want to run the risk of having someone think you aren’t practicing what you’re preaching. I often wonder how many people in the church are suffering in silence, holding it all in because they want to present this spiritual persona of strength and composer.
If you’ve read any of my musings, you know that I’m a long-term sufferer from multiple myeloma, a type of blood caner. One of the things I struggled with early on in my journey was wondering how long I would live before this disease ushered me from this life into meeting my maker. Year after year of survival and thriving, taught me that I was being blessed beyond anything I could’ve hoped for. Finally, it donned on me that my experience and my faith were powerful elements that formed my testimony; a testimony that God wanted me to use in offering encouragement to others. I now think about how lying about my suffering might have prevented me from sharing the truth about my cancer walk.
Talking, counseling, sharing ourselves with others are powerful tools that I believe God wants us to use in our relationships. When you look at the scriptures, you see God has always been there providing counsel; asking questions that He already knew the answers to. When the great I AM asks those questions, He’s offering an opportunity to be truthful. Truthfulness to self and others can prove useful in keeping a person from sinking into a depressive state. A false persona is not the spiritual and truthful presentation we should be showing others because we think that’s what they want to see.
There were no dogs howling or other creatures making strange sounds. My dog did what she always does, roamed around the yard, sniffing at the ground for what, I do not know. Nonetheless, it was a magnificent event. I am talking about the solar eclipse that just happened. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas which was a perfect location to view the eclipse. We are in a swath of real estate stretching from Mexico, extending across fifteen states of the United States.
Ari and me
The news folks have been chatting up the eclipse for who knows how long, predicting that Arkansas would experience an influx of up to one million visitors. For a state with a population of just over three million, that increase in humans if for only a short while is significant. Grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, gas stations and all manner of service-providing businesses have been preparing for the eclipse, hoping to prevent crippling shortages of all things we need to live. Just the other day, I read an article in my local newspaper about hospitals in Little Rock making plans to order additional amounts of regularly stocked medical supplies early. They will be ordering their supplies two to three days before they normally do, because they are not sure what effects the increase in visitors to the state will have on their supply chains.
Out of all the logistical concerns political and business leaders discussed and planned for over the weeks and months leading up to today, I can honestly say that the event was fascinating. My wife, oldest child and I pulled down lawn chairs from the back deck, positioned them on the lawn and took it all in. Seeing the moon creep slowly across the path of the sun was eerie to say the least. When totality occurred, I removed my eclipse glasses for just a few seconds to see nature’s celestial beauty in full array. I did not want to look too long without the glasses…better safe than sorry.
Chris and me
I got the opportunity to view a partial eclipse from my back yar back in 2017; however, it was not as spectacular as the event I just witnessed. I sat through the entire event, watching the moon’s shadow slowly invade the sun’s rays and eventually cover it entirely. The point of totality was sheer beauty to behold. Watching the streetlights come on when darkness occurred was cool, too.
Today, March 12, marks a very personal anniversary for me. I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma twenty-four years ago. I guess one would say I’m a cancer survivor, especially since so many people diagnosed with this threat to life don’t enjoy life as I have. I’ve chosen not to pen another lengthy blog; however, I’ve included links to three others I’ve posted in the past.
Please join me in celebrating this wonderful blessing that I’m experiencing. This is the primary reason I use the name Old and Blessed for my blog.
It’s that time of year in the southern part of the United States when the media is warning us about snakes. These aren’t the cunning creatures like the scoundrel referred to in the Bible story that chronicles the fall of humankind. Although their bite may not result in such a catastrophic effect on the face of eternity, for me they are about as scary.
Let me be clear, I hate snakes with a passion that goes beyond reason. This is strange in a way, because I grew up in a rural area where these demon-looking creatures were plentiful. I think the prevalence of them contributed to my phobia. When I was a kid, they would sometimes show up unannounced in our yard. When my grandfather would take me fishing, to gather blackberries in the woods, they would lurk in wait to take me out. There is something unnatural about a creature, with no legs, that glides unseen through the grass. Some are even adorned with colors that provide them with the ability to camouflage themselves, making it possible for you to step unknowingly into their territory.
Yeah, I know snakes are creatures of the Creators, as am I, but do we really need them? Hawaii, Ireland, and Iceland have done fine without them. I remember when I was much younger, I even thought about moving to Hawaii just to be where there are no snakes.
The last I looked…this is the only phobia I have, and what a strange one it is; one that a country kid from Cross County, Arkansas shouldn’t have. So, what, there are countless strange things in the world. My phobia about demons without legs is just another one of them.
We’ve had some normal, cold weather in Arkansas this winter. A heavy blanket of snow covered the entire state back in January. We experienced the expected electrical outages in some parts of the state. Here in Little Rock, the capital city, schools were closed for an entire week. Whenever this happens, I think about school and snow when I was a kid. I don’t recall schools closing back then with any appreciable amount of snow.
Despite the frigidness of January, spring is rushing to show its soft, embracing colors this year. With one day left in February, this month has had twelve days of seventy-plus degree temperatures. Winter has given up its turn at forcing us to wear garments worn to abate the expected chill of the season. Daffodils are popping up all over the place. Dogwood trees are displaying their glory with white blooms reflecting the warm sunlight that should be concealed at least until the middle of March.
Winter in Arkansas can sometimes appear to exhibit what one might call dual personalities. You can find yourself experiencing seventy-degree temperatures at 3:00 am, and then the weather takes a turn, showing much colder temperatures during the upcoming day. That’s what happened last night. We were experiencing air-conditioning weather yesterday, and in need of heating today. The ten-day forecast calls for mid-sixties to mid-seventies. It looks like spring is being given the freedom to walk on in, sit down and shower us with comfort that should come in April.
Most of the stuff we pay substantial amounts of money for becomes obsolete in a brief time. However, the stuff that only takes time like love, compassion, understanding, and other relationship building attributes, once developed, stay with us for a lifetime.
Today is super Bowl Sunday, an undeclared holiday in the United States when American football fanatics throw all other things important to the side and sit for over four hours in front of the television to watch a modern-day gladiator battle. If you had staked out a Best Buy store yesterday, anywhere in the United States, you would have seen someone rolling out a big new television, to watch the game. The confusing thing is that some folks buying new sets are purchasing them on credit. They don’t have the money to buy the thing outright; however, they are more than willing to make substantial draws against future earnings for the joy of seeing their favorite team battle it out in the arena for the chance to be the champions. In 2021, the total personal debt in the U.S was at an all-time high of $14.96 trillion. The average American debt (per adult was $58,604 and 77% of American households had at least some type of debt.
We Americans love our stuff. We’ll fill our attics, closets and every nook and cranny in our houses to store our stuff. When we run out of space in our humble abodes, we’ll rent space in the nearest self-storage facility. We would make better use of this money by wisely investing it somewhere. I heard a stand-up comic once (can’t remember the name) make a joke about people who use their garages to store a $1,000 worth of junk while $75,000 worth of automobiles sit outside in the elements. If you can find the logic in that, please tell me.
If you come from a Christian-faith-based tradition, you’re familiar with the message of love presented by God. His son, to whom we dedicate our lives, lived a short life of thirty-three years on earth, void of the material entrapments that so many of us cherish passionately. Scripture tells us that He gave His life as a living sacrifice so that we who believe in Him will experience an eternal existence with Him, absent of all the troublesome concerns we experience during our short lives. That message makes it clear that material stuff has no value compared to what God has offered for our consumption. Are we saying one thing and living another thing completely? Can we have our earthly cake, plus access to the celestial feast, too?
What can I get from you? Where’s the marketplace? If I spend eight years in elementary and junior high school, plus four years in high school, I’ll get my diploma, and I can move onto college. When I graduate from college, I’ll be prepared to get a respectable job. With a respectable job, I can begin making life-long investments that will prepare me financially for a comfortable retirement. Do you recognize these questions, these scenarios? No matter what stage in life you might be at this point, you’ve probably entertained these issues of life. They’re common to all of us in one form or another. However, when I look at them closely, I can’t help but think that there’s something missing.
When I look back on my seventy-three years, I can see where adults placed the emphasis on my development. From early on, I can recall teachers telling me in school that education was the key to success. I accepted statements like this without question. Pearls of wisdom like this were handed down from adults, who knew a whole lot more about life than I did. I now realize that much of my educational experience was based on concepts of transactional activity. This was strange in a society that shut doors of opportunity to people like me at every turn. Sure, there were some folks of my hue, who, by the grace of God, entered closed doors. When people like the women in the movie Hidden Figures, entered closed doors, they found closed inside. They had difficulty accessing bathrooms, water fountains, strategy meetings, lunchrooms, etc.
Society continues to focus more on how to prepare our children to live in a transactional world. Even when they’re introduced to an environment, the church for example, where spiritual development should be the primary focus, a transactional mindset is the driving force. Think about this, I’ve been exposed to the church and a traditional Christian-based environment all my life. Although the spiritual aspect of that environment is talked about constantly in sermons, Sunday school, Vacation Bible school, as well as other educational venues, somehow there’s a transactional aspect to it all. If you do all these things, you’ll get the greatest reward one could ever receive, eternity in heaven. I’m certainly not saying that that isn’t important. But the experience of being introduce to and getting to know Jesus is supposed to be more of a transcendent experience than anything else? Aren’t we supposed to allow Jesus to rise within us? Isn’t the Holy Spirit supposed to empower us, reengineer us into beings who can deal with all the world throws our way? Well, then, answer this question: why is there just as much mentally, socially, and culturally askew with Christians as with people who aren’t?
We bring our children up to believe wholeheartedly that if I play, I’ll get the trophy. They aren’t given the preparatory message that sometimes the trophy doesn’t come, sometimes your efforts may result in your being exiled to the bench. How does all that transaction-based education and acculturation prepare a kid for that? Shouldn’t our children be provided with the tools necessary for developing themselves from within, rather than depending on external forces to trigger all the attributes they’ll need within themselves to function effectively; attributes like, self-worth, love of others, a life-long thirst for self-improvement and a consciousness that reminds them that they can contribute to making a better world, if they make themselves a better human being?
My previous blog, where I talked about the joyous time a small group of my family had getting together and celebrating the holidays was only a part of the wonderful things that happened this past December. A few days before Christmas, I happened upon an obituary in my local paper. I noticed it for two reasons; 1) I only read obituaries containing pictures of people I recognize, and 2) one of the pictures I recognize was a cousin of mine. This was a first cousin, who lived in my hometown of Wynne, Arkansas. Although we grew up in the same small town, we never really spent that much time together outside of school. Additionally, he was born with severe spinal disorder that prevented him from attending school regularly. He also spent an inordinate amount of time at the children’s hospital in Little Rock when he was young. I remember hearing the adults saying that he wouldn’t live beyond his teenaged years.
After I graduated college and started my career in Little Rock, I discovered that my cousin had moved to Little Rock, too. He attended trade school after graduating high school. Although he and I lived in Little Rock, we only visited by way of phone calls and chats in the isles of stores whenever we ran into each other. Seeing his picture in the obituary section of the newspaper was a bit surprising; however, not shocking. I’m at that age where people are taking their exit from this earthly existence all around me regularly. One of the realities we all must come to grips with is that the longer you live, the more people you know leave.
I’m not one for funerals. There was a time during my early adult years when I could say that I could count the number of funerals I had attended on my finger, and still have several left. I can’t say that anymore. Over my two score and thirteen, I’ve come to know a sizable number of people whose exit warrants my attending their last celebration. My first cousin was one of those people, even though we never spent that much time together.
His celebration of life began with a family hour on Friday, December twenty ninth. When my wife and I entered the building, I immediately noticed that there was a good-sized crowd. We made our way down the aisle to my cousin’s body, which was lying in an open casket. I hadn’t seen him in years. At the risk of sounding disrespectful, looking at his body didn’t provide an opportunity to see him. There’s something distinctly missing when I look at the remains of someone I’ve known. After mentally saying my goodbye, I turned to look at the audience. That’s when the years of catching up and celebration of my cousin’s life began. Three of his siblings were there, one from California, I recognized right away. She pointed out to me the other two, who surprisingly mentioned my name in their greetings. I didn’t remember them. In their updates, they mentioned that two other siblings, who I remembered well were in nursing homes.
I was fascinated by the number of young second and third cousins in attendance at the family hour. These were relatives I had never seen. Most of them were from out of town, from places like Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and other locations outside of the South. This wasn’t surprising since most of my dad’s siblings were part of the mid-century migration of African Americans to the Midwest, seeking a better life than what they were experiencing in the Jim Crow South. What was surprising though was that many of my second and more distant cousins lived right here in Little Rock, as well as other towns in Arkansas.
The funeral was the day after the family hour. It, too, proved to be just as celebratory. The church was full. I was quite pleased to discover that my cousin was a well-respected member of his church, a deacon, resolute servant to all. Oftentimes, I get the feeling that speakers dig deep to find something good to say about the person lying at the front of the church, but all props offered my cousin had a genuine flavor to them.
After returning from the interment, we gathered for a repast, where food, folks and conversation continued in the final act of celebration. As I sat, enjoying my meal, and chatting with my cousin’s siblings, I noticed something astounding. I was in a room with more people who had my last name than I had ever been before. Time had scattered this side of my family (my dad’s) to the four winds, separated like grains of sand in a windstorm, not knowing anything about each other. I felt warm, realizing that this was the result of the union back in the latter part of the nineteenth century of my fraternal grandparents. This repast was like none other I’ve ever attended. I couldn’t help but wish Ulysees and Katherine (my fraternal grandparents) were dancing somewhere to see the beauty of their extended family.
I’ve written more than I normally do in my blogs, and there’s much more to tell. I’ll stop here. I will say that I’ve started a Facebook page for this lovely group of people that I want to know. I pray that God will grant me a few years to know many of them. They’re my family.
This past Christmas/New Year Holiday season (2023/24) was one of the most eventful I’ve experienced in years. The foundation for it started early in 2023 when my daughter, my oldest child, decided to take on the task of planning a family reunion. This would be the gathering of relatives coming from the union of my maternal grandparents. I won’t mention any names here for fear of offending anyone. My daughter began planning the gathering back in June. She chose my home and that of a cousin of mine to be the primary locations for all activities (eating, games, storytelling…). She prepared a slick announcement for posting on our family’s Facebook page, as well as a Cash App account for collecting registration funds. The idea was to have a highfalutin event. This was our first family reunion post pandemic. The plan was to pull out all the stops.
As fall approached, there had been no response to the post on Facebook. A sizable number of people had viewed the post; however, none had taken the necessary steps to register and pay their fees. As the holiday season approached, I told my daughter that we should cancel. She posted a notice in the first part of November announcing that she was cancelling the event due to lack of response. She received an immediate response from my cousin, who indicated that we would have several people coming in from Atlanta. With those and a few people coming in from elsewhere in Arkansas and Memphis, we decided to go ahead with the gathering.
The gathering had twenty-five people, and five dogs spread over two venues and four days. There were stories told of days during our childhoods. A cousin of mine, who is six years younger than I, shared a story about how she always wanted my approval when we were coming up as kids. Her story was heartwarming and even shocking to me. I never knew I had that kind of effect on her. She just received a Doctorate Degree in Education nine days before Christmas. I would say she has done well. I did let her know that I’m proud of her. Her countenance told me that that acknowledgement was long overdue.
Our celebration of the holiday, our family and our blessings started on the Friday night before Christmas. It also included Church services on Christmas Eve. Although the group was smaller than what we originally hoped for, the quality of the fellowship couldn’t have been more satisfying. We ended things with a promise to do this every year, moving forward. This was the first gathering we’ve had without anyone from the generation before. They occupy the stories we’ll tell our grandchildren. As trite as it might sound, they were there in spirit. I’m sure I felt their presence. I hope they were pleased.
oldblessedwordpresscom 