BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
What follows in a complying of blogs posted to the
Brazil Times website under the by-line MY VIEW FROM THE BACK PEW beginning
May 17 2008 at a time when I was still finding my voice after a stroke. The last one was published on May 10 2015
following the suicide of our son Nathan.
By that time I had written over 350 blogs with a minimum of 500 words
each, and was both burned out on writing and going through what must be called
not my better days. Besides, after writing
that long about things only interesting to me, even my wife had stopped reading
them. These blogs can no longer be found
on the Times site and are reproduced here from original document files.
Not all blogs can or should be included -- that's well
over 150,000 words which nobody much read the first time around. And, some will be edited for timeliness, relevance,
or just plain keeping short enough to be read.
Anyhow, this is where it began:
This Is Me Blogging[i]
So this is a blog. If you are over, say, 30 years of age you
probably have a child who can explain computers to you. We have such a son. Our #2 son, Nathan, is something of a
computer guru. And, since I do some work at his business, people think I know
something about computers. I do
not. I can only “blog” as long the good
people at the Brazil Times continue to humor me and turn this stuff into
Internet wiz.
“Long enough to cover the
subject, short enough to be interesting.” This is the challenge laid down as I
begin to write observations of the county and state that has come to be more
“home” than any place I’d been before coming to Brazil . I must begin with a certain amount of
disclaimer: I am well aware my need of
the disciple of actually writing something on a regular basis is much greater
than anyone else’s need to read it.
It seems the place to begin
is at the beginning. This is me, who I
am and what I bring to the game.
Time flies when you're having fun, enjoying life and being whom and where you are. The [now 20+] years since we moved toIndiana have gone too
swiftly. We were told a fellow has to
live in Indiana
ten years before he could claim to be a "Hoosier". But I adopted Brazil ,
Indiana as my
hometown the day we moved here and hope to never leave. In fact I fully expect to be buried here (in
the very distant future).
Time flies when you're having fun, enjoying life and being whom and where you are. The [now 20+] years since we moved to
I sincerely hope to bring a
unique viewpoint of life in Clay
County . Perspectives many miss. I had lived most of
my life in St. Louis , Missouri . And, if you did not grow up in north St. Louis you
cannot completely appreciate the differences between living there and
here. For a good part of my life the
houses were thirty-six inches apart: A
walkway to our backyard on the east side, a walkway to their backyard to the
west. So close and somehow you never
knew anyone. Over the years schools
became so dangerous guards must now patrol their halls. Yes, you could still walk on the streets at
night, but not around the block.
People ask how we happened to
come to Brazil ; to them I
propose this question: Your youngest is about to enter a big city high school
and you get the chance to come to a small town in Indiana
with the unlikely name of Brazil ,
what would you do?
When this move was first
proposed the worst was imagined. Would
there be only shacks in the land of "Hoosiers"? Will they have
running water? What we found was a very
comfortable home at the crossroad of the best of all possible worlds: Over half
an acre of yard bounded on the rear by a cornfield. Have you ever watched corn grow? Fascinating, particularly if you didn't know
the stuff grew on stalks. At our front
door we could watch, and occasionally smell, the cows graze. My wife and I are probably the only ones left
in Indiana
still excited about seeing deer in the road.
At [now 75+] plus years of age I can truthfully say I have never been
happier or more content any place else.
Which leads, I hope, to the
things about which I may choose to write.
My daddy said you can play the game by any rules you want, as long as
those rules are known before the game begins. So, these are my rules as I begin
writing of what I see:
First, I’ve never been a good
reporter or researcher. Most of what I
write I think of as prose written in essay form. Probably the reason very little of what I
write is ever read by anyone.
Second, one of my great
failures in life has been a failure to be politically correct. Instead I tend to be too honest for anyone’s
good. Unfortunately this will continue.
Third, I am neither a leader
nor a very good follower. Most of what I
do is observe and keep an incredibly lot of irrelevant facts in my head. My observations and mistaken memories are
what I write.
Them am the rules. Let the game begin. At least by now I’m officially a Hoosier.
____________________________________
[i] The Brazil Times,
May 17, 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment