1. Sunny days are for nothin'
2. How to be happy
3. Readers' Comments
4. Forwarding is allowed
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Readers' Forum
Did you catch the mis....mis.... nevermind.
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Last week I got to do something I haven’t done in years – and I bet you haven’t either. Back about, uhh, “many” years ago, the summers were longer, the days were hotter and things moved slower. It was nothing to use up an entire day just breathing and doing nothing. Many times, way back before we entered the age of instant everything, the world seemed to move at our pace. We weren’t captives, at that point, to the gratifications we have come to expect.
Last week I went out under a tree and lay in a hammock for about an hour or more. I did not feel guilty and I did not have a nervous collapse because there should have been umpteen things I should have been doing. I should have been lying in the hammock, so I did.
The temperature was near 100F and there was virtually no breeze. Flies did attempt to make this session unpleasant but I ignored them. Ignored all but those who seemed to want to make my face a landing place when practicing their aerial maneuvers. The others tried to get my attention but after most of a life time of putting up with middle school and high school students, the pesky flies did not particularly bother me. I didn’t like them but they weren’t about to ruin my afternoon.
Back in the olden days, when summers began in June and ended with Labor Day, kids had time to be kids. I seem to remember playing some organized baseball but it really wasn’t all that organized. Maybe I was not all that organized. Playing marbles, running the hillside, riding bikes and slipping off to go swimming seemed to be a better plan of action than to have adults try to relive their youth by telling you what you were doing wrong.
Lying out under the willow tree reading Jack London was not wrong. Hot summer days were made for reading or maybe not even getting that ambitious. Maybe we should just lie in the sun and get tanned all over or as much “all over” as were allowed to tan. Tanning all those other parts happened when we went to the strip pits to swim and act like today’s boys seldom know how to act.
There is something magical about the hot sun beating down and you just being totally immobilized. Up above there are white clouds standing thousands of feet tall towering above the horizon and drifting off to magical places. Some of them contained castles or pirates or sailing ships that went to places undreamed of by young land locked boys.
Later on we learned that clouds were only a collection of moisture but they were thousands of feet from earth and stretched for miles high. Finding that clouds were not the creatures of a young boy’s imagination was tempered by the fact that their science was even more than your imagination.
As you are there watching a massive cloud drift across from southwest to northeast you could only long to go where you supposed it was going. This cloud could look down and see you but it soon would be over a part of your very own country that you could only read about and imagine. Then the cloud would be over the ocean and may be over a foreign country.
Hard as you tried you could not imagine the sights it would see nor the people who would see it. The sun continued to beat down and the brain grew weary trying to stave off the effects of its hypnotic powers. The clouds continued to drift across your field of vision and if your eyes opened long enough, you could follow the path of a particularly interesting one.
But lying in a hammock is new. In those days one took an old quilt out under a tree – or sometimes just out on the grass. Back in those days one had to be especially careful and not take a quilt that was not “old” or one would have his time outdoors cut severely short. Mothers were possessive of things like expensive quilts being dragged out into the yard and abused by boys.
But an old, raggedy quilt was perfect for stretching out, lying on, listening to the sounds of locust, thinking of watermelon for later that night and mostly, wellsir, mostly for doing nothing.
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2. How to be happy - two wise men
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. ~Benjamin Franklin
If you want to be happy, be. ~Leo Tolstoy
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3. Reader's Comments
Agree? Disagree? We can talk
Comments? State them, it is your turn to speak.
Click here: andfurthermore@cox.net and please put COMMENTS in the subject line
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4. Forwarding is allowed
Send this on to others and see what they think -- and yes, I'd like to know.
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Readers' Forum
##I know it is almost unbelievable, but I mistyped, since I don't make mistakes, the number of the Light Brigade. As I told this alert reader, I relied on my memory. Yes, I know, a foolish thing to do.
**Did you mention 500 charging into the valley of death to test readers to see if they knew
that in his The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson really wrote "Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred?"
## I want to know where that extra 100 chargers came from and why they weren't there when I memorized.... nevermind.
## But this reader, and the next, seemed to be in tune with last week's idea.
** ** Amen, dear one. …
** Just as a heads up. The head football coach at Jenks Makes $86000 a year just for coaching. With his other perks he pulls down over $106000 per year. Oh, by the way, this was the coach who got caught using ineligible players last year. After a three month suspension he's back at work. What kind of message are we sending to the children w/ this?
## Jenks is a suburb of Tulsa but was a separate town back when that was possible. Like all Oklahoma schools, it is way underfunded this year and next year is supposed to be worse. I am glad they have their priorities straight and entertainment gets its proper place above those academic programs.
See you next week.
