Another One Bites the Dust

Happy New Year, friends!

Things have been a bit rough at my homestead for several months, so I am looking forward to a new year: a year full of hope and changes for the better.  

Over at Dear Daughter's home, though, things have picked up wonderfully.  After being unemployed for what seems like ages, Kareema has found a career she is ideally suited for, which she loves.  Earlier this year, she trained to become a Certified Peer Support Specialist -- an assistant mental health caregiver to help people who have gone through, are going through, the same sort of therapy she went through while trying to get back on her feet.  I am so proud of her! 

Grandson Donovan entered a school to become a Certified Ford Auto Technician.  Being an aspie works in his favor with his new venture.  The day he interviewed for the school, reps from Ford corporation were scouting for potential students to enter their advanced courses.  They listened in on Donovan's interview and marked him as a student to follow.  If he does as well as they think he might, future training and specialization with be paid for by the corporation.  So far, he has aced 95% of his courses, and scored very high on the rest.  He picks up information quickly and retains every bit of it...well, almost every bit.  (There are those courses he didn't quite ace, after all.)  His father used to have a race team and Donovan spent time several summers with the team learning to do a good bit of what the first part of his training covered.  I think he will go far in this business.  He even bought his own Ford car!

I've missed blogging and hope to get back to it on a more regular basis.  First, though, I have to get a computer; mine died a couple of months ago.  The company doesn't mind that I use theirs for checking my emails and bank statements, but blogging -- not so much.

May all of you have an even better new year than ever before!  I'll keep visiting your blogs and will try to remember to say hello when I do.

Listen to Willie.

 

Willie Nelson has a new song with a message we all could use.

 

Not the Last Pencil, After All

Today we celebrate (or merely observe, for those of you who are more digitally and computer keyboard  inclined) National Number 2 Pencil Day.  (Okay; well, I do, anyway.)

Go scribble, draw or write something...with a #2!

The Last Pencil

 OLD FRIENDS

I subscribe to Whiskey River, a thought-provoking blog that offers quotes from well-known,  and some not-so-much, writers.  Today's post quotes writer Charles Wright, from a piece about lessons learned from others.  I was particularly taken with the third lesson: "Write as though you had in hand the last pencil on earth".

The last pencil on earth.  Can you imagine that?  First of all, do you still write with a pencil?  I used to write all my poems, short stories, grocery lists, budgets and snarky notes that sit on the mantelpiece with No. 2 pencils.  With or without erasers, but always graphite lead.

Now I use the keyboard connected to my PC. 

What would you write if you held that last pencil?  To whom would you write?  Would you draw something?  A sketch of what you see before you?  A portrait of your child or grandchild; perhaps of the love of your life (or for the moment you share)?

Would you savor the aromas of graphite dust and fresh-cut cedar shavings?  Would your ears thrill to the sounds of lead against paper as you scratch out words or doodles or music notes or just make marks that only your hand can produce?

Does this pencil bear indentations (and chipped paint marks) from when you held it clenched between your teeth?  (Oh, yes you did - at least once in your life you did that!)

Is your last pencil one of a few others sitting in a cup, stubs or half-lengths or broken and splintered?  Or is it a brand-spanking new one, with a pink eraser, brass ferrule, yellow paint job?  Does it remind you of going with your parents to buy school supplies for the new school year, that bittersweet demarcation between the end of summer and passage to the next level classroom?

I read that line a couple of times this evening, thinking about all of these things and more.  Memories from childhood came flooding in: First grade and those thick pencils designed to make it easier for untrained fingers to hold onto while learning to print our alphabets.  Later, a full box of No. 2s, bought with money I had earned from my first summer job.  Graphing algebra problems, being grateful for the eraser, wishing the graph paper were sturdier.  I made so many mistakes!

In my house, I must have four or five boxes of old pencils, bits and pieces of once perfect treasures.  Most have hard erasers (if any at all) that tear holes and leave streaks of eraser dust on any piece of paper unlucky enough to get caught.  Nearly all of them have teethmarks along the shaft.  Some show signs of being hand-sharpened, faceted cuts made with my penknife or a kitchen paring knife.  Others bear the uneven cuts from a hand-cranked rotary sharpener.  Still more have empty spots where the lead snapped off and was never resharpened.  One could imagine those empty spaces were the black holes of the pencil universe.

I sometimes think about what I will miss after I've died: family, friends, stars, birds and other animals (sorry, Joe - not spiders!), and on, and on.

Tonight, I've added pencils to that list.  Maybe I can convince my daughter to bury my remains with a box of old-fashioned, cedar-clad, Number 2 graphite pencils.  Plus a good German-made sharpener.   

AMEN

Silence is not neutrality.

Silence is not a shield.

Silences relinquishes your voice and opinion to others, enabling those who seek power through division, disunity and deceptions.

Silence is the approval that allows dark deeds to exist in this world.

Silence is complicity to the darkness.

In things that matter, silence is surrender. 

 

(Lifted from Gary Myers blog, RedtreeTimes, https://redtreetimes.com/2018/01/15/mlk-silence/.  Thank you, Gary.)