staff meeting

I listen to their thoughts. They flow like a rapid, rushing in the spring thaw.

Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea.

Action. Result. Action. Result.

I am slower. Like some big river nearing its end in a vast sea, ocean.

My thoughts come still, but they are surrounded by precaution, the things that will stop the dreams from being real.

I listen to them. They are young. So bright. So filled with energy.

I am feeling old this day. 

The dreams are still there. I am supposed to "manage" them.

That means, I think, letting the thoughts flow to conclusion.

My addition is to point out the deep water, the monsters there.

Let them speed in the rapids.

But watch for the really big swell, the riptide that waits in the big waters.

I am amazed by them.

I see tomorrow in them.

It is strong. It's real and it's not waiting much longer.

Changing landscape

I called it 'Pizza Hut road'. Shorthand for a road going past a Pizza Hut, out of town, into Talbot County farmland, over the Choptank near a place Frederick Douglass lived as a slave, into Caroline County farmland, to a major route through farmland into Delaware and beaches on the Atlantic.

I can close my eyes right this very fraction of a second and see myself on that road. I can see the farms. The lives spent making food burst from this patch of Eastern Shore earth. 

I can feel my 20 years here. The hours I spent riding this road. The conversations I had, over there, next to that farmhouse with a governor and a farmer struck by drought; on that bench near that building with a congressman, now "retired," about how special this place is; and there with a friend hoping he could convince me to follow a different path.

Now I pass 3 new developments. Three farms gone. I see lots of new houses. New people. Suddenly being in this place for 20 years counts as a long time, instead of the requisite generations when I first drove past the police in St. Michaels in their blue Volvo station wagons, Barney Fife writ safe.

It's changing, this place.

 

Mid-life

Sadie and Rowan two years ago with a statue of 

Carolina football great, Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice in the background

There is no crisis to this. Just accepting.

Suddenly, those my age are responsible, in charge, making decisions for those behind us.

The achievements not made weigh heavy.

The dreams not fulfilled are like so many ghosts.

The people gone are an unwelcome silence.

But, there is time, at 45. There is still time.

Maybe, just maybe, we can change the world for the children.

Spending time with them. Loving them. Voting and spending and striving not for ourselves, so much, but for them, now.

This thought is not heavy at all. It is more like a butterfly in a rainforest, glad to be home, looking to tomorrows, days of light and hope. After all.

The President

His speech struck me.

No surprise there. This man is beyond good at turning a word, dipping into history, and our dreams of what should be, all that is just out of touch.

He moved me. I'm thinking, he's my age. He knows. This is our time. "My Generation". 

I am hopeful.

I get up and go to work and think, again, maybe I can make a difference.

I hold Sadie, whose world this man is shaping, and I think, please make a difference.

Clear, dark sky

It's that bitter cold, that seems all the more bitter for the clear dark sky and the bits of Ursa Major strung across it.

This will be my 19th Eastern Shore winter, in some way or other. The 19th year looking up at that hard sky from this patch of Earth between the Chesapeake and the deep Atlantic.

The cold bites as I stare up.

I remember the times and the people in that brief snatch of history.

I remember the other times looking at that sky in the cold. Different, in some way, from the soft night sky of North Carolina.

I wonder about others who see this sky, their hearts beating, their minds dreaming, their souls longing.

It is very quiet here, just now. And, very cold.

The farmer

Today  I spent doing what I used to do most waking hours: talking to, interviewing a farmer.

This was a "project" instead of straight-up journalism. But, it was good.

I learned a bit about a man's life. Admirable things. Love of the land. Love of a wife. Love of children. Hard work. Rewards you can count on. Challenges controlled by God and Nature.

I learned, again, that no one stands alone.

His advice to those starting farming, those few: find a mentor, find some good solid minds, hearts and hands to stand with you.

Southern past

It came as an email. 

"I am writing a book on the 20th N.C. Infantry and noticed you have an ancestor who fought in the 20th N.C."

Some Web site I had searched for information.

The author wanted to check facts.

There it is, my Southern past. 

Confirmed by a man writing a dry, dusty book to be sold in all those bookstores at Civil War battlefields, tucked in with the DVDs of Ken Burns' Civil War series and medallions honoring some long ago conflict to tack to your hiking stick.

I am suddenly proud of those hours spent studying the past.  

I can talk of the ancestor he is interested in, Lorenzo Todd, a corporal in the 20th N.C. Or, his cousin, Isaac McDaniel Todd, my great-great grandfather, in a brigade of the 2nd N.C. Cavalry. Or, I can go back farther to Nicholas Prince, my ancestor from Horry County, S.C., who fought in the Revolutionary War. 

He is interested in Lorenzo Dow Todd from Columbus County, N.C. (My great uncle Dow Todd, named for him, was a big man with a flat top and suspenders who kept trying to get me to try chewing tobacco in those wonderful years before 10.)

Lorenzo, a hero, was the also namesake for my great grandfather, Lorenzo Lamar Todd, a Baptist preacher in Columbus and Bladen counties.

We exchange emails. I confirm what he mostly knows. Lorenzo fought along with the rest of the 20th in virtually every battle in that terrible war, including Gettysburg, and surrended with Lee at Appamatox Court House. After the War, he moved to Georgia, where he died a very old man and with 10 children, whose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are all my distant cousins. 

I am removed from this past. Cotton mills, dusty farms, battles and skirmishes with British and Yankees. But it is in there somewhere.

The Todds are talkers and quick to get a temper up, so they say. My grandmother on both sides, mom and dad, were Todds. One line from North Carolina, the other Todds from South Carolina, like the Princes.

The Princes are more subtle. Prone to plowing straight lines.

The Powells are mixed bag.

Like me.

From the pew

Father Bill's homily is a discussion of symbols, meanings in life.

The Easter seal on his Stole, passed down from a priest after death. A symbol of commitment, faith, a path taken.

The renewal of baptismal vows we taken are filled with meaning, symbolic in every word. ... "Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"

The answer is always humble: " I will, with God's help."

God's help. The piece that makes the possible.

Jazz

Wynton Marsalis and his quintet was magnificent tonight.

Everything you would expect. Sublime.

Elevating.

Artists at their peak. Singing without words. Speaking without a language.

In New Orleans last February, one night returning  to my hotel,

I stumbled on a group performing in a side street. A group of teenagers, from the looks of them. Like a high school marching band without uniforms, director, formation, parade or requirements. They filled the night's chill with notes like those from Marsalis or Coltrane or Miles Davis, or the newest jazz lion, Christian Scott. 

They were all smiles for a group assembled randomly to take it in.

An unexpected joy in that late night along the Mississippi.

The dozen of them, flung not-so-expensive, banged up, duct-taped, instruments into the air. Twirled and cavorted.

The smallest of them worked the crowd with his purple LSU baseball cap looking for dollars and cents. I gave. He gave and they gave back, more.

Jazz. 

the dairy farmers

It's been 3 years ago now. "Is anybody going to do anything to help us?"

It was a good question posed to me by the wife of dairy farmer on the phone. There was anger and tears in her voice, as she talked about not paying vet bills and feed bills and electric bills and hoping that it didn't come to and end with a foreclosure.

With that question, "Is anybody going to do anything?", she transferred this to me, at this moment her representative and soon to be her advocate.

Now, it is upon us again. A conference call with economists -- the dreaded grey economists with numbers that don't bend to positive thinking and hope -- shows that it's about to get really hard for dairy farmers to survive as dairy farmers. The price of milk is dropping  like a rock, production costs are down some, but not enough.

Diners

Me, in Exmore, Va., 6 years ago! (Photo by my friend, Sonda Dawes)

Diners are wonderful places, aren't they?

It's almost the way things should be.

Simple. Easy to understand. Collard greens. Pastry. Non-Starbucks coffee. (Well, I do like Starbucks.)

But, definitely simple. And satisfying.

Make's you want more, like a tiny taste of the comfort of home and heaven.

Bits of wildness

Finding wildness, nature in its rough-cut form, is essential. A few trees, some slowly degrading wood and rock. A hawk. Any of it is a rejoiner to all the artiface that is our world. I look for it wherever I am. Today, as everyday at work in Annapolis, I walk through a small patch of trees with some 80 years of age on them. It is dark this morning and raining. I catch a glimpse of one of the chipmunks that use this area as shelter. Their lives, lived so close to mine. Theirs is outside, mine in the steel and brick and glass building nearby. Theirs is brief. Mine much longer. Theirs is primal -- food, procreation, bodily function. Mine has the essentials and art and thinking and books and God. But, I envy them their wildness.

Grandpa, first part

Sadie has a running thread of conversation these days about her "grandpa's". They tell her things. "Grandpa told me ..." You add the rest.

They are wonderful souls, her grandpas. They tell her they love her. They tell her about nature. About television and fast cars. 

Thing is, she has never met her grandpas.

Tiffany's father, Thom House, and mine, Thurman Powell, are gone from this world, except in their genes which flow into this little girl. 

Which get's me to this photo. His genes reside somewhere in Sadie and Rowan, my 14-year-old. That's Oliver Powell, all of his thin, tall self in front of his house in Cumberland, N.C. My grandpa.

I didn't know him well. I was the grandson living over the Atlantic in Europe. My times with him were short on visits to North Carolina. 

He worked in the nearby cotton mill. The house was in a mill village. I remember the house not having much furniture or "things." I remember him laughing, a lot. He died in the early '70s and is in a graveyard with plenty of the Cumberland County Powells. His father, my great grandfather. His uncle, Benjamin, who fought in World War I, according to his gravestone. His wife, Cora Todd Powell, my grandmother.

 I wish I had known him. I can't help but ask myself what he would think of me and his great-granddaughters. Our lives are so different from his.

Oh, the things he could share, my grandpa.

One of life's pure joys

She climbs onto my lap and leans back against me. She is still sleepy. I am too. I rest my nose into the messy-ness of her bedhead red hair. The smell is wonderful, like something from summer on this cold winter morning.

"Daddy, read me a book," she says.

I start to say, "I'm reading my book," but, I don't. Not this morning.

Geocaching

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game, according to Wikipedia. "Treasure" is used in very loose fashion here. Tiffany, Sadie and I spent the day with Joanne and Travis trying our hand at geocaching in Easton. Using a hand-held GPS we found several, couldn't find one off the the rails-to-trails.

Joanne and Travis are veterans, bringing newcomers into the fold.

It was fun. Something about the experience of searching and the finding, not necessarily the "treasure." And the too rare experience of being outside, rambling around with little purpose other than simply having fun was wonderful. Suddenly, I was 10 again instead of 45 with all of its slowing decrepitude. Sadie smiled a lot as did Tiffany and Travis and Joanne. So did I. That qualifies as a good day, well spent, just having fun, finding treasures.

www.geocaching.com

The beginning

So this is an odd 2009 resolution. But here it is anyway. My online journal for family and friends.

Today, I'll just give you a cool quote and a picture.

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." William Faulkner ... great Southern, and American, writer.