Morning Bird Droppings June 18, 2024 I am trying to regurgitate a previous day’s thought. It was about ten years ago my youngest son was in a level one trauma center and was to be moved to a rehab facility. It just hit me with all the news of how lucky we can be sometimes. After sitting down at my computer in a haphazard way for the past months, I want to get back to my writing in the mornings. I am beginning with a crazy title, but then again, it is very specific. I walked out into a mild morning with a haze in the sky behind the pines, plenty of humidity, and whippoorwills that almost surrounded me with calls. It has been almost a dream-like feeling for several days since I heard those calls. As I stood listening for a few moments to the calls so soft yet sinking into my soul, I began to ponder as I tend to do. Nearly every day, I sit down and write, and some days, it makes it into my daily or almost daily ritual, Bird Droppings, and others well into my files for later use. A few months back, I received an email from a friend, a fellow teacher whom I had never met in real-time. I met through the acquaintance of another friend who I have met and who referred me to this other new friend. Now, I know that isn’t very clear, but how it happened? Anyhow, I received a great series of old farmer quotes in this email from North Georgia, which caught my attention. "Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled," An old farmer’s advice.

After sorting emails and getting serious about writing, I wanted to continue my thoughts from the previous day. Truth is so often an elusive quarry, and somewhere along the line, talking with my wife, we got into technology, and a new topic sort of evolved: the spiritual loss within children as we inundate them with technology and occupy every moment with a gadget or thing. Paradoxically, I was registering some software this morning and got to one screen where you check which of the following you or your family owns. There were thirty objects listed, ranging from Blackberries to cable TV. We had twenty-six of thirty in our household. Had we not been so against Apple computers, excluding iPads and iPhones, we might have had all 30. I do like Apple. We do not have one currently, and the more I use my iPad and iPhone, the more I like Apple.

As I thought of how much we count on and "need" all of these things, it hit me how we replace aspects of our humanity with the immediateness of technology. I see anger transmission as a good example. I was reading various blogs on Facebook this morning. I saw several venting on an educational blog yesterday; a middle school principal asked parents of middle school students to shut down their children’s social networking sites in a Midwestern state. Some of this was in light of cyberbullying and several suicides linked to online bullying. I am old and can recall back in the days waiting till you saw someone to argue or yell, but now instantaneously, your blog, email, text message, and cell phone immediately your anger. That is a significant change in how we react and deal with life. So often, we miss the journey since the destination is immediate. "Life is about the journey, not the destination …. We don’t know what tomorrow brings" Steven Tyler, AEROSMITH So many years ago, I first read this line and have told the story many times of finding a yellow sticky note (again, technology with 3M Post-it notes being old) on my computer. Every once in a while, I get amazed, and as I was driving from point A to point B on a recent day, a song was playing in my son’s truck; he swapped with me, so he had a working AC. It happened to be the Aerosmith CD with this line in it. An old Aerosmith song entitled Amazing from the 1993 album Get a Grip never went higher than number three on Billboards’ top ten, but it was good enough to have its own Wikipedia site. However, it is a very powerful couple of lines about life. Over the years, I have paraphrased and altered a bit, so here is the line from Steven Tyler’s lyrics. I have heard about promoting Aerosmith with Steven Tyler on American Idol and touring this summer. "Life’s a journey, not a destination, and I just can’t tell what tomorrow brings. You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk." Steven Tyler, AEROSMITH I never realized Steven Tyler was a developmentalist; I always considered him a rocker. There are steps in each of our lives as I grow older with technology and without; I learn each moment is special and unique and intertwined with so many others. I have learned to enjoy and view the journey. I have my technology, but I use it to work with me and not to substitute for any piece or part of my existence. "Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating you." George Bernard Shaw

We each get up in the morning and begin the day, which is usually very similar to the previous day. I was thinking back to nearly twenty years ago when my house was quiet, and everyone was gone. My wife and middle son were at Georgia Tech for orientation. My son started there now almost twenty years ago. My youngest was at a music camp for the week; I did not know if they were ready for him or not. He took his tuba, but his passion has always been the blues harp (harmonica) and still is. He and his cousin went to camp to do some serious jamming; his cousin brought his national steel guitar and my son his harmonicas. My son is always trying to turn some folks on to some old Robert Johnson songs instead of the traditional pop music so many teenagers listen to. Today, my son is an ICU nurse and listens to some bluegrass music. We shall see what happens when bluegrass hits blues.

I used to drive by my mother’s house many afternoons after school, often dropping off some digital photos for my mother’s hobby or having dinner. Over the years, she created one kind of greeting card from photos and artwork for her family members. She used the image on the front and then wrote a unique phrase for that person to enter. I recall driving around looking for a picture of a spider web for her and taking 60 or more other photos I have used as a screen saver on my laptop for some time now.

My oldest son, many years back, started a ten-gallon mini reef tank that has been through ups and downs and, at last time, was a twenty-gallon tank but now sitting idle. However, in basic, a mini reef is a saltwater aquarium that simulates a coral reef in miniature. The residents in his area had been primarily colonial polyps and coral, which, from a few feet away, looked like lumps of rock in a very brightly lit tank. Still, up close, the rocks have quarter-inch creatures with tentacles waving in the current and are very much alive. I have taken many pictures over the years, and one is of a group of anemones that cluster together, each only a quarter inch wide, covering a piece of coral rock with what looks like hair till you look closely. It is tiny tentacles catching microscopic creatures in the water. Tiny mantis shrimp that have hatched in the tank would swim about less than a sixteenth of an inch. What is impressive is how much beauty is contained in a space thirty-six inches long, thirteen inches wide, and a foot high. I often think of life this way. We miss so much when we do not look closely. "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Albert Schweitzer Dr. Albert Schweitzer, for many today, is an unknown, having passed away nearly sixty years ago. He was a humble doctor in the jungles of Africa and very well known in his time for his musical talent and medicine. It isn’t easy to even find his books in print today. Of course, if you Google or do an internet search, he will pop up, and his exploits of saving lives will be found. So many people are not content and struggle to look for what may be right in front of them all the time. Having a good outlook and open-minded perception is crucial to seeing all around you truly. This is often impeded by the lack of altering the truth in today’s world. I did get into yesterday’s topic a bit on that. "How far is far, how high is high? We’ll never know until we try." California Special Olympics song "Somehow, I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable." Walt Disney How many years ago, a man was walking through orange groves and palmettos in central Florida with a dream that today, Disney World is one of the most visited places in the world? It is all in the journey, walking along, seeing all there is to see, not missing that minute detail or word, and with conviction and achieving your goals. No one can see or hear what you hear, only a vague proximity, and only you will know when your goal is met. In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary stepped to the top of the world on Mt. Everest, twenty-nine thousand feet above sea level; no one else had ever done that. Nepal and Mt. Everest are nearly tourist trap, albeit very expensive. Still, many have made the summit, and many more have died trying as of a recent major event with as many as three hundred people waiting in line to the summit. "You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals." Sir Edmund Hillary We all can achieve, do great things, and overcome obstacles; it is with confidence, constancy, courage, and curiosity, as Disney said. I might add that it is always to be looking and observing; it is about trying to understand the depth and passion of our existence. Keep all in harm’s way on your minds and in your hearts, and always give thanks namaste. My family and friends, I do not say this lightly, Mitakuye Oyasin (We are all related) bird