Beautiful description of the soldier-like corn going over hill and dale.

Brings back my own memories of big scale gardening days 4 decades ago when I was in high school. 

We had a Troy-bilt rear tine tiller and had about a quarter acre sown in corn.  The seeds were strategically chosen to spread the harvest out over six weeks or more.

Except the d@mn groundhogs and racoons had other plans.   The racoons weren't too bad: they would bend an ear or two down and strip them clean...and leave the rest undisturbed.  They took what they needed.  

But the groundhogs were like feral teanage vandals....take a bite or two out of every ear in the row.  Never finish and ear, never leave a stalk unmolested.  Just pure cussedness.

Sometimes there was some corn left for us.  The technique was to start heating the water while picking the corn.  By the time it was husked the water would be boiling.   There is simply no way to describe the overwhelming sweetness of truly fresh picked off-of-the-stalk-and-into-the-pot corn; except to state that if it is that fresh NOTHING is needed.  No butter.  No pepper.  No salt.

The best varieties, back in that day, were "Illini super sweet chief" and the standby Silver Queen.  Illini produced multiple ears.  One standard sized and three or four (occasionally more) smaller ones.  Sometimes they  would cross pollinate and you got a bi-color ear with the best of both.

Those were the days.

I learned a few years ago that freshly picked sweet corn can be cut from the cob and quick frozen.   Corn I got that way from a farmer friend tasted out-of-the-field fresh from the deep freeze even one year later.

"My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel"

I think about things. A lot.
I ponder morality, history, philosophy.
My thoughts keep me good company.

Lately I have pondered the collective insanity that has gripped the nation. When will it end?
And, when the storm passes, what will my nation, my children's home look like?
What will become of the great American experiment?

I'm fascinated by Cognitive dissonance; the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
What a mystery the human mind is.
For instance, how can a person be outraged when an NFL quarterback refuses to stand for the national anthem, yet embrace monuments to and wave the flag of men who took up arms against that same nation?

08/19/2017

 The mood is serene.

 I'm writing this at three in the morning.

 It's not because I can't sleep. I'm sleeping better than I've slept for years. I'm just enjoying living my life at night instead of being forced to do so during the day. It's a much different world now. You can see, do, or purchase practically anything at any time of the day or night.

 So I sleep during the day and go out at night.

 The night tonight is thick. Sultry. It has the feel of a wet wool blanket, stifling. There's a mist filling the dips in the road, a cloying, thick, sinister thing that clings to the windows as if it wants in the car.

 Giant was delightfully uncrowded.

 I spent my last ten bucks on frivolous things like bread and cheese...and soda, of course. I'll be pretty much skinned until the first of the month. The transition is still in process, there are bumps, but I'm okay with it.

 But, where I would have been greatly distressed before, I'm not now. It hasn't affected my mood or my attitude in any way. That, by itself, is remarkable. Retirement is really agreeing with me.

 I've been reflecting on some of the conversations I had with my dad in the nursing home in the weeks and days before he died.

 I had sent a message to my sister, Shelly, to ask how many brothers Pop had. I thought I knew the answer but I didn't know much about Pop's extended family prior to him marrying my mother so I wanted to be sure.

 Pop told me the story about how his brother died. He was part of the landing at Normandy and was killed on the beach. Pop was in a mobile infantry unit and landed at Normandy later in that same week. He said he didn't find out about his brother until months later. The story was very detailed, the mental imagery clear.

 It was also completely untrue.

 Pop's brother, like every other healthy male his age, did fight in World War II. I was never able to determine if he did land at Normandy. I did know Pop was in an infantry unit in France following D-Day but accurate information about his brother's service is not something readily available.

 Pop's brother died of Alzheimer's in a nursing home in Georgia in 1997.

 My mum and pop would schedule a vacation every year in the off-season to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. From their hotel there, they would drive to the nursing home to visit Pop's brother. I don't know if if was just the one visit or if they went several times during the vacation.

 The last time Pop saw is brother alive, his brother didn't know who Pop was.

 It was kind of a sad thing to hear.

 You can spend your entire life, a very long one, with others in it and it's completely possible to forget every last one of them.

 Once I would have felt a sense of tragedy, loss, but I don't anymore. I still feel, I still have empathy, but what's past is something than can never be changed.

 Neither can what is.

 So I choose to enjoy what I can in whatever time I have left on this world. It doesn't matter if I may forget it all one day.

 Those are just memories.

 What you have around you right now? That's what a life is.

 Live it while you can.

 Thanks for listening    

08/21/2017

 The mood is relaxed.

 I'm actually quite drowsy. I decided to live my life at night when I have no daytime commitments. I don't like being out in sunlight, I have to stay covered up or I'll burn, which means wearing long sleeves and a hat when it's ninety.

 That sucks.

 I had no choice since there's no such thing as a swing-shift for caseworkers. Once I was able to get out of the clock-slave mentality I decided I'd spend my time outdoors at night instead of being miserable during the day.

 I usually go to bed at around ten or eleven AM and get up at seven or seven thirty in the evening. By they time I've finished waking up it's full dark.

 This is a different world from the one I was born to. You can do almost as much at two in the morning as you can at two in the afternoon. In some cities there's no difference between day and night life. I did my laundry then went grocery shopping and filled up the car. I wanted to go walk some trails around the lakes but I didn't want to go alone and my friend wasn't feeling up to it.

 So I went to the crossroads instead.

 I'd been meaning to do this for a long time I just couldn't be in the right place at the right time due to other commitments. The crossroads is somewhere out toward Stewartstown (very small rural town for my out of state friends).

 I don't know the name of the roads because there are no road signs.

 The roads were probably built for access to farmland when the housing bubble was inflating and development fever was at its peak. There is a four way stop-sign so I at least know this wasn't an other-worldly place.

 I took with me a lock of my hair, bound with twine, with one drop of my blood and a picture of my brother Jon. He has his arm hooked around my mother's neck. It was taken when he was still living at home. He was drunk and mum knew it but you can tell because her smile stops at her mouth.

 It was the only picture of them together that I could find.

 I place everything in a tin box. I placed the box in the center of the crossroads at midnight on the night of the new moon. I turned around three times and when I looked back there was...Just that box, sitting in the road.

 The Crossroads tradition can be traced back throughout all of history.

 They were considered places of great power and were useful in containing the corpses of demonic creatures, vampires, lycanthropes, and witches. Or, as they are now known, the deformed, the sickly, the mad, and the elderly.

 In America, the crossroads has a slightly different tradition.

 The methods vary depending on who you ask. Some references say the night of the full moon, some say the new moon, some say it doesn't matter. The recurring theme is the inclusion of a personal item in the locus (that's the box), hair or blood, to seal the deal.

 The deal with the devil.

 Or a demon. Depends on which tradition you consult. You follow the rite, you turn around three times, and the devil is supposed to be standing in the center of the crossroads. Then you make a deal. You get what you want for a certain period of time then the devil comes and drags your soul to hell.

 My request was fairly straightforward...my soul in exchange for my mother's and my brother's.

 According to certain christian dogma, both are burning in hell for taking their own lives. So I performed the rite and nothing happened. Because nothing is going to happen.

 There is no magic in this world. There are no gods. There are no demons. No spirits, no angels, no Djinn...nothing. There never was. All there was was our fear. Fear we shaped into something we could deal with.

 Fear that others learned to use to control people. To abuse people. To gain power.

 We are the devils. We are the demons.

 Sometimes we're the gods but we've lost our way.

 Thanks for listening