Time passing as men pass who never will come back again…
And leaving us…with only this – Knowing that this earth,
this time, this life are stranger than a dream…

—Thomas Wolfe
_______________

The email popped in one day last summer, sometime in early July. From a reader. Which was not at all unusual, and still isn’t. I’ve heard from people from a lot of different places. Mostly from this country, of course. But also from far places like China, Japan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Australia, Mexico, and several European countries. From people who downloaded my book on the internet, and wrote to tell me about it. This message was a little different, though. It was a bit longer than most. And, more startlingly, it was from a professor in Germany.

Her name was Dr. Sabrina Völz, and she taught at Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg, way up north. She had read the book and was touched by my story, she wrote. And she was intrigued by the literary aspect of it. She told me a bit about herself. She teaches English and North American Studies, teaching those who will teach English. And she went on. In her academic research, she focused on ethnic literature and culture in North America, and the American short story.

Wow, I thought. Now that’s a small world, right there. A professor in Germany read my book. A professor. And she wrote to tell me. How cool is that? She wasn’t done there, though. The email went on.

She’d like to interview me, she wrote, if I’d be willing. Either by email or in person. She was traveling to New York City in August with her husband and children. Would it be possible to meet to talk, if she came to Lancaster County? She didn’t want to infringe, but she really would like to use the interview to teach a seminar there at the University. And maybe write an article to be published, too. What did I think? Would it be possible to meet?

Well, yeah, I thought. Sure it’s possible. It’s remarkable, too. An email from a professor in Germany who had read my book. And she wanted to interview me. Of course I would. I get two or three interview requests a month, mostly from students writing research papers. From grade school to post-graduate level. Mostly the interviews are done by email, although once in a while I’ll give someone half an hour of my time of an evening on the phone. I have never turned anyone down. I’m not out there looking to get interviewed but if you have a legitimate reason to ask, I’m always honored. And I’m not just saying that. I really am. But Dr. Völz wasn’t quite done, yet. The email went on.

I read on your blog where you travel some to give book talks, she wrote. It would be great if you’d consider coming to Germany. I could easily get you booked at my University and a few others in the surrounding area. I don’t know if you’ll travel that far, though. And I thought to myself. Germany? Travel to Germany? Fat chance I’ll ever do that. It would be wild, though. But I’m sure the cost would be way out there prohibitive. Plus, I’d have to take time off work. And that’s what I told her in my response. Sure, I’ll talk to you when you’re traveling through. I’d be honored. I have some Amish friends I could introduce you to, if they’re home that day, that is. I’ll find out. But traveling over to talk at your University? That’s a little far-fetched. I’m pretty happy right here where I am.

We emailed back and forth a few more times. From the start, she insisted that I call her Sabrina, not Dr. Völz, as I had addressed the first message. OK, if you insist, I said. I’m always hesitant to do that, to not recognize a degree someone has worked hard for. And one Saturday afternoon in late August, we met at The Back Page, a nice little pub in Leola. I got there first and waited by my truck. And soon enough, a little mini van pulled in and parked. A tall man unwound himself from the driver’s side. Sabrina got out of the passenger’s side and walked up to me, smiling. We shook hands and she introduced me to her husband, Hans-Jürgen and their two school-aged children, Maximilian and Emily. After chatting a few minutes and posing for a pic, Sabrina and I walked into the pub while her husband and children left to cruise the area for an hour or so and see some sights.

With Dr. Sabrina Völz.

We got along quite well from the first moment. Just chatted along. She asked about the book, how it came to be. And I told her. My blog brought it to me. After a bit, she set up her little recorder on the table, and off we went, for the official interview. Which used to make me a little skittish, early on, having a recorder sitting there latching onto your every word. But it doesn’t anymore. You have to relax and be yourself. Speak what you know, what you believe, what’s in your heart. Sure, you might stumble and say something that doesn’t come out right. But if you do, you can correct yourself. That’ll be recorded too, I figure.

In about an hour, we were done. Sabrina handed me her hard copy of the book and I signed it. She had a real hard copy, not the electronic version. I was surprised and pleased, not that there’s anything wrong with any version. But still, a real book is a real book, I’ve always felt. Something that you can take and hold in your hands. I like that. And we chatted again for a few minutes.

“You know,” she said. “I wasn’t kidding when I asked if you would come to speak at the University. I think I could get the funding to bring you over. But you didn’t seem that interested. Would you consider it, if I can get you over there?”

And I laughed. Look, I said. I’m very content where I am. But if you get funding for the trip, of course I would come. I’d be stupid not to. I just would never expect such a thing. I mean, what chance is there of that happening? But I’ll come. Oh, yeah, I’ll come. I’ve never been to Europe. Never. If you get it done, get me over there to talk about my book at a few Universities, I could even boast that I’m an international lecturer. That’s a joke, that last thing I said, there.

She laughed, too. “You might be surprised,” she said. “I’ve done it before, brought an author over to speak. And your story is unique enough that I think it might work. I’m going to try when I get back home. I’ll start filling out the applications. I actually think there’s a pretty good chance. I’ll keep you updated.”

That’s great, I said. I really appreciate your confidence, and that you think my book is worth all that effort. But I won’t look for anything until I see it coming.

Her family had returned, and they all followed me the few miles to the home of my Amish friends. I had asked them, a few weeks before. Would you like to meet some folks from Germany? They’ll be here, and I know they’d sure love to meet some real Amish people. I’d love to bring them over. And my friends said what they usually say to my off-the-wall requests. Bring them on. We’ll make coffee.

We arrived, and were genuinely welcomed, as I knew we’d be. My friends invited us into their home, and we sat around the kitchen table, talking and drinking coffee and lemonade and eating pretzels and cheese and cookies. I had planned on staying only a few minutes, but we all got along so well that before we knew it, more than an hour had passed. Sabrina and her family told us what it was like, to live in northern Germany. The customs, how things went, the cost of a house. And my friends told them how it was to live as Amish in Lancaster County. You can’t get all that much said in a little over an hour. But we made the most of the time we had. And we all enjoyed the company of each other.

The Völz family at the table of my Amish friends.
Sabrina is signing the guest book.

They left then, heading out to their next stop. And I thought back to that day more than a few times, how cool it was, to have someone like Sabrina and her family show up to meet me and my friends. And sure enough, a week or three later, here comes another email.

Thanks for your hospitality, she wrote. We all enjoyed meeting your friends very much. And thanks for interviewing with me. Now, here’s the info I’ll need to fill out that application. Full name, address, and so forth. I sent her what she asked for. And life just went on, as it does. I stayed busy living it.

A week or two later, she emailed that she had submitted the application. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m hopeful, she wrote. Yes, yes, I wrote back. It would be hugely exciting, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work out. I expect nothing. And there’s where things rested for a while.

And then, right at two months ago in early January, here comes another email. A very happy one. She got the funding, Sabrina wrote. It came through. The trip was on. All expenses paid. A place to stay. And three book talks at three different places, plus a stipend for each talk, yet. I had half believed her earlier, when she told me she had a good shot at getting it through. But still, there’s nothing like seeing it right in front of you on your computer screen.

And I just sat there at my desk at work and stared at her message. She had really done it. I was going to Germany. I have never been to Europe. Never. Which probably makes me a hick to some people. But it was never that high on my bucket list. Sure, I always figured it would all work out someday, somehow, that I’d get there. But I’d never fretted much about it, exactly how it would happen. It was just one of those things you know. And now the book was taking me. It took a bit, to absorb the enormity of all that.

I never bother my friends in the publishing world much. Never have, never will. Those people live in a world so far removed from mine that sometimes I think it’s another planet (a good planet, just not the one I’m on). But that day, I wrote a little note and sent it to my agent and a couple of my good friends at Tyndale. Hey, I want to share this joy with you. Look what’s happening. The book’s taking me to Germany. I’m speaking at a University. In Germany. I’ve never even been to Europe. Now the book’s taking me. How wild is that? And they all wrote back. It’s quite wild indeed. Congratulations.

I had another thing on my mind, though, and wrote back to Sabrina. Thanks very much. This is unbelievable. Now, let me ask this. Would it be possible to get my return ticket a week later than my stay in Germany? I’d like to travel on over to Switzerland on my own, to check out the areas my Anabaptist ancestors came from. Sabrina answered immediately. No, that should not be a problem.

And we worked out the schedule. I’ll be leaving in early May, returning in mid May. The first week, I will be with Sabrina and her family and colleagues. I’ll be speaking at the University and a few other locations. I think I’m speaking in a couple of classes Sabrina teaches. And maybe at a high school. I’m not exactly sure of the schedule at this point. Whatever is lined up for me will be fine. And right now, I’m not nervous about any of it, because I haven’t thought about it much. I will, though, as the time gets closer. Things like, how do you address a group whose primary language is not English? I think most people at the University speak and understand English. Should I speak slower? And I wonder if anyone over there would understand my PA Dutch.

The next weekend, I’ll take the train to Switzerland. I haven’t really figured out where all I’ll be going, yet. Definitely I want to see some sites that are historically significant to the Amish and Mennonites, like where Felix Manz was drowned. And maybe some castles with dudgeons. I want to check it all out, so see the spots where all that terrifying stuff happened that I saw and read in the Martyr’s Mirror as a child. I want to walk where my forefathers walked, hundreds of years ago. And I want to see the ground on which they stood when the state condemned and murdered them.

I’ve been around long enough to know that nothing happens until it happens. Despite all the best laid plans, tomorrow is promised no one. I always try to keep in mind, as something big like this approaches, that something could go wrong. It just could. Mom could leave us the day I’m scheduled to fly over. It could be anything. But last week, Sabrina sent my eTicket, so we’re that far along. That’s when I figured it’s safe to write the story here on my blog. The story of how it all came down so far.

And yeah, I’m flying. Got no other option. The TSA goons are gonna get their paws on me. I’ll have to grit my teeth and take it. When it comes to flying, I’ve always had an exception for funerals, emergencies, or something really big. I figure this is something really big.

I still haven’t fully absorbed it all, that this trip is really happening. I won’t, until the day gets a lot closer. A week out, I’ll start freaking for real. This is uncharted terrain for me, a huge adventure. And yes, it is just flat out wild, the whole thing. Another wild strange stop on a wild and strange and beautiful road.

And I look at it all and wonder. What were the chances that a person in Germany would pick up my book and read it, a person like Dr. Sabrina Völz, who had the clout and the connections to do what she did to get me over there? I’d say they were extremely remote, if you look at random chance alone. Maybe it was more than that. I don’t know.

I am proud of the book, proud of the accomplishment of actually getting it written and having it published. I’m proud of all it has been and all the good things that have flowed from it. But still, I am who I am. A guy just walking along, trying to describe as best I can the world around me and the things I have seen and lived. And all I know is that I walk forward into this journey as I’ve tried to walk, these past few years. With joy and with thanksgiving, but mostly with a grateful heart. That’s the one thing that’s kept my head half straight, this last while. Simple gratitude to God for the host of astonishing blessings He has poured into my life. And continues to.

One of these days, this little ride that is the book will end. I’ll look around, a bit startled, probably. Where am I? What just happened? I might have to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t all one long, beautiful dream. And then I’ll get off and go right back to being who I was before. Just with a little more world experience.

It’s been quite a ride. Maybe someday I’ll have to do it all over again.

**********************************************************

There’s a little issue I’ve been wanting to throw out there for a while, but just never got done. I mentioned a few blogs back that the half-millionth hit was coming right up. It came a little over a week later. A shining and proud moment. I snapped a pic of the screen with the number. 500,000 even. I never wrote for the numbers, but that was a very cool milestone for me.

Anyway, in the past couple of years, I have gotten a half dozen or so random emails from advertising companies. Hey, they say. We notice you’re getting some nice traffic on your blog. Would you consider running some ads? We’d love to sign you up. I always ignored those messages. It just didn’t seem important.

But lately, some of my geeky friends have told me the same thing. Why not run some banner ads, there on the left side of the screen? Or both sides? It’s completely empty space. People are used to seeing ads when they read online. You could make a few bucks. And I told them. I don’t know. It’s never been important to me. All I want is a place to write my stuff. I suppose it’s not a big deal, one way or the other. But I still couldn’t quite bring myself to give anyone the go-ahead.

It all boils down to this, money wise. I suppose I’d earn a few dollars a month. Enough, maybe, for food and beer and drinks for my garage party every summer. Those are very important things. But they won’t break the bank, either way. Nice money to have. Won’t miss it much if I don’t.

And I thought, I’ll just ask my readers. This is where I’m writing for now, and will be for a while. Would you mind if I ran ads along the left side of the blog? Or both sides? Yes? No? Why? Why not? Give me some feedback. I’m not saying I’ll keep a tally of votes and go with that, or anything. But I’ll sure take into consideration what you have to say.

Some things will never change, some things will always be the same.
Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen.

—Thomas Wolfe
_____________

I get those calls, oh, maybe half a dozen times a year or so. From some Amish guy, usually a farmer. Hey, I need some advice on a project. Maybe you can help me out. Any way you could stop by sometime? And usually I say, sure. We figure out a time that works, Saturday afternoons, most often. And I’ll drive right on out to the farm to see him.

Which is what came down, a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, when I headed out to a farm in the Leola area. A little snow squall had swept through the night before, and the roads were a slick and treacherous. But navigable. I nursed Big Blue along, off the main highway and up the hills and around the curves of the narrow ribbon of a side road. More like a path, really. Someone told me years ago that some of the roads around here were born as cow paths. Never found any reason to doubt that tale. I slowly crept up a long hill, keeping a sharp eye out for a little country school house. And there it came. I passed it, then turned onto the long drive that led to an old farmstead tucked away almost out of sight. Lancaster has quite a few of those. Old farms set so far off the road that it’s like another world in there.

The lane was unplowed, but something had tracked in, probably the milk truck. I drove in, parked my truck, and got out. Not a soul around. It had to be the right place. I walked up to the house. Knocked. A teenage girl appeared, broom in hand. Cleaning time on a Saturday afternoon, I figured. She opened the door and smiled at me. Are your parents home? I asked. I’m supposed to be here around one. The girl smiled some more and invited me in. I stepped inside. She disappeared into another room, and her mother emerged a moment later.

The woman was very pleasant. And quite apologetic. “I’m sorry you drove all the way over here on those snowy roads,” she said. Not a problem, I said. I have a truck, and it’s not that bad. “My husband’s working out in the barn. I can take you out there,” she continued. Sure, I said. I waited as she bundled up, and we walked out across the drive and yard toward the massive old barn.

It was an old place, this homestead. The original stone house had been expanded and extended with a new wing here and there over the years. Daudy house, no question, part of it. The outbuildings, too, were big and old. This land had been farmed by Lancaster County Amish for a hundred years, probably more. And it showed. Everything was maintained, kept up, cleaned up, spic and span. We approached the barn, and she tugged open the large hinged door. We walked in.

The interior was a classic stanchion cow barn. Two long rows of Holstein cows stood there, facing each other. The feeding aisle connected them. The cows were clean, the barn was clean. These people milked, and they took care of their livestock. My mind flashed back to those Bloomfield days, back when I was trapped and hapless on the farm. Milking cows by hand. My memories in no way connected with what I saw before me now, though. This place was just spotless. The cows were groomed and gleaming and, well, clean is the only word I can use to describe them. Clean and content. Munching their feed and hay. The odor of animals permeated, sure, but it wasn’t that strong. Not overwhelming, like I remembered from my farming days.

And I wondered fleetingly. Would I have liked farming, or at least tolerated it, had we been raised with a setup like this? Maybe it wouldn’t have been all that bad. But nah, I thought. I still would have hated it. Especially milking. I always hated milking. You’re stuck. No freedom. You have to be there twice a day. No exceptions. And we walked through the connecting aisle, toward the back of the barn.

The goodwife led me to a door on the far wall. Opened it, and disappeared inside. I stood there with the cows. Still marveling. The Lancaster Amish milk with mechanical milkers, not by hand. I have never milked a cow, other than by hand. How much easier it would have been, I thought, if we could have used milkers. A moment later, the Amishman emerged with his wife. He looked a trifle stern and grim, but he was really quite friendly. He walked up to me, shook my hand and smiled. We exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries. Then I peered back into the room he’d been working in. What are you doing back there? “Come on in and see,” he said. I followed him into the room. And walked into a scene that has remained unchanged for over two hundred years.

The barn was old. And this room was old, too. A wing, kind of fit into one corner and flung out. The only light came from rows of large windows on two walls. A table lined those two walls by the windows. In the center of the room were four large cardboard bins. A little crackling wood stove sat over close to the opposite wall. The room was comfortably warm, warm enough to work in shirt sleeves. Four or five children, ranging from teenagers to a five-year-old, stood there by the tables, working. Well, except the little guy, the five-year-old. He flitted around, half working, half playing. And I just stood and stared. This was a scene I’d heard told, but had never seen before. And what I was seeing could have come right out of the early 1800s. The way the room was laid out, the way the people were dressed. Even the air smelled the same, a rank but not unpleasant odor. An Amish father and his children were working in that room, doing what fathers and their sons and daughters have been doing for many generations in these parts. They were stripping tobacco.

I stood there and just drank it all in. I was seeing a slice of Amish life that was totally foreign to me, growing up. Sure, I knew the Lancaster Amish raised tobacco. And I had seen many stages of how tobacco is raised and harvested. I had seen the farmers planting in the fields, in spring. Seen them out there hoeing and trimming in summer. I had seen them in the fields in the stifling August heat, cutting the plants by hand for harvest. And I had seen the bundles of tobacco hanging from barn rafters, drying in the natural air. All that I had seen in the past, just driving by. But I had never seen this process, the final process. The stripping of the dried tobacco leaves.

The thing is, seeing it all from the road, driving by, is a lot different than actually being there. A lot different. Here, in this room, I could not only see it, I could sense it, feel it, smell it. What it was, this ancient tradition, and what it meant.

And I told the man. Wow. That is just fascinating. I’ve never seen this before. How do you do it? Why are there four bins, here? How long has the tobacco dried? How much does an acre produce? Doesn’t it deplete the land, raising tobacco? That’s what I’ve always heard. And he beamed and smiled, very pleased at my interest. I was in his world. And he was eager to tell me the things he knew and lived.

“Every tobacco stalk has four different grades of leaf. So we have four bins,” he said. And he showed me the different grades, from rough to fine. The children all looked at me with large eyes, but kept right on working. Stripping leaves and throwing them in the proper bins. Soon, though, they paused and gathered around this funny English man who could talk PA Dutch. Smiled at me and my questions. They could not imagine how I could be so dense and ignorant of the things they had seen and known from the day they could walk and speak.

And the Amishman chatted right along. “It’s a lot of work, from seeding to harvest to stripping,” he said. “It keeps the children busy. They’re getting a little tired of it right now, but we have to have this shipment ready by next Tuesday. They’re doing pretty well.” And he told me of how they bale the loose tobacco into great 600 pound blocks. “The baler is set up over there in the other room,” he said. “No one wants to use the old tobacco presses any more. Too much work, cranking the press by hand, and tying the bales by hand. The baler does it a lot faster, in bigger bales. They come out with their trucks and load the bales.” To my next obvious question: “It all gets shipped down south somewhere. We contract in the spring, to produce a certain amount.”

“And no,” he said. “The things people say are wrong. Tobacco doesn’t deplete the land. Alfalfa takes more from the soil than tobacco does. Of course, we rotate the crops every year. This year, we raised six acres of tobacco.” Wow, again, I thought. Six acres. Six acres of heavy labor-intensive work. Six acres of planting by hand, harvesting by hand. Six acres of tobacco leaves, to hang in the rafters to dry. Six acres of tobacco to strip. Yeah, he keeps his children busy, all right.

And time was winding down, in that room. I could feel it. I pulled out my iPhone. I want to take a picture of the tobacco bins, I said. If the children need to move out of the way, that’s fine. And all the children kind of edged off to the side. Except one. The little guy. He stayed there, unmoving. Didn’t budge. I quickly lifted the phone and snapped the pic. The little boy looked right at me. And his father did not scold him.

And I thought a good bit about it later, absorbed it, turned the thing over in my mind, why that simple scene spoke to me so deeply. The father and his children, out there on a Saturday afternoon, laboring at a job the Amish have done ever since they settled here in the 1700s. Providing a cash crop for the market. Thinking nothing of it, really. Perplexed by my fascination.

Coming from where I came from, the experience put a human face on an activity that was always taught to me as evil. Tobacco. The devil’s weed. Everything we hear in our time screams condemnation of anything associated with the word. I grew up hearing that condemnation. Grew up reading it, from my father’s writings. I heard it preached from countless sermons in church. It’s bad stuff. It’s evil. No Christian could ever raise or sell it. No Christian could ever use it. There can be no understanding of it. And there can be no defense.

And yet, here are people from the same culture that birthed me, raising and selling tobacco. Just as they always have. A different sliver of that culture, sure. These are the offspring of the blue bloods, the first wave of Amish to come over from the old world. The second wave came later, around a hundred years later, and that wave included my ancestors. People who pushed on out west, restless people who tended not to stay too long in one place. Not so the Lancaster Amish. Most of them were content where they had settled, and they’ve always raised tobacco. The mortgage lifter, they called it. Because they considered that money as extra, as a bonus, that could go to pay off the farm.

They’ve always raised tobacco, and they’ve always withstood criticism from within from people like my father. And they’ve stood strong against criticism from the outside world, too. In recent decades, the winds of public opinion never bothered them one bit. The market has, though. A decade or so ago, the bottom dropped out of tobacco prices. For a few years, it wasn’t worth raising. Their crops sat unsold in their barns for years, or they sold it at a huge loss. And a good many Amish farmers in Lancaster County quit tobacco and went to raising “truck” crops, vegetables and such. But when the market prices rose again, quite a few of them returned.

And there are some farmers, too, who have quit raising tobacco because of moral reasons. Because they decided it’s wrong. Maybe they read my father’s writings way back, some of them. And got convinced. Maybe there were other influences. Whatever the case, some local farmers decided it’s wrong and don’t do it anymore. But those are a minority, I think. And either way, it’s fine. To each his own conscience, to each his own choices.

I have no moral qualms about tobacco use of any kind. None. It’s a choice, that’s all it is, and what you do with that choice is none of my business. I’m not saying, go start smoking cigarettes. But I am saying it’s not the evil it has been portrayed to be, an evil that will cost your salvation if you are a Christian. And any church that claims otherwise is preaching a message based on fear and not the true freedom the gospel brings us.

I’m not saying anyone should raise or use any form of tobacco, or approve of it in any way. I am saying, stop judging those who do. And please spare me that tired old “Your body is a temple” song and dance. Let me ask this. Are you overweight at all? 10 pounds? 20? 50? 100? Do you eat the poisonous junk they serve at fast food joints? Do you use refined sugar, or any of a host of artificial additives in your food and drink? If so, why? Your body is a temple. Stop judging others. Judge yourself instead. Honestly, I mean. And learn what it is to live.

I enjoy the occasional pipe or cigar, mostly in the summer months when I can sit outside and relax and puff at leisure. I smoked cigarettes pretty heavily off and on for ten years, a long time ago. That was a choice, too. A choice I made back then. I might still die from lung cancer because of that choice. If I do, I do. I wouldn’t dream of blaming anyone but myself.

Certainly I wouldn’t blame God for being unfair or blame the big tobacco companies for producing a product I enjoyed. The tobacco companies have been blatantly robbed of billions of dollars by sniveling plaintiffs in frivolous lawsuits, egged on by greedy shyster lawyers, the massive verdicts handed down by idiotic, brain-dead juries. The shame of that stain, how the courts collaborated in flat out “legal” theft, will one day be told for what it is in the story of what was once passed off as law in this morally bankrupt society.

I resent and detest the nanny state that demonizes smoking to hysterical heights and relegates smokers to leper status, all while grabbing more and more of their rights and freedoms. All the while inflicting increasingly onerous taxes on tobacco products. All the while inflicting ever heavier burdens on the poor, many of whom tend to smoke and can least afford the ridiculous, state-mandated cost of a single pack of cigarettes.

I deeply resent the anti-smoking Nazis who have created a world where the tobacco companies make around 30 cents a pack in profit, while the state, which produces nothing but force and fear, imposes a tax of several dollars per pack. That’s just outright theft. It’s all “for the children,” of course. And for public health. It never was about health, and it never was for the children. It was always about money and control. Follow the money, and follow the threads of control, any time the state prates about the good it will do for anyone or anything.

I am proud that one segment of the Old Order Amish has kept it right, when it comes to tobacco. By holding on to what they have always done long before the fickle winds of state-orchestrated public opinion derided and demonized this particular tradition. They keep this tradition as they have always kept it, as a family unit on the family farm. These people have not been moved, they have not been swayed. Instead, they quietly and stubbornly insist on being who they are. Which can be a bit frustrating, sometimes, depending on the situation. Maddening, even, when you’re inside trying to break out. Believe me, I know all about how that can be.

But now and then, their quiet stubbornness shines like a beacon in the darkness because they are standing for something bigger than themselves. And that is always a beautiful thing.

************************************************************
And how about that Super Bowl? Wild, wild game. And, ahem, if you go back and check my last blog post, you’ll see how I called it. Ravens by a field goal. Which, by some miracle, is exactly how it all came down. I’m no prophet, and will not claim to be one. But still, it feels good, to have called the game right on.

Someone in New Orleans should get fired. Period. Of course, the NFL is way too PC to acknowledge that. But there was and is no excuse for the power to go off during the most watched sporting event in the world. For more than half an hour. That delay almost cost the Ravens their hard-fought win. But the football gods stood tall, and justice was meted out. In one of the best Super Bowl games in history. Congrats to the Ravens and Ray Lewis.

All that said, I loathe the Ravens just a shade less than I loathe the Patriots or the Steelers, or a handful of other teams. All are evil. And I’m happy to go back to my normal settings. Go, Jets, next season. Ah, what the heck. Who am I kidding?

And finally, a note about the blog. I am getting dangerously close to my 500,000th hit. I figure it might come before the next post. That’s not a huge number for the big boys. But for a guy just walking around out there, sometimes living intensely, sometimes not, a guy who throws out a story and some thoughts every couple of weeks, it’s not bad. I’m getting between 3500 and 5000 hits between posts. And to me, it’s pretty wild, that the half-millionth hit is coming right up.

As always, I’m grateful for every reader. I know full well there are thousands and thousands of other sites you could be checking instead of mine. I take nothing for granted. So, thank you. Without you, the numbers would not be what they are. Thanks for reading my stuff.