Flower Festival Spring 2006

To the Great Smoky Mountains Peace Pagoda, near Newport Tennessee, to take part in one of their annual Flower Festivals.
The ride is an easy interstate run across the land of Anywhere. 1:40 minutes, most of which is driven through a trance, of sorts.

We exit the Interstate at the small town of Newport at a gasoline station/restaurant that looks as if it crashed while trying to land on the highway.

The next part of the trip is steep. As scripture warns, it is a narrow way indeed, but sadly none of it is straight. Our directions keep us safe though, and lead us through a baffling array of parked All Terrain Vehicles, huge garages, trampolines, semitrailers and doublewides. The further we go, the steeper becomes the road. Finally we enter a dark, wet, cold and dismal world of thick clouds. Our world becomes tiny, gray and gravelly.

We exit the cloud cover into a band of winds - are these are the fabled winds that protect the approaches to heaven? All of a sudden we don’t know - not sure of anything. The world seems changed somehow, no longer a place we have ever been.
Suddenly the Temple rises boldly out of the clouds, riding into the wind like a great ship. Slender flag poles, some planted along the road, and others tied to the deck are bent by that wind, their flags slapping and popping. We park and walk through a door surrounded by discarded shoes into the temple.


Laughter, gold and glitter, gaiety, friendship, hugs and sometimes even kisses, the people here all know each other well, even if we have never really met before. We all have come from far away. most have been here before but that was always long ago. The room is large. A very thick rug lies over its hand-hewn, polished floor. Prayer rugs lie over the carpet and also are scattered along the floor. Seating (or kneeling) mats are available all over the floor, a few chairs are also available for those who require that. The Temple is filled with the smell and sight of floating incense.

A chime rings out high and clear, and people settle upon mats and into chairs. More incense is lighted accompanied by a series of chimes. Then a gong sounds, its vibrations uniting the temple, the furnishings and the people into a harmonic unity.

Br. Utsumi kneels before a prayer lectern, and begins the celebration in Japanese. The congregation has a bulletin printed in “Anglo-Japanese” so we can take these holy words Utsumi says and try to make holy word-sounds, if we wish to try. We do a pretty good job.


The ceremony concludes as those of us who wish approach the altar. We bow on prayer cushions before a small golden Buddha which stands in a small flat bowl filled with sweet tea. A wooden ladle is provided to pour the tea over the Buddha three times. Meanwhile, Utsumi is chanting words which roughly translate to: “Now I am sprinkling this sweet tea on the Eternal Buddha. Praise to the Eternal Buddha, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the One of Wisdom and Practice, the Knower of the World, the Teacher of Gods and Humans, the Buddha, the World-Honored One.” Chimes ring out, two deep gongs sound, the sunlight flashes from endless golden objects and we are all washed in incense.
Miso soup, hummus, marinated green and red pepper slices, flat bread, beans and tofu, crackers and salad follow. All of this is consumed with laughter and happy talk. Plans are made, anticipations and revelations revealed. Later we all tour the substantial complex that comprises and supports the Temple. Finally we walk up to to the top of the mountain - the site of the Pagoda-to-be. The land is cleared now. Cement blocks, stacked two high are scattered 10 - 15 feet apart, forming a circle some 80’ in diameter. They support weathered wooden planks that reach from one stand of blocks to another and provide a glimpse of the size of the Pagoda.

Then it is time to go. Good-byes, farewell hugs, and two hours later we are walking our doggies in our own woods at own home.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Metaphysical Fundamentology

I have always known that I was raised in a fundamental church. Basic Baptist, way down south - hot sweaty Sunday nights in a Mississippi church in the late 1930s with old women crying and fanning their tears with funeral parlor fans and acknowledging themselves to be miserable sinners and “wretches”. Long altar calls, with a tired choir singing “just one more verse” and tearful grandmothers boldly walking up to you, squeezing your arm tightly, and asking again: “Are you SURE you’re saved, young man?”

After high school, I began drifting away from that Muggy Fundamental Ocean, and in my 25th year I sailed full steam into the Episcopal seas of Refinement and Contentment, and spent another 25 years riding those carefree and eloquent religion-cruise ships. But I slowly began to see the church less and less as a sanctuary, and more and more as some kind of a beautiful cage. Part of me recognized that feeling, but I repressed both it and its significance, and concentrated on the fine beauty of those glorious anthems and the solemn pulse of its ancient rituals.

However, one spring morning, while sitting up front, where lay readers sit after they have read, and while looking out over a sleepy and bored congregation which was pretending to listen to a new, young priest explain Paul’s message in II Corinthians (the “ ... wives, submit to your husbands” part), and while he was pointing out how that part of Paul’s message was generally misunderstood, because Paul was really, in fact, one of the very first “womens’ libbers”, I was paid a visit by Casual Question who walked up to me and asked “What are you doing here?” I was astonished that I not only had no ready answer, but could not even fashion one; in fact, my silent search for a rebuttal amazingly began turning into a soliloquy in which I found myself explaining to myself why I was going to leave the Episcopal Church. To my credit, I did not get up and leave at that instant, but when I did leave the church later that morning, it was for good.

Now, looking back from even further away, I can realize that my religious beginnings way back in that hot, sweaty Baptist church were really very metaphysical, even mystical, and for that matter absolutely occult! A lot was expected of a young man on those faraway southern nights, and little was graphically explained. “Are your garments spotless, young man? Ah, but are they white as snow? And how about you? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” Well, how metaphysical, mystical, or occult can you get? It was a puzzle. I remember wondering if one’s “garments” should be white or should they be red? I knew that blood was red, and also knew that it stained, and for a year or two I was shamed to realize that my “garments” probably were “white as snow” because I had clearly not washed them yet in any kind of blood. In fact, they probably weren't even spotted!

I finally asked someone in the church about this and thought I was going to be burned at the Baptist stake; at least I finally knew that white was good. But the mystery deepened: how could dirty garments be made white by washing them in blood? And then, there was the preacher: a man of enormous girth, jowls, and eyebrows; swept by wild winds of passion, given to slamming his bible onto the pulpit, and rising on his tiptoes, to shake clenched fists, and shout at the ceiling - it was hard to imagine him wearing garments white as snow; even when he smiled, he seemed wrapped in blood-bright crimson cloth. Well, I never asked another question in church again, even to this day.

“Rock of ages, cleft for me; let me hide myself in thee ...” That old song carried mystic worlds of meaning to a generation that was still only seventy years from the War between the States, and which was still sunken in the great depression and also quickly falling into a war whose outcome seemed likely to have already been secured by the Germans and Japanese. We didn’t sing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, (that was for Yankee Heaven), and we didn’t sing “When the Saints Go Marching In “ (Negro Heaven), but we could march in place to “Onward Christian Solders”, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”, and “Holy, Holy, Holy!” And there was not a lot of mysticism in some of those songs. Others though, like: “ ... Crown him, ye martyrs of our God, Who from his altar call: Extol the Stem-of-Jesse’s rod, And crown him Lord of all!” Well, who knew what all that meant? I finally figured it out about 50 years later, but by then it really didn’t make any sense, because by then I also knew that Doctrine had inserted the Gabriel/Joseph hiatus in the Jesse/Ruth link with Jesus, so it never had been real to begin with, and what about Mary? From whom had she descended? Well, the Jesse link was mainly to show the Jewish connection, and I’ve seen Mary’s picture, hanging in a French gallery, and she was clearly a blue-eyed blond, probably from somewhere in Holland.

And what is the “saved” bit? In order to be “saved”, one must “believe ON the Lord Jesus Christ.” Well, I believed IN Jesus - did that count? Of course, by now I was afraid to ask, but it did sound awfully easy and simple. If you were not saved, then, when you died, your soul went to hell for all eternity. If you were saved, then your soul would go to heaven for all eternity. I can remember wanting to go to heaven, but not right away, because it sounded awfully boring. I began to envy those preachers who talked about the life of sin they had led before they were saved, and it seemed to me that if I had to be saved right now, I would miss out on a lot; such as why I would want to be saved in the first place. I was told that when I got to heaven I would have a harp and walk on streets of gold, and that if we all were saved, then we would all be reunited as a family after death. There would be my mother and father, and their mothers and fathers would also be there, and we would all live together. There would also be their mother’s and father’s mothers and fathers too, and so on. And then there would be my kids, if I ever had any, and in time, their children and their children’s children; and we would all live together in heaven as one great big family, walking on streets of gold with everybody else’s families and forever playing all those harps.

So heaven was not a major objective in my young life. It was better than hell, but still not much of a prize for an 8 year old. Besides, my mother had let the mystical cat out of the bag when she had convinced me that God loved me and would always take care of me. That made it hard to believe in hell, and even heaven didn’t look quite so bad.

©John Womack, 2006, All Rights Reserved

Earthright

It is indeed self-evident that all humans are created free and equal: free, because our souls are a gift from heaven; equal, because we are created equally out of the Earth; we wear it’s fabric on our faces, carry its breath within our lungs, its minerals are in our bones and its sea pulses within our veins. We have truly been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights – and all that follows from that belief does appear to be soundly based.

But It also seems self-evident that there is a prior claim which takes precedent to that free-and-equal clause. That claim is the right of the Earth to sustain and renew itself, for if that sustain-and-renew right is ever denied or lost, then all other rights, privileges, grants, precedents, and pleas will sweep across empty spaces devoid not only of reason, but also beyond all recourse.

We now know that seen from a distance in space, the Earth does appear to be a spaceship. Where is it bound? What is its course and destination? When will it arrive, and where? How much is it worth? It carries a cargo of gold, and has silver trim, and zinc and copper and many things of value. But it also has precious things: owls and rivers, mountains and deserts, forests and frogs. We know that gold and silver and zinc and copper are scattered throughout the universe, but where else can you find an owl or a frog?

How can anyone think that the Earth belongs to them? How can they imagine that it is theirs to torment? Did a merciful God give us this great gift to destroy? That we may “own” it and sell it, and whip it and scour it and poison it and kill all that is on it and make it do our bidding and whim, that it should work for us until it fails? That we should shred it and rip it a part and squeeze its great wealth, converting that to money for us to put in out pockets or bank accounts and discard the rest?

Or could we pay it the least compliment possible and declare it to be a “person,” and thus protected by our constitution, be considered equal to commercial corporations and entitled to enjoy life, liberty and to pursue it’s own happiness?

Or shall we wait until the last owl is in a zoo, and the last wild river in an amusement park? And where will we keep the last human being?

Are we that dreadful creature?

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

GreatDaddy

Dad died in the waning crescent of the harvest moon during the year of his wife’s Lord, nineteen hundred and ninety two, and in the first week of his own ninetieth year. It was just before the election, but he had already voted - Absentee now, in the most emphatic meaning of that word. Fitting though, that he was still fixing and trying to make work, those things which to his mind, weren't working right.

He could fix anything. Even in his later years, when his physical abilities had somewhat diminished, he would apologize at not being able to help, then get that faraway look in his eyes and slowly, as if he were reading something, and with his crooked finger tracing steps in the air, he would tell you how to do what you needed to do. It was as if he could still see and do it in some kind of a close-up spiritual world.

He was a man of many names: Dad, Daddy, Grandfather, Granddad, Grandpa, the Big Cheese (from his grandson) the Leader of the Clan, Granpops, Sweetheart (from his wife), and of course, (to everyone else) Mister Womack; and then finally, Greatdaddy (from his great-granddaughter, Jessica).

He was a farm boy who left home. The farm was hard, and he always remembered that. He found everything was hard, but then he had to build everything he ever got, and he had to build most of it from scratch. There was never a desire to go back, everything else was better than the farm. The depression and the war, he took in stride; the farm had prepared him well for hard times. The later prosperity of the fifties, sixties and seventies were different; he wasn’t as well prepared for those as were softer men. They often did “better” than he; they were more malleable. But yet, he did very well in the stock market.

His few friends were real friends, and their friendship ran deeply; they understood each other, quietly, respectfully. He wasn’t much for small talk; he could do a little small talk if there was no work to be done, but then he would always go find something that needed fixing.

The lessons from the farm were strong. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. Money doesn’t grow on trees. The world doesn’t owe you a living. Hard work never hurt anybody. Daylight was always burning, the night was always coming.

He was tough, he was fast, and every job he ever started, he finished. And when he was through with it, you could tell he had done it. He left his signature on many things, mostly things that needed fixing. The Samurai and the Storm Troopers thought they were masters of the world, but then they had never met men who knew how to fix things that had gone wrong and could not only defeat their armies but would rebuild their countries.

When he was born, power came from horses and steam locomotives. He mastered those things when he was a young man, and then he made a living working on the railroad, showing the crews and men of the Roundhouse and the Train Yards how to make those overworked steam locomotives fit those tight wartime schedules. But when he was in his late prime, the only steam locomotives left were in museums; and horses were only found in zoos and rodeos. He probably didn’t see a horse during the last thirteen years of his life, and he was thirteen when he saw his first car. He could clearly remember when airplanes were rarer than spaceships were when he died.

He would rarely watch television because he was a child of the “radio set” era. He even remembered well those days before the radio set came along, back when people did all the talking and entertaining. Back then, everybody was expected to know some stories. Usually these were tales about things that had happened many years before, and everyone present not only knew about the event, but they also knew the story. Yet they looked forward to hearing it told again, and really expected to find that the telling of it had improved over the past year or two since they had last heard it. It was not completely unlike finding out that Aunt Lucille was going to fix her famous beef stew again, and you would prepare to savor the smells that you knew would come from the kitchen; so too, a good story was a savory tale that you needed to hear again: “Hey, tell about the time Uncle Fred fell off the . . .”. In this area Dad was sort of a hybrid, reflecting both the pre- and post-radio eras. He would tell long stories, and when he began telling them everybody was supposed to remain seated, be quiet, and listen attentively, and then he would scoot forward in his chair and sit hunched over with his crooked finger tracing steps in the air, while he looked at the floor in the manner of one who was listening to a radio set. So, in his later years, he was the teller of the stories and also the listener to the stories.

It’s hard to tell a long story to the sound-byte generation, but that didn’t deter him. The grandchildren would sit around the room and pretend to listen, looking like so many TV’ s themselves; quiet, impassive, blinking on and off. Staring at this man who was hunched over, looking at the floor and talking softly about living a different life in a different place.

©John Womack, 2006, All Rights Reserved

Now Hear This.

Went to WCU last night to see a production of the Vagina Monologues.

I was clearly in the minority, being male, and was subjected to some words I had not heard before, at least not in the presence of women. Strange words, crude words perhaps but they were descriptive words and they were words charged with power.

Women, I thought, had never heard any of these words or if they did they would blanche and begin shaking and tell you to “Hush! Hush!” and they would run away blushing.

Tonight they were neither blanching nor blushing and they were not running away but charging.

I heard no new words, but I learned the meaning of one of the words which was only spoken once in the entire performance. It was a word I had heard before and I had always found it to be awkward and puzzling. Tonight I learned the meaning of it.
That word is “empowerment”.

I have heard blacks use it before and thought it a bit strange then.

Now I hear women claiming they are becoming empowered and they seem to become different beings.
Slowly I began to realize that I grew up in a white, male, Christian world as a white, Christian male. I had been empowered all my life, even when I was a small boy - at least the implements of power were mine to use when I learned how to claim them.

What is that empowerment? The power to claim a thing as your own, to promote or dismiss concepts as you wish, to do as you wish with yourself. The power to assert and to contradict. The power to be yourself and the power to lead. It is also the ability to publicly dismiss the power that certain concepts and words have been used to shame you. It is the power to break free.

Out of the mouths of babes come wisdom, eh? Well, perhaps everything in the whole world is speaking. In the final result, it is not who, or what is speaking, but what it is that those who are “listening” do not recognize.

Sometimes words of power must be used to break through barriers of unawareness.

Last night I too said a new word.

“Oh!”

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The Mercurial Heart

An excerpt from my old nature photographers newsletter "The Dancing Trail" that I published by subscription for about 10 years back in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Mercurial Heart

We did get a taste of winter, didn’t we! I’ll bet that all those solid black Wooly Bears I saw last year are now red with embarrassment! It was particularly touch-and-go with the electricity on the fourth weekend of the year, especially of concern to your faithful writer here, since we had not been able to get our LP truck up our driveway for three weeks- and were almost out of gas! This after last winter when we had to exist only on kerosene stoves and my four-wheel truck for two full days.

Saturday, the 29th was a day of quarter-degrees. A quarter-degree up, and a quarter-degree down; a whole half-degree was a cause for concern! The day dawned darkly at thirty-one, but soon thereafter was way down to thirty! A closer look showed it not all that bad, it was actually thirty and PROBABLY a quarter. And there was more good news ten minutes, later when it climbed up to thirty and at least a HALF!

Still later I’d pulled it back up to thirty one, and both the day and I looked a whole lot brighter. Then I glanced at the birds through the dining room window and saw that RAIN had started to fall! I raced quickly back to the temperature gauge to see where it was and saw that it was now up to thirty TWO! Oh Joy, joy! With a happy heart I went to the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee; no need now to hurry, with electricity safe, the lines won’t come down, not now - we’re safe!

A quarter-hour later, I casually checked to see how warm it had beome, and I froze as I saw it was now thirty one! Omph! I wished it would climb, and saw in my mind the temperature gauge at forty degrees! But when I looked again my heart fell to thirty, where the temperature column then rested. Five minutes later it was thirty and a quarter; five after that, it was back down to thirty, and then climbed up to thirty plus a whole complete half - whew! At thirty two my heart climbed to fifty, but when it dropped to 28, my heart dropped to twenty - and then all seemed lost as the mercury fell - incredibly - to twenty-seven and three-quarters degrees! Then twenty-seven and only a half, and twenty-seven and just one-quarter, then on down to twenty-SIX! - And now the rain had turned to ice!

In my mind I could hear the wild, lonely howl of long-hungry wolves and wondered if even our bones would survive. I found myself wishing I had some pottery to put out to help future archeologists figure it all out. Then - unexpectedly, the sun came out and the sky even became blue in places! And the day changed completely.

Now, the birdies are singing sweet songs of enchantment in the warm blue skies in my heart, and the flowers are fragrant with blossoms of springtime in that pleasant land where I spend most of my time.

So, I guess what’s going on inside is really more important than all that other stuff out there!

© John Womack, 2002. All rights reserved

And the Winner Is . . . The Bumbling Brothers??

Well, yeah. I'm talking about the 2006 World Series. Some guys impersonating the great St. Louis Cardinals baseball teams of the past would up being the last man standing in some kind of a kinky game of musical chairs. You could almost hear the collective Cardinal team speak: "Yeah, I figured we would lose, well we screwed up enough to . . . what? You say we WON? Wait a minute. Let me check that out!

Oh well, somehow baseball is the real loser. The Boys of Summer are out of place wraped up to their chins on cold, semingly mid-winter nights, The fans become unworldly too, all covered in great football-like parkas and coats. Where are the slanting rays of the autumn sun from my own childhood that used to coat the World Series in a golden glow? Where are the fans of yesteryear who used to relax between innings and shield their eyes from the sunlight, not the glare of the winter arc-lights? Where are the "between-innings", for that matter? Now they are gone too, the buzz of the stadiums and friendly chatting of the announcers, the calls of "Coldbeer .. . IceCOLDbeer!", all now lost in the ka-ching of the commercial cash register that keeps increasing the profit of the TV stations and their advertisers by blasting the watching audience with 30-second dramas and other nonsense.

Well, there WAS some baseball there, Pujols great play between his legs and and Webster's stomp of triumph on first base stand out. There were others as well, but what will remain in the minds of many will be the dropped balls, the pitchers who couldn't throw straight, and the noses of fans sticking out of their parkas.

Baseball deserves better.

© John Womack, 2006. All rights reserved.

Some of John Womack's work:

Photography: http://www.photo.net/photos/Pathways

Travel stories:

Titan Tales

Methods and Procedures of Outdoor Photography

Methods and Procedures of Outdoor Photography

METHODS AND PROCEDURES OF OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY: Photographic Art in the Southern Mountains.

By John Womack
160 pages, 4.25 x 7 inches. ISBN No. 0-9655546-1-9. Available from author for $15.95, plus $4.00 shipping and handling via USPS Priority Mail, shipping with invoice on the day after order. Payment may be made by check, money order, VISA or MasterCard. For more information write johnhwomack@gmail.com

Statement by the Author:
The southern mountains of the United States are the oldest mountains on the planet, yet the scenery they provide changes as easily as the clouds sail over their ridge lines. This is a indeed a land filled with an astonishing variety of life, spectacular scenery and color, but it is often difficult to make good nature photographs here! The great natural beauty of these mountains is often presented in a dazzling display of constantly changing brightness with contrast extremes that exceed the latitude of any film, and its distances are so great that tall mountains are easily flattened and rendered insignificant in the photographic frame. Great wildflowers whip about on mountain winds like trapped spiders, and autumn leaves sometimes become a messy jumble of random colors.

My book provides suggestions and strategies for dealing with these and other problems of photography in these and any other mountains. Here you will find how tones or values of darkness and light can be arranged to provide harmonic balances; how colors can be combined, and sometimes limited, to produce effective and compelling pictures; and how to emphasize and enhance the mountain environment, and keep those mountains tall! You will also find composition techniques that will attract the eye of the viewer and bring their imagination into your picture. Then keep them involved as an active participant in your pictures. I have taught these procedures in nature photography courses at my studio in Franklin, North Carolina, for the past several years. Many of my students have been artists in watercolor, oil or other mediums, and through working with them in the classroom and the field, and on into the exhibition gallery, a considerable amount of cross-fertilization has taken place. From that exciting interchange has come much of the material in Chapter Three, in which I discuss methods of discovering, exploring and interpreting the feelings that can be encountered in the world of nature, no matter what medium you are using. Then I present some of the methods I have found to be effective in pictorial storytelling. I use this book as a text in my classes, and it also serves as a field guide. In fact, I selected a book size that would easily slip into the pocket of a hiking shirt, as well as the hip pocket of jeans, and of course, into a vest pocket or camera bag. This manual is designed to help photographers of all skill levels make compelling photographs of the land and sky, and the wildflowers, butterflies and other objects found in the beautiful forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Statement by the Publisher:
This book goes far beyond being a simple field manual for photographers visiting the southern mountains; it is a forthright investigation and description of the role played by any artist who wishes to share their own feelings, moods and spirits with those found in the world-wide universe of nature. Then, through the medium of photographic art, the writer shows how to creatively express the understandings and impressions that arise from those encounters and explorations. The work of the artist is finding, interpreting and expressing such impressions in an imaginative and creative manner so the images that are produced will not be just a mere copy of nature, but a unique and distinctive representation of of an encounter between that world and the larger one within each of us.

Womack has integrated traditional concepts with original ideas to form images in our own imaginations as colorful and dramatic as those he presents in film. He discusses the process of composition from four very different points of view. The relationship of colors to each other is explained in an unusual and unforgettable manner. He explains how to understand and use the different "oceans of light" for the best photographic opportunity that each offers, and how to use "tones of light and dark" to develop contrast, texture and harmony. Methods for the photography of mountains, landscapes and skyscapes are presented in detail, along with numerous strategies and options. Techniques for photography of wildflowers are discussed and include the use of props and how to "garden" without affecting the other valuable natural resources around the flower.

The book contains 160 pages, plus eight color plates. There are twenty-four black and white photographs and eight pen and ink sketches which illustrate concepts presented in the text. An appendix provides tables of sunrise and sunset times and azimuths for each month, times each month when the sun rises and descends through 45° elevation, a general calendar for natural photographic events and some exposure settings. There is a discussion of equipment and accessories that are useful in outdoor photography, and a description of the processes that the author uses when he is actively shooting in the field. It is truly a book for photographers of all skill levels. More than that, it is a book for all of us who are interested in those "wild places" of which John Womack speaks, whether they are in the world of nature, or in that greater world he sees within each one of us.

Titan Tales

TITAN TALES: DIARY OF A TITAN II CREW COMMANDER:
By John Womack

200 pages. 5.5 x 8.5 inches. ISBN No. 0-9655546-0-0. Available from author for $15.95, plus $4.00 shipping and handling via USPS Priority Mail, shipping with invoice on the day after order. Payment may be made by check, money order, VISA or MasterCard. For more information write johnhwomack@gmail.com

Statement by the Author:
Some of the movies about the Cold War have depicted those of us who carried the nuclear weapons into the air, or who stood ready to launch them at a moment's notice as being wild eyed, macho monsters full of bravado and rage, ready to attack to prove our manhood. Well, this is a story of what it was really like working with the incredible system known as the Titan II. This book tells a tale of great missiles and aircraft and great men, too, that's true; but it is also a story about their families. It is a tale of children and parents - and the larger family of the United States Air Force - and how all that fit in to the great war that stayed cold, and the one in Vietnam that did not.

I served as a crew member on the Titan II ICBM for six years. This book is a story of the last two of those years. During that time, I was Commander of a Senior Instructor Crew serving at the Alternate Command Post; my crew launched a Titan II from Vandenberg AFB, California, we were selected as the SAC Crew of the Month, and we participated in the filming of a simulated missile launch. I was active on the SAC Speakers' Bureau and presented speeches at community organizations and affairs and participated in several university seminars. I also published articles in the Strategic Air Command's professional magazine Combat Crew concerning missile operations, missile safety and management techniques.

In this book you will visit the hardened missile silos that once were dug into the southern rim of the Ozark mountains, you will go on alert with missile crew members and meet some of the people who maintained and operated America's first line of defense during the Cold War. You will travel to Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Western Test Range and explore some of the even-then ancient missile complexes from the first generation of ICBMs. Also, chapter three is a step-by-step description of the underground launch of a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile!

Statement by the Publisher:
This is a surprisingly deep book. It will turn out to be more complex than it appears at the beginning, and that's one of the reasons you will probably read it more than once. Initially, it presents a simple story describing two years in the life of a United States Air Force officer who is commander of a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crew. The crew helps maintain a gigantic missile on constant alert status, a missile that can carry its multi-megaton nuclear weapon deep into enemy territory at the push of a button. But that's all background to the main story. There is also the subtle background tension of the Cold War with its constant ebb and flow, and the unsettling, nagging pulse of the Vietnam War which slowly makes its presence felt and then gradually rises in intensity throughout the book. Then there is the main story, a description of a pleasant but hectic life in a military family with three young children during the late 1960's. We are treated to a deep look at life seen through the eyes and feelings of this family, both from the perspective of the young parents, and also their children. The story unfolds across the southern United States. From the missile base in Arkansas, the family travels in an ancient travel trailer across the southern deserts to California, where they spend seven weeks preparing a Titan II for launch at Vandenberg AFB. The launch, itself, is described in vivid, moment-by-moment, detail. Then, back to Arkansas, and later, on into Florida. What was Orlando and the Atlantic Coast like back then? Remember? This book does. And throughout the book you will find revealing excerpts of direct observation of life, which carry a very strong Zen-like quality in which you may find yourself observing, not just nature, but a deep place within yourself. The book is well written, with humor, and a lively pace and rhythm that will lead you on to the next page, and then to the next, and on and on! It is a real treat to read, and it is a book for all ages!

Photography

Some of my photos are displayed here:
http://photo.net/photos/Pathways


My blogs are on Blogspot.com. Some that concern a specific item (usually travel) are organized as “Composite Blogs” and are listed below:

308 SMW Reunion in Little Rock Sep 2007
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2007_09_16_adventuresinexploration_archive.html

Trip to Crete and Greece Oct 2006
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_adventuresinexploration_archive.html

Trip to Czech Republic Oct 2005
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_adventuresinexploration_archive.html

Trip to Andulicia, Novtp://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2004/11/andulicia.htm
Trip to France Oct 2003
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2006/07/france-2002.html

Austria and Germany, Oct 2002
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2003/10/austria-and-germany-2003.html

DC, June 2001
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2001_07_15_adventuresinexploration_archive.html

The Land of Flowers, May 2001
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2001/05/land-of-flowers.html

Trip to Germany Oct 2000.
http://adventuresinexploration.blogspot.com/2000_10_22_adventuresinexploration_archive.html

The Problem With Religion . . .

. . .is that God, in Her great wisdom, has not yet spoken clearly to the multitude. Not in English at least, not in Arabic, nor in Yiddish or Aramaic or Italian or Spanish or Batu-batu. Not even in French for God’s sake.

And when God has spoken it has been in secret, to priests, rabbis, Imams, shamans, roshis, itinerant preachers and other assorted receivers of the True Word, all of whom have been afflicted with the identical learning difficulty associated with masculinity.

God, however, has clearly and truly revealed Her intention to a few special prophets. Most people agree on the first five or six or seven or so, like Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed. But it doesn’t end there - there are always men (it’s always men) who have been chosen by God - such as Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, Jim Jones and David Koresch, and it even gets worse. Of course not everybody would agree on the validity of all those “prophets”, but therein lies part of the problem with religion.

Even when we have winnowed down the lengthy list of potential prophets, we still are left with a few important questions, like should the sabbath be honored on Friday, Saturday or Sunday? To what tribe does the land surrounding Jerusalem really belong? Should a man cut his beard? How should a man treat his women - also, one wife only or can (should?) he have more? Only one God for that matter or more? Genesis indicates there were several, or that God was at least plural.

Well, never mind. God has provided that His/Her/Their word be truly recorded in language so that all people can have it available as a “Law” for posterity, to guide their actions and thoughts. Once the Law has been established, then it is THERE - for all eternity - no need for any more laws, ever. Therefore, no need for legislatures, we can do away with all that wrangling and bickering, and finally get rid of elected representatives and democratic dialog - no need for any more elections either. All the Laws ever needed have already been “passed”. Humanity will now need only judges and police.

The Law will be available to all people at all times. The Ten Commandments will be especially available - all thirteen , or sixteen of them will be posted in all public places. The rest of the Law (fine print) can be read in the Upanishads, Bagavad Gita, Rig Veda, Zend Avesta, the Torah, the Book of Tao, Talmud, Books of Cuang Tzu and Laotse, the Qur’an, the Tao te ching, and the Holy Bible. Doesn’t matter which book you read. They’re all the same - the Judges will explain later. Doesn’t matter which bible you read either: the King James Version, the Douay, Revised Standard Edition, the New Jerusalem Bible, the New English Edition, the Apocrypha, or the ASV, BBE, BWE, CET, CEV, DKJV, TEV, the Darby Translation, or the Book of Mormon. Well, that’s just to name a few. There are at least another 53 listed on just one site on the web. But it just doesn’t matter, they’re all the same - God would not let Her people be misled. They are all really the same. But don’t try to read them all, that would be confusing. You just have to Believe - the Judges will explain all that!

The judges will really be busy. And they will need to get right with God this time. No more screwing around like in the past. No more sanhedrins, colonialism, inquisitions, crusades, Salem witchcraft trials, slavery, segregation, and genocide against native people - like American Indians - all of which were (and still are) done in the Name of and for the Glory of God. As far as homosexuality is concerned, that too is a no- no, well - there’s supposed to something about it in there somewhere, no need to try to find it the Judges will take care of that. Female discrimination is different though, that’s OK, the Bible says so.

It is going to require a lot of judges, police and jails ( religious remediating schools). There will have to be substantial hierarchy involved here. The only thing that will handle all that will be a worldwide return to the feudal system. Then we can have a Lord who will run everything. The Lord can finally tell us which book to read and which parts of it to honor, and how to follow all that and how to live on the "Right Side of God". The Lord can appoint a coterie of wise men who will work and act in the name of the Lord. The Lord’s will will finally be done. And it will all be Catholic too. All who protest will be shot - about time! And no more Sunni, Shiite nonsense either - that will stop! No time for Orthodoxology and certainly no need for Reform - ever! Evolution will be banished both as theory and as a fact. Nothing will ever evolve again. Anyone caught evolving will be burned at a stake! The ban on evolution will evolve to include all learning except for religion and technology. The lion will quit eating all that lamb, and they will just lie down together - never to get up again.

But the real problem with religion is that it usurps the presence of Spirit and turns glory into mere gold, wonder into mindless creeds, realization into servitude, and it pretends you are a sinful piece of clay instead of a luminous being of light.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Old Friends

The great agony of death is the parting of friends - we shall never meet again! Or shall we? Certainly not in this life but perhaps in others. If that is so, how many friends have we already made and lost in total? Countless thousands, perhaps. Do we ever meet them again? Are we now meeting some of them? Did we sit next to one on the bus or in the theater today? Did we drive past others today? What of those sad, lonely people we saw today? Is is possible that some of them were actually close, warm friends, dearly beloved from our distant past? Perhaps some of them might have been relatives from another time; a parent long passed from their old form, or children that we left behind long ago, in another time? How would we know? Were we absorbed in the latest popular tune or last weekend'’s game? Or the comics, or the news? Those people, were they all strangers? Were any of them old friends? How would we recognize them for who they really are? What secret signals could we use? What do we share and have in common? What if we treated them as if they WERE old friends? How would we do that? With a friendly glance, a warm smile, an atmosphere of acceptance and appreciation, perhaps. If they aren't old friends or long lost family, what harm could be done? If they are all old friends aren'’t we lucky? And maybe, just maybe, we may even make some new friends!

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

The Land of Flowers

“Un, uh, uno - taza café - noir - uh - negro.” With these halting multi-lingual words, I placed my first ever order in the United States to a waitress who spoke no English. This was at a McDonald’s in Mission Beach, California, where English is kind of like a rumble seat - quaint, but not very useful if you really want to go anywhere.
Another trip, this time to San Diego, La Jolla, Tijuana, Tucson, and other assorted points. Best memories were of the cliffs at La Jolla and the Kielbassa seals lying about fifteen feet away from the wild photographers behind the fence at the Children’s Pool.
I Had no idea which flowers were native, but there are probably more flowers there than I have ever seen anywhere else “ . . bowers of flowers . . . bloom in the smog. . . ”. At the beach, above it really, $15 breakfast problems now were blown away on salt-scented breezes. Memories become bent, and distort into shapes that belong to another world. Clouds come off the ocean, teasing and imploring the Torrey pines which already seem crossing from land to sky, ready to be the first tree to fly, waving their great cumulo canopy of rising needles and only one slender, twisted foot still tenuously reaching to touch the earth.
The zoo was good, and it wears on one, although I confess I felt very sorry for the animals. I know some of them keep their species alive only in zoos, nonetheless. it is a repository of just bodies. How can one live in a world with no sense of discovery, challenge, curiosity, or mystery? Can a soul survive without mystery? And in a world without decay there is not even that hope of final escape. (You just become nothing? ) Then, what about the morphological impact? What kind of kinks are being twisted into the habits of the universe? Here is an area for Sheldrake to study. Best exhibit? Polar bears; next, the gorillas; third, the pandas. All three of these had significant protection against the constant man-made noise that overwhelms the zoo. Worst thing about the zoo? The noise. Weedeaters, lawnmowers, blowers, kids shrieking, prams squeaking, interstate traffic drumming and pulsating, horns, sirens, telephones ringing, back-up beepers all constantly sounding while hamburger wrappers and cellophane bags swirl past the bewildered animals.
There are lots of surfers and kayakers in San Diego and La Jolla; everywhere you look people are drifting by - like the fast-food wrappers at the zoo. I stopped at the Torrey Pines Glider Club to watch people flying parasails and hang gliders, all at very close ranges. They and the torrey pines seem to sum the entire message of California: “Why Stay Rooted?” Problem is, once airborne, there is nowhere to go - you leave California, you get back in the muck - so there’s a lot of hovering going on out there.

©John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Life Comes.

Gift
Originally uploaded by Pretty Penny.

Spring is a reckless season, coming in wild, ahead of time, before things are ready, before the safeguards have been put in place.
There’s more to Spring than just its beauty - it’s wet and cold and it comes here lost. The rest of the world dosen’t know what to do with it. Sometimes we just want it to go back, get its act together and come back when it’s ready and when we’re ready. But that’s not how Spring comes.
Life came briefly in the form of tiny animals to our doorstep last spring.
As the ephemeral wildflowers began to fade and the early spring flowers rose through the cold wet leaves, the New Green cast its magic colors across the mountains, bringing bright young leaves out in profusion, so also then come to us tiny animals.
A dead possum lay in our yard one spring morning, obviously a victim of our dogs. I went out to bury it and found tiny creatures, still without hair or opened eyes, that had tried to crawl out from her pouch. One was three or four feet away. It had died while crawling away from that suddenly cold world it had know all of its entire life. I wondered briefly what it must have been like in that sudden silence, when the great heartbeat stilled, leaving a moment that wouldn't end, a moment in which it must have also felt the aura of its mother's love slipping away, and with the silence that followed an unknown coolness came creeping into its world. Then it went crawling, looking for Mother. It embarked upon the greatest trip it ever took before it died; a mind-boggling journey of a lifetime.
Mother and children were reunited in a shallow grave below the crowfoot flower, with human words of sadness to bid them farewell.
Next midnight three tiny creatures lay on my back deck, obviously brought there again by my dogs. These too were without hair or opened eyes. I placed them on a newspaper with another on top of that, perhaps to die, not being able either to kill them or to care for them. Next morning, I found one had crawled away from its now dead siblings and had nestled under a light. The solar powered light had also been chewed by the dogs and had also been placed on the table for its protection, and thus these two survivors of the beasts provided each other a measure of their own cold warmth. I was touched by the tiny creature’s will to live, its mad desire to find out what Life was all about. It kicked and thrashed and struggled, looking for food. I called the Nature Center in Asheville and found that they would take it in, and there was another place in Cullowhee. Both might as well be on the moon. I was finishing IRS taxes at the last moment and preparing to leave for Florida early the next morning. The tiny creature was placed in a shoe box with old towels and it wrestled quite mightily, snuggling into the warm darkness. Every time I tried to feed him I was impressed by his energy and and strength and desire to live. It was obvious that he would survive, somehow. He must have been his mother’s pride. She must have a long time to see such a special baby.
Telephone talk indicated that Gator Aid and moistened and mashed dog burger- bits might be edible for him. I tried these with a dropper, and he struggled and strained but did not know how to drink or eat. I toured all the veterinarians in town to see if they would take my little gift of life, which I realized by looking at its see-through ears
was a tiny cottontail rabbit. They all held their hands helplessly and showed signs of profound pity as they sadly shook their heads.
A wonderful friend named Jan agreed to accept our little burden and we left it with her along with Gator Aid and dog-burger bits.
When we returned from Florida, we found its search for life had ended. I had somehow seen it returning to the wild to race through the brambles and canes, leading our dogs on years of fruitless chases. Burial was beneath a bramble bush on the south side of steep hill; its monument a small stack of rocks; also a memory in the hearts of those who shared its life .
Now the tiny rabbit lives on, not in this world but in another world, close by this one,. It lives with Zach and Cherry and Scooter and those other ancestor creature-beings, part now of the soft, dark summer breezes, sharing together the magic moonlight nights of autumn, and delighting in the sparkle of winter sunrises.
And now spring comes again, and whenever spring comes, life comes.
©John Womack, 2005, All Rights Reserved.

The Moon of Ennui

As we watch children develop, we can see that they each become many beings while they go through various stages of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual development.

That is true of all of us of course, and hopefully, we will continue to develop as long as we live.

It is clearly apparent that we are physical beings, for we can see, feel, touch, hear, smell sometimes, and even taste those bodies. It takes a physical body to know one.

So too, with our mental and emotional bodies. We all know about our minds and emotions, and we hear about them a lot; especially in books, movies and on TV. In fact, our minds and emotions tend to get intertwined and become undifferentiated, which is very bad for both, because they really don’t go together very well at all; together they form a bad melting pot which mixes and combines Thomas Jeffersons and Martin Luther Kings and comes out with Archie Bunkers and Phil Donohues.

And then, there is the spiritual body. We know we have one of those too, it’s just harder to pin the spirit down. Especially in our world today. Churches really don’t do it very well. Mostly they generally either aim for the mind or the emotions, or worse yet, both. Spirit needs spirit food to grow, and spirit practices to perform, and when your spirit is a “child of God”, caught in the cage of the church, it can’t grow up. You may have to “become as a child” to contact your spirit, but any true spiritual organization will be one which develops spiritual adults.

Back to the bodies for a moment, each body seems to resemble a world within itself. It has many organs and chemical components and many other constituent parts: heart and brain, liver and lungs, skin, and then blood and bones, even hair and nails. The organs of our body, we are told, are each a virtual continent in itself, afloat in a great sea of germs and bacteria and plasma and breath. From this point of view, our our bodies then might seem to be resemble a planet.

What then about the mind? Might it not seem to be more reminiscent of a solar system? A mind, resembling our sun with its own captured planets: Reason, Memory, Imagination, Will, Desire, Intellect and others, and each planet pulls and is pulled by its own moons, each in themselves planets, or mind-things that never fully developed: Call them Fantasy, Nightmare, Pleasure, Ennui, Logic, Yugan, Fancy, Pity, Ego, Whimsy, Caprice, Impulse and perhaps others.

And the emotions roll across these planets and moons like great seas: Pacific, of course, and Anger, Passion, Indifference, Forsaken, Envy, and they swell and race through many Gulfs of Fear and Isthmus of Intimidation, washing into great basins of Patience, Happiness, Confusion, and so swirl in and withdraw across the face of each planet and even some of the moons.

But then, what about spirit? Child of God, or child of the church? Well, first of all, the spirit is free. It is beholden to no mind, no body, no emotion; not a part of any universe, not associated with any thing or event, not a part of any church, temple synagogue or mosque. Not a resident of any heaven, not aware of any hell, Spirit is life, it is love, it is what we might call God. And it is our own true nature, as it is also the true nature of the mountain or sunrise, but still more than that, it is the true nature of the mountain and the sunrise at the same time, also our awareness of the mountain and the sunrise, and the awareness that the mountain and sunrise has of us - of our spirit, that is. Because “our” spirit can only be our awareness of spirit, not spirit itself. In the same way in which archeologists can be aware of bones, shards, and ancient weapons, and from that can be “aware” of the life that they represent, without “seeing” that ancient civilization in its entirety. So too with us, we are “aware” of spirit as it manifests in physical, mental and emotional things and events, but not in itself. Spirit often comes before us as kindness and gentleness, but that is because spirit is aware of what it is aproaching. Spirit is wild, wild like weeds and storms, wild like things you don’t expect; spirit is energy.

© John Womack, 2006. All rights reserved.

Wisdom

Comptemplating that big 7-0 - Today!

So the years pile up. After the big 2-1, they become more insignificant. Their reoccurrence begins to become a matter of mild amusement. Eventually you feel somewhat like Gulliver watching one more thread lead to the hand of yet another Lilliputian. As succeeding years arrive, they become even more insignificant than the last one until another year becomes a matter of complete triviality and total inconsequence.

Yet they also become a ubiquitous nuisance. They accrue and accrete. They spill out of one’s pockets and are strewn in one’s path – one must occasionally take care to find firm footing amongst them and occasionally concentrate to find one’s way.

More and more often they interpose themselves between you and the object of your vision, requiring blinking and squinting to focus clearly. This would be bad enough if they were discrete objects like ping-pong balls or moths, something fixed and knowable, an understandable expiation for occasional confusion and stumbling, but years cannot really be seen themselves. Other people sometimes attribute our clever circumventing of these obstacles as apparent confusion on our part. Sometimes the progress through these subtle impediments require one to return to the beginning of your immediate quest just to get another start on another angle.

Getting older is not really all that bad in some ways, you don’t feel any different, not really - not deeply inside. You finally do get wise - much wiser than anyone else you know - but part of the attainment of wisdom is finding out that no one else understands it, appreciates it or even wants it. Therefore, it is of little use with the younger crowd.  You can't even talk to them about it without seeming to babble.
 
Biggest problem with getting older? Easy. It happens too damn fast!

© John Womack, 2004. All Rights Reserved

The Smell of Coffee

The Smell of Coffee


There is a place of wonder that is eternally reserved in my memory, totally suspended in time, living forever in the late 1960’s and it’s in the heart of California. I can return there almost at will, especially when I toss some ground coffee in a pot and add a small amount of boiling water. Then, while I pause to let the grounds briefly steep, before adding the rest of the water, the memory of that place wafts right out of the pot, along with the aroma, like a great Genii and captures my moods and thoughts, and its presence stays with me for a while.
The place I remember is a small outdoor camping, ski and hiking shop in Merced. It is two stories high and has a small loft way up at the top. High up on its inside walls are great pictures of the great mountains, and all around below are the magnificent gadgets required by those who go to see those great sights and make those great pictures. At the very entrance to the shop, right at the front door, there is a wrought-iron table with its chairs, their white paint making them look strangely at home, maybe it is just a California-thing, but they look cool, and they beckon as a lens through which you can pass to change your direction of thought. It was impossible not to stop and pick up and feel those gadgets which were always displayed on this table, and when you did, you instantly became a different being - magically released from the humdrum day and the workaday world, suddenly a fugitive from the streets of Merced, an escapee from your body which you absently-mindedly left standing there at the table. There was also always a dark blue porcelain coffee pot and two or three porcelain mugs, along with instructions explaining how to do all those things that high mountain trekkers must learn to do. One of these instructions told how to make coffee over a campfire; it seems - let me think a moment - I believe you boiled water and then poured it into a pot just like that dark blue porcelain pot that you are holding in your hand right now, and it would already have coffee grounds in the bottom. Not all the water was added at once, as I seem to recall - I believe you first made a kind of “stew” with just a little water and grounds, then a short time later, the rest of the water would be added, and the top put on the pot. When the coffee had steeped long enough, the grounds were settled and the coffee poured. Hmmmm, I seem to have forgotten how the grounds were settled - let me think for a moment ... well, anyway, that initial smell remains, and I can smell it right now. And I see that table again, and the shop with its loft and photos, and then comes the feeling of those wonderful tall trees of California and their great bright mountains. Yes, that was a road I looked down, and yearned in my soul to follow, but it was a trail that I then could not then travel; for then my load was heavy and I pulled a long train. Now come again, thou great sense of joyful freedom; Thou, the sense of my main highway not taken because were were children to raise and wars to wage and an evil empire waiting if I had chosen to travel that trail then; Thou, yes Thou who beckons, I see you smiling and dancing, I hear your singing, and your joyful call: “Come with me, friend, old cake tastes good, it is the best of all, come bring your friend; she too, has marched other lonely trails of duty. But this trail is a dancing trail! Come dance and sing with me; I am a trail of life, leading into a new world. All that should have been will now be found, Glory gives, and Glory calls us to dance and sing. Yes, come dance and follow me, and look, look here: ‘Should Have Been’ grows here, right around this bend, here we call it ‘Beautiful Glory’, here it is, look at it ... behold its great beauty! And over here is a magnificent example of what you call ‘If Only’, it is such a beautiful plant that only grows in rich deep earth, we call it ‘Precious Fulfillment’; see, it really was planted, not lost, and has been growing all these years, right here, waiting for you! Oh, what a time to sing and dance! And follow me - ah look, here is the Sacred Tree itself, the tree of life. Only the wise can dance under its branches for its fruit is not to be eaten, its fruit is the dance of life itself; yes, this is the dancing tree. Let’s join hands and dance: for we are the seeds of that sacred tree.

©John Womack, 2006. All Righs Reserved.

Sufi - Quick Trip Out and Back

A break-away breakfast launched us down the road. Seven and a half hours to go 450 miles, including a stop at a Subway shop in a small town in southern Georgia (Unadilla). There we found a booth in the shade because the early spring sun was hot down here. Two nice African-American women waited on us, one even gave us a brand-new and still-warm apple pie turnover. Delicious. Two white men came in, tieless and in shirtsleeves, one wearing a white smock, the other with a stethoscope draped around his neck. They got Subways without pie and set near us in the sun. They were talking about medical problems. A family of five entered, all wearing flip-flops and with a red tilik on their foreheads indicating they were devotees of Shakti. Mother wore a long silk dress with a dark red banner draped over her shoulder and wrapped around her body. We wrapped ourselves in our car again, air conditioner on, radio on, and disappeared into the blur of traffic.

North Florida seemed quiet and old. Things move slowly out here in these woods down close to Gainesville. We went for a long walk in the dusk that never ends, walking slowly with our friends, walking in a timeless land. We passed through a thin place somewhere along that dusty trail and vanished into another space. It was a chance to be together in the dream-time, walking under the camellias and kumquats with the smell of honeysuckle under an old lavender sky. Later the moon took over the night sky, repairing a worn-out world of old trees out of swaying Spanish moss and fresh green lariope.

Next morning was a fast trip in a hard rain down to Tampa for a Cuban meal in a restaurant that had a far more auspicious reputation and decor than its food turned out to be. Later the rain intensified and we reached for Sarasota cruising down a river that was called I-75. The traffic was mostly double length semi-trailers, all of whom were going faster than my 85 mph. Finally, after the rain began to pool on the road, creating hydroplaning problems, I slowed to 55, then was just got off the interstate for protection. I had thought we were driving through a dense fog, but found that was just the moisture blown into the air by the trucks. Supper with friends was a fancy shrimp creole.

We awoke in a bright blue world to strange birds calling, grass lushly growning, astonishing flowers and domesticated trees. This is what it is like to live in a city. Of course, the people who do live here don’t think that way, they feel they live way out in the suburbs.

In to see the great Sufis. Much ado. People coming together who normally would not be seen together; people of power, people who know, people of knowledge, prayer and purse. Esoteric words, exotic glances, hints of what is to come, someday soon, maybe, maybe not.

Then the great leader slowly enters, tottering, nodding, tapping with cane; smiling and casting visage of awe . . mama bird bringing manna from heaven.

He carefully sits and slowly speaks: “. . . what we think of as being the world is only a fragment . . . God is a potentiality that becomes a reality through us. . . get in touch with your not -yet devoloped potentialities . . . the greatest need on Earth is a sense of the sacred . . . there are no boundaries to your being . . . . what is that secret yearning that you really want to be . . . ”

The Havana Sandwich Shop in Atlanta is what Cuban food is meant to be. Well worth the 474 mile run out of Sarasota the next day. Home again later that night, back up on a secret ridge high in the sky, with happy puppies, far from the rain, egrets. and palm trees, far from nice Cuban spices and food, far from mama bird, back in the blue mountains. The thermometer reads 43°, it was 27° last night. It is winter again.

Outside, tonight though, the first peepers call out, practicing their synch out of the mountain mud as a late February moon rises red, and climbs up over Onion Mountain to join the stars.

Thoughts On Setting One's House on Fire.

Never mind how it started, let’s just say that cold evenings inspire shortcuts. But I found myself standing in a ring of fire ignited from a small kerosene spill. I was stomping on it and it wouldn’t go out, but grew from under my shoes and spread. Dry brittle leaves blew through it quickly blazing and carrying their newly lit fire into a pile of lumber under my deck. It was intended for shelves in the basement, but now stood stacked upright like rifles (or firewood). A large pile of dry brittle leaves had blown in under this stacking over the past weeks and now those newly lighted leaves bounced into the midst of that pile of lumber and leaves where they lodged and flared, fanned by the wind, rising quickly into a blaze. Cold night swiftly coming, sun already down, darkness falling quickly, wind rising out of the north - 25 to 35 miles per hour, eighteen degrees. Hoses are disconnected and carted away. No water available, the ground is frozen, no earth to throw on the fire which is now doubling in size every five seconds. I can call 911 but that help is still 20 minutes away. I go into the basement and come out seconds later with a fire extinguisher, I pull the saftey and fling it away, aim the nozzle at the base of the roaring fire, pull the trigger and the fire vanishes. A huge cloud of dazzling white fog swirls around like a little tornado under my deck and vanishes, whipped away into the cold night, which is now suddenly quiet. I come out every ten minutes and inspect the lumber for the next six hours, finally declare it out. The remaining two fire extinguishers in the house now sit inside the basement, on alert.
Next morning I go to Lowe’s and buy five more Kidde fire extinguishers. All designed to use on Class A, B and C fires; $10.95 each. Now they are scattered around the house ready for use should some cold fool strike again Also, the camcorder tape of our household inventory is taken out of the truck, recorded on a VHS tape and taken to the safe deposit box. My writing is already backed up monthly on two discs, one of which is always in the safe deposit box. The precious things given to us by our now dead parents and relics from our children’s past are mostly still in the house though, guarded by seven red fire extinugishers. So, you who read these words, before you cast sparks at me, go check your own fire extinguishers and make sure they are ready - and HURRY!! If it takes more than 30 seconds to find them, forget it! You lose – everything.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Juliana Sidra - Welcome to the Planet!

CELEBRATION!

Special Edition Bulletin - for September 12, 2001

 - Published by Soliloquy Press - Franklin, NC 28734, USA - 

Juliana Sidra

September 28, 2001.

St. Cloud, MN

Welcome to our planet Juliana Sidra, you’re going to like it here.  it’s really just a great big busy box, and you will feel at home if you can learn to push and twist and pull and toot just enough.  Congratulations on your choice of parents!  You have selected two of our most advanced models. They run well and are capable of much wear and tear.  Should you encounter any problem with your parents please call the following numbers 472-6666 or 472- 6323 (that’s GRA-NMOM or GRA-NDAD).  Should a sleepy voice answer your call, please hang up and return to your parents until mid morning.

Wrap'd

Once again the stories arise about the practices of American slaughterhouses that are raising quotas so fast that they don’t allow time for the animals that are used for food here to die before being cut apart. This last article I saw was in the Washington Post Weekly in June, 2001. Reporters do a horrible but necessary service to the world to bring such practices to the world’s attention and then it becomes a universal imperative that requires response from every person on the planet, every animal, every bird and insect, every plant, tree and bush, every rock must cry out against this ultimate insult of greed. Here is one of my responses in a poem:

WRAP'D

With clanking chain and shrieking rumble
and the cows that bellow loud
Oh the pigs do squeal
and they both cry tears
as they move on down the line
cut apart
while still alive
cut apart
before they died
eyeballs rolling, tongues out-thrashing
squealing, crying as they’re cut apart
alive so quotas can be met
and terror fills the air

Shopping carts that squeal and rumble
as they move on down the line
with corn flakes here, orange juice there
and cow remains all tightly wrap’d
in plastic, neat with feces, dirt
and terror also caught
and tightly wrap’d,
fancy and convenient,
so easy to take home

Expensive tires squish through the rain
and move on down the line they
carry home the nation’s bounty
Food for commerce, food for children,
but seldom ever food for thought
Harried mothers unwrap plastic,
cooking cow-parts for their family
setting on their kitchen counter
meat that’s filled with unseen terror
and feed their children silent screams.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Craven Gap, NC

Late in the afternoon of the last day of winter, warm sunshine lay on the side of the mountain. Its pleasant light brightened the branches of sleeping trees, and reassured a lone hiker that winter was finally over.
But then the sun fell quickly from the sky and a breeze swept across the trail stirring leaves and raising a surprising chill out of the earth. A strong gust slipped through the hikerÂ’s jacket and under her blouse.
Uneasily, she zipped her jacket, reached for her cap and gloves and turned to head for her car.
The shadows on the trail quickly darkened. A ferocious wind raced up the pathway, hiding it and hurling leaves into her face. The wind began a low howl as it rose into the tree tops, and the hiker suddenly knew that her jacket would be no match for this cold night. She began desperately running for her car, still half a mile away.

As the trail and forest grew dark, bitterly cold air rushed out of the frozen earth, devouring those soft breezes which had occupied the mountain for the past two days. The icy wind roared up out of the frozen rocks, slashing and twisting and bending the trees, whipping their tops and sending leaves and needles swirling headlong, stinging the frozen skin and numbing the mind with its vastness and intensity. Great frozen strength penetrated the universe. Winter had come again, reclaiming its mountain kingdom - reigning again - ruthlessly, righteously, implacably, eternally sovereign - never to leave again! Then it was no longer just the wind which was howling and roaring, but all the creatures and trees, the rocks and hills, the entire world was screaming and crying with shock and agony on this, the last night of winter, 1991.


Morning finally comes and the hiker returns to the mountain with the sunrise, to find that winter has burst - like a soap bubble - still clinging as a fine film, scattered here and there on icy ledges and in snow-speckled hollows.
Whistles, peeps, croaks and the song of birds gently float along with the smell of earth and water on moist, gentle breezes while the cold starlight of those long winter nights bids farewell to the mountain, glinting and sparkling as it fades away under the trees and shrubs.
It is morning - the first day of spring.

©John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved

Oak Ridge - 2000

Sunday, August 6, 2000. A not-so-quick (three hour each way) run over to one of the most desolate and forsaken places I have ever seen. If you want to feel sorry for the planet Earth visit Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We drove through the Y-12 reactor area before the demonstrations began and felt like we had been taken to a world where everything had failed. Roads were blocked all over the place, many with signs saying that it was not safe to travel those roads. Trees were dead and dying in vast numbers. Streams had signs posted reading: “Danger! Stream Contaminated. Do not drink, fish, wade, swim or trespass!” Other signs read “Avoid all contact with the water!” Then in smaller letters: “Condemned by the State of Tennessee”. Later we joined up with Br.
Utsumi and Sr. Denise and about 250 other protesters, most of whom appeared to be Oak Ridge residents.
I left my Nikon in the car and filmed the event with my Sony camcorder. The camcorder is a remarkable tool for conducting interviews and recording events since it captures not just images but also movement and sound. Later its story can easily be shown to selected music. Furthermore, the message of the camcorder reaches it’s audience not through the museumic dust of the ages represented to many modern viewers by a slide projector, but through the power, authority, intimacy and urgency of television.
We assembled for lunch and speeches at a public park, then marched about a mile and a half down the highway to the Y-12 Reactor entrance area where we became part of an omelet-stew featuring protesters, counter protesters, police, federal marshals and some 12 news outlets including Fox and ABC, perhaps others. The protesters were generally dressed in a post-modern-hippie array of clothes (partly because of the march in hot weather). Most of the counter protesters were dressed in some form of military costume, or parts thereof. We also had a “preacher” who had come uninvited over to our side, and later we found out he had been dispatched to us by the counter-protesters. He was a young man with an amazingly loud voice, perhaps in his mid-twenties, dressed in tan trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt and he carried a bible and some tracts. He began shouting at us, asking if we were Christians. He grabbed Br. Utsuni who was dressed in his Buddhist monk’s robe and asked if he was a Christian, Br. Utsuni put his palms together, near his heart, in the nomastai gesture of respect, bowed and said “Ah sooooo!”
“Well, you’ll burn in Hell forEV-er if you haven’t accepted the Lord JESUS CHRIST as your personal SAVIOR!”
Br. Utsuni walked toward the podium The preacher followed him.
“Brother are you SAVED?” Utsuni talked to someone else about the program. The preacher continued “HEATHENS will burn in HELL!” Then he added “FOREVER and EVER!”
I went over to the counter-protesters to interview and photograph them. They had a very powerful loudspeaker system that they had aimed at us and it played martial music at full blast. One old gentleman who was confined to a chair and oxygen was (according to his wife) a former member of “Merril’s Marauders”. I did not photograph or interview him. A young man held up a sign protesting the protest in the name of “vets”. I asked him where he had served and he replied that he had never been in the military but that he liked vets. Something new in the world, I guess. A woman grabbed my arm and asked how I could side with the “heathens” - then as a small crowd of counter-protesters surrounded me she asked if I had received the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I told her that I was a native American and that Jesus had been the worst thing that had ever happened to us. The result was a min-nuclear reaction. Bibles were produced (duly photographed), scripture was quoted(also recorded). One woman was dressed in what appeared to be part of an old WAC uniform but with brigadier general stars as her rank. I noticed a submarine patch had been sewed on her uniform. When asked, she said that she had sung a song for “the navy people” on a submarine and the “boys” had “awarded “ her this patch. She sang a partial verse of “Silver Wings on My Son’s Chest”. I asked her what service her son had joined and while I did not understand her answer, I took it to mean perhaps that she did not have any children. I did not ask again but she sang on about “...America’s best...” in what seemed to me to be a voice that alternated between tremolo and vibrato. She was obviously concerned about the path in which her country seemed to be headed now. I told her I had to get back to the other group and she smiled and said “Well, I shore hope you don’t git no aids ... .” I acted surprised and asked if there was any “aids” over there and she nodded her head and said “Yep, you can count on it!” As I headed back to “our” side I was thinking “Silver Wings on Jesus’ Chest ..” That train of thought ended when a policeman stopped me to see if I seemed bent on trouble, then he let me go on. I made his picture too and he looked very somber like he was the only person there who had noticed how hot it was.
There were two speakers on our podium; one probably American, the other appeared Japanese. They spoke briefly and then showed how to do a chant in English and Japanese - “Make Peace not War! War no More!” Then a rather well dressed man took the podium and began speaking about the consequences of America’s continuance of nuclear weapon building. He talked about moral obligations, international treaties, United Nations resolutions, court decisions, and legal ramifications. Meanwhile, the preacher still wandered about with his bible. “Are you SAVED?” “Brother! Listen!” “Sister, LISTEN to me!” “Are you washed in the BLOOD of the LAMB?” The counter-protesters were playing military songs, about Anchors Aweigh, The Cassions are Rolling Along, and Off we Go ...” All this added a dimension of immortality and imputed grave importance to the speakers words. Although the music was not exactly overpowering, it was still audible and the speaker seemed to fall into its cadence so that his words seemed to march forward as if an entire nation was behind their inexorable sweep to victory, and to the measured march of “From the halls of Montezuma”, the words stepped forward from the speakers mouth “... the re-spect for gen--RA-tions will de-pend on what we do!””The BLOOD of the LAMB!!”” ... for us to walk the talk ...” “hellFIRE FOR-EV-VER!!” “... moral obligations for humanity ...eternal damnNA-TION!!! ... moral obligations... “Around the Globe ... Depart from ME ye WICK-KED ... international tribunals ... with our banners gleaming ... and suffer in HELL forEV-VER!!

A shuffling of cards could suddenly be heard. Cards? What’s that? A glance showed federal marshals in dark camouflage marching in military formation to a blue line which had been freshly painted across the road that led to the Y-12 nuclear plant. Now the brigadier has found a microphone and is sending out an amplified, quavering song: “Silver wings on my son’s chest ...” “God’s ONLY Son!!!” “...he’s one of America’s best ...” “Heathens will go to HELL!!!” “ ...and then you will see ...” “BURN in HELL for all ETERNITY!!” A bell sounds to commemorating the explosion over Hiroshima and drums begin a cadence which will last for more than two hours. “Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum-de-dum; dum, dum, dum, dum, dum-de-dum” It was the cadence of the march from Atlanta to Oak Ridge. “In a lake of FIIRRE!!” Now the two Buddhists begin chanting and marching toward the new blue line. The crowd surges behind them. The Japanese man is at the microphone again shouting in Japanese but his words are overridden by the preacher who is in our midst: “The Lord sayeth in I-SAY-yah...” From the counter-protesters faintly comes the tune “Over there, over there, send the word ...” , and they are now waving United States flags. “Suffer for-EV-VER!!!”
The first two protesters walk across the blue line and stop. There is a cheer from the protesters, then breathless quiet. Faintly can be heard the tune from the counter-protesters Mine eyes have seen the glory ... A federal marshal, a tall man with an enormous belly, comes up to the protesters who have crossed the line and reads a statement to them from a card he holds in his hands. There are about six marshals surrounding the two protesters and probably twelve journalists with cameras, recorders and camcorders surrounding that entire group. The two protesters are both small elderly ladies wearing straw hats, and are perhaps both in their 80’s. “Now if you don’t leave, Ma’am, I will have to place you under arrest ...I will have no choice ...” he stops and bends his head over so he can hear what she is saying. ‘ ..he is tramping in the vineyard ...” . A swarm of camera lenses open and close constantly, flashbulbs flickering. For a moment he looks like he might be talking to his grandmother; she stares straight up, her fingers lightly touching his arm, smiling, as if looking at her favorite son. He straightens up. “Ma’am, I must inform you that you are under arrest; anything you say may be held against you ...” The lenses open and close constantly as if in amazement, not believing what they are recording. The marshal looks like his lunch maybe didn’t agree with him. Several marshals help the ladies over to the shade. A roar arises from the protesters, and a clapping of hands. “Make Peace not War! War no More!” “God have MERCY on your SOULS!!!...” then spontaneously all other noise is washed away by a new song which begins from one female African-American voice and instantly swells and seemingly lifts to fill the entire world! “We shall overcome ...” .

So, two more waves of protesters were arrested, about at 30 minute intervals, probably about 20 or so in all, and the once yearly celebration segued into the one which is held every Sunday there. That’s when we walked the mile and a half back to our car. On the way, at about 5:30 p.m., we noticed a bank temperature sign reading 96°.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Y2K

Dec. 31, 1999. Y2K - Are we ready? As December runs down to its end, somehow the threat seems to have vanished. People I know who have bought up storage food have slacked off.
The day dawns: First report from an island out somewhere in the dark Pacific midnight.
“Nice day, and our computers still work.”
“How many computers do you have?”
“Two - but they’re both working fine.”
Well, so far so good; of course the corrolary to that is that there are only two computers working in the world right now - just like the IBM president forecast many years ago..
Midnight finds our computer still working well, our lights still on, the TV is still transmitting and receiving what appears to be a full package. We finallly head off to bed.
Next morning I walk out onto the deck - Happy New Year! And welcome to Faux Millenium! Looks like any other morning I have ever known.
Tepredaciously I turn on the computer - it works! How nice.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Blue Moon, or Risqué Moon?

Breaking News! 

This just in to Dancing Trail News Center:  Here is the latest on the REAL Blue Moon story!  The magazine, Sky & Telescope, has just had their, probably, first ever exposé in the May issue of 1999.  

It turns out that the Real Blue Moon may not necessarily be the second full moon when two full moons occur in one month!  Now, what follows in this bulletin contains graphic material and may not be suitable for all ages –  please use suitable discretion: It turns out,  according to Sky and Telescope, that the length of time from full moon to full moon is 29.5 days, and since the solar year has 365.25 days, then each year contains enough days for 12 full moons plus 11 days left over, so therefore 7 years out of every 19 there will actually be 13 full moons.  Also the Astronomical Calendar  Year, called a “tropical year”, does not run from January 1 to December 31, but from “Yule” ( December 21, or winter solstice) to “Yule”; this places three full moons in each season except for those 7/19 years (told you it would get graphic) which will contain one season which will have four full moons.   Therein lies the scientific part of the problem; the REAL problem, however is religious, and that mix-match goes something like this:   The Roman Catholic Church has decided that Easter is apparently more important than the sun, and therefore the vernal equinox will always fall on March 21, regardless of whether the sun actually crosses the equator on that day or not (people more familiar with the Roman Catholic Church than I am usually close their eyes and nod their head when we get to this part), and also that Easter MUST fall within one week after the Paschal Moon which, they say, is that first full moon after March 21.   So, ALL the moons of the year are determined by the “tropical” year (yule-yule rule) EXCEPT for the two near Easter, the Paschal Moon (the first full moon of spring) and the one before it, called (by the Church) the Lenten Moon, (and which therefore must be the last full moon of winter). These are determined by ecclesiastical, not not tropical or astronomical rules.  And, in order to keep the other main moons still corresponding to the activity suitable to them (harvest, mid-summer, long-night) whenever a season, as measured from Yule to  Yule has four full moons in it, the THIRD (not the fourth) full moon is designated as the Blue Moon.  So, now you know.  

The Jewish faith handle this problem by adding to seven out of every nineteen years, basically a “blue month”, which they call Adar.  The Islamic faith, not being especially concerned with Passover,  Easter or Christmas, ignores the whole thing, letting their calendar years rotate backwards so any given month begins 11 days earlier each year.  So, if you want to refer to a really, really, really long time, you might try the term “Islamic Blue Moon”!  

Sky & Telescope apologies for their “error”, committed 53 years ago in the March, 1946 issue, and suggests that both methods be retained, since “theirs” is certainly much simpler!  How does all this affect our current Blue Moon status? Hmmm.   That would mean no Blue Moons at all in 1999!  Next one would be February 19, 2000.  February, of course is the only month which could NEVER have a Blue Moon under the second full moon in a month rule, but under the four in a season rule, one out of every four blue moons MUST occur in February!  The others will have to be in May, August, & November.  

The official Dancing Trail policy toward this new development will be to try to celebrate all Blue Moons, whether “tropical”, "astronomical" or “ecclesiastical”. And perhaps we might call the now unauthorized, two in a month occurrence a Risqué Moon, and the new, but really older, four in a season occurrence an Out-of-the-Blue Moon.

© John Womack, 1999.  All rights reserved

Leonid Meteor Shower, 1998

On the morning of November 17, 1998, between 1:30 a.m. and 2:15 a.m., I saw about one meteor each minute falling between periods of deep fog which drifted up the mountain.  The first meteor appeared as a great light falling from east to west.  I was reminded of a freight train that had lost its tracks and was plunging down on top of its rails into a deep canyon leaving a fantastic display of sparks,  followed by a pathway of smoke.  Then it was gone.  I waited for the awesome sound I knew would come, hands ready to clap over my ears.  But there was no sound.   A couple of Roman-candle-type fizzles followed, then a great flash lit up the eastern sky.  And another “freight train” fell into that same abyss, piercing its own halo as it arrived into our planet’s embrace, leaving its own blazing trail of sparks bouncing up and down in the turbulence of its ride to oblivion.  Silence again.  As the great rocky road of dust faded into the night sky the oaks around our house also faded into the newly arrived fog, and the lights from our carport glowed a pale yellow.

I thought back to how the great naturalist, Marie Mellinger, had pointed out at the Hambidge Center in Dillard, Georgia, last month, that Fungi was a separate kingdom, separate from plants and animals and minerals.  She told us how Fungi had joined with Algae to form Lichen, and somewhere in that trio is a mysterious combination of things we can refer to as “Life”. Algae seems native to our planet, but not Fungi. So where did Fungi come from?  Some say it may have ridden one of these great “freight trains” into the atmosphere of our planet, then, liberated from its vehicle of entry, was free to float into our own “sourdough-starter-mix”, perhaps mixing with Algae; who knows?  I had read separately that some eleven tons of meteor dust enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day.  So what is eleven tons a day times eight billion years?  Well, if you could multiply all that out you’d lose yourself in the answer.

Meanwhile, the fog drifts briefly and another meteor falls into our sky - I am reminded of a home run, hit late in a game, by the opposing team - it seems to rise at first, and rise way up and then hang for a moment before it slowly descends and vanishes - all in total silence.