Things Are Getting Better All the Time

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I suppose I’m an optimist by nature, but I usually feel annoyed when I hear people say things like, “Things are worse than they’ve ever been”, “What’s this generation coming to”?

You know the refrain.  It’s always negative.  Things are getting worse and worse all the time.  Every generation seems to say this.

I always think when I hear this kind of talk “No, they’re not.  Things are actually getting better.  We don’t have slaves in this country any more.  We aren’t killing off the natives so we can have their land.  We don’t skin people alive or burn them at the stake.” 

We are far from perfect, but it seems to me we are moving in the right direction.  I was reminded this week again of the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

I suppose it takes faith to believe this, but that’s what I believe, so I was pleased this morning to see a couple of my relatives share a link on facebook to a presentation by Bill and Melinda Gates titled “9 Reasons the World is Better than Ever”.  http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/12-ways-the-world-is-better-than-ever-according-to-bill-and

I also loved the low-tech method they used to present their topic.

Reading Little House Books

Photo Source: Shella Scarborough, Flickr,

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I first read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books about growing up on the prairie when I was a child.  When my daughters were growing up I read them to them.

Now, I’m reading these books to my granddaughters and enjoying them all over again.  I never did like the TV series much, though.  I thought it was too sappy.

What I enjoyed about these books were the stories of survival on the prairie.  In the book I am reading at present to my two oldest granddaughters, Pa is building a house for the family.  In order to do this, he had to drive his wagon down to the creek, cut down some trees for logs, haul them back to the site, and, just with the help of his wife, place all of those logs, hoist them up as he’s building, cut shakes for the roof, haul rocks for the fireplace and construct it by himself.  Nothing sappy about that.

I’m a great admirer of that type of self-sufficiency.  That may be one of the reasons I’m living in the country now and why I’m forever tackling projects around our little plot of land. 

Directions to My Home

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There are several routes to use to come to my house, but, if I can, I like to direct people here by way of Pea Ridge.  I think the scenery is nicer that way.  And I like the name.

Turn off the main highway at a little red brick country church with a shelter built outside for potluck dinners, Decoration Day celebrations, or homecomings.  The narrow road takes you up through the woods to what we now call Billy Goat Hill because there’s a goat farm there.

At the top of the hill, a sharp left turn takes you winding through the countryside to the other side of the ridge on a narrow blacktop road with several right angle turns, by isolated country homes where families have lived for a long time.  Not farm houses, because there seems to be little farming going on.  Just country living, out of the city, the noise, the traffic, with trailers and ranch style brick houses and ponds and quiet.

Then it’s down the hill and across the little creek as the road straightens out and becomes a tree shaded lane, with the trees overhanging the road, making a tunnel to drive through—a tunnel that changes with the seasons.

Just the drive to my house sometimes still gives me a thrill.

The Mouse That's Missing from My Christmas Tree

When it comes to Christmas, I am all about tradition, so my Christmas tree has looked the same for many years now, decorated with ornaments I have collected for years.

The ornaments included the little red Santa from the small tabletop tree I had in my first apartment.  The drummer boy we purchased the first year we got a ‘real’ tree, who sat lonely in the middle of the big tree because we didn’t have many ornaments to accompany him.  It became a tradition to begin the decorating with the little drummer boy as we played Emily Lou Harris’s rendition of that song.

The tree also included the hand-made ornaments from a few years later.  The Disney ornaments I painted with my oldest daughter when she was two years old.

I also collected ornaments when we traveled and have one from each trip representing countries all over the world, even from places like Nepal and China, where you might not expect to find a lot of Christmas ornaments.

And then there was the little mouse that was given to my youngest daughter when she was three because she had an imaginary friend who was a mouse.  Every year when I decorated our tree I remembered again all of the times I had to lift that imaginary mouse into the car as we were getting ready to go someplace.

So decorating our tree each year gave me a chance to revisit those events in my life.  Very rewarding, all warm and fuzzy.  But the thing about it was, the tree was never very attractive.  That conglomeration of ornaments never fit together quite right.

Through the years, I always admired some of my friends’ trees that looked so beautifully decorated, with everything matching and orderly and splendid looking.  I had especially admired a solid white tree at a friend’s house with all white ornaments, many hand made.  It was very splendid.  And I always wanted one.

So this year I got a white tree with matching ornaments and left all of the memories in storage.  I did pull them out and look through them.  The memories are still there.

I Know Where the Elves Live

Source: Jack Flanagan, Flickr, https://farm9.staticflickr.com

No really.  And it’s not the North Pole—at least not exclusively.  I saw them last year.

Not far from my home here in northern Tennessee there’s another home high on a hill.  I’ve been there before for political functions.  It’s quite an elaborate spread.  At the foot of the hill there’s another house (maybe a caretaker’s house?), a rather nice, ancient two-story brick house.

Leading in to this whole estate is a wonderful wooden covered bridge over a small stream.  Every year at Christmas the wooden bridge is lined with Christmas lights of all sorts—angels, reindeer, Santas, snowmen, and lights, lights galore, all glowing in the dark.

One year my two oldest granddaughters were visiting for the weekend to make a gingerbread house.  One night we drove them down to see the lights.  We went over the wooden bridge and they oohed and ahhed at the lights.  We stopped to turn around just in front of the house at the bottom of the hill.  In the upstairs window we could see a person sitting in front of the window.  Just the shadowy outline.  Without any prompting one of the granddaughters whispered, “I think that’s one of Santa’s elves.”  The other agreed it had to be.

I know where they live now, and if you come here some December night you might be able to see them.

Getting My Friday Night Fix

Much of my television watching involves watching the news.  I don’t care for the cable news networks that have 24 hour coverage and not much substantive journalism, but I do usually watch a nightly news program.  I especially like the PBS News Hour because of their in depth coverage and lack of sensationalism.

Every Friday night on the News Hour they have a special segment that I religiously watch called Shields and Brooks, that’s Washington Post columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.  I have been watching this segment on the News Hour since before they were Shields and Brooks.  They were Gergen and Shields when I began watching it.

In this segment the columnists engage in a succinct and substantive analysis of the week’s major news stories.  Mark Shields is a more liberal columnist and David Brooks a more conservative columnist.  I especially enjoy this segment because I want to hear both sides of the issues.

I read an article online once called 'Can We Agree to Disagree in a Nice Way'.   For a lesson in how to disagree in a nice way, this segment on the News Hour is a perfect example of how to do just that.

Mark Shields and David Brooks often take opposite sides of an issue, but they are never disagreeable.  They state their opinions in polite, civil ways, and show remarkably  good will and respect toward each other.  They also have an in depth knowledge of the subjects they are discussing.

Their discussions are very different from many political discussions one might hear on cable news shows, and it’s an example many of us might try to emulate.  

Honeysuckles Grow Wild

I live on five acres of mostly wooded land.  When I got ready to build a house here, I had to have a driveway cut up the hill to the building site.  When the bulldozer came to build the driveway, I followed the driver around as he was bulldozing.  I wanted to be sure he didn't cut down any more trees than necessary.  He told me he understood because he had two acres and had 182 trees on those acres.  I decided that someone who had counted his trees was safe as a bulldozer driver for my property. 

As a result of this tree-saving activity, our driveway curves up the hill in and around several trees.  It makes driving up to the home site a little more interesting.

One day in early spring not long after construction had started, John and I drove up to the property after returning from a trip.  As we crossed over the little stream at the bottom and started up the hill with the windows of our car opened, we were greeted by smells of the honeysuckles growing wild in the woods beside the driveway.

Honeysuckle vines can be annoying, but when I'm working on landscaping around here, I always remember that day driving up the hill as we returned from a trip and the welcoming aroma of the honeysuckles greeting us.   

Sometimes it's just hard to improve on God's work.