A Few Thoughts On This 80 Degree August Day

Posted on November 10, 2025 by terryhenry2014

I began this post more than a year ago and now that I find myself mostly unemployed, I logged into my blog account and this piece sounded to me like it needed to be finished. So here it is.

As I watched an episode of the television program “911” where two married lesbians adopt another daughter and a male fire fighter begins to date another male fire fighter, I thought back to the early 1950’s when the “I Love Lucy” series wouldn’t show Lucy pregnant. As I remember, Lucy and her real life husband, Ricky, were also shown sleeping in separate beds.

Recently turning 75, I am amazed at how the past seventy some years have been compressed and also how much has changed culturally and how the images of what is currently accepted in life are now being packaged and fed to us in films and television.

What was once considered an illness is now presented to us as a choice we are free to make. A choice that is championed by our good friends and politicians in the print media and in television and films.

Not only that, but if you “feel” that you were born into the “wrong” body, much of the progressive left is now eager to affirm your new gender, even to the point of paying for your “transition” with public funds and forcing governing bodies into accepting biological males to compete against women in sporting events.

And yet the public seems to be silent on these fundamental changes in what has been our understanding of what is “right” and what is “wrong”.

One of the most popular books in history is the Christian bible. Around 100 million Bibles are sold world-wide annually. This is the same book that tells us in Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

This creation story is seen as establishing a foundational equality in value and dignity between men and women, as both are made in the image of God. It is also foundational for the biblical view of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

And so my question remains: What has happened to our past cultural understanding of life and our human existence in it?

I know at this point that I am on shaky ground in terms of trying to communicate my thoughts and feelings around this touchy subject of what I believe has been a gradual cultural decay.

In reality, what we see happening around us has been a part of the human story from the beginning of the book to which I have referred.

Cain was angry and killed his brother Abel. Sound familiar.

Lot was challenged by the wicked men of Sodom who wanted to have sex with his guests, which led him to offer his daughters instead. Sounds like a Hollywood movie.

The point being that the thoughts and actions of human beings hasn’t really changed that much over the past thousand years or so.

What has changed is the general acceptance of what was once considered a normal understanding of the way things should be.

Life is full of extremes and the shifts from the far right to the far left is the legacy we live with.

From Father Knows Best and Lucy and her husband in separate beds to Hollywood’s current portrayal of marriage, sex and love in the movies and television, the extreme is very visually real.

I am reminded of another bible quote that states in Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

At this point I had to pause and walk around the house for a little while in order to regain a thought I had, then lost, as to how to end this post.

And that thought is “…how did we arrive in 2025, with all this turmoil and cultural upheaval.”

To answer that, I am reminded of Proverbs 29:18 and what it says about “vision”.

The phrase “without vision people cast off restraint” is a variation of Proverbs 29:18, which means that when there is no clear, guiding vision or revelation, people become uncontrolled and act without self-restraint. This lack of direction can lead to aimless wandering, a disregard for rules and moral boundaries, and ultimately, chaos or destruction, while those who follow the law of the spirit remain happy and blessed. 

In other words there are many paths that we can follow individually or corporately which can either lead us to wholeness or brokenness, to certainty or confusion, to life or to death.

The choice is ours to make.

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Every Day Is A New Day

Posted on August 10, 2024 by terryhenry2014

I have heard it said many times over the years that to be good writer you have to be a good reader and have read lots of books.

According to Mary Oliver in A Poetry Handbook it seems the opposite is true for poets: “Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school. This is true of painters, sculptors, and musicians. Something that is essential can’t be taught; it can only be given, or earned, or formulated in a manner too mysterious to be picked apart and redesigned for the next person.”

Every story needs a beginning, and for today, this is mine.

What I have found true for my self and my wife over the past decade or two is that, at least for us, it is much easier to enter through a door we believe is being opened to us, than it is to walk through that same door when it seems to be closing.

To illustrate this point, I will reference our experience in a local church that we were a part of for over 20 years. By and large, the experience that we had during the first ten years was mostly positive. We were a community of people working together, having babies together and fellowshipping in and around the formal Sunday meetings. That the leadership style was more or less “top down” and performance based didn’t stop us from being a big family, even though there were structural deficiencies in how the working out of the gospel was presented to us.

I have said that in order to say this: towards the last part of our participation (maybe two or three years) the church became embroiled in disputes over leaders, leadership styles and stuff happened that should not have taken place. Sandi and I saw the door being closed and stayed around, to our eventual harm, much too long.

After we left that church (more like released from eldership) we bounced around and tried out a few churches before becoming involved in one that closed its doors sometime last summer, 2023. Our experience at that church was similar to the one before: an open door, feel at home, time passes (maybe 8 years) and things began to feel a little bit strange. I can’t remember all the times Sandi and I would talk about our concerns but were not able, for some unfathomable reason, to walk out through the door that we felt had originally been opened to us by God.

As to being a writer or a poet I have this to say: I love it when the words that frame the thoughts I am having find their way to the page; more so in prose than in poetry.

I am writing this, to some degree, in order to share a poem I wrote on 6/23/2016 and perhaps during, or just before, my time at the second church experience I have mentioned. In sharing this poem, I want to juxtapose that place, with the place that I find myself today, in a small community church where I have grown more in the last three months than I grew in the 8 plus years before.

6/23/2016

There are feelings and thoughts
that grab my mind for a moment
and then fade away,
unarticulated – they linger just long enough
to inflict their pain.

As I see and feel that my life has not gone
in the direction these thoughts suggest
I vow to plumb the depths
of these brief encounters.

Last night
As I looked at one of my bookcases
filled with poetry and stories
I felt the loss of something
I can’t readily explain: the sadness that accompanies
these momentary glimpses into my torn phyche.

I have kept that little scrap of paper around for a long time and never felt the unction to share it.
It’s somewhat bleak but indeed a poetic moment that I passed through.

I am happy that I am not in that place anymore and feel equally blessed to be where I am at today.

I still wonder why it is that we stick around something or somewhere that we truly believe is over in what I call God’s timing, and has ceased being beneficial to our emotional or physical health.

Last week I helped move a family from our church group, from a thousand square foot house to a two thousand square foot house next door. The difference I saw, for a family of six, is simply amazing and speaks to the fact that God is for us and not against us and His timing is His timing and sometimes not easily understood.

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It’s A New Day!

Posted on July 2, 2024 by terryhenry2014

Years and years ago, Morningstar church had a motel and restaurant in Wilkesboro called Jubilee Junction. I don’t know what it was before they purchased it, but for a time, they held their Sunday services there and if you stayed after, you could buy lunch at a reduced price. I remember going a couple of times (it was a 25 mile trip from Boone) and towards the end of the service you could begin to smell lunch which was always very good.

The motel eventually got torn down, the restaurant was closed, and the place was used for what they called the “school of the spirit” on Friday evenings. By this time we were locked into a Boone church but often attended the Friday evening meetings.

Ramey Hughes and Kelanie Gloeckler (Kelanie Webb) would often do praise and worship along with Don Potter and others. It always seemed real and was a blessing.

One night, after the service, the leaders lined up at the front and made themselves available for prayer and perhaps a “word” from God. I beelined for Don Potter (one of my favorite worship leaders) and asked for prayer. All I can remember is that he took my hands in his and began to kneed them like you would bread dough. After a minute or two, he stopped, looked and me and said, (as a word from God) “I don’t see retirement in your future.”

And that was that.

On the way home, I was somewhat angry and bewildered at his word for me, having been raised on Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver and other timeless tv shows. The party line was you work one job, marry and raise a great family, have a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. After a successful life, you retired and never had another worry in your life.

Now I was being told that this wasn’t happening for me.

However halfway home, the light came on, and I realized that this was a blessing and not a curse. That I was going to be vibrant and available and useful until the day I died.

And I have lived with that understanding ever since that day.

And since those years long ago, we became elders in a local church, saw that church split, found another little church group, and hung there for awhile and watched that meeting change and fade away.

After recent visits to a couple of local congregations, a friend told us about a little community church called Mountainside. They meet at a big gym room inside a tennis club and have to set up and tear down for church every Sunday. The first time we went to visit, they had changed the meeting that Sunday to a lodge outside of town. But I was determined to find it and visit. However GPS is not that reliable in the mountains and before long we were lost on some dirt road and I was about to quit and return home, but something told me to persevere. We found the lodge, were not that late, and really felt right at home as we entered.

It is now several months later and we are amazed that God had a plan for us, even in our latter years. We have made friends, attend a home group and really feel well feed and knit in.

I am reminded of this verse in Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

And that is something to look forward too.

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Cleaning the Closet – Circa 2023

Posted on December 26, 2023 by terryhenry2014

Cleaning the closet is never simply about cleaning the closet: there are always a lot of hidden motives behind such an act of bravery. And why did the idea of bravery come to mind at the end of the very first sentence. Perhaps it is the very act of avoiding such a task, day after day and month after month, and this after first hearing the call to get rid of those shirts that haven’t been worn for a year or two. And what about those sweaters that have been piled on top of one another since long before the pandemic, when a full time job required pressed shirts and nice sweaters.

We all remember the oft quoted advice, in relation to cleaning closets, that if you haven’t worn it for a year it is time to remove it from its hanger. Whatever “it” might be.

So, I recently filled up a garbage bag with those shirts and another bag with sweaters and took them to the Salvation Army and dropped them into that big box in front with donations written on it in big black letters. I wasn’t exactly floating, did I seem to feel a bit lighter as I jumped back into my truck and headed to the dry cleaners.

Yes Virginia, there is more to this story than what this surface introduction would seem to suggest.

Before I took to the closet, my wife gently reminded me that she had given me several merino wool sweaters that I might want to keep. They were expensive and light weight and well worth keeping.

I knew where the dry cleaners was located even though I think the last time I visited them was when Bush was president. My thought was that for a few bucks I could get them cleaned and folded and hung on hangers and they would be clean and ready if the sweater mood ever struck. I am happy to say that all five of them have a new home hanging in another closet and that I actually took one out of the bag and wore it for a few cold days.

But this story isn’t about cleaning the closet or finding a few sweaters to wear. It’s really more about getting a part of my life organized which is one of the strongest motives we have to do anything. After having spent years collecting stuff and living the “good” life, we approach a cross-roads of sorts which leads us to begin the process of lightening our load and getting things in order so that we can enjoy each day as it arrives.

When I was tasked many years ago to clean up my dads apartment after he died, I was overwhelmed by all the odd stuff he had stashed in every nook and cranny and drawer in his place. I sort of made the pronouncement at that point that I wouldn’t leave the same amount of junk for my kids to filter through when I depart. We all know that saying this is like saying that we will never complain about the traffic: it’s kind of a hollow threat.

Having said all that, I am in the process of bringing order to a little piece my world everyday. Today, in the basement, I dusted and cleaned an area with lots of computer cables and junk like that which will never be used again. My truck was half full of boxes and bags which are gone for good.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the hundred or so music cd’s that have been collecting dust for a few years. I don’t even own a CD player anymore, having taken most of that stuff to the habitat store a couple of years ago. It’s nice to have a Beatles, Dylan, and Pete Seeger collection, but knowing that it will probably never get played again, is a hard fact to wrap the head around.

I guess it is kind of like riding a bike. For several years, I rode my bike 50-75 miles every week and really enjoyed the road and the fellowship of riding in groups and by myself. Then, for some reason, that season seemed to end, but it was a couple of years later that I finally sold my bike, after coming to terms with that reality.

For many years, I listened to music all the time at work and in my car. Now I play my guitar or mandolin every day and sometimes listen to some piano music as I lay in bed before I fall asleep. Ear buds are a great invention for this.

And I guess that sums it up: we need to be brave and take those steps that bring us peace and happiness even though it means letting go of some things that have meant a lot to us.

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What’s A Blog – My 314th Post – A Trigger Warning

Posted on February 14, 2023 by terryhenry2014

There are times in our lives (at least in mine) where a light comes on, or a door opens, unto an understanding of how our minds work and how we process the many bits and pieces of information we are confronted with on a daily, moment by moment basis.

At times, this information input can be overwhelming and lead to a sense of frustration and we might ask: what do we do with all this stuff we are thinking about?

In one of those magical marriage moments last night, talking with my wife Sandi, I began to unpack a few thoughts that just seemed to pop up for that very moment and that moment alone.

I realized, as I began to talk and explore, that of all the pictures and information I gather each day, I really only share perhaps a very small amount of it with her, and likewise, her with me as well. It is interesting how our brains relegate an order of importance to the days input events and we are left with a distillation of them at days end.

And I guess, anymore than the few things we are left with, would be more than we could handle from a practical perspective.

One of the ideas that I explored that evening was whether or not we have the ability to live an intentional or purposeful life every moment of every day. In other words, can we move forward in the moment with intent or direction and awareness of who we are and how we fit into the overall scheme of things. And all this with without feeling overloaded or having the need to dump or unload these thoughts and feelings on someone else.

From personal experience, I will admit that feeling overwhelmed can lead to a place of self-medication, which can then lead to dependence or addiction.

I think recently watching the latest version of “A Star Is Born” might have had something to do with my recent state of mind. Watching a talented musician wreck his life with alcohol and drugs, was not a pretty thing to see on the screen. We can understand why he took his own life, knowing that he had little or no control over his addictions and that the end result would be his detrimental effect of his wife’s career.

I recently fell and broke my hip and as I fell onto the concrete in the back parking lot of a local Walmart, I believe I heard God say, as I hit the ground and was aware of my condition, “I have saved your life!” What I thought this meant at the time and what this means to me now, is still somewhat the same, yet has changed in depth and understanding.

I knew my fondness for red wine had gone beyond what it should be, but until the other evening, was not fully aware of what this habit had done to dull my mind and thoughts. As I talked with Sandi, I was aware that my mind was clearer than it had been in some time and this was also a part of what “saving my life” had meant.

When bad habits begin to control us, our purpose seems to muddy itself and our follow through is not as intentional as it should or can be.

Sort of like this: I like growing things but do not always follow through with intent or purpose. In growing cabbage, the purpose is to create sauerkraut or Kimchi. Many times I haven’t keep the worms from eating my cabbage and as a result, have nothing to work with at the end of the season. The lesson is to not grow more than you can deal with at season’s end and don’t let a week or two go between looking at what your veggies are doing. That’s being “purposeful”.

When I fell, my sense of or awareness of where I was and what I was doing was most likely dulled to a degree and allowed me to lose my footing and fall and break my hip.

Yet in that breaking, something also broke in my life, which in so doing, has cleared the path for me for what is to come. No pain, no gain, and I can say that this one event was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. And for weeks afterward, as I had to use a walker and sleep in a recliner because it was to painful to get into my bed.

Through the whole ordeal, I have had the sense of this event being a blessing rather than a curse and this has helped me during those early days of pain and frustration. Yes, there were moments of crying and despair, but realizing that there was a purpose in my accident, helped to mediate the pain and helplessness I felt.

God really does cause all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His “purpose”. Romans 8:28

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The New Year Every Year.

Posted on January 9, 2023 by terryhenry2014

“The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills” is the title of a book and subsequent poem that Charles Bukowski wrote and published in 1969. The book was printed and published by the Black Sparrow Press in Los Angeles, and was printed using the old fashioned letter press method instead of the more modern offset press.

In one of my many former lives, I was the director of The East Lansing Arts Workshop (1975-78), located in the Old Marble school several miles from Michigan State University. During this time, I had come into possession of an old Ben Franklin letterpress printer. It was the type of printing machine that required you to hand set each letter from a tray filled with different sizes of A’s, B’s and Z’s, etc. There was a platen where you applied ink, which the rollers would run over and then apply ink to the type, held in place in a frame, and then the press would bring the paper into contact with the inked type and then return to print the next sheet of paper, all hand fed.

It was a marvelous machine, a direct descendant of Guttenberg’s bible press, and depending on the quality of paper used, the type would not only leave ink on the paper but would also leave just a slight indention in the paper. The better the setup, the less indentation but there was no missing the fact that a book had been printed using the “letter press”, which at that point had become somewhat of a lost art.

It is a hard process to describe, but suffice it to say that every bit of your body is used in the production of a printed piece. My machine had a big flywheel which was in turn rotated by an electric motor with a huge leather flywheel belt to keep it going. Once engaged, it was up to the operator to keep feeding the paper into the press and removing the piece that had just been inked. Once the press was engaged, here was no first gear, then second and then third: it was full bore the whole way. You could stop the paper from hitting the type, but the press kept moving as long as the motor was on.

Interesting, but not the point of this post. I think I told this story in order to set the stage for the time when I first encountered the thought of days “running away”. Those days of printing stuff at the Old Marble School have runaway or more accurately faded into the past.

Since falling on October 17th of 2022 and breaking my hip, I have had plenty of time to ponder my days and how they have come and gone and in some sort of sense, run away as well.

Yet as I peer into 2023, what is it that I am seeing. Is it holy spirit smiling back at me and whispering in my ear that I need to value each and every day, each and every cup of coffee or glass of wine with my wife, and keep my family as a priority.

My life, as I recall, has been mostly accentuated by big brush strokes and lots of primary colors. Add to this periods of greys, crystal clean black and whites and colorful, muted pastels and earth tones, and you get the picture: almost.

I have never considered myself a writer, although I have journaled for years. I play the guitar almost everyday and have never considered myself a musician, nor an artist though I have filled up many portfolios.

I am just a boy, standing in front of my future, and asking for a little bit of perspective and some knowledge of my purpose to take with me for the rest of my ride, no matter the length or the width or the depth of it.

My fall has given me a gift and allowed me to slow down and rid myself of some habits that needed to be gone, but were hard to walk away from when I walked in full strength and without a limp. I have faith to believe that my limp will lessen and my strength will return and I will achieve the balance that my life has needed for several years.

Our story is like that letter press printed page, with each letter selected, slowly, one by one, until the whole page is finished, sentence by sentence, inked and prepared for publication.

And rather than the image of a horse running over a hill, our lives are at best, like a mountain stream, that runs past a stationary spot, yet keeps running from a source hidden in the hills, over and over and over and beyond a place that we have ever been.

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The New World

Posted on July 19, 2022 by terryhenry2014

This was originally written in April 2020 and for some reason never published. It has some good stuff so here it is today.

One of my favorite past times is reading the newspaper. I know, that is kind of “old school” but that is what I grew up with. When I was a youngster growing up in Port Huron, Michigan, I had two paper routes as they were called back in the day. Each morning at 5:30 or 6:00 I would pick up and deliver the Detroit Free Press to about 75 or 80 people in and around my neighborhood. The Free Press was a Daily morning newspaper and that is how lots of adults began each and every day: reading the news. In addition to that route, I also had a Sunday route delivering the Detroit News, which was a weekend fixture in many homes at that time. It was big and heavy and included the Parade magazine and Sunday comics, which I delivered Saturday morning while collecting the subscription money which many people paid each and every week.

It was one of the very first “gig” jobs and we were all independent contractors who collected money and paid our “paper bills” each Saturday.

Nearly 32 years later, I would find myself working for a little twice weekly newspaper in West Jefferson, North Carolina. It was a job that I loved and worked at for over 3 and a half years. In between writing stories I would sell advertising and walk the streets of that little town almost each and every day in search of “all the news that fits” to coin a phrase.

During that time, I relied heavily on the Winston Salem Journal, which had a Northwest section of the newspaper a couple of times a week. This was normally two or three pages relating to what was happening in Ashe County, the most northwest county in North Carolina. I would read their view on things and then take the stories and add a local element which they didn’t have the staff or time for.

I learned many things during my nearly 3 1/2 years at the Jefferson Times. I learned to load my black and white film in a darkroom and then develop it after a picture taking assignment. Not only did I write the stories, I also took the pictures that often accompanied them. One valuable lesson came on the heels of me taking a photo at the local Ford dealership of several employees receiving awards. They were great shots from the knees up and focused on the framed awards they were receiving. When I printed the photos, my editor asked me if these people had feet. I remember answering “I guess” and his response was classic: “Then where are they?” was his reply. That lesson has lasted the rest of my photographic life along with the “whole body” pictures of the family at the beach.

As I remember we practiced old time journalism at the Times. What I mean by that is we used the pyramid method of story writing along with the who, what, where and why formula. The pyramid method stacks the most important info into the first few paragraphs so that if the editor cut some of the story off the end in order to fit everything in, the sense of the article would not be lost.

It was during the last few months at the Times that a new paper began to be published. It was called USA Today and most of us traditional journalists called it the Mac Paper because it featured a lot of news in short bits and pieces and didn’t seem to have any depth to it. USA Today was indeed a sign of the times and definitely spoke to the attention span of many Americans at that time.

Even though I hated that paper at its beginning, several years later found me buying one out of their television paper boxes almost everyday. I liked the way it was organized with its color coded sections and the focus on the news and entertainment industries. Then, at some point it got way to liberal for me and the cost was more than I could justify, so I stopped buying it. The last time I read it in 2019 was the last time I will ever waste any more money on it. I realized at that point that they were not reporting the news but trying to manipulate the news to fit their liberal agenda. And there you have that.

But that is not the end of the story. Several months ago I began a subscription to the Wall Street Journal after buying their weekend edition at the local Publix. What I have found is that they actually report the news and still write with the intent to inform rather than manipulate. A lot of what they report comes at us through the lens of finance and business but I have found that they do more in depth reporting than almost any other news source. Of course it takes me about a week to wade through the weekend edition and some weeks are better than others in terms of what interests me.

An interesting article I just read in the Journal during this Covid-19 lockdown says that: “Evidence shows that social interaction is a biological requirement, much like eating, drinking and sleeping. Our ability to learn to talk, play, acquire new skills (like making art – my addition), fall in love, conduct business and age in good health all hinge on our motivation to connect with other people, social neuroscientists have found. So, while social distancing reduces transmission of the coronavirus, which is good for us, it also increases anxiety, frustration and loneliness, which is bad for us.”

During this time, it is in our best interest to try and keep connected with one another.

I was alerted via Facebook this morning that John Prine had passed away. I don’t know why he was never on my playlist as it seems like he was a singer/songwriter that I would really like. One of his song lyrics that popped up on my news feed is from a song called Hello in There and one verse goes like this:

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”

In ending this little story, lets take John’s advice and reach out to someone today by phone, by mail, by Facebook, by Zoom or any other ways that come to mind. As a community, let’s post what we are currently reading, listening to, or working on and keep sending those prayers and good thoughts to one another.

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The Joy of Running

Posted on September 30, 2020 by terryhenry2014

In my dream, which I recently realized I have had more than once, I am running in a neighborhood, at night, on the sidewalk, in my bare feet. My strides are long and evenly paced and the feeling is that my feet barely touch the ground. I am amazed that the more I push, the less  I feel physically tired and the lighter I seem in spirit.

I think that I have a destination in mind: something that I am running towards, but that seems to be the least of my concern.

All I am really aware of is the joy that I feel and the sense of freedom that this joy brings me.

I recently discovered a song on Steffany Gretzinger’s latest album called “Forever Amen” that maybe puts my running into perspective. The verse goes: “Let me hear the sound of Your voice and I’ll come running”.

Something worth thinking about!

 

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Life Stories

Posted on September 14, 2020 by terryhenry2014

One of my favorite program on television is This Is Us. The series follows the lives and families of two parents, and their three children, in several different time frames. On any given episode, there may be several separate story lines running across these many time frames.

The series is really much like our lives in that there are always several different story lines progressing through our days, weeks, months and years.

Today, in the midst of coronaville, I was reminded of a story line from the late 60’s in my own life. The relevance of which I hope you will see.

Late 1966 was a tumultuous year for me in many ways—most of which I only vaguely remember. I was a senior in high school and was having a hard time figuring out my place in life and often felt like I was a stranger in my own body.

My home life was less than stellar and I was often at odds with my parents who often seemed lost and caught up in their own drama as well.

Fast forward to early winter 1967 and amidst the confusion I seemed trapped in, I quit school and hitchhiked to NYC with a friend. Really can’t remember what we thought we would find but the city was to be the beginning of a year long journey which found me flying to San Francisco, moving to Seattle and finally returning to NYC and flying to Europe. After floating around Amsterdam and Munich for several months, I ended up in Italy and worked my way back to America on a freighter.

The biggest mistake in my life was moving back into my parents house when I returned to the USA and that is really where today’s story begins.

Everything was really wonderful after I returned from Europe and for awhile it seemed like I was riding on top of the world. I went to night school and got my high school diploma and began classes at the local community college. By the middle of my freshman year, I had all the teachers convinced I was smart and ran for student government president and won. During my brief tenure, the student council brought both Ralph Nader and Dick Gregory in to town as featured guests and speakers. Dick Gregory was less a comedian than a human rights activist and health nut at the time. I spent several hours with him from the Detroit airport and back and it was enlightening.

One of the people on the student council was a very pretty black girl who was also in my sociology class. She was a feisty debater and it wasn’t long before I asked her out on a date. As I remember we went to a restaurant for dinner and then attended a movie afterward.

Now we are talking about Port Huron, Michigan, a city on the shores of Lake Huron and the St. Clair River. Growing up I don’t remember many people of “color” on either side of the tracks.

World traveler that I was, the stares and so forth didn’t seem to bother me as my date and I walked through the downtown area. The first part of my wake-up call came as we watched the movie. It must have been one of those beach pictures which were popular at the time. I firmly remember, abut 15 minutes into the movie, noticing that there were not any black people in the film and I began to feel uncomfortable at that and my choice of movies and my total lack of under standing that reality. I don’t believe that I had the words to express what I was feeling and about how uncomfortable she must have felt.

Anyway, we made it through the evening, I walked her back to the student housing and went home. It probably was really that simple.

Later that week, I asked her out again and she asked me to meet her at her apartment. She informed me that she would not be going on another date with me and when I asked her why, she pointed to another student housing building down the block where a few of her black friends were hanging out. If I go out with you again, she said, I risk losing my friendship with those people that you see over there—they don’t approve of me dating you. Another moment where words failed me.

It wasn’t until several years later (yes, I am that thick sometimes) that I began to understand what had really taken place on that day. I felt stupid that I had rushed head-long into something that was beyond my reach or comprehension.

But it was a lesson learned and it is probably to simple to say that it was an example of reverse discrimination.

In writing this I am not looking for a pat on the back or a racial diversity award. I have my filters and so does everyone else.

Several years ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine about being black and all that entailed. I can’t remember the entire conversation but what stuck with me was his response to me. He said that even though his skin color was different from mine that he wanted me to regard him as a brother and to not define him as black or treat him any differently from how I would treat anyone else. We are still friends after all these years and that is really all that matters. He is a musician, a father, a husband and friend and that is really what defines him to me.

After all, it is the unknown that we are really afraid of isn’t it. What we know and are familiar with, is not as scary as what we don’t.

While walking on the beach with my wife a week or so ago, the 1958 movie “South Pacific” came to mind. The sound track to the movie is one that I will remember my whole life. One tune in particular came to mind that day on the beach.

The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”.

[Verse 1]
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

[Verse 2]
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught

[Verse 3]
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught

And during this ride that we are on, I do hope we learn before it is to late.

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Letting Off A Little Steam

Posted on April 11, 2020 by terryhenry2014

In light of this coronavirus lockdown, social distancing and all the rest, I stumbled upon this thought this morning. I was imagining myself as an older John Prine who had not spent most of his life not writing songs. I was carefully strumming the guitar and allowing myself to think John Prine thoughts, or so I imagined, and in doing so let those pent up words and verses turn themselves into Oscar worthy songs.

Well, that never happened. But as my fingers loosened up on the strings, I remembered thinking, during my months as a surveyor for an engineering firm in the late 1960’s, that I hoped to reach 64 and still be able to play the guitar and hear the world around me.

To that end, I was one of the only people who wore ear protection when I used a chainsaw or brush cutter, so common when plotting out a subdivision in a heavily wooded area. My thought was that I would protect my body so that when I got older, there would still be something there to live for.

What I have come to understand since that time, and during this Covid-19 era, is that you really can’t totally protect yourself from everything that is going to happen around and to you. You can do your best to protect your hearing and then at 50 realize that tinnitus makes it sound like you are in a fall forest with the brittle leaves blowing against one another. And having said that, I do believe that my efforts to protect myself were not in vain—I just failed to take into consideration situations that were beyond my control or imagination.

And that is where we find ourselves today. Face masks either protect or they don’t (I guess there could be a middle ground). And if they do protect us is it you protecting yourself from me or me protecting myself from you or we are both protecting ourselves from one another. And what are we protecting ourselves from—that you might sneeze and that those droplets of viral infection might linger in the air that I unknowingly walk through.

In all of this, I doubt that we have all read the same articles and am reasonably sure that most of us are not on the same page when it comes to dealing with/understanding what is happening around us.

What I am almost positive about is the fact that none of us are 100% right or 100% wrong in the methods we have chosen to navigate this global storm.

Several years ago, a doctor who I highly respected told me that after 65 I should start getting the seasonal flu shot since our immunity is reduced (or so he said) as we age. Like I said, the guy was from Michigan (my home state) and seemingly read every analysis and medical report published. He had even stopped cholesterol testing in the blood work that he ordered for our annual check up. This because he believed that heart disease was mostly caused by inflammation and not cholesterol in our blood. What I have since learned is that he was correct about inflammation.

However, when it came to getting the flu shot, I took his word for a year or two and then after much research stopped getting one. When I did I made sure that I was getting the single dose version and not the bulk version with some sketchy preservatives. But then, after all that, you realize that the shot is only partially effective, that you have never had the flu, and that during flu season you wash you hands often and don’t pick your nose.

Not that any of that makes any difference in the overall scheme of things. The choices we make often have outcomes that, had we known at the time, might have affected our choices.

People die everyday because of bad habits—overeating, junk food, alcohol, drugs and the like. Good people get hit by drunk drivers, get cancer, and occasionally get hit by a bus.

Since Covid-19 has hit the scene and been politicized beyond measure, it is almost impossible to find a consensus about anything concerning this virus and the computer models that seem to propel the daily news. I read the other day that we have most certainly lowered the vehicle death rate during this crisis. And whether or not flattening the curve will prove effective or just serve to lengthen the time we have to live with this, has not been determined yet.

This is where things get dicey. I could go on a long time about what I have read and what I think about where things are at, heath and economy both considered, but I fear that the blowback would be significant and without any redeeming social value. A quick perusal of Facebook would be a case in point. People that haven’t hibernated or worn a mask or gotten within 6 feet of someone else have been called all sorts of stupid. We live in America and I am sure that some sort of forced vaccine will not be accepted. On the other hand, giving away some of your “rights” under the guise of big brother’s protection might be something that many would welcome.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out and how soon we can let the millions who have lost their jobs get back to work and making a living. I could use a good burger and beer.

 

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