Prison or Cafeteria Food?

This infograph is from GOOD Magazine. Interesting comparison but I have been both to jail and public school and the food in jail is NOT near as good as that from school.

Bound to Ramble, part one

Harold had the bushiest eyebrows in all of Polk county. Folks when they would meet him would always remark about his eyebrows, no matter what else Harlod did. And that was indeed an impressive feat for Harold also played a mean banjo. Harold had been playing since he was just a boy, traveling with his family to the flatlands in the summers to pick cotton. Those kids swore that those summer evenings in the Arkansas delta were as close to hell as any place on this here earth. The humidity was so thick you could slather it on a piece a bread with a spoon. And so Harold began to pick a homemade cigar-box banjo he had made to keep their minds off the heat. At first, The kids couldn't decide which was worse: the pickin or the climate. But Harold, like his daddy, was as stubborn as an old dog and he picked that poor banjo every night after pickin that poor cotton. With callosed and even bloody hands, Harold would struggle to figure out how to roll his fingers in time to make that banjo sing like all the greats. When they were in the hills in the off-season, they could sometimes pick up the Opry on the AM radio if it were clear enough. They had heard Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley and in that hearing they were transported, not to Nashville, but to somewhere even better, somewhere like heaven were their troubles weren't gone but understood. When Stanley would moan Man of Constant Sorrow, they knew that pain instinctively. And it was only in that place, somewhere like heaven, that Harold truley felt home, felt alive. He knew he was destined to pick.

And so he picked and by the end of that first summer, he not only had the finger-roll down but he could play a recognizable Orange Blossom Special and for a moment the family forgot all about the Opry and found that place of understanding had found them there in that ghost of a house they filled. Each of the kids got to spend some of the cotton money on themselves, usually they would buy some prize like a coca-cola or if they had had a real good harvest a new pair of shoes. But this summer, they left the coke in the icebox and threw in to get Harold a real banjo, a used one that a friend at the gin got in Memphis, but a real one nonetheless. Years later, Harold would think back on that day, on that banjo and he would still cry. Never had he been so surprised, so happy, so whole. Harold took that hollow-back banjo in his hands and he smelled the wood, cedar. As he inhaled the distinct smell, he knew it was a good gift, the best even. And as he sat down to pick it, the Orange Blossom Special never sounded so good and perhaps never again. When we was done, he laid it down on the bed beside him and nearly prayed over that instrument, "Its so good, so very good." And so it was, for a time.



This is part one of a five part short-story I will be publishing the next five Thursday nights.

A Children's Message: Good Names

One of the joys of being a parent is teaching your children about animals. With Mary Grace, this has been a lot of fun. She sometimes gets lions and tigers mixed up, but she has her farm animals down. She will sit in my lap as we flip through a book of animals, pointing out all the ducks, geese, horses, cows, and bunnies. Her new favorite game is for me to ask her if her animal friend, Jack-Jack, who is a cat, is some other kind of animal. She'll sheepishly grin and moan a long "no" that implies that her daddy is silly. It is so funny to her to hear us give the wrong name to Jack-Jack. She like most little kids loves animal names.But how did all these animals get their names?

A long time ago the very first person, Adam, had the huge honor of naming the animals. One can imagine the line of creatures miles long waiting with anticipation to hear Adam pronounce, "woodpecker" or "duck-billed platypus." Adam sure was creative, I would never of thought to call a black-and-white striped horse a Zebra, I would just call him "confused." But I also imagine that this was a lot of fun for Adam and that it meant a lot to him to name the animals. I have had the honor to name some things in my life and those too have been fun and meaningful.

My dog's name is Brandy, I gave her this name because her parents names were Belle and Buddy. I wanted her to have a "B" name too so that she was connected to her parents. Michala and I name our cars too. My old, beat-up white truck was called possum. We named him that because he was white, fast, and ratty. But best of all, I was privileged to name my daughter. She is named after her great-great grandmother, her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mom. In her name is line of women who loved Jesus and we wanted to her to be connected to these beautiful women before her. Our names mean a lot, they give us our identity.

Long before I named possum and brandy, long before we were named, even before Adam named the animals, God named everything. He gave everything, the sky, the stars, the oceans and the mountains, and especially us our first name. He looked at all he made and he named us "Good." Before we are Michael or Sally, or any other name, our first name, our most important name is the one God gives us: Good. 

"God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!" Genesis 1:31