God's Artwork & Bush's Beans

Been having a high ole time here in the Smokies. Here on business really: a three- day board meeting.

To break the tedium of the meetings we got into our cars and went to Bush’s Beans, home (home, factory, restaurant, museum and country store) of the famous Bush Beans and their dog Mike for lunch. Of course they had cute little doggie pillows and a bunch of hand crafted “pick’n” instruments make with “guitar strings” on a slat of hand-fashioned mountain wood screwed into a Bush’s bean can.

They also had the customary ole-timey items “for sale” and clerks dressed in their frontier 19the century calico dresses and head gear.

If this wasn’t exciting enough we topped it all off going to Clint’s home spun country and antique choked (over done, they must have made midnight raid on a Cracker Barrel) BBQ restaurant for dinner.

The restaurant was bedecked with a life sized picture of the patron saint of Gatlinburg and the Smokies, Ms. Dolly Parton with her piled high blond hair and famous tooters. Of course Clint a grinn’n ear to ear was in the picture with Dolly. Both with the look of kindred country spirits.

Side note on Clint. Clint was rotund and white bearded like a classic Santa Clause. Mr. C worn a droopy mountain hat and overalls in the evenings but not while operating his rug cleaning business during the day.

A man of many homespun talents he also had his own gospel singing band that performed nightly in his picnic- benched tourist-filled BBQ emporium. Well perhaps not nightly due to his faithfulness in attending services at his church in the valley.

On the way home after all the excitement I was happy not to encounter a stray deer intent on tangling with my windshield nor a black bear homesteading in the middle of my pitch-dark narrow switch-back mountain roadway.

I’m just grateful I’m snug in my room and will be returning to my home turf tomorrow filled up to my eyebrows in country-mountain culture and charm.

May God forgive me if you think I’m making fun or unintentionally hurting anyone’s feelings. My only point is that a Chicago area bred and raised guy like myself probable can’t appreciate good gospel music and deep fried or BBQ food.

God is so generous up here with His beauty.

Jim

SLAVES TO A DIFFERENT MASTER

Yes, Charleston does have a Slave Mart, granted today it’s a museum even if some of Charleston’s vendors would like to deny it ever existed, Believe its because there is no money in it for them.

We found it just a couple of blocks away where the lady with the babble decorated glasses adamantly declared that we were just out to besmirch South Carolina’s famous seaport’s good name.

My thoughts went right away to the enslaved poor and illiterate who populate our land of the free and the brave today.

No, we don’t shackle them in irons; we’ve gotten so much more civilized. We shackle them to living hand to mouth or worse beg to mouth with lack of opportunity, lack of money, lack of education, lack of political power and a host of other ball and chains.

It’s amazing how after all these years the scars from the beatings and irons are still visible on the psyche of so many, yet so many can't figure out why, after all they're free now and we did pass the bill of rights. I guess they figure its no different than the etchings of approval and the landmarks of the landed gentry is on the backs of their decedents.

But I digress. What caught my eye was the AA unity symbol (the circle within the triangle) carved into the façade of the building above the larger of the two windows on the second floor.

Poetic in that freedom from the slavery to our addictions has been and always is right above us.

Really Grateful. Joyous and Free.

Jim

CHARLESTON, NC

Can’t get there without crossing water as one of the natives said. Couple of big bridges, lot of smaller ones and causeways, even drawbridges.

Ran the Cooper suspension bridge

Don/t know whether you’re crossing river, bay, creek or marsh at night. Length height and smell are tell tale signs, marshes are dank and muddy and a little fishy at low tide.

The food is great. In fact one could spend the whole week long vacation burping from one “must go to” seafood, bib and shell bucket eatery to another.

We sat at a table with several little brass medallions nailed to the surface with little brass nails. Each had the name of some celebrity.

I had a bit of lark envisioning John McLain sitting at this same table Hootie and the Goldfish; I’m sure it had been on different occasions.

I sat in the Hulk Hogan seat and got my picture taken with my arm on a mermaids shoulder

The older and squeaker the dining rooms floors, the more “Charleston’s Finest” awards clutter the walls.

Speaking of walls I believe every spring or other tourist season there must be a contest to determine on which restaurant/bistro walls thereon are hung the most celebrate pics. The older and more funky the better.

Went to the “Slave Market”. Asked one Charleston store owner at the “Charleston Market ” where the SM was. Peering over her babble decorated chain secured reading glasses and out from behind her array of Charleston souvenir shot glasses she very promptly corrected us that Charleston did not, yes she repeated it “Charleston does not have a Slave Market!

Since she was so adamant we were wrong we were determined to find it tomorrow.

Gotta get out of here. Go for a run on the beach; fly a kite and kayaking yet this pm.

Doggone sobriety is great! Joyous and Free.

Jim

WHAT WILL IT BE?

Good friends, friends who know your warts and still love you to pieces.

Friends, closer than family, who

I suspect know us better than ourselves

after all

They’ve got a ring side seat; only thing missing is the popcorn

Why am I concerned with what they think or for that matter what I think?

God knows, and yet continues to include me in Creation.

I’m a critical and unique link or just a metaphor.

Are my worst mistakes my best contributions or is it those times when I scored myself a perfect ten?

How much and in what way does my laughter and my tears contribute one iota to anything..

Am I part of the spit that keeps everything together?

Or am I a particle of tension keeping everything from colliding.

What is it?

Am I this or that or…am I this and that?

My bumbling speech? My misspelled and mistaken word?

My gravity dragging actions?

Is it in spite of them or because of them?

Is it my experiences stacked high with age or is it my ignorance of tomorrow?

After three quarters of a century under my belt are the few remaining years to contain my main event?

Will I recognize it or will it be like so many others in the past just another day at the office?

Will I participate or sit idly by?

Will I sit on my comfortable old ass or get up and take the risk?

God what ever is your will use my love hungry heart, my memory filled mind and my love –to-tell-a-story tongue as instruments of Your love and Your peace.

JIM

Fellow Spiritual Travelers

Stopped by and visited with a new friend of mine. Interesting guy. Lost his wife a year ago. Writes poetry almost daily since losing her a year ago; his grief still runs deep.

Since then it's amazing on how he changed. He knows it. No hostility, no anger just a calmness, a peace, "a new me." He says nothing upsets him, acceptance has set in. As he pats his chest he says "she lives on here." Yet he acknowledges "its more than a circumstantial change, it's deeper and broader than that, I'm a new me. Totally different."

His poetry, like his new and exciting "new me" and his relationship with his Higher Power is bursting at the seams. He admits to a "spiritual awakening," his words not mine. We agree that when we first met we could feel the energy, the spiritual energy, that energy that goes beyond words and explanations, we were and are one.

One, because in God we are one. God has always been there we are the johnny-come-latelies who have discover this truth. I experienced it when I entered my first AA meetings. An old friend in the program always insisted that "upon entering a AA meeting or encountering a fellow alcoholic on the street there was a electricity, a recognition of a fellow spiritual traveler."

My new friend and I talked for quite a while in his place of business; he ignored the ringing phone. We were talking about his new found love of writing poetry. I shared with him my own passion.

We agreed poetry brings out or manifests the feminine in us. We also agreed that the male is incomplete until he discovers and integrates the feminine within. We have come to the realization that it sometimes take a jolt, a traumatic experience to jar lose the masculine grip. To make known the masculine's vulnerable self. To deflate the masculine ego and let the feminine heart do the "thinking."

Since the feminine is linked to the heart, it follows that the metaphor,creativity, caring, compassion, suffering and love are also present; that's poetry.

Higher Power

Got up this morning wanting to post a note. Lot on my mind to share.

Instead during prayer and meditation time got out of my mind and followed my heart into the following.

Knowing You

If You are everywhere

Then why are You so hard to find?

If You’re the very breathe I catch

Then why can’t I hold You longer?

Some say You’re within

A light brighter than the sun

Then why can mere skin bar the sight of You?

Some say You’re in nature

In majestic mountains and towering trees

Then why can mere distraction

Blot You from sight?

If You’re everywhere

Why do I have to seek You?

If I can’t see You

Why do I look and look?

Why explain Yourself

If You’re who I know You to be,

You’re a mystery and

This mere mortal would

never understand.

This knowing You....

I know.

It’s experiencing You

That overshadows

Mere knowledge of You.

Jim

Book Launch--Joyous & Free

I'm back again. The last time I came back I thought I would be able to settle back into a routine of posting and dabbling with prose and poetry. I was wrong, the preparation for the book launch was mild and less time consuming than the actual launch.

This summer has been one hell of roller coaster ride. In future posts I'll share with you my summer adventures of book signings,conventions and speaking engagements.
These occasions have been a source of true joy. I have met and made friends with hundreds of wonderful folks and with this I am a wealthy man.

In this post I want to thank all those I met and for their overwhelming acceptance of Joyous & Free .

Thank you all for your more than generous postings on and for the many emails comments that I have published in the 2nd Edition due out this week.

Thanks again for your participation in Joyous & Free exceeding all expectations.

I will continue to post.

James Frederick