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I was reading from Tony Robbins this morning. His comment was to look at life as a gift. I think that is a beautiful way to view our existence. It makes one feel as if we are chosen. As if we are special. But that really doesn't describe how we get life. Our lives come to us more like Branches sprouting from the trunk of a tree. We depend on everyone who has come before us because we are made of the combining of genetic information created by countless pairings back to the dawn of existence. The fact that we have made it so far is remarkable. Bill Bryson in his book about the history of everything said we should feel fortunate that all our ancestors were attractive enough to find mates and lucky enough to live sufficiently long to have children. That is an impressive string. Every ancestor before us was attractive and healthy enough to find a mate and have kids so that we are where we are. When we are looking at our family tree as you did in that class, we can only go back so man

As I went through college, I learned that the whole concept of Thanksgiving had been concocted so that it was more like a fantasy than reality. The Indians sitting down with settlers to have a big meal was simply false. The idea of being thankful is something I approve of. But we are often thankful to the wrong one. It was really something to go to your Grandparent's and Maw Maw Johnson's for Thanksgiving dinner. They really put on a feast. I've never seen the like of food and pie and cake and candy. those folks really knew how to eat. What they were doing was sharing the work and sweat and labor of their lives with the people they cared about. Every mouthful of food represented work that they could have kept for themselves that they shared. They traded all that work for the joy they shared with all of us eating till we thought we would explode. Our contentment was more important to them than their own. And what do we take away from these family get-togethers? Memories. It

I don't know if this would make much of a nickname but it describes how I feel some days. Draggin tail...

I wish I could have known the future when I was a teen but I am sure I could not have understood it if I had been shown. The world changed a lot. I thought about a funny quotations I read once upon a time. Yogi Berra had said, "the future ain't what it used to be." It isn't . Nor will it ever be. When I graduated high school, the space program was in full swing. We had landed on the moon and returned several times. the Viet Nam war had ended. There had been an oil embargo that had driven the price of gas high and everyone spoke of ending our dependence on foreign oil. Pollution control devices had been added to cars. No one was openly gay. There were only 10 or 12 stations on cable television. There were no cell phones. No one stayed in touch with a phone stuck to their head all the time. In pharmacy there were fewer than 1/2 the drugs that are available now. We didn't know how Aspirin worked! I was headed out into life with a few notions of what I wanted in my ow

When I was a little boy, I sat on my swing-set in my Great-grandmother's yard and looked over toward Bull's Gap. My Grandmother Odessa called them Blue Mountains. They seemed far away to me. I thought it would be a great adventure to go there and see what was beyond them. Later as a teen, I would drive my car up to that mountain top and look back into the valley where Sylacauga and the area of all my childhood ramblings lay. I saw this whole area as home. My Grandmother Odessa had told me about our indian heritage. About that same time two of the biggest heroes on television were Daniel Boone and the Lone Ranger. They both had Indian friends who were their sidekicks. So the idea of being Indian was cool. As my understanding of the politics of the settlers coming into Alabama grew, I knew that most of the Indian's were displaced and their land stolen. It made me feel like I belonged here more since some of my ancestors were here before the white men came. So many of my and y

It has been said that curiosity killed the cat. There are lots of cat fables. Fables are an effort to distill a truth down to a simple lesson that is easy to remember. Whenever something gets simplified, it is easy for the point to be missed or the lesson to take on a different meaning than the intent. That comes from losing the context of the lesson. If you knew the story of the lesson, then you can understand the point more clearly. Curiosity is not something to be avoided. In fact, curiosity about things in life can be very useful. But taking risks to satisfy curiosity can be dangerous. A safer way to satisfy curiosity is to observe others. There is an unlimited supply of people who have tried almost everything life has to offer. We can learn from them. We can avoid many heartaches and pitfalls by doing so. The greatest use of curiosity is to drive us toward education. There is so much more we humans don't know than we know. But the sum of our knowledge is great. It would take m

By working in the pharmacy, you understand being careful. Carelessness can hurt people. And being negligent about care can make you responsibile for this harm and cost you. The same is true in all aspects of life. Lack of caution can hurt. I came very close to killing Mike Sherrill because we didn't apply caution about a canoe trip. We went down Hatchet Creek when it was at flood stage. Not just any flood stage, it was a 100 year flood. The flood had washed out a major bridge. That day the canoe flipped and trapped Mike against some logs in the creek. At first, I didn't think I was going to have enough strength to lift it off him. If it had set down on his chest rather than his legs, he would have died. If I hadn't been strong enough to get it off his legs, he would have died in the cold water before I could have returned with help. Apparently the age I was at that time has been associated with risk taking behavior. That is probably why that age range has the high death rat