Just a word for California Senator Diane Feinstein – retire. Retire with grace and dignity instead of trying to continue. It’s past time for you and other aging people in Congress to just – go.
Go enjoy the rest of your life.
Go spend your last years with family and friends.
Go, so people with youth on their side can pick up the reins and guide this wobbly wagon that is our government and breathe new life into the horse pulling the wagon.
Was compelled to write that after seeing pictures of her in a wheelchair on Twitter. The photos were taken after she’d been released from the hospital, and she didn’t look good at all. She’d fallen over the weekend and had been in for tests and observation. She’s fine. Well, as fine as she can be considering all her health issues, but I still wanted to cry when I saw the images.
That’s all the commentary for today. Slim Randles has sent a thoughtful piece about the importance of building a fire. I can relate. I hope you do, too.
The other night it was hot. Hot during the day means hot at night. Heat seems to define this time of year for us.
But in spite of that, after a day in the outdoors, we built a fire. A small fire. A “hat” fire, which mountain people define as one you can put in your hat. Why so small? Because it was hot, and we didn’t need the heat. Why the fire? Because we need the fire.
It’s the touchstone to our past. It’s a link with countless generations of ancestors who have sat here looking at the flames licking up on the chunks of firewood and taking us back endless years, countless years, to what was then. Through the flames and later the glow of the coals, we can see things that we can’t see at any other time. We can hear music in the crackling. We can be comforted by the fire, which is our best friend as well as a potential destroyer, at the same time.
How many times have we looked into the flames of a small fire, just like this? It’s beyond counting. Sometimes the fire has been in a fireplace with all kinds of louvers and vents and controls, and yet even then we shut off the lights and sat quietly, looking into the fire and taking ourselves back to our beginnings.
It’s important that we do this, so important to our emotional health that we willingly pay extra for a modern city house or apartment that has a fireplace.
It doesn’t make any sense at all.
No sense at all until you look into the fire and those same questions come along. Who am I? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? Is my life being spent for the right things? What more can I be doing?
Do we remember other fires in faraway places? Places where the weather is different, the animals are different, the people are different. Remember using wood from other kinds of trees? Remember sitting around the fire with others who are only with us now during these quiet times by the fire and in the sanctuary of memory?
We ask ourselves these questions, but the answers can only be found in the silent glowing of the coals.
And we can only hope we stack up right in the long run.
Because when we look into the coals, at the end of a long day, it’s our way of going home.
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Slim’s column is brought to you by his sponsor. Supporting his sponsors helps keep the fun coming.
Leather that looks much better than when the cow was using it. Use your imagination. www.artvincentleather.com.
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Once more I’ve teamed up with 25 fantastic authors to give away a huge collection of Crime Fiction & Thrillers to two lucky winners! The contest is hosted by BookSweeps, a great promotional site for authors, and I like being a sponsor of their terrific giveaways.
In addition to all the books, the Grand Prize winner gets a BRAND NEW eReader in which to load all the new stories.
You can win my novel Brutal Season, the latest in the Seasons Mystery Series, along with books from authors like Susan Furlong, B. M. Allsopp, Emma Jameson, Eric J. Gates and many more.
Contest runs through Wednesday, August 16. Enter by clicking here 👉 https://www.booksweeps.com/giveaway/august23-win-a-bundle-of-crime-fiction-thrillers/
Good luck!