Tough Choices

Please welcome my friend, Slim Randles, as Wednesday's Guest today. Enjoy his wit and wisdom from his popular Home Country syndicated column.

Sure was good to see Jimmy back from the Middle East last week. He looks good in that uniform, too. He was running all over the place for a few days, visiting everyone he knows, but he finally came in to the Mule Barn and sat at the philosophy counter, headquarters of the world dilemma think tank, to be with us.

"Must be good to be home," Doc said.

"You bet," Jimmy said. "But it isn't the same as it was."

We thought about that. Thought back over the year he'd been gone. A few new babies born, a few old-timers gone to rest. Oh yes, they finally filled that pothole in front of the drugstore. But that was about it.

"What do you mean it isn't the same, Jimmy?"

"This is going to sound funny to you guys," he said, "but all that time over there, I kept thinking about how nice it was going to be to get out in the woods at night again with Ed Lakey and the dogs and go coon hunting, you know? It was so hot over there, I tried to remember what it felt like to wear Carhartt coveralls and feel that cold night air and hear those hounds bawling and running down along the river. Oh man, that was one of the things that kept me going."

 He looked at us and his mind came back home there for a minute. "Of course, I missed you guys, too. Thought about you a lot."

"Well, sure you did," Doc said.

"Anyway," Jimmy said, "I got home and the first thing I did ... well, almost the first thing I did... was call Ed and tell him I needed to get in the woods, and how about he throws those dogs in the truck, you know, and we'll go hunting? He told me he was sorry, but he didn't have a single hound any more. Had to quit coon hunting for good.

"Well, you know Ed. He lives to go hunting with those dogs, so I asked him what happened. He said his wife was upset at him for spending so much time with those dogs and not with her. She said he loved those dogs more than he loved her and she told him either the dogs would have to go or she would.

"So Ed said, 'Doggonit, Jimmy. I flipped a coin and the dogs lost.'"

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Brought to you by “Home Country Minute” with Slim Randles. Ask your local television stations for time and date.  And here is a taste of what you will get.

Thanking a Veteran

I am honored to share this poignant story from Slim Randles as Wednesday's Guest today. It doesn't have to be only on Veteran's Day that we remember. Enjoy....

We buried Marshall Sprack last Saturday, and we will miss him. Ol’ Marsh was the cheerful old-timer who could be seen each day walking his two tiny dogs around the neighborhood. He always had a smile and wave for everyone.

He was a very private guy, however. We all knew him, but didn’t really know him, if you get my drift.
 
He’d been retired for more years than some young married folks here had been alive. And he wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to come down to the Mule Barn coffee shop and settle the world’s troubles like the rest of us do. He stayed home and he walked the dogs. 

We didn’t really know Marshall Sprack until Saturday, really. On Saturday, as we gathered to say goodbye to him, the military honor guard showed up. He was buried in his dress uniform from a war most of us can’t remember. His medals were on display next to the casket. The honor guard carried his flag-draped coffin to the grave-site, and other honor guards fired a three-volley salute to Marsh. Then the flag was folded carefully into a tight triangle and presented to Marshall’s daughter.

When the chaplain rose to speak to us, it was about Master Sergeant Sprack. It turned out that Marsh did things in combat that none of us could imagine him, or anyone else, doing. Later, we said the miracle of Marsh’s life was that he made it home. Now, at last, we understood the reason for his slight limp. And we can also understand a bit more why he didn’t go in for the shallow, flippant conversation we practice daily. He had things he could have said, but he didn’t have to because he knew them.
 
Well, we started out on Saturday thinking we were burying our old pal Marsh, the morning dog walker. But by the time that bugler played “Taps,” we realized that we didn’t bury him at all. His country showed up to bury him and say goodbye.
 
Marsh … thank you.
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Brought to you by Home Country. The book, which is a collection of some of the best of Slim's weekly Home Country columns, has many stories that are humorous, as well as more that are thoughtful and poignant. Check it out.

Monday Morning Musings

I read a good editorial in The Dallas Morning News the other day. Titled: Trimming Government, Message to Obama and Congress: Get on with it, it listed a number of ways to balance the budget. The top two suggestions:

• Eliminate duplicate programs
• Consolidate related programs

Good ideas. Do you think if enough of us say this, someone in Washington will listen?

There are a number of programs available to help returning soldiers deal with PTSD and other combat-related issues as they assimilate back into civilian life. One of them is Horses for Heroes which has a facility in Keller, Texas called Rocky Top Therapy Center. There, men and women can spend some time grooming a horse and doing some ground work.

On the surface, you may wonder what that could do to help a traumatized veteran, but one vet has said working with a big chestnut gelding has reduced his stress level a great deal. The soldier said the horse is a good listener. "There's no negative feedback. There's nobody saying you need to do this and this and this."

Working with the horse also helps in controlling anger and frustration. There is no way you can lead a horse if you have a lot of strong negative feelings churning inside. I know that from personal experience. A horse has to trust you to let you groom him, pick up his feet, and lead him around. Horses are very intuitive and react to your feelings. If I approach him in anything but a calm manner, my horse shies away from me because he is afraid and his instinct is to run from whatever is scaring him.

Learning to be calm around a horse, can surely help a veteran learn how to be calm with his or her family, as well as in other social settings. Kudos to the people who are helping the soldiers learn that.

A new book out, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, deals with the benefits of people who work alone. According to Cain, great inventions and great art come from people working in solitude, not committees, and she cites the example of Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer alone in his garage. It took people like Steve Jobs to launch the business and work with committees to market the product, but the initial invention came from one man, working alone.

Susan Cain advises against relying on Groupthink in business and education, and has plenty of data to support her belief that people are more productive when they work alone with few interruptions. The book is well worth a read, as is the article she recently had published in the New York Times.

Speaking of good books, I have a review of Louise Penny's wonderful new book, A Trick of The 
Light over at The Blood Red Pencil blog. If you have a minute to check it out, you might find another good book to add to a list of those you want to read.

Monday Morning Musings

Two stories in Parade Magazine this past weekend were a study in contrasts. The first one was about Flash Mobs that have gone from gatherings to do something silly and fun, to looting and violence parties. These gatherings started in about 2003 when young folks - and some older ones - used social media to suggest getting together to do something outrageous. One of the first was people riding the subway in New York in just their underwear. Silly, but harmless.

But more recently the flash mobs have gone beyond harmless. The riots in London this summer were started by a flash mob, and the city of Philadelphia has a curfew now following the vandalism and looting at a Macy's store this summer.

According to the article in Parade, police departments are now monitoring social sites in the hopes of discovering plans for outbreaks so they can intervene.

How sad that what started out as just fun had to take such a downturn.

In contrast, there was a story about former U.S. Army Sgt. Adam Burke who found a unique way to recover from the physical and emotional damage caused when he was shot in Iraq. Burke suffered from a severe brain injury, PTSD, and a ruptured ear drum that left him unable to maintain his balance without a cane.

Two years after he came home from the hospital, he and his wife moved to his family farm in Florida, where they were given a few acres. He spent his days preparing the land, planting blueberry bushes and caring for them. After about a year he noticed that his balance had returned. So had some small measure of peace. That's when he decided he would offer the same opportunity to other veterans as they came home. He invited men and women to come on weekends and help with the care and harvesting.

By 2010, the enterprise was so successful, Burke decided to expand. He acquired funds from Work Vessels for Veterans, a non-profit that helps former military personnel start a new business, and bought eight more acres.

The farm has really been a godsend for returning veterans who need the healing power of working in the sun and connecting with living, growing things. Not to mention the support they find as they can share their stories with men and women who truly do know what they have been through.

Kudos to Sgt. Burke.