Driver's License

Ron Ogletree, a retired Alabama Highway Patrolman told me one of the funniest stories I've ever heard and like all really funny stories, this one is absolutely true.
Many years ago, when Ron was fresh out of his training, a recently appointed commander issued a mandate that every Alabama Trooper would spend four hours every month checking vehicles and drivers at road blocks.
Ron and his fellow troopers immediatley noted that the directive did not specify how many cars must be stopped during the four hour period. Using that bit of information, most of the troopers established their monthly roadblock on the most isolated roads in their jurisdiction.
Ron was no exception. He set up at a cross road near the rural, north Alabama, community of Flat Rock. For the first and most of the second hour he was manning his road block not a single car appeared. Then he heard the sounds of an approaching vehicle.
After hearing the vehicle for a long time it finally came into view. It was an ancient Chevy pickup driven by an equally ancient old man, obviously a local, a farmer from the look of him. Ron stepped into the roadway and raised his arm in the universal signal indicating the driver should stop. He said nothing happened for a long time except that the old truck continued to close down on him. Just as he was about to vacate his spot in the middle of the road, the brakes squealed and the old man brought the vehicle to a dusty halt with the front bumper inches from the trooper's leg.
Ron gathered his composure, then walked to the driver side of the truck. He looked at the old man and said, "How are you doing? I'm Trooper Ogletree and I'm conducting a routine vehicle and driver check. Could I see your driver's license?"

Without hesitation the old man said, "I don't have one."
Ron said, "Do you mean you left it at home?"
The old man raised his voice a bit and moved the intensity level a degree higher, "No son, I mean I don't have one."
Still not believing what he had heard, Ron asked, "Do you mean you lost your license or maybe it's been suspended."
The old man, getting more than a bit frustrated with the young trooper said, "No, son, I mean just what I said. I don't have a driver's license and I've never had one."
Ron said he wasn't sure what to say next. Finally he blurted out, "How old are you, Sir?"
The old man said, "I was seventy-four my last birthday."
Still with no idea where he was headed with the question, Ron asked, "Do you mean that in 74 years you've never had a driver's license?"
The old man looked at him like a drill instructor explaining a basic concept to his slowest recuit, "Son, up until two minutes ago I've never needed one."
It took Ron a moment to regain his composure. Finally he did, looked at the old man and as seriously as he could manage to speak, said, "And you still don't need one. Go on wherever you were headed and have a good day."

Black Women - White Men

I thought of many black women I've known whose picture I could use to illustrate this blog posting. I thought of Della Reese who took my hand one morning almost twenty years ago, looked right in my eyes and said, "Bert, always remember this; don't take anything for granted. Just as soon as you hit the top they'll run a Whitney Houston in on you." Then she laughed and it was so contageous she instantly had everyone in the room laughing though she and I were the only ones who knew what she was laughing at.



And I thought of Lillie Hoskins who has run a day care center in Batesville, Mississippi for almost forty years and goes through life trailed by clouds of love and doesn't even know it.



And I thought of Louise (there is no one left in my family who remembers her last name) who took care of me every afternoon from the second grade through the fifth grade who will never know how much she meant to me and how much I love her and she laughed when I told her that I could always see a halo around her head.



That list goes on and on. I didn't use Della's picture, or Lillie's, or Louse's - I chose instead Norma Jean Anderson. When I think of black women and unconditional love she is the one that comes instantly into my mind. Norma Jean left an amazing list of accomplishments - too many to even begin to note in this posting (click on her name and read her memorium). As far as I'm concerned one of the most memorable of them occured the night in her home, when I blurted out, "Norma Jean, would you be my mother?" She didn't laugh or pretend that she hadn't heard. She looked into my eyes and my heart and my soul and then she smiled and said, "Bert, it would be an honor." My adopted mother passed away almost two years ago but she will be with me forever, as will Della, Louise, Lillie and a growing host of others.



I am a white man, not something I had anything to do with, and certainly not something I'm proud of, but still, if power means anything to you, white men are the most powerful group on the planet. From a conventional viewpoint, that is true, but I'll be the first to own up to the fact that power isn't worth a thing in and of itself. In fact that's the point of this posting. I've done a lot of things in this life and to be honest, everything being the same, I'd do them all over again. Do I have any regrets? Well, sort of - but it's not about anything I've done or failed to do. My regret, if you can call it one, is that I didn't spend this life as a black woman rather than a white man.


Why? It's simple. Black women are the masters of unconditional love. It's in their eyes, their hearts, their every breath. No matter what you've done or who you've done it to, they'll still love you. When a black woman looks in your eyes and says, "Honey, it's going to be all right." You know that it is.



I'm stuck with being a white man for the rest of this trip but I do have a consolation - I have the friendship and love of a long list of black women and that list grows longer every week. There just isn't any comparison between that and power.

What Matters

"You taught me almost everything I know that matters," she said.

"Thats not so hard," I said. "Because not many things matter."

"But the ones that do," she said, "matter a lot."

Carl Touchstone

In 65 years I've had a half-dozen or so "good friends" and maybe four mentors. In only one case were they the same person - that's him in the picture - Carl Touchstone, my friend, my mentor, and a man that I think of every day though he has been gone for almost eight years.

I could tell stories about him for hours and hours, maybe even days, and never repeat myself. I won't bore you with that. However, I will tell you how we met and try to limit my stories to that one event.

In 1979 I was the managing partner of a car dealership in Laurel, Mississippi. I was 35 years old, deskbound, and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I was always the first one to work, my office manager, Johnnie Taylor, was usually the second to arrive. One morning, in June 1979, I looked up and saw her turn off the street in front of the dealership and head back to the employee parking lot. Immediately I readdressed the never ending stack of paperwork on my desk.

A few minutes later I realized Johnnie hadn't come inside. I got up, walked outside, and found her still in her car. She was clutching her chest and could barely talk. In minutes the ambulance arrived and she was whisked away like she had never been there.

Johnnie, who had never had a hint of a heart problem was given a 50-50 chance of recovery. A week later, on a flight to Kansas City where she was scheduled for open-heart surgery she died. I thought about little else during that week. We were about the same age and we both smoked. I figured that if I didn't do something I'd go the same way. So I decided to take up running.

On July 2, 1979, at 9 pm, just eight days after Johnnie's heart attack, I walked out of my house, flipped my last cigarette into the dark and began jogging down the street, thinking to myself, 'I'll run a mile or two until I get used to this and then begin to increase the distance.' It's a good thing I chose the downhill turn from the house or I'd have never made it the 1/4 of a mile I ultimately managed. The struggle served to convince me that I had to stick with it. However, two months later, hurting in every joint, and with no relief in sight, I was seriously thinking of hanging it up; figuring that death from some cigarette related disease couldn't be as bad a death from running.

I was probably within a few days of giving up running when, minutes after arriving at work, the phone rang. I answered and heard, "Is this Bert Carson?"

"Yes it is. Who is this?"

"This is Carl Touchstone. You don't know me. I live here in Laurel. I'm a runner and I've heard you're a runner. Is that right?"

Suddenly I forgot all of my aches and pains. I forgot that I was about to give up running. I took a deep breath and said proudly, "That's right, I'm a runner."

"Great," he said. "Let's meet at the high school track and run a few a laps."

I quickly agreed and we met that very afternoon. I had run from my house to the track, less than a half-mile, and it had taken everything I had to get there, but I didn't let on that I was hurting. We ran a mile together and I noticed that it seemed that Carl was really pushed to the limit - why, I thought, he can barely keep up. When we finished the four laps, we shook hands and he said, "You are good. I really appreciate you running with me."

Much later I realized that Carl had also run to the track from his house, about three miles away. After our run he ran back home, met some of his regular running buddies and they knocked out a 9 mile loop that was known as the Garbage Dump Route.

It was the beginning of a friendship that continues today even though Carl passed away on June 5, 2000 - because you see, my friend Carl is with me every time I lace up my running shoes and he always will be.

Every person who ever crossed his path was better for the experience - I'm damn sure glad I was one of them.

Children of Tomorrow

As for the children of tomorrow, they are those who have been summoned by life, they have followed it with a firm step, their heads held high. They are the dawn of the New Age. The smoke of wars will not dim their light, nor will the clanking of their chains stifle their voices, nor will the miasma from stagnant waters overwhelm their fragrance.
They are not very numberous among the crowd. But they stand out like a flowering branch in a burnt-out forest, like a grain of wheat in a haystack. Nobody knows them but they know each other. They are like the mountain tops which can see and hear each other, quite unlike the caverns, which are deaf and blind.
They are seed sown in a field by the hand of God. It will burst forth from its husk with the strength of its flesh, it will sway like a radiant plant facing the sun, it will become a majestic tree, whose roots take hold in the heart of the earth, whose branches aspire to the depths of the firmament.

- Kahlil Gibran - from The Eye of the Prophet

The Virgin and the Gypsy

"She liked that mysterious endurance in him, which endures in opposition, without any idea of victory. And she liked that peculiar added relentlessness, the disillusion in hostility, which belongs to after the war. Yes, if she belonged to any side, and to any clan, it was to his. Almost she could have found in her heart to go with him, and be a pariah Gypsy-Woman."

D.H. Lawrence
The Virgin and the Gypsy

Happy Valentine

Another Way

For me, patriotism died within minutes of landing in Vietnam in 1967. It was a totally unexpected death since I'd volunteered to be there and actually believed that me and my buddies were there to protect freedom and democracy. Within minutes I realized what countless soldiers before me had discovered- war isn't about protecting anything, it's about powering economies, strengthening politicians, and validating religions.

Once you convince the people that their freedom is being threatened it is easy to go to war. Just tell them that godless hordes will take over the world if we don't fight - or more aptly, continue to fight, since the history of this country is war - continous, senseless war - in fact, the history of man is war - no more, no less.

It has been said that war is the failure of politics and for a long time I believed that was true but I've come to realize that war isn't the failure of politics, it is simply a product of politics; a natural outgrowth of the idea that in order to maintain political power it is imperative that threats to ones way of life are manufactured and overcome.

If there were no countries and no religions there would be little left to motivate the people to fight to defend. Then we could get on about living in harmony, peace, and joy. I'm the eternal optimist but I sometimes wonder if we have gone too far down the path of war to ever find another way.... but still, the possibility is a beautiful thought to contemplate.

By the way - the Buddha in the photo now stands where in 1967 there was a small hamlet - a hamlet that we decimated by day and the Viet Cong by night - It's now a quiet place - a place where the voice of God is easily heard by those who choose to listen.

Tribute to Love

On the banks of the James River, a husband erected a tombstone in memory of his wife, one of those 100 maidens who had come to Virginia in 1619 to marry the lonely settlers. The stone bore this legend:

"She touched the soil of Virginia with her little foot and the wilderness became a home."

-Eudora Ramsay Richardson

Happy Valentine

Men, Women, Love

It looks like we are about to get married but, in fact, we were about to marry another couple. Though we aren't, by any stretch of the imagination, into religion (see the Feb 8th blog posting), we are ordained ministers and we spent over three years as the ministers of a church. By far, our favorite pastoral activity is performing weddings. Conservatively I'd estimate that we've performed over 200 of them.

I know that we officiated at many of them because we only require one thing of the couples that we marry - that is that they love each other.

There are people who say that space is the last unexplored frontier; others say the ocean, still others maintain that the mind is the last unknown region in the universe. I maintain that the last unknown of any consequence is love. We are totally oblivious to the the glaring truth that men don't understand women, women don't understand men, and neither men or women understand love.

However, and we should be eternally grateful for this, lack of understanding doesn't stop us from making forays into the unknown and no matter how painful previous experiences were and how fiercely we deny any interest in another adventure in love we dive back in at the first opportunity.

Love is what makes the world go around and more - Love is God and God is Love.

Happy Valentine

Old Ships

There is a memory stays upon old ships,
A weightless cargo in the musty hold, -
Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips,
Of stormy midnights, - and a tale untold.
They have remembered islands in the dawn,
And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
And tortuous channels where their keels have gone,
And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.
Oh, never think that ships forget a shore,
Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore;
And there be some who say that sunk ships rise
To seek familiar harbors in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.

David Morton

Beauty

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

- Sara Teasdale

Perfect Moments

With my wife Christina, I run a children's portrait company that specializes in portraits of children taken in day care centers. Last summer Michelle, one of our photographers was shooting at a child care center in Nashville when one of the children's
mother asked if we would do a family shot if she ran home and got her husband. Since we encourage family portraits, Michelle said, "Yes, we'd be glad to do that."

Within minutes the woman was back with her husband. He agreed to wear the overalls and with some strong encouragement from his wife and Michelle he was changed before he could reconsider (photographs are something that few men enjoy being part of).

Mom knew what she wanted. She told her husband where to stand, then sat at his feet, on the bale of hay that use with the children, put her right arm around her husband's leg, and her left arm around her son.

Michelle looked through the viewfinder and said, "It needs something."

Mom leaned her head against her husbands leg and smiled.

Michelle recalled when she saw the pose in the viewfinder she screamed, "Don't move!"

No one did and here's the result.

There are an infinite number of "perfect moments" in our lives. Few of us see them, at least not very many of them. We have to be alert for them and when they come we have to grab them without hesitation.

Days - Karle Wilson Baker

Some days my thoughts are just cocoons - all cold, and dull, and blind,

They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind;

And other days they drift and shine - such free and flying things!

I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.

Mr. Lincoln Said

"I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right: stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." Abraham Lincoln

The Search

"Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister and sometimes the Mosque but it is thou whom I search for from temple to temple. Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy for neither of these stands beside the screen of thy truth. Speculation to the heretic, theology to the orthodox, but the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller."

Sufi Abu-'L-Fazl Al-Allamin

Tell us a Story or recite a Poem

Today I found a journal that, among other things, had a number of poems and quotes that I had jotted down of the past year or year and a half - I plan to share many of them here - maybe with you but more than likely just with myself. Here's the poem, by Robert Penn Warren that sparked that idea.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

but you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Also by Warren and from the same book, Tell Me a Story:

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
by a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
the great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
and the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

What He Taught or What You Believe That He Taught

Jesus wasn't a Christian and for that matter Lao Tzu wasn't a Taoist and Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. Like all enlightened beings they walked their own path, they had no use for religion, politics, creeds, or any other form of "right and wrong" as defined by society.

Once Jesus was asked, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?"

He replied, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Imagine for a moment, just a moment, a world where we all loved each other - regardless of race, creed, culture, or economic status - a world where we just all loved each other, totally and unconditionally. Where your needs are as important to me as my needs are to me. Where everyone would give everything to support everyone else. Just imagine that....

No Time Out

I just noticed that my last entry was made early in January 2007. I wasn't that busy last year - so what can I say except my priorities must have been a bit out of kilter. A thought-provoking conversation with an old friend of more than 20 years and the death a week ago of another friend of 30+ years made me realize, not for the first time, that all that matters in life is our connections to each other - and more and more I'm beginning to believe that blogging may be a serious way to both build and rebuild connections.

In any case I'm going to spend more time with this blog even if I'm the only one who reads it. Here's why: That's Tucker in the photo on the left. My wife and I operate a small company specializing in vintage photos of children in day care centers http://www.united-portrait-studios.com. I met Tucker at a day care in Mississippi last fall. We were selling photos in a room near Tucker's classroom and in the two afternoons were there I must have heard his name called two dozen times. It was always followed by, "You're in time out."

If you aren't familiar with the term, "time out," as it relates to kids Tucker's age, it means, you are removed from the group and put in "isolation" - in the case of Tucker's day care it means you have to sit down with your back to the wall and you must remain there, silently, until your teacher allows you to rejoin your classmates.

The second day we were there I overheard Tucker's grandmother talking to him when she picked him up. She asked, "Tucker, did you get put in time out today?" Without hesitation, remorse, or apology, he answered simply, "Yes."

As near as I could see, Tucker isn't a troublemaker, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. He has determined at his young age that he has no use for the conventions of this world and that includes the people he has to deal with. He isn't angry, nor is he trying to make a statement, defend a position, or force anyone to give in to him. He is totally detached from all of that. I love Tucker but I don't envy him because in 65 years I've come to know that the only thing that matters in life is our connection to our fellow human beings - not in some commerical or even social way but at a heart level.

Bert 3 AM Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.

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