Undoubtedly, the notorious history of Spain’s exploitation of mineral
resources in Mexico and South America plays into the belief that colonial Spanish
shipwrecks will contain objects considered valuable on today’s market (i.e., gold, silver,
and jewels).26 Historical narratives like these were also popularized in late 19th century
works of fiction. Notably, the characters of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island are
motivated by the search for lost treasure from the wreckage of the “wrecked plate ships”
along Florida’s coast.27
As Burgess and Clausen note, however, “bottle caps and seashells were what most
found.”29
The beliefs about colonial Spanish shipwrecks that the general public, popular
culture, commercial treasure salvage companies, and mass media hold are generally
misrepresentations of the reality of colonial Spanish presence in Florida. As mentioned
previously, Florida served more as a military outpost and buffer zone than as a source of
wealth to the Spanish Empire.56
In two volumes concerning the State of Florida’s colonial Spanish silver and gold
coin collection, Alan K. Craig notes that over 95.75% of the State’s collection of silver
coins (far larger than the State’s collection of gold coins) comes from Kip Wagner’s
salvage lease on a 1715 wreck, extended from 1964 to 1975.58 Apart from this relatively
sizeable collection recovered during the earliest years of treasure salvage along Florida’s
coast, the numbers of coins retrieved by both salvors and archaeologists from the colonial
Spanish shipwrecks since those years have steadily declined: the years 1975-1983 represent only 2.29% of the State’s collection, and the years 1983-1997 represent only
1.84%.59 Although the State of Florida’s collection represents only a portion of the gold
and silver material recovered from colonial Spanish shipwrecks in Florida, the significant
decline in finds since the advent of treasure salvage efforts is evidence that the belief in
vast sunken treasures on colonial Spanish shipwrecks in Florida waters is fueled mostly
by misinformation and romance.
A couple days ago was Columbus Day so this is a little late.
Indeed, few know that Columbus prayed at a shrine in Spain called Guadalupe before setting off on his great journey. This was a spot where an ancient image of the Virgin had been hidden in the first centuries after the death of Christ and where she later appeared to a herdsman, telling him in 1326 to have the bishop dig up the image and build a chapel. It is believed that Columbus took a replica of the image with him on his first trip across the Atlantic, and when he arrived in the New World he named an island after Guadalupe (it is now spelled "Guadeloupe"), and soon after, the Virgin appeared to an Aztec Indian near Mexico City at a spot that was also named Guadalupe!
The devotion of Columbus was tangible. He named his ship after Christ's mother (the Santa Maria) and every night he and his crew sang the Hail Mary. According to his diary, Columbus, looking for the correct course, was guided at one critical point by a "marvelous branch of fire" that fell from the sky.
That was on September 15, 1492. Once across the Atlantic, this faithful son named the first island he came to "San Salvador" for the Savior and the second "Santa Maria de la Concepcion" for Mary, in addition to Guadeloupe and another island, Montserrat, named for another ancient apparition site near Barcelona.
Upon landfall Columbus and his men prayed the Salve Regina...Here is the link.
columbus
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archaeologist
Awash_in_Tales_of_Treasure_Modern_Percep.pdf
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Money Diggers in Charleston | Chucktown Tours
The Gold Bug : Edgar Allan Poe : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Full Text
How platinum shaped Edwardian and Art Deco rings and reveals authenticity
I touched on this subject not too long ago when I talked about the reasons for hoards. I mentioned that some coins were used in rituals or had various types of superstitions attached. I've been told to get rid of some finds like that because of any evil that might be attached. There are some common beliefs about that which you might find interesting. This is the first time I've ever given this type of disclaimer in this blog, but I want you to know that not all of the beliefs expressed below are mine. I can't take the time to explain in every instance where I agree or don't.
Superstition? Not. Objects Can Be Imbued With Evil
The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting
MoneyDiggers.pdf
Benjamin Franklin, in a satircal article, discusses the practice of "money digging." | B. H. Roberts
In Catholic tradition, burying a cursed or impure object involves blessing it, cutting spiritual ties, destroying it, and then interring the remains in the earth, often with holy water and a blessed medal 
Fish Eaters+1.
Step-by-Step Process
1. Bless the object
Sprinkle the item with holy water while saying:
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Fish Eaters+1
2. Break unholy ties
Pray the Prayer of Breaking of Unholy Ties three times, naming the object and commanding any evil spirits attached to it to go to the foot of the Cross of Christ Fish Eaters+1.
3. Pray for protection and release
A common prayer asks God to bind and cast away any demonic entities attached to the object, plead the Blood of Jesus over it, strengthen spiritual protection, and bless those who have handled it Fish Eaters+2.
4. Destroy the object
Alter it so it no longer resembles its original form:
Burn it (collect ashes)
Break glass, split metal, saw wood, or tear apart other materials Fish Eaters+1
If destruction isn’t possible, tie a blessed palm branch or St. Benedict medal to it Fish Eaters+1.
5. Bury the remains
Dig a hole in the ground.
Place the remains inside.
Sprinkle with holy water again.
Add a blessed St. Benedict medal if not already attached.
Fill the hole Fish Eaters+2.
Alternative: If the item is biodegradable and won’t pollute, it may be discarded in a running river or stream Fish Eaters+2.
Spiritual Notes
Tip: If you are unsure or the object is valuable, some Catholic groups (e.g., The Catholic Centurion) offer to destroy and bury it for you 
catholiccenturion.squarespace.com.
By following these steps, you both protect yourself spiritually and ensure the object is removed from your home in a reverent, tradition-based manner.
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What to Do with Objects Considered “Bad Luck”
If you have items that are thought to bring bad luck — whether due to superstition, Feng Shui, or cultural tradition — you can address them in ways that both respect your beliefs and help restore a sense of harmony in your space.
1. Identify the “bad luck” object
In Feng Shui, “bad luck” items often create Sha Qi — negative energy — by representing decay, stagnation, or conflict. Examples include broken dishes, dead plants, stagnant water, sharp or pointed objects, stopped clocks, and worn or unwanted gifts 
theqiflow.com. Superstition also links certain objects to misfortune, such as broken mirrors, certain numbers, or symbolic items like upside‑down horseshoes 
Centre of Excellence+1.
2. Decide on the approach
You can choose to:
Remove the object — If it’s no longer needed or is causing discomfort, take it out of your home or workspace theqiflow.com.
Neutralize its energy — Use cleansing or protective methods to “reset” the item before discarding or repurposing it 
WikiHow.
Repurpose it — Turn it into something positive (e.g., a decorative piece) if it still holds value.
3. Common cleansing and removal methods
Salt cleansing — Sprinkle sea salt in corners or under windowsills, or throw a pinch over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck WikiHow.
Mirror fragments — If it’s a broken mirror, wrap a piece in black cloth and bury it under the next full moon, or grind it to dust and scatter it in the wind WikiHow.
Incense burning — Burn pungent scents like sandalwood or jasmine to clear negative energy WikiHow.
Crystal or charm protection — Place protective crystals or amulets near the area where the object was kept WikiHow.
Smoke cleansing — Use sage, palo santo, or other cleansing smoke to clear the space WikiHow.
4. Feng Shui-specific tips
Remove clutter, broken items, and stagnant water to restore Qi flow theqiflow.com.
Avoid sharp or angular objects in key seating or sleeping areas theqiflow.com.
Replace or reposition items that block energy pathways, such as mirrors facing beds or sharp corners aimed at seating theqiflow.com.
5. Mindset and prevention
Even if you keep an object, you can change its “energy” by cleaning it, re‑arranging it, or giving it a new purpose. In many traditions, the act of consciously deciding to let go of something “unlucky” is itself a positive step WikiHow.
In short: Identify the object, choose to remove, cleanse, or repurpose it, and use protective or cleansing practices to restore balance. This can be both a practical and symbolic way to “get rid of bad luck” and invite positive energy into your life.
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80 percent of U.S. adults say they believe in a spiritual reality.
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Not too many days after talking about the common connection between birds and treasure, I happeded to see a new episode of Hudson and Rex that ended with a long sought treasure being found in a Red Crossbill nest.
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- A century-old religious painting connected to a Florida Greek Orthodox community in Tarpon Springs has been rediscovered in Greece
- The artwork was sent to Greece for restoration more than 100 years ago but was never returned
- Local officials are now working with church leaders in hopes of bringing the painting back to Florida
A painting that belonged to a cathedral in Florida and went missing over 100 years ago has been rediscovered in Greece.
Herer is the link.
Lost Florida painting has been found 103 years later. It was hanging in a church in Greece
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===
It must have been 1973, give or take a year, when I sat in an office on the 27th floor of the Tower of Leaning when my dissertation advisor told me I was "perspicacious" and asked if I knew what that meant. I remember that well, probably because I rarely heard anything so positive about myself because my parent's theory of child rearing was that I'd get a big head if they told me I did anything well. I don't know how or if, that actually affected my personality development in any way at all, but for whatever reason, I turned out to be stubbornly independent and very introverted. Maybe I shouldn't, but I like that. And I do think I'm perspicacious, but maybe everybody thinks of themselves that way. I suppose they do.
A half century sounds like a lot of time, but it doesn't really seem that long ago. I'm fond of my memories and wouldn't want to lose them.
The Cathedral of Learning was just across a parking lot from Forbes Field when the Pirates beat the Yankees in the World Series in 1960. Forbes Field was torn down in 1970. I have an old film strip showing my grandma making her way down to the dugout with her box camera to take some pictures of the players. A security guard was starting to walk over her way. She was the extrovert of the family and liked to keep things lively.
I've put years of posts documenting a part of my life on the internet. On occasion I told about parts of my personal life in this blog but over the years I've made many other posts that revealed and documented my thinking and experiences. I posted a lot of photos over the years and told personal stories. Google, AOL and others have vacuumed up a lot of life details.
I like remembering my past and this morning and started to wonder if with AI and all the data that is scanned and encoded could in the future provide AI personal memory assistance. Just to do a little test just to see how it might work, I asked something AI something I knew I had shared in this blog. I asked AI what did the TreasureGuide say were the two most important or beneficial things he ever learned in college. I know I told exactly that in at least one of my posts and wanted to see if AI would pick it up. One of those specific things I mentioned was Operationism. AI didn't catch that. I got some more insight to how AI works. It generalizes a lot, and I've noticed before that it is often wrong.
The answer AI gave me sounded good in a general sense. The story sounded good, kinda like what you'd expect from an ingratiating con man, but one major part of the answer was completely wrong. Maybe AI mistook what others were quoted as saying in my blog for something I said.
At this time my conclusion is that I wouldn't trust AI at this time as a personal memory supplement, but I can imagine that sometime in the future that something like it might be used to help people with memory loss. That, of course, would require the experiences or memories to be recorded or somehow encoded. In my case, I've said a lot online. There are many others that have documented a lot of their lives online and others that easily could. Every teenager has a vast documented digital presence.
Cosidering the massive amount of online documentation that is already online, future developments should make it possible code and store memories much more efficiently. It seems to me that a digital form of memory loss assistance is not that far away.
Hey, Elon!
===
People like to put a name on things. There are even words for unidentified things, ie. UFO It seems to be so basically human. The child's first utterance associates a verbal expression with an object, often mama or dada. Associating a word with an object puts the referent (the object) in a category or class, which assists memory organization and storage, but it also has more magical effects. Uttering a word of recognition in social situation has an effect on those who hear it. It draws them into the same shared world. The experience is then not private but part of a social group and interaction. If you are on a safari and spy an elephant, it doesn't seem sufficient to see an elephant, but you hear people, especially youngster cry out "an elephant." Then they'll point to share the experience of seeing and recognizing. Neural networks in several brains comprising the social group light up. It helps build shared world views through this basic expression of recognition. Layer upon layer subjective worlds are formed and shaped. Now it is accomplished not only by social groups but also media, fact checkers and now also AI, which does not share a personal experiential world (though some might disagree with that) but sucks up variously recorded expressions of human language or other available forms of coded information (though some of it is not really information by some definitions).
I hope you'll forgive me, but I hope to show the relevance of this to treasure hunting and metal detecting.
I was recently with a small group of my wife's relatives when one of them repeated a couple of times that "money is just paper." I knew she had more to say about it by I wasn't particularly interested in finding out what point she wanted to make by it so ignored it. First of all, I usually take the word "just" to be a red flag. When someone uses that word, they intend to reduce or diminish something. My reaction is that nothing is "just" anything. If I handed her a piece of toilet paper, it wouldn't be the same as if I handed her a ten-dollar bill, so at the very face of it, the statement was wrong - not to mention that even bills are not paper. It is more of a linen and cotton combination, not to mention the ink and most importantly, the social agreement of value that attaches to it. The word "just," besides being inaccurate, often signals a reductionistic agenda. Things are not simple although there are often advantages to acting as if they are. It can at times be helpful to reduce the infinite and overwhelming complexity of reality. So we lump things into categories and attach labels.
My wife has recently been trying to assess values of various items and has been using AI to help get some idea. It is helpful but occasionally very wrong, which can probably also be said of most authoritative sources, whether they are jewelers, gemologists, investment professional's, physicians or whatever. The advantage of AI is accessibility and speed. In the end, unless you live in a box and your own private world, reality is largely social.
In John 18:38, Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, "What is truth?" after Jesus declares that He came to testify to the truth.
the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion:
Test the hypothesis using controlled, repeatable procedures. Only one variable (independent variable) is changed at a time, while others are kept constant. Experiments should be repeated to ensure reliability
Percy Williams Bridgman’s operationism (also called operationalism) is the view that the meaning of a scientific concept is exhausted by the set of operations used to measure or apply it www.philosophyprofessor.com. In other words, a concept is defined by the specific procedures we use to observe or quantify it.
Core Idea
Bridgman argued that “we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations”
It sometimes seems like we desperately hang onto smallest floating twig of understanding to stay afloat in the raging mystery of life. One of my biggest frustration is the infinite lifetmes of study required to learn something of the many things fascinating things to study in this life. Each and every object opens a door into countless additional areas of study.
The social context helps narrow down our areas of interest. It is easy to value those things that are valued in the society. Interests come from experiences and the people in our lives.
I never get bored. I get frustrated by not be able to study all the things that catch my interest. It becomes a bit of a problem for me in this blog. I start a topic and that topic opens many other doors. I was just thinking that I started a series on the future of metal detecting but got off on other things and haven't finished it. I plan to go back and do that sometime.
Not long ago I wanted to find out what metal object was in a conglomerate. I started cleaning the conglomerate and noticed what looked like microfossils. I did a post or two on that topic and still haven't opened the clump. I think I'll do that sometime.
I enjoy writing, but the type of writing I enjoy the most isn't easy and it takes a lot of tie, so I seldom do that kind of writing. I usually settle for simply communicating information. I'm happy with that. I just don't feel like I have the time to present a lot of information AND put it in more artistically pleasing form.
Fact is, you can only do so much in life. That means priorities are very important. You have to make choices and decide how you really want to spend your time and what you want to accomplish with your life.
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But, hey! It isn't bad to disagree. In fact, I'm convinced one of the best things you can do is disagree with yourself.
I know that sounds like heresy. Doesn't that make you conflicted? Isn't it neurotic - or worse?
I say no. When you can look at both sides of the coin, or should I say issue, you weight it out. People used to be able to do that. It seems, that somehow they lost that ability. They can't tolerate complexity. They talk about relativity and personal or subjective truth but can't stand more than one simple overgeneralized view.
But one thing about disagreeing with yourself, is the opportunity it presents for learning and change. Every time you learn something, you change. The process of learning is a process of changing. You can't learn without changing and it wouldn't do you a lot of good to learn if you didn't change something significant.
When I learn something significant, I can look at what I previously believed and say that I was wrong. How can you grow as a person without looking at your old self and recognizing where you were wrong. It doesn't do much good to keep adding new facts to your knowledge base unless you change how you look at things.
Once I was lost and now I'm found. You change. And then you keep changing. All things become new.
One thing the soccer fans might not know about those West Virginia country roads they've singing about is they are hilly, wind around, and when paved, are covered with pot holes.
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
8:20 Some of the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the kingdom of God come?”
Jesus answered, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes. 21 People will not say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ because God’s kingdom is within you.”
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
-
---
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
---
Psalm 8:4 “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
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The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
-
---
---
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
The sun knows we can't take go on too long without taking a break to shut down, recharge, reset by exploring dream world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
---
About the author.
Nothing is more inevitable than an excited beagle being pulled up over the hills and through the weeds and briars by his nose hot on a rf\fresh rabbit trial.
Drawn away by dreams I did not know, the road that took me far from home is calling me back.
First, I'd travel head north on 95 with many others hurrying in both ways over the multiple smooth paved lanes. Then through Georgia and past the place where once years ago a car with an illegal trailer swerved and pushed my Opel GT over the hill sticking the nose of the Opel in the bottom.
The highway continues through some other states. The roads get older, more narrow and wind slowly through the hills as the scenery becomes more familiar but also strange. Things have changed.
Finally, I'm at the intersection to the unpaved road I walked to school everyday. Crossing the old bridge over the creek in the valley, I start up the final hill. There are new houses and the houses I knew are now old. The sheep and cows are gone. Around the bend and up the next grade, there is the house where the Simpson boys lived, but nobody is home. Then Hamilton's. That house looks old and smaller now. Gary died a long time ago, and Loretta maybe ten years ago after she went to Washington D.C.
But what leave me feeling out of place is the old, weathered grandfather barn and the spreading oak tree where the barn owls nested are completely gone. A big, ugly steel maintenance garage stands there now.
On the other side of the road, I look up the long driveway to the house that my dad built. The house is different. The small trees are now large and there are new trees everywhere.
For a moment it is strange and I feel lost, but then through it all I see my dad and mom, I see the neighbor kids. I can see the house and barn as it always was. It is all still there. It is the same place just another time. I'm
===
It must have been 1973, give or take a year, when I sat in an office on the 27th floor of the Tower of Leaning when my dissertation advisor told me I was "perspicacious" and asked if I knew what that meant. I remember that well, probably because I rarely heard anything so positive about myself because my parent's theory of child rearing was that I'd get a big head if they told me I did anything well. I don't know how or if, that actually affected my personality development in any way at all, but for whatever reason, I turned out to be stubbornly independent and very introverted. Maybe I shouldn't, but I like that. And I do think I'm perspicacious, but maybe everybody thinks of themselves that way. I suppose they do.
A half century sounds like a lot of time, but it doesn't really seem that long ago. I'm fond of my memories and wouldn't want to lose them.
The Cathedral of Learning was just across a parking lot from Forbes Field when the Pirates beat the Yankees in the World Series in 1960. Forbes Field was torn down in 1970. I have an old film strip showing my grandma making her way down to the dugout with her box camera to take some pictures of the players. A security guard was starting to walk over her way. She was the extrovert of the family and liked to keep things lively.
I've put years of posts documenting a part of my life on the internet. On occasion I told about parts of my personal life in this blog but over the years I've made many other posts that revealed and documented my thinking and experiences. I posted a lot of photos over the years and told personal stories. Google, AOL and others have vacuumed up a lot of life details.
I like remembering my past and this morning and started to wonder if with AI and all the data that is scanned and encoded could in the future provide AI personal memory assistance. Just to do a little test just to see how it might work, I asked something AI something I knew I had shared in this blog. I asked AI what did the TreasureGuide say were the two most important or beneficial things he ever learned in college. I know I told exactly that in at least one of my posts and wanted to see if AI would pick it up. One of those specific things I mentioned was Operationism. AI didn't catch that. I got some more insight to how AI works. It generalizes a lot, and I've noticed before that it is often wrong.
The answer AI gave me sounded good in a general sense. The story sounded good, kinda like what you'd expect from an ingratiating con man, but one major part of the answer was completely wrong. Maybe AI mistook what others were quoted as saying in my blog for something I said.
At this time my conclusion is that I wouldn't trust AI at this time as a personal memory supplement, but I can imagine that sometime in the future that something like it might be used to help people with memory loss. That, of course, would require the experiences or memories to be recorded or somehow encoded. In my case, I've said a lot online. There are many others that have documented a lot of their lives online and others that easily could. Every teenager has a vast documented digital presence.
Cosidering the massive amount of online documentation that is already online, future developments should make it possible code and store memories much more efficiently. It seems to me that a digital form of memory loss assistance is not that far away.
Hey, Elon!
===
+++++++++
I have to admit I enjoyed the World Cup. I always like thinking about strategies. It was no different when watching soccer. I don't know, but it seemed to me they could benefit by drawing more from other sports. They already use the pick and roll, prevent defense, and Hail Mary of sorts. I think teams could benefit from using more planned "plays."
US Mint FIFA World Cup 2026 Coins Open for Pre-Order June 4
One thing I don't like about coin collecting is the infinite number of coins. Now there are more. I'll restrict my collecting to what I find.
---
People like to put a name on things. There are even words for unidentified things, ie. UFO It seems to be so basically human. The child's first utterance associates a verbal expression with an object, often mama or dada. Associating a word with an object puts the referent (the object) in a category or class, which assists memory organization and storage, but it also has more magical effects. Uttering a word of recognition in social situation has an effect on those who hear it. It draws them into the same shared world. The experience is then not private but part of a social group and interaction. If you are on a safari and spy an elephant, it doesn't seem sufficient to see an elephant, but you hear people, especially youngster cry out "an elephant." Then they'll point to share the experience of seeing and recognizing. Neural networks in several brains comprising the social group light up. It helps build shared world views through this basic expression of recognition. Layer upon layer subjective worlds are formed and shaped. Now it is accomplished not only by social groups but also media, fact checkers and now also AI, which does not share a personal experiential world (though some might disagree with that) but sucks up variously recorded expressions of human language or other available forms of coded information (though some of it is not really information by some definitions).
I hope you'll forgive me, but I hope to show the relevance of this to treasure hunting and metal detecting.
I was recently with a small group of my wife's relatives when one of them repeated a couple of times that "money is just paper." I knew she had more to say about it by I wasn't particularly interested in finding out what point she wanted to make by it so ignored it. First of all, I usually take the word "just" to be a red flag. When someone uses that word, they intend to reduce or diminish something. My reaction is that nothing is "just" anything. If I handed her a piece of toilet paper, it wouldn't be the same as if I handed her a ten-dollar bill, so at the very face of it, the statement was wrong - not to mention that even bills are not paper. It is more of a linen and cotton combination, not to mention the ink and most importantly, the social agreement of value that attaches to it. The word "just," besides being inaccurate, often signals a reductionistic agenda. Things are not simple although there are often advantages to acting as if they are. It can at times be helpful to reduce the infinite and overwhelming complexity of reality. So we lump things into categories and attach labels.
My wife has recently been trying to assess values of various items and has been using AI to help get some idea. It is helpful but occasionally very wrong, which can probably also be said of most authoritative sources, whether they are jewelers, gemologists, investment professional's, physicians or whatever. The advantage of AI is accessibility and speed. In the end, unless you live in a box and your own private world, reality is largely social.
First hydrogen energy car packs 932-mile range and takes just 5 seconds to refuel
In John 18:38, Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, "What is truth?" after Jesus declares that He came to testify to the truth.
the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion:
Test the hypothesis using controlled, repeatable procedures. Only one variable (independent variable) is changed at a time, while others are kept constant. Experiments should be repeated to ensure reliability
Percy Williams Bridgman’s operationism (also called operationalism) is the view that the meaning of a scientific concept is exhausted by the set of operations used to measure or apply it www.philosophyprofessor.com. In other words, a concept is defined by the specific procedures we use to observe or quantify it.
Core Idea
Bridgman argued that “we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations”
80 percent of U.S. adults say they believe in a spiritual reality.
It sometimes seems like we desperately hang onto smallest floating twig of understanding to stay afloat in the raging mystery of life. One of my biggest frustration is the infinite lifetmes of study required to learn something of the many things fascinating things to study in this life. Each and every object opens a door into countless additional areas of study.
The social context helps narrow down our areas of interest. It is easy to value those things that are valued in the society. Interests come from experiences and the people in our lives.
I never get bored. I get frustrated by not be able to study all the things that catch my interest. It becomes a bit of a problem for me in this blog. I start a topic and that topic opens many other doors. I was just thinking that I started a series on the future of metal detecting but got off on other things and haven't finished it. I plan to go back and do that sometime.
Not long ago I wanted to find out what metal object was in a conglomerate. I started cleaning the conglomerate and noticed what looked like microfossils. I did a post or two on that topic and still haven't opened the clump. I think I'll do that sometime.
I enjoy writing, but the type of writing I enjoy the most isn't easy and it takes a lot of tie, so I seldom do that kind of writing. I usually settle for simply communicating information. I'm happy with that. I just don't feel like I have the time to present a lot of information AND put it in more artistically pleasing form.
Fact is, you can only do so much in life. That means priorities are very important. You have to make choices and decide how you really want to spend your time and what you want to accomplish with your life.
Percy Williams Bridgman’s operationism (also called operationalism) is the view that the meaning of a scientific concept is exhausted by the set of operations used to measure or apply it www.philosophyprofessor.com. In other words, a concept is defined by the specific procedures we use to observe or quantify it.
Core Idea
Bridgman argued that “we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations”
settle for something that simply conveys information even though it is not as nice as I'd like.
He was merely digging a backyard pool. Suddenly, he hit an $800,000 gold treasure.
But, hey! It isn't bad to disagree. In fact, I'm convinced one of the best things you can do is disagree with yourself.
I know that sounds like heresy. Doesn't that make you conflicted? Isn't it neurotic - or worse?
I say no. When you can look at both sides of the coin, or should I say issue, you weight it out. People used to be able to do that. It seems, that somehow they lost that ability. They can't tolerate complexity. They talk about relativity and personal or subjective truth but can't stand more than one simple overgeneralized view.
But one thing about disagreeing with yourself, is the opportunity it presents for learning and change. Every time you learn something, you change. The process of learning is a process of changing. You can't learn without changing and it wouldn't do you a lot of good to learn if you didn't change something significant.
When I learn something significant, I can look at what I previously believed and say that I was wrong. How can you grow as a person without looking at your old self and recognizing where you were wrong. It doesn't do much good to keep adding new facts to your knowledge base unless you change how you look at things.
Once I was lost and now I'm found. You change. And then you keep changing. All things become new.
One thing the soccer fans might not know about those West Virginia country roads they've singing about is they are hilly, wind around, and when paved, are covered with pot holes.
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
8:20 Some of the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the kingdom of God come?”
Jesus answered, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes. 21 People will not say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ because God’s kingdom is within you.”
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
-
---
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
8:20 Some of the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the kingdom of God come?”
Jesus answered, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes. 21 People will not say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ because God’s kingdom is within you.”
Psalm 8:4 “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
---
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
-
---
---
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
The sun knows we can't take go on too long without taking a break to shut down, recharge, reset by exploring dream world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
---
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
My wife raises butterflies and being a born "observer," I watch what they do.
There is an area of our yard that is almost always patrolled by a black swallowtail butterfly. It is a very well defined area, and almost every day there is a black swallowtail that patrols the area back and forth, something like the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. He occasionally takes a side trip to a bougainvillea to catch a snack or something, but he spends hours each day patrolling. that has been going on for years. There have been several generations. I'd guess there is either something very attractive about that area to male swallowtail butterflies and maybe there is a nurture or genetic component, but a female lays many eggs on one plant but only one male controls that specific area generation to generation. He'll chase competitors off.
The sun knows that we can't take go on too long at once and daily turns off at a preset time so we can recharge, reset and explore dreamy world's we'd never dare in the full light of day. Fine thing it is for body, mind and spirit.
With the hope of bringing the lessons of deep night to day, I open my eyes in the middle of night just enough to grasp pen in one hand while holding a fleeing dreamworld of deep memory in the other and try to make a single whole of the two
The shy two or three-year-old dressed in a bright Satin costume with top hat feels the spot-light on an intimidating auditorium stage in long line other only of sweet and kind children that are a little older and less shy. It was me. It is me. He is still here, but stays back stage until the sun goes dark and the other spotlight comes on.
The little boy who awakes one Christmas morning delights to see Lionel trains running all around grandma's living room floor is there too. So is the high school field goal kicker that hears the crowd cheer while watching the ball disappear into the snow and darkness as it approaches the cross bar not knowing yet if the game was won or lost. So too is the young man, standing before his first psychology class as a new college instructor, and the consultant creating software to train pilots on the Airbus 300 flight control system at Eastern Airlines or developing training for a new prototype GPS system for Martin Marietta aerospace.
One day somewhere between here and there, past and future, a man looks back at all the people he's been. He is all of them. They are still here. He is them and the sun is returning.
---
In my heaven, the streets aren't paved with gold. In fact, my heaven has no paved roads at all. It has dusty winding roads that small groups of school age children cheerfully walk twice a day during the school year and whenever they want or can during the summer and weekends. On colder days a pure white covering transforms the well tread path into a winter playground interrupted only occasionally by a few well-worn tired motor vehicles struggling to make it through the deep snow or up the icy hill.
In my heaven, I put up grandma's aluminum Christmas tree and decorate her house with wintery scenes populated by little metal skaters, cows, deers, Santa and a manger scene, or peer through the cellophane window at one end of a brightly colored sugar egg to view a three-dimension Easter landscape
The green fields turn from green to brown to white and back again, and the neighbor kids change from picking wild stawberries or playing baseball on the new growth grass to football or hunting and then football when green turns to brown. The kids can't resist a few forbidden attmpts to climb Mr. McNealy's haystacks the seasons change and bundled against the cold, trudge up the snow-covered hill for the pure joy of sliding down it again and again.
In my heaven, brief sorrows exist but transform to sweet memories. They punctuate and emphasize but do not endure.
Rather than streets of gold, I prefer rolling green hills that change colors, creeks that wind through wooded hollows, barns and cows, scattered small yards made by hardworking families and filled with young hope, parents doing their best to make a way, and the sound of laughing kids. My heaven is where I came from. My heaven is my home.
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I saw part of an episode of the Oak Island show. It was the end of the season and they came up dry. I actually pitied them. Some seemed to be on the verge of tears.
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About the author.
Nothing is more inevitable than an excited beagle being pulled up over the hills and through the weeds and briars by his nose hot on a rf\fresh rabbit trial.
Drawn away by dreams I did not know, the road that took me far from home is calling me back.
First, I'd travel head north on 95 with many others hurrying in both ways over the multiple smooth paved lanes. Then through Georgia and past the place where once years ago a car with an illegal trailer swerved and pushed my Opel GT over the hill sticking the nose of the Opel in the bottom.
The highway continues through some other states. The roads get older, more narrow and wind slowly through the hills as the scenery becomes more familiar but also strange. Things have changed.
Finally, I'm at the intersection to the unpaved road I walked to school everyday. Crossing the old bridge over the creek in the valley, I start up the final hill. There are new houses and the houses I knew are now old. The sheep and cows are gone. Around the bend and up the next grade, there is the house where the Simpson boys lived, but nobody is home. Then Hamilton's. That house looks old and smaller now. Gary died a long time ago, and Loretta maybe ten years ago after she went to Washington D.C.
But what leave me feeling out of place is the old, weathered grandfather barn and the spreading oak tree where the barn owls nested are completely gone. A big, ugly steel maintenance garage stands there now.
On the other side of the road, I look up the long driveway to the house that my dad built. The house is different. The small trees are now large and there are new trees everywhere.
For a moment it is strange and I feel lost, but then through it all I see my dad and mom, I see the neighbor kids. I can see the house and barn as it always was. It is all still there. It is the same place just another time. I'm
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It must have been 1973, give or take a year, when I sat in an office on the 27th floor of the Tower of Leaning when my dissertatio
