Remembering This Day And The Joys It Held

This was a fantastic day! Fellowship and music for 13 hours, and now it is drawing to a swift close. New friends met, old friends greeted, and not a single thing to dampen the spirit other than a little rain late in the evening. Musicians, Lord, I thank you for musicians! Twenty miles from my doorstep a studio beckoned early this morning, and that was the beginning. Out in the country, just far enough that the rabbits don't run away when you're walking around where they live, was my location for 8 great hours. For those of you haven't been afield much, rabbits, even in the wild in SD, are very tame. Why would they be any other way, nobody ever bothers them and the rest of us that walk through their world are only momentary interruptions( if even that). This is SD where the entire state is comprised of less than a million people. If you talk to anyone from here, and you happen to be from here, you both know a lot of the same people. That never ceases to amaze me! In the process of meeting new guys that play I learned that although we come from different areas of the state, we all worked the same places during the sixties and seventies, and we all know dozens of the same people. Every state has a history and a heritage to be proud of, and ours is no different, only ours tends to hinge on the "big things" that get SD attention, other than the "big thing" that makes us totally unique in the country today. Mount Rushmore is a national monument, the Corn Palace in Mitchell is the only one like it in the world, and the other high spots you can read about for yourself. The thing you won't read much about, though, has to do with the people and their collective personality based on numbers. Because we're few, we are mighty in the sense of how we deal with one another and how we deal with the stranger in our midst. We're like the rabbits, there really is no need to be alarmed for any reason. I'm sure this sounds like a naive approach to life in the 21st century, but I think if you're one of those folks who is also a non-threatening individual you will find an entire state where you can wander and spend time with people that you'll love meeting. Who knows, you may even wish to come live here, but I hope not too many do because that would put an end to some of what I'm writing about. The communities would be altered for ever. We've probably got all the bad stuff the rest of the world has, you just have to look harder to really find it. Just a quick tap on the calculator just informed me that I'm a blood relation to about 1% of the people in the state. Whoosh, where else in the US could one find that much togetherness? (Don't even go there, I know what you thought of, and yes, it is possible) Just please remember this, if you want to meet the people you have to go where they are, and that means actually setting aside the regular tourist stops. Stop at the visitors place on the interstate, or at a service station, get a map, and find the places where the rabbits don't run when they see you coming. That's when you'll know you've arrived in the heart of SD. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Thoughts On Being From A Less Populated State, South Dakota! 

We Could Franchise This In The United States And It Could Be The Next BK 

I'll Let Her Tell The Story

Auctions provide the student of human nature with amazing insights to the inner workings of people's minds. One week ago last Saturday Cheryl had "inside" information concerning a local sale being held by the sons of an elderly lady of our community. Now in her octagenarian years she was an inveterate collector of all things collectible and many not. I agreed to accompany her and suggested that we ride our bicycles(my thought being that we couldn't possibly purchase anything if there was no way to transport it), silly me. It proceeded to rain(oh, the best time to be at an auction is when it rains 'cause everybody goes home and you can get boxes of things for a buck), she found a girlfriend with a van, I was dispatched to the house to get my car and 23 boxes of "stuff" later it's history. I assumed there must be treasure in her recent aquisitions and in the process of seeking it I found the print you see below. Dark brown at the edges in a frame at least as old as the lady who collected it was this picture of a girl driving a single horse buggy. She wasn't really very visible so I removed her from the frame and began processing the print with my computer tools. This was the first time I had attempted an undertaking such as this, and discovered that the same techniques that are applied to ancient manuscript studies apply to projects sucn as retrieving a lost image. It took about six hours and a proper amount of frustration, but there she was, "Yesterday's Lady," looking as close as I could get her to the manner in which she may have appeared originally. She's been sitting in a file waiting for the right time to be shared. How often I ponder, have I run across people much in the same state as she was when I found her? Those who are dirty, tattered, browned around the edges, wet on by the world and barely discernible to the eye(there must be a hundred or more ways to describe people that, at first glance appear to have little worth), and yet, beneath the surface of each there is another creation of God, replete with facets capable of dazzling the eye and inspiring the imagination. I guess the task, then, is one of searching out the image beneath the surface. We can love them the way they are, and leave them in the box, or we can enter in to discover how truly beautiful each one is, a unique creation to be admired for what they were, what they are, and what they will become when exposed to the light of God's love. Preacher.

From A Forgotten Box Of Framed Artwork She Emerged From Years Of Neglect.