Author: John Messeder

Two families, two empty chairs

I‘ve been working on these thoughts since a couple nights ago, when our son was perusing his smartphone and reported a police officer had been ambushed and killed. My first thoughts were several, wrapped in “if you felt a driving need to kill someone, probably a cop was not the best choice.”

A fellow columnist led me to Cpl. Bryon Dickson’s Facebook page. Dickson’s profile picture is of Abraham Lincoln, possibly referring to an interest of Dickson’s, and possibly to avoid putting his picture online for bad guys to use to identify him. When your job is putting bad people where they cannot injure other citizens, you sometimes make enemies for whom vengeance is a serious mission. Not many, but it only takes one.

Continue reading Two families, two empty chairs

Stork is a 3-letter word

Stork deliversI liked Joan Rivers. In “Tonight Show” doses, she was hilarious, and made Dad guffaw. Now she’s gone. The world keeps spinning, but there’s a hole where Joan Rivers stood.

She was 81, and it was her turn. One day, it will be mine. A friend’s brother visited two weeks ago and was the picture of health. He went home and had a heart attack. The doctors opened him up like the little guy on the TV series “Extant,” fiddled with some of his plumbing and circuitry, and David is doing just fine. It wasn’t his turn.

Last week I watched the NBC and ABC “documentaries” about Rivers. Continue reading Stork is a 3-letter word

Beauty leads to love leads to beauty

Dahlias on the stem
Downtown is eerily quiet. The tourists have gone home, and there is plenty of parking. It’s a cliché to say the season is changing, when truth is the seasons never stop changing as the planet on its tilted celestial spindle angles its forehead toward and then away from the warming sun. After a couple weeks of denial, I finally must acknowledge that the seeming storm clouds blanketing me at 4:30 in the afternoon are really sundown moved up from it’s temporary 9 p.m. time slot.

In similar manner, morning comes a few hours later, and though a short time ago I was able to read in bed without the intrusion of artificial light, now there is insufficient illumination on the page and I am faced with the choice of getting up or remaining there in the comfort of my best friend breathing beside me in the unwaning dawn.

A fellow named Socrates noted beauty leads us to love, Continue reading Beauty leads to love leads to beauty

Good guys (sometimes) wear white hats

It’s great fun to sit by the stream and watch the oak leaves start raining down on the earth. They’ll become fertilizer to make more leaves next year. I do like a place with seasons.

Soon will be time to get Babe the Blue (Harley) Moose onto some curving mountain roads, among the multi-colored maples, birches, poplars and other natural topiary.

Continue reading Good guys (sometimes) wear white hats

Rural Directions

Friends, meet Staci “Mrs. Matt” Gower. Readers of the Gettysburg Times may remember her as Staci George, an energetic police and fire reporter who eagerly responded to blazing infernos, kept her fingers on a plethora of social events, and once returned to the office with a tip that led to a Public Service award for the paper.

Staci is a detail-oriented young woman who, responding to my request for information to feed the GPS, led us thusly to a diner for the post-rehearsal repast, last weekend:

“When leaving the church, go down the road toward the beer distributor on the left (you’ll see on your way to church). Continue reading Rural Directions

Granddaughter stars on discovery channel

Bluebird hovers at the houseOn the way from one place to another, she and me and Grady the Golden and the Jeep crossed over a stream. She saw the herd of cattle enjoying the summer afternoon.

“That’s pretty cool,” I commented.

She gave me a thumbs up.

Continue reading Granddaughter stars on discovery channel

Pa. residents share Chesapeake Bay waterfront

A recent newspaper story about efforts to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay noted Pennsylvania does not have frontage on the bay. That is not quite accurate, unless one is a real estate seller.

Continue reading Pa. residents share Chesapeake Bay waterfront

“Not all those who wander are lost”

Stairway to unknown placesThe title quote comes from a poem by J.R.R. Tolkein, but it is something I knew without knowing I knew long before reading the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Many of us who enjoy “nature” go hiking. Down Under, I’m told, Australians go on a walkabout. I always have preferred to aimlessly wander even on seemingly well-defined pathways, with little or no clear destination in mind.

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Coming up: all new episodes of “Blood, Brawn and …”

I thought I’d write this week about nature. Maybe about birds, or about the compost pile we’ve started behind my home by digging up and chipping a pile of brush, beneath which we found tons of worms.

But she won’t stop haunting me, the 25-year-old lass, twinkling blue eyes, light-brown-sugar hair pouring in almost-ruly curls around her face, her young body scattered …

Continue reading Coming up: all new episodes of “Blood, Brawn and …”

Coast to coast, water supplies severely stressed

The nightly television news tells seemingly disconnected stories.

California is suffering a historic drought in the middle of its winter “rainy” season.

Power plants have been forced to reduce output in the summer as the Great Lakes, several rivers and an ocean used to cool the machinery become too shallow or too warm —or both.

Earlier this month, a Freedom Industries storage tank leaked 7,500 gallons of coal-processing chemical into the Elk River near Charleston, W.Va., to be sucked into a West Virginia American Water treatment facility about a mile downriver.

Continue reading …

Shinseki is out. But are the vets in?

Recently, I needed a prescription. My doctor called it in and later I went to the drug store to pick it up.

I am old enough to be on Medicare, but I didn’t buy the extra part that pays for prescriptions. I also am retired from the U.S. Navy and therefore covered by TriCare For Life, the current version of continued medical benefits for military veterans. It pays, except when it doesn’t.

Continue reading Shinseki is out. But are the vets in?

There are more worlds than revealed in history textbooks

A favorite tee-shirt of mine shows four Native Americans prepared for battle. Around the image are the words, “Homeland Security / Fighting terrorism since 1492.” I’m always amazed when people don’t get the message.

“In fourteen-hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” And so began a dedicated effort by predominantly white Europeans to erase cultures which had existed for at least centuries in the “new” world.

Continue reading There are more worlds than revealed in history textbooks

We’re all House Sparrows

A few months ago, a pair of English House Sparrows began guarding what they intended would eventually be the place they raised their offspring. Like most of us, they chased away interlopers, including the bluebirds we human yard owners hoped would make a home there.

Continue reading We’re all House Sparrows

Thanks, from the heart

One of my favorite quotes is from Will Rogers: “Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.”

Like an old car, I have parts that don’t work as well as they once did. Two weeks ago I visited the doctor for a quarterly check to see that my parts were working, if not as they should, at least not worse than they did three months earlier.

Continue reading Thanks, from the heart

That’s a mid-size car??

My wife-slash-Resident Travel Agent and I went to Florida recently. We left my Jeep in Long Term Parking and flew to Fort Lauderdale, where I signed for a rental car to use for the week.

Renting a car for a trip actually is a good way to go. You get a fairly new vehicle, and all you need do is drive – and turn it in when you are done for someone else to clean out any dog hairs or French fries you might have dropped between the seats.

Continue reading That’s a mid-size car??

Birches are meant to be climbed, bent

“I should prefer to have some boy bend them, / As he went out and in …” Birches, by Robert Frost.

Better a boy than an ice storm should bend the birches. A girl could bend them, as well, if a girl is in the house, and requires exploratory forays into a nearby forest. To climb a really tall tree is to gain a sense of accomplishment not available to parents and other adults who are well advised to stick to the lower, thicker branches.

And to have Mom worried that you might fall is to have an opportunity to show her, “No, I won’t.” There is no finer feeling than to tell her you will not fall, and then prove it.

Continue reading Birches are meant to be climbed, bent

Japan, Ukraine foreshadow environmental risks in PA

John's thumbnail(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 5/9/2014)

Nuclear disaster in Japan and aggression in Ukraine could be good for natural gas producers in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region. For Pennsylvania taxpayers, not so much.

Much of western and central Europe buys about a third of its natural gas from Russia. That’s a lot of countries wondering how they will cope if Russian President Vladimir Putin makes good on his threats to close the valve.

Continue reading Japan, Ukraine foreshadow environmental risks in PA

Silly question, silly answer

John's thumbnail(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 5/2/2014)

During a question and answer  period on Russian Television, Russian President Vladimir Putin took one from Edward Snowden – famous in this country for revealing that our National Security Agency has been collecting information on all, or most, of us. Snowden asked Putin whether the Russian government spies on it’s citizens.

Putin was shocked at the suggestion. Of course not, he said. We have laws against such activities.

Continue reading Silly question, silly answer