The barefoot toe-wriggling season ... by Joe Wilkins

The barefoot toe-wriggling season ...

Ecclesiastes got it right. There is indeed a season for all things and, although he didn’t say so exactly, that includes a season for kicking off your shoes and wriggling your barefoot toes in the wet sand while the last inch of incoming wave runs over your feet. That season is here.

My own plans kick off this week. We’ll drive to the southern tip of New Jersey for the first summer concert of the Cape May Brass Band.  My friend Bob Fineberg, a distinguished attorney and even more distinguished musician, has promised “an old-fashioned concert in the park” replete with “marches, a couple of show tunes, some traditional English brass band songs, and some good solo works”. At Bob’s suggestion, we’ll bring our own folding chairs, but before all that I intend to walk to the beach, leave shoes and socks on the soft sand, and re-introduce my toes to the ocean.

And that’s just for openers. Now that the kids are out of school, it’s open season on visits with the grandchildren. The June graduations are over, but the July birthdays are coming fast. There’s a string of them starting July 2^nd, which will require barbeques, iced tea on breezy porches, and cakes with candles of varying count. There’s at least one medium sized family re-union, and a sprinkle of “evenings of opportunity” when vacationing friends and cousins come down to the shore hoping to get together for Jersey tomatoes and corn on the cob, with lobsters here or clams there. 

These are the small stitches in the fabric of our lives, and they matter. You have to come up for air now and then, to mix a metaphor, and these are the months to do it. What better way to start than with a brass band?

Meanwhile, of course, events march on, brass band or no. The Supreme Court is announcing big-scale decisions on voting rights, gay rights and affirmative action before heading to whatever beaches they wriggle their toes on, and Congress is doing its thing, although it may have to wriggle its ears in the sand rather than its toes, given where its members have stuck their heads. If ever a bunch need a brass band and a bracing John Phillip Sousa march to get going, Congress is it.

Hillary’s brass band, on the other hand, has already stepped out, trumpets and bugles and drums going full steam. Unfortunately they started without the drum major. She’s still off-stage, raising money and politely trying not to step on President Obama’s parade for a few more months. You can get an idea of what’s going on when you realize Hillary’s mere plans drive the President’s actions, such as they are, clear off the front page. Her parade may look a bit ragged starting out, but it’s a 3 year march. Eventually she’ll be rested up and will get them marching in step. Meanwhile the Republicans are practicing close-order drill and measuring their neighing   mavericks for muzzles and hobbles. Neither side has called me yet for advice, so I expect to find time this summer for camping, golf, sailing, grandchildren and book-writing.

On other fronts, look for the Edward Snowden flap to simmer all summer. Like his predecessor Julian Assange, the intelligence agencies want his scalp but have lost their tomahawk, so to speak. China, Russia, Ecuador and maybe Cuba are having fun playing “keep-away” from the U.S., and that game has no predefined time limits. New players can join anytime. All you need is an airport that can be reached without flying through US airspace.

Barefoot or not, Governor Christie will be walking our beaches all summer, and doesn’t mind a bit that most of the people on them will be from Democratic Pennsylvania and Democratic New York, both of whose electoral votes he’d love to bundle with New Jersey’s for the Presidential race, if only he can wrest the Republican nomination from the Tea Partiers who hate his guts. The only two things sure for Governor Christie this year are that he’ll be re-elected Governor, and there will be more hurricanes coming ashore on our coast. But that’s weeks away.

Meanwhile, welcome to summer. Now kick off those shoes!

_____

Copyright Joseph T. Wilkins.  

  

Joe Wilkins is a semi-retired lawyer and former municipal judge who lives in Smithville, NJ. He is the author of  "The Speaker Who Locked up the House", an acclaimed historical novel about Congress set in the Washington of 1890, and "The Skin Game and other Atlantic City capers", a richly comic account of the stick-up of an illegal card game as Atlantic City casino age began. To buy Joe’s books, invite him to talk to your group, or send him your comments, you can email him at wilkinsjt001@comcast.net, visit his website at www.josephtwilkins.com or catch his author's page on Facebook.

Spring Fever … Guest post by Joseph T. Wilkins

Spring Fever …

By Joe Wilkins

Once upon a time not so long ago an incurably romantic writer named Richard Halliburton wrote incurably romantic books with titles like “Seven League Boots” and “The Royal Road to Romance.” Halliburton was a wanderer, much given to adventures like hiding overnight in the Acropolis at Athens, or in India’s beautiful Taj Mahal, and there communing with the spirits of the gods and maharajahs of ancient times while waiting for the first soft coming of dawn. One of his books opens with the author sitting comfortably in a ground-floor window seat at his college, then impulsively stepping out of it onto the green lawn dappled with sunlight and shade and walking away from books, studies, and musty libraries into the world of exotic travel and youthful discovery.

I couldn’t step so lightly out of my life in those days, but the lure has never faded. Today is a lovely day in May as I write these words, and my eyes drift away from my laptop and out my window to the lush appeal of shaded lawn and dappled sunlight. In that part of my heart that is forever young I yearn to be off in search of adventure and surprise. “Come, my friends,” as Tennyson says in his Ulysses, “tis not too late to seek a newer world. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sails.

Push off and sitting well in order strike the sounding furrows with a bound, for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars…”

Potent stuff, that, and not for the faint of heart. If ever I must give a commencement address I will read Tennyson and Halliburton to the graduates, and hope the auditorium will empty out in a mad rush of young folks to be on the road to adventure before they settle down. Life soon enough claims our time and energies.

 Wordsworth had it right: “The world is too much with us; late and soon getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours.”

It is probably wicked of me to spread such temptations. At the very least it is irresponsible – a shameless call to backsliding and shirking of the sort frowned upon by the serious movers and shakers of the world. After all, we all have bills to pay; jobs to work at; lists of things we’re supposed to be doing this very minute.

No doubt the ghost of some outraged Puritan is already sounding the alarm; some dried-up bony-fingered scold is clucking his tongue and slamming shut the

windows.

And yet. Why is there such a thing as youth if not for this? Why, after all these billions of years have we become creatures that come alive with hope and excitement at the arrival of Spring and its flowers and scents and sweet yearnings?

Which of us does not thrill at the flash of some free spirit on a quest; some flyer setting out to circle the globe; some volunteer off to help children in a distant land; some young mother packing a picnic lunch and heading out with her toddlers for a bit of sunlit nature? There is no rule of scale in such things. Adventure does not require travel agencies and passports; only a questing heart and a willingness to be delighted by something new; something unexpected.

The squirrels that play beneath my window and the birds that flit and chirp so merrily do not have to withstand such silly temptations; their’s is a life of do or die. They must eat and mate, and raise their young. We also are bound by those basic conditions of life, but for us there is more; much more. We hear music in the world around us; smell perfume in the grasses and the woods; feel our hearts rise with the freshness of the morning breeze. Why, then, clog up our ears with the noises of mankind and shut ourselves in from the day?

If this be Spring Fever, as Patrick Henry might have put it, let us make the most of it.

Courtesy of Google 

(pictures are taken from Google) 

Joe Wilkins is a semi-retired lawyer and former municipal judge who lives in Smithville, NJ. He is the author of  "The Speaker Who Locked up the House", an acclaimed historical novel about Congress set in the Washington of 1890, and "The Skin Game and other Atlantic City capers", a richly comic account of the stick-up of an illegal card game as Atlantic City casino age began. To buy Joe’s books, invite him to talk to your group, or send him your comments, you can email him at wilkinsjt001@comcast.net, visit his website at www.josephtwilkins.com or catch his author's page on Facebook.

Morning Magic by Frank Steele

Guest Post

Morning Magic

This is a guest post from Frank Steele, a freelance editor and proofreader who lives in the Dallas area and resides on the Web at www.steele-editing.com.

Mrs. D. asked me if I’d consider writing a post for her blog, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what to say. I’m an editor, not a writer, so inspiration doesn’t come easily for me. I was puzzling over it this morning as I went for a walk around our residential neighborhood, which is a quiet, pleasant area full of cozy little brick houses, trees, and parks. It was a beautiful fall morning, with crisp, clean air, and a sky so blue that it was almost fluorescent.



I’ve always loved the mornings. I think they’re magic, and this one was especially beautiful. It was still early, so the streets were deserted and the houses were quiet, although an occasional squirrel went bouncing by, chittering as it went. Birds sang happily in the trees, which still have their leaves, although they’re now all shades of yellow and red and brown. The sun was still low on the horizon, so its rays filtering through the trees and houses were like broad spotlights on the trees and grass, giving them a golden glow. Often there are bunnies, but I suppose they were still in their burrows this morning, staying warm.

The morning was magic, and the world was a magical place, full of possibilities. So as I was thanking God for such a beautiful day, it dawned on me what I should write about: Books also make the world a magical place, full of possibilities, and transport children to realms of wonder, no matter what’s around them.

When I was a child, growing up in Kentucky, I read a lot. My mom would take me fishing with her, and I’d always take books with me. We might be sitting on the bank of a bank of a muddy river, but I wasn’t really there. I was riding with Ivanhoe, or gazing across Walden Pond, or wondering how it could be both the best of times and the worst of times, or tumbling down the rabbit hole with Alice. I explored all sorts of new worlds while my mom fished.

So thank God for children’s books, and for authors like Mrs. D., who uncover the magic in the world and open children’s eyes to the magic that surrounds them and the possibilities that lie within them. As children see new worlds through their books, they can’t help but be inspired to make this world a new and better one as well.

For bilingual children’s stories, children’s videos, coloring pages, activities, and more, please visit http://www.freekidstories.org/, a great site run by Frank’s talented daughter.

Dear Frank,

Thank you: It’s so little. It’s so big. It’s easy – and easy to forget, too. So THANK YOU for your time and devotion to my work. Not too many old-school professionals like you are left in this modern world. You are a blessing ...

  Mrs. D.