The tears came, but words would not as they embraced, oblivious to the numerous pairs of eyes focused on them by those standing or seated in the airport departure area. The others really didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was leaving and she was not. More sawdust »
My wife and I went to a high school graduation recently, and aside from the great job the valedictorian did and the usual boring speeches from everyone else that picked up the mic, there was one thing that was incredibly notable. More sawdust »
The paddle, one of many he’d owned in his long life, rested lightly across the gunwales of his craft as it drifted down a calm stretch of the river on which he had paddled for most of his life. His mind drifted, too, thinking about what a worthy boat he had. His friends had tried to convince him to try a newer model, and once he had even gotten cajoled into getting into a kayak. He had felt like a fish out of water and about as stable as a coin standing on its edge. He quickly got out and vowed that he would never again forsake his canoe. More sawdust »
The room was filled with family and friends, but the atmosphere was gloomy and the infrequent conversation was in hushed tones. He appeared to be asleep, but his labored breathing told the story: he probably wouldn’t last the night. Occasionally his eyes would open, but there was a dullness in them that spoke of pain and pain killers and impending death. One sat at his bedside, gently stroking his hand. They all knew this day would come, but wished it could be at some distant point in the future.
He couldn’t be wrong.
It was, of course, a radical theory, and one that flew in the face of all that modern science had held as sacred for hundreds of years. When he had tried to expound the results of his research before the so-called “experts” of science, he had met with everything from mild disbelief to vehement debate. Most of those experts had attempted to “help” him with his research by pointing him toward their own, but he saw through the thin disguise of their jealousy over the earth-shattering discovery that he was in the process of putting through final testing. Besides, all great scientific discoveries had been formulated by those who thought “outside the box.” More sawdust »
It was a long walk for the small amount of money that I made by delivering 12 newspapers, and the deserted street was slippery with ice and melting snow. More sawdust »
The cross-hairs in the sniper’s scope settled firmly on the man’s forehead. It was an easy shot, even at this distance. In fact, those sitting near the target would hear only the dull thud of the bullet and see the resultant spray of blood, bone, and brain tissue as a life was swiftly ended; the life of one who had not so swiftly ended the lives of many others. More sawdust »
When in our early married life we lived in a rural part of Maine and kept a few animals ranging from chickens to rabbits to a beef critter for the freezer, we always had an abundant supply of the organic gardener’s dream fertilizer: the manure that those animals routinely supplied. Along with our annual fall trip to town to gather the large plastic bags of leaves that others had so kindly raked and bagged and placed by the side of the road for us to pick up, that manure formed the basis of our soil building program so that we had a freezer well stocked with organically grown vegetables that would feed us through the long cold winter. More sawdust »
It’s a story that I’ve often related for the sake of emphasizing the importance of even the smallest details in our lives, and to point up the fact that we can never know in advance the consequences of our own actions or inaction. More sawdust »
Huh?
Warning: You have suffered a Total Brain Failure due to exceeding your mind’s 1000 character limit. This TBF is the result of not having learned to think beyond sound bites and text message abbreviations
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