When I launched this website back in 2012, I never intended it to be overtly political. The Jim Baumer Experience was me attempting to establish my personal brand, and this site (and blog) have played a part in that process. Life is a lot different these days.
Work is now a combination of freelance opportunities, with other fairly interesting part-time gigs rounding out the mix. I’m not sure how I want to write about all of that, at least not in the context of this blog.
Politics lately has taken up more of my blogging time than I intended. Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a valiant effort to reason and write about what’s going on from where I sit. Basically, it’s gotten me nowhere. How can you reason with people who have lost their minds and lack any historical context for anything that they believe?
What is it that I really love to do and would spend most of my waking hours engaged in if making money and paying bills weren’t the bane of my mortal existence? The answer would be, write. And likely, it wouldn’t be writing about politics, either.
I won’t promise that you’ll never see another political post here at the JBE, but I can say that you won’t be seeing one in the near future.
For the next few weeks, and maybe even months, I’m going to write about something other than the lesser of two, three, or whatever number of evils are still in the running for president.
I found an intriguing book on writing the other day at the library. It was written nearly 80 years ago and begins with, Everybody Is Talented, Original, and Has Something Important to Say.” I loved that. The sentiment was so much more positive than the bashing back and forth that people are doing in places and contexts that are at least supposed to approximate friendship.
That’s the sort of stuff I’d like to write about in the near future.
It’s interesting how the library is almost always an inspiration for you. These places of quiet, storehouses of knowledge. Sure, you can google the things in the library, but the physical building itself represents something and stands as a sentry to knowledge and reason.
I look forward to reading what develops from this book and the changes in your blog.
Psst! HI Jim, remember me…known to some as Julie2, Slippah Sistah etc.; someplace recently I came across the mention of your annual reading list and I think there may have been a link to follow (might have been Miss JAB’s blog) I’m not sure but I can’t find my way to it and wondered if you might give an assist?
I received a note via email from Tim Knedler of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife a short while ago and there was a link to an event that is upcoming. Since our last meeting and the idea that came up and your interest in natural beauty and wholesomeness I am going to pass it along. http://www.worldfishmigrationday.com/events/764/celebrate-our-royal-river
Perhaps we could meet sometime in the not so distant future and go for a walk over at the New Gloucester Fish hatchery and check out their grounds, the pools they raise the young fish in are natural bottoms and it’s a beautiful spot, lined with tall, pines.
Sunday, March 13th, 2016 after driving back from Jay; I went for a walk into the Pettingill Park woods, with a friend. There is a well-marked trail and it is quite hilly with a meandering brook, mud and fallen leaves etc. It’s the brook that my father caught his first brook trout in and I used to cross-country ski there with friends, in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s not for the beginner skier, as the trail winds up and down hills with sharp curves, along the tree lined path. I had the hankering to look into water and see a fish for some reason or other and so I asked my walking companion if they minded leaving the marked trail and walking along the brook; they agreed to come along and we followed the windy brook. The trail, goes up, up, up and I wasn’t sure if we continued to follow it that we would be able to cross the brook so we left it and went down, down, down, slipping on Beach tree and other leaves which covered the forest floor and the mud underneath. It was pretty slick in some spots. At one point, my friend slid and fell, a big greasy mud slick, scarred the forest floor. They were probably embarrassed. I would have been. There were spots where old trees had fallen, they were covered in the thick fur of forest moss, the afternoon sun, rested upon them, green as green could be, I had to go pat at least one of them. Moss covered many of the rocks, especially those along or in the brook, the brook, drops down into the side of the hills, actually seems more like a waterfall than a brook at that point, with small pools cut into ledge, broken tree limbs and branches crossing it’s bubbling and sparkling stream. It has its own voice, as though talking to us.
When we entered the path into the woods, I stopped and asked my walking companion to stop also and listen.
And not a sound but that of the breeze into the tops of the pines and evergreens and bare branches or soft and hard woods could be heard.
It reminded me that at times it seems as the God of our understanding seems to have a thundering powerful voice, such as the crack of thunder, or raging sea, but at others, like now, it can be that still soft voice, Breath of God, as in a whisper. The Comforter.
It’s surprising that all around that area, there are malls, and traffic, but there in that little nook in the woods, nature sounds remain almost untouched by the mechanical. There are a few Beach leaves still hanging on from last year, so winter isn’t over yet though nearly all the snow has vanished, except in one spot, and most likely that spot doesn’t get much sunlight, there, ice covered the brook and snow the ground.
I looked for the spots that I had found while walking there with my dog Matty years ago, where springs bubbled up into the brook, and the sand was pure white there, but I could not find it. And even though to ground was soft and in some places very unstable and muddy, I pursued the edge of the brook, watching and waiting, investigating, checking the depth of the pools, did I see anything moving, any sign of life, any animal tracks in the mud or the snow. Then in an instant I saw it, it flashed so quickly, I wasn’t sure of what I had seen, and there something, moved again, speeding at an incredible rate, zipping or zinging up the streambed like a miniature missile. A fish! A very small fish of perhaps no more than four inches. I could not discern its type but I wasn’t the only one to see it.
Yes, there were a few tracks in the mud at the edge of the stream and even into it. Were they a mink, looking for a meal?
There was one spot where the angle of the land joining the brook, began to get steep on the side we were on, the brook at that point was a yard or so across, and the sides of the brook were starting to be undermined, I decided to leap across the brook, so I climbed the hill a ways and turned, ran down the slope and jumped; I am so out of shape, and when my foot came down the front of it was on fairly stable soil but the back, began to cave, and I felt a twinge of pain, which I thought might be a sprain; the option to climb up and go around had been offered to me before I jumped by my companion but I declined the reasonable offer because I wanted to stay near the water.
This is where Gary D. would have most certainly called me a hard head. My companion had the same results, and then I thought that for their sake I should have resisted the temptation to jump. My heel really gave me a stern talking to that night, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk Monday but it didn’t prove to be true. I am hoofing around just fine.
I jumped across at another spot one a bit shorter, and had no difficultly, my walking friend wasn’t as lucky and their foot was baptized.
Muddied the waters a bit too.
How wonderful it had to have been for Adam; having all the time in the world on his hands to enjoy nature in its most pristine state, the Lord beside him; still it was not enough, in his mind. The addiction to having more, traceable to that moment.
I would have stayed on; but my friend had to return to study and homework and I also.
So acknowledging the beautiful sounds of a flock of chick-a-dees moving through the section of the woods we were in as we walked out on the path and to the parking lot in the full brightness of the sun.
My heart full of thanksgiving, that the stream still was able to support life seventy-five years after the fish that was in it inspired a young boy and changed his life forever.
@Jule2 (aka, Slippah Sistah) My reading list actually now resides at this site. Here is the link to it. Thanks for dropping by.
Nice thought about how nature is all around us, and even close to where nature’s been compromised by “man’s progress,” she remains nature “untouched by the mechanical.”
Thanks Jim!
Have you read “The Debate on the Constitution”? A friend gave me a two volume set and I began reading in it three years ago. Well, it would at least make a great book club discussion, if parties were interested in that sort of thing.
If only I could find where I’ve put Vol. 1. 🙂
Best Regards,
Julie