Inspirations and Illuminations

Today was hard.  I wasn't completely unprepared, because I've seen the signs over the last year or so, but the news today of Dolly Parton's death really hit hard.  Her influence over the last seven decades has been so far-reaching, it's impossible to imagine a world without her in it.  Dolly has done so much good, and has spread so much light and joy and imagination and music, that countless generations to come will feel her impact even if they don't know who she was. Dolly has been part of my life since the beginning.  My grandpa and dad were huge country-western fans.  They were old-school:  Johnny Cash, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn and her sister Crystal Gayle, Conway Twitty, Marty Robbins, Charley Pride, Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell, and Don Williams, among so many others.  And Dolly Parton.  The first song I actually remember from Dolly was a Bee Gees song:  "Islands in the Stream."  But a...

I love trees.  I feel a strong connection to trees.  I've always loved looking at them, sitting in their shade, climbing them.  Growing up, I have fond memories of the trees we had.  In our front yard, we had a beautiful white birch tree.  I loved to peel the papery bark of that pure white trunk.  Sadly, it got a common disease and we had to cut it down.  In the back yard, we had several trees--a locust that left its seeds everywhere to come up as little shoots all over; a weeping willow that my parents hated (I'll come back to that); a redbud that was perfect for climbing and enabled us to jump the fence into the parking lot next door.  At my own home, we have a Rose of Sharon that yields hundreds of white blossoms every year.  We planted a crabapple tree several years ago, and someone must have tossed an apple core into our yard, because now there's an apple tree taking over the crabapple.  It was this tree that became "my tree" when I...