Category: Commentary

If you are a human on planet Earth, you need money. We all carry it. We try hard to earn it. And whether it is found in the form of plastic, paper, or various alloys, we all depend on it every day. Money is important.
Though not overly fond of conversation, and perhaps lacking some degree of social adequacy, I do occasionally talk to people. As a sort of sociological experiment, from time to time I have asked folks this question – who’s on our money? Call me curious. Maybe I have been hobnobbing with the wrong crowd, but I can honestly say that I have yet to meet one person who could accurately identify all the fine Americans pictured on our currency and coin. Yes, almost everyone knows who is on the one-dollar bill, and most can identify the face on the five. But when it comes to the $2, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills, they are often at a loss. And then we have coins. Who’s that guy on the nickel? I have been flummoxed to realize that most citizens do not know who is shown on our money. Maybe most don’t care, but I happen to think this is important. Our money reflects our history. We need to know it.
I think this history is especially important as time marches on and things change. There is talk of swapping out some of those pictured on our bills now. It is rumored that Harriet Tubman is scheduled to replace Hamilton on the $10 bill sometime in the future (or maybe replace Jackson on the $20). If this must be done, Harriet Tubman is indeed a worthy candidate. Her exploits ferrying runaway slaves to freedom, pistol in hand, on the Underground Railroad is the stuff of legend. She deserves to be honored. But I shudder to think of what is in store for us in the future when the shallow people take charge. Imagine Taylor Swift on the twenty? Arghhhh……
All that being said, for those who want to know, here’s a brief primer regarding the storied folks you might find in your wallet, purse, or closet coin jar. Let’s start with folding money first.

~ $1 bill – George Washington – Our first president and often called the Father of our Country, George Washington graces the one-dollar bill. As Commander of the Continental Army, he led our patriot forces to victory against the British in the Revolutionary War.
~ $2 bill – Thomas Jefferson – You don’t often see two-dollar bills in circulation, but they are out there. On the two you will see the face of our third president, Thomas Jefferson. He is probably most famous for penning the Declaration of Independence.
~ $5 bill – Abraham Lincoln – Our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln is credited with holding the Union together during the Civil War and playing a major role in the abolition of slavery. He was our first Republican president and the first president assassinated in office.
~ $10 bill – Alexander Hamilton – Another Founding Father, military officer, and statesman, Alexander Hamilton is pictured on the ten-dollar bill. He served as our first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Washington.
~ $20 bill – Andrew Jackson – Our 7th president, Andrew Jackson is found on the twenty-dollar bill. He was a U.S. Army general and served in both houses of Congress before being elected president in 1829.
~ $50 bill – Ulysses S. Grant – Our 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Army to victory against the Confederacy in the Civil War. Along with his military accomplishments, I think Grant is on the fifty-dollar bill in part because he has a cool beard.
~ $100 bill – Benjamin Franklin – Immortalized on the one-hundred-dollar bill is the brilliant Benjamin Franklin – writer, inventor, statesman, scientist, political philosopher, and polymath. His immense contributions to America’s identity and founding cannot be overstated.
Pictured on our U.S. coins, we see some of these same notable figures. Abraham Lincoln is found on the penny. Thomas Jefferson is on the nickel. On the dime we see Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). He was our 32nd president and guided the U.S. through the perils of WWII. George Washington graces the quarter. The fifty-cent piece shows our 35th president, John F. Kennedy (JFK). Sadly, he was the fourth U.S. president assassinated in office. Though not often seen in circulation, we do have one-dollar coins in our money supply. The current issue shows Sacagawea, known for her vital role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806). Don’t mistake these coins for quarters.
The next time you toss a few bills on the table to pay for your brisket lunch or breakfast tacos, you might glance at the faces found on those green bills and remember some of what they did for us. They were fine Americans and deserve to be remembered…
© 2025 Jody Dyer
typewriterweekly.com

“Where’s the basement?”
-Pee Wee Herman (at the Alamo)

If you ingested any amount of television during the 1980s, you are probably familiar with Pee Wee Herman. Pee Wee, a comic creation and persona of actor and comedian Paul Reubens, dominated alternative pop culture during the Reagan years. Kind of like a cross between Howdy Doody and the B-52s, Pee Wee Herman brought a strange and surreal space-age retro vibe to America. Pee Wee’s brand of humor was so offbeat and refreshing that we couldn’t help but love him. Recently a news story broke that at first was hard to believe but turned out to be true. It involves a bicycle, and Pee Wee’s distinct connection to Texas and the Alamo.
Besides a hit TV show for kids, and his frequent appearances on late-night television (most often on Late Night with David Letterman), Pee Wee Herman was perhaps best known for the wacky big screen movie hit Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985). The story of a boy and his bike, the cinematic action centers around Pee Wee’s vintage 1950s era red and white Schwinn DX cruiser. In movie lingo the bike is what you would call a MacGuffin (an object used as a plot device in movies that the story is centered on). In the movie, Pee Wee’s bike is stolen, and the action tracks his quest to get it back. Various hilarious misadventures follow, and all is wet your pants funny. If you’ve never seen this movie, it is worth watching. Here’s a brief summary…
While shopping, Pee Wee’s bike is stolen. He assumes his hateful neighbor Francis is responsible but can’t prove it. A psychic then tells Pee Wee his bike is in the basement of the Alamo, so his travels begin.
Pee Wee hitchhikes to Texas, riding first with a fugitive convict named Mickey, and then later traveling with trucker Large Marge. At a truck stop, Pee Wee realizes he has lost his wallet, so has to pay for his meal by washing dishes. There he meets Simone, a waitress who dreams of visiting Paris. Pee Wee encourages her to follow her dreams, but as they watch the sun rise from inside a roadside dinosaur statue, Simone’s jealous boyfriend Andy appears. Pee Wee escapes angry Andy by hoping onto a moving train. Finally arriving at the Alamo, Pee Wee learns there is no basement, and his bike is not there.
Despondent, Pee Wee calls Dottie, his only true friend. He then again runs into Andy and is only able to evade him by posing as a rodeo contestant and riding a bucking bull. Pee Wee is thrown from the bull and knocked out as the bull chases Andy from the arena. Pee Wee later visits a biker bar to use the pay phone and is threatened with death after accidently knocking over a line of motorcycles. Pee Wee wins over the bikers however after borrowing a pair of platform shoes from a small statured fry cook and dancing on the tables to the song Tequila. The bikers then give Pee Wee a motorcycle to finish his journey, but he promptly crashes and winds up in the hospital.
While in the hospital, Pee Wee sees his bike on TV being used as a prop at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California. Pee Wee then travels to California, sneaks onto the Warner Brothers lot and grabs his bike. After being chased by security, Pee Wee passes a burning pet shop and stops to rescue the animals inside. Firefighters declare Pee Wee a hero, but the police arrest him anyway. Allowed to keep his bike, the studio president agrees to drop the charges against Pee Wee in exchange for the rights to adapt his story into a film starring James Brolin (as “P.W. Herman”) and Morgan Fairchild as Dottie. The movie ends with Pee Wee and Dottie at a drive-in theater, watching this film. Ultimately, Pee Wee and Dottie depart on their bikes, with Pee Wee claiming that he doesn’t need to watch the movie because he’s already “lived” it. This is one bizarre and fun movie to watch. Fast forward to today…
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and its ties to Texas, Pee Wee’s red bike (one of several used in the movie and recently acquired at auction for $125,000), is to be put on display at the Alamo. It will serve as a centerpiece of a new visitor center and museum in the Mays Family Gallery, slated to open in the fall of 2027. Until then you can see Pee Wee’s bike at the Ralston Family Collections Center there on the Alamo grounds.
I am glad that Pee Wee’s bike has finally made it to the Alamo…
© 2025 Jody Dyer
typewriterweekly.com

“Wherever you go, there are three icons that everyone knows: Jesus Christ, Pele´, and Coca-Cola.”
-Pele´

If you are old like me and were blessed to grow up before we had bottled water and the internet (we just drank from the hose and played outside), then you know what a real Coke should taste like. Coca-Cola, that magic elixir and supreme concoction created by John Pemberton in the 19th century may be considered the classic American drink. It is, of course, now consumed in mass quantities worldwide. Baseball, apple pie, and Coca-Cola – all are part of America.
Foremost among my vices is an appetite for carbonated beverages. I try not to drink in excess, and most days completely refrain, but I very much enjoy an icy cold Coke (or Dr. Pepper, or black cherry soda) on occasion. And, as long as I enjoy in moderation, I refuse to feel guilty about it. I often tell my wife things could be worse. I could be slumped in the corner of our kitchen smashing empty beer cans into my forehead instead.
Back to being old – if you were ever blessed to enjoy a Coke back when Nixon was in office, you probably remember that they tasted really good back then. As a kid, it was a joy to retrieve a frosty glass bottle from the cooler at the back of Englehardt’s store. Coke tasted like it came from heaven. But if you stumble into a crowded convenience store today and purchase a plastic bottle Coke, it doesn’t taste as good. Why is that? And what is about to change? We have good news from our grand orange leader on the Potomac. Real Coke, until now only found in parts of Europe and Mexico (where it is still made with real sugar), will soon be in our stores. This is good news out of Washington. Mexican Coke is coming to America. Here is the backstory.
In 1971, a ginormous sale of U.S. grain to the Soviet Union triggered a boom in corn prices. These rising corn prices then touched off a massive increase in corn production by American farmers. Even after corn prices settled, government subsidies buoyed prices and farmers kept gleefully planting corn. Access to monstrous quantities of corn prompted companies like Archer Daniels Midland to develop new space-age corn products and markets. Enter ethanol (a topic for another column) and High- Fructose Corn Syrup.
To produce High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), a “wet-milling” process is used to isolate the starch in corn. An enzyme is then added to the starch, transforming some of the corn’s glucose into fructose. This creates a syrup with a sweetness profile similar to sugar. This development in “food science” produces a cheap sweetener, but HFCS doesn’t taste as good as real sugar.
Arther Daniels Midland had hoped to capture the big soda market with HFCS, but by the early 1980s inexpensive foreign imports had driven sugar prices way down. HFCS could not be made cheaply enough to compete. But political maneuvering soon changed things. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan, along with Congress, placed quotas on imported sugar, raising the price of sugar in the U.S. Suddenly, HFCS was a lower-cost alternative for soft drink companies, and they almost fell over themselves starting to use it. Note – Many credit the use of HFCS with the rise in obesity in this country. Today HFCS is found in almost all U.S. processed food and beverage products. Besides weight gain, HFCS has been linked to the increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, inflammation, and uric acid build up. HFCS is not good for you. Some have described it as liquid Satan. Although there is some debate regarding the use of HFCS vs. sugar, numerous studies show that HFCS is metabolized to produce fat, while sugar is metabolized to produce energy. I don’t have a bowtie and clipboard, and lack a science degree, but I do know this. Every time I drink HFCS regular Coke, I feel like I’m wearing it around my waist the next day. When I enjoy a refreshing Mexican Coke, made with cane sugar, I don’t feel it.
Up until now, the only practical way to enjoy old-school good-tasting cane sugar Coke, if you could find it, was to drink Mexican Coke (sometimes available in Mexican restaurants and in select grocery stores). With the new administration’s push to Make American Healthy Again, the use of HFCS appears to be fading, which is good news. And recently, President Trump announced that the Coca-Cola Company will soon be offering again in the U.S. Coke made with real cane sugar. Look for it soon. Mexican Coke is coming to America!
© 2025 Jody Dyer
typewriterweekly.com

By Kathleene Runnels

Growing up in a close-knit family in South San Antonio, Franklin Runnels had only two first cousins, John and Charles Schweers, sons of Aunt Doris, his mother’s sister. Every Sunday-after-church dinner included the grandparents, the Runnels, and the Schweers families. The two Schweers boys grew up to follow quite different dreams: Charles became a coach; John pursued a more unique career.

In their childhood, both boys were given violin lessons and were admonished to continue to study into their teenage years. While Charles fell in love with football, John picked up a guitar, even though his mother had said, “My boys will never play a guitar,” as though that would be a disgrace to the family.

John was 15 when he began to apply his violin training to learning the guitar, and his talent blossomed. While attending college at Sul Ross, he performed in a rock group that toured throughout Southwest Texas. Next, he moved to California and began developing his songwriting skills while playing in various bands.

Fortuitously, in 1972 and at the age of 26, John moved to Nashville without any money but with a pocket full of hopes. Soon he began to catch the notice of such notables as Tom T. Hall, Charlie Pride, Ronnie Milsap, and many other super stars in the music world.

Ultimately, John Schweers became one of the finest country music writers of his generation, responsible for such iconic songs as Charley Pride’s “Amazing Love,” Ronnie Milsap’s “Daydreams About Night Things,” Dave & Sugar’s “Golden Tears” and Trace Adkins’ “I Left Something Turned on at Home.”

The first No. 1 hit penned by John Schweers was Pride’s “Don’t Fight the Feelings of Love” in 1973. Pride’s follow-up single was “Amazing Love,” which also topped the country hit parade. In 1975, Nick Nixon charted with the Schweers song “She’s Just an Old Love Turned Memory.” Pride recorded it two years later and turned it into another No. 1 hit. Ultimately, Charlie Pride recorded more than 20 of Schweer’s songs.

Ronnie Milsap had a No. 1 hit with Schweers’ “Daydreams About Night Things” in 1975. The superstar repeated the chart-topping feat with the Schweers’ songs “What Goes On When the Sun Goes Down” (1976) and “Let My Love Be Your Pillow” (1977). Milsap recorded 15 John Schweers compositions.

The songwriter’s other No. 1 hit during the 1970s was “Golden Tears” by Dave & Sugar in 1979. During the decade, his songs were also recorded by Eddy Arnold, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, David Wills, Johnny Russell, Mel Street, Susan Raye, Jim Ed Brown and Jeanne Pruett, among others. Sixteen of his songs made the country popularity charts in the ‘70s.

In 1978, on Nashville’s Master Songwriters Sing Their Hits, Schweers performed his versions of “Daydreams About Night Things,” “She’s Just an Old Love Turned Memory” and “Early Fall,” all of which he wrote solo.

During the 1980s, Schweers wrote such top 10 hits as Steve Wariner’s “Your Memory” (1981), Janie Fricke’s “Do Me With Love” (1982) and Mandrell’s “No One Mends a Broken Heart Like You” (1986).

Others who recorded Schweers’ songs during the 1980s were Louise Mandrell and Tom T. Hall, The Oak Ridge Boys, Tanya Tucker…and many more.

John Schweers continued to create hits in the 1990s. Two of his biggest were “Born Country,” sung by Alabama in 1992 and “I Left Something Turned on at Home,” sung by Trace Adkins in 1997. His songs were also recorded in the ‘90s by George Jones, Mel McDaniel, Roy Clark, Travis Tritt, Johnny Rodriguez, to name some. And into the 2000s, John Schweers’ songs have been sung by Mark Wiils, George Strait, The Mississippi Mass Choir, Marty Raybon, Con Hunley, Don Everly, Brother Slade, Buck Owens and Joe Nichols, among others.

Songs that Schweers wrote from 25-50 years ago continue to receive airplay to this day. It is also noteworthy that of his 12 Top 10 hits, only three were co-written, an amazing feat in an environment of mostly co-writers.

Here’s a fun fact. In the late 80s when John had come home for a visit at the family cabin at Alto Frio, on an excursion into Leakey there was a band performing on the square, and he overheard them playing his song, “Don’t Fight the Feeling.“ He walked up to the band members and introduced himself as the writer of that song! They were elated.

John’s mother was wrong. Needless to say, the family is proud of this amazing kid who grew up on San Antonio’s south side and who used to pester his older cousin Franklin and me, the girlfriend at the time.

John Schweers passed away in Franklin, TN, in May of this year, 2025.

By Kathleene Runnels

A while back Bo and Wendy Maxwell approached me about doing a painting for them. They wanted this painting to depict old/time Devine as Bo would imagine it in the 1800s. His vision was the young town nestled down in the valley with the train passing through. He wanted bluebonnets, oak trees, a horseman, a road runner and a rattlesnake, (which I almost refused to do), a house and barn, children playing in the lane, a farmhouse and cattle in the distance, and, of course, the hill country on the horizon. I can do that. But wait. This is no ordinary painting on canvas. This is going to be a mural painted on the Maxwell‘s dining room wall! This is going to be a 14 feet wide and 5 feet tall mural painted on site! Well, this is a new venture, but of course I can do it! 

So, when the time came around in February of this year, I gathered up my materials – paint, turpentine, brushes, acrylic paint for the base and headed to Devine. For the next six weeks, I showed up two or three times a week for a 3 to 4 hour afternoon painting session. 

It didn’t take long for Bo and Wendy to learn that I loved Big Red and chips, especially Cheetos. So, every time I showed up, they brought out the refreshments. 

Day One, with the scaffolding in place, I climbed up so I could reach the ceiling! The wall was painted dark maroon, a 14’ wide and 8’ tall maroon wall. Bo had planned to put up a rustic wooden siding along the bottom 3’, so he had taped it off. Remaining was the 14’ X 5’ wall that I had to prime with acrylic to neutralize the maroon! 

The scenario of me on the scaffolding lasted for weeks. But, eventually I painted my way down to ground level! 

On occasion Bo would make suggestions. It’s always good to have a fresh set of eyes. But the coolest thing about this project is how special Wendy and Bo Maxwell treated me and that, regardless of whether it’s true or not, they think the painting is wonderful. I recently asked Wendy if they were tired of looking at it yet. She assured me that they still enjoy it, and I certainly hope so because it’s there for posterity.

By Kathleene Runnels

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the 1930s song that you still hear from time to time:  “Shine on Harvest Moon”. But I wonder if anyone knows the jingle that precedes that opening line, “Shine on, shine on harvest moon, for me and my gal….”

My mother used to sing it, and I’m fortunate to have it recorded, albeit on a cassette tape. It goes like this:

“The night was mighty dark and you could hardly see; the moon refused to shine. The couple sitting underneath the willow tree for love they pined. The little maid was kind of ‘fraid of darkness, so, she said, “l guess I’ll go.” The boy began to sigh; he looked up in the sky and told the moon his little tale of woe: “Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky….”

I found it on YouTube. And if you’re curious and want to be entertained, listen to it sung by Ruth Etting, 1931.

And speaking of courting, a term used before my time, believe it or not, one day my husband, Franklin, out of nowhere popped out with this little ditty, recorded this time on my phone. Too bad I don’t have music to accompany this jingle, but the words speak volumes.

“Don’t start courting in a hot rod, but in a buggy like your mom and dad.

How can you hear those dear sweet words when you can’t hear nothing that’s said. ‘I’d rather hear the clop of old Dobbin‘s feet.’

[and she said, in Franklin’s best high-pitched girl imitation] ‘I’d rather hear glasspacks going down the street.’

Don’t start courting in a hot rod, but in a buggy like your mom and dad.”

If you have a favorite jingle or quote or memory, get it recorded. Lately I’ve been recording my childhood memories, just little voice memos, on my phone. Don’t you wish you had asked more questions on your grandparents?

When we both still had our mothers, I sat down at the computer and typed as each of them at various times told stories of their youth and their young adulthood. These stories are priceless.

Hopefully these memories shared give a glimpse of another era, one that we lived, that the children can appreciate later on.

“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”
George Will

Historical news from the baseball world erupted recently. Two players, Pete Rose and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, among others, were reinstated by Major League Baseball. Both had received lifetime bans from the MLB. It makes these two sports legends eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pondering Pete and Joe this week, I realized some may not know the stories behind this story. Let me tell you about Joe…
The iconic baseball movie Field of Dreams stars Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer, who at the prompting of a mysterious voice, builds a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield. As a result, ghosts of former baseball greats show up to play. The first player to emerge from the corn is “Shoeless Joe” Jackson.
Jackson was born in Pickens County, South Carolina on July 16, 1887, the son of a sharecropper. One of eight children, he went to work at the age of seven in a textile mill to help support his family. As a result, he didn’t attend school and never learned to read or write. But he could play baseball.
He acquired the nickname “Shoeless Joe” while he was playing semi-pro ball in the South Carolina mill leagues. In one game, wearing a new set of spikes that gave him blisters, he removed them and played in his stockings. After hitting a triple and sliding into third base, a loud-mouthed opposing fan shouted, “You shoeless son of a gun, you!” A reporter for the Greenville newspaper heard it and wrote about “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. The name stuck. Joe hated the nickname and throughout his life bought lots of shoes in an effort to prove he was not shoeless.
Joe was a natural ball player and is considered one of the best to ever play the game. His .356 lifetime career batting average is still the fourth highest in MLB history. Recognizing his genius, baseball legend Babe Ruth said that he modeled his swing after Joe. After two partial seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1908-1909, Joe played his first full season in the majors with the Cleveland Naps, batting .408 (still one of the highest batting averages ever recorded for a rookie). In 1915, Joe was traded to the Chicago White Sox. Two years later they won the World Series, with his help.
Despite his amazing career, Jackson is best known for his role in the Black Sox Scandal, where members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox conspired to fix the World Series, losing on purpose to the Cincinnati Reds. Eight White Sox players, including Jackson, were indicted and charged with conspiring to defraud the public and accepting payment from gamblers to throw the games. The jury in their 1921 trial found the players not guilty, but baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis still banned the players from the game for life because of their alleged involvement.
The ban from baseball crushed Joe. He was never the same. Although he admitted to accepting some payment, he maintained that he had not taken any on-field actions to jeopardize the games and had “tried to win all the time.” During the series in question, Joe hit a record of 12 base hits that set a Series record not broken until 1964. He also led both teams with a .375 batting average for the Series.
Broken-hearted without baseball, Joe spent the last years of his life running a liquor store on Pendleton Street in Greenville, South Carolina. There is a story that Joe’s friend Ty Cobb came in to the store to see him one day. After Joe acted like he didn’t know who he was, Ty Cobb asked, “Don’t you know me, Joe?” Joe responded, “Sure, I know you, Ty, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don’t.”
As he aged, Joe struggled with heart trouble. At the age of 64, on December 5, 1951, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson died of a heart attack. He was buried at Woodland Memorial Park in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. Fans still love him. You can always find baseballs left at his grave.
I hope they have baseball in heaven…
© 2025 Jody Dyer
typewriterweekly.com

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, there
are twice as many stars as usual.
Laura Gilpin

It has been said that poetry is prayer. That may be true. It is an expression of the soul, something that matters. I memorized a poem this week – The Two-Headed Calf, by Laura Gilpin. It is a special poem, with deep personal meaning.
Laura Gilpin was a poet and a nurse and a beautiful human being. She loved words. In 1976 she won the Walt Whitman Award for her first book of poetry – The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe. Gilpin died young. In the summer of 2006, she was diagnosed with a form of incurable brain cancer – glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Ironically, one of the symptoms of GBM is double vision. Like the calf in her famous poem, she could see twice as many stars as the rest of us. Gilpin died six months after being diagnosed, at the age of 56. She had just finished her second poetry collection – The Weight of a Soul.
The Two-Headed Calf is Gilpin’s most celebrated poem. It describes the short, sweet life of a newborn calf suffering from polycephaly, a rare genetic defect. Calves born with two heads, or more often two faces, are usually stillborn. In rare cases they live for a short time, surviving for only a few hours or a few days. Their lives are short and tragic.
The imagery in this poem is striking. The first stanza is cold and speaks of death, describing the calf as a “freak of nature” to be discarded and carried away to a museum for people to stare at.
The second stanza in contrast is warm, drawing the reader into the present where the precious newborn calf is alive “and in the north field with his mother,” gazing at the stars in the summer sky. The calf is unaware that he will no longer be alive in the morning.
Much can be gleaned from this short poem and these few words. It speaks to the precious beauty of life, however short, and living in the moment. It reminds us that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Many, myself included, who find themselves different, can relate to this poem. We may not fit in or conform well to the world around us. We may look different or be different, just like the two-headed calf. In the end, we are reminded to love ourselves and others as we are, two heads and all. And we are reminded to appreciate the time given to us in life.
I found another one of Gilpin’s poems this week. It is less known, but equally beautiful and moving. It offers us deep truth about love and life and death. The poem is Life After Death, by Laura Gilpin.

These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature