Each man is good in His sight

I am a red man.
If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have
made me so in the first place.
He put in your heart certain wishes and plans,
in my heart he put other and different desires.
Each man is good in his sight.
It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows.
Sitting Bull

(A crow perches in a tree in Cades Cove, Great Smokey Mts National Park / Julie Cook / 2020)

Native American Indians always believed that spirits resided in the beings of
the creatures of the earth…all the way from the mighty bison and bear
to the majestic eagle, the stealthy wolf all the way down to the lowly turtle and snake.

Each animal and creature was aforded various human-like traits.
They protected or watched over the one who claimed them as a ‘spirit guide’
Imparting power to the one they protected or looked over.

One such spirit was that of the crow or raven.
The bird was known as a trickster or prankster,
the mischievous one.

Years ago we took our son, who was about 9 at the time, on a vacation that had us
heading west.
West to places like New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and then up towards
Montana and South Dakota.

Places that a Georgia born native son needed to see and experience.

We stopped at places like the Painted desert, the Badlands, Yellowstone,
the Grand Canyon—we went to cities and towns such as Taos, Sante Fe, Cody,
Salt Lake City, Logan, Cheyenne, Jackson Hole…
while visiting various Pueblos, Reservations, monuments, churches, museums
and national parks…

And yet in all that mighty and grand greatness, there was one small thing that caught
both our eyes.

It was something vastly different from the beautiful landscapes found around this
great nation of ours.

We were each drawn to something that was small yet skillful.
Tiny yet intriguing.

As the art teacher, I was drawn like a magnet to the inticracy…
As a young boy, my son was drawn, as most young boys would be, to all
things of imagination and of cowboys and indians.

The draw you ask…???
They were small tiny stone carvings by Zuni indians known as a fetish.

Tiny carvings of animals created in stone, fossils and shells.
Each held in the palm of one’s hand.

According to the Black Arrow Gallery:
Fetishes, charms, amulets, or simply good luck pieces, call them whatever you would like,
but virtually every culture has them. Fetishes are small carvings made from various materials
by many different Native American Tribes.
These carvings serve a ceremonial purpose for their creators and depict animals and icons
integral to their culture.
As a form of contemporary Native American Art they are sold with non-religious
intentions to collectors worldwide.

Origianal fetishes are no longer available for purchase as they are considered
museum worthy.
Yet there are some very well known tribal artists who continue to create these tiny
artistic treasures to sell.
And the better known artists and their art carvings fetch high prices.

During our trip, as a rememberance from this particular vacation,
my son and I each bought a few affordable carvings.
We were told that the fetish would choose the buyer.
Each fetish supposedly possessed certain characteristics and traits
which would draw the buyer.

Well, I was drawn to several.
A bear, a beaver and yes, a crow.

Crows and Ravens are birds of a feather…with ravens being of the larger feather.
So my crow was most likely a raven…but it was still a small marble black bird
with two turquoise eyes.

Again, according to the Black Arrow Gallery:
The raven is not a traditional fetish but he is carved often, and beautifully,
by a number of artists.
Some artisans will put a stone in the raven’s mouth.
He is generally carved of jet or black marble though he can appear in virtually
any stone of the artist’s choosing.
While considered somewhat of a prankster, he doesn’t have the negative characteristics
associated with the coyote.
The raven can help us work through failure and short-comings by reminding
us that anything we have the courage to face, we have the power to transform.

I imagine that the reason crows / ravens were afforded a place at the tribal table was
in part due the fact that these birds are actually very intelligent.

Those who study crows and ravens know that these birds have a language of calls all their own.
They can actually communicate with one another.
They also have keen memories and have been known to bring “gifts’– various sparkly
found objects to humans who interact with them.

I have had a long love-hate relationship with crows.

I find them irritating when they gang attack a hawk who flies
into their territory.
I’m not a fan of gang activity.
However, I imagine that there is some sort of perceived threat
when a bird of prey intercepts one’s private airspace…I digress.

And yet I love throwing out stale bread for the crows to come gather.
They will often wake me at dawn with their loud raucous caws as
they swoop into a tree outside our bedroom window where the
bread still sits from the prior evening.

So reading the wisdom of Sitting Bull in today’s quote, I am reminded of
that song sung in many a child’s church chapel…Jesus Loves the Little Children

Written by C. Herbert Woolston and George F. Root.

According to hymntime.com
Words: C. Her­bert Wool­ston (1856–1927).
Wool­ston was one of George Root’s fa­vo­rite lyr­i­cists.
Child­ren oft­en sing just the re­frain, which is a song all to itself!

Music: George F. Root, 1864, Root orig­in­al­ly wrote this tune for the Am­er­i­can ci­vil
war song Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.

Jesus calls the children dear,
Come to Me and never fear,
For I love the little children of the world;
I will take you by the hand,
Lead you to the better land,
For I love the little children of the world.

Refrain

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,

All lives matter…both living and yet born.
All lives matter… each man, woman and child…no matter their color or race.
For all are not only good, but rather are most
precious to our God, our Father and Great Creator.

It just takes a crow to remind us of such.

(a camera friendly crow / Cades Cove, The Great Smokey Mountains National Park / Julie Cook / 2020)

the common sense of the obvious

“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good:
a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright.
This is common sense really.
You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.”
C.S. Lewis

(Percy assumes the throne is his…it is not / Julie Cook / 2018)

No, Percy’s name is not Autumn and no that is not Percy’s chair,
it is Autumn’s chair.

Yet Percy thinks that what is Autumn’s is actually and naturally his…
because he was the first baby here in this house and therefore anything that is
for a baby is his by proxy.

In Percy’s brain, that all makes sense.

So the stroller is his…

That’s him underneath.
He prefers to be up top but at the time it was unfortunately occupied.

Autumn’s finnbin is his.
(That Scandinavian baby box I ordered so Autumn can snooze comfortably after her
workout on her play mat…of which is also Percy’s…as in his playmat.

When I’m busy folding clothes on the bed and Autumn is busy snoozing, Percy snoozes too.

So I really don’t understand why Gregory got so upset the other day when one of his very
expensive hearing aids disappeared and he naturally assumed Percy took it.

Years ago, poor Gregory was involved in a hunting accident and is now totally deaf in one
ear with considerable hearing loss in the other ear.

He gave into hearing aids about 8 years ago and has fussed and cussed them ever since.

They don’t work, despite costing a small fortune.

He’s lost one in the ocean.
He’s lost one someplace else that we can’t remember, otherwise it might not be lost.

Replacing them is a pain and another small fortune.

And so obviously, if Percy sees them say sitting on, say the counter, or by Gregory’s chair or
on the shelf by the shower when Gregory forgot that they were still in his ear when he got
in the shower and had to quickly get them to a dry spot…
Percy just assumes that Gregory has laid them out for him to happily take.

If you are not familiar with hearing aids…they are these tiny, yet expensive little
contraptions you shove into your ears.
They have tiny little batteries and tiny volume controls and they work by amplifying sound.

Unfortunately, Gregory claims they amplify the wrong sounds.

If you’re in a crowded restaurant, they amplify the noisy background chatter rather
than the true target, that being the person sitting across from or next to you…
as in me with whom he’s trying to communicate.

The waiter asks “Sir, how would you like your steak cooked?”

“I’ll have blue cheese thank you.”

With me then having to interject
“he’d like it medium and the blue cheese goes on the salad…”
this as he looks at me as though something happened but he’s just not sure what.

And whereas it can be quite comical and funny…
In actuality, it is very frustrating and equally maddening.

And can, more times than not, make his life just darn miserable.

Anyone who wears hearing aids will certainly testify to such frustration.

As can anyone living with said folks who suffer from hearing loss…
There is simply an awful lot of repeating, yelling, screaming, exasperation
and hands simply being thrown up in the air.

“WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME???”

BECAUSE I SAID IT THREE TIMES AND YOU STILL DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID”

“WELL I’M SORRY BUT I CAN’T HEAR, REMEMBER!”

“AND DON’T SCREAM AT ME CAUSE YOU’RE HURTING MY EARS!”

It’s a vicious cycle

So I think the real reason as to why Gregory gets so upset when the hearing aids go missing
is not so much because they work, but rather because they cost a small fortune.

And here is where our real story continues…

The other evening Gregory went to take a shower and took out the hearing aids,
placing them on the counter in the bathroom.

One of them mysteriously disappeared.

I say mysteriously because two were there, and then two were not.

It wasn’t until after his shower that he’d come back to the den to watch TV that
he remembered he needed to go back to get his hearing aids.

If he doesn’t put them in while watching TV, the television is turned up so loudly,
I have to leave the room.

Suddenly I heard my name being called in a not so pleasant manner.

I race to the back making certain everything was okay.

“Julie, I can’t find but one of the hearing aids.”
“Percy got it.”

“How do you know Percy got it?”

“Who else would have gotten it?”

“Maybe you didn’t have both of them with you when you took a shower and the other
one is by your chair or still in your pant’s pocket.”

“I already checked the pants and I remember plain as day putting them here on the counter…
plus I remember seeing “him” in here.”

I did not like the way he had said “him” and I wasn’t too keen on how this was going.

I will admit that there have been a few occasions that Percy may have actually taken one
of the hearing aids, thinking of it as some small squeaking creature. And he may have
actually played with it as he would, say, a small creature…
Batting it wildly across the floor and tossing it up in the air as if it was a poor living
creature to be toyed with before a slow torturous death.

I know this because I must confess, I’ve caught him doing such.
My fear being he’d somehow get the battery out and swallow it.

So imagine my then having to fuss when Gregory obviously and carelessly forgets to
securely put away the hearing aids when he takes them out. This in turn potentially allows
for Percy to potentially get a hold of the hearing aids which potentially lead to his swallowing
a battery and potentially having to have some sort of emergency surgery.

Talk about a small fortune.

Plus as his mother, I have to defend this baby.

And so I spent about an hour that night scouring the house looking for said hearing aid.
All the while Gregory kept looking angerly at Percy,
demanding Percy tell him what he had done with the hearing aid.
All the while poor Percy was simply looking innocent as a lamb.

I crawled on the floor, looking eye level across the rugs, peering underneath the couch,
the chairs, the tables.

I didn’t remember the house looking, so, well, dusty and dirty…hummmmmm.

Finally, I gave up for the night because I knew tomorrow was another day.

So…for four long hours the following morning, I looked high and low.

I vacuumed the entire house, I dusted, I swiffered and I carefully looked, while on all fours,
investigating every inch of the house.

I opened closet doors.
I looked under cushions.
I flipped over every pair of shoes.
I debated calling the vets telling them I needed to x-ray Percy’s stomach…
and I even considered the unthinkable…sifting through the litter box.

I called Gregory who was at work, only halfway hearing.

“Gregory, I can’t find it anywhere…”

There were a few choice words I can’t repeat.

So I did what I always do in a crisis.
I prayed.

I prayed earnestly to God…explaining that I knew He knew how expensive the stupid
little things were and that I really needed to find it.

I decided to check under the couch in the living room one more time,
despite having already looked, dusted and vacuumed there twice this
particular day and once the night before.

With flashlight in hand, I got back down on my hands and knees, bent way down
almost on my head, lifted up the kick pleat and shined the flashlight into the far recesses
when low and behold…there it was.
Despite my having already looked three times total under that couch.

Ecstatic, I called Gregory and explained my answered prayer.

His reply was “Good, and when I get home, Percy will be tried in a court of law, my court.
He will be tried to the full extent of the law, my law.
He will be tried and found naturally guilty and punished…better yet, banished.”

Donning my best defense attorney hat, I proceeded to explain that since no one had actually
seen Percy take the hearing aid…let alone seen him take it to his favorite hiding spot
under the couch…the same hiding spot he goes to when, say a “stranger” comes in the house,
and he is afraid…or the same hiding place that his favorite toys often rest.
There is simply no clear-cut obvious explanation…only mere conjecture.

It is therefore only presumption that he is guilty as there was really just no way
to prove that Percy took it as there were no witnesses.
Peaches, the other cat…did not count.

I even threw in the fact that had
Gregory taken better care, putting the hearing aids in their case, it never would have
disappeared in the first place.

I was beginning to walk on thin ice.

But in the end, it’s all really pretty darn obvious is it not?

Who else would have, could have, taken it??
Especially given Percy’s proclivity and track record demonstrating his lack of restraint with
hearing aids, there is a pattern to his madness.

Yet I was simply running with it…to the far reaches of the absurd.

And thus my far out over-reaching is no more absurd then what you and I are hit with on a
daily basis flowing from our progressively insane society.
A society that is happily playing fast and loose with all things truth, common sense and
downright obvious.

I was running with it just like our own politicians, our legal eagle justice system
and even now our entertainers are running off with the obvious as they thrive to live to
shuffle and distort, to rile and defile.

They twist and turn the obvious and the truth around in such a way that they first convince
themselves while wielding their charms to twist the obvious into the oblivious for
everyone else.

And should you or I dare to question or think otherwise…questioning their form of the
“truth” …then you will be punished or even better yet, exiled…
much like Gregory decided to do with Percy…banished.

And I for one have grown weary of it all.

So this little tale about a cat and his hearing aid fetish serves not merely to
entertain us but rather to remind us…reminding us of the absurdity of that which
is currently circulating around us.

It reminds us of the lack of common sense and the twisting of the blatantly obvious
as the culture gods have taken the ultimate Truth and created the absurd.

Because remember, there’s no better way to ellude the average citizen than to
confuse him or her…so that way, no one really cares as to what is really what.

Now how did that stuffed mouse get in my shoe…?

The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them;
the sins of others trail behind them.
In the same way, good deeds are obvious,
and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever.
1 Timothy 5:24-24