Memorable scenes:Shawshank Redemption morgan freeman-red is free from pr...

 
December 20, 1977

As Exhilarating as yesterday's surprising news was, it is as equally frightening.  I have been released before on a number of occasions.  17  1/2  years have been spent in over a dozen institutions throughout my young 33 years and never have I made it.  As Red is oft quoted, I'm an institution man now. For the past 6 1/2 years I have been told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat, what to wear.  Everything has been provided for me.  And if I wavered from the rules there was solitary confinement to remind me just who  is in charge of my life.  And NOW, now I will be  a free man with every decision now mine. 

I don't know, on this date, when actually I will be released.  The whole preparing for release can be overwhelming to say the least.  I don't have a job nor place to stay, though for the first month or so I will be staying at a halfway house.  A decompressing chamber if you will to allow me to secure those sorts of things.  The halfway house can be a danger itself, you are still in prison just without the walls to surround you.  One false step, fail to make the 4 O'clock check in, be in by 10:00 pm, come in drunk, are only a few of the things that can get you sent right back inside and your parole revoked.  For the moment I can only think on how I am going to make it.

When you are a little kid you are most vulnerable to the stories that are being told to you by all sorts of relatives and older folks who have access to you like babysitters.  Unless they are reading out of a book (and those speak for themselves as purveyors of truth, fiction or fantasy) you again, the child that is, are vulnerable yet still.  

When I was a wee one being raised on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood, soon to be home to the Blackstone Rangers and Jeff Fort, I heard many stories about my family.

 One was that my dad had been a boxer and fought under the name of Tiger Thomson.  When later in life I asked my Uncle Elmer, my dad's twin brother, was he ever a boxer and Uncle Elmer just laughed and said no he never was.  

My dad did walk with a limp and to that I attributed to a fight with a bear that he had had.  Again, probably not true.  

But the biggest story that requires a little imagination was that my sister was kidnapped and left on the doorsteps of an orphanage and was almost adopted by a family before my parents got wind of it and they in turn sued the orphanage for $100,000. Trust me, if you had that kind of money in the 40's you don't continue to live in the ghetto which is where we were 10 years later before I in fact was sent to an orphanage.  

The other part of the kidnapping/$100,000 story was that my dad drank up all the money in the bars up and down 63rd street.  Now that part I can believe, if they ever had it in the first place.  My dad died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 52 so to say that my dad could drink a bit is an understatement. 

 Years later I forgave my dad for the less than emblematic life he gave us.  But I want to qualify that forgiveness.  My mother would always say she could forgive but she would never forget.  And that attitude about forgiveness is widely stated and accepted as the thing to do.  Not so, say I.  I too was forgiven and I dare say for a good many things that not even my dad had done.  Yes, I am talking about Jesus forgiveness.  When he died on the cross for our sins, he didn't just die as one taking the rap for them I understand what that is. He took our sins as if they were his own.  And we know He was sinless.  And when he forgave us our sins he buried them as far as the east is from the west. Yes, he forgot them.  I'm going to let you figure that little bit about forgiveness yourself, because it might just take the Holy Spirit to break it down to you for your own satisfaction.   

This year's flu season looks like a bad one—and it could be coming early | Popular Science

This year's flu season looks like a bad one—and it could be coming early | Popular Science

Paint it Black - Vietnam War

Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit-

   This technically is still morning given this post says its 9:04 am.

Wednesday Morning Musings Betwixt and Between

I should start my musings here on my Morning Coffee News Blog so I can come back to it as need be.  Fumbling over what to broach as my lead story.  I think they have determined that a blog is in fact classified as a news source, right.  I mean if I come out with some astonishing news that nobody has heard from before doesn't that allow me to blaze my story with LATE BREAKING NEWS?  And it doesn't have to be NEW news either, it can be re-told news, re-hashed news, stuff like that, right? 

There are goats wandering around down at the beach is something I learned today.  That doesn't trouble me to be a nosy neighbor and call the police because  I don't think goats should be down at the beach?  Besides this beach happens to be in Liberia where my friend Martha Lukens resides and I should pause long enough to get the picture.  And there you have it.  The morning news for today. 

Mel Tillis -- Good Woman Blues

Wintley Phipps - It Is Well With My Soul [Live]

Motivate Me

This is Motivated Me this morning while at the same time I want to temper my enthusiasm with consideration  for my family and friends in Texas and Florida.  I have awaken a many a day angry and hateful and I can tell you that is no fun.  It does nothing but drive people away all the while you thinking you all tough and bad.  There was a time for that but that time is no more. Today I am encouraged to look for 3 things which I am grateful for, 3 things I am looking forward to, and 3 things I am going to do today which will make my life even better.  I know that sounds like a formula and some people don't like formulas, and I am one of them.  But sometimes maybe we should brainwash ourselves into believing life is better than it is.  Not in a phony sense like denying what's wrong with the world because there is always going to be something wrong with the world because people, certain types of people who are waking up right now along with you with larceny in their heart, but you aren't one of them.  Life is good because their are good people in the world and you are one of them.  Call someone to mind that brings a smile to your face.  I see plenty of babies and grand babies on Facebook so there are a lot of smiling  faces to bring to mind.  Throughout your day...move! When you move your body from forehead to toes as if you were happy, it's impossible to not be happy. Try it. Remember, you get more of what you focus on and this effect amplifies over time.  What do you want more of? What do you want to be better at? This is your life and you are in charge.

The Doxology | Anthem Lights ft. Selah

I have often heard it said that our routine in the morning sets the course for our day.  I equally as often fail to heed this sound advice.  I don't stretch and do my exercises that my body sorely needs.  With the emphasis on sorely body. I must have my coffee and will often move that to the head  of my activities.  Then its a toss up, scroll through Facebook, emails, or the news. News and I aren't getting along these days so they are no longer in the running.  The other two could go either way, but emails usually have me doing more stuff to early in the day so it ends up being Facebook.  What I should be doing is Praising God for even waking me up and giving me another day.  That someday is feeling way to close lately and I should be feeling even more greatful then I am.  So when I saw the Doxology this morning it helped to put that in perspective.  When I see encouraging scriptures from my friends Ken and Mary Cumpston, that too causes me to ponder what my priorities should be.  There are others, Jane Harris and Diana Besse Chalmers who one can always count on  and of recent times I have some cousins who message me spiritual encouragement.  The world can take care of the world, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all the rest will be added unto you.  The End

Tom Roddy

I have to set up to write this piece, because of every piece I could write about the last 4 decades, this piece defines the beginning.  So at the midnight hour I have to turn some lights out, make a hot cup of coffee. and settle in.  We changed up a bit, instead of the hot coffee we went for pumpkin pie and a glass of cold milk.

I drove up to Reba Place Fellowship in January of 1978,  actually I boarded the El at the Jackson Street Station and rode it to Howard before catching the Linden and deboarding at Main St.  This man, fresh from the United States Prison System landed on God's Promises doorsteps.  How much time I had done or what I had been in prison for never became important.  The fact that I had been a follower of Jesus Christ for 5 1/2 years also was not inquired about or cared about.  I would live in a communal household of an elder and his wife and 1 son and another single mother with 2 children and 1 other single woman and 1 single man.  I would live with this household for the better part of 6 months.  3 more single women would join the small group before I left on my own to seek fortune and fame.  Those six months of transition and error and misgivings and desperation are a story for another tale. 

I had not known Tom Roddy during those 6 months but I knew who he was.  The Fellowship of approximately 300 people was not that large that you could escape the awareness of everyone else.
In June of 78' I moved into a boarding house, 1310 Elmwood.  Tom Roddy also had a room there.  In a few short months the owner announced that he was selling the house and everybody had to fend for themselves and find another place to live.  I had a job at the time working for Pioneer Press in the bindery department from 4pm to midnight so I planned on using the early hours of the day to look for housing.  A former boyfriend of a women at the Fellowship was traveling to the south in Arkansas and told me I could stay at his place for a month.  That helped me save a little money aside for affording my own place.  I had no idea nor was it my concern just what Mr. Roddy was going to do.  We had not established a friendship at this point.

Julius Belser was an elder of Reba Place Fellowship, one of the Big Three who ran the joint in my early lexicon of terms.  He also had the knack for coming along and showing up in a person's life at just the right time.   The Fellowship had just purchased a 22 unit apartment building on the corner of Sherman and Madison.  They had some work to do in rehabbing the place and motivating the drug users to find some place else to live but in time it started to take shape.  One of the things that Julius was instrumental in doing was to send Tom and myself messages that we might consider being roommates in the new building.  I have had many cell mates before in my past experience and if it helped to hold the rent down to share a place, why not.  Tom and I had some similarities in our background.  Not exact similarities but close enough to give the other person an understanding that the other person new what time it was, without explaining it to each other.  I always said that Julius probably felt that we would either kill each other or get along fabulously.  We got along fabulously.

Tom and I would both be classified as having "shanty Irish" sensibilities.  We both smoked at the time so there was no problem there.  Not long, maybe a month later we got a call from Jim Croegaert who was the Music Minister.  He, Jim, was the contact person for a man coming to the fellowship, needing of course a place to stay.  The m. o. on Dave Beatty was that he was from Boston and attending Northwestern University as a Grad student and majoring in Accounting.  I'll skip the discourse on the differences between 'shanty Irish' and 'lace curtain Irish.'  Dave definitly leaned toward the lace curtain Irish.  Dave wasn't a bad sort, kinda friendly in fact, but he was a neat freak.  Tom and I were bachelors and lived the part.  Most of our apartment was furnished from spoils we captured from the alley, like an old crate for my night stand and a humoungous black leather couch from my family in Hazel Crest that had no legs.  And a bed that had more carvings of who had slept there than any one dare count.  There's more to Dave that needs to be included in this narrative but we will rejoin this effort tomorrow. 



Sitting at the counter in the Main Cafe where everyone knew who Tom was one frosty summer morn, Tom asks, with  that tone of voice, to a waitress "Does that hair-do have a name?"  "Yes", she says: "Lithium"  handclapping could be heard all around as a smirk surrounded Tom's jovial cheeks.

1959 Corvette

I got a lot of response out of first asking was this a Mustang.  Mustangs are cool cars and so are Thunderbirds, but this is a Corvette. 

Obviously one of us is more elated than the other, As soon as I figure out how to get rid of this underline we should be doing okay,     

What do we have here.  Oh, I see, the underline has been removed.  Now let's see what we can do about the Bold.   

Only those who take the medicine Furosemide will know how many pitstops it takes to complete one 250 word essay.

Ah ha, a few tricks to get rid of Bold and now we have some normalcy around here. So it's on to starting my day.  Hope you can be as elated as Mary appears to be.