A paradox, a contrast, the contrary,                                                                               Indeed …                                                                                                                         From whence evangelicals                                                                                                   Flee                                                                                                                                 Full tilt …                                                                                                                    Contraries cause headaches,                                                                                              And heartache …                                                                                                                 For minds and hearts                                                                                                          And necks                                                                                                                         Stiffly built…                                                                                                                       With no apparent                                                                                                                  Room                                                                                                                                  For the mystery                                                                                                                     Of God’s eternity.

Is it any wonder we have so much conflict

in the good, old U S of A?

Science tells us that we seek out friends who

are like we are, really okay

in voice, body and yes, smell. Was it because

the Dutch smelled that Ojibway

and Ottawa moved away…from the beautiful shore?

We make friends not rivals

with people with our own genes — probably a defense,

an instinct of survival.

So, is America, the Beautiful, beautiful for reasons

other than the revival

of appreciation of the national parks, the forests, lakes

and streams? Is America beautiful

because, unlike other places on earth, we have sought

beyond natural instincts to hearts bountiful?

The alerts go off in the little brains in our genes and we

start realizing that the differences

were there to help humans adapt to the environment and

survive and thrive and that’s all the differences,

which are there mean. Maybe, we should be giving thanks

that the conflict is there and out in the open

in spite of protests to the opposite, because now, unlike

any other time in our history, we are chosen

to deal with it and change the little brains in our genes,

expand our hearts to accept the notion

that they are all brothers and sisters who have come fleeing

or seeking a country open

to opportunity along these beautiful shores and across our

glorious deserts. And I? I must say goodbye

to the ghettos of my Viking and Bavarian birth, and embrace the

songs of English, Spanish, Thai,

Hindi, Keres, Tagalog, Senegalese, Hebrew and

oh, so many more

of those of different customs, clothes, colors and yes, smells, too,

who traverse sand and sea to be welcomed

with, “My Love, Mi Amor.”

He was a scrim-

shaw artist,

a scrims-

hander who

hawked

his ivory wares

all summer long

at community fairs.

He spoke jokingly

of his earrings

dangling

the ivories after they

had been

tickled lovingly

in a jazz trio.

Did the scrims-

hander

not know

that before the piano

ivories

had tickled and earrings

dangled,

some had hung

on elephant mothers

who,

when slaughtered,

left orphaned babies

to howl a song of

woe

across the

the savanna so dry

and low

and not a female

dangling the earrings

while crooning a tune

at the Sands casino?

And to make

matters even worse

and way more obvious,

he etched pictures on

small slabs of tusks.

You could hear the

babies howl all the

way to Northern

Michigan. Maybe

he thought such

small pieces didn’t

matter much

and,

of course, they

were purchased

legally as such.

Why didn’t he just

carve some

Ivory Soap and

then wash

himself clean

of the whole

scrim-

shaw, scrims-

hander, bloody

thing?

She wore a big, black dress in the middle of

summer, covering her more than ample

girth down to the five-finger knock offs

picked up at a Dollar Store in a backwater,

Northern Michigan town; she sat next to

her twelve-year-old van in which she

sleeps and keeps all her jewelry, which she

is showing at an art fair, one in which she

has been showing for, this, her fifteenth

year. She is camping at a near-by city camp-

ground located at the end of one of two legs

of a large lake leading to Lake Michigan.

It is a warm, wonderful day up north, 75

degrees, sunny and 52% humidity, a perfect

day for an art exhibit. She had a really good

day at the first of the two-day event.

She said she had an increase of one-

hundred percent over the previous year’s

first day. She kept griping about her

ex-husband who had a site near her

site at the campground and is showing

his very similar scrimshaw artwork at a

booth near her’s. She said her ex be-

longed in the hoosegow for all he had

done not counting the adultery but she

wasn’t going into the details. On Saturday

evening, she had a disagreement with a

tent camper she said was encroaching on

her site and the previous day, Friday, had

griped about a pickup truck and boat block-

ing her site. Saturday evening before she

crawled into her van for the night, she spent

a lot of time on her cell phone mumbling and

grumbling, maybe about her ex who never

mentioned her as he sat around the campfire

with several other exhibitors that evening, but

he had sneaked a peek toward her booth

earlier in the day to see what was going

on. He laughed freely at the jokes and sell

or not, it seemed like a vacation, they all

said.  On Sunday, the second and last day

at the fair, all the exhibitors hope to make

some more money before heading home,

the woman and her ex to the same

town and only a few houses apart.