Welcome to The Backeddy

Where The World Is Always Coming To A Beginning

It only took a world wide pandemic in order for me to decline my umpteenth Grand Canyon trip and to finally get me to think seriously about writing. I don’t know what I am going to say in this planned, regular column but then I never knew where I was headed with my rants on social media either.

I’m going to be honest with you. The stress of dealing with our modern-day black plague has been mentally exhausting. This is not the brave new world Aldous Huxley promised or I anticipated. (Though I did take the precaution of fleeing to Baja California in a geriatric school bus, not named Further, accompanied by a cast of good friends who I was confident would know how to ride out the imminent disintegration of society by Y2K. That was the trip where I was introduced to Banderas - a shot of tequila, a shot of lime juice and - my preference - a shot of Spicy V-8. Perhaps that’s a subject for another column.)

In reference to the mental exhaustion, I’m not going to lie. I’m a little gassed.

In any event, I can promise you my columns will be easily digestible. I’m not implying they will be fact-free but I’ve never researched anything before and I am damn well not going to start now. Besides everyone, apparently, is entitled to their own set of alternative facts these days.

You know, those statements we used to just call “opinions”.

As for topics, I plan on leaning toward eclecticism, whimsy and serendipity. I’ll most likely latch onto something I’ve read, watched, heard or wondered about in the past 24 hours. I’ll want you to feel like it was worth your while to spend a minute or two of your day chomping your way through my prattle.

I can guarantee I’ll sprinkle liberal doses of aphorisms and colloquialisms because my mother, who was Mississippi’s version of Rosie the Riveter, could not speak three sentences without liberally sprinkling many colorful and endearing expressions. Hell, according to my sister, my mom would invent her own aphorisms. Every once in a while, she’d mix and match, but we always understood the point she was trying to get across.

I might steal a column or two from my dad. Just like I stole his subtitle about the ‘world always coming to a beginning.’ As an erstwhile national columnist for a Presbyterian magazine and as a full-time Presbyterian minister, he wrote religiously (pun intended) for decades. Besides, my oldest brother has been threatening to send me boxes of his mimeographed columns for years. What else do I have to do while sheltering-in-place during the Great Pandemic of 2020?

I’ll definitely pontificate but most of the time it will be Mark Twain like stream of consciousness with a point to be made somewhere along the way. Or possibly not.

I’ll also reload and resurrect some previous writings from my other blogs scattered across the internets. With touch ups, of course. There are always touch-ups. No writer is ever fully happy with the end product. (Which makes me wonder. Was Michelangelo beset by wanting to do a touch-up here and there every time he set foot in the Sistine Chapel?)

As it turns out at the end of the day, the world bestowed me with two skills:

One, reading and running a river, which has no useful application in a world gone mad but is akin to blissful meditation for the one doing the reading and running (assuming the outcome is a positive one).

And two, my writing, which won’t ever earn me a Pulitzer but it may just brighten your day, put a hitch in your giddy-up, elicit a wry smile or make you pause and go, “Hmm”.

And that’s all a writer desires.

~~~

A couple of quick items I want to make sure you have not missed:

John Krasinski’s Some Good News video. I encourage you to check it out because it will definitely make you smile. It’s inspirational! And, I had NO IDEA he was married to the Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow star! Two thumbs up, by the way.

Randy Rainbow’s latest video pays tribute to the Cuomo brothers. It’s a must watch.