by Uncle Ronny

I stepped out the door to greet the fine day,
But two horny-honkers were blocking my way.
My "babies," my sweeties, my lil' birdheads!
They honked recognition! "Good morning!," they said.

I stepped off the stoop, while avoiding some poop.
"Hey, I've warned about that! You birds wanna be soup?"
I strolled to the glider and sat my bones down.
And those two feathered critters came waddling around.

They stood quiet and still, and at me they stared.
All morning on grass and sundry green stuff they'd fared.
Oh, I knew what they wanted; 'twas really no news.
Honk Hogan walked over and nibbled my shoes.

I smiled and I giggled as I watched silly birds.
I said, "What's goin' on here!" Or some similar words.
Honk pecked and he picked, then as sure as you're born,
He threw up his head and, I swear, squawked, "Corn, corn!"

"Well, good golly Miss Molly, Land O' Goshen, indeed,
Like clockwork on grain each morning they feed."
I stood, smiled, and dawdled, and acted quite lost.
"Come on, dude, get going!" those peering eyes bossed.

"'M'on" I motioned, and they were right on my heels.
In sublime anticipation of the bestest of meals!
Inside the garage, scooping, corn I took hold,
And anxious webbed feet tapped the metal threshold.

Lucy Goosey and Honk gobbled golden grain down,
Then sought water and grass to help push it on down.
They watered and grazed and then awaited my weed pull.
'Cause the best grass to eat ... is grass fed by a people.

(This was a lil' poem I wrote for my Multiply.com blog November 24, 2009, just messin' around.)

Photos: (Top) Photobucket.com.

(Bottom) These be the guilty parties, subjects of the poem. © R. H. Livingston

(This is a small essay I originally posted on my Yahoo! 360 blog on 26 July 2007.  I wrote it in about an hour in response to a blog entry which stated that we should accept whatever hand life deals us.)

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The mistakes we make in life can teach us in ways that observation and advice cannot. Experience often makes the most lasting impression. What a pity, then, that at times, in trying to do the right thing, we may even unwittingly risk all we truly love, just to be crushed by the cruel teacher "fate" (just to learn a lesson). We learn from our mistakes, but our mistakes and their results do not, in my opinion, lead to some divine or universal perfection that was meant to be, anymore than our successes do. Choices made are just choices, some better than others. The road not taken is just a road not taken.

I reject the notion that whatever is, whatever happens, was meant to be. People say "Put matters into God's hands; if they were meant to be, they will be." So, when our lives thus become crap because of the "ordained" choice we opt for, do we really believe THAT is what God really really wanted for us? Que será será: I think not! No, way, José. "Stuff" happens, but we don't have to like it, and we don't have to accept it. It doesn't all "work out in the end"! One bad thing can just lead to an endless series of more bad things. Losing the love of your life, for example, just leads to a crappy life, not a new day of glorious other opportunities. People make good decisions and bad ones; the good ones don't necessarily indicate good intentions, and the bad ones don't always result from bad intentions. "The road to Hell," it is said, "is paved with good intentions." Maybe such builders just need better maps, not worse intentions! Sometimes we can't help others, love others, if we don't know what they really need or what they really want from this life!

We have free will. We have faith. Faith doesn't mean we should just camp out and let "stuff" happen. Some people prefer those who take such a course. After all, such fatalistic individuals are so tractable in allowing others to make that perfect pie-in-the-sky, that "ordained," "divine perfection" of everything always working out in the end. We have free will to do good or bad, to accept or reject that which happens in our and others' lives. We have the will to change things, as well as the will to accept things. Sometimes mistakes can be made in the doing, but they can also be made in the not doing---not doing things such as forgiving, especially when another makes mistakes for the right reasons. Fighting the good fight, doesn't always lead to a better tomorrow, but it's still the right thing to do. Not everyone accepts the good intentions of those who wish them well. Perhaps the well-wisher was mistaken to trouble the other, but the other is mistaken to not appreciate or forgive. People make mistakes in trying to do the right thing and in how they go about it. But is it right, to see them as paving a road to Hell? (After all, such a person COULD have decided to stay home and watch "reality" t.v., instead of toiling for others.)

Mistakes don't have to be permanent. They can be tools for learning. They can be just a twist in the road of life. They can even be opportunities for building things better and stronger.

Greetings! Welcome to "De Omnis," a blog wherein I hope to present some thoughts on various things of a wide range of topics.  This site has come about due partly to my need for a place to share some things I have written in the not too distant past, besides a place on the Internet to post things that are not local history or Texas ghost stories (subjects of my two other blogs). Some of my earlier blog posts were originally posted for a small audience of online friends in social networking websites.  One of these sites (Yahoo! 360, which was a terrific and fun site, albeit one with some glitches that its users would good-naturedly gripe about from time to time) has gone belly up, and some of my writings were thus displaced.

In a way, I am a reluctant blogger!  I'm really not all that opinionated (at least not to my way of thinking), but then, of course, that label tends to get stuck on each of us anyway, mostly by those who negatively regard whatever ideas and opinions we express that they don't particularly like; nor am I all that driven to ruminate just for the sake of "writing" something. Something thus written to me is just blurb, not that I claim that anything I write is (or was ever meant to be) great writing.  I don't even like to write about writing because such pieces sometimes seem a bit haughty and nearly always tend to come across as professorial and preachy, as though intended as some great revelation handed down from some lofty place, position, or experience. I write for more utilitarian reasons: when something interests me, when there is something I want to share with others (whether "FYI" or simply because it was fun to create), or to ask for others' opinions about something that interests or perplexes me. I write when I write and when I think I have something that to me is worth saying (whether others think it is worth their time and effort is up to them---but then they won't know until after they've read it, so I'll try hard not to waste anyone's time!)

Likewise, I don't consider myself a philosopher or an essayist.  I prefer the "just the facts" treatment because all so often the facts themselves are what makes a subject so interesting.  Speaking of facts as such, there won't be much written here of a political nature. I AM political (kinda-sorta) but I really hate politics.  It is too depressing a field of interest, simply because so much good is claimed and recommended for the common good (and votes) by persons who, it so often soon becomes apparent, have only special interests and personal gain at heart. I am very interested in history (particularly that which is not overly steeped in politics), genealogy, science (in general), agriculture, architecture, the unexplained, the strange-but-true, art, photography, and folklore.

I can't at this point, though, give readers too much of an idea of what to expect here.  (I'm still sort of wondering that myself!)  You will simply have to stop by from time to time to see what is new.  As the blog title means to suggest, I guess you can expect a bit of just about anything or everything.