What others think great
I often think crap.
When I show them what's good
Then they take a nap.
Jesus said we're to share. But the only thing we have of any value, with all its imperfections, is ourselves.
The front runner wants his rival to drop out. He might as well ask his rival to cease the beating of his heart.
The cliché is the writer's shortcut. The reader though would rather be taken the long way round.
Know what I mean?
Shakespeare did well in his own time. He died a wealthy man. But in his dark hours he must have thought: "You have no idea how good I'll be."
Chairman Joe
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.
ReplyDeleteLouis L'Amour
(today is his birthday)
((born in Jamestown, North Dakota, 154 miles south of Edinburg))
I was thinking of a friend from Jamestown, a mere 154 miles distant from Edinburg, as I stood between the Fireside Lounge and the General Store, where in 2007 the proprietor of the General Store commissioned an artist to paint a large mural of the ox carts, pulled by oxen, rolling across the prairie with outriders on horseback alongside, and many bison on hilltops in the distance.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more prominent ox drivers walking beside his yoke of oxen, in the mural, looks exactly like a Jamestown man, Tom Thronsedt, who accompanied the Orlin Ostby family from Gatzke, Minnesota, and their 2500# Holstein ox 'Pum' that pulled a two-wheeled ox cart from Pembina, ND to St. Paul, MN in 2008 for Minnesota's 150th birthday, with Jackie and I in attendance throughout. Imagine singer Charlie Daniels and you can envision Tom Thronsedt, absolutely.
As Tom is an avid John Wayne fan with The Duke's memorabilia on walls and shelves, he likely has read all of L'Amour's books too and probably can recite whole lines spoken by important characters in them, just as Chairman Joe can recite Irish prose from memory the whole night long and at the same time, jig to a silent tune playing in his head no one else hears.
There's something about a dusty cowboy hat, jeans that fit, well-worn cowboy boots and North Dakota, that all go together in the imagination or on the side of a building in Edinburg, Nort' Dakota.
I recently visited Edinburg. Nice place. The mural could use some refurbishing though. And the Quasquicentennial sod hut needs work too.
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