Life, actually…

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WEAPONS OF PEACE

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I do not want to get all corny right now, but in times like these there must be room for occasionally peaceful thoughts. Or healing thoughts. Or kindly wisdoms.

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Since I do not see myself as having consistently profound ideas, today I am relying on words of wisdom from other folks.

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Even if you only have one profound thought within your lifetime, it deserves to be held up for all to see. Some of us do need to imagine sweet notions of what life on a peaceful planet might be like.

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So, here are a few quotes that occasionally give me a moment of hope. Pick those you like and cling to them until the current Troubles have passed.

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“May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.”
–The Upanishads

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“We are Love We are One We are how we treat each other when the day is done. We are Peace We are War We are how we treat each other and Nothing More.”
–Alternate Routes

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“What Carl Sagan envisioned we could become: Conscious, wise, compassionate, energetically curious, eternally skeptical, immune to the manipulations and intimidations of the powerful, free of the walls that imprison and divide us; awe-inspired by the beauty of an ever-broadening identification horizon, welcoming of its expansion; no longer stunted by the old primate hierarchies, but instead, proud of our capacity to care for each other and to discern our tiny, utterly decentralized place in the fabric of nature, space and time; secure enough at last to embrace the wonder inherent in this reality, awakened to our responsibilities as a link in the generations past and future, at peace with our self-knowledge, alert to a heightened and consequential sense of the sacred; long-term thinkers, solid citizens of the planet and the cosmos; as Carl was; fully alive, completely connected.”
–Ann Druyan

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“Why should we not all live in peace and harmony? We look up at the same stars, we are fellow-passengers on the same planet and dwell beneath the same sky. What matters it along which road each individual endeavors to find the ultimate truth? The riddle of existence is too great that there should be only one road leading to an answer.”
–Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

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“Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.”
–Katharine Hepburn

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“Being kind and loving and caring really matters. The truths constantly change and disguise themselves, but being kind and loving and caring always counts.”
–Jim Reed

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“The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves.”
–Mark Twain

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“The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.”
–Daniel Defoe

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“If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.”
—Bob Hope

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“I needed some quiet time so I listened to a recording of my favorite mime songs.”
–Jim Reed

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That’s enough for today. Pick at these words and embrace the ones that seem to matter.

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Then, come up with your own thoughts about how to endure bad times, how to perpetuate good times, how to post loving and kindhearted ideas so that those who journey with you will be inspired to do better

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s 4-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/4EVacnUt8m4

or read his story below:

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Life, actually…

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I HAVE A DREAM. OR TWO.

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I hope you will forgive me my vanity, my self-absorption, for two minutes. I want to share two dreams with you. They may have deep meaning, they may be interesting but meaningless. You and I can determine that. Here they are:

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DREAM ONE: I’m in my childhood Down South home. My sister Barbara is here with me in the living room.

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This dream is in color, unlike many of my dreams.

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Outside, the sun is reflected in bright green hues off a row of large trees just across the street. The trees are waving and swaying under a strong breeze. They are not the trees I was brought up seeing. They are taller and more lush and most graceful in their rippling movements.

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The living room is a combination of the way it looked when I was a child—hardwood floors and pastel walls—and the way it was up till the day Mother died—some antiques and more family memorabilia lying around.

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Barbara is talking with me about something, but I’m beginning to ignore her because I can now hear my mother’s voice as if she is still alive. I can’t make out the words, but her musical voice is definitely in the room with us.

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Then, I see my mother.

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She is sitting on a hassock or footstool in the living room. I quickly hug her, enfolding her entire body in my arms, hoping to make sure she doesn’t get away from me this time. She is warm and small and self-contained and does not respond to the hug, nor does she pull away.

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She is saying something again, and what she is saying is incomprehensible, but I can tell from the way it feels that she is in another place away from all of us, a place where she can deal with her own singular universe without having to be concerned for what’s happening on our block, in our world, in our family. She feels very real while I am hugging her, and then she is gone, as is the dream.

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I wake up, staring at the wall, not daring to move, hoping the dream hasn’t gone but knowing that it will never happen again. This is the last communique from Mother.

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THE FINAL DREAM:  Soon after my father died, I saw him twice before he went away for good. Walking into the den of my parents’ home, I saw—out of the corner of my eye—my father, sitting in his easy chair, staring serenely into space, self-contained and comfortable with himself. When I looked directly at the chair, he wasn’t there.

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A few days later, I dreamed that our wall held a large portrait of my father as he looked when young. He was hatless and wearing a three-piece dress suit. He stared directly at the room from within the portrait and his lips began to move. I could not tell what he was saying, but again I had the feeling he was letting me know he was all right, that things would go on without him but that he, too, would go on without us. He was in good shape, he was trying to tell me.

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So, the parents are gone for good. I am here and they are there. This doesn’t seem to matter now, not to me, anyhow. I have this feeling we’ll not need each other again, nor will we ever see each other again—not here nor in the afterlife.

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We’re all going our separate ways and the cosmos is too large for us to ever find one another. Instead, we’ll each go to our respective niches on our own tracks and continue to participate in nature as tiny atoms dispersing dispersing dispersing but never stopping.

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Thanks for sharing with me these short minutes. You may now resume control of your beautiful life

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 © 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/ejT7MGS8Fvs

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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MADE WITH REAL INGREDIENTS

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Way back home during way-back times Down South, our little close-knit family occupied the time we had by piddling around with words and phrases and imaginings and ideas and spontaneous improvisations.

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This was before Television, before the Internet, before ear pods, before video games, before cell phones and smart phones.

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Yes, my childhood took place way before any of these wonderfully frightening inventions took over our lives.

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So, what did we, the Reed Family, do to entertain ourselves? We had books and board games and jigsaw puzzles and anthills and crossword puzzles and coloring books and model-airplane kits and magic sets and toys that required our devotion—we assembled things and glued things and painted things and created makeshift tree houses and re-purposed so many objects. A discarded umbrella, held high on a breezy day, could transport a roller-skater an entire village block. Two fists clasped just-so together would become a puffed-cheeks doomsday trumpet for backyard battles. A worn-through blanket could turn into a superhero cape. A painted high heel became Cinderella’s long-lost slipper.

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And because we had never heard of all those new-fangled inventions to come, we were perfectly happy with what we could discover. Everything became a burst of imaginary possibilities.

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All this might explain why I still read fortune cookies, why I look for the daily quote in a newspaper, why I cherish every short anecdote that reveals something delightful about humans and the nature of humans, why I take notes. All this might explain why ponies are still findable in our scattered and checkered world.

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MADE WITH REAL INGREDIENTS is a bold and enthusiastic statement printed on a package of edibles I just opened. Yes, I still read cereal boxes and candy wrappers and creepy instructions. Yes, I still get some pleasure and puzzlement out of disjointed statements such as THIS FILM CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT. This basically says the movie contains content. Wouldn’t we all assume this…or can content contain content? Some things are worthy of consideration, some are worthy of a good laugh and a nearby trash can.

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I wonder whether I’ll ever see a package that states MADE WITH UNREAL INGREDIENTS.

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I wonder whether I can prove that I am made with real ingredients.

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Is this an unreal expectation on my part?

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Don’t bother answering. I’m busy trimming down a Quaker Oats box to form a trading-card-size image to slip into the bubblegum card display at the shop.

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Can’t wait to watch the browser’s reaction

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/9HO3b6u9yig

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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A TASTE OF COOL CLEAR WATER

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Cousin Little Pat Hassell is slowly pulling an old rope downward, leaning over the side of a deep front-yard well. As he pulls, a clunking sound from below signals the ascension of a wooden bucket filled with water.

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Eight-year-old Jimmy Three watches coverall-clad Little Pat as he labors to secure the bucket, swings it to rest on the edge of the well, then reaches for a large ladle.

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We’re back in actual time now, some seventy-five years ago. Jimmy Three and Little Pat stand in sight of a breezeway clapboard family home on the North River  of Tuscaloosa County.

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The well is the source of all water for the Hassell family. Jimmy Three is just visiting. A nearby outhouse stands guard, as does a grunting plow mule and Aunt Dinah’s simmering collard greens.

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Jimmy Three licks his lips in preparation for the well water that he considers to be magical, coming from the depths of the earth and all. At home across the Black Warrior River, Jimmy’s family has indoor plumbing, thus indoor running water on tap at all

times—no effort required.

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This is like being a Davy Crockett explorer, this retrieval of deep water from the original source. He learns later that Davy himself once explored the North River country and entertained the idea of settling down here. That did not work out, but the pioneers and Indian tribes who populated the area did drink the same water that Little-Pat and Jimmy Three are about to drink.

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The ladle is full of cool, clear water. Nothing ever tasted as good as this water. Jimmy savors its fullness, its heft, as he glugs.

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Little-Pat does the same, but in a more routine fashion. This is an everyday occurrence for him, a once-a-year adventure for Jimmy Three.

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For the rest of his childhood, in fact for the rest of his life, Jimmy Three will cherish this baptism from sacred groundwater.

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Whenever he slurps from a public fountain, sips from a garden hose, peers into a plastic restaurant cup of suspicious fluid, grabs a convenience store bottle of unknown-sourced refreshment…whenever he splatters his face in the wee morning hours, whenever he tilts an earthen mug, whenever he wonders how all those fizzy bubbles showed up in that cola…he recalls the North River and Little Pat and deep dark places where water hides out.

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All this time later the grown-up Jimmy Three is still momentarily captured by memories past whenever he hears the Sons of the Pioneers sing,

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“Can ya see that big, green tree where the water’s runnin’ free? And it’s waiting there for you and me? Water, cool clear water.”

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The squeak and clunk of rope and bucket remain sweet music just in time to take me back to the loving protection of memories that refuse to go away

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/4Upi-kTkOHo

or read his transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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SHARING OUR LOAD SIDE BY SIDE

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“Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money, maybe we’re ragged and funny,

But we’ll travel along, singing a song, side by side.”

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I am plying my trade at the pc keyboard. Trying to make sense or silliness of the world around me.

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Either will do for now, you know. If I can’t delve deeply and discover the good the gooder and the goodest in life, at least I can search for silliness and a good laugh.

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Sometimes silliness and a good laugh will guide me through the day.

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“Through all kinds of weather, what if the sky should fall,
Just as long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter at all.”

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That song, that song. It keeps circulating through my daily activities. It is reaching out. Maybe it wants to tell me something.

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It does go on.

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“When they’ve all had their troubles and parted,
We’ll be the same as we started,
Just trav’ling along, singing our song, side by side.”

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At last it occurs to me that this is an old, old, 1920s song. A cheer-up song. A merry-distraction song.

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And now I recall the best performance of this song I ever witnessed.

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It is grammar-school time in my life, a time so far back that you could not possibly have been present to witness it. Here’s what I remember:

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Schoolmates Betty Jean Raiford and Betsy Boyer are all decked out for a short show they are about to perform right in front of the classroom of small students such as me.

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They wear coveralls and straw hats and imagine themselves to be merry hoboes on their way to who knows.

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Betty and Betsy are dancing and singing this old song. It is fun and funny.

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Here’s the best part: It’s bunches of decades later and I still remember the lyrics and the dancers and the schoolroom and the slanted wooden desks. I still feel the electricity in the air, the toothy smiles of the best-friends-for-life duo, the sound of soft hands applauding.

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Whatever happened to the bandanna-wrapped walking stick these merry hoboes waved about during their skit?

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Anyhow, Betty and Betsy did a good thing that day so long ago. They created a fond memory for me. A fond memory I can recall anytime I please.

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Incidentally, Betty Jean Raiford and Betsy Boyer remain best friends to this day. They are still a great team though they live far, far apart.

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All my far-back pals and playmates and friends still run amok and amuck in soggy, happy old memories, side by side by side.

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They can’t become mortal and finite because I won’t let them

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Visit Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/ZbcLI9F1NwM

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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SPAM: THE FINAL FRONTIER

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It is one of those make-do nights in my Down South home.

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The refrigerator is filled with stragglers from dinners past. Now that the family is fed, it is my time to determine what is edible for me. Time to pick through what’s left and prepare something for my dining pleasure.

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What’s here?

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There is always mayonnaise. I retrieve it and place it on the stove counter.

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Some peanut butter rests next to the sink. It goes next to the mayo.

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Let’s see…there is a semi-ripe banana within easy reach. I could use that.

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Lettuce. Hmm…is there usable lettuce in the crisper? Yep, here’s a wedge. It clusters next to the other victuals awaiting their lonely fates.

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OK, what else will satisfy me on the run? My main criterion is to feel temporarily full, so what can I add to the mix?

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Half a loaf of seed-strewn brown bread is hiding behind a block of butter in the fridge.

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Two slices coming up.

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Wife Liz is munching on her own leftover meal and warily observing my meanderings.

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She is a patient soul.

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Shall I add marmalade? Nope, not this time.

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I grab a can of dried fried onions from the wall cabinet, place it in the display.

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What about salami? Nope, my stomach is not as tough as it used to be.

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I find a small red plate and place it on the counter, arrange side-by-side two slices of seedy bread.

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Next I kitchen-knife a dollop of mayo and spread it evenly onto one slice. Using a second knife, I drop a hunk of peanut butter onto the other slice and caulk the surface.

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With yet a third knife I peel and slice the banana, then row up the mushy circles onto the peanut butter.

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A couple of lettuce leaves top the peanut butter and banana disks.

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Where was I?

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Oh, a sprinkling of onions will add crunch to the meal. And maybe a palmful of shredded cheese I just remembered to fetch from the crisper.

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I glance at Liz, who is successfully not verging on nausea.

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I pick up one slice of bread, flip it face-down onto the other slice. Yet another knife is employed to slice the sandwich into four symmetrical finger foods.

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I generously offer Liz one of the mini-snacks, she politely declines.

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Now I grab my nearby fizzy drink and transport the red plate and myself into the studio, where we will eat side-by-side, chat about the day, enjoy each other’s company, and marvel over the fact that we can still appreciate our mutually exclusive eating habits.

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Damn! I suddenly remember that there is a can of Spam in the pantry. Guess I’ll save it for another day. I can only push the relationship so far

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 © 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/wbtKFmcZRn8

or read the transcript below:

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Life, actually…

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BIG BOTHER IS WATCHING ME

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As a big-hearted and lovely region of the country, My Down South manages to escape some of the steamrolling distractions that chase the day-to-day quest for peace and quiet and smooth sailing I hunger for.

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As Mister Cool himself, Ferris, said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

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Noticing can make my day a tiny bit better.

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I discard most of my random thoughts as being, well, random. Random and useless. But now and then I listen to the Voices, just to see if anything new vies for attention.

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For instance, it feels good to believe what it is convenient to believe, even if it is fake. No joke. This is a thought deserving a second take. Quick, before it sinks: Sometimes it is good to believe something just because it is convenient and pleasant, even though deep inside I know it to be temporary and rather worthless.

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Another passing fancy: Today is the day when happening almost happens. You know, what I want to happen, what I am certain will happen, simply does not happen—at least for today. I can live with that.

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/booksidwanttoreadifonlytheyexisted.mp3

or read on…

Sometimes I just gotta pause and get something silly off my chest. These book titles are cluttering my mind. I wrote this entry eleven years ago. Nothing has changed.

BOOKS I’D WANT TO READ IF ONLY THEY EXISTED

Think and Grow Sluggish

 The Count of Monte Crisco

Apocalypse Week Before Last

The Lord of the Bathtub Rings

The Kindle Thief

The Next to the Last of the Mohicans

Munchies at Tiffany’s

The Whining

The Rise and Fall of the Third Facelift

Madame Bovine

Putin on the Ritz

Love in the Time of Croup

The Canterbury Tweets

Moby Bernie

Catcher in the Gluten Free Rye

Gone with the Breeze

Pride and Aimlessness

As I Lay Scheming

50 Shades of Puce

For Whom the Bull Toils

Mein Kampfire

Withering Heights

Fahrenheit 17 1/2

The Electric Band-Aid Ouchy Test

Abraham Lincoln’s Aerobics Class

The Outsiders Go Shopping

In Lukewarm Blood

Harry Potter and the Hangnail of Death

Twelve Years a Slave to Fashion

The Full Monty Python

© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed

Catch Jim’s youtube podcast: https://youtu.be/a1Rk8kKfaFY

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Life, actually…

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HOW TO RE-REVIEW AND RE-RENEW YOUR WORLD

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“Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore…”

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The lyrics of an old Yuletide carol fade from memory, quickly replaced by a  New Year that is happening with or without my permission.

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Here it is, ready or not.

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So, what will this newborn era bring to me? What will I bring to it?

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Is it in control of me, or am I the baton-wielding conductor?

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How can the world as it is, co-exist with the world it could be?

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Enough with the soul-searching questions, away with the philosophizing. It’s time to get on with life.

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Happy New Year!

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Sometimes, stopping to smell the roses can be thorny. But sometimes, it’s a good way to re-start, re-boot, refresh, renew.

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You might even consider getting up close and allowing the roses to enjoy you.

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Let me toss a thought or two into the atmosphere. Here are some notions about gaining control of your world on your own terms:

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Sit still in a park or restaurant or window and carefully observe the first village elder who passes by. Memorize every graceful move, scrutinize all limited motions, note the assuredness, the insecurity, the constant overlap of mind and matter, the recollections that must be occurring.

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Sit still and carefully consider the fact that you are gazing through a portal to a future time. You are observing yourself as you might be some future day.

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Then, consider what suggestions you the future Elder might offer to this present-moment version of You.

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If nothing occurs, consider what you would like to say to that distant-future You.

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Be kind.

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Carefully observe the reactions of both selves.

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Close your eyes for 90 seconds and bring your selves together in peace, understanding and harmony.

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Snap!

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Some other harmless but notable things to do:

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At a public event, pretend you are about-facing in order to view the audience behind you, ignoring what’s up front. 

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The audience is the real show. Everything else is artifice.

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Carry snapshots of your parents and grandparents and brag about them every chance you get.

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Have someone read you a bedtime story.

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With eyes closed, clutch a very old book to your chest for an hour and imagine what is happening inside that volume. Then, open it up and view the pop-up world within.

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If all this unsolicited advice is too strange for you, make your own list of ways to view this new year. You are a passenger, but now and then you can occupy the driver’s seat.

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Turn the world upside-down for a day and tell me what that was like

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/xcpKRptHlRw

or read the transcript below.

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Life, actually…

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GIVE US PATIENCE RIGHT NOW!

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Encroaching holidays give me an excuse to examine the ol’ Red Clay Diary for signs of intelligence past…in this case, Christmas past.

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Here is an entry from more than a quarter-century ago. A long time gone. Another era. Lives passed by but always on call in the journal of your heart…

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Well, Christmas runs hot and cold down here in the Deep South. The temperature in Birmingham will be below 20 for the next two nights—that’s cold for us Alabamians!

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Will Phil (my philodendron here at the shop) make it through the night? Will our pet finch make it? Will water pipes freeze despite the fact that we’ll be practicing the trickle-down theory of thawed-plumbing-flow all night?  Will I be able to get the fire started without kindling, just to make us think we’re Christmas-warm in our century-old house? Or will I cop out and place a particle-board log under the real one to make it burn well?

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Will my daughter’s car start in the morning or will I have to grumble-crank it myself?

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Will I think kindly of all those people in other parts of the world who are roughing it in a deep winter with multi-footed banks of snow? Will they think of us as victims of tornadoes and prickly heat?

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And will I have just the right book to cuddle if we get frozen in by one inch of snow (really—that’s about all it takes to shut down the city here under the right conditions)?

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Of course.

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Even though I wander among thousands of books in my shop, I do sneak a few home every night to rummage and ruminate through. Can’t get enough.

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Maybe tonight will be catalog night. I’ll look at what other people might be buying for themselves…might have been buying for themselves a generation or two ago. Nothing in the catalogs will be as oddly diverse as the titles around me right now.

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My book patrons and I—we the book guardians—wait patiently. As browsers pause and examine, brows furrowed, lip corners turned upward, what will they adopt? What will they carry home?

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We watch patiently, fascinated by the mysterious process.

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The suspense is beautiful and maddening.

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O Book Cosmos, please grant us patience—and of course we want patience this very minute!

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The Season is sneaking closer. Prepare ye for unconditional moments of pleasure blended with the jittery knowledge that each good moment may be jumped by a snarling unpleasant moment. But that just means that yet another good moment is preparing to pounce

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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed