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From the Editor By R.D. Hohenfeldt Managing Editor T.S. Eliot declared April
“the cruelest month” in the long, boring and aptly titled poem
“The Waste Land,” which ranks second to Silas Marner as the biggest
waste of my time in high school English. That’s just my humble
opinion; you can disagree and I won’t be angry. Indeed it has been a pretty
cruel month in the past. Both the American Revolution and the War for Let’s change the subject from
war and death to something better, something like jokes and poetry, for
April is also National Humor Month and National Poetry Month. I don’t
know who declared it to be so; maybe it was Congress. In honor of National Humor
Month, here’s a joke I heard recently: “Two good old Ozarks boys are
drinking coffee at a diner when one says to the other, “My wife gave
me the best birthday present I could ask for yesterday, a brand-new,
top-of-the-line hearing aid.” The other old boy says, “What kind is
it?” And the first one looks at his watch and says, “It’s 2:30.”
Well, it’s kind of funny. In honor of National Poetry
Month, here’s a poem I recently wrote in honor of the April 1 The doctor says I’m way too
fat If you don’t think that’s
pure poetry (and you really shouldn’t) I’ll just encourage you to
continue reading this month’s issue where somewhere you’ll find some
mighty fine poetry, better than anything either I or T.S. Eliot could
come up with. I’ll also encourage you to pick up a pencil and piece of
paper and write your own poem and send it to me. This April, we’ll also be
celebrating Easter, a movable holiday that sometimes falls in March.
I’ve never understood how to figure out the date of Easter. I don’t
know who decides this, maybe Congress. I guess I could look it up, and
maybe I will someday, though not today, for it is not that important to
me. What is important is the reason
for celebrating Easter. Like every Sunday, it is a day to commemorate
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The church (I
guess it wasn’t Congress, after all) hundreds of years ago picked out
the springtime to have a special celebration of Jesus’ coming back to
life. Spring was the time the pagans celebrated rebirth of the earth, so
the church thought it would fit in just right. The same thing happened
with Christmas, the pairing up of a pagan holiday with a church
celebration. Now because of that pagan
connection, there are some churchgoers who think it is ungodly to
celebrate Christmas or Easter, but especially Christmas. They make a
truly major big deal out of it, and not celebrating these holidays makes
them feel super-righteous. I look at it this way: I used
to be an unbeliever, and now I’m a believer in Jesus Christ as my Lord
and Savior. I’ve been redeemed. The church did the same thing with
pagan holidays; they “redeemed” them, so to speak, and gave them new
meaning and purpose. Don’t misunderstand me now. I
am not holier-than-thou. In fact, I’m quite sure that I am unholier-than-thou.
I do not claim to be a good person. I am pretty doggone evil. I talk
rough, think lustful thoughts and am impatient. I am coarse and
ill-mannered. My hair is not pretty. I usually need a shave. I expel gas
frequently. I am offensive and lack basic social skills. You do not want
the likes of me in your church, but don’t worry, you’ll probably
never see me there. There’s only one church in all the land that I
have found that accepts people of my ilk. It is wonderful country
church, which I’ll not name, because I don’t want to embarrass the
good folks who love that church. I attend Sunday School there fairly
regularly; it is the Goodness, this column has
gotten religious all of a sudden, and I don’t like that because,
although I love the Lord, religion gives me the creeps. Also, this
column is in danger of being as long and boring as The Waste Land and
Silas Marner combined. Go to church for Easter, thank Jesus for dying to cleanse you of your sins and for rising again to assure you of eternal life. Come back here to see me next month.--RDH --- For the first two weeks of the month, the temperature here in the Ozarks was in the high 20s or low 30s every morning. It has warmed up, though, during this third week of the month, and the weather sorcerer says it's going to be nice for awhile. Be warned, though, that we'll still have some frosty weather. I had a nice conversation with Mr. Yelton in the parking lot at Brown Veterinary Clinic a couple days ago, and he said there'll be frost in May, just as there always is in the Ozarks. That's why you've got to be careful about planting too early in the spring. People get anxious about planting tomatoes, and they wind up losing them. Bill Sands at Sands Farm and Home Center said eople were exasperated with him in early March because he didn't have tomato plants ready for them. Folks, that is way to early around here to put out your tomato plants. Today, Wednesday, April 18, is beautiful. We've got wispy clouds in a light blue sky. The sun is brilliant. It's a good day to find a copy of The Ozarks Chronicle, find a sunny spot and a cup o'coffee and enjoy reading something down-home and uplifting. The news in the newspapers and on television and radio is not so good. Although I'm 53 years old and a man, I weeped a little this morning while watching Fox & Friends. They showed photos of some of the people killed on the Virginia Tech campus, listing the students' class year and hometowns. There were some professors shown, too, including the one fellow from Romania who was a Holocaust survivor. I teared up because there was so much potential lost when those children died and so much mentoring left for those professors to do. All of those people loved somebody and were loved by somebody, and that love can't be adequately expressed now, because of the actions of a troubled young man. I'm even sad for the killer. It's difficult for me to hate the mentally ill Korean student who murdered those people and then killed himself. He was somebody's son and grandson. He, too, had some potential that is lost now. Of course, if he had lived to be arrested, he would have, in my opinion, had to pay for his crimes with his own life. May God have mercy on him, on his victims and on all of us who are here to live and work another day. |