Tim Herd

During one of the seemingly annual debilitating October snowstorms in my area, a branch fell across the power lines outside my house and caught on fire.  As we gazed, the blaze soon fired the wire itself, then ran with it all the way to the transformer at the edge of our property. An immediate and mighty flash lit up the entire Eastern Hemisphere (remember that!?), then we and many others were promptly plunged powerless into the cold dark night, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth…

Fortunately, we have a fireplace in the living room. So we purposely employed some of that downed branch’s relatives and invited the fire inside.

There, the small heap of formerly dry, inert logs, now ablaze with colorful, dancing flame, sustained us with light and heat. As the cordwood released its sizzling potential, occasionally spit-firing cascades of tiny shooting stars skyward, we watched, warmly mesmerized, as it altered our plight and prospects.

That’s the thing about fire and other catalysts of change. Their very appearance sparks significant transformations in themselves, their surroundings and ultimate destinies. (more…)

One of my dreams is to act in a film with my hero, Kermit the Frog. I love his natural optimism and team leadership as he artfully leaps from mayhem to mishap with his company of “frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and things” in pursuit of their dreams. In The Muppet Movie, they trek across the country through one misadventure after another until they rambunctiously arrive in the office of The Big Hollywood Producer, played by the indomitable Orson Welles. He glowers at the ragtag gang for several long moments, then summons his secretary to fetch the “Standard Rich and Famous Contract.” Jubilant Pandemonium! Slap-happy Music Reprise! Crack-brained Credits! The Blissful End!

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Brains are like the cars we ride
When put in gear and driven;
The highest peak or loneliest stretch
Is climbed and conquered, striven.

But fuel they need, and ignition too,
Or far they will not go;
Nor accomplish much on Life’s long trip
But waiting for a tow.

‘Cause brains not used are like the cars
Neglected ’til they’re rusted;
Though power lies beneath the hood,
Ignored, is just like busted.

But with the proper tuning,
Attention, love, and care,
Brains last much longer than the cars
And none the less for wear.

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Full disclosure: I never went to kindergarten. It didn’t exist in my rural township in those dark, early days soon after the ice sheet had receded from North America.

And so I never learned all those things that people learn in kindergarten: Things like… like…

Hmm. Maybe that’s the problem right there.

In the late 1950s, educational progress in our locale consolidated a dozen one-room schoolhouses into a “modern” elementary building. So a few days after I turned six years old, I started First Grade. My teacher, Mrs. Sham, wore what used to be called “coke-bottle glasses” (because the lenses were so thick), and what I called “teacher’s perfume.” (I have never met anyone else so distinctively scented in my life.)

I was an impressionable kid, and I learned many life lessons from Mrs. Sham: (more…)