By Wayne Allensworth We are strangers in our strange-and-getting-stranger land. Alienation? That’s not quite what I’m thinking of, though what we see seems alien to any sane mind. The country is, in fact, largely unrecognizable, though flashes of our past appear occasionally in our collective line of sight. Landmarks remain, but they are glimpses of an exhibit at a museum. Unlike Moses, we are...
By Wayne Allensworth Eva Cassidy may be the best singer many of you have never heard of, and she may become the best singer you have ever heard. She died too soon in 1996 at age 33 of melanoma. I was living in the DC area at the time, and Eva frequently performed in clubs around town, but I learned of her too late, after she had passed away. She had just begun to attract attention, and her...
by Wayne Allensworth Christina’s World (Andrew Wyeth) Once upon a time in a world that seems like a galaxy far, far away, I wrote a creative writing piece inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s painting. I was 13 or so, and the paper was for an English class. The teacher liked it and read it aloud to her classes. I can’t remember what I wrote, but that painting made quite an impression on the young me...
By Wayne Allensworth (Pexels.com) A certain older gentleman of my acquaintance, let’s call him “Mr. K,” is noticeably, steadily declining. He had been hale, hardy, and robust, even after receiving his doctor’s grim diagnosis. Now he appears pale and drawn. The decline has been sudden and swift, but not unexpected. Mr. K, after all, is nearing 93. He suffers from bone cancer, and his once...
By Wayne Allensworth I’ve always known there were dogs that wouldn’t hunt, and that you should let sleeping dogs lie. I’ve walked in high cotton, bit off more than I could chew, kept tabs on something or someone, had to be careful what I’ve wished for more than once, and have been disturbed to find the fly in the buttermilk (or ointment). Your humble servant is always fixing to do...
by Wayne Allensworth Consider this a follow up to my Memorial Day Message. Harold Oliver Allensworth was my uncle and namesake (My full name is Harold Wayne Allensworth). He was killed in action on June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe. Sergeant Allensworth, the ball turret gunner on a B-24 christened “Sweating it Out” by its crew, would have turned 19 on June 29...
By Wayne Allensworth The deer have spotted me. They freeze for an instant, then go about their business, even as their eyes are subtly fixed on the human figure in the distance. I slowly move away from them, and they trot off into the distance. I come out to watch them in the mornings, their ever present, subtle grace, the stately solitude of their presence. The only sound the cooing of the dove...
By Wayne Allensworth The Searchers (1956), directed by John Ford, is a personal favorite of mine and a movie that influenced a whole generation of filmmakers, the generation of Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, and Scorsese. Spielberg has said that he watches The Searchers before beginning each new film project, and the opening doorway sequence (pictured below) has shown up in other films–notably...
By Wayne Allensworth On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman, read verses 1-10 of the Genesis creation narrative as they orbited the moon: We have lost the sense of wonder, of enchantment with and in our world. So many of us have become enveloped in a technological cocoon that regaining it will be difficult. Man has successfully manipulated his...
By Wayne Allensworth Gordon Lightfoot, Canada’s Minstrel of the Dawn, the travelling troubadour of Don Quixote, who warned Sundown to take care, languished in loneliness In the Early Morning Rain, and who wondered what would be discovered If You Could Read my Mind, has passed on at the age of 84. Sometimes I thought he could read our collective mind, as his songs were at once deeply personal and...
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