NOOKS AND CRANNIES

IT CAN HAVE A CERTAIN DESPERATION TO IT—we searched every nook and cranny. Or, you can describe your hoarding auntie—she has stuff crammed in every nook and cranny. Or, maybe it can prompt some sort of adventure—let’s explore every nook and cranny. Let’s talk about that one.

The Cambridge dictionary says that nooks and crannies are: every part of a place.

Dictionary.com says: Everywhere. This metaphoric idiom pairs nook, which has meant “an out-of-the-way corner” since the mid-1300s, with cranny, which has meant “a crack or crevice” since about 1440.

Since we’re going to go digging through nooks and crannies as a sort of adventure let’s start with the places. Places can be literal like an attic or basement, a library and even a book. Places can be your town, or your state, or beyond. Think about people like Lewis and his buddy Clark. As they trekked mapless across the continent it was pretty much all nooks and crannies. But, let’s go further, let’s say a place full of nooks and crannies can be your own mind and soul, your memories and your stories.

My adventure for now is sleuthing for goodness, truth and beauty in our modern day culture and in myself. I’m going to confess some despair, because in the thin, wide open, garishly-lit places of the 24-hour news cycles, politics, religion, social media, pop-culture, etc. I’m not finding much; goodness, truth, beauty that is. So, these must surely be in the nooks and crannies. I know they haven’t gone away completely. It’s just that most everything else is so loud, chaotic, shrill, flashing, strobing, grating, grinding, shallow, deceptive, false and dissimulating.

It sounds like I’m describing the Las Vegas strip. It’s kind of pretentious like that, but more pervasive and sneaky and ugly. I’ve been to Vegas twice: once for a trade show, once to accept an award for a web design project. I don’t like it at all. It’s not that I’m taking some moral highground, but I’ve been to Paris. I’ve been to New York many times. I would suggest that if you want to experience either, go there; not to some gaudy Vegas charade of those two great cities. (Although I would recommend seeing the 1963 film “Charade” starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.)

Excuse me while I get my train back on the tracks.

Do you find all of this—our current state of affairs—a bit disorienting? I do. Do you sort of despise the “new normal”? I do. Do you long for something solid that you can count on? I realize this is beginning to sound like a set up for some product I’m selling like an herb or oil or potion, like a wand Harry or Hermione might have, or maybe a book or a sermon. Sorry.

I do have this though: there is goodness, truth and beauty all around us. There is a certain joy in the search and in the discovery. Looking in the nooks and crannies always promises a eureka moment. I often find them in song lyrics like this scripture turned popular song:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

Or, in a verse:

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” —Jesus

Sometimes we can find them vicariously. Surely by now you’ve heard the stories of Steve Hartman. He is the Sherlock Holmes of uncovering goodness, truth and beauty; along the road. Here is his Facebook page. Click and rejoice. Discover them through Steve’s encounters.

Where do you find goodness, truth and beauty?

At the Heart of Town

WHAT IS THERE ABOUT THOSE ROADS that meander through the countryside in and out of small town after small town? I don’t know that my aversion to interstate highway travel is all poetic and Robert Frost-y in the sense of choosing a less-traveled road, if that’s even what the poem is about. But, I do like those roads.

Recently, My Amazing-Missus and I towed our little shiny Airstream through the “hill country” of Texas. Our first stop was in Waco, where we paid homage to the high priest and prietess of house re-doing. It’s a bit astonishing to see people come by the hundreds from hundreds of miles away to see the wonder that is Chip & Joanna. They do seem to bring a sort of beauty to the world; in more ways than just fixing-upping.

I remember hearing a speaker at a banking convention proclaim that when a small town loses its local bank, it is on its way to ghost town status. I remain skeptical of that opinion, but it did start me to thinking: what is vital to the beating heart of a  town or village?

We drove through one wide-spot in the road whose better days were behind it. On a large piece of land in the heart of the little town, where its school once stood, was a marker, reminding the few people left in the town that there was once a school with teachers and kids and sounds and smells and energy.

Maybe they were the Eagles, or Bulldogs, or Terrapins. Their “colors” might have been green & white, or blue & gold, but probably they were red & white.

So, what is it that makes the difference between a community having a pulse and being a ghost town?

Bank?
School?
Church?
Post Office?
Bar?
Barber shop / Beauty Parlor?

Or, one of those places when you can get gas, bread, milk, beer,  and lunch from a greasy, steamy glass case filled with fried stuff like okra, gizzards, potato wedges, and such; plus a 32 oz. plastic vessel of some soft drink to wash it all down?

As our trip through rural America continued, I may have discovered what it is that most every small town seemed to have. It was easy to spot them. Many are brightly painted and gaudily adorned. The local flower shop. Think about it. If the town still has one of these, not only do you have a vibrant business still left on main street, but you’re also likely to have its effervescent and flamboyant proprieter. You also have a place to buy a balloon for a birthday, a gift for graduation, Father’s Day, and a baby shower. After all what is a community if not a place to celebrate and make memories together. 

I haven’t forgotten the obvious: the flowers. How could we be a community without flowers? There will be Mother’s Days and Valentines Days. Oh, and the weddings.

And while there may not be ballgames, and school dances on the town calendar anymore, there will undoubtedly be the next funeral. You need community to bring flowers and a covered dish to the house to remind you that in the midst of deepest grief, there is a tomorrow and your community is with you.

While I’m on the subject of the essential role of beauty in the midst of despair, let me beg you to contact your congresspersons and implore them to not buy in to the ill-informed, misguided, ill-conceived, near-sighted and selfish scheme to strip funding for the National Endowment for The Arts and the National Endowment for The Humanities. It would be like burning down the flower shop of a small town, or telling Chip and Joanna they can’t fix-up anymore ugly houses, turning them into someone’s dream home.

If you don’t believe the arts are critical to our national well-being, go see this exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. You only have until July 2, 2017. If you want to go with someone, call me. I’ll join you and even buy your ticket.

Here’s another idea. Click here and Watch this. https://vimeo.com/194276412