John R Purcell

An early morning walk before the days activities begin is usually uneventful. There are few cars or trucks on the road and the only other people you see are other walkers, some walking their dogs , or joggers. One morning an event occurred that was out of the ordinary. I was walking down a road which had four lanes of traffic and a median in the center. There was no traffic on the road at this early hour except for an old model minivan approaching toward me on the other side of the median and continuing on past me.

The other day at lunch I bit on something hard which turned out to be a piece of a tooth that had broken off. When I checked my teeth in a mirror I saw that it had come from one on the left side of the upper jaw and was visible when I smiled. Although I am not one to smile often, it would be embarrassing to appear in public and display my gap tooth smile, so a visit to the dentist was quickly arranged. At the dentists office it was determined that it would be necessary to remove some of the broken tooth and install a crown, an artificial tooth, in place of it.

Usually the news on television and in the daily newspapers is full of the most shocking and depressing events that are taking place everywhere. When the local television stations break into a news program with the announcement, "This Just In", it will probably be a report about some violent crime or a disaster of some kind. Though all of this is very depressing, the news stories that bother me the most are those about the abuse and cruel treatment of animals.

These days when mail can be sent and received electronically in seconds with computers, it is rare to receive a hand written personal letter the old fashioned way, delivered to your mailbox. So it was a surprise to Mr. Persky when he found one in his box with his name on it in large , printed letters, but with no address or stamp, obviously left by someone other than the mailman. When he opened it he found a sheet of lined notebook paper with hand printed lettering typical of a child's writing, and when he saw the name of the sender, he knew who sent it.

As I was watering some hanging plants in the backyard, I noticed that one seemed to be fading away. The stem and branches were becoming gnarled and pitted and although it still had some green leaves, I was sure that it was dying. Later on all the leaves were gone and the branches looked like dead wood. It was time , I thought, to uproot it and discard it to the trash can but as I was about to do so I noticed a tiny bit of green poking out of the tip of one of the branches. As long as there was some life left in it, I decided to let it be.

There are many different concepts of art that artists use to display their artistic talents. One of them is called "abstract art" and since I have a family member, an artist who uses this concept very successfully, I have seen many abstract paintings. There are several adorning the walls of my home, in fact. I know now that many people love this form of art and will pay large sums to own them, but I must admit that I do not see what they must see and I won't pretend that I do.