ARTICLE
An honest witness tells the truth.— Proverbs 14:5
There is a preacher man who stands apart through no fault of his own.
He stood on the balcony once, 40-plus years ago — “just yesterday, really.”
Said his so-longs and untils to the friend who was coming to his house later that night for dinner. He took four or five steps before the shots rang. He still hears that sound perfectly.
“Ka-pow.” Samuel “Billy” Kyles’ usually soft voice is powerful and sudden.
“That’s how it was. Ka-POW.”
Kyles — people who know him just call him Billy — remembers almost every detail of the hour before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis. And he vividly recalls what happened during the long, unreal moments after the shots were fired …
STORY
Return to Harmony
(Story inspired by Native American folklore)
Long ago, before there were clocks to measure the passage of time, the animals of the earth lived in great harmony.
Everybody had a job to do and did it gladly.
The birds carried seeds and replanted the forests.
The fish were the first to go to school. And they taught others the benefit of a good education.
The deer and the antelope helped keep the grasses trim.
The elephant and the water buffalo practiced team building and showed the others how to work together.
Even the wolf, the hyena and the cheetah did their part to keep life in balance.
Now the turtle was called the Great Protector. He was given this important turtle not because of his hard shell so much as his intelligence. If there was a misunderstanding between an iguana and an eagle, for example, the turtle always found a way to suggest a compromise.
This worked well for many, many years …
COPY
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The Exquisite Bite
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You are an airborne creature, all-female. You are elegant, full of grace — even if other creatures wouldn’t think so. Gray in color, you sport a tattoo on your back in a silver pattern shaped like a lyre.
Your two delicate wings, which can play harp-liked music, make it possible to hover swoop, spin and dive at will. When you land you do so with engineered grace, alighting like a mute Mars landing module on three pairs of legs. As with all of your species, your life is short but busy. And your body is made, well, for taking care of business.
Sure, your nose is the size of an elephant’s trunk compared to the rest of you, but wait till they see you use that nose!
Your name is Aedes. That’s Greek for unpleasant, but you haven’t a clue as to why. What you are about to do, for pity’s sake, is natural. It’s instinctive. You don’t mean any harm by it …