Have you signed up for the Good Morning Polk! Newsletter yet? No? You’re missing out. Make sure to sign up here. Reminder: if you signed up and aren’t yet receiving it, there might be a good reason for that. Check your spam folder. Some folks have been seeing it there…
Instead of a “Message of the Day,” as I’ve come to think of it in my head but without giving it a real title, instead this is something else completely. Call this a random item I threw together representative of writing I’ve done before, and plan to provide in the near future on KevintheEditor.com. It’s not fiction, or verse, or commentary. Just collected thoughts that came out this way.
For those interested, subscribe ahead of the launch of the site in the coming weeks by paying $5 a month now (or the full $60 a year) and get content on a daily basis at a discounted rate.
I hope you enjoy this item. Feel free to drop a reply with any commentary you wish to give at kevin@polk.today. Good or bad, I don’t mind hearing what you have to say.
…
Who is “They”
They call it wanderlust.
It is that nagging tension in the legs to lead their owner outdoors after the chill of winter has waned away to the early promise of spring. The desire in the soul to go explore, set forth and see new lands and undertake new experiences. Senses go wild with want for new tastes and smells and sights the imagination cannot conjure, for it has no frame of reference to create the false memory within our minds.
They call it nuance, without even the notion of the various shades of gray it takes to get to the thin line where the word lives.
People exist with the concept that everything is about the two sides between every story without any in between, deciding after hearing both sides who is right and who is wrong. All are right, all is wrong. The point is that whatever the event between both parties or everyone happened in the first place. Separate realities cannot co-exist in the same space. One thing happens, then the next, each of us the stars of the show our conscious minds tell us to explain what is going on.
My story bumped into yours today. Sorry about that.
They call it chaos.
Not exactly that, but the idea that we can govern the events that happen in our daily lives anymore than we can control the whims of the wind and the sea is on the spectrum of insanity. But it isn’t exactly chaos. We steer the ship between the hazards and sometimes we end up in smooth waters, and others we take a course that finds us on the rocks and shoals. We wonder how this happened, blame others for our mistakes. We forget to point the finger at the person in the mirror when we’re in the thick of it. Only later do we realize the error of our ways.
They call it an earworm.
The song stuck in the back of the brain on repeat, or the phrase that won’t go away no matter how many times it is spoken aloud. Think of the beginning of this chorus “I would walk 500 miles” and try for your life not to want to sing the rest of it aloud. It is the unspoken idea that won’t go away, the invention for that gizmo that you think will be the million dollar invention that saves humanity. Somewhere in the back of someone’s mind is an earworm that is the cure for cancer. One day it’ll come out.
They say nothing is original.
It’s a small, small world and everything is a copy of what we’ve done in the past and what we will do in the future. Hollywood loves a sequel bringing back an 80s franchise. Publishers enjoy the homage to Shakespeare and Hemingway, praise authors who invoke the spirit of someone not around anymore to cry foul. People will remember the flawed idea presented and locked inside of memory forever.
They like to kick you when you’re down.
Ugly world that we live in, the moment you’ve reached the top of the mountain you find that someone’s at the bottom with a bunch of dynamite trying to bring it all crashing down. No one is immune to a culture who loves a hero, but also enjoys the schadenfreude of seeing what skeletons they have in their closet. Everyone wants success, no one wants to pay the cost to get there. Give me fifteen minutes of fame, and let me walk away set for life. That’s not how the story goes, the ending is always somehow tragic.
They say don’t be fooled by a story that sounds too good to be true.
Yet we do it all the time, with the good stock tip, the 100% guarantee to make money deals. The 3 a.m. infomercial exists for a reason. People buy the plastic doodads promising to save us time and money in the kitchen, or to make our muscles stronger despite sitting in front of our flat screens. Products promising beauty, to reduce the fine lines of aging, to restore the health we’ve lost with a single pill a day.
They will call this free association without any point.
They will be correct, but the thoughts were fun while they lasted.
-Kevin the Editor
Sherman Davis is college-bound
Rockmart fans can celebrate after another Jackets football player signed with a school to continue his career on the college level.
Davis will be going to Hanover University where he’ll play for the Panthers and plans to go into Criminal Justice Studies. More on this later today.
(Note for post readers: this is an example of the kind of content you get as a free subscriber to the Good Morning Polk! Newsletter, published regularly and delivered by e-mail. Subscribe here!)
Farmer’s Market today!
Don’t forget the Rockmart Farmer’s Market is coming up today! See above for the Market preview.
Today’s forecast
It’s the perfect day to be outside based on the latest from the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. It’s mostly sunny and 75 for the day, with a low of 50 overnight. The stretch of good weather continues with temps in the upper 70s through the weekend… Happy Birthday to me…
Something to Watch this Morning
Instead of writing a Tech Corner Thursday, I’m going to let you watch This Week in Google instead from one of my favorites, Leo Laporte (he used to be on TechTV before it became G4, then became Spike.) They explain what an NFT is (essentially one-time digital creativity that a single person owns the rights to, just like when you buy fine art.) It’s more than two hours long. You can fast forward over the parts you don’t care about…
Something to Read this Morning
$1400 checks cleared the House on Wednesday. Awesome!
COVID vaccination is expanding here in Georgia as the supply grows. More on the numbers locally over the past days coming up shortly. Hint: they are really low in the past days.
The first thing I ever recorded was on cassette, and likely still in my spare bedroom collection under dust. The man who invented a medium that shaped music tech is gone.
Facebook seek dismissal anti-trust suit against them. Ummmm… I’m of many minds on this one…
Hershel for Senate? If former President Trump thinks it is a good idea, then maybe Mr. Walker will think twice before jumping into the race.
I’ll side with The Atlantic’s David A. Graham on this one: the GOP ain’t going anywhere. They are however going to still face a challenge of getting new voters to flip to the current conservative brand. Based on their moves so far, it is business as usual for Republicans. which seems to be every Democratic idea is a bad one.
Polk.Today Facebook commenters overwhelmingly agreed time changes are dumb. Apparently, these guys agree and are backing Federal legislation for one time to rule them all.
Beth Moore splits ties with Southern Baptists. (NYT)
