A Thousand Stars across the Sky

This is the one-thousandth blog that I have posted here – 1,000!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve writ too much and too little said,
but ‘tis something to remember me by when I am dead!

This is the one-thousandth blog that I have posted here – 1,000! That is quite extraordinary, I suppose. A few thousand pages of blather from an old man who thinks he sees things a bit more clearly than most people, but who, in truth, probably has a poor focus on life and truth. Who knows?

One thing is certain. For my grandchildren and, perhaps, their grandchildren, I have spread a thousand stars across the sky. They are little points of light that will reveal me completely to them – “…the good, the bad and the ugly,” if I may steal from a 1966 movie directed by Sergio Leone. To remind you, that was the reason for all of this writing; that is, to leave behind a record of me and my nature and character.

I know a little about one of my grandfathers and nothing of the other. Of great-grandfathers there is no record of them available to me (not even a name in one case) – though, heaven knows, I have searched. I deeply envy my wife that she has so much incredible information about both sides of her family, going back many generations.

Some people, I guess, don’t care and, I also guess, that is perfectly all right; however, I do and I have been left quite a void when I search for information about what these grandparents thought or did in their lives. Nothing!

Now these thousand blogs will be printed and enough volumes will be given to my grandchildren that they may someday share them with their grandchildren also. Perhaps, along the way, in years distant from now, some great-grandchild will wonder and he will have some kind of record, from my childhood right up to my last years, of who I was.

Was it all a vast ego-centric project? Some will say so! Perhaps they are correct. I do not know, but I do know that it sprung out of the futility of my search for information about my grandparents.

I could end my blogging today – here with my one-thousandth blog – and, from here on, think and write more privately; yet, now there are readers, however few, who don’t want me to do that. For them I will continue to write and things may get rather intense as we round the bend toward the home stretch of this election season.

During the 2008 election campaign this blog reached the height of its popularity and, for a stretch, had approximately 5,000 readers each week. The number has dwindled to about 500 regular readers now. For some reason they continue to come here, prying and trying to find out what is on my mind. If you read me regularly you understand that I do not write in a degage manner. My soul is often bared here and my feelings are often intense. That will never change. That is a promise.

One of my readers, in trying to explain this blog to others, called it eclectic. Yes. Indeed. I’ve never found that a flattering word, but, in this case, I think it fits the bill. The dictionary says it is an adjective and roughly means…

• selecting or choosing from various sources
• made up of what is selected from different sources

From the many communications I receive, I can also tell you that I have an eclectic readership – and that is nice.

Fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
-- Christoper Marlowe, “Doctor Faustus”

So, I thank all of you who come here and read me so faithfully and for such friendly reasons. I keep trying to be creative and meaningful in my eclectic sort of way. For instance, a little verse of mine follows that is inspired by John Milton’s line from Paradise Lost: “…with thousand thousand stars that then appeared, spangling the hemisphere…”

I shall rise one night no longer here
but there among a thousand thousand stars
that suddenly appeared and lit my way
into a blissful, spangled eternity

fear not my loss and cry not for me
for I am home at last and not far away
among these brilliant, glimmering lofts
where I may rest and safeguard you

___________________________

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