A DIRTY OLD MAN GETS WORSE John Cowart’s 2006 Diary John W. Cowart Bluefish Books CowartCommunications JacksonvilleFlorida www.bluefishbooks.info A DIRTY OLD MAN GETS WORSE: JOHN COWART’S 2006 DIARY Copyright © 2007 by John W. Cowart. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America by Lulu Press. Apart from reasonable fair use practices, no part of this book’s text may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bluefish Books, 2805 Ernest St., Jacksonville, Florida, 32205. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data has been applied for. Lulu Press # 1042186. Bluefish Books Cowart Communications Jacksonville, Florida www.bluefishbooks.info This book is dedicated to The Kid In The Attic and to VIRGINIA Who made me the dirty old man I am today. — jwc Other Bluefish Books You May Enjoy: Glog: A Dinosaur Novel Of Sorts A Dirty Old Man Goes Bad: John Cowart’s 2005 Diary A Dirty Old Man Gets Worse: John Cowart’s 2006 Diary The Lazarus Projects I’m Confused About Prayer Letters From Stacy Crackers & Carpetbaggers Moments In The History Of Jacksonville, Florida Strangers On The Earth Gravedigger’s Christmas & Other Tales Heroes All: A History of Firefighting In Jacksonville Rebel Yell: The Civil War Diary of J.T. Whatley, CSA Seeking A Settled Heart: The 16th Century Diary Of Puritan Richard Rogers The Diary Of Samuel Ward, A Translator Of The 1611 King James Bible John Cowart’s Daily blog can be found at www.cowart.info/blog/ Bluefish Books Cowart Communications Jacksonville, Florida www.bluefishbooks.info A DIRTY OLD MAN GETS WORSE JOHN COWART’S 2006 DIARY Introduction: Pixels, tiny dots of black, light or color, in a picture on your computer screen — That’s the way I think of the months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds of my own life. Viewed individually, they reveal little sense or purpose. But a picture emerges when these are blended together. It’s not a picture of me I’m a spear-carrier in the background of my own life. For close to 30 years I have kept a daily journal. Each posting by itself is a pixel. Some colorful, some light, some dark — very dark indeed. In 2006, I posted my journal entries as a daily blog. The blog’s title is Rabid Fun at www.cowart.info/blog/ and its heading reads: “A befuddled ordinary Christian looks for spiritual realities in day to day living.” I think the picture these pixels form shows what Christ is doing for, to, and spite of this one dirty old man. He’s got His work cut out for Him! My Webalizer counter shows that over 300 people a day read these blog entries. I can’t imagine why. Nothing good on tv, I suppose. Reading these entries you may get a few laughs. You’ll find a lot of befuddlement and foolishness. You’ll see a few tears and much joy. You’ll read about temptation, failure, frustration — and deep satisfaction. In all that, I hope you see far beyond the individual pixels, the little events of my mundane life, to see a bigger picture, a picture of Something truly beautiful. --John A DIRTY OLD MAN GETS WORSE John Cowart’s 2006 Diary John putting a ship into a bottle A DIRTY OLD MAN GETS WORSE JOHN COWART’S 2006 DIARY JANUARY Sunday, January 01, 2006 Future Plans An old saying goes: If you want to hear God laugh, make plans! A dizzy spell woke me up at 3:30 Saturday morning and stayed with me throughout the day; this curtailed plans I had to work on the car. I felt leery of taking the radiator apart if I might not feel well enough to put it back together again, so I stayed inside working on my manuscript all day. While Ginny disassembled Christmas decorations, I wrote out a work plan for the coming year. This meant trying to realistically examine what I hope to accomplish and evaluating whether or not it’s worth doing. Sometimes yea and sometimes nay. On some level I do want to be 100% at the disposal of Jesus Christ and available to fit into His plans; on another level, I have my own ideas that I want to push through come Hell or high water. I’ve pretty much decided to let other people take care of the young man dying of cancer, yet I’m trying to stay open to the work if I see I’m really needed. I’ve looked at my motives for wanting to be involved (being with a group of insiders, wanting to impress folks with my hands-on piety, and crap like that) and I see my motivation is a great deal less than love. On the other hand, I realize that a person in need doesn’t give a damn about the motives of the helper – the soup tastes just as good to him even if I cooked with paternalistic motives. 2 — John Cowart At any rate, I decided not to help in this instance but I’m not satisfied with my decision and I’m open to changing my mind. During break times from our work, Ginny and I sat together smoking and recounting various things we have to be thankful about in 2005. We accumulated quite a list. Things have gone very well for us. We also nosed about things, good and ill, to anticipate in 2006. We’ll take those as they come. She also advised me about some formatting problems I’m having with the current manuscripts. As a writer, I used to envision a special niche in hell where editors would thrash around in flaming piles fueled by manuscript pages they had rejected. Now that I’m editing my own copy, I can see that editors may have suffered a bit in the here and now already. Their job is not as easy as it looks. I did get a pleasant stroke when an e-mail arrived from a young historian asking permission to quote from Crackers & Carpetbaggers, my book on Jacksonville history,. He’s writing his own book on J.E.T. Bowden, a politician in the 1880s, and wants to quote me as a source. I couldn’t be more flattered! I’m putting together a response with some tips so he can avoid some of the bogs I got stuck in as I wrote my own work. Another happy thing is that about 4 in the afternoon I received my very first New Year’s Greeting, an e-mail from Jellyhead, a young lady in Australia – where it was already the New Year. That was certainly a lift. Jennifer and Pat hosted a New Year’s Party at their house with pizza, videos, and milk shakes, with a trip downtown to see fireworks at midnight. Ginny & I planned to stay home and watch tv – but I fell asleep about 9:30 and the New Year managed to arrive without me. Reuters News Service reports that in Palu, Indonesia, a New Year’s Eve bomb exploded in a Christian market killing 8 people and mangling 53 others. The bomb was packed with nails to maximize damage. A Dirty Old Man Gets Worse — 3 According to the wire: Central Sulawesi has been plagued by religious violence and tension since the late 1990s. Fighting between Muslims and Christians from 1998-2001 killed 2,000 people, mainly around the Muslim town of Poso…. While a peace accord halted the 1998-2001 bloodshed in Central Sulawesi, violence has erupted sporadically. In one of the worst incidents, three teenage Christian girls were beheaded near Poso last October. Bombings last May in the Central Sulawesi Christian town of Tentena killed 22 people. Inter-communal violence has killed thousands in Indonesia since the downfall of longtime autocrat Suharto in 1998. The nation of 220 million people has experienced several major bomb attacks on Western targets as well, mostly blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a group seen as al Qaeda's Southeast Asian arm. In addition to such violence, Indonesia is experiencing an outbreak of polio, and bird flu still looms on the horizon. Last year my book on prayer was translated and published in Indonesia. If you're inclined to pray, please ask the Lord to help my little book on prayer honor Him in this troubled place and time. Monday, January 02, 2006 An Ordinary Day Yesterday I drained the car’s radiator and poured in new antifreeze. A neighbor saw me working on my car and asked me to jump start hers. Ginny mended clothes and caught up on odds and ends chores she’s been meaning to get around to. I answered a few e-mails and researched the shipwreck photos Wes gave me last week, but I couldn’t identify the wreck. It was not the one I thought. Ginny & I watched football on tv. A common, ordinary, unexciting day. My blog heading says I’m a guy who looks for spiritual reality in daily life. So, where is God on a day like this? 4 — John Cowart The Bible says, “God is near”. It says, “In Him we live and move and have our very being”. Why wasn’t I aware of Him as I fiddled with the car or watched football? I wonder if it’s not that He’s far off, but that all of us -- like people who live in the mountains who take the view for granted – I wonder if we grow so accustom to ordinary, daily mercies that we loose sight of Majesty.