A day at Crickhollow Studios...

A day in the life…. I have been thinking about writing one of those posts lately. You’ve seen them, where the studio artist type posts pictures or videos of what they’ve done that day with explanations and “how to” guides. I would cap off the post with lovely photographs of the finished product from the day. I enjoy blogs like that, but I’ve never felt the inspiration to put one together, until today.

My day started out at five this morning. I woke up just before the alarm clock went off, the last time I remember making note of the hour was around three or so. I don’t sleep much. I hit the shower and woke up standing in the lukewarm, half pressured mess the plumbing here provides. I went through the mindless movements of getting ready for a long day, then went out to put my shoes on. My wife was awake and sitting on the edge of the couch wearing the morning death stare waiting for me to get out of the bathroom.

“Good morning darling..” I chimed in the most pleasant voice I could muster, as I walked by her. She hit me with the usual noncommittal daybreak growl, she can’t stand mornings at all. I put my shoes on and headed for the coffee pot as I glanced back and forth between it and the clock on the microwave weighing time versus left over coffee if I made a pot… I decided to wing it without caffeine. I heard the car pulling up outside and called out my goodbyes to her as I went out into the new day…

This was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays mean the cancer treatment center with my brother. He was diagnosed back at the beginning of the year with pancreatic cancer. I’ve been taking him up there for his doctor visits and chemo treatments since some time around March. We go at least once a week, sometimes its more, but that’s rare, thank god. He had an early appointment today so we left at six. The drive to the Winship Cancer Center at Emory in Atlanta is an hour long mindless drone of a thing through Atlanta traffic. I fell into the endless line of talking I always do when I drive, yes.. even when I’m alone I talk when I drive. We were thinking it would be a good visit since the appointments were scheduled early, which would mean we wouldn’t be there all day long. That is always a danger when you go to Winship. The care you get when you are in the presence of the doctors and nurses is pretty good, its just the getting to that point that can be a royal pain in the ass. The scheduling department at Emory is not a well oiled machine. You can be scheduled for blood work at eight in the morning, then for chemo at four in the afternoon, then not get into the infusion center until five or six to start chemo. Those are the bad days. Luckily, my brother is one of those people that follows the edict of  “screw that I’m not waiting around there all day, I’ll go in for blood work at three, if they don’t like it I’ll just go home.” I believe that sort of attitude is In our family’s genetic make up.

We got there around seven thirty, Atlanta traffic being what it is, an hour and a half for an hour long drive isn’t too bad. We sat in the car for a little while then headed in. Blood work only takes a few minutes so we had a while to kill before heading into the hell that is the infusion center. Imagine a waiting room that is standing room only, with a couple of hundred people in various stages of a deathly illness waiting to get into a room the size of a school gymnasium so they can be hooked up to machines that pump poison through their bodies making them sicker in the short term, but better in the long run. You guessed it.. It’s a happy place.

I sat down next to the coffee machine and watched people trying to figure out how to drive it and look cool at the same time. I shared knowing glances with the folks in line that were old pros with this satanic thing they use in the infusion center. The machine, as I’ve come to call it, offers a variety of hot beverages, coffee being the most popular, but it has hot chocolate in it. The drink is god awful stuff, but it’s chocolate so I must have it. When the line is gone I hop up, knowing all too well how to run it, press large, then hot chocolate, then cream as I smile in triumph… only to hear snickering break out all around me. Then I notice, I did everything except for placing the damn cup under the spout. I laughed at myself and my arrogance as I watched the spill grate rapidly fill up while I was blindly grabbing a cup. I don’t mind being comic relief for these people. They deserve any sort of distraction they can get.

They called us back a few minutes after his appointment time had gone by, which is good for Winship, you can wait as long as two hours before they acknowledge your existence. We headed back to the nurse’s station so he could be weighed and sphygmomanometered, then it was on to “Bay B” each bay has six or so seats per side, facing each other, there isn’t much privacy. First you sit there for a while as the nurses run around and take care of other people there, then they come to you and get you ready, they connect all the necessary tubing to you, then they vanish for a while. They claim they are waiting on your blood work to come in from upstairs, but I think they do it for meanness. Once the blood work is in they put your medicine order in, this is the tricky part. The time depends solely on what it is you’re getting. My brother’s last round took about an hour to get ready, then three to four hours to run. He is on his second and final round of chemo, post whipple procedure. (The whipple procedure basically means they put you on an operating table, gut you like a fish, then re-plumb you so you can be all better. Not to pleasant, but if it saves your life, right?) This second round only takes thirty minutes to get ready and thirty minutes to run, so you’re usually only there two or three hours…

I was feeling a bit restless today as we waited on them to get to the point of getting him ready so I told him I had to go to the bathroom. I headed out through the waiting room and shook my head as I looked at the people standing around waiting for a seat and flashed on the sight inside the fusion center of all the empty chairs waiting to be filled. I recalled a nurse telling us on one of our “shut the place down” visits when we got out of there around eight o’clock in the evening, that they were sorely understaffed. I wondered how long you had to work in this profession before you became this jaded to the sight of these people waiting, hoping, and trying not to think about dying. People from the age of four or five to well past eighty with bald heads, sickly, pale, exhausted, wearing masks… it will, and does, rip your heart out. It’s enough to make you old, right quick.

I headed out the door and worked my way over to the parking deck to stand around for a few minutes. I had a smoke as I watched people going in and out, and thought about the irony of sneaking away for a cigarette at the cancer center… I stared up at the sky for a while as I steeled myself to go back in, took a deep breath and went for it. Once I made it into the infusion center I noticed that they had gotten my brother ready for his chemo, things were looking up. I sat down and he said something under his breath and nodded to the seat next to him, I saw then that his oncologist was there with his nurse practitioner. The doctors rarely make a visit to the infusion center so I knew something was up. He was sitting with an elderly lady who I then heard groan loudly. She was sitting in a wheel chair at the foot of her chemo lounge. I could discern from the conversation that this was her first chemo treatment. Her daughter was with her. The lady was complaining of pain. She had been up the entire night before throwing up, and had not stopped all day. They gave her one of the ubiquitous “sick bags” that hang on every wall in the cancer center, next to the “hand sanitizing” stations. She doubled over in pain and moaned loudly, groaning out that her stomach hurt. She began to cry as all human dignity left her. After almost a year of this I still can’t get used to this cry for help. The high pitched wail that gives way to the low guttural sounds as they double over. I stared at the floor and listened as it played down my spine and tried as hard as my soul could manage not to cry for this woman. She was sitting five feet in front of me, begging not to die as a crowd of medical professionals looked on and touched her shoulder. The place my mind goes during this type of thing is to see the faces of all the people I have met since this started that are no longer here, I have no choice. She knew that she was dying, and it scared the hell out of her. I was making it through the scene as they called an ambulance, and an EMT team showed up to help. They told the nurses and doctor that they could get her across the street to the emergency room, but they had no gurney, and the ambulance was about fifteen minutes away on Briarcliff.

It was then that I made eye contact with her daughter. The tired reddened eyes I know so well looked back at me. I felt every bit of her loss of hope. Her despair and helplessness went straight through my soul and burned a permanent impression on the core of my being. She looked at me, blinked a couple of times, and looked away. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and poured all of the love I could muster out of myself toward her, hoping beyond hope, that whatever god or creative force in the universe would take just a damn second to offer this woman a sliver of  mercy in her pain. I cursed anything that would bring this type of suffering upon a human being. I began to cry slowly and silently. I blinked repeatedly, trying in vain to stop my own eyes from becoming red. My feeling was to run to this woman, to hug her, to hold her, to offer anything, up to and including my own life, to bring her a few seconds of peace, just any… escape.

I took several slow breaths and opened my eyes to stare at the floor as I sat there, feeling useless. The nurse then returned to tell the EMT guys that insurance regulations dictated that she had to wait for the ambulance. The next emotion in line was anger, it always follows such deep sadness, always…  I wanted to get up, push them aside and wheel her in her chair to the elevator, down one level, through the tunnel that goes under the street, and directly into the emergency room that sits at the other end. A trip of probably five or six minutes, instead she had to wait on an ambulance several miles away to get here?

She continued to cry in pain and to call out how her stomach hurt as her daughter, doctor and EMT team stood there looking down at her. The doctor finally said, “We will get you something for pain.” as he walked away, quickly followed by his assistant. The nurse then appeared with a hypodermic of morphine and gave it to her. She slowly became quiet as she settled into whimpering. Her daughter stepped forward and began stroking her hair. I continued listening as I looked around the room. There was only one other person in the aisle with us, he was quietly reading a book as the chemo pumped through him. I looked at my brother for the first time and he too was staring at the floor. Finally the ambulance team arrived. They took little time assessing her, loaded her on the gurney, then walked out. The nurse appeared next to my brother and happily told him his medicine was ready as she began to get it ready to go. I sat there, trying to gather my thoughts and emotions. I couldn’t seem to make sense out of life at his point….

The thirty minutes of his chemo passed in just a few seconds as I felt anger and sadness fighting for control of my well being. The pump beeped its signal and the nurse came over to disconnect him. I stood up, looked down the aisle to the older gentlemen still reading his book, the eleven empty chairs and the nurses all standing around the computers. “Lets get the hell out of this place.” was all I could say at this point. He walked ahead of me and spoke up as we entered the waiting room, still full of standing, sitting and laying down patients. My brother said, “All these people in here and all those empty chairs in there, it doesn’t make any sense…” I replied with, “Overbooked and understaffed.”

I nearly broke into a run as I made my way to the exit, I couldn’t focus on the signs they have all around the place saying things like compassion, hope, etc… I just had to get out of that house of pain. I was nearly in panic mode when we walked through the door and I felt like I could breathe again. We made our way to the car and left.

Driving through the streets of Atlanta, all I could think about was that just a few miles away from all these people walking around, going about their daily lives as they smiled and talked to each other were hundreds of people fighting for their lives. “It amazes me that life goes on like this with all that pain just a few feet away, hidden from view.”

Normalcy slowly returned as I navigated my way down the interstate toward Newnan. I asked my brother if he was hungry, I had a destination in mind. He said he could eat as I drove toward downtown and a big sloppy cheese burger from Christy’s Café, I haven’t been there in a while and I needed a fix. I relished the tater tots and huge cheese burger as I slowly ate the life stealing mixture of animal fats deadly carbohydrates, washed down with a sweet tea with so much sugar a stirring spoon would’ve stood in the glass by itself if I let it go. We then walked around the block to the hobby store as he bought a new model, he has a penchant for classic movie monster models. We then left and headed toward home.

Once here I looked over my project sheet, made a few phone calls, answered some emails, and lined up the next work to do. I then went across the road to my brothers place with my two sons and we began to pick our way through a pile of oak limbs, looking for the right length for a hiking stick a customer needs. My brother was in his shop working on a window project he’s doing for his barn. We took the sticks I dug out up to his shop and he cut them for me on his saw. We stood around and talked about useless things few a few minutes then returned home. I organized my new finds, and adjusted the work schedule. Then got about prepping the new pieces for carving. I worked on that until my wife arrived home. Throughout this entire afternoon I could not get the sound of that woman’s cries for help or her daughters eyes out of my mind. Our older son got ready for work and headed out as number two son made preparations for his Wednesday night church trip with his cousin.

Once they had left, my wife broke out the jewelry project she had been thinking of making as I made dinner for us. As I prepared the meal, she put on some loud music, and for just a few minutes I was carried away to a place in time before life attacked me with responsibilities and worries that come naturally with age.

I sat down at the computer as our meal finished cooking. I logged onto a social network, checked email and stared at the screen as the music flowed all around me. I read about who was eating what for dinner, what someone thought about the idiot trying to get elected, how someone was getting their hair did, and who was getting drunk at which bar that night… I turned it off. I looked out of the window wondering whether or not that little old lady I saw this afternoon was still alive. I wondered what her daughter was doing as I watched the trees sway in the breeze, and I hoped that at some point a little peace came into her life soon.

That was my day…      

The broken limb

The phone rang, my brother’s voice crackled on the other end, “You have to come over here and see what I woke up to…”

We hopped on the kawasaki mule and headed over. He has a huge oak tree next to the deck on the back of his house. There’s a limb that extends from the tree which is bigger than most of the trees people have in their yard. The limb was split and touching the ground. I have never seen anything like that. I’ve seen broken limbs that have fallen and stuck several feet into the ground, but this looked bizarre. He played the security video of the back of the house and just past sunrise you could see the limb slowly sink without a sound as it laid gently on the ground, literally inches away from his deck.

We walked around it a few times scratching our heads. He called a couple of tree services and was quoted on its removal. I told him to let us know what he decided to do and give us a call so we could help with the removal. A few days later I went by and saw that it was gone. I asked him how much they charged to do it he said, “I just climbed up there and cut it down a piece at a time.”

I stood there for a few minutes looking at him then said, “you’re going through treatment for pancreatic cancer and you climbed up a tree to cut down a limb almost as big as your house…” In his typical fashion he pushed his hat back on his head and said, “well I did it in the morning before it got too hot, besides.. I ain’t paying nobody three hundred dollars to cut a limb off a tree…”

I shook my head and went on…

I went over to the pile of discarded limbs at the edge of his yard and began to dig through. Several hours, scratches, and couple of gallons of sweat later I was back at home organizing and cataloging the pieces I had taken. The first piece I finished was a walking stick with a vine design burned into it from top to bottom. The second one I finished was a painted wood spirit.

There is just something I enjoy about working on pieces taken from especially beloved or familiar trees, almost like giving them a second chance at life. This is going to be a fun series to carve...


The vine walking stick is 39 inches in length and the painted wood spirit is 41 inches. The pricing is $45 each. If you are interested in either piece you can reach me at 678-423-6541 or via email at crickhollowcarving@gmail.com

Cicada Song

The air is growing thicker with humidity and can be seen when viewed from a short distance. Heading out into the woods to search for pieces to carve has become an exercise of early morning or late evening hours only.

The heat has moved in along with the humidity. Dogs laze about during the afternoon hours without moving, waiting for the moment the sun goes down so they can pick up where they left off with their meanderings about the place, on missions of utmost importance,  yet understood only to themselves. The principle carving has moved indoors during the afternoon hours as the bane of southern summer living has arrived along with the heat and humidity.. Insects..

A veteran of these seasons knows what that means, insects of all shape and size are cruising around looking for any meal they can sink their teeth into. That usually means me, even hanging clothes out on the line calls for a good lathering of bug ointment. I go for the generic repellent and ignore home remedies or the latest fad in anti insect salve… the cheaper the better, and I ain’t going to rub any sort of poultice on myself, at least while conscience…

Buried deep in the woods off the back yard a few days ago I was concentrating on cutting a nicely twisted limb from a tree. I was paying little attention to my surroundings. Head bent, back aching, sweat dripping… the usual position for wood shopping. All sound was gone from me as I sawed while concentrating on holding the limb just right so the bark wouldn’t be harmed.  When the limb finally gave up the ghost and I had climbed down from my perch, and I stood upright brushing the bark and sawdust off of myself, I was caught by a sound that ripped me away from the spot with a jerk.

Cicadas…

It was official, summer had arrived, regardless of what day of the month the calendar or the farmers almanac says the summer solstice happens, it was here. Instantly I was riding across countless summer days as a child of the south. The daydream became real as I could smell the mixture of sweat, sun tan lotion, salt marsh and bug spray… images flashed in front of me in rapid succession of a life long since passed. A childhood filled with endless days of sunburn, beach vacations,  and laughter. I looked to my left and could catch a glimpse of the creek at the bottom of the hill that I had spent countless hours damming. That took me immediately to the sound of a screen door slamming shut as kids passed through in a desperate race to the front yard, my grandmother stepping out of the kitchen, with a dishrag and pan she was drying in hand, to yell out, “Ya’ll quit slammin’ that door!”

I moved on to the neighborhood around Martin street where I lived until I was in the second grade, the games of hide and seek that took place every night. The endless loop of Martin, Stallings, Gordy place, and Ozmore street that I made all day long on second hand bikes. Dirt roads that I maneuvered down in bare feet on my way to ponds to throw rocks or spy on girls swimming.

My next stop was my grandfather’s house on any given Sunday. Sunday dinner was a required event for the family. My father’s parents house was for holidays, but Pa’s house was for Sunday. Listening to the old wood box radio while waiting for the food to hit the table, then it was outside to drop rocks down the well to wait for the plop as they hit the water so far down it was hard to imagine such depths. The day would turn lucky if we made our way to his shop, where he still had all of his tools, half buried in sawdust that would never see his shadow again.. That place was a kid’s paradise, you never knew what sort of treasure you would turn up in the thick sawdust on the floor…

The call to come to the table for dinner was an event that was like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one because you knew what was waiting for you. Home made biscuits, pot roast, ham, collard greens, fresh corn, cornbread, lima beans, mashed potatoes, fried sweet potatoes, pinto beans, fresh sliced tomatoes, fried green tomatoes, slaw made with tons of  mayonnaise and pepper - the way it should be, and gallons of tea so sweet the spoon would stand up in it if left alone… All prepared by the hands of fine southern, Christian women, that would hover about the kitchen during the cooking to shoo you out, mainly so you wouldn’t repeat the volumes of gossip that were bandied about, but oft denied in the cornering…

I rolled on through the memories as I visited with the family at the fourth of July barbecue, lord, what an event. Days in the making, weeks probably. No smokers were here, this was real barbecue, direct fire cooked, with painstaking attention paid to every detail. Hand made sauce in varying degrees of flavor and heat were available to douse the perfectly cooked over hickory coal meat.. I stood by the huge tree that still stands there as an eternal sentinel over that sacred ground. My eyes passed from the frenetic movements of my grandmother, to the detail oriented speeches of my grandfather as he stood over my older brother’s shoulder teaching him about the fine art of making Brunswick stew in the ageless old cauldron I was afraid of as a child. I saw my great uncle Woodson handing out lemonade from the huge tub he made it in, constantly asking, “What ’chu think about that?” with each cup passed along. Woodson’s wife Irene’s laughter split through the afternoon heat like a knife, as I turned toward the fire where a large group of people were standing, I saw her slapping her thigh as she was listening to my father and his brothers entertaining the crowd with stories of their youth. I looked from face to face as I drank in the countless memories of these smiles. The ever present twinkle in my father’s eyes was dancing that day, just as I had seen it do on so many occasions. My uncle Donald’s bald head was gleaming as he laughed, slapping his knee and pointing toward his brother Thomas, accusing him of some sort of malfeasance… Thomas’ voice rang clear with years of southern training, as he belted out with, “Boy, you ain’t worth a shit are you?”

The breath caught in my throat as I watched my own siblings come crashing through the yard, headed toward the lemonade. They were much younger than they are now, no worries lined their faces. They joined the passels of cousins that were all gathered around the table as hands started dipping cups in the huge metal tub as even more sugar was reached for. The dirty, sweat covered faces brought a smile to me as I looked over each one of them, so young they all were. Secret discussions of plans that were being laid out were flying about and an atmosphere of pure energy was crackling in the air as my mother walked out of the end of the building. She was closely followed by my father as she called out, “Cut that out you heathen!” as she side stepped his advances. He grabbed her from behind and enclosed her In his arms. As he nuzzled her neck, trying to steal a kiss, I stood in awe of the pair of them. Five children and endless years together hadn’t dampened their love at all. They had worked all of their lives endlessly providing for their kids’ every whim and desire. My mother was involved with every sport that came along and my father devoted his time to family, work and church.

Tears began to come as I was swept along to visit a lunch table at an elementary school I attended. I listened to the twelve year old boys gathered around as they deftly spoke of the girls at the other tables. Conversations, which at that age, always gave over to more important issues, such as lurid bodily functions took place… I saw animated speeches given, with full sound effects, about everything from the latest episode of happy days, to the detailed description of the kid throwing up in the class across the hall from us… I was in heaven.

I was taken then to countless cookouts at my parents house. Steaks, hotdogs, hamburgers, ribs, salad, baked potatoes, coleslaw, toasted bread, people jumping on the trampoline, playing pool, playing video games and pinball… I watched the familiar faces move about, laughing as they talked in that all to well known sing song southern drawl. Home made ice cream was having salt added to the ice as the watermelons were being cut and the tea and coffee were freely dispensed.

Music seemed to flow more freely during the summer, laughter came easily as people talked and enjoyed the pleasure of each others company. Fireworks, craft shows, cookouts, family reunions… All these things seemed to be more prevalent in that world. A world where living in the road wasn’t yet an idea, where children had no devices to guide their imagination, where people were more accepting of each other, flaws and all, where twelve and fifteen hour days gave way on the weekends to fun and family, where dirt spots in the yard were coveted as places where hot wheel cities manned by star wars action figures could grow and thrive.

The visions of that lost world passed as I was brought back to reality, brushing the memories away from my face like a gathering of gnats you walk through. I headed back up the hill, still smiling as the tears dried on my cheeks, with the faces of those who aren’t here anymore dancing alongside of me and the sound of their voices thick in my ears. I rounded the corner of the house as my son James and his cousin Bailey ran out of the door, well equipped with military packs, camo clothes, and Halloween costume Mario brothers hats on their heads… who knows why. I shook my head at the sight of them as they tore across the front yard toward the woods. Before I knew what I was saying, I yelled out to them, “Hey.. Y’all don’t slam that door!”

I stopped cold in my tracks as new tears began to flow down my cheeks. James called out to me with a response I couldn’t understand, tossing up his hand as a signal that he had heard me. I stood there for a few minutes watching them rip up the hill into the trees, hearing their laughter dance through the same woods I played in as a child.. I heard my father’s voice, backed by all of my grandparents… “Full circle, boy… it always comes back full circle.”

I closed the door slowly behind me, with the last sound from outside playing in my ears… cicadas, they do indeed bring the magic.      

A Carving for Cancer

During the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico I was moved to do something about the lives I saw ruined. I thought about what I could do and came to the decision that I would carve a walking stick to help these people out. I looked into the various relief agencies and organizations that were being plastered across the airwaves and wasn’t very impressed. So I carved a walking stick, then began looking for someone to help. I found a couple that owned a small shrimp wholesale business in Louisiana. They sell shrimp to restaurants directly from the boats that come in just down the dock from their establishment. I saw them one evening on the news talking about how their business had dropped off completely, the video showed the small cinder block store room, usually filled with shrimp, completely empty at what should be the height of the season. The elderly couple made a statement that struck me, “What is the toughest are the little things that we need help with right now.” I put the walking stick up for auction, sold it, and sent them the money along with a letter explaining what I was doing. I received an email from them thanking me for what I did and letting me know that the money I sent them provided them with a week’s worth of groceries.

I decided then that this was the type of charity that I wanted to pursue. Let the people of greater means deal with financing research and development, I will help the people directly affected by whatever tragedy they are dealing with, even if it’s in a small way, I know that every penny of what I give goes into the pockets of the people I want to help.

I felt moved earlier this evening to do this again…

I prepped a piece of hickory for a walking stick and began to stare at it, waiting for whatever design that was hiding inside of it to jump out at me, I was stuck. Looking for inspiration I sent a status to facebook asking the people on my friends list for any suggestions for a theme. One in particular jumped out at me with the force of a hurricane, not because of the actual suggestion, but because of who it was that posted it. In January of this year her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, just about the same time my brother was handed the same diagnosis.

Sadly, her mother recently passed away. I was keeping track of her progress via posts on facebook and even texting her now and again to check on her and her mother. The news of her mother’s death was met with a moment of me crying out a loud, “Nooo!” I sat alone in front of my computer and wept silently for her pain and the pain her mother had to endure through the last weeks of her life, indeed the last few months.

Everyone has been touched in some way by this disease. Whether through knowing someone who has dealt with it or being one of it’s victims, we have all seen the ruin it leaves in its wake. My brother has just finished his chemotherapy and is getting ready to start radiation treatments. He is getting his medical care at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta. I’ve been taking him up there and sitting with him for the chemo, MRI’s, scans, doctor visits, port installation, marker placement, blood work…. After a while it all kind of morphs into a blur of antiseptic smells, bright lights, hand cleaning stations, bad coffee, waiting rooms, dry five dollar sandwiches, parking decks, traffic, and a lingering sadness that drains everything out of you.

Sitting in the infusion center for hours at a time as he got his chemo I heard many conversations as I stared at the timer on the equipment pumping his medication into him counting down the minutes until he could be free of that place. Parking, price of gas, time in traffic, and overpriced food from the café were generally the topics at hand. Time, of course, was the topic most often spoken of. The infusion center is packed every day with people from all walks of life. The very young and the very old sit patiently while waiting for the staff to prep the medication they need that will hopefully bring them relief from the pain and exhaustion they are living with.

I remember the first time I went in there. I thought to myself, “I’ve read about it, seen things online and on television, but this is it… this is where the rubber meets the road.” I was sitting in a gymnasium sized room filled with people in the fight of their lives. The quiet dignity they hold is simply astounding. The waiting is enough to drive you insane. Go here, go there, see this person and that… It’s all done in a professional manner, but the desensitizing of people that face it each day takes hold. It is that one small moment of  compassion that lasts a lifetime. That is what these people are craving. Last Friday we met a gentleman that works there by the name of Tim. He was assigned to my brother when he went in for his appointment to have his medication removed from his port. Tim came up and asked us if there was anything we needed, he apologized for the wait and asked my brother how he was feeling… all before he mentioned a single word about disconnecting the bag and pump so he could go home. His words and actions had an immediate affect on both of us, the anxiety was visibly cut in my brothers voice and eyes as he told him that he was the first person to apologize for the wait since he had started going there. We were some of the last people in the center and wound up talking to him for about ten minutes as we left. We both complimented his professionalism and courtesy, telling him that we would let the powers that be know about it. That was the longest day we spent there yet, ten hours total for three visits, on the next visit his doctor asked how everything was going.  The words my brother spoke to him will never leave me, “If the people working in there would just stop as they are walking by, look you in the eye, and ask you if you’re alright or if there is anything you need, that would go a long way toward lowering the stress level. We aren’t cattle, we are people.”

These people are sick all the time. Nausea never leaves them, and their medicine doesn’t help that much. I’ve listened to them toss out chemical combinations to assuage the sickness back and forth with the ease and expertise of NASA engineers discussing proper mathematical formulas to successfully land spacecraft on narrow strips of concrete. The support they show each other is the finest depiction of human strength I have ever seen. They get tired just by walking to the mailbox, when they can get out and about. The question that haunts them is, “What if this is it? What if this is the best I am going to feel for the rest of my life?” You can see it in their eyes while you’re in there.

I sum up the experience with two words, triumph and tragedy. Triumphs in successfully making it to the next step is what they are looking for. The chemo to be over, the radiation to be over, the operation to be over, all in hopes of hearing those words, “The cancer is in remission.” the cost of the treatment is staggering, both financially and emotionally. Tragedy comes with the lingering specter of finality that is always standing by to reach out and snatch one of them away at any moment. They can be told that they are too weak to continue treatment or that its spread or progressed too far at any time. This happens far too often with devastating results.

What I am going to do is this, I’m putting this walking stick for up auction. I will let it run through the weekend, until the evening of Sunday May 27th. I will start the bidding at $100 and will personally hand the money off to someone sitting in that center to help with transportation costs, parking, food for themselves while they are there, or really whatever they want to spend it on. They need that moment of true compassion more than most people.

If you are interested in placing a bid, send it to me via email at crickhollowcarving@gmail.com or call me at 678-423-6541.

It’s a hickory walking stick measuring forty nine inches in length. The design of three butterflies burned into it was inspired by the ceiling tiles in the doctors office that my brother goes to at Winship. Each examination room’s ceiling in his office has three tiles in it painted with a butterfly. I have never asked what they represent, but have come to find comfort in my own interpretation of the images. The first represents the life the patient had before being diagnosed, they second stands for the trials they are going through while undergoing treatment, and the third butterfly is in honor of the life they will lead once they hear those words, “You are cancer free…”




If you know someone who is currently suffering from this disease, pass a link along to this post and let people know about it.                        

Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the media

What did George Zimmerman do?

Listening to the media would lead you to believe that he was an overzealous leader of a local neighborhood watch group driving a car through his neighborhood looking for suspicious people intent upon breaking into homes in his gated community. While driving he spotted a black teenager wearing a hoodie, drinking Snapple tea, and eating skittles as he was walking down the sidewalk, he then began following the guy because he stereotyped him as a thug. Zimmerman called the 911 emergency number, reported that he was following a black kid, then set out on foot, was told to stop following him, refused, and then hunted the kid down and shot him. He was then taken to a police station where his father, a former judge, was called and used his influence, while on the phone with the police, to have him set free. The police seemingly didn’t think too much about it because these types of cases happen all the time. Only when reverend Al Sharpton got involved was anything done about this, because it had been a month since Trayvon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman and the police obviously had no interest in arresting him for the crime of murder, which this surely is, a blatant homicide.

I paid attention as continuing saga played out, listening to what was being said, listening to the portions of the 911 call that had been released, then the subsequent 911 calls that were made by people from the neighborhood, reading multiple articles about the event, listening to various people in interviews, official folks during press conferences, and soapboxers relay to the general public what their opinion of the situation was and is.

The only two complete stories we have from people in contact with Zimmerman are consistent with all of the evidence known to the general public at this time. Whether you believe what these people have to say doesn’t matter, they are the only versions of events available from one of the people directly involved in the shooting. The police have said that there are at least two eyewitnesses to the complete event, both of whom have been interviewed by the police and have chosen not to speak to the media.

Standard procedure when something like this happens is to detain the person involved in the shooting, look at the evidence at hand, take laws and said evidence into consideration, then make a decision as to whether or not the individual should be charged with a crime. That is exactly what the police did. Whether you believe it or not George Zimmerman was injured, the exact extent of his injuries aren’t known to the public, his appearance at the scene was consistent with his version of events, and everything said by the eyewitnesses matched what Zimmerman told the police. Taking all of this into consideration, the police then let him go free.

Zimmerman has stated, via his father and brother, that he was on his way to Target to shop for groceries, established by the police when texts Zimmerman was sending at the time were read, when he saw someone he didn’t know walking from door to door. The supposed reason Martin was doing this was to get out of the rain. When Martin saw Zimmerman he began walking down the sidewalk while talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend. Martin was to Zimmerman’s right as he walked down the sidewalk, when Martin got to a point between two buildings where the sidewalk continued straight, and also had a turn to the left, he took the left turn between the buildings away from the street, then a right turn between the next set of buildings. Zimmerman then exited the car to go to the other side of the block to give the police the number of the building he went behind, as he walked by the right hand turn he looked between the two buildings and did not see Martin. When the 911 dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following Martin he said yes, and was told not to do that, he replied “ok” and turned to head back to his car, as he went by the walkway Martin had gone down, they met, an altercation ensued, and Martin was shot. According to Zimmerman, Martin approached him, made a statement, attacked him, knocked him to the ground, began hitting him and banging his head into the ground. Fearing for his life Zimmerman then shot Martin. He has not said if he drew the weapon or if Martin went for the weapon and they struggled over it. The funeral director that prepped Martin’s body has stated that Martin had no injuries other than the single gunshot that killed him. This interview has been played in the media to “prove” that no altercation took place, yet what this interview shows is that Zimmerman did not injure Martin in a struggle until he shot him.

What is my opinion of the situation?

This is a horrible series of events that should have never taken place. George Zimmerman should have never gotten out of his car. When he was faced with what he considered to be a suspicious person he should’ve given the police the details, waited on them to arrive, given them another description and the last known position of the individual, then made his way on to Target to do his shopping. Had Zimmerman done this, no one would know who he and Trayvon Martin are, a seventeen year old kid would still be alive, and George Zimmerman wouldn’t be sitting in jail right now.

The peripherals of this case aren’t in question, or shouldn’t be. Whether or not Zimmerman had a gun is irrelevant, it is legal for him to carry a firearm in Florida. The Florida “stand your ground” law has no bearing here as all states have some form of self defense laws. The race of either person involved shouldn’t matter either, but it does. Zimmerman has shown, from some forty six calls during the previous couple of months to police, to be consistent in reporting any person he considers to be suspicious, regardless of race. He has been reported not to be a racist by people of several different races that know him personally. So why does race matter in this case? It was used a catalyst to launch the case into the national media and draw attention.

The law enforcement community in Florida has now backed themselves into a corner. They have taken him into custody and charged him with second degree murder, forty some odd days after the fact. There is no way they can let him go if he is found innocent during a trial. The man has a price on his head (where is the FBI?), he and his family have received constant death threats, and the media has transformed the man into a monster.

The knee jerk reaction to hearing what took place here is to “bring the man to justice”, there is simply no reason for a grown man to shoot an unarmed seventeen year old, this is just another case of a black man being killed and it being swept under the rug, the guy should have never had a gun in the first place, nobody should be killed because they had tea and skittles, vigilante justice is no justice at all…

Some or all of these tings may be true. The problem with all of this is that we do not know exactly what happened there, only through a thorough examination of the facts can this be determined. The police thought they had done this, yet the public wasn’t satisfied, so the county is seeking to appease the public outcry. My question is this…. If Zimmerman goes on trial and is found to be innocent of these charges, will the media take a portion of the blame for the violence that will be sure to follow his acquittal with the same vigor they have shown in smugly taking credit for being the reason he was arrested? Will Piers Morgan and Nancy Grace admit they were wrong? No they won’t. They will act as any other sociopath would in that position, they will double down and then lead with pictures of the riots for the next few weeks while shaking their heads and proclaiming all Florida juries to be comprised of stupid people.

The questions raised by the case should be addressed in a national forum, headed by a panel of the same people that promote the case nightly on television. A discussion of why people stereotype, why firearms are sold and handled as they are, vigilante justice, police harassment, unfair legal systems, the high cost of decent legal representation, race relations… all of these things should be discussed, openly. Yet they won’t, and these types of things will continue to happen.