April 2010
Daniel Taylor
April 3 (Saturday) 6:45 am

Well I am finally getting a bit of time to write to my journal.  We got in two good days with TVA, and rough
work it was ..., well, for me, anyway.  I can barely lift my arms, and the wounds I've received recently are still
sore.  Thursday a tree fell on my head -- not a large tree, but large enough to knock me to the ground and
break my hard hat.  From what I can tell this early morning, two days later, I survived the incident relatively
well.

Regarding the recent passing of Bonnie, I received the following condolences from online friends:

from ForGodSoLoved:
Here is Nanuk ( part German Shepard part Huskie) that we recently rescued from being
put to sleep.  So sorry to hear about your loss. Animals do become a very important
part of our lives.

Other condolences from online friends

April 4 (Sunday) 6:30 am

It feels like everyone has left.  Oh, all of the others are here, but Bonnie was the life of the party.  Bonnie
kept herself busy with everyone else's business, and in that sense Bonnie was very aggravating.  I've had
to beg Bonnie to calm down more than any of the others, and now that she is gone everything is so quiet
around here.

Thanks to all of those who sent their condolences: they were much appreciated.  One online friend sent the
following couple of tidbits:

Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.
-- Joe Gores

Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, Filling an emptiness we don't even know we have.
-- Thom Jones

During Bonnie's initial seizure, I did as I usually do: I reached down and picked her up, but this time she bit
down on my left index finger.  The poor girl bit so hard that her canine tooth penetrated clear through my
finger.  I have two holes -- one on the bottom and another on the top -- but they are healing nicely.  The
experience was not a pleasant one, and although I tried hard I could not force open Bonnie's mouth.  When
she came out of her seizure she relaxed her bite, though, and I was finally able to free my finger.

Four nearly four years each and every day I gave Bonnie her seizure medication -- once in the morning and
once in the evening.  Someone else helped me out during my three day sojourn in the hospital; otherwise, I
have never been able to spend a night away from home.  Because the dogs have to be kenneled while I am
away, staying away for any length of time would not work for me anyway.  Truth is, why would I want to stay
away from Willow Oak?

April 5 (Monday) 9:45 pm

Oh the house seems so empty!  Even the bed, although piled high with dogs and cats, seems void of life.  I
look about me and wonder how things would seem had another instead of Bonnie passed on.  I see the
others, and stop and contemplate each and every one in turn, realizing that they are all precious and loved
and needed.  I need them more than they need me.  I was blessed to have been loved and possessed for
so many years by Bonnie Girl.  I am more blessed that there are others to love and be loved by.

Spring is here; the days are bright and beautiful, and the sun is warm and inviting.  Today we worked at a
house that must have had a hundred purple martin houses, and the yard swarmed with their number.  Life is
a great and wonderful thing to have and to be savored.

April 8 (Thursday) 6:50 am

Another huge thunderstorm ripper through our area during last night.  The immediate forecast, however,
calls for increasing clearing skies and warming temperatures: time for work to pick up.

All of the Willow Oak crew are doing fine today, so far as I can tell.  

April 10 (Saturday) 9:00 pm

My thanks go out to the many online and other friends who sent condolences on my loss of Bonnie last
Wednesday morning.  I haven't said as much about Bonnie's passing as I could have -- it has just been too
painful.  Every morning and every evening for more than four years I gave Bonnie medication to treat her
seizures.  Except for my brief stay in the hospital when a friend filled in for me if I ever missed giving
Bonnie her medication I am not aware.  I wish I were still doing so.

Today I served as judge for the annual Chili Cookoff in downtown Corinth.  I have had some sort of
intestinal virus the past few days, and I would have been better off foregoing the task, but I was asked to
serve, and I did.  I am now suffering the results of that.  Some of the chili was downright delicious, but most
of it was awful, nasty stuff.

Work is beginning to pick up for Stump Busters.  Hopefully the weather will continue to improve and allow
us to get some much needed work done.

This Friday I shall be giving a presentation to our local Home School association.  Perhaps I shall find the
time next fall to involve myself in facilitating parents in their efforts to teach the higher mathematics to their
children.

April 14 (Tuesday) 7:15 pm

We've had a couple of good days' work with TVA, and although I am once again thoroughly sore and tired, it
is satisfying to be outdoors, exercising the muscles.  Today we worked near a pond and saw a family of
Canadian geese: there was the mother and the father and about six or seven chicks.  What a wonderful
sight that was!  The birds were first spotted wandering across a field, and at first I could not tell from
whence they came nor could I tell to where they were headed; but eventually they migrated toward the
pond and all was clear: they had evidently been foraging in the boggy field and were returning home when
we saw them.

Not much to report on the Willow Oak crew these days.  Life has settled in since the departure of Bonnie,
and I am still finding it difficult to believe that she is gone.

April 16 (Friday) 8:15 pm

Larry and I have spent the past two days at a local farm, salvaging what we can from a bank of trees that line
a creek that meanders across it.  What beautiful countryside the place is!  The sun shone brightly the past
two days, but the temperatures remained moderate with a slight but constant breeze.  In addition to the
rolling meadows, full of golden sage grass, we had visitors!  There must have been 50 to 75 cows in the
herd that occasionally walked by us as we worked.  Many of the heifers had only recently delivered their
calves, and they were in the fields looking for grass to graze.  The cows found the grass, alright, but they
also discovered the leaves on the brush that we created from the downed trees to be sweet and succulent,
and they gorged themselves full.

Cliff has returned to sojourn at Willow Oak, and this time he might stay a bit longer.  Cliff and I are very
different people, but we were good friends years ago when I lived in Indiana, and it is always good to make
reacquaintances with an old friend.

I had a nice visit this evening with Mr. Rafael Parker, the man who hires us to work with TVA, and he is
pleased with our work and has plans to increase our work load in the immediate future.  Well, we hope that
is the case.

I suppose that now is as good a time as ever to climb back on the soap box.  I was scheduled to give a
presentation to the local home school association this evening, but at the eleventh hour the director called
to inform me that the board has a problem with my credentials.  To make a long story short, they read my
book, and there are parts to it that the "powers that be" find objectionable.  Evidently I am not "orthodox"
enough for these folks.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to invoke the thought and meaning
of God in my words and works, but orthodox I definitely am not.  I despise the dogma of religion, which
chokes the life out of all those who allow themselves to be blinded by such.  In person I do not wear my
beliefs on my sleeve, but I can definitely say that anyone who finds my writings objectionable from a
religious standpoint is someone who is mired in the muck of stifling dogma.  I feel sorry for that group: in
their haste to protect their children from the world they cut off from them the very breath of life.

Having said all of that, they do have the right to find anything about me objectionable.  But I find it
objectionable that they have continued to inform me that they looked forward with eagerness and
excitement to my presentation, and they did this for the past few months, and then on the night before I am
to present, they call me to inform me of their objections.  How petty is that?

April 22 (Thursday) 9:30 pm

We had a long but pleasant work today, felling trees and operating the tractor.  The weather has been
pleasant, and thankfully the rain has been staying away.

Right now I am missing Bonnie.  I am blessed to be surrounded by so many loving creatures, but I still feel
the need to hold Bonnie and feel her caresses on my cheek.  I never cease to be amazed that so many of
God's creatures bestow such love and affection upon me.  Who am I to be so blessed?

April 19 (Monday) 6:15 pm

Today was a tough and brutal day once again with TVA.  The TVA job is a hard one, and more so for me, since
many years have passed since I did such manual labor.  But the scenery, as usual, was breathtaking.  Today
we trekked through a very nice portion of the forest, which had a carpet of freshly fallen leaves; but the
best part was the meandering stream that followed an undefined path for a few hundred yards, twisting this
way and that, with small eddies and falls where the water trickled over beds of multi-colored rocks.  When
we reached our destination we felled a very large sweet gum, whose crash disturbed a flock of wild
turkeys, causing them to fly off in random disarray.

Cliff spent his day at my house engineering an improved situation for the dog kennels.

April 25 (Sunday) 7:30 am

Darkly has been staying put since I let him out of prison, but I have not seen him since day before
yesterday.  I suppose there is nothing to worry about: the worst is that he found his old home next door and
has returned there for a sojourn, which means that I shall have to retrieve him from there or leave him
alone.

I need to get Sasha spayed.  She is cutting up something regularly and needs some relief.

Alcorn County and the surrounding area really got pelted with rain and thunderstorms yesterday.  Parts of
Mississippi made the national news on account of several deaths due to the storms.  All we got was a lot of
rain.  Yesterday evening I sprayed the yards surrounding the house for ticks and fleas.  The ticks have
been specially pervasive so far this spring, and I intend to get them under control early.

Ostensibly I shall be taking the tractor into Alabama, just on the other side of Florence, to do some work for
TVA next week.  We still have work in out area that needs to be finished, and that work requires the use of
the tractor.  So we shall have to see how we get that done.