No man is a saint, it will forever serve you best to put your hopes in the one who is least likely to become a sinner...

Gun laws. Who are the actual "target" of gun laws? They apply to all, of course, but, who are they actually intended to regulate? Good people? No. Sane people? No, of course not. They are actually "aimed" at regulating the actions of bad people, insane people. Well, we all start out as pretty much good, and sane, people, then, shit happens. You can't regulate that.

Being a back roads traveler when I ramble, I come across some things money can't buy, and, you just can't make up...Cruising through a little local community that clearly had seen its better days, trailers crumbling, half stripped cars rusting away, I passed a small, abandoned, boarded up white clapboard church...On the well weathered sign out front that was once used to give notice of times and days for services, these were the only words it bore..."For Sale - By Owner"...No phone number...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...”
It was, it is, something many wish they had written.

It's been over 150 years since Mr Dickens penned those timeless words. To Charles Dickens, the world of his day must have appeared, at times, as sorrowful and as hopeless as one could possibly imagine, just as to many, our world appears today. However, the world which inspired Charles Dickens' now immortal prose lived on, as will ours.

Wars, famine, natural disasters have forever been a part of mans' premise on this earth, just as, love, springtime and wild flowers have been of his delight. There will be no end of time, there will be no great demise, today, tomorrow or any day, it's all far too well scripted to even begin to imagine a fitting ending. Why doomsayers persist in such can only be a testament to their personal miseries.

The end of the world looms, ever over bearing for many because they believe it could happen. Well, it could, but, it won't, certainly not by mans hand anyway. We humans are such a pompous, arrogant breed, believing we rule all that we inhabit, all that we invade. We also believe that everything we do, everything we create is a good thing and for the betterment of mankind. That theory goes up in smoke, literally, with a nuclear bomb.

On the day that I die, I would be most pleased if the sun is shining. I want the natural world still astir. I would prefer it to be in the Fall, ideally, about mid way through, after the dying leaves themselves have all turned and found their way back to Mother Earth. Fall, just seems like the best time to die.

The Winter would be the worst of times to die, for it is already too over-bearing for most. It is already cold and gray. A death is not rightfully embraced in the winter, the season has already sapped the emotion from most.

Summer, is certainly not a time to leave this world, it gives us so much of what we need to sustain life. Summer is nourishing, full of warmth and life giving sunshine. It is also a time that fills us with youthful reminders. And Spring, oh no, Spring is certainly not the time for death. Spring is about birth, so much is born, re-born in the Spring.

Yes, the Fall is the right time for dying.

Some, would label me a non-believer. Others, would call me an atheist. Some, the more missionary minded, would say I am a misguided child of Satan, yet another lost soul, adrift on a sea of sin, a captive to the temptations of the flesh, misled by the devil's hand as a result of my assertions that god does not now, nor has ever existed, that he is simply a product of human frailty and design, the human need to know that we are simply not the ultimate source of our being, that we are not, the end outcome of our worth, of our intent. That we, ultimately, are not the cause, blame or fault of our short comings, misgivings and failures. To this end we naively grant, that surely our fate lies not with us but with a higher power, one we can believe in yet we cannot ever be certain that it exists, or, believes in us.

It is true I do not believe in a god, a singular supreme being, in any form. Not now, nor have I ever. Even as a child I can recall questioning the existence of such an entity. There realistically isn't a need for one. And, as numbers point out, in a slow but steady stream more and more people are coming to the same realization that god, does not exist, that the entire concept of a god is unrealistic and defies all rational reasoning and logic. Faith, be damned. You may have the faith and belief that you can swim across the Mississippi River but faith alone will not make that happen. You will die. To understand my reasoning as to the non-existence of a god you must first try to comprehend one basic fact, and that is, how much more simple, how much more easier my life would be made to simply concede that there is a god. Join the masses, enlist in the army of the unenlightened and put my blind faith in the hands of the unknown. Deny a lifetime of education and enlightenment, refute my own personal analytical conclusions drawn from a lifetime of study and observation, deny the equally drawn conclusions of some of the greatest minds of all time, and surrender.