What Caused The Civil War

Sometimes, people question whether the Civil War was about slavery or not. This is what Lincoln said as the war raged on around him:

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

They Leave Home

 We bring them home.  We raise them up.  We fill them up with as much spirit and love and learning as we can possibly find.  One day, you realize their home isn't big enough for them anymore.  All those qualities you tried so hard to put them are greater than the place they grew up can hold.  

The true cost of keeping Mississippi last at everything, and all the stubborn unwillingness to change, and all the blaming of the wrong people is just this: we lose our children.  We grew them to be too large to fit in the world we created for them.  

My words float out in the air in the hopes that they'll land somewhere that will make a difference.  It's all I can do.

Podcast about Hal and Mal's Chef.

Paul Wolf podcast with Chef Damien Cavicchi of Hal and Mals

Soul Sessions Jackson · Damien Cavicchi

The Blue Whales and I

 A Frenchman in a red knit hat came on television and told me about Blue Whales.  

Is it bigger than an elephant?
       It's bigger than six elephants.

Is it bigger than a brontosaurus?
       It weighs twice more than the Brontosaurus.

It's bigger than three school buses.  It's bigger than a jet airplane. Its food is smaller than your pinky finger.  Its heart is enough for a boy like you to stand up inside.  Its brain is larger and more complicated than yours.

To find each other through the broad, dark, deep ocean--they sing.  They sing through their giant bellies, the bones in their nose, and the nostrils on the top of their head.  Their song fills the water and travels for miles until it finds another behemoth, a deep, long, sad song of cold and food and sunlight and life and beauty.  

When I was a boy, the Frenchman in the red knit hat said that the Blue Whales were dying.  We were poor companions for it on this living blue ball, and they were dying.  In my dreams, I could see the last few blue behemoths swmming through endlessly deep oceans, praying they would live.

They did live.  Though their extinction was thought all but certain, they came back out of the pure blue depths.  They are the largest animals that ever lived.  We are the animals with the largest environmental impact that ever lived.  Maybe we are bound together.  Maybe their songs I hear in my sleep have a messge.