2000-12-27 - 19:38 PST

December 27, 2000

Fieldstones

They come in many guises. Some I have seen in Southern Idaho are volcanic rock bulldozed to the sides of the potato fields, huge windrows of volcanic rock. We have an area near Denver called Rocky Flats which is more or less on the Piedmont east of the Rocky Mountains. The area is billiard table flat and at one time covered with loose stones of various kinds. The name might be more familiar if the name Plutonium and Triggers for atomic weapons is mentioned. Sometimes farms are on ground that once was streambed or riverbed, the fieldstones there are pretty well smoothed by the action of sand and rubbing against each other and the rocky walls of the water course. I guess Sutter found a few rather novel fieldstones there in California once.

Thinking of this brought to mind the similarity between people and field stones. There are precious and semi-precious field people and some field people are smooth and shiny having had the rough exterior worn smooth. Some are volcanic field people, ill tempered and crotchety. Some field people are hard, and have knife sharp edges. We have the sandstone people who are apt to get worn out quickly but can last for ages if they wear a cap of hard stone. Under the cap, a group of sandstone field people can exist as mesas for ever almost. Field people have different ingredients, layered sometimes and just all mixed up at others. Some field people have been refined under heat and pressure -- the loose stones like that are called diamonds. Field people can be field diamonds under the right treatment if their ingredients are the proper ones in proper proportions.

So it seems to me that, people like stones are each one unique. There are many of similar size, etc., etc., etc. But all in all, each one has its own uniqueness imn makeup. Each one fills a particular spot in society which needs to exist.

We can stand the loss of a particular fieldstone, but cannot risk the fabric of civilization by the loss of one field people.

The attribute of uniqueness also needs, for lack of a better word, "tolerance," a somewhat camouflaged term that somehow can be paired with white knuckled, painful association in the name of political correctness. To me the words I would use would be, "respect for others and their opinions and smiling courtesy towards all." I think any unique person deserves just that. I want my self produced field people to be accorded that, and I think also that you want the same prerogative for yours.

Many years ago in The Readers Digest there was a somewhat humorous article which pointed up our bigotry and predjudices, society was being reduced little by little by so called legal moves, eventually things came to a head and got grim when the blue eyed and the brown eyed ganged up on the black and hazel eyed and killed them off. Then the brown eyes killed off the blue eyed people. On down the line I think it ended up that there was two people a brown eyed man and a brown eyed woman who had freckles -- the only difference between them was freckles and sex. Did man survive or did the two refuse to propagate more pigheaded humanity ? I can't remember now what the end of the story was. But still I remember, and often I think of it when I see the "in-your-face," types having at each other about things that belong only to the other persons. I don't know which side to try to be on when that comes about . . . . . . maybe it would be best to be an Apache Tear in the White Sands of Los Alamos vicinity. A black unit among white Fieldstones . . . . . .

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