Wisdom vs. Intelligence

Even though Guy Davis (referenced in my last post) played mostly songs from the giants of blues catalog I found him to be more folk than blues. But what do I know? I am not a folkie. He told some great stories between songs.

I woke up thinking I was tending to the cabbage in our garden. We don’t have any cabbage. I was still thinking about the German movie we watched a few nights ago called “The White Ribbon.” It was full of “who done its” without any concrete resolution and it had us speculating all day long. Not that it even mattered, it was a way of getting back into the movie. It was beautifully shot in austere black and white and set in pre WW1 Austria and was as unsettling as “Children of the Damned.” The sub titles were small so we sat cross-legged, up close to the tv. This intensified our involvement and it took a while it shake it. May have to try that again.

Clarence, the man who built our house in the late forties, stopped by with his daughter like he does every summer. Our neighbor, Jared, who was here when Clarence lived in our house, stopped n to reconnect and he asked Clarence what he attributed his longevity too. At 98 and a half Clarence is sharp as a tack. He said something about the Lord and Jared, the lovable atheist that he is, asked, “Why does the Lord decide to let you live to a ripe old age and then take a young person down”? Clarence said he has lived long enough to gain wisdom which is better than intelligence”.

We put “The White Ribbon” in the mail and cued up the Netflix “Instant Play” version of “The Horror of Dracula” on our iPad. Jack Garner recommended it in our local paper. We propped the iPad up between a Philip Guston book and one on Mattise and ran the audio out to our stereo. The application locked up at one point and I grabbed this still.

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