It saddened me deeply to learn Friday that a man and friend I've greatly admired and cared about for 20 years had departed this strange world we are told began, so appropriately in his case, with "The Word."
The poet Miller Williams of Fayetteville, Bill Clinton's second inaugural poet and a co-founder of the UA Press, died on Jan. 1 at Washington Regional Medical Center following a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's.
Ironic and cruel, isn't it, how sometimes our demise comes at the hands of an affliction that robs us of even reflecting on all we contributed to life?
This distinguished and beloved man of letters, the brilliant son of a firebrand, civil-rights-crusading Methodist minister, received multiple worldwide recognitions and acclaim for his poetry that appealed to the academic persnickety as well as blue-collar working folks.
Also the father of the Grammy Award-winning singer Lucinda Williams (a nod to genetics), Miller relished in telling me and others that, as a young man, he'd happened across Hank Williams in a bar. There, the late, great country legend told Miller it was apparent his newfound young friend had "a beer-drinking soul."
Miller was always quick to smile and emphasize that Williams hadn't used the term "beer drinker's," but rather a "beer-drinking" soul.
How appropriate that his death would come on New Year's Day, just like Hank Williams.
More than anything, Miller Williams is one of those who made such an eloquent and gracious difference by being here.
His passing at age 84 leaves a yawning chasm in our consciousness simply because he reached inside with his words to personally connect with so many others in such positive and profound ways. Miller was an acute observer and recorder of life's ironies and joys, its pleasures and dramas.
Among my favorite of his poems was one in which his pet dog had gone in a frantic, futile search for a snowball Miller had thrown into a yard blanketed in white. After a long time of running in ever-tightening circles sniffing for the ball, the dog had finally given up. Miller's observation was that he felt certain that by later that day the dog had forgotten all about that episode, yet it still lingered on Miller's mind.
I always will treasure Miller's words, his smiling image and warm friendship. He's in my bloodstream, embedded deep within my heart and mind as surely as the cells that compose my own fragile physical body. So many of us feel that way about him.
I'll never forget late afternoons spent with him and his beloved and caring wife, Jordan, sipping a beverage in their comfy back den as he read from his latest works and an assorted collection of interesting odds and ends he'd been compiling for discussion. Many times the conversation turned to the craft of how to most artfully craft images from the proper word choices.
Miller always opted for the choice he believed most descriptive and eloquent. For instance, one afternoon he pointed out to me that using the word "yet" in a sentence rather than the word "but" often was the more literary and elegant choice. Yet again, his advice was correct.
Godspeed, Miller Williams. What a truly magnificent treasure you were to intriguing our minds and lifting our imaginations.
Thanks for so freely sharing your beer-drinking soul and ability to illuminate our hearts and minds with your words for such a relatively brief, yet deeply profound and meaningful spell among us.
Do the right thing
In light of SWEPCO's wise decision to abandon its aggressive push to lay a 50-mile-long high-power line through the Ozarks from Benton County through much of Carroll County, I'm wondering the same thing many others are today.
Members of Save the Ozarks, the citizens group that formed to fight this wrongheaded transmission line for two long and uncertain years, expended tens of thousands of human hours and contributed dollars in attempts to get the utility giant SWEPCO to reconsider its doggedly determined effort.
So now that the corporation finally decided to drop its efforts, I'm wondering if it also can find it in the integrity of its heart and mind to reimburse Save the Ozarks and those who withdrew so much from their personal savings and resources to achieve this same end.
Seems only fair to me that the utility folks could (and should) make such amends and gain a lot of future allies rather than angry citizens in the process by simply stepping up and doing what strikes me and lots of others as simply the right thing.
Try putting yourself in the place of those who tried so hard to make you see and understand from the beginning of what even you concede was unnecessary all along.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 01/06/2015