A Blessing I Won't Take for Granted

The ads for Black Friday have been going strong for several days now. They've been telling us all we really cant live without something we have done without for all these years.

Or as a friend tells me, Black Friday is when people buy a $300 tent to wait in line to save $50 on a television. Or it is the day that thankful people get up to push and shove to spend money they don't have on items they don't need.

At least that is what I expect of Black Friday.

Sometimes, though, we just need to sit back and think about some of the simple things in life. We say it often, but do we really understand it? I think I do now.

Something that happened in my life that really taught this old boy, at age 57, that the things we take for granted every day really do matter most.

A couple of months ago, I was checking my Facebook account when I saw where Paul Martin, who had been a member of Marty Stuart's band, The Fabulous Superlatives, had posted a YouTube video that caught my attention.

It was Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss and Allison Krauss, three of the sweetest voices this side of heaven, singing the classic “Teach Your Children” at the White House in 1995. Legendary guitarist Chet Atkins was in the video while Martin was playing the pedal steel guitar. I had known of Paul for many years, dating to his time as a member of another of my favorite groups, Exile.

But I had no idea about this gig, in which he was actually a last-minute replacement for someone who had an appendicitis attack. If you have never seen it, check it out here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g795h7HaZsw

What really got me about the video, though, was the song itself. I had not known about this version of the great Crosby, Stills and Nash song. Apparently, it had been very popular 20 years ago, but I never knew that three of my favorite singers had this version of one of my favorite songs.

Those who know me know that I have cochlear implants. Since undergoing the surgeries to stimulate my cochlea, I've had the world of music reopened. From about 1992 or so until having the second cochlear device implanted in 2010, I rarely listened to music. Usually, it just sounded like jumbled noise.

Dr. Kari Mobley, then my audiologist at the University of Kentucky, introduced me to Pandora and encouraged me to listen to as much music as possible.

But I had not thought about “Teach Your Children,” which I actually heard first performed by The Imperials, a gospel group, back when I was in high school.

The video Paul posted might have been some good entertainment for many people. To me, however, it was another link to those days before my hearing deteriorated to the point of giving up something I love.

After watching the video, I immediately got out the inexpensive guitar I purchased last year. I started strumming that “D” chord, the key in which I had played “Teach Your Children” more than 30 years ago. Then “G,” “A” and so on. Admittedly, it was a bit rough and my fingers did not perform some of the runs I had been able to perform when I had played a 12-string guitar years ago.

To many, this might seem silly. After all, it was just a song.

But it is the very point I was profoundly reminded of when Paul posted that link. Just a song, regardless of its magnitude on the charts, can be something more profound to others.

I heard it. And yes, I could still play it, rough as it might be.

THAT, is a blessing.

It's so easy to overlook even the smallest things in life, even simply listening to a song or strumming a few chords on a guitar.

But they, too, are blessings. I will never take them for granted again.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17.

Winner didn't surprise but margin did. Some thoughts on the Kentucky election

 I don't think very many of us saw this one coming.

Privately, I had told a very few close friends that I thought Matt Bevin was going to be the next governor of Kentucky, but that we might not know until the early hours of Nov. 4, the day after we had the opportunity to go to the polls.

A statewide margin of less than 10,000 votes either way would not have been a surprise and the lingering question would have been the effect of a third-party candidate.

While the effect of Drew Curtis on election dialogue could be open to debate, there is little doubt that Bevin's performance with voters was very strong, regardless of sensational Internet stories claiming the election was rigged or stolen.

I'm no political expert and believe election shenanigans do go on, but I find it very hard to believe a margin of 85,000 votes, or better than 9 percent of those cast, could be influenced by voting machine hanky-panky.

That being said, I am an interested observer. Elections affect all of us, including sports editors. How we perceive they affect us is obviously different, but, yep, they are significant exercises of our citizenship.

Over the last week, I have tried to figure out how Matt Bevin fooled the pollsters to pull off the most one-sided Republican gubernatorial win – in terms of his percentage margin – in my lifetime. Here are some thoughts, in no particular order.

1.Jack Conway might have run the weakest campaign by a major party candidate the state has ever seen.

Back in May, after Bevin won the Republican primary by 83 votes, the general consensus was the GOP had given the Governor's Mansion to the Democrats for four more years.

While that was premature, the race was probably Conway's to lose.

I can't say anything about how much either candidate was out shaking hands and kissing babies, but do know that the advertisements from Conway simply had the message, “Bevin is the Bogeyman.”

We knew little of what Conway wanted to accomplish other than the “better jobs and better schools” mantra that nearly every candidate since Isaac Shelby has espoused.

That was it. Precious little other than “Keep the Bevin the Bogeyman out of Frankfort.”

Even if attack ads work – pundits say they do – somewhere along the line, people want to know why they should vote for anyone.

Conway gave them little reason to do so.

2.Bevin's campaign was much stronger than given credit for.

That was evident in the primary when he ran that memorable commercial depicting rivals Hal Heiner and James Comer in a food fight. It was about that same time I told my wife, “Bevin is letting them pick each other off and will slip through in the primary and win this fall.”

Full disclosure: I am a registered Republican, but did not vote for Bevin in the primary.

In the fall, most of the Bevin ads I saw showed him as a smiling businessman with his wife and nine children. It was very effective.

It would be unfair to say there were no attack ads on Conway, but, for the most part, they came from political action committees who successfully tied him – rightly or wrongly – to President Obama, who is not exactly a favorite in Kentucky.

Bevin was unorthodox, but the perceived gaffes, such as walking into Democratic headquarters during the campaign might have actually solidified some support in a climate where the a large portion of the electorate would like to give career politicians of both major parties a piece of its mind.

And agree or disagree with him, you knew a vote for Bevin was a vote for dismantling Kynect and for smaller government, among other things.

3.Bevin's win was a landslide among those who voted, but it was far from a mandate.

Bevin got 53 percent of the vote 938,715 who voted. Many of them are passionate in the call for a smaller government that Bevin rode to victory.

But over 2 million registered voters did not vote. About 70 percent of the so-called “responsible adults” did not take a few minutes to go to the polls on a beautiful day.

That's not just sad. It's pathetic.

Some pundits lamented that neither Conway nor Bevin excited the masses, but to that I say, “So what?” If the masses have to be prodded to go to the polls, it is much more of an indictment on the people than the candidates.

Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, there are few excuses for someone not voting. When Americans have one of the greatest freedoms of all and don't exercise that freedom, we are all losers.

Over the years, I've had some great political discussions that invariably devolve into “The politicians don't listen to me.”

Au contraire. They listen very carefully.

And when 70 percent of an electorate stays home, the message is, “We don't care.”

And we wonder why our country is in the mess it is in.