Changing...

Last weekend, the town went nuts.

And it's all because of cranberries and fish.

Every year, on the 1st weekend in October, there is CranberryFest.
And a pretty good-sized Musky Tournament.

About the Musky aka Muskellunge - it is an elusive torpedo-like fish sometimes referred to as the "Northern barracuda".  It's a vacuum cleaner with teeth, taking in fish, ducklings, baby loons, and, on rare occasion, hand-sized lures full of treble hooks.

The cranberry doesn't need much of an introduction.

It's small, red, and tastes like lemon rind. Kinda.

The little town goes from being 1,800 hardy souls with mostly polite manners to a seething, anxious metropolis of 30,000 with the patience and thinly-veiled rudeness of the cosmopolitan.

Hey, the visitors are not all bad. Not by a long shot.  But there's just enough of the really-jerksome to make one weigh the benefits of this last great influx of tourism dollars right before the onslaught of six months of winter.

Okay. The scales pretty much always tip in favor of the 'Fest.

It's Economics 101 - a weekend of frustration beats a Winter of credit-card living followed by a Spring of repossession and foreclosure.

So.  Welcome to our little town. We shall embrace the change even though it isn't what we're used to. 

Now this brings forth the question, egged on by the third cup of the Elixir of Knowledge this morning.

Have other people ever felt this way?  Caught in change and wanting to maintain the status quo.  Longing for the "good ol' days"?

Yeah.  Uh-huh.

David.  Had to. Yeah.

(Amazing how Sunday School & caffeinated flashbacks coincide, eh?)

Here's a kid growing up, shootin' at stumps with a sling, putzin' with the harp, writing songs, watchin' sheep, and watchin' clouds.

Okay, there was the occasional adrenaline burst brought on by a bear or lion, but, for the most part, it's pretty bucolic and idyllic.

Kinda like a Jewish Norman Rockwell painting. Sort of.

Then Samuel tells him this "thing about being a king".  A dead giant and a few thousand dead enemies later, the sitting king decides he doesn't like this "thing about being a king" and tries to make it go away via homicide.

But God keeps promises, so David becomes the king.

Oh, boy.  The job's got perks.  Great perks.  But it's those other things that give him headaches.

Power-brokers. Palace intrigue. Decisions. Responsibilities.

Yeah.

I wonder if there were evenings when David climbed the stairs to the palace roof and watched a shepherd bringing the flock home at sunset.

And he would've gladly swapped places with the guy.  In a heartbeat.

The Elixir of Knowledge floats in another thought I read a few months back.  It's from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

"Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something that you have never been."        (June 8th reading)

I'm pretty sure David wrote a psalm about this but obviously it went unpublished.  Would've liked to hear it.

So.

Enjoy the change - that wonderful, terrifying, firmly-planted-in-mid-air, white-knuckled-trusting change.

You'll find yourself doing things and going places you never dreamed of.

You might go from phys ed and recreation to banking to chainsaw sales to writing screenplays and a blog about drinking coffee and living in the trees.

Changing.  It's a hoot.