Such a glorious Sunday it turned out to be. A vacuumed carpet and the waste paper and magazines consigned to recycling, a shower taken, teeth brushed, cheeks and neck shaved. I sit in clean clothes with a plastic tumbler of iced Earl Grey tea on the table to my right.

As a change of scenery I am watching BNSF tracks in Fort Madison, Iowa. The tracks handle a lot of freight. The tracks flank the Mississippi River, then cross the river on a bridge and into Illinois, near Nauvoo, where Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Latter Day Saints met his demise, if memory serves me.

Speaking of memory, I recall the story, learned I know not where, of how Thomas Jonathon Jackson earned his sobriquet.

“There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginian!” Commanded South Carolina’s General Bee at the Battle of First Manassas.

Funny how the tangible can be desttoyed, but the idea, the legend, the memory and the dream live on, undaunted by the tattooed cowards of the night who afflict our city like those other nocturnal denizens, the rats.

Memory conserves so much. Some memories live on in the brain, others in the muscle, some even in the cock, to be recalled in tumescence for time to time.

Anger seems so distant now, as I gaze upon the tracks, park, and river on this idyllic afternoon.