People might ask how it is that I never believe what others say, about somebody, until I’ve either heard or spoken with that person.

I think it’s because of 1999.

Don’t worry; that story is already chronicled, in a piece called No Excuse. Yes; after seven years of continuous avocational compulsion To Write, although this may be the first week I’ve actually listened to my Christopher Parkening duo CD all the way through, in print we’ve reached the blog recycle stage.

It takes having been the subject of public slander.

Once you realize that entire chunks of multiple demographics believe you to be the aggressive perpetrator of your own fleshly failings, you discover that what people say about anybody is forever tainted.

Tainted, by rumor, innuendo, the men who manage and their ladies who lunch about the lives of those to whom they only aspire.

Once you endure, first acutely and then forever, false characterization of your very self by remote strangers, you learn. You learn an even stranger magnanimity, a broadly stroking latitude, a prisoner’s forgiving heart.

And again, even this will be subject to the panel of self-assigned scrutinizers, those who remember or think they do, as if your very act of acceptance is an indictment.

To the world, your judgment is warped, your worth relegated, your life to know its place.

This is how, therefore, I came to actually hear Pierre Kory, MD speak about his bedside Emergency Room treatment of actively infected covid patients. To most paying him any attention at all, he’s right up there with RFK Jr on the list of those condemned to the social trash heap. But, I’ve been listening to him talk every week for several months, live online, along with his colleagues in the fight. And, just yesterday, he replied to my direct email. If we met in an airport, we could say Hello like old college buddies.

I listen to Richard Fleming, too. And, Dr. Mobeen Syed. And, Suzanne Somers.

If you don’t hear people, first hand, you won’t get their testimonies. And, personal testimony isn’t reserved for court. It’s what we are.

Anymore, the personal testimony of those who really do have our health and vitality at heart, while they still breathe air, are waiting to be heard.

Go, find them, and sit at their feet. It’s the way Jesus’ disciples learned the Gospel. They didn’t wait for somebody else to tell it to them. Granted, that Gospel has endured endless iteration, but we wouldn’t have the Good News at all were it not for those who listened, first hand.

Thanks to the wonder of audio technology, Christopher Parkening repeats his Recuerdos de la Alhambra as many times as I request him. I wasn’t there when he first recorded the piece, circa 1993; but, returning to a time when who I was had not yet been defined by those who still don’t know, I meet and revisit him, through his music.

People might say I know him, by name.

.

.

.

.

Copyright 8/22/22 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose name is real and appears above this line. No copying, translating, or quoting without sharing the blog link, directly. Thank you for your first hand attention.

littlebarefeetblog.com