Oscar E Moore

In the land of anything can happen, which could be just about anywhere these days, we begin.

Sunlight had started to disappear.  A dullness at first.  Then grayness.  Then little or no light that one was accustomed to seeing at daybreak.  And then those gorgeous blue skies (even cloudy skies) slowly but progressively disappeared as well.  And finally to make matters worse the forests with their bounty of beautiful green trees and wild flowers and berries began to be drained of all color.  What was happening?  What has caused this disappearing act brought about by our dear old Mother Nature?

It was time that Simi Farkel Holmes, our baffled Private Investigator, once famous Girl Scout crusader and all around smarty-pants got to work.  After all, her prized majestic bed of gorgeous delphiniums was being endangered.  Time to put on her thinking cap, use her infamous grey cells and favorite Ouija board to solve these strange and perplexing occurrences.

Simi was troubled and disturbed.  She asked her artistically inclined friends.  They were equally frustrated and bewildered with the ever increasing darkness.  Do I dare say they too were in the dark as to coming up with a solution?

Ummm…

She asked her parents.  Separately.  To no avail.  They were divorced, living apart and made it obvious that they had other more important problems and could offer little or no information on the mysterious happenings that they hardly even noticed.

Frustrated, Simi went to the small neighborhood library to do research only to discover that it had been temporarily shut down due to lack of use.  No one seemed to read hard cover books these days in the land of anything can happen.

Real books had become too heavy, too long, too wordy and much too boring for its intended readership as opposed to the awful “breaking now” news (24 hours a day) syndrome that spread like some contageous virus –  regarding the frightening “dark ages revisited” alerts.

All this before the advent of the instant information internet and cell phones and whatever else was waiting in the future to isolate humans from each other while bringing them immediately in contact with a lot of junk.

Isolation of individuals.  Each and almost every one staring into a small gizmo and pressing buttons and letters and numbers to while away the lonely hours that resulted in not having a real cause to deal with or a real friend to share with –  that personal touch called communicating face to face.  Not face to image.  Just lots of sore thumbs.

BACK FROM THE FUTURE

So our determined but totally confused heroine returned home to her very adequate studio apartment that her feuding parents had bought for her prior to their divorce – just in case – and wasn’t that a good thing as she preferred living alone anyway away from all their bickering and complaining about each other and she had enough money from her trust fund.  Ah, the magical trust fund.  Solves lots of problems.

Simi was widely known as a philanthropist – although many couldn’t even spell the word.  In any event, money – unlimited funds – were handily at her disposal.

What did she do? You may ask.  Go right ahead.  I’ll wait.  No?  Here we go.

Simi is trying to solve this darkness problem knowing she will eventually see the light (couldn’t resist) as she tends to the gardens in the park spending lots of free time with her friends.  Mostly animals.  And doing a lot of good deeds for a lot of needy people in private to boot.

BACK TO NOW

So our determined albeit confused heroine went home and baked a batch of delicious cookies – of her own closely guarded recipe that by far outsold and still does all the other Girl Scout members in her troop that she still stayed in contact with.

Simi Farkel Holmes Private Eye, her card read.  And that’s how she was famously referred to and respected in the small town of Kaplunk where she tried her best to be interesting, kind and generous and to do deeds worth her while, while on this planet that was so suddenly beset with so many problems.

Simi Farkel Holmes Private Eye had a reputation.  A rather fine reputation for being intelligent and for using that old fashioned “common sense” method that seemingly had gone out of style to solve any problems that crossed her threshold.

Take for example the slaying of Dendle the friendly neighborhood dragon whose home was in the rapidly drying up and slowly disappearing body of water so aptly named Lake Bygone.

A kindhearted shy dragon he was but someone somehow slew him as a trophy.  A trophy!   And that was not correct.  But she figured out who did him in – with the aid of her trusty Ouija Board and then she did that person in and in return she was awarded her twentieth Girl Scout Merit Badge for Detection.

Her prized possession.  Added to the many others which she had received for Science and Technology, Baking, Citizenship Improvement, First Aid, Forensics and last but not least Environmental Maintenance to name but a few.

And then one day while tending her drooping delphiniums Simi had an instantaneous thought race through her mind.  Completely out of the blue – which was a bit pale but still blue.  Like so many of her successful far out ideas she had received in the past.  The thought was a single word.  A name.  Pandora.

YIKES!  Not again!  Pandora, for those of you who have never heard of this all too curious woman, was responsible for unleashing all the evils of humanity when she lifted the lid of a gift that she was told never to open.

Hatred.  Revenge.  Disease.  Despair.  Greed.  Envy.  Famine.  Gluttony.  Lust.  Arrogance.  And all of their many sordid relatives.  The list seemingly endless.

We know that history does have a predilection for repeating itself but this is ridiculous thought Simi.  This blast from the past is certainly not welcome.  But perhaps this is just what we need.  A wakeup call to pay attention.

To the air we breathe.  To the clear blue skies.  Our trees.  Our flowers.  Our food.  Ourselves.  Can you imagine if all that goes down the drain?

Suddenly another word exploded in Simi’s thoughts.  Hope.  Yes.  Hope was still available.  The only thing that remained entrapped under the lid of the vessel when all those horrors were released by Pandora’s disobedience and curiosity.  Hope remained protected.

That is why Simi’s delphiniums survive.  Representing joy, happiness and kindness.  Acting as protection against the multitude of dangers lurking and waiting to destroy us.

So please stop thinking and worrying about so many unimportant matters while ignoring what might be the end of our beautiful world if we fail to take action immediately.  While we can.

And so Simi Farkel Holmes leaves us with a possible way of dealing with these difficult problems.  To pay attention.  To be kind.  After all, kindness is contagious.  A thought on a card that she hands out to one and all.

H.O.P.E.  Happiness.  Optimism.  Peace.  Empathy.

Spread the word.

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