About Dripping In Pearls.... The poem "Off Road Religion" was inspired by Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", but McCarthy's collected works inspired even more. "Blood Meridian," McCarthy's celebrated novel about the brutality of the old West, followed the exploits of John Joel Glanton. Glanton had started out in Texas as a scout with the Texas Rangers. He rode with best of them, Samuel Hamilton Walker and John Coffee "Jack" Hays, but Glanton was expelled from the group because of his viciousness. Glanton had nearly killed the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in San Antonio, Texas, Rev. John McCullough. Dodging Glanton's assault, Rev. McCullough moved to Galveston to become an founding pastor of Galveston Island's First Presbyterian Church. Glanton rode west to provide the basis of Cormac McCarthy's widely acclaimed novel and to meet his death at the hands of the Yuma Indians in Arizona. The story of Glanton's demise was told to the Alcade of San Diego, California, Abel Stearns, by a survivor of the attack and member of the Glanton party, William Carr. These facts inspired "The Wild Root Weed." "Tuff It Out" was written after I had learned that Tuff Hedeman, the champion rodeo bull rider, was like me, the youngest child in his family. A youngest child in a church filled with "Elders" and I was often sure that I was riding bulls of a different nature. I had just read Frank Sulloway's book on "birth order" titled "Born To Rebel". If there is a singular message in this collection of poems it is that life is a journey and that the seemingly unconnected and frazzled strands of our life's unfolding tapestry are not disconnected at all. The satirical poem "I'm Moving On To Texas" was inspired by Billy Bob Thorton's role in the 2004 version of "The Alamo" as the true-life fiddle player, Davy Crockett. This poem was picked up by a number of on-line bloggers who attributed it to Crockett himself which, of course, was pure folklore in the making. Much of "Dripping in Pearls" was written after the tragic death of our son in December 2000... like the poem "Shine Down On Me" that was written on Chapman Ranch Road between Kingsville and Corpus Christi, Texas in December 2001 next to a run-down gas refinery circled by a rusty chain link fence and holding a herd of goats who appeared to be employed at keeping the grass cut. The goats seemed to appreciate the musings of a passing balladeer while voicing a unique brand of sympathy and understanding for my lamentations or perhaps not? "Pass Me A Draft" was written in 2005 after I had read Josiah Bunting's book "The Lionheads," Bunting argued prophetically and convincingly that as in the Vietnam War era the U.S. needed an ongoing draft of military age soldiers to avoid the privatization of the U.S. military. "Vivo Por Le Noche" was recorded as a song by the author and performed by Ramon Claveria and Camco (Cuban American Music Company) and is included on Claveria's 2014 album "Island Solutions." "Fire In the Holler" and "Fred Is Dead" came from the culmination a study of my family's Georgia history and the lessons from General Smedley Darlington Butler's book "War Is A Racket." A member of the Adcock family from Walton County, Georgia, and named for my grandfather, William Harvey Adcock, the Adcock farm was solidly within the northern and eastern advance from Atlanta of General William Tecumseh Sherman's march to Savannah in 1864 and is part of the historical background for this author's 2015 book, "One Nation Under Oz." Walton County, Georgia was also the location of the tragic Moore's Ford Bridge Massacre. -WHC