I have the ability to make myself two inches taller at will.  I have stooped shoulders.  I regularly lie down flat on my back on the floor.  Because of my stooped shoulders my head cannot even contact the floor for perhaps a full minute.  Eventually gravity accomplishes the feat, and my whole spine undergoes a thorough stretching.  After doing my exercises, I stand up, and a miracle has occurred.  My back is straight, and I am two inches taller!

I proudly display my haughtier-than-thou posture and attitude to my admiring wife; but a few minutes later my concentration lapses, and gravity again takes over, bringing me back to my regular posture.

My stooped shoulders are genetic.  My mother was a McCornack.  All of her ancestors were Scotch and Irish.  The Scotch and the Irish both built magnificent rock walls.  The lands they inhabited were very rocky.  In order to grow more grass for their livestock, and to make arable land, they had to gather the rocks out of their fields.  Rather than throw the rocks into a pile in the corner of the field, they used them to make fences.  They didn't have mortar, so they stacked them dry.  By carefully selecting just the right rock for every space and position in the wall, they were able to dry-stack the stones and create beautiful fences that are works of art.  Scotland and western Ireland are covered with these ancient  rock walls.

I like to think that my stooped shoulders are because of my ancestors' rock-gathering, and stone-wall-building, lifelong activities.

They were artists.  Building an enduring rock wall is an art.  One might intuitively start by placing the larger stones on the bottom, but that would not necessarily be the right way to do it.  The heavy weight of big rocks on top of the wall keeps the lower rocks in position.

The walls were built without mortar, yet have endured for centuries.  In extremely rocky areas the walls are numerous and close together.  The paddocks and fields between the walls are green with grass, and farmable.  The work of those ancient ancestors has blessed the lives of their posterity down through many generations.

The rock walls and cleared fields gave those ancient ancestors great feelings of satisfaction as they saw them slowly take shape.  The hard work also gave them stooped shoulders.  The cleared paddocks provided more pasture for larger flocks, and made possible a larger harvest of wheat and oats to feed their families and animals.

The hard labor of those ancestors blessed themselves and their families, and also their posterity.

A written record does the same.  Writing is hard work, but writing endures.  It blesses posterity.  Life's lessons get passed down.  Mistakes don't have to be repeated through the generations.  Wisdom and lessons learned can be shared.  Each generation can be better than the previous one.  How we wish that those ancestors had left a written record as well as enduring, mortar-less walls.

My ancestors removed the rocks from the fields.  My writings are my effort to remove rocks from my posterity's lives.

My ancestors had a problem.  Rocks were their problem.  They used the rocks to build protective fences for their livestock.  They turned their problems into blessings.

My life has been one problem and challenge after another.  I've written about them all.  My writings constitute the walls that I've erected to protect and bless my posterity.  I've spent a lot of time hunched over a paper with pen in hand.

If my stooped shoulders are a product of that labor, so be it.  I have tremendous feelings of satisfaction when I look at what I've constructed, and hope that my labors will bless my posterity.

My shoulders are McCornack shoulders.  McCornack shoulders are very recognizable.  But I haven't always been stooped.  I used to be very straight.  My wife points out that my shoulders are a product of age, as well as of labor.

I hope my stooped shoulders and the walls I'm leaving behind will bless my posterity.

Please use these protective walls.