re: Visited the Angola Rodeo and Craft fair and was amazed what I saw. Can good come from bad?

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It depends. What were those artist found guilty of?

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It seemed in bad form to ask. Some were behind fences...I figured those were the bad apples, didn’t buy anything from them.

But most were out and about at their tables, selling their wares, visiting. If not for the shirts and the location you couldn’t tell the difference between those men and free men selling crafts at an art fair.

And who knows, maybe I bought something made by a murderer. The ancient man with the crazy white hair who looked like Einstein could have gunned down a man in cold blood decades ago. Maybe he got busted selling something the government decided was illegal. Maybe he left a woman to slowly drown after crashing drunk off a bridge.

I don’t know. What I do know is that in that moment he didn’t seem a threat to anyone. He just made beautiful bowls out of discarded hunks of wood.

This country, in its formative years, was hewn from the wilderness by men who at times committed acts that today would have them in prison forever. Yet they built this country. Had families. Were part of society.

Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, both murderers who are celebrated as heroes. The world has always been violent. We’ve been killing each other since man first picked up a sharp rock. The world has changed but man hasn’t. And I don’t know if one act of evil makes a man evil forever.

Maybe i’m Wrong. Maybe there is no redemption and if released that old man would kill with abandon.

Damn fine bowl though