{"id":100741,"date":"2018-03-29T17:23:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T23:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/james-being-good-just-like-you-are\/"},"modified":"2018-03-29T17:23:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T23:23:30","slug":"james-being-good-just-like-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/james-being-good-just-like-you-are\/","title":{"rendered":"James: Being good just like you are"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom
Tom James<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve been draggin\u2019 her around for years just \u2018bong chinginin\u2019 away whenever I could find somebody to tune her for me.<\/p>\n

I call her Bonnie, after Bonnie Parker of Bonnie & Clyde infamy, mostly because Thelma and Louise are already taken by my pickup and car. My friend Burt Baldwin put a tunin\u2019 on her a while back and I\u2019ve been jammin\u2019 my little hiney off. Havin\u2019 more fun than a dog rollin\u2019 in a dead skunk.<\/p>\n

Music, art and literature, amazing huh? I have to be honest and say I never paid much attention to them before now. The folks at the Herald and you folks readin\u2019 have blown the barn door plumb off of my mind and opened it up to some really cool stuff and I\u2019d like to say thanks.<\/p>\n

I have discovered that my thoughts, and all the stuff that rolls around in my head in a day, are unique, and they\u2019re supposed to be. It\u2019s what makes me, me. That bein\u2019 said, then the same thing must be so for you. Instead of tryin\u2019 real hard to fit in to the mold society has pre-arranged for us, how cool is it to just say, \u201c Naw, I\u2019m good just like I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes bein\u2019 less judgmental easier. We\u2019re all just cruisin\u2019 along life\u2019s highway tryin\u2019 to do the best we can each day. Some days are better than others, but it seems to even itself out if we stay the course. Life is big, and it\u2019s supposed to be; each one unique to the owner.<\/p>\n

Read a book by an author you don\u2019t know today, try a new type of food, listen to some music that\u2019s new to you, and if you get the chance, introduce yourself to someone who doesn\u2019t look like you. All change isn\u2019t bad; it\u2019s just change.<\/p>\n

Thanks to you all for enlarging my mind and my world.<\/p>\n

Woody Guthrie sang it best: \u201cThis land is your land, this land is my land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom James was riding horses before he could walk. He currently hangs his hat in Ignacio. Reach him at outlivedthemallsofar@gmail.com<\/a>. The topknot, by the way, is the last knot tied on a pack saddle.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James I\u2019ve been draggin\u2019 her around for years just \u2018bong chinginin\u2019 away whenever I could find somebody to tune her for me. I call her Bonnie, after Bonnie Parker of Bonnie & Clyde infamy, mostly because Thelma and Louise are already taken by my pickup and car. My friend Burt Baldwin put a tunin\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6341],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-watch-yore-topknot","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100741"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}