An incidental, and coincidental, collection of maxims and verse, both wise and comical, both commonsensical and abstruse, TUBAV is the result of years of writing, gathering, and experiencing life. Through times ranging from ecstatic exuberance to the heaviest despair, from the most carefree frivolity to the greatest intensity of effort and concentration, the author and editor has learned truths that only experience can teach, and only the furnace of hard lessons hardly grasped can instill. Within the few pages of this short compendium, depending on the views and tenets to which one adheres, the reader will find quite a bit to cause either delight or disdain, reverent musing or vane ridicule, provocative reflection or smug dismissal. Some of the greatest minds in history have been the least known outside of their specific purview, and yet their pithy observations and statements can cut through all of the trees and undergrowth to clearly reveal the forest in all its grandeur. When I was yet a child in grammar school my Great-grandmother, Georgia "Gramma Johnny" Gardner Johns, nee Gardner Owens, began requesting-actually, obliging-me to produce, think up, a "proverb" as often as may be, pushing for one every month. It was very good training, as it made necessary my study of words of wisdom from others, the famous and the not so famous, the latter group subsuming some of her generation's family members. As she was in her late eighties at the time, the insights of her generation introduced to me a wholly new perspective, devoid of the prejudices which engulf the understanding of all eras and epochs. In the four sections you will find heartrending sentiments; bitingly honest appraisals of what are, for the most part, culturally hallowed views; unflinching and unashamed statements Christian truths-and truth; expressions of the deepest love, couched in whimsical verse; and profound remarks by some of the wisest minds ever to have been encased in "mortal coil." If you take offense at mention of Jesus of Nazareth, or His words, you probably do not want to read any further, but, to quote G. K. Chesterton, Christian and intellectual giant of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." Even if you are not a Christian, but open to the possibility that there might be one or more things in life that you still have not learned, you just might want to read on. To quote Chesterton again, "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." Lastly, as noted in the above second paragraph, much of what you will find in these pages was drawn from my own wellspring, and I leave it to you to decide for yourselves whether that spring is a fount of wisdom, or merely a pool of banality. So, if you are still with me, by all means read on!
About the Author: John Spencer Yantiss was born in Louisville, KY to parents of Anglo-Scotch-Irish, and Lithuanian descent. A musician and singer, he started piano lessons at age 5, and began writing poems and songs at 8 years of age. While still in high school he began playing guitar professionally, and over the years shared the stage with such notable figures as Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley. His love of writing continued on over the years, expanding to include fiction, beginning with a few attempts at fantasy, along the lines of Tolkien and Lewis. In 1985 he turned to writing primarily Christian song lyrics, and classic detective mysteries, based on the character Sherrod Reynard Colsne, in the transatlantic and cumulative tradition of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. Murder By Bequest, his inaugural effort, first appeared in publication in 2012 via Amazon.com, as a Kindle e-book. Throughout the years Yantiss carried on the tradition begun with him, by his great-grandmother, Georgia Gardner Johns, nee Owens, of framing truths-usually self-evident-in proverbial form, many of which constitute a central element of this little volume.