Gently Said

Artic Blast

2012-02-18T05:37:00.000-06:00

I’m pretty sure…I think I am. I think I saw four snowflakes blowing across the tundra – uh, the pavement in downtown Houston. Doubt me? I have independent verification.

“This is stupid…but I think I saw a snowflake.” That’s what he said.

But then here comes science to put a damper on faith and belief in the goodness of things. “Bullshit!” the pseudo-scientist said. “It is nowhere cold enough to snow!” We need to work on his grammar.

I kept looking if for no other reason than to prove him wrong.

I’ve was looking forward to yesterday – the day of the Artic Cold Front. Actually this forecast was upgraded by the forecasters yesterday on Channel 11. “The Artic Blast will hit around 9:00 a.m. causing temperatures to plummet.” Artic Blast. I like that better than Artic Cold Front. The term ‘blast’ was apropos. At 9:00 a.m. yesterday temperatures did indeed plummet, accompanied by high winds. In Canada those winds would probably be classified as a delicate breeze. In Kansas they would have been called a ‘wind’. Down here they were called a “friggin’ force-5 hurricane’. Downtown people were nudging themselves around light poles to keep from being blown around.

This windy stuff contributed to something – and I don’t want to get to technical here – called ‘wind chill’. It was thirty-eight degrees at 4:00 yesterday afternoon, and with the wind it felt like approximately minus 762-degrees. For my Canadian friends, this is below 0-degrees Celsius. Today is better. The wind has died down. My car thermometer kept bouncing back and forth between 32 and 33-degrees. I could imagine my car whispering to itself, “I’m freezing. I’m not. I’m freezing. I’m not.”

And as I drove in to my half-day work this morning, I considered those football players that wear short-sleeved jerseys while playing in frigid weather. Part of it is to show how tough they are. I once heard a player say that it was invigorating. As I thought about this during my drive, I figured that I needed some invigoration. So I rolled down my window and let the 32/33-degree weather whip across me. I wanted to experience what those football players felt. It only took 90-seconds for me to become Really Invigorated. But I think that I now have bonded with them.

Speaking of bonding, I’ve written my congressman. I think that we need to become closer to our Canadian friends – share experiences a little. So I suggested that we pass a law to adopt the really-weird Celsius temperature thing in the summer, but keep our old fashioned Fahrenheit in the winter. Think about it. If it is 85-degree Fahrenheit, to a Canadian it is only 29-degrees. If we realized that it was only 29, we wouldn’t feel damn hot. I haven’t heard back from him.

But being Artic Blasted provided me with the perfect excuse to have a bowl of chili for lunch. Someone told me that the chili at Jason’s Deli was pretty good – so I tried it and it was pretty good.

Actually I wrote this a while back during one of our cold fronts, but never got around to publishing it. Today, February 18th, it is 60-degrees and it has been raining a lot. I just needed to remind myself that sometimes in winter it actually does gets cold here.

Stieg's Girl

2012-02-11T08:46:00.000-06:00

When I went to Canada a couple of weeks ago, I made sure to bring a book with me. For some reason, and it has always been completely accidental, it seems that I have always ended up with a fiction book about plane crashes when I flew.So this time I grabbed a non-plane crash book from the library to keep me company.

I enjoy the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. Reacher is a fascinating character that refuses to be tied down with 'ownership and documentation'. So he owns nothing and doesn't even have a drivers license -- but somehow gets around, solving the woes of the world. They are entertaining reads.

So I carried my book onto the plane and settled back for a comfortable read -- and discovered within three pages that I had read the book before. This was awful. A trip without a book to read was an unthinkable situation. So I had to be content for the four hour trip with watching Moneyball on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me.

We -- I was traveling with a business associate -- landed in Calgary, fought our way through customs, rented a car, and headed west toward Banff National Park. Within an hour or so we were greeted with beautiful snow covered mountains and made many attempts to take pictures from our moving car which is really kind of a dumb thing to do. In the midst of all of the awe and wonder my internal nagging voice was beginning to grate at me. 'I need to get a book!'

The notion of staying a few nights in hotels without a book was simply unthinkable.

Finally we spotted a bookstore -- one of those place with publications about the wonder of the area. I was disheartened, because I wanted a novel to read. If I am traveling I want something entertaining, not something full of non-fictional facts. The bookstore was pretty good size and had tons of books. I wandered around until I found a small table of fiction. Prominently displayed on the table were two small stacks of books. One featured The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the other was The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, both by Stieg Larsson. I asked the proprietor if he had read either book. He said he hadn't, but he had a hard time keeping them on the shelves. He went on to say that those stacks of books would be sold out today.

I had heard of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I was pretty sure there was a movie out about it. This threw me into a bit of a quandary. Many times, actually most of the time, I don't care for what seems to be popular with everyone else. It is not that I am so particular, it is just that -- well, maybe I am little particular. No one has ever heard of the movie Spitfire Grill or Picnic at Hanging Rock. I really liked them but no one else seemed to. Some will rave about the latest Sherlock Holmes movies. I saw about an hour of the first one, and didn't like it at all. This wasn't the Sherlock Holmes I appreciated. It is the same with books. Many times, with a few exceptions, I simply didn't appreciate what was on the bestseller list.

I looked at the two novels on the table. Both books were softcover but the size of a hardcover. And each was thick, which interested me. Thicker books imply that the author was serious about the whole thing. But my choice was limited, and I definitely had to buy something to read. So I grabbed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest simply because I liked the cover better.

I didn't get a lot of reading done during the trip. It seemed that my evening hotel hours were spent with work-related stuff in preparation for the next days meetings. But I did get in a few pages of reading.

Right from the start I realized that I was going to have to concentrate a little. With characters like Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander and Karl Axel Boden and locations like Sahlgrenska and Stallarholmen, I could see I was going to have to really pay attention. And I could see that for the first 100 pages great effort was spent in setting the stage for the rest of the book. There was also a lot of time spent on delving into recent history -- and I was quick to figure out that this book was the third in the series of 'The Girl' books.

I am now on page 301 and a little over halfway through. I am now staying up way too late at night reading for it has become truly intriguing. I started off mildly interested. Now I am really interested.

Interestingly it is the story of a sequence of events revolving around The Girl, Lisbeth -- but she is only playing a background part so far in the book. I am not even going to try to tell the story for it is complicated and full of twists which start building the reader's hopes, then suddenly twists, which fire up a new set of hopes.

I can only leave you with a strong recommendation for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. Will I read the two preceding books in the series? Reluctantly I think, and that is a tribute to the authors writing talent. Will I see the Dragon Tattoo movie? Probably not. I now understand that the movie would probably be a fairly dark one with a lot of incest and violence that I would rather read about than see in a movie.

I am saddened to understand that these books were published after the author died of a heart attack in 2004. Mr. Larrson lived with Eva Gabrielsson for many years, and she says that she had collaborated with him on the books. Because Stieg Larsson and Eva were not married, his estate went to his parents who, if I understand correctly, had the books published. Eva is suing for the rights to the publications and has said that she has a fourth book, God's Revenge, which she has completed since his death. The book continues with the story of Lisbeth Salandar in Canada. The estate has offered two million kroner for her to drop the suit and give them the book. She has refused.

Mr. Larsson never saw his books published.

The BlogDotCom Murders

2012-01-28T18:26:00.000-06:00

It is hard to begin a story at a time like this, especially if it is somewhat autobiographical. It is difficult to tell the truth and not glorify certain events as one is prone to do when talking about oneself, but there is the underlying unbelievable fact: How can a gentle kind soul who would never hurt no one – that would be me – become a fugitive from justice?

It all started with a series of silly and innocuous events that cascaded….well, let me start at the beginning.

The Crime

One weekend day, I guess a couple of weeks ago, I decided to change things. My intent was to make a minor improvement. It was a cool and cloudy day, a boring day and my mood was adventuresome. A perfect day for tinkering. I sat at my desk, booted up my computer, and clicked on my ‘Gently Said’ icon to bring forth my blog. I thought it would be interesting to change things. I was especially interested in changing the font of the list of blogs that I enjoy reading. The list was bold and a little too glaring for me, so I simply wanted to make the list ‘not bold’ and reduce the size of the font a notch. That’s all.

America's Most Wanted?

The advantage would be that I could then increase the width of my narrative area. I had been successful at changing the presentation of my blog before, so I felt relatively confident. There is an area in my little blog universe to make these sort of changes, so I confidently started work.

I couldn’t do it. No matter what I tried, that list of blogs that I routinely read remained bold and glaring.

I thought about it. I knew there had to be some way, because I had seen it on other blogs. Obviously I had to approach the whole problem from a different angle. Why do I need that list of blogs that I read anyway? Well obviously so I could get to them. But I knew that there was some place on the Dashboard that identified other blogs. Just to be sure, I checked. Yep, the first blog that I saw was one of my favorites. So now I had a new approach.

I deleted the offending list and expanded my narrative area and was pleased with the results.

I saved everything and shut my blog down.

An hour or so later I reentered my blog to spend some enjoyable moments reading other blogs. I confidently tapped my way into my dashboard and started clicking through blogs and it started dawning on me. Some of my favorite blogs were there, but there were many that weren’t. And on top of that, I didn’t even recognize some of those dashboard displayed blogs.

Panic began to sit in. I went back into my blog and tried to undo everything in the vain hope that my friends list would somehow reappear. No luck.

My friends had disappeared. Through my ineptness, I killed them.

Becoming a Fugitive

I have never been a murderer before. The only thing I could think to do was run away.

So in desperation, I turned my attention to a far off land. I thought of Canada, which is even farther away than Oklahoma. So far that even the Texas Rangers couldn’t find me. So I hopped on a plane and fled. I knew I had to lose myself and needed to stay away from populated areas because that is where private detectives hung out.


I thought to hide at Vermillion Lake -- but it was too open. I know about drones, you know.


Then I thought to hide in the forest.

But then I got smart. I figured the best thing to do was to hide myself in the crowds at the International Ice Sculpturing Festival at Lake Louise.

But I figured the mountains would be safer. But which mountain?

Then my wife called and told me I had to stop playing like I was a criminal and come home.

The Punishment

While hiding in the crowds at the Ice Festival, I slipped on that pesky ice and fell forward catching myself with my two hands. Unbeknownst to me until the next day, I suffered a whiplash in that fall. Today I sit at my desk in five minute stretches with an agonizing pain in the back of my neck. The natural order of things. I am now being punished for....

....trying to reduce a font on my blog which resulted in the killing of my friends.

Maybe, just maybe, if you will leave your mark in my comments, I can find you and resurrect you from the dead.

13..0.0.0.0.4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in

2012-01-14T08:14:00.000-06:00

We are what we eat, so I have been a lasagna since last night. I was the night before too so that means, and I believe in full disclosure, that I am actually leftover lasagna. So anything you read here, you need to consider the source.

Goodman

Way back around 400 AD, which is before I was born, a lonely Mayan (oops -- already editorializing -- I really don't know if he was lonely or not) stone carver happened to carve the fateful phrase '13..0.0.0.0.4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in' onto a tablet. At least that is what Joseph Goodman thought was carved when he viewed it in 1897. The tablet was damaged and that was what he, with a bit of extrapolation, thought it said. This inscription was some sort of reference to the end...the end of what, we are not sure. That phrase appeared to be a date. To translate that date into something meaningful took some work because those old Mayan people had a different kind of calendar which involved cycles which are completely different from our annual cycles. But he figured that the date would be, more or less, December 21, 2012. He liked this date because it happened to fall on the solstice -- which was kind of cool.

There are others that say that the 'damaged' phrase isn't a date at all and that Mr. Goodman was liberal with his extrapolation.

So this is where the end of the world thing came from? Not exactly. It seems that the Mayans actually wrote documents too. There was this thing called the Dresden Codex and on the last page it talks of great floods. Well since it was on the last page it must refer to the end of times, and Goodman's find talked about December 21st -- obviously they were talking about the same thing. Catastrophe on that date.

That's it?

Well, in 1966 Michael Coe found some Aztec references to 'Cycles of Destruction'. Since the Aztecs believed in destruction and the Maya had an end date, it seemed kinda' reasonable to tie them together. Maybe they were on to something. It's beginning to sound kind of scary.

The Maya

That is me appearing to be exhausted and hugging the steps about two thirds of the way up. Not true - I was studying ancient carvings in the steps. I translated one that said, "Matt was here". My investigation was ongoing.

I have heard that the extinct Maya were an advanced civilization so maybe we should pay attention. In fact there are more Maya alive today than ever were -- complete with their own language. And they may be perturbed to learn that they are extinct.

We tend to think of the Maya as a great centralized nation, like Rome or Babylon or something. Actually, they we were many distinct tribes each with its own government and religion and there only communication with each other was to kill the other one. The largest tribes were the Tikal and Calakmul and they had fierce wars between themselves. They hated each other. When the Spanish invaded they were not confronted with a unified nation, but with tribes that had to be conquered one by one.

13..0.0.0.0.4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in

This is from Google Images. Not sure if it is the true thing or not.

This was the damaged markings on a tablet by one tribe. It is from Monument 6 from the ruined site of Tortuguero in Chiapas. The Dresden Codex were documents of another tribe. To continue, another tribe discussed the anniversary of the coronation of K'inich Janaab Pakaal, who was the king of the Palenque tribe, to happen in the year 4772. You will note this is a little bit later than the year 2012. There is another calendar reference which projects events billions of years into the future.

Somehow these other calendar references are forgotten about.

December 21, 2012

Well Sylvanus Morley wrote a book in 1915 about Maya hieroglyphics. In the book he specifically referenced the Dresden Codex and proclaimed that it predicted the end of the world...and the hieroglyphic date of December 21, 2012 pinpointed the precise time.Then in 1946 Morley wrote The Ancient Maya in which he elaborated on the theme. It should be noted that Mayan experts laughed off the book. Actually it was Michael Coe, in his book The Maya that introduced the notion of Apocalypse into the Maya lexicon. (Actually, Professor Coe did not believe it had anything to do with us, but thought that was what the Maya believed.) It was the word 'Apocalypse' that set the stage.

Now we understand the root of it all.

But how did it get from there to galactic alignments, a rogue planet crashing into earth, harmonic convergence, and all the rest?

Do you remember Erich von Daniken of Ancient Alien fame? He said that it was prophisized by the Maya that aliens from space would return to earth on the fateful day. (Actually he quoted the wrong date -- but a minor detail). Then Frank Waters wrote The Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth World of Consciousnessin which he talked about Quetzalcoatl, who actually was Aztec and not Mayan, and the fact that extraterrestrials were coming and tied it into the rising of Atlantis. Oh, he happened to mention the wrong date -- the same one that von Daniken happened to mention.

It goes on. December 12, 2012 was then tied in with I Ching and would be a day of Transformation of Consciousness. The Harmonic Convergence thing came from Shirley MacLaine's book Out On A Limb.

PlantX/Nibiru

Note the Maya said nothing about this. But it is speculated that the rogue Planet Nibiru will crash into the earth on December 21 of this year. It is interesting that this is the second date predicted. It was originally predicted to happen in May of 2003. When it didn't happen, the date was revised to coincide with the now popular date this December. The reason they know that Nibiru is going to hit is because the aliens of Nibiru have been channeled and they told us. No evidence of any planets heading our way.

Geomagnetic Reversal

The so called 'reversal of the poles' will occur on December 21st. The Maya mentioned nothing of this. There have been many magnetic reversals in earth's history which actually didn't cause much disruption. It kind of screws compasses up though. But a reversal takes about 7,000 years to happen...it is a slow process. It is not Zap! Oh, there is no evidence that one is beginning.

Solar Flares Which Will Cause Magnetic Reversal

Aha. We are entering an active period of solar flare activity. The peak is supposed to be in May, 2013 -- and there is no evidence it will be greater than any previous high solar activity. And, solar flares have nothing to do with the earth's magnetism.

Galactic Alignment

Somehow on December 21st we are supposed to be aligned with the sun and the center of our galaxy where there is a massive black hole. All of that gravitational sucking on the earth will destroy us. Actually we came closer to this 'galactic alignment' in 1998 than we will in 2012. It must have done something because I think that was the year I had a car accident.

But there is also another type of galactic alignment now being proposed. The sun and planets are going to pass through the galactic disc as it does every 25 million years and when it does all life on earth is destroyed. Uh, we are moving away from the galactic disk rather than toward it.

Also another theory. There will be planetary conjunction on December 21st which will doom us. Actually there were planetary conjunctions in 2000 and 2010 and not much happened. Astronomers say no such thing is happening in 2012.

So what is it all about?

Not much. One good thing, I suppose, is that the Maya that live in Mexico now are planning on capitalizing on all the hype. (By the way -- the prevalent attitude of current day Maya about all this is bemusement.) They are preparing souvenirs, tours, mystical journeys to the Chichen Itza pyramids and big 'holy' celebrations on December 12th. I hope they make a killing.

My conclusion

If one wants to believe that the world is coming to the end on December 21st, or that there will be a Harmonic Convergence, or that we will be visited by aliens, or that the second coming of Christ will occur (and this seems to be a newer twist), that is fine. But you would be walking in thin ice to attempt to trace it back to the Maya. We all get a perverse pleasure out of speculating that 'something will happen' -- it is fun to talk and speculate about. We have this insatiable want for something different. Even now I see so many programs on TV about the 'Doomsday'. There have been over 1,500 books published addressing the subject.

My personal view is that the hype rules and there is no basis in fact as I understand it. Do I understand it all? Nope -- what you see here is my scant review of various articles. You would probably have a lot of fun doing your own research. Here are some starting places:

Wikepedia - The 2012 Phenomenon

It's Not The End of the World by Mark Van Stone

Debunking the 2012 Doomsday

The End of Time: The Maya Mystery by Anthony Aveni

Wikepedia - The Dresden Codex

The Outer Space Connection

If I am wrong and the world does come to the end, you have my permission to berate me for misleading you. After all, I am only day-old lasagna.

And She Girded Her Loins

2012-01-08T08:56:00.000-06:00

It is Sunday morning and is therefore fitting that I address a biblical subject. The subject is Esther and I bet you know nothing about her because you didn't pay attention in Sunday School. I happen to be an expert on Esther because I saw her on TV last night -- well, not her but they did have a lot of pictures of different pretty women they called Esther. This was pretty confusing because it forces the viewer to mentally start picking and choosing the one that you want to be Esther.

Anyway, Esther is a book from the Old Testament and I figure that Pippa is her reincarnation. Think about it. Pippa spelled backwards is Appip, which sounds Persian to me.

Rembrandt disagrees with me and says she looked like this:

The fact is that she was extraordinarily beautiful, in fact the most beautiful woman in all of Persia, which is what Iraq was called way back before Iraqian times.

Esther's family were part of those wandering Jews that were kicked out of Jerusalem and environs. Somewhere in all this, Esther's parents died and so her uncle Malachi took the fifteen year old lass in. They ended up in.....in one of those Persian towns.

And it came to pass (that was a nice Biblical touch) that the King of Persia, Anazar, was having a party with the guys in his palace one evening, and he got a wild idea. He summoned his very lovely queen to come forth with her crown. Most scholars agree that this was a summons for his queen to come forth wearing only her crown. He wanted to show off his wife in her lovely nudity to the guys. Well the Queen said "Stuff it. Are you crazy?" Actually she probably said "Stuffith it". Well now, she not only disobeyed him but in the process embarrassed him in front of the guys. So he did what any embarrassed Persian King would do and de-crowned her and banished her from his kingdom.

So now the King was in a fix. Even though he had a harem of lovely ladies, his queen had been the most lovely. So he figured he had to somehow replace her. So he sent out all the king's horses and all the king's men to find the fairest in all the land. (Am I confusing this with something else?) Lo and behold, biblically speaking, the beautiful, now sixteen year old Esther was found. She was carted off and placed in the harem.

Now let's talk about harems a minute. We tend to think of harems as a horrid place where lasses are huddled shivering in fear of being commanded to bed the king. Nope. Not like that at all. First of all, the harem took up a significant part of the palace with multiple rooms and courtyards and banquet halls and were luxurious. The women were pampered and their every need attended to. There was also a political hierarchy within the harem. The king's mother was the boss -- for after all, she wanted to have the best for her son. But the real power lay in The Eunuch. Now The Eunuch was someone who had been castrated in early life and -- I really don't want to think about it. But he was someone the king could trust around his bevy of beauties.

Nor Mr. Eunuch took a shine to Esther not only because of her extraordinary beauty (see my picture above) but also because of her intelligence and calm wisdom. He taught and coached Esther for a year in haremland. Esther, as well as the other haremees, looked forward to being summoned by the king. This was the epitome of harem life. And Esther had been taught how to please the king and what mannerisms to use and when to speak up and when to be silent. It seems strange, but it was not unusual for a lass to be in the harem for a year or two before ever seeing the king.

So when Mr. Eunuch felt that Esther was ready he told the king that the most beautiful woman in the land was ready to...what's the word...yes, consort with him. So Esther entered the kings chambers and they dined and they talked (kinda' like a first date) and they consorted.

The king was so smitten with her...and I figure she was seventeen or eighteen years old at this time, that he immediately took her as his wife and made her queen of Persia.

There is a bit of intrigue here. We know that Esther was Jewish, but the king didn't and she saw no reason to tell him. Jews were not the most favored people around.

Esther was able to get her uncle appointed as a Gatekeeper to the palace. While gatekeeping, Malachi just happened to overhear a couple of eunuchs plotting to kill the king. Well that wouldn't do...after all, the king was his son-in-law, although the king didn't know this. So he sent word to Esther, and she told the king that his loyal gatekeeper discovered a plot to kill him. The king called Hawaii Five-0 and investigated, and the eunuchs ended up getting hanged. The king wanted to reward the gatekeeper for his loyalty, but with the pressure of kinging didn't quite get around to it.

There was an evil upstart in the palace who schmoozed his way into the kings favor. His name was Haman, or something like that. He kept doing things that the king liked so Haman was ultimately promoted to Prince of Something. He figured that the princely thing to do was to ride around lording it over everyone making them bow in his presence. So everyone would bow except when he rode through the gate where Malachi refused and stubbornly stood there. This wouldn't do, so he called Hawaii Five-0 to have this guy investigated. They found out he was a Jew.

This festered with Haman. Every time he rode through the gate, this Jew guy would just stubbornly stand there. Those damn Jews -- they corrupt the kingdom. I think something else happened with the Jewish population but I think that is where I left to get some iced tea. But the important part is that Haman grew to hate Jews. So he convinced the king that Jews were insurrecting and being horrible subjects and something had to be done. The king essentially said, "Whatever. Take care of it." So Haman issued a decree which he brought to the king to sign ordering that all Jews be rounded up and killed. The king -- never one to jump into things -- said, "Well -- hold off a bit. Delay this for a year."

So the decree went out that all Jews were to be killed in a year.

Malachi got a little perturbed about this. So he sent a message to Esther to do something. Esther said, "I can't do anything. It is a decree and I can't protest on part of Jews....I can't tell him that I am Jewish." Malachi was horrified and sent her a letter that said that it was God's plan for her to be where she was so she could save her people. Get with the program.

No one could just appear before the king. They has to be summoned, and Esther had not been summoned for over a month. She thought and fretted about this and then girded her loins and marched into the kings presence. The king was at first disturbed that someone would dare march in....but then it was Esther and she was so lovely...and his heart melted. "Dear Esther. What can I do for you? You know you can have anything you want."

Oh, what to do. She thought and said, "Well honey, I was thinking that I would like to invite you into my chambers for dinner. In fact, we could invite Haman too."

"Well Sweetie Pie, that's right nice of you. Of course we will come."

So Esther had her court lay out a magnificent dinner. She acted the perfect courtesan and entertained both the king and Haman with wit and intelligent conversation, and reacted to everything they said with awe and wonder, especially Haman. In fact, Haman was quite taken with her. The king said, "Come on Estie, I'm sure that you wanted to ask me something. What is it?"

Esther said that she would discuss it tomorrow night...in fact she would throw a magnificent banquet for the king and Haman that they must come to. It will be better than this piddling little meal. The king could never figure out women but if she wanted to throw a private banquet, what the hell.

The next day Haman went out princing with his evil wife. Everyone in Persia bowed in his presence except Malachi which infuriated Haman and his evil wife. She turned to him and said, "Hang that sucker. Build a scaffold 5 cubics high (or maybe it was 50 cubics) so he will be an example to all those stupid Jews." (That is a rough translation. Persian is kind of hard to figure out.)

So Haman ordered a large scaffold be built. Gotta' please the little lady. Malachi was to be hanged tomorrow.

The king that morning was resting and a bit depressed and so he called in his Royal Chronicler to read him the recent history of his accomplishments and events. One of the things read was about Malachi telling of the plot against the king. 'Well hell,' he thought, 'I never did reward him for doing that.' So he called in Haman and said to clothe Malachi in royal robes and place him on his finest steed and lead him around town proclaiming him to be the savior of the king.

"But he is a Jew."

"Don't question me. Do it. He saved my life."

So a pissed off Haman had to lead a finely clothed Malachi proclaiming him to be the kings savior throughout all the streets of...whatever city they were in.

It was banquet time that evening. It was magnificent with a lot of wine and celebration. We can only imagine that Esther paid a lot more attention to Haman, which would explain what happened a short while later. The king left to go to the bathroom for something. We are not sure exactly Esther did. She either put her seductive powers in high gear, or simple pulled Haman onto her, but the king came in and saw Haman on top of Esther. He was tumultuously enraged (tumultuous enragement is the ultimate) and ordered the guards to take Haman and ordered him hanged. The irony is that he was hanged on the very same scaffold that his evil wife wanted.

The king felt so sorry for Esther. She had to suffer the indignity of such a horrible display of passion from that evil man. He pleaded with her to ask him any favor and he would grant it. Esther meekly told him that she was Jewish and that her people were going to be slaughtered and that her uncle was the gatekeeper Malachi and she didn't know what to do. The king looked upon her kindly and thought.

"Estie darling, the law forbids me to rescind a royal decree. I don't know what I can do."

"You have to do something, you handsome kingly person."

"Hmmm. The best I can do, my little pumpkin, is allow you to write your own decree and I will endorse it."

The best Queen Esther could come up with was a decree that stated that the Jews had the lawful right to band together and arm themselves and defend against the planned extermination.

They did, and saved themselves....in fact they killed 300 soldiers in the process. Thus the Jews were saved.

That is all we know of Esther. She probably went on to discover oil or something. In fact, the only way we know of Esther is through the Bible. To date no one has uncovered any other reference to her.

I am pleased to have added to your biblical education.

Desert Musings

2012-01-02T09:27:00.001-06:00

I had always thought that deserts had sand dunes, complete with Lawrence of Arabia and the French Foreign Legion. I was disappointed at first to learn that there are some deserts which have no dunes, and are instead hard ground with gullies, cracks, cliffs, boulders, arroyos, hills, nipple peaks, and even caves. I learned that what defines a desert is not the terrain, but the lack of moisture. The Chihuahuan Desert, bounded by the Chisos mountains, has little moisture. It is located in Southwest Texas and is known as Big Bend Country.

Many people visit this wonder, for it is a National Park. Most gravitate to the mountains as I used to. But hiking mountains becomes more and more of a struggle as you age. The desert offers an apparent easy out for hikers.

It takes a while to understand the desert.

This desert is a violent place. Storms brew up out of nowhere and lightning crashes without warning. A rain cloud spotted miles away suddenly produces a tumbling flood in the arroyo where you are hiking. The landscape is eerie, with many traps and pitfalls for the unwary. You climb over tumbled rocks and boulders from a prehistoric volcano, and slip and slid down the side of canyon, only to become snagged in seemingly attacking bed of cactus. The desert doesn’t welcome visitors. And it doesn’t fight to keep them away. It simply doesn’t care. You can laugh, cry, or die – and the desert simply doesn’t care. And that indifference is the worse kind of welcome.

There are rules for those wandering into the desert. Carry a compass. Carry lots of water. Hike slowly. Always, unlike me, travel in pairs. Always know where you are – memorize landmarks. When confronted by a mountain lion that may have wandered down from the Chisos in search for small desert prey, stand your ground and curse at it and throw rocks. It works. Close to the mountain edge one may be confronted by a bear. Be calm and slowly back away. If you find yourself trapped in a pack of javelina (wild pig), don’t worry about it. They won’t notice you unless you get within two feet, then they will run. When you meet a rattlesnake, apologize for the disturbance, and make a detour. When you meet a family of hare, stop and laugh at their antics.

Above all, don’t fear the desert. Just know that it isn’t going to take care of you.

And there is more to the desert that you should know. The human inhabitants – the desert rats. They live there, in places like Terlingua and Study Butte (pronounced Stoody Boot) and Breaking Wind Ranch. They are rock hounds, photographers, geology buffs, cactus gardeners, and tour guides. They tolerate visitors. And they will tell you the truth of the desert if you shut up and open your ears and listen carefully.

You come to understand the relationship between you and the desert when you become lost miles away from where you want to be. And only one-third of one of your two canteens still have water. It then dawns on you. This isn’t a game. There is no one to rescue you. No camel riding Bedouin tribe will stumble upon you. There isn’t a secret enclave of Apache that watches over everything. No, it isn’t a game. People die here. Dozens die here each year – mostly Mexican immigrants trying to gain entry into the country by crossing the desert.

Lost. It is times like this that the sweat pours off of you. It is only May, and the temperature scorches at 100 degrees. One of the things that you learn is that you go slowly in the desert. You even panic slow. You sit. Sit for thirty minutes. It takes that long. For ten minutes you worry. Then you begin to observe for the next ten minutes. You look at the angle of the sun, and where you were in relation to that peak when you entered, and did you see that huge flowering cactus earlier? The last ten minutes is needed to assimilate your observations and to gently formulate a plan.

If you accept the desert, you will know that it is a lonely place. And that is the magnet. For each of us is truly alone too. The difference is we try to hide it and cover it up with pretend relationships and forced hobbies and the stuff of civilization. We fear our loneliness. The desert teaches us that it is okay to be alone.

If you sit upon a bluff for two or three hours and soak – absorb what is within your site and smell and hearing – you won’t fear so much.

I prefer mountains and streams and trees. I love the snowcapped Rockies, but I wish they would lower the elevation a little bit so I could breathe easier. I enjoy hiking the Adirondacks in New York, and climbing down to the water falls at Petit Jean, Arkansas. I love the rustle of the wind through the trees and the smell of it all. But, once every few years, the magnet pulls.

Is there beauty in the desert? Sure, I could talk of the unimaginable canopy of stars at night, or the awesome brilliance of a desert sunset. I could point out the desert flowers and the starkness of the land or the purple hue of the mountains in the distance. The desert has an intrinsic beauty.

But, that doesn’t dig deep enough. It also offers the opportunity for peace. And composure. And reevaluation. And coming to terms. And knowing that it doesn’t care about you – so you have to care about yourself. That, I think, is the real beauty of the desert.

Christmas Images

2011-12-26T19:03:00.000-06:00

After 764 hours, give or take 750 hours, of trying to unsuccessfully load my ~~Academy-Emmy-Peabody-Pulitzer-Nobel Award Winning~~ Video into this blog, I cheated and had my wife put it on You Tube.

Here it is...and I hope the hell it plays. Oh, it works better if your audio is on and you have six minutes to kill.

Christmas Images

Warmest Wishes,

Jerry

Intruder Alert

2011-12-16T20:34:00.002-06:00

For a long time I have been praising the acute intelligence of our dogs. Now I hang my head in shame as I am forced to proclaim that they are idiots.

I am talking about Hutch, the black Labrador mix, and Buddy, the ‘I don’t know what he is’. No, I didn’t bless them with those names. My wife declared that the black dog would be henceforth be known as Hutch – for that was a manly, strong name befitting a brave black Lab. (The underlying message there. I think, was that Jerry was not a manly strong name – although I didn’t press the point..) Buddy, which is a cross between a German Shepherd and Beagle and about every other mutt in the world, is quiet, amiable and friendly with everyone – hence he is a ‘Buddy’.

To give you an idea of their personalities – when we go to the Dog Park , Hutch prances around like he owns the place, many times challenging other dogs that are smaller than him. But, if they snarl at him, he quickly backs off.

Buddy, on the other hand, kaplops over to everyone offering to be their friend. Kaplops? Well, when we found Buddy, he had a limp in his left front leg. The doc said there was a calcified bone chip in the leg, and the $1,000 surgery probably wouldn’t help. So we give him baby aspirin and glucosamine. But his little limp doesn’t stop him. He can kaplop pretty darn fast. He is sort of the lovable favorite of everyone.

Late last night Marilyn and I plopped on the couch to watch the news. Hutch snuggled on the couch between us, and Buddy stretched out behind the couch next to the sliding glass doors. Yes, that’s right, we have a sofa against the glass doors. That’s just the way it is – our den furniture can only rearranged so many ways. Anyway, we use another door for access to the outside.

The news was boring and all was calm. Suddenly Buddy, the one behind the couch, started scratching himself, and in so doing was banging his elbow against the glass door. I guess that should have been an indication right there. I mean, if you scratched yourself while banging your elbow on something, wouldn’t you stop or move or something? Not Buddy – he just continued scratching and banging.

Well, with all of this commotion against the glass doors, Hutch jumped up. Clearly someone was trying to break into the house. He jumped off the couch and paced back and forth barking and whimpering. We tried to explain to him that it was just Buddy. He looked at us thinking that we are just stupid humans that can’t hear anything, and clearly someone was breaking into the house and it is his responsibility to protect us.

So he danced around barking and kept running back and forth and finally tore through the doggy door barking up a storm.

Now this started a firestorm with Buddy. As far as he was concerned, Hutch had found an intruder and needed his help to fight him off. So Buddy starts barking and tears off from behind the sofa and he too flies out the doggy door barking insanely.

While they are in the backyard chasing invisible desperadoes, I sat back down and looked at my wife. She looked at me, and we shook our heads in resignation. Clearly we were going to have to withdraw our dog’s names from the Nobel Prize nomination list.

The sequence of events. Buddy made a noise. Hutch thought that noise was an intruder and went to chase him. Buddy also thought there was an intruder because Hutch thought so.

Sad.

A few minutes later they came back into the house prancing proudly. They looked to us for praise, for they had risked life and limb to protect us from those evil forces that were trying to do us in. We praised them while also pointing out that they were stupid. They didn’t care. They felt good about themselves.

I guess the message here is if you are going to do something stupid, do it proudly.

Whorederves

2011-12-10T08:02:00.001-06:00

I really thought about re-posting an old entry today.

How droll. People want to read new stuff.

I could act like it was a new entry. No one would know the difference.

Someone would catch you. They would tell you that they read this a year ago.

Then I would just admit to lying. People adore it when you confess of your sins and display humble contrition.

Humble contrition?

Yeah, but only if I'm caught.

Why are you here if you have nothing original to say?

My wife told me that I need to get on the stick and write a blog entry. But I don't have the mental faculties to direct to bloggering. I haven't even opened this thing for two weeks.

You have mental faculties?

Yeah. They are finely tuned to the Christmas stuff. A zillion presents. Christmas cards. All this decorating. Then we need to come up with some whorederves for Christmas Eve.

You mean hors d'oeurvres?

We always have the stupid Swedish meatballs and those little sausage things swimming in hot pineapple preserves and deviled eggs and those dinky little sandwiches only fit for elves. I can hear the kids now: "Well, I guess we have to go to Mom and Dad's and have those damn chocolate candies that Dad always makes." We need to get imaginative, without too much complication.

It is just family, isn't it?

Yeah, all 18 of 'em. Marilyn vetoed my ordering Pizza idea. We even got a book from the library on Christmas Party ideas and it was depressing. They seemed to have ingredients that I have never heard of and took sixteen hours to fix. I'm not looking for elegance, just simple and imaginative. Maybe a platter from Chic Fila.

Maybe someone will come up with some ideas for you.

I wish someone would decorate that tree in the front yard for me. Not only does Marilyn want the trunk and branches wrapped up in white lights, but she also wants me to roll red lights into balls somehow tied so they won't come unraveled, and hang them down from the branches. Did you know it is cold out there? Do you know there are no available plugs outside? I am going to have to run extension cords through the window to tap into interior power, assuming we have any interior power left.

Have you considered the notion that maybe you are over doing Christmas a bit?

Months ago I thought about getting one of those computer driven systems that plays Christmas songs with all the lights dancing....except I wanted to do it inside. I thought that would be cool. Just imagine...everyone sitting their talking and suddenly the Hallelujah Chorus blasts out and all of the fourteen zillion lights in the house flashes on and off to the music and...

Whoa!

Marilyn vetoed that idea. But I have come up with some innovative ideas. I was the one that suggested using red and green light bulbs in the overhead light in the den.

I see.

And then I took over decorating the patio.

Who decorates patios?

Maybe that is why she would only let me decorate the patio. But I did it brilliantly. Who but me would have thought to put red lights in the chiminea?

Did you notice the logs in there? And the tin foil to reflect the lights. Hmmm -- I need to figure out how to hide that cord.

Tacky comes to mind.

My mind is brimming with decorating ideas. I just don't understand why she won't let my brilliance branch out to the front of the house. She even ignores me when I come up with great ideas for inside the house. I still think draping lights from the edges of the living room ceiling to the center of the ceiling would be great -- sort of a circus tent illusion. She keeps muttering some nonsense about being tasteful. I guess I am limited to my artistic essence being displayed in the patio. I wonder where I could get some gray lights.

Gray lights?

Just think. I could have billowing gray lights coming from the chimney of the chiminea like fluffy smoke. That would mean more cords to hide though. It's hard being brilliant.

On second thought, you really don't have time to write a blog today.

I wonder if wrapping cheese stuffed wieners in crescent rolls would work for whorederves? And I personally think we should ditch the Christmas card idea. This is the internet age. We just need to send emails saying Merry Christmas. You know I could have that billowing smoke billow all the way to the edge of the roof...it would kind of like the Smoke Monster from Lost. And what about...

History Is Documented...if I could just document the damn thing

2011-11-26T08:35:00.000-06:00

I wrote about this in October 2010. This is when I told the story of a letter that my daughter wrote to a Band Director of another school, and excerpts of her letter were published in 'The Leaguer', a publication of the University Interscholastic League in association with the Music Educator. I think it is worthwhile reading that story again to understand the background. It is here.

A quick summary. My daughter, Elleana, was in a highly competitive and successful marching band in high school. She and her fellow band members were familiar with the derision displayed by other bands as they marched onward winning one competition after another. In October of 1987 the band was invited to march in a pre-UIL competition in Plano, Texas. Plano had one of the top bands in the state (in fact went on to win the coveted UIL competition that year) and they only invited the best bands to compete. The Plano competition was known for its rigorous adjudication and bands performed there to learn what they were doing wrong so they could correct the problems for the official competitions.

To complete my summary, Elleana's band won the competition. Instead of the catcalls and hateful comments they were expecting, the Plano band cheered for them and rushed forward and hugged our kids congratulating them. This was so unusual and unexpected that our band kids were left stunned with tears streaming down their cheeks. This hit Elleana so hard that I found her in her room at 2:30 the next morning crying as she wrote an appreciation letter to the Plano band. The handwritten letter was four pages long in which she derided what competitions had become and was so awed by the Plano band because it brought into focus what music competitions should be. We received word that the Plano Band Director read the letter to his band and they became tearful at the words. But the Band Director went a step further. He sent the letter to a UIL official. This official wrote an article entitled 'Examining the True Value of Competition' in October, 1987.

I was very interested in getting my hands on that article. Finally I got the yellowed newspaper publication of the article. It pretty much validated my memory of Elleana's letter. The article was pretty scholarly and addressed many diverse points and he concluded with this:

A second element would be an affirmation of the proverb stated at the beginning of this article. In short, the essence of educational competition should be a matter of putting forth one's best, respecting the best in others and growing from the experience.

Recently, one of the outstanding directors in our state shared with me a copy of a letter that was written by a student in one band to the members of the other band. The letter was written after a competition in which both organizations participated. Its contents suggest that there is a final element that must be part of this scheme. This final element would have something to do with our perception of what it means to win and how we view our fellow competitors in victory or defeat. The young lady who wrote the letter is Elleana and she is a member of the La Porte High School Marching Band. Her thoughts very eloquently address this third issue and should be an inspiration to us all. The following is a summary of her thoughts about the contest and what winning is all about.

"I just wanted to thank you so much for the wonderful welcome you gave us (at the recent band contest). Usually when we go away from home to compete, the bands from the area (of the state) think that we're snobs and just go to show off....We do not compete for these reasons.

Our feelings about competition go like this: When you win the members of the other bands scorn you....it makes you feel like you haven't won at all. On the other hand when you've won the respect of another band, it doesn't matter if you won the contest because you've won in a different sense.

When they announced that we had won, many people from your band ran up and hugged and congratulated us. We didn't just win a contest, we won the respect of one of the finest bands in the state! We have won many contests, but this was the only one that made us feel like true champions. Thank you!......You are truly a great band and have definitely earned out respect as well."

.......This young lady from La Porte beautifully summarizes the essences of what educational competition is all about.....

Elleana was a sophomore when she wrote the letter.

(I'm having fits trying to publish this article. I have it saved as a PDF file but it is too big to load here, and it won't link. My total sum of things computerese is scary. If I get it figured out I will publish it.)

The Marshmallow Tree

2011-11-23T06:31:00.000-06:00

It is early morning the day before Thanksgiving. It will be a busy day, and it seems like we really need a plan. But actually, it is more fun without a plan. I am in favor of toodling our way towards Thanksgiving, just doing things as they come to mind.

"Turkey. Oh yeah. I guess we will do that in the morning. Are we having that stupid green bean casserole again? Do we have any beans?"

In our hearts, we know that no one cares. If we have turkey, potatoes and dressing -- everything else is superfluous. People will eat whatever is plopped on the table.

The notion of Thanksgiving is pretty cool. We like to buy into the myth that we are celebrating the Pilgrim/Indian thing, but really we just appreciate getting a couple of days off work and all sitting together for a meal. There is something comforting about traditions. They give us a base, a root, that tells us that everything is all right.

The idea that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks is something to consider. We give homage to this concept just prior to sitting down to dine. We stand around the table and hold hands. The idea is that everyone, in order, is provided the opportunity to say something...anything they want to say. When a person is finished talking, they squeeze the hand of the next person. No one is required to say anything and if they choose not to speak, they simply squeeze the next persons hand. Sometimes the comments come in the form of a prayer, but mostly they are statements about the stuff they are thankful for, both silly stuff and important stuff. I always pay attention to the tone as the words progress around the table. If it becomes thoughtful and somber, I will change the mood. I am always the last one and traditionally end with a prayer of Thanksgiving. So I will break up the reflective aura by praying in thanks for something silly -- like marshmallows that always seem to rest more or less burnt and crusty over a bowl of sweet potatoes. If there are no chuckles at this point I press home the notion that no one knows where marshmallows come from so I am on a search for the elusive marshmallow tree. I could continue on talking about how alligators love marshmallows, and this is a fact. Sometimes we rent a cabin with a porch hanging over a lake and the 'gaters always come to greet us so we pitch marshmallows to them and they go crazy eating them. The point is to get a chuckle so I can then finish the prayer in a traditional way and everyone sits to eat in a light and comfortable mood.

This short pre-meal interlude sets the tone. The overall message is: 'We like each other and are pleased to be here together'.

So Thanksgiving is not a big deal, but it is a neat deal. It is kind of the antithesis of every day which is a complaining day. Sometimes we have to search for something to be thankful about, especially when the bills are piling high and the economy always seems to be sputtering and we are tired and worn out and nothing seems to work right. We get used to complaining and griping and getting irate -- it has become a way of life these days. So it is neat to just stop and take a breath and think about something good...like the marshmallow.

May you have fun searching for your marshmallow tree this Thanksgiving.

Thank you for being you.

Gaudy and Nice

2011-11-13T07:05:00.000-06:00

It has been two years since we have celebrated Christmas for the family at our house. As a result, the last couple of years our Christmas decorations have been on the minimal side -- in fact, down to one single Christmas tree and no decorations outside. It was a nice, sedate holiday season for two years. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas were at one of our kid's houses which meant that we could simply get in our car and drive to the festivities, and then get into the car and leave. Little hassle, and actually a pretty relaxing experiences.

This year the calendar finger is pointing directly at us.

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and are we concerned with Turkey and all the stuff that goes along with it for twenty people? Nah, of course not. It is panic time in preparing for Christmas.

You see, there is a rule that states that on Thanksgiving Night, the lights are switched on. Actually that sounds more technically advanced than we really are. It really means that on Thanksgiving Night we rush around like mad crashing into each other trying to plug extension cords into too many outlets, and then the lights come on...kind of haphazardly with different parts of the house and yard coming to lighted-life one after the other...about a fifteen minute process. The whole point of all this is so the grandkids can dance with glee and their mothers mouth "How pretty" and their fathers stand there and smirk.

It is a rule.

To obey this rule calls for preparation, the first of which is to find the lights and the four artificial Christmas trees (not counting the seven or eight mini-trees) then untangle lights and test them and somehow organize the whole thing. This one preparatory part of this process can take a weekend. Don't believe me?

This is the untangling and sorting and untangling of lights part of our Christmas preparation life. I know, I said untangling twice because we somehow ended up with really tangled lights this year.

If you look close you will see a sort of a sick white tree with red ornaments standing in the background. We found it in the attic and at one time it stood all lit up in the yard, but now none of the lights work on it -- and now we look at it and proclaim that it is sick looking tree and is destined for the trash.

By Thanksgiving we will have way too many lights outside -- including the back yard patio -- primarily in red and white which is symbolic for -- well, red and white lights. Inside we will have only 4 trees this year. There's one decorated in gold in the living room, one in silver in the den, a blue one in the dining room, and a red one in the foyer. We normally have 5 but some creep broke into our storage facility and stole all our burgundy ornaments. I can't remember what else....let's see, a big Christmas village and merry-go-rounds and each interior doorway draped in lighted garlands, and special themed decorations on every flat surface and...I don't know, a bunch of stuff.

It is a lot of work and for what? Well, we once had my boss and his wife over during the holiday season, and his immediate reaction was, "Wow! We just walked into Disneyland!" My kids sort of make fun of the whole thing, but I have heard my daughter remark, "They do it up right. It is awesome." My son kind of smirks at the whole thing, but then I notice that he takes his son to every decoration and brags how pretty it is.

Our theme is gaudy and nice. Yeah, we go over the top....but we also have some very nice and tasteful decorations too.

Is it worth it? Now is not the time to ask me that question.

I'll keep you apprised of the progress.

Lara is Not as Pretty as...

2011-11-04T07:57:00.000-05:00

Why are you so grumpy this morning?

Life is getting too rushed and complicated. We need to put a moratorium on stuff we have to do so we can concentrate on stuff we want to do.

I see, and how do we...

We can start by postponing Thanksgiving and Christmas one month. And stop software developers from developing for six months. And stop this financial insanity which forces faithful employees to work harder and longer hours right when the holidays are coming.

You are asking for a lot.

Do you realize that I now have to remember passwords? It's all because Firefox issued an upgrade to their browser package, and Billeo can't keep up. Billeo remembers my passwords for me and now Billeo is not compatible. I have been trying to get into this blog thing for days, and I finally remembered the password. That time could have been better used to prepare for the holidays which really sucks because our Christmas decorations were stolen.

What?

Right out of that storage thing we rented. We had to have a storage space because we have so many decorations and lights because my wife thinks we can't have Christmas unless we are lit up and decorated like Disney World. Do you know how expensive Christmas stuff is? And I don't have time to worry about it because stupid work people are making me work harder and longer to meet some kind of artificial deadlines which shouldn't matter because we have to prepare for a party tomorrow night.

You are confusing me.

It is my wife's birthday and she couldn't do something simple like have a nice quiet meal in a nice quiet restaurant with a few family members. No -- she wants a Games Party -- and we have to dig out those games that have been hidden away for years with pieces probably missing. And then there is food and drinks, and oh yeah, we actually have to clean up the place.

It sounds like you...

And then I was thinking of Dr. Zhivago.

Why did I know that you were going to fly off in a different direction?

You remember Lara. Dr. Zhivago sexually harassed her right into bed.

Ah, you are weighing in a Mr. Cain's problems.

No. I'm weighing in on the duplicity in people's thinking. Zhivago snuck away from his wife, who I thought was prettier than Lara, and bedded Lara -- and who did everyone cheer for? Zhivago and Lara! Everyone was happy that he dumped the wife, who was really prettier than Lara. Ha! Rooting for infidelity!

I'm not sure that...

And look at House. He sexually harasses everyone within fifty miles, and everyone grins. It's duplicity I tell you. I'm not sure how he does that. If I were to sexually harass someone, they would just double up laughing. It is downright disheartening. I think I lack gravitas.

So, we should just ignore those Cain allegations?

Nah -- I just think that when people think it is shocking, they are forgetting how much they approve of House and cheer Zhivago and Lara, who is not as pretty as his Zhivago's wife.

Has anyone ever told you that you have a warped view of the world?

It's not that I like Cain's policies -- I think that are naive and absurd. But he seems like he would be an interesting fellow to have coffee with. I would like to see if he agrees with me about Zhivago's wife.

And what else would you like to talk about?

Quit asking all these questions. I have a lot to do and no time. There is the party and then Thanksgiving for about twenty people and we really need to get hot on those decorations. And I really need to write Billeo and Firefox. They really need to get their act together.

My Political Conundrum

2011-10-30T08:03:00.000-05:00

Writing about government and politics is an anathema to me. I'm not smart enough to understand the ramifications of any position I might take or idea I might have. This is an area where I might have an absolutely clear idea of what is right, but when expressed I start to doubt myself when those pesky 'what if' questions start creeping in.

I have pretty much conservative in my thinking most of my life. This was pretty much a general notion rather than a specific position. By that I mean that the idea of government being only a small part of our lives seemed to give me a freedom of not being a character in the book 1984 or Brave New World. But when a specific issues came up like 'gun control' or 'right to life' or 'health care', I would waffle. The last few years I have found myself leaning more toward many liberal notions. But there I waffle a bit too. I think I see some European countries, which have bought in to strong liberal policies, almost collapsing with the high debt of those policies.

There is so much that I don't know. I know that we could save a bunch of money by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, and it sounds like we may be cutting back significantly in Iraq. The idea of getting out of expensive wars and saving a lot of money seems so simple and obvious and straight forward, I wonder why it is not happening. I can only suspect that a President who I thought was interested in doing just that instead is doing the opposite -- he has to know something that I don't. I suspect that when someone assumes the presidency he finds out that there is a true and frightening threat of nuclear terrorism in our country, so much so that he is forced to go to extreme means to protect us. So we see scary surveillance of ourselves and intrusion into our private lives and expensive fighting in other countries. And he can't tell us that if he didn't do that we would be blown up. Perhaps those are things that a President learns when he takes office that we just aren't privy to. That is my guess.

And there is another conundrum. That is the problem, every political subject is a conundrum. There seems to be a huge disparity in my income and the income of the really wealthy. And there is the notion that I pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes than wealthy people do. Those are two separate issues.

I am sure that many will be quick to correct me if I misunderstand something. I think that the tax rate for millionaires is pretty significant right now....higher than my tax rate. When the 2012 tax booklets come out I am going to check that. But I am able to sneak in under my tax rate because I am allowed some deductions and exemptions -- so I actually pay a bit less then what the booklet says my rate is. The wealthier have more deductions and exemptions and tax shelters than I do. I think this was an evolving thing. The reason I can deduct the interest rate on my house is that the government wanted to encourage housing investment. Well, the government over the years wanted to encourage investment in all kinds of area over the years. The idea is that it was good for the economy if money was poured into certain areas.

Our tax structure, as gobbled up as it is, is a progressive one. If every one were to pay the same rate, then the poorer would pay less (in real money) than rich people. Ten percent of a million dollars comes out to significantly more than ten percent of thirty thousand dollars. Our progressive tax rate ensures that the wealthy pay even more than that. The more money you make, the higher your tax rate is. If I pay ten percent in taxes (and I am making these numbers up), my rich friends might be paying thirty percent. So the rich get a double whammy.

Do you see the conundrum? Should the rich get double penalized for being rich? On the other side of the equation is how much money do you have left after your pay taxes. Whereas I might have thirty thousand dollars left over (again, I am just making stuff up for illustration), my wealthy friend may have fourteen million five hundred thousand dollars left over. Aha! This is where that original disparity question between the rich and poor raises its ugly head.

First of all, the rich don't actually get a double whammy. Remember those deductions and exemptions and tax shelters? They get to reduce their taxes more than I get to. In my simple beleaguered brain I think that we should get rid of those deductions and exemptions and tax shelters for everyone. Then everyone would pay what the tax booklet says they should pay.

A powerful argument against this is that it is our wealthy friends keep the economy going. They buy more, which means that someone has to make and sell what they buy and that requires people to make those goods and therefore jobs are created. Yep, I figure that is pretty much true. The second argument strenuously shouted from the rooftops is that rich people own companies and corporations which employ millions all of who buy things that create even more jobs -- and to top it off, all of those employed people pay taxes which helps with that deficit thing. I think that second argument might have had some merit many years ago. The wealth of our nation was in fact with the owners of large companies. But who are the rich today? I think it is people who do not employ millions. I think that for every Bill Gates there are hundreds of stock traders and actors and singers who are multi-millionaires that employ a tiny few people. These days, where everyone is a millionaire but me, my rich friends got that way without contributing to the economy. Today, the most of the wealthy are not drivers of the economy.

So I don't place much credence in that 'shouted from the roof top' notion.

Energy. Oh God, another conundrum. I truly want to see our energy needs met by non-pollution generated power. But it ain't going to happen for a long time. Wind Power: You can have hundreds of wind turbines covering miles and miles, but they will only provide a small percentage of power of a power plant covering only a quarter mile. And all of those wind turbines are unreliable power. They only spit out electricity when the wind is blowing, and that unreliability is so disrupting that a back-up power generating station is required to keep the electrons flowing at a steady rate. That kinda' defeats the purpose. Sun powered solar cells is pretty nifty, except the power they generate is so minuscule they simple don't count for powering our massive energy needs. Solar powered generating, where highly reflective mirrors direct sunlight onto a boiler to make steam which can be used to power generation. Same story. The power output of such a large facility is tiny. Hydro-electric requires damming up our water ways. We simply haven't figured out a way to provide non-polluting power. So we are left with gas and oil and coal and nuclear. We can pretty much drop coal from the equation because coal plants are phasing out because the pollution controls are so expensive that they are becoming uneconomical to operate. Oil is pretty much utilized for manufacturing of plastics and other oil derivatives and less and less for power generation. We are left with nuclear and gas. Gas has become remarkably dependable and clean for power generation. The pollution controls for gas are smart and not-that-expensive and safe. Nuclear works pretty damn good if designed right and the proper redundant systems are in place. France generates most of their power from nuclear with no pollution.

But? I mean, we can't just keep subtracting stuff from the ground. We have to until we figure something better out. So what is left? Conservation. Not using so much power. That is what will buy us the time we need to figure stuff out. I think we are getting better at this, and we need to get a whole, whole lot better. We require less fuel than in the past and hopefully less and less fuel through conservation. And we need to supply our own fuel from our own continent rather than through the middle east and South America. We need to be fuel independent. That is my take on the whole thing.

I wish I knew what to say about the conundrum of health care. This is of particular interest to me especially since I have to work well beyond my retirement age until my wife reaches sixty-five which makes her eligible for Medicare. Otherwise we would have to purchase prohibitively expensive health insurance. I simply don't know how the country can afford to provide health care for it's citizens. At the same time, I do believe everyone has the right to affordable health. I wish someone would figure this out...and pretty quick, so I can retire.

There are so many conundrums out there. The problem is that every approach you take has consequences so you have to be careful what you wish for. There is one thing that I know though -- taking a no-holds-barred adamant position on issues does everyone a disservice. I am especially disdainful of the stance of the Tea Party, simply because they refuse to look at consequences. I am especially disdainful of our conservative friends in congress because they are more concerned with policy rather than the country.

This blog has no particular theme -- just sort of thinking out loud. I am a bit Liberal, a bit Conservative, a bit Independent. And that is my conundrum.

Sneezingly Yours

2011-10-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

Do not get too close to the leaky parts of your computer. Especially those little holes where the fan is, and those weird looking slots that you put camera SD cards and whatever in. You see, I am sick and I feel so sick that I must be infected, so don't breathe leaky computer air while reading my blog.

I feel so sick that I don't want to do anything. I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to read. All I want to do is lay around and moan and complain how sick I am. Marilyn is tired of hearing it, so now I turn to you. I mean, if one moans to no one, is it really a moan. I need moan recipients.

It is called allergies. I learned a few years ago that I am not fit for earth habitation, except for maybe Antarctica. Some ~~vicious little bitch~~ sweet young nurse stuck a zillion pins in my back in a concerted effort to ~~see how much pain I could endure~~ what I am allergic to. I can't remember it all....grass, some trees, mold spores, dust mites, all kinds of pollen, and probably some other stuff. The message was that I shouldn't go outside without a Hazmat suit on.

The second message was that I should take shots every week to build up an immunity. I asked why I wasn't immune to chocolate because I had been taking that all my life and they apparently felt that it wasn't a sincere question because they never answered it. So, dummy old Jerry, signed up for six shots a week every week so that by the time I was on my deathbed I would be immune to everything, except death I guess.

Did I tell you that I hate shots? Did I tell you that taking (let me think....6 times 52 time 2...uh..) 624 shots did not make me immune to my hatred of shots. After my 624th shot, I said screw this. Nothing had changed, except that my fear of needle bearing nurses grew. They said that I would probably have to take the shots five years which is (let me think...6 times 52 times 5...uh,,) 1,560 shots. They wouldn't consider my idea of taking one big shot and get it over with. So I stomped out refusing any more shots. I would show them.

I figure that allergies are a natural phenomena (or is it phenomenon? I get confused.). Life balances out. I get sick so that others will not get sick....they are only so many allergens to go around. But I am not totally altruistic. I also figure that allergies probably help my body in some way that science hasn't figured out yet. Some day you non-allergy people will be jealous to find out that we allergy people have highly developed appendixes or something.

At least it only happens twice a year, in the fall and in spring, which just happens to be the precise time when I want to be outside. Tomorrow I go to the expensive doctor which will give me an expensive prescription. Actually, it is more fun to sit around and complain.

So thank you for listening to my moaning, and if I have touched your heart, pray for me and send money. I am working on a theory that money will cure it. Those skeptics among you will snort and tell me, "Well then, it must be psychological then." Let's see if you are right. Send money and I will tell you the results.

My Beloved Yankee Desk

2011-10-22T08:09:00.000-05:00

This is really disconcerting and actually a bit heart breaking. I think I am going to have to replace my desk.

I've had my beloved desk a long time. It was one of my acquisitions when I went to work for GE in Schenectady, NY. That came about when I found myself without a job around twenty years ago. So I did what any out-of-work guy would do, and that was to go to Colorado and hike around and think about the whole thing. I didn't do the hiking thing with tents and cooking on the open campfire. Instead I did it a different way with motels and diners. One night I got a phone call from my wife and she said some woman from New York was trying to get in touch with me. I didn't recognize her name and certainly couldn't understand why someone from New York would be calling.

So I got the number and slept late the next morning and called her. It took me a few moments to place her in my foggy brain. She was the vice-president with the firm that I used to work for. She was now a consultant with GE and she knew I was looking for work and they needed a Manager for eastern division power contracts group and she thought of me. She brushed away my objections that I didn't know a damn thing about contracts and told me to call Jim. So I did, and found Jim to be a pretty likable guy. He said I was highly recommended by Anna, the instigator in all this, and he asked me a lot of questions about my experience and started talking about contract management and I would throw in a comment or two and I finally asked him if I was faking it pretty good because I didn't know a damn thing about contracts? He laughed and said that they had a bunch of geniuses up there who I would learn from. Then he told me to call Gary who was the VP of something or other. So I did and he didn't sound very friendly but said I was recommended by Anna and I did answer his general questions pretty decently and faltered quite a bit on his specific questions and the conversation ended.

I sat in that motel room for a minute thinking, "New York! That's crazy. Oh well...." Then the phone rang and it was Jim and he asked me when I could start to work. I stammered a bit and told him New York was a big city with lots of cabs and it was cold, and he explained that there was more to New York than The City and that they were in Schenectady which was a couple of hundred miles northwest and then he lied when he told me the snow wasn't that bad. I wasn't so sure about dedicating the rest of my life so far from Texas so we agreed that I would come aboard as a Contractor and he sweetened the pot by offering per diem and a flight back to Texas every month. I told him that being a Contract Manager of Contract Management sure seemed odd and he said it would fit right in because their whole organization was kind of odd. So we agreed that I would report to work in two weeks.

So I drove back home and my wife was pleased because the world wasn't going to come to an end after all and I packed up all the clothing I had with long sleeves and drove to New York. I made my way into Schenectady about noon on a Thursday and got a motel room. Jim met me the next morning at a diner and I followed him into work and I met people and was introduced to my staff and I wondered what I had gotten myself into. The following Saturday I searched for an apartment and found a tiny one on the second floor of an old apartment building. I then set about getting some furniture.

While driving around I spotted a dinky second hand furniture store. There I found cheap furniture piled on top of each other. I think I furnished my apartment for about $300, complete with an orange sofa and Formica kitchen table and chairs and a coffee table and a bed, which I had to find new mattresses for, some old dishes and pots and pans, and the desk.

Today the desk is tending to come apart at the seams. Yesterday my wife had the carpet replaced in my office. I didn't particularly feel that I needed new carpet....those stains didn't bother me. But during the process they had to move the desk. My desk doesn't take kindly to being moved around. Now I sit here and notice that parts of it are kind of crooked, and two of the drawers won't fit in to their homes because things are a bit out of shape. I kind of banged and shoved on it trying to make it work, but it is old and cranky and is not cooperating.

This is a Yankee desk but has fit right in to my southern lifestyle. It is my friend and we have suffered through life together. It has traveled with me from Schenectady (five years there) to Fitchburg, Massachusetts to Houston and to an apartment in Houston when I got a divorce to another apartment when I met Marilyn to this house.....and hasn't complained too much about it. Now it is tired.

My wife has wanted to replace this desk for years. I have explained that it is old and I am old and we understand each other. She has told me that it doesn't go with the decor and that there are some really nice desks that I can get on Craigslist for a couple of hundred dollars. She has repeatedly sent me Craigslist listings which I have deleted. But now I am going to have to start looking at them.

I wonder if it will hold up until the New Year? Maybe I can drag it out a little longer. I really like my old desk. We are comfortable with each other. We understand each other...maybe with a few nails and screws I can.....sigh. I think I have to face up to it. I wonder if I can find one that looks like this one?

Gently Said

2011-10-15T07:29:00.000-05:00

Last night I spent an hour reading some of my old posts. A little traipse through my history. I was pleased to see that, for the most part, I lived up to my theme of 'Say it gently'. I started blogging as a lark. I was goofing around on the computer one day and came across a blog. I was wondering how one created a blog so I googled the subject, and quickly found myself in over my head. As I was about to back away from the subject I saw an add for Blogspot explaining how simple it was...just follow the easy steps. I did. Somewhere in the process it asked me for a title for my blog. Without thought, I typed in Gently Said. Before I hit the enter key, I leaned back and thought about it. Since I had no idea what I would write in my blog, had no limits or rules in mind, I quickly understood that whatever it was would reflect my personality, however warped it is. Gently Said didn't limit me in any way and left the door wide open. And whatever I wrote I knew that would write it kindly. It fit.

When I told Marilyn I created a blog she wasn't too impressed. When I tried to explain to her what it was she was even less impressed, for she quickly realized that I didn't understand it either.

I found that there were abundant articles about how to write a blog. How to make your blog interesting. How to sell yourself. What every blog post must have in it. This immediately brought to mind writing courses I had taken in college. When they gave me a subject, I could whip out something in no time. When they started applying rules I was stymied until I figured out that I could write about the rules, and gently mock them. I didn't, and don't, do well well with rules and structure.

It didn't take long for me to figure out that a blog is a stage. A presentation. When I would open up a blog I was immediately confronted with a curtain opening up. The set design would establish the tone. Some of the stages were filled with garish design, some were rich and warm, others roaring, and some soothing. Before a word was read, a mood was created. With some I expected to find a screaming hard rock group center stage, others a symphony orchestra, others a glaring spotlight on one person. The blogs I initially read were so diverse -- preaching, extolling, crying, trying to convince, begging for understanding, lecturing, self-serving, babbling -- I wasn't sure where my voice could fit in.

I once saw a concert by jazz singer Mel Torme. The curtain opened and there he was sitting on a stool center stage, by himself. He started singing. Soon a bass player walked out and stood next to him and started playing. A good part of the concert was Mel sitting on the stool singing with that bass player. It impressed me. Simple, and connecting.

So blogging, from my perspective, is entertainment. My stage is simple. I sit on my stool and just talk about stuff. No agenda. No controversy. Mildly entertaining with a splash of humor. That's me.

Marilyn just woke up so I took a coffee break with her to talk about the day's plan. She asked me what I was blogging about today. I told her I was just talking about blogging. That is when she said, "I don't like how your blog looks. It is so boring."

My blogging world, simple and unsophisticated, just came crashing down.

Anything To Do With Bras Will Get You in Trouble

2011-10-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Good morning.

::Sip...snort::

You are late this morning. It is already 5:30.

::Yawn:: I stayed up late. Went to bed at 10:30.

That is not late.

It is when I normally have to get up at 4:24. I usually go to bed around 9:30.

4:24?

It is better than 4:15 or 4:30. If I set my alarm for those times I would be putting myself in a traditional time rut. By getting up at 4:24 I am signifying my protest at being forced to arise so early to get to work at 6:00 in the morning. I have principles ya' know.

You have to be at work at 6:00?

Well, it's better 'cause I can get more work done without the phone ringing and people hassling me.

So you choose to be at work at 6:00.

And I miss the traffic too.

So you are protesting your own decision by getting up at 4:24.

It's complicated. I am a believer in protesting. I even joined the Wall Street protest, or whatever they call it, here in Houston last Thursday.

You did?

Yeah, they were marching past my building so I figured it was my duty to march and shout with them for a block. It was a little confusing though. The guy next to me was holding a sign protesting the war and I don't think he was shouting what everyone else was shouting.

Did you get arrested?

No -- it was really dissappointing. Maybe I should have found a bra to burn or something. The cops were laughing and talking with the protesters and stopping traffic for them. Everyone seemed to have fun and someone was playing drums somewhere and someone had a bullhorn blaring something and the cops were smiling and going with the flow and TV cameras were dashing around and there was a news helicopter. This really wasn't what I expected. I even shouted, "End corruption" right in front of a cop, and he shouted "Right on!"

I guess we just don't know how to do it like New York does. No blood or arrests or anything.

You were about thirty years late for bra burning anyway.

Anything to do with bras will get you in trouble. Just look what happened to that school board member.

What are you talking about?

There was this guy that had been on the school board for quite a few years, and he figured that school board meetings were getting pretty boring. Since he liked to dab in magic tricks -- the kind of thing that you astound and amaze family and friends with. Since his friends always laughed when he performed his tricks, he figured that he would start a school meeting with a laugh. He had the best of intentions.

What does this have to do with bras?

Well, as the meeting started and the audiance was settling into their seats, he walked up to a female school board member and muttered some mumbo jumbo and did a waving of his hands, and magically seemed to pull her bra off through the sleeve of her blouse. Ta Da!

He did what?

He didn't really pull her bra off, it just looked like it. He ended up standing there with a bra dangling from one hand fully expecting laughter and glee and awe. I mean, it worked with his family and friends. What he received instead was dead silence and the female sitting there with her head buried in her hands.

My gosh.

I feel sorry for the guy. He was just trying to liven the meeting up. He ended up having to resign.

But you have to understand, sometimes going against the flow is hard. But it has to be done. It is that school board member and me against the establishment. It is marching in protest marches. It is setting your alarm clock at 4:24 in the morning. There needs to be more like us.

You are quite the radical.

Yep.

You and your alarm clock against the establishment.

Yep.

And this has been in depth interview with Jerry at a secret location in Texas where...

Don't tell them I am in Texas.

This is a stupid interview.

Well, I stayed up to late last night.

Julianne

2011-09-24T06:49:00.000-05:00

Imagine for a moment sitting around a table some evening sipping coffee with friends and someone suggests that everyone relate their most unusual experience. Perhaps Brittany talks about a car crash she was involved in and how she was rushed to the emergency room and ended up with a broken arm, and everyone nods in concern at her ordeal. Or Jim tells about, while in the Navy, sneaking out to an off-limits island -- it was a French possession and we weren't friends of the French back then -- and how he ended up getting robbed at knife point, and "Boy, it was a good thing I had ten dollars stuck in my shoe" so he could hire a fishing boat to get back to the Newfoundland coast and safety. Jim tells this story with such humor, that everyone smiles in appreciation.

Julianne

Then it is Julianne's turn. Shy Julianne. "Well yes, let's see! I once fell out of an airplane without a parachute and crashed into the jungle and wandered eleven days without food with a broken collar bone and concussion until I was rescued by loggers."

I would imagine there would be silence around the table, until someone gently says, "Julianne, we are telling true stories, not something we make up."

Julianne murmurs, "Yes. Oh yes. It was true."

Indeed it was.

On Christmas Eve of 1971, 17 year old Julianne Koepcke was flying with her mother to Pucallpa, Peru to meet her father. The plane flew through a storm and was struck by lightning and exploded. There were 91 people on the plane, including her mother, that instantly perished. Inexplicably, Julianne was ejected from the plane still strapped to her seat. She plummeted 10,000 feet (which is 3.2 kilometers for my Canadian friends) toward the Peruvian jungle.

I cannot imagine the horror of that descent. To know that you had seconds to live had to be a terror that we just can't comprehend. Her glasses were ripped from her face, and a shoe was blown off during her plummet.

How did she survive? Perhaps the jungle canopy helped break the fall. It is speculated that she fell through the sky back first with the seat helping to buffer the descent. All that we know is that she survived the slam into the jungle floor, suffering a concussion, a broken collar bone, and cuts and bruises on her face and arms.

Julianne, a high school senior studying in Peru, wanted to be a zoologist. Her parents were both scientists. Her father, Hans-Wilhelm was a biologist and her mother, Maria, was an ornithologist. Julianne had traveled to various research posts in the jungle with her parents as she grew up, so she wasn't a stranger to that environment.

After some time, grateful to be alive, she struggled out of her still buckled seat belt, and searched for the wreckage of the plane. She was searching for her mother, but she found no identifiable remains. She did find parts of the wreckage, and in the twisted metal, came across some candy which she scooped up. Then she had to make a plan.

She was in the middle of nowhere and she knew that she had to find civilization. Her knowledge of the jungle was beneficial and she knew her best chance of survival was to find a river, because people lived along rivers.

Dazed, with one eye swollen shut, near-sighted because she had no glasses, only candy for food, no ability to make fire, without any survival equipment, walking barefooted on one foot, and a collar bone broken, she headed through the jungle in search of a river. Within days she stumbled upon a creek. She followed the flow of the creek for she figured it would have to meet up with a river. And it did.

She again followed the flow of the river. Her candy had long since run out and she foraged as best she could for food. Her only choice for water was to drink from the murky river. She would travel along the bank of the river, and when the jungle became too dense she would wade down the river. For days she kept traveling girded only by her stubborn determination to find civilization. She knew that somewhere there had to be people and she refused to give up.

Julianne, as an adult, revisits the crash scene

After eleven days of this hell she stumbled on a make shift lumber camp. Isolated. No people. She dragged herself to the center of the camp and fell to the ground almost comatose from exhaustion. The next day loggers returned to camp to find her asleep on the ground in a fetal position. They immediately tended to her, applying what little first air they could. They gave her water and food and poured gasoline on her infected wounds. They then loaded her into a canoe and traveled for seven hours further down the river to the Tournavista District lumber station. There a local pilot airlifted her to a hospital, and her father, in Pucalipa.

Of the 92 people on LANSA Flight 508, 17 year old Julianne Koepcke was the only person to emerge from the jungle alive.

Julianne and her father moved to Germany where she completely recovered from her ordeal. She later went on to get her PhD in zoology. Julianne Diller, her married name, is now the librarian at the Bavarian State Zoological Collection in Munich.

She wrote a book of her experience, When I Fell From the Sky which was released earlier this year and it received the Corine Literature Prize. In 1974 a documentary was produced called Miracles Still Happen. In 2000, the documentary, Wings of Hope, was released.

A Lunaristic Scientific Dissertation

2011-09-17T07:45:00.000-05:00

What are you doing so early this morning?

Researching.

Researching what?

Metrical stuff. You know, that is how Canadians and other foreigners measure things. I don't know why they have to complicate something so simple and straight forward.

Metrical? You mean metrics?

I had to figure out what a centimeter was. Why don't they use inches? If it was good enough for George Washington it is good enough for me.

Why do you need to know about a centimeter?

I'm concerned. Did you know that the moon is moving away from us at a speed of four centimeters per year? That is almost two inches a year.

Well that is pretty slow.

If you back calculate very carefully, you will find that back in dinosauruous times the moon was twelve feet away from earth.

I'm not sure that is...

That is what killed the dinosaurs, the tall ones anyway. The moon whacked them.

I don't think...

Why do you think we only have shortl dinosaurs today, like crocodiles and lizards? Did you know about this? Why isn't it in our school textbooks?

Maybe your calculations are off.

Scientists know this, but they aren't telling people. It is a conspiracy and that is what concerns me.

Have you had your second cup of coffee yet?

Have you ever seen an eclipse, when the moon sneaks right there in front of the sun?

I believe it is called a solar eclipse.

Don't try to bury the obvious in scientific mumbo jumbo. Have you noticed that when the sun and moon line right up in a eclipse, the moon exactly blots out the sun? Doesn't that concern you?

Uh no. Why should it?

Haven't you been paying attention? The moon is moving away from us at four centimeters a year. How come it just so happens that the moon is at the precise point to blot out the sun right now? If the moon was closer to the earth, you would see no hint of the sun at all on during one of those eclipse things. You couldn't see the suns vapors around the edge of the moon. If it were further away from us, then you would see a whole lot of sun around the edges of the moon.

Doesn't that concern you?

I don't understand.

Right now the sun and moon fit perfectly. Why now? Think about it. The sun is a whole lot bigger than the moon, but the geometric fit just happens to be perfect. Now.

I don't know. Coincidence I guess.

Haven't you ever watched detective shows? What is the one line you always hear? "There are no such things as coincidences!" If we were here a million years ago, the moon would have been 4,000,000 centimeters closer. If we were here a million years later, the moon would have been 4,000,000 centimeters further away. That's a lot of centimeters.

But isn't that only twelve...

So why is it that at this particular time the moon isn't too far away or too close? Huh? Why right at this precise moment? Science won't tell you. They are afraid to.

But you know the reason?

Aliens.

Uh huh.

I dreamed about it last night.

That isn't the type of thing most people dream of.

We saw a movie last night. The movie was stupid. So stupid that we couldn't stop watching. Actually it was designed to be stupid so that you would laugh, and we did.

Is this some sort of bizarre lead-in to a movie review?

The movie is "Paul" and I wouldn't recommend it for those easily offended by salty language. But if you have the tiniest science fiction bone in your body, you will laugh.

What is it about?

"Paul", the alien, is trying to get back home.

Uh, we saw that in ET.

You will learn that Paul consulted with Stephen Spielberg on the writing of ET. You will also learn that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, two science fiction geeks with a RV, is helping Paul get back home. You will also learn that every science fiction movie you have ever seen is pretty much true.

And this caused you to dream about the moving moon?

About aliens. And the moon's strange behavior. It can't be a coincidence. There are no such things as coincidences!

More Talk About The Damn Piano

2011-09-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

In my last vignette I explain how I became an invalid by saving a piano, and perhaps the world, from disaster. My words apparently has caused some consternation among some of the congregation, so it behooves me to come up with a way to use behoove in a sentence and I just did so... Where was I? Oh yeah, I am humbly behooved to address this subject in greater depth.

First of all I am pleased to announce that I am now able to walk without a grimace, unless I am in a situation where a grimace can be used to fine effect. Such as: "Oh my dear, you poor thing".

The issue was whether or not it makes sense to buy a $200 antique piano to be used as furniture. Some felt it was a grand idea, and others expressed dismay that we would be so crass as to use a musical instrument in this way. First of all, no matter what you say my wife feels she made a fine decision. So there.

Secondly, I can actually play at the piano in a personal, sort of non-audience viewing manner. I used to have a Fake Book, and it still may be over at my previous wife's residence. A Fake Book is a binder of perhaps 500 songs, one song per page. If you were to look at a song, you could discern the notes of the melody above which are odd alphabetic notations. If you were an astute musician, like moi, you can read the melody and play it on a keyboard...with your right hand. Your left hand, if you were the astutist of the astute, could read that mysterious alphabet and immediately play chords with your left hand. When you combine these actions together, you are playing the piano. Maybe. Sort of.

Jazz musicians always have Fake Books with them. They can sit and play for hours using that notated melody and those funny alphabet chords. They form the basis, the groundwork from which they can build on. I never quite figured out the 'build on' part. But I could sit and play those melodies and chords in root position. Major chords, Minor chords, 6th, leading tone chords, I could do it all -- in root position. How do I explain root position? A simple chord is three notes played at once. Say it is a C Chord, which means the notes are C, E, and G. (How do I know this? Because I am astute. And I majored in music.) Root position means that you always play the chord with the C-note as the bottom note, and the E-note always the middle note, and the G-note flying high on top. If you were astuter than I am, you would note that the C-chord can also be played as E-G-C, or G-C-E. All of those are the C-chord because they are comprised of the C-chord notes.

So I can actually play from the Fake Book as long as I don't switch the notes of the chords around, because then I would have to think. If I see 'Cm' it means a C-minor chord and the fingers on my left hand would automatically fall to the notes C, E-flat, G. But only in root position. My fingers know root positions and if you ask them to do anything else they get confused.

So the point is that I can play piano. If I have a Fake Book. And no one is around to listen, because sometimes I try to get experimental just like real jazz pianists and whilst trying to keep in mind the key signature and the Circle of Fifths (I said that just to impress you) and allow my fingers to dance across the keyboard. The typical reaction is, "What the hell are you doing?" I mumble something about improvisation while mentally wondering how I deviated from the plan.

So, the piano can possibly, remotely get some use in the future! That settles that.

Secondly a commenter that was trying to cause trouble asked me what was the name on the piano. This is a sore point. As the commenter wryly suggested, I checked the piano keyboard cover. On the outside, on the inside and on the lip. Then I lifted the top of the piano and checked. I have a no-name piano. This leads to several possible conclusions:

1. The piano was made in 1894 or before. We know that because the sticker on back says it won a Columbia Blue Ribbon Award in 1894. (No, I can't check the back for more information because the piano is too heavy to be moved and I am not risking my back again.) Possible conclusion: Maybe they didn't know how to write back then. Or,

2. Maybe the keyboard cover is a replacement, untitled cover. I don't think so but I can't prove it. The wood looks like the rest of the wood. Or,

3. Perhaps Top of the Line pianos don't like to brag. Maybe it is one of those, 'If you have to ask, you shouldn't be here' type of pianos. After all, we paid $200 for the thing.

Are the keys ivory, a commenter slyly asked. Would I go to jail if they were? Isn't there some law about owning ivory? Well, they are ivory -- but 1894 ivory and they didn't know any better back then.

If you were to expose the keyboard, it looks sort of snaggle toothed with some keys drooping and most discolored. And if you were to look down at those foot paddles, well one has no life in it. The poor old girl is tired and worn out.

But we will slowly bring her back to life. So I can play melodies, and chords.

In root position.

The Damn Piano

2011-09-10T07:34:00.000-05:00

Many of you accept the fact that I am a mild mannered semi-productive American citizen. Few of you know of my secret life, which is that of an invalid.

You see, my wife is blessed, or cursed, with a central theme in her life and that is to not pay full price for anything. When I am not dressed in raggedy shorts and scruffy tee shirt, which is my preferred attire, I am dressed in spiffy, name brand attire -- well perhaps not really spiffy since spiffiness requires a spiffy body to go along with the spiffy clothes. But I do wear fancy expensive shirts and slacks which my wife purchased at under $5.00 -- new and in unopened packages. Thus is the power that Ebay holds over her. If she could, she would buy milk and bread through Ebay or Craigslist if they offered it for 99 cents.

So two weeks ago she got it into her head that she wanted a piano. I reacted as I normally do. I ignored the notion, because I learned that sometimes if I ignored stuff like this it would go away. I knew the folly of rational argument like, "What the hell do we want a piano for?" She didn't play piano, and my sole expertise with the instrument was having to demonstrate my piano mastery, after months of gnashing lessons, by performing in front of an audience and jury in college. I think the composition was: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, complete with chords.

When Marilyn started showing me where we could put the piano and how it would look just perfect there...it was evident that she viewed it as a piece of furniture which would fill out the living room just right.

This whole notion splattered against my sensibilities. I explained to myself that it gave her psychological benefit to have things. I'm not sure if this was proof of a underprivileged childhood or a severe emotional disorder. In fairness, I guess that my desire for experience over things was equally evidence of some sort of psychological trauma.

So I ignored the whole concept, confident that it would just go away.

My gut twisted when two weekends ago she said, "I found an antique upright piano for $200 on Craigslist. Let's go see it." That is when I started mumbling sage platitudes like, "We don't need more furniture." "Won't you feel silly when someone asks you to play it?" "Why have a piano when it won't be used?" "Do you know how much it costs to get a piano tuned?" "We have too much furniture as it is."

She would hear none of it, for she was already figuring out where we had to drive to see the silly thing.

I was considering the wisdom of putting my foot down but before I got around to it I found us driving 37 miles to see the antique piano.

The piano was in a large garage. The owner pointed out that it had a label on the back that indicated the piano had won a Blue Ribbon award at some event in 1894, and Marilyn "ooed" and "aahd" over the fact that the wood was tiger oak, whatever that is. I didn't care because I had a hidden trump card. "Marilyn, exactly how are we to get this thing to our house?" After all of these years I should have understood that Marilyn doesn't address future obstacles head on. "Oh, we'll figure something out."

She did ask me if I liked it and I mumbled something like, "Yeah, but..." She didn't ask me if I wanted it. Somehow it was a done deal.

Back home, Marilyn spent a lot of time calling around for piano movers. Do you know that the going price was $350! Of course, that was unacceptable. After three days my wife found two Mexican gentlemen that had a truck who would move it for $150. I pointed out that the piano was extraordinarily heavy and it had no wheels and there is no way two guys could move that thing. She brushed off this future obstacle consideration.

Last Saturday the truck with the piano arrived. It took one and one-half hours for them to get the piano off the truck and into the house, with a lot of grunting and cursing along the way. When they finally got it off the truck the piano started leaning backwards and the guys were struggling to keep it from falling. That is when I ran out there to provide extra muscle to keep it from crashing onto the pavement. Then, it was evident they needed help lifting it from the sidewalk to the porch, and then lifting from the porch into the house.

Did I tell you I was an invalid? Sunday morning I awoke with a ripping back pain. The kind of back pain that requires a fine balancing act to simply put on one's underwear -- one hand on the bathroom counter while delicately trying to thread a foot through the waist and leg opening of the underwear dangling from the other hand. Bending wasn't an option. The kind of pain where you are pretty sure that a hot bath with Epsom Salt would be smart, but couldn't figure out how to lower yourself into the tub.

Of course, this past week was the one week that I absolutely couldn't be absent from work. I learned that I could operate in fifteen minute cycles. After fifteen minutes of sitting, I had to stand. After fifteen minutes of standing I had to lean against something. Then I had to walk, slowly and deliberately. Then I cycled back to sitting. All because of the damn piano.

Today is Saturday. I am doing much better. Thursday night I had a session with my Massage Therapist who told me that my hips were sort of locked up. This morning, I go to another therapy session.

I would kind of like to see what that Blue Ribbon Award thing is on the back, but the piano is against the wall and too heavy to budge. Maybe we can hire someone to push it away from the wall and view the award and push it back. Craigslist.

I was thinking that I could sue her for mental and physical anguish. But lawyers are so expensive. Wait -- maybe I could find a deal on Craigslist.

Persnickety Pics

2011-09-03T07:46:00.000-05:00

There are times when you have to take the bullet by the horns and bite it. That is what I told myself when I poured my first cup of coffee this morning. So here I am writing in this here place even though I really don’t want to. As of late I have chosen to wrap myself in my finely woven cocoon and shun blog things simply because I wasn’t interested. This psychological malady is called Persnicketiness.

So I am faced with two choices. I either submit to Persnicketirization therapy which has something to do with a straight jacket and having to answer personal questions, or getting a second cup of coffee. Hold on a minute while I go to the kitchen.

I had to take a detour on my coffee venture to pee, and whilst peeing I had a flash of insight. Post pictures. Then I would have something to talk about.

If I step outside and look around before I have had my first cup of coffee, this is how things look to me.

This is our house, and you can tell it was taken a while back because the grass is green. That was back in olden times when we actually had water around here for the lawn. I hesitate to post this picture because someone may do something Googleish and find where I live. But sometimes you just gotta' trust people.

This is my office where I post this blog from. What can't be seen is the orange extension cord hanging down the back to supply power to my computer. Maybe if I get a bonus this year I can do something about the wiring in this place.

This is my backyard. As you can see, this lack of rain is really screwing up things up.

These are our dogs, Buddy and Hutch. They just didn't seem themselves so we were preparing to take them to the vet.

Twelve years ago I decided to retire from doing spy things and take up a new career as an artist. This is my first painting that I called, 'The Painting of a Flower That Almost Looks Like a Photograph'.

This was my second attempt at painting. I called this 'The Painting of a Yellow Bowly Thing That Almost Looks Like a Photograph'.

I was never successful at this painting stuff because my potential customers would accuse me of cheating. I had to go back to spying.

This is what happens when my wife forces me to wear a stupid Santa Claus hat. Oh, I am the one that isn't smiling. That plastic stuff on my chest is there for a reason, but I have no idea what it is.

This is Buddy and Hutch again. You can see that the visit to the Vet was successful.

This is Strike Team Zebra as we were preparing to jump over the railing into Iraq. I am the handsome one on the left. The mission was successful and we received a lot of medals that I can't talk about, because that part is classified.

This is me in disguise.

This is what is called a Circle Picture. Notice the lack of corners. This was taken after my wife and I hiked Kilimanjaro.

I don't know why beautiful women keep jumping on to my lap!

This is Strike Team Gamma as we were preparing to jump into Yugoslavia. You will notice that I was the only one wise enough to wear blue so I would blend in with the sky, and white shoes so my feet would blend in with the clouds.

As you can see, sometimes in my profession I have to pose as a younger person.

This is me on an active mission that I can't talk about.

This our house around Christmas....just to prove that we do get snow down here once every decade. The more astute among you will discern that this house doesn't look like the house pictures shown earlier. The reason is simple. We sometimes have to disguise our abode for security reasons.

This is just to prove that I didn't always have a beard.

There you have it. Persnicketiness is now cured.

Please delete these pictures after you have viewed them. For security reasons.

Late Afternoon Musing

2011-08-23T17:57:00.000-05:00

I understand that this is the 33rd day of temperatures over 100 degrees here in Houston. That is not as bad as it first may seem, because the famous Houston humidity has not been all that high – so it is bearable. What is unbearable is the lack of rain.

One of the first comments a visitor makes when they arrive here is how green everything is. No longer. Grass has died and trees are sagging and flowers are pretty much non-existent. People have given up trying to water yards – they just can’t keep up with the relentless sun. I’ve even heard some are dismayed that the hurricane is heading toward the Carolinas rather than here. It is pretty bad when we start wishing for a hurricane.

I just saw the seven day forecast – and the triple digits continue.

I started to apologize to everyone about Mr. Rick Perry entering the presidential fray – but then it occurs to me that he has found a way to escape the oppressive heat. He has an excuse for cavorting in milder temperatures. Maybe all of us in Texas should run for President so we can scoot up to Ohio or New Hampshire or wherever those thermometers look pleasing. That’s a scary thought – more Texans running for president.

Actually I need to point out that most Texans aren’t caricatures. Most of us don’t own cowboy boots and ride the range and spit tobacco and spend our free time in saloons. Some of us are even thoughtful and don’t shoot from the hip and practice not swaggering. We may try to convince you that we really are the biggest state in the union ‘cause when you melt all that snow in Alaska, it would only be a piddling state. We may say that, but inside we really don’t care. We actually know that it easy to get tired of Texas, especially when we get in the car and drive for twelve hours and still can’t get out the state. We are pleased as punch that we don’t have an income tax, although the sales tax is nothing to sneeze at….but even that is lower than most states. I guess it is because we have all those oil and gas companies that plow money into the state coffers. But even so, we have a pretty high deficit. And we have an education proficiency that sucks. And more than a quarter of the population has no health insurance at all. Those things we can’t brag about. But we stand up to crime and stick a needle in your arm and kill ya’ if you screw with us. Many of us won’t brag about that either.

But we have some good things – NASA and one of the best medical centers in the world and Big Bend National Park and modern cities….Houston even has an underground tunnel (almost an underground city) system downtown that is really getting a lot of use during these hot days. We have some interesting professional sports teams and seem to always have world class gymnasts. And we are friendly. We won’t shoot you on sight. We will look you in the eye, nod our head and greet you with, “Howdy”.

What am I getting around to here? Mr. Perry is the personification of a Texan that is not representative of us all. That I apologize for.

In the Air with Natsumi

2011-08-12T22:44:00.000-05:00

I have a soft spot for interesting people, or sometimes just the interesting things people do. Sometimes these people are 'over the top' like Joshua Norton that I talked about in Le Rei est Mort. Sometimes the stories are tragic stories, like that of Barbara Follett.

Occasionally though it is just an expressed idea which fascinates me.

Look at this picture.

Her name is Ms. Natsumi Hayashi and she is walking calmly, on air. This is a photographic self portrait.

Natsumi is a photographer in Tokyo. One day she had one of those oddball ideas that we all get now and then, except that she acted on it. She set her camera on a tripod, adjusted the shutter to a fast speed (1/500th of a second), pushed the self-timer button, rushed in front of the camera, and jumped. The resulting picture looked pretty stupid, but... She did it again. And again....each time striving for a naturalness....a non-jumpiness.

Why? Well, she thought it would be fascinating to portray a gentle goal that we all aspire to -- calm floating in air. Did she achieve her goal. Let's look again.

She strived to achieve a naturalness in her jumps. She worked hard on her facial expression and limb placement, anything to look like she was floating and not jumping. In some cases, she had to jump more than 300 times to get the one picture that she was looking for.

Kind of a quirky idea but with fascinating results.

You may have seen some of her photos -- they have gone viral on the web. If you haven't seen them, I am privileged to introduce you.

I applaud her.

Her photographic website is http://yowayowacamera.com/.

Hachi

2011-07-29T20:31:00.000-05:00

Are you really going to write a movie review?

A little one.

A little movie or a little review?

A little review. I mean, how can I write an exhaustive review of a movie that I could condense into three sentences? The movie is Hachi: A Dog's Tale directed by someone that does that sort of thing and it has Richard Gere in it. Actually it was originally called Hachiko: A Dog's Story and they changed the name for very important reasons, I'm sure.

Richard Gere. That's a heavy hitter.

Actually, not in this movie. In fact, there are no human heavy hitters in the movie. All the human people are secondary to Hachi, a dog, an Akita.

Okay, what's it about?

Actually it is based on a true story of what happened in Japan back in the 1920's. In fact, in Japan the story has become part of its folklore. This movie is an Americanized version of it. It has been reported that the original Japanese movie is better than this one, but you would have to put on your glasses and read the subtitles.

Once again, what's it about?

Maybe it would be interesting to see what others have said of it.

You're really trying really hard to stretch this out, aren't you?

Someone called Surfer-Lancealot wrote: Well what can i say. I'm a guy i don't cry about movies i know its fake but i gotta say this one caught me by surprise even tho id watched the trailer and read a few reviews already. by the end of the movie i was in tears absolutely broken down crying my eyes out. and saying that i probably haven't shed a tear in about 8 years for anything but i love dogs and this is the most amazing story I've ever seen this is probably the best movie I've seen in about 10 years and i have seen almost everything.

Lorina Stepenciuc wrote: I'm not at all an emotional person,but this movie really touched me,i couldn't even stop crying after 15 minutes from the final.I just sat on my armchair,and started to cry. This movie,teaches us first of all about love,there is no power bigger than love,nothing compares to this strong feeling. I'm really objective when it comes about movies,and honestly no one till now,have cut me as deep. It's surprising...but true,that everything in this world,is ruled by love,and if you thought that only humans are aware of this,you did wrong. I liked the performance,i loved the music(it was so so calm)

Unknown Author: It is based on a true story and it's only natural that the movie is great because the real story itself is very touching. One of the things that sets this movie apart from the other movies that involve animals is how they stuck to reality instead of throwing in some a-little-hard-to-believe elements here and there just to make it more entertaining.

Sometimes they show things through Hachi's eyes as opposed to human eyes, which helps you relate to him and understand how he felt and what he thought then, as well as emphasizes that Hachi is the main character of the movie.

JapanGaijin said: I have never seen the original Japanese version of the movie but know the story well as I have been told by many people here in Japan. There is a statue of Hachiko that stands outside of Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Now the statue is the most popular place for Tokyoites to meet their friends before going out shopping or dining in Shibuya.

Unlike other Japanese remakes, this movie actually gives credit to the original story so that you don't get the sense that Hollywood wants to call it its own. All actors/actresses in the movie do a superb job in making you feel as if you were a part of the community embracing the dog. Compared to the original story, people were more accepting of Hachi rather than considering him a nuisance. Of course this is going to be released in the U.S. as a holiday movie so the goal is to make it uplifting.

Just a warning, do take many tissues. I am a grown man and can honestly say that I have never really cried during a movie. I think the score of the movie plus the dog being so adorable made me lose myself. When I looked around the theater though, every single person was crying and I saw a lot of red eyes as I left the Men's restroom. Any movie that can make me do that deserves a 10/10.

Davor Blazevic said: Knowing the real-life story behind it, Hachiko: A Dog's Story (2009) has been made in a sort of staged documentary style, similar to the kind of movies often seen on documentary channels (e.g. NatGeo), however without a narrator so common in documentaries, and including well-known actors (Richard Gere, Sarah Roemer and Joan Allen), making it more suitable for theatrical distribution.

Before my last year's visit to Tokyo I've been unaware of the true-life story this movie is based upon. In time an occasion came up to meet a friend in Shibuya city, contemporary center of Tokyo's youth culture (shopping, fashion, nightlife...), and that's how I've learned about the popular local meeting point for all Tokyoites, the Hachikō Akita dog statue just outside of Shibuya Train Station, but the real story behind it has been still eluding me ever since. After seeing this movie, and some additional research on the web, all pieces have fallen into place.

I get the sense that this is not an action packed...

Let me introduce you to Hachiko.

Hachi - The Pup

And in memory of Hachi:

Hachika Memorial, Tokyo

When are you going to tell us about the movie?

I'm not. All I can say is I began watching it only half-interested while I munched on a sandwich. Within fifteen minutes I had finished the Fritos that I had with my sandwich and was making comments to Marilyn that I always liked Akitas. An hour and a half later I had a horrific sinus attack which resulted in dramatic sniffling and watering eyes. I guess Marilyn had a sinus attack too for tears were rolling down her cheeks.

You? You are brave and strong and dynamic....and you were crying?

I had a sinus attack.

How would you grade the movie?

Acting: C; Set Design: B; Dialogue: C; Music B; Special Effects: C

Overall Grade: A

Wait a minute. That doesn't average out. You are saying the sum is greater than its parts.

Precisely.

My wife, two days later is still talking about the movie. "It moved me," she said.

I recommend it.

Dimming the Lights

2011-07-24T09:11:00.000-05:00

I don't do well with sharp contrasts. I figured this out when I walking through our darkened den on the way to the kitchen to get my morning coffee as I was pondering the fact that I really needed to write something in my blog. We have those recessed pot lights in our den ceiling so I automatically reached over and twisted the dimmer switch to undimmer the lights as I passed by.

Some folks, my wife included, can watch TV or mess around on the computer in the dark. I can't. A single glowing screen is too abrupt, too sharp, and it grates on me.

Now that I am forced to think about it, and writing about it tends to do that, I can see that throughout my life.

I prefer pastels or muted colors rather than sharp colors. To me, bright reds or velvet greens or royal blues are garish. They seem to exist because they refuse to blend as if they insist on calling attention to themselves. A few years ago my wife was fussing over what color to paint our bedroom and bathroom after Hurricane Ike ruined them. She asked my advice and I answered the same way that I always do when she asks what color I think would work. "Gray", I said, "Go with gray." This time she didn't reject my idea out of hand. She spent a long time with some of those little color charts holding them up against the wall....all different shades of gray. We chose a light gray, with white trim around the walls and crown molding, and a white ceiling. When it was finished, she was ecstatic.

Next came the carpet, and guess what. Dark gray? It worked perfectly! Dark gray silk curtains and a light gray bedspread completed the look. And the bathroom? Naturally, dark gray walls and light gray marble. Perfecto!

"How did you come up with gray?" she asked. I think I pointed out that every time she asked me what color to paint something, I always said gray and it was always immediately rejected. But why gray? It blends. It works with all soft colors. It blends, and I am a blender.

I don't appreciate people with adamant views or proclamations of perfection or brightly colored cars or snazzy dressers or forceful personalities or being the center of attention. These are non-blenders.

I think I was stunned as I slowly began to realize as I was growing up that there were few absolute rights and wrongs. It was easier thinking of the world as black and white, right and wrong, true and false. It was harder to learn that life was made up of textures and shades. This forced me in to being an investigator.

In church as a youngster I kept hearing that Our Church was the pathway to salvation. This bothered me and so I decided to find out about this Church thing. In my digging around I found out that the root of the subject was the Greek work 'ekklesia', which mean 'those of common purpose'. Somewhere along the way it got translated to "kirk' and from there "Church". Isn't it interesting that when it became 'Church' it was suddenly a proper noun with a a meaning akin to "the select few". Using the original meaning one could say, "We are the church of guys that like to ogle girls" or "We are a church of bridge players." I presented my findings to my father expecting to be blasted. Instead he beamed and said, "Always question and search."

The connection? The little 'c' church blends. Church doesn't. My father bought me a Greek Interliner Bible...a book that showed the original Greek alongside the English, with root definitions all over the place. I studied and learned that Elders weren't originally positions of authority, but rather wiser people that were older that one should turn to for advice. I learned that Deacons wasn't a position, but simply someone who did something to help out. If I mowed the church lawn I was by definition "a deacon". The "Church" I belonged to underlined contrasts, but my research showed otherwise.

See what happens when you turn up the lights on the way to get your first cup of coffee? Little things make you ponder. Think about it. The best spies aren't dynamic and dashing James Bonds, they are the fat, bald headed guys that blend in and quietly go about their business. Look at what happens when you have two opposing adamant positions bitterly fighting in our government -- you have some of us looking longingly at Canada.

It is us blenders, those that prefer softer colors and try to avoid large gatherings and who appreciate the more mellow approach to life -- we are quietly working to save the world.

Oh. I just had another thought. I poured that cup of coffee this morning. Nice, dark and rich with no sugar or cream. The purity of non-blending. Boldness. Like Kennedy saying we will put a man on the moon within the decade. Like being forceful in standing up for what is right. Like.....naw, I'll stick with blending.

My wife graded this blog a C, which sort of blends perfectly.

Mind Sputters

2011-07-09T08:21:00.000-05:00

Why are you starting this post over?

I read what I wrote last night and didn't understand it.

It was a movie review. A terrible movie review, but nonetheless...

Yes, it was about I am Fourth in Line or I am Number Four or something like that. It had good guys who were handsome and likable and bad guys that wore black and were ugly and it started off pretty good and kind of descended into a bunch of fight scenes between aliens and I really don't want to talk about it this morning.

You gave it a 67.5 out of 104.

I may have overrated it. But my concern this morning is that I am being sucked into a technological morass. It is because people keep giving me things.

Oh, that sounds horrible.

Look, I have a digital camera and a digital video recorder. Right off the bat I was skirting the edge. Then I upgraded my $18 flip cell phone to at $49 cell phone which has one of those itsy bitsy keyboards on the bottom and takes horrible pictures. And I learned how to text (you can see where I started sinking) and learned that some people forgot how to speak on phones and only responded to texts. That is where I drew the line. I had sunk in the digital quicksand up to my waist and needed pull myself out.

Whew! Sounds like you were being whipped down into a dizzying cauldron that...

Then my daughter gave me a Kindle. So I had a Kindle that I could read Kindle Instructions on but nothing else because I didn't have Wicky Ficky.

Wicky Ficky?

Wi Fi. Try to keep up. So I took it to work figuring that I could tap into the electronic ether there....but it was proprietary and wouldn't let me in. Well, I wasn't about to install that WiFi stuff in my house because I didn't want all those strange tech molecules floating through my air. So, after fourteen seconds deliberation, I realized that my son has everything techy. So I loaned him my Kindle to play with for a weekend and he downloaded some free books onto it.

Have you read them?

No. I have too many flesh and blood books laying around to read. But I'll try it some day. The point is that I am being sucked deeper and deeper by doing nothing. It gets worse.

I feel so sorry for you.

'Whispers' by Travis Erwin

Then I won a free Kindle book from Mr. Travis Erwin. He has the blog One Word, One Rung, One Day. His blog has a humorous slant and he is from Texas, which is a brilliant combination.

A book?

It was a book he had written. He is an author, after all. You see I have started reading a wonderful blog by Wendy Russ called On the Front Porch and she interviewed Travis and was giving away his book to three people that commented and out of the thousands I was picked because she recognized by verve and magnificent contributions to the arts, science and...

She drew your name out of a hat.

You are missing the point here. I now have a fancier cell phone, a digital video and a Kindle and a gift book for my Kindle that I can't download. I think I am going to have to loan my Kindle to my son again.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Oh.

Yesterday I received a gift from my company for my extraordinary service on a special project. They couldn't have given me something useful like a nose hair clipper or a car or something. They had to give me a Portable DVD Player. So now I have so much electronic stuff I don't know what to do with it all. Things are just sitting around all over the place. And they don't make it easy. Everything has to be charged and it is confusing trying to figure out what charger goes with what device. My electric bill is going through the roof.

We will pray for you. You are now chest deep in the technological quicksand.

I don't want to talk about it -- it makes me dizzy.

Did you notice that I deleted that Follower Section from my blog?

Huh? Jerry, this is getting a bit long already...

It all seemed a little silly to me. It was like bragging or something and it bugged me. So I deleted it. It was kind of like that Friends thing on FaceBook which was stupid. When I got up to 800 friends on FaceBook -- and I never even wrote in the damn thing -- I decided that this makes the concept of friends meaningless and deleted my FaceBook account, which wasn't easy let me tell you.

You are a little viscous deleting things right and left.

You know the Bible says that when you get a sty in the moat pluck your eyes out. Or something like that.

I think you failed the Biblical scholar test.

But I am adaptable. You know, blog people actually make comments in response to comments on their blogs. I kind of figured this was a sneaky way of making their comment count high.....you know, you would show 50 comments when actually 40 of them were written by you.

But then I read that this is not only an acceptable but recommended practice. It is a nice thing to do.

So you are...

That's right. Starting with this blog I am going to comment to commenters. It is a bit of a problem though because I have to think of something to say. If a someone comments "Interesting", what do I say? "Your comment was interesting too". And it may be time consuming. But I'll give it a shot.

This missive has wandered all over the place.

That is your fault. If you would stop making stupid comments I could end this thing.

But...

Sshhh

The Two-Holer

2011-07-02T06:48:00.000-05:00

Because of some repairs to our plumbing, the water at our house was cut off for a while. Of course, this was precisely the time that we suddenly had a desire to make coffee and brew some iced tea. Maybe even boil some rice and cook some pasta. And we probably needed to put water in the iron and take a shower and water the garden. When you do not have something then you find there is a pressing need for that something that you do not have.

So we took our usual course -- sat down to discuss this malady. We first lamented the fact that we had no bottled water, so we vowed to get some the next time we went to the store -- just in case our water was cut off again sometime in the next five years. Then my resourceful wife suggested we get water out of a toilet tank -- so, we finally had water to make coffee. (Note that I said 'toilet tank' and not 'toilet bowl'.)

Now we could sit down and lament our dire fate with steaming coffee in hand. We criticized ourselves about being so helpless when denied a simple modern convenience. Marilyn said that we would really be suffering if we had to pump our own water out of the ground. I told her that was exactly what my grandparents had to do.

"You're kidding?"

My paternal grandparents lived on a farm about fifteen miles outside of a small town in Oklahoma. They were farmers. Primarily grew corn, I think.

I explained to her that when we would drive up to visit them, the first thing my grandmother would do was stoke up the wood stove, put on a pot of coffee, and start rolling out pie dough. That wood stove was a marvel to me, and temperature control was governed by my grandmother's experience. Somehow she could make marvelous meals including an apple or cherry or raisin pie baked to perfection.

Like many people in rural communities, a lot of technology had passed them by. They had electricity and a refrigerator and this fact confuses me a lot. It may be that my memory is messing with me, but I distinctly remember that my maternal grandparents also had electricity but had an ice box. Ice box: That was an insulated cupboard that was filled with a block of ice delivered every third day. Why does this baffle me? My maternal grandparents lived in town and had an ice box whereas my paternal grandparents lived on a farm and had a refrigerator.

My sister and I always enjoyed visiting my father's parents. They were pretty much no-nonsense folks but went to extraordinarily lengths to make sure we were comfortable. Grandpa would take us out to talk with the sole cow and into the chicken coop to grab some eggs or over to talk with his only horse and sometimes back into the corn fields where he would shove rattle snakes out of the way with his shoe while we ventured through the fields to the river behind. We always had fine meals and red beans was a staple at every meal. At eight o'clock it was bedtime because all would have to rise at 4:00 a.m. My sister and I were bedded down into a bed that sunk deep when you lay on it with thick quilts that kept us toasty.

I told my wife that they didn't have a car and I said that because I remember The Preacher would stop by and pick them up every Sunday for church. But I do have a vague memory of a blue pickup truck somewhere, so I might have told her wrong. After all, how did they get their farm product to market? And get groceries? They couldn't have needed many groceries though. They had the cow for milk and Grandma churned her own butter and they had chicken and eggs and veggies from the garden, but little else.

Sometimes people would stop by to visit and the guest parlor was the front porch with a line of rocking chairs. Sometimes they would bring out a card table, and it was on this card table that I learned how to play dominoes. On those nights when guests came by, there was a bedtime exception. Everyone stayed up until nine or nine-thirty.

I wonder if I am getting any of this wrong? I don't think so and if I did, Sally, my sister, will be sure to correct me. But the one thing I do have a solid memory of is the outhouse. I hated the outhouse. It was located out the backdoor about fifty feet away. When I went to the outhouse I always had a dreaded fear of not only being attacked by snakes and scorpions and spiders on the way to the place, but that those very same critters would bite me on the butt as I would nervously sit there.

But the outhouse was a special ritual for my grandparents. It's funny. Today in 2011 we are pretty open and accept all sorts of behavior. But would we accept daily going to outhouse with your spouse? It was a two-holer and my grandparents had a ritual of going to the restroom together. They would stay for a while and if you listened you could hear them talking as they sat together. As odd as it may sound, this seemed to be a special time together when they talked things out and communicated with each other.

My father talked with them quite often about moving to town. He offered to help get them a house. After all, they were getting on in years and would have a harder and harder time maintaining the little farm. As was their way, they would 'think about it'. It wasn't so much that they were stubborn, they just simply discarded any notion that didn't make a lot of sense. There came a time though when they listened. I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe it was when my grandmother broke her arm. Or maybe they began to feel the weight of years.

My father found a house for them in the small town. It had running water and window water coolers and a gas stove and he would get them a TV and it had an indoor bathroom. When my father showed them the house and he was explaining the stove, my Grandmother just stood in front of it staring at it. She wasn't excited. She just had a hard time understanding how the damn thing could possibly work. The fact that they wouldn't have to pump water didn't particularly impress them. Neither did the indoor bathroom.

But one thing it did have was a front porch. They spent a lot of time on the front porch thinking. Then they went back to the farm and proceeded to the outhouse and spent a lot of time there. Talking it out.

My father worried about whether or not he was doing the right thing. But they were in their eighties and stuff wasn't so easy anymore.

They relented and my father moved them.

They never turned on the TV, but it made a fine shelf. My grandmother slowly began to like the gas stove although she complained that it would never get the right temperatures. But they never were comfortable with the bathroom. There was only one toilet -- a one-holer.

Until they died, they spent most of the time on the porch.

Our life was turned upside down because we lost the routine convenience of running water for a couple of hours. There were some people that relished their lack of convenience. And never lost their love of their blessed two-holer.

The WWII Prisoner of War Who Escaped Over 200 Times

2011-06-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

It was 1939 when Horace Greasley joined the British Army to help defeat the Nazis that had just invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. Twenty year old Horace went through seven weeks training with the 2nd / 5th Battalion of the Leicesters and then embarked on his first combat mission -- where he was promptly captured.

Horace found that being captured by the German's was not a fun experience. He first faced a ten week forced march across France and Belgium -- one of those horrific scenes you have seen in the movies where there was no food and if you fell to the side of the road your ended up getting shot. He and the other prisoners survived by eating what little food was given to them by sympathetic villagers and drank water from ditches. At the end of the march, Horace and the other prisoners were loaded on a train for a three day trip to Polish prison camp.

This where Mr. Greasley's story begins. I guess you could say it is a story of consummate lust, at least it started out that way. Perhaps it is a story of an evolving, intense love affair. Perhaps it could have been an episode of Hogan's Heroes, or perhaps it may become a movie. It has been reported both Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard are interested in the story.

You see, this prison camp was at a marble quarry where the prisoners had to work. The quarry director had a seventeen year old daughter named Rosa Rauchbach who did interpreting for the Germans. She caught Horace's eye, and he caught Rosa's eye, and their eyes were filled with lust for each other. So, right under the noses of the Nazis, they would find secluded places in the camp -- many times in the camp workshop -- to engage in raucous sex.

Now Horace admits that his interludes with Rosa were not affairs of the heart -- they were simply screwing. But, I suppose they actually talked in between trysts, and as a result they began to fall in love with each other.

Purported to be Horace when Himmler visited the camp

But just when love was blossoming, Horace was suddenly transferred to Freiwaldau (E173 Setzdorf), an annex of Auschwitz which was a few miles away. This was devastating. But he was able to exchange messages with Rosa through a barber who passed the messages back and forth via work parties. Finally they worked out a plan to meet nearby. She would travel close to his camp, and with the help of his fellow prisoners, he tunneled under the fence at night to meet with her.Then he would sneak back into camp, sometimes bringing food or much needed supplies that she would give him. In fact he was able to construct a radio so his fellow prisoners could hear BBC from the radio parts she supplied.

Now may sound a bit improbable. But note that the Prison Camp was far removed from the war, and to escape was pretty useless because there was simply no place to go. In fact, to escape was essentially considered suicide. So guarding of the camp was pretty lax.

Now all of this sneaking in and out resulted in Horace and Rosa engaging in their unmarital activities three times a week which means they were probably having more sex that most couples back at Ibstock, Leicestershire which is where he was from.

This crazy life continued until it was interrupted by the war ending. He was shipped back to Britain, but they were able to exchange letters -- and he even vouched for her so that she could become an interpreter for the Americans. But suddenly he received news that she, and her infant, died in childbirth. It is assumed the child was his.

Horace's story was later confirmed by Intelligence Officers of MI9 debriefing of prisoners of war. Horace Greasley holds the record for the most escapes from a Prisoner of War camp.

Horace went on to open a hairdresser place and run a cab company. He later met Brenda and they married in 1975.

At 89 years of age, Horace met with ghost writer Ken Scott and they published his story. Mr. Greasley passed away at the age of 92, in February of 2010, shortly after the book was published. If you are interested in reading more, this is the Amazon link to his book. Also here is a line to the website maintained in his name.

Too Connected

2011-05-28T07:11:00.000-05:00

It is with great hesitation that I admit that my wife and I have new cell phones. I have had many objections to these new fancy gadgets and my primary objection was the absurd cost to use the darn things. It seemed that the only way to get a phone at a decent price was to enroll in some kind of plan that would lock you into an exorbitant monthly cost. And then when you finally got one you were sucked into a world of texting and apps and other crazy stuff that piled on more costs and attention. So I resisted even thinking about it and relied on my simple little phone that knew only how to allow me to talk now and then.

It was when my wife and I figured that it would probably be smart for us each to have a phone for no other reason than it would allow us to find each other if we got lost in the mountains of Utah or in the jungles of a Las Vegas casino.

So I investigated and finally broke down and purchased two phones for us online.

That is a picture of it to the right. Yes, yes -- it has a keyboard. Each phone cost $29 and there is no monthly contract. We pay about $30 every three months to buy prepaid minutes, which is plenty ample for our use.

It is also with great hesitation that I admit that I have texted on this phone. This was primarily to send messages and pictures, yes -- it takes pictures, to the kids. I now have the ability to get online and to download apps -- neither of which I am particularly interested in doing.

My kids sort of smirk at this turn of events, as if I have finally come over to the dark side or something.

My briefcase was filled with electronic gadgets and chargers while traveling. Let's see, two cell phones, a small camcorder, a digital camera and chargers for everything. The TSA showed great consternation when my briefcase would pass through security. It seems that they had to call a supervisor over to verify that a battery charger was in fact not some kind of detonator. I'm glad that they didn't pick up one of the gadgets and ask me to demonstrate it. Trying to remember which gadget needed which button to push to turn it on might have been a challenge.

Soon I face the daunting task of trying to delete my Facebook site. It seems that a couple or so years ago I set myself up there...and when I got a handle on what it was all about I wanted to get out of there. I went back in and deleted myself out of the whole thing. It seems that the damn thing didn't delete. This was a problem with Facebook for quite a while -- it wouldn't let you delete yourself. Now it seems that this stirred up a bit of controversy, so I understand I can now actually do it. I get emails daily of people that somehow connected to me on Facebook. The other day I went in and saw that I had 900 people, with pictures, somehow attached to my site. I don't know who these people are, and honestly, I don't want to know these people. So now I have the daunting task of once again trying to wipe myself out of Facebook. I can do it. I know I can.

So now I am off to downloading vacation pictures and videos and getting myself organized.

Be good.

The Sands of Time are Gushing Through the Skinny Part of the Hourglass

2011-05-20T05:37:00.000-05:00

Where have you been? You haven’t been reading blogs.

Working. Too much working stuff. I thought I was hired to think. No one told me I had to work too.

That’s silly.

I think the average worker actually works 70% of the time, which I think is appropriate. I am working 130% of the time which sort of sucks. People come into my office to have a friendly chat, and I tell them to go away I’m too busy. When people call I answer with, “What do you want?:” I can’t even have hour and a half lunches.

130%?

Yeah. Because I work that extra 30% I should be paid double time which makes it 130%.

That makes no sense?

And then I lost last weekend. I had fifteen things that I absolutely had to do in preparation for our vacation this weekend and I couldn’t do a single one. In fact, that is one of the reasons for my 130% productivity is so I can go on vacation.

Vacation?

Last Saturday was supposed to be a simple four hour birthday gathering which involved the zoo and a lunch, and somehow it turned into almost nine hours, and I am still trying to figure that out. My Saturday was lost, but I figured it I worked 200% on Sunday, I could catch up. But somehow another birthday gathering ended up at our house for a four year old and people just kept showing up…we didn’t have anything planned for Sunday – suddenly we have a house full of people. It is very strange – people just assume things, like “Why don’t we have this over Jerry and Marilyn's”. I mean, if they had told us we could have vacuumed the carpet or something.

So none of my absolutely important fifteen things were done. I am taking off work today so I can do them.

You’re right, I haven’t been reading blogs. No time.

Vacation?

We are going to Utah again. I think there is a high probability that I won’t come back. I think I will become a Morman and explore the country and live off the land – someplace where I won’t have to work 130%.

Morman? You just want multiple wives?

You are confused. Mainstream Mormans don’t do the Bevy of Wives thing. That is only a sect which proclaims that they are living according to the original Mormany ideas and I can’t handle one wife anyway, much less a bunch of wives. It also occurs to me that Mormans tend to build a lot of cathedrals and that seems like a lot of work. Maybe I would work for the Park Service and become a tour guide instead.

So you have been under stress.

Nah – got it covered.

You have just explained that you don’t have control of what is happening to you at work and home. That is stress?

Oh.

But I am able to influence events which made my wife happy and so I am happy.

For some reason, I am having a hard time following you.

That is because the sands of time are gushing through the skinny part of the hourglass. So, pay attention. My wife has been unable to sleep for three or four months because as soon as she would lie down she would start coughing, sometimes so violently that she would throw up. So her sleeping was done sitting a half-reclining recliner. She went to a Pulmonologist three times and got pills and inhalers and x-rays and MRIs and they could find nothing wrong.

Then the Monday night we were sitting there talking.

Talking?

Yeah, just like unmarried people do.

Four years ago my wife had lap band surgery which fixes it so my wife can eat only itsy bitsy morsels of food which means less intake which means weight loss. And she lost a lot of weight. So while we were talking, I suggested that she call the Lap Band doctor – maybe the whole coughing thing had something to do with her stomach thing. She sighed and figured why not. When she called and explained the problem, the receptionist said, “Oh you have Esophaghia Whatchamacallit. You need your band expanded. Come right on in.” Well she did. When the doctor inserted the needle into her chest and into the band to withdraw fluid which opens the band, he asked how loose she wanted it. It was at that moment that my wife thought of steaks and hamburgers and chicken and pork chops, all those things that had been denied her for four years, so she said, “All the way!”

That solved the problem, and Tuesday night she was able finally able to sleep in the bed – after eating a pork chop meal.

But won’t that mean that she will gain weight?

I’m working on a plan. If she gains fifteen pounds, she needs to agree to lap banding again. I need to discuss this with her during our next discussion.

So you are happy?

Yes, when she is happy I tend to get that way.

So we are flying out Saturday which so happens to be the day the world ends. That will be cool too.

What? Oh, I think I read about that, but…

You see, if the world ends when we are in a plane, it is good. I figure God will give the order to grab people into heaven, and it makes sense that he would get the closest ones first….and we will be in an airplane and the closest.

I…uh, can’t you think in a straight line?

Gotta’ go. I’ll call you from heaven.

From Then: An Absolutely Brillig Post

2011-05-15T05:49:00.001-05:00

Because of a conflagurance of eventitudes I find myself lacking in the time to invest the vast resources required to engage in bloggerism this weekend. So I offer a guest post from an earlier me, kind of historical adventure from January of 2010.

'Twas Brillig

I have never been very good at poetry – either writing or reading. There have been very few poems that have really moved me. By and large, I pretty much keep away from poetry. This is a fault that I guess should be corrected, and I vow work on it sometime.

Lewis Carroll

When I was sixteen years old, I picked up a book called ‘The Annotated Alice’. This book had all of the Alice adventures of Lewis Carroll – ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and whatever. What interested me about the book was that it purported to explain the real meanings of the stories. It has long been claimed that Lewis Carroll wrote in code, and the ‘Annotated Alice’ addressed that. True or not, it made interesting reading.

In this book I came across the poem “The Jabberwocky”. I think this was in ‘Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There’. I remember reading the first line.

“ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…” Huh? I thought this was odd – in fact too odd to continue, so I put the book away. But one Sunday afternoon I was bored and spent most of the afternoon in bed listening to music. For lack of anything else to do, I grabbed the Alice book – and it fell open to the poem. I read the first stanza in a bored and sighing way.

“ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

The first thing I discovered was that it rhymed. I am more comfortable with poems that rhyme. But the wording was kind of hard to get your tongue around. So I set up a little challenge within myself to be able to recite it out loud without stumbling. Soon I was able to do it.

Now I had no idea what it meant – but the words kind of melted together once I could read it. Then I tried to understand whether that first stanza was meant to be soothing, or boisterous, or demanding, or lyrical. So I practiced saying it out loud in different tones – sometimes fast and spitting, sometimes slow and romantic. To me, it seemed to work either way. Thus my fascination began with the poem, “The Jabberwocky”. It became my favorite poem and remains so today.

I have since learned that some of those strange words have Elizabethan era origins, but most are not words at all. I thought about this poem quite a bit. Generally, poetry is an attempt to convey thought in a lyrical way – to move or astound or make you feel as though what was expressed hit you right in the gut. Listen to me, trying to explain poetry. Ha! But I couldn’t figure out any thought to be conveyed within ‘The Jabberwocky’. It made absolutely no sense. Well, it made a little bit of sense…for if you read carefully you could detect a sense of emotional thought. But, what truly intrigued me was the use of words. The “sound” of words was used – much as a musician uses notes. This fascinated me – and still does fascinate me. From that point on – the sound of words became important to me. Many many times I will opt for the sound of words, even when more precise words would have been better. Sometimes I find that a good speaker will do this. The sound of words is important.

I taught my son and daughter “The Jabberwocky” in their pre-teen years. I practiced it with them. They reached a point where they could recite “The Jabberwocky” as a funeral dirge, or as a bombasting oration, or full of hate with venom spitting out, or as a soul encompassing love poem. As I practiced in my youth the sounds and textures of the words, my kids learned to convey any type of meaning they desired in reciting this poem. No – don’t think that this was a torture chamber for them. We had great fun and laughed a lot at the exaggerations in voice tone and gestures while reading the poem.

Since that point, each of them was always the preferred student to be called on to recite narrative or poetry in class. They knew how to pull emotion out of the written word.

The Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back
.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I Can't Talk About This, But...

2011-05-07T06:57:00.000-05:00

Take that first sip of coffee.

Mmmm.

Why are you up at 4:30 this Saturday?

Mmmm. It is what I do...get up early to smell the birds and hear the flowers.

Take another sip.

It is the fault of our Armed Forces. If you were in the Army or Navy or Marines of Air Force, you have to get up early. It's a rule or something.

That was many, many years ago.

I was impressionable. I guess it stuck with me. Besides I had to train.

What kind of training did you get out of bed to do?

Bunk. It was called a bunk. I'm not sure I can talk about this, but I...well, trained with the Navy Seals.

No you didn't.

It's true...you know that you can't lie in a blog. Every morning we would have to get up and run for miles and then jump in the Atlantic Ocean and swim for miles. Then it was time for breakfast. You see, habits die hard. I still get up early, except sometimes I write in my blog instead of all that silly exercise.

Are you trying to say that you were a Navy Seal and went on secret missions?

I don't know if I can talk about this.

You see, in Little Creek, Virginia there is the Navy School of Music...and I was a student, and then an instructor. We had a barracks there. The Seals had a training facility there too. Already you can see a symbiosis developing, can't you? Anyway, at 4:30 a group of Seals would run by the barracks...I mean like run in step hollering a cadence. They were running to the ocean for their refreshing swim.

Since they always woke us up, we took to standing outside and watching them. Finally we figured out that we were kind of like Seals, so we decided to join them. So when they came by, we would follow in behind them shouting our own cadence. Our cadence was a bit more complimentary of musicians and less complimentary of Seals.

This is not...

We would run behind them for miles. Well, maybe about a quarter of a mile. I don't know why they had to run so damn fast. Anyway it became an expected show of comradeship and patriotism. We would run behind them sort of mocking them, and they would in turn change their cadence to say something about fruits and fairies. We were in lock step. We would sort of verbally challenge and they would verbally respond until we had to stop challenging because we would run out of breath.

That was stupid.

That occurred to us. We wondered what we would do if they suddenly stopped. We changed our strategic position and took to standing in a row drinking coffee as they ran past and kind of waving and saying things like, "Hey guys". Just to let them know we were on their side. Americans, you know.

So this is why...

So one day we were in the gedunk sitting...

Gedunk?

Sorry, that is Navy talk for coffee shop. So we were sitting there one day eating or drinking coffee or something and in walked two Seals. You could tell they were Seals because they had those big knives in their boots. By the way, you could tell we were not Seals because we had the dreaded and feared Music Lyre on our arms. Any way these guys came in and grabbed a cup of coffee and said something to each other and turned and walked to our table and asked if they could sit down.

So you drank coffee with two Rambos? Did you get scared? After all, you made fun of them.

Don't be silly. Seals are anything but Rambos.

Let's say the thought might have crossed our mind that they might express some degree of concern about our early morn activities.

They asked if we were part of the crew that is out there in the early morning hours. We indicated that it was slightly possible that we might have been. They proceeded to tell us that they looked forward to us running with them and even had come up with some really nifty cadences to challenge us with. In essence, we were a little break from a boring routine and they enjoyed it. They challenged us to begin running again.

We indicated that we were hesitant to put them to shame but indeed would start running again, if they would just slow down. Alas, they were on a timeline and had to run so many miles in so many minutes.

They stayed at our table and talked for a few minutes. They were confident, polite guys who talked with intelligence and they knew who they were and we knew who they were, so they could see the respect in our eyes. When they got up to leave they shook our hands and slapped us laughingly on the back.

We sat for a few more minutes making comments like, "They weren't so tough", and then after a thought, "Yeah, they were." We did make an attempt to run with them a couple of more times and I will admit that their verbal cadences were highly imaginative.

So yes, I trained with the Navy Seals.

I see.

I had an intense Navy career, a little of which can be revealed. Like when I was involved in reviewing flying tactics with The Blue Angels.

The Blue Angels? The elite Navy Flight Performance Team? I'm not sure that I want to...

It is a long complicated story about how I came to be in the Officers Club bar at 7:00 a.m. in the Naval Base at Argentia, Newfoundland. That is a whole long story in itself.

We don't have time...

You know what the Great Circle is, don't you? It is the shortest route between our country and Europe...in essence it is a north eastern arc over the North Atlantic, and Newfoundland seems to be smack dab on that arc. So the Angels flew into our base on their way to England or somewhere for a show, and dropped by the O-Club for private breakfast.

And you were there.

Yep. I was maybe one of five people other than the Angels that were there. Anyway I was sitting at the bar drinking coffee and one of the guys came up to the bar to get some more coffee and he said "Hi" and I said "Hi" and a conversation developed. For some reason I was surprised that he wasn't much older than me...essentially a kid.

Being the flight tactician that I am I had to ask him a question. I used my hands as visual aids. I asked about how those two planes could fly directly toward each other each simultaneously flipping ninety degrees at a time until they passed each other belly to belly inches apart. I didn't understand how they could be so precisely together.

He told me it is sort of a secret, and then in a lower voice, he said the two pilots sing to each other.

Huh?

That is precisely what I said. He told me what they sang.

Well?

I guess I can tell you. I mean today with fancy computers and stuff they probably don't do that anymore. Let's see, how can I do this -- you see, certain words of the lyrics are emphasized which is their key to flipping ninety degrees together. Okay, I'll underline the emphasized words.

'Merr-ily we roll along. Roll along. Roll along'. They sang it slowly and precisely and together.

Can I believe this?

As you can see, I was reviewing tactics with the Blue Angels.

Okay, I guess it is time to shut this down.

But have you ever dropped sonobuoys from a P3B airplane searching for enemy submarines?

I don't want to hear it.

The things I did in defense of my country.

Good bye.

But it is really an interesting story....

There Was a Wedding Yesterday

2011-04-30T07:19:00.000-05:00

I don’t care what you say, being in a monarchy can sometime be a grand thing. While we here in the United States went to great lengths to not be a monarchy including a war and a constitution that forbids it, a tremendous amount of us reveled in the pageantry and royalty presented yesterday morning during William and Kate’s wedding ceremony. It is said that every girl wants to be married as a princess. Well, I suspect that there were a lot of guys sitting around envious of crisp uniforms with golden swords and the pageantry of it all.

On Friday morning I awoke at 4:24 a.m. to my alarm, stumbled into the kitchen to pour my initial cup of pre-brewed coffee and sat to watch the news and weather before dressing for work. There was no news and weather. There was The Wedding. My wife wandered in bouncing from wall to wall, saw what was on TV and immediately sat down to watch. What we saw was rich, fascinating and finely choreographed – so much so that I got to work late, at 6:15. Before I left my wife encouraged me to record it all.

I have some observations.

Kate’s dress was beautiful and white and full with a long train and symbolized purity which is okay these days even though Kate and William have lived together for quite a while. I wondered though, what if Kate, in the hotel fifteen minutes before entering the car for the journey had to go to the cathedral, had to go to the bathroom. How does one go to the loo with a dress like that?

I find that women are particularly critical of the hats that women wore to the wedding. It is obviously Hat Envy. I liked them and I was fascinated by them, especially those that seemed to balance precariously on the side of the head with a swirl of feathers curling around to the other side of the head. I have no idea how those hats stayed on the head. I was thinking, one of these hats would be a fine gift to give Marilyn – although I haven’t a clue when she would wear it. Just think, all of those women bought a fancy hat to wear one time. I approve.

It was cloudy in London yesterday, yet when Kate exited the car to enter Westminster Abbey, the sun broke through. A sign, surely.

Have you ever met anyone named Pippa? Kate’s sister is really a doll dressed in a form fitting white dress and at any other time probably would be not be smart because she would have upstaged the bride. But Kate was so alluring that it all worked out okay. Pippa’s primary job as Maid of Honor was to carry the train. They do things different over there.

When Kate was walking down the aisle, the orchestra with brass broke into a triumphant march. This is interesting, because the first note played by the brass was right on. It is hard for brass players, trumpets and trombones and the such, to get the first note perfect especially playing a cold instrument. Typically instrumentalists sneakily blow their hot breath into their instruments prior to playing to keep them warm. But they are never quite warm enough, and if you listen close, you will find the first couple of notes a tiny bit out of tune until the performer can adjust and the instrument warms. But it seemed to me that the first notes were perfect which makes me wonder if the music was a recording.

In America, we cheat. When the bride walks up the aisle the groom stands and watches her approach. The Brits follow the rule that the groom is not to see the bride until she is at the altar, and that is why William faced away murmuring such things as, “Actually, I was hoping for a quiet family wedding” to his future father-in law. William has a warm and comfortable relationship with Kate’s parents. It is said that one of his great delights is joining them for dinner at their house sitting in the den balancing dinner plates on their knees watching and making sarcastic comments about a soccer game on the TV. Where was I? Oh, when Kate finally makes it to the altar, William turns and looks at her and tells he that she looks beautiful. He better have said that after all the effort she went to.

Doesn’t Kate have a nice, quick, natural smile? William’s expressions seemed to bounce from “Couldn’t we just have used a Justice of the Peace or the Sheriff of Nottingham or something” to trying to make sure that his bride was at ease, which is funny because she seemed more at ease than he. As a young teenager Kate was not the beauty that we saw on TV. In fact, the boys in her school rudely rated her as a 2 out of 10. Now look at her….an eat your heart out moment. Of the two, it is said that Kate is the stronger of the two. In private she brings a strength of the history of a strong family to the relationship. William is a bit more fragile. His mother had died tragically and he was raised in a life of privilege and pampering – his military service notwithstanding. Once in their years of being together, he broke up with her. Kate, that first evening alone, found the slinkiest, sexiest dress that she had and wore it to a club that she knew he would be at. Once there she gaily pranced around flirting with all the men as a sexy siren. When William saw her, he immediately decided to put a stop to it and stepped in and "rescued" her, and they left together – and the relationship was on again. Kate knows men.

When the couple left the altar, the herald trumpets played a fanfare – and it was as it should be. The first notes weren’t 100% perfect. To be fair though, herald trumpets (those long trumpets with flags hanging from them) are notoriously hard to play and hit perfect notes under the best of circumstances. I was swept away in long lost memories when The Crown Imperial March was performed as they walked together down the aisle. Crown Imperial was a march written for King George VI’s coronation and was my favorite during college. I really need to download that – I had forgotten all about it.

They really should have shown more of Pippa.

The Day of the Wedding was declared a National Holiday. That just can’t happen here, and it is a shame. The closest we can come to it is when a presidents child is married in the White House, and then you will see a little of it on the evening news. The crowds for the Kate and William’s wedding was overwhelming. I’m telling you, a monarchy can be cool and meaningful at times. It was estimated that two billion people around the world watched….all those people watching Pippa….and Kate and William….all wishing warm thoughts.

Did you see the Crowd Choreography managed by the Police? I have never seen crowds maneuvered and positioned so perfectly and calmly before….especially at Buckminster Palace. Thousands and thousands of people positioned so perfectly patiently waiting to see Kate and William kiss on the balcony. How awkward that must have been. Usually when people kiss, it is sort of a private affair. I can’t imagine their thoughts before walking onto that balcony. “Okay dear, I guess we have to go outside and let billions of people watch us kiss. I sure hope I don’t miss your mouth.” I have to say that the kisses – there were two – were a bit ‘public’ and not very heartfelt.

Look at the young lady on the left

Kudos to the youngsters involved in the whole thing….the young bridesmaids and…young boys…pages? The young ladies were so pretty and the young men dressed in smart uniforms were so handsome. When walking down the aisle, accompanied by Pippa I might mention, they were perfect. I was gratified to see though, that one young lady allowed her youth to show through on the kissing balcony by covering her ears to the crowd noise and looking absolutely bored.

I’ve often thought that every woman’s dream wedding is never quite so dreamy. Dreams and reality clash. When the day arrives it is stressful and a hassle and tempers can flair and stuff doesn’t work right and there are things forgotten. To watch Kate and Williams wedding must have been a dream come true, vicariously, for so many women – the perfection of it without the hassle.

I understand that William and Kate are now in line for King and Queen of Great Britain. I didn’t understand this because I thought Charles was next in line. Marilyn said that she thought that since Charles married Camilla, who had been divorced, he was now ineligible. Is that true?

I was one of the two billion people that enjoyed and appreciated the pageantry and wonder of it all. I wish them well.

And Pippa too.

Music Tastes

2011-04-25T09:39:00.000-05:00

You youngsters under 60 years old missed out. As a teenager we would ride around in my Volkswagen (with no brakes), crammed full of people and suddenly we would hear this on the radio:

I told the witch doctor I was in love with you

doh doh doh

I told the witch doctor I was in love with you

doh doh doh

And then the witch doctor told me what to do

He told me

Oo ee oo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang

We would sing "The Witch Doctor" at the top of our lungs. And then the exotic "Purple People Eater" would blare, and our voices would blare even louder.

Well I saw the thing comin' out of the sky

It had one long horn, one big eye

I commenced to shakin' and I said "ooh eee"

It looks like a Purple People Eater to me.

It was a one-eyed one-horned flyin' purple people eater

One-eyed one-horned flyin' purple people eater

Sure looks strange to me.

Not only did you poor children miss out on these wonders, but you were not born early enough for "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" and "Please Mister Custer, I Don't Wanna' Go".

With this foundation in my repertoire it was only natural that I went to school to study music. There I learned that the music I listened to evolved from the Gregorian Chants through to old Gospel Music employing a basic four chord progression in a major key. And if I listened to "Singin' the Blues" I discovered that there was such a thing as a minor key.

I once read a short science fiction story about Shakespeare appearing in our current world. He found out that there was a college course on Shakespearean Literature, so he signed up for it. He flunked the course. He walked away bewildered. In his mind he meant what he wrote just as he wrote it. But they assigned deep and mysterious meanings to his words that he just couldn't fathom. He was completely lost trying to read his own words the way they told him to.

Sometimes we can destroy a subject by studying it too much.

My music tastes have changed since those early teenage days. In some ways I guess it could be considered more sophisticated. I love the jazz vocals of Mel Torme (known as the Velvet Fog) and appreciate the singing of Michael Buble. I am intrigued by Mannheim Steamroller, and appreciate the symphonic tones of Aaron Copeland, H. Owen Reed, and Heitor Villa Lobos -- and even that oddity Esquivel. Put a nice jazz combo in a restaurant, and I will sit there all night.

But in one way, my music tastes take a bit of a twist. There is one other singer I like a lot.

His birth name was Francesco Peolo LoVecchio, His father was deeply involved with the Mafia, and his grandfather was gunned down by a rival gang. He started singing at the local church, and when he was 17 he was invited to sing at Chicago's Merry Garden Ballroom before a crowd of 5,000 people, and the crowd was so ecstatic that he had to give four encores. He said of that experience, "I was really nervous but I started singing 'Beside an Open Fireplace,' a popular song of the day. It was a sentimental tune and the lyrics choked me up. When I got done, the tears were streaming down my cheeks and the ballroom became quiet. I was very nearsighted and couldn't see the audience. I thought that the people didn't like me."

He ended up working with Rose Marie, Anita O'Day and became friends with Nat King Cole. He also became close friends with Perry Como, and Mr. Como would have to lend him money so he could travel to his performances. These were hard times. "I would sneak into hotel rooms and sleep on the floor. In fact, I was bodily thrown out of 11 different New York hotels. I stayed in YMCAs and with anyone who would let me flop. Eventually I was down to my last four cents, and my bed became a roughened wooden bench in Central Park. I used my four pennies to buy four tiny Baby Ruth candy bars and rationed myself to one a day."

In 1939 a program director told him that Francesco LoVecchio was too much of a mouth full and he needed to change his name. He did. To Frankie Laine.

Frankie continued to sing a various jazz spots until he was discovered by Hoagy Carmichael and got a record contract. But that pretty much went nowhere. He was singing at The College Inn in Cleveland when he sang a fifteen year old song named, "That's My Desire". People would line up just to hear him sing that song....and it led to a record contract with Mercury.

Frankie was $7,000 in debt and he was astounded when his first royalty check was over $30,000. He paid everyone back, except that Perry Como refused to take the money. Frankie Laine continued singing jazz and had four gold records.

Then he suddenly changed a little. He cut a new record with the lead song "That Lucky Old Song". It was a spiritual -- and that type of music just wasn't recorded back then. It became his fifth gold record. Then he recorded, of all things, "Mule Train" -- and to everyone's astonishment, the two albums, "That Lucky Old Song" and "Mule Train" became number one and two on the charts.

Frankie Laine, the popular jazz singer, found that he liked singing songs of the west. Some would consider it sophisticated Cowboy music -- with the twangs of guitars and banjos replaced with french horns and trumpets. He had a sophisticated voice that was rich with emotion, and it came through warm and crystal clear.

Frankie had 39 hit records featuring such songs as High Noon, I Believe, Cool Water, Ghost Riders in the Sky, The Cry of the Wild Goose, Rawhide, The 3:10 to Yuma, Jezebel, Gunfight at the OK Corral, They Call the Wind Mariah, and Tumbling Tumbleweeds. If you have seen the TV series "Rawhide", that is his voice and music...and the movies "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and "The 3:10 to Yuma".

An interesting note. Frankie Laine was even more popular in Great Britain than in the U.S. and even topped Elvis in the charts at the height of Elvis' career and he broke all attendance records at the London Palladium. He was personally requested to perform a Royal Performance for Queen Elizabeth.

So, when I am in a down mood, I will drive down the road, plop in a CD of Frankie Laine and sing The Cry of the Wild Goose at the top of my lungs right along with Frankie.

He was 93 years old when he died in 2007.

Here is a You Tube link, if you are interested. Ghost Riders in the Sky

Secret Internet Places

2011-04-17T05:57:00.000-05:00

I am ill today. I started getting ill yesterday, and today I am iller. My primary symptoms are a sore throat, mild headache, stopped up sinuses, and an inability to write a blog entry even after four tries. A doctor would proclaim that I am having an allergic reaction to grass and tree pollen and I would be inclined to agree.

So I will make this easy on myself. I will simply tell you of a site or two that I visit daily so that you can too if you are so inclined. The first site serves as portal allowing me to jump and skip all over the internet tracking down information that interests me.

http://www.refdesk.com/ is the first site that I visit every day. The Reference Desk is nothing more than a collection of links to a multitude of places. Not only can I easily jump to newspapers that I like, but I can sneak in and read Dave Barry or pick up a delicious insult, like "Thou venomed scurvy-valiant haggard!" from the Shakespearean Insulter that I never have the nerve to use in real life. You can dig into history, find reference material, look at National Geographic photography, get the latest news, find poetry, and come up with quotes that I absolutely love and would pay to be able to say that they are my own, like: "Gravity is not my fault. I voted for Velcro!" If you like recipes, desire to see the dreaded "Drudge Report", want weather news, interested in calendars, or need to prepare for the SAT -- this is the site for you. The is the first site that I visit each and every day, and many times provides fodder for my blogs.

The second site that I usually visit daily is Arts and Letters Daily. The site is divided into three categories, Articles of Note, New Books (which provided in depth reviews of books that I would never actually read on my own), and Essays and Opinions. To be honest, I probably actually read perhaps 40% of what is provided. But I am usually impressed by what I read.

These are my secret internet places. So instead of sending me flowers and cards as I suffer in allergic anguish, I offer them as my gift to you. If you have a secret place that you visit, share it with me. I won't tell anyone.

Talk With Your Dog

2011-04-10T08:51:00.001-05:00

I was beginning to think that I wasn't going to write this week. First thing this early Sunday I poured a cup of coffee and automatically sat here and pulled up the posting screen, so why let all that effort go to waste? It is not that I am blase' about posting, it is that I have nothing to say and when I read other posts that begin with "I have nothing to say", I immediately sigh and lose interest in what they are not saying. So now that I have lost your interest I figure that I can say just about anything. That leaves me with what some call 'stream of conscious writing', but it is what I call surfing my synapses.

It begins with last night. He walked up to me while I was watching TV and said, "Please pause the TV. I need to talk to you." I did. I fingered the pause button stopping the lady coroner in Body of Proof in mid-speech and gave him my resigned attention.

Hutch

"I know there is homemade stew in the kitchen," he emphatically stated. "And I want some. In fact, I want some now!" I knew that is what he said and my wife knew that is what he said and she smirked as I got up and dragged myself to the kitchen and spooned out some stew into a bowl, and then spooned out some more stew for our other dog. It was not just a desire to fulfill his wish, but it was sort of a pleasant reward for such perfect inner-species communication that Hutch achieved. His words to me weren't just an intent stare, but a vocal crooning and jerk of his head toward the kitchen and then back to staring me in the eyes as he crooned more. His intent was 100% clear and anyone in the room would have understood it. Communication between species.

Which leads me to thoughts of the cosmos. There may be species out there that we may have to communicate with. I know you have seen those visualizations where you -- well, not you exactly, but a person -- is photographed from on high. Then the camera retreats and we see the block you are standing in, then retreats again to show the city, then the state, then the country, then the earth....and keeps zooming out and you see our solar system and then our galaxy where our sun shrinks to a tiny dot and then it disappears with a view of the cosmos where our sun disappears, then the camera backs up to show a mass of stars... It shows that we are a tiny, tiny part of something huge that we simply can't comprehend.

So many, many suns in the cosmos and a bunch of them have planets, and planets are where there could be species. So with so many invisible planets -- gazillions of them -- logic tells us there must be populations of species out there. Actually, I'm not so sure if it is logic, but more like wishful thinking. Why? Look at the alternative. If there are not, then we would be the only species amongst billions and billions of planets -- and that is almost unacceptable. It is just too lonely a feeling. Deep inside we don't want to be alone.

Of course, there is the fact the we don't know. This gnaws at us. We can't stand not knowing. Even if someone reverently spouts that we can't know the unknowable, inside we find that answer unacceptable. We thirst for information. That is why we gossip, argue and plead, we have to understand what is going on.

Hubble Image of Stuff Out There

So we turn to science for clear cut, simple answers and we get quarks and string theory and quantum mechanics in response, which is another way of saying that they don't know either. Have you seen the pictures taken by the Hubble telescope? They are beautiful and strange and just plain weird. They show things that are 'out there' and we never can quite understand that we are somehow part of it. Then they say things like, "This is a photo of a star system 214,000 light years away...we are seeing history 214,000 years old." Wrap your heads around that. We can only take pictures of history.

If I take a picture of you, the image I get is a historical image because I can only photograph an image after it has hit the lens and it took time for the image of you to travel from you to the lens...the speed of light. We don't realize or pay attention to it because it does so in a billionth of a second, 'cause light travels pretty fast. But we notice it when we see Hubble pictures. What we see is an image after light from the image has traveled a long, long way. Since light travels 186,000 miles per second, the distance that light travels in one year is a Light Year. So when they say that something is 214,000 light years away, we are seeing an image 214,000 years old. It may not even exist now. All we can see is history. (If you really are nerdy enough to want to translate a light year into plain old miles you can do some multiplication: 188,000 x Number of Seconds in a Year = the Mileage Equivalent of a Light Year.)

This takes the fun out of it. It makes things strange and confusing. Now they are talking about building a bigger and better telescope than Hubble that will be able to see the Beginning of Time. This is enough to make you want to turn to making stew. Stew -- you can touch and smell and taste it and it is right there. It is just hard to comprehend that a telescope is a time machine. It sees history. A bigger telescope can travel further and further in the past. (They haven't figured out how to make a telescope see into the future, but I'm sure they are working on it.)

Big Bang?

So now they say they will be able to see The Beginning. The prevalent theory is that it all started with the Big Bang. Why? All the evidence seems to point that way. Stars and galaxies are moving outward from a seemingly central point. They can even measure how fast they are moving. So they must be moving outward for some reason -- they are being pushed away. From what? An explosion. That is the theory. The problem, at least in my feeble mind, is that theoretically there was nothing before the Big Bang. I haven't figured out any way to create something out of nothing....especially wealth.

In other words, we don't know.

With all that stuff out there, stuff involving zillions of light years and zillions of suns and billions of planets, I'm banking on the fact that we are not alone. There are other species out there.

Talking with your Dog

So, where does that leave us. Simple. Talk and listen to your dog. Develop that inner-species communication. So when we find out that those UFOs are real and they come to talk to us, you will be prepared. Because you pay attention to your dog.

A Conspiracy of Traps

2011-04-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

Why did you sleep so late?

Huh? Oh,. I woke up at 4:30 this morning, looked around, and asked, "Why?", and went back to sleep. Then somehow it got to 6:45 and here I am and I'm dazed. I'm not used to sleeping so late.

You must have had a wild night.

Let me think. Oh. We watched "The Tourist" on DVD and then I read. I'm pretty sure that I complained about my wounds through the whole thing.

Wounds?

It was a conspiracy of traps carefully designed to do me in. First I had to call Comcast and complain that the digital adapter they sent for the TV upstairs wasn't worth a flip. And do you know what she had me do? She wanted me to read the serial number off the adapter. I thought that was pretty stupid.

Yes, and...

So I was carrying around the phone talking as I went upstairs and went to the TV and found a black box on the TV and turned it around and squinted out the serial number and she said that wasn't it but it was the only number there and I was getting upset with her until I figured out that I was reading out the serial number of a X-Box. You can see I was getting frustrated.

You thought the X-Box was the adapter.

Well, how was I supposed to know? This was in my step-son's room and he has all kinds of electronic craziness in there. So after I explained to her that I may have read a X-Box number to her by mistake I heard her sigh impatiently which frustrated me even more because now she thought that she had an aged idiot on the phone. So I was going to rush around to the other side of the big TV and then it happened.

Big TV?

Well yeah. We gave him our great big boxy TV after Marilyn got us a big, skinny HDTV. So I going from one side of the big TV to the other side and -- you know, his overhead light needs more wattage. You see, I tripped over a portable sewing machine sitting right there on the floor. I mean, it wasn't a standard tripping, it was a full scale trip and I plopped flat onto the floor. The floor was carpeted but under the floor was wood and the hardness of the wood transconfigurated right through the carpet onto my body.

I'll bet that hurt!

But I more or less kept my composure. I grabbed the phone which was two feet from my head and pulled it to my ear and she was saying, "Sir? Sir?". As I lay there I explained that I tripped and that maybe I should call back later. She started saying something else but I clicked her off. By now she was convinced that I was an aged idiot and it is hard to speak meaningfully to someone who thinks you are an idiot.

I limped downstairs and Marilyn asked what that bang was and I told her that I tripped over a sewing machine and bruised my leg and I jammed my mouse-clicking finger trying to break my fall. She tried to stifle the laughter as she said, "Oh my gosh." I then ranted. I mean who leaves a sewing machine on the floor. That was just stupid. Marilyn rubbed it in, "There was a sewing machine in the middle of the floor and you didn't see it?"

I replied with absolute certainty, "He needs a bigger light bulb up there. Besides, I was concentrating on finding a stupid digital thing on top of the TV and wasn't looking down. And it is stupid that he leaves a sewing machine on the floor. And why did that stupid Comcast lady make me go all the way upstairs to read a serial number anyway? If she had just taken my word for it none of this would have happened!"

So clumsiness doesn't come into play?

You sound like Marilyn. Don't you guys understand that I suffered blunt force trauma? I mean, it hurts to type.

So this is your blog entry?

Most people don't realize that when one suffers physical trauma they also are whacked with psychological trauma too. The only way to confront this before it becomes debilitating as to face the fear head on. So I am going to call Comcast as soon as I wake up and confront the lady and explain to her that I am not an aged idiot. But then maybe it won't be the same lady.

Maybe I can call this entry "Confronting Your Fears" which would give hope to those who feel the world conspires against them. They would find an ally in me here.

I don't think that is a very good idea.

If my wife will leave me alone to tend to my wounds today maybe I could research something and write about it later. If my finger stops hurting.

Elleana and Friends

2011-03-25T18:10:00.000-05:00

Way back a year and some months ago when I was younger than I am now I began this blog. My wife blabbed about it to my daughter and my daughter sent out a loving and darling email to the family that said something like: "Oh my God! Dad is writing a blog. My technologically inept Dad who thinks cell phones were invented on Star Trek is actually writing a blog!....."

One would think, after that moving tribute, that she would be an avid follower devouring every entry and would daily be gasping for more. So imagine my surprise when she casually mentioned the other day that she would like the address of my blog. It seems that with the vagaries of life that my blog URL slipped away about...."Oh, I don't know -- a year or so ago."

Elleana, that is the kids' name, mentioned this in front of a group of her friends -- and they all chimed in. "Yes, yes. Send your blog to us too. We want to read."

Now what am I going to do? This entry -- this one right here -- will be the first entry that Elleana and Friends will read. I only have one choice -- and that is to cheat. Most of you already know Elleana because I have written much about her here. But Elleana doesn't know Elleana because she hasn't read it. So with apologies to by Blog Family I am going to do the linkaroo thing to selected blogs what may have won many awards if anyone had read them. This is primarily for Elleana and Friends but you can hitch a ride too. In fact I would sort of like your company.

In The Piccolautist I point to the one thing that I think influenced my daughter's burgeoning music career more than anything else. It also reveals who she was before she became a Boss and Mover and Shaker.

In spite of who they are, both of my kids have actually done remarkable things. Sometime last year I was irked at Elleana about some silliness and I figured out real quickly how to become un-irked, and that was by recalling that Remarkable Letter she wrote many years ago. You too will be amazed.

Sometimes being a father is bittersweet. Happy sad. Every father experiences this. You just can't get around it. This particular treatise was actually written a few years ago after an encounter with my daughter. I think I got it right in Dinner With My Daughter.

Now enough about the kid. For the Friends of Elleana I offer the following entries which seems to have stirred some interest among my little corner of the Blogger Community. These entries have won Accolades and Awards and....hold on a second. My wife asks, "What accolades and awards?" Oh. The silent, invisible ones. These entries have won the prestigious Silent and Invisible Accolades and Awards.

For the sake of bringing forth little known historical events, I present The Marriage Proposal and Le Roi Est Mort. I do this as a public service without pay for the edification of Blog Peoples.

And now my favorite blog entries, whether you agree or not: Ink Wells and Butter Churning, Desert Musings, and The Clasp.

So this My Cheating Blog Entry. If you have waded all the way through this and deign to leave a comment, you can take the opportunity to instruct Elleana on the finer points of Dad Appreciation and explain what a Technological Marvel I am.

Regressive Genetic Disorders

2011-03-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Internet People,

I thought I read in a comment that I did the best regressions in the world and I thought this odd because I figured regressions had something to do with somehow going into my past lives which I really didn't know I had. But this started me thinking, who would I have been in a past life and I couldn't come up with an answer mainly because past lives people didn't have air conditioning and had to work much too hard for a living. The whole idea of picking a past life is kind of intriguing and odd until it occurred to me that they may have time travel in the future and I could have picked a past life and just inserted myself, but if I did that -- well, I picked me...now. Wow! I picked myself to be a past life to me in the future. I didn't pick being a king or Daniel Boone, I picked me. I must be special. What have I done that is so special? Well, actually -- not too much. So that means that I am going to do something special that I don't know about. Well, this notion has sure picked up my attitude and given me a dynamic purpose for living.

Except...I went back and read the comment. Oh. She said I did the best digressions in the world, not regressions. Bummer.

Sigh....where did she get that anyway?

Okay, I promised that I would gear my humdrum life up and finish answering those questions.

How would you see yourself in ten years time?

Am I supposed to assume that I won the lottery or not? You know, there are two basic ingredients in life. Do your best and expect the unexpected.. It is the 'unexpected' part that throws a kink in the whole thing. Unexpected things can be good things or bad things and they are monstrous variables. So actually those two ingredients in life can more appropriately stated as Do Your Best and Learn How to Cope. No matter what is thrown at you, winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning or being promoted to vice-president where you work or a loved one dying -- you have to be able to handle it.

I am pretty much convinced that the older you are the more important coping skills are. That's because an older person is more likely to be hit with abrupt challenges. Friends and family are older, you are more disease prone, you tend to be set in your ways and changes are harder to take, and there are planned but abrupt changes that will happen -- like retirement.

So -- where will I be in ten years?

I will be retired. I will be pleased. My plan is to be a sage dispensing my brand of wisdom and kindness -- and being someone that grandkids and kids can bring secret problems to and receive secret understanding in return. I will be grumpy at times because I have a secret fascination with grumpy old men. My wife will continue to gripe at me about wearing my hearing aids and I will gripe at her because I lost my reading glasses but our gripes will be expected gripes of love. We will face a myriad of problems together, but be wise enough to talk and engage in calm and insightful deliberation as we learn to cope. Maybe I will get a smart phone and we will spend months figuring out how to use the thing. We might even sign up for Facebook because we won't give a damn about our privacy being invaded and utilized by strangers. We will not Twitter because we simply can't be limited to a few words to say something. We will travel and our Christmas and Birthday presents will be much less extravagant so we can save for those trips.

In short, we will be as we are now, except do it better.

What's your fear?

The death of a loved one.

Would you give up all the junk food for the rest of your life for the opportunity to visit space?

I sort of want to say yes. I have always wanted to be an astronaut if I didn't have to do all that math and calculations and ride in a centrifuge. I can't do roller coasters much less a centrifuge. I want the benefits of space, the wondrous views and the lack of gravity, but I don't want to do the work involved. And I have yet to see a decent phaser and not one single alien.

Maybe in ten years when they have developed stuff more. For now, I will stick with junk food.

Would you rather be single and rich, or married and poor?

Being single and rich has got to be a horrendously lonely life. I'll go with the latter.

What is the first thing you do when you wake up?

Come on...this is a trick question. My routine is established and I will continue it the rest of my decrepit life. I pee!

If you could change one thing about your spouse/partner, what would it be?

Since my wife invades my private life and with absolutely no shame, reads my blog -- it would behoove me to answer this question with poise and delicacy.

Actually, it is kind of hard to answer. She is the source of a lot of little aggravations. But in truth, I'm not sure what I would do without those aggravations. But I think I can narrow it down to Dependability.

I have a Commitment Gene embedded in DNA somewhere. When I say I am going to do something, I do it. If I say that tomorrow I am going to be on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, I will be there. If I say that I will empty the dishwasher tomorrow, I will. If I tell my boss that I will have a project plan on his desk at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, you can be sure I will -- and I will not allow getting sick or car problems keep me from it. I am Mister Dependable and everyone knows that I can be counted on. Now it used to drive me nuts not to arrive at a party on time...because to me that was a commitment. But I have mellowed a bit on that. I can now show up fifteen or twenty minutes late with no visible signs of trauma. I don't scream at my wife that, "We Are Late!"....although I may mention in passing what time it is two or three or four times.

Now Marilyn doesn't have this genetic disorder. What she means when she says that she is going to do something is, "Right now my intentions are to do this tomorrow, but who knows what tomorrow might bring. I might not feel like it. The world won't end. I promise, it won't."

This is hard for me to get my head around. If she mentions that she will cook her famous meatloaf tomorrow, my tomorrow is sort of geared around meatloaf for dinner. I look forward to it. I find myself salivating for meatloaf. It just hard for me to understand that there is a fifty-fifty chance that meatloaf will be on the table. After all, a commitment was made.

So I would opt for gene therapy for both of us. Perhaps her Lackadaisical Gene could get whacked back a bit, and maybe my Commitment Gene could be trimmed.

How did I do? Should I expect divorce papers?

*Note from Marilyn - so that means I can still go wild on Ebay, right? As long as you get your meatloaf?

If you could pick a new name for yourself, what would it be?

When I was around twelve years old I figured I should be named Tom because Tom was manly and who ever heard of a hero named Jerry? Throughout history, name one Jerry that pops to mind. On top of that was the understanding that I was named after a paper doll. My mother's family was very, very poor and her toys were two paper dolls names Jerry and Sally and she vowed that when she grew up and had kids they would be so named. Thank goodness she had a son and daughter -- I would feel really sorry for a brother of mine to be named Sally.

I can't come up with a preferred name...well maybe Sir Jerry!

Would you forgive and forget no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

Artist and author J B Chicoine, the blogger that is making me answer these questions, answered with the perfect answer herself. She said, "That depends on how that special person feels about it." It is absolutely true and I can't improve upon that.

If you could eat only one thing for the next six months, what would it be?

I don't have an absolutely favorite food. I love Italian food, and like Mexican food, and a good hamburger can't be beat. And I can be forced to indulging in a hot fudge sundae. There are few things that taste better about 10:00 o'clock on a weekend morning that a good breakfast. But somethings that I would want to eat for six months? I guess I have to settle on Marilyn's meatloaf.

There, I've finished. No more questions. Now I have to go back and find some pictures to throw in here because all good blogs have to have pictures. I think someone said that.

Now, go and do something stupid.

Sincerely,

Sir Jerry

Questions and Whalan Love

2011-03-12T09:13:00.002-06:00

I felt like I should put a picture here -- so here is one I took when I was on Mars

I'm not sure what happened. I woke up this morning and discovered that it was time to post. I did that last week and the week before, but failed to avail myself of the posting opportunity. I often said that I post because it serves as a vehicle for the enjoyment of writing rather than as an obligation. The last two weeks confirms that notion. I didn't feel like writing, so I didn't. Now I am beginning to feel the tiniest bit stress about it. So here I am de-stressing and as soon as I can figure out something to write about I will let you know.

I have to mentally reconcile this. I think back to the inanity of some of the things I said as a parent to my kids. I always spouted nonsense like, "You know, homework can be fun and an adventure -- exploring all kinds of stuff you didn't know." When that didn't work I would resort to, "You will do your homework now, and enjoy it!" That is where I am now. "I will write my blog now, and enjoy it!" There -- everything is now reconciled.

It doesn't explain why I haven't read blogs though. That one is tougher and requires descending into the depths of my psyche and when I do I discover a conundrum of absurdity. If I don't blog I don't deserve to read blogs. Is that really true? Maybe I am simply setting myself up for a reward. If I blog now, I will be able to read other blogs. That sounds a bit saner -- so I'm going with it.

So now I will address those questions jbchicoine dumped on me a few weeks ago.

If you have pets, do you see them as animals, or are they members of the family?

It is interesting that you ask that. (It's not really. It is what one says when they are stalling for time trying to think of something to say.) Hutch, our black Labrador, is big and very polite and gets his feelings hurt easily. He is more of an observer than a doer and always wants to join in the conversation. Many times when a repair person comes over to fix something and is standing there explaining what needs to be done, he will start putting his two cents in by crooning over and over. Once when the cable guy was on his knees unscrewing something in the wall, Hutch pranced over and stuck his head under the guy's arm to see what was going on as if to ask, "Whatcha doing?"

Buddy, our big mongrel (sort of a cross between a shepherd, a lab, and a beagle), is more of a stubborn guy. If he doesn't like his food, he will tip his bowl over. That is better than what he used to do. He used to dump his food and then take his bowl and hide it. We figured we would solve that problem by using a heavier bowl. But then he would just shove it around until it was hidden. He won in the end. We finally found a dog food that he liked. He loves the Dog Park more than anything in the world -- it is his Disney World, especially if there are mud puddles. He knows that if I don't go to work it is the weekend. He will come and stand in front of me staring into my eyes asking, "We going to the Dog Park today?" He will not move until I give him an answer. If I say, "Not today", he will wander off and sulk. If I say, "Yes", he will take off running and dancing and tell Hutch and Hutch will run and dance too.

We have learned that we cannot say "Dog Park" out loud, or "Go" or "Going" or "Library" or a myriad of other things. So we have learned to talk in code (such as "departing") and sometimes spell things out. But now those dogs are getting good at spelling. Oh, did I tell you? They are adopted dogs and are part of the family.

If you have a dream come true, what would it be?

This is hard since I am pretty much living my dream -- except for the having to work part. And the paying bills part. I think I would like to have a mountain cabin somewhere, beside a stream (where Marilyn could fish), where it snows sometime, and I can get to know all of the animals in the area. I don't think I would want to live there -- but just spend a few weeks there a year to rejuvenate and think and read and write and just wander around. Yeah, that is a fine dream.

What is the one thing most hated by you?

The lack of kindness that I see so much of.

What would you do with a billion dollars?

No one would know I had a billion dollars. My life style wouldn't change, except for buying that cabin in the mountains. I would share my wealth, first with family....but a little bit at a time just to pull them over the humps. I wouldn't look for causes in the world, but I would look for small needs to fulfill -- a high school band or orchestra that needs instruments or helping a woman that has dedicated her life to feeding the local homeless out of her own kitchen or maybe repairing a sewage system for a struggling little town. Little, meaningful things. Anonymously.

What helps pull you out of a bad mood?

The only thing that can cure a bad mood is myself. An attitude change. The acknowledgment that I am not supposed to be in control of everything and that I have a lot of good things around me.

Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

Ya' can't receive it unless you give it. And you maintain it by working hard to please who you love, and they work hard to please you.

What is your bedtime routine?

Since I get up at 4:30 in the morning, I am the first to go to bed in the evening. When Buddy thinks it is my bedtime, he will jump onto the bed and wait for me. After turning on the wall light sconces behind the bed and turning off the lamps and finding my library book and my glasses that always hide from me and pulling out the clothes I am going to wear the next day -- I have to do this since I am definitely color blind early in the morning (too many times I have worn brown slacks that I could have sworn were blue) -- I finally plop onto the bed. I reach over and grab a dog treat from the bowl on the bedside table and pitch it to Buddy, and then settle down to read for about thirty minutes. Sometime in there Hutch will amble up beside the bed and tell me, "You gave Buddy a treat so I need one too", so I give him one too. I double check that the alarm is set, flip off the lights, and sleep with Buddy beside me. When Marilyn comes to bed, Buddy tends to cuddle next to her.

If you are currently in a relationship, how did you meet your partner?

I've written exhaustively about this. We met online shortly after both of us were divorced.

If you could watch a creative person in the act of a creative process, who would it be?

This would probably be very boring. We tend to think that an artist just whips out a painting in fourteen seconds flat -- when in fact it can take days or weeks. We forget that making a movie is very technical and laborious and detail-oriented and probably very boring. How does one get excited about watching someone write? I think I would rather watch the transformation that occurs when someone gets an idea, a little spark, and maybe they pace around, then start babbling and gesturing and grow more animated moment by moment when the idea blossoms and they run to grab a piece of paper or a chalk board to scribble and sketch and they forget to eat.....then come back months later to see what happened to this idea.

What kind of books do you read?

I am a moody reader. If I am in the mood, something out of the norm. I might read a science fiction book. If I am in the mood for intrigue, I'll grab a spy thriller. If I am starving for thoughtful ideas, I might grab some essays written by David Brooks. Sometimes I am looking for lighthearted stupidity or delight in silliness or uniqueness and I will read about the parade in Whalan, Minnesota which...

Okay -- I need to talk about this. There was a fellow in Whalan that wanted to increase the sales of his products in a store on the main street of the town of 64 people. So he suggested a parade. That way the spectators would shop at his store. He presented his idea of a parade, and it was pointed out that one single band in the parade would be longer that the actual town. But everyone was still intrigued by the idea. So innovative thinking crept in. Why don't they have a standstill parade and let the spectators march around the parade? It sounded pretty stupid....but why not? So they put out the word that they were going to have a Standstill Parade. Well, bands from nearby communities thought...well, we wouldn't have to march and get tired, so why not? Then Fire Departments from other towns thought this was so silly that they thought, why not? Then groups from other towns figured they could make floats. The whole idea was so absurd that everyone wanted to join in. Then people began to wonder....maybe we should go see this Standstill Parade. So when the time came...it was a little confusing. The parade participants weren't really sure....are we really supposed to stand still? And the spectators kept wondering, do we just stand here and watch a parade not moving or what? But finally everyone caught on....the bands played, the firetrucks and police cars blared their sirens and local beauty queens on floats waved....and they even had the oldest person in town leading the parade, by standing there with his walker. The Cub Scout honor guard did the town proud by....standing there proudly. The spectators finally figured out that they could get a better view of what was going on by walking around, and sometimes walking through the parade. It was so successful that everyone figured this is so stupid we should do it every year. And now we have the annual attraction at Whalan that people travel far and wide to participate in.

Standstill Parade

If you are from Whalan, I love you.

Did I get off subject? Oh well, I just read -- lots of stuff.

Can I stop and finish the rest of the questions later? It sure seems like I've written a lot. It's funny -- once I start writing I stumble on something that really interests me....a bit too late.

Now on to reading other blogs.

All Sewed Up

2011-02-27T06:21:00.000-06:00

What is on your mind this morning?

A stitch in time saves nine.

That's not too interesting.

It means that if you do a little sewing on a tear early then...

I know what it means.

I'm a seamster.

A seamster?

Actually, a tearster. I am sewing up tears in dog toys -- actually stuffed animals that the dogs have torn up so much that they are bleeding cotton. We have a garbage bag full of these poor torn torn toys.

So you've been absent from here, not commenting, not writing, because you prefer to sew toys instead?

Well, some other things have been happening too. Like Marilyn's mother dying. And working to get the HOA Architectural Committee to approve some property improvements we need to make. And were trying to get the house refinanced, and...

Wait? Marilyn's mother passed away?

Yes. She was almost 95 and as of late, losing her mental acumen and physically really going down hill. So we expected it. But there is a difference between expecting it and it happening.

Marilyn?

She's okay. I mean it was the abruptness and the feeling that we should have prepared better. But in truth, everything had been said -- but it does take an emotional toll and sorting out of feelings and expectations and stuff. But she has done okay.

I guess you have had a lot on your plate -- maybe you will get a pass this time.

So I've been sewing. We buy cheap stuffed animals at Goodwill and the dogs really like them, although it would be nice if they viewed them as a beloved toy instead of as a prey.

Okay -- although it seems a little incongruous for you to be sewing.

Because of my manliness and my history in saving the world as a spy and I'm now working on that sunspot problem and...

Not exactly.

You know sewing is a metaphor for life.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. I haven't quite figured out that part yet, but when I do I'll write a blog about it. I do need to work on an innovative way to thread needles though. I know there are self-threading needles which is a joke because that don't really 'self-thread'. Marilyn says all that I have to do is put the thread in that little notch but I can't see the notch and she says that I need to get better glasses and tell her it is not the glasses but because the notch is too damn little. Sorry for cursing but I tend to do that a lot as a seamster.

Is 'damn' your favorite curse word?

What? Some kind of psychoanalysis? No -- my favorite curse word is "Pifflesnit". I have learned that I can thread the frigging needle better by stabbing at it with the thread. The trick is in the attitude. You have to understand that the world is going to blow up if you don't get the big, fat thread into that dinky little hole. The world is counting on you, holding it's collective breath, all watching to see if I can save humankind and worldkind. Of course I'm used to saving the world.

So this approach makes you successful?

The last time I only blew up the world only 39 times before I finally saved it.

Not too many guys write about sewing.

You have to plan ahead, you know. As I finally pull the thread through the needle it occurred to me that when I finished sewing the toy I would have to go through the whole maddening needle threading process again. So I wisely figured out if I pulled a whole bunch of thread through the needle I would have enough for further toy repair.

Not to change the subject, but what else have you been thinking about?

Like everything, metaphorically speaking about life, there is an upside and a downside to this approach. Yes, I am able to have enough thread in reserve for another toy or two. But, it is really cumbersome walking across the room when I am pulling the thread through one stitch.

It seems that...

...and I can do cross stitching too. I mean if you make little x's it's cross stitching, right? And I double up my thread to make the repair stronger. But I can't quite figure about the knot that you have to make at the end of the thread. I've seen people make these knots with one hand some way but I think I must have been imagining it. And then when I've completed the repair I never could quite figure out how to end the thing. So I just ended up sewing a bunch a little stitches and sort of crossed my fingers.

Stop. Why are you sewing in the first place? And more importantly why are you writing about it? Don't you remember the extraordinary artist and author jbchicoine tagged you to answer questions? You could have written about that?

Stitching dog toys is the only thing Marilyn will let me sew. I'm pretty sure she is letting me build my expertise so I can advance to being a button seamster. Besides, when you get bogged down in life it is good to take on a completely new task, something with finite results that you can see. And the dogs appreciate it. They sit in front of me watching and I have to explain why I am sticking needles in their toy...I patiently explain it is for the toy's own good.

...and you write about it.

Well, I can't do the tagged thing right now. You know, "Tagged" breaks down into two syllables, Ta and Gged.

I don't think....

And etymologically speaking, the root of "Ta" traces back to the Piltdown woman. That was the first word she spoke -- actually the first word ever spoken. We can surmise that she was speaking to her mate and it meant, "Where the hell were you last night?"

Piltdo...

We find that the second word ever spoken was "Gged" by her mate in reply. The literal translation is, "Why dear, I was hunting all night." But research shows that the true word was "Gge". The fact that he added the "d" indicates that he had a mental afterthought. And that was, "No way I'm going to tell her that I was playing poker with the Neanderthals the second cave over, especially since Lucy was there."

I've lost the....

Don't you see? There is a historical basis for lying when you have been tagged. This presents a conundrum because...

Stop!

Besides, I got stumped on the first question asked. I'll do it sometime later.

I don't know...I've lost the thread here -- no pun intended.

That's very good. It's simple. When you sew you have the luxury of thinking of these things. It is very therapeutic.

Oh. So this is your blog entry.

Yep.

No pictures?

Nope. That takes time. I have more sewing to do.

Texas History - Normally Written

2011-02-20T09:18:00.000-06:00

I was going to write an entry early yesterday morning except for the fact that my wife asked me fifteen minutes earlier, "What are you going to write in your blog?"

I answered truthfully, "I don't know". I rarely know. I somehow evolve into a subject once the keys start clicking. But then she said, "Why don't you write something normal. You've been way out there lately."

That ruined me. Normal. I sat at my computer and concentrated on being normal. To write normal I had to think normal and the more I tried to think normal the more abnormal I became. I finally left in disgust but the whole notion of normalness bounced in and out of my noggin all day. Did you know that you can go crazy trying to be normal? Finally I said, "Screw it" and decided to just sit and let the words of dead Pharaohs or someone equally dead to channel their thoughts through my fingers. Either that or I would make something up. Or even better, I could cheat.

Texas Monthly magazine has published 150 facts about the history of Texas...facts other than about the Alamo which I don't want to talk about because it would make everyone envious that John Wayne and Davy Crockett and Billy Ray Thornton died there. Instead I figure I will steal a couple or three or four notions regarding Texas history that you didn't know. And I figure that this would make this a pretty normal blog. Right?

- The hamburger was invented by Fletcher Davis, a Texan from Athens, Texas and he took his new sandwich to the World's Fair in St. Louis where a reporter from the New York Tribune called it a 'hamburger' -- and the name stuck. Now there may be disbelievers who mistakenly believe that the hamburger was invented in Seymour, Wisconsin or New Haven, Connecticut or Tulsa, Oklahoma or Hamburg, New York. I have proof of the true roots of the hamburger. In 2007 the Texas Legislature declared Athens, Texas the 'Original Home of the Hamburger' by unanimous vote! As Mayor Randy Daniel proclaimed, "Anytime you can get a group of the best politicians money can buy to agree on one thing, it's got to be true".

- In 1861 Marshall, Texas was the seat of government for Confederate Missouri. When Missouri's legislature refused to vote for succession, the state's Governor and Lieutenant Government got so gosh darn mad they left town and reestablished the state government in Texas. Sound reasonable to me.

- If you have watched Walker, Texas Ranger you know that Texas has...well, Rangers. There is an unofficial motto related to the Rangers, and that is, 'One riot, One ranger' which, I suppose, speaks to the bravery and way too much confidence that Rangers have. It is said that this quote was made by Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald in 1896. It is sort of true. When he arrived in Dallas to take care of a mob, his anxious greeters asked where the rest of the ranger company was. Captain McDonald replied, "Well, you ain't got but one mob, have you?" There is a statue of Bill in the Love Field terminal in Dallas with the inscription, 'One riot, One ranger'. I guess it is more succinct.

- It was in 1958 that Jack Kilby had to stay at work while everyone else was off for two weeks at Texas Instruments. Engineers had been working on designing complex circuits, numbering into the thousands, to work with those new-fangled transistors. The result of all this designing meant that thousands of circuits had to be hand-soldered...and it just seemed plain stupid to Jack. So he figured out instead of everything working separately -- and I do not understand any of this -- he could combine it into one glob...and the integrated circuit was born. Thanks to Jack you now have a cell phone.

- And finally the most important fact of Texas history. Sheryl Leach was an elementary school teacher and decided to make videos for her students in 1991 in a small, plain studio in Dallas. She got a guy to dress up in purple and green dinosaur costume and dance and sing, "I love you, you love me, we're a happy family" and taped it. They called the character Barney. The kids liked it so much that they made multiple videos one of which eventually ended up in the hands of a Connecticut Public Television employee who got it for his daughter. He was so impressed with her reaction, he arranged for the video to be turned into a television series called Barney and Friends. Who says Texas doesn't contribute to our nation?

This concludes my lecture on Texas history as borrowed from Texas Monthly Magazine. I'm sorry you can't be a Texan, but I like you anyway.

New Stuff I Learned

2011-02-13T08:31:00.000-06:00

I find it important to learn things. Maybe you do too.

The Voynich Manuscript

If you blow this picture up you will see that it is a page from a book handwritten in something other than English. It is also something other than Latin or Persian or Greek or Babylonian or anything else you can think of.

This is known as the Voynich manuscript and it was written in the early 1400's. In code. Wilfrid Voynich is the gentleman who found the book. The whole book, over 200 pages thick, is full of illustrations and coded writing. No one knows who wrote it or why they wrote it or what it is, although it is suspected that it has something to do with medicine and botany and astrology and naked girls....at least that is what is illustrated. Cryptanalysts, or code-breakers, have been trying to decode this sucker for 100's of years....and as of late, sophisticated computers with code breaking programs have lost the battle to figure this one out. Why write a book in code? That is pretty much a guarantee that it won't be a best seller. Maybe it isn't a code at all, but simply nonsense-writing. But that seems to be a lot of trouble to say nothing at all. Here is your chance to become famous -- simply break the code.

Barbara Newhall Follett

The picture above is a young Barbara Follett. What an amazing lass. In the early 1920's when Barbara was five, her father introduced her to the typewriter and she immediately wrote a tale titled The Life of the Spinning Wheel, the Rocking Horse, and the Rabbit. At the age of seven she was writing poetry. By the age of eight, she decided to write a novel and worked on it for years. At that young age she posted this Do Not Disturb notice on her bedroom door.

NOBODY MAY COME INTO THIS ROOM IF THE DOOR IS SHUT TIGHT (IF IT IS SHUT NOT QUITE LATCHED IT IS ALL RIGHT) WITHOUT KNOCKING. THE PERSON IN THIS ROOM IF HE AGREES THAT ONE SHALL COME IN WILL SAY “COME IN,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT AND IF HE DOES NOT AGREE TO IT HE WILL SAY “NOT YET, PLEASE,” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THE DOOR MAY BE SHUT IF NOBODY IS IN THE ROOM BUT IF A PERSON WANTS TO COME IN, KNOCKS AND HEARS NO ANSWER THAT MEANS THERE IS NO ONE IN THE ROOM AND HE MUST NOT GO IN.

In 1927 she finished her novel at the age of thirteen. It was a forty thousand word long book titled The House Without Windows. Her father sent it to a publisher. Weeks later, when she received a letter from the publisher she wrote of her feelings upon seeing the envelope:

"I simply threw myself on the floor and screamed, either with fear for what it might contain, with joy for getting it at last, or with terrific excitement of the whole thing. There is a feeling, after you have been waiting a long time for anything, there is a feeling that, when it really comes, it must be impossible— a dream—an optical illusion—a cross between those three things…

"Now: “What doo zhoo fink???” It is Eepersip, The House Without Windows, my story, my story in New York, with the Knopfs, to be published!!... published!!!!!!!!"

The Saturday Review of Literature said of the book: It is "almost unbearingly beautiful." The novel also received critical reviews by the New York Times and H. L. Mencken.

The novel was not a child's book but an adult novel for adult readership.

Next she published The Voyage of the Norman D. one year later at the age of fourteen. The reviews?

"Its ingeniousness is preserved, yet embellished, by a literary craftsmanship which would do credit to an experienced writer," the Times Literary Supplement marveled from London. The Saturday Review featured her book alongside Dorothy Parker’s latest, and declared it “a fine, sustained, and vivid piece of writing.”

William Follett, her father, was her biggest supporter and fan. He had taught her how to type at the age of five, and he critiqued her works as they were in progress. He encouraged her to follow her dreams. Shortly after The Voyage was published he and Barbara's mother divorced and he left.

The young Barbara felt that he had abandoned her. She ran away from home and was soon picked up by the police and reunited with her mother. They were poor, so she had to go to work taking stenography. She said of those times, “My dreams are going through their death flurries. I thought they were all safely buried, but sometimes they stir in their grave, making my heartstrings twinge. I mean no particular dream, you understand, but the whole radiant flock of them together—with their rainbow wings, iridescent, bright, soaring, glorious, sublime. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money.”

Still she wrote two more books, Lost Island and Travels Without a Donkey in 1934. She met and married an adventurer named Nick Rogers shortly after these books were published. In 1939 Barbara discovered that Nick had an affair with another. After an argument she left...to never be heard of again.

The child prodigy disappeared after she felt abandoned by the second man in her life. The last mention of her was this police report:

Brookline. 139 4-22-40 3:38 pm Maccracken. Missing from Brookline since Dec. 7, 1939, Barbara Rogers, married, age 26, 5-7, 125, fair complexion, black eyebrows, brown eyes, dark auburn hair worn in a long bob, left shoulder slightly higher than right. Occasionally wears horn-rimmed glasses.

Black Ice

2011-02-04T08:05:00.000-06:00

I am staying home from work today. It is an Arctic Tundra out there.

You live in Houston.

We have Black Ice which means that if you drive your car it automatically plows into another car. And the temperature...why it's 28-degrees! It was 22-degrees a couple of days ago so there must have been a warm front. And snow. Snow is coming and I didn't buy a snow shovel. We are expecting 3-inch snow drifts! I'm having second thoughts about vacationing to Antarctica this year.

Three inch snowdrifts? 28 Degrees? Have you watched TV? Have you seen what is happening up north?

But we live in Houston. They are used to that stuff. Besides, we have Black Ice and I didn't hear anyone say anything about Black Ice up north. By the way, when I say Black Ice I don't mean that in a prejudicial way.

Prejudicial way? How can...I'm having a hard time with your brain. Wait....is this one of those transitions?

You know, I grew up in the segregated South.

Yep. I would call that a transition.

I even went into the back door of a cafe with black friends to eat with them in the back room because they weren't allowed in the main room with white folks.

We...aren't you just...

That's because I asked my father for a summer job as a teenager. Since my father was the City Manager I was assured of getting something cushy but I ended up working on a garbage truck. I never asked my father for another job.

Another transition already?

It must have put Hawk and his crew in an uncomfortable spot -- me being the big man's son -- although I didn't consider that possibility at the time.

Hawk was a really big black guy and he was the boss of the garbage crew. I liked him and always asked him if he was Coleman Hawkins in disguise. You know, Coleman was a famous jazz musician and called himself Hawk too. Hawk...the garbage man Hawk...thought it was interesting that I would even know a black musician and I think he liked me. Anyway for lunch we would drive up an alley next to Main Street and stop at the back of a cafe and they would go in the back door. Hawk told me to go around to the front but I told him I wanted to eat with the guys. At first everyone looked at me funny but Hawk just said, "He's in my crew."

Did they mind....

At the time I didn't think so. But they must have felt that I was invading their space or something.

And the point is?

Hawk may have saved my life. Well, not exactly....but we were unloading garbage at a trash dump and I was on top of something high. I'm not sure what. It was a tremendously hot day and I got heat stroke and fainted and Hawk dived forward and caught me in his arms. The crew loaded me into the garbage truck and they rushed me to a doctor's office. Hawk stayed with me there the rest of the day, even after he called my father and he came down there. He wouldn't leave. "Jerry is in my crew," he said.

I have fond memories of Hawk. I think I remember my father did something for him, but I don't remember what. I'm pretty sure I quit the job after that.

That is interesting. Where is this leading exactly?

To Melissa. I think that is what her name is but I'm not sure if I am remembering correctly.

Hawk to Melissa?

Yeah. I guess I was in my late twenties working in a downtown office and I was an analyst and Melissa was an Administrative Assistant. She was black lass and really pretty, but more importantly was her vivacious personality. She was one of those girls who had laughing eyes which made it a treat just to be around her.

Melissa and I would flirt with each other, and it was pretty obvious. She understood that I really liked her and I was pretty sure she liked me. We had fun with each other and always found a reason to be in each other's presence.

Weren't you married?

Let's stick with the subject. Back in those days we usually brought our lunches with us from home and ate in our offices. One day, for the first time, Melissa came into my office at noon and asked if she could join me for lunch. We each ate our lunch and bantered back and forth which I truly loved. Then the conversation became more serious. It was 'The Conversation'.

'The Conversation?'

It was a conversation that made me take a long hard look at myself. A conversation about race.

I can't remember it word for word, but it went something like this. It was an exchange that I replayed in my mind over and over.

Melissa looked at me across the desk. "Jerry, we like each other and have fun with each other, and if you are like me, look forward to coming in every day to see each other."

"Absolutely", I responded. "If you take a day off, it is really a bummer for me here."

"Can I ask you something serious?" she asked.

"Of course."

"If we weren't married, would you ask me out?" She had crossed her legs and was leaning forward looking at me.

"In a heartbeat," was my automatic response.

"I understand because I feel the same way. But where would we go? Would you come to my place to see me? Or would you invite me over to your place? Some place that we could spend private time together?"

"Sure," I responded hesitantly wondering where the conversation was going.

She began to look earnest. "But Jerry, would you take me to the movie and sit and hold hands with me? Would you invite me out to eat -- maybe to a nice restaurant with candles? Would you walk down the street with your arm wrapped around me?"

"I....". I tried to find a response.

"No. Don't answer. You are a white boy and I am a colored girl. We like each other and it would be fun to be with each other. But, in public? Could you stand the taunts and ridicule? Could I stand it? What about your family? Or mine? What if we got married and had a kid?"

I didn't say anything.

Melissa continued, "I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I am just trying to explain a reality. A woman looks toward the future -- even hugely improbable ones -- and a man sometimes doesn't. My reality is different from yours, and for colored people it is a reality we are always aware of. I wonder if you understand that."

"Melissa. I am..." I tried to find some words.

"It's all okay." She stood and walked around my desk and leaned down and kissed me on the cheek and hugged me and said, "I adore you. You are one of the good people."

With that, she walked out.

From this conversation, you learned...

I learned so much. I learned that I wasn't one of the trailblazers that could blithely defy convention. I learned that I didn't understand the rules and didn't understand why there were rules. I felt ashamed and felt like it wasn't my fault but also felt like it was my fault. I guess the most important thing was that I learned to observe and think and try to understand and that it somehow tied into Hawk telling the people in the back room of the cafe that 'I was in his crew' which meant that everyone was to leave me alone and him catching me and sitting with me in the doctor's office all afternoon.

Was your heart broken?

No. Melissa and I flirted and that's all we would have ever done, race aside. In fact we continued to do so...but there seemed to be an undertone of understanding...or of sadness maybe.

And now, it is years later.

Melissa was brave to bring up what should have been obvious to me. Maybe she was purposely planting a seed....maybe not.

Yes, but would you now walk down the street with your arm around a black lady?

Let me put this in to perspective. If Marilyn divorced me, I would ask Halle Berry to marry me.

And now you understand why I am not prejudiced against Black Ice.

Pot Purry

2011-01-29T06:56:00.000-06:00

Don't you mean potpourri?

I thought I got rid of you a couple of weeks ago.

I'm always here -- your paranoid other self, your conscious, your kick-in-the-butt to provide fodder for your writing imagination, your...

Can it! I have a headache and think I will go back to bed.

You are ducking the fact that you are a cheater?

Huh?

Don't you read your comments? It was asked if you make up your recipes, on that dismal recipe blog of yours, without actually cooking them. She postulated that you just sit here and make up culinary conglomerations without ever setting foot in the kitchen.

She is just trying to get me to invite her over for dinner. I get that a lot.

No you don't. Again I see you are evading the question.

Why don't you answer the question? You eat the same thing I do. I'm not sure I would be capable of making up a recipe sitting here....well, I think I have a Rachel Ray '30 Minute Meals' book. I suppose I could take something from there and re-write it. Actually that is an interesting idea, something like 'How to Turn 30-Minute Meals Into Two Hours With No Effort At All'. Rachel would probably sue me and we would end up having to meet and she could autograph her book...and who knows, she would probably have me on her show. I could...

Stop wandering off into dreamland. Do you cook the damn recipes? And why are there only three of them in your stupid recipe blog?

I am going to put in another recipe this week. A dessert with berries.

Boring...

And like the other three....I have prepared them all and they have been taste tested by me and my less-than-enthusiastic wife. I cook then write....maybe years later.

Well, I guess this concludes today's blog.

I'm really concerned about people changing things without asking my permission.

What are you talking about?

Someone changed that children's prayer, you know:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Amen.”

How did we get from recipes to...

They changed it to:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

Guard me while I sleep tonight,

And wake me safe at dawn's first light.

God bless Mommy; Daddy, too,

And help me to always be true to you.

Amen.”

Okay...so what? Who changed it?

I figure it was the Damn Revisionists. They always want to protect us because they figure we aren't smart enough to protect ourselves. It may give our children nightmares worrying about dying before they wake. I never got nightmares. Who do they think they are?

So the old ways are better?

Yeah. I mean we could get really old and inform the public where that prayer actually came from. It was an adaption of this old English prayer:

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I lie on.

Before I lay me down to sleep, I give my soul to Christ to keep.

Four corners to my bed, four angels there aspread, two to foot, and

two to head, and two to carry me when I'm dead.

I go by sea, I go by land, the Lord made me by his right hand.

If any danger comes to me, Sweet Jesus Christ, deliver me.

He's the branch, and I'm the flower, pray God send me a happy hour.

And if I die before I wake, I pray that Christ my soul will take.”

That's really not too interesting, Jerry. What is interesting though is your insistence that we should keep things the way they were.

Stupid people are sticking their noses in changing stuff.

You mean changing stuff like:

Or this:

This blog is getting too long.

I see. We need to keep things the way they were.

I didn't mean that. This is getting way, way off the subject.

Well Jerry, you were the one trying to figure how to get those old ads in your blog.

Actually, I sort of like this one.

So you wanted to get a children's prayer and sexist ads into a single blog. Your mind is a strange thing.

Actually, I wondered if I could take three disparate subjects and successfully weave them together into a single essay. It's not easy going from recipes to prayer to ads.

And you think you did this 'successfully'?

We left out an ad. Look: