Prestoni'sPlace

Wedding Notice

2011-07-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here is what the Concord Tribune had to say about our parents marriage:

The Concord Tribune
June 3rd, l935

Concord, June 3.--- Very beautiful and most impressive was the wedding Friday afternoon at 5 o'clock in the First Presbyterian Church of this city, of Miss Jane Elizabeth White and Preston McKamie Faggart. Dr. W. E. Davis, pastor of the church, officiated, using the ring service of the Presbyterian ritual.

Harmonizing effectively with the stately colonial architecture of the church, the decorations were quite simple but beautiful. Against a background of potted evergreens, white double larkspur was arranged in silver vases, and smilax was entwined effectively under the windows. The family pews were marked by graceful Easter lilies. Tall white tapers set in two seven branched candelabra lighted the wedding scene.

Samuel Goodman, organist, and Miss Elizabeth Woodhouse, soprano, rendered the wedding music beginning the prenuptial program on the tower chimes with "Faithful and True", "Parlez-moi d'amour," "I Love You Truly", and "Sunrise and You."

He then played "Kamenoi=Ostrow" by Rubenstein, and "Largo" from the "Symphony in D" by Cesare Franck.

Miss Elizabeth Woodhouse, coloratura soprano, sang the beautiful wedding song, "Beloved It Is Morn." Miss Woodhouse was attired in an afternoon model of pink lace with blue hat of horsehair braid. Her corsage was of white roses.

The four ushers, Everett McKinley, of Kannopolis, Joe Foil, Nevin Sappenfield, and E. L. Morrison, Jr. of Concord, were the first of the bridal party to enter the church.

The bride had as her only attendants her two sisters, Misses Ellen and Isabelle White. Their costumes were exactly alike, being afternoon gowns of beige lace over pink and blue maline hats worn off the face, and blue sandals, they each carried nosegays of mixed garden flowers.

The bridegroom, attended by his best man, Wallace Morris, entered from a side door and met his bride at the alter.

The bride entered with her father, Chalmers Lindley White, who gave her in marriage. Her wedding gown was of apricot lace, floor length, and with it she wore a hat of brown horsehair braid and brown sandals and carried an arm bouquet of white roses and lilies of the valley.

Immediately after the ceremony, the bridal party, the two immediate families, and the out-of-town guests were entertained at an informal reception at the home of the bride's parents. After the reception, the bride changed to her traveling costume of gray with navy accessories, and left with the bridegroom for a motor trip through the Shenandoah Valley. Upon their return they will reside in Concord at the home of Mrs. H. I. Woodhouse.

Mrs. Faggart, the eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers Lindley White, received her education at Converse College and for several years has been a member of the city school faculty, a position to which she has been appointed for another year.

Mr. Faggart, son of Mrs. A. M. Faggart, and the late Mr. Faggart, attended Davidson College, and for some time has been connected with Gibson's Drug Store.

Among the last of the pre-nuptial affairs given for this popular couple was the stag supper Wednesday evening at Hotel Concord for Mr. Faggart by the men of the bridal party.

After the rehearsal, Thursday evening, the members of the bridal party were entertained informally by the bride's parents.

Charlotte people in Concord for the wedding included Mr. and Mrs. Tom White, Misses Rose Ellen and Eloise White, Mr and Mrs. W. C. Taylor, Mrs. Winney Barron Pegram, and Miss Helenora Withers.

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Sam Goodman, the organist, was one of Dad's good friends... he had had a singing career in opera, for a while, in New York... encouraged me when I started learning the piano... Had a fascinating house with a lot of sculpture, sacred art and artifacts fancy lamps, carpets, an electric organ, and a grand piano. The house was Latin in design... a patio with a fountain, arcades beyond which were the bedrooms on one side, the dining room and kitchen opposite.. open in the back.... His sister, Miss Addie kept house with a lot of bird dogs, they made a terrible fuss when we visited, and had to be shut up elsewhere. A country place, they ran some cows as well. Dad said his family made a fortune, early investors in Coca Cola! Sam and Addie were the sole heirs... We visited them at Christmas, usually... I remember the fruit cake, very dark and soaked in spirits. Sam smoked Old Gold cigarettes, I remember. Down to the last mm!!!

Elizabeth Woodhouse, the singer at the wedding, lived with her family next door.... very close to Mom and Nana, especially. Mom always talked about Mamie Woodhouse like she was another mother. But when Elizabeth practiced her singing, Pa and Uncle Maury, covered their ears. Coloratura soprano is horrible, I guess, to a lot of people, especially difficult.... Uncle Maury is said to shake his fist: "Oh isn't that awful!!!" Dad said that Sam did not approve of her musical selection.... The Whites at listed as out of town guests were Mom's cousins... Tom White Sr. was Pa's brother, and had died a few years before. Aunt Maybelle, his widow, was a frequent visitor to 25 Georgia Avenue. She said I sailed in and out like a blue streak. Her favorite expression, seems. She talked a blue streak too.... but they all did... getting words in edgewise the way to go around there.

Wedding Bells Ring

2011-07-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

Mom and Dad got married May 31st of 1935. That means that Mom was turning thirty-one that June 11th, and Dad was 29, December 7th, his birthday. The flowery, detailed write-up in the Concord Tribune included in another blog. Wedding in the Frist Presbyterian Church's new sanctuary on Union Street, and the reception at 25 N. Georgia... Pa Built the house to Nana's wants.... Nana wanted large rooms, living and dining, for public entertainment, in in the front, and had her bed room and a smaller "back sitting room" or family room in the back. Both rooms had fire places.... connected to the one chimney... one for wood in the living room, and a coal great in the back sitting room, with another fire grate upstairs in a front bed room. I do not think I ever saw a fire upstairs, where we lived, Uncle Jacks back bedroom had been turned into our kitchen.

Mom graduated from Converse College, down in Spartenburg, South Carolina in the mid 20's, majoring in education... and then taught 2nd grade at Central Primary School, 2 blocks away in Concord, corner of Spring and Grove Streets... Her salary was $99,00 a month.... For depression days this was OK, if you lived with your folks... and Dad made more as assistant with Gibson Drug Store, on the corner of Union and Depot, right in the very heart of downtown Concord. Then owned and run by the Lafferty family, great personal friends with Dad. A job he had had since he was 14. And kept till 1943. Twenty plus years. Did two years at Davidson College... not consecutive years, though. I was taught math by one of his class-mates. Prof. Kimbough almost fluncked me in in Trig. He and Dad never got along... He was like Harry Potter's Professor Snape.... I think, remembered Dad making fun of him. Something about a pair of flashy shoes too tight for Dad, he sold to Kimbrough, too tight for him also... money was not refunded. (At the reception of my freshmen year, when we were meeting the faculty, Prof. K. shook my hand, said he was in school with my father, and asked me if he was still alive.... Dad said some bad words when I told him that!) Resentments sometimes last a life time!!!! I got Dad's transcripts later, when I requested mine!!! His were a mixed bag of b's, c's, d's and dropped courses. Sort of like mine... apple falls not far from tree...

Although the Great Depression was raging, the wedding was well attend, and the silver and china they received were beautiful. Silverware was still de rigueur, wedding presents. Mom's pattern was Kirk's Repousse´, the oldest pattern still made in America.... flowery and hard to polish. Sterling. After the wedding, they took off to Virginia, to honeymoon along the newly built Blue Ridge Parkway. I do not know whose car, Dad did not as yet own one. Probably Pa's Hudson... The White family was a little surprised at this union, their first child marrying a man with few or no assets, but, the story goes, Pa gathered Mom, brother Jack, sister's Ibel and Bobu together and said that full blessings would be extended and that Dad's more humble circumstances were not to be held against him. I think Nana expected her to marry rich... Joe Foil was very much in love with her, after all. Joe's dad was Pa's good friend, they often went hunting together.... called the Major for his military service: Spanish-American war? Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders? But no. Love takes it's own course. They had been in school together since ever, same class because Dad was so smart, or such a problem, he was pushed up a couple grades early... you graduated high school after 11 years... SO... Jane and Press were the item... Dad's career a bit spotty, but personable, fun loving, voluble. Mom, practical and stable.

When the Prohibition Amendment passed, it put on brakes for the roaring 20's for sure. Dad, working at the drugstore, could help out, by-pass the dryness of it all, and mix a little ethyl or methyl with the sodas. Every drug store had a soda fountain. And there were four in Concord, at least when I came along. Nobody dreamed of supermarket stores like Eccerds. There was Pearl Drugs, on the corner across Union from Gibson's. Porters, also on the south side of Union near Grant's Five and Dime. The "dollar" stores of the day. There was another in that same block as Gibson's, the name eludes.

Before marriage, Dad was sharing quarters with the son of a prominent banker, Tom Coltrane, whose aunt was married to the owner of Cannon Mills, maker of towels and stockings, the undisputed richest people in town... J.C Cannon had cotton mills all over the place and half the town worked in them. Mom dated Tom, but his drinking was too much for her. It was said he was drop-dead good looking, though. It was known that there was a lot of drinking going on, and Dad and Tom controlled some of it. They kept their personal stash in the tank of their toilet john. Their pad was up on Church Street and downstairs lived a couple, the Misenheimers. Dr. and Mrs Misenheimer. And Tom may or may not ... well, Mrs. M was a lively gal. One cold, icy winter night, Tom was found dead outside that house.. his head hit the steps when he fell. It really created a stir in town. Dad never gave me all the details he knew, and Coltrane Sr. kept it out of the papers. As he had the unexplained death of another of Tom's aunts, in New York's Belleview Hospital earlier.... the family had a wild and crazy streak, as most families do. Miriam Coltrane, Tom's sister, one of Mom's close friends. Dad played ignorant to whether he was drunk or not at the time, and whether the relationship with Mrs. M. was a factor. He said he lied to Mrs Coltrane about the drink, but he knew that they both knew anyway. I could never get a straight answer from Dad about the affair.

Gibson's was the social center of down town Concord for one of the several social crowds.... Mom and her friends would go shopping at the dress shop next door, and gather around those funny round tables for cokes and crackers, gossip and news.... I discovered a chewing gum mine under said tables and was roundly disciplined for chewing some!!!!! The shopping trip usually included a stop at Uncle Maury's men's clothing store beside and connected to Uncle George's grocery. Richmond-Flowe. I could go into the cookie jars and had to decide whether I wanted an oreo or a fig newton or one of those coconut cream things.... I could only have one. Groceries from there could be delivered to your house. Nana would call and put in the order that Nonne made up. And Shirley would deliver later in the morning. Shirley was a huge guy, and drove a great Ford pickup. Down the drive he came, and would leave the groceries on the back porch in cardboard boxes. I would make houses out of them. Pa would check out the groceries and rant about his brother-in-law sending them rotten veggies!!!! He may have returned them. Uncle George and Aunt Evelyn lived down the street. He was my grandmother's youngest brother, with two children, George Jr and Mary Gillmer... Mary G. rode a bike, sometimes giving me a ride on the back... It was scary, though.. my coordination was always in doubt... and taught me how to catch doodle bugs in the yard. Early Biology experiments. You take a wild onion stem and put it down the perfect hole of the bug, a hole the size of a pencil. Wait until the stem starts to move, then jerk it out... and lo and behold, an ugly segmented grub with a mouth like a front-loader...

I was the last person on my block to learn the trick of balancing, pedaling, steering a two wheel bike. Nobody could teach me, and I had to go on the back of my friends bikes. I finally managed to teach myself. I am completely self-educated. Invent the wheel, fool. And now I break this rambling narrative to go bike riding with my friend, Alice.

The Grands... family notes continue...

2011-07-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

Pa, who sat in a big chair in the living room, beside a big stand-up console radio, read the Charlotte Observer every morning.... would read me the comics, especially "Bringing up Father". I think he related to Jigs... I loved the funny shaped people and the pictures on the wall with people and objects that did not stay in their frames, like in Harry Potter stories.... Pa often had a card table in front of him, playing solitair which he taught me... the 7 card and the 9 card spreads! Occasionally he had some friends over and they played bridge. Sometimes I could go with him to his "Men's" club where they played cards, and probably poker, as well as bridge. But Bridge was big with everybody we knew, except Nana and Boo and that generation....

He owned a big Hudson auto, probably vintage 1932... but had almost stopped driving by the time I came along. Mama was the official driver. She said that he had taught her to drive back in the teens when she was quite young. Being the oldest of her siblings, and times were prosperous, she had some advantages... like a horse, named "Queenie", of her own, kept at the local livery stable... every town had one then! After she had been driving a while, she said, Pa told her that she needed to go to the court-house and get a permit to drive... something called a driver's licence. A new rule. Earlier, Pa traveled a lot, worked for a New York clothing firm selling clothes. Swartz and Co.... I think was the name of the firm. When he went to New York, the he brought back presents and tales of the big city, Mom said. Pa had grown up on a farm near Rocky River, in Cabarrus County, and claims he graduated from the 3rd grade before going to work. Hunting was his favorite sport, and would come in winter nights with birds he had shot in his coat pocket. Nana would not cook them so he cleaned them and had Nonne do it. (Nana only cooked cakes and special souffle´s I remember.) The birds, Doves and quail, mostly. Sometimes with Uncle Jack they would go east Duck Hunting. I do remember pheasants... do not know where they shot them, not local birds!!! The guns stayed in a huge wardrobe on the back porch, and cleaning took all night, it seemed. Loud noise hurt my ears, and I did not like to go with them. One story he told stood out. A big scar on his leg, he told me, came from when he was a boy chopping wood in a distant field, and he hit his leg, opening up a huge bloody gash. Could not get any fast medical help, he found some raw-hide string and sowed the would closed himself. You could see white hole spots on either side of his scar! Probably true.

When Pa undertook to polish the brass andirons, I would try to help. But one time he got very mad at me for spilling the Brasso, and accidentally turning one of the heavy things against his bad leg!!!! I think that is how I got the above story. I remember that at Christmas time, It was a big deal getting in the Christmas tree, probably from his family farm or near by, which may or may not have been sold at that time. One year the tree was so big, they cut the top off!! no room for a star or angel or anything. The ceilings were nine feet high... The decorations were out of date, and a lot of candy canes and shiny ribbons and fancy balls and all. I loved this. Mama told me of the real old days when she was growing up, they would light real wax candles!!! Carefully!!! And the presents... I shook them all and guessed what might be in them for me. There was this big pecan tree between our house and Boo's, and every fall, a man would come by, climb up and shake the nuts down. There would be a lot, so many Pa would sew together these orange sacks, and there would be a bag for each of his children and friends... When the grandchildren came along, he loved them but too many at a time bothered him. Mama quoted him, saying you should have all your children before you are 30, and your grandchildren after you are dead! You could not tell that he believed it! Always loving, Pa.

Something that tells me global warming was... has been occurring for a very long time: When it got cold in winter, and Nana or someone would complain, Pa said it was not like it use to be! He remembers when you could drive a team of horses across Rocky River, it froze so hard!!! And Boo told me about the ice house at the Richmond place, down Corbin Street toward the Railroad Station where my great grandfather worked. The shed was over a pit lined with saw dust, and each winter, people would go the the lakes and rivers, and cut blocks of ice, bring them back to town and they would be put in the pits... and would last the summer. The refrigerators before electricity had a hole in the back, or where the freezer compartment was later, where you put a block of ice in daily. Ice came in horse carts daily. Before refrigerators, I guess, they just went out to the ice house and left their milk and eggs.... And the well house, they would sometimes build a trough that carried water to the kitchen. Boo tells that at one time, they had a wind-up fly shoo contraption that sat on the table. Had this propeller on top that created a breeze and kept the flys away from the food!!! Few houses had screens, it seems... The kids sometimes turned it into a toy and sent biscuits flying when the parents were not looking!

But Pa did not talk too much about his family... According to the White book, put together by our cousin Eugenia White Lore, Pa had 2 half brothers, five "real" brothers and a sister.... Nathaniel Green White, (1825-1895) his father, and mother was Nathaniel's second wife, Eleanor M. White (1835-1912)... I do not remember hearing anything about her, Mama was 7 or 8 when she died. Nana and the Richmonds talked about their family all the time, but Pa said very little... He was closest to his brother Thomas Jackson White, who married Maybelle Culp and had lots of children, favorite cousins of Mom and siblings... 3 girls and 3 boys... lived close by, moving to Concord when their father Nathaniel died.... Aunt Maybelle was one of those big talkers... and visited a lot. There were plenty of other related Whites in the town.... it sometimes seemed that who were not related to Mama, were related to Daddy... and there were some common to both families!!!!

Pa got more and more dependent on help, hired a black man, Mack who had his own car!, to help him in and out of bed. Mac took me to the fair once. Pa paid! But the Christmas before he died, when my brother's and cousins were coming on, he said he had enough and would not see another Christmas! And sure enough he died the next September... I was in the 6th grade.
He said that the Whites died at 75, long enough for a human to live. The Richmonds were built to last longer, but their mind died at 75.... he did not want his body to survive his mind... He saw Nana going into senility. And discovered how to humor her... I can see her now after his funeral... asking me where he was... It scared me, as I did not know what to say.... Did she not know he had died? Had she forgot? We had just been to the funeral. The funerals of both Pa and Nana, took place at their house. They lay in their coffins overnight right down stairs! lots of flowers all over the place. The funeral processions went through down town Concord to Oakwood Cemetery, the policemen at the square with their hats over their hearts... a mocking bird sang as the coffins were lowered. Uncle Jack noticed and said it was very nice and a good sign. Pa loved birds and new their calls!!! He could predict rain: "I knew it would rain... heard the rain-crow." A man can leave the country, but the country never leaves the man.... Pa died in 1946 and Nana in 195l.

Nana

2011-07-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

Nana and Pa... my maternal grands. From my earliest recollection. We lived up-stairs in that big square house on Georgia Avenue, next to Boo and Uncle Maury... Nana was slim and nervous... always in motion.... losing her grasp on reality. She was born Janie Elizabeth Richmond in 1876, 60 years before me. She ate like a bird, sometimes taking a spoonful of suger raw... Married Pa in 1902.... good looking pair in the rather art nouveau oval portraits. She was the youngest of the Richmond girls, and had suffered from malaria as a child. She told of her doctor giving the bitter awful tasting quinine, the only thing they had then.... and later, after marriage, had a bout with typhoid fever, loosing all her hair from the high temperature. Mama was a teenager when it happened, and they used to quarantine the homes of people with dangerous contagious illnesses. Her hair grew back in beautiful curls, Mom said. And Ibel, her youngest sister was afraid of her new looks!

Nana was extremely nervous during the summer thunder storms. Mama said her fear of electricity was so bad, that on stormy nights she would not even let them play the piano! Convinced it would draw the lightening inside! A couple of summers when I was 5 and 6, I slept in the hall beside the stairs, because it was cooler there, and Nana would come sit on my cot and tell me about her life growing up during Reconstruction in Concord... already another lost world and way of life by 1936, when I was born. She taught me ten commandments. We went to church all the time... I still remember many passages from the Bible I was encouraged to learn. Much reading went on in those days. Radio was still a novelty and TV had not descended into our lives. The depression was raging, and times were lean. I learned the 23rd Psalm of David by heart... and they asked me what I wanted as a prize. I asked for a water sprinkler for the lawn. Fascinated with lawn hydraulics... love to watch the big oscillating sprinklers on the neighbors' lawns. So I got a brass ring shaped thing that did the trick, and my cousins and I would run through the waters on hot afternoons. Days of no air conditions, the front porch and shady lawn, the big windows always open, was what we had. The ceilings were higher, 9 feet at least...

Those stormy nights, she told me about her job at the Post Office, how she would walk to work so fast that Old Will Gibson would call from his shop, saying "Where is the fire, Janie??? Slow down!". She rode a her bicycle, too! And hated bananas! One time, a shipment of bananas arrived at the post office, and some were left there for the workers... she ate so many it made her very sick. And since that time she never ate another! And passed her banana phobia on to Mama. The only people I have ever known not to love that fruit.

There was a servant Nonne, big, black and authoritarian, an all knowing big mamma, in for no non-sense... She came 6 days early, cleaned, cooked breakfast and lunch, called dinner, the big meal of the day, and took home enough for her family. Her husband, James Parks, had the enviable job of being janitor for the prestigious First National Bank. Together they made enough to send their daughter to college!!! The black Normal Teachers College then in Greensboro. They lived in the "black part of town" Logan School, for the segregated folk.... Separate but unequal, really...

My Life and Loves

2011-07-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

In this photo, from around 1946, you see my maternal grand mother, NANA, and her three sisters: Aunt Bell, Aunt Willie who I called "Boo", the most influential... and Aunt Lucy. They presided over my early intellectual, social, and spiritual education. It is my intent to write what I remember of my early education in this blog. It may come in short bursts or it may have expansive stories, but now is the time to do a lot of work I did not do in the first 75 years of my journey through life on an improbable, albeit wonderful, planet... beautiful, mysterious, populated with as much diversity to make discoveries never ending....

More shall be revealed...

October 15th, 2010

2010-10-15T04:26:00.001-07:00

Before the light arrives in the early AM.... like old Mother Hubbard, I went to the cube yard to get my doggie a bone, but when I got there, the cupboard was full and confusing, so I just said "fuck it" and the dog got none. she would eat the cat food, but I just realized that I could build a cat-feeding station beyond her reach....

I am watching some seriously fucked up things on Tumbler. must watch that... my old mind probably does not need that.... fading fast... must go to NC Thanksgiving. Pray that Bert is still with us then... must go visit... will go cook for Alice.

Maury said he talked to a barred owl this morning. I think owls say: "who-cooks-for-you" I have a horned owl near by... have not seen her in a while... or heard her, as a matter of fact, but next time will try to get it to respond. Maury says he will try a different tone of voice next time... lower. More male....

Thoughts about Israel

2010-09-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

Is that really the issue? Why is Israel not grateful and gracious enough, and thankful that they have been blessed with wonderful energy and smarts and ambition, etc everything that makes Jews Jews...and admit they are wrong... and that this nature sometimes but often enough, leads to downfall and humiliation, not to mention, persecution... Did it take an unthinkably horrible Holocaust to regain a Biblical promise of a Promised Land... flowing with milk and honey.... which they savagely clawed from the hands of the residents philistines.... under orders from a viciously protective Lord God, way back then... And now, not happy in the limitation of that gift... that a guilty world consented to some of that land to be given to them.... which prospered worldly speaking, because of their resources, their industry and craft, admirable as it is... leads to surperba and greed and ambition beyond measure... practicing a kind of apart-heit with the people they super-imposed themselves on.

Of course we did the same thing... admittedly the Native Americans were much less unified, and were easier to heard off to reservations, paid to stop fighting with rum, as it were... The strong survive. The mighty triumph. The small and the weak get trampled under foot forever.....

Peace is in your hands proud, mighty mouse Isreal.... go for it.... make a sacrifice please... let Palestine become a nation like we, the rest of the big world, let you!!!!!

Interview with the Vampire writer

2010-08-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-anne-rice-20100807,0,5152082.story

I pretty much agree... rarely go to a church service anymore, and usually with someone I like! Or services with special music. Churches with pipe organs and musicians that know how to play them... churches with good choirs and sing Bach. Churches that preach a gospel of love and tolerance...Churches that bring in guitars and insist on joy to the world.

Most churches send mixed messages, like Ann Rice puts it. I do not knock churches for putting up soup kitchens, giving food away at pantries.... I may need a God Pantry some time... Texas is cutting food stamp programs. (I have not applied yet, but am considering it) It the Republicans stay in power here, it will be a crime to be poor, and all poor people will be lined up and shot.... but, of course I can live on a pack of Ramen noodles for a week... and like Thoreau I know how to cook the earth. (A great book: J.K.L. Fischer's "How to Cook a Wolf") And that thing I sent Ronnie about facts of life and diet!!!!!

Much of the great art and architecture has been created for religion and athletic purposes. Greek Temples and stadiums, Egypt and the pyramids for dead souls... Taj Mahals and Chartres Cathedrals speckle the landscape of history... Ghandi and Mother Teresa and Francis of Assisi, Buddha and Jesus himself.... What have angry Tea Baggers done? Like the vandals and priests of old, they see the work of science and art as a threat to their every-day life.... they may have a point... How angry we all got when the Kaliban in Afganistan dynamited Buddhist art in the name of Allah and made women wear the berka.. and that Russia helped Egypt build a lake whose water would cover Abu Symbol or whatever tombs of spectacular 3000 year old sculpture... in the name of god-less science and relief of human misery....Humanity!!!! what a mixed bag of good and evil.... Met the enemy, but it is only us!!! dammit!!!!

and also:

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on
nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those
conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans...

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine
and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and
suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like.
Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Study: Belly bulge can be deadly for older adults.

If your pants are feeling a bit tight around the waistline, take
note: Belly bulge can be deadly for older adults, even those who aren't
overweight or obese by other measures.

One of the largest studies to examine the dangers of abdominal fat
suggests men and women with the biggest waistlines have twice the risk
of dying over a decade compared to those with the smallest tummies.

Surprisingly, bigger waists carry a greater risk of death even for
people whose weight is "normal" by the body mass index, or BMI, a
standard measure based on weight and height.

"Even if you haven't had a noticeable weight gain, if you notice
your waist size increasing that's an important sign," said lead author
Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society, which funded the study.
"It's time to eat better and start exercising more."

Other research has linked waist size to dementia, heart disease,
asthma and breast cancer.

Just what I need. Breast cancer wrecking these magnificent man-boobs
I've spent a decade building. To hell with that. I want a second
opinion. After all, that's just a prudent thing to do before you toss
your whole life over because some fat-loathing sunken-chested
pencil-necked geek with no personal gravity well wants to be a hater,
right? So, I looked to alternate medical traditions to find my answer.
I found my bubble-reinforcer in China:

A venerable Chinese Doctor responds to my forwarded belly fat article.

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong
life. Is this true?

A: Your heart only good for so many beats, and that it...don't
waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speeding up heart not
make you live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving
faster. Want to live longer? Take nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiency. What does cow eat? Hay and
corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So steak is nothing more than
efficient mechanismof delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain?
Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy
vegetable). And pork chop can give you 100% of recommended daily
allowance of vegetable product.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine,
that mean they take water out of fruity bit so you get even more of
goodness that way. Beer also made of grain. Bottom up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have body and you have fat, your ratio one to one.
If you have two bodies, your ratio two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular
exercise program? A: Can't think of single one, sorry. My philosophy is:
No pain...good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU NOT LISTENING! Food are fried these day in vegetable oil. In
fact, they permeated by it. How could getting more vegetable be bad for
you?!?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around
the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You
should only be doing sit-up if you want bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy?!? HEL-LO-O!! Cocoa bean! Another vegetable! It
best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming good for your figure, explain whale to me..

Q: Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! 'Round' a shape!

See? It's the damned sit-ups that did it!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had
about food and diets and exercise.

ah ah ah ah ah

gargling in the rat race choir
twisted out of shape by society's players...

just like Bob Dylan said it would be...

as it was in the beginning
is now, and ever shall be
World without end... ah men

phone calls from Ethiopia

2010-05-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

Bill collectors are getting slick. In-stead of using the give-a-way 800 or 866 number.... they call from area code numbers. And still somehow, from India... Somali or Ethiopia. I guess. Why not China? anyway, I made the mistake of answering this after noon. The inevitable accent, and the embarrassment of saying my name... I asked if he was calling from Ethiopia. He ignored that wanted to find out if I was me. "What is your name, Sir".... I told him it was Space Cowboy. He pressed again, and I said I was the gangster of love.... He asked if he could speak to Preston Faggart, and I decided he could not... Sorry.

I get these calls a lot.Because I owe some money for credit card debt. Credit cards are the pits.... have always been, especially for one so unstable as I am. Brings back memories of my first credit card. I got it unsolicited in NYC in probably 1966. I had lived in New York just a short time, and had my first real job up there, temporary, but fairly lucrative with over-time galore. American Photo is responsible for Santa Lands that are set up at Christmas in big department stores around the country.

My account with Chase never had a whole lot of money in it, but when they started the first credit card operation I ever knew anything about.... I received the card in the mail, with the instructions I could use it anywhere the "Everything Card" was visible.

I got the card, quite intrigued. I started using it. I do not think I had a balance of more than 4 or 5 hundred bucks. I paid it off for a while, than I ran out of money. There was a time in there when my income froze, and I let that slide. I remember getting a call from some lady at the bank, want some payment or other! I explained to her I was now a pauper, (used that silly term), and could not pay now. She took exception to my word use, and I told her the bank was crazy sending out plastic like that to the slums where I lived in a 40 dollar a month walk up, 5 blocks from Spanish Harlem!!! I think I got a few more attempts for collection.

This was 1965. A little Wikki research shows that this sort of thing started in San Francisco in 1958, when Bank of America sent out some charge cards:

"In mid-September 1958, Bank of America launched its pioneering BankAmericard credit card program in Fresno, California with an initial mailing of 60,000 unsolicited credit cards.[7] The original idea was the brainchild of BofA's in-house product development think tank, the Customer Services Research Group, and its leader, Joseph P. Williams, who convinced senior BofA executives in 1956 to let him pursue what became the world's first successful credit card "drop," or mass mailing of unsolicited credit cards (that is, actual working cards, not mere applications) to a large population.[8]"

It was quite a few years before I bothered with a credit card again. My Grandfather never bought anything he did not have the cash on hand to cover. I always thought that was admirable. I tried to do likewise. However, I did finance a car finally, in 1982, and got my first American Express card then, as I was making good money at the time, and still living like a starving artist in the cheapest dump I could find. American Express was fine, because you had to pay up every month... no interest to accumulate.... just pay them a reasonable 50 bucks a year (back then) for the privilege. My first Visa, I got when offered by a green company, whose profits went to good causes like the environment. A major growing concern. My wealth creating greed. What else is new? So, I kept my job at the Nuke plant and joined the Sierra Club.... not telling either party of the other affiliation. Ha.

I kept the two cards, and kept a low balance on the visa. But in the 90's back in Texas a traumatic time, the death of my father, and my mother's need to go into a care center, I found I had no good source of income, a recession had cut jobs, and unemployment was rampant, like now. My resources stretched, I was still receiving cards in the mail from all over. I had great credit, but no income.... and my judgement became very impaired. I gave a credit card or two to a couple of young friends.... stupid, but I was mad at the system, and decided to burn it.... immoral capitalism. They will get theirs!!! Fuck em!!!!

My ideals slipped out of hand, got me in trouble... I think I even told one of these guys to go out and ruin my credit. He did. In a few years, I needed to buy a car.... and after a horrible tote-the-note deal with a wrecked Nisson, which ended up being repo-ed in the middle of the night from my yard, they got a lousy deal, it was full of garbage and hail damaged etc!! My only re-po.... But as luck would have it, I got an offer from a bank that was taking high-risk loans, with high risk interests!, I got my hatchback Honda, which I still drive.

My last two credit cards, when they turned the interest up to 25 percent on one and 21 percent on the other, I dropped and am paying off as best I can....

Constellation Orion, the Hunter

2010-03-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

Inspired to write this, because I have trouble remembering star names...

Orion, Orion... my first stellar love!!!!!

Alpha Betelgeuse, oh what a name, the big red, about to blow...

Regal, the royal blue
beta diamond, cold fire...

Belatrix, a name brought to cruel shame by J.K.R., the wicked Black witch of Harry Potter fame...

Saiph, Kappa in order make the frame complete....

the belt Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

with M43 and M42, the star nursery sword...
reflection nebulae, horse head in there somewhere,

heavenly jewels sparkling the winter night....

primary colors

2010-03-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

Texas Primary

Perry won, ominously, by a large margin, showing the anti-Washinton spirit of the Republican electorate. Perry who called for secession for the state at one point.... this anti federal government feeling is popular with his crowd.... and the distorts his record of effectiveness. Has in the past made a big deal about not accepting federal largess, as a protest, for funds to help education. The climate gets worse, as he rejects environmental demands to curb coal burning for power.... continuing the policy of letting the polluters write the laws... etc...

No telling where this will lead. Bill White, the overwhelming choice for Democratic opponent in it's primary, is considered to have a better chance at defeating him than Kay Bailey who is more centrist in political philosophy... Bill is Moderate, while Perry gets farther and farther to the right.... May sensible reason will return and we would get the state out of the retarded hands the right wing Republicans hold on the politics and persuasion this red red state has. Dick Army is still in the shadows, so let us beware....

Texas Governor Election

2010-01-28T04:05:00.000-08:00

I do not know which I care less for: Kay Baily Jr League or Rickie Perriwinkle.... I am glad watch them destroying each other, but since this is Texas, that hates government and elects the one that stays out of the way and lets you do what you like... we will have a blah republican in power for four more. Unless that guy from Houston.... but no... don't think he has a chance. I may be the only one that votes for him!!!!!

They found out that the Democrats like to interfere with people's lives so flush them down the drain and elect the silliest dumb old republican and get on with life as it unfolds.....

We still have great orchestras, pop country rock, hell we have real good musicians... we have great art.... we have great rodeos and honky tonks... great land and great art....

New Year... 2010

2010-01-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe. Ghosts of the past crowd around. Maury took his young friend to Athens for an interview with the Gobob. Jeff Tate still the Dean of Dearing Street.... I think the last I was there was 1983... quite a few years back. Boy, the memories..

hello

2010-01-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

the ice. only water flowing on Saturday, Temp in the low teens!!!!
......just to say I am not quite dead yet. ....... but very little has changed..... I am currently working at McDonalds.... The best job I could get, and the easiest one I have ever had, I guess. very much part time now.... looking back over all the blogs posted in former years, I am amazed that I had that much spunk and interest, not to mention the wonderful writing skills exhibited..... still spending time at Alice's. Making sourdough... feeding live stock...
..... waiting for Jane Maury....

the new year

2009-01-17T23:43:00.000-08:00

So much for resolutions! Here it is 2009 and have not made a dent since????? well. I am rejoicing to see that Obama made it and will be our 44th president this week!...

much has happened and the last 2 campaign years have been totally absorbing... been following twitterlike Salon, NY Times, Slate, Huffington Post mainly...

will get some pics out of the closet or something and blog.

back to blogspot

2008-10-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Sureprise: I have been away for a while, a year and a half. In the mean time I have kept my thoughts alive on facebook and My-space, for heaven's sake!!!! But with a little encouragement I will share a daily blog over here too.....

Saturday 14th

2007-04-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

"Tin Top in Parker County

Hell-of-a night. Unsettled Spring weather. Halcyan days of blue skys and bluer wild flowers with crashing storms and violent destruction.

After a night of terror for some in North Texas, we are left cold, kinda hung over feeling. Wind blowing from the North.

Watched the movie Brick. Try to find the soundtrack. The whole thing works so well as a piece of film. I do not know how the events and story make sense, but the filming: each scene is vivid and compelling.... maybe because of what you can't see, hear or follow. The intent is so straight and sure. Unwavering....

I made breakfast:

oatmeal plus:

cup of milk, two cups water. Bring to a boil and add:
1 cup 3 minute oats
1/2 cup brown sugar (or more)
1/2 tsp salt (or more)
4 or 5 prunes
1/2 cup raisins (or more)
1/2 cup Craisins (dried cranberries)
1 tsp cinnamin

Let come to rolling boil again then cut heat to simmer. Stir from time to time....I would have cut up an apples if I had thought of it!

Eat all for hearty breakfast.
Blue Bonnets in the snow

Equidorian Plant (and a Cheap Supper)

2007-04-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

The Green Day Plant

Oh yes. In the jungle of equitorial Equidor, and plant was identified for the first time.

Stop and smell the GREEN DAY. A botanist from Switzerland, Dr. Jason R. Grant, just wrote to NRDC to tell them that he named a new tropical plant species after Green Day. It's called Macrocarpaea dies-viridis (dies-viridis is Latin for Green Day), and the scientific journal Harvard Papers in Botany just published an article about it! In his message, Dr. Grant says, "My students and I discovered this new species in February 2006 in Ecuador, and listened to Green Day music while driving, and in the evenings. Obviously as a botanist I am concerned with the environment, and applaud the efforts of the Natural Resources Defense Council."
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Supper tonight: money tight, I made up some pancake mix, fried a slice of balogny and warmed a bit of Monterey Pepper Jack on top and had a great supper....

Pancake mix:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 heaping tablespoons sour cream
pinch of soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4th cup oil (corn or whatever)
1/2 cup milk
water to get desired consistancy
egg if you have one (I did not on this batch)

Mix the above, not over-mix! fry a large (7", say) pancake in a pan slicked with a little oil. Corn oil I like. Lard ok too, bacon fat etc.
remove and keep warm, while you fry gently a slice of Balogny. Turn and put a slab of Monterey Pepper Jack on top to melt slightly. Place meat and cheese on the pancake, and fold in half. "Serve", meaning EAT!!!!!! Yum. Good.

keep rest of batter in the fridge for breakfast....

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Lush wood in the desert mountains a spring-fed stream up in the Guadaloupe mountains creates a mini forest, quite lush and wonderful, Photo taked last Thanksgiving.....

School days

2007-03-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

Garrison K, of Prairie Home Companion, has a great little piece about what a dis-service it is for a parent to do the art projects for their children, and worse, giving the job to the art department of thier business cooperation, sometimes paying comercial artists to do it.

When I was in the 3rd grade, in the early 40's, our teacher set up a valentine box, decorated with hearts and cupids, and a slot on top, of course. We were told to drop Valentine messages in for our friends and school-mates in our class. To be opened on February 14th, and one of us would play Dan Cupid. (Dan?)

Mom told me that in her school days, she and her friends would make Valentines out of colored paper with scisors and glue, messages done in crayon. I decided that was what I would do. Everybody else went to the Dime store and bought theirs. But it was a good project and kept me out of trouble, spreading out over the dining room table, making a grand mess for poor Mama to clean up!

I do not think my efforts were appreciated, since I was made some fun of by students whose mothers bought there greetings at Woolworths, and some of my oversized efforts would not go in the box slot, and received a frown from the teacher. But I had fun doing it. Wish I had kept an example of the home-made efforts!!!! Even though my secret heart-throb, Margaret Beck, hardly even thanked me for hers, the most elaborate I made!!!!

Enjoyed Garrison's piece, and think that every ounce of creativity in children should be encouraged.... all the time. And maybe they will grow up to love and understand the place of art and craft in the human psyche and what it does for the soul and mind....

We gotta hand it to him!

2007-02-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

Obama for Pres

Blogspot just changed me over to my google accout and I almost forgot what I wanted to put on there. Oh yes. That funny slip Biden made: Quote:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy ... I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Sharptons reply was that he bathes every day. Jesse, who is inspiring and artulate.. just punted.

Obama, Obama a wonderful guy!
he's got it: Charisma
that reaches the sky.....

A great fight ensuing: Hillary vs. Barak....

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Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia is back at Salon after 6 years! I love to read that bright gal! Check out this quote:

"I love the way Barack Obama has nimbly upstaged the ponderous Hillary machine. It's a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford bitch fest! But Obama's effusive gusts of generalities irritate me; it's all sizzle and no steak right now. He needs seasoning: 2012 may be his year. I wish Nancy Pelosi were running. Despite her foot-dragging mishandling of the flap over her transcontinental military jet, Pelosi has style and pizazz and knows how to put the shiv in while smiling ever so brightly at the cameras. She's brass knuckles in a velvet glove, and I'm loving every minute of it."

It's Saturday, Opera season

2007-02-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

Adolfo Hohenstein
Mimì e Rodolfo:

Soli d'inverno è cosa da morire!
Soli! Mentre a primavera
c'è compagno il sol!

Ah, to be alone in winter is death!

La Boheme forever. Probably the most heavenly beautiful opera ever.... Love in poverty... deprevation.... but joy and love lift the tragedy and waste to sublime levels.... the harmony and texture and weaving and twining of voices and orchestra has rarely been so perfect... color and line entwine like a Mucha poster....

(nel Cabaret fracasso di piatti e bicchieri rotti)

Would not like to be without opera. A life time obsession. The Met on Saturday afternoon. I soaked it up in the womb, according to Mama. She listened regularly. I was born Feb 23rd, opera season at its best....

What are we Fighting for/with?

2006-12-20T04:55:00.000-08:00

Who are we Fighting???

Sunni or Shiite??? many policy makers do not know. Jeff Stein, writer for the Congressional Quarterly, posed the question to some people in the government, and they came up short. They still are!!!!

From articles in the Times: here is a cheat sheet I put together, in case some one wants to play trivial pursuits about who we are fighting, who they are fighting, and the wisdom to know the difference..... ??????

Here are some of the hot ones:

Al Qaeda: Sunni (Osama bin Laden etc.)

Saudi Arabia: Sunni

Iran: Shiite

Hezbollah: Shiite

Palestine: Mostly Sunni

Sadam Hussein: Sunni

Iraq is split between Shi'a and Sunni, with the latter further divided between Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds; and thus that Iranian influence over at least some parts of the Shi'a population is hard to avoid, even given the fact (which they should also know) that relations between the Iraqi and Iranian Shi'a have not always been particularly smooth.

Historically, the two branches of Muslim Islam, has been summed up as follows:

The split occured immediately following the death of Mohammed, and related to who should be his successor. Shias feel that Imam Ali, cousin of the Prophet, husband of his daughter Fatima, father of Hassan and Hussein and the second person ever to embrace Islam. should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Mohammed via Ali and Fatima. Sunnis gave their allegiance to Abu Bakr, who lead prayers in prophet's mosque in the last few days of prophet's life, as the first caliph because they felt his old age would be a wiser choice to the young Ali.

Still confused? Me too. Why did we get involved? The Sunni Qaeda bombed us. With oil we bought from Sunni Saudi Arabia!!! IRONY SUCKS!!!! Yes it does!!

visions

2006-12-19T04:07:00.000-08:00

The Hood County Courthouse

I used to work in that town. Baking bread at the Nut Shell, on the south-east corner of the square. Crocket and Pearl. A formidable old building, still sturdy after all these years, thanks in part to the native lime-stone walls: still sturdy after more than a hundred years. A nightmare to keep the plumging and electricity in good shape. Barbara and Kay have kept it a lively part of the town scene longer than any other business enterprise around this famous square. They took over in 1980, about the time I ended up here to work on the nuke plant.

The beautiful center of the square, of the town itself, really, is this formidable Court House structure, in its symetrical, graceful architectual units, narrow windows, mansart roof, clock tower that used to have red-painted, cheerful casements for its louvers, and a clock that had to be wound by a crank. I know that, because my friend, Hugh Raupe, was the clock-winder for many years. The winding was done by a crank turning a spindle that pulled a 10 pound weight attached to a long rope, up about 15 feet. (Huge rigged it to use an electric drill, with a socket bit...) When released, the weight, thanks to the law of gravity, would power the clicking mechanism for a week, before the weight reached the length the rope would allow. The chimes were a sometime thing, usually not keeping time with the clock hands... and sometimes you got a different time from each face of the thing anyway. Einstein's famous theory about the relativity of time was true in this case, then.

Hugh had a shop just behind the square on Lambert Street, set up to repare everything from clocks, vacuums, bicycles, a shop filled with all manner of clocks, photos and good advice and an ever ready sourse of history and knowledge of the town of Granbury he grew up in and loved to his dying day. He could patiently repair any small motor device that was reparable at all. Then get on his 10 speed bike, strap on the helmet, and ride to Austin!!!! He died on the steps of that shop in 1993.

When the courthouse was renovated, in 2000, if I remember right, the clock was removed and replaced by a modern, electric machine, with recorded chimes, which do not work now either. Maybe just not used! The fine old Seth Thomas clock was last scene in a pile on the Court House lawn. Alas. Also those red sashes and casement frames for the louvred fenestation, which was striped down to a more basic frame underneath, and the surface cover, with zink-coated fish-scale shingles, dull grey, quite un-impressive. Kenny Burns, the architect, told us to wait, it would look better when the weathering of the metal took place. Well, we had to wait, but in the mean-time we forgot the folk art look of the red and bright baige tower, and have gotten used to the blue-grey look of the tower today. Dull but stately still, proclaiming that justice for all is not always housed in showy design.... or something like that.....

Then they built City Hall, a tribute to the grand old style, with local Cretaceous limestone, from the old seas and shores where the great dinosaurs roamed...90 million years ago.

Time and the river rolls on. Man's efforts to make things go there way, will not outlast the motions of creation which is ever evolving and is obliged by forces ordained and maintained by a deeper, more powerful drive... Call it God. Call it Nature. Call it what you will, but it operates by its own laws. Laws which man can only exist with. Or work around.

dream reality

2006-12-06T03:10:00.000-08:00

It is December 6th. St Lucy day or almost. The Scandinavians celebrate... the youngest blondest beauty child is adorned with a candle crown and present breakfast sweets to all in the house... and Santa Lucia is played or sung...

Flying through strange ethers

I have been in a very strange place, this morning.... before I woke to the bed and blanket reality I think I exist in... head is still a blurr at 5:13 AM, but of course we keep on crashing the all-to-familiar time-horizon along with riding our slow-whirling globe.... just try to catch the micro-second of now... the tiny hair-thin instant that separates the past, from the split second present, and we can watch it float off somewhere behind..... made real by the memory banks of brain where it is stored, for maybe future reference.....

I was in the air. or maybe it was something else that filled space, thick oxygen rich, breathable cream, through which this fantastic boat/car was noislessly hurling itself. I was in the back, the tub-like bed of an el Camino sort of truck, with features all rounded like Lord Voldemont's face, of a no space-suit journey above what may be earth maybe Jupitor, far below was a fantastic landscapes... tangled ropey boiling pasta shapes, stringy curvy pipes, but sort of nylon flexible clowding up. the colors were pastel blue-green and grey... some color...the space above grey-blue.... There was no wind, and gravity is not a problem on this smooth ride. I think I am in space. I get out and hold on, definitle being pulled, as my legs stretch out behind. I can let go and grab back on... I wonder if I get separated, floating where-ever, will anyone know and come back for me? So I climb easily back into the hot-tub like bed... But then I am floating-flying outside again... Looking down at the strange scene below, like none other I had ever scene.... Who ever is driving, if anyone is, and if that is what is happening, unseen... I am not afraid, even though the strangeness of a never-done-this-before experience unfolds. A strange dream of exotic space... the shapes below morph like under-water life forms, like kelp or ropey sargasso weed....log jams on a blue-green lake... The experience is not unpleasant, but not exactly exhilerating... The static feeling, the nothing is happening but just being in a new place occupies my mind... I did not seem to care where I had been, how I had gotten there, or where I was going. Did I die? Was I dead? These thoughts occur now in this waking life. Hey, that movie! WAKING LIFE... Was this another chapter in that strange, disturbing flic.... an avatar in pseudo, graphic ambience of another reality????? dreams, the concoction of the mind, which never sleeps when the body does. Sometimes we think the mind is asleep, but it is not.... Oh how strange, wonderful, ever changing our life....

Artist in Residence.....

2006-11-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

Ran Horn

The Ran Horn Story. Driving throuh Van Horn, Texas, the I-10 Business Street, Broadway, one store front really stand out among some non-descript feed and hardware and ranch supplies enterprises. A banner proclaiming VAN GOGH: resplendant with colors and marks like the iconic surfaces of the Netherland master himself.

The grand obsession of an amazing man, Ran Horn, who left the ministry himself and took up painting, usuing the Dutch giant himself as his teacher. So amazing. The store is crammed inside and out with artifacts and books and paintings and reproduction and prints on every wall and every vertical space available... and a veritable maze of book shelves. The famous works are there, some supended from the ceiling, and the painted subjects, some times assemble in the same frame, La Mousme, the Zouave, Postman Roulin, his son Amond, the dealer Pere Tanguy, Madame Ginoux, the night cafe with some tables added and others drinking, ... some contemporary!

The list

When Tommy Lee Jones brought his film crew to Van Horn to shoot some of his Border epic, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", several cast and and crew came to see Ran. Dwight Yoakam bought three or four works, Ran told us. He has his purchases with their purchasers recorded on a big list hanging in the gallery...

Ran

If ever driving west along I-10 as it goes through the wedge pressed down by New Mexico and up, across the Rio Bravo del Norte, by Mexico..... Well, do not miss Ran on Broadway in Van Horn.... Texas, that is. Oil wells and shooting stars!!!!!

Thanksgiving. 2006 edition.

2006-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

Desert Campsite View
Nancy and I headed out Wednesday for the west. Through Texas, following 180: from weatherford to MINERAL WELLS, Palo Pinto, Breckenridge, etc.... finally our first camp, pulled into Monahan Sandhills after dark, that beach in the desert plains... where we rested weary on the sand. Next day, Thanksgiving, taking back roads, first to Guadeloupe National Park, where the Pine Canyon campsites were full, we headed on to Hueco Tanks, where we finally got a good place to pitch tents.

Leaving Sandhills

Boy did we bring enough stuff!!Crammed into the Honda wagon, tents, backpack, clothes bags, food food food, doggie gear, cooler full, maps, books, lit and science!, enough to spend a month it seemed.

Then back to Guadaloupe, where the kind camp hostess, who had fallen in love with Megan, Nancy's noble poochie, had a camp site for us, on top of the ridge with the view above all around.... so happy, we...

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Nature's beauty all around...This is my Father's world for sure, and mine too!!!....The Guadaloupe Mountains were this massive reef rising out of the off-shore reach of the Permian Sea. This was some 250 million years back. Time spans we cannot image. This was before there were dinosaurs. There were sponges and clams and nautilus and jellies and the like leaving calcious remains stacking up hundreds of feet, just below the waves...just off the land... after many changes... the Permian Sea went away, the continents split up and re grouped and the Dinosaurs came and went..... The flowers and bees and furry mammals the size of mice, stayed on, and became cows and men, and orchids and daisies... with another sea, more erosion, forces pushed up the reef as a long block of mountains, with beautiful El Capitan at the southern head, a ship's prow! The desert came and went and came back!! CHANGE.... the only constant. The Atlantic divided us from Europe, the Pacific floor came under us, and docked island on our west coast, fiery volcanos rose, leaving the Rockies and the Sierras and leaving the Cascades.... 10 million years, something else will be here. The whole thing will become melted down by erosion, one rock, one grain of sand, one river of mud at a time..... The Grand Canyon will disolve, and run down to fill in the Baja gulf, and on and on and on....But. Our little window on time... this beautiful earth we are privileged, yea, lucky to enjoy as it is right now. (wish I could have seen Mt. St Helens before it blew in 1980!!! for example...)

BUT. Can see it now before it blows again!!!) All you have to do! Open your eyes!!! Get on the road!!!! Stretch your mind!!! Open you heart!!! See what it is all about... Life like a Dome of Many Colored Glass, stains the white radience of ETERNITY..... said Shelley..... From our first breath to our last, life is a journey. Each of us is a book. Others can read it. Some can write it all down. But those we share our life with, our soul with, yet, our vision, our understanding, in this great and glorious library called Earth... full of glory and sadness and joy and sorrow in equal measure.... we live, we learn, we enjoy, we cry... life is to be lived!!!!

Walt Whitman spoke and wrote it all..... Meville sailed the seas.... Darwin, too!!!! Galileo saw the Moons of another world (and was arrested) Aristotle and Linneaus who continued to give names to the natural world..... John McFee telling us how California was assembled!!!!

As my pal Bill says, "the unlived life is not worth examinating", an Ambrose Bierce style epigram on Socrates, "An unexamined life is not worth living" or something...

Good Morning Earth: How Are you??????

Megan

Buddha of Suburbia

2006-11-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

Sunset near Thorp Spring

A merry heart doeth the spirit good like a medicine:
but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Bert asked where that quote came from. I guessed it was a Proverb. The Book of Proverbs, put together or created by wise old Soloman. I wrote: "...sounds like a proverb out of the Bible.... could be just in the "style" of such a proverb...." and sent it on to friends: Shirley wrote: "Isaiah 28-31, The Bible Somewhere along in there I think?"
Ronnie actually looked it up: "It is in the Bible in the book of Proverbs 17:22.
and added:
Here's another 'Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones'.
Proverbs 16:24"

Some people like my ideas. I will become the Buddha of Suburbia.... gather the faithful and bestow blessings... distribute my weight in words to the poor......

to a friend on OM early this morning:

.......Keeping positive is the main thing. There is so much to learn and enjoy about this amazing life of ours, this improbable and unique world, with its wonderful, seemingly infinite aspects.

I think many religions agree: The first question in the Westminster Catechism of the Presbyterian church, I grew up in, almost literally, is:

What is Man's chief end? the answer: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The river that formed the lake below me was named Los Brazos, by the Spaniards first Whites to encounter it... brazos means "arms" and the full name was Brazos de Dios, arms of God. I like to think I live above those, in those, and praise Him for that. I am not near as religious as I sometimes sound, though...

I set up my bird feeder in a clearing, well not exactly, but among shrubs and trees, here in North Central Texas, 30 miles south-west of Ft Worth, in rolling limestone hills, I built my cabin above canyon-like gullies, covered with thickets of oak, elm, sumac, hack-bury. I have a good view of Lake Granbury, an impoundment of the Rio Brazos, which cuts the town, 8 miles away, in two, the lake being very thin, with a mesa formation, called Comanche Peak just to the south, over the town... which dates from the 1870's (the town that is) and is quite "charming". I prefer to live in the woods, 9 miles north, 20 acres, but I ramble off into a thicket of TMI...

...all the birds have not found my new site, after 2 years, but maybe if is a change in the food I give them. I get a lot of cardinal, chicadee, tit-mouse activity, but cannot get the finches. I think they need a more open area like before. Plenty of doves, at least two breeding pairs of road runners, who are like chickens who hang around wherever they like. One likes to perch on my roof peak and sing a plaintive song. I fancy a sad soul who cannot find a mate. They are beautiful birds, improbably goofy looking at the same time!!!! If I leave a glass or mirror outside they will come and admire themselves.

Some white-throats and rufus crowned sparrows are here, but the latter along with the bob-white quail, I do not see anymore, recently, and guess that the exploding fire-ant population is the culprit, getting the babies, since they nest on the ground. Road runners do too, but they may be a lot tougher... I can sometimes hear, occasionally see one of the virios, and some summers, the painted buntings come to the feeder. I mean to add some more feeder locations. Would love to get the goldfinches coming back.... Down on the lake there are the usual shore birds. ducks and egrets... and every now and then big bunches of white pelicans with their 8 ft wing span.... recently during dry times, there were sand-pipers. Oh and some little ruby crowned kinglets and junkos in the winter...

birds birds birds.... love them all.....

Let Freedom Ring

2006-11-12T03:49:00.000-08:00

I guess I was in gloom and doom mode...buying into an IDEA that the school yard bullies that seemed to have taken over this country, were here to stay. All their tricks worked in their favor in 00, 02, and worst of all, 04. I forgot one thing. I forgot where I live. I forget that this Amerca, ur, United States, can unite to overthrow any leadership that does not respect its true values. When Thomas Jefferson set the course with the reason we all are here, that "all men are created equal..." and we all have equil rights, under the law, in our neighborhoods, towns, states, the land we live in... Just like grade school history tells us.

Maybe I won't move to Mexico after all. Maybe the new shape of Congress will right some of these wrongs. At least, I believe it will try....

I was thrilled to read Frank Rich in the NY Times this Morning... I think you have to subscribe to the internet Times to get it... How undemocratic! (But thats all about the freedom to sell your brain produced work, part of what this all is about anyway....)

He talks about the fall of the Virginia senator, how he shot himself to death with a word: Macaca!!!

"The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen’s defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of “faith.”"

O Tempus O Mores

N.B. I still like Laura Bush, Stepford wive that she seems. She was the sweet kind lady at the door of the big banker's house, who gave you cookies and said sweet things to you as her husband was forclosing on your Daddy's farm!!!! And we all went to the same church!!!!!

HOORAY AND HALLELUJAH/you had it comin' to ya...

2006-11-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

REJOICE, REJOICE: WE HAD no CHOICE

Yes, this means you, American people. The voting electorate has turned the tide. Our brand of Democracy has spoken... Season of doubts has ended for now. Now the Dems have so much to start un-doing...

here is the Bard's sonnet no. 100, complaining about the his truent muse. I enter it because some sensibility has returned to the American psyche...... O Tempus, O mores...

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

I been accused of not reading my blerbs and being angry. There has been much to be angry about, maybe this is a Spring thaw..... a few months early.... Now, about 2008.... LOOK OUT!!!!!!

OK: some anger.

I just want to congratulate that egotistical show-off, yes, you, Kinkster, and your fellow whatever goof-ball Grandma for our continuing wonderful Republican rule of this could-be great state of Texas...... I hope Kinky sells a lot of books and records and can afford to booze it up with his talented country addict buddies... They are good at that, all a big joke, no??? Hahahaha...... said something about Goat Farm? Try funny farm, Kinkie Baby. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA DAMN!

I despise the way politics spin out these days, O tempus, o mores.... oh dammit all anyway. I sometimes want to sell out and move to Mexico.... where slime-ball politicos have always been in charge, and there are no laws that money won't get you around!!!!! Saved by poverty and corruption, you might say. Land of fantasy and magic. People who insist on living...

Drying Lake Dying

2006-11-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

Cattails springing up among the debris

Lake Granbury is drying: sandbars with sand pipers feeding, freshwater clam shells shining
mother-of-pearl, cat tails starting to grow....

a bay that was once pasture... sometime floodplains....
This lake is dying.... let it go. Free the Brazos... Let it return
to the canyons that have been cut, the meanders, the great bends,
since the dinosaurs stalked the Cretaceous shores... since the snows
of yesteryear melted, and filled the Permian Basin.... since the
Rockies rose.... Since the old Lipan Indians made their arrowheads
on the Cliffs of the Brazos...

The House on the Crumbling Cliff

Down with the damn dam!!!!! The lake will silt up anyway and there
will be a grand waterfall where De-Cordova dam now holds the water
back..... after we are all gone.... Mother Nature will have the
final say!!!!! OR: God is not mocked! (take your choice)

Ghosts of Driftwood

Now revealed: ghost-like, blanched driftwood, now drying, that
soaked up the saline waters of Lake Granbury........

Films by Leonardo DeCaprio: http://leonardodicaprio.org/

Bonjour le froid

2006-11-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

outside

ah, it is finally autumn. Season of mists and gentle fruitfulnes, as I mis-paraphrase old Keats or is it the Lord B????? (Keats! see below) anyway, playing with color and enjoying the exuberance of nature.... Spectacular, the dying of the green... death in all its glory.....

pool

Ode To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Brush up your Shakespeare

2006-10-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Eringo

(A sort of slow read... tribute to the strong but kind, the gentle giants, tough souls with hearts of gold, the guardian angel types..... finishing with a bitter sweet warning...a reminder.. observation... ???.)

Sonnet #94 - 2006-10-25 02:18:39-04

XCIV.

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Read more...

(I somehow signed up for a Sonnet-a-day by the Bard. It is a morning challenge. Shakespeare's Elizabethan language and sensibility makes you stop and think. I like it.)

p

Don't Attact Iran

2006-10-14T02:43:00.001-07:00

"Paranoia runs deep"
Will they or won't they? According to Democrats.com there may be an October Surprise.

(In case anybody dosen't keep up with politics, an October Surprise is an event, like a startling announcement by the incumbent leader's party just before the election to guarantee that that party will stay in power come November.)

As we keep reading, the mood of the electorate is swinging away from the crazies and fumblers now in charge,and may change things at the upcoming elections, as has happened in the past. One of the most hysterical suggestions is that they have Osoma Bin Laden's body in a deep freeze at Camp David which will miraculously appear sometime around Halloween! And another is that there might be another invasian of a second prong of the self-declared Axis of Evil. Paranoia runs deep.

I do not wish to think that madness like that of Osoma or Timothy McVey or Pol Pot has settled into the weird skulls of Bush and the boys currently over-reacting to world events that they (and WE, dammit) have had our share in the making. But we are such a primative species.

Here you can read some of the paranoia.

Dear Preston,

While North Korea is dominating the headlines, the threat of an "October Surprise" U.S. attack on Iran has not diminished.

Pentagon planners have moved from routine "contingency" war plans to "second-stage" war plans. And the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Eisenhower and its accompanying strike force of cruiser, destroyer and attack submarine are sailing towards Iran.

How would Iran respond to an attack? Iran has three times the population of Iraq, and a modern military capable of firing missiles at our oil-producing allies and shutting down all shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil travels every day. The 140,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq would be attacked by Iran's Iraqi allies, and Hezbollah would attack Israel.

So why would Bush want war with Iran? For one obvious reason: to prevent Democrats from sweeping the November elections, as all polls now predict.Dear Preston,

While North Korea is dominating the headlines, the threat of an "October Surprise" U.S. attack on Iran has not diminished.

Pentagon planners have moved from routine "contingency" war plans to "second-stage" war plans. And the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Eisenhower and its accompanying strike force of cruiser, destroyer and attack submarine are sailing towards Iran.

How would Iran respond to an attack? Iran has three times the population of Iraq, and a modern military capable of firing missiles at our oil-producing allies and shutting down all shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil travels every day. The 140,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq would be attacked by Iran's Iraqi allies, and Hezbollah would attack Israel.

So why would Bush want war with Iran? For one obvious reason: to prevent Democrats from sweeping the November elections, as all polls now predict.....

Can anything like this happen? Is the leadership really ready to do this? Is the Pope a German? wow wowie. Mass extinction has taken place several times in Geologic past, xolub impact of a comet or asteroid ended the Dynasaurs reign on our planet 65 million years ago, and Biblical past (remember Noah? if you do not agree with science:) plus, and it all stared with humongus violence, big bang, I mean, do you see where I am going? But this time it will be Man, not God or Mother Nature pulling the punches. And we all die at the same time rather than one by one, etc etc.

Looking bad for homo sapiens sapiens chance of survival!!!! But we are only the latest in evolutionary development, Or God's favorite, AMADEUS, if the Holy Bible is your science book. Either way the final curtain may be in sight!!!! FORGET THE WHIMPER, ELIOT! IT IS THE BANG WE HAVE TO FEAR!!!!!!

New Flick

2006-10-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

The man.
The Black Dahlia. Brian de Palma. over the top, or over the hill? both but still fun. This years entry in the Venice Film Festival....
Josh and Hillary. What are they looking at?

What is a blue dahlia?

My favorite smart-ass critic, Christopher Kelly, says "it's Chinatown as replayed by your high school drama club." And, yes, it is de Palma playing with films again. Campy fodder for film critics, and they always amuse film buffs who love to parse the scenes. Almost all his movies are ready-made trivia games: he just did a Hitchcock "Rear Window" move.... Oh that was from Eisenstein!

If you enjoy this stuff, it can be great fun. (Guilty fun, because there is usually some grissly violence to look away from....) And I have to admit that I do love it. "Carrie", my first viewing of Sissy Spacik, was a sensational masterwork. "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Double" (Dressed to Drill, a smart-ass critic wrote, because of a very original murder weapon!) sealed my love of the director. And everybody agreed with me on the "Untouchables" and gave it deserved awards. There is always something to look at in his films, even if you do not like the plot or the characters, or even the actors. This can be just pop froth, but at its best, I have to admit. The return of "Scarface" is eagerly awaited. Al Pacino and his mountain of (gasp) cocaine!
Scarf one/chain 1/2

2006-10-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

yum yum yummy yum

Boy, am I hungry for sweets. And this mousse sounds so good:

Chocolate Mousse

1 3/4 cups whipping cream
12 ounces quality semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 ounces espresso or strong coffee
1 tablespoon dark rum
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon flavorless, granulated gelatin

Chill 1 1/2 cups whipping cream in refrigerator. Chill metal mixing bowl and mixer beaters in freezer.

In top of a double boiler, combine chocolate chips, coffee, rum and butter. Melt over barely simmering water, stirring constantly. Remove from heat while a couple of chunks are still visible. Cool, stirring occasionally to just above body temperature.

Pour remaining 1/4 cup whipping cream into a metal measuring cup and sprinkle in the gelatin. Allow gelatin to "bloom" for 10 minutes. Then carefully heat by swirling the measuring cup over a low gas flame or candle. Do not boil or gelatin will be damaged. Stir mixture into the cooled chocolate and set aside.

In the chilled mixing bowl, beat cream to medium peaks. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. Fold in the remaining whipped cream in two doses. There may be streaks of whipped cream in the chocolate and that is fine. Do not over work the mousse.

Spoon into bowls or martini glasses and chill for at least 1 hour. Garnish with fruit and serve.

2006-10-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

Assembling Mark Foley

2006-10-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Shocking history of the earth

....reading this early morning from John McFee's "Assembling California", the beautiful and fascinating story about the forces of nature and the geology of the west coast. Bits and pieces of this amazing story have been coming together over the last two hundred plus years like the pieces of ocean floor and island arcs that docked, from the plate, diving under the continenent, scraping the Islands, along with some of the ocean bottom, well off spreading centers, moving eastward out of lava centers in the Pacific, whose west coast was once Utah, an ocean front Arizona and the like.

McFee and his geologist buddies have traveled along I-80 from Western Nevada, past Tahoo, across the Sierras, spending a lot of time in gold rich canyons and taking side trips all the way from Arizona to Cyprus and more, through exotic terrains locally. Finally the far west coast, with the exciting events going on along the St Andreas Fault, re-defining the coastal domains of the continent. He tells all about the strike slip fault which will bring Los Angeles up next to San Francisco some day.

The action goes along in slips and starts, as the Pacific Plate, riding on the slippery mantle, fueled by unknown engines, pushes northward, grinding against the North American Plate. It is a continuous surge, but is only felt in the quakes that shake the land every so many years. The elasticity of resistance and release are at work. The longer the time between releases, the greater is the force and destruction of the catch-up shifts. LA is on the Pacific Plate, San Francisco on the North American Plate. Right on the dividing, at that. The fault goes through western San Francisco, and out to sea around Golden Gate. If things go on as they are now, the two cities will be side by side, and eventually, LA will be in Alaska, and SF will be in the tropics!!!!

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Jumping in crazy attention-deficit confusion, Public Radio comes on and talks about the case of Representative Mark Foley, and his indiscretion by way of expressing his attraction to a former page boy. Via e-mail, no less!!! The hidden fault in the biological make up, like the hidden St Andreas under California, causes an earth quake like rumble, which may bring down the House. Literally! This happens all the time. Monica Luinsky is neither the first or last object of these inconvenient, or annoying lusts and desires the human heart seems to manufacture in many of us, with no respect for ability, talent, personality, color, creed, wealth. Out of step with prevailing mores, they are suppressed as much as possible. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with them. The mechanism of confession, one of the sometimes good institutions associated with the Catholic Church, is a great help if used correctly, in dealing with these "defects of character", as those in 12 step programs know it. But many times there is an eruption, an earthquake, whose magnitude is increased. Reputations go down the drain. The plug pulled, for better or for worse. Protecting the innocence of our young is harder and harder to do, and in truth, they have to grow up fast, and learn to deal with these facts, so shocking when the ideal world manufactured by Disney and company, Sesame Street, etc, Mr Rogers and his neighborhood, is in our collective conscience. Put there from birth, almost. Fighting off unwanted attention must be learned sooner and younger. Most of have had to deal with it, even way back then. Sin did not begin when we were in grade school!!!

Has all of this been going on forever? Has a lot of dirt been swept under the carpet all along? It seems that now there is an increasing avalanche of sexual revelations coming to light. Straight and broke-back. (It has been said that if every person who has ever had a same-sex desire or encounter in their life, would turn bright red, it would be well over 50 percent glowing rouge!!!!) The record shows that in the Foley affair, the man was known as a helpful friend to the pages in congress, lending an ear, giving them encouragement. The Times records statements of appreciated kindness from some ex-pages, both sexes included. There is a lot to learn yet about the human heart, the contradictions of being a human in this crazy world...... But an earthquake occured in Washington and Foley was swallowed up!!! With the usual tut-tuting and moral posturing of those around.

more thoughts on the Vanitas bello and the venitas outcome

2006-10-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

Bush's Vanity War

Prophet priest or king?

The war we went into was necessary. That was 5 years ago. Afghanistan. The training grounds for the bombers who destroyed the World Trade Center. A not so bad choice. Those people needed a break. Osama needed to be brought to justice. Iraq. A mistake.beatific visione So much so, it was/is an absolute disaster. We will never get out unscathed. The End-of-the-World War has begun. Also, on Myspace, the end-of-the-world-party seems to have begun, although some say the date was back in the sixties. Some say the twenties. Some say the "gay nineties"..... The decline and fall of the Roman Empire???? transcendent devil!!!maybe We should just say WHEE and enjoy it? Down the u-tube we go.... and then, then, then??? not with a bang, but another big bang???? the big whimper????transcendent devil?

Prophet priest or king?

I Keep Hearing America Singing

2006-09-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

setting things up in my Myspace page I penned [sic] this early coffee rush: It sounded sort of nice and I do intend to write a book about my love for all kinds of noise, that we call music....
Brad and Ed in Singer's Fight Club have nothing to do with it, but I like the poster.....

Music, Maestro, Pleeeeeeze

Trying to keep up. Prowd of the NC bands. T for Texas. T for Tenneesee, but the Tar Heels get there rock and roll off as good as any.... music is essential and the garage band generation never had it so good. Walt Whitman heard America singing way back then, and we have never shut up!! I keep playing songs in my head. (Or In college, I played orchestra, listened to Bach, wrote fugues. But. Spoodie Oodie was be-bop hot and.... Danced to Stan Kenton and Woody Herman before Jerry Lee Lewis got smokin'... Big Mama Thornton and all the rest taught Elvis how to sing... But before you could say Jack Shit, here comes Bob Dylan! Damn. I was still getting over Kingston Trio, and here came Joan Baez! Sunami's like Beach Boys and Janis rolled over the land, Doors banging, and of course the Brits got hot rocks, Fire-power from Albion, stones and beatles majorly figured in the mix, Filmore east and west, north and south, Alman Brothers and Leonard S., and the rest is history, but for power metal Led Z, and the 70's with enough glam make-up to sink the Titanic again, thanks Alice Cooper, only to be saved by a life raft called punk! Sexy Pistols and a bunch of Ramones Clashed!! Plate Techtonics fused LA with London. Bruce Springsteen brought things up to date-rape, but before you could say "Pet Shop Boys", and new syncronism occured, and Ska did not go away inspite of the Police, some Cheep Trick or other wants you to want them! and the band so good it duran duraned itself to death, but that was then: B.N., Before Nirvana and the grung explosion in volatile Seattle and spread. Whew. Nine Inch balls!!!! and punk never went away, just ask Green Day, Green Day, Green Day! and what else, Weezer, what else???, where is the Sonic of my Youth and Bob Dylan sounding off loud and clear, songs for all seasons, he never stops inventing, and Willie, Waylan and the boys never sounded so good, and on it goes, A for Austin, N for Nashville.... New York and San Francisco and LA used to have it all, but not anymore. Who do you listen to today? Anything you can cram into the silly old iPod. No more beautiful Morning Glory horns and cactus needles to scratch out music from the groovy groove groove!!

Hats off to Classic Case, hoping the new work turns into masterpiece!!! In LA right as we spell check, dammit, recording number 2.... thats where its at, Mama Cass!

oh yes: Rapp!!!

Rant. Rant. Rant. Not for those who love Bush to read.

2006-09-09T02:50:00.000-07:00

There is a flap over ABC's 9/11 two part show, reportedly written by a Russ Limbaugh pal, and blaming the bombing of the Twin Towers on the lack of preparedness by the Clintonites. This is to exhonerate Bush, according to Maureen Dowd in the NY TIMES today, for the mess that followed:

"W. is pulling out all the stops this week to try to make people forget he was in charge when the twin towers were hit, but if he’s doing so great, why is Osama releasing new tapes while Afghanistan crumbles while Pakistan stands ready to implode while Lebanon has already exploded while Iran goes nuclear and taunts us while Al Qaeda in Iraq calls on its followers to kill Americans 'by a sniper bullet, spear, explosive or martyrdom car'?"

How long is this sorry mess going on? The september surprise to influence the elections? Playing catchup after the Bush August-long vacations leading to disasters? Bin Laden bombers, and Mother Nature's Katrina, for example? Leading us into war with Iraq with lies about atomic bombs, etc....

Bush is without doubt the worst and most dangerous president of these United States that I have had to live with in my 70 years on this planet. And I put down Isenhour because I loved Adlai, thought Nixon was bad news and rejoiced when he got caught and disgraced. I thought Ronald Reagan was silly and knew we had elected a senile president, but enjoyed his morning in America, never-the-less. (And I worked for Halliburten and bought my piece of Texas rock for my dumb old ass to rest on in my dotage.) Bush Sr was horrible, but he self distructed and any Democrat could beat him, even with Ross Perot trying to spoil everything. Clinton I loved because he talked my language, a language I understand. I could not understand anything from the Bushes except there pretty lies written by some smart-ass ghost writer!!! rant rant rant...
I would proably accepted favors from the likes of Monica and lied about it too.

O tempus, O mores!!! Odi et amo!

Guess I should go to Washington with Casey's mom and let my voice be heard. This is still a democracy, if we can keep it.... I forget, though. I am an anarchist. Not by choice. By necessity, goddamit!!! The Rock forever....

Here in my humble room I sit at the Mac and contemplate a world I did not make.......

Fellini at the Modern

2006-08-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Fillini Fellini Follini Fullini, how I love you. But the oportunity of seeing everything you did, is overwhelming. The Ft Worth Modern is hosting the grand retrospective: Tutto Fellini... show two weeks worth of all the films including commercials!!! So far I have seen Variety Lights, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, La Dolce Vida, and 8 1/2. That is a heavy plate of delicious, wildly flavored pasta, especially seeing the last two back to back.... I had to miss Satyricon the next day, as much as I love that one.... will pick up on Amarcord on Friday I hope....

I have not seen them in a long long time. But Vida and 8 1/2 show no signs of becoming dated. As someone told me when I was in Italy in the early 60's, La Dolci Vida is still going on in Rome, with the same cast still partying, and they even told me who to contact to join in!! I was much too scared. But don't you know I wanted to! I thought I had a handle on the "meaning" of 8 1/2, and I may, but it fell short of my memory of it, but I got some more insights also. The scene with Saraghina and the taking of the waters, the beginning with what was a metaphor, I think, for the whole film, with Guido in his Mercedes in a grid-lock, and locked in, suffocating it seems, trying to get out with others looking on in helpless indifference, and finally breaking out, sailing away, arms outspread, flying like the flying crucifix being flown, dangling from a helicopter in Dolce Vida, and ending up tetherered high above the beach waves, having to be pulled down by his producers and other aids.... As it turns out not his producers, or his tallent, or his women, or his past, can save the current project. Ah, the shame, the waste, but at the end, the old magic is still there and all's well that ends well, it seems..... like an old artist dying, and seeing one last time, the parade of memory and desire dancing, marching, running, to the tamborine in time...

New Element Identified

2006-08-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

Elvis and Nixonium

Nixonium

A lot like Bushcronium. Highly unstable, and given to superficial false annalytical results...dificult to pin down... Nixonium found in high places......celebrity status is the goal....

Bushcronium:

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Bushcronium." Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an Atomic mass of 311. These 311 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
The symbol for Bushcronium is "W".
Bushcronium's mass actually increases over time, since each reorganization causes more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass." When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element which radiates orders of magnitude, more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has just as many peons but twice as many morons .

vote for the republican of your choice, but vote!!!!

2006-08-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hehehe

What You Need to Believe To Be a Republican

1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary
Clinton.

2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy
made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad
guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade
with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony

4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest
national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind
without regulation.

6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in
speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then
demand their cooperation and money

9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing
health care to all Americans is socialism. HMOs and insurance companies have
the best interests of the public at heart.

10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but
creationism should be taught in schools.

11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is a impeachable
offense, but the president lying to enlist support for a war in which
thousands die, is solid defense policy.

12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the
Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

13. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but
George Bush's drunk /stoned driving record is none of our business.

14. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a
conservative radio host(Or President). Then it's an illness and you need
our prayers for your recovery.

15. Supporting "Executive Privilege" for every Republican ever born, who
will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)

16. What Bill Clinton did is of vital national interest, but what Bush is
doing to this country is irrelevant.

17. Support for hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing
orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.

18. When they wrote the Constitution, the founding fathers meant to say it was OK for the governement to spy on its citizens and track their bank
accounts.

* Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican *

e-mail with the enemy

2006-08-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

Ronnie of yore.
The young and the wasted.

----- Original Message -----
From: Preston Faggart
To: Ronnie Selman
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 12:18 AM
Subject: gmail address

io.preston@gmail.com my other e-mail address.... yes, io.preston@gmail.com

My other e-mail address I will be using. My sbcglobal.net may not last that much longer since I am changing my account. No more dial-up!

thanks, Preston

On Aug 20, 2006, at 1:12 AM, Ronnie Selman wrote:

That's cool, I added it. I was just wondering though. Sense [sic] you were all ready use to using yahoo mail when you were on the road, why did you go with google? And what happened to prestoni?
When are you going to start using this new address?
As all ways, you were very vague.

Hugs,
Ronnie

Prestoni's response:

this is just a back up. I finally figured out how to get it to come in on Apple Mail, but box of choice. If and when they decide to take away the sbcglobal since I no longer have dial up.... or not supposed to, soon....

On Aug 20, 2006, at 1:24 AM, Ronnie Selman wrote:

You only answered one question. There were 2 others. They were the ones with a ? at the end.

I responded thusly and, I hope, finally:

Don't worry about it. Just keep sending to Prestoni@sbcglobal.net until the ugly 'mailer-daemon' comes back at you, and then start using io.preston@gmail.com. OK. I like the sound of io.preston because Io is one of the larger moons of planet Jupiter. Named for one of the God's girl friends:

1 Greek Mythology a priestess of Hera (Juno, Jupiter's wife) who was loved by Zeus (Jupiter). Trying to protect her from the jealousy of Hera, Zeus turned Io into a heifer. Hera sent a gadfly to torture the heifer, which then fled across the world and finally reached Egypt, where Zeus turned her back into human form.
2 Astronomy one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the fifth closest satellite to the planet. It is actively volcanic, colored red and yellow with sulfur compounds, and has a diameter of 2,526 miles (3,630 km).

Capiche?

Snakes on a Plane

2006-08-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

Mr Rivas and captive 'conda

The internet is full of laughs about a much buzzed movie coming this Fall, called "Snakes on a Plane". !!!!. It stars Samuel Jackson, and will be a hit, if only a cult hit for a little while. The title is dada. "The Eggplant that ate Chicago" comes to mind, but
"The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"
,(you can find in IMDB.) And still exists. Remember "Blair Witch", anyone?

Salon.com has some realated stuff today, and introduces us to a crazed snake lover
Jesus Rivas
. This intrepid biologist walks South American rivers barefoot and drags powerful anacondas up. Careful to avoid the vicious caimans and other fruminous bandersnatches. But Rivas actually recounts a "snakes on a plane" episode, when he actually took two pillowcases of baby anacondas up in the air, after convincing security and the pilot that it was safe and cool. (Yes, cool. They stay calm below 85 degrees, and the plane's cabin temp is well below that....)

What next? I want to see Jay and Silent Bob on a plane......

2006-08-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

Shaffer Hotel, 1923

Starting from the end of the New Mexico trip, which included three nights in the Hyde State Park above Santa Fe, NM, operas and road trip to Taos, stopped in Madrid, we headed south and to the Manzanos Mountains, through little land grants in green valleys to Manzanos and the state park there. Jesuite Missionaries established outposts here to civilize the locals, after Coronado had no use for anthing but gold, and this was no el dorado. Later apple trees were around, maybe planted by the early settlers, and hence the name: Spanish for Apple Tree...

Good Vittles Cafe

These photos show the Shaffer Hotel in little Mountainaire, New Mexico!!! some 50 miles south of Albuquerque, in the foothills of a very green little valley above the familiar desert plains and below the high forests of the Manzano mountains.

Story: Shaffer, a yankee, came there for health reasons and built and hand detailed this place in the 20's. The place has been kept up ever since, and I guess kept secret too. The Albuquerque couple that took over the dining room, called the Good Vittles Cafe, makes great New Mex-Mex food, judging from the huevos rancheros I enjoyed, and Nancy's veggie omelet, with lots of good yummy tortillas, salsa verde etc. (my mouth waters as I write: the simple beans were divine. I am tasting them now!!) We had breakfast there, following a tip from our Manzano State Park Ranger, our last morning leaving New Mexico, and were amazed.

Concrete fence and gate!!!

The cook and owner of the restaurant said he thought old Shaffer must have had a lot of time on his hands because of the extensive detailing. He sure brought together that folk-Mex look of old pottery and blankets, and "moderne" art deco for the ceiling panels, the fire places and the lights in the restaurant: the chandeliers with the stylized coyotes holding lamps with hand painted shades!!! It is startling to see the broken cross, the reverse Swastika, used extensively, but this was before the rise of the Nazis and dates way back to local Indian design.

/The cast concrete fence for the garden beside the place shows a big sense of design and some humor, with the face of devil himself on the gate. I have never seen work like this before!!!

In the lobby, the radiators are placed up high, in hopes to help heat the rooms upstairs in the cold of winter. They remind you of organ pipes in that context..... The art work, paintings etc. are original, now faded and in need of some restoration, perhaps, done in that era when a lot Yankee artists "discovered" New Mexico, with the writers like D. H. Lawrence and painters like Georgia O'Keefe, in Taos and Albiqu working here.. Just what artist love: cheep living and colorful landscapes and Indio/Spanish culture dating from way back. Santa Fe is, after all, the oldest state capitol in the country, if not the oldest town. It had been a thriving city for a century or three before Washington was even designed!!!

Stuffed with breakfast, we head out east on hightway 60. Straight ahead is Clovis and Lubbock:

Straight as an Arrow

More from the Beach

2006-08-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

On the couch...

Natty, Gigi, Sarah

Pawley's Island, SC. The house is old. It is the beach cottage of the Cogshalls and Williams of Darlington, etc. South Carolina, the fabulous, century old Sandycott.....

Back when I first went there, Marian and Tony get a month each year, time-share style, and family and friends enjoy care-free lazy life of surf sand games fishing road trips great food fests.. is this the life?

Beach Life 2005

At first, Marian and Tony, there boys Tony and David, Tony's sister Sister (Alice Carol) and Price Caldwell, their kids Delia and Michael, usually Derek and Erika Knox, with their girls Kathleen and Jenifer. Later NC artist Doug Houchens and wife Maggie would be there.

The roster now includes Tony and Shawn's twins, Adam and Sarah, David and Kelly's kids: Natalie and Gillian, Michael's boys: Thomas and Pierce. Keeping the gender's even in this generation.

Thomas celebrated birthday 10, being the oldest among them. Before he and Pierce arrived, Adam, the only boy so far, had to contend with the ever-active and creative girls, who set up a restaurant, The Tea Cup, in the under-space below. They served food prepared in the kitchen and brought it to the table with great aplomb and efficiancy. I wish that restaurants in that area had such service. Before that, Edward, long time friend of Tony II, entertained the twins and girls with music. He brought sax and tought them some body sounds!!

Alice who likes to go there too, and provides us both transport from Texas could not come this time, (her truck needed work this year), but flew me to Charlotte, and i bussed to Georgetown. Later she flew me back from Raleigh. I guess that represented Texas this year. Doug and Maggie could not come, but I saw them in Davidson waiting to see about Alice, whose last minute delay and ultimate cancelation, caused a bit of uncertainty, but it all ended well. Alice was much missed.....
The Front Porch. Beyond, the Oceana Atlantica

Tony Tony Macaroni

2006-07-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

Saint Anthony
Oh Tony, oh Tony. My friend of choice all these years. Tony brought an old violin to a made-up string class at Davidson in 1955, I think. I was a busy sophmore and Tony was a Freshman. Maybe it was a year later, I do not remember clearly. Doris West and Betty Goehring, fiddle playing wives of music faculty agreed to have a class. I found an old viola and wanted to see if I could learn a stringed instrument. Found I did not have the time, but got to know Tony. He struck up a friendship with my homey friend Morrison, and we became pretty close as the years went by. After I started taking art from Doug Houchens, Tony seemed to take an interest in what I was doing. He started his art collection along with Morrison and myself. Prints from the Baltimore dealer, Ferdinand Rotin, who brought affordable prints and works to College campuses back then.

The reasons I like Tony and am grateful for his long-time friendship:

1. His wife, Marian. The grandest girl you can ever meet....

2. Always patient with my folies

3. Always interested in music and art. Two things that are high on my list.

4. Maintains beautiful premises full of art and music.

5. Has great kids and grand kids....

6. Invites me to the beach with him every year...

7. Supports my interests and passions. Or at least indulges them.

8. Has stuck to his ideals all these years.

9. Teaches what he believes, practices his principals....

10. Sifts his life as carefully as his money.

11. Has values of utmost worth and purity....

12. Has fathered two splendid boys, who now have two youngsters each....

13. The way those boys love their dad and mom is simply astounding.

14. This family has so much love between the members....

many more later......
We stayed in touch.....

Children at the Beach

2006-07-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

There is a certain slant of light
on Winter afternoons....

but it is summer at the South Carolina shore. The water is warm but refreshing, and there are clouds. A gentle land breeze turned the waves to rollers and the water surface calm and clear. It rained last night and there was thunder and lightening. Now, I sit at the computer at the Pawley's Library and am about to go to sleep it is so serene. Been reading tales of the terrible great Alexander Magnus and Anals of a former World, John McPhee's story of the Earth and the US in particular. Glorius geology lessons. Roadcuts will never be the same again.

Marion's beach place, called Sandycott is full of children, her's and Tony's grands. And some others of Alice Carol and Price. A good time. Crabbing parties, cooking up great dinners. Relaxing on the beach. Some go serfing, other's ride the waves. And read read read....

Last night we had stir-fry pork and rice. Left-overs. In a make-shift wok, heat corn-oil and sautee onions and garlic, add chopped bell peppers, sliced carrots, chopped ginger root. Just before browning occurs, stir in a goodly amouth of chopped roast pork, mixing well. Season with plenty of soy sauce, some terriaki etc... add a can of chicken stock. Break three eggs in the mixture, keep temp high, but stir to prevent burning. Bean sprouts would be good in this, and a hot pepper or two if everybody likes it hot. Then add lots of rice. Serve warm, or let everybody dig out of the pot at will. Our Louisiana friends called it Jumbalaya. And maybe it was, but it got eaten!!!!!

Where I was when the Balloon went up

2006-07-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Big Bang

I read this today:

"On this day in History:
First atomic bomb exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico

1945: The Manhattan Project, a joint effort by scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico, culminated in the explosion of the first atomic bomb at 5:30 AM on this day at a site on the Alamogordo air base, 193 km (120 miles) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bomb generated an explosive power equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT, and the surrounding desert surface fused to glass for a radius of 730 metres (800 yards). The following month, two other atomic bombs produced by the project, the first using uranium-235 and the second using plutonium, were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan."

Then it was this day in 1945, when I was 9, that Daddy, home early from work, took me aside and said something very important had happend. Namely, that the government had exploded the biggest bomb ever out west in New Mexico. It had melted the tower it was exploded from, and created this huge ball of fire and a cloud that could be seen in other states. Daddy did not often talk seriously about this sort of thing. I think he was trying to soften or prepare the news I would be hearing in a few days about, first, the destruction of a whole city, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Japan a day later! He was telling me the world had changed again forever....

The effects on those like me, (I was 5) in December 1941, when the Japanese destroyed Pearl Harbor (on Daddy's birthday). I only understood later. And certainly later when news of the Austwitz-style concentration camps in which Jews were gassed by the thousands, the news-reels of the blitz of London, people sleeping in Subways, all men of a certain age gone to fight, my uncles and a cousin brought it all home. Dad was given a 4F, because of a heart condition, and his age, 36. But on the home front he was an air-raid warden, with a flashlight covered with blue celophane. When we had an air-raid warning, and the terrifying wild-cat whistle on the Lock Hosery Mill sounded off, all terror broke loose and lights were doused. Dad and some other men his age were on the streets shutting off the give-a-way powerMaking sure the enemy could not see us. We did not know if it was practice or real!!

By that summer of 45, though, Germany had already surrendered, Hitler had committed suiside, troops in that theater were sent to the South Pacific for what looked like an invasion of Japan. Then the bomb. And the surrender of Japan.

The days of all the flag waving, fund drives like saving bonds and saving stamps sold at school, Kate Smith singing "God Bless America", Irvin Berlin's anthem many thought should become the National amthem... every night somewhere on the radio, were coming to an end. There was not a TV anywhere I knew of for four more years. We got it all on the radio, anyway. Such things like rationing were ended. We all hated rationing, since everything from Coffee to shoes required rationing stamps. Gas was available depending on your job sensitivity and importance!

Boy Scouts had paper drives. There were copper drives. Once, the Cabarrus Theater, down town, had a special showing of Bambi, with the price of addmission, something copper scrapped from a junk pile. Nobody could find anything like that around our house, so they gave me copper pennies. It cost nine of them to get in anyway, if you were under 12 then. My, how times have changed!!!!
Bambi made me cry. I had not seen it before.

We saved bacon fat in Crisco cans, and turned it in at certain food stores, for the war effort. We saw movies like "20 Seconds over Tokyo" and "Guadacanal Diary", and cried for the dying and the dead on the battlefields. We had days of prayer for the troops. Every house that had a son or father serving overseas had a special sticker for the front window. The pledge of alliagence to the flag did not contain the words "under God" but we prayed and read the bible at school anyway. Around our house, it was God and Franklin D. Roosevelt that will see us through. (It was only later that I found out that Dad was not a Democrat, and disliked FDR! But he was a strong beliver in God.)

War. What is it good for????

More WW2 memories.

exhileration and depression

2006-07-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Star Sizes

Saturday Morning. After being up pretty late, I wake at 7. Or was it 6:30. checking e-mail, Ronnie still up... Brittni had sent me this sentimental message at some time around 2:00AM. Like her dad, she loves to stay up late.

The birds are drinking from the bird bath, but the water there is hot and not refreshing, I guess. Chick-a-dee dee dee.

I call Alice and plan to come over to pick up the clothes I washed Wednesday and left for her to dry. There were some other things. I call the Huggins. Marian sounds chipper for 8:00 AM EST, and tell her the latest that we will get to join them at the beach mid week. Downloads are so easy with broadband... amazing.

I like to cook over there. She has this nice kitchen and stove. And the random items in the big refridg are a challenge. There were some mushrooms going bad fast, some sliced ham, some left-over tomato/pepper sause in two containers. Plus, a garden full of tomatoes and peppers and fresh herbs just getting ripe.

I put them together like this.

half cup chopped red onion
5 or 6 large mushrooms, coursely chopped
a variety of peppers, chopped
chopped ham....

sautee slowly in olive oil

add chopped fresh parseley and basil
when the onions are soft, add 2 cups of chopped tomatoes and some juice will form, but add a little water and a spoon of chicken base.

I wanted to add a half cup of white wine, but there was none, but Alice offered some good cognac, French, Coivoisier (sp?) A little dab will do you!
Then poached the three eggs. Two of them broke, damnit. But when done, put them on toasted red corn tortillas. Goodness, how delicious. Instant coffee made with milk and a bit of sweetened condensed milk... Oh. And cut up melon and mango....

Back home with some chores to do here, and trying to set up e-mail from my new server's address. Found an opera to listen to on Radioio http://www.radioio.com Porgy and Bess came belting out. The complete opera! It was wonderful. Saturday and the opera once more. Ricardo Mutti conduction and singers of exceptional beauty. I love that one more each time I hear it. I think Gershwin turned in the Great American Opera, so satisfying and complete, rich in melody and rhythm, and a deeply felt story of realism and hope.

7/4/2006

2006-07-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

HAPPY FORTH OF JULY, Y'ALL

Main Street, Crawford, TX? 2005

A PERSISTANT QUESTION: Why is the word "free"? (as in "land of the free" in the National Anthem)? set to a note so high few can reach it????

WE ARE A NATION, DESIGNED IN PERFECTION, AND ARE STILL TRYING TO MAKE IT LIVE UP TO ITS PROMISE. (Someone once said: "we were conceived perfect, and we keep on trying to improve...")

Some have to leave our land to find it's promises realized:

A US expatriot writes in Salon::

10 Great Reasons to Live in Belgium

1. You can get as sick as you want, and even die without worrying about how you're going to pay for it.

2. You can have a same sex marriage, and it won't be revoked

3. You can have an abortion, and no one will harass you

4. Chances are, King Albert is probably not listening in on your phone calls

5. You can drink a beer in the park, on the bus, or walking down the street and not get arrested

6. You can get a university education without paying anything more than the cost of books

7. The streets are too narrow for cumbersome SUV's

8. If you have a baby, it doesn't cost you anything, and a private nurse will come to your house once a day for a week to teach you how to care for your enfant (for free!)

9. It is legal to possess marijuana for your own consumption

10. The national legal minimum number of vacation days per year is 20 days, for everyone, whether you are a lawyer or work at McDonald's

These 10 things contribute greatly to my pursuit of happiness. To me, these things represent liberty and independance. Although many of these don't pertain to me, I like the idea of living in a place that accepts that just because it may not be right for one person, doesn't make it wrong for another.

-- US Expat

Meryl

2006-07-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

New Streep flic

Seeing "Prarie Home Companion" this week reminded me of the seeing "The Deer Hunter", Cimino's 70's anti-war classic. the first time I saw Meryl. When Streep appears at the wedding celebration, the camera is drawn to her radient image image, and in many ways has stayed there in my mind ever since. I think it is her nose. An unmodified, anti Holywood glamor nose. A real nose that gives her a real face!!! Her presense in a film is an excuse to go see it. The camera seeks her. The camera loves her. Sophie's Choice, Out of Africa, French Lieutenant's Woman, Postcards From the Edge, even those I did not like, I could admire with awe the presence, the subtile beauty, the nuance of body and voice in every frame, every tic, every jesture of this remarkable actress. I have this new one to look forward to: The Devil Wears Prada. She is so good being good (Silkwood) and bad (Manchurian Candidate) I know I will love it. I am her fan for life.

Of course, Deer Hunter was Cimino at his best outweighing his worst. John Cazale and Chris Walken propping up the great champ De Nero... They do not make movies like that any more.... and maybe we do not need them. But we do have Good Night and Good Luck and Angels in America....

There!! I have broken my silence on this BLOG. Maybe when I get the Nikon to working again......
I

CATCH-UP

2006-06-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

The pretty Texas Dandelion

Oh WOW! Where to begin. It has been a long time since I blogged. Going into withdrawals. Well, the wild flowers are coming on strong as usual this time of year. It seems there is a bumper crop of the annual splendor. Above is one of many many Texas dandelions that have come up to grace the roadsides this spring. These pale yellow lovelies are making a big display this year. This one is in the same "Asteraceae" family as the common dandelion, "Taraxacum officinale", mentioned in an earlier blog, but this is named "Pyrrhopappus multicaulis". Latin lingua.

Bluebells are blooming here and there. Along this creek near Ronnie and Peanut's house, Brittni and Aimee and I like to hike, and enjoy the geology, the flora, the fauna, we found some Bluebells.! Eustoma grandiflorum, indeed!!! I have this Linnaeus thing, wanting to know the names of all the flowers....... I like to know the name of minerals and rock formations, and chemicals: The periodic table and the names of the stars! The names of classical music compositions and their composers. The names of artists that have made their place in the world of art and architecture!... A life-long project.

I went in.

This day, Aimee was sick and could not go, but complained and shed tears. B. was in charge of the Nikon, and when we got to the deep part with all the overhanging rocks, the lens cap slipped from her hands and went in the water. A good excuse on this hot afternoon for plunge into the pool and retrieve this important item. I lingered, floating and splashing. Water is made of one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen. A mystery to me. Two gases. Hydrogen volatile as can be, and explosive, and oxygen, the supporter of combustion. Why, then, is water wet and cannot burn???? Our general science teacher in the ninth grade, Mary Alice Fisher, posed the same question. She said we would learn why, but some smart ass answered, that it itself was a product of combustion. I did not quite believer this, but water is indespensible to life as we know it...... Well, the creek has a lot of algae and stuff. Not very clean. But clean enough for a swim on a hot day.

B. Smiling at the old man in the water!!!!

Memories and breakfast on the rock

2006-05-08T07:21:00.001-07:00

Kathleen and Oma
Kathleen and Oma in front of his van in 2003. Kathleen died of cancer in December 2005, much grieved and missed by those whose life she touched. There will be more about this gentle, saintly creature....

Memories and breakfast on the rock

2006-05-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

Kathleen and Oma in front of his van in 2003. Kathleen died of cancer in December 2005, much grieved and missed by those whose life she touched. There will be some more about this gentle, saintly creature....

but living in the now:

Breakfast on the rock, Monday May 8th 2006:

whole-wheat slices, toasted with monterey jack peppered, and butter

Smoked sausage (made with chicken, pork and beef) Rath Black Hawk

1/2 yellow onion, cut in large cubes

3 sprigs of fresh oregano, leaves chopped fine

dried red pepper (ancho and serano) chopped fine

Brown the last four items in a skillet, stirring and shaking pan on high heat.
Add one cup water and some chicken soup base. Poach 2 eggs in the liquid.

Serve egg and sausage and onions over the toast. Quite tasty

Best Banana pancakes yet

2006-05-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

Banana Pancakes:

Ok. Here is the best so far.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup raisin bran
1 tblspoon baking powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 mounted tblsp sour cream
2 ozs melted butter
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups milk or water (milk is richer, water is lighter) (more for thinner batter)
crushed pecans (optional)
one banana mashed

mix all together, let stand a while and fry desired size in skillet with a little butter or shortening.

sugar syrup: 2 cups brown sugar, 1 1/2 cups water. Boil until thick. Will make a thread when dropped from spoon.

KEEP IT FREE, DAMMIT

2006-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

tell it to Congress

Message from moveon-help@list.moveon.org

"Don't Let Congress Ruin the Internet:

Right now Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the First Amendment of the Internet -- a principle called "network neutrality" that preserves the free and open Internet. Congress needs to hear from you today or they will hand over control of what you do online to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from these companies. They're being wooed by people like AT&T's CEO, who says "the Internet can't be free." Sign this petition to tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom now. When you fill out the information and push submit, we will automatically send it to your Members of Congress."

Keep it free free free....... libre frei liberte

Opera violations

2006-04-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

nothing to do with blog text: sixtos refrigerator art

April 18th: I wrote WRR about the abysmal commercials that disrupt the live feed from New York of the Metropolitan Opera Saturdays during the winter and spring. They drive me crazy. Opera is sacred to my soul. Texaco sponsored this thing for so long, dated back to before I was born even. Mama always said I got my love of music from her: She listened to the opera broadcasts while I was inside her!!!! But I just had to write WRR and let them know they were allowing a scrolled to occur!

April 18th: I wrote WRR about the abysmal commercials that disrupt the live feed from New York of the Metropolitan Opera Saturdas during the winter and spring.

Sirs:

I know you have heard this before, but the commercial messages that interrupt the Met Broadcast each Saturday this year are an abomination. Not only does it break the mood of the broadcast, it covers up valuable information that us opera lovers find indispensable. For many this is the most sacred time of all radio that we have. It is a deep annoyance at least, and a most, a slap in the jaw!!!!

I am going to pass this message to all those that advertise, even the cultural societies, and the Campbell Art Gallery, to name one I know and love, even, people that ought to know better. They and WRR ought to be ashamed of their insensitivity.

Some of us are too poor to ever get to see a Met performance live again (or ever),[sob sob poor me] and this outlet has been a life-long habit for me and many other old and new opera buffs. These wonderful broadcasts should not be ruined with the dead beat commercial distractions. I will never buy another drop of Texaco again, for abandoning us, and not support the companies that demand their commercials to be played while valuable opera programing is in progress. Sometimes even the music is covered over!!!

Intolerable, it is, and insulting.

Faithful listener, anyway

Preston Faggart
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Isaacs reply:

Mr. Faggart,

Since Texaco dropped their long-term exclusive sponsorship of the Met, it’s been up to those stations who wish to carry the broadcasts to find sponsors.

In perspective, an average four-hour Met broadcast includes about five commercials. That same four-hour time frame during mid-day Saturday, with no Met broadcast, would include up to 40 commercials—quite a difference!

As we look ahead to next season’s broadcasts, we will certainly evaluate all financial options available to us to fund such broadcasts and keep any commercial interruptions to a minimum.

Gary Isaacs

Gary M. Isaacs
Sales Manager
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My response:

Thanks Mr. Isaacs, appreciate your reply, and I do understand the problem. Last week the broadcast of "Marriage of Figaro" was much better. Fewer commercials. Better placed! Considering the nature of the live feed from New York and all..... But the intermission features are important to us also. The Met does a complete package. We were just spoiled by the Texico sponsorship all those years. They understood this. I wish those wind-fall profits from the high gas prices were put into opera sponsorship.

Like a lot of your listeners I am a supporter of public radio, and their broadcasts at KERA are to me the golden standard, knowing you cannot do that. Maybe some of us opera lovers could start a fund to buy commercial time and have anti-commercials... let the streaming feed flow!!!! That would take a real campaign, of course.

Over all, WRR is still the best commercial station on the air for many of us and long may it live and thrive!!!

Preston

PS. I wish the Saturday afternoon operas could continue all year. Guest hosts could present recordings of their favorite classics would be nice....

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Gary’s reply:

Mr. Faggart,

Believe me….we are VERY open to the concept of a non-commercial broadcast of the Met for this next season---if we can find a company(s) to help underwrite the program.

If you know of any firms which love the cultural arts as much as we all do, please advise me and you and I can begin to work out this concept. Thanks for your loyalty to WRR and thanks for being open to a new idea!

Gary

events

2006-04-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

I heard the plaintive cry of what I thought to be a Mourning Dove, but guess what? it was a roadrunner perched atop my house, crying his heart out. Boy did he fool me. Hope this will get him a mate. Do male birds get blue balls?
ROADIE

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Lord, what has happened? Went to the the Main Street Art Festivities with Debbie and Brandon. What could I have been thinking!! But it turned out OK. Here is D.'s report:

Greetings!!!!! Hope all is well. We are all ok. Nothing much really going on. Just thought that I'd give you an update on how not smoking is going. Day 12 and counting. I want one so bad that my teeth hurt, but it would taste awful like it did two weeks ago. And I'd feel as though I'd licked an ashtray. It is nice not having to worry about when I can smoke and stuff. I'm much more patient now. And I'm not out in the heat and I think that my house is cooler since I'm not always opening the door to go out and puff. And I can breathe. Many reasons. But I still want one. Whine, whine.

Preston took his friend and I to the Main Street Arts Festival today and we had a blast. We went in my car with Preston driving because he knows directions and I don't. He's a better driver. It was free to go and there were wall to wall people. We saw some neat art, although it seemed as if the mood of most of it was dark and foreboding. Of course it was all priced way out of my league so I wasn't looking to buy. I did get a T-shirt and two iced coffee drinks from the Starbucks stand. We heard some good music. One group had an electric harp and they were quite interesting. I wouldn't mind having one of their CD's.

Then I had a special treat. We came back Camp Bowie in search of food. I didn't want to eat at the festival because it was just too expensive. Preston got us to Zeke's where I had a famous fish burger and mushrooms. I haven't been there in 26 years. And it's the first time that I've ever been there straight. Amazing to me. And the kitchen people weren't stoned either like I remembered. They've remodeled too. The restroom is still the pits though. So it was a very good day and I think that I've had my daily workout. And no one tried to rip off my purse either. Granny warned me and warned me. She's quite paranoid about things like that.

It was pretty warm again today, upper 80's. It's supposed to be 90 tomorrow and then Tues there is a chance of rain and cooler temps. I forgot to stop by Target today and get a coffee pot. I guess I'll go by Walmart tomorrow and get one. I wanted to see if T had anything different. The water here is so bad that it just kills coffee pots. I clean and clean with vinegar, but after a while they just bite the dust. And my WW diet has just gone out the window. I'm working out. I spend nearly an hour at the gym doing all kinds of different things. I'll just have to eventually face the fact that I'm old and will never have a hard bod again. Reality sucks.

I guess this is all that's going on. Not really much of anything. Now I want to go to Mayfest, but Preston won't take me. He will take me to the flower show in Richardson whenever that is. I think in May. I got tired today walking and we didn't see every booth that they had. We saw most of it though. And I only saw one person smoking. Everyone has quit it seems. Nasty habit. I've turned into a radical ex-smoker. A man came in the meeting this morning with a cig and I banished him to the porch. Well, I gotta go rest my brain. Too much stimuli today. Have a great day!!!!!!!!!!!! Hugs

High Holy Day of EASTER 2006

2006-04-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

This image is from Friday, Good Friday. Now is Sunday, the day of resurrection. The spring flowers are a bit spotty this year. We had a drenching rain three weeks ago now, and nothing to speak of since! The Blue Bonnets are noticeably missing. Only in ditches, so far, mostly where a little more water has collected. Some flowers came out more abundantly, like a lot of Foxgloves over on Pathfinder Rd. Also there seems to be more Engleman Daisies than ever, and Paralena. The Paintbrushes are fading already and not many. Few and far between. Thelsperma and Storkbill are not abundant as usual.

Ah, so pure
But something very interesting happened at Zack's. A banana plant came through with a bloom stalk before a leaf appeared. You can see how the pistils are are turning into bananas, a whole ring at a time. When the petals of one bloom die, another forms inside with another ring of pistils and so on to eventually form the big bunch.....
Banana Love

I know of no other fruit that forms this way. I have only seen the blooms high up on plants in the Ft Worth conservatory. Or fully formed bunches still on the trees in Mexico. This is a rare treat.

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Yesterday, went to Hico with Alice after our walk. She needed to buy a pie at the Koffee Kup Kafe. Voted best in Texas by some mag or other. We did this once before back some 5 or 6 years. Decided to eat lunch there since it was after eleven AM. This happened before. A mistake like last time: her BLT was less than great, and service was slow. Under the old faded photo of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. My cheese burger was ok, saved by piles of lettuce and tomato! The place was full of bikers out for the good weather. These were the yuppie bikers, not the bandana bart gang crowd. No noticable colors or costumes. Maybe the KKK still meets there, and keeps the town ethnically pure, such is the bad rep this place has. But there were two Hispanic waitresses, never-the-less. The Wiseman House Chocolate works was open for business. We declined. I sold some pictures there once.

An old log cabin close to the Wiseman House was open and we walked through. Probably someone had in mind making it a visitor attraction, but all inside was some rustic chairs and a dirty table which could be intended for an information desk....We took Levi and went shopping, past the ugliest sculpture in Texas, of Billy the Kid in flight. He was from that town, and a local hero, if he can be called that.....

Alice bought a small school desk, one of those with the big fan writing area from long ago..... Going back home through the prairies and hills... Chalk Mountain, Flat Rocks, river crossing....

Confusion

2006-04-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

money... da da da... I guess it all started Thursday night at Aimee and Brittni's birthday bash at the skating rink. It was Aimee's birthday, but Brittni's in July, and Odel ("Peanut"), their mom, let them both celebrate together to avoid the inevitable ego crises. Those girls might be joined at the hip, or at least indenticals, they are so close to each other!!!! And the party worked out fine. Aimee was set up with cake and snacks at one end of the party room and Brittni at the other. A lot of kids showed, friends of both 9 year old Aimee and 10, going on 21, Brittni, for the occasion. Skating madly on the big rink floor with music and fun songs, and finally: limbo!!!! I just took pictures. Did not want to bust my old ass like that. Never been much of a skater, sadly.

Cutting cake and opening presents finally. Much money was raked in!!! It just kept falling out of cards!! They each made upward of 50 or 60 bucks.... A good time was had by all, as the paper said.

Brittni, who has her own cell phone, called Friday night to ask me to take her to Volleyball, games are on Saturday Morning. And the answer to a child is always "yes". Ronnie had to work, Peanut had to work. What is the surrogate grandpaw to do? So I picked her up and then Aimee, who was spending the night with a friend, all of a sudden, and had to be taken some clean clothes. Of course, they were not the ones she wanted, so there were tears. And a tantrum, for emphasis. But somehow they calmed down enough to continue. The Gym. Another crisis: A. wanted to carry a toy into the game, B. put a stop to it. A. cried and pouted. Got them calm and we went in. B. was not to play because of a hand injury, someone had dislocated her thumb a bit and she had bruises to prove! But the game was fun, good crowd, enthusiastic cheering, with these half-pint girls getting the ball over the regulation high net! I was impressed, but the Amazing Aces, her team, lost by a little.

We went to McDonalds. It was 10:20AM. Not quite in time for the lunch meal to roll down, so B. and I got biscuit big somethings but A. only wanted chicken nuggets. Not yet ready. But I read the riot act: no more tears or tantrums or we go home, and then it was 10:30 and A. got her nuggets!!!! They played on the slides.

Their birthday money still with them and they want to go to the Square and "shop". Oh Lord, I thought. Waste of money on toys they do not need. First, they bought a big chocolate muffin at the Coffee Grinder. I needed caffeine at that time too. Bad! We went to Pamala's. Free fudge. Yum. On down to the a couple more places, then the Books on the Square. There, Aimee found a cute golden little football with a zipper. Unzip to find a cute little mouse. Actually a Christmas tree ornament. Cute. It cost 4 bucks, but she bought it, and then, to my surprise presented it to her sister! Pure love! Joined at the hip Siamese!!! So on around the square, B. found a surprise at another shop for A. Cats Meow was the last place visited, then back through the Grinder to refill my cup, to the parking lot. By that time, it was 3:00, time for Peanut to be home. They were still excited, I was pooped.

And then scheduled to drive to Fort Worth for movie and hearing Matt at a Coffee house. Brandon went along, with his Pizza delivery money, and we picked up Sixto and headed to the dollar movie. Nothing started at that time, and Brandon wanted us to go to his Grandma's, but she could not be reached. To the My-Lan. Favorite wonderful cheap Viet-Nam food was what we wanted next. But the place was packed and the kitchen slow, and the waitress got our order mixed up, with Sixto's 105, Chicken with Lemon grass on rice, came out first after a long wait, and the wrong stir-fry bowl for me, sent to the right table by the frustrated head waitress... and finally, it seems they lost our ticket, the kitchen in chaos, we got the spring rolls and my number 32, made with egg rolls instead of pork, which I shared with Brandon.... Poor Brandon had to pay as Sixto just got his truck fixed from a wreck, to the tune of 600 bucks!!!! Went to hang at Borders Books for a while, killing time before Matt performed. After we could not find the coffee house, Berry street was torn up and I had not written the address or anything like the name of the place down, we compromised again by ice cream at Brahms, a block from Six's place. This after Brandon had called his Mom on my phone to tell her that he was getting sick. Sick. Yeah. Hypochondria, is the name of the disease!!! I got mad at that, read him the RA too late, about how dumb it was to worry his mon, when all he needed was a coke and some desert. Well it fixed him up, said good night to my beaner friend, and headed back to Granbury. I went home, fed the dogs, slept like a log.

Farewell and welcome!

2006-04-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Tom Delay!!!! @#%@&*!! Bon chance. Bye Bye to pie in the sky.... Oh frabjous day, callou! callay! The fruminus bandersnatch is gone (from the halls of congress, at least!!) Guess he needs that huge campaign war chest to fight Ronnie Earl!!!!

Rare sighting of the beautiful Celestial. Of all places, in Zack's drive!!! These beautiful little lilly iris things are only in bloom a few hours. I spotted one near his parking spot the other day, and did not have my camera, or was too tired to bother that day. Went out looking for it the next day, and it was gone. Then at quitting time, I discovered a bunch of them, some growing right up through gravel! Charateristics: lavender blue, out of a center circle of white, with yellow/orange tri-partite stamen over the pistil. about 2 inches across, 6 petals, overlapped in the above example. Long skinny leaves..... nimastylis geminiflora.... for those of you who speak Latin.

Splendor in the Grass

2006-04-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, my heart leaps up too, William.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o're vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodil's;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

Alice came over early, brought a bag of food, odds and ends, and we walked the hills of Cliffs of the Brazos. About three miles, a loop with Pathfinder Rd. With her Dashhound Levi, and my Sally and Iago. Trying to keep the bods strong and the useless fat down. I love to see the flowers pop up so regularly after rains in March, April adds showers (sometimes!) and in regular procession, the spring beauties open up to the sun and the bees and butterflies. This area is barely developed. We make fun of most of the houses, so inappropriate for these rural, wild settings. Sales are slow, it seems. And the most beautiful site will soon be crowned by a clumsy, ugly mansion. One of the few "Cliffs", actually, the lot has the most spectacular view. But the land is supported by some of the weakest, most fragile rock, which keeps sliding down the cliff onto the road below. Does not bode well.

I took some flower pictures, put them together hastily, in Mac Works, came up with the above. Caught as it were, in a matrix of wild mustard, are evening primrose, fringed piccune, on top, and fresh, green oak gauls, and Englemann Daisies, on bottom. There were the beginnings of paintbrush too, which I must go back for, as my picture did not pan out very well. We were sore from the second day of walking after a winter break.

I looked in the bag she brought, and there was sausage, mushrooms, red bell pepper, an avocado yet. Stir fried these up with garlic, herbs from the garden like oregano, garlic chives and rosemary. I even found a small onion. It looked pretty good. I took it out, put in a couple spicy red corn tortillas, Alice gets from somewhere like San Antonio, then poached a couple eggs my chickens laid. Cut the avocado into chunks, seasoned with Louisiana style hot sauce, et voila: breakfast, washed down by some Mexican roasted coffee. Who could ask for anything more????? God is great!

Wordsworth is the ultimate nature poet. "Intimations of Immortality" is one of the greatest poems to live close to. It has something for your intire life. Now that I enter dotage I revel in such:

"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight.
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
we will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
which having been must ever be;
in the soothing thoughts that spring
out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
in years that bring the philosophic mind...."

current notes

2006-03-31T07:22:00.000-08:00

Matt at MacHenry's

Matt, back from NYC, has wasted not time getting together with old buddies, and stiking out with new songs. Weatherford's persistant troubadour came out swinging at MacHenry's West Camp Bowie club last night. With Jason and Jeff backing him, it was a brave effort, to mostly family and a few friends. I was so tired I almost did not go, but am glad I did. These worthwhile musicians need support. Ft Worth is a far cry from New York, but it has its scenes and venues, and has always been a launching pad for artists of all stripes. We all know that Matt will make it. To where ever he wants to go. He has made it already in so many minds.

Jeff and Jason

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Found this on a soldiers' blog. More about Michael Valentine Smith, the Stranger in a
Strange Land,I mentioned introducing Michael J. for his 4 year tag the other night.

M D Fay,s blog

Stranger in a Strange Land

Back in the 60s there was an interesting word that was used regularly, but at the end of the day failed to make it into the progressive lexicon of subsequent decades. The word was grok, as in "to grok something", or "I grok what you're saying". Grok was a word coined by the author Robert Heinlein for his book Stranger in a Strange Land. The main character of this seminal bit of science fiction, Michael Smith, is an earthling who's returned to Earth after having been raised by Martians following the death of his human parents, the first visitors to Mars-think of him as Tarzan, but this time raised by ethereal beings of the most advanced intelligence rather than apes. He returns to Earth with a grab bag of highly evolved skills. For instance, by simply kissing a woman he triggers orgasmic paroxysms that would make Don Juan seem no more skilled than a 14 year old boy with a mouth full of braces on a first date. His greatest apptitude lies in his ability to "grok". A character in the book describes it thusly, "'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man." Smith goes as far as to say that even were he falling to a horrible death from a skyscraper he would continue to grok the whole experience up to and including the instant of body shattering corporeal destruction.

I sent this to Fey:

America is a strange land now. I have been thinking about Stranger lately. "Water brother" came to mind, as a friend comes to my place for water, especially good stuff from an ancient acquifier. (sp?) (Snow melt from the last Ice Age we are told.) Mentioned the book it at a meeting the other night, and nobody seemed to have read the book except my friend that gets the water....

Glad I found your blog. Will enjoy reading. Want to check out your art work. If it is as good as your prose, should be very fine. I really like what I have read. Glad you are back with us here. Hate that war with all my guts.... But all wars of course changes lives of the fighters and makes soldiers either better or crazier or.... Talking about it now on public radio Morning Edition. Damn.... I missed Viet Nam by a year or two, protested that madness from this side, but realize that I missed a chance at the transforming experience unique to the experience of war and fighting. Find myself eating a lot of Viet Nam meals at a near by restaurant, playing with the idea of visiting or living there.

My-Lan is the favorite to date. over 106 entrees on the menu. Spring Rolls lile no other. Pho Pho Pho. Six and I eat there all the time!

The show

2006-03-27T01:39:00.000-08:00

I have avoided this exhibit, the "Impressionist Gaugin" at the Kimbell. Like what I had seen of these works, practically none, I found out, had left me cold. But as so often, I am wrong in these superficial estimates.

It was a long apprenticeship, perhaps. Paul Gauguin, born in France, brought up in Peru, merchant marine at 17, married into a Danish business family, became a sunday painter at first, making a killing during the week as a stock broker. He collected the art that inspired him, getting a sizable collection that paid off later, supporting his own art career from re-sales. Left Denmark, and took up with the artists in Paris. He used dark, rich colors naturally, and began to organize his canvases along the lines of Camille Carot, and the Barbezon school, painting out doors, most likely in the company of other artists. His mentor for the first 12 or so years of his painting career became old Camille Pissarro, who was daddy to other artists, and stood in high esteem among a group that included Degas, Cezanne, Monet. He participated, we learn, in five of the eight Salon des Refuses exhibition, that gave Paris and the art world surveys of what the impressionists were up to, in a stiff art world officially dominated by the Acadamy of Fine Arts, who considered those Bohemians undisciplined upstarts. The Salon shows created much controversy and ridicule among the Bourgeoisie, and Gauguin attracted much attention when he showed, in 1881, a very ordinary, rather lumpy nude woman sowing, close-up and personal, but a far cry from the slick, silken goddesses of the Academic manner dating back to Bouchee and Ingres! And an advancement, it turns out, that Degas learned a lesson or two from, receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of one independent critic, Huysman, who practically wrote a doctoral dissertation on the piece... He first showed his sculpture talent in two beautiful marble busts, of his wife and one of his young sons. He did these, they say, while living in a rented apartment owned by a sculptor whose studio was near by. In fact, his original and remarkable sculpture surfaced several times during his long and busy career. The show is revealing, giving such a big display of this artist's under-appreciated beginnings, the blaze of his later work seems to have blinded us to the richness and variety of the many works done in this early period. But after initial critical , but not financial success, he went back to a more lack-luster business career in Copenhagen for a few years, but could not escape his passion for making art. Back in Paris, his marriage in shambles, he could not seem to pick up where he left off, and this prompted a move first to Brittany where a group of painters were transforming art in a new way, emerging was the movement that was later anointed the name Nabis, the "symbolists"! Somewhere in here was a disastrous collision with Vincent Van Gogh, the other great figure, brought about an emotional, intense elevation of the impressionist break-throughs.

Then on to the Caribbean isle of Martinique and finally to Tahiti, where the techniques he acquired transformed into the tropical, mystic paintings his reputation rests on today. The rest is history, you might say, painting away glorious elevated canvases of tropical brilliance while dying of syphilis among the natives, much to the horror of the Christian missionaries who tried to impose Western morality on these sinful naturals.

His philosophic method: "Dream freely and seek the simplest form." and finally he could say: "I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional. Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature. After the disease of civilization, life in this new world is a return to health."

This was the last day of the show, and I am glad I made it in time, because I do not believe that this large body of unknown work will be put together again in my lifetime.

Surprised by Joy

2006-03-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

Love this picture. As good as any done in Tahiti or anywhere.

I have avoided this exhibit, the "Impressionist Gaugin" at the Kimbell. Like what I had seen of these works, practically none, I found out, had left me cold. But as so often, I am wrong in these superficial estimates. I am going to try to compose an essay of my impressions of the impressionist works of the impressionist. Next post. Now must run to get ready to go hear La Boheme. Ah. Culture overloads.... favorite opera, if I have to choose one... so later later later

Thats a dandy line!

2006-03-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Dandelion. The most pervasive of American weeds. One wild flower that blooms almost the year round. Can be found blooming on a warm winter day here in North Texas. We have had a lot warm winter days these past few, but, of course, still our boys in government now say that there is not enough evidence, etc etc. and there is no positive global warming to worry about.... They probably believe what our fundamental Ayatollahs tell them about the end of the world coming soon, and this heat is only the fires of hell down below heating up for sinners after the last judgement. And if you do not want to go there, you know whose ass to kiss. Now, BOY.

Some that want lawns with nothing but their favorite grass to carpet them, consider dandelions a pest. Others, like me, who love nature raw or nearly so, do not mind their cheery distinctive bloom popping up anywhere they want to, or can. The fact is, they like disturbed ground. Ground that has been disturbed for some other use makes a good place for the opportunists that these plants are to come to life. The familiar golden disk of a flower composed of many skinny petals become those balls of seed, tiny white parachutes that wind and breath will disperse. Make a wish, we used to say, and blow. The number of seed left is the number of days it will take for the wish to come true.

Euell Gibbons
, the champion of natural wild foods, wrote the Bible: Stalking the Wild Asparagus, published in 1962. My first edition copy is a bit ear marked, but has sent me out on many searches, and experimented with his recipes over the years. He finds the roots of young plants good to eat peeled and boiled, likes them better than parsnips or salsify, (???). The white crown above the root is might fine boiled, he reports. He even dries the roots and roasts them slowly in the oven, and grinds them for a coffee-like drink. I have not tried this, honestly, but Euell likes it with or without sugar and cream. The harvest should be made before the plant blooms. The green young leaves need blanching for 5 minutes boiling time, then you can treat them with salad dressing. Tasty and nourishing.

But Dandelion Wine is of major interest to those that love the hard stuff. My Uncle Maury would get a big bottle of the home made when he visited his long time girl friend in Washington DC every year. She was very sophisticated and hip for the 30's and earlier. Uncle Maury was a life long bachelor, as was Boo. Boo, my aunt, Maury's sister, who kept house, would make it into a gelatin desert, deep golden brown, and with a taste I never warmed up to. She was the best cook I ever encountered. I spent lots of time at their house next door to ours. Her kitchen was my play pen on long Concord afternoons.

Here is Euell's formula for Dandelion Wine:

1 gallon of dandelion flowers picked on a dry day
put in a two gallon crock and pour over:
2 gallons of boiling water

Cover and let steep for 3 days.

Strain through jelly cloth, squeezing out all the juice. In a kettle with the liquid, add
1 small ginger root, pared and peeled,
3 oranges, peels and juice and 1 lemon. add:
3 pounds of sugar

Boil for 20 minutes, then return the brew to the crock.
When barely lukewarm, float a piece of rye bread spread with 1/2 cake of yeast on top. Cover with cloth and keep in a warm room for six days.
Now this is important: strain and pour this into a gallon jug, corking it loosely with a wad of cotton. Keep in a dark place for 3 weeks, then carefully decant into a bottle and cap tightly.

"Don't touch until Christmas."

Good luck.

Seven-thirty Tuesday Morning

2006-03-21T05:17:00.000-08:00

OK. Spring has officially arrived! It is cold today. Cool. Warm by yankee standards. It is blizzard across the North. I was heartened by the
Salon

report of our president's Cleveland pep talk for the war. I guess a 36 percent approval rate is a call to action. He reported on some successes that were overlooked by most of the press. After all, Fox can only do so much! People that love Seinfeld re-runs sometimes do not stay for the news. So slanted I just slide right off like the high pitched roofs so popular in tract architecture these days.

But at the end of the q&a, time for lunch, Bush cleaverly asked: "Doesn't anyone work in this town????" Some wag pointed out that since the Bush term began, unimployment has risen in double digits in the Cleveland area.

The columbine in bloom was in Austin. At Lady Bird's Wildflower Center. You do not see much of that here, too few "undisturbed for a long time" areas, where they grow and bloom. Locally, Ft Worth Nature Center is a good place for endangered flowers.

Working with TJ. Yesterday we took out a faux marble bathtub, complicated with an elaborate installation that had to come down carefully, piece by piece. It weighed a ton, and old me had a hard time getting it moved. TJ is as strong as an ox, but not me. The home owner has two strapping high-schooling sons, and they will be recruited to get it out, I believe. It is back to Zack's today.

Rain

2006-03-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

This was the scene described on the previous blog everybody a bit distracted, Josh and Serge gazing out of the photo, while Kevin is enjoying his smoke. Then, while waiting on the Classic Case performance, we head to the wonderfully funky Boiling Pot., for refreshment. Kevin gets the crawdads. Did they not spell them cray-fish? at one time? I seem to remember uncovering these little lobster looking things in NC from under rocks in the brooks. They did not look like the Louisiana crustacea from the bayous of the New Orleans region. They came brilliant red and dumped on the table steaming.

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Time and Space fragments

2006-03-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

March 5th:

I cannot find the up-lode image button any more. I wanted to throw out some random thoughts about the recent hunting accident involvelving the only Vice President we have. A heart beat away from the president,gulp!,they used to say. (maybe it was Bush insurance against assissination!) When Ronnie called giving me the news that Chaney had peppered some judge or lawyer on a hunting , I was hoping it was Justice Scalia. I know that probably is not the way to spell his name. But I am spelling impared, if you want to know the truth. Mama, the school marm, would beat the spelling words into me for the Friday test. She would sound out the words very carefully,I guess, ignoring the fact that English is particularly a non phonetic language when it comes to spelling. SEP-AH-RATE...

March 16th, Austin:

IT IS THURSDAY, AND I AM IN AUSTIN. Came down yesterday mainly to hear my Tarheel friend's current band, Classic Case, perform at the SXSW mess going on. Got hold of Serge and Kevin, who has a central located business address, Strike Productions, more like a house that is arraqnged like a loft. Pictures will come later. Serge and I made our way down through busy down town, and thanks to electronic miracles in this wired-for-sound city, negociated tricky traffic with KEVIN in one ear, and Serge offering suggestions, until we see my friend waving frantically on the next corner. (Lack of traffic lets me cut across a couple of lanes to negociate....) I am directed onto a surprisingly quiet shady street with old solid stand-alone houses. A peaceful island right in things American......

Inside I meet Christian again, his partner. We try to get a cab to Beauty Bar on wild wild 6th Street, but one is not forth-coming. So K drives us across town in the Honda. After some inquiries, find Josh just unloading for the gig. We chat and catch up. I shoot a picture for his Mom and posterity. It is in the back yard behind the bar and it is easier just to look over the fence than to get signed up on the guest list. a couple of bands procede, and Kevin wants to drink and eat so we go across the street to this bar that specializes in sea food and brew...... The Boiling Pot, complete with paper table clothes rolled into place by the hostess and waiters. There was a dixie-cup with crayons for any artistic expression on the table cloths. Serge and Kevin had brew, Keving ordered crawdads, whose steaming bodies were dumped in front of him, and the waitress tied a bib on. K pronounced them undercooked, but I liked them hot, spicy and slimy.

Back at the music:

(It is beginning to rain) Pay five for parking. Even the bands cannot find such. Unloading in the jammed alley. Classic Case has come from Lafayette LA. where they gigged yesterday. How these bands do the traveling is beyond me. Youth and energy. Until they become so famous and rich.... Maybe their time has come, as Austin is packed with companies signing bands at this SXSW phenom. Such a boiling pot of country, rock, pop, punk, hip-hop, swirling dizzily along the streets and avenues, venues galor, thousands cheering, mass clamoring for music music music. Classic Case is thick layered rock, with influences of metal punk art rock... but manage to be creative and original, and have won many fans in the US and the UK. Josh's former band, Beloved, died or natural causes last fall, (the drummer got married!) and was put to rest with a big show in Winston Salem, the farewell out now on DVD, Kiss it Goodbye"

Josh comes from a musical family I have known for some 30 years. The Peele's, especially, are all natural musicans, his mom, Ginger sings like an angel, her two sisters and brother John, drummer and singer, we all thought would continue a musical life. There dad had beautiful voice too. Ginger married Michael, one of the biggest and most knowledgable fans of rock and pop you can find anywhere. Josh has a twin brother who has a band and plays a lot, but not on the hectic road. Beloved started when the boys were still in high school, so the story I got goes, while working at the local supermarket. They remained faithfull to the Christian Faith, they grew up in, and the band, though fiercely heavy sound-wise, played in Christian venues from one end of the country to the other. I heard them at the Ft Worth and Dallas "Door" clubs: no smoking, no alcohol..... all ages. But one generation back, the Ocean View United Methodist on Oak Island, NC, would get a moment of shear beauty and magic each Christmas in the late 70's, when Ginger, Joy, and sometimes Big John, would sing "Little Drummer Boy" with "cute little John" doing the tapping on the plaintive tambour. Such sweet harmony would make the Angel's jelouse!

This trip has brought me out of the doldrums, not surprisingly. More later when I can get some photo's up somewhere!!!!!

Birds of a feather

2006-03-14T05:38:00.000-08:00

Maggie Langdon once said that artists are useful friends. If you have something, anything just about, you want to get rid of, an artist will take it and do something with it, or keep it around until they can find another artist to take it. Like artists will swap, too, and pass on stuff rather than send to the land-fill. Sixto gave me a wonderful thing several years back. This carefully made armature for a sword-fish made with sturdy wire, red marble eyes, and then half covered with paper machee, (which has dissolved since, the rains of yesteryear.) A project he had tired of. I hung it first over the door, but then it came down during a repair session and remained on the ledge outside my front stoop. This spring, I noticed a nest in it's lower abdomen, and tiny tiny egg. The most likely suspect would be a Bewick's Wren. We have plenty, and they will build in the most surprising places. Like an unfinished place above my kitchen! Indoors is considered fair game, and the birds fly in and they fly out after a bit of frantic exploration. Sometimes guided by a waving broom. But this one would have to be very small as the openings in the mesh armature are hardly more than an inch wide.

Well, I am not a careful scientist, and in extracting the little egg to get a measurement, I dropped the fragile thing, broke into pieces. But. Already, a hole had been drilled in the bottom and it was just a fragile shell, 1/2 inch in length!!!! Probably ants.

I had a nest of at least three Wrens hatch in that unfinished spot in the kitchen. That was back in the days before the dogs, and I had a cat or two around. When the babies began the pfledge thing, they would sometimes fall from the nest, and I witnessed the murder of one of them, Di, the black one with the white diamond on her forehead, reached the flopping thing before I did, and killed it, as cats are wont to do. AH. Nature, red in tooth and claw.

From my window, I can watch the cardinals and chickadees, the titmouse's and sparrows taking turns at the feeder and bird bath. They share it reluctantly with the squirrels who love the pumpkin and sunflower seed in the wild bird mix I put out for them. It is fun watching the cardinals, as the red papa bird will not tolerate other birds on the feeder, except in that magic mating season. He will give his darker, more subdued amour a seed, putting it in the beak for her convenience. They fly away happy to build their nest for the year. Some years the most spectacular pair show up, the Painted Buntings with their beautiful colors. At least the male has these iridescent ruby reds, emerald greens and sapphire blues. Almost as if a tropical bird got stranded up here before the last ice age, and managed to adapt, colors and all!!! His mate is duller than the sparrows.

Sometimes Mr or Mrs Roadrunner will bob around to see what is happening. These unlikely things give you a good idea what a raptor dinasaur must have been like. Of all the grown nesting birds, the things have survived out here in spite of the fire ants. I never hear a Bob-White anymore. Chief suspect: You guessed it. (I hardly ever find scorpions anymore either. The ethnic cleansers of the "lower" orders, those fire ants from the south...)

............

Maybe, just maybe, I will be on my way to Austin tomorrow, to see friends and hear a band Josh Moore has joined. His Mom has the most beautiful voice of any singer I know, famous or un-famous. These are Tar Heels, Winston Salem Tarheels, at that. North Carolina has about as many musicians per capita as Texas!!! Just a bit quiter, more thoughtful, less showy. More Wren than Painted Bunting! But if you take the time, musicians like Doc Watson or Baby James Taylor deliver just as surely. Hurrah! the "Old North State forever" we used to sing.... sometimes called a valley of contempt twixt two great mounds of conceit. (Reference: hot-head South Carolina, and Virginia full of snooty snobs. Tenneesee, across the western mountains used to be us, so we mesh better westward.)

re-birth

2006-03-12T04:38:00.000-08:00

Here pops up bright gold Paralena and Verbena.

It is that time again. The spring flowers starting up. Recent rains here in North Texas have done their thing. "The drought of March is pierced to the roote" abated, now, the rains "bathed ev'ry vain and root in sweet liquor", well, somewhat and "Spring the wood anew.... (sing cuckoo!)" Weather reports and season changes from Chaucer and company....circa 1300 AD. The Paralena will bloom till fall, depending on the rain, and the purple verbena will show up all the way to December. One of our dependable sources of lavender blue in the grassy margins and fields here among the Cross Timbers and prairies....

Spring is a mixed blessing. We have already been under a tornado watch, and storms with hail were in the forecast. They went north and east of us, but more are in the near prospectus. Killer tornados and golfball hail ripped up Southern Illinois yesterday, they just announced. One death. Life is uncertain in the big tornado alley in the Spring. Depressions and head-aches. Sinus season.

Computer back up, all unbacked files gone, and things in cold disarray. My best instinct is to put the sucker up on e-Bay or at least ad in the local, or Craiglist it. The iMac G-5, the wonder of wonders just like the G-4 before it, is superseded by the iMac Intel Duo. I want it. BAD. But will wait. If you want my iMac G-5, I am asking 850. Recent spells, colds that don't go away, scary allergies, have affected my mental state. Coupled with the horrible state of our government, the loathing of our leaders, the terrible mess our misguided venture in Iraq, the horrors of Dafur, the scary scenarios unfolding in Iran and North Korea... No wonder it affects the states of people's minds..

Like the Spring, I am back on line and will try to post something positive every day. Working with TJ keeps me fit. At least getting rid of some couch-potato flab which has crept onto my old bod recently. Maybe I can tackle some hikes in the mountains and canyons soon. That, and a promised two month tour in Mexico next winter, makes me get up in the morning.

G is for: Gloom and Geology

2006-02-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

William "Strata" Smith. The first Geologist to identify the rocky underpinnings of England. Gloomy weather. We need rain. We got rain.... Computers. I have two that will not work. I take to the couch. Crawl into my sleeping bag. I do not want to do anything. Just contemplate. What have I done the first 70 years of my life????? A gloomy prospect. My birthday was Thursday. I entered that 7th decade... Oh gloom! Dispare. Agony on end!!!!

Space and Time

2006-02-15T04:04:00.000-08:00

This is from the Orion nebula. Known to science as M-42. Swirling dust clouds. Many light years away. Below Orion belt, in the stellar constellation, is a fuzzy area, the sword, it is called, there is a cloud mist, which they say is a star factory or incubator, sometimes it is called. This looks quite beautiful through field glasses, and any telescope. The photo is by Nasa, taken by the Hubble Telescope. I guess there is a team that puts together the Astronomy Picture of the Day, with commentary by a "real astronomer" they assure you. It is worth a visit, and often jump-starts my day, a visit to the site. Http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

I got the astronomy bug back in High School. Saw an ad in the back of a Marvel Comix for a telescope for something like $2.90. I talked Garren Tate into going in with me on it. The thing came to our surprise in a tiny box, and consisted of two lenses, about a half inch diameter!!! No instructions, except a blurry printed note, thanking me for my savvy purchase and hoping I would enjoy its use forever! Well, using the technology at hand, I got a large cardboard tube, spool from a carpet, from the trash of a local furniture store. (They make good stage props also. Columns and lamp posts, etc.)

Orion, the hunter. The most recognizable constellation, with the great red giant Betelgeuse and the brilliant blue Rigel. And, impossible to ignor, the near-by dogs. Canis Major, the big dog with the bright eye Sirius, the brightest star we can see here in the northern hemisphere. Orion seems to be shooting Taurus, the bull, for some reason, with it mean bright eye, red giant Aldebaran, charging the twins, Castor and Polux, the Gemini twins. The little dog, Canis Minor, with its brigh star Procyon, yapping near by.

And the continuing wanderers. The Planets, our siblings in the Sun solar system. Right now, Venus, our near neighbor, is rising in the East as the moon is setting in the west. Stunningly bright. At night you can see Jupitor, Saturn, hanging very close to the Pleiades, sometimes called the little dipper, more correctly, the seven sisters, like diamonds on black velvet when seen through a telescope, even field glasses. Naked eye shows a fuzzy patch.... and Mars, bright red, back in hard to make out Cancer. I think.

Check out http://www.earthsky.com/ For the moon, a great sight is http://www.inconstantmoon.com musical, and not updated the last time I looked, with more info about our closest celestial neighbor than you may want to know. It has some music if you like. Guess what? Moonlight Sonata, Clair de Lune..... Blue Moon!!!!

Looking back to the origin of our universe through light years, light minutes, light seconds..... Makes me humble. Makes me tremble. How important we make ourselves out to be, when we are such an infinitesimal speck in the overall and increasing size or God's creation, and how unlightly we are to be here in the first place, and how we cry and moan and curse our fate to no real avail except to make ourselves feel miserable. I like to look to the stars for hope and confidence. And feel the warmth of our closest star and praise the God of creation, and thank fortune that I have been endowed with life, a little lower than the angels, it says in some sacred text or other.....

2006-02-13T07:26:00.000-08:00

Want to know about the new health plan the government has rigged up? This is what GWB told a lady who expressed confusion:

Verbatim Quote:

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: 'I don't really understand. How is it the new plan going to fix the problem?'

PRESIDENT BUSH:

'Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.'

That ought to get it. I think he has been hanging with his Dad recently.

On another note, Chaney has been hunting again. Ronnie informed me at 5:00 AM this morning that our VP had shot someone hunting. My first thought was, "Damn! I hope it was Scalia!" I do not think Ronnie knows who Scalia is, or even why I thought someone would take him down. But it was an Austin lawyer, and if he were hunting with Dick, well, he probably deserved it as well.

I spent yesterday with friends doing income tax and watching the best movie I have seen in several years. About three burials of an undocumented Mexican laborer on the border. Tough old Tommy Lee Jones, of San Saba and Harvard, turned in a great work of a film. Ah, the spirit of Peckenpah returns. I must write and think about it, one film I will definitely see again. "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is playing now only at the Angelika in Dallas, but it will be making some buzz, I feel sure. Must see again. Mel Estrada is killed and nobody seems interested, especially Dwight Yokum, the sheriff who should, except Tommy Lee, who has become friends with the Mojado. He takes on the task of returning the body to his chosen burial spot in Mexico, with the captive killer in tow for the hard labor, this hapless border guard with sexual hang-ups, played by Barry Pepper, to find the perhaps non-existant place.... Well, this tale could be out of one of Cormac McCarthy's Border novels. Jones, known only as Pete, takes on the job of Charon, in Greek myth and the killer becomes enlightened though great suffering and agony.... and Melquiades, looking and smelling worse and worse, is laid to rest finally at his chosen spot.... Beautiful film with all sorts of references from several Spaghetti Westerns. Filmed in Big Bend, Van Horn, and other quintessential West Texas locals, even a scene in the Monahan Sand Dunes.

Bagdad on the Hudson

2006-02-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

Oh Blog. Just read Matt Broyles elegy to his four years in New York.

Yes, go to New York where everything can happen and if you find something up there you cannot do without, stay and remain part of the great kaleidoscope dynamo. It grinds the gifts of the gifted and ambitious into little pieces and adds it to the ever-flowing river of life that flows from it’s bowels. He quotes REM’s Michael Stype:

....It's easier to leave than to be left behind (it's pulling me apart)
Leaving was never my proud (change)
Leaving New York never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the life fading out (change)
Leaving New York, never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the light fading out (change)
Leaving New York never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the life fading out (change)

- R.E.M., Leaving New York

Oh it is there for all. Hardly even part of the United States, a separate urbanity, like Hong Hong or Singapore. It’s own place, and a place for everybody. Black hole and super nova. Depending. If we went there to find ourselves, we only got more lost. If we went there to conquer the world, we found we had to get in line. Every man is Alexander the Great up there!!! And what you find is all about you.

And twice, the lights went out.

Reminds me of the two blackouts I was on hand for..... The first in 1965, in my 40 dollar rent controlled flat with Jim Carter, the violinist, not the future President. Jim and I were problem drinkers from North Carolina at the time and I had just lost a good job in the Davidson College Art Department and headed for NYC, hoped to go to Germany or somewhere and do art, until Jimmy, who was genius violinist studying at Manhattan School of Music in East Harlem, about 20 blocks north of our First Avenue/91st Street digs.... which he found in this German Town area. I could goof off a lot with that kind of rent. And besides, he knew and associated with these beautiful Alabama musician bells, Sister and Ceci Carter (no kin!) When the lights went out, we watched from the fire escape, as they went out all over town. Then you could see across the East River to La Guardia airport, the spans of the Triboro bridge.... It was exciting for a small mill town guy, still quite green to big city life.... Going dark, quite disarming.....

That November night, Jimmy playing his fiddle to the Avenue out on the fire escape, wanting something to happen. I went down to the car and listened to a local station on the radio, the announcer getting into more and more panicked.... finally giving up. Nobody knew if it was the end of the world. Or what. The bars were serving by candle light as we went up the hill to the Carter girls’ Lexington Avenue flat. I found some Scotch whiskey somewhere. Andy Warhol's place was on the next block.

The lights did not come back on till the next afternoon, and NYC under the full moon that night was quite a sight!!! Tranquil, calm, citizens taking charge of the traffic and all.... They finally announced around midnight, that the trouble had been found, the grid, near Canada, or something, and everything would be better soon..... The city is at it’s best in time of peril. Did not see many cops for some reason. The whole North-East and New England was dark.

The Rupurt Brewery was still in operation, and we drank a lot of beer. We watched a lot of underground movies in the East Village and made a few too.... Jeff Tate and Tanky Ritzman came and went. My brother Chal came home from the Army and stayed mostly. He is still there, but not at 1773 First Avenue. Brother Maury came with all his earthly affairs in his van. But when he saw the number of cockroaches in the flat, running amock among tooth brushes etc.... Would not hang. He left early the next morning, doing a 600 plus mile round trip in a little more thatn 24 hours. New York is not for everybody. But one of his girl friends had given him some high dollar Theater tickets. I got to use them, seeing things like Tosca and Salome with Birget Nielson, and the wonderful play: Marat/Sade. ("the Persecution and Assination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Clarenden Assylem under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade".... whew!) I gave a ticke to Beethoven's Fidelio to a friend at work, who slept through it!!!! It was the last season of the old met.

Mark de Mello showed up with his Nikon. He took the above photo. And Broadway was every bodies' Boulevard of Broken Dreams....

rambles

2006-02-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

There is a fact that Ronnie keeps pointing out to me, you can not process two sources of information at the same time. The brain cannot multi process. That can be argued with. The simple part of that is: you cannot do two things at the same time...... I can but not very well. You can talk and drive at the same time. But why is is harder to talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time, even if both hands are free????? Does only hearing a conversation over the phone, headphones, whatever, different, and more distracting than talking to someone in the car with you?????

I am listening to TWIT as I start this blog. If you are not familiar with TWIT, you have probably not checked out podcasts, maybe. Since podcasts came into being, and easy (kinda slow for dial-up) to download, I’ve started listening and downloading, more downloading, especially at Ronnie’s fast broadband connection. My iMac G5 is being used a bit like a lap-top. I have not taken it to Starbucks yet, but any day now..... ITunes makes it possible.

Doing the TWIT. BABY. The Week In Tech. An hour plus of discussion of the latest computer/silicone valley gossip with an energetic bunch of young execs who overlap their ideas and comments, and know oh-so-much about what is going on with Google, Yahoo, all the young dudes, the start-ups... and especially what Jobs and Apple are up to or down to!!! Steve Wozniac was on one of them. In fact several. A good one on MacWorld, and the PC annual at Las Vegas. The cast comes in once a week. Leo Laparte is the moderator, if that is the word......

Other pod-casts I subscribe to, and hardly ever watch Anime Network ads, episodes of a viscous, nasty, cartoon with the innocent name: Happy Tree Friends, who do all sorts of viscous, painful things to each other. Another is the Al Franken Show, which put out a lot of podcasts last year, but stopped in the fall. They are fun for a rainy day. The Diane Rehm Show weekly Friday round-up comes in every week...

What I really wanted to write about while it is fresh is the Coretta King funeral, or rather the Memorial Service, with George 1 and 2, and Bill weighing in for tributes. Bill was the best received with Hillary beside with a bittersweet smile. Like a rock star, as ABC said, he was received. And when he silenced the crowd enough to be heard, he drew attention to he lady in the box.... said just the right things in that charming, relaxed, friendly, knowing manner that made him so popular. He never lost an election, we know. That manner of his. That way of explaining things. Makes sense. We have yet to see what Hillary can do, but you bet she is going to try.

George the 1st, was short and sweet and funny. George the 2nd, had down a very impressive tribute, which must have been written for him. He does have that awkward grace, and can get involved with the language and words, tripping over some metaphors and dangling all sorts of participles and ideas, like his Dad. But today it was smooth, and I feel sure, sincere.

*****

Keira Knightley is Elizabeth Bennet in the most recent filming of that ever-green tribute to 19th century matchmaking, "Pride and Prejudice".... The days of well supervised courting, at least in the houses of gentility. You have to go to Defoe to get the picture of the underbelly of that scene. But who will get Mr Darcy? This story about 5 lucious daughters, and a pushy stage mother, trying to direct traffic to advantage in rural England, has been often told, but this one is so lush and seductive, so well cast, it is deserving of any oscar it gets. I saw it at the UA yesterday. My cell was on vibrate, and could monitor the calls that came in without answering. Does it seem that progress is out-running sensibility? Well, that is another Jane Austen great, "Sense and Sensibility".... same problems in another house. But on the screen, while I was checking who was calling, letters and notes were being passed back and forth between several elegant dwellings by pony express.... The lushness and wild-ness of the rural landscape, filmed at maximun times of beauty, clouds, sunsets, sunrises. The huge trees framing shots of the Bennet house. The reflecting pond at dusk before a rain at Lady Caroline's palace. People really lived like that!!! 200 years ago. The kind of film I would cherish when I was a kid and living among the scenes and actors. The more "Hollywood" and "technicolor" the better. Tastes change, but some things remain. Is that what Shelley meant??????

"....the many change, the one remains,
Earth with all its shadows flee,
Life like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radience of eternity"

not an exact quote.... a remembered sketch. will look it up later...

*****

Things to look up, I heard on TWIT:

valleywag.com

dvorak.org

utube

flower time once more

2006-02-07T12:54:00.002-08:00

The time has come again. I saw a single paralena blossom sticking up through the gravel on Zack's driveway. Back in 1994, I worked for Johnny and Maggie Langdon, sort of gardner, lawn keeper, antique restorer, you name it. But being outdoors most of the time on their beautiful acreage, fields sloping down to Mary's Creek in a hide-away in Benbrook, stable with goats and a donkey, many dogs in and out of the house, cats, tropical plants in great urns, paintings by Nancy Lamb and a Dallas folk artist, Bob Wade, and more.... Quite an establishment. But the wild flowers. I got to examine first hand and conceived this plan to learn the names of one of Texas's most abundant resourses, it's wild flowers.

I started in March, when a flower popped up I took a photo, checked in my guide book, found the name and pasted the photo on a 36" x48" piece of card board, with a calender page of that month. All the flowers I saw, and the date I noticed them in bloom. I sort of added some other info. I went to the Hill Country, through San Saba and Llano to Enchanted Rock, mainly to be amoung that red cristaline granit. Pictures from that trip, and the unique flowers blooming down there, made it on the April page. I think I will do the same on my blog this time. With photos. The photo above is of course the familiar Indian Paintbrush which blooms later when the bluebonnets come along.

Maggie took me along on a expedition trip to Austin and vacinity before Christmas that year, with a morning at Lady Bird Johnson's fine Wildlife Center. We took her huge Airdale, Honey Bear. (Who embarassed us by peeing on the Creche outside the Johnson City Babtist. Almost got cought by the pastor!) We also went to Fredrichsburg and through Johnson City, and Marble Falls, admiring the Christmas light displays, examining rocks and furniture, and sculpture by Bob Wade, personal friend of the Langdon's. Yes, Daddy-o came to visit often, and I snapped a picture of him and two friends, writer brothers, as they were putting together his book. Bob liked my photo and used it on the dust jacket. The major work of his, the Langdon's owned, was his "art car", a laundry van painted bright orange and riddled with bullet holes, Bob and friends I am sure enjoyed preferating the vehicle with. And the title of this work of art? Why, "Bonnie and Clyde Mobile". It sat nobly in the pasture, and Bob gave it to them for a wedding present.....

I still have those 13 months of flower calenders. Sorry, but they are not really works of art, just flower diaries.....

2006-02-07T12:54:00.001-08:00

Leonardo

2006-02-06T23:55:00.000-08:00

A friend asked me about Leonardo Da Vinci being gay. I wrote this back after some investigation inspired by
"The Da Vinci Code"

Three out of the four Ninja named turtles (remember them) Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo were homosexual. Raphael was quite straight and very randy. The bio I have of Leonardo is by one Serge Bramley. It is endlessly detailed, bringing up every scrap of info about not only Leonardo, but his family, his fellow artists, associates and bosses. This was an age of extreme creativity and genius talent. And so much of it was crammed in the city of Florence, the hotbed of the Renaissance. Homosexuality was wide spread, and not much was made of it, in spite of the preachers and Bible thumpers, and laws against it. The ideas of Socrates (Plato and Aristotle his students) were brought back to light, translated into Italian (English Spanish Etc...) And revered. All these philosophers were gay, as you probably know. Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great, who had some male lovers as well as the hottest babes in Jerusalem. or was it Damascas? I was quite shocked to find all this out about the greats in our civilization.

About Da Vinci, according to Bramley, he was accused, along with three other Florentines of having sexual debauchery with a youth of 17, connected to a famous family. The boy was a known prostitute hustler, and the case was finally thrown out of court for lack of evidence, or too much evidence or something like that. It was thought to bring discredit to the Medici family. Leonardo was 24 and still working in Verrocchio's studio, where he had been apprenticed since 15 or so. It caused some embarrassment, and his well to do father and unwed mother, (he was a bastard at that, also).... we do not know how they took it. I was told in an art history course that he was expelled from the studio, but this was not mentioned by Bramley.....

After he left Florence to go to work as chief military engineer for the Duke of Milan, where he designed implements of mass destruction, and entertaining shows with puppets and exploding pumpkins, out of which danced sugarplum fairies.... for the Duke's parties and celebrations .... well almost....

Later he came back to Florence to paint a mural on a wall in the town hall. Michaelangelo was to paint one on the opposite wall. Neither of them were finished, due to rough times. The two were not friends. Ego's clashed. The paintings of battle scenes fell apart, bad paint, poor care or something, and now known only through drawings they made. And other admiring artists who studied the exciting scenes.

It was in Milan that Leonardo hooked up with a partner, who I believe stayed with him after the French conquest of Milan. Which ended his job there, as Lodovico was overthrown. Then, Francis 1st, king of France, invited the aging Leonardo and his servant/lover to come live and paint in one of the famous chateaus. He brought with him the unfinshed Mona Lisa and the other paintings now in the Louvre in Paris. (Henry the 8th was King of England, and played in Jousting Tournaments with Frances, a fierce but friendly rivalry, and I think Henry bought the Leonardo's that hang in the National Gallery in London, and Windsor Castle to this day. There are so few of them around the world.

Your eMail and the Da Vinci Code book sent me into all this last year. You can find other books, biographies, in the library, the more modern ones do not bother to white wash the "sin that dares not speak its name"..... Even Bramley points out in Leonardo's writings, warnings against over doing it sexually, and thinks he was maybe impotent, but liked to hang with pretty boys, for aesthetic reasons. He drew a lot of old men too, and loved to contrast on the same page a handsome youth and a grizzled old fart, warts and all..... And he hid his own handsome face with a long beard.....

2006-02-05T23:09:00.000-08:00

Today I sailed off to Dallas early, after walking the hills in the cold with Alice and the dogs. Had to go by Salvation Army to try to get the package of teeth and CD to Ross. They did not take them, but let me leave him a note. Then on to Dallas for the Opera. Handel's seldom performed "Rodalinda". When I got to Fair Park and found my favorite parking spot on Expsition, I noticed not many people about, except this artist looking fellow with a big digital camera taking close-ups of a fine looking foreign car, of a make I did not recognize.... I look at my ticket. It is for January 29th... last Sunday. Shit. It is the second opera I missed this year for just pure dumbness!!!!! And mis-management.

And now must get my seat for next season, before I loose it. Hope I can remember when the operas are next year!!!!

Called Sixto, and got up with him early. We headed downtown to the Library. A great show of very retro art was on view, black artists dowing black-themed art... One fellow was doing Picasso influenced cubist imagery. Looked real good!

After getting the forms for Six's incometax, the 1040EZ, and finding that his withholding covers things real well, and he will get more than a grand back!!!

We head for the movies, find that we both want to see "Walk the Line". And sure enough, the critics had it pegged pretty good. Reece was a great June Carter and Phoenix did a nicely nuanced Johnny Cash.... They managed to sound like the stars, singing. The film was not as tightly edited as it should have been, but it covered lot of emotional territory, and brought in a lot of characters. Many of the rock and roll originals were presented. Notable was Jerry Lee Lewis....

We ate at Jack in the Box. My turn to pay, and I only had plastic by that time!!!! We talked about Mexico. Taking two months for a mid winter spree....

Errors

2006-02-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

I am so screwed up. This post for yesterday got in three times because of stupid miscalculations. Karl got his shit together and we went to the Stock Show, even trying to get Ross's teeth and CD to him at Salvation Army and the Jazz club on Montgomery, which we could not find. But in the bright lights and wild rides of the midway, we strolled. Karl had a hotdog. I desisted. And all the things he wanted to see like big cows, we missed. He wanted to leave after a tour of the rides and fun houses. Nobody rode. On the way out I insisted on going into the exhibit hall to gaze and admire the big ranch equipment, especially the fancy tractors and four wheelers..
a lot of other fancy things. Beautiful boots, gear of all kinds.... bright gigaws gadgets of all kinds..... I could have spent hours... but humoring Karl like a good boy... so much for our trip to the Stock Show.....

Prestoni'sPlace

2006-02-04T14:10:00.002-08:00

Prestoni'sPlace

This afternoon, Saturday, the hazy sun and all. Listening to the Met's performance, Cyrano de Bergerac, by Franco Alfano. Radvanovsky as Roxane, Antonio Barasorda, Cyrano. First hearing. Sounds sort of like movie music, but Radvanovsky soars. Heard her in Pique Dame in Dallas a few years back.... First performed in '36, not done in the US, at the Met last season. Attention divided. Went to get a burger for Debbie, who is home bound and hurting!!!

Karl wants to go to the stock show. He wants to see big cows for some reason. I want to go to the Rodeo, but we do not have the money. But this morning, he too was hurting sick and put it off. Now we go, he says. Must take Ross's teeth. He is playing at a jazz club on Montgomery tonight. Cut a disc for the man also. Times rough for Mr Talent. Salvation Army, 6 bucks a night. Better than the whore motel I left him at the other day!!!! Maybe he will make it this time.

Prestoni'sPlace

2006-02-04T14:10:00.001-08:00

Prestoni'sPlace

2006-02-04T14:10:00.000-08:00

Day after Ground Hog Day 2006

2006-02-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

There was rain today, and I did not work. Read some blogs and decided to do one..... Maybe no one will read it. I do not have much to say these days, except some vague and disperate rambles, maybe but I have written a lot, and if I do not keep on, my thoughts may stop coming, and I will achieve brain death before my time. People do live longer these days, if they take care of themselves, or if they are just lucky! Both probably applies to me.

This is the day after Ground Hog Day 2006, and I am haunted to remember the Bill Murray movie, waking up over and over in that little Pennsylvania town, until he got the message: the message of love....