Had the flu or an awkward cold for a few
days; just now beginning to think I may live. Carolyn was was sick
before me and still hasn’t fully recovered.
I watched the flick, Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden and found it to be somewhat enjoyable but not very Hemingway-ish.
The book was published long after Ernest Hemingway’s death and from
what I can tell, it was extremely edited by the book publisher. The
movie is probably better than a highly-revised Hemingway novel.
——————————–
When I pee beneath the stars
Is someone watching from afar
Peering at my weenie on this earth
And and giggling with celestial mirth
A man has to be really sick to write something like that.
I noticed the blackberry briars don’t have near as many blooms this
year; maybe too much rain and not enough sunshine. The past few days
must have been “blackberry” winter; very cool for two nights and days.
Planned to go shooting today but my driver has a bad cold. It has been five years since I had a good Memorial Day photo session.
Got a new Roku 3 box and “hard-wired” it to my router. Roku is still
working with me on the broken one; they sent me one last idea to try to
fix it via software; haven’t tried it yet.
I was wrong about my Roku; it had only a 90 day warranty. For the
price of the device, they should stand behind it for at least one year.
Nothing they suggested for me to do worked and I am seemingly stuck with
an $80 plastic hockey puck. It worked for eight months. C’est la vie!
Blackberry briars are blooming which means we should have a cool snap
in the weather. I hope it means we have a lot of jam and jelly and
cobblers and dumplings.
Plenty of t-storms yesterday and last evening. Nothing like ‘the delicate sound of thunder’.
The Stroll dance … yes, I well remember it; no, I never did it.
Looks like megashot.net has some good ideas; flickr.com sure has
copied a lot of them. Be aware of one thing; the very large size photos
available on Flickr are perfect for stealing and anyone with a free
account has access to them.
Sammy and Mason are here; I am tickled. Watching Thomas and Friends on Netflix.
My papers have supposedly worked their way through channels and are
at the surgeon’s office. Supposedly. Hope to know something very soon.
Has Flickr committed suicide just like MySpace did a few years ago? A
lot of folks are complaining. Just two weeks ago I renewed my Pro
account and I feel really screwed.
My Roku has quit. I admit it was a mistake to buy the wireless-only
version. Now I must shell out $100 to get the wired unit. Pisser. I like
the Roku because it has so many channel choices; just last week they
added PBS and it alone has enough to keep me happy for many months.
Sammy and Mason are here; I began writing this post before noon and it is now past 3:45pm; they keep us busy.
Heart doctor gave me the ok for medium-risk surgery, such as knee
replacement. Waiting on his report to go through channels. Hopeful for
surgery by early next month.
Maggie flattered the ‘aw shucks’ out of me by graciously placing one of my photos and a couple of my poetry attempts
on her site. If you go there, do some clicking around; she is a
multi-talented young lady. How she finds time for all her projects is a
mystery to me. Thank you, my friend.
Jeremy is building a storefront on storenvy.com
which will feature my photo efforts. When he has it ready to view, I
will let you know. What a good grandson; I don’t know what his future
holds but I truly believe he will become a great entrepreneur. He is
another who gets a lot done in short time. Thank you, Grandson.
With all the hard news happening in the world, what was CNN featuring
last evening? O.J. Simpson in a courtroom, of course. OJ had his fling
19 years ago; let it be, CNN.
The recent seizure of Associated Press
telephone documents is the most chilling thing I can remember being
inflicted upon the citizens of this once great country by our own
government, even worse than Watergate and Iran-gate. How low can Obama
and his cronies go? How stupid can he be? First, he (his administration)
has the Internal Revenue Service unlawfully making life
difficult for his political enemies and now he has been caught
restricting freedom of the press; both of these acts are deplorable,
unconstitutional, and impeachable. I cannot wait until this evening to
see how MSNBC’s top guns (Obama lovers) handle this one. If the
president is allowed to get by with this grievous political move, it
will eventually mean that citizens will have to turn to illegally
published underground papers for a few grains of truth about our rulers.
If we allow this abomination to persist, we are building our own Iron
Curtain.
Barbara Walters is retiring from her celebrity interviews. Goodbye.
My thanks to Mark for the music video.
“When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday – no matter what happened Tuesday.“
~Stephen Colbert
It had to happen; Friday the 13th has
fallen on a Monday. Monday already stands alone as being the lousiest
day of the week and making it fall on the 13th is in very poor taste; if
I were a Friday, I would call a wildcat strike.
Sammy and Mason spent Mother’s Day
afternoon with Chris and Carolyn; the way Mason is going I think he will
be talking before Sammy does. Two chatter boxes going at once and both
demanding attention at the same time. I am blessed.
I want a new DSLR camera; I damn sure
don’t need one because I don’t use the one I have which still works
fine. The K200D has only 6.5 thousand shutter clicks on it. I cannot see
a new one improving my photographic skills; for me it is like a hack
writer wanting a new typewriter so he can turn out better stories. I am
longing for a Pentax K5 IIS but the more than one-thousand dollar price
tag is way out of my range. Any new major purchases will depend on how
surgery goes and the kind of shape I’m in afterward.
Yesterday JJ placed Carolyn’s bedroom TV
on the wall where she could better see and hear it; she is in video
nirvana now. It is much better up higher; I watched To Have and To Have Not
last night and didn’t have to turn the volume as loud as I used to.
I’ve seen the movie many times but never get enough of it; anything of
Bogey’s in this period is on my favorite list. I also watched my Youtube videos and subscriptions along with my Flickr photos. They all look pretty good on big screen.
Not quite as warm today and cooling even
more for tor the next few days; heat of summer will hit us come
Wednesday when I have to go back to heart doctor. This better be the
last doctor office visit before knee surgery; I am tired of waiting and
the knee isn’t getting any better. I am to the point now where I don’t
even try to go to the porch to sit.
Speaking of summer, Mark’s Summer would
have been in a panic last evening when thunderstorms hit all around the
house. He says she is fearful of thunder and we had plenty of it; not a
lot of rain, though.
They still make Squirt soft drinks.
Squirt was never very popular in this area except as a mixer but I
think they are the best citrus drink made. I haven't seen any in years
but I bet the local night spots have them. I first came across the brand
while tramping in West Virginia in 1970; it mixes well with bourbons
and blended whiskeys.
Another brew I discovered in W.Va. was Stroh's beer. It is a Detroit beer and was more popular in West Virginia than was even the mighty Budweiser. Stroh's was an ok beer and actually much better than the bitter Bud but I will stick to my Miller High Life. A couple of brews I first tried in Pennsylvania were Rolling Rock and Iron City beers. I liked Iron City ok, but Rolling Rock's taste reminded me of how cow pee smells. My mother-in-law liked it.
I
enjoyed my time tramping--except in Georgia--and could have liked
living about anywhere I went with little problem. Southern Maryland was
too far from the hills and I once spent 70 days straight there. They had
great, fresh sea food and the best root beer I've ever bought. Still
don't make up for the lack of tall oak trees on a high ridge, though.
Mark is going to have one of his photos of his house seen nationwide. Bravo television will be using it in a documentary film. Congratulations, my friend.
Are you ready for the weekend?
Thursday, May 09, 2013
—————
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The above lines were all I was ever required to learn of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner … thank
ye gods. The whole is a long, boring piece of verse but a darn good
story and these few lines nicely fit conditions in N.E. Tennessee at
present. When I was at Watauga Lake early last month, the water was as
high as I’ve ever seen it. Now it is more than three feet (@one meter)
higher than it was then. Fortunately I live on a high ridge which is not
on the Watauga watershed but is on the Nolichucky watershed. At my
granny’s house in the springtime of my life, we were on the line between
the two districts; I could pee off the front porch and it could
conceivably find its way to the Watauga River. If I peed out the back
door, some would eventually wind up in the Nolichucky River. Granny
frowned on such practices but little boys gotta do what they gotta do.
Sammy and Mason visited for an hour or so last evening. I was hopping
around on the crutches and Sammy wasn’t too happy about it. Carolyn was
at work so I had to get his toys and entertain him the best I could.
Mason laughed at me.
I would like to say the lousy, wet weather we are having is typical
of early May and it is up to a point. The problem is that it is lasting
much too long. The ninth of May has always been our last frost day but
like a couple of years ago when it frosted on the fifteenth, I am not so
certain about this gardening season. Anyway, it all keeps my sinuses
clogged.
The first week in May is almost over and it will be autumn before we
know it. I am longing to get this knee fixed so I can get out and live a
bit.
The past few weeks have been saddening for me, mostly because a boy I
grew up with and have known all my life passed away. Norman was
seventy-one years old when he died and was the oldest of and the leader
of the community kids with whom I played. Norman was my main influence
to join the National Rifle Association when I was young. He had a great
sense of humor which the rest of us had to pay for in sometimes
embarrassing situations. He lived a good life and had a great family.
The color photo is his obituary photo for the newspaper and the other
one is part of our gang from the mid-1950′s. Norman is the tallest and I
am the long-legged kid at his side. Others are his brother, his two
cousins, and his sister. The photo was made in my grandmother’s front
yard and his family’s home is the white house just over Norman’s left
shoulder. Losing someone such as a life-long friend is the most
difficult part of growing old; much more difficult than any physical
infirmities. The memories are cherished but the reality of the present
is a bit overwhelming.
Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone Let's pretend that we're together all alone I'll tell the man to turn the juke box way down low And you can tell your friend there with you he'll have to go
Whisper to me tell me do you love me true Or is he holding you the way I do Though love is blind make up your mind I've got to know Should I hang up or will you tell him he'll have to go
You can't say the words I want to hear While you're with another man Do you want me answer yes or no Darlin' I will understand
Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone Let's pretend that we're together all alone I'll tell the man to turn the juke box way down low And you can tell your friend there with you he'll have to go
Although
I never particularly liked this song, mostly because it was country and
country was not cool to most of us teen cats of my day, it was
immensely popular. It was known to be the basis marital disagreements,
arguments, fights, brawls, mayhem, and even murder. Even my house wasn't
immune to the persuasive croon of Jim Reeves at his best. When the song
was on radio or TV, my mom would say something like 'hang up on him,
girl' to which my dad would retort 'lady, you know you want 'im so tell
the guy there with you to scram'. For some reason I had a premonition
to keep out of their "discussions" about the lyrics. Being a 14 year-old
country kid, I wasn't supposed to know much about "adult" stuff. My
parents arguments about it were mild, actually. The newspapers, which I
dutifully read while sitting in the outhouse waiting to put them to
their original intended use, had many stories about otherwise normal
couples whose disagreements had led to mayhem of one sort or another.
Women were divorcing their husbands because he happened to agree with
the caller. Men would get "tipsy" in a bar, play the song on the
jukebox, and phone their wives at ungodly hours just to aggravate her.
More than one of these last jokers ended up on a mortician's slab and
their wives were in jail before the night was over. Life, it's all about
the music.
1959 was a very normal year; I got my first handheld
transistor radio--a Motorola--for Christmas, I was miserably failing
Algebra for the third time in high school, and the rest of my grades
were at the C- to D level. I was too shy to talk to girls and too dumb
to try to overcome the bashfulness. I still am shy and dumb about it.
In our great society, even 5-year-olds are allowed to own and bear firearms http://news.yahoo.com/5-old-boy-shoots-2-old-sister-ky-161229579.html
I don’t think even Hitler stooped this low. Was this kid part of a “well regulated militia”?
What kind of parent would allow a small child to even be around
something like a rifle which is made for one thing: killing? I’m sure
the NRA approves of this type of weapon usage.
Supposed to rain all weekend; maybe some shooting next weekend.
Jerry came by yesterday and brought Carolyn a Mother’s Day rose bush
from him and Tammy. She put it in the ground this morning and I hope it
does well. I have better luck with roses than does she.
Why has Obama not brought under control Bush’s patriotic war against
Americans. The answer is that he likes and intends to use that kind of
power over people. He is but one step away from being a parliamentary
dictator.
On the way home from work one night a couple weeks ago, Carolyn saw a
coyote not far from where we live. I’ve never met one of the critters
but I hear they are moving into the area. Also Armadillos are supposed
to soon be here. I heard several years ago that fire ants would soon
spread into the hills, but I know of none. Another rumor was that cattle
egrets would be here but I don’t know of any.
