Those Blog Visits Are Totaling Up...

I had been building and selling cigar box guitars and a musician friend asked about them and I said, "check out my blog, there's pictures of some I've made," and gave him a business card with the address. Now a days it would be that picture of a thing that probably has a name but I don't know it that you scan with your phone to be taken right to the site but when my friend heard the word "blog" he said "you don't say bad things about ____ on there do you" and named the sitting president. He went on to say he would not be able to read it if I had said bad things. 

I guess I had not said anything bad about _____ because he bought a cigar box guitar.  His reaction made me see that apparently some folks think a negative thing at the use of the word blog. I'm the same way when someone mentions their podcast. I've never been able to get past the first 30 minutes of a podcast where they talk about how great it is they are having a podcast. 

Technically I guess the reading comprehension required for a blog is a lot more exhausting that the listening of a podcast so I guess it is of note that in the almost 18 years of blog operation I have going on I will probably hit 2000,000 page visits sometime next month. I thank all of those that took the time.              

Of course the last couple of blog posts have had only 3 visits so the success is based on the ever popular posts Another Guitar Story  and the Girls on the Beach Blog Post. There's also a blog posts that involves an ex son in law that's had 540 visits for some unknown reason but we won't link that here. 

Back when I started writing this blog my father in law, the late Bill Cooney urged me to monetize the blog with ads. I could link to the type of perch jig I use when I'm out in the canoe and while I'm at it the type of canoe and so on on Amazon and if you clicked the link I'd get .0002 of a cent or something like that. At the time I was pure, a writer who wrote. 

Now I think "well what if everyone of those 200,000 visits had scanned that thing I don't know the name of that I have started putting at the end of the blog when I think about it and donated a dollar it would have been a nice chunk of change." I mean not life changing money because after all in my life I've bought a house, about a dozen or so cars, several outboard motors, put all my kids that wanted it through college, put myself through college, visited at least half the states and at least 8 foreign countries, saved up a couple of retirement 401ks that are speculated to last me till I'm 90 years old gone and done what I wanted and ate pretty much what I pleased. $200,000 I'm here to tell you isn't what it used to be and wouldn't cover all that. 

What it would do would maybe put me in Gibson guitar territory. Which I don't know that I really need at this point because I mostly play at backyard fish fries using my old Student Princes and somehow I don't think all that would be as much fun with expensive guitars. There's always a guy going to sit down where you lay it and Student Princes are pretty rugged.  

I have been paid a little now and then to write someone a blog and I certainly sold cigar box guitars through the blog and I play my best when I'm singing for my supper so I guess I've done all right.

Thanks for reading and here's this thing I don't know the name of. Someone actually left an anonymous comment on the blog about how much they enjoyed it "but couldn't justify leaving me any money" whatever that means. At least I got some blog material from the visit and the comment. 

    

      

 

Old #9...

Mary and Miguel told us a while back they were expecting another baby. They waited till yesterday when we finally got our whole clan together to reveal the sex and it's going to be a boy. If anyone needs advice on raising boys looks like this couple is going to be the go to because this will be their third. 

The due date is May 25th which is coincidentally their wedding anniversary. Mary always keeps quiet when another baby is coming so it does not seem like these are long pregnancies at least to me. It's a little different from when my generation was getting pregnant. Now they have tests where you can know if you are or not about 15 minutes after the latest opportunity and when you find out that quick 9 months seems like a long time.

Anyway however you do it we pray for them and all mothers and fathers to have the best of luck with children. 

They need it because as this is our 9th grandchild it's going to be hard not to say, "old #9, coming down the line" all the time which may impart certain personality traits. I don't know what those might be but I do know that in some cultures 9 is considered the perfect number. 

Mary and the new blog character. 

I think I captured most of the blog characters in this photo if they weren't chasing down other blog characters that need more supervision.

Coming soon the official family photos. For good work contact Newfoundland Photography.   

       

 

36 Actors...

 I am religious and in fact a Christian. I'm not given to a lot of hocus pocus but in my reading I discovered the mention of Tzadikim Nistarim an old mystical notion rooted in Judaism and thoughts of this have captured a part of my imagination. The belief is that there are 36 righteous actors in the world waiting for the right moment.

Depending on where you read about the Tzadikim Nistarim the number might be different. It could be 36 or maybe even 45. These are anonymous, ordinary people, hidden among the masses of humanity. They may not even know who they are. They are scattered across the Earth and don't know who the others are. They emerge, act to save their people and sink back into their daily unheralded lives. 

The more I thought about this the more I became convinced that I knew a couple of these people. Then I read that one of the qualities of one of these good actors that keeps the world from falling apart is humility. Nope, sorry about that, I was mistaken. 

I found mention of these people in the Kim Stanley Robinson book, "The Ministry for the Future." It's about climate climate change and now is a good time for reading since heat waves and forest fires are now something that happens here locally instead of somewhere else. 

Robinson notes in the book that we seldom get glimpses of the actors in action. "The stories of the secret actors are the secret action."

Do you know secret actors? 

        

 

My Friends Have Super Powers or So It Seems...

My youngest daughter, Mary, told me once that she thought all my friends were super heroes. It's because they had what she, as a small child thought were super hero names. In this photo you see me and two of them Gary Strong and Darwin Mann. Mary thought those names had to be describing some kind of powers they possessed.

Gary is long gone now but I think his super power was bending time which we know as a sequence of events at measured intervals into his own application which he called "Yoder Time in Hootersville." I think maybe this photo of me, Gary and Darwin was taken right before Yoder Time in Hootersville kicked in. I don't participate in Yoder Time in Hootersville anymore. Too, powerful, unpredictable and you never know where you will end up. 

I still hear from my old friend Darwin. We send each other big fish pictures by email or text. I think his super power is remembering what I said. For example Darwin will say "remember that time we were on the cliff fixing to jump down into the river and you said..."

He will then go on to relate some deep space existential, quasi-religious, philosophical manifesto that I declared on the spot of this river cliff that he has been remembering and pondering and possibly using as his spiritual guide for years now. I tell him, "Heck Darwin, I don't even remember jumping in the river."  

Recently I introduced Mary to my old buddy U.S. Tico aka Donnie Mohonnie. Mary said, "See, there's another one."   

  

 

Have You Heard Loose Lips Sink Ships, or Have I Seen Those Lips Before...

We had friends over for a nice evening of fried catfish and conversation. In fact we talked so much we never even got around to discussing our shared grandchildren but some of the topics we covered were fishing, travel and facial recognition software and how good it has become. 

On the porch not far from where we sat was my old red wagon. Actually it's one of those new red wagons, pretty stout frame and canvas sides that serves me as a tool carrier, a grandchild transport for donkey walks and when I'm bank fishing it's a gear hauler. 

In the course of telling fishing stories I remarked to our friends how when we were launching the boat that day several people were on the shore unable to use the walkway to the old marina because of high water. It's a popular fishing spot and I related how "they loaded a wagon like that," on an aluminum boat and with a rope that was tied to the bank and the marina hand pulled themselves river ferry crossing style out to unload the wagon with fishing gear on the marina walkways. 

I did not have my phone in my pocket when I told this story. It was about 15' from me on a table all evening. I don't have one of those "Hey Google" things. Since I have a wagon there is no need to shop wagons on the world wide web. Today my ad feed for the internet is full of "shop wagons like this" ads apparently because I said "a wagon like that." 

I have not checked on my friends today. The information they provided about the facial recognition software part of the discussion was second hand from a good source. 

If I tell you I liked this house boat I photographed on the lake will I be under consumer pressure to shop similar craft?         

And while we are on these seeming coincidences here's my third great uncle Charlie Ledbetter, a ferry man on the Tennessee River. Seems that one evening in 1906 a man by the name of R.H. Ward had been drinking and caught a ride across the river to visit Charlie. This seems to have been a custom on his drinking days. Later his body was found about 10 miles down river. Charlie was arrested, tried and acquitted. Probably good thing there was no facial recognition software in those days. 

I believe that's Charlie with the dog. 

 

Reading Suggestion While Stuck at Home...

I used to read a lot. I think in the 4th grade I read 145 books that year. Only person who read more was a girl. I kept this reading up for several decades till life seemed to get busy and the internet came along so I only had time for things read quickly online or in magazine articles. Over the past year I have picked up the pace for books.

I do the Amazon Kindle thing, reading the free books offered on Prime. A forgotton password and a possibily imagined conflict/persecution by the powers that be have locked me out of that avenue and that may be just as well. It's forced me to return to the many shelves of books we have collected up over the years. 

This week I picked up a John Brummer novel Children of the Thunder. It had a book mark from a used book store tucked inside and I don't think I have read it. These are the works of his I own that I could lay my hands on and I think there are others around.   

Brunner who died in 1995 was a Englishman and probably best described as a sci fi writer but I like to call his work speculative fiction since it often takes place in the near future not too many years after it was written. Wiki gives him credit for predicting computer worms and virus, online encyclopedias, genetic engineering, same sex marriages, pot legalization and Viagra. All these old books describe a world not too much unlike the one we live in now. In Children of the Thunder there is a paragraph, just thrown in, where the characters are rushing across town but are delayed by a passing protest of the pro dog vs. the anti dog people incited by the discovery of rabies in a certain area of the country. There is no more detail than this but it sets a feel for the society of the novel and for current events in our times.

Brunner, being an English man received criticism for being too Americian in his writings but these books have many references to English life that will not be read through or apparent to the average American as a book you might pull from the New York Times Best Seller List.

Two of my favorites, not pictured here but probably in the house somewhere are The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar. I think in the last scene in The Sheep Look UP characters stand on the shore of the British Isles and say "What's that smell?" Some one replies, "It's America, burning."       

  

Friendly Guy...

I see a lot of deer next door in the high game fence amd you can get pretty close but this is the friendliest guy yet. I could tell me and him would hit it off right away. 

As I stod making photos I edged a little closer, a little closer, a little closer...

...and discovered he likes to have his ears scratched. 

One thing he does not like is carrots. Although he politely took one from my hand he let it fall to the ground uneaten. 











The red tag in his ear? It Has his name on it. Ladies and gentlemen meet a new blog character. This is "Buckey." 

New Blog Character...

Introducing a new blog character, a future grandchild, to be born in July to parents Rose and Juan seen here in an ultra sound made today. Juan says it waved at him.

We are sitting around debating names tonight, Baltimore, Caesar, Moon Child and Field Marshall.

This is the first of many $39,000 b;log appearance payments.

Guadalupe Cruising...

Cooled it on a Guadalupe tube float this weekend. First Hill Country river float I have done in a few years good to be back in the tube so to speak. There might even be a couple of old tube buddies from back then lurking on these pages.

Time for a new blog character alert, here is Katherine with boyfriend Charles. No, jog your memory, Katie has long kept up her $39,000 payments to appear in all glory, Charles is the new patron. We had a very good weekend getting acquainted and he seems like the kind of guy that will keep up his payments.
Me and Cathy float by rocky banks lined with cypress. I have begun to accept the fact that cypress is a must have for water adventure. Some kind of mojo thing.
As you can see, we had company down the river. Lots of folks on tubes and with the river flowing at a measly 52 cubic feet per second (ok, so I know stuff like this that you don't) they were more that happy to increase the beer flow to make up the difference.
Why is this man grinning? Looks like he might be cracking everyone behind him up as he monkey grubs his tube. He might even need one of them new finagled mansieres. You know, a brosiere, like guys wear. Lucky for him he's not doing this in Wal-Mart.

More Christmas...

There's 12 days to Christmas, let's live it up. I may have enough Christmas pictures for each day.

Here Katie auditions for a re-make of the old Lawrence Welk Show.
New blog character Jeff was under intense examination, as all new blog characters are during their probationary period.
They got laughing gas for a present.
I couldn't tell what this picture was. I think it was made during the great silly string massacre. This unidentified person had silly string spewed at them and they ducked and I just happened to get a photo of it hitting the back of their neck. You can see from the angle how their head points down and the curve of their back up. They also have on some kind of hat.

Hey, I am good at figuring out stuff like this. I should get a job as a super hero or a blogger or something where I can use my input for the good of humanity. Wait a second, I think I may be already doing those things.

So I had to work today...

There were others who braved the rain to fish. Those who did not fish just snuggled together.











Others relentlessly thrashed the water to a froth.













Another new blog character alert, Katie's boy friend Jeff.

Final catch was 19, they are swimming in our bellies.