I Wear Women's Yoga Pants...

A late friend of mine, Jason Carriger (RIP) wrote a song called Yoga Pants. I've searched the internet and Jason left a pretty good YouTube and Soundcloud footprint but I can't find a performance of Yoga Pants. What caused me to think about my friend's song was the fact that the elastic they put in those old chicken skin long johns is just not what it used to be and though it may be illegal in some  states I purchased women's yoga pants to wear for my own convenience and warmth . 

A resolution I made and it was just before the New Year as I'm always always trying to get ahead of the game was that I was not going to be cold this winter. I also made a resolution that I was tired of those chicken skin underwear sliding half way down my butt. I could have been happy about that and said well the elastic is worn out and I'm just losing weight, they are not fitting correctly  but when I pointed out the decreased load that was my ass my doc busted that bubble by saying, "probably just lost muscle mass."

In this time of my life what with decreasing hormones I probably can't do anything about the loss of muscle mass. An increase in red meat eating and a furious weight lifting regime will only make me have a heart attack. What I did was abandon loose fitting long underwares in favor of women's yoga pants. 

Women's yoga pants are tight fitting and warm. I like them. I must add that I wear them under my outside pants. The are extra large size so when some one says, "pull up your big girl underpants" I actually can. Cathy has forbidden me to wear women's yoga pants as outside pants in public as she thinks I look pretty good in them and might get in some kind of trouble with unwanted attentions. I mentioned this time in my life and since it is that time any attentions is good attentions. 

Of course since I bought a warm garment the January weather has been mild this year and I've only worn it once. I have high hopes for wearing yoga pants though February, March and of course there is that bitch, April. 

Since there are machines that watch the internet for any dissent and I live in a state where who uses what bathroom is more of a concern than healthcare or education or songs about yoga pants they will probably be coming for me and my yoga pants anytime now. 

        

Three and a Meat...

I am pondering recent events where our country seems to be swinging in favor of Russia by negotiating a peace in Ukraine that grants them what they want. My whole life time America has stood against Communism and I think we should still. I looked back on photos I made in New York City in Spring of 2019 at a Ukrainian Festival and wondered how the people in them have been affected by the war.    

 In thinking about the war I thought about a story a WW2 vet I had as a nursing home patient. He was 98 years old at the time, an old Sgt. from Pine Bluff, Arkansas and his duty was something to do with supplies and feeding the troops. He was a member of the 69th Infantry Division, the unit that made first made contact with Russian troops at the Elbe River on April 25, 1945. Coincidentally those were Ukrainian troops. 

The old Sgt. told me how the Russians were invited to the mess tent. He said, "they were a different kind of soldier, rural peasants, uneducated, crude, wild and you could tell that life was cheap to them." They lined them up for chow and when a serving of food was put on their plates they went to a seat and began hungrily devouring it. The American food line was much like the buffets and steam tables you seen in our restaurants of today. The war would be over in a matter of days and supplies for Americans were plentiful. It had to be explained to the Russians who were used to little or nothing in the way of comforts that you go through the line and get a meat and three sides, don't forget bread and coffee. They had never seen such bounty and had been used to the single serving meal. 

Someone told me the other day, "those of us doing like we are supposed to are going to be alright." It's my understanding that Russian soldiers in WW2 did as they were supposed to to defeat the Nazis suffering 26 million civilian and military causalities. It was a war of attrition and it seems like Russian tactics have not changed much today as the war in Ukraine continues. The count varies according to your source with the high end being a possible 839,000 total Russian causalities.  

Like my Sgt. friend told me, life for the Russians is cheap. I find it strange that our country which values the Sanctity of Life sides with one where life has little value. Lots of things to unpack from this.  Men who ate in that American mess tent have probably lost great grand children in the Ukrainian war and to continue with more Sanctity of Life issues think how all our unborn descendants will be affected by future climate change.

I'd say these are forces we should oppose but like they told me, "those of us doing like we are supposed to are going to be alright."       

           

When the Light and the Noise Shines in Your Eyes...

 We name the bike trails we ride in our rural neighborhood. There's the cemetery, the "L", the East Tex loop and one I don't ride too often we call the "T". I call it the "T' because you ride a long straight road and come to the choice of left or right and not being 100% where they go I turn and around and ride back because the distance I have covered has been enough to maintain the health of a 67 year old man, at least for this day. 

Riding the "T' recently as I approached it I heard growing sounds of machinery that I had not noticed the last time I rode this route. I passed a couple of those country mansions that are springing up all around my area, places that sell for $300,000 to $500,000 depending on acreage and there was some type of well, gas or oil reared up above the tree line behind these homes. 

Now of course I am guilty. as singer songwriter Randy Newman said, for the the rest of my life. I drive a big pickup pulling a camper and my preference for a hybrid car and the lithium ion battery on my e bike coupled with recent rare metal finds in the USA will threaten to turn Arkansas into a strip mine. It does appear that someone is going to have to have things like this in their backyard.    

From the looks of the clearing there will be more than one well going in here. So more noise and I would imagine these work places are pretty well lit at night. I live on a pretty dark dead end road and recently some new neighbors put up lights. Thankfully not permanent installations but shop lights and extensions cords strung through the trees while pretty bright are not showing signs of making it through the winter. I've been here 42 years and have lived through worse   

    

After a couple of well photos I took a dirt track across the county road into another clear-cut area and spotted a deer stand and feeder. No one was around and there were deer tracks in the road so I would imagine while hunting success was possible is happiness possible?

Modern life has evidence of 1st world people who have everything being unhappy. This indicates that the quality of the experience might not be all that good. I can imagine a hunt in a wilderness area using ancient skills as enjoyable but sitting in a deer stand in the middle of a clear cut waiting for a deer or the rig workers to show up leaves a little something to be desired. Same with a spending a half mil on a house and having an oil rig running loudly and brightly next door.

Of course that will probably happen to me. A decade or so ago my neighbor's cow field was surveyed by crews drilling holes and setting off charges to sound for what was beneath the ground. My neighbor died a few months ago. The heirs are going to want that money. 

I'll have to watch out for the oilfield traffic while riding my bike.         

My Photos of the Dakota...

On the anniversary of John Lennon's murder I browsed back on photos I had made of the Dakota Apartment building where he lived on our visit to New York in 2016. I won't forget the night in 1980 when an old high school friend, Grady, called me from Houston on a land line and told me about the incident. I had not even known Grady was a big Beatles fan. That's how people were effected.  

Now with violence and threats practically everywhere do you call anyone when something happens? I believe Lennon, a great musician was a flawed man. Maybe not someone you would enjoy visiting your home but if you verbalize bun violence or make fun of victims of gun violence you are as bad as the killers themselves.   

Lennon was gunned downed on the street outside this entrance.  

The Dakota is right outside Central Park 

 

An old hippie thinking about what could be. 

Cathy photo'd with one of Lennon's guitars at the MET. 

Chicago, Evansville and All Points in Between...

 We made a great trip to see family in Chicago and Evansville, In. this past week. It's traveling and living and while we are not visiting the Grand Canyon with specular views we are enjoying the company of people we love the most. It can be a little hard to rationalize the joy we have in our lives with the terrible things going on in the world such as storms, war and political unrest but maybe we just do the things we can as we can and pray for the best. 

One thing that might have an effect on the world and something that made me as well as my pocket book happy was the performance of out hybrid gas electric Toyota automobile. We racked up 2049 miles driven getting 50.1 miles per gallon, used 40 gallons of gas and spent $110 dollars on fuel. Maybe I won't save the planet today as my next trip to the beach my Ford F 150 will use 40 gallons to and from my favorite shark fishing spot but driving a hybrid to met the needs we can is a start and a start is what we need. 

Speaking of starts we saw these wind farms along the way. Actually Texas leads the nation in wind farms but the are mostly in southern Texas where I don't often travel. Illinois and Indian, though we saw many do not even make the top 5 list.

We also saw quite a few solar farms. Texas rates number 6 on solar. In Chicago Katie and Peter have a solar plan for panels on the roof which requires and investment but the plan is that by their retirement and of course taking in developing technology that the harvest of power will amount to a passive income stream. 

Also along the way I noted many service stations advertising EV charging. Granted with the technology we have now I could not have driven 12 hours straight from Indiana to sleep in my own bed with the neighbor's cows mooing in the backyard but as with the energy changes we saw it will happen one day. The naysayers may say it won't and that you can't charge your car when the power goes out but one day you will.  

Like I say I did not view the Grand Canyon but while in this save the planet mode I hit several thrift stores and picked up several records (another blog post), a pair of skinny leg black pants and a couple of used climate fiction change books.  

Kim Standley Robinson is a noted climate change author and I've read several of his books. He includes the science to back his stories up. Afterglow is a short story compilation and so far the resounding vibe I get from the stories is hope and that mankind does not start to make changes until it is apparent there is a disaster about to happen and then while the world becomes a quite different place it also becomes a better place while the planet begins to bloom and grow again so do the people. 

That's also a good pattern for us, to love, to travel, to bloom, grow and change.     

     

       

I Splurged...

 I like getting magazines in the mail and while Cathy can often be seen at the box by the road in pajamas as she collects them the diligent carrier tosses my newspaper way up in the garage so the only special going to get the paper dress up required first thing in the morning for me is a cup of coffee in hand. No matter what I am wearing this is how I get the majority of my news. 

One magazine I take, Rolling Stone Magazine, once a great bastion of the counter culture which I somehow managed to acquire a lifetime subscription to pictures a world of music and culture I'm not a member of. It's changed.  The other magazine, The New Yorker has a great mix of poetry, politics, short story fiction, science, books, music,  theater, current events, food and more reported each week in it's pages. The Lufkin Daily News is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper and while at three days a week it's a shell of it's former self I think it does a good job. 

Now I know some will say, "I knew he was a commie liberal when I saw him in boxers fetching up that rag the LDN out of his garage." Because we live in historical times and I wanted the best coverage I splurged on the introductory offer made by The New York Times to deliver to my email in box the entire paper for the vast sum of $1 a month for the next 6 months. The Times has been around since 1851. They probably know what they are doing.

I guess in addition to being a commie liberal I'm now a member of the East Coast Elite because Lord, Dorothy, out here in Kansas we don't even think about New York but the thing I see all these news sources have in common is that if it walks like a duck they say so with no bias. It's left for you to decide if it is indeed a duck. 

Recently there was a story in the Times that touched my heart. A photo accompanying the story of the civilian causality toll of war in the middle east showed two wounded brothers, about the age of my grand children laying on cots. One of the kids badly wounded himself was rolled so he could keep his arm on the other in comfort. I watch my grandkids as they help each other, finding lost shoes, getting a drink of water or a snack, teaching the little ones how to climb and putting all that together with the picture of the two wounded boys I get just a glimpse into how we should treat each other in the world.

That's not how it is. It's the 21st century and in the middle east, the Ukraine, Sudan and other places human beings still bomb cities and civilians. 

To try and get a grip on thoughts about this I turned to an unlikely place. I thought of the Grateful Dead song China Cat Sunflower. It can be tricky to turn to pop personalities for wisdom because like Popes and Presidents they are flawed fallible men and women and the song certainty has it's psychedelic overtones but reportedly the authors say it's less about this than it is about the connection we have to each other and what it's like to remember being three years old. 

That's my prayer today. Let everyone splurge and remember what it's like to be three years old. We might then walk out to the mail box to some different news. 

                

  Look for a while at the china cat sunflower

Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun

Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono

Like a crazy quilt star gown through a dream night wind

Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandanna

Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack

A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle

To a double-e waterfall over my back

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

China cat, china cat

Comic book colors on a violin river cryin' leonardo

Words from out a silk trombone

I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls

In the eagle-winged palace of the queen chinee

Missed That Note and They Took it Back...

I was driving home the other day and I snapped this cell phone photo of the old Little Flock Baptist Church as I cruised past at 50 mph. My house is a 100 yards or so behind the grounds. The church is abandoned and closed down. The grounds are becoming unmowed and unkept. I'm not quite sure when they left but it's been at least over a year. 

The preacher they last had down there had a way of nosing into my business. One morning as I set up for a fish fry, a cooking area and musical instruments on my garage stage, he walked over just to check on me. He should have seen that I was doing alright although when I informed him I was an active long time member of the Catholic Church he probably had his doubts. 

Another time back in 2021 or so I was mowing and he approached me to "make sure I was watching Fox News" so I "knew what was really going on." I put him on the road and told him if he was following Fox News instead of the Sermon on the Mount he was on the wrong path. I don't imagine this sat well as he realized that in addition to being a Catholic I was also had a different idea about politics and I never saw him again.   

Now the church is closed down. In the photo on the right against the trees is where the original wooden church sat. Maybe 40 years ago they moved that structure out on highway 103 east and it looks to be a thriving place of worship under a different name and is very neat and well kept. I'd say people who care attend there. 

There is much development in this area with the construction of very nice houses all around filling up unused lots including on the other side of the farm road from the church. I think the old church would make a great event venue center hosting weddings in the chapel and dining in the hall with cooking in the kitchen but I half expect to wake one morning to demolition crews taking it down to make room for new $400,000 houses.

Thinking about this I got curious about who did own the property so I got one of my trusty assistants (you didn't know we actually have a writers room @theolderyouwillget) to research the owners. Turns out the church is owned by The Texas Southern Baptist Foundation. I looked that up and turns out the Foundation is some kind of finance institution. I don't know but I suspect the governing body of the Little Flock borrowed money, missed the note and lost the property which had been put up as collateral. The property does not seem to be on the market.

That's a sad thing. Some churches have money and some don't. Some churches the population gets old, dies out, the kids move off and they don't thrive. Some don't have good leaders. I don't think the Little Flock preacher needed to change his core beliefs to be successful but I think the Fox News thing was a secular dry stream he attempted to paddle his boat up to the point where he ran aground. 

Some might lay this misfortune on the work of the Devil. Whatever you call it humans are humans. All need to work together to make sure the property stays mowed.           
     

 

This Might Be the Last Time I Don't Know...

I have been marking my mortality this year. I'm the same age as my dad was when he passed. My knee hurts. Cathy made our wills. Every few days I see an obit for some one I know. Not an old person but someone close to my age. 

 When  I was about 17 years old I spent a summer working construction. Good pay for the time at $2.25 an hour. I was a big old boy and did well pushing wheel barrows full of dirt and concrete. I don't remember it even being hot. I do remember there were older guys on the job who seemed cool. They arrived each day to work in late 60s/early 70s muscle cars, not real clean muscle cars but cars that had been once owned by cooler guys who had already got the goody out of running the heck out of those big motors. My guys did ok with a fill up the oil check the gas kind of muscle car.  The morning after a night of racing around in these cars and they usually had a pretty good hangover. 

I remember one of these guys was nicknamed "Fish." I saw Fish's obit the other day and even though it did not mention what his nickname had been (I want ya'll to make sure and list "mudbelly" in my obit) it did have a photo of him in which he looked just about how I recalled his appearance from that summer we worked together. It also listed his age as 72. So that means when I knew him I was 17 and he was 23. I thought he was 72 back then. 

Later this week I'll get these documents signed and notarized. Godspeed Fish. I'll think about your nickname from time to time. I think my knee feels a little better. 

  

Heat Wave Hits the Yard...

Yesterday was a record for heat in my small East Texas town. The mercury in the thermometer hit 110F and things are looking pretty wilted in the yard. 

I'm not worried about the grass. I've needed to change lawn mower blades for a couple of years now and if it does not grow I just save on that expense as there is not so much to cut and if I do cut it either way, dull blades or drought it looks like a bad haircut. 

I am a bit worried about my big oak tree. It shades my driveway, my house and the areas my grandkids do most of their playing. I would estimate it being 100-150 years old  and that's just an educated guess. As I figure I can afford water a bit easier than I can afford a tree service and this is judging from the price I paid to have a smaller oak that died from a fungus cut down so I have been putting the hose on slow drip at various places under it's big canopy several days a week.  

There is also a tall pine nearby and with the pine seeds getting ripe it's full of cat squirrels shucking their little hears out and carpeting the ground underneath with debris from the cone stripping the do to get at the seeds. Squirrels are pretty smart and it did not take long for them to notice the damp cool spot left by the slow water drip. It's been a common sight to see them in the evening, it's usually the day after I've run the water, laying on their bellies with legs fanned out to soak in the wet dirt. Sometimes I slip out and turn the water on them and they might take a drink but while it's running they will move on and birds move in for a drink until the next day when the squirrels return for any cool that's left.    

There's usually some animal scratch signs in the dirt where I lay the hose and hopefully the black carpenter ants which have plagued the kitchen sink and the counter top fruit bowel in search of a drink use this instead of eating and drinking on my dime and soaking up the air conditioning as well. Relocation of the fruit to the fridge has knocked the ants back and helped me cool off too.   

I'm a lazy landscaper and I let nandinas grow up at will. I recall them in my mom's and Granny's yard so they are something that's been all around but if I google nandina I get mostly "5 reasons why you should not grow." Seems it's one of those good for nothing plants that is probably an invasive species form somewhere and will take over. Global warming is creating some interesting problems but there might be a few cures mixed in. personally I think we will be better off with nandinas.     

Even the yaupon looks a bit droopy. Yaupon is a native plant and the only North American source of caffeine. The Indigenous people of the New World called it "Big Medicine" and the settlers thought it responsible for the good health of the native Americans. The settlers saw the locals using it as part of the Black Drink Ceremony to purify mind, body and soul along with chanting, fasting and purging. 

Even though some of the kids have expressed caution about my organic living I have made tea from the yaupon and drank it. I guess you can call what I do chanting. Still working on mind body and soul.       

Another lazy landscaper project is this ground cover. Probably another bad plant I can't seem to find it under any description of the best ground covers. It has done well, spreads around on it's own and fire flys come out from nesting in the leaves it traps making my deck view very colorful. The big freeze and now the drought is taking a toll. 

Here's something I usually have to trim regularly around the place the privet of the Ligustrum family. I've never seen it like this and I might not have to do much trimming come spring. Another invasive it's poison to humans but birds eat the seeds and readily spread it around. It's all around out here most strategically located here so that I can't be seen by members of the now defunct church (the one that tried to convert me to the Fox News Gospel) when I'm wearing the sarong.   

I have seen it written and it can probably found contradicted somewhere that this is the last cool summer. I myself think things are changing. Two ways to stop the change. One way is to pay the people that are extracting fossil fuels or building third world economies into global powers to stop what they are doing. It will take some money. The second way is to follow the logic of thought if unborn people have rights then those unborn have the right to a world that is not burning. Otherwise the children of the future will be pretty wilted.  

 

Thanks For The Birthday Wishes...

 This is what 66 years old looks like on me. Before you say "it looks like them tictok teens making bathroom selfies" (this was her idea) I'll tell you that my dad passed away when he was 66 years and 5 months old. My mom lived till she was 95 and I have quite a few first cousins older than me with some of them still pretty spry ranging from 75 to 95 or so. It's not really fair to cry bad genes. 

When I think about what I thought about my dad way back those 32 years ago when he passed it does feel like I am nosing the boat so to speak into unknown waters. It seemed at the same age my dad was a slow old man or at least that's what I thought. Maybe he was as he was starting to get sick and I was a dumb young man who maybe did not know as much as he thought he did at the time. Makes me wonder what my kids think (I really know what they think, I think) about me at the same age and makes me think that those waters might not be what I don't know but what they don't know. To make it all more mysterious makes me think about if we all know anything at all. 

Thanks to all the folks who reached out through social media, texts, phone calls, sent cards, gifts, or bought me a birthday dinner. It's a humbling experience to know how many people think about you in a special time. I'll try my best to follow the example my fine friends set as I continue to navigate the waters of life.     

All Hail the Turtle...

 When I was a child I recall, and of course after all this time this reminisce might not be exactly factually correct, the family making the discovery of a large snapping turtle crawling through our backyard. 

There were still woods behind our home and the houses and streets back there were a few years away and there was a creek drainage snaking through this undeveloped area to emerge into a man made system of under street culverts and ditches to funnel the water away. This makes the turtle unsurprising as when you have woods you have mammals, reptiles and if there is enough water there will be fish.

I think and I'm not sure they thought like this back then but that now days parents make the attempt to turn anything a child experiences into a learning experience even to the extent of diminishing the traditional classroom.  I might be wrong but maybe my parents were ahead of the game but they did allow us to take a stick and poke the turtle. 

This of course made the turtle furious in the exact same way it would make you furious if you were poked with a stick and it exhibited the behavior for which it was named. It snapped at the stick. My parents told us that if it snapped a body part it would not release till it thundered. Surly a teaching moment and I probably told my kids the same thing and I'll tell the grandkids also but I now see signs at the boat launches on the nearby lake that due to rarity and approaching extinction I should report to Parks and Wildlife sightings of certain snappers including photos and GPS coordinates. 

The sighting of this statue in a Texarkana BBQ restaurant kind of boiled all this up in my mind. Why? They did not offer turtle on the menu which is quite common in certain parts of the country. 

My first impression was that little boy has two turtles but someone pointed out that it might not be a boy and I'm ok if you present how you want to. I felt the figure was showing a certain carefree joy so I looked up the symbolism of turtle and it's what you might expect. Longevity, slow and steady perseverance, healing, retreat, the Earth, receptivity, survival and determination are just a few things people associate with turtles which by the way are related to crocodiles and birds. Demonstrations of all these traits are necessary for a successful life and there are many ways to put them to good use. 

What do you think about the statue? 

That snapper we were poking with a stick that day was allowed to proceed on it's way. It's entirely possible that it's still crawling today as the life spans of these are thought to reach 100 years. I have not poked another turtle with a stick since then and have not had another snapping turtle encounter. I have caught a few fishing, all gently freed and observed many in the wild sitting on logs and once while canoeing in cold clear winter waters every time I looked down seemed like the turtles were swimming like aquatic acrobats under my boat. I've probably killed a few by running over them on the highway accidently when they crawl in the spring but I've tried to make up for it by stopping to recue others from the same fate. It's the way of the car. I've probably run over everything you can run over with a car but that's a diminishing occurrence as the wooded places near where people live, just like those of my childhood are now less and less.        

     

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? 

        

 

Book Report...

 I read the book by Kim Stanley Robinson "New York 2140." I checked it out from the Kurth Memorial Library. It's a climate change novel. There's dangerous stuff down there in the library of our little town. There's ideas, science and things that people think and write about that they think might come to pass given the directions things seem to be headed. 

If you don't know the author Kim Standley Robinson he's a sci-fi writer and has been named "the gold standard of realistic and highly literary science fiction writing." He came to my attention through this article recently in the New Yorker Magazine. His main themes are nature and culture, economic and social justice, ecological sustainability, scientists as heroes, and climate change and global warming.

In the book I read, New York 2140 there has been a 50' rise in sea levels. All kinds of things are hinted at happening in the decades leading up to the present time of the book and the seeds of those things can be seen happening now. New York, though flooded is still an important place and people have managed to adapt to living there but one thing that is noted about climate change is that the ultra rich have enough money that they are not much effected by climate change. The world is still run by the financial institutions that run it today including the cycle of boom, bubble and bust which is always bailed out by the governments piling up more debt and making the rich richer. The people effected the most by climate and boom and bust are and you may have guessed it by now are the poor people. I'll leave it to you to figure out which you are.

In the book, the climate problem does not get solved but it is hinted that in the early years when the situation is finally accepted effective carbon reducing technologies are rolled out at an amazing pace even though things are past the point of no return. The economic and social justice problems get solved and guess what? The world is a better place if people are happy and taken care of with their needs met. I'll stop with the spoilers here. 

As I write this book report the temperature is about 10 degrees higher than normal. The government of Texas has asked that you keep your thermostats on 78 degrees. A little over a year ago we had some record lows and 246 people in Texas died from the cold. In 2016 I wrote this song about climate change (yeah I was getting around to selling my own stuff) and though there are a couple of versions floating around out there and I have changed and tightened up the words a bit this version recorded on a battery powered amp on a record low day during a grid failure will give you a hint at my ideas. I have performed the song in public but everyone thought it was by Paul and John.

For your info the record low when this video was recorded and the 10 degrees warmer today are related events. Come on, you scientists as heroes, YouTube researchers, poor people cause I know no rich people are reading this or they would have called me over to their houses by now figure it out! 

               

Was Just Too Spooky...

On a New York trip in Spring of 2019 our walking route back to our hotel after a day of sightseeing often took us past the KGB Museum. Open and maintained by a father daughter team of Lithuanian immigrants it reportedly provided an unbiased view on the cold war and a large collection of espionage equipment. We never darkened the door because coming of age in the Cold War era when nuclear war was possible and perhaps still likely any exposure to items that might have been used by Russian agents in an attempt to gain world domination gave me the creeps.  There was a restaurant next door with a sign advertising boiled crawfish. I did not darken the door there either because like KGB espionage crawfish in New York City is an experience I chose to avoid. 

So I write about things like this on a day that Russia invades the Ukraine. Some say to mark this as the day WW3 began because like at the beginning of WW2 the USA tried to stay out of it. Like at the beginning of WW2 there are various opinions on which side we should take with some even calling Putin a genius. They use the term in a good way and he is certainly a genius at emboldening  dictators and opponents of human rights across the globe. 

Right now there are people dying in a real shooting war. Americans, on the other side of the globe will moan about rising gas prices which I am sure are higher at the pump this morning. Not as bad as tanks in the streets but remember that Europe imports 27% of it's crude from Russia and they combine with the USA and several other countries to provide 70 percent of the natural gas. It's estimated that 60 percent of Russian export income comes from fossil fuel. This pays for their military adventures. 

The rest of the winter in Europe promises to be expensive, cold and without much driving. 

I often get to observe the effects of climate change brought on by the effects of fossil fuel use in my little corner of the world. I can't help but think how different things would be with renewable energy sources which will certainly bring about a difference in the way we do things but would be crippling to people like Putin who can influence the politics and perception of fault with the turn of a valve. We would have a better planet and screw a dictator. I'm all in. 

The KGB Museum closed, like so many people in these times a victim of Covid 19 impacts. The exhibits are to be or maybe already have been auctioned off. I don't know if the restaurant has crawfish this year but we ate some at a local boil joint the other day and they were good.

       

   

 

This Year...

 Now that I think about it 2019 was not all that good a year. There were things that happened including my mom passing away at 95 years old. Then 2020 came along and Cathy's dad declined, passed away at 88 years old all while the pandemic was hitting. 2021 has been off to a bumpy start with numerous people I know contracting covid, including myself and then this past week Texas was hit with a severe winter storm. It was not the worst thing that could have happened if you like camping but it knocked out power and water to many homes. Although some things made us sad there were also triumphs, births and other milestones and if you consider that in some parts of the world today a child starved to death and a village was strafed by a helicopter gunship things have not been all that bad this year. 

In fact all this brings me to a song by the band The Mountain Goats. If you don't know them and the central member is John Darnielle. I have seen the band twice. Once was in Chicago at the Riviera Theater and once at the old famous but now demolished for a parking lot Houston venue (I have also been to the famous FitzGerald's venue in Chicago) Fitzgerald's. If you are a fan of emotional, driving low-fi boom box (at least the early stuff was recorded this way) mostly acoustic songs about relationships and life this is the band for you. 

I have a zip drive plugged into my car. On that drive there are 19 Mountain Goats albums. They were downloaded from the old emusic service we used to subscribe to by Cathy. He's one of her guys and with 19 cds playing at random among the other 5000 songs stored on this medium you do not hardly make a trip anywhere without hearing some Mountain Goats. He's become one of my guys also. 

The song that has stuck in my head the past several years is called "This Year." The main line is "I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me." I picked this cut because it showcases the fine backing musicians that I have seen at each show. It's also the first I have seen of Darnielle with long hair. 

That's the way I feel, the way we all should feel. If you like the Mountain Goats I suggest the albums "All Hail West Texas" and Tallahassee." They just might get you through this year. 

 

 

40 years Out of High School...

I had a very nice time this weekend at my 40 year class reunion. I have always felt that those three years of high school were a pretty pretty small part of my life compared to the 40 that have followed but maybe I was wrong as old connections pull me back and I look back to roots that go even deeper than simply the class of 1975. 

 This is the graduating class of Peter Pan Kindergarten. If you spot which one I am I'll ride by your house on a bicycle playing a tuba. The photo was taken spring of 1963. Many of the people in this photo were at the reunion Saturday night. Let's see what roots show here. 

That fall semester of 1962 had been the Cuban Missile Crisis and the brink of nuclear war. Most of these kids would be at good old Trout Elementary in the Fall semester of 1963 when JFK would be assassinated. I recall going with my mom to the principles office while at Trout after some kind of testing where I seem to remember the teacher telling my mom "he puts the square peg in the round hole." In 1969 this class would be in 7th grade at the old Junior High which is now Pineywoods Community Academy, a charter school. It was the year Lufkin Schools finally integrated some 15 years after the Brown vs. The Board of Education Supreme Court decision. I would begin playing the tuba that year. We would be too young to really be good hippies and luckily too young to go to Vietnam. Somehow all these things were good things for us and we came through it to be the class of 1975. 

Just the other day I related the story of the square peg in the round hole to my wife. She said "You still do that." I also still play the tuba. I have a job that square peg in the round hole thinkers do well in. Sometimes I even take the tuba to work when it's some one's birthday and I play "Happy Birthday" for them or maybe at the Christmas party I make my daughter Mary dress as an elf and play drums while we do drum and tuba Christmas songs. 

So all these years after Peter Pan, after High School, after all this tuba playing and self examination of blog writing we come on down to what makes us what we are. I have been guilty of not keeping up with many those people in the photo even when some of them are right here in town with me. Somehow I realized this weekend that the times with those people are a part of me and made me. 

There is talk of getting back together in five years. Who knows how many will be able to do that. Glad I did it this year. As they say, "thanks for the memories." 

This Blog is 10 Years Old...

Here is what I wrote on the first post:

Just a little web space where you can see what me and mine have been up to. I just know there are people everywhere that think what I do is really interesting. I think it is really interesting so life as I live it is bound to strike a similar chord in the hearts of others because we are all brothers and sisters under the skin.

Durn, that's some sensitive stuff.

It apparently has been interesting to some. Here are the stats after 10 years:
Page views total 73,440
Page views today 35
Page views last  month 1078
Comments 646

Page views by country
USA 49,641
France 3199
Russia 2494
Germany 2219
Ukraine 1190
UK 977
Netherlands 828
Canada 820
Turkey 498
China 484

Internet Explorer has been used by 32% of the visitors and 66% use some kind of Windows based platform. 

My youngest kid was 14 when I started this and my oldest was 24. The other two were 22 and 18. You do the math. 

Some think this should be a book. I consider that high praise and thanks to those that say that. I think we have used this space well. I hope I can keep finding something interesting to write about or take a picture of. 

If you have not figured out the name of the blog keep reading. 

I'm Good With People So Let's Do This...

One time I went to a marriage encounter workshop or some sort of thing like that. It's been so long ago I forgot what they called it. I did take my wife. We went not because there were any problems but seemed like a nice thing all sensitive to do and then feel all good, go out for a nice dinner (it was not local) in a different town at a new place and well you probably have been in some sort of situation like this before yourself. 

To this day I think about that weekend occasionally and the married couple that taught it. I don't think it was the first marriage for either one of them but they were trying hard and trying to get other couples to try hard also.  I remember that the woman, and they kind of sold this to me at the time, got the man to show that his love was so strong for her that they picked the opening day of dove season to marry. The man loved dove hunting and the way they put it was that he gave up something very important to marry her and so henceforth would never have the pleasure of an opening day hunt because he would always be with her celebrating their anniversary.  

This seemed pretty cute and as I sat in a room full of people who were all trying to get something or other out of this I just went along. Now I think back on this and see that there are 364 other days in the year to get married on and there is no way I would take away something that was important to my wife as that woman took away the man's opening day dove hunt. 

So I think I can run this marriage encounter thing a bit better. It will take place at the lake. I'll supply boat, gas and sunscreen. You will pay a small fee and bring cold drinks. It will be a team work exercise involving cooperation, communication, patience and understanding. You can cuss a little bit but not at each other. Your goal will be to mount an inner tube together to be towed behind a fast moving boat. Here's how we do it. 

Some one has to be the anchor. The tube swings outside the wake better with the heavy on the bottom. 

You know the foundation. The bottom. Note the skilled handlers we have on our staff to assist you with your every team building need. 

Then you have balance things. 

and when you think you got it...

Away you go. 

After a while it get's easy and you can be silly. 

and you really start having fun. 

Then you want other people to have the same fun even if it involves some growing pains. 

Looks like one of those Hindu dancing fertility gods. 

One thing to member is you should never hurt your team mate. Don't step in his back. Don't push his head under the water. Remember cooperation, communication, patience and understanding. It will serve you well. 

I think our services will be of use to you. Oh yeah, you need to be able to swim just a little bit.