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...My God.....
It was a day to be alive.
Sunlight
bright enough to illuminate
the corners of your soul.
Air
that penetrated
to the bottom of your lungs
a breeze
... to bring
the rustle of the leaves
and the twitter of birds
and scratching of squirrels...
into focus.
you could feel
the pulse of the earth
beneath your feet
as it leads...
ever deeper...
into the euphoria
of just being
it is.........
almost
...enough
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..."the story of our life is,.... in the end, not our life.......it is our story".
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Today we had one of those early fall, near perfect, days where the sky is a perfect blue bowl overhead, the air is clear with no haze, you can still wear short sleeves without being either too hot or too cool.
It was just a pleasure to be outside. It would have been better of course if I had been in the mountains walking beside a stream or overlooking a valley from the mountain heights, or cruising a winding road punishing the tires and brakes on the curves and switch backs.
Here in NE GA the seasons sort of sneak up on you in subtle ways until you look around and say in surprise "hey, this is fall", or some other season. Of course our springs turn to summer before the official date, and we can have tee shirt weather up until Christmas sometimes. Nothing as definitive as my sister's weather up in the northern part of Maine, but then, we're not likely to get snow in September or June either.
It's way too easy to not pay attention to the progression of the days and nights. We just had the harvest moon this week. When I was younger running the dairy farm clear nights with a full moon would catch me gazing up in wonder at the sky. And as the moon waned gibbous I'd remember that man once strode (well, hopped and shuffled) across the barren whiteness of our nearest neighbor.
Will the country that set it's flag on the surface of that old moon be the ones to go back and really claim it for mankind? Or will we trade our inheritance for a mess of porridge, and cower lest someone accuse us of not caring about the children?
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"Levees shouldn’t break. Bridges shouldn’t fall. The Detroit school system should not cheat three out of every four entering freshmen."
Stolen with h/t from Here.
Can we blame these things on politicians and bureaucrats?
Why should it take Sparrow’s company 10 to 12 months to get a new permit for something that was already permitted.
I rant and rave because, like most people, I don't believe we have to behave stupidly, and against our own best self interest. Either our own interests or our society's interests.
But WTH do I know. Pill time will be in an hour and shortly after that I'm sure I'll feel much better. Not as good as a fine Cognac, but I don't fall down as much either.
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It is very easy to rant and rave about all the things one thinks is wrong with the world today. At least for the part of the world that I've lived in all my life. Of course I have many years to look back and count the changes from then to now. Nearly 58 of them which I consider not too many, and my kids and grandkids can't imagine reaching.
Lord knows that I have done more than my share over the last 33 years. Once I left the army I entered a world that I didn't recognize when I returned. Some part of us always wants to live in the past, although that is never possible. All we have is today and a hope for tomorrow.
My hope for tomorrow has always been to see it be better than either today or yesterday. In order to do that we have to remember the past mistakes and successes and build tomorrow on the desire to make it better.
I have for a number of years been disgusted by the direction the political world is heading. It's kinda like coming in from the yard and smelling dog shit on your shoe.
Of course it could be said of me that my political stance is somewhere to the far right of Attila the Hun, or Timur-a-ling. So none of the announced candidates of either party have yet to do anything about the smell in my opinion. (And I stress that this is only my opinion, you can have yours, simply allow me the same privilege).
I watched this evening a recording of a speech made in Michigan recently. I link it HERE for you to watch, or not, at your preference.
Seems like we could use a few new Solutions in America. What we got don't seem to work all that well in a political sense.
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.......you just tug gently here and the whole human DNA unravels into one long strand.
She's going to be a Scientist or Astronaut. I just know it!
We get to keep her next week while mom and dad are on a hunting trip to Wyoming for mule deer.
I taught her mom to shoot starting around age 3. She's taken more deer than me. Which wasn't hard considering I never squeezed the trigger on one.
My kids all just amaze the heck out of me.
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What a day!
Up at 7pm because I forgot to put the cell phone on charge and it was still in the pants pocket at the foot of the bed when Don calls to ask what's going on.
People who get up and started before 5am should have some kind of a restrictor plate put on their phone until at least 8am. It wakes us (or at least me since the wife gets up around 5 but is generally quite about it) up and forces us to start the day, which I like to put off as much as possible since I don't have to open my eyes, or think for that matter.
But I was looking forward to getting a check, which was overnighted????, from Dallas on Friday. Called post office. Nothing. Probably coming via Fed Ex or something. Called Dallas. Yes, Fed Ex. Got tracking #. In Gainesville probably arrive in afternoon, thinks I. So I can make the 100 mile round trip for the 2 hour meeting in Hartwell. Surely be here when I get back, again, thinks I.
Needless to say, it's not. Use tracking # online........not delivered due to incorrect address......WTH. Call Fed Ex. Attempted delivery to address from a year ago. Dallas used my old address............not like they don't know where I live since I communicate via mail with them nearly every week.
To make a long story short, while talking to Fed Ex I climb back into the truck and head out, balls to the wall for Gainesville only to decide about 15 miles up the road that it would make far more sense to have them send it to Athens so I can pick it up at 9am rather than make the 200 mile round trip tonight when I wouldn't be able to do anything with it anyway.
Ya see, even I can have moments of cognitive thinking. I just have to be faced with the prospect of a 4 hour round trip.
So my butt hurts from all the driving and sitting today. I'll hopefully never have to put up with drooping ass cheeks since I wear them off constantly.
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Between my new kudzu header, courtesy of Lil Toni, and her new blog featuring an old antebellum home, I started noodling over some of the old houses of memory.
The first old plantation home I remember seeing and having a sad feeling about was about 5 or 6 miles SW of Braselton, Georgia. We used to go quail hunting in the overgrown fields surrounding it.
My dad loved to quail hunt. Well, I guess he probably loved hunting of all kinds. I can remember the second house I ever lived in. It was the house my paternal grand parents moved out of about the time I was a year old. We had been living in another house on the original Dunagan's Dairy Farm behind Alcovy Baptist church. We moved after my grandparents moved into the house they built up on the hill.
Mom and Dad had a fenced lot beside the house where the garden was tended. The hunting dogs pen was there as well as a chicken coop. I can remember that dad would fatten up and clean out the digestive system of the opossums he'd catch. There was a place to keep the snapping turtles, feeding them on milk soaked cornbread, he'd trap on the creeks and rivers close by. We might have been poor as far as money went but we feasted on the bounty of nature. I can't imagine what it must be like to know hunger. We live and lived in a nation of plenty........it's just that sometimes you had to go out and hunt it down.
Back to the old plantation house. As I said it was not far from Braselton, Ga, the town that later Kim Bassinger bought at the urging of her realtor brother-in-law, and later had to bankrupt on. (I doubt that he had to give back any of the commission.)
This old place was about a half mile off the paved road, and had been abandoned for long enough for it to start falling down around it's self. What had once been a large rambling two story wooden structure with a huge balcony across the whole of the front, had the porch collapsed and holes in the roof, the windows were all broken and the doors were ajar, looking like an old bleached skull, wondering where the rest of itself was. The grounds were all overgrown with kudzu which had begun to creep over the roof line, determined to hide the ugliness like a once great beauty drawing her shawl close about so you can only see glimpses of what used to be.
Many, many are the ruins of what once were dreams of young, strong builders of this country. Farmers whose children went to where the paychecks were regular and sure. Who had a fondness for the old home but neither the money or desire, or ability to keep something tax collectors were determined should not be passed down to future generations.
I've seen buildings in Germany which have been pretty much continuously lived in for a thousand years or more. Lived in, loved in, repaired, updated, housing generations of people from birth to death, they are sanctuaries for their occupants, except for the occasional war here or there.
We have many two, three, a few even four hundred year old year old structures, many of them designated historical landmarks. But for the most part, whats old gets discarded, bulldozed into oblivion, then paved or concreted over.
The natural order you may say. Perhaps? But I wonder if we're leaving a part of our soul behind in order to have the latest and newest?
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Lil Toni has a new blog to showcase some of her pictures. She sho knows how to take a picture and tell a story. Go pay her a visit here.
Isn't it amazing how many times in the past 40 years we've heard a politician, indeed most politicians, talk about how we need to fix, or improve our marvelous Social Security system in this country.
All talk, all want to raise taxes and none of them ever mention that what is paid in today is paid out tomorrow. If no SS taxes were paid into the system at all they'd probably not be able to pay benefits in a couple of months. This in spite of the so called trust fund, which in reality is a filing cabinet full of IOU's in Virginia somewhere.
Oh, I guess they'd still pay the benefits. All they have to do is print more Federal Reserve Notes. Do a little google search about the hyperinflation of the German Reichmark in the early 1920's. Or the Hungarian catastrophe of the 40's after wwII.
This while the congress critters all get a full pension after just a few terms, at their full rate of pay plus yearly increases for life and their spouses life, although I'm not sure who would get Barney Franks.
If you're old enough they send you a projected SS payment form each year showing how much you would get at age 62 or 65. Take a close look at it and then go read about the retirement plan Galveston, TX has in place. Then ask your congress critter why a county has a better plan than the whole country.
I really should know better that check on the news after 6pm each evening.
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We certainly ought not to just allow anyone to abuse the right to die and be reincarnated without proper government approval, no doubt in triplicate.
The government of China, which claims control of Tibet despite the region's vigorous culture of independence, announced in August that it would henceforth require Tibet's "living Buddhas" (special clergy believed to be continuously reincarnated) to get permission from China's religious affairs officials before submitting their souls to be embodied in the future. The government acted, it said, because the reincarnation process needed to be managed better. [Agence France-Presse, 8-3-07]
Maybe this would be better titled: Stupid Chinks
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I have taken a little time to update some of the sites I check. Some each day and others occasionally, but all have good things to say from time to time.
I've been a little lax lately although no more than at other times. I can only rant and rave for so long before I realize that you don't care and it doesn't make me feel any better. Just relives the monotony some what.
But tomorrow is another day. Ihop in the morning until the bank opens then garner some mammon and head out to buy a few herringbones. Boy did they go out of fashion or what? People thought you could wear them like any other necklace. Sleep in them, work in them, mess around in them, whatever, it took only a small kink to ruin them. Most jewelers and pawnshop owners held on to them way too long.
With the recent surge in gold prices people are starting to reevaluate their worth.
I don't care, they refine easily.
Of course the price is also a reflection of the perceived worth of the US pictures of dead presidents. Right now we're losing out to the euro, which makes them happy as a pig in a mud wallow. Wait until they force us to pay for oil in euros. Don't think the Fed lowered rates to help the housing market. No, it's all about them making money in the currency markets.
Funny how we spend our lives, or a great portion of it, to gain what few pieces of paper that we can, and if we do amass a large number in our bank account call ourselves rich.
At least you can eat Kudzu and make paper out of it.
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On second thought, this guy isn't a redneck, he's an Idot.
I don't care how many beers you have in you, if you put a poisonous snake in your mouth, no matter how large or small, it's just a damn pity that he didn't garner a Darwin Award.
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Having been the proud possessor of a cast iron stomach most all my life, I rarely hesitate to eat what ever gets in front of me, although I have for the most part hidden from common knowledge that holiday meals don't see me return for seconds as often as once I did.
Today the first thing to get in front of me was a nice sausage biscuit eaten on the go along with a quart of water between then and lunch. Lunch time saw a new Mexican restaurant opened up. Remember these clues: 1. it's in an old Arby's in a small town, 2. the Arby's sign is still up and the now open sign is printed on half an old bed sheet. Not quite up to hopeful expectations. I'm all about equal opportunity but they've used theirs up. Remember those clues and violate your good judgment at your own risk.
This evening saw the piling on of a Supreme Pan Pizza, picked up and consumed with the addition of crushed red peppers to taste. I'm reasonably sure the ol' pipes will be alright in the morning, but the ears are ringing even more than usual, and I've a slight throbbing in my temples.
Checked the blood pressure before taking the daily BP pill this evening and it was a nice 106 over 62. Seemed reasonable considering I hadn't seen pictures of either Angelina Jolie or Lil Toni today.
Looking around to make sure there are enough Kudzu leaves within reach here in the kudzu grotto.
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Allen Greenspan husband of Andrea Mitchell claims in his new book that the Iraq War is all about OIL.
Well Duhhhh. He makes it sound like he and his masters had nothing at all to do with it.
If you still believe that Bush and Congress run this part of the world, I've got news for you. They're as much cattle as you and I.
You can call me a conspiracy nut if you want, I don't care. Read "Proofs of a Conspiracy" written in 1798 if you would seek understanding. Any number of other books. Look at a history of Henry Kissinger. The writings of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
They consider us the unwashed, unintelligent masses who have to be molded and led around with blinders on for our own good and their power and profit.
Financial Vampires they are. Feeding on the spoils whether there are wars or the illusion of peace. So for Greenspan to come out all self-rightous over this is just more of the same old, same old to keep the kettle boiling, just like they always have.
I could really get worked up over this, and I have over the last 30 or so years, but, most people don't want to hear it and it doesn't make me feel any better.
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Nice bit of rain falling this evening. Gracie the dalmatian hiding outside in her hidey hole and Toby the yorkie curled up on the couch burying his head against the thunder like the wuss he is.
Used to be we'd call this snuggling weather. Now it's known as sleeping weather.. Which is what I did after arriving home from the trip to Clayton and back. Flopped down in the rocking recliner and never felt the second rock backwards. Woke just in time to eat a bowl of veggie beef soup and cornbread.
I know, it's a hard life, but, someone has to do it.
While in Clayton I stopped at the Ranger Station and picked up a few topo maps of the northeast part of Georgia. I want to get one of the hand held GPS systems and do a little trekking before the year turns too far toward winter. Of course the term winter doesn't really apply here like it does in the more northerly parts of the country.
Snow measured in more than inches just makes me cold, although back when younger I liked to go sliding over it. Now.........just want it to go the heck away.
Lil' Toni over at Random bits of Pomposity has posted a couple picture of some kudzu from down in Miss-a-sloppy. Hopefully I can get LL of Chromed Curses to tell me how to use it as the header for this poor excuse of a blog. That would be really , like, cool, you know?.
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.............to consider when you think about our men in Iraq.
Here are pictures of two of my nephews.
Lt. Zack ( he's the one not trying to look crazy)
And his younger brother Josh.
He's a medic, just made Sargeant.
Both warriors just fighting a little different type of battle day by day.
Updated:
To make the post complete.
Here is a picture of their younger brother graduating from Basic at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma
And not to worry ladies, the beautiful youthful lady he has his arm around is my sister, his mother.
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No, I don't really have any reason to say that, except that it's almost as if a feeling of calm has washed over me. May be getting the meds adjusted or me adjusted to them.
Yet it's such a strange feeling. I who always feels something lacking, or wrong, or disgusting. Who loathes politicians with a feeling of having just puked my guts out after trying to pick up a dead dog by the hind leg only to have the hair and skin come loose in my hand and a half gallon or so of maggots burst from the distended stomach.
Who holds bankers in a position of low esteem only slightly higher than lawyers. Which are on an equal footing with politicians since most pols are or would like to give signals to lawyers under the bathroom stall divider.
I can't explain it. Probably a bad bit of beef.
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Time goes by quickly, and our memories are short. Our individual memories can sustain us for lifetimes baring head trauma or Alzheimer disease, but our national collective memories seem too often shaped by our viewing of the boob tube, or even by our adherence to a particular party line.
Mostly we don't like to look back at the bad things in life, or if they didn't happen to us directly we don't want to think that they might next time, so we squint our minds eyes as if looking at the sun too closely and pretend they didn't happen.
Men like Churchill could see the signs of WWII coming ten or more years in advance.
George Patton knew that our alliance with Stalin during that same war was a deal with the devil and that we would pay the price afterwards. Senator Goldwater knew that the way to keep our precious freedoms was for freemen to exercise those rights given to us by our Creator. Ronald Regan knew that you didn't sit with your pants down in the Oval office getting a Lewinsky while foreign governments supported terrorists who tried to blow up the twin towers or blew up our warships and our troops stationed in foreign lands.
Whoever said that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to forget it" was pretty wise. The question is are we?.
I've always been moved by the writings of our founding fathers. Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech (you can read the text here, the sound plug in didn't work for me) has always roused a fire in my heart that takes days and weeks to quench, and never goes out entirely, but, like the clamor of the ambulance siren, seems to make most people I try to express those sentiments to smile weakly while nodding there head and casting their eyes around for the nearest emergency exit. Nothing like a zealot to run most people off. And I wonder what it is about me that does that to them. I do take a shower every Saturday after all. And in my opinion Old Spice is still in fashion. My Grandfather wore it by golly, and so do I.
I had started this post with the intention of repeating last years post for this date. If you didn't read it then you can look it up in my archives.
All I want to say is, Look at the threats ( and there are many more than Islamic fanatics alone) and don't hide your eyes, but face the enemies of freedom full on and Never surrender, Never give up.
Sharpen your bayonets, see to your weapons. Get some sleep, you're going to need it.
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.........to being a lone wolf.
"There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.
It seemed that, lately, I had barely been touched at all"
White Night, Page 185
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..........I stole this from GOC.
I've always wished that I could sing in a way that would make people stop and listen.
These girls make it look easy but I know that it's not.
Good music enlarges your heart and soul. According to some research it will increase the intelligence of children. Don't know how good it works on adults as we sometimes scoff at that which enthralls us as we don't want to be labeled geeks. Too late for me of course. My geekdom needs only a pocket protector to be complete.
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.............but is there anything better that a bowl of peach cobbler along with a little vanilla ice cream on top.
Well, at least in the typical food groups anyway.
At least that is the opinion of this ol' redneck country boy.
I can remember as a young child our mother cooking up apple pies and peach cobblers and my favorite, blackberry cobbler. Served still hot from the oven. So hot that we would take real cream, skimmed off of milk from our own jersey cows, and pour it liberally over the top, cooling it down enough to eat. And if you had it the next day there would be a film of congealed butter on top sweetened by the copious amounts of sugar it took to make. Yum doesn't hardly begin to describe how it tastes in my memory.
All of this triggered by the last bowl of cobbler I'm eating on right now between every sentence.
Wishing you all a peach cobbler weekend.
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You meet many different people in your life these days.
Unlike days past (long ago and far away) when a person might live his whole life in the same town or village and possibly never travel outside a short distance (compared to how we measure distance today with automobiles and airplanes and rocket ships into outerspace and even once upon a time to the moon) from where he or she was born. Today we can in a few hours travel to the opposite side of this ol' world
The furtherest I've ever traveled was 13 time zones away, which is about half way around the world or a little better away from Georgia. But in terms of seeing much of this planet, I can't really say that I've seen much. About 37 of the United States, a couple of territories, 7 foreign countries. And really most of them I can only say that our plane landed there or we drove thru them on the way to somewhere else. So I really haven't seen much. To be sure we can turn on the Travel Network on TV or read about places and learn a great deal that once was the realm of only the rich who could afford to travel or the military who'll send you where they want you, but knowing a place or understanding it requires a little more I think.
There is something within most people, I think, which yearns to see and experience different places or things. We can admire the view from a roadside pull off high in the mountains where we can see for 50 miles or more, but I think in our deepest subconcious parts of our brains the explorer in all of us wishes we could experience all of what is within our view. And more if that is possible. That's why I have a lot of respect for researchers, scientists and deep thinkers of what ever persuasion.
They are reaching out for answers to question we may not even have thought of yet.
Several years ago I was in a small trading post in a little NE Ga town. They sold used furniture and appliances and STUFF.. They would also buy or pawn items from people. They had accumulated a good bit of old jewelry of various description and had decided to get rid of things they hadn't been able to sell. I sorted thru all their items and picked out the genuine gold from all the costume jewelry. Quite a nice little buy I thought. One of the items kinda caught my eye and after I got home I gave it a closer look.
It was an apparently hand crafted piece of 18 kt gold with a curiously crafted design on it which resembled a central or South American ancient carving. Anything like that gets my attention since supposedly my mother was 1/8 Cherokee Indian, so I feel a certain amount of kinship towards Native American cultures where ever they were.
I took the piece to my friend Renato, a Peruvian Lawyer who immigrated to this country many years ago and because his legal training was in that country could not practice as a lawyer since he didn't complete his JD in this country. He works as a legal aid to the hispanic community assisting with taxes, passports and other things they need help with.
A most interesting person. Highly intelligent, the author of 2 books now. A speaker on the ancient architecture of South America and very interested in many of the unexplained mysteries of that region and the world. I met him at church and our friendship seemed to have that bond of long knowing of each other.
He told me that the design was one of the smaller winged gods engraved on the Sun Gate of the Tiwanakuan culture high in the Bolivian Andes mountains at about 12500 ft above sea level.
This is a picture of my piece:
Click through some of the links to the Sun Gate or related sights and you'll get a better idea of the image shown.
An interesting item is that some of the cut stones making up Machu Piccu is that they weigh 400 tons or better. The largest stones in any of the pyramids of Egypt weigh about 300 tons and they're at close to sea level. These are at an altitude of two and a third miles in some of the steepest parts of the world. How did ancient workers get them there???
My friend has a website at http://www.renatolongato.com
I think you might find some things to consider and maybe even ponder there. I might try to get together a group to have him speak to sometime. I learn new things every time I visit with him.
Sitting in the Kudza picking at the lint in my navel. Never know what will turn up.
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Growing up in the 50's and 60's was a unique time, now that I think back on it.
The agricultural past of this country and especially the South was fast changing. I feel fortunate to have grown up on a small family farm, part of a tradition that stretched back to the early 1900's when my Great Grandpa moved his family out of the hills around Gainesville, GA (a place then known as New Holland) to a new farm in the center of Gwinnett County along the Alcovy river.
Dairy farming could be profitable there. Close enough to make daily deliveries of milk, cream, chocolate milk and even at times orange juice to the door steps of families on the eastern part of Atlanta. Decatur, Stone Mountain and other small towns that provided growing room for what became quite a bustling town rising out of the ashes of the War between the States.
Then a Farmer could pretty easily count the number of families he could feed. Now 1 farm can produce more that they ever thought possible.
Families provided the basis of your whole life then.
The small church we went to had a cemetery full of dead relatives that we never knew and the pews full of family with ties going back 3 even 4 generations, although as kids we didn't know that. Names like Buffingtons, Pratts, Dewberries, Dunagans, MaHaffee's, Hinton's all tied into a circle the that just kept growing.
The circle today is large enough that we have a hard time seeing from one minute of arc to any of the other 360 degrees. It both saddens and gladdens me to think of how it's grown. Sad to think of all those I've never known and never will, and glad to be a part of those I do.
It's kinda like life it's self. With no beginning and no end in sight, we just keep on marching around on the path before us, whether it's fated to us or just happenstance, I can't tell, and feel no real need to know at this point. I'm just glad to be a part of it.
There was a PBS documentary on The Carter Family on the tube tonight. I suppose that's what started me thinking along these lines.
They started a tradition that shaped the music world of their day and to great extent still does today. I wish I could have found the following song on YouTube by the original 3 Carter family members, A.B., Sarah and Maybelle, but 1 and 2 generations later they still kept the traditions alive.
May the Circle be unbroken.
I can get all misty eyed just hearing it again. I think of the almost 60 years behind me and the 135 years yet to go to reach my goal.
Maybe later I can find something by Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers.
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I may not agree with all of his politics, but no one can reach me with this song better than the original. Seems appropriate for a cloudy Sunday morning.
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...........we know that we're going to change the world.
When we're middle aged we just hope we survive the world
When we're older we just shake our heads at what the worlds become.
After we're dead the young know just how they're going to change the world from what we changed it into.
And so it goes.........
