Just a little too DAMNED close

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We've been mighty dry in these parts folks. So much so that we're under a stage four or five watering ban. Which means that we're not supposed to wash our trucks or water our lawns at all. Course there may be exceptions if you have the money to have new landscaping put in. (for a 30 day period)

So it was with a grateful heart that I saw the clouds begin to build in the sky on my way home this afternoon. Even went through a couple of showers just north of town. They seemed to be moving closer to home as I arrived. They held off long enough for me to get into the house and settle down a little then started a nice slow sprinkle while I was in the back yard, which caused me to give a little prayer of thanks and welcome.

Just before supper I was sitting here looking out the window and wishing I had had time to unload the back of the truck, when KABLOOOWY right out in the yard a huge bolt of lightning cracked across the window with instantaneous thunder.

Seconds later I saw a cloud of red oak leaves fall to the ground and my tightened throat managed to croak out, "Shit, that hit something". Never let it be said that I am at a loss for words in a crisis situation.

I've never been personally struck by lightning, but, I have seen the destructive force that it possesses, having had cattle killed, equipment ruined and a quarter mile of barbed wire fence vaporized. I know enough to get in out of the rain and especially thunderstorms.

This was a relatively light strike as these things go. But consider that the following pictures are of a tree only 75 feet or so from where I was sitting.





Glad I wasn't out walking the dog. Needless to say he was looking for places to hide in the house and none of them were suiting him, so he was trotting around in circles, panting like a race horse.

Hope the tree doesn't die. Will know by next spring I suppose.

How old

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were you, when you realized you can barely change yourself, much less the world.

Fade to black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aNuyNk8nro

We think that it cannot happen again.

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WARNING; NSFW OR THE SQUEAMISH


But history has always taught at least one thing.

Those who do not learn from it, make a great mistake that will inexorably lead to it's repeating.

Pamela has posted a Hitchcock Film suppressed for two generations.

Does it apply today?

It does if we allow the enemy to gain the strength and authority that the Nazi's possessed.

Evil triumphs, when good men do nothing to prevent. Thanks God for our GOOD men and women.

WARNING; NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. DO NOT WATCH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO CONFRONT THE DEMONS THAT LURK WITHIN US ALL.

It's Good to Know.........

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........That there are men and women like this
With all the blather about politics and war, evil doings, foot tapping Senators, kneeling interns, and which celeb is in rehab this week, showing off their shaved pudenda, or putting their big foot in their mouth, it's nice to celebrate determination, commitment and a drive to succeed at a task one sets for themselves.

It's too easy to dwell on the inane and senseless things of the world. Far better to think about the inspiring and noble things.

When all children think about is how their going to be the next NBA, or MLB superstar, or want to emulate the latest Hip-hop rapper or winner of American Idol and obtain wealth and ease with little or no effort to increase their intellect or the size of their dreams, we lose something that might have been.

How much better to seek to enrich and en-noble and leave, for a little while, the base and mundane.

Just my view from the Kudzu.

A train wreck once started

"A train wreck once started goes to completion.

And the policeman cometh. He cannot, I think, be stopped. The abolitions of the Bill of Rights, the ever increasing surveillance, the diminished recourse of citizens against the government—these are not business as usual. They have happened before, in bits and pieces, but now they become respectable. The CIA has always tortured people and the FBI has always engaged in illegal phone-tapping and political persecution. Yet in the past they didn’t want to be caught because consequences might follow. These are now federal policy, openly admitted. The government keeps records of the books you read in the airport. This is something different.

And it can’t be stopped. Actually it is wild and fun when viewed as entertainment. What a show: The United States is close to one-man rule. Congress is complicit, the Supreme Court a nursing home. No serious opposition exists. If Bush leaves office in 2008, the incoming president will continue the trends of today. The effects begin to show. People grow ever more docile, accustomed to intimidation, to searches without cause. Several writers of my acquaintance no longer question federal policy. They are afraid.

And we are going to see this show through to the end. In a dismal way it is funnier than Oprah."


I hope He doesn't go away for good, but if he does I understand. I feel much the same myself. Only I don't have the wherewithal to move to Mexico. Although if I could it would probably be Argentina.

Seems like we already tried this once.

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As a son of the South, and having read somewhat more history than most of the great unwashed out here, I find my sympathies residing with the confederacy in the War between the States. Give the times and circumstances, and the knowledge that this country was a Union of Individual States, it seems reasonable that if compromise could not be reached a separation of that union should have been possible.

Despite that I'm glad that Union was maintained. We are a better country together than we would be as individuals separated.

With the increasing encroachment of government into every part and particle of our lives today I do not agree. We lose much when we try to shoehorn every person into a homogeneous mass all thinking, acting and marching in step with the orders of folk who have forgotten they were once us.

So while I have removed myself from the dictates of government to the limited extent that I am able, I find myself almost hopeful that these groups of dreamers meet with some success. If only to cause some few to rouse themselves from their NFL, WWF, look for the weekend to Parrrr..Tay opiated dreams.

Home from War

SAFE
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Breakfast of Champions

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Damn the cholesterol, bring it on.

Hot biscuits, Country ham, sorghum syrup and apple butter. Not homemade apple butter but good nonetheless.

Oh boy.......or girl

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Watching the granddaughter this week while parents on Pronghorn hunt. Picked her up from day care yesterday.

Crabby doesn't begin to describe it. would not sleep with out someone holding her. Finally put her in bed with me around 1:00 this morning where she slept till 6:00.

Worse today. Found sores on her mouth, which pain her very much. Doctor visit this afternoon if her grandmother and I survive. We will. Right now she is finally eating some cream of mushroom soup. Seems to feel a little better with a little something in her tummy.

Meanderings

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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

Stories.............

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..."the story of our life is,.... in the end, not our life.......it is our story".

Changes

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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?

Is this really radical??

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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.

Very Easy

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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.

You see..........

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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.

Oh My

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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.

Haig or Sun Tzu

If'n yo ain't reedin Kim yo r miss-n da boat. Here why I likes hem.

Him's a thanker!

Waxing Nostalgic

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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?

Go give her some love

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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.

Obama Floats Social Security Tax Hike

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.