Bra Department

Somehow, I can hear the conversation.  I wasn't there, but the words reverberate in my brain.

Female Shopper. "There's a pervert standing in the bra section, over by the dressing rooms.  He's been there for the last twenty minutes or so, just STANDING by the dressing rooms."

Store Mgr.  "I'll take care of it for you.  Can you point him out?"

Female Shopper.  "Of Course!  He's just standing there,  Must be a pervert.""

I'm sure it went something like that, 'cause I could see a female shopper kinda hiding behind a table full of women's panties as the effeminate store manager sashayed up to me.  He was on the smallish side, but packed full of courage and authority.  If I were in his place, "taking care" of a problem as tall and heavy as me, I would have been sure to have several warehouse workers within shouting distance.  He came by himself, and one of these days, in his profession, that behavior is gonna cost him dearly. 

Well, he was not entirely alone - the female shopper was hiding out around there to lend a scream or two if things went horribly wrong.  And a scream, ya know, will help a lot in a fight between a midget and a moose.

He walked up and said. "Sir, may I help you find something?  I'm the Store Manager, and it's been reported that a man is just standing in the undergarment section, and some of the ladies are concerned." 

At least he was honest, and straight forward.  No beating around the bush, just a straight up reason why he was there.  It's just possible a REAL pervert, one who slinks and lurks in areas where no male should ever be, would cower and beat a swift retreat from this dwarf of a man just because of his businesslike manner.  It's also possible the manager would wind up with one or more bruises he could display to his significant other a little later in the day.

Ah, I'm just starting to learn the indignities a caregiver must learn to deal with.  My disabled wife was having a fairly good day today, and since she wanted to pick up a few new things to wear, we went shopping.  Good days are not to be wasted, and Lord knows I'll never be able to try on clothes that will fit her.  I could probably try stuff her size, but by the time it was on my rotund body, most of the seams would be split.

I explained a little about my wife's condition to him, and let him know just which door in the dressing rooms she was behind.  I told him it takes her a lot longer to change from one set of pants to another than most because she has a severe balance problem.  I needed to be exactly where I was for the better part of the next hour, in a position to see if she fell to the floor, so I could help her if she ran into a problem.  Further, I let him know I'd MUCH prefer to be in the sporting goods department, trying the fit of a rifle to my shoulder, than to be in my current location, the middle of the bra aisle.  I winked at him and said, "Bras are OK, ya know, but I prefer to play with them while they are being worn." 

Well, having established my credentials in the most manly way possible,  I told him my wife really enjoys the clothes he carries in his store for her everyday, around the house apparel, and let him know we would be back.  "Hopefully," I said, "You'll remember and be able to let any other folks with similar concerns know what is going on when we come back."  He accepted the information, thanked me for shopping with them, turned and left.

I saw him stop next to the woman who was still hiding and watching.  He said a few words to her and continued on his way.  She left the comfort she had found, behind the panties, and continued to shop.

I've got to tell you, I probably am a perverted individual.  Not in the way she at first thought, but in my sense of humor.   It was all I could do to keep myself from fondling the bras on the racks in front of me as she passed by. 

Just to see the look on her face.

Brothers

There was a pleasant surprise waiting in my email today.  The Facebook people were nice enough to let me know my brother, Mike, posted on my wall.  I couldn't believe my eyes!  At first I thought it was some kind of attempt by a nefarious gang of hackers to gain control of my computer.  If you knew my brother, you'd understand.  He'd NEVER buy a computer!  I'm not sure, but I'll bet it was a present from his kids!

Mike is a dinosaur, and if he were here beside me right now, he'd be the second to tell you that.  He comes by it naturally; he gets it from me.  The reason I learned to use this sucker is because I needed to eat.

The last time I was in his for real "Home on the Range", complete with his herd of cattle, I think I saw his most recently purchased piece of modern electronics, a Victrola by RCA, hiding behind the Underwood Typewriter.  Don't get me wrong, Mike is as smart a guy as you'll ever want to meet, and a whole lot more fun to be around than almost anyone I know.  Including myself.  These two qualities have allowed him to make a VERY good life for himself, and his family, without ever once having to sit in front of a computer.

Man, I wish I could say the same.  Instead of having carpal tunnel surgery a few months ago, I'd have been with him, beside a stream up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, with a gold pan in my hands.  The wives and kids, with their families, would have been either beside the stream with us, or in our camp thirty yards away. We used to do that a lot, Mike and I, and it's something I really miss. 

He and I had some pretty good times together.  He is my little brother, and once, with my hands clenched into fists, I ordered a high school teacher to leave him alone.  The jerk was verbally abusing him and I couldn't stand it.  We both got kicked out of the class, but the facts were pretty clear.  From that time on, the teacher's days were numbered, and his career was finished at that institution.  We made a fair team, Mike was more the hunter and fisherman, I was a little more bookish and musical. 

We grew up together.  Anyone with a brother knows what that entails.  We got older, Mike stayed in town and I moved away.  That's another difference between us - he has roots, I have seen more places and met more people.  The paths we took to reach our old age were different, but when our Father died, both of us were at his side, and we held hands while walking to his grave.

Circumstances make it difficult to see each other now; he's busy taking care of his mother in law and I need to be with Carolyn.  Neither of them can travel.  But, one of these days, he and I will spend all day beside a mountain stream again.  At the end of that day we will have run twenty-five dollars worth of gas through the engine on the dredge and will have found five dollars worth of gold in the pans we use on the tailings.  Both of us will need a whole bottle of Ibuprofen just to stand up. 

We'll also have made another million bucks worth of memories.

35 Teachers

Yesterday the big news was 54% of the students in our local High Schools are unable to graduate in the allotted four years.  Most either drop out or take an extra year to reach this milestone.  So, I slapped myself on the forehead and said out loud "What?  WHAT???",  when I picked up a copy of  today's Bend Bulletin while waiting for the Doctor to tell me I'm OK.

After telling me the wrist he slit is now four fifths OK, the Doc asked about the bruise on my forehead.  I let him know I have a nasty habit of smacking my forehead when things just make no sense whatsoever.  I asked if there was anything he could do about that condition.  "There are no pills I can give you that'll curb that urge," he said, " but I'm a surgeon, you know, and a frontal lobotomy should do the trick."  At first the procedure was sort of appealing , in a mostly backward reasoned way.  It's hard to live in a world as crazy as this one unless alcohol plays a major role in your life, and a frontal lobotomy might be just the ticket.  But, I have a wife to protect from the everyday crap that is flung at everyone of us until the second foot slips on the banana peel.  I declined. 

As soon as I reached the safety of our home, as flungcrap-free an environment as I can possibly create, I greeted Carolyn, scraped Muffy off my leg, and headed for the office.  I fired up my trusty computer - then rebooted it 'cause it froze up. 

In case I haven't told you yet, my computer is eight years old.  It is an old, trusted friend in a world full of too many options.  I have no clue what I'm gonna do when one day it stops, it's memory as full as mine, and rolls over.  Maybe then the lobotomy will be an even more attractive option.  I have to replace it, but someone will have to drug me and drag me into the store before that happens.  I REALLY hate new electrical stuff.  I can't see electrons, have no clue what they do, and would never include one in my will.

Finally everything was in order to find the information I needed to reassure myself I was not hallucinating.  The world really is FUBAR.  I'm not gonna explain that to you, if you don't know what it means, ask a military man.  I wanted to compare the rates in the towns of Bend and Redmond, and I discovered the rate of students either dropping out, or taking more than four years to graduate, in the town of Bend is 23%.  That's much better than the 54% of students in Redmond.  But, don't worry folks, we're gonna be OK here.  The headline in today's paper let me know it's gonna be just fine. 

Because of budget problems, the La Pine- Bend High School District is going to eliminate 35 teachers next year.  I'm sure that little action is gonna help even the score.  For sure, their drop out rate will increase to match ours.   God save us from the idiots we have placed in positions of power.

PS:  A reader and old friend, sent this in today's email.  JR, I hope you don't mind.  It just seemed to fit here..........

"I can't believe one of the first things our schools cut is some of the most important things like music and physical education. One keeps your mind in tune, the other your body - both things you really need and our society should value. Makes no sense to cut these in the long run - like never maintaining your car."  

46%

Ed u cation.  Now there's an interesting subject if ever there was one.  Someone ran the numbers for this state the other day and discovered only 46% of the kids in our local high schools manage to graduate in four years. 

The next picture, on our almost brand new HDTV, was one of an educator explaining the numbers are a little off.  There are SO very many more requirements these days, he complained, it is taking the kids five years to graduate.  What the heck is that all about??  High school is high school, and if 46% of the kids can do it in four years, there can't be that many more requirements these days. His lame excuse doesn't pass the smell test, in my opinion. I'm guessing he is in some sort of supervisory position, but lacks the brains required to make a decent excuse for failure. 

The kids I've met around these parts are pretty well behaved, exuberant examples of the everyday, garden variety, kids I hung out with every day of my teen years.  They seem to be of average intelligence, respect old fogies like us, and are full of life and curiosity.  What has occurred that makes them take five years to graduate instead of the four it took the youngsters of my generation?  Ya think maybe it might be us?

How is it this great nation of ours has gone so wrong it is incapable of educating our children?  May the good Lord help us, they are the future.  They will move this nation forward, continue this experiment in self government, and pay the taxes that provide funds to support us in our old age.  Why have we failed so miserably?  When I grew up, we were going to send a man to the moon.  My President promised me that and I believed him.  Jeeze, a little later, I even helped.   Now, my president can't manage to keep a promise to balance the budget.  Do any of our Senators and Congressmen even have checkbooks these days?  Do they have enough grasp on reality to realize checkbooks need balancing every now and again? 

Sorry, that's a different rant, and this one's supposed to be about education.  Must be something I ate. 

I have two nieces, daughters of my next younger brother, who are teachers.  If they are representative of the profession, it's not their fault the kids can't learn.  Neither of them are lazy, they are not dumb, and they both answered that calling because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of small people.  Not because they couldn't make it in the "real world."   Let's look instead at the parents.

Now here's a sorry bunch, and the ones most often criticized by the teachers.  "How can I teach a child without the aid of the parents?",  you'll hear the educators ask.  Well, here's the answer to that particular query.  Ya can't, but the parents are worn out.  After both of them have put in a hard day at whatever work they must do to feed and clothe the youngsters, they are just plain TIRED.  Worn out by the effort to make ends meet, keep up, pay the bills.  When I grew up, it took only one income to do these things.  One parent was left at home to mind the place and raise the kids.  That's what wrong these days, nobody home. The kids are raising themselves, and computer games are much more engaging than Copernicus.

I can get upset with the situation, the educators can say it's someone else's fault, and the parents can complain about the quality of education forever.  It won't help.  All that will help is to pay one member of the family, either the male or female member, enough to support that most basic unit of civilization, the family.  Also, the other parent, either male or female, must be satisfied with the role of "parent" and realize it is one of the most important of professions.  Somehow, it's importance has been minimized in our society.

There's a reason for that, but that's also another rant - the ruling class requires the labor of all the males and females in this country to support them.  One of these days, when I'm feeling a little more suicidal, I'll expand on this thought.  A little whisky might be just what it'll take for that topic, remind me to buy some. 

Without the aid, comfort and example set by an adult human being during most of the waking hours, children will grow up a little off.  And, when they are out on their own, members of our civilization in addition to being members of their families, our civilization will be a little off.  Until we can somehow turn back the clock to the days of Richie and Fonzie, when one parent was present, this nation is gonna lose more and more of it's standing in the world.  People are gonna get meaner, and the kids?  Well, they're just gonna be lost.  May Heaven help us and them - that's already happened.

Coffee Mugs

I knocked over my coffee mug today.  It didn't make much of a mess because it's always filled with an assortment of pens, sharpies, marks-a-lots in various colors and a pair of scissors. 

That's what caused me to make the mess.  The pair of scissors.  The mug was picked to hold all the stuff that belongs in my desk drawer because it makes no sense to use it to hold coffee.  That's because it starts with a diameter of three inches at the bottom and tapers OUTWARD to a diameter of four and a half inches at the top.  Now, who in their right mind makes a coffee mug that's bigger at the top than at the bottom?  Have they no sense of functional design?  A mug like that will tip much easier than one that is the same size from top to bottom, or bigger at the bottom than at the top.  Anyway, while reaching for my stash of pens, which was conveniently located way behind my monitor, I caught my pinkie finger in one of the holes in the scissors and the laws of physics acting on such a poorly designed cup resulted in a 20 minute break from paying bills while I cleaned up the mess. 

Being the easily distracted kinda guy I am, I started thinking about coffee mugs.  That's a lot more fun than paying bills.  We have a whole kitchen cabinet devoted to the darn things.  I measured it and there are four shelves, each  24 inches long and 18 inches deep filled to the point that some mugs must be stacked on top of others so the doors will close.  I'm sure there are a box or two, unopened in the garage, waiting until we remodel the kitchen, possibly with trap doors in the floor leading to basement mug storage areas, that need to be unpacked.  Mugs just sort of sneak up on you.  One day you're in charge of them but after awhile, they're in charge of you. 

In my case, it all started with a college mug. "Go Bulldogs!" or something along those lines - it was broken long ago and tossed in the dump to be discovered and revered by some yet to be born archaeologist in the thirty-second century - so I can't say for sure just what it proclaimed, but that's close enough. Everybody hung out at our digs back then and most of them forgot at least one mug per year as they departed our place in varying states of inebriation. I was well on the way to being overwhelmed with mugs by the time the college years were behind me. The situation improved for awhile.

Like most young men, I moved a lot and mugs were unceremoniously dumped into a box during each move. Needless to say, scores of them were broken in this way, and now await the afore mentioned archaeologist. But, a guy's happy go lucky days are soon overcome by the nesting instinct of a female member of the species, so OUR mug collection began. After several years, the mugs had again gained the upper hand. Well, the solution to ridding myself of that bunch, along with all the remaining ones from MY collection was a divorce. Ha! She got the house, the car AND the mugs! Serves her right! I took the tools. Just about an even trade, in my opinion.

Later in life, I finally met the woman with whom I wanted to collect mugs.  Again, it started benignly enough.  Just a mug here and there as we traveled.  Smallish English ones that say things like Stonehenge, Dunkirk, and Skipton.  Larger ones from the Continent and REALLY BIG ones from Germany.  The size of a mug can say a lot about where it came from.  There's one with the faces of four presidents carved from a mountain on it.  One from Monument Valley with a picture of John Wayne.  Lots of mugs to remind us of pleasant vacations and then there are some, like the one that says Meteor Crater, that remind us of tarrying on the way to somewhere else, just because we had never been there before.

One shelf is mostly full of acomplishments.  These remind me I'm the  Worlds Greatest Dad, #1 Pilot, Happy to be 40 - that kinda thing.  Their value is derived from the fact someone I care about and who cares about me, wanted to put them on my shelf.  These are the best ones, but I don't often use them.  I'd hate to chip or break any of them, and I'm good at doing that.

Other mugs remind me of employers.  One proudly proclaims "With great respect, we thank you for a job well done"  By the time in my life I collected that one, management considered such things to be morale boosters, never once understanding they couldn't be used to buy a loaf of bread.  At least by that time I had wised up enough to know the score.  If I wanted to retire, it was up to me.  I'd never get rich working for wages.  Here's a tip:  There are always "side jobs" available if you look for them.  Find something you're passionate about that will bring in more money than the boss thinks you're worth.  It's out there, Just Do It.  Keep your day job for health care and a steady source of income, but retire on your side job.

Our cupboard is full, of mugs and of life.  There's a mug in our home for each of our friends to pick for his own, and ya know? These days I wouldn't want to have any less. Even though the collection is larger than it has ever been before,  there is no need to discard even one of them.  Well, maybe I wouldn't mind too much if the poor step-sister designed one that holds my pens just happened to reach fatal velocity on it's way from my desk to the floor some day. 

One less just might be OK. 

   

Polynesia

We took a journey of about twenty miles this evening, and after parking the Guzzler,  found ourselves in the Polynesian Islands.  The truth of the matter is the Guzzler was parked in the parking lot of Bend High School and, after a short walk from it to the HS auditorium, we were treated to a fantastic troupe of Polynesian dancers and drummers. 

The trip started at a neighbors place several weeks ago.  We were visiting with them when their daughters boyfriend rushed in with a bunch of tickets to the show.  He gave the neighbors the tickets they had purchased earlier and sat down to wait for the daughter to finish dressing. 

I've never understood that part, waiting for the female to arrive.  I've always thought punctuality showed respect for the person being met or entertained, and waiting for my date used to upset me while I was in high school. In fact, I have been known to ask the parents of several young ladies to tell their daughter to forget about the date and walk out after waiting more than fifteen minutes or so.   Age, and having to wait many, many times in my life, has tempered that feeling somewhat, but I am still annoyed every time it happens.  In this case, however, Zack having to wait was a Godsend.

We were introduced to him and were told of his involvement with a local group of dancers.  The tickets he had in his hands, it was explained, were to a benefit performance.  I was intrigued and asked about the group.  Turns out his father learned to drum in his native islands before coming to this country and once here,  missed the ceremonies and the drums.  He and his two sisters, who were dancers, formed the company, recruited members, and taught them to drum and dance.  After several decades, the company now boasts more than seventy dancers and drummers.  We bought tickets to the show.

It was a good thing Carolyn rested most of the day so she could better enjoy the evenings activity.  The show lasted well over two hours, and we enjoyed every minute of it!  What's not to like about seeing dancers of all ages, grandmothers to toddlers, gyrating to the wonderful rhythms of Polynesian drums?  Women doing Hulas, the men doing Samoan War Chants, colorful costumes, comedy routines and so much more was presented on that stage last night.  It was a feast for all the senses!

The show was to raise funds to allow the group to travel to San Fransisco later this year to compete in a national competition of Polynesian Dancers.  I'm betting they will do well.  Who would ever have imagined this small town would be home to a world class bunch like this?  I'm amazed.

Better in person, but here they are!  (At least a few of the seventy) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-6KooVP4LU

The Long Way Home

There are times I find myself rushing from one place to another, not taking the time to look at the wonders the universe has placed all around me.  Even after six glorious months of not having a clock order my life since retirement,  I have not yet mastered the art of going slow.  But, every now and again I manage to slow myself enough to notice small things.  Ya know, small things like the end of civilization.

Our street stops at a fence which separates our subdivision from a cow pasture three houses away from ours.  The road is not a dead end, it just stops.  The pavement sort of trails off and a few feet of base course, the road underlayment, continues.  A couple of yards after the base course there is graded dirt which soon transitions to undisturbed grasses and then there's a fence which runs perpendicular to the road and encloses the cow pasture. 

I've been looking at that fence since we moved in and until today had no clue why my eyes continued to wander back to it.  I guess the end of civilization is like that.  It takes a while to figure out just what you're looking at because you've never seen it before.  Now, don't misunderstand; I have seen lots of dead end roads in my life, and some of them look just like this one.  They just sort of run out.  There's a difference, though, in this road and others that stopped short.  This road is civilized all the way to the end. 

If I were to go to our local planning and zoning people, I'm sure I would find the pasture was in the middle of getting rezoned when the money ran out.  In this small part of the world civilization has already come to an end, and the end came three doors down the street.  For sure, folks still come and go, and carry on with their lives as if nothing happened.  But it has.  There's no more money.

I thought about my newest find for awhile and then jumped into the Guzzler Deluxe.   Civilization also must have ended elsewhere and I was determined to find out.  It didn't take long, and I can report  the end we experienced, on our street, was a very orderly thing.  In most places, chaos ruled.  There are MANY subdivisions with completed houses dropped onto lots with nothing more than pipes and coils of electrical wires coming out of the ground on the lots to either side.  In several places, I traveled the length of a city block, past the pipes and wire emerging from the ground, before coming to a house sitting all by itself  - and the pipes and wires continued for a block past the house. 

Some of these houses were occupied and some were empty.  One enterprising guy has even put inexpensive fencing around the empty lots on both sides of his home and planted a lawn!  The only clue that he is squatting on the lots are the pipes and wires.  He'll probably get away with it until he dies - the money's gone and the developer is more than likely bankrupt.  I doubt the bank that owns it even knows where it is. 

Mostly I've been in a hurry and have driven on larger, main arteries in my travels to and from our home.  I've always taken the shorter, faster roads.  If I had even once taken a longer route, I would have seen the end of the world.  It's a pretty compelling reason for slowing down and taking the long way home.

Music

Music has been a part of my life from the time I was around two years old.  My Dad would sit me in his lap, or rock me in his arms and sing "Roley, Polly" as he bounced me to and fro in time with his voice.  That's the earliest memory I have, buried in my very cluttered brain, and the next earliest came several years later.  It also involved music.

I was listening to an old Philco radio, the kind that stood a little over four feet tall, was curved at the top, and had multiple bandwidths that could be selected with a knob.  Even at that early age I was a curious creature and I wanted to find out where the music came from.  I crawled around behind the radio and grabbed some wires.  My mom came running when I screamed  and I told her "Oleo bit tonny."  That was as close as I could get to saying the "Radio shocked me."  Sonny was my nickname back then, long before I was called "Dufus."  It was a really good radio and while seated in front of it in the garage during the year of 1957, I listened to the "beep - beep" of Sputnik as it flew overhead.

Violin lessons came early in my life, way before I figured out that instrument was not manly enough to make the girls fall all over me.  Those lessons, however, did give me a great foundation in music theory, scales, keys and signatures, which I put to good use when I picked up a guitar while in high school.  That instrument lead to my first gigs, in a rock and roll band in Yosemite National Park, the summer after high school graduation.  Yeah, it also lead to a bunch of girlfriends there and later, in college, where a buddy and I formed a pretty good college band.  Now, almost half a century later, Ed and I still get together and pick the old tunes whenever we can.

Carolyn's love of music comes from a different perspective.  When she was a baby, her Dad would place her on the palm of his hand and balance her there while he sang to her.  She learned to dance to the music he sang.  Ballet, tap and ballroom instruction came early in her life, and she became a dance instructor.  Singing, dancing, and music is as large a part of her life as it is mine.

Music runs deep in our souls and, maybe after sharing a little of our background with you, you can understand our love of American Idol.  Since discovering it during the second season, we have not missed more than two or three episodes of this modern and real Cinderella story.  Lately, I have noticed a marked improvement in her condition while we are watching the show.

Watching her during the last two shows has started me on a quest to better understand the effect music has on a damaged brain.   A cursory search has shown the effect is real, and I hope to learn how to use the knowledge I gain to ease her journey along the difficult path she must travel.  Our current medical knowledge includes nothing whatsoever that will help her make the trip, and there is only one exit on the road ahead.

Music may hold an answer.

The List

OK, Global Warming, show me your stuff!  Shane drove up in a big white van this morning and started unloading boxes.  And some more boxes.  Pretty soon, he had some sort of new-fangled fiberglass pad laying on top of the dirt between the house and my brand new concrete walkway.  Yeah, right where I had planned to grow some herbs and mint plants.  Being the curious get-in-the-way kinda guy I am, I just had to ask about it. 

He told me the pad was the latest thing in lay offs.  Well, what he actually said was it takes the place of the older concrete pads that needed to be formed up and poured, usually by a crew of several guys.  But you know me - I always look at things from a realistic point of view.  Labor saving gizmo's like this, mass produced in China and shipped to this country, are just the ticket to long lines of unemployed people. 

It wouldn't be so bad if we could figure out how to make them here, but the EPA probably has a problem with anything made of fiberglass, and besides, all the empty buildings in Detroit, and most other places capable of cheaply housing the production facilities, are in slum areas; who wants to work there?  Answer:  Lots of guys would probably be willing to do that.   I'm just sayin', ya know, the buildings are there, the people want work, we need the product right here in the USA.....
It did, however, speed the installation of the rest of the stuff in the boxes, our new air conditioning unit.

As I made Carolyn's breakfast, Shane was busy drilling holes in our beautiful weatherproof home and scuttling around in the attic crawl space above us.  By the time we had finished eating, the electrician was running wires from the service entrance to somewhere close enough to energize everything.  He was gone before noon.  Todd, one of the owners of the heating and cooling place, came by with the correct condenser.  We needed, and had ordered, one with a vertical orientation, but it came with a horizontal one instead.  Thank Goodness the guys had the one we needed laying around the shop.

We fired everything up at 1:45, signed that it was good, and were alone in our home by 2:00.  Wow.

Goes to show we can make things happen in this country.  American workers are bright, resourceful and willing to do a good job.  I don't know what has gone wrong here, but I'm pretty sure it's not the fault of the guys in the trenches.  Somewhere along the way a bunch of guys who wear suits in New York and  Washington DC have found virtual monkey wrenches and have tossed them into the gears of the system.  They've broken the hell out of our way of life. 

If there's a buck to be made by breaking something - anything - these suits are willing to break it.  No matter they're breaking America and the decent working people who are just trying real hard to get by.  They've got theirs, by golly, and they want more.  They just don't care what they're doing to everyone and everything else.  We have a couple of senators http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=332491 and a couple of crusading REAL reporters http://dailybail.com/home/matt-taibbi-justice-department-has-no-appetite-to-take-any-c.html   who are starting to put the names of the responsible parties on a list.

The list will wind up in one or another court one of these days, but I'm not holding my breath while waiting for a trial and firing squad.  Mostly, I think, it'll all be swept under the rug.  But, I'd hate to have my name on that list.  Like dirt that is swept under the rug in your home, the list, and the names on it, will survive to be dealt with later.  Depending on when this particular dirt is dealt with, we may not have functioning courts.

We will have judges.

Sue Me!

A little item in today's news caught my attention.  Remember when the lady sued McDonald's because the coffee was too hot and won a fair amount of bucks from the greasy spoon?  Well, they're at it again.  In the great modern tradition of today's newscast, FLASH!  BREAKING NEWS!!!  HAPPENING NOW!!!!!!!

Today some woman sued McDonald's 'cause the toys they put into the bag with the food have hooked her kids on fast junk food.  Maybe I got it backwards and they're hooked on junk fast food.  I'm not sure it matters much because either way they're getting fat JUST because Md's ads and toys have brainwashed them.  Now, I just might agree that the food there is maybe a little less healthy than the tatter tots in the frozen foods section of the corner grocery store, but the first thing that flashed across my junk food altered mind was a line of tricycles, powered by a bunch of four and five year old fat kids, stretching from beneath the golden arches all the way to a horizon twenty or so miles distant.   Every last one of the rotund kids was clutching a wad of dollar bills that had been stolen at gunpoint from little old ladies at the local shopping mall. 

I mean, how else could the toddlers have gotten there?  Certainly the mother, who was upset enough to sue, would not have ever loaded them into the car and waited in the drive through while the tykes placed their orders.  And even if the small fry had pointed the gun at their mom and demanded transportation from her, someone had to pay for the cheesy fartdogs.  I'm betting the suit gets tossed, and I hope she gets to pay the court costs.  I don't want my tax dollars used for such stuff.

Something like this has a curious effect on my idle brain, it sends me to the Internet for a bunch of similar incidents.  So, fellow travelers, you're gonna get subjected to a barage of stupid lawsuits.  You should sit back and enjoy, or leave now.  Nothing of any earth shattering importance will follow. 

A cleaner in Michigan stole what she thought was a large candle from the condominium she had cleaned. Later that day she she lit her candle. Turns out it was not a candle, but instead was a monster firecracker, and when it blew, the woman was severely injured. She sued the owners for not putting a warning on it. She lost.

Robert Brock sued himself for $5 million. He contended he had violated his own civil rights and religious beliefs by allowing himself to get drunk and commit crimes which landed him in the pokey for 23 years.  Suing  yourself might not be the best way to gain money, but since he worked at the jail, he was hoping his jailers would pay any award.  He lost.

Prisoner's must have a lot of time on their hands.  Another one sued the prison cafeteria for his flatulence. He claimed that his wind was caused by prison food.  He lost.

A drunk lady accidentally backed her car into Galveston Bay. She was too drunk to figure out how to undo the seat belt and drowned. Her passenger wasn't quite as drunk, got hers undone and made it to shore. The parents sued the car company for making a seat belt their drunken daughter (her blood alcohol level was .17) couldn’t figure out. They lost.

The list goes on and on.  What do most of them have in common?  They clog up the court calender, cost money, and are usually lost.  But, every now and then, someone wins. 

I'm thinking I just may have a pretty good case myself.  A week or so after pulling a bunch of garden hoses out of a box and leaving it in the middle of the floor, I caught the toe of my shoe in the mess and tripped.  Not much was wounded except my pride, but that's worth something, don't you think?  Maybe a couple of million or so.   I'm pretty sure the garden hose was made in China.  We all know those guys cut corners, so I must have a pretty good chance of winning this one! 
 
Anyone know a good lawyer?

Garden of Eden

What a week end around this joint.  Saturday morning I wrestled a monster Thatching Machine around the yard.  Have you ever done that?  If not, I'm gonna give some advice on the proper way to operate one of those babes.  All I learned can easily be summed up in six words.   Pay someone younger to do it. 

It really is impossible to put into words just what a couple of hours at the controls of the vibrating, clanking,  spinning and out of balance blades, located just below a balky engine that refuses to restart without reading to it from a Steven King book about machines that take over the world, will do to a persons entire body.  The first affected body parts are the fingers, hands and wrists.  The fingers go numb.  The hands start to clinch into fists, that cannot be opened without the use of a crowbar, caused when some sort of abused muscle mass somewhere in the immediate vicinity starts going into spasms.  The wrists?  Oh, all they do is jerk to and fro for an hour or so after the machine has been returned to the rental place. 

Arms somehow manage to turn to jelly.  And the back?  Don't even go there.  Whatever of it survives the evil hammering is destroyed picking up and loading the monstrosity for transport.  Actually, that's the best part of the whole deal.  You see, all the nerves running from the legs to the pain center in the brain get confused while transiting the contorted spine, and about the most they are able to tell the brain is that some legs are more or less attached to the torso in some way.  No more information can be transmitted, so no pain what soever is associated with that area of the body.

After running the machine into every tree on the property several times, and after running over, instead of along, every border in an unconscious attempt to determine if I could, at some later date, use it to break concrete, I finished pulling most of the thatch from it's nicely concealed location below the grass to a place on top of the grass where it could easily be seen by anyone who happened to pass by at anything less than a half mile distance.  What an eyesore.  And just think, I had paid good money to rent this Devil Machine just so my manicured lawn could be destroyed.  My wife is correct.  There are more rocks in my head than there are in the entire state of New Hampshire.

I cursed it as it was loaded and carted back to the hell from which it came, and returned just in time to overhear the neighbors as they commented on the sanity of people who move from New Mexico to Oregon.   I smiled and said hi, pretending not to hear the comments on the size of my gray matter, and walked into the garage where my trusty rake is stored. 

I also have boxes and boxes of black 55 gallon trash bags stored in the garage, courtesy of the trash collection department of the town where I used to live.  Those good people knew that I would need them one day, and included two boxes each year in my trash bill.  Most of those boxes were unopened and moved with us so I would be sure to have an over full garage here.

Two Hydrocodon/ATAP 10mg/650 pills later, there was a pile of 19 of those bags filled with raked thatch in my garage where it will start to mold and produce obnoxious odors long before I recover sufficiently to haul it to the dump.  The Sun was starting to set on my labor so I ordered a pizza for delivery, ate and we retired.

Sunday morning came WAY to soon - I started the day with another of the bluish pills and I washed it down with a cup of coffee.  An hour or so later the pill gave me the courage I needed to finish the job.  I went back to the hell where the machines are located and rented a combination  Aerator/Bodybreaker.  In comparison, this machine was a pleasure to use.  As long as you don't count the rose thorn. 

That's right, the rose thorn.  Before it was buried deeply in the end of my right index finger, it was attached to the bush I ran over with the Aerating Godzilla.  I quickly managed to stop the machine and quiet the beast so I could dig a hole in my finger with my trusty Leatherman blade. I thought I got it all out, so I completed the lawn and returned the machine.  I took yet another of the pills and, due to the magical power of modern medical miracle drugs, thought no more of my aching back nor of the quarter inch piece of rose thorn that remained undetected in my finger. 

This morning I woke with a finger half again as large as usual, and it hurt like the Dickens.  I dug around a bit, then decided a trip to the Doctor was in order.  I never wait til the little red lines start running towards the heart.  The one time I waited til then was enough to convince me this type of thing can get real serious real quick.  The Doc agreed, shot some good numbing stuff into the finger, dug around some and then showed me what I had missed. 

The finger's healing, the lawn looks pretty good, and I'm gonna have to fight off Adam and Eve if they see it next week.

On Their Own

I kicked my newest born out of the house today.  Now don't be alarmed, the kids left sometime before the beginning of this geological age.  Today it was time for the Okra and Broccoli to leave the shelter of our dining room.

The weatherman had a little to do with forcing our latest attempt at self-sufficiency to leave the building, but mostly I kicked them out because I finally located my tarp.  As those of you who have put up with this collection of mixed tenses and misspelled words for a while are aware, my garage is a mess.  Nothing is yet where it should be.  Oh, it's clean enough to walk through, but that's just because all the boxes are on the shelves.  The problem is, I have very little idea what each box contains.  Not to worry - my plan is to look in each box, one at a time as I need stuff.  I'll start sometime next winter. 

Yesterday, while looking for a missing three piece set of vice-grips, I found my tarp.  Well, by golly, that was good enough for me.  I've been trying to find it for the last week or so, ever since the plants started to show a pair of healthy leaves.  To heck with the vice-grips, I'll find them some other time while looking for something else.  I'll fix the loose cabinet door with the stripped screw then. 

My tarp is a thing of beauty.  It's a real oil treated canvas tarp that I bought over thirty years ago.  A tarp like this one goes for $135.00 these days in the 8x12 size I bought for around twenty bucks back then.  I know because I just looked it up.  Unlike the several blue poly tarps I have purchased every time I needed something a bit larger since then, this puppy has lasted.  It's welcomed the challenges of sun, rain, snow and abuse I've heaped upon it since it was new, and asked to be mistreated more often.  The only thing it asks of me is to be dry when it's time to be folded and put away.  All the new poly ones, you know, the ones that claim to be "Heavy Duty," have been thrown out, shredded and unraveling around the edges, like an old pair of cut off jeans.  Modern miracle tarps.  Ha - I sneer at the new ones.  CCC's I call them - Cheap Chinese Crap.

A moderate-to-severe wind came along last month and broke a bunch of branches off the two Birch trees I suspect are dead.  I lopped the smaller stuff off these and was left with five sturdy limbs, each about six feet long, which I intended to use as supports for my tarp to cover the plants against the cold start of the growing season and again later in the year.  The limbs are much more pleasing to the eye than a bunch of two by fours or furring strips leaning against the house, in my opinion, and besides, they're too small for the fireplace and too big for the trash can. 

Tarp and branches in hand, I placed everything so that it could tightly cover an open space in the flowerbed against the house on the sunny south side.  Next I served the eviction notice and carted out the soon to be orphaned plants.  Having found my garden trowel last month, while looking for my drill, I was able to use it to dig holes of approximately the correct size and soon had a bunch of potential veggies in the ground.    

If they survive the next few weeks, Carolyn and I will be eating in high fashion while the rest of our neighbors are saving their fifty cent pieces to buy less tasty green groceries in the store.  They'll never be able to buy anything if all they're saving is nickles and dimes - REAL inflation is running around nine to ten percent these days.  Don't believe your government when it tells you inflation is around two percent.  Believe me instead;  I've got less to gain from lying about it.  http://www.cnbc.com/id/42551209

Tomorrow I'll replace the Jiffy-Pots from my starter tray I put into the ground today with new ones and start all over with new seeds.  Soon, I'll start feeding the neighbors too, and they can use the fifty cent pieces to buy an ounce or two of gasoline.

Easy Come, Easy Go

I walked down the block to liberate our mail from the locked cell box the postman uses to imprison it the other day.  After grabbing the various fliers and envelopes I walked back to the house in a dazed stupor.  You see, there was a very official looking envelope from the IRS and I open these at once.  Inside the envelope was a rather large, for this household, and totally unexpected check. 

I had mailed our self-completed 1040 and a personal check for what I though was the balance due to them several weeks before.  I hate doing that.  Our government has a way of using my money for things I don't want or need.  Really, is there any reason I want to know just why people barf after ingesting a pint of hot soy sauce?  I'm sure we're studying just exactly that or something very similar, and it's probably costing about forty million bucks to learn the answer.  Don't get me started,  I'm not sure there are enough electrons in my computer for me to finish that particular rant.  Besides, you've heard it from more capable ranters than I. 

Well, I've been doing my taxes all by myself since starting work while still in high school, and thought I was completely capable of filling out the forms.  This year, though, our lives changed somewhat and we sold a bunch of stuff that we had planned to use at some later time.  It complicated our return and instead of using the tax tables to determine the amount we owed, as I have done since the Indians first sold us Manhattan, I should have completed some sort of worksheet to do that.  In other words, I screwed up and learned the hard way I'm more capable of fixing the dog's dinner than I am of doing a complex tax return. 

I also learned the government is COMPLETELY able to check each individual return it receives.  They checked mine, which was for a very modest amount and in no way special, and corrected it for me.  If there are any reading this who are thinking they're gonna pull a fast one when they file their taxes, beware.  Be very aware.  Uncle must have infinite resources with which to check a finite amount of returns.  Be careful what you do.  In my case, after checking my work, they sent me a check that was about five times what I sent them. 

That's the Easy Come part of this post and I'm betting your gonna be happy about the Easy Go part.  It's much shorter.

Carolyn's body comes equipped with a digital thermostat.  There's really no other way to explain her ability to freeze at 69 degrees and roast when it's 72.   I've tried for years to fool her into thinking she's comfortable with the thermometer set to 68 in the winter and 74 in the summer to no avail.  She knows when I've dinked with the thermostat in an effort to lower our energy usage, and usually asks if I've monkeyed with it within an hours time of my doing so.  It's uncanny. 

Imagine the concern I felt when I first realized we had purchased a house with no mechanical means to cool it.  It is a fact the summer temps here will exceed those in the cool New Mexico Jemez mountains to which we have become accustomed, and she languished during the mildly warm months there.  This house is located in an upscale subdivision and was built in 1998, so I assumed it came with all the toys.  I never thought to ask. Duh. 

Here comes the really cool part.  Last week, for the first time in what seems to be several centuries, everything came together at once to solve a knotty problem in our lives.  Home Depot had a sale on Trane Air Conditioners, Uncle Sam sent us some money, and the telephone worked!  I called, the guy came over on Friday to look around, and today, we signed the papers.  The equipment to cool the house will be installed next week! 

Also, there's a little over a hundred bucks left over and it's been a while since we've gone to dinner.  How cool is that!

Lambs to the Slaughter

I never thought I'd see the day that Rolling Stone would become a trusted major source of news for me.  Lately, however, other sources have fired their reporters and refuse to mention anything at all that would imply criminal conduct or unethical behavior by their owners, friends of the owners, campaign contribution recipients of the owners, family members of the owners, dinner guests, ex-wives, illegitimate children of the owners, or any other people who operate in the same social sphere as these captains of industry.  In short, the bias shown by mass media in favor of the monied rulers of our society these days has rendered it totally  devoid of the ability to accurately report the news.  I no longer trust what used to be the major news outlets for anything other than news about who's dating who in Hollywood, and which dogs are starving where in Japan.  Holy Crap, Batman! Jump into your Batmobile and save us from these rich men's lackeys. 

Where have you gone Bob Woodward?  A nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.   Oh yeah,  I forgot.  He's in the middle of a book deal and can't be bothered.  Sorry.  My bad.

Instead, I have learned to turn to the Internet and the Rolling Stone.  When that rag first appeared on the scene, based in the drugged out hippie town that was San Fransisco in 1967, it was hailed by all the counterculture gurus and shunned by every serious journalist in the country.  It has quietly become a major source of truth since that time, and now stands almost alone in it's quest to shed light on today's culture shaking events.  Here's a couple of recent examples.   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/tax-cuts-for-the-rich-on-the-backs-of-the-middle-class-or-paul-ryan-has-balls-20110407 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-is-the-fed-bailing-out-qaddafi-20110401  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411

You won't read about any of this in the newspapers, and you won't see it on TV.  This young buck, Matt Taibbi, is the modern day equivalent of the Woodward and Bernstein team that brought down the Nixon presidency.  It's easy for me to see the differences in the times when I remember how folks were in front of the tube, on the edge of their seats every night, waiting for W&B to report the latest revelations back then, and noticing that today only a handful of people are even aware of what's going on around them.

There  are other, more pressing issues in our lives these days, and it's hard to focus on just who it is that is stealing from us when the reporters are more interested in letting us know that Snookie is gonna get $100,000 per episode for throwing up in public this season.

Aw, heck with it.  Maybe we deserve to be fleeced.

Update:  Today, three days after this post, I noticed articles containing this info begining to show up in several mainstream internet articles.  Also, Elliot Spitzer mentioned several of these items on his show on 4-14-11.  Maybe it will get reported?  Goodness knows, it's the crime of the century.  Change that.  It's the biggest theft in the history of the world.

Lawn Care

Mowed the lawn today.  It's been almost two decades since I can claim to have done that and it feels pretty darned good to say it.  I just may say it again.  Louder.  I MOWED THE LAWN TODAY!  There.  That even looks better, as does the lawn after today's trim.

The mower has been started and used several times a year during my vacation from mowing lawns, but it was used to overcome weeds, not grass.  My New Mexico landscape consisted in native vegetation, which really means any form of weed that could push it's way through gravel covered soil, baked into an adobe-like brick, was allowed to grow.  No sissy, green, spindly, manicured grass was given permission to exist.  Took too much water.  What was out around the house was tamed only by strategically placed rock walk ways and Round Up.  I used lots of Round Up cause thorny stuff like native grasses and yucca need a lot of taming.

Yucca.  Now that's an interesting plant in that it always comes with the Yucca Moth.  Did you know that only a Yucca Moth can pollinate a Yucca plant?  It's true.  Nothing else will get the job done.  This behavior is called "obligate mutualism"  and refers to a relationship where one spices is TOTALLY dependent on the other.  Only these Moths can pollinate the Yucca and they lay their eggs among the seeds.  After hatching, the moth larva eat only Yucca seeds.  If one species were to suddenly vanish, the other would soon follow.  Sort of like Americans and cars.  We absolutely refuse to ride bikes or trains or buses to the store so we'd starve if we didn't have cars.  And who'd make the cars if we starved?  Everybody else in the world knows how to walk or ride something else.

I have knowledge of this esoteric fact only because it is expected that I know something of the weeds in my landscaping.  To get away with having nothing but a bunch of weeds in your lawn area socially, you must be able to name them and give an enquiring guest a little information about which ever one of them piques his interest. Understand, all my buddies know they're just a bunch of weeds, but casual aquaintances have no clue, and appearances really do matter.  My weed turns into a plant only if I know it's name.  And, by extension, I turn into a caring environmentalist instead of a lazy slob who doesn't take care of his lawn.  It's amazing what a little knowledge can do to one's station in life.

Occasionally, no matter how much herbicide I used, the only way to open the front door was to mow the mess.  Take it down to the ground.  Well, at least down to about four inches off the ground 'cause that's about as close as I could get without breaking the mower blades on the rocks the pocket gophers threw out of their burrows as they enlarged their dens.  Everyone thinks of New Mexico as a barren, desert wasteland but, let me tell you, it's a war zone of competing life forms, and I'm not real sure humans stand even a fair chance of winning that battle.  For sure it's hard on mowers. 

Take, for instance, my mower.  Before I used it today, I cleared the area under the deck of caked on dirt and associated embedded weeds, removed, sharpened, and reinstalled the blade,  then washed the top areas and added oil.  I drained all of last years gas and added a fresh tankful.  I then pushed the priming plunger three times and pulled the cord.  It started on the second pull!.  No trip to the mower shop this year.  Then it started to surge. 

You know.  It ran, then missed a couple of strokes and then ran and missed some more.  Master mechanic and ruler of all things made of metal that I am, I knew to first look at the air filter.  Sure enough, it was full of New Mexico dirt and dust.  I cleaned and reinstalled the filter and tried again.  It ran like a champ. An hour later the lawn was done.  Tomorrow I'll try out the edger. 

Not much chance of anything going wrong with it.  It has a motor instead of an engine. 





 
.

Winning

Well, the news this weekend, if you haven't already heard, is all about Joseph Stiglitz writing and going all over TV proclaiming America is all "of the 1% , by the 1% and for the 1%."  He's busy selling his book, but it's always a good thing when a Nobel laureate starts talking about the same thing I've been thinking about for the last year or so.  Of course his prize was given for work in Economics, and that's pretty much the only field where you can be wrong three hundred times in a row and then be anointed "Hero of all Time" if you get it right just once.

All my life I've prayed for a gig like that - I'm usually wrong exactly that many times for every one time I'm right.  I must have been in the wrong profession because mostly I've never been anointed Hero of anything, and in fact, most often I've been booed.  Should've grown a beard instead of a moustache.  Would've looked more inscrutable or something.  A beard and a mumbling scowl works wonders for the income.  A bow tie often helps, but it would not have helped me.  I'd have strangled with one of those darn things around my neck, and that's not a recipe for success.

His whole point is there is more inequality in the good ol' US of A, in terms of rich Vs. poor, than in almost anywhere else in the world.  Democracy is just a dodge, used to throw the lower 80% of the masses of workers off guard, while their entire lives are stolen from them.  Now I have never gone that far, but I didn't get as much education as he did either.  I'm sure any judge would look at the two of us and declare him "winner."  Except for rugged good looks.  I rule there, and if I were't so dag-blamed fat, I'd be downright handsome. 

An easy way to find the truth of his arguments is to look around you.  I'm personal friends with a bunch of folks who read this blog - goodness only knows why they read it - certainly not to learn anything from me.  On a scale where 1 equals "Learns from most everybody he knows" to 10 equals "Teaches most everybody he knows," my rating is 2.  I can still teach Muffy a thing or two.

Because I have known them so long, I know most of my friends can pay their bills and send their kids to school, but still make car payments and wonder about retirement and medical expenses.  And ya know something?  Most of them live in households that have six figure incomes, which puts them firmly in the top 15%  of earners in this country!  $150,000 per year?  That's the top 6%.  $200.000 per year?  Top 3% .    Ask any one of these friends of mine and they'll tell you they're not rich.  And, they're not.  They have bills to pay. 

Just try to imagine life at the other end of this spectrum.  I'm not sure my friends could get by on the $36,000-57,650 per year the middle twenty percent of folks in this country earn and certainly not with the less than $20,000 the bottom 20% live on. 

I'll tell you who is rich.  The 1% that Joe S. is talking about who, as of 2007, own 43% of the nations wealth.  Here's an easy way to think of it.  Imagine 1000 one dollar bills and 100 people. Give 430 of those dollar bills to one person.  Give each of the next nine people 44 of  them.  The next group, all ten of them, numbers 11 through 20 in line, include most of my friends and they each get 10 dollars.  Give everybody else two quarters and two dimes.  Boys and girls, that's the way it was split in America four years ago and it's worse now.  We're all fighting for the last seventy cents.  And that is why I worry about revolution.

For some reason that I fail to understand, the wealthy want even more, and right now are plotting tax and budget "reform" that will take more taxes from you and lessen theirs.  They will get their way because all of us will be convinced the only way to eliminate the deficit is for the lower income people to pay more taxes and the poor in this great nation must do with even less. That means Americans will starve, and a father will pick up a gun and take the food his children need to live.  That one act by one father with a starving family will repeat again and again until there is no law.  End of story.


I looked around a bit for some neat charts and graphs and such, with easy to understand explanations to illustrate what ol' Joe was talking about.  About the best I found is here. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html 
Take a look at these charts and spend a little time reading what it's all about.  I have no answers, but maybe one of you can figure out what needs to be done.

Authors Note.  If you're at all interested in this topic, please take time to follow the link I've included.  I really did spend quite some time to make it easy for you to gain a little perspective about what the power structure in this country is all about.  The discussion on this link is the clearest I've seen, and well worth the hour or so it will take to digest the mountain of information you will find there.

Barely There

This funky driveway and gate is located on the highway to Sisters, about two miles west of Redmond.  The sign let's you know you're at the "Barely There Ranch."  We've driven by it several dozen times and it's always intrigued me.  I've stopped by the side of the road to take a closer look several times, but hesitated to actually open the unlocked gate and wander around uninvited.  A closed gate between me and another person's property still means something to me, even in this age when vandals spray paint every flat surface they find. 

Thank Goodness, the vandals have not had much success in our town.  I've only seen three places that have been so brutally attacked  in Redmond, and all three of these blights were rather small, puny efforts as if the vandals were unsure of themselves.  I can't stand the uncivilized behavior exhibited by these little, and not so little, heathens and it makes me wish for the days when a person could pull out his six shooter and take care of problems like that in a few seconds.  I shouldn't fret - I'll probably see the return of something close to that kind of justice in my lifetime.  Oh well, back to the subject at hand.  As the Beatles once remarked I'm "so easily called away." 

We passed by this place again this afternoon and I noticed a guy putting a "For Sale"  sign on an RV in the field just to the right of the gate.  We pulled over and I hailed him.  He came over and I told him how very much I enjoyed his display and asked if we could look around a bit and take some pictures.  A great big grin flashed across his face and he told us we were welcome to do that.  "Take your time,'" he said.  "I did all this just so folks like you would stop in."  I went back to the car, grabbed Carolyn, Muffy and the camera and we walked around his field for a while.

He has a whole town there.  I snapped this shortly after entering the gate, and closing it behind us, as we walked up a gently sloping hill.   There's a gas station with a pump from the same era as the rusted out hulks of the cars.  I wonder if, in some long ago time, gas from it's nozzle actually filled one of the several ancient cars.  And, were any of them ever repaired in the garage who's hand painted sign is now nailed to this scaled down version?  We looked through the glass window pane at the various old items on display inside.  Jim, the owner, has done a good job collecting artifacts, old oil cans and the like, and I'm thinking that if I ever catch him again, I'm gonna donate an old Aircraft Oil can to his collection.  It's from the same era, and one of my most prized possessions, but it belongs in his service station.  Not on a shelf in my garage.

Next to the gas station and garage, he's built a house of ill repute.  The sign reads "Beware pickpockets and loose women"   The cat house is conveniently located so that customers can spend some time there while the car is being repaired, I guess, and also on the way home from work at the other place of employment in the town of Barely There, the local mine. 

Yep, that's right.  To pay the pretty ladies, the miners could trade some of the stuff they dug out of the ground that very day.  The mine is dug into the side of the hill. We couldn't get in and pilfer anything valuable 'cause the last guy out locked the doors with a really old and big padlock and chain, so I have no idea how deep they dug to find the yellow metal.  Must have been quite a haul - there are several ore cars and an engine to pull them on tracks that lead out of the hillside.  There's also a nozzle, the type used by hydraulic miners back in the days when it was legal to wash a whole mountain down the stream, set up close by.

There's a lot more, there in Barely There, and we loved wandering through Jim's anachronistic creation.  It took us a lot longer to see his work than I had thought it would.  On the way out, I had Carolyn pose with one of the gate guards.  Jim guards his collection from the outside world with a couple of rusty trucks loaded with flowerbeds.  Fitting.

Snow Job

Woke up this morning and opened the blinds.  I still have not figured out what to do about real fabric drapes so that was all I needed to do to see more stinkin' SNOW on the ground.  When does Spring get to this part of the wilderness?  And, will the country have a budget by then?   I'm not sure which upsets me more, the weather or the congress.  One thing I'm pretty sure of is nothing can be done about either.  I can cuss at the weather with the same effect as cussin' at the congress.  All that happens is I get winded and hoarse.

Votin' doesn't much matter anymore - the  big boys own both parties and have co-opted the third before it had a chance.  No matter who gets elected, we lose, Richie wins.   Some days it's so bad I wish I still had a job that required me to spend eight hours a day completely consumed by a set of tasks that kept my idle mind occupied.  Gettin' up and going to work beats flipping off the TV every time some elected idiot in a two thousand dollar suit, paid for by his masters, tries to convince me to take an enema  so the major contributor to his campaign can flourish. 

Ya know, Social Security is not an "entitlement."  I paid my share all along the way.  If I had had the use of those funds I could have doubled the measly check I get from the government just by doing with that money what I did with the rest of the savings I managed to put aside during my working years.  If you leaders of the masses in the F-in' congress and executive branch decided to transfer the SS funds into the general fund and then spend it on wars and crap I personally did not want or need, that's your fault.  Take it out of your own hides, not mine. 

To all you A-Holes in congress - here's a plan.  Ya want a balanced budget?  Tax the jerks that screwed up the economy and stuffed billions into their pockets doing it.  Don't take it from the guy that goes to work and tries to pay his bills on less than $25,000 a year.  Don't starve folks by taking away their food stamps.  For the love of our Good Lord, PBS produces the finest work seen on the air - don't kill it because your buddy doesn't own it.  You stupid, dog crap for brains, fawning pimples that are walkin' the halls of OUR capitol are not only wrecking the best country man has ever devised, you're also fanning the flames of revolution.  Whats wrong with you?  Did your mothers put you in the oven along with the bread she was baking?  Think.  This is America you're breaking with every breath you take.

Man, I wish it hadn't snowed today.  I hate it when the day starts that way in the Springtime.  Gets me riled up a little.

Washing Clothes

Laundry is a chore.  But, since Carolyn and I sorta like wearing clean clothes on a mostly daily basis, and since our yearly clothing budget is no more than dollars measured in the VERY low four digit range, we use the washer and dryer a lot in this nailed together abode.  I have been blessed most of my life in that someone else always sorted, loaded, and punched the various buttons on the machines so they produced clean garments, but lately that's changed.

Sure, there was a time during my college years when I managed my laundry without help, but back then nobody really cared if white clothes got mixed up with colored ones.  As long as the underwear didn't come out of the machine in one of several shades of pink, everything was OK.  Toss it in, listen for the noise and vibrations to stop, transfer to the dryer and repeat.  Nothing to it.  An hour and a half at the coin operated Laundromat every week took care of the dirty business.  Besides, there was always the off chance that the girl of your dreams would be doing her wash at the same time and a match made in heaven would somehow fall into your lap.  It happens all the time on the TV, usually in the ads, but I can report that even after more time than it should have taken to complete the college experience, it never happened to me.   

From what little I can remember of those days, everything was easier than it is now, and the laundry is no exception.  Once again I have found myself in charge of performing this task.  And, not only must I wash my clothes, Carolyn adds hers to the basket and somehow the number of sheets and towels we use have multiplied six or eightfold from my college days.   Whoa!  Wait just a minute! 

Now that's a fascinating observation, and one that I just now noticed.  How did that happen?  I'm sure I got much dirtier back then - I played outside a bunch more than now, and got into messes that I'm sure have decreased as the square of my age increased.  Just exactly why is it I use more towels?  I'm gonna have to think about that a little more, but don't worry, I'll do it on my time, not yours.  If you can, though, please help me out with this.  Let me know if you use more towels now.  OK?

Also, the machines these days are a lot smarter than I am.  Girls already know this, but guys, have you looked at all the knobs, switches, settings and temperature controls on these outrageous computer guided and overwhelming behemoths lately?  I firmly believe that if I were in college today, I would be able to figure out how to write a term paper and print it out using nothing more than the chips in a washing machine.  I probably wouldn't even have to take it apart to get to the chips.  I'm betting there's a setting to do that. 

There used to be only soap and bleach.  Don't get me wrong,  those things still survive, but there's also softener, bleach for colors, stain removers, drop in doohickeys that rumble around and massage the dirt away, little squares of anti-static stuff, and boxes and bottles of crap I moved one thousand miles from our old laundry room to this place that I have no clue about.  The directions on the boxes might just as well be written in Sanskrit.  I'm pretty sure there are not more than two or three dozen people in all of creation who understand how to use the product, and those folks are the ones who write the instructions.  They knew what they meant to say, but no one else understands.

All of these wonderful modern improvements have mostly served to add to the amount of junk that must be contained in the up to date American laundry room, and to the price of the equipment.  Dirty clothes are, after all, just dirty clothes.  Just like back in the day.  As long as Carolyn isn't looking, I wash the clothes with just soap if it's a load of colored fabrics, and with soap and bleach if it's a white load.  Period.  If she is around, I add crap and turn knobs until I think she's good with it.

Maybe you noticed, but just in case ya didn't, I'm gonna point it out to you 'cause I'm really proud that my technique has improved with age.  I make sure I separate the whites from the colored these days!

Sailing Part 2

Yesterday I reminded myself of an adventure that happened back when I was young and giant lizards still ruled the planet.  Man, am I giving away my age - we used to think they were lizards and that's what I was taught in school.  Now we think those ancient lizards were birds, not lizards. 

Somehow being run down and eaten by a huge bird seems to be less fun than having a lizard chase you.  If ever I have a choice, I'm gonna be eaten by a lizard.  They just appear to have better credentials than birds. I mean, really, I think I would stand a better chance of laughing myself to death, if a big yellow bird was trying to eat me while singing a song  to a bunch of preschoolers, than I would have of being consumed.

Learning the wrong stuff has been a way of life for me, everything from Newton's physics to History has changed since my first exposure to a classroom.  I'm betting it also happened that way to you.   What a waste.  If we had learned the right things, you and I, we could have spent our productive years being, you know, productive.  Instead, we've been kept busy unlearning stuff so we could relearn it.  Small wonder education costs so much.  We have to keep paying the teachers til they get it right.

Anyway, back to my tale of misadventure.  The adventure started one weekend when I fouled my anchor on the rocky bottom of the sea off the island of Anacapa, 18 miles south of the California town of Ventura.  After trying to raise it for an hour or so, I finally gave up and cut the line.  It was getting late in the day and I wanted to make it back to my slip in Ventura harbor before nightfall.  I didn't know it at the time, but cutting that line started a sequence of events that cost me the boat.  Actually, the sequence started long before that, when a bearing on the prop shaft seized up leaving me without power.  It took a while for the part to arrive, and frankly, I was just too lazy to install it soon as it got there.

Several weeks later, a three day weekend turned up on the calendar so my buddy Rodger and I headed to Catalina for two nights.  Long before my time the Avalon Ballroom used to rock, but by the time I discovered Catalina, the party had moved to the harbor.  Everybody motored from boat to boat in skiffs and boy did we let our hair down.  PARTY!  All things eventually end, or wear out and wind down, and by early Sunday morning it was time to unmoor and head for home.  The song says "Twenty-six miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is a-waintin for me"  but that's a straight line to the closest shore. It's about 85 miles from Avalon to Ventura harbor, and in a sail boat that makes 6-7 knots in a good wind, it takes all day.  Did I mention that sometimes there is no wind? 

That's what happened to us.  We had sailed all day and were just about even with the naval station in Oxnard when the wind died.  Vanished.  Gone.  Was no more, and we started to drift.  Now, if you happen to have a map of the area, draw a line between Avalon and Ventura.  You'll find that Port Hueneme, a Naval Base, is very near that line.  We drifted with the current for several hours, and around midnight it became real obvious we  were going to wind up on the beach.  I had no engine with which I could hold us off shore, and no anchor to keep us at sea til the wind came up. 

Roger was frantic, all the more reason for me to remain calm and in charge.  I reassured him by announcing I wanted to be rested if we were going to have to swim for it, and told him I was going below to take a nap.  I advised him to do the same, but if he insisted on remaining alert,  could he please shout out a warning just before we went in?  I went below, gathered most of my valuable possessions in a bag, and went to sleep.

Roger's scream and the boat lurching at the same instant woke me.  It had come ashore with the port side facing the beach, and when the keel dragged bottom the boat acted like a catapult and threw Roger about twenty feet into knee deep water.  The scream I heard happened during his time in the air.  I grabbed my bag, climbed the now sideways companionway, and jumped in.  We both waded ashore and started to shiver in the cool 3:00  AM  air.  As we were walking towards the nearest lights a vehicle of some sort came towards us and the command "Halt!  Stand Fast!"  was given.

Turns out we had beached on US Navy property and had to stand cold, wet and shivering in the now blowing wind while we told our tale and they checked out the wreckage.  Finally Roger was allowed to call his girlfriend,  she picked us up and allowed us to take warm showers and rest, then fed us.   The adventure was over, we had survived, and I had made another payment to a teacher.  The teacher, in case you haven't figured it out yet, works at the University of Hard Knocks.  A really expensive institution.  At least I thought the adventure was over.  It was not.

Several weeks later I got a letter in the mail, from the US Navy, at Rogers address. I had used his address in the Naval report because I had been living on the boat and it now was full of water.  No way I was gonna tell them to send the mail to their beach.  And besides, the storage facility where all my stuff was stored, and where I would be sleeping for a while, did not allow mail to be delivered to residents who were not supposed to live there.  They advised me I had thirty days to have my trashed boat removed from their beach or they'd remove it and fine me $10,000. 

Well, my Dad did not raise an absolute idiot, although you'd never guess it after reading the above tale, so I made a few calls and found out there was a Sea Scout chapter located right on the base!  I called them, made a tax deductible donation of the boat to them and everybody lived happily ever after.  The adventure, finally, was over.






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Sailing

One of these days I'm gonna sail a boat around the world all by myself.  It's called sailing single-handed, and I'm gonna do it. 

There have been two things in life I have found that I love to do, and both of them have one thing in common - just me and the Good Lord against whatever the world can throw at us.  Airplanes are like that, there's nothing between you and the ground except personal skill and the Lord's good graces.  And sail boats?  They're just really slow airplanes.  The same laws govern their movement.  Most people think the wind blows boats around but that's not true.  The sail creates a low pressure area in front of it in much the same way a wing creates a low pressure area above it.  It one case the boat is pulled forward into the low pressure area, in the other, the airplane is pulled up into the low pressure area.  When you're in the middle of the ocean, there's nothing between you and the harbor except personal skill and the Lord's good graces.  With sailboats, however, the contest with nature and the laws of physics lasts weeks and months instead of hours and minutes.  I've guided both craft, and had distractions caused by other dimensions in my life take the craft from me.   One of these days it's gonna be time for a new sailboat and a new airplane.  The boat will come first.  If I don't die, the airplane comes back into my life after going around the world.

My last sailboat was a 26 foot hard-chined T-Bird.  The T-Bird has a cutty cabin, which means ya have to duck your head and crawl around on your knees whenever you're below, so it's no good for a guy my age.  If ever you catch me inside a church, you may see me bow my head in respect for the Lord, but never again in a boat.  My neck doesn't work like it used to, and if I were to crawl around on my knees with a bowed head I'd need more Ibuprofen than the boat can carry.  It would sink, and I've had enough of sinking sailboats.  I spent a little over a year living on that boat in Ventura, CA. before I sank it in the Pacific Ocean. 

Well, actually I ran it into some rocks on the California coast on the way home from Catalina Island.  But it was in the Pacific, and although my feet could touch the bottom when it happened, and there was no swimming involved, it's kinda cool to claim to have survived sinking a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean.  Don't you wish you could truthfully make that claim?  (Yeah, I have witnesses!)  Maybe tomorrow I'll write a little more about that fun evening.  It's a post all by itself!

So ended that chapter in my quest to sail around the world, and it still remains the very last item I really want to check off before I check out.  I'm gonna need a bigger boat, and I'm gonna need a lot of automated equipment the T-Bird was missing 'cause I don't move as fast and am not as sure footed as I used to be, but the navigation is so very much easier these days.  As long as we don't start a war and the Chinese don't knock out our GPS system,  finding Hawaii is not the chore it used to be.  A thirty-four footer would do quite nicely.  Maybe a Catalina or something like it.  So long as it's a sloop with auto reefers, I can handle the sails alone.

I'd invite you to come along, but that would spoil the whole thing!

Explorers

Somebody once told me a joke about Chris Columbus.  It went something along the lines of "He didn't know where he was going, where he was when he got there and couldn't tell anyone where he'd been when he got back."  His whole problem, I believe, was that he did not use Google Maps before he started.  Neither did we when we left the house headed for Tumalo Falls yesterday.  

 That's them, Tumalo Falls, and we wanted to see them and feel the mist on our faces.  So, we loaded the Guzzler Deluxe with some snack food, the dog, waterproof jackets and were on our way.  The only rather small problem we had was that I had never been to Tumalo Falls, and really had no idea where they were.  I thought I knew, because everybody knows Tumalo Falls should be somewhere close to Tumalo, and Tumalo is a teeny-tiny village about five miles north of Bend.  When I say "teeny-tiny" it means, in this instance, anyone at all can find anything at all, if it's in Tumalo, within six minutes.  On foot.  Don't even need roller skates to speed the search.  It's like, ya know, a small place.

We drove around for much more than  six minutes, and the closest thing we found to "Tumalo Falls" was a sign that read "Tumalo State Park."  We took the turn, drove four miles until we crossed the Deschutes River and turned at the sign.  Here we found an RV and tent campground on one side of the road and on the other was a nice picnic area along the bank of the river.  Never ones to let a wrong turn make us go nuts, we got out, leash and doggie poop bags in hand, and wandered around awhile.  The sound of swiftly flowing water has always had a soothing effect on both of us, and today was no exception to that fact of our lives.  This is a picture that appeared in the Bend Bulletin of  the Deschutes as it runs above the picnic area, and the rapids that are shown are as loud as they look.  The river is also a lot bigger than it looks in this photo.  Those rocks in the foreground are BOULDERS. 

A little farther downstream of this area the river widens and becomes much more placid.  We spent a wonderful afternoon walking, resting and watching Muffy chase things that were too small for us to detect.  No telling what they were, but they were fast and made sharp turns.  The place was deserted, which surprised me, but that allowed Muffy to be off the leash.  He loved it as much as we did.  It started to get a little chilly as the sun dropped below the Cascades so we trudged back to the car and headed for home.

To our amazement we came upon a sign that said "Clines Fall Road" after we passed back through Tumalo.  We know where that road leads!  It goes right by another of our favorite Oregon places and it's probably a lot shorter way home than the way we came.  That's the way we went.  We stopped along the river again on the way home, this time at Clines Falls which had not yet been cast in the shadow of the mountains.  We climbed our favorite rock, listened to the water and then headed home.

Now some folks might claim we were lost all day.  I'd like to think we were more like 'ol Chris.  We discovered a new world.  Any fool can get lost, but it take a champion to turn bewilderment into a memory.  Tumelo Falls will wait for the next road trip.