Author Archives: mandala56

Today I was finishing up battening down the hatches on the old adobe for winter.  The last week or so it’s been into the low 40s a couple of times, nights, so I’ve been pecking away at putting up plastic over the insides of most of the windows to cut down on the amount of wind blowing through the house.  I came across some car-covers free a while back when the lady was wrapping up at the flea market and was going to haul them to the dump because they didn’t sell.

I’m cutting up those to staple over the plastic in hopes it will provide insulation.  Last year it got cold enough in here to impress me with my pansyish non-pioneer spirit, even with Mexican blankets hung over all the windows and the front door on the inside.

Anyway, I ran spang out of staples and plastic, mid-job, so I toodled down to Rio Rancho Home Depot to buy more.  The clerk asked me in passing, “Does it look like snow out there to you?”

I’d been asking myself the same question almost from daybreak onward.  “Pretty early for it.  Almost never get snow before the first of October.  But it’s happened.”

Clerk laughed, handed me my bag, and I headed back through Bernalillo toward the mountains.

As I passed the Dollar General I was reminded I was running short of tortillas and a couple of other incidentals, so I swung in.  I always take a look at their half-price clearance items, which are dirt-cheap and sometimes something a man could use.

There on the half-price clearance table was a plastic package with a hand-crank flashlight and a handcrank AMFM Weather radio.  $12 regular price.  Hmmm.

Some little voice in my mind says, “Jack, old man, batteries are dead on your flashlight, and likely are dead on your radio.  You need to buy that $6 package of flashlight and battery just in case the power goes out for a few days.”

So I put it in the plastic box hanging off my arm, picked up a few extra cans of canned fruit and fruit c*cktail, and headed for the checkout.  Clerk knows me by sight and we’re amiable.  “You think it looks like snow out there?”

“You been talking to the guy down at Home Depot?”

Blank look.

“Guy down there just said the same thing.  I think you might be right.  That’s the reason I’ve picked that half-price radio and flashlight off your clearance table.”

Another blank look, then he squints at the plastic thingee with all that in it.  “Was this on the clearance table?”

“Yup.”

He calls the manager over.  “Is this half price?”

“No.  The half-price stuff was all the summer stock… barbeque things and that.”

I scowl.  “Okay.  I’m not paying $12 for it.  Don’t ring it up.”

“You’ll buy it for $6?”  She grins at me.  We clown around  some when I’m in there.

“Five and a half.”

“Six.”

“Sold.  Ring it up.”

Sooooo.  I ended up with a hand-crank charging flashlight and radio.

The hosses are getting thick coats of hair.  I’m thinking it’s going to be an early, bull-goose of a winter.

Mainly the radio and flashlight thing.  I confess I haven’t gotten a good look at what the hosses  are doing, hair-wise.

Jack

Edited in: 

As I re-read this entry I noticed the censor had edited out the nasty part of the word c*cktail.  So here I was claiming I’d bought some fruit tail, which I might if I ever come across any, but this wasn’t the day for it.  That old censor’s always catching me out when I try to use that nasty word, full-c*cked pistol, c*ck fights, and now fruit c*cktail.  Lucky thing for me that old censor’s on the job.  Otherwise I’d be saying just awful stuff.

I’ve been thinking for a while about what a person might do with a jackpot win to bring about some changes in the political zealotry in the US.  It’s something gone rabid, Democrats and Republicans going at one another with their wolf-teeth.

In the past I’d thought when, yeah, when I win a large jackpot, I’d put up a Zen Monastery with some refinements into other avenues of metaphysical and spiritual pursuit.

But the last couple of days have convinced me that Zen Monastery cum Spiritual Healing Center will  have to wait for the second major jackpot win.

The first one’s going to create the None of the Above Foundation.  That foundation is going to do everything legally and monetarily possible to make certain no incumbent will ever serve a second term in office.

Somewhere down at the roots of everything that’s gone wrong with America is the career politician, the power, the retirement and health benefits, the near-thing bribes and special interest supports giving them motives to stay in office.

A hundred million or so going to make sure they don’t get re-elected might just help a lot.  In fact, it might just spawn a None of the Above political party.

We need people in national elected offices who get out and live in the land.  We need folks such as, say, fjxsterling up there in the Senate, or the House.  People who’ve felt the pain of the problems everywhere at street level.  People who aren’t going to sit still for any air-castle election time feeding frenzy illusions to deal with real problems.

I can see it all now.

Vote for FJX Sterling

Rush Hates Him

Heck, I’d register to vote.

Jack

Morning blogsters:

Last night one of the cats awakened me from the window, even though that window’s now covered with foggy plastic.  I don’t know how she was able to pick up on what was going on outside, but I glanced at the monitor for the security camera when I saw the security light was on in the yard.

A spring coyote pup was out there wandering around checking things out.  That one’s going to be a problem before too long, I’m thinking.

Old timey country coyotes were as cunning as a living creature can be, but they could be depended upon to behave in certain ways.  They had a healthy respect for the cunning and destructive abilities of humans.  Out away from town one of the ways a person could keep down the number of coyotes coming in close bothering what wasn’t to be bothered was to urinate around the chicken house daily, and around the perimeter of where you didn’t want them.

When a person was bothered by with coyote-trouble, it would be a single one, not the entire pack.  The person could study him, identify him by a dozen traits, figure out his habits, and take him out without having to go after the whole pack.

Not so, these newfangled city coyotes.

I read in National Geographic magazine, I think it was, or maybe Smithsonian, yeah, I think it was a Smithsonian that Jeanne gave me, that coyotes have done a turnabout during the last 15 years…. nobody understands why.

There’s a new kind of coyote moving into the cities and towns, first time anyone knows about, and they’re living right there among us.  The article focused on the ones in one of the parks in Washington D.C.

I suppose I have more respect for the intellect of country coyotes than perhaps any other wild creature.  To be honest, I hate to even contemplate what’s going to become of things when a large population of them grows up in cities unafraid of people, watching people, same as they do in the wild, studying them, learning from them.

We haven’t heard the last of this.

Jack

• We want the rest of the world to be like us.
• We want the rest of the world to want to be like us.

Time was not so long ago when the US cared so little about whether the rest of the world wanted to be like us, or not, the thought would have never entered their heads yea or nay.

What the rest of the world did was the business of the rest of the world.

The leaders of this country at the same time never wondered what the leaders of the rest of the world thought about them, or this country, nor cared.

During the Civil War, when the UK was trying to decide whether to join the French in the invasion of Mexico, the Prime Minister was saying a lot of things to the Queen about the leadership of the country (Abraham Lincoln), the reasons for the war, the conduct of the war, that Americans would have found painful to hear if they hadn’t been too busy killing one another to pay attention.

But they’d have found those remarks between the PM and the Queen painful because they contained so much truth.  Not because they cared a damn what the leaders of the UK thought about the US.

We’ve spent the last half-century trying to make the rest of the world want to emulate us, politically.  Most of the world wasn’t interested.

But we did succeed in a lot of ways nobody anticipated.

We shipped all our industry off to the countries we spent a lot of lives and treasure whupping the socks off of, trying to help them be like us.

We shipped all our industry off to third world countries because of the cheap labor trying to help them to be like us.

When we were minding our own business we had thriving industry, plenty of jobs, affluence.  Anyone who wanted a job could find one.

When we succeeded in making the rest of the world in our own image in some unanticipated ways, our industry became a dead shell.  All our jobs became government related, or pure government.

And in the process, the world we made in our own image wanted to be like us.  They wanted cars, television sets, air conditioners, microwave ovens.

They became super-consumers.  They began needing petroleum products for energy, for plastic rubber monster toys for the kids.  Petroleum to run their powerplants to refrigerate.  Petroleum to run their hair dryers.  Petroleum to run their industries.

They became like us.

The dead hull of US industry didn’t demand so much energy, but our automobiles, air conditioners and plastics requirements continued to do so.

But the rest of the world wanted it, too.

They became like us.  Prices skyrocketed.

So, now we don’t have any industry, don’t produce anything, but still need the energy to run.

And so, also, does the rest of the world because they’ve done as we hoped.  They became like us.

Now maybe we need to find some other ways to make them want to be like us, before they decide to be like us in some other unanticipated ways we’ll like a lot less.

Jack