Author Archives: Old Jules

The heel of the loaf

Posted on May 21, 2014 | 17 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I mostly never forget to do my gratitude affirmation ritual as many times per day as I remember to do it.  Suffice to say, many times each day.  But I’m prone to forget my forgiveness rituals unless I catch myself being angry, or sense a seed of anger feeling around for a hold on my consciousness.

This morning I had to add forgiveness affirmations as an adjunct to the gratitudes, however.  Old memories climbing up into my head for a breath of air.

I was associated for a number of years with a family who didn’t throw away the heel of the loaf, as some families do and my own family would have never considered because it was too alien a concept.  In my childhood home you ate the heel if it arrived on pain of I can’t imagine what.

But this family I had to forgive this morning found a way around throwing the heel away, or throwing it away.  They’d each reach past it and get the next slice down, leaving the heel for someone else.  Me when I was around, because they all just passed it by.

When the loaf bag went empty except for two heels, someone would carefully place the two heels into a bag of left over heels, presumably in case anyone came along who’d prefer eating a dry heel to a piece of wasp nest fresh out of the loaf.

A lot of it got thrown away I’m sure, and a fair amount fed birds or went into stuffings.  Meatloafs got rice instead of dry breadcrumbs.

Something got me remembering that after all these years, and I felt my gorge rising.  Damned people leaving the heel for someone else.  And what it implies.

And had myself a specially scheduled on-the-spot ritual of forgiveness affirmations.

Old Jules

17 Comments

Posted in 2014, America

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A love affair with Nuns-

Posted on May 20, 2014 | 12 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

A while back I found myself thinking about the weird what? Metaphysical? Fantasy relationship? That US non-Catholics have with Nuns.  And have had during most of my life.  The television series, The Flying Nun [which I promise I never sat through a single episode of and therefore can’t testify as to how lousy it must have been] was only one example.

Of course there was Two Mules for Sister Sara.  A Clint Eastwood flick as I recall, with Shirley MacLaine as the nun.  Not a bad movie, and I do remember noting for future thought the male/female tensions throughout and wondering why.

The setting’s one not often used:  the French invasion and occupation of Mexico during the US Civil War.

Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, with Robert Mitchum as a WWII US Marine Corps corporal and Deborah Kerr, a nun.  Stranded together on an island in the South Pacific behind Japanese lines.  Mitchum, at least, comes out and tells it as it is.

Considering the potential, The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine is a surprisingly sorry example of the phenomenon.  Heck, they picked a time when the Inquisition was rolling along full steam, picked a passle of nuns in a convent, but they just never managed to get the male juices flowing the way Clint’s and Robert’s US Marine and Civil War veteran juices flowed when placed in close proximity with those sexy ladies.

But then, of course, there’s the expected decline you’d probably expect that comes from being in a different century.  Nude Nuns with Big Guns was probably inevitable.  If we didn’t know it we should have.

After all, we’re living in a world where Rap music has been around 35 years.  People who listen to Rap are listening to the same music their dads and granddads listened to, and liking it.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns can’t hold a candle to that piece of trivia.

Wonder how old Sally Field is faring these days.  I’d surely like to see her step into the 21st Century with a leading role in Nude Nuns with Big Guns.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Return of the neighborhood church

Posted on May 20, 2014 | 11 comments
Olathe Community Theater Association - one block east, currently the eastern extremity of my attempts to walk somewhere. Easternmost bastion of artsy fartsyism from where I live and breathe.

Olathe Community Theater Association today. But for half-cenury it was a neighborhood Presbyterian Church serving an area of seemingly small town neighborhoods.

 

temple2

Rebirth of the neighborhood church.

temple3 lao buddhist assn

Eastern Churches have always had a slightly different twist visually.

Eastern Churches have always had a slightly different twist visually.

temple6 lao buddhist assn

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a  read.

Heck, I don’t know what else to day.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2014, America

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A covey, a flock of old eagles

Posted on May 16, 2014 | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Some beat poet, maybe Ginsberg, maybe Ferlinghetti said he’s caged the world away from himself.  “I’m an old eagle smoking this fine Italian cigar.”

Down at physical therapy we’re a flock or covey of old eagles who’ve forsworn too late those fine cigars running in place as we’ve done all our lives without noticing, caged the world away from ourselves.  But still able to gaze out the window for an eagle-view of the parking lots roads and city around us.

33 degrees F last week one day and it snowed in western Kansas.  Today it’s bundling up in jackets time all the old eagles will be walking walking walking to Missouri in sweatsuits and warmups.

Because we’re probably mostly man-made climate change deniers.  We’re able to adapt the way modern women have adapted to the wants and needs of modern men by having bigger breasts than their peasant and aboriginal ancestors.

And we men have been able to adapt by having smaller brains, a lot smaller brains, than our Heidelberg Man ancestors 250 – 650 thousand years ago.  Brains as big  or bigger then Daniel Webster, Albert wossname, Einstein, and Mangus Colorado.  Brains so big that during their 400,000 years of  time hanging around they didn’t need Heidelberg Man-made climate change, nor breast enhancements, nor Mexican food.

Maybe we old eagles can figure out why by walking, walking walking to Missouri today.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Do not plug in this USB connector

Posted on May 14, 2014 | 13 comments
Seems to me that's asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.

Seems to me that’s asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.

Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

When FEDEX delivered this package I examined it with considerable awe.  Here’s a device with no instructions, nothing to indicate what it is, nor why the VA had St. Judes send it to me.

It's evidently intended to be plugged into an electric Coleman camp stove. The camp stove wasn't included in the package.

It’s evidently intended to be plugged into an electric Coleman camp stove. The camp stove wasn’t included in the package.

However, I eventually got replies from my enquiries to the KCVA about why it was sent.  Seems the camp stove should be arriving sometime soon, and that on May 27 I should take it along with me to an appointment with a VA cardiologist specialist and all will be explained.

Until then I’m still doing all my cooking on Jeanne’s electric range.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Netflix, Mahjong, computer chess and good books

Posted on May 11, 2014 | 12 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

For the past while my physical prowess has been challenged enough to force me to find alternatives to just reading and meditating, while Jeanne’s pointed out my brain might be failing me from lack of oxygen.  So, she introduced me to Mahjong online to exercise my brain cells.  Which she has no confidence will help.

http://www.freegames.ws/games/boardgames/mahjong/freemahjong.htm

But I’ve been enjoying it.  Online Mahjong makes for a middling good way to pass some time so long as you make it clear you’re not going to put up with any BS from it.  Just hitting the reset button when it tries to throw near-impossible tiles onto that right side and top will keep it towing the line.

Similarly, computerized chess will throw a lot of BS at you, but there’s no easy way of escaping it.  Conceding the games early, immediately after it takes your queen, does cut down of the time wasted, but even that finds a traction point eventually.

And all work and no play leads me to movies.  A place I haven’t been in decades.  Jeanne’s son, Andrew, subscribes to Netflix and allows me to use unlimited streaming video [cheeze I love that phrase] access to their movies.

Watched out movies I haven’t seen except as a kid or teenager, watched movies I loved as a young adult, movies filmed in times a lot different from these. And sated myself out.  Huk, starring George Mongomery during the early 1950s is an example.  Movie about a ‘native’ Filipino uprising after WWII against the US plantation owners.  If we allow the moviemakers to tell us whom to root for we’ll be cheering for the plantation owners every time a little brown brother gets himself shot.

What I’ve learned is there are one hell of a lot of independently made low-budget movies out there capable of providing a type of entertainment I don’t believe movies and television have ever before quite managed.  Maybe the funniest I’ve seen yet was an independent titled, “A Fork in the Road“.    I’d never have had the pleasure of it if I’d not been blessed by a failing vehicle.

Another hilarious one was “Unidentified“.  And a number of Russian ones, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean made movies have offered themselves up for my admiration and piddling around waiting to die or whatever it is I’m doing.

As for good reading material, I’m getting more of it than I can absorb.  Jeanne’s library jobs are fine that way.  Catching up on Terry Pratchett novels, a nice history, Quantrill at Lawrence, The Untold Story, by Paul R. Peterson, One Summer, America 1927, by Bill Bryson,  Prescriptions for Herbal Healing, by Phyllis A Balch, CNC, and Trials of the Diaspora – A History of Anti-Semitism in England, by Anthony Julius.

To name the ones I’m in the process of reading right now.

Saw Harry and Tonto with Art Carney a couple of weeks ago on Netflix.  Reminded me of how differently I viewed it when I saw it sometime in the early 1980s.  And I resonated far too much with it, Hydrox and myself, to watch it through without dropping a few tears.

Hydrox is hanging in there day by day, for those interested.  Who will outlive whom is up for grabs.

Old Jules

 

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Animals

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If they wanted good health care they should have dodged the draft and gone to Canada

Posted on May 10, 2014 | 11 comments

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

Current VA Hospital investigation news videos:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A0LEVw85nG5TSFYAZTdXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0a3VnZmkwBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1NNRTQ4NV8x?p=VA+hospital+investigation

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I’ve said before I don’t believe the US government owes veterans good health care for the remainder of our lives as an ethical matter.  Merely a legal one.

We don’t particularly deserve it any more than Native Americans deserve cradle to grave health, dental and eye care because they happen to be descendants of aboriginals.  Merely something required by law.  Same as the VA.  They’re no more deserving than veterans, Wall Street bankers, CEOs of Multi-National Corporations, Congressmen and US Senators, or people living down in the war zones of slums getting their asses shot off in driveby shootings and their kids getting HIV from dirty needles.

Fact is, the US used to have wars people could understand and they needed to be able to draft young men to fight in them.  Forcing the Confederate States to come back into the Union and offer up their sons to fight in Cuba and Puerto Rico [Spanish American War],  the various Indian Wars acquiring Arizona, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Washington and Oregon, and WWI [the BIG Mystery], along with WWII and various Asian Police Action debacles required incentives and salesmanship.

Out of the need for incentives for young guys to be discommoded in foreign lands for the benefit of big business and old men who liked parades grew the VA hospitals.  And when military conscription went away at the end of the Vietnam War and the US began using a force volunteers, the need for the huge infrastructure gradually aged along with draft era vets.

Today we’d probably be better off moving the entire Indian Health Care System [run by the US Public Health Service] into those VA facilities so they wouldn’t be getting any better care than Veterans.  That would take up the slack for a while, until this whole health care issue in the US gets sorted out.

It ain’t that anyone deserves any better health care than anyone else, no matter how much money they make, don’t make, or what they’ve done with their lives.  It’s whether whatever health care anyone gets is what it claimed to be out where these claims are made when people are deciding what they want to do about their health issues.

Today the VA appears to be a cruel farce.  I’m glad I’m eligible to make use of it, but a nice disclaimer on the front above the door might be appropriate:

ABANDON HOPE ALL WHO ENTER HERE

Old Jules

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, History

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Physical therapy

Posted on May 5, 2014 | 15 comments
This thing's going to need some repairs before anyone can use it again. Trying to get it airtight enough to do any good in outer space ought to be a full time job for someone.

This thing’s going to need some repairs before anyone can use it again. Trying to get it airtight enough to do any good in outer space ought to be a full time job for someone.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

This area abounds with covered wagons, plows, cultivators, the occasional intercontinental missiles and a few of the people who used them, coveted them, wore them down to a small frazzle, or just sneaked around admiring them when they were shiny and new.  The automobiles get pretty fair physical therapy, but a lot of it just sits rusting in decorative positions in parks, front yards and displayed in unlikely places.

VA Medical Center surprised me by deciding I ought to get some physical therapy they’re too far away to provide.  They’re paying for a few weeks of me going to the Olathe Medical Center for it.  Had my first run at it last week on the day I wasn’t having something done to my goozle.  It was a surprising display of a lot of really old bastards walking around panting and generally being a lot more friendly to one another than they’d probably spent their lives being to other people.

Most appeared to be the sort I smile and speak to when I  meet their eyes in a grocery store or on the street, and they turn their heads away as an alternative to acknowledging I exist.  I sometimes carry the conversation further with, “Don’t you dare say hi to me!  No telling what I’d do back.”

But down there at physical therapy you’re more likely to meet again soon, him on the electric walking machine next to my stationary bicycle.  Snobbing a person off who’s there for a stay in close proximity could lead to all manner of long time discomfort.

So I smiles perlightly and says hi, [first to do it mostly] and while we each try to make something inside us perform better, we discuss weighty matters involving.  That’s right.  Involving.

Involving things our opinions don’t have anymore influence on than they ever did on anything else.  Mostly the weather.

Old Jules

 

15 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, Animals

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Ferry tales

Posted on May 4, 2014 | 16 comments

All but two of these guys were 2 year draftees or single enlistment 3 year recruits. Those would have all come home before the end of 1964, ETS [expiration term of service]. Just in time to miss the Vietnam debacle. Those returning to the US for reassignment went to 11th Air Assault Group, Fort Gordon, GA, training to jump out of helicopters. Then the Army moved the 1st Cavalry Division to Vietnam, dissolved the 11th Air Assault Group, and sent everyone in it to Vietnam. I'm betting these guys had better sense than to reinlist.

All but two of these guys were 2 year draftees or single enlistment 3 year recruits. Those would have all come home before the end of 1964, ETS [expiration term of service]. Just in time to miss the Vietnam debacle. Those returning to the US for reassignment went to 11th Air Assault Group, Fort Gordon, GA, training to jump out of helicopters. Then the Army moved the 1st Cavalry Division to Vietnam, dissolved the 11th Air Assault Group, and sent everyone in it to Vietnam. I’m betting these guys had better sense than to reenlist.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Camp Howze, Korea, 1963, 1964.  I was standing in a chow line almost certainly with one of the guys in this picture waiting for breakfast.  A twelve-year-old Korean lad came down the line selling Stars and Stripes newspapers, yelling, “Lots of Japs killed!  Hurrah!  Lots of Japs killed!”

Koreans still savored a deep hatred for Japanese in those days.  Having your mamas and grandmamas raped more-or-less whenever the mood hit for a few decades probably does that.  At least when the rapers are of a particular nationality.  [I’ve wondered whether East Germans don’t feel some of that toward the Rooskies because of their grannies during the retreat from the Eastern Front].

Anyway, it was a ferry disaster of some sort carrying Japanese passengers.  The first time I recall ever paying any mind to ferries and the associated dangers.

But over the decades I’ve certainly heard about a lot of them.  I suspect a risk assessment involving frequent use of ferries would reveal it to be more dangerous than airliners, trains or busses.  Not to say I haven’t ridden on a lot of them.

But on a ferry going between [I think] Newport News, RI, and Long Island, a nuclear attack submarine surfaced next to our ferry almost close enough to touch.  We assumed at the time the submarine commander was perfectly aware of the ferry.  By hindsight, though, I’m brought to wonder whether he had to go change his shorts when our presence and proximity came to his attention.

A person used to be able to pay once to get on the Statin Island Ferry and ride it back and forth all night, which I did a good many times.  Near misses with smaller craft were relatively common and a source of amusement for the ferry passengers.

I was on a ferry to one of the outer banks islands of Georgia, or North Carolina once when it hit something hard enough to jangle the eye-teeth of everyone aboard.  Never heard what it was, but none of the passengers were laughing.

Which is to say, life’s full of surprises and ferries have the potential for providing new ones.

I don’t recall when I began carrying a couple of hundred feet of small diameter 200 pound test rope with me in my luggage when I travelled.  But I do recall it was a decision I made watching people diving out of the windows of burning multi-story buildings on the news.  A bit of rope, I observed, would have saved a lot of them by allowing them to get off the upper floors and beneath the fires.

If I had to ride a ferry every day I’d probably decide an inflatable camp pillow would provide a nice place to sit on those hard ferry benches.  One person aboard protected by one inflatable pillow would remove the temptation those vessels wave around in front of the Coincidence Coordinators inviting disaster.

Old Jules

 

 

16 Comments

Posted in 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 2014, Adventure, America, History, Human Behavior

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The White Man’s Burden: Sharing US Culture

Posted on May 3, 2014 | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Hell they just want to be like us.  You can’t blame them.  Who in the world doesn’t want a piece of the best sociology, culture, society, music, attitude, behavior, the US has to offer.  The centerpiece for the cultural best has to be exported for the advancement of humanity.

But there’s not room for two.

People in conquered lands always want to imitate the conquerers.  That’s why British all try so hard to behave as though they’re Normans.  And [East] Indians try so hard to be good Christians.

Same as the whatchallem, Native Americans who aren’t whites, Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and such.  Aboriginals, they’ll likely want to be called sometime. Tribal Americans, some other time.

The Rooskies have always been good at gangsta, but they always felt something was missing over there in the KGB, GRU, and up in the Gulag.

We haven’t gotten around to conquering Pakistan yet, but maybe dropping a few cruise missiles and drones down their smokestacks was enough.  Bound to be an explanation and drones might be it.

Africans adapt surprisingly well to modern US culture.

New York Jewish gangsta rap would be difficult to top by Israeli gangsta rap I’m betting.

Australian aboriginals get into the swing about as well as a person can wish.  Hard to find fault with that.

All in all I’d say this fits the 21st Century better than Christianity fit the earlier ones.

Old Jules

 

4 Comments

Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Human Behavior

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