COMET CORPSE: “Doomsday Comet” Elenin was briefly famous for inaccurate predictions that it might hit Earth. Instead it disintegrated as it approached the sun last month. (Doomsday canceled.) Over the weekend, Italian astronomer Rolando Ligustri spotted the comet’s remains. It’s the elongated cloud in this Oct. 22nd photo of the star field where Elenin would have appeared if it were still intact.
Another team of astronomers–Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero and Nick Howes–spotted the cloud on the same night. At first they were skeptical. “The cloud was extremely faint and diffuse,” says Guido. “We wondered if it might be scattered moonlight or some other transient artifact.” But when the team looked again on Oct. 23, the cloud was still there. A two-night blink animation shows that the cloud is moving just as the original comet would have. Note: Some readers have noticed a fast-moving streak to the to the lower right of the debris cloud. That is an unrelated asteroid, 2000 OJ8 (magnitude 14), which happened to be in the field of view at the same time as the cloud of Elenin.
More information about this discovery and continued tracking of the “comet corpse” may be found at the Remanzacco Observatory Astronomy Blog.
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Meanwhile, here’s what Old Sol has to say about it:
There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA.
He’s looking fairly spiffy, though, with all those spots. Even without any coronal holes. He’d be the first to point out, you can’t have everything all at once. You’ve got to spread things out some.
There’s unanimity among the celestial bodies, whatever Gods are, the Coincidence Coordinators and other interested parties that there’s only one shot at destroying the earth. Ramming comets, asteroids into it, hitting it with phantom planets and galaxies, having some unexpected thing explode inside it, those options just don’t have enough drama and class to hold up under close scrutiny. They’re holding out for something better.
Mark it on your calendar if you can figure out what it is.
It’s become popular during the past few decades for individuals believing they have come connection to a group of dead men judged by hindsight to have harmed other groups of dead men, to apologize for the offending activities of the deceased they believe they’re responsible for to living people it didn’t happen to.
My granddad had a cap and ball pistol he inherited from his granddad. The butt had a lot of notches carved into it, which probably meant the weapon had been the instrument of the untimely deaths of a good many people who might otherwise have lived longer.
Genetic karma?
The man pictured above owned slaves in his lifetime, fought in wars and feuds. He was the great-grandfather of the man below, my biological father.
But his daughter was the mother of this man: Cole Younger. Killer, bank and train robber, rider with Quantrill during the Civil War.
Meanwhile the same genetic pool was spreading itself across the continent like some sexually transmitted disease. Cherokee, Choctaw and other tribes sneaked into the mix.
So here’s the problem:
I want to make all this right with all the people in the gene pool derived from the dead people who were wronged by the dead people within my own gene pool. I’d like to offer them an apology for the ugly stuff those who share my gene pool did to them.
For instance, the guy with all the hair on his face was part of the ugliness perpetrated against the Cherokee and Choctaw and the Trail of Tears. Naturally, if I’m to rid myself of the overwhelming guilt I need to apologize to some group of living people those painful things did not happen to. Cherokee and Choctaw, preferably.
But, whoooowah! The people on the Cherokee and Choctaw side of my gene pool are me. How can I convey my regrets to the Cherokee and Choctaw in me from the guilt-laden Anglo side? And can I assume without fear of error that my Cherokee and Choctaw genes don’t include someone who did something to some other group I need to absolve?
Is there some living group of people out there seething over something that didn’t happen to them, but happened to their ancestors as a result of some offense committed by holders of the Cherokee Choctaw genes?
And what’s all that turmoil and guilt churning around in my gene pool doing to my cells and whatnot?
Just to be on the safe side and try to set things right I think I’d best give myself a present as a gesture to calm things down. Yeah, I think I’ll eat an orange or banana.
Coming back from Fredericksburg yesterday I spotted this sitting in a field 100 yards off the pavement. I felt an immediate kinship, made a U-turn to go back for a closer look.
The first new vehicle I ever owned was a 1970 F150. Standing here looking at this one too-long left in a pasture, flat tires, dents and proud sign I flashed a brief, joyful memory of driving mine back to Austin from the dealership in Luling.
Someone did the same with this one from some other dealership. I wonder if he remembers the day, wonder if he’s even alive to remember some piece of geography he shared with this heap of steel, glass and rubber before me.
The young don’t know enough
About being young
They squander youth
And never know ’til later.
Any lad of twelve will testify
An eight-year-old can’t even qualify
To be a child
At eighteen our own ignorance
At fifteen is finally written
In language we comprehend:
We know the score
Reality’s the icing on the cake
Of youthful fantasies;
When the young grow old
They know a lot
About being young
But almost nothing
About being old.
But trucks know
Trucks have the dents
Worn bearings
Frayed seat-covers
Holding a thousand
Passed-gas kisses
Spilled drinks
Forgotten miles
Of those who forgot.
Recurring dreams of life
Disturbed his slumber
Nightmares they often were
But they were dreams
Had to wait in line
Almost forever
To even get a nightmare
Ticket out
For just that tiny while
From all that somnolent
Incessant
Endless nothing
Broken now and then
By welcome
Welcome dreams;
Nightmare punctuation
In a twenty-chapter sentence
Was a blessing;
Wished he could kill himself
When he killed himself
In dreams
But never quite learned
To love the nightmares
While he dreamed them
The human mind is a strange place to find ourselves living if we ever get enough distance from the background noise to notice. I tend to notice it a lot.
This morning seemed destined to be just another day. Gale and Kay were doing the Austin Gem and Mineral Show, so I’d figured to walk up to his house to get the truck mid-day so’s to take care of putting their chickens to bed tonight. Startled me a bit when I looked up and there he sat in Little Red a few feet away, having brought it down to me. My hearing must be further gone than I’d realized.
Seemed they’d no sooner gone than I got an email from Jeanne saying my old friend from childhood and later lost-gold-mine chasing days was in Fredericksburg trying to get hold of me hoping I could get over there for lunch. Heck, it must be 15 years or more since I’ve seen Keith, though recently he’s been reading this blog. Naturally him being 40 miles away and me with a truck sitting there available, I headed over there.
Really nice visit, but in the course of bringing one another up-to-date he asked me a number of questions about my situation here that forced me to take a hard look and organize my thoughts about it all. That kicked off a series of trails of thinking to organize clearer, more concrete priorities for myself within a realistic examination of my options.
There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re all stacked atop a single one: having the means of leaving this place in a relatively short time if the need arises. It’s time I decided on a single course of action and begin leading events in a direction that allows it to congeal in a way that accomodates the needs of the cats.
But the process of thinking about it in an organized way had a parallel thinking-path over whispering somewhere else in my brain wiggling out a sort of excitement, anticipation about it. Here’s something that will be pure trauma and agony for the cats I do everything possible to spare such things, and my ticker’s beating a little faster in a pleasurable way just considering it.
That, combined with the certainty the process of getting things together to execute the plan I come with is going to involve some unpleasantness, excruciating work and fingernail chewing as it goes along.
Seems I’ve somehow contrived to be two different places at the same time inside my mind. One being pushed by probabilities to do what makes sense rather than what I’d prefer, the cats would prefer. And one reaching somewhere into fond memories of pinon trees, high mountains and an entirely different sort of solitude than I have here.
Keith confided to me today, “Everyone thinks you’re crazy.” I can’t find any good argument that everyone’s wrong. It’s nice being crazy and still being as happy as I manage to be all the time, though.
Anyway, to satisfy that fiddle-footed nagging, here are some songs of the highway and the road.
For a number of years I’ve watched people wearing ball caps turned backward and sideways, nobody raising an eyebrow. I’m not sure why they do it because the purpose of the visor on a ball cap is to protect the nose from Old Sol’s battering. But I gradually began to wonder if people just didn’t know which piece of a hat is the front, which is the side, and which is the back.
Eventually I decided to perform an experiment. I carefully selected a hat for my next trip to town, determined to wear it backward all day, seemingly oblivious to that. I wanted particularly to corner-of-my-eye observe the reactions of people wearing their ball caps backward and sideways.
My findings weren’t ambiguous. From my first stops of the day I saw that people of every age and gender did double-takes, then attempted to surreptitiously call the attention of someone else to the fact I was wearing my hat backward. If they had no companion they’d nudge a stranger to share it. Not once did anyone sidle up to me and whisper, “You’ve got your hat on backward,” as they’d have done if my fly was unzipped.
If I’m wearing a hat when I eat in town I usually take it off a moment while I briefly acknowledge gratitude. On this occasion the hat was on backward when I entered and took my seat, ordered my food and waited to be served. The café was well populated and though I pretended to be reading I observed the hat was a subject of notice and concealed, smiling discussion at almost every table.
When the food arrived, after the waitress left, I removed the hat and bowed my head a moment, then replaced it, facing forward. But, pretending to notice I’d put it on forward, I took it off, looked at it, then turned it backward again on my head, and began eating while still occupied with my book, watching the other patrons.
This brought giggles and laughter, even among those wearing ball caps turned backward and sideways.
My conclusion from this study is that people don’t know what is the front and what is the back of a ball cap, but they do know the front from the back of western-style headgear. I believe the findings are important enough to justify more in-depth study by PHD candidates in anthropology, sociology and fashion.
This is Jack Swilling, founder of Phoenix, Arizona, who died in prison awaiting trial for homicide. He was posthumously acquitted. However, Swilling’s hat is the issue here. There’s a bullet hole in it, and it’s been ripped almost in half and sewn back together. Swilling’s hat could be worn backward, forward or sideways and nobody at all would allow himself to notice.
Here are some other examples of non-ball caps that might be worn backward without concern:
Manny Gammage of Texas Hatters made this hat for me in 1971, or 1972. The style was dubbed The High-Roller.
Here it is today with the original Mystic Weave band Manny put on it when he made it. I’ll leave it to your judgement and the judgement of the PHD candidates whether it ‘works’ backward.
Other possible backward hats:
This pic was taken around 1976 worn conventionally.
Here’s the same hat today, backward. Your call.
Straw John B. Stetson backward.
Felt John B. Stetson backward. These last two and the next one are hats I inherited from dead men sent me through thrift stores and flea markets and arranged by the Coincidence Coordinators.
This one is Guatamala palm leaf bought for a dollar in a thrift store. Maybe the best straw hat ever made.
Backward’s not much different.
This is a Tilley, the best canvas hat made anywhere. It can be worn backward or forward without fear.
This is a Tilley knockoff. Can’t be worn backward or forward with pride.
Gale gave me this dead man hat he picked up somewhere. Here it’s worn backward. You can just never tell.
Old Jules
Carl Sandburg, Hats:
HATS, where do you belong?
what is under you?
On the rim of a skyscraper’s forehead
I looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats:
Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls,
Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn.
Hats: tell me your high hopes.
Carl Sandburg, Hats are Sky Pieces:
Proudly the fedoras march on the heads of the some-
what careless men.
Proudly the slouches march on the heads of the still
more careless men.
Proudly the panamas perch on the noggins of dapper
debonair men.
Comically somber the derbies gloom on the earnest solemn noodles.
And the sombrero, most proud, most careless, most dapper and debonair of all, somberly the sombrero marches on the heads of important men who know
what they want.
Hats are sky-pieces; hats have a destiny; wish your hat
slowly; your hat is you.
I watched it sit in a vacant lot I frequently drove past in Kerrville for several years. Occasionally I’d trip up the hill to it, walk around it, kick the amazingly good tires.
After I began scouting for a new, moveable dwelling I began going snake eyes when I got near it to keep my intentions from drawing the attention of the Coincidence Coordinators. Sydney Baker is at the other end of town from the lot it was sitting in, so I assumed the Wing King was long defunct and this jewel was waiting for me to chase down the owner, make an offer, and take it away.
But today when I drove to that lot to get the license tag number so’s to try to contact the owner the bus was gone. I figured someone had called a wrecker to haul it away because they were going to use the lot for something. I puzzled over my next step toward finding it as I drove to Sydney Baker to see who occupied the address of the Wing King on the side of the bus.
Sheeze! The Wing King was right there, still in business. Okaaaay. Got to prepare myself mentally for this. I kept driving, furious thinking. But a few blocks ahead in the parking lot of the strip center in front of Dollar Tree, there it was, parked parallel to the curb.
I walked around it, squatted down to see if it was dripping oil or coolant. Nothing. I pulled off my vest and slid under the engine. Everything was pristine. No grease, barely any dirt.
What the hell’s it doing sitting here? Why did they move it?
Nothing for it but to drive back to the Wing King and talk to the owner. Now.
I sat in the truck going snake eyes a couple of minutes to prepare, then went inside looking for someone who looked ownerish. Two kids.
“Is the owner around?”
“No, he doesn’t work days.”
“I want to talk to someone about that bus down there parked by the curb across from the high school.”
“The water pump went out on it. He’s waiting for the part.” The kid thinks I’m someone in authority about to make trouble. How the hell could he think that, looking at me?
“I want to talk to him about buying it.”
“He won’t sell it. He got it for almost nothing, $1500, and it’s only got 10,000 miles on the engine.” Thanks a lot kid. I needed to hear that last part.
The other one, a girl chimes in. “Yeah, and parked there with that sign on it reminds the high school kids we’re here!”
Ahhhh. And Kerrville has a sign ordinance. That bus parked there doesn’t violate it.
That’s a bus the cats and I will never live in. But at least I found out about a place sells chicken wings. Wonder if they’re any good.
Old Jules
C.W. McCall – Wolf Creek Pass – a song about a truckload of chickens.
The politico dependent portion of the US population has gone to enormous effort to keep the boundaries of dialogue within a poured concrete septic tank for an awfully long time. Those boundaries have confined what can be expressed by the totally disfranchised, the largely disfranchised, the mildly disfranchised and the slightly disfranchised safely outside platforms for discussion.
Two dominant political parties, lobbyists, government contractors, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies and the health industry, multi-national corporations and defense industry entitlement organizations have all found comfortable niches to work within that structure and prosper. The symbiosis benefits the yin of government officials, both elected and hired-hands, and furthers the interests of the yang of anyone with the financial backing to feed the gargantuan resulting from it all.
Technology and communications at a grassroots level have conspired to abruptly allow voices outside that structure to be heard in the context of peaceful assembly by citizens with little in common besides their frustration with being locked outside the box. Evidently enough of that dissatisfaction exists to spread their numbers over a surprisingly wide area.
Enough to set off the burglar alarms across the spectrum of the comfort zones of those accustomed to doing precisely as they wish quietly in warm and friendly waters. Probably their best strategy would have been to ignore it all and almost certainly it would have gone away. It would have faded without the tsunami of indignation the bought and paid for elements of mass communication rattling denouncement through every channel, calling out the cavalry, piling insult and venom on those peacefully expressing themselves in harmless ways.
This ‘movement’ wasn’t created by the seedlings who began it. The Occupy Wall Street movement would have died on the vine if it hadn’t been nurtured and fertilized by the shrill cries of the safe and comfortable denouncing it. And by continuing to do so they provide the life blood for future expansion.
The protests on wall street are those coming from inside the buildings. Someone’s opening a door they believed they had locked.
Me thinks the lady [inside the buildings] protests too much.
Make certain your last will and testiment is up-to-date, don your face protection and body armor, adjust the lathe to the slowest possible RPMs and mount the future beer glass in the lathe.
Finding that lowest speed is important.
Change tools and readjust as the cylinder size is reduced. Gradually the RPMs can be increased.
Trim off everything that isn’t a beer mug
When it approaches the shape you want prepare the end for the talon chuck.
The talon chuck holds it by the end so you can begin hollowing out the vessel.
Note the protrusion at the base to serve as a grip for the talon.
If your material is mesquite some filling might be needed at this point.
Gale’s been using chrysocolla for that job lately
Now you’re ready to begin hollowing it out.
A closer view:
Gale prefers to use a drill press to take out part of that center plug because it’s awkward and the speeds of the material vary and directions reverse at the center.
Then back to finishing the rough mug.
The rough part of the job done, cheated death and any more of these one more time:
Other finished, or near finished vessels:
There’s not much money in it for him, though he sells a lot of them. But you have to admit there’s something magic about turning a dead tree into a wine glass or beer mug.
Sometime soon I’ll show you some of his silversmith work.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
