Tag Archives: musings

To Live is to Fly

Posted on September 10, 2011 by | 7 comments


Good morning everyone, Admin. (Jeanne) here.

Old Jules told me that some folks have been asking about who I am and wonder how I came to be “behind the scenes” on this blog. He asked  me  to explain a bit about how we met and got to this point.

We actually met in a y2k chat room. When my ex and  I were researching y2k in ’98, I  was new to the internet and immediately became addicted to chat, where this guy who could really turn a phrase caught my attention with his sharp, although often warped, sense of humor. He obviously was an expert about  emergency preparedness and soon he and his y2k website became my number one resource.

When he got his property at a land auction in the summer of ’99, we also bought a piece of land and I went from Kansas to  New Mexico for the first time to sign the closing papers. My family put up our own getaway cabin about a mile and a half down the road from his place.  After three more trips to put supplies in place, I had a suspicion that y2k was going to be less of an event than had been predicted. I  decided to take advantage of the chance to give my kids a taste of a life not only in a different culture, but without telephone, electricity, or indoor plumbing. By New Year’s I was there with all five of my kids, and I  lived there for 4 more months with the three of them that were homeschooling.  Jules and my family became good neighbors. He again became a valuable resource for us when we were studying New Mexico culture, history, and geography.

After my family reunited back in Kansas, we stayed in close contact. When I quit homeschooling and began working outside the home, he again became a mentor for me, since his career  in management positions gave him perspectives that would have taken me years to learn.  After my divorce a few years later we shared a house in Placitas, N.M. for a couple of years before I again moved back to Kansas. I’ve visited Old Jules in New Mexico many times, and in Texas a few times.  We’ve taken a lot of day trips, hit the thrift stores, and shared our cats, music, and books.  We’ve also collaborated on various  projects.  He’s been great about encouraging me in my art work, too.

I work two library jobs, and I’ve always had a passion for reading and writing.  I’ve had blogs myself, but I decided a while ago that my own expression should focus more on my art  than writing. I have other friends who are writers and I enjoy following their progress. Living on the edge as Old Jules does, with a slow dial-up connection on a phone line that I happen to know has a tree branch lying across it right now, makes it difficult for him to maintain a blog site. Since I’ve always enjoyed reading what Old Jules writes, I’m happy to help by using my fast internet connection to set up and maintain the blog.  So this blog is truly a joint project.  When we can, we use photos that we’ve taken ourselves, and discussing which music  fits each post is one of the parts about it that I enjoy most.

Because we live 800 miles apart, we don’t actually see each other very often,  so we’re grateful to live in a time when y2k didn’t bring down the grid,  destroying communications and becoming the end of the world as we know it.
We hope you’re grateful, too.

Mandala 56
Addendum: Here’s a link to my Deviant Art page for those who’d like to see more of my drawings. I don’t update the page very often, but it’s a handy place to have a gallery!
http://mandalagal.deviantart.com/gallery/

Townes Van Zandt– To Live is to Fly

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Posted in 1990's, Admin., Adventure, Communication, Emergency Preparedness, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Internet, NM, Relationships, Y2K

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Intelligent Common Sense vs. Knee-jerk Common Sense

Posted on September 9, 2011 by | 18 comments

I agree.

The question is what brand of common sense we choose to adopt.  One trait we humans all share is the unquestionable fact that we have common sense.  We’re able to spot the lack of it in others whenever it’s out of sync with our own, which frequently happens.

Among other things, it seems to me common sense ought to be manifested in personal and public choices about what’s worth getting excited about, being afraid of, and what is not.

For instance, I read somewhere recently that in the entire history of terrorism, beginning in Russia in the 19th Century, fewer than 10,000 people have died.

Common sense would seem to argue terrorism’s not a large enough issue in the world to lend much weight to private and public decision-making.

The war on drugs has been waged since the Reagan Administration.  Countless millions of dollars have been expended in the effort.  Today, forbidden drugs are as available on the streets of America, perhaps more available, than they were when Reagan declared war.

Common sense would seem to argue it was time to look at other alternatives about five years after it all began, rather than spending more on it, building more prisons, hiring more cops, judges, prosecutors.

We’ve known since the early 1970s that foreign energy dependence was a threat to the well-being of this nation.  Petroleum and other hydrocarbons were going away.  From Nixon onward, US presidents pledged and waved the bloody flag pretending an effort to free the US from foreign energy dependence by development of alternative energy sources.

Common sense would seem to argue we’re more dependent on foreign energy today, 40 years later, than we were when our elected chiefs first made public acknowledgement of the threat to national security and well-being.  Which is another way of saying they lied, made meaningless gestures to an actual threat to national security and well-being, while devoting their attention to waging bloody wars on top of soil where the old-fashioned energy sources lay hidden.

Whatever common sense is, you and I certainly have a lot of it.

If we could ever discover how to inject it into the gray matter of the men we elect to office, we’d have to change the definition to something less common.  Which is the reason I stay the hell away from knowing the current news events and don’t pay any mind to politics.

Common sense tells me history testifies to the futility of common sense and the futility of worrying about political matters.   Common sense tells me life’s too short to fire up my ammunition at targets I can’t hit.

Old Jules

John Prine– Illegal Smile
http://youtu.be/Li-HVSdjQFg

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Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Liars, Politics

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Thursday morning meanderings

Posted on September 8, 2011 by | 7 comments

SOLAR RADIO BURSTS: This week’s sharp increase in solar activity has turned the sun into a radio transmitter. Bursts of shortwave static are coming from the unstable magnetic canopy of sunspot 1283. Tuesday in New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded some samples at 21 MHz: listen. Radio listeners should remain alert for this kind of solar activity as sunspot 1283 continues to seethe.  http://spaceweather.com/

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Got a call last night from Gale saying they were in Van Horn, headed home. They should have arrived around midnight, so they can take care of their own animalcules this morning.

He said the Hatch Chili Festival probably won’t be among their future plans for having a booth. Sales were flat on most of his crafts, though the Siberian Wolf fang jewelry sold a bit, and his old stand-by steak turners with elk-antler shaped handles might have brought him to the break-even point.  He sounded a bit down-hearted and beat to a small frazzle.  But those craft shows are a big piece of the glue holding this place and their lifestyle together.

I’ve wondered for some while how long financial ventures depending on consumers buying non-essentials could hold up in a lousy economy.

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Came across an interesting blog: dumpster find of the week: boot haul, boat haul – Seems to be a kindred spirit.

————————————

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past while about various news items I wouldn’t be aware of if it weren’t for the Internet and blogs I read.  It’s guided my thinking into directions I probably wouldn’t otherwise drift, such as actually having conscious priorities in my life for a while.  At least sort-of priorities.

Not to suggest anyone’s a good economic prognosticator, but with all that guessing going on out there, and with what appears to be a lot of contributory factors, I probably owe it to the cats, at least, to have a backup plan.  A way to get the hell out of Dodge intact if things go sour, that has room in it for four cats.  If something happens to Gale or their finances, or SS is eroded by inflation, or both, hedging against the sleep-under-a-bridge alternative probably makes sense.

My obvious first priority is to get my new truck running and street legal.

But after that’s done, I’m either going to need to build a house to live in on the bed of it, find an old overcab camper to fit in it, or find a camper-trailer sitting out somewhere I can pick up for nearly nothing for fixing up to pull behind it.

I see these sitting around with weeds growing up around them a lot.  I think once I have transportation I’ll have to get serious about trying to acquire one or something rhyming with it as a future place for me and the felines if the Coincidence Coordinators decide to play dirty.

I’m thinking if things get too rough I might be able to slick out further west and establish a moving circuit of campsite homes on US Bureau of Land Management and US Forestry Service lands, changing locations every couple of weeks to stay legal.  The cats don’t care for the idea, but they tell me they’d agree to it if I won’t get any chickens.

I’ll probably talk more about various facets of all this in future posts.  Progress reports, learnings, that sort of thing.

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Meanwhile, happy posthumorous birthday to Jimmie Rodgers

http://youtu.be/qEIBmGZxAhg

He’d have known exactly how a person ought to go about becoming an honest-to-goodness hobo with a house.

Old Jules

——————————–

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Solitude, Trucks

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Don’t Call an Angry Jersey Bull a Sick Cow

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | 16 comments

He won’t like it.


  Every spring and fall the lady friend I mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for all The Valentines entry and I used to go adventuring down the Rio Grande to the wildlife refuges.  We’d watch the antics of the full quota of migrating birds at Bosque del Apache  Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, NM  [ http://friendsofthebosque.org/aboutrefuge.html ] and other sites near the river.  We carried our cameras and binoculars along, same as everyone else, and let where the birds were tell us where it was okay to go.

One year we were scouting the roads and farms on the east side of the river when we spotted a huge flock of cranes grazing among a dairy herd.  No signs forbidding trespassing, so I followed the irrigation ditch bank to get us as near them as possible.  Then we got out of the truck and began threading our way through the cows as we tried to get close enough for good pictures while the birds tried to foil the effort by moving further away.

The cattle were contained by an electric fence positioned about 18 inches off the ground.  The lady and I got separate by about 40 yards, me trying to be sneaky and circle around the cranes, her a few feet away from the cattle but on the side of the fence opposite them.

“Jules! There’s something wrong with that cow.”  I was focused on the cranes and didn’t pay her any mind.  I didn’t care if there was something wrong with one of the cows.  “Jules! That cow is SICK.”

This happened several times, me still ignoring it, her becoming increasingly shrill.  Finally, frustrated, I glanced toward her.  SHEEZE!

A huge Jersey bull was snorting and pawing up a dust cloud fifteen feet across that single strand of electric wire from her, telling her to “QUIT CALLING ME A COW!”

I yanked off my mackinaw.  “THAT IS NOT A COW.  STAND STILL!  DON’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE!  DON’T MOVE!”  I waved the mackinaw in the air.  “HYAAAAH!  HAYAAAH LOOKEE HERE YOU BASTARD!”

Snort.  Stomp.  Paw.  Dust.  Now he’s turning my way and I ain’t even across the fence from him.  “Hyahhhh!”  Less enthusiasm.

To her:  “Back away slowly.  REALLY slow.  Hyahhhh!”  Me backing away too, still waving the mackinaw, stepping across the fence, him taking a few paces toward me.  “HEAD TO THE TRUCK!  Slowwwww and easy.  Don’t attract his attention again.”  SOB’s thinking he’ll charge me, moving my way stomping and snorting, pawing up dirt.

I got up on the ditch road thinking how I can jump into seven, eight feet of water if I need to without ruining the camera and binocs.  He’s maybe 40 feet away, still coming.  She’s beside the truck.  “OKAY!  START YELLING AND WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND, THEN IF HE TURNS GET IN THE TRUCK!”

She did, he did, and I did.  He never came past the fence.

When I was a kid a Jersey bull was universally known to be a dangerous beastie.  We had to sit through films at school telling us to watch out for them.  I read somewhere once that more kids on farms were killed by Jersey bulls than died any other way.  She sat through the same films.

I suppose she forgot.

Or maybe I was just more tuned in because of a Jersey milk cow who used to chase me all over the barnyard, me trying to get her into the stall for milking.  My step-dad always sneered at me about that, “All you have to do is grab that ring in her nose!  She won’t do anything after that.”

I don’t recall I ever got close enough to grab that ring and test it out.  I preferred batting her across the nose with a broken hoe handle.

When It’s Mushroom Picking Time in Minnesota http://teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-its-mushroom-picking-time-in.html reminded me of this.  Rather than bog down her comments with my yarns I figured I’d best post it here if I wanted to tell it.

Old Jules

Johnny Cash -the Bull Rider
http://youtu.be/TViGS1ePGp8

6:15 AM Newsflash:

Last night I heard a ruckus outside the back window along with the sound of destruction.  I shined a flashlight through the screen and found a feral sow and 5-6 piglets about the size of Cocker Spaniels had broken into the rooster pen and were tearing everything up, one trying to get up the chute to the night rooster fortress.

I got the .22 and picked a target, the one tearing up my chute, fired through the screen, resulting in more destruction of the pen, a squealing, flopping-all-over-the-place pig, herd stampede by the others, and one ANGRY feral sow.

She’s been out there all night snorting and grunting.  My guess is that piglet’s still alive out there, injured, and she’s waiting until I come out to express her displeasure.

I’m not going outdoors until it’s light enough to see what I’m doing and she’s doing so’s we can come to some sort of permanent understanding about the issues involved.

Old Jules

7:30 AM aftermath

Judging from appearances she and the pigs ate the one I shot during the night.  Stinks something awful all over back there.  They did a lot of damage to the rooster pen, which I’ll have to shore up today while the two roosters run loose and hopefully leave The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters alone.

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2 might have to hang off in the background today, leaving the hens alone.

Damage from the hogs wasn’t restricted to the chicken pen.  They tore off some of the siding to the storage building trying to get to the chicken feed, also, broke pieces off.  More repairing and shoring up necessary there.

When I went out the sow was in a cedar thicket near the main henhouse where I could hear, but couldn’t see her.  Couldn’t tell whether the pigs were in there, too, or not.  I agreed not to go in after and she agreed to not come out after me.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Country Life, Education, Human Behavior, NM, Wildlife

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The Sawmill: Joys and Frustrations

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

One of the ways Gale makes money for himself is saw-milling mesquite.  There’s a guy with heavy equipment bulldozes cedar and mesquite off ranch land, and he pushes big mesquite off to the side instead of burning it.  We go pick it up in a trailer, haul it back here and stockpile it for cleaning up to be saw-milled.

These are mesquite boles waiting to be sold to a woodworker or for Gale to work them down into something tasteful and useful:

Here are a few larger ones stockpiled by the sawmill waiting for sawmilling.

But when Gale bought the sawmill he din’t actually have an enviable shelter to put it in.

We plotted, planned, watched and horse-traded when they were putting in new power poles to acquire enough for a new sawmill barn:

Even laid out the footprint for the new pole barn and got the holes drilled:

We’ve got the design put together by us two geniuses.  Those poles need to be measured and cut to length, then dragged over to be slid into the holes, set vertical, tamped into place, first off.  Then everything that doesn’t look like a pole barn needs to be removed from that airspace sitting there empty.

But the fact is, Gale’s an old guy.  Claims to be older than me even, by an imaginary year.  He’s got a bad hip and too many other things troubling him to have any business out there trying to do work ought to be reserved for a younger guy, namely me.  I can’t afford to be losing an old friend and the man who owns this place because of some silly notion he might have about getting out there doing any heavy lifting and sweating.

So that barn of the future’s been sitting there waiting to happen for a year now.

If I had my new truck running I’d be up there now, while they’re gone and can’t do anything about it, measuring and cutting those poles, dragging them somewhere they can become something better than what they are now.  I’d be getting those poles up pointing at the sky the way the Coincidence Coordinators intended when they delivered them.

All while they’re off in New Mexico at the Hatch Chili Festival doing what’s best they do and they do best.

It ain’t going to happen this time, because I don’t have anything to pull them with.  But that new truck’s going to be running next time they leave.

On the other hand, I think he might be edgy about me doing it.  They’ve both seen the things I’ve built, or am building down here:

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Thumbing Rides on Throwaways

News from the Middle of Nowhere

Disclaimer and apologies – I posted this accidentally when I went to save the draft.    But there’s been too much deleting of accidental posts here lately, so I’m leaving it up.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Texas, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Something Rhyming with Joy in the Pre-dawn

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 6 comments

The temperature dropped enough last night so’s I turned off  the fans.  When I walked outdoors the cats were doing those little rear-on-hindlegs-pivot happiness acts they’ve taught one another, all gathered for a some grub, a refill on the water bowl,  having their tails tugged and a few words of greeting.

They all explained they’re grateful to me for turning down the heat, and I didn’t tell them any different.  Anytime a person can get a cat feeling beholden he’d best take advantage of it.  I took my coffee out to the porch swing hangs under the oak and let them take turns snagging a few scratches behind the ears, held Tabby upside down and explained how she was one of the best cats around here and just listened to the night trailing away.

I stay fairly joyful around here always, but somehow it managed to get itself trumped this morning.

If I was shorter and had me a mirror and a sink to stand on I’d do what Jessica’s doing in the video below.

Jessica’s “Daily Affirmation”

http://youtu.be/qR3rK0kZFkg

Instead, I reckons I’ll have another cup of java and wait for the roosters to begin their concert.

——————–

8:00 AM

Without taking anything away from Jessica, here are a few of my own gratitude affirmations this morning:

I’m grateful Gale’s got water up there I can haul, grateful for all these jugs to haul it in, and grateful he’ll loan me Little Red for packing it down here.

I’m grateful Gale gave me this new truck:

“GOT ME A NEW TRUCK” https://sofarfromheaven.com/category/trucks/

The wiring's too Communist and beyond my ken to fix myself, turns out. I'm grateful there's a real mechanic in town and we can tow it in when he gets back.

Won’t be long now before I have transportation again and whoooeee will I ever be grateful.

I'm grateful we don't have to depend entirely on rain.

If I had a sink I’d dance on it, same as Jessica.
Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, Trucks

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White Trash Repairs – The Dumpster Telescope

Posted on September 2, 2011 by | 15 comments

The Salvation Army Thrift Store, July 2009

Tube, flange and swivel – Salvation Army Thrift store – July 2009. No eyepieces, broken tripod.  Looked too much like junk to find a willing buyer.

It’s been a longish while since I owned a good telescope, an 8″ tube with a tracker drive to allow watching deep space objects or the moon without having to constantly chase the targets.  Since that time I’ve confined my star gazing to a pair of binoculars on a camera tripod unless some acquaintance owned a good one and invited me in for an evening.

But in July, 2009, I found an Orbitor 8500 Chinese tube in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrville with a sad, badly-used look to it and an unrealistic price tag.  I examined it carefully, then wandered around the store pretending to look at other merchandise while watching other customers when they got near it.  My thought was that if I saw someone getting too interested and likely to snag it I’d beat them to the counter and plunk down the unrealistic money with a pre-emptive strike.

After a while I moseyed back and talked to a couple of guys who were scowling at it.  I shook my head about it, talking about it not having a drive, speculating how much it would cost getting eyepieces, what a shame it was the tripod was junk.  We agreed a person would be a fool to take it home at any price.  Likely that mirror, I pointed out, was as much a piece of junk as the rest of it.

We all wandered away, and I picked up a couple of books off the 25 cent shelf.  After those two guys left I went back and made a show of frowning at it a while longer before I went over to the counter to talk it over with the lady I’d done a goodly amount of haggling with in the past who knew what to expect from me.

“Somebody’s going to be back arguing with you if you sell them that telescope and they take it home and try to use it.”  I fiddled around in my pocket for change to pay for the books.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“If they don’t know what they’re paying for they’ll get it home and end up with something they can’t use.  It’s a cheap Chinese-made thing to start out with, but the tripod’s broken, for starters.  Someone didn’t take care of it.  Probably a kid got it for Christmas and lost interest by New Year, pushed it into the corner until he broke it.” 

I plunked down my money for the books.  “Do you suppose the guys in back let the eyepieces get separated from it?  Nobody can use it without eyepieces and they’re expensive.  Might not even be able to get the right diameter ones easily.  If you could find the eyepieces someone might buy it at some price.”

Eventually I agreed to haul it off for five bucks if she’d promise to try to find the eyepieces and hold them for me if they turned up.  She doubted seriously they’d be found, but I had in mind to buy salvage lenses off the web and turn down something to put them into out of wood on Gale’s lathe.

But there was still the problem of the drive and the tripod.  I spent the next couple of years picking up junk telescopes and parts at garage sales and other thrift stores.

Collecting parts from other stores:

Primarily I was after a tracker drive and eyepieces but I ended up with a lot else.

Then, this summer I found this for $5:

Batteries are dead, telescope is trash, wrong size cove for tube. Tripod’s great. One good eyepiece. Great price. Humane Society Thrift Store July 2011.  In a thrift store environment dead batteries most equal disfunctional. They might be right. These are still dead.
 But all that can hopefully be managed.  Meanwhile, back in the Salvation Army Thrift store this summer I was down at the end of the glass counters and noticed a dusty baggie with eyepieces in it.  When the lady who sold me the telescope in 2009 finished ringing up a customer I got her attention.
“That bag full of lenses in that end counter,” I pointed.  “How much are you asking for them?”
She came for a look.  “Oh, I can’t sell those.  They told me to hold them in case the guy who bought the telescope comes back for them.” 
Then she looked at me, down at the lenses and back at me her face dawning realization.  “YOU’RE the one who bought the telescope!”
“Yeah, I am.”
 It’s still got some work ahead.  I have to do some figuring how to get a cove that fits the tube attached to the drive, if the drive can be made to work.  But something will turn up one way or another.  The Coincidence Coordinators will make certain of that.

I have a permanent position selected out in the meadow for the observatory once I’ve got something with a tracking drive put together and have hauled enough rocks and tin for walls and dome.

If I’m around long enough and if this place remains available for me to live here, I’m going to have an observatory.

Meanwhile I use StarCalc 5.73 [free download] to keep track of what’s going on in the sky, along with the Multi-Year Interactive Computer Almanac software from the US Naval Observatory for fine tuning calculations.

Old Jules

Pendulum Star

Pendulum star
Swings to and fro
While maggot-earth
Digests his legions
Tick tock
Tick tock

Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Through Paleozoic hours
Quaternary days
Pleistocene weeks
Tick tock
Tick tock

Sub-microscopic
Parasites
Scurry flourish
Scratch peel
Posture
And rot
Tick tock
Tick tock

Pendulum star
Swings to and fro.
Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Maggot-earth digests
Tick tock
Tick tock

Copyright 2003, NineLives  Press

Choose Something Like a Star– Randall Thompson
words by Robert Frost
http://youtu.be/8dg2iE2ixeE

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Astronomy, Country Life, Homesteading, Kerrville, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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News from the Middle of Nowhere

Posted on September 1, 2011 by | 4 comments

Old Sol’s going through some unusual upheavals today.  I don’t recall ever seeing such an array of sunspots reported:

“GIANT SINE WAVE: Imagine a sine wave 400,000 km long. Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring just such a structure. It’s an enormous filament of magnetism slithering over the sun’s northeastern limb:”

http://spaceweather.com/

Meanwhile it’s a red morning out there, so all you salesmen probably need to take warning.

Last night I was planning to haul water but I was interrupted by a wild hog meandering out from behind the truck as I came around the corner of Gale’s house.  We stood and looked at one another from about 20 feet, him undecided about whether he wanted some of me, while though I’d decided I couldn’t think of anything to do about it if he did.  When he wandered off behind a hedge I ducked inside to seal an agreement with him that we’d postpone any drama until we could each feel better about invading the personal spaces of the other.

Gale had told me he was having a lot of hogs troubling him but he didn’t mention I needed to pack a .45 walking around the place.

Maybe more later.  I’ve got to go let his chickens out.

07:45 AM – Snagged enough water to hold things together a couple of days down here without seeing any porkers.  Kay’s duck, which was missing last night when I locked down the chickens and caused me concern, flew in while I was filling the water jugs.  Eased my conscience considerable.  I hate having one of their critters come up KIA or MIA while I’m the one taking care of things.

While I was driving back down here I got to thinking about that tusker last night and the fact something’s been tearing up the pen where I keep the roosters every night.  Went out looking for hints of what might be doing it and found pig scat all around out there.  If it was there before I hadn’t noticed it and it appeared fresh.

I’m guessing whatever water source the wild hogs were using somewhere else must have dried up and motivated them with ambition to do some exploring.  It’s been a year since pigs were a problem here except for brief spatterings, a herd passing through.   I’m hoping these will follow the pattern, what’s left of them.

Tidbits you’ll be glad to know:

On this day in 1948 the Chinese formed the Peoples Republic of China, intended to create a nation of manufacturers to create all the stuff Western Europeans and US workers were having to make for themselves previously, getting their hands dirty.

On this day in 1926 Turkey began allowing civil marriage, the results of which subsequently became obvious.

On this day in 1918 the first US troops landed in Vladivostok, Russia, to help settle things down and restore the aristocrats overthrown by wossname, revolutionaries.  For those guys WWI didn’t end until 1920.

On this day in 1866, Navajo Chief Manuelito turned himself in at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, thus putting the final touches on getting all those Navajo over into the temporary [15 years] rez at Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner bunched up with the Mescalero so’s to get the numbers down to something more tidy and manageable, which they did. [The Long Walk of the Navajo http://www.logoi.com/notes/long_walk.html ]

Old Jules

“The Java Jive” (Ink Spots, 1940)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6IUqrFHjw&feature=related

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, History, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Wildlife

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Did You Ever Fake Reading a Book?

Posted on August 31, 2011 by | 12 comments

The e-newsletter  Shelf Awareness  occasionally includes author interviews where a standard question is “What book have you faked reading?”   This brought to mind something I can tell  now because I don’t think they can take my high school diploma back from me.

When we students who began school in the first half of the 20th Century in Portales, New Mexico entered Junior High in 1957, they explained a lot of what we had to get done during the next few years if we wanted to graduate from high school. If those years passed and we hadn’t done each thing on the list we’d be pumping gas the remainder of our lives.

Among the various academic requirements was Major Book Report every year. I didn’t see this as a problem up front. I was a heavy reader and couldn’t imagine a deadline arriving on that one without me nailing it in plenty of time.

But somehow the 8th or 9th grade came along and spang, there I was, with Mrs. Wilbanks standing before the class announcing day-after-tomorrow our big book reports were due. Suddenly I was in a panic. I’d read plenty of books, but none that came to mind as qualifying for a big book report. Those normally had to be cleared with the teacher ahead of time, which somehow slipped by me for one reason or another.

I don’t know what made me decide to invent a book that didn’t exist.  It seems insane all these decades later.  But I suppose  I concluded I just hadn’t read any Big Books after I went to the library and saw the lists of the ones other kids had been thumbing through and dogearing.

But I got out my Esterbrook fountain pen with the turquoise ink and set to work inventing a Big Book I’d read.  “Chessman”, by Borden Deal .  It was a good book and I regret Borden Deal never wrote it.  I turned in the book report on time and sighed thinking I’d cheated death one more time.

A few days later Mrs. Wilbanks brought the graded book reports in and prepared to pass them back, but she cautioned us to just look at the grades and corrections, then hand them back in.  They’d go into our permanent files with our other Big Book Reports until we graduated High School.

Then she pulled out a book report from the stack I could recognize from my desk near the back of the room.  Sloppy, turquoise handwriting on yellow paper.

“I don’t give A+ on Big Book Rep0rts, but I’ve made an exception this time.”  She lighted up the room with her smile and gestured toward me with it while I sank into my seat.  “I believe this might be the best Big Book Report ever written by one of my students.”

Knowing that book report was up there hanging over my head as evidence bothered me a lot.  When I left Portales and headed for another school my 11th year, I hoped they’d let me carry my records so I could snag it, but it wasn’t to be.  Next year I changed schools again and again didn’t get an opportunity to steal it back.

Not until I graduated in 1961 did I again get my hands on my Big Book Report on “Chessman”, by Borden Deal.  I packed it away with all my other important papers and kept it until Y2K, when it went into the fire after one last read.

If you haven’t read the book I recommend you write it.  It’s a winner.

Old Jules


The Coasters – Charlie Brown
http://youtu.be/dS9sOCRH3MU

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Posted in 1950's, Books, Creative Writing, Education, Liars, Portales, Reading, Writing, Youth

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Déjà Vu All Over Again – Ways to Be a Good American Without Waving a Chinese-made Flag

Posted on August 29, 2011 by | 18 comments

Lose the God-Damned Bigotry or Quit Calling Yourself an American -You’re Walkin’ on the Fightin’ Side of Me

on

Paid for by Americans to Restore Freedom, Austin, TX 1970

A word in advance:  About the time Merle Haggard was reaching the top of the charts with “The Fighting Side of Me”, and “Okie From Muskogee” a war over forced busing was being fought in cities all across the country by good Americans.  The poster you see appeared on telephone posts, taped to the outside of doors, windows of public places, scattered on the streets. 

In 1970 a friend and I came across a guy taping one of these up near the University of Texas.  He had a ream of them beside him on the concrete.  We discussed it with him and his noggin required surprisingly little thumping to persuade him to give us all the posters and swear he would not do it anymore.   He didn’t have the strength of his convictions.

I suppose I kept a few of them  boxed up with other curiosities from  over the decades.

The administrator for this blog found a few of them among some boxes of scribblings and asked what it was all about.

Merle’s had a change of heart, repudiated a lot of what he said and did during those times, says we all make mistakes and we all eventually grow from having made them.  But interestingly, instead of vanishing from arena of public bias, the past two years has seen a re-emergence of surprisingly similar material intended to assist in denouncing the US president.

Being a good American and a good human being isn’t about waving a flag, hating Democrats or Republicans, Muslims, or people who say ugly words about political leaders.  It isn’t about fear, hysterical dialect, consumerism and waste.

Being a good American and a good human being is about personal responsibility.  About having enough confidence and courage not to feel threatened by every little thing.  About assuming the responsibility of not being part of the problem any more than is absolutely necessary.  About self-reliance.

Sometimes it’s not obvious how a person might accomplish those things.

  • On a personal level your life will find itself a lot better place if you can recognize the fact you are going to die as a means of exiting it.  Maybe disease, a car wreck, any of a thousand common ways that don’t have a damned thing to do with any foreign country, foreign leader, foreign war.  You are going to die.  No point in going into frenzies of terror and hate because the death you get stands a billion-to-one shot at being the act of a terrorist.  Trust me on that.  You are going to die, and I’ll only be the tiniest, most microscopic bit of a liar when I tell you it won’t be from anything any foreigner does  to cause it.
  • On a personal level you’ll find it’s a hell of a lot better place if you can learn what is your own business, and what isn’t.  If you can change it, it’s your business.  If you can’t, it ain’t worth concerning yourself with, getting all worked up about.
  • On a personal level you’ll find your life’s a lot better place if you spend considerable energies looking at it, instead of other places, looking at what you like about it, and what you don’t like about it, and changing what you can.  Looking in a metaphorical mirror at the sort of person you are and asking yourself if that is the sort of person you want to be.  You can’t change the kind of person the prez of bongobongoland is, but you can change the kind of person you are into someone you have more respect for.  No one respects a dishonest, hysterical coward, including you, when you see it in others.

If all of us could pull that off our own lives would be a lot better, and America would be a better place for it.  But insofar as personal responsibility and being a good American, we can expand on that a bit.  Here are a few things a good American might do without having to shout from the rooftops about what an admirable person he/she is:

Dependence on hydrocarbons is the ultimate problem of this nation you say you love.

  • Be conscious of your own energy use.
  • Every plastic grocery or garbage bag, every foam-plastic hamburger box, no matter where it was produced, drives up the price of oil.
  • Every time you fire up that hair-dryer you drive up the world-wide price of hydrocarbons.
  • Every made-in-China yellow ribbon ‘SUPPORT OUR TROOPS’ you buy to stick on your car drives up the price of hydrocarbons world-wide, increases the demand.
  • Every made-in-China flag made of nylon you wave drives up the price of oil and increases worldwide demand.
  • Every new plastic radio, CD player, computer monitor.  Every plastic wrapper from that frozen pizza pie.  Every cellophane cover and foam plastic bottom covering the piece of animal you’re having for supper and sending to the landfill afterward is driving up the world-wide competition for oil.
  • Sure, there are the other obvious things.  The things Jimmy Carter used to beg you to do when he was prez, to help you quit relying on foreign petroleum products.  Turn down the heater.  Turn up the thermostat on the AC.  Don’t drive anymore than you have to.  Which, of course, you didn’t care for then and immediately forgot when he left office (which is part of the reason you’re in the fix you are in now.)

But there’s a lot more to being a good American, as opposed to a good human being.  Here are a few more ways you could try to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem:

Quit buying ANY foreign product if you can avoid it.  Even if it saves you a few cents.  Just say no.  Refuse and make it clear why you’re refusing.  If US workers didn’t manufacture it and you can live without it, don’t buy it.  If your old one’s broken buy a replacement used in a thrift store, garage sale or flea market.  If it can be repaired take it to a local appliance repair shop and let a US worker repair it.  Every dollar you spend on a new foreign-manufactured product reduces the value of the dollar you’ll get next paycheck because of the overwhelming trade deficit.

If this country is going to survive another century the population is going to have to begin manufacturing what it consumes, energy-wise and every other wise.  Building hamburgers to sell back and forth to one another isn’t enough to keep a country sound.

Americans are going to have to produce products, and the other Americans are going to have to buy them.  We can’t continue indefinitely sending our chunks of our trade deficit off to bongo-bongo land for petroleum, to China for plastic bags, television sets, seat covers and rubber monster toys.  We can’t starve out our farmers by buying agricultural products from Mexico and Argentina.

Being a good American involves a hell of a lot more than getting angry when some foreigner says something ugly about it.  Loyalty to America and Americans is about keeping America alive, productive, self-reliant, healthy economically.

If we can do those things we’ll find we’re spending a lot less time hurling empty rhetoric back and forth, hating the owners of bongo-bongo land oil, a lot less time bombing the hell out of foreign lands, a lot less angry and full of fear and hatred.

And we wouldn’t need to wave flags to prove we were good Americans.

Old Jules

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/187535.html

MERLE HAGGARD – Fightin’ Side Of Me
http://http://youtu.be/QX9X5zJ91Ac

Afterthought:  Tffnguy’s got a rant on similar but not identical subjects you might find worth a read, along with comments by a number of oldsters on my blogroll.  http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/2011/08/divide-and-conquer.html

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Posted in 1970's, 2011, America, Current Issues, Ethnic Supremacy, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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