I thought since it’s a holiday weekend, most people will be out and away from their computers, and it might be a good time for me to insert a couple of comments about the blog.
First, an apology to the subscribers who have on at least two occasions received notice that a new post had been published, and then found that it was unavailable. I take responsibility for that mistake–when I’m proofreading, I sometimes get so distracted with Old Jules’ scintillating wit that on occasion I hit “publish” instead of “preview” or “save draft”. You’d think that someone in charge of the details would be more careful, especially after the first time, but… it happened again today. So, I’m sorry for the carelessness.
I’m posting a feature called “Ask Old Jules. ” On an irregular basis, I put up previous material from Old Jules in a question/answer format, and you’re welcome to post questions on the wall as well. When a question is posted, I forward it to him and post the reply when I receive it.
As usual, if anyone has a comment or suggestion about the blog’s appearance or features, you are welcome to email me at the address found on the Admin. page on the navigation bar.
The above image is one of my gel pen drawings. It’s what I do when I’m not working or laughing at Old Jules’ stories.
Have a good holiday weekend! Mandala56
Ozark Mountain Daredevils – You Made It Right live 1976
“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:”
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 ]
The e-newsletterShelf 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.
El Palenque doesn’t think;
Knows his only job
And does it;
Perfection without
Compromise.
Old Jules copyright 2003 NineLives Press
Escape artist
Unless the Great Speckled Bird is closed up in the other pen so the younger roosters can’t open a can of whoopass on him I keep them separated here:
”]and every night deer, coons and other critters break into the cage for leftover feed or as a possible access to the fortress. Before I let the two roos into the pen at daybreak each day I go around the base and make repairs with wire pinchers and tie wire.
And every few days this guy finds a way out. So I herd the Great Speckled Bird off to the other pen for his own protection.
Mr. Leon Trotsky, I swear to you, is pushing his luck.
I rarely talk to young people, though I’ll confess to craftily observing them when I can, watching their interactions reflected in a plate-glass window, sneakily watching them at another table in a restaurant, trying to hear and understand what they’re saying.
The problem is, mostly I can’t understand what they’re saying. As the years have progressed I’ve noticed that, even in convenience stores and fast-food joints I often can’t understand the simplest thing that’s being spoken. I tilt my head, ask them to repeat, explain I’m a bit hard of hearing and ask them to repeat again, and finally usually give up and just smile and nod ‘yes’ if that seems it might be appropriate.
I don’t believe it’s entirely my hearing doing this. I think there’s something new and different going on with language, but more importantly, inside the heads of people who sound as though words should be spoken through a mouth full of something, and really fast.
Mostly I don’t have a clue. Frequently my curiosity taunts me. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know what, nor how, they think. To me it would be easy to merely mutter to myself, these kids are incredibly stupid, illiterate, and so whacked-out on television and public school brainwashing it’s a wonder they can function at all.
But I’m trying to insist to myself that the human race hasn’t truly devolved all that much in only a couple of generations. These aren’t subhumans, though it would be easy to conclude they are, based on a lot of their mannerisms and behaviors in public. I think these creatures probably think and feel, but that they don’t express those thoughts and feelings in ways that allow me to fathom them.
Enter, the blessing of YouTube. When they aren’t too long, it rarely takes more than half-hour download on my dial-up. But it’s a chance to actually decipher something one of those people thinks, feels and expresses, in a way that bypasses the mouth full of marbles and the speed with which the words come to the fore. Once it’s downloaded it can be repeated until near-understanding arrives.
Old Jules
Steve Goodman– Talk Backwards [Edit: hope one of these links will work better]
He goes by the surname of Fauna;
From platypus to the iguana:
He hunts and he stalks
And he ceaselessly talks
Of death and the killing he want’ta.
She goes by the surname of Flora.
She’s plankton; she’s trees, a plethora,
But lives in a dread
Avoiding his tread;
He’s Sodom; he’s death; he’s Gomorrah!
He eats, he digests, he excretes her;
She’s worried each time that he meets her.
It’s not so dismaying
To find him decaying:
His syrup of nitrogen treats her.
Submerged in a hostile reality
Humanity flirts with finality.
He yearns to transcend
But his carnal self wins
And he wastes all his life in banality.
“The midnight sun is a sore trial for amateur astronomers in the high North,” says Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway. “But now, after a long summer without stars (save one), darkness is falling again. Last night when I was watching the beautiful conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, the first auroras of the season suddenly appeared!”
“I am looking forward to a great season with lots of activity on the sun!” says Broms
GEK, the friend who owns this place is going into high gear preparing for the Hatch Chili Festival coming up soon in Hatch, New Mexico. Last night he sent me a pic of his latest creation involving Siberian wolf fangs:
—————————————
Upcoming White Trash Repairs Project – Soon to be a nesting box
Getting the guts out of there without destroying the aesthetics is the challenge A layer of dead leaves or horse bedding chips in there and the Great Speckled Bird explaining the operation, they'll be right at home.
“Life after death will take care of itself howsomeever it plays out. Finding something useful to do with yourself when the future passes you up without volunteering yourself for the burn pile is a this-lifetime matter worthy of concern.” Josephus Minimus
The cat you see above came to me as a loaner 13-or-so years ago. A litter mate to Hydrox, the jellical cat I’d established an actual contract with for the remainder of one of our lifetimes. Mehitabel, an adult in the household, hated Hydrox and I thought he needed some company, so I borrowed Naiad on an indefinite loan, no contract involved.
Turned out she’s probably the best mouser I’ve ever enjoyed spending a piece of my life with, a survivor. She went through Y2K with me, has braved every available kind of predator stalking cats from dogs to coyotes, an eagle, hawks, bobcats and probably others she’s never had the courage to divulge, even to me, a liberal and open-minded sort of guy.
She generally trusts me but there’s always been that no-contract thing hanging over her head, and the guy loaned her to me got murdered a few years ago. She’s acutely aware if I hold strictly to our original agreement I have no option other than to return her to Socorro, New Mexico sometime. So she’s careful not to cross me.
But I’ve digressed.
When Gale, Kay and I encounter one another we almost always exchange news about which predators are currently threatening our chicken-herds, particularly predators that might commute from mine to theirs, or vicee versee. Yesterday Gale sprung one me:
“There’s a cat working up here you might want to keep an eye open for. Kay took a shot at it, but she missed. Black cat hanging around down by the hen house.”
“Black cat? Stalking your chickens?”
“Stalking something down by the hen house. Lots of rats down there because of the chicken feed.”
“Black cat? You sure it wasn’t Naiad? She’s been around chickens on and off forever. Never bothered a chicken.”
“You have a black cat down there?”
“Yeah. I’ll email you a picture. I’d be obliged if you don’t shoot her. She won’t bother your chickens.”
Toyota Goes Communist
Thursday I needed to go to town, so I packed the ice-chest with ersatz ice, a shopping list, and went to roll the 4Runner downhill to start it so’s to get up to Gales and borrow a truck to go to town. The 4Runner did okay rolling down but I suppose just half-mile trips back and 4th to Gale’s place hasn’t kept the battery charged. I’m thinking it spang went completely dead.
So, 100 degrees out there and me all dressed up for town I pulled up my galluses and hiked my young-ass over the hills and through the woods, picked up Little Red, the loaner truck, bumped my young-ass back down here, picked up the list and ice-chest, then off to town, where I happened to notice L’il Red’s license tag and Safety Inspection Sticker had both expired back in June.
Sweated blood and bullets all the way to town, various thrift stores, feed store, grocery store, all without getting into a gunfight with the law over the expired civilization indicated on the windshield. And not entirely the result of me being unarmed. Every time I saw a police vehicle I kicked into my ‘invisible’ mindset mode, which works a lot more frequently than a person might be led to expect if the person isn’t into such esoterics.
Posted a piece this morning I love and I think you might love too. Popular Science Magazine archives going back to before the invention of life as we know it. Going back so far there weren’t even any human beings running around to publish and read it, at least no human beings as we’re currently prone to indulge in believing humans are.
Stay tuned. Likely something else will happen here sometime.
When I got out of the US Army in 1964 I was a confused young man. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but initially I felt some urgency to get started doing it. My first thought was to buy a farm in the vicinity of Portales, New Mexico, where I’d spent most of my youth and done a lot of farm labor. That area was in the process of the subtle change from hardscrabble family farms to agribusiness farms, though I didn’t recognize it.
Although my granddad had a small farm a few miles from town, and although the main revenue for the population was farm-related, most non-farmers didn’t hold farmers in high regard. Including my granddad, with reasons he considered adequate.
The result was that my granddad, my mom and my step-dad took active measures, once I found a 160 acre irrigated farm I could swing for, to make certain with the local bank that I didn’t get financing to buy it. They each pronounced separately to me that I was destined for ‘better things’ than farming, which I bitterly resented.
Someone mentioned to me the Peace Corps was a place where young people at loose ends were volunteering to go off and set the world right. Relatively new at the time, I’d never heard of it, but I applied.
Then, as I’d done numerous times before, I hitch-hiked out of that town. The World Fair was going on in New York, and I headed that direction, and spent the summer in Greenwich Village simulating being a beatnik.
I might talk more about all this in future posts, but I’ve digressed from my original intentions for this one.
I began my Peace Corps training in Hilo, Hawaii. India X Peace Corps Project, intended to send bright young Americans off to Gujarat, India, to teach the locals how to raise chickens. Sometime I’ll probably wax poetic about all that, but I’m trying to limit my digressions.
Training was intended to be a time of intense learning, but it was also clear, we were cautioned from the beginning, it also served as a filter to remove the great percentage of the trainees through observation, psychological testing, peer ratings, and voluntary withdrawals. A sort of basic training with the emphasis on washing out all trainees with potential shortcomings. About 2/3 of India X washed out of training before the end, including me.
But I’m having a lot of trouble getting to the point of this post because of all the background material. Enough!
One of the methods of screening trainees was the Minnesota Multi-Phase Personality Test. Most of the trainees were well-enough educated to be familiar with it. The MMPP was reputed to be ‘unbeatable’, and we were each acutely aware of our personal shortcomings. Most of us agreed if the Peace Corps had any idea what was going on in our heads they’d faint, revive themselves, and deselect us without further ado.
During the week prior to the test we’d gather at night to discuss the best strategy for foiling the Peace Corps cadre and the MMPP. The two obvious approaches were, a] Tell the truth and suffer the consequences, and hope to be forgiven, or, b] Lie consistently.
By reputation, the MMPP wasn’t capable of being lied to consistently without catching you out.
Most of us viewed ourselves as the cream of US youth. The Peace Corps told us that’s what we were from the first day of acceptance for training. We’d been picked from hundreds, maybe thousands of applicants.
So we’d already fooled them that much.
Our consensus as a group was to lie consistently. Some of us succeeded.
This is getting lengthy, so I’ll use it as a launchpad, most likely, for some future posts.
Things could seem fairly grim to almost anyone trying to stumble through this new century. Somebody always walking into a schoolhouse with a gun, someone always bombing someone else, shooting someone else.
A cop probably feels things are middling dangerous for cops, feels things have gotten out of hand, feels threatened.
Store employees fearing their bosses, merchants fearing their employees, all of them fearing the dangerous potential of every customer.
Politicians fearing the opposing party, fearing the voters, fearing the prez.
Gang bangers fearing opposing gang bangers, fearing the cops, fearing their brother gang members knowing they’ll sell them out for a plea-bargain in a minute if faced with a long-term sentence.
Druggies fearing the dealers, fearing the cops, fearing the high cost of a habit, fearing other druggies, fearing their families, fearing do-gooder mammas and sisters and angry wives who might give them to the cops ‘for their own good’ after a long series of attempts to kick that didn’t work.
Christians fearing Muslims, Muslims fearing Christians, everyone fearing what the price sign above the gas pump’s going to show the day after the November election.
Single women fearing they’ll grow old without a man, married people fearing they’ll lose their partners to disease, to war, to accidents, to infidelity, to abuse.
Everyone fearing for the kids, for their safety, their increasingly brainless approaches to reality, for their futures.
Everyone watching the television screen, everyone shaking his head with the latest thing happened somewhere.
We’re in one of those niches in human history during which mass hysteria prevails. An erosion of faith, a lapse of memory as a result of the bombardment of news submerging the mass-consciousness into the goldfish bowl of NOW.
The reality is that things aren’t worse now than they’ve ever been.
Death still comes one-to-the-customer.
Kids, cops, gang bangers, birds, whales, baby seals, druggies, Christians, Muslims, every living creature is going to cross the finish line, same as they always have.
People aren’t killing one another more frequently than they’ve ever done. They’re doing it about the same amount as they always have. Killing and stomping one another, enslaving one another, robbing one another, invading one another.
Life’s a tough gig if we forget we’re going to die. It always has been.
The challenge to man has always been putting himself above all that. The courage to accept he/she will die, the kids will die, their kids will die.
The challenge is in the courage of acceptance, of distancing the self from the daily events creating the illusion death is somehow foreign, unnatural. Tragic.
The challenge lies in living in the knowledge we’re going to die while behaving as though we aren’t. In the courage to transcend the inevitability and allow ourselves to understand those other folks, the kid-killers, the gang bangers, the druggies, the cops, the government goons, the Christians and Muslims, the sheeple, all of them are just the same as us. All stumbling around trying to get through this life.
The challenge lies in forgiving them for forgetting, forgiving ourselves for forgetting, we’re going to die and submerging ourselves in fear and brother hate.
The challenge lies in transcending the forgiveness enough to be grateful for the moments, every one of them, between the crying and the dying. Grateful for the pain, the hardship, the loss, and the spiritual growth potential.
The challenge of acceptance that it ain’t all flowers and honey, never has been, never was supposed to be. That this life isn’t about what happens across the ocean, in Washington, in the crack-house down the block, or in the next bedroom where the kids are sleeping.
This life is about this side of the ocean, this city, this block, this house, this bedroom, right there where you are sleeping.
The impression you are making in that mattress, that pillow is where the minutes are ticking away, that’s where opportunities to become something better are located somewhere in a flash of life and time that’s ticking, ticking, ticking, trickling sand into the bottom of the glass.
The courage to repudiate the mind-games of others.
Others shouting to you that where someone else dies matters. Others demanding you pretend you won’t have to die, if you hire more cops, hand more of your personal decision-making over to the government, watch more television, put more people in prison, send the army off to stomp bad guys somewhere.
Ignoring the cowards whispering if you avoid different ingredients in your food, buy the latest health miracle and don’t breathe second-hand smoke you won’t have to die.
That’s the challenge. Same as it’s always been.
Old Jules
Four Sacred Mountains- R. Carlos Nakai (Song for the Morning Star)
Explanatory note: I used to spend a lot of time on the Zuni Rez with a lady-friend who was school librarian there for 20+ years. The animals described and named here were all hers. I post this as a hat-tipping to Ernie, Princess, Spot, Boy Toy and the rest.
A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni
had canines subversive and loony;
her communist felines
made neighborhood beelines
with doctrines both outworn and puny.
The KGB cat was a lean
and speckled-nosed beauty serene
appearance alone
for her countenance shown
multi-faceted plots as she preened.
Her Weathercat history was tops.
She’d sprayed on dozens of cops
with a Commie aroma
ere she joined Sertoma
cavorting with phonies and fops.
The ringleader hound was a red
and curly haired rascal it’s said
whose Trotskyish leanings
and Maoish gleanings
were pondered curled up on the bed.
Princess Redfeather, they tells
of this curly red bitch of the cells,
forsook her fine lineage
to sip of the vintage
of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.
The worst of the felines, Bearboy:
striped and cross-eyed and coy;
Politically weak,
but claws that could tweak
bourgeoise carpet, and bedspread, with joy.
The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut
was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;
dog-tired, and dogmatic,
he thought, ”Problematic:
dog-eared dialectic and glut.”
A calico hound lying dormant,
most likely a police informant:
a capitalist clown
took his food lying down
resisting the commie allurement.
The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie
began as a dog-pound attorney
commuted from gassing
he pondered in passing
discretion’s demands for a journey.
The Stalinish kittenish spies
spread foment and torment and lies
to the Indian curs
and mutts that were hers
and war-gods high up on the rise.
Princess and Ernie and, Spot,
and Chester , the narc-dog; the lot:
for half a piaster
would bring the disaster
to Zuni, once called. Camelot.
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 
