Tag Archives: thoughts

Disambiguating, De-Obfuscating and De-Horsemanurizing the Previous Post

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 15 comments

I just got to say I love that word, disambiguating. 

Anyway, here’s Old Sol today.

And here he is October 23, 20o5.

Planetary positioning today

Planetary positions October 23, 2005, with particular emphasis on Saturn, Uranus and Earth/Mars positions.

Please don’t in any way interprete this to mean I believe you’re interested, or that I’m offering any sort of theory, opinion, statement or hypothesis.  I’m just posting some images of Old Sol’s face and the concurrent locations of celestial bodies relative to one another.

Further deponent sayeth not.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2000's, 2012, Astronomy

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Powdered Horse Milk

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 16 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

After I finished my morning download ritual this morning and prepared to go outdoors to bring up Old Sol and turn out the chickens I checked Ask Old Jules Biggest Regret? to see which of my brainstorms of the past she’s picked for the day.  I take a lot of things about myself for granted and occasionally one of my answers rattles me a bit, gets me asking questions about me and what makes me tick.  This morning is one of those.

Sitting out there under the tree I found myself asking, “What in the dickens is wrong with me that I feel so content and can’t come up with anything to regret?  It ain’t as though I haven’t gone the last mile to assure myself of plenty any sane person would prefer to be otherwise.”

I can’t guess how many people live the way I do, close to the cuff, physically having to force myself to maintain a comfort range that includes whatever the Universe tossed my way.  Probably a lot do in the poorer countries, but likely not too many within the boundaries of the US.  But when I see some evidence of them, I generally find myself on the edge of feeling sorry for them.

But meanwhile, I’m about as content, almost euphoric about my own life most of the time as a person could be.  Yeah, there are nagging things need doing, need changing, forever being pushed forward in time for one reason or another because of limited options.  But they whisper from the wings and mostly I don’t pay them any mind.

“Would I like, or trust someone like me if I came across him?”  That’s what I finally found myself asking.    And the answer’s a bit confusing to me.  “No,” I’m forced to admit, “I probably wouldn’t.   How the hell could you trust someone like that? “

“So, do you want to change it?”

“I’d hate to.  I’m more-or-less fond of being happy.  But it might be better to cultivate some regrets, some yank-your-heart-out-things I wish I’d done differently.  This satisfaction thing can be taken too far.”

Cultivating regrets, yearnings, deep feelings of loss might just be what it takes to live a life of fulfillment.  It would open the door to finding things to be scared of, frightened they’d happen.  Angry because they did, or didn’t.

Old Jules

 

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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Crazy Lost Gold Mine-ism Re-visited

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | 7 comments

Crazy Lost Gold Mine-ism

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this cold morning.

The adventurers are getting old and long in the tooth.  I’ve written about this in the past a number of times, but a few days ago I got an email that got me thinking about it again:

Hi J,  I hope this finds you well….cats too.

Age 72. Raised in northern Wyoming. Made my living mostly in electronics and related technology. Army vet.

I have been obsessed with that lost gold mine since 1974 and many years ago received a copy of your CD via a guy I think you know….If you had ever watched him shovel.

Bought your book several years ago. Lots of good stuff but editing sucked on the CD.. Also, someone you might know, Bob Gordon of Dallas went on a trip with us once to the Mangus Mt. area (probably in the early ’80’s) and I think I gave him his first copy of Allens and Byerts.  Excuse me, but I am currently too many margaritas along right now and need to cut this short. I am convinced I have a lot of the story figured out….Yeah, like I’m alone. But seriously. 

I would like to chat with you if only email,  Fergy

I replied to his email saying I’d be willing to discuss it by email.  Back during the day I spent enough hours on the telephone hearing where it was to break me of any desire to ever do that again.  But there’s always a chance someone will come along and add the piece to finish out the puzzle.

When his reply elaborating on his ponderings arrived, he didn’t clear anything up, but it did get me thinking about some things. 

Over the years those phone calls and emails have gradually squeezed down to men of advancing age.  Most of us are getting so old we’re not likely to tromp up high mountains anymore.  And we’re dying off.  Of the hundreds of letters and phone calls I got over the years, every one of the originators had solved the mystery, or was near unto solving it.  As I always was.  Heck, as I still am, though I don’t think about it much anymore.

During the 20th Century thousands of men tried to find that lost mine, as did a similar number during the 19th Century.  There was even a movie made about it in the late 1960s. 

Mackenna’s Gold (1969)

Format:  Mackenna's Gold DVD 
 
Sprawling frontier adventure with Gregory Peck as a sheriff who is given a map, said to show the location of a large cache of gold hidden in a valley, and soon finds he’s the target of every fortune hunter in the West. The star-laden cast also includes Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Julie Newmar, Lee J. Cobb, Edward G. Robinson. 123 min. Standard; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital stereo; Subtitles: English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai; biographies; theatrical trailers.

 

But as the 20th Century wound down something interesting happened.  There were no new legions of youngsters replacing the old ones, researching, reading, poring over maps and trekking into remote canyons.   Something was gone, and it’s over.

Old Fergy, Keith and I, a few others are still out there thinking about it, but what we are and what we were is something modern humanity has left behind without noticing it’s done so.  I don’t know what that means, but I’m not overjoyed about it.  My preferred view of humanity and youth is going to require some adjustment.

Old Jules

Previous posts referring to the lost gold mine search:

Crazy Lost Gold Mine-ism, Wilderness Threats, Adventure, Imagination and Keeping the Juices Flowing, Cold Mystery, Fevered Romance and Lost Gold

Today on Ask Old Jules:

Old Jules, which prophet out of known prophets could make a good philosopher, and vice-versa, and why?

http://askoldjules.com/2012/02/13/prophets-and-philosophers/

7 Comments

Posted in 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 2012, Adventure, America, History, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Prospecting, Senior Citizens

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Picking Your Own Hills Worth Dying For

Posted on February 4, 2012 by | 16 comments

“Hey!  Congratulations man!  You picked a hill worth dying for and just got your leg shot off instead of dying.  Cool!”

“I didn’t pick it man.  I don’t know who picked it.  Maybe the General.  Maybe the Colonel.  Maybe the other side.  I din’t do any picking.  Nobody asked me anything.”

“Wow.  You got your leg shot off and didn’t even make your own choice about whether it was worth the effort?”

“Higher than my paygrade.  Not my job to figure out whether hopping around on a stump of a leg the rest of my life or spilling my guts across the landscape is worth why they think I should do it.  It’s up to the big brains to decide that.  The Generals, and Colonels and Lieutenants.  The people who see the bigger picture.  I’m not into long-term thinking.”

“Sheeze man.  Tough gig.”

Bloody Valverde.  Measured in percentage of casualties among those participating, the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

Texas Mounted Volunteers were on that mesa, coming down to cross the Rio Grande just below the left end.

Federals and New Mexico Volunteers were below and across the river trying to keep them from doing it.

You can’t get over there anymore without breaking some laws.  The railroad police will arrest you for trespass if they catch you trying to cross the RR bridge.  Last I heard, Ted Turner owns the ranch the mesa is on.  He has riders out there who’ll haul you off for trespass if the RR police don’t get you.

A few cows graze up there and Ted Turner can’t have people up there bothering them by poking around among the pockmarked hideyholes and artillery placements.  A lot of men on both sides died so Ted Turner could keep the right to keep you off his holdings and bothering his cows.

If you sighted across the top of that monument across the end of the mesa and drew a tight bead you’d be looking at a mushroom cloud about 50 miles away when they fired off the first atomic bomb in 1945.

But by 1945 the government and scientists all finally realized the place wasn’t worth anyone getting excited about, getting legs shot off or dying for.  By that time they knew it wasn’t worth anything except for blowing up with an atomic bomb.   You can’t go over there, either, for what that’s worth.

Pretty big hunk of granite for such a little event.  But nobody much winds around those desert roads to look at it.

I used to have a pretty nice cannon ball that came off that battlefield.  Wonder what ever became of it.  Hope I didn’t scare any of Ted’s cows or stir up any future atomic bomb attacks on the place by the US Government.

Old Jules

 

16 Comments

Posted in Adventure, History, Music, New Mexico, NM, YouTube

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One of the Fascinations of Christian TV

Posted on February 3, 2012 by | 17 comments

Maybe I should have explained this on my earlier post.  If my dad’s still alive he’s too old to care, and anyone else who might have once felt anything about it will also be old enough to handle it.

For me, discovering I had a biological half-brother didn’t come as a particular shock.  I’d always figured I probably had a few, maybe a lot.  My dad never made any bones about having been a rounder all his life.  His extra-marital affairs cost him a couple of marriages.

One night during the early 1980s, Dad and I were sitting in the parking lot of the Georgetown, Texas, hospital at 2:00 am, because his wife of the time was inside being treated in the Emergency Room.  They were visiting my wife and me over some holiday.

It was a long wait, and the conversation drifted to women, observations about them, stories about them, puzzlements about women we’d found during our individual experiences with them.  Somewhere during all that the subject of the products of our meanderings came into the discussion.

He said he didn’t actually know how many kids he’d left along his back trail, but one was a sure thing.  He’d first seen the guy on television because someone told him there was a televangelist who bore an amazing likeness, both in physical features and in mannerisms of speech and gesture.

Dad was mildly interested, enough to eventually watch the guy on television.  Which bowled him over.  He said it was like watching a movie of himself speaking at a Toastmaster meeting at an earlier age.  A suspicion dawned for him sufficiently to cause him to find out more about the man.  Where he was from, how old he was, and eventually to find out who the mother of the televangelist was.  He had, it turned out, vivid recollections of her when they both were a lot younger.

He didn’t name the man, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought for a number of years.  But early during my Christian television watching it came back full force.  For a moment I was disoriented, almost as though I watching my dad on television.  I truly was amazed and there was no doubt in my mind I was seeing my biological half-brother.  Just about my own age. 

My lady friend of the time, whom I made a point of having watch him without explaining, commented, “He looks and talks like you.  Weird.”

The man was a moving speaker and a faith healer of some fame.  So one of the attractions motivating me to rise at 3:00 am and watch Christian television was the strangeness of watching him, particularly. 

I always tried to catch his show and his appearances when I could.  If a person’s going to put himself through an experience of that sort, 3:00 am’s not an altogether bad time to do it.

Old Jules

17 Comments

Posted in 1980's, 1990's, Human Behavior, Parents

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The link to the Ask Old Jules blog is active

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 2 comments

http://askoldjules.com/

All that’s over there until the first post tomorrow is the single-post archive migrated from Facebook.  But if you’d care to go for a look at the archive it might give you an insight into the general drift.

I’m posting this today in hopes of discovering whether anything needs changing, whether the navigation works, and to just give anyone interested a gander at it.  If you click it and find there’s a problem of any sort I’d be obliged if you’d send her an email, post it here, or let us know by mental telepathy.

Gracias,

Old Jules

 

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication

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The Backyard Chickens Conspiracy

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | 15 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Yesterday I got an email from someone called himself Rob, AKA ‘Nifty Chicken’ of the Backyard Chickens newsletter telling me I need to re-register. 

“This is Rob, AKA “Nifty-Chicken” of www.BackYardChickens.com.   I noticed that you’re registered for our newsletter, but can’t find you in our community membership.  This quick note is to let you know of some important changes and to help you get re-registered so you can continue receiving the BYC Newsletters.”

Naturally, I’m deeply suspicious about this.  Someone’s wanting me to become a part of their ‘we’ over there without me having done anything to deserve it, other than subscribing to their newsletter for several years. 

Then I went over to the site instead of clicking the ‘register’ part of the email and the first thing I saw was:

Welcome To BYC!

Hi Peeps,   Welcome to the new & upgraded version of the BackYardChickens.com website!   There are a ton of exciting new features and areas of the site for you to explore.  To help get started we suggest you… » read more

Can you imagine that?  I go over there with more-or-less neutral intentions, other than a few suspicions about what manner of ‘we’ someone was demanding I include myself in, and the first crack out of the box he calls me a ‘Peep’?   The guy thinks people joining his ‘we’ are peeps.

Whatever the hell a peep is.   Strikes me this might be a group of ‘we’ folk who go around looking through windows trying to see naked women.  Nothing whatever to do with chickens.

Or he’s an agent provacateur for Homeland Security trying to identify all the people who’d be gratified to belong to a ‘we’ that considered itself peeps.

I’ve donealready got plenty of ‘we’ stuff in my life.  I ain’t including myself in any we bunch of peeping toms even if they’re peepers that like chickens.  Heck, maybe it’s chickens they’re sneaking around spying on.  Maybe they’re trying to find out where I am so they can come in here nights spying on the Great Speckled Bird and the hens do and talk about when I shut them up in the fortress nights.

Or more sinister yet, maybe they’re trying to see if I gather the eggs every day.  Or whether they’re doing okay on the milo feeding I’ve been doing lately to save money.   Or somebody over there read the post, Shame and a Confession About Inter-Species Sex and thinks because I have a perverted chicken I’d want to draw my circle of ‘we’ bigger and feel a part of some group of peepers. 

I think it might well be one of those government traps like the one they did in Colorado a few years ago, sending in agents to open up a taxidermy shop, putting out the word they’d buy endangered species carcasses under the table.  After a couple of years they’d bought and paid for hundreds of otherwise healthy endangered birds and animalcules and collected names dates and places of the folks killed them because there was suddenly a market.

Indicted half the community before it was over.

I ain’t joining no government plot to arrest my rooster.  As far as I know he can’t even get out nights to do any peeping.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Creative Writing, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Texas

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A Scene of an Ancient Massive UFO Crash

Posted on January 29, 2012 by | 19 comments

This is located almost atop the Continental Divide in the Gila Wilderness at around 8000′-9000′ above Mean Sea Level elevation.  Nobody much goes up there.  I was actually looking for something else when  two comparatively ‘small’ parallel gouges mid-picture first caught my eye.

Trench deep on our left pushes up rocks ahead
Closer view of key impact
 
 
Bad things happening to good people
 
 
Impacts and energy events stage 1
 
Stage 2 Along path breaks up and explodes
 
Impact trenches
 
Hot spots
 
Stage 2 energy events
 
  

 
Main pieces remaining
 
Interesting local geology
 
Aftermath investigation and cleanup
 
Better view of initial ground contact
 
Pilot applies full power – Dire emergency attempt at recovery
 
Meanwhile a couple of ridges away 1
 
  
 
 
Meanwhile a couple of ridges away 2
 
Mother nature anticipating and waiting – It only needed the human imagination to complete the picture
 
Skeptics probably won’t believe this is a UFO crash site.  I personally don’t. and so far as I’m aware I’m the only person who’s ever suggested it might be.  I’d surely like to get up there and have a look at it sometime, but for other reasons than the UFO story.
 
I’d like to spend about a month up there with half-dozen pack goats just nosing around the immediate area.  Some places don’t need a crashed ancient UFO to have appeal.
 
Old Jules
 
Edit:  You can have a look for yourself by going to flashearth dot com and entering the longitude/latitude coordinates in the lower right corner of each image.

19 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Nature, NM, Outdoors, Prospecting, Senior Citizens, Solitude, UFOs

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The Ask Old Jules Blog

Posted on January 29, 2012 by | 11 comments

Jeanne’s migrating the Ask Old Jules feature from Facebook to a blog to be linked to this one.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Facebook thing, here’s what it’s all about.

Several years ago I used to amuse myself between doing other things by answering questions on a Question/Answer site.  Over the years I somehow managed to build up 13,000 answers to every sort of question imaginable, many of which were inappropriate or off-the-wall enough to forever have them banning me from the site.

I’d send them an apology promising never to do it again, they’d restore my membership, and in no time at all some pencil-necked stuffed-up questioner would report me again and get me banned.  But while all this was going on, Jeanne was religiously copying and pasting the stuff, saving it for her own incomprehensible reasons.

When this blog came to being and nobody was reading it Jeanne decided to use some of the more inane Q/As in her files on Facebook to point people towards the blog.  But a lot of the Q/As were too long to post on Facebook, so eventually the choice was to drop them entirely, or to continue them on a blog.

She’s been working like an illegal alien or some foreigner setting it up, putting some of her art work as headers, generally creating a pleasant blog site.  Her thought is that people reading it might wish to participate by asking questions there.  I welcome any avenue providing me more opportunities along the lifelong journey of discovery to discover what I think.  Especially in an environment where I’m less likely to be banned than was the case in that other Q/A thing.

So beginning February 1st the Ask Old Jules blog will be up and running.  A link will show up in the blogroll. All the old archives from the whatchacallit, Facebook one, will also be stored there if you want to have a look-see to get an idea what she was doing.

Old Jules

Note from Jeanne: Posts here on So Far From Heaven will continue as usual when Old Jules and WordPress are cooperating with each other.
At this time posts are scheduled on Ask Old Jules for Wednesdays and Sundays. That might change depending on participation.  Comments are  welcome as usual, but if you ask a question, it might be used (without your name) as a new blog entry with an answer.
Shorter Ask Old Jules entries will still show up on Facebook from time to time.
And here’s some Leonard Cohen that I’m fond of, even if he’s not singing:

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Internet, Writing

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Blogging to Keep Off Boogie Street

Posted on January 28, 2012 by | 24 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I’m a bit out of sorts this morning.  That pic above was taken for the post about hats worn backward, but if I paused and had a look in the mirror it think it would be me again, minus the backward High Roller.  Hats You Can’t Wear Sideways or Backwards

The protracted computer fiasco put me fairly far behind on one of my projects, which I went a hundred miles an hour for a lot of hours yesterday playing catchup without getting there.  But I think doing it must have worn my mind down along the edges and frayed my thinking processes enough to have me wondering if I’m not getting old.

If I had a vehicle and enough slack in the budget I think I’d probably forget everything for a day and just go for a road trip for a day.  Try out my Texas Thumb and Finger Signs and let the projects, the chickens, and the cats fend for themselves long enough to get a recharge on my batteries.

But that’s not going to happen, and the project’s going fairly well once I reconstructed where my head was when I got distracted by computers.  The roosters are singing up Old Sol and I hear cats hissing at one another on the front porch, so all I have to do is wait until my head clears, kick start myself into motion.

I’ve been fighting off urges to write long written works lately, which I’m not going to do, and one of the ways I avoid doing it and push the urges back involves typing words on this blog.  Pressure release valve, more or less.

I appreciate the role you readers play in the process.  If you weren’t here I think I mightn’t write the blog, and find me sneaking up on myself writing a book instead.  A pure disaster.

Thanks, all of you, for coming by occasionally.

Gracias,

Old Jules

24 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Country Life

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