A mocking bird’s been terrorizing the cats and chickens for some while now. It even swoops down on me and takes me by surprise sometimes. I noticed Niaid lying upside down out there and thought she was dead. Headed over there just as the mocking bird dived at her.
When the mocker was pulling out of the dive she came alive and grabbed at it, got a paw full of feathers, but it got away. Niaid resumed position and I ran for the camera.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011
Tagged animals, cats, country life, environment, home, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, random, Reflections, Wildlife, wisdom
But I wouldn’t want my brother to marry one.
In 1967 I was working 5.5 days a week doing hard physical labor, taking night courses at the University of Houston and having an urgent, compelling romance with my wife-to-be living in Port Lavaca, 150 miles away. Every minute I could spare I cranked up that Metropolitan and headed west to spend a few hours with her. Even for a young man exhaustion built and I had a lot of difficulty staying awake while driving.
Picking up hitch-hikers was one of the ways I stayed awake. Just having someone to talk to on that endless road was a major asset.
1967 was a year of serious racial tensions and polarization. During the years immediately previous a gradual mind-opening of tolerance was manifested in a brief cliche, “I’ve got nothing against blacks, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.” For a while a person heard that at least once a week.
One day as I was leaving Houston I stopped for two black guys hitching at an empty stretch of highway. As they ran up to the car they saw the University of Houston sticker on back and without moving to get in they took on a grinning, belligerant-but-joshing attitude. “You go to U of H?”
“Yeah. Where you guys headed?”
Still no move to get in. “We go to Texas Southern [a black university in Houston]. You a queer? The last guy picked us up went to U of H was a queer. Dumped us out here ’cause we didn’t want none of him.”
“I’m not a queer. I’m going to Port Lavaca to see my girl friend.”
They relaxed and squeezed into the Metropolitan, joshing about the klutzy car, how tight it was, how they didn’t want to be seen riding with a white guy. “Anyone sees us riding with you they’ll think you’re queer. They’ll think we’re letting you queer us.”
As we reached highway speed I grinned and looked over at them. “I’ve got nothing against queers but I wouldn’t want my brother to marry one.”
Both of them gagged on that, double-took me, one another, trying to decide whether to be offended. Finally one of them guffawed. “Hey man, that’s a good one!” Held his hand up to be slapped.
Turned out to be fairly nice guys headed to Corpus Christi for the weekend. The drive to Port Lavaca went by fast, once we decided we were just three young guys not needing to fight, fear, or scrutinize every word for some slur or threat.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much times have changed.
Old Jules
Posted in 1960's, Senior Citizens, Texas, Uncategorized
Tagged culture, Education, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, Relationships, senior citizens, society, sociology, thoughts, wisdom
Ruidoso Steak-House
Glanced at her reflection
In the plate-glass window
New squash-blossom turquoise
Sassy Stetson
Patted 50ish blonde curls
And wished
They’d eaten at the casino
Where this didn’t happen
Wrinkled pretty nose
“Don’t give him anything
He’ll just get drunk!” Stage whispered
To her Houston lady friend
As though he wasn’t there
She was right of course
Except the old man Mescalero
Was already drunk
He turned away
Then turned back and mumbled
“Sing the Song of Life each day
Or when the time arrives you won’t know how
To sing the Song of Death.”
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Adventure, History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, NM, Relationships, Senior Citizens
Tagged carlos nakai, culture, entertainment, environment, fashion, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, mescalero, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, native american, navajo, New Mexico, other, philosophy, poems, poetry, psychology, random, Relationships, senior citizens, society, sociology, thoughts, tourism, tourist, travel, wealth, wisdom
Two years ago these were healthy trees.
About a year ago the trees in the vicinity of the cabin began dying. I’d been fairly certain it would happen because there’s a grove immediately above about 100 yards that had all died off two or three years ago. It appears to have started at the power line easement atop the hill and is making a path of dead trees moving east, or downhill.
Conventional wisdom is that it’s Red Oak Wilt, or Red Oak Disease. There aren’t a lot of certainties about it, no preventive measures or cures anyone’s aware of.
Over the space of about a month they lost all their leaves and the bark began separating from the wood. One of the problems with trying to get them down is the abundance of wasps making nests between the wood and the bark. Hundreds of wasp nests and clouds of angry wasps. The temptation is to wait for a cold day.
There was a certain amount of urgency about trying to take some of them down because after Oak Wilt kills a tree the first strong wind often brings it down. Evidently the disease rots the root system long before anything shows above ground. Several of the dozen-or-so trees dying immediately around the cabin and outbuildings actually have large limbs hanging over roofs.
But the nights are cooling enough to send the message it’s time to begin building a pile of firewood. It won’t take much hauling this year. Some of it I could almost cut and allow it to drop down the chimney pipe.
The larger trunks are going to be a major undertaking to split, so I’m thinking I might sawmill any of them with potentially good lumber left. Sometimes Oak Wilt rots out the center too badly to leave anything worth using except to burn, but sometimes it leaves the heartwood almost untouched.
If there’s enough capable of being sawmilled it might provide enough oak for a project I have in mind cut relatively thin into planks usable for building a structure. But in any case it ought to stay toasty inside the cabin this winter.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Human Behavior, Solitude, Survival, Uncategorized
Tagged country life, culture, economics, economy, environment, Events, home, homesteading, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, Nature, Oak wilt, other, personal, random, red oak wilt, Reflections, science, survival, thoughts, trees, wisdom
Left to right: Left, Democrats. Middle center, banks, multi-nationals, defense contractors. Bottom middle, US public. Right, Republicans, Tea Party.
I had a friend for a few years who lived everything the American Dream used to think it was. He was working for a steel fabrication company in Silver City, New Mexico during the 1970s doing grunt labor, but thinking. He saw around him some flaws in the ways the process sequences were performed, believed he could advance in the company by suggesting improvements.
Marsh, I’ll call him, went home nights and worked in his garage inventing a tubing bender far more efficient than the one used where he worked. After it was complete, he took it to the company, expecting praise and rewards. They shrugged, brushed him off and kept him busier at work.
So Marsh applied for a patent, began manufacturing his bender in his garage. He couldn’t keep up with the orders, so he quit his job and expanded, meanwhile inventing other improvements on what he’d seen, manufacturing and selling those, also, becoming a surprisingly wealthy man within a decade or so.
His business flourished, his children matured, and one of his sons started another business, inventing, patenting, marketing. His son became wealthier than Marsh, far more rapidly. The son, carefully examining his conscience and human needs, his business thriving, spent a million dollars and several months in Afghanistan during the early 2000s building housing, providing shelter for those left homeless by the wars there.
But during those same years Marsh began seeing his patented designs showing up in Harbor Freight and other Chinese import outlets priced lower than he could manufacture them. His patents were being violated and the US government was allowing those violations to be imported with impunity. During a Republican administration. His own inventions competing with him in stores all over the US.
Marsh was outraged and gradually the business he’d built was being destroyed by theft with the complicity of the US government.
Marsh listened to daytime talk radio a lot during those years. He got daily doses of opinion telling him the source of his problems, and those problems were caused, he allowed himself to be persuaded, by liberals in politics. When the Tea Party emerged, he attended meetings and demonstrations hoping to bring about political change, hoping somehow to save his business, his livelihood. Furious, frantic, determined, certain now, this president, this administration was out to destroy him.
Last I heard, it was doing so. His business was declining to such an extent he was being forced to lay off longtime employees vital to continued operation.
All the years I knew him Marsh was an honorable, honest, solid, hard-working man, dedicated to the betterment of himself, his employees, his country and humanity.
But somehow he missed the point, maybe because he was standing too close to the problem. Maybe because he was holding to a dream of how things are that no longer was.
Marsh, to this outsider looking in, was destroyed by a government comprised of the illusion of two parties. Both were bought-and-paid-for by people bigger than Marsh. Neither of those parties cared what happened to Marsh, to his family and employees, to the dream, the innovation, the drive, the ideal he represented.
Marsh was betrayed by the people who own the talk-radio host he listens to, who own the Tea-Party, who own every facet of this country where the decisions are made as to whether US citizens work, prosper and are rewarded for their labors rather than being merely consumers of foreign products.
Marsh didn’t belong in the Tea Party. He belonged in Occupy Wall Street.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Education, Politics
Tagged business, culture, democrats, economics, economy, Education, Events, government, History, home, Human Behavior, liberals, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, occupy, occupy wall street, other, OWS, personal, politics, random, Reflections, republicans, society, tea party, technology, thoughts, wisdom
Hated Saturday nights;
Being third to
The bath-water
After Mom and Dad
But before the older kids
Felt poor;
Deprived.
He thought he was.
While down the road
His buddy, Joe Cordova
Didn’t have to feel so poor
Because the family
Didn’t have a tub.
Lucky Joe.
Old Jules
Doomsday Comet
COMET CORPSE: “Doomsday Comet” Elenin was briefly famous for inaccurate predictions that it might hit Earth. Instead it disintegrated as it approached the sun last month. (Doomsday canceled.) Over the weekend, Italian astronomer Rolando Ligustri spotted the comet’s remains. It’s the elongated cloud in this Oct. 22nd photo of the star field where Elenin would have appeared if it were still intact.
Another team of astronomers–Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero and Nick Howes–spotted the cloud on the same night. At first they were skeptical. “The cloud was extremely faint and diffuse,” says Guido. “We wondered if it might be scattered moonlight or some other transient artifact.” But when the team looked again on Oct. 23, the cloud was still there. A two-night blink animation shows that the cloud is moving just as the original comet would have. Note: Some readers have noticed a fast-moving streak to the to the lower right of the debris cloud. That is an unrelated asteroid, 2000 OJ8 (magnitude 14), which happened to be in the field of view at the same time as the cloud of Elenin.
More information about this discovery and continued tracking of the “comet corpse” may be found at the Remanzacco Observatory Astronomy Blog.
———————————–
Meanwhile, here’s what Old Sol has to say about it:
There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA.
He’s looking fairly spiffy, though, with all those spots. Even without any coronal holes. He’d be the first to point out, you can’t have everything all at once. You’ve got to spread things out some.
There’s unanimity among the celestial bodies, whatever Gods are, the Coincidence Coordinators and other interested parties that there’s only one shot at destroying the earth. Ramming comets, asteroids into it, hitting it with phantom planets and galaxies, having some unexpected thing explode inside it, those options just don’t have enough drama and class to hold up under close scrutiny. They’re holding out for something better.
Mark it on your calendar if you can figure out what it is.
Old Jules
Posted in Astronomy
Tagged country life, culture, environment, Events, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, science, thoughts, wisdom
It’s become popular during the past few decades for individuals believing they have come connection to a group of dead men judged by hindsight to have harmed other groups of dead men, to apologize for the offending activities of the deceased they believe they’re responsible for to living people it didn’t happen to.
My granddad had a cap and ball pistol he inherited from his granddad. The butt had a lot of notches carved into it, which probably meant the weapon had been the instrument of the untimely deaths of a good many people who might otherwise have lived longer.
Genetic karma?
The man pictured above owned slaves in his lifetime, fought in wars and feuds. He was the great-grandfather of the man below, my biological father.
But his daughter was the mother of this man: Cole Younger. Killer, bank and train robber, rider with Quantrill during the Civil War.
Meanwhile the same genetic pool was spreading itself across the continent like some sexually transmitted disease. Cherokee, Choctaw and other tribes sneaked into the mix.
So here’s the problem:
I want to make all this right with all the people in the gene pool derived from the dead people who were wronged by the dead people within my own gene pool. I’d like to offer them an apology for the ugly stuff those who share my gene pool did to them.
For instance, the guy with all the hair on his face was part of the ugliness perpetrated against the Cherokee and Choctaw and the Trail of Tears. Naturally, if I’m to rid myself of the overwhelming guilt I need to apologize to some group of living people those painful things did not happen to. Cherokee and Choctaw, preferably.
But, whoooowah! The people on the Cherokee and Choctaw side of my gene pool are me. How can I convey my regrets to the Cherokee and Choctaw in me from the guilt-laden Anglo side? And can I assume without fear of error that my Cherokee and Choctaw genes don’t include someone who did something to some other group I need to absolve?
Is there some living group of people out there seething over something that didn’t happen to them, but happened to their ancestors as a result of some offense committed by holders of the Cherokee Choctaw genes?
And what’s all that turmoil and guilt churning around in my gene pool doing to my cells and whatnot?
Just to be on the safe side and try to set things right I think I’d best give myself a present as a gesture to calm things down. Yeah, I think I’ll eat an orange or banana.
Old Jules
Posted in History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, Uncategorized
Tagged culture, Education, Events, genetics, History, home, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, Relationships, science, sociology, wisdom
Coming back from Fredericksburg yesterday I spotted this sitting in a field 100 yards off the pavement. I felt an immediate kinship, made a U-turn to go back for a closer look.
The first new vehicle I ever owned was a 1970 F150. Standing here looking at this one too-long left in a pasture, flat tires, dents and proud sign I flashed a brief, joyful memory of driving mine back to Austin from the dealership in Luling.
Someone did the same with this one from some other dealership. I wonder if he remembers the day, wonder if he’s even alive to remember some piece of geography he shared with this heap of steel, glass and rubber before me.
The young don’t know enough
About being young
They squander youth
And never know ’til later.
Any lad of twelve will testify
An eight-year-old can’t even qualify
To be a child
At eighteen our own ignorance
At fifteen is finally written
In language we comprehend:
We know the score
Reality’s the icing on the cake
Of youthful fantasies;
When the young grow old
They know a lot
About being young
But almost nothing
About being old.
But trucks know
Trucks have the dents
Worn bearings
Frayed seat-covers
Holding a thousand
Passed-gas kisses
Spilled drinks
Forgotten miles
Of those who forgot.
Old Jules
Posted in Poetry, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Trucks, Uncategorized
Tagged country life, culture, History, home, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, my life, other, personal, poem, poems, poetry, random, Reflections, senior citizens, wisdom, writing
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/
So Far From Heaven 
