Green, green hills of home......

“Wheels are made for rollin’, mules are made to pack, I’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better lookin’ back.”

Pig Phillips told me once that he’d been all over this country and he’d never seen a prettier place than Greenup County, Kentucky. ‘Course, Pig was born in South Shore and he’s never lived anywhere else in his life.....’n he don’t want to live anywhere else.
Jack Craycraft agrees with him. Jack told me one time that he’d never lived more than a half mile from the Ohio River and had no intention of living anywhere else.
I was on the phone with Gerald Boyles, oh...a lot of years ago, ‘n Gerald said, “Them old hills are sure green this year.”
I was born ‘n raised in South Shore ‘n the hills are always green in the summertime....’n brown ‘n grey and kind of lifeless-looking in the wintertime ‘cept when they’re covered with snow ‘n being so close to the river, snow-covered hills are pretty rare.....’Course, now ‘n then, there’ll be an ice storm followed by bright sunshine and the hill’s get so bright you can’t hardly look at them.....’Course, ice storms break a lot of branches and power lines and do some serious damage....but somehow, the hills are always pretty....There was a book I read years ago that had a wonderful title.....”The Enduring Hills”........I don’t recall much about the book, I think it was about a family that was forced to leave Kentucky for other pastures.....Kentucky Route 23, which has come to be known as the ‘Country Music Highway’ was one of the routes out of those enduring hills....it took thousands of Kentuckians to Detroit and Chicago....and brought ‘em back every long weekend that they could get away.....’Course, the hills ain’t home to the children and grandchildren of the refugee ‘hillbillies’ and they don’t come back so often anymore but the green hills are still there.....they still endure.
Jesse Stuart wrote, “When you’ve tasted the lonesome water of the hills, you’re bound to return.”
Sometimes, more often when you get old, you get to thinking of ‘home’....’n home, no matter where you live or how long you’ve lived there, is always where you grew up, it’s always the place you go in your dreams and it don’t matter that home was never really the way you remember ‘cause, like it or not, everyone’s childhood becomes a fantasy and fantasies are nice places to visit but no one can live there.

“Home is made for comin’ from, for dreams of goin’ to.
Which with any luck will never come true.”

Don't get no respect.......

Remember the Democrat Primary when Barama wuz takin’ state after state ‘n the pundits 'n party bosses were all telling Hillary to lie down ‘cuz she wuz dead already....’n sumhow, as a dead woman walking, she managed to win more of the popular vote than the new Messiah.....’Course it didn’t really matter to the power brokers who had already annointed Barama...
Well, the Annointed One made his triumphal tour ‘n was widely acclaimed all over Europe....he may have been a little premature as he ain’t been elected yet and Europeans don’t really get to vote over here in the colonies...
Millyrose ‘n I got in the habit of watching Tim Russert ‘n ‘Meet the Press’ every Sunday....I always liked Tom Brokaw but he ain’t as tough as Russert, at least so far, ‘n he did a puff-piece with Obama this mornin’....Barry looked and sounded as smooth as always but all his foto ops and sound bites remind me of the satirical ‘Wag the dog’ movie. Brokaw ‘n the rest of the anchors should be careful...NBC’s losing credibility faster than Major Leaguer on steroids......
I remember ‘Chris in the Morning’ from Northern Exposure and how articulate he was...and then I recall John Corbett, the actor who portrayed him being interviewed on a talk show, seemingly unable to put more than two words together at a time, let alone formulate an entire sentence. I don’t believe Corbett is dumb anymore than I believe Obama to be dumb....I just think both of ‘em come off better when they have good scriptwriters....
And on that proverbial ‘other hand’.....John McCain reads a teleprompter like a bashful third grader and should have taken acting lessons long ago....What’s ‘er name Fonda could have helped him if she hadn’t been otherwise involved.....Of course, McCain unscripted, as he was on Stephenopolis this Sunday, is a horse of another color (if I c'n say that without sounding racist.)
Well, y'know...I don't really care if it sounds racist or not...

I’ve been enjoying all the speculation about who is gonna be the Veep...and all the reasons that the pundits come up with...’n that’s for both sides.....there seems to be almost universal agreement that the election depends on certain ‘key’ states....Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia.....Ted Strickland, (he’s the Scioto County boy who is Governor of Ohio) sez that Ohio is important in the coming election becuz it’s got eleven and a half million people...Wow! Imagine that!
If you took a couple small towns out of the equation, the Bay Area in California might shrink to that size....and nobody pays attention to them becuz El Lay is so much larger and has so much more political clout...
California is so large and so diverse that it really shouldn’t be a winner take all state.....if the size and population of California were really in play, all the candidates would have to spend a lot more time and money here....
I think California (the land of fruits ‘n nutz)... is in danger of becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of politics while Florida (the sunshine state) is almost as important as......well, lemmee see....they’re ahead of Kentucky ‘n Tennessee but behind Ohio....still, their hanging chads managed to elect George Bush as President...that’s more’n you c’n say about California....
California, New York and Texas are so large with so many people, you’d think they’d have more impact on a national election......just think of the money and time spent on Kansas, f’r example....and Kansas has about the population of Sacramento county which has absolutely no impact at all, at all.....

Discombobulating........

all over the place.....

Discombobulated.....is how I found myself wandering around a dark house in the middle of a long night......I seem to recall too many moments in my salad days where I spent far too much effort, time & hard to come by money seeking to reach a similar conclusion with the aid of artificial substances......ahhh, those youthful excesses.....not at all sure how my friends and I survived them.....in an age of txt msg shorthand, WWWWW or, more simply 5W...(Wonder Where We Went Wrong)...
I didn’t say I was good at txt msg’ng, or even understood it, for that matter....I’m not sure I’ve ever even responded to a txt msg altho’ I’m pretty sure that I rec’d one, once upon a time.....or not. Used to do some of that shorthand stuff in e-mails but don’t do much of them anymore.....as a matter of fact, most e-mails t’day seem to consist of forwarded stuff....sumthing tickles your fancy ‘n you send it out to whichever friends you think will enjoy it.....ain’t knockin’ it, y’understand, guilty of it myownself.....sumtimes, it’s just to let someone know that you’re thinking of them....sumtimes, it’s just easier to hit a button that fwds to every address in your book...
Anyhow, when you’re tired and can’t sleep and one more game of Solitaire just might put you over the edge for all eternity, when the discombobulation has affected all your motor skills with the exception of your left foot and your big toe is becoming almost a good enuff typist to have a movie made of it......lights appear in the driveway, the thump of the morning paper hitting the porch makes you suddenly aware of the sullen ache between your shoulder blades and you realize that you need to jump back in bed becuz you only have a few minutes to sleep before the dogs force you out of your cocoon.....anyway, if you didn’t know the meaning of discombobulate before, you certainly do now.....that is, supposing you’ve been able to actually read all the way thru this verbal garbage.....g’nite or g’morning to you.

Margaritaville.....

“...blew out a flip-flop..”

There is a place where the sun don’t shine, m’friends, at least for Obama supporters.....who now are saying that Bush the Hated is changing tactics to what Obama has been saying all along...What?.....You heard me. Even his most severe critics (read: Bush-haters) bemoan the fact that George ‘stays the course’ to the bitterest of ends...is loyal to his crew....Heck! Even (where’d he go) Scott McClellan had to throw his own body under the bus....but he did a good job of it...
And now Barama is winning the war in Iraq, wants to invade Afghanistan and kick Taliban butt, repair the broken economy and cause the world to love us again....It’s, by God, the second coming of Christ, ‘cept he’s got a funny name and a sassy wife, and omg, did I mention, he’s black.....well, he’s almost black....anyway, he’s part black....or coffee with cream...sumthing like that.....
Ev’ry time I turn around, the junior Senator from Illinois seems to be re-inventing himself and taking a new direction.....this newest one, however, seems to be thru the looking-glass and down the rabbithole.....well, the Obama Magical Mystery tour has certainly looked like a fun ride for him....he’s got his very own O-force one, (Heck! They gotta spend all that money on something) and we get to see him striding across the tarmac, hiding behind his Foster Grants, toting his very own gym bag and being chauffered by a King who, if he yells, “Off with their heads!” can actually make it happen...talk about a fantasy world...Walt Disney hisownself, could never have come up with a fantasy to match what the Sheiks of Araby have done with all the billions we’ve sent them for their oil.....’Course, after having seen the fuss they all made over O, (that’s rock star talk for Obama, not to confuse him with Oprah altho’ the difference might be moot) you gotta wonder if the Israeli’s could be just a little bit worried that they might get ‘sold down the river’......(or is that being racist?) But Obama is completely supportive of Israel....at least, that’s what the man said, we all heard him say it.....but then, he told the folks in the rust belt that he would renegotiate NAFTA to bring the jobs home while one of his surrogates told the Canadians that “he had to say that, it’s just politics”...
You gotta give it to him tho’.....he is a force. Or, maybe a farce.....one or t’other. What the hell? It’s just politics.



“This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Gobbledygook.....

Sleep deprivation and midnite maunderings.....

There’s a technical term for self-involved meandering musing in the middle of the night ‘n it ain’t ‘gobbledygook’ though that’s a fairly adequate description.....No, as I recall from some long ago creative writing course (which is as oxymoronic as it sounds) ...allowing your mind to ramble and committing those tho’ts to print is called....’stream of consciousness’...a style (?) popularized by Jack Kerouac ‘n parodied by ‘way too many impressionable English majors....a style of writing akin to Jackson Pollacks ‘spash ‘n pour' paintings, which, incidentally, were a satirical and somewhat jocular response to what he considered an insulting request for ‘one’ of his paintings to be displayed in a retrospective show of ‘Modern’ art...his joke proved to be a lucrative one when the art world took his splash ‘n pour canvas seriously and his subsequent success led to an early demise, which seems to be an absurdly normal event for artistic types who enjoy financial success at an early age.....
Lots of otherwise rational people have thoughts or dreams in the middle of the night and wake up in the morning wishing that they had been somehow able to write them down.....the legendary Hank Williams said that he kept a tape recorder at his bedside so when he woke from his chemical dreams, he could immediately save them for posterity.....or so he claimed. God alone knows how many artistic souls attempted to save their ‘pure’ and unsullied moments of genius from the subconscious dreams that hover forever just outside the outer edges of memory.....well, t’ain’t so..at least for most people, the night visions, like opium dreams, fortunately dissipate in the light of day....
Letting a little light in drives away the shadows and exposes the cobwebs and dust motes.....Shadows flee from the light but you gotta sweep and dust for yourself.....

Grit......

is.....since 1882....Check it out...you won't be sorry.

That's Life.....

I’m tired but I can’t sleep....I blame it on the lack of a snack.....I told the Diabetic nurse that I would skip the bedtime snack for a week.....God knows, it’s easy to be blithe about skipping a bedtime snack in the morning, after breakfast, when you ain't hungry....the ubiquitous ‘they’ say, “Never go shopping on an empty stomach ‘cuz you’ll buy more food than you really need.” ‘Course, the opposite holds true also....if you go grocery shopping after you’ve had a good meal, you won’t be interested in food so you’ll buy less. Probably so much less that you’ll have to go shopping again before you really want to.....ah well, that’s Life. What’s Life? A magazine. How much does it cost? Two bits. I haven’t got two bits. That’s life. Just shows to go you how old I am that in my youth, you could buy a magazine for a quarter. Tho’ to be fair, I didn’t buy magazines. Not when you c’d get a comic book for a dime. If you had a dime, which I seldom did.....ah well, that’s life.
Life magazine was a big deal when I was a boy. So was Look, Saturday Evening Post, and a host of others. Grit was a weekly newspaper that I p’ticularly liked. It had a little bit of everything in in.....news items, short stories, serialized novels, and comics....for all I know, it may still be published somewhere. I’ll have to google it ‘n find out.
Newspapers were pretty good back in those days...You got the quick-flash news over the radio but you had to wait for the paper to get the full story. Kids delivered the paper. They didn’t get paid much for the job, a few cents per paper, and if someone didn’t pay their bill, the kid had to make it up. The newspaper always got their money. Still, it was a pretty good job for a kid and highly prized.
In those days, newspapers were pretty well respected and were very jealous of their reputation. Not so much today.....Most newspapers are conglomerates and they print pretty much what they’re told to print.....and it don’t really make any difference what side of the spectrum they represent, the sad truth is they’ve lost so much credibility that you can’t trust any of them to report ‘real’ news anymore.
Sadly, the same appears to be true for the major television networks. Anchors are paid so much and are so vulnerable becuz of all that money, that none of them dare stand up to their bosses and present all the facts of some of their stories and let their viewers judge for themselves.
It must be difficult for a newsperson to work for a lifetime to achieve a reputation for fair, unbiased reporting of ‘just the facts’ and find themself at the zenith of their career only to find that they have become
a ‘spin’ doctor reciting their 'Polly want a cracker' speeches. Anyway, enuff is enuff, saieth the sooth. Pray move on....
And so, Tom and Brian, and Katie and Chuck.....”what doth it profit a man to gain the world.......”

Fridays come 'n go....

Son Dave is in India on yet another leg of his ‘round the world bevel-head tour’ (www.nokilli.com/rtw/) ‘n his last report suggests that he might be able to do it on his old Ducati....he said that if he wasn’t able to get the Ducati into India that he might look for an old Enfield...anyway, his ‘stache has aroused a lot of interest, enuff anyway for him to have learned enuff Hindi to recognize ‘nice moustache’....his latest post has him drinking Indian beer and eating Mexican food...go figure.....
It be Friday here ‘n da gurlz showed up this mornin’ with a box of do-nutz.....they are good but it’s hard to stop with only one even tho’ one is more than my diet allows...
Millyrose ‘n I took another carb-counting class...not so much to lose weight (altho’ that would be a plus) as to help control our blood sugars...getting old is nice in so many ways, too bad health ain’t one of ‘em....
I’m kind’a tired of talkin’ about politics so I’m only gonna mention one thing....network television has been going down the tubes in so many ways...they seem unable or unwilling to compete with the cable channels...so why are the big 3 sending their evening news anchors on a road trip with Barama.....Obama’s on a slippery slope and the networks must think it’s a water slide....
anyhow, all the buzz at the Liar’s Club this morning was the 4500 water meters that were stolen from Sacto Water.....Bureaucracy and tax dollars at work....the game stays the same, only the names of the players change...

“You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself." R. Nelson

Kellye tells me that I write with a Kentucky twang that I don’t speak with.....Cary tells me that she don’t like shorthand words, that it’s too much like ‘txt msg’ng’...
I told Cary that if you can’t spell words differently, you don’t have enuff imagination....thing is: I purty much write the way I feel in the moment....and sumtimes, ever’ once in a while, ‘specially when I’m recalling ‘way back when’ times, I just feel a l’il twangy....when I wuz a boy, we called creeks, ‘cricks’.....hollows were ‘hollers’....’n we all used euphemisms like Durn, Dang, Doggone, Gollywampus, ‘n a ‘hull bunch’a other words that I’ve got buried in the deep recesses of my mind...’n that’s a purty darn good place for ‘em, if I do say so myownself....
I found a old picture of the 5th & 6th grade class at South Portsmouth School in 1949 and sent a copy of it to my friend Marvin and to his sister, Delores.....Marvin, his brother Wayne and Delores all went to school there for a short while...anyway, Marvin and Wayne were pictured there....Marvin and Dee were talking about it and who they recognized and, mostly who they didn’t...
Marvin said he bet I c’d tell ‘em who ever’one wuz...I told him he’d lose that bet....
Oh, BTW & FYI, I write to please myself....I hope y’all like it, Heck! I hope ever’one likes it...I know that ain’t gonna happen but I b’leeve just maybe, it’s hope that sets us apart from all the other animals we share this planet with....
and for Gina, the rules of granny still apply but I gave up on the rules of grammar long, long ago........

One hand or t'other.....

Prevarication vs Equivocation

If I said it, I probably meant it,
unless I was lying,
in which case,
you should have taken it
with a grain of salt.
for..........
I don’t always mean what I say,
and often
don’t say what I mean,
but I try always to be truthful,
except when I lie.
Usually.

I showed this bit of free verse to my friend, Nick. He said that he really liked the way I said things but he wasn’t sure he understood it. I told him that I don’t always understand my verse either but that I wasn't being intentionally obtuse. I guess I could have called it, Politics 101.
I only mention this becuz Cary Heather stated that she couldn’t vote for Obama or McCain, that she didn’t believe either one of them, and that she would probably write in her vote for Jon Stewart.
I don’t think I’ve ever met so many people so disgusted with both the Democrat and Republican Parties that they’re changing their registation to Independent. And, y’know what, I can’t really blame them.
George Bush has to carry a lot of the blame for this prevailing attitude. But then, so does Bill Clinton.
Clinton lied and cheated from his knockabout childhood to the Presidency and beyond. And George Bush was supposed to stand up and put things right.
Europeans call Americans naive and, Boy Howdy, I guess we are.
What it comes down to is that Clinton deceived us and shame on him. Then, we allowed George Bush to lead us down the garden path again and shame, shame on us. And that’s why we’re so pissed at George. ‘Cause we know in our hearts that we let him do it. We’re angry with ourselves and we’re taking it out on Bush.
The Republicans cheated us so we showed ‘em. We kicked the bums out and voted in a bunch of Democrats....who diddled us even more. Congress has a 9% approval rating and rather than running them out of Washington on a rail dressed in tar and feathers, we let them stay and collect their paychecks and connive on ways to take even more of our money.

Priorities.....

Monday, Monday.....
Quiet mornings are good mornings....let the dogs out, make coffee, read the paper.....routine things, and a break in routine is unsettling....
Wasn’t always that way. Used to be, sleeping in was good, but elusive...stumbled out of bed, needing the coffee, ‘most always running late.....forever in a hurry, no time for sleep....so much to do and such a short time to do it....”every crazy day brought something new to do...”
Life is all about priorities....and priorities change with age....
Dave’s on his way to India...It’s a long way, 26 or 28 hours....something like that, ‘n I don’t know how many stopovers, etc....I s’pect he’ll be tired of flying by the time he gets there......Bill ‘n Karen hosted a ‘get out’a Dodge’ party for him...lotta friends, food, drinks....it was a good time....Cary said, "Mom, now that you've seen how boring our parties are, you prob'ly won't want to come to another one." Millyrose told her that the biggest drifference between now and 'way back when' is that more people smoked at our parties..
And last Saturday, Emily ‘n Sophie each got a blue ribbon for swimming....Emily took a first in backstroke ‘n Sophie for freestyle....freestyle being current speak for Australian crawl.....I imagine both of ‘em swim faster than me.....ah well, it’s all about priorities, ain’t it?

Liar, liar, pants on fire......

An altar-ego c’n sumtimes be a trubblin’ thing, it c’n pop up when you don’t expect it ‘n put words in your mouth that you maybe didn’t intend to say out loud...that said, using it to express tho’ts that otherwise wudn’t get said at all.....well, that c’n be cathartic.....which is the main reason I began this blog anyway....
I don’t know about you but the sniping back ‘n forth ‘tween Barama ‘n McCain is already getting old...altho’ I think McCain’s flip-flopping is based on circumstance as opposed to Barama’s political expediency....all of which is a round-about way of saying that you c’n tell when a politician is lying if his (or her) lips are moving......

Pay it as you go
Justin Other Smith

When you’re standin’ there asweatin’
that you might not make the cut,
when the truth don’t come real easy
and a lie might save your butt.

You might think that it don’t matter
if you tell a little bitty lie,
just to save a bodys feelings
or you don’t want’a see ‘em cry.

‘N fibbin’ just a little bit
is mostly just bein’ polite,
so’s you don’t hurt somebodys feelin’s
or maybe have to fight.

Little white lies are common,
folks tell ‘em by the yard,
‘cause telling lies is easy,
it’s the truth what comes so hard.

You c’n always find a reason
to justify a lie,
makes it mighty tempting
to let yourself slide by.

To stretch the truth a little bit
just so’s you can claim
that it wasn ‘t really you at all
but someone else to blame.

To tell the bare-bones truth,
well, it often ain’t enough,
sometimes ya gotta dress it up,
maybe add a little stuff

So’s you might avoid some punishment
or maybe win a prize,
but there’s always someone, somewhere,
that knows you’re tellin’ lies

‘N it’s hard to remember sumtimes,
the lies that got you in a mess,
so I’ve found through trial and error
that truth is ever best.

Sumtimes, when you’ve told a lie,
and there ain’t no other out,
you just gotta stand and take it,
Cause, that’s what life’s about

For there ain’t no freebies in this world,
and everybody pays, y’know,
what goes around sure comes around
you better pay it as you go.

Ev'ry little breeze....

can seem like a Godsend after a few days of triple digit weather.....or an hour in Red Bluff or Redding....
There’s a breeze....God’s in his heaven ‘n all’s right with the world.....kind’a.....
It ain’t much of a breeze yet, barely more than a hint of a breeze, just enuff to stir the leaves ‘n the smaller branches.....still, it brings hope.....’n lower temps....still warm,but warm is better’n hot....we’ve gone from triple digits to mid-70’s ‘n that’s a plus....
See, just for the info of people who don’t live around here, it’s the Delta breeze what makes Sacramento livable in the summertime.....summer weather c’n be tuff to take but with the Delta breeze, it c’n go from triple digits in the daytime to 50’s at nite ‘n if y’can sleep, the days ain’t so hard to take.....besides, a good stiff Delta breeze will blow the durn smoke out’a here...’Course, the fires are going strong....burnin’ up norCal ‘n more.....don’t know how much fuel we’ll have left for August when the burn season officially begins.....but Hey! George is comin’ to take a look ‘n we’re getting help.....Mexico ‘n Canada are sending men ‘n equipment... ‘n so are Australia ‘n New Zealand ‘n that’s a long way to come for a BBQ....I guess Arnie should ice down a ‘hull lotta beer...

It's a luvly day.......

...for saying, "It's a luvly day."

“Everybody talks about the weather but, no one does anything about it.” Mark Twain

D’ya remember that old joke, “It’s so hot, I saw a dog chasin’ a rabbit ‘n they were both walking.”
Well, Ol Fair Oaks has prob’ly got rabbits somewhere but not runnin’ free on my li’l ol street....what I got, is chickens....lots ‘n lots of ‘em....’n I got two dogs what love to chase chickens....it’s so hot this evening that Rusty (the mini-poodle) made a couple half-hearted attempts before he gave up...but Willie, (he’s the new one) Willie’s a lot more rambunctious, not to mention younger, ‘n he didn’t give up ‘til we hit the homestretch of our walk...by that time, his tongue was durn near as long as his tail ‘n they wuz both drooping......anyway, this’s like the third or fourth day of triple digit heat ‘n I sure am lookin’ for’ard to the return of the Delta breeze...’cuz it ain’t just the heat, it’s the smoke....layering over us like a tule fog....it’s bad here but it’s really bad a little farther north and higher in the foothills......
Millyrose ‘n I’ve been on the go most of the afternoon ‘n I ain’t watched the news but I’ll bet that McCain is sniping at Obama ‘n vice versa.....California is still on fire ‘n the mighty Mississip’ has played hob with a lot of little river towns....I grew up on the Ohio river and once in a while, rivers get to feeling hemmed in or sumthing and they jump their banks and go wanderin’ round ‘n about the countryside just seeing how much damage they c’n do to the unwary souls that dared to build their nests on the riverbank...
“Old Man River, he don’t plant ‘taters ‘n he don’t plant cotton....’n folks that plant ‘em are soon forgotten....but Old Man River, he just keeps rollin’ along.”

Run for the roses.....

Big Brown...Barry Bonds....steroids made ‘em ‘n steroids took ‘em down. ‘Course, they ain’t the only ones....lotta ath-a-letes ‘n Gawd knows how many horses, but the fact is when you’re talkin’ bigtime anything, ever’body looks for an edge......’n nowhere is that more true than in that bigtime game called for want of a better word..... POLITICS!
Once upon a time, in the long ago (as opposed to the long, long ago) Millyrose wuz stumpin’ for a local Pol here in Ol Fair Oaks. She uninvited me from the tea she wuz givin’ for him after I asked her why he was spending a hundred thousand dollars to get a twelve thousand dollar a year job........
I understand that Obama ‘n the Democrat party has got about six hundred million dollars to spend to get him elected to a job that pays a quarter million a year.....
The Chicago Machine has been in business a long time ‘n they’re a direct descendant of Tammany Hall...reminds me of what my Momma said about John Kennedy, “The Kennedy’s have always been political.” She wuz sumtimes a little cryptic ‘n you just had to figure out what she meant.
Ol Barama’s a pretty savvy politician.....the Democrats have themselves a race they can’t lose but they’re riding a horse that can’t win....McCain, on t’other hand is the very model of a modern major candidate....he’s a can’t lose candidate but he’s in a race the Republicans can’t win.....t’is, as the poet said, a quandary....
So, if our leftwing, socialist candidate that can’t win can repackage himself as a maverick centrist, a McCain in sheep’s clothing, well....politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows....
“Fellow Texans, I am proudly standing here to humbly see.
I assure you, and I mean it- Now, who says I don’t speak out as plain as day?
And, fellow Texans, I’m for progress and the flag-long may it fly,
I’m a poor boy, come to greatness. So, it follows that I cannot tell a lie.”

Family reunion.....

JP shares a birthday with the late, great George M. and what began years ago as a bash to celebrate his own birthday, morphed over the years into an annual family reunion....
George M. Cohan wrote, “It’s a grand old rag......”
And it was a grand old day, pretty much all day.... Yest’day was a family reunion day....it was a quiet day, not too hot....the kids swam, the adults talked....ever’one consumed sodas and water...JP did the bbq’ing, burgers ‘n dogs ‘n pulled pork sandwiches....We had Rusty and Willie and Buddy there with us....we had to keep 'em tethered pretty much, of course...they barked at the constant parade of people enjoying the park....families with young kids, mostly....scooters ‘n skateboards ‘n a few bicycles...most exciting thing wuz Buddy, the German shorthair diving into the lake after a gaggle of geese...chased ‘em clear to the other side before being rescued by Ashby on a tube....’Course, as Ashby rather sheepishly admitted, “I egged him on....”
After crossing the lake and giving up his place on the tube to Buddy, he wuz almost back when the motorboat ranger finally appeared and cautioned him that there wuz no swimming in the lake and Buddy wuz spozed t’be on a leash.....ahhh well, all’s well that end’s well....
It wuz the longest trip I’ve made since the Chemo thing, about two hours each way, and I wuz exhausted when we got home....Still, it wuz a nice day ‘n all in all a pretty good Independence Day weekend.....”and forever in peace, may it wave.”

A dumping ground......

“Give us your poor, your huddled masses.......”

I’m thinkin’ that Americans take independence for granted....well, why shouldn’t we? We’ve been an independent nation for a couple hundred years now and more than that, we are a nation of independent people. It sez so in our Constitution. Taught to us in our schools and celebrated in our daily lives.
Started out as a bunch of hardheaded misfits and miscreants...English, German, bullheaded Scotch Irish, French adventurers...allegiance to England wore thin over the distance of the Atlantic Ocean and the yoke of taxation by a heavy-handed King George who barely spoke English.....
Starvation is a very effective tactic when used in warfare or when dealing with a disaffected populace. The starving nations of Africa bear witness that it is as effective today as it was when the English used it against the Irish over a hundred and fifty years ago. Out of a population of nine million, over a million Irish died of starvation and over four million migrated. Many of them to America where the streets weren’t really paved with gold.....and America needed them. We put them in uniform and sent them to war. They fought and died on both sides of our bloody civil war. That war took the lives of three quarters of a million men decimating the United States forever changing the face and culture.

America is a large country and the westward expansion policies of the American government required people. Someone to do the work. The gates of America were thrown open to emigration from eastern Europe. And the european powers were eager to solve their own overpopulation prolem by encouraging the emigration of what they considered the dregs of their society. Well, heck, England had long considered America and a few other choice spots around the world as a dumping ground.
So, America got the Slavs, the Poles, the Russians, and the Italians and became a melting pot. No matter that melting pot was a derogatory term like mongrel.
America took pride in being the melting pot where no matter your country of origin, you became first and formost...American.
Richard Lamm gave a speech wherein he declared that diversity would destroy us; that our strength lay in our homogenity. I don’t believe it. We are diverse and always have been. But it’s our diversity under one roof that provides the anchor for our strength. We are diverse but we are Americans. All of us. Ever’ damned one of us, black or white or purple.
Today is the Fourth of July in the most mongrelized country in the ‘hull damn world. It’s our Independence Day! The day we all of us stand up and shout, "Hurrah for the red, white, and blue."

And the rant goes on........

So, I wore my ‘Irish for McCain’ ball cap to the club....One guy gave me a thumbs up.....that was more’n I expected....But one guy, an emigre from eastern europe, launched into a tirade.....nobody likes America anymore....the south Koreans despise us, the Chinese think we’re naive children, the Japanese laugh at us behind our backs, the Germans and the French hate us....
and it’s all because George Bush invaded Iraq to steal the oil.....
And the rant goes on, the rant goes on.....
I tell you, I’m beginnin’ to feel almost sorry for Ol George......all those letters to the editor want to impeach him, hang him, draw & quarter him....he’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s a drunk and I don’t know what else but if there’s anything wrong anywhere in the world, it’s George’s fault....and Cheny helped him in ever’ thing he done.....
the price of oil is too high, it’s George’s fault...
if the rest of the world doesn’t love us, it’s George’s fault.....
if the Arabs bombed the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people.....it’s George’s fault.....
any act of terrorism in England or Spain is George’s fault....
Heck! or as my old man used to say, “Shoot fire!” ....if there’s an act of terrorism anywhere in the world, it’s George’s fault...
My old man didn’t usually say, “Shoot fire!” He normally said “Sh#t fire” and only cleaned it up for women and somebody’s else’s children......
the rant goes on, the rant goes on......
Dick Cheney is George’s evil conspirator and according to some, the puppet master....the evil genius behind the ‘illegal’ and ‘immoral’ war in Iraq. Cheney is BIG OIL’s man in the White House and the USA invaded Iraq at the behest of BIG OIL becuz Saddam Hussein wouldn’t give them access to Iraqui oil......
And the seemingly successful ‘Surge’ was always part of the secret plan to give Iraqi assets to BIG OIL!
There is no way the surge could have worked without the connivance of BIG OIL...
The reason the demonstrably superior American forces seemed to be losing in Iraq was to demoralize the American citizenry so that they would support drilling off the coast and in the Antartic National Reserve. All for BIG OIL...
the rant goes on, the rant goes on......
Everybody knows George Bush stole the Presidency from Al Gore in 2000. Al Gore was our rightful President and we would never have become involved in Iraq or Afghanistan. Al Quaida would never have bombed the World Trade Center and the world would have loved and respected us the way God always intended...
And the libs keep poundin’ a rhythmn to the brain.....
George is responsible for the loss of homes and life in the Katrina debacle.....
Pity all those poor folk in Burma....oops, Myanmar....George only pretended that he was gonna help them.....
And the earthquake in China....George should boycott the Olympics.....
He came to look at the floods in Iowa but he didn’t do anything......
And he hasn’t been to see the fires in California.....p’haps he has no marshmallows.....
History has turned the page, uh huh
Obama is our newborn king, uh huh
George Bush is Cheney’s puppet,
and McCain is Bush’s puppet so that George can have a third term......I don’t know who McCain’s puppet is gonna be.......
And the rant goes on, the rant goes on.
Bums still cry, “Hey buddy, have you got a dime?”
La de da de dee, la de da de da.........

Life 'n lemonade.......

“Life ain’t about surviving the storm but how to dance in the rain.”
I’m a great believer in positive thinking....tho’ I’m often reminded of the old saw: “Cheer up, things could be worse. So, I cheered up and sure enuff, things got worse.”
Iowa ‘n Missouri are durn near drowned and California is burning.....the midwest is gonna get more rain this summer and California ain’t...I’m almost positive that there are some folks in the midwest that enjoy poling a raft thru downtown streets just to see what they c’n see.....’n I know for a fact that there are some Californians buying fireworks and looking forward to toasting marshmallows over the Fourth.....so, we got weather. “I mean-n, we got wea-ther.” Mark Twain sed, “Everybody always talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it.”
500 year floods in the midwest but I don’t know how we know that ‘cuz we ain’t go that many years of records.....In hazy, dazy California, they’re saying it’s the driest year on record, but again, we ain’t been keeping records that long....’Course, talkin’ about the weather does give us a break from talkin’ politics.....“So always look for the silver lining, And try to find the sunny side of life.”
All the media, the television, the newspapers, all the pundits are positive that Obama is gonna win the Presidency....It’s revolutionary! It’s an earth-shattering milestone of an event....It’s unprecedented! The USA is gonna elect a black man to the Presidency and we’ll prove to the world that we ain’t racist anymore. One big problem with that is the ‘world’ doesn’t give a damn one way or the other.....What the ‘Libbies’ don’t understand is the same thing that the ‘Uber-cons’ don’t understand; to wit: The mass of humanity struggling in obscurity and quiet desperation don’t have time to sit around contemplating their navels, their days are taken up by life itself.
“Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’,
because I’m free...Nothin’s worrying me....”

Sleepin' in......

It’s a pleasant morning....cool breeze.....’n I wuz sleepin’ goooooooood. Can’t say I wanted t’ get out’a bed but the dogs just won’t take ‘No’ for an answer....Well, Willie might....he’s still a little unsure of himself altho’ that don’t stop him from tearing up ever’thing he c’n get his teeth into....Nah...it’s Rusty that won’t take ‘No’ for an answer....he just keeps talkin’ ‘n nudgin’ ‘n pesterin’ until I can’t sleep anymore anyway so I give in and get up ‘n outside to meet the morning.....
S’ kind of funny how ritualistic everyday chores become ‘n how quickly they develop....In my way back when time, I never envisioned there would come a period in my life when my daily actions would not only become so predictable, but how a break in those routine actions c’n be upsetting.....
Back when me ‘n the world wuz new, doing the same things at the same time ever’ day wuz anathema....just cudn’t fathom eating the same thing every morning, taking the same route to ‘n from school....the enforced cookie-cutter sameness of school wuz maddening..... the military even more so....thus wuz born a generation of rebels without a cause that our parents cudn’t understand....
Of course, what goes around comes around and no generation understands the following generation.....most of us struggle just to understand ourselves....
.Now, ever’one don’t develop tolerance with age....In sum people, intolerance, like a cancer grows....and if left unchecked....spreads.
I believe in a live and let live philosphy m’self ‘n wonder why sum people can’t seem to exist without trying to run other peoples lives.
What the world really needs now, is less interference....