Monday, November 15, 2004
yesterday on my stroll/wlk/hike I saw a pr of bluebirds. What made this noteworthy, apart from my abiding interest in that species, was seeing them here in the southern Appalachians in early Nov. It's taking me a while to get used to a fact that I saw last yr to the effect that bluebirds are around all the time, ie not migratory.
I built a new box for them, the ones that have nested in our front yd. The old box was still serviceable, but slightly under the recommended dimensions, altho they had successfully raised at least 4 broods in it.
And continue to receive occasional e-mails from a woman who I 1st knew as a little girl, & about that time, my wife also knew her. We graduated from a small grade shcool in 1945, & went on the three of us to the same high school, where we also graduated together. There was one get together of the hi school class last year, a re-union neither my wife nor I had any motivation to attend. Our friend went, more socially inclined than we, & continues to furnish us with tiny fragments regarding those classmates or the town we grew up in.
As of this writing neither my wife nor I regret missing the affair, tho now we get the occasional bulletin, so & so has ______ whatever, or has 'passed' or gotten yet another divorce. These are mostly people we never cared much for, & they seem to not have gotten any more appealing over the years.
One individual (male) we have gotten more contact with & as a picture emerges, it's rather amazing how little people change in basic ways over the years. Once a pain in the ass, always a pain in the ass.
I built a new box for them, the ones that have nested in our front yd. The old box was still serviceable, but slightly under the recommended dimensions, altho they had successfully raised at least 4 broods in it.
And continue to receive occasional e-mails from a woman who I 1st knew as a little girl, & about that time, my wife also knew her. We graduated from a small grade shcool in 1945, & went on the three of us to the same high school, where we also graduated together. There was one get together of the hi school class last year, a re-union neither my wife nor I had any motivation to attend. Our friend went, more socially inclined than we, & continues to furnish us with tiny fragments regarding those classmates or the town we grew up in.
As of this writing neither my wife nor I regret missing the affair, tho now we get the occasional bulletin, so & so has ______ whatever, or has 'passed' or gotten yet another divorce. These are mostly people we never cared much for, & they seem to not have gotten any more appealing over the years.
One individual (male) we have gotten more contact with & as a picture emerges, it's rather amazing how little people change in basic ways over the years. Once a pain in the ass, always a pain in the ass.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Now in my old age, I wonder at some of the things we have always taken for granted.
One we hear now is the lament from the weaker sex about how all the 'good men' are either gay or married. As if the world was jammed with a surplus of eligible females, & posterity was being denied the fruits of perhaps a wonderwoman who was otherwise going without male attention.
A glance around the community soon will dispel that wrong idea. There they all are, a teaming bunch of air heads, chatting busily on their cell phones with some other air head about a vital issue of the day.
It would seem, to this observer, that young or not so young eligibles, might want to spend less time examining their wonderfulness in some mirror or chatting on their cell phones, & actually try to activate the few brain cells God gave them & do some introspection. Less time with my wonderful person & more time wondering about who I really am, what do I want to do with myself, besides being sought by some 'hunk.'
One we hear now is the lament from the weaker sex about how all the 'good men' are either gay or married. As if the world was jammed with a surplus of eligible females, & posterity was being denied the fruits of perhaps a wonderwoman who was otherwise going without male attention.
A glance around the community soon will dispel that wrong idea. There they all are, a teaming bunch of air heads, chatting busily on their cell phones with some other air head about a vital issue of the day.
It would seem, to this observer, that young or not so young eligibles, might want to spend less time examining their wonderfulness in some mirror or chatting on their cell phones, & actually try to activate the few brain cells God gave them & do some introspection. Less time with my wonderful person & more time wondering about who I really am, what do I want to do with myself, besides being sought by some 'hunk.'
When Mr. Bush 1st became pResident, I commented on some mssg bd or other we had picked a poor time to put a moron in the White House. Well, we've outdone that last mark, & now with turmoil nearly everywhere we look, it's a pretty poor time to put him back in the job. But I don't see it entirely as his fault. When the Berlin Wall came down, neither progressives or conservatives had made the slightest move in a direction we might move if Russian Communism collapsed. We probably must listen to more nonsense about how it was unexpected, how our wonderful CIA had no idea the collapse was imminent, which meant we were free to diddle about pretending we were eg. No. 1.
Friday, November 05, 2004
I voted about 2 wks b-4 the election, my wife the day of. Both of us for Kerry or maybe more accurately 'anybody but Bush'.
I never truly warmed up to the idea of Kerry, & maybe 1 reason is, I never heard what he was planning to do differntly in Iraq. Different from Skippy. Been reading an article about his major speech writer, & how K. wouldn't stay with the script, went into long windy extensions of the main idea, etc.
At 1st, I couldn't grasp how people all over the country could vote for Goat-Boy. They liked what they'd been getting? astronomical National debt, an unprovoked war, their Social Security about to get plundered, then I realized they didn't really like Kerry for one thing, & all they had to go on when they entered the voting booth was a skimpy voters' guide they'd just been handed as they left church 2 days ago. You had to suppose that despite all the ads, they really hadn't given the election much thought. After all, there's a whole lotta work goes into putting that brain in gear, etc.
No, I finally reminded myself, they weren't voting for what they had been getting, because they weren't real sure what that was. All they knew was their prescription was mighty high lately, and gas for the old pickup was getting ridiculous. So, their reasoning went, I don't like Kerry much, Bush seems like a good family man, against gay marriage & partial-birth abortion (which is a big problem out here in the Kansas prairie) & he says he cut our taxes. Then Sunday the preacher said gay marriage would be the end of the world, so it was pretty easy to decide.
I never truly warmed up to the idea of Kerry, & maybe 1 reason is, I never heard what he was planning to do differntly in Iraq. Different from Skippy. Been reading an article about his major speech writer, & how K. wouldn't stay with the script, went into long windy extensions of the main idea, etc.
At 1st, I couldn't grasp how people all over the country could vote for Goat-Boy. They liked what they'd been getting? astronomical National debt, an unprovoked war, their Social Security about to get plundered, then I realized they didn't really like Kerry for one thing, & all they had to go on when they entered the voting booth was a skimpy voters' guide they'd just been handed as they left church 2 days ago. You had to suppose that despite all the ads, they really hadn't given the election much thought. After all, there's a whole lotta work goes into putting that brain in gear, etc.
No, I finally reminded myself, they weren't voting for what they had been getting, because they weren't real sure what that was. All they knew was their prescription was mighty high lately, and gas for the old pickup was getting ridiculous. So, their reasoning went, I don't like Kerry much, Bush seems like a good family man, against gay marriage & partial-birth abortion (which is a big problem out here in the Kansas prairie) & he says he cut our taxes. Then Sunday the preacher said gay marriage would be the end of the world, so it was pretty easy to decide.
