DANCING WITH ASPARAGUS

I dreamed last night I was dancing in the produce aisle. Oranges, bananas, mushrooms and rutabagas, we were all boogieing down.
Then there was the asparagus, their lean bodies rockin', and little faces smiling, getting loose, because you can't dance and stay uptight. Even the green leafy veges know this.
Anyway, we were dancing away when a woman came up to me and said "You shouldnt dance in the grocery store"
I stopped dancing.
"Why not ?" I asked.
"Because its obnoxious, immature and embarrassing to me" she said.

So I stopped dancing.
All the vegetables looked so sad. They hung their heads, and went back to their display cases to chill.
I left in a car with the woman.
But we didn't make it out of the parking lot.
I said "You know, if I want to dance in the grocery store, and be friendly and loud and cut up, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I turned around and went back into the store.

It wasnt just a dream. I really let it happen this year.
Fuck that.
I'll dance with the asparagus if I want to.

THE LAND OF THE FREE

I went to a Marching Band competition Saturday night.
I was trying to send my daughter some pics I had taken when they started with the anthem, so I came in a little late. I might not have come in at all except for all the recent controversy. I thought about taking a knee for about 6 milliseconds, decided my balls aren’t that big, and put my hand over my heart.
That’s when I noticed about half the crowd was either filming the choir on the field or texting. The man three seats down, he had his hand over his heart, but was texting away one handed. 

Pretty impressive.

THE DEBATE AS A POORLY FORMED FORMULA

“If Donald Trump had said all the things that you said he said in the way you said he said them, he still wouldn't have a fraction of the insults that Hillary Clinton leveled when she said that half of of our supporters were a basket of deplorable's.”
VP Candidate Pence

Or to put it mathematically:

If 

(T Said) = (Y said) + (Way they were said)
then
(H Said) x (H+T) < or = .5 x(insults) + (Supporters) / Basket of Deplorables

I wanted to laugh, but it wasn't funny yet. Lets let them finish slugging it out:

Kaine: I cannot believe that Governor Pence will defend the insult-driven campaign that Donald Trump has run.

Pence: That's small potato compared to Hillary Clinton calling half of Donald Trump's supporters a basket of deplorables.
Kaine: Hillary Clinton said something on the campaign trail and the very next day she said, you know what? I shouldn't have said that.
Pence: She said she shouldn't have said half.
Kaine: Yeah, that’s right, so now we're even. Look for Donald Trump apologizing to John McCain for saying he isn’t a hero. Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting?
Pence: She apologized for saying half.

A MOMENT OF ZEN

I live 2 miles from my workplace. People don’t believe me, but I miss having a longer drive to work. I wouldn’t want to go back to that one hour commute I used to have, but there are some days when I stagger out of the house and into the car, and find myself 6 minutes later planted in front of the damn idiot box here, still bleary eyed, and I wish I had a little longer drive. Just enough time to even catch a story on NPR. The abruptness and shock of arriving at work so quickly some days cannot be measured.

Now that I recall, I used to stop for a coffee at the local gas station. That broke it up a little. But I stopped going in order to save the 10 bucks a week.

One morning there was a smiling woman that seemed to be flirting with me, touching my arm and laughing. But when I got to work I discovered there was a sock stuffed up my shirt where my bicep should been been.
Or the three laborers, in dusty boots and workingmans clothes, standing in front of the coffee bar, smiling and eyes wide, pointing to the different flavors for the coffee like kids in a candy shop. They did not speak English, but their intent was unmistakable. Hazelnut, or French VanilIa? Or were they Pumpkin Spice and whipped cream kind of guys? I smiled all the way back to the car that day.
Then there was a pretty girl I used to see in there. I always wanted to say hello, but never got in proximity to do so. Then one day I found myself in line behind her. I was ready to give her my best “Good Morning” when I noticed her bra tag was hanging out the back of her blouse.
34B
I froze like stone. What to do?
Maybe I should start stopping in for a small coffee again.
And a moment of Zen.

I painted my lips with her

Russian Red, a nasty, 
nasty lipstick
—
she taunts me
she makes me do things 
—
the other evening, after my
shower, she made me give
myself to her
—
before my black silk dress
before my little panties and 
before my black lace stockings 
—
even before my favorite 
black heels, the ones 
with a colorful history
a nasty, nasty 
Russian Red history

—

—x-changes/so-realism

WHEN YOU SMELL BULLSHIT

"...one should strive to remain skeptical of what are presented as real-life accounts that state in narrative form things people are predisposed to believe, especially those tales wherein wrongdoers get their comeuppance through being told off by others." 

THE MOCKINGBIRD

image~jemini joseph

the mockingbird
by Charles Bukowski

the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.

summer was over.

EVEN IF THE ADULTS DON'T GET IT, THE KIDS DO

"We acknowledge that what we did was wrong ... The actions of last week do not demonstrate who we are. We are not ignorant to the dialogue taking place across the nation and that is not how we want our school to be viewed."

The Students

To understand this story you have to understand the demographics of the two schools. Colleyville is rich and majority white. Trinity is only 36% white, with one of the most ethnically diverse student populations in the country. Forty percent of its students live in families that receive some type of financial aid.
Once again its a battle between the Anti-PC squad and the folks that just want us to have better manners. I like the apology the Colleyville kids came up with, that they are not "ignorant of the dialogue" taking place" in the country.

Back when I went to Bell 40 years ago, someone had held up a sign in the stands directed at the Trinity side. It said "YOUR MAMA CLEANS MY MAMA'S HOUSE".
Could we stop this now? Maybe this is why we still have the  problems that we do.
I'm just thinking that after 220 years of Anti-PC attitudes and policy that gave us slavery, lynchings, Barry Goldwater, Teapot Dome, eradication of the Buffalo, Bloody Sunday, smallpox epidemics for Native Americans, Kent State, repeal of Glass-Steagal, Lynchburg Va., marijuana laws, Joseph McCarthy, Socs and Greasers, Clive Bundy, and Vietnam, we might want to try something different and make a sober effort towards being more respectful of other folks situations and station in life. Can we just try it for a decade or two?

'What the hell do we have to lose?"

I got a call from the school one day, eight years ago when my son was a senior at Bell, another Trinity rival.

It seems he had come up with the bright idea to start a “White Persons Club”
After all, they had a German Club, a Spanish Club and a French Club, they may even have had an African American Club, who knows? Anyway you can follow his logic there.
He decided to form up this club, and began hanging “Join The White persons Club “ posters all aroud the school.
Unauthorized and without permissions of course.
Anyway, I got to go down to the school and sit there with him in the principals office, and the principal and I did our best for an hour to explain what was wrong with a White persons Club.
We never quite did to his satisfaction.
It’s a difficult thing to explain.
But two years ago, after Ferguson, I was riding in the car with him. We got to talking and I asked him:
“So 8 years later, you are all grown, and you’ve had time to see what goes on in the country. Do you understand now what is wrong with a “White Persons Club”?
He smiled a sad little smile, and said “Yes Pop, I do”.

By the way, Trinity licked Colleyville's ass on the playing field.

THREE FIGS FALLING

"“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ed Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Artist~ Jay Wilkinson, Fort Worth Texas
The size of this piece is about 6X8 feet. 

Thats right. 6X8.
Its huge.

Inspired by Plath's quote above from the only novel she ever wrote, The Bell Jar. 

Well done Mr. Wilkinson, very well done.
More of Jays Work (Click Here)

Painting Details:

PLENTY OF FISH, EPISODE FOUR:

DEAR MINNIE;

I appreciate your message, wanting to meet and have a few laughs.

I'm new to this online dating thing. One month now.
It could be a full time job.
Don't get me wrong, I like meeting new people. Thats why I got on here. But at the same time, I'm kind of a one girl at a time kind of guy so this is a little, uh, overwhelming.

You know, that really didn't sound right. Let me try this again.
In 30 days I've met 6 girls in person, Minnie. One, all the way down in Granbury. I haven’t met any of them a second time. I've traded I don't know how many messages with I don't know how many girls. I would need an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with it all.
One of them lives all the way out in Garland! Based on messages, she's my favorite, but that's 40 miles away, through some of the worst traffic on planet Earth.

And that’s just not my style. In 18 years of being divorced I don't think I've dated but 3 girls.And one of those wasn’t even "dating". We were just friends WITHOUT benefits.
But I loved her. I sure did love her.
Besides, I'll come right out and admit it. I'm High Maintenance. I need something a little more handy than 40 miles away. Do you know what I'm talking about?

So I see you live in Lewisville, and its not the end of earth, but its further away than I have in mind.
I'm trying to figure out which one of the 6 girls I've met should I maybe meet a second time. And I just don't know. I surely do don't know.
Maybe that is the answer? There must be some reason I haven't asked a second time. Just scrap them and move on to Number Seven?
Do you really want to be Number Seven, Minnie?
I hope I'm not being rude, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here.

How long have you been on POF? What has it been like for you?
Thanks for listening!
Bulletholes

It didnt take long to get her replay.
"That's the most honest message I've ever received. Yes, I'd love to be your Number Seven".

Jesus, thats not much help is it?
She's making it real hard.

Zugunruhe

“You feel it don’t you…
September rising in you…
what is the word…
“Zugunruhe”, yes?
That’s what the Germans named it
when caged birds want to fly

And can’t…"Migratory Restlessness…”

The days grow shorter

And fall starts driving you mad

until you beat the walls to go.
You feel it don’t you…for me…

as I do for you…Zugunruhe”

Peregrine @ Your Eyes Blaze Out

PLENTY OF FISH; "DO YOU WANT TO KEEP FISHIN'?"

I traded a few messages with her over the period of two weeks. Finally she just came out and said "So do you want to keep fishin', or would you like to meet me somewhere."
She gave me directions to a local Starbucks.
"I've used that one before" she said, and that's when I knew it was going to be hot.

I followed her back to her place, She sat on her couch, her silk blouse slightly open, her skirt rising up her legs. She patted the seat next to her, and I moved slowly towards her, felt emboldened by the way she licked her lips. I could tell she wanted me, needed me, to kiss her, our faces inches apart now and I cupped her breast and she moaned, and just  as our lips were about to meet, I veered lower, and softly kissed her neck, right under her ear. She moaned louder, and I repositioned my hand on her breast, realized I barely knew this woman, and whispered in her ear:
"What's your favorite color, baby?"
Breathlessly, she whispered back "Pizza".

So we got up and went in her kitchen to make pizza.
Thats when I woke up.
That was some kind of dream.

MY GREATEST COMPLIMENT EVER

...comes from my daughter.
She says “If I want advice, first I call mom, and she gives me advice. Then I call dad, he never gives me advice. He tells me a story, and then I know what to do”.

THE AMERICA I MISS

"Style is not what keeps us going. We survive by virtue of people extending themselves, welcoming the young, showing sympathy for the suffering, taking pleasure in each other's good fortune. We are here for a brief time. We would like our stay to mean something. Do the right thing. Travel light. Be sweet."
Garrison Keillor, From "The America I Miss"

PLENTY OF FISH DATING: ONE NIGHT AT A TIME

She sent me a message this morning:

"Oh no, I fell asleep in my recliner again.I need to sell this thing."
I replied:
"I’m a chronic couch sleeper. Actually, a reformed chronic couch sleeper, I should give myself some credit. I bet I slept on the couch for 15 years after my divorce. Its amazing; one has to train themselves to sleep in a bed again after that many years on a couch. It was hard, but I did it! One night at a time. I’ve been sleeping in a bed for about five years now. They should make a chip or key tag for that, like they do at Alcoholics Anonymous
But here’s the thing.
I don’t do it right.
I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed, or sometimes sideways, with my feet hanging off the edge. Once in a blue moon will I find myself having slept in my bed correctly, with my head and feet where they are supposed to be.
I cant say for sure how that happens.
So, knowing this, are you sure you still want to meet for coffee?"

PLENTY OF FISH: EPISODE ONE

"THE DORK"

My first day on the dating website "Plenty of Fish, I traded messages with a dog lover. On the fourth message I just went ahead and hung it out there.

“So what are you doing for supper? Ya wanna meet up someplace, have supper, something easy and lite?”
She said yes. She said she had been on this dating site for three months and it was the first time a guy asked to meet up, because all the guys on the site are lame.

She wasn’t bad looking. She had a nice smile. And her hair was thick and luxurious.
So I meet her. We have dinner. She laughs at my stories, chews her food with her mouth shut, doesn’t go on about Donald Trump or how the government is sitting on a formula to turn water into fuel. In other words, she’s OK. She might not be dance partner material, but she is nice to talk to.

So I get home, send her a thank you note. She replies back:
“You are a dork. But you are a cute dork. Don’t change.”
So I look up dork. It says I’m a guy that is not afraid to be who I am. That I don’t worry about what people think about me, have odd interests, and is silly sometimes.
Well, that’s close enough. Except I have learned that what people think about me IS important. That helps keep this dork from being a total asshole.
And its not like she called me a DWEEB.

A few days go by. Its Thursday evening, time to eat. I send Dog lover a message:
“Hey, ya wanna go get a pizza? I know a great dive up on Grapevine Highway!”
The reply comes back, almost instantaneous:
“You know we have no chemistry, right”
Hahaha. That’s telling it plain I guess. My reply?
“Right. No chemistry. So ya wanna go have a pizza?”

But here is what I’ve noticed. Everybody has their antennae up for “Chemistry”. If you are so honed in on chemistry, I think you might miss out on something bigger.
Just being a friend and going for pizza.
I can’t remember a single time I met a girl, felt chemistry, did a triple back flip back to her place and had tantric sex.

I waited five minutes for a reply, and decided on chicken livers from Lisa’s Chicken instead.
Because I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks; I like chicken livers.

THERE IS A STAR BY MY NAME IN THE BOOK OF LIARS

Live with total integrity. Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment. It is better to be yourself and risk having people not like you than to suffer the stress and tension that comes from pretending to be someone you’re not, or professing to like something that you don’t. I promise you: Pretending will rob you of joy.
~ Christine Carter, Ph.D. 

And this, which explains the health effects of telling lies.

"Lying, even if we do it a lot, or think we are good at it, is very stressful to our brains and our bodies. The polygraph test depends on this: “Lie Detectors” don’t actually detect lies, but rather they detect the subconscious stress and fear that lying causes. These tests sense changes in our skin electricity, pulse rate, and breathing. They also detect when someone’s vocal pitch has changed in a nearly imperceptible way, a consequence of tension in the body that tightens vocal chords."

The results of lies? Impaired relationships.
A friend kept telling me this year:
"Maturity is saying the right thing at the right time for the right reasons"
It ended up being rationale for telling a lot of lies.
I haven't seen my friend in a long long time.

Twenty years ago I ruined a perfectly good marriage with lies and cheating and dope. Fell deep into an 11 year addiction. Finally got clean and got honest with myself and the world. I got square with old friends, and the people around me. Its a wonderful feeling, being square.

Down at my NA Group my Grandsponsor says:
"The Truth and Spiritual Principles are never in conflict"
What does that mean?
Tell the fucking truth. 

Especially when its hard. You'll feel better being square with the Universe, and the people around you will be able to make decisions based on reality.

I would know.
There is a star in the book of liars by my name.

INSIDE WAS ALL OF IRELAND

There was an old Celt who loved his wife, his children, his friends, and his jar. But most of all he loved the land he trod and fought for food. So when his time came, his sons carried him from the stone cottage and laid him on the stone earth. He clenched a fistful of Ireland and was gone.

When he arrived at the gates that only swing in, God appeared in the long robes of judgment. He noticed the closed hand. “Old man, you are not allowed to bring anything in.”

But the hand with the loved land heaved beneath the judge’s nose, “Then I stay outside.”

After a while, God appeared a second time as a pub mate with cap and pipe. He threw a tavern arm over the old man’s shoulders. “Friend, dust belongs to the wind. Let go of that earth and come inside.”

“Never,” said the tightfisted one.

After a while, God came out a third time as a small boy. He ran to the ear of the old man. “Grandfather, the gates only open for those with open hands.”

The old man rose with a slow sadness and never looked down as caked and crumbled Ireland fell.

The gates opened like arms flung wide and the old man entered.
Inside was all of Ireland.

Gathered at "Alive on All Channels"

SUNSET ON LOUISIANNE

I looked for this song after Katrina in 2005, and again after the big BP spill in 2010. Now with Baton Rouge underwater I went looking again and found it.
I first heard it back about 1995, and I only heard it the one time, but it stuck with me all these years.

I

Sunset on Louisianne

When I was young and full of dreams,
My whole life in front of me.
But things are not always the way they seem,
Some things will always change.

My papa’d been a trapper living hand to mouth,
But when I made shop foreman, I had it all figured out,
I thanked god each and everyday
When the industry came to town.

Chorus:
Sunset on Louisianne,
The sun going down on the promised,
I’ve given you everything I can,
I’ve got nothing left to lose.

Married a girl from Pauché Briide,
Raised a family of Cajun kids,
Nobody did no better than we did,
But things can always change.

My sister lost her baby premature,
And my papa got the sickness that got no cure,
And what they told us about it at the plant,
We could not be sure.

Chorus

Bridge:
Smokestacks burning on the river,
From New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
How can I go on believing
When they won’t tell me the truth.

I take my grand son fishing down at Camanida Bay,
I hope some of this beauty will last,
But, lord, it’s changing so damn fast,
Each and every day.

I love the river and I love the swamp,
The snowy egret and the old bull frog,
But they’re harder to find one and all
Since the industry came to town.

TRUMP THE RACCOON

"He is entirely wrapped up in himself, like a raccoon trapped in a garbage can, and apparently uninterested in the realities of policy and politics, which unnerves old hands in the Republican Party, but what can they do? He came to political prominence in 2011 by insisting that Barack Obama is secretly a Kenyan, which appealed to a large segment of Republicans, the same ones who imagine that the government is sitting on a secret formula for turning tap water into fuel.

Reality is a show, and wild conjecture and playground insult are his strong suits. He has gotten a long free ride on news shows...the first albino raccoon to run for president. His platform, whatever it may be on any given day, is pure hokum. He is, as Mitt Romney points out, a fraud. Hillary Clinton has her faults and is no whiz at email, but she does not walk around arguing with lampposts.

And meanwhile, Republicans are asking themselves how it happened that this freak was bestowed upon the national stage by their grand old party. Democrats have put forward candidates who lost spectacularly but we were never ashamed of them, they represented a strain, a tradition, of our particular circus. We never ran a raccoon for the presidency. We never put on a convention that our elders were too embarrassed to attend."
...excerpted from a really nice Garrison Keillor column.

ONLINE DATING

IN RESPONSE TO A MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM A PRETTY GIRL POSING WITH A GUITAR, WARNING ME TO BE CAREFUL OF PROFILES THAT WERE SCAMS



Hi Ellen!

I am new to this. Like 10 days new. I did get a bogus looking message that asked me to email them because they were shutting down their account. Looking at the text, they didn’t claim to be a Nigerian Princess, but the whole thing kinda stank, ya know?
So I didn’t respond. What’s weird is they weren’t all that stunning as far as looks go. You’d think they would use more attractive bait.

I get a lot of identical two word messages: “Hello There”.
I get enough of them that it creeps me out a little. I think I wrote a story one time that started out “I haven't tried internet dating. I've got my hands full just flirting with every girl I run into on the street”.
But that hasn’t worked out so well, Ellen, so here I am.



How to be original? Well, I actually met a girl the first day I was on POF. We had dinner, and talked for two hours. I sent her a message later, and she said I was a dork. And she said to stay that way, because I was a “cute dork”.
I think that was her way of telling me “Thanks, but no thanks”lol
So I looked up Dork. One definition is “a dull, slow-witted, or socially inept person”. That’s not me.
The other is
“Someone who has odd interests, sometimes silly, and can be themselves without being afraid what other people think.”
That’s me Ellen!

I see you are the Class Clown! When I was in the 5th grade the teacher sent a note home with me saying “Steve tries to be the Class Clown”. “Tries”? It cut me to the quick, and I never liked her much after that.
But it did motivate me to try to achieve my greatest goals which are to make the world a funnier place and to die laughing. I am not a stand up comic, but I seem to be able to find some humor in anything and have a knack for never speaking too seriously for too long about serious matters.



This cloudy cool day would be perfect for any of the three things I used to be very passionate about: Fishing, Golf and Gardening.
Do you golf much? I used to be so addicted to it I would call golf courses during tornado watches and pouring down rain to find out if they were open. I’m not sure I would ever take up golf again.
What about fishing? I could see fishing again. I went a couple times last year with my son (he’s 26) but I used to fish a lot. Like every week I would go. Camping 3 times a year too. But life happens, and things get left behind.
Now gardening, that’s something I still do on a small scale. I don’t have a yard anymore, but I got a nice little plot outside my apartment. Tomatoes and basil, lots of basil, the maintenance crew helps me keep it picked which just makes it grow more, and I have rosemary too, and come September I’ll replace the tomatoes with sugar snaps that will be ready t pick by Christmas. I used to have a green thumb they say. 
Still do, I say.



I've probaly had every hobby known to man at some point. The last few years my biggest hobby has been writing. That’s why this message is probably way longer than it should be (sorry). I like to write, and I write like I talk, and I like to talk, and sometimes I dance like no one is looking. It wasn’t so much the fact that you had a guitar that attracted me. It was the way that you HELD the guitar, with the fingers, and the mischievous  look on your face. Then I read your profile, and as you hoped, the humor came shining through.
And you have a very nice smile.

Love, Bulletholes

TO SING YOUR OWN SONG

TO BE HUMAN IS TO SING YOUR OWN SONG
Everything I can think of that my parents
thought or did I don't think and I don't do.
I opened windows, they shut them. I pulled
open the curtains, they shut them. If you
get my drift. Of course there were some
similarities - they wanted to be happy
and they weren't. I wanted to be Shelley and I
wasn't. I don't mean I didn't have to avoid
imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But
then, for me, there was the forest, where
they didn't exist. And the fields. Where I
learned about birds and other sweet tidbits
of existence. The song sparrow, for example.

In the song sparrow's nest the nestlings,
those who would sing eventually, must listen
carefully to the father bird as he sings
and make their own song in imitation of his.
I don't know if any other bird does this (in
nature's way has to do this). But I know a
child doesn't have to. Doesn't have to.
Doesn't have to. And I didn't.
- Mary Oliver
Blue Horses

Gathered at Whiskey River

Image~ Everyone thinks its from Woodstock. Its from New Orleans, 1972, taken by George W Gardner

"Good. Now here’s what poetry can do."

"Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There’s an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You’re beautiful for as long as you live."

~ Stephen Dunn, from Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry (1966)

Gathered at Live and Learn

SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION

No longer sold at Six Flags, NASCAR, Walmart, or displayed at High Schools, County Courthouses, and government offices, this flag was removed shortly after being displayed at a Trump rally in Kissimmee Florida.
The flag was denounced by the Southern Baptist Convention last month. The Southern Baptist Convention split from Baptists in 1845 over the issue of slavery. The group had always embraced its “rich southern heritage”.
Hurrah for Dixie.

Here is a link to The Resolution. I have to hand it to those Baptists. Well done.

Excerpted:WHEREAS, In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention repudiated “historic acts of evil, such as slavery,” and committed “to eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry”...

WHEREAS, We recognize that the Confederate battle flag is used by some and perceived by many as a symbol of hatred, bigotry, and racism, offending millions of people...WHEREAS, We recognize that, while the removal of the Confederate battle flag from public display is not going to solve the most severe racial tensions that plague our nation and churches, those professing Christ are called to extend grace and put the consciences of others ahead of their own interests and actions...

RESOLVED, That we call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we urge fellow Christians to exercise sensitivity so that nothing brings division or hinders the unity of the Body of Christ to be a bold witness to the transforming power of Jesus.

RIG AN ELECTION?

Shoot, I been rigging elections since 1972.

You can put this one in the freezer, boys.

THE DWEEB

I went to dinner with my beachcombing friend last night. She said she joined Match.Com.
“Its like a full time job. I got 100 messages a few days ago. I narrowed it down to one guy, and met him for a drink. He didn’t look anything like his profile. But in his profile he had on a hat and sunglasses so it was hard to tell. Really, he was a DWEEB. Just a dweeb. Why do people do that, with the hat and sunglasses? He kept saying “We’ll have to do this again”.

“We’ll have to do this again” he kept saying.

So we exchanged numbers."

I’ll tell you a little about her. She is a petite girl. She probably weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet with her clothes on. Curvy she is not. She had a breast job many years ago which she is proud of, and likes to go to nude beaches in warmer climes. She has a pixie face and is cute as can be. Her mouth is sexy as hell, like Michele Pfieffer. She does hair at an upscale salon. She is very stylish, has blonde hair with a few small streaks of blue just for fun.  

She tells me she gets to her car and the dweeb has sent her a message.
The same guy that minutes before was saying “We’ll have to do this again”.

His message says “I said we should get together again but I saw you when you walked away and you are just too skinny for me so I dont think so.”

“It was like a dagger to my heart” she says “A total dweeb was telling me I was too skinny my first time out on Match.com”

I tried to be sympathetic.

“Can I tell you the truth?” I said.

“Sure”

“The hottest sex I ever had was with a girl built just like you, only her breasts werent as nice.”
“Don't tell me that”
“No, really its true. Just like you. We had two bottles of wine, she tied me to the bed and for 8 hours it was pretty amazing.”

I’m not sure if she heard this last part because she had her hands over her ears and going “La-la-la-la-la”
I just couldn’t stop laughing. 

I hope it made her feel better.

THAT MUCH HELP

I wasn't sure I should do it. 

I wondered "Who would it serve?" 

The Head Doctor said I had to do it.

He asked me how did it feel after I did it.

“Like a 16 ton anvil wasn’t hanging over my head anymore”

“So who did it help? To whom did it serve?” he asked.

“It helped me” I said.

“That’s right. It helped you. How does that make you feel?”
“It makes me feel horrible” I said.

He looked puzzled. “Why?” he asked.

And I broke down.

“Because I’m not supposed to need that much help”

I guess we got some work to do.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

I saw a post last week that generated one of my weird dreams. I dreamed I was at work, and the boss and secretary were sitting there in my area. Suddenly the door opened and 3 BLM people came in with pamphlets. They introduced themselves, handed me the pamphlets and left.
My boss and the secretary looked at me and asked why they left the pamphlets. They seemed thoroughly confused by it. I told them:
“They left the pamphlets because…” 

Before I could finish the boss and secretary vanished. Like *POOF* into thin air!
But I continued, even though there was no one there but me:
“…because they want to have a voice.”

But it was only I that could hear.
Some dream, yes?

POLITICAL CONVENTIONS, 2016

Its incredibly interesting, whats going on with politics in the USA.
Trump is not a true rep for the GOP, or so says most GPO folks I know. That’s why in some weird universe I could vote for him. I could have voted for Bush too. But Bush is, in his own way, like Trump. If it were between Ted Nugent (a true rep for the GOP) and Trump, hands down its Trump for me.

Here’s another weird thing. I cant stand Cruz, but I admire what he did. Stood up there with zero support and refused to endorse Trump.. Now most everybody that loved him has turned against him.
Contrast that with Sanders, who stood up there and very eloquently endorsed his opponent with thousands of his supporters in tears and screaming for him.
I admire that very much too.

At first these two thoughts seemed incompatible. Hypocritical. But I think they do go together. I just cant explain how.

I knew a guy back in the day that used to drape himself in an American flag and ride a Unicycle off his dining room table. It was the high point of the evening, every night. That's why people went to his place to party. Half the time he crashed and half the time he stuck the landing pretty good. Either way everybody there yelled like crazy for him. He reminded me a lot of Dennis Hopper. But today he seems more like a metaphor for the GOP. Or the Dems, why not? Either way.

DAVE GIVES THE BALL A NUDGE

It appears that while my nephew Dave has been fighting the cancer, he has also built an open air pool hall in Dalaguete, Cebu.
Dalaguete is in the Phillipines.
Dave says:
“There are many ways to be positive about what's happening to my body. Cristina Renfro and I still have hope that medical science will deliver a breakthrough, but medical science needs to get busy. The clock is ticking. In the mean time, a more non-unicorn-believing way of being positive is for me to begin planning how to wind down this great adventure of mine on my own terms. I already know I want my ashes to be scattered on the small patch of farmland we have in the mountains of Cebu. It's quiet and peaceful with a cool breeze, a perfect place for my reclusive and mildly troubled soul. A few times a week, though, I'm going to float down to Dave and Tina's Place in Dalaquete to shoot some pool and be amongst happy people. When your ball stops for several seconds at the edge of the pocket and then mysteriously drops, that will be me giving it a nudge!
Cristina has a million more pictures to post of our dream open-air pool hall, from its construction to its blessing and grand opening yesterday. My meager savings wasn't going to last forever. I figured I could leave behind a big pile of medical bills or leave behind a big pile of medical bills and an awesome recreation center in my adopted home town. It was a no-brainer! We have a million people to thank for helping make this dream come true and we'll get to it, but for now I couldn't wait to post something. More to follow!”

WRITING WHEN YOU HAVE NO SOMEONE

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. Or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no someone to whom to say them. Matters that are so subtle, so personal, so obscure, that I ordinarily can’t imagine saying them to the people to whom I’m closest. Every once in a while I try to say them aloud and find that what turns to mush in my mouth or falls short of their ears can be written down for total strangers. Said to total strangers in the silence of writing that is recuperated and heard in the solitude of reading. Is it the shared solitude of writing, is it that separately we all reside in a place deeper than society, even the society of two? Is it that the tongue fails where the fingers succeed, in telling truths so lengthy and nuanced that they are almost impossible aloud?

 from The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

Another post gathered once again at "Alive on All Channels"

THE MIDDLE EAST

 "In Iraq, the United States had intervened and occupied — and things had gone to hell. In Libya, the United States had intervened but not occupied — and things had gone to hell. And in Syria, the United States had neither intervened nor occupied — and things had still gone to hell."

GOOD ARTICLE HERE

SECRET LIFE OF PETS

I was thinking about getting me a puppy dog.
Then I went and saw "Secret Life of Pets".
Oh my god.
I thought it would be cute and funny and relaxing.
But no.
It was like Die Hard, only with animals. Car crashes, near death experiences, snakes, villains and weird henchmen everywhere, and a homicidal bunny. I left there wound up like an alarm clock.
May as well have been watching The Matrix.
I WAS thinking about getting me a dog. Now, not!

FIREFLIES

“And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”
"...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.” 
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

image~ APOD, Fireflies and the Milky Way

THE DEAD GIVE-AWAY

I tried to keep a secret one time and before long everyone in the damn lunchroom knew. Its kind of like a joke, where you start it and pretty soon everyone is crying. That happens to me a lot (haha), just ask Dallas. Folks get together and try to do some good, try to behave like mature adults, try to make a statement on the current state of a affairs and then someone comes along with a bag full of secrets, a whole magazine full of secrets, and he lets all his secrets out and the next thing you know the whole bleeding country is in on a joke, a joke that isn’t very funny at all.
Like the time I took a bite out of Joannas sandwich and put it back in her bag. It was supposed to be a secret, like a funny (haha) who-done-it, but it wasn’t a secret for long because of my overbite, and the peanut butter and jelly on the corners of my mouth. That was a dead give-away. It wasn’t funny either, especially to Joanne who was pissed that some asshole with an overbite had secretly taken a bite out of her sandwich her mama had packed for her. Right there in the lunchroom, while she went to get her milk.
What was the country coming to, that you couldn’t set your lunch down for not even a minute?
And it wasn’t funny to me, me being absolutely horrified at what I had done, and the fact that it wasnt a secret, or the least bit funny-- which is what I was shooting for, haha-- at all. No sir, it wasn’t funny at all.

'THE MORE WE RUN FROM IT THE MORE WE RUN INTO IT"

Near the end of Part 1 of Ken Burns documentary on the history of Jazz, the great trumpet player Wynton Marsailles is presented with a quote from a white jazz player from the 20’s, who had said that blacks had nothing to do with the origins of Jazz. That it was exclusively a white man’s invention.
I love his reaction. At first he is speechless, numbed,  and then quite eloquent. 

SACRIFICE

“GK Chesterton once said that to criticise religion because it leads people to kill each other is like criticising love because it has the same effect. All the best things we have, when abused, will cause bad things to happen. The need for sacrifice, to obey, to make a gift of your life is in all of us and it’s a deep thing. In the Islamic world today, people are trying to rejoin themselves to an antiquated and ancient faith and the result is massive violence when they encounter people who have not done that. We’d say that sense of sacrifice is good but only if you’re sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another’s life you’ve overstepped the mark.”
― Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World

POLITICS IS SO BORING

Politics is so boring. I go home and turn the news on and before I know it I'm fast asleep, chin on my chest and drooling down my nice shirt.
What fascinates me these days is geography, and its cousin , geology. See, Lynchburg Va and Charlottesville Va are only 70 miles apart. but the two cities couldnt be more different.

In Charlottesville you have The University of Virginia (Mr. Jefferson’s School), Monticello, the homes of James Madison and James Monroe, Lewis @ Clark and, heading south toward Lynchburg, the Rockfish River and the home of “The Walton Family” (Goodnight John-boy). Charlottesville has a Whole Foods, Trader Jacks, a new Wegman’s on the way and every kind of International and ethnic product and produce you ever heard of. On July 4th a Naturalization Ceremony is held for immigrants acquiring citizenship.
In Charlottesville, the Earth is 4 billion years old.

But in Lynchburg, when Civil Rights Laws dictated that black people should have the right to swim in the Lynchburg Public Pools the decent, God fearing, people of Lynchburg decided to fill them all in with dirt. When those same laws dictated that black children had the right to a public education along side white children a young preacher named Jerry Falwell opened up “Christian Academies” for white children only. Today that has grown to be “Liberty University”, the largest Evangelical University on the planet.
In Lynchburg, the Earth is only 6000 years old.

Lynchburg voted overwhelmingly Republican the last election, and C-ville, that’s what the locals call Charlottesville, voted Democratic.
But don't lose hope. In the last election, when the kids at the Lynchburg High School held a mock election,  it was Obama who won in a landslide.

I find this infinitely more fascinating and instructive than any Trumptweet, or story about Hillary's EMails.

Largely gathered at Mrs. Neutrons Garage.

SO WHAT DO YA MAKE OF THIS?

I’ll send her a text.

Usually, it takes 6-8 hours to get a reply.

No matter how charming, witty and funny I might be, I cant seem to lure her into much banter.

When we’ve gone to dinner three times the conversation is lively.

So a few weeks ago I sent her a text. It took a day for her to get back to me. I’m used to it by now, right?

But I decide to just not text her for a while.

It takes 8 days, but I finally get a text. It says
“I’ll be off the grid for a while, so if you text me and I don’t text back, don’t think I’m ignoring you”
I said “Cozumel???”
She says “Bahamas”
And I say “I guess you know I have a mental picture of you walking down the beach, topless, like it aint no thing?”

No reply.

Now I’m getting nervous. Maybe I’ve offended her.

I give it five minutes and decide to call. Maybe I can mitigate whatever damage I might have done.

She answers the first ring.

“Hey!” she says.

“Hi Darlene! When are you leaving for the Bahamas?”

“I’m in line to board right now” she says.

So the last thing she thinks of before going on vacation for a week is “I better let steve know if I don’t return his texts its not because I’m ignoring him”

So I sent her a text yesterday.
“Are you home yet?”
she says “Yes. How are you?”

“I’m probably not as lean and tanned as you” I say.

No response.

But this morning @ 7:00am she sends me a text.

“It was horrible. I got a rash, cut my toe, fucked up my knee, have tummy trouble, lost my boyfriend. But I got a lot of reading done.”
So I say “Sorry to hear that.  A lot of that rash going around.Two friends went to Galveston and got it. That boyfriend stuff is going around too. I had that girl of mine come get her shit from my apartment 3 weeks ago. So when can you go to dinner again?”
And I got no reply!

Maybe I should have shown more empathy?

THE PROPHET

EXCERPT FROM "A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION", 1991

"I recall when I was a little boy, going to the volunteer fire department Fourth of July picnic. My family doesn’t remember this at all, but they have very poor memories. ... I got the beans on my plate and I had the bun and I had just put the wiener in the bun and I was just squeezing the ketchup and the air turned white and it was snowing. Snow was falling and everybody was amazed and then somebody said, “oh no”, they said, “It’s fluff from the cottonwood trees, it’s just seeds coming down from the cottonwood trees”, and so, that was that, but then I looked down at my plate and there was nothing there. Now cottonwood fluff does not melt. Seeds don’t just disappear. It was snow on the Fourth of July. A snow flurry hit Lake Wobegon on the Fourth of July when I was a boy, but if you talk to anybody, including my family who was at the Volunteer Fire Department Bean Feed that day in 1951 on the Fourth of July, they will tell you that was fluff from the cottonwood trees that came down. I was the only one who knew the truth. A terrible responsibility for a child and one more reason to leave town, you know. There were too many things that I was the only one that knew them...

Stunning thought, but when God sends snow down on the Fourth of July, that indicates to me that he is talking to us in a loud voice and apparently I was the only one who saw this and therefore, the only one who might have a hunch what God was trying to tell us, but I turned down the privilege, thank you very much, no thank you. To be a prophet was too much for me then and it’s too much for me now. To be a prophet is hard work anytime and anyplace, but you never want to do it in a town of less than 2,000 population. If you live there and if you come from there. To stand and to tell people the truth that they have been successfully avoiding is not a pleasant business in a small town.

Back in 1918 in my town, back when the streets were lined with flags and when school children sat for hours of deadly nonsense about glory and honor and this war was a war to end all wars, this war would usher in a New World Order. Sat and listened to this there was a man on a bench outside a grocery store and turned to the man next to him and said, “I wish they’d take the flags down, I don’t think there’s any glory in this war, it’s just a bunch of politicians.” And the word got around town of this man’s remarks, this slur on our country ... and people would not speak to him again for a long time...

You have become a scourge. You have become a prophet and it’s time to time to hit the road Jack. You gotta get out of this town. Well, that never happened to me and I’m not ever going to have it happen to me. That’s what God was offering me when he had the snow fall on the Fourth of July and I saw it. He was saying, “Witness to people about this. Reveal the truth of this and be a prophet.” I said, “No thank you, I don’t want it.” He said, “This will be a great service to people whom you love, to tell them the truth”. I said, “Well they’re not going to thank me for it. I know that for sure. People hurt prophets. They throw sharp things at them. They rip the clothes off them and they make them sit for long periods of time in uncomfortable positions on top of sharp objects that are extremely flammable. That’s what they do to prophets. I don’t want that. I don’t want any pain whatsoever. I don’t ever want to experience any pain. Minor dentistry is more than enough for me. So, no thank you. I don’t want to be a prophet and tell the truth. What can I do that’s the opposite of that?” And so, I got into this line of work. Telling lies and I’ve never regretted it, which is a terrible thing to say in front of children. To say that you’ve spent your life telling lies, but I have and I’ve had a wonderful time, and I have been very well rewarded for this, and I have been congratulated by all sorts of people including members of the clergy, whereas if I had been prophet and told the truth, I would be broke and I would be unhappy myself and I would be despised and I would be condemned from most pulpits in the country. No thanks, I don’t really care for that. ...

No, it’s not that I don’t know what a prophet would say, you see. I do. It’s not for lack of a message. I’m not interested in saying it. If there were a prophet, of course, a prophet would tell us that America is a country that God has blessed so much, we have not suffered as other people have. We don’t know what suffering is like. We have not known war in our country since 1865. That experience of war in 1865 was so horrible in this country, the Civil War, that we did not lift our hand against anybody for years and years after that.

But over the years we’ve become so prosperous and we have developed technology that allows us to deliver war to other people, and it never falls on us. We have no idea what war is like in this country. Our soldiers know, but when they come back to tell us, we don’t know what they’re talking about. We don’t know what war is like in this country and so it behooves us to be careful. And to rain down death on people and then to gloat over it is not becoming in God’s eyes. This is not good. To rain down destruction from this country, which knows so little suffering that our own navels become the source of our suffering is not pleasant or good in God’s eyes. We should be very careful, very careful. This is what a prophet would say, I think.

But who wants to say it, because prophets have an approval rating of five percent, only in some places. No, I’d rather be in my line of work. ... God was disappointed in me at first, but He’s come around to seeing this more and more from my point of view. ... God made mistakes...you spread the truth around and it becomes common and people ignore it. ... Whereas, with someone like me, if I ever do tell the truth, people remember it. ... I remember every time I told the truth. Like a snowfall in July — you remember every time."
Garrison Keilor, 1991

NOT ALWAYS

"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact."
- Judith Butler