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“Banality of banalities. All is banality …”
I know I warned last week that the coffee posts would be few during the summer, but today wasn’t as warm as I had hoped. So a little time for musing.
The first day of the week dawns a bit warmer, but still a bit too chilly for morning stoop sitting. But second best is my studio with a large window that looks out on the stoops, and of course, the coffee cup resting near my right hand.
In my religious tradition, the day is simply called the first day. A day when God brooded. A day when God separated the darkness from the light. Maybe it was the Big Bang. Who knows? There was no sun yet, no earth, no sunrise, no sunset. So one wonders how it could be called a day. Ah, sweet mysteries!
Kipper is demanding attention today. It is her bath day, and Snooks cleaned her cage and put the bath in. She gets one a week in winter, and two a week in summer. They really seem to cheer her up.
Linda is preparing for company in a few weeks. She seldom puts off ‘til tomorrow that which she had already done yesterday. She has dusted, vacuumed, shampooed and changed the linen in the guest room, shampooed the carpets, and at the moment is entertaining the dogs by picking up their lees in the yard.
She is in charge of packing and shipping, and the dogs are in charge of production. Sometimes the inventory of lees gets ahead of packing and shipping, and she ceases from her other household chores and gets the inventory taken care of.
The dogs seem to think this is quite amusing, and usually when she gets the last of the lees bagged and put into the bin, they leave a fresh deposit.
OK … on from the grossness of living with pets.
So today is my cooking day and I have no menus planned. There is frozen waffles from last weeks breakfast of sausage and pecan waffles. I have some turkey sausage patties made up, so maybe we’ll get that again today. Soup and a sandwich for a late lunch/early dinner, and there is plenty of snacks for the day.
And the sun has climbed another 7°, and I must be about my day.
Good morning.
Coffee, Ponderings, and Some Personal Theology
Preparation day dawns overcast and 57°. Later in the day, it will approach an ideal 72°. I am still trying to let the sun and not the clock govern my day, but it is still a bit disconcerting to have some man made device try to tell you that you are sleeping your life away. Daylight Savings Time does not save me one single hour of daylight, but the old meme persists.
It has been a good week, though a bit disappointing with the weather. Typically, by this time of the year we have had several gorgeous days to get the yard ready for spring. I have several rather ambitious plans, though most of them will not permit me to spend as much time at the keyboard as I do in winter. I am ready for a hiatus however.
The house smells good this morning. Snooks has prepared a savory stew that has started cooking in the slow cooker last night. Later in the day she will prepare the challah bread, and we will subsist on the stew through the Shabbat.
I did some research on “resting”. That God, of all things in the universe, would need a rest was a perplexing idea. But truthfully, the word in this instance isn’t rested from His labors, but rather ceased from His labors. The meaning is that everything was finished and put into motion.
This presents a lot of theological issues that I am not prepared to deal with in this little missive, but it has obsessed my thinking lately.
Anyway. This may be the last coffee and ponderings post until fall returns, though I’ll certainly post other offerings from time to time.
Good morning!
My second love … (throwback Friday)
I have no personal photos of my youth or early days. They are all moldering away in boxes in my sisters homes. But thanks to the internet, I can find snatches of my youth online if I search diligently. In looking at her pictures, my heart still beats a little faster, and dreams of becoming an engineer once again course through the synapses. Here is my contribution to Throwback Friday …
This is her, back when I was a lad. My second love. D&RGW T-10 Number 169. I chipped my teeth falling off of it, pinched fingers and toes on the controls, drove the people in the library in the brick building standing in the background crazy with the ringing the bell, hid out in the rusted out water tank.
Today, it has a fancy shed built over it with wrought iron fencing to keep kids from hurting themselves, but also it keeps them from falling in love with her. She sits like a bird in a gilded cage
She was rebuilt for 1939/1940 Worlds Fair in New York to represent the D&RGW railroad, and retired shortly afterwards. Only two T-12 are in existence today, and both may one day steam again. It will cost upwards of $400,000 to restore her to operating condition.
My first love you ask? Here she is. But she had a thing for that damned Pan. He was an asshole and treated her like shit, but she stayed with him. Yeesh! Wimmen! I was off women for seven years afterwards. Unlike choo choos, they had cooties, anyway …
Remembering Harper Lee
I have been thinking about the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. I met Truman Capote in the early seventies, just as he began his downward spiral, and unwittingly again in the late 80’s when I was talking to Joanna Carson about canine epilepsy. Yeah. Long story for another time.
Truman was staying at a high-dollar alcohol rehab center in Colorado. My good friend, known on the streets as Listerine Fred, had finagled his way into the center, which was quite a step up from his usual dreadful skid row drying out rooms. Truman took Fred under his wing and encouraged him to write a biography, and when it was completed, Truman said he would help him publish it.
Fred dried out and began writing. He wrote, I critiqued, and Truman commented. I know Harper Lee was around in some of those Friday night tête-à-têtes in the penthouse hospital, but oddly, I only remember her form, not face. All this was going on while I was recovering for the last time from alcohol and bad ideas. Getting the alcohol out was the easy part. I never completely recovered from the bad ideas, however.
Anyway, a few months later, Truman returned to California, Fred finished his manuscript of hundreds of pages hand written on yellow legal paper, and mailed his labor of love to Truman. Fred never heard back from him, and it depressed him so severely that he committed suicide.
I do remember Harpers soft voice from the shadows. I can see why Truman clung to her …
soft voice from the shadows. I can see why Truman clung to her …
Yeah … I suspect that I will read it …
My so-called friends have fallen under a spell
They look me squarely in the eye and they say, “All is well”
Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high
When men will beg God to kill them and they won’t be able to die?”
~ Bob Dylan ~ Precious Angel ~ 1979
So my morning starts with coffee and Bob Dylan, a bright and cheery sunshiny morning, a happy parakeet who loves any kind of noise, and a feeling of being well rested.
*sip!*
A mild back and forth with another blogster on Islamic Terror and Saddam Hussein. A comment here, a comment there. A new item posted in my labor of love, Akashaic, soon to be the Great American Novel. It is just as easy to wish for a billion as it is for five bucks, I guess.
*sip!*
Half of America is pissed at Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at Congress without getting the White House’s permission. The other half wonders where in the hell is it written that anyone has to get the Presidents permission to speak before Congress. I stand with the latter.
*sip!*
Another birthday came and went, marking yet another year of survival in my humiliating slow march to decay and death. There has been [mumble] sunrises and sunsets in my life. One great war, and untold military actions. Twelve Presidents. Two wives. Two arterial bypasses. Uncounted angioplasties and angiograms. 12,486 pots of Snookums flawless morning coffee.
*sip!*
Today is Sunday. My day to prepare the meals. It is time to begin Sunday brunch. I have a craving for waffles, but even the thought pegs the meter on my glucose reader. So. Ersatz sausage and eggs it will be.
Mz Muze and an Amusing Harem
I was sitting at my workstation in peptic distress after a gourmet dinner of Chinese takeout leftovers when I noticed her perched on my monitor, dimpled knees crossed properly so that I couldn’t see past them. Some days I am just lucky.
“Hello handsome. It’s been awhile.” She said throatily.
“It has, but I haven’t been much interested in writing.” I answered ruefully.
“You seldom are.”
“No thanks to you!”
“I see that you are working on Akashaic again. Getting bored?” She said, changing the subject.
“It seemed an interesting twist to the old formula. Boy meets girls, girls fall madly in love with boy in spite of his other six wives. Girls marry boy and all go off to live happily forever.”
“People like unusual stories, but this sounds like a middle aged man’s fantasy.” She said, cackling at her humor.
“I am no longer ‘middle aged’. I left middle age back in the dust somewhere.”
“Finally! We agree on something!” She cackled again.
“You’re not exactly a spring chicken yourself!” I snarled
“Hey! I just manufacture fantasies, Dickens, I don’t live them.”
“You are a fantasy. A figment of my fevered mind.”
“Hey, Sigmund. I am not the one talking to a woman perched on your monitor. What’s your plan on the harem additions?” She shot back, as she quickly tried to change the subject again.
“This is a wind-down section after the hero’s epic battle with one of the Eternal Guardians. He almost loses the battle, and realizes that he needs to add to his harem to increase his power. It isn’t all about great sex and fantastic orgasms. It is about the symbiotic relationship he has with his many wives who are more than wives. It also serves to introduce a new element into the epic.”
“You’ve been trying to write without me. I had to throw in the new element to keep this tome from turning into a …”
“Yeah, yeah. A middle-aged male’s sexual fantasy. Have you any more clichés that you want to pass out?”
“Yeah. You are going to need me to help clear up this multi-dimensional epic. You are getting lost in the labyrinth.” She said, once again trying to re-direct the conversation.
“I am lost, at that. I have started writing it in yWriter, ® a writing aid. It helps me organize the tale on the fly. It helps a great deal, but a functional time-line would help. The dinner at the Prime Ministers mansion really pulled this section out of the mud, and I don’t think I would have seen the need for it without the guidance of the program”
“You noticed that?” She preened. “It was one of my better thoughts!”
“Ah come on now. That wasn’t you!” I replied.
“Yep, Hemmingway. It was all me!” she chirped.
“It couldn’t be all you. The Library of Congress couldn’t hold all of you!” I countered, gloating at the quickness of my retorts.
“You just don’t recognize help when you get it, you ungrateful bastard. You would still be rolled up in your day bed, sucking your thumb and wishing for spring if it wasn’t for me!”
“If it wasn’t for you, I might have finished at least one stinking novel before I died.”
“Pfft! Go back and read some of your earlier stuff, Captain Trite. When I found you, you couldn’t even write a proper grocery list. All you ever wrote was stinking stuff.”
“I still can’t write a grocery list!” I replied, a little embarrassed at my ineptness at common tasks.
“Well, anyway … you got one whole chapter outlined today. Not bad, my hero.”
“True. Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Allah’s gimlet eyed gaze …
Friday. Preparation day.
Snooks had the coffee brewed when I arose, so I poured my cup and limped down to the studio, trying to not use my damaged toe, and settled into my $49 Executive chair to watch the sunrise and catch up on the fate of a mama dog and her weaned puppies that I drove to Waxahachie yesterday.
My bottom doesn’t fit a drivers seat like it used to, and I am pretty sore from the chest down to the knees. Add to that an injured toe from roughhousing with Jenna, our once cute furry puppy that is today a huge white moose. She’s a puppy that is almost as big as I am.
But it looks like a peaceful daybreak. Kippur da budgie helps me greets me with clicks and chirps and squawks. The cassock filter timer clicks on with a low hiss that masks the morning joy of the dogs as they romp around in morning play.
For some reason unexplained, I cannot bring myself to read beyond the headlines of the morning newsfeeds. They scream in bold fonts about Nigerian Muslims killing hundreds of Muslims in Nigeria, all for the greatness of Allah, and Muslims shooting news reporters in Pakistan all for the greatness of Allah. And Muslim sleeper cells throughout the world are plotting to kill infidels for the greatness of Allah.
I just hope Allah doesn’t set His restless gimlet eyed gaze in the direction of this insignificant part of the universe. I don’t think I can deal with that much of his greatness nor his peace.
A hard to write story …
I am a fair to middlin’ essayist. All you need to do for an essay is to pick one salient point, hammer it home while avoiding bunny trails, and stretch it out for three to five hundred words. On the other hand, I can do a rant, selecting three salient points, drive them home, then sum it all up.
But this type of writing that I am doing here is one I have never had a lot of luck with. The behind the scenes story. I have tried twice to tell it now, and I am still unsatisfied with the progression of it, so you may get it yet again. Nevertheless, I will keep pecking away at it because it needs to be told. It is long, passive voiced and rambling, but I hope you stick with it. It is a tale that needs telling.
Many of my fellow transporters and rescuers will say this is a half-told tale. And they would be right. I just ask them to be a bit merciful if I omitted an important aspect of it. I only have 1200 to 1500 words to get it all out.
Last year I retired from active work in my local congregation, and began to look around for a less demanding place where I could put whatever talents I had to work. Driving is the one occupation that remains, and so one day I accidently stumbled across a group of volunteers who transported rescued animals all over the US. I didn’t know then that was to be my introduction to some of the most giving people that I have ever met. I do not have words that would laud them enough.
I filled out the questionnaire on one national transport site, purchased a couple of medium sized live animal crates and within a week I found myself transporting “Roy”, an older hound that was badly infected with red mange, who was being transported to a safe haven to live out the remainder of his days.
I don’t know what Roy’s history was, but he had evidently had a lot of training, and he endured the transport with a stoicism that was near heartbreaking. With hardly any urging, he jumped into the car kennel as the previous transporter handed him off to me, and rode without complaint to the next point where I handed him off on the last leg to his new home. Roy would have been a perfect match for an old widower to live out their final years together. Nevertheless, I am sure that he is happy in his new home and today is mange free.
The vast majority of the rescue people and transporters are women, though I have met a few men who take the time to alleviate the suffering of those who do not have a voice. The women are outstanding. One that I met went right onto the grounds of a group connected with Mexican gangs to document the abuse of the dogs, and gathered enough information to break up one dogfighting ring.
And when the hurricanes strike the coast, hundreds of these unsung heroes throw transport kennels into the back of their cars and they tirelessly go looking for lost and abandoned pets, finding temporary shelter for them, then photographing each one and putting out flyers in the communities where they were recovered.
However, I did not sign up for that level of involvement. I just pick the dogs and cats up here, and take them there, and often I don’t even know the history behind them. Maybe that is a good thing. It has gotten me involved in local animal control efforts. Here we have a huge problem with feral dogs, and there is not much that you can do for them other than be as humane as possible. Rabies, heartworm, parvovirus and tick infestations are the rule in this part of the world, and the adoption centers and shelters have their hands full. Treating them is not often an option, and as much as I hate it, euthanasia is the more humane method for many of these animals.
But the few who can be adopted out, mostly estrays that their owners hadn’t micro chipped or tagged, do get a chance both in the receiving shelter as well as the many who go to a foster family. The fosters work tirelessly to get their charges rehomed. Moreover, pregnant females invariably find fosters that will keep the mothers and pups together until they are old enough to adopt out. One group of puppies that I was recently involved with were of that type. Now the mother will be treated for heartworm and malnutrition, be spayed, and then the effort at finding her a lasting home begins.
Literally thousands of unpaid individuals oversee all of this. Shelters themselves can only keep the dogs in cages, hoping that someone will come by and take a dog with them. However, their work is mostly in vain. There are more animals than the adopters or sanctuaries can keep up with, so a hard eye has to keeping the more adoptable animals in the forefront, and euthanizing the rest. It is a heart rendering process, and the turnover in shelters is very high.
That is where these unheralded volunteers shine. Breed specific groups that concentrate on one breed cull the pounds and shelters for those breeds. Usually they need a 501(c)3 enrollment before the shelter will release the dog. Again, that is where I come it. One woman I have worked with rescues Bull Terriers. When the pound gets one, either they call her, or she pesters them for their breed list. She will then make the trip to the pound to look determine if the dog is suitable for their program. If it is, she puts a claim on it, the pound keeps the dog for whatever the required period is for the owner to redeem it, and when that time is up, the dog is released to the rescue agency.
Again, that is where I come in. In the case of a Bull Terrier, I pick up the dog from whatever shelter it is in, and transport it to her. Often, this is a 100-mile or more round trip for me. My pay for this is pictures of the dog and its new owner. I am sufficiently and well paid!
Another group takes in pregnant Lab females, provides pre and postnatal care for the puppies, and delivers them to their adopting agencies all over the USA. The puppies are not just given out. The rules are that an adopter gets a home visit first, and then the puppy is delivered. The puppies often travel great distances, such as the latest group that I transported that went to Rhode Island from Texas.
Through a huge network of volunteers, the puppies were transported in ninety-mile “legs” across the US, and spent two nights at temporary foster homes where they were allowed to roam in larger quarters, fed and watered. The foster would let them out to play and potty again in the morning before first light, give them a very light breakfast, put them back into the transport kennels, and help load them on the first leg of that day’s journey.
We can follow their journey via private chat windows that are opened up just for that trip, and it is pleasant to hear each driver make comments on the puppies as they travel. One of the larger males that I had figured out how to open the latch of the kennel, and got to ride in the drivers lap until she could get to a place to pull over and re-secure him. Note to self: Remember to put a handful of tie-wraps in the travel bag.
So there you have it. Some unsung heroes. If you are retired and have time on your hands, and a little disposable income, consider this small effort as an outlet for paying life back.
If wishes were portents
A cool 35°F and gentle breezes greet me this December morning. ISIS kills off a few more Christians and forces their daughters into a proper Muslim marriage. Allah be proud of His little Jihadi’s. But tonight in more peaceful parts of the world, the interstice between Chanukah and Christmas Eve is sundown. One blends into the other with the imperceptible flicker of a candle flame. Dedication and Birth. I hope that it is as portentous as it seems.
Lisdexia
Lisdexia
Most of you wouldn’t notice that I have a type of dyslexia that transposes letters and numbers because I am very careful not to let it slip. But once in awhile the blunders get by me, usually in the form of typos. At least I prefer to think of them as typos.
I really do know the difference between there, their and they’re, but they will slip by my fingers unnoticed, and generally hide themselves in the proofing as well. Twos toos and to’s get me too, and I know the rules for them as well. There are certain number combinations that I always transpose, such as writing 35 for 53, and a few other that sort of come and go.
Dyslexia comes and goes, and I seem to be in a particularly bad phase right now. I do better with longer pieces like this than I do with quick comments on facebook and newsfeeds. I go back and reread my comments later and just cringe.
My blog pieces are not immune either, and I have gone over three year old pieces and found basic mistakes that no one should make.
I don’t know why it is, but if I try to proof a piece as soon as it is written, I will not see the errors, but if I go back a day or two later, the errors seem to leap from the pages. Like most dyslexics, I didn’t do all that well in school, but always tested high on IQ tests, and general knowledge exams. Moreover, I could often bullschick my way through orals and essays. Nevertheless, college did it in as far as education. I managed two years in a small teachers college before throwing in the towel.
I tried again a decade later, and discovered that I am just not going to ever be a student. It was much later in life before I discovered precisely why I had so much trouble in school. However, I also discovered that I am in good company with people like Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and George Patton.
And if you are wondering why I bothered to write this little high school level biography, you are in good company too ….
Rusty's Armory 